It was September 2020, one month after I suffered a broken ankle when I said to my physical therapist, “how am I ever going to curl again?” The location of the injury impeded my ability to flex my ankle to 180 degrees; a critical position for delivering a 42-pound stone on 27°F ice. My world had turned upside down and the future was unclear for me. 

Can you remember a set-back you thought you could not overcome? 

As I think about my misfortune, I can’t help but think about the CEO or Senior leader in an organization who is going through some type of rapid change and feels off track. The tricks of the past no longer serve them, they feel lonely and don’t know where to turn. Those moments may be indicators to start with a clean slate and re-evaluate your situation. Sometimes leaders have to navigate twists, turns and uncertainty to gain clarity. 

I tell leaders when they’re unclear to ask themselves these questions:

• What are the opportunities in front of you?
• What is in your control? 
• What resources do you need to get back on track?
• What personal accountability do you need to stay focused on the future?

Here’s how these questions helped my broken ankle:

Several weeks later I met with my physical therapist and told them I was frustrated and didn’t think I would get back into curling in 2 weeks time. It was now the beginning of October.

The physical therapist said the most profound thing to me: “When you look back 6 weeks ago, you could barely walk in a hard boot with crutches, now you’re in a soft boot complaining about walking up stairs. Look back and see how far you’ve come. It will make you think about the future in a whole new way!”

The first day I got back on the ice, I could only deliver the stone by carefully descending into my delivery with my foot turned at an awkward 45 degree angle; hardly the form of a silver medalist. I was frustrated, but happy to see I could get on the ice without doing too much damage. 

The Transformation

I started to throw a few stones and a few more. Because my mending ankle had not regained full flexibility, it forced me to deliver my stone more deliberately as I pushed out of the hack and accelerated down the ice. The extra second or two I took to descend into my position gave me the time to better focus on the trajectory of my stone. 

To my amazement, my delivery was far more accurate than in previous years. The unfortunate event that left doubt in my curling capability resulted in a step change improvement in my overall performance ultimately. We had a winning season and I’m pleased to say my confidence is significantly higher than when I started.

How are you going to handle a broken business?

Sometimes we feel stuck, a crumbling foundation and it’s a lonely place to rebuild the foundation, leadership and a strategy when you are dropped into a situation or conditions change. Just know that the CEO’s Compass, a 7 point assessment tool, is exactly what you need to regain confidence, control and create a winning future for you and your team! 

To learn more about The CEO’s Compass – Your Guide to Get Back on Track, my book releasing later in 2021, jump on our waitlist to get the latest information. 

If you simply want to have a free 30 minute conversation to discuss your current situation, let’s jump on a call. 

For more information about curling, go to USA Curling to learn more about the sport as we get closer to the 2022 Winter Olympics. If you are local to Cincinnati, come curl with us at the Cincinnati Curling Club! I’d love to take you out on the ice starting in October when the season opens. My business video was also partly filmed at my curling club. Check it out!

Resources:

Good reads: 

How to Negotiate When Negotiating Makes You Nervous by Moshe Cohen

The challenge of negotiating is not always in the technique, but instead negotiating with yourself.

Good music:

Veigar Margeirsson

My go-to composer when I need to feel inspired. 

Most inspirational Podcast Guest I spoke to this week:

Dr. Charles Reed, a truly transformational leader. Connect with him and share with him how you found him. Subscribe to the podcast so you catch his episode in the coming months. 

How often have you seen a new senior leader drop in an organization, turn it around in 12-18 months and then they’re gone in less than 3 years?  What went wrong? The reason lies in what we ask of these leaders; we want short term gains without focus on a sustainable outcome. In The CEO’s Compass, the outcome is the true north each leader should be navigating to or Peace of Mind. 

How to Identify a Transactional Leader

The CEO’s Compass Assessment grades you on 7 compass points and the average of those become your Peace of Mind Score. For the scenario above, the situation lies with you hiring a Transactional Leader vs. one that is using a compass. Here are the signs you hired a Transactional Leader:

• While this leader has a highly articulated Purpose and is laser focused on Performance Metrics, they fall short of ensuring it aligns with the team throughout the organization. They talk a good talk, but the transactional person in the organization only knows their job and not in the context of the overall Purpose. Just kick the boxes next time you go to Customer Service or IT department and if they speak in terms of a KPI (Key Performance Indicator). See what their response is and if they can only describe their task vs. something like “I’m here to deliver a memorable experience”, then you have only a transactional leader. Low scores on developing people around a purpose detract from the Performance. 
• This leader invests in project teams and technology to get rapid results via having the right Platforms. They’re cheered as a results driven leader, but the result is offset by a lack of understanding of the Past & Pride of the People. You see, humans need to interface with technology to get a desired result and when things are going well, the leader is cheered for efficiency improvements. The system fails however, when the environment changes, mergers, downsizing or a significant market change and the results falter.When the environment changes and a little bit of chaos is introduced, it is the humans who we need to count on to get back on track. When the leader treats the humans as just transactions as part of technologie efforts, the people are heads down and only perform a transaction. Had we taken the time to know them,  their culture and their unique intellectual property, we could have built much needed trust to get through transitional times. 
• The results of this assessment show an average investment in the Process of coaching team dynamics and that is the role of a transactional leader. The problem with this approach is they fail to develop individual skills at the People Level. We assume people have the needed skills when we hire them and they may. But often  we fail to identify the skills needed for the next level or if the environment changes requiring new skills. It is at those times we need a leader who values the development of people as a critical element of their leadership and knowing the results will come. When organizations don’t instill a culture of Personal Development as a leading indicator of a leader’s success, we never achieve Peace of Mind, hence the score in this example of 2.2 on a scale of 1-5. 

So I ask you, knowing what you know now, what to do in order to get back on track? If you’re not sure, why not take The CEO’s Assessment for yourself by direct message or email me to get the tool and then book a call to see how you can achieve Peace of Mind. 

And if you’d like to find out more about The CEO’s Compass – Your Guide to Get Back on Track and all the tools used, sign up for our wait list to learn more about the book and when it becomes available.

“It’s 4:00 o’clock, I’m exhausted from meetings and I didn’t get any of my projects done.”

“We can’t cancel the meeting; this is our opportunity for us to align and know the status of the initiative”

How often does this inner dialogue run through your head before you plaster on a smile and head into yet another “critical” meeting?

The truth is, if you’re feeling this way the chances are high your team feels the same way. Even if they show up prepared, if you’re seeing indicators of exhaustion and missed deadlines – these meetings could be doing more harm than good.

Just imagine how much time one less meeting would allow you to spend on strategic work.

So why is it so hard to have the courage to cancel meetings?

In an era where technology enables us to connect virtually, the ability to host meetings has never been easier. But as with anything in excess, over connection can actually have a negative impact on productivity. 

Before canceling your Zoom subscription, I would recommend reconsidering how many meetings you currently have with your team and what the true intention of each meeting is. Categorize them by purpose, such as Follow Up, Collaboration, Relationship Building, Strategy, etc. 

Once you’ve done that, take a look how many you have in each category and determine if your meetings are indicators of a larger problem. For example, if all of your meetings are follow ups, that may be an indicator that you aren’t trusting your team to complete their projects. If you have an excess of strategy sessions, it could be an indicator that a larger system within your organization is constantly needing attention.

There is nothing more important than creating an environment where people know and trust each other because we’ve spent time building relationships. Once we’ve laid that foundation in our organization, there is no need to continue to have meetings to maintain it. It is already there and the inputs and output of meetings can be done through other technology.

Bottom line: As leaders, we need to look at the landscape and assess what is the best use of time.

Having the courage to cancel those meetings and connect with our teams in more efficient ways isn’t “introverted” or “hands off” behavior, but rather a sign of strength in your leadership.

I recently had a conversation about communication in the workplace. This Podcast episode with Josh Little, Founder of Volley and explores how asynchronous communication gives people back time and the opportunity to engage in more meaningful conversations. 

On the Drop in CEO Podcast and my solo episode this week coming out on June 11th I speak about The CEO’s Compass and the need to spend more time on the People & Process Development.

The role of a leader is to guide the process and help them to be more effective & efficient with their time and interactions. This is especially true in my article on Three Types of Emerging Leaders that Need Your Help, where I discuss leading indicators of individuals to spend more time in their development. 

I’ve had the good fortune of meeting so many leaders whose expertise further supports the need to look at yourself and see how you avoid burnout in yourself as well as your team during Linkedin Live conversation with Dr. Stanley Ward. If you like this piece, we had a fantastic conversation during our podcast interview as well. 

Do you have the mindset to assess when a meeting is valuable and when an email or other collaborative tool will suffice? 

Here are three tips to start your journey to “Cancel Courage:”

• Assess the % of time in meetings each month and cut 10% of them and re-allocate to strategic work
• Assess the % of time in meetings each month and cut another 10% and re-allocate to personal development
• Yes… cut another 10% and re-allocate to employee development

During this process create rules for you and your team for when a meeting is required.

By demonstrating “Cancel Courage” to your team, you may find they model the same behavior and leverage email or just picking up the phone to give you back time in your day for productive work.

If you still struggle with this, please have the “Courage” to do something different in your personal life and in your organization. Let’s book a free 15 minute call

If your employee retention program is focused on keeping individuals in the same position forever, you’re not planning on them being successful.

One of the highlights of my career was being promoted to a Head of Operational Excellence role. While the offer sounded amazing, it was the beginning of one of the most difficult transitions of my career. 

The promotion was exactly what I had wanted, but I was completely unprepared because there was no succession planning. Organizations often promote people to solve an immediate need, but lack planning for when that person is actually successful and achieves what they were promoted to do.

If succession planning isn’t part of your current workplace culture, are you working to retain jobs or the people within them? 

Succession Planning demonstrates an organizational investment in talent.

Think about your experience when you arrive at a company and the first one to two days is filled with warm welcomes and a highly coordinated on-boarding process. You get a computer, a space to work, invitations for lunch and you settle into what you believe is a long and rewarding career. 

If you’re amongst the lucky few, you continue your experience with monthly meetings to discuss strategic alignment of your work with the purpose of the organization. Finally, you discuss the development skills needed to prepare you for the next level and only in the last part of your meeting, you discuss tactical issues needed to complete your work. 

Are these conversations not happening in your workplace? 

When Succession Planning is discussed on day 1 with an employee, your brand leads with this in mind; building a culture of grooming leaders.

When you attract talent in the context of succession planning (future focused) vs. filling a technical gap (today focused), the talent you draw to your organization shows up differently and your investments are better protected. 

You can start building a culture based on Succession Planning today by taking these steps:

• Ensure every functional area of the organization has a career ladder
• Include the next two roles in every job description so when you are hiring talent you are evaluating them in the context of the current role and the next levels above
• Implement leading indicator metrics that include:
• % employees on track for the next role
• % Job descriptions that have succession planning defined
• % Functions have a career ladder defined

The first day of my position as the Head of Operational Excellence for North America it was up to me to create my own plan. As a result, in my next 5 years:

• I rebuilt the Operational Excellence Organization to generate 5MM in cost savings annually (but I struggled a lot to make this happen)
• I aligned with the Head of Quality and started to shadow their work (to create my own succession plan)
• I was asked to succeed the Head of Quality and had only 2 weeks of transition (so I struggled a little less)
• I turned around North America’s Quality performance in 2.5 years, groomed my staff for the next level and handed over a transition plan for my successor. (my boss did not have to struggle with my replacement) 

When Succession Planning becomes an integral part of your culture, there are fewer surprises and people feel better prepared for the next role.

How will you create a Succession Planning Culture that attracts the right talent and more predictably prepares the organization for the future and a lasting impact?

Let’s book a call if you struggle with this and want to intentionally make Succession Planning your Organizational Lead Magnet.