The Leading-Edge Manager's Guide to Success E-Book

David Parmenter

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 525

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Practical, commonsense advice on becoming an effective leader Examining the baggage that most managers have and then helping them to understand the personal traits that can limit their potential, this book guides you through the pathway of self development, then takes you through management and leadership better practices, providing many implementation tools. * All you need to know when getting prepared for a 'management role' * How to develop 'conquest leadership' attributes * Traits to make you a 'winning' CEO * Latest thinking on KPIs, quarterly rolling planning, decision based reporting and performance related pay * How to create Winning Management and Leadershp Habits * Examines how to become More Financially Aware This book is a very practical guide with templates, 'how to do it tools', stories about gifted leaders, checklists and examples and is devoid of all intellectual arguments on management. With directional guidance on what managers need to know in order to be able to manage and lead others, The Leading-Edge Manager's Guide to Success helps managers and 'managers to be' as they climb the 'management mountain'.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Selecting the Mountain and Your Guides

CHAPTER 1 Creating a Vision of What You Want to Achieve

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Influencing the Environment

CHAPTER 2 Find Out about Yourself

Personal Baggage

Courses to Attend

Locking in a New Behavior Trait

Inner Disarmament

CHAPTER 3 Locating a Mentor

Why You Need a Mentor

How to Find a Mentor

How to Ask Someone to Be Your Mentor

Types of Mentors

Some Mentoring Better Practices

CHAPTER 4 Finding the Right Organization for You

Working under a Great CEO

Working for a Great Manager

Part II: Getting Prepared for Management

CHAPTER 5 Creating Winning Personal Habits

Treasure Mapping

Self-Recognition

Recognition of Others

Making Decisions

Do Not Run Out of Fuel

Continuous Innovation

Learn How to “Post-It” Reengineer

Mind Mapping

Business Etiquette

Managing Relationships

Cell Phone Etiquette

Greeting the Guest

Remember You/Remember Me

Disengaging Swiftly and Politely

Full Attention at Meetings

Returning Phone Calls

Golden Rules with Email

CHAPTER 6 Developing Winning Work Habits

Attend a One Week Management Course

How to Help Your Boss Be Successful

How to Handle a “Bully of a Boss”

Time Management: The Basics

The 4:00 P.M. Friday Weekly Planner

Power Dressing

Preparing for Your Performance Review

Preparing a Monthly Progress Report

Quality Assurance Checks

Contributing to Your Organization’s Intranet

Making the Most out of Your Computer Applications

In Pursuit of Slow

Better-Practice Graphics

Delivering Bulletproof PowerPoint Presentations

Searching the Web Efficiently

Interview Techniques

CHAPTER 7 Part Two Progress Checklist

Thirteen-Week Change Program

Lessons from Sir Edmund Hillary’s Expeditions

Part III: Being A Better Manager

CHAPTER 8 Improving Team Performance: The Basics

Attending Further Management Courses

Staff Debriefing at the End of the Day

Attracting the Best Staff to the Team

Getting the Right Staff

Getting the Induction Process Right

Set Up Monthly One-on-One Progress Meetings with Direct Reports

Performance Reviews that Work

Hold Offsite Meetings for the Team at Least Twice a Year

Make Work Fun

In-House Satisfaction Survey

Getting a Bigger “Bang” for Your Training Dollar

Managing Staff on Sick Leave

Stress Management

Apply Pareto’s 80/20 Principle in Your Work

Maintain a Focus on Materiality

CHAPTER 9 Improving Team Performance: The Cutting Edge

Implementing “Action Meetings” Methods

Hourly Meeting Cost

Check the Need for the Meeting

Ban Morning Meetings

Learn How to Negotiate

The Hidden Cost of Downsizing

Dismissing a Poor-Performing Employee

The Overnight Challenge

Use the One-Minute-Manager Techniques

Introduce a Team Balanced Scorecard

Lessons from a World-Class Coach

CHAPTER 10 Effective Recruiting

Understand That Time Spent Recruiting Is the Most Valuable Time

Cathay Pacific Recruitment

Peter Drucker’s Five-Step Process

14 Great Questions to Help Get Select ‘A’ Players

Using the Organization’s Values in Recruiting

Involve the Human Resources Team

Use Simulation Exercises and Psychometric Testing

Assessment Centers

Involve Your Team in the Final Selection Process

Ask Your Top Employees for Referrals

Reference Checks: The Do’s and Don’ts

Selecting an Executive Assistant to Be Your Copilot

CHAPTER 11 Becoming More Financially Aware

Understand Your Financial Responsibilities as a Budget Holder

Understanding Internal Controls

Understand Your Organization’s Financial Statements

Balance Sheet or the Statement of Financial Position

Statement of Profit and Loss

Source and Disposition of Funds

CHAPTER 12 Developing Your Selling Skills

Selling a New Process through “Emotional Drivers”

Always Pre-Sell Your Proposals

Selling Your Team to Your Peers

CHAPTER 13 Working Smart with the Outside World

Supplier Relationships

Seeking Publicity

Using Outside Consultants Effectively

CHAPTER 14 Part Three Progress Checklist

A Bulldog Who Never Gave Up: Churchill’s Leadership Lessons

Part IV: Being a Leader Who Makes a Difference

CHAPTER 15 Learning Must Never Stop

A Constant Thirst for Knowledge

The Thinking of Jeremy Hope

The Thinking of Harry Mills

CHAPTER 16 Key Performance Indicators Can Transform Your Organization

The Great KPI Misunderstanding

The 10/80/10 Rule

Characteristics of a KPI

Importance of Identifying the Critical Success Factors

The Balanced Scorecard

Winning KPIs Link Day-to-Day Activities to Strategy

Implementing Winning KPIs

Use the Emotional Drivers When Selling Winning KPIs

If Your KPIs Are Not Working, Throw Them Out and Start Again

Importance of Daily CEO Follow-Up

CHAPTER 17 Reporting Performance Measures in a Balanced Way

Reporting Measures Daily, Weekly, Monthly

How KPIs and Financial Reporting Fit Together

CHAPTER 18 Making a Difference in the Senior Management Team

Your Involvement with the Organization’s Intranet

Your Ability to Lead

Your Competency with Technology

Your Ability to Work in the “Not Urgent and Important” Quadrant

Your Ability to Finish

Your Commitment to Human Resources Management Techniques

CHAPTER 19 Finding Your Organization’s Critical Success Factors

Few Organizations Know Their Critical Success Factors

Definition of Critical Success Factors

Identifying Organization-wide Critical Success Factors

Identifying Organization-wide CSFs: A Three-Stage Process

CHAPTER 20 Special Organizations

Cathay Pacific Recruiting Frontline Staff Born with the Ability to Serve

Building an Organization That Works in the Fourth Dimension: SMASH

Toyota’s 15-Year Advantage

Management Practices at the Pier Nine Restaurant

CHAPTER 21 Making Your Day More Successful

Managing Your Scarcest Resource: Your Time

Revolutionizing the Working Day

Planning a Sabbatical

Bring Back the Morning Tea Break

SMT Lunches and the Monthly Team Breakfast

Focusing on One’s Goals During the Day

CHAPTER 22 Reporting to the Board

Selling the Change to the Board

Costing Board Papers

Scoping Information Requests

Avoiding Rewrites of Board Reports

Tabling Board Papers Electronically

Do Not Give the Board “Management Information”

Training Session for All Writers of Board Papers

Set Timely Board Meetings Less Frequently

Using a Dashboard to Report Key Result Indicators to the Board

CHAPTER 23 Annual Planning Is Not Working

Throw Out Your Annual Planning and Associated Monthly Budget Cycle

If You Must Keep an Annual Plan, Do It in Two Weeks

CHAPTER 24 Quarterly Rolling Forecasting and Planning

The Quarterly Rolling Forecast

QRF Quickly Creates the Annual Plan Goalposts

QRP Creates a Quarter-by-Quarter Funding Mechanism

QRF Is Based on a Planning Application—Not on Excel

QRF Should Be Based on the Key Drivers

QRF Has a Fast, Light Touch (Completed in One Week)

CHAPTER 25 CEO Feedback

Managing One’s Ego

Measuring Your Performance as a CEO

CHAPTER 26 Implement Reporting That Works

Daily/Weekly Reporting

Month-End Reporting

Snapshot of All Projects Currently Started

Reporting the Strategic Objectives/Risks/Costs Pressures

The One-Page Investment Proposal

CHAPTER 27 Seeking Staff Opinion on a Regular Basis

A Staff Survey Run Three or Four Times a Year

Designing a Staff Survey

CHAPTER 28 Importance of the Human Resources Team

Selecting the Right People for the Business

Reducing the Need to Recruit

Reducing Recruitment Costs

Developing Managers and Staff

Enhancing the Organization’s Performance through Changing the Culture

Savings through Reducing Sick-Pay Payments

Managers Do Not Have the Time and Expertise to Be HR Experts

Steps You Can Take Right Now

CHAPTER 29 Performance Bonus Schemes

The Billion-Dollar Giveaway

The Foundation Stones

CHAPTER 30 Avoiding a Rotten Takeover or Merger

How Mergers Go Wrong

Alternatives to a TOM

CHAPTER 31 The Perils of Restructuring

Why Do We Appear to Have an Addiction to Reorganization?

Typical Reasons for a Reorganization

Before You Look at a Reorganization

CHAPTER 32 Becoming a Serving Leader: A Viking with a Mother’s Heart

Five Foundation Stones of a Serving Leader

Areas of Focus for a Serving Leader

Crisis Management

Abandonment

Recruiting Your Team

Abundance of Positive Energy

Develop and Maintain Relationships

Student of Psychology

Seeing the Future

Focus on Learning and Innovation

Finishing What You Start

Develop, Engage, and Trust

Valuing Results and People

Accumulate Experience

A Viking with a Mother’s Heart

CHAPTER 33 Part Four Progress Checklist

Twelve-Week Change Program

APPENDIX A  In-House Customer Satisfaction Survey

APPENDIX B  List of Success Factors

APPENDIX C Intranet Content Checklist

APPENDIX D  Recognition Letters

APPENDIX E Focus Group Meeting Workshop

APPENDIX F  Putting Your Support Behind Initiatives

APPENDIX G  Staff-Satisfaction Survey

Confidential Employee Survey

APPENDIX H  A 360 Degree Feedback Questionnaire Suitable for a CEO

A Confidential 360 degree feedback on the CEO

Index

Copyright © 2011 by David Parmenter. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parmenter, David.

 The leading-edge manager’s guide to success: strategies and better practices/David Parmenter.

p. cm.

 Includes index.

 ISBN 978-0-470-92043-5 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-02310-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-02311-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-02312-9 (ebk)

 1. Executive ability. 2. Management. 3. Leadership. 4. Success in business. I. Title.

 HD38.2.P375 2011

 658.4'09–dc22

2010045217

To my friend Michele who, one evening asked “What are all the facets of leadership?” This question, which I could not answer, inspired me to complete this work.

Preface

Many of us have drifted into management without adequate preparation, very much in the way we drifted into adulthood. In many cultures, the transition into adulthood is managed very carefully—the Australian Aborigines by the “walkabout,” the New Guinea highlanders by formal ceremonies, and the Zulus by hunting game. If we are to be successful in management, we need guidance from our extended family, our managers, our colleagues, our heroes, and our mentors.

This book is designed to share the peer wisdom that you might get if you are lucky enough to be influenced by a gifted leader—one who, like a passing comet, gathers others and drags them upward until they themselves have the momentum to make it to the top.

The better practices listed here are like the buckshot from a shotgun. Many of the buckshot will miss their target—either they are not appropriate or you are already doing something similar. However, some better practices will hit the target and these will hopefully make a difference in your current and future management positions.

Please note that I do not view my management experiences as being anything like those of the great managers and leaders I feature here. That is not my purpose. I fervently seek to ensure that the reader does not perform in the naive and fault-ridden way that characterized my own management years. This book is about better practices that will help you become a leader who will make a difference—a serving leader.

While this book incorporates many of the latest management techniques it cannot replace regular management training or the attendance of a residential management course.

How to Use This Book

This book is for all those talented managers who are making a difference but acknowledge that some of the building blocks were never put in place properly. It targets the staff person about to become a supervisor, who needs to process the first section, as well as CEOs who, behind closed doors, may find some tips to help them score more goals.

Using Part One: Selecting the Mountain and Your Guides

It helps to have an idea of what you want to achieve—otherwise, as Lewis Carroll said, “Any road will take you there.” If you want to climb Mount Everest, you will obviously need a high degree of skill and preparation on all types of challenging terrain. If you want to be a CEO of a major corporation, you will likewise need to have that vision early on and carefully map your career moves to ensure you are gaining the requisite skills.

All successful mountaineers need to select their guides carefully. These guides in the business world are your mentors. Your mentors will help prepare you for the challenges ahead and save you from falling into the crevasses. Mountaineers carefully pack their rucksack. They cannot afford to carry excess baggage as this would limit their chances of success. This section of the book will help you; minimize your own personal baggage, find you mentor(s), spur you on to find your vision, and assist you to find the right organization to work for.

Using Part Two: Getting Prepared for Management

Many of us embark on management with limited knowledge and skills, having at best read a collection of management books and attended a management training course some five or six years ago. For various reasons, the building blocks are not complete. This section of the book is aimed at providing the missing building blocks to give you a sound basis for summiting the management mountain. It covers creating winning personal habits and developing winning work habits.

Using Part Three: Being a Better Manager

This part covers those skills and experiences you need to have in order to move onward and upward. It covers creating improved team performance, better recruiting, becoming more financially aware, developing your selling skills, and working smart with the outside world.

Using Part Four: Being a Leader Who Makes a Difference

This part covers those skills and experiences you need to have gained in order to successfully reach the top of the mountain (become the CEO) and return safely, ready for the next mountain. It covers understanding how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can transform your organization, reporting performance measures in a balanced way, finding your organization’s critical success factors, stories about some special organizations and people, obtaining feedback on performance, adopting twenty-first-century performance management techniques, ways you can destroy value quickly if you are not careful and becoming a serving leader.

Why Feature Leadership Stories throughout This Book?

During the journey of writing this book I have been captivated by the stories of some great leaders. When researching them I have found that their messages are very powerful. In this book I feature lessons from Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Winston Churchill, and other leaders less well known. I have deliberately woven them throughout the book to give the reader a sense of continuity and perspective and some relief from the technical topic areas that are covered here.

Electronic Media Available

To support you in implementing the strategies and better practices in this book, the following electronic media are available (some for a small fee):

Numerous webcasts (see www.davidparmenter.com/webcasts/). These are free to everyone.On my website (www.davidparmenter.com) I have placed some complementary electronic media that will be helpful to readers. The website will refer to a word from a specific page in this book which you can use as a password.Most of the checklists, agendas, and report formats can be purchased from www.davidparmenter.com using a PayPal link on the site.

The following icons relate to what types of media are available throughout this book:

All exhibits with this icon are available electronically (some for free, some for a small fee).

I have performed a webcast on this topic for you (see www.davidparmenter.com/webcasts).

An article on this subject is available for free on my website (www.davidparmenter.com).

As an alternative to reaching the author’s Web site, you can access the material by going through the publisher’s link: www.wiley.com/go/leadingedge

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the commitment and dedication of Waymark Solutions staff members over the years it took to complete this project (Dean, Roydon, Matt, Louis and Jennifer). I thank my partner, Jennifer Gilchrist and children, Alexandra and Claudine, who are so understand­ing during my absences which are so much a part of being a writer and speaker.

I am also grateful to all those managers who have shared their ideas on management and leadership with me over the years.

I want to thank Harry Mills, Matt Clayton, and Jeremy Hope for their ongoing sage advice and Sheck Cho for getting this book published in the first place.

Special appreciation goes to my parents, who, encouraged all their four children to be independent and confident in their own endeavours. To all of the above mentioned people and all the other people who have been an influence in my life, I say “thank you” for providing me the launching pad for the journey I am now on.

Part I: Selecting the Mountain and Your Guides

CHAPTER 1

Creating a Vision of What You Want to Achieve

If you have only a few minutes to skim over this chapter, this is what you should focus on:

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

It helps to have an idea of what you want to achieve, otherwise, “Any road will take you there.”1 If you want to climb Mount Everest, you will obviously need a high degree of skill and preparation on all types of challenging terrain. If you want to be a CEO of a major corporation, you will likewise need to have that vision early on and carefully map your career moves to ensure you are gaining the requisite skills. It is worth noting that becoming a CEO of a major corporation seldom happens by chance.

It is worth understanding the power of the subconscious. As I understand it, the subconscious does not know the difference between right and wrong; it does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined in the future or the present; it does not know its limitations.

In the book, The Winning Zone,2 Al Smith states that “the more vivid the imagination, the more real the subconscious thinks the picture is; eventually, the subconscious will believe it is reality and allow the body to perform the task.”

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Many readers will be aware of this term, even attended a course on it, and yet this concept has been left in the deep recesses of the brain, unused. At its basic level it is the most effective form of behavior alignment one can do. By using your five senses you create visions of achievement you have yet to attain. You smell, you see, you feel, you hear, you touch, all in your mind, the event you want to achieve. Your subconscious is now in a dilemma. It needs to close the gap between now and this future reality. Because it knows no bounds, it will lift your performance, the only limiting factor being your consciousness, which as always will interfere and will sabotage progress, if allowed to.

Al Smith, a sport psychologist, sat his son down to watch hours of videotape of the top-ten bowler, Marshall Holman. After a week and a half of focusing on Holman’s delivery and visualizing the same approach and motion when he bowled, his son’s average moved from the 120s to the 185s! There are many more sporting analogies highlighting the power of vision.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay are reputed to have visualized being the first person to climb Mount Everest. It is no surprise that they should meet each other in the best-organized attempt on Mount Everest. Upon meeting, they soon realized their compatibility and joined together as a two-man climbing team, performing feats of endurance designed to catch the eye of Lord Hunt, the Expedition leader. They naturally were then selected to be the second summiting team. The first team met a problem they could not surmount, whereas when Sir Edmund Hillary approached the final barrier, now known as the Hillary step, he developed a new climbing technique, at 27,000 feet, to get around the problem. One wonders how much Sir Edmund’s and Norgay’s shared vision was the differentiating factor between the two separate summiting attempts.

Influencing the Environment

There are people who believe that one’s thoughts can influence the environment around you. For those readers who think I have lost the plot, I ask you to do an exercise. Pick a busy shopping day where parking will be a nightmare. Now think precisely where you want to park—the most convenient busy road where parking is available. On the journey, think of an empty parking spot. Now that you are thinking the positive thoughts you will be amazed at the results you get. It is as if the universe has linked into another driver and stimulated him to move his car just as you are arriving; or looking at this another way you are more open to the opportunities that are always there. Many cars will be leaving their spots during peak times!

By creating visions of where you want to be, you are, according to this school of thought, creating the opportunities and being receptive to them as they arise. It is worth attending courses on neuro-linguistic programming, meditation, and visualization, which lock in practices better than any book on the subject.

Notes

1. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, (Tribeca Books).

2. Al Smith, The Winning Zone, Ist Books Library, 2002.

CHAPTER 2

Find Out about Yourself

If you have only a few minutes to skim over this chapter, this is what you should focus on:

The EnneagramThe personal baggage checklist

Personal Baggage

We will always be running with a few cylinders misfiring unless we fully understand our behavior patterns and those of the people around us. Skip the section on personal baggage and I promise you that you will never reach your potential. You will never be able to successfully implement large change as this requires advanced interpersonal skills.

We inherit baggage from our ancestry, along with many great things. This baggage is added to by our parents, with either too much smothering, too little attention, too much criticism, too little quality time (need I go on?). One course I attended, called “Turning Point,” stated that we all have baggage; our role in life is to lighten the load so that it is not crippling when we decide to start “management summiting.”

My point is, you owe it to your colleagues, staff, suppliers, contractors, family, partner, and offspring to do something about your personal baggage.

We have a choice: to grow and to challenge those behavior traits that will create havoc in the workplace, or to ignore them and seek new jobs like we do new partners, hooked on the romance period and leaving when the going gets tough. To make a major contribution, you will need to achieve through the contribution of others. This means acquiring a suite of behavioral skills.

Let us be clear: To be a leader today you do not have to have handled all your personal baggage. There are plenty of leaders “crippled” with the weight of their personal baggage who are causing havoc within every organization that they work for. Yet there are those Iconic leaders who are a pleasure to work with that demonstrate the benefit of minimizing one’s own personal baggage.

Courses to Attend

As I said before, you owe it to your colleagues, staff, suppliers, contractors, family, partner, offspring, and golfing partners to do something about it. Here are six courses that everybody needs to do as a basic minimum.

Course 1: The Enneagram

“The enneagram is a profound, elegant, and compassionate approach to people and their relationships. It describes nine basic world-views and nine different ways of doing business in the world. Each of the nine personality types is something of a pathway through life, with likely obstacles and pitfalls along the way.”1

Your principle motivation should be a better understanding of how you work and what will benefit your family, friends, and colleagues. A by-product will be that you will have an understanding of the likely worldview/personality type of your boss, and thus be in a better posi­tion to make the relationship work. (See www.enneagraminstitute.com/ennagram.asp.)

Course 2: Hermann’s Thinking Preferences

This entertaining workshop looks at the way people think. It is broken into four types. It is important to understand the thinking preference of your boss, colleagues, and staff reporting to you so you can communicate effectively with them. Attend a local course as soon as you can or visit