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How are you being disruptive vs. being disrupted?

While technology can be disruptive, I want to remind people to stay the course with your vision and don’t be distracted by what “everyone else” is doing.

I’m probably late to the game with AI and I should educate myself on the benefits and challenges.

But while other people are jumping on the bandwagon and creating initiatives to react to the disruption, how many of you are disciplined to take in the new information, take time to process it and respond responsibly to it while staying true to what you are doing.

Following the crowd positions you to be always behind.

Being a responsible leader and forging ahead with your mission while making concisous decisions about how to apply the disrpuption will put you in the lead and other will turn around and try to catch up to you.

Remember, there are always disruptions and crisis and pandemics and acts of mother nature that we’re conditioned to react based on humanity’s need to survive.

But remember, some of what you do is in your control.

Follow your way and not that of others.

I’ve never been one to follow the crowd, because I know I’ll never win with that strategy.

Creating my own disruptive category “The Drop In CEO”; serving C-Suite Leaders of Today and Tomorrow to Navigate Challenges with Confidence, sets me apart from Fractional Leader, Consultants or Business Advisors.

I’d love to hear your reaction #linkedin and the rest of the #dropinceo community.

Friday thoughts while I procrastinate starting my day! -Deb

#ai#csuiteleaders

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Time Management Habits of CEOs

Poor time management was the beginning of the end of my firefighting leadership style. Having received a very poor performance review because I didn’t complete my objectives, it was eye opening and liberating for me. I had fallen victim to what was easy and activity based vs. being the leader focused on moving an organization to an outcome that served our business and customers. After moving through that mindset shift, I see this behavior plagues numerous C-Suite leaders as well as those who seek the secrets to the C-Suite. Does it take an “aha moment” such as mine, or can we build those skills so you and others don’t have to struggle? 

Before I move to a framework that has served me well, I do want to take a moment to help you shift your mindset if you are not yet in the C-Suite. How do you think you will get into an influential role, even if it doesn’t have a “C” in front of it? It’s by seeing yourself in that role already and behaving as if you had the position. See those above you as peers and you become the person you aspire to be. I thought I’d throw that in there, because that was a stepping stone into being a C-Suite leader myself and some of those I coach find it transformative.

Time Management Habits to move you to Strategic Leadership

  • Major Mindset Shift:  Ask yourself if you want to be a leader at all? If you see your value more as a firefighter than having the discipline to stay the course on strategic work, it’s okay. But your ascend into the C-suite may stop there. If you set your expectation that you will make the shift, then we can proceed.
  • Decision Logic Ground Rules: What are your non-negotiables or values? In the face of making a choice between activity vs. strategic work, you need a set of rules that will help you with making good decisions. Does this work support the strategy? Does this work help someone on my team to be self-sufficient? If I make this decision, will I violate the time I want to invest in well-being? Will I sacrifice time with my family? Get these down on paper and decisions will be easier. 
  • Prioritization made simple: Look up Eisenhower and you’ll know how much I love this matrix. Everything that comes across your desk, assess it if it is a “Do Now”, “Do Later”, “Delegate it” or “Delete it”. It’s a lifesaver and I talk more about this on the podcast releasing later this week. I get hundreds of emails a week. I review everything and delete as much as I can. I do the urgent, I schedule important tasks into the future and others I delegate. You’ll thank me for this tip!
  • Discipline is what separates you from other leaders: Let’s set a principle first; 80% is good enough in completing your daily/weekly/monthly tasks. We have to make space for urgent matters and people coming to us for help. We are not heroes, but we must be heroic in self discipline. If you have good decision logic and prioritization, you’ll find your “to do” lists getting closer and closer to 80% done as you hone these skills. As of today, Thursday I’m at 60% complete, but feel confident based on how I’ve set my schedule I can get to 80%. Discipline is a leading indicator of success in making strategic work being realized.
  • Reflection: If you’ve done well, remember what worked and repeat. If you failed, be kind to yourself, but what can you change in  your behavior the next week to increase your odds of being successful? You have one more chance to decide if you want to be a firefigher or evolve your Time Management Skills of a C-Suite leader. 

So there you have the framework: Mindset / Decision Logic / Prioritization / Discipline / Reflection

Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. 

This framework enables you to do it yourself, but I’m here for you to be a resource. 

To hear more about my story about How to achieve Time Management Skills of the CEO, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 5/19/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders simply need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leader support. To learn more about our next event in June you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

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How Mitigating Risk Showcases Your C-Suite Leadership

The worst time to mitigate a crisis is when you’re in the middle of one. Leaders think their greatest purpose is to rush into battle with their teams to work tirelessly at all costs and celebrate surviving another day. While those leaders seem like heroes that live in the glory of their team seeing them as a great leader, I challenge you to rethink what true C-Suite leadership should be. It is the patient leader who discusses risk everyday and collaborates with their team to identify ways to reduce risk as part of daily work that should be the leaders worth following. When we have the time to methodically identify, qualify, prioritize and set a course for action during a time of calm will assure the business can respond responsibly to a crisis vs. react and be part of the crisis. 

Having been caught off guard during a crisis in a past role, all I could do was organize my team to react based on predefined protocols. We followed the protocols and came out of them with a few battle scars. And I wondered, how could this have happened despite what we thought were all the controls to avoid a crisis. We only were able to detect and then seek to contain. Given my overwhelming exhaustion from such an experience, I later found a better way and I have to say the ISO 9001 Standard for quality management systems provided me guidance on how to be a proactive leader vs. a reactive one. 

The new version of the standard which came out in 2015 was rooted in Risk Based Thinking and how to identify risks in all areas of the business both internally and external factors that opened my eyes up on a better way of leadership. Combining this with my Continuous Improvement Methodology, I developed a best practice for Mitigating risk in your business. The ISO auditor when we showed the approach was astonished at our approach and had nothing more to offer except validating it was a best practice and the company truly understood what it meant to manage risk. 

I have the template to share with you if you want and I’d be happy to go through it with you if you think it will help your organization. Connect with me and let’s have a conversation. 

If you would like to do it yourself, here is the framework: 

  • Invite every functional area to the conversation: Sales, Operations, Finance, IT, Regulatory, Quality, Supply Chain, HR, Security. You would be surprised how many risks can be identified no matter how obscure. 
  • Identify the risks – short term and anything that could happen in a 2-5 year horizon
  •  Categorize them into people, process, platforms, regulatory, compliance, safety – any category that makes sense to your business. It enables what will be an overwhelming list to sort and manage different workstreams and simplify the work. 
  • Rank them based on Severity & Occurrence. This is typically done on a scale of 1-10, but can be as simply as High, Medium and Low. A bonus would be a ranking of Detection which is the ability of your systems to detect the issue before it becomes a crisis. You can have a super high risk, but if you have an extraordinary detection system, the risk can be mitigated. Finally multiply all three numbers to get a final score; often referred to as RPN or Risk Priority Number. 
  • Sort the priorities – you can do the entire list or do it within the individual categories. This reduces the overwhelm and helps the team to focus on the critical few and plan for lower priorities in the future 
  • Take action – including assigning an specific action, assign an owner, due date and status. 
  • Re-evaluate on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. This is a living document that should regularly be reviewed to assure we are mitigating risk and add new ones as they arise. 

So there you have it: Invite, Identify, Categorize, Rank, Sort, Action, Re-evaluate. Sounds simple? It can be, but I’m right here for you if you need help to implement this. 

On a personal note: I hate surprises and managing through a crisis. I do it very well and that is why companies pull me for that support. However, out of that dislike for managing a crisis, I find the best work I can do is to help leaders like you to mitigate a crisis. It’s hard work to sit down and do this work, but most rewarding and ultimately can lead you to a place of Excitement, Optimism as well as saving a lot of time in the future. Doesn’t this sound like the leader you want to be? If you’ve got this, but know someone who is struggling, could this framework help them? Pass it along if you think someone would benefit from this framework of if my support will help another leader mitigate a crisis. 

 Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. 

To hear more about my story about How to create emotional consistency as a leader, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 5/12/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders simply need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leader support. To learn more about our next event on 5/15/23, you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

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How to Create Emotional Consistency as a Leader

Update on Reagan: Thank you to all who have expressed their sympathy on his passing; it has meant a lot to us as we celebrate his life and feel less sadness. There’s a void, but the memories make us smile. As we exit this story, it feeds into the topic of how to create emotional consistency as a leader when faced with challenges.

When we are exhausted from overcoming challenges and dealing with overload, we must find the mental fortitude to keep it going. Even when the team bears bad news, we must behave with emotional consistency to tackle it head on. We must rally the troops and foster their creativity and intellectual horsepower to rise above and become better. It’s not firefighting, which can be negative and draining. Instead, we must create positive energy and help the team climb the mountain. 

Moving from Chaos to Control

I had a client that needed a certification and we had arrived at that final date. We had worked tirelessly to prepare the team, dotting I’s and crossing t’s to unfortunately come up short with one minor finding. It was not a full system breakdown, nor a crisis, but it was an overwhelming event for the client who expected to come out of this with their certificate. It is rare to receive their certification on the first try, but it was clear they were going to be delayed. The team was a bit emotional and I was as well, but I knew the process. I knew that a thorough investigation into the matter, correcting the deviation and setting up the system to error proof in the future was the path forward. While the team was down, I had renewed energy knowing I could take them through the final few steps to certification. Within hours after the auditor parted, we cleared off the table, created a problem statement, a detailed analysis, had a solution in place and understood how to set up their systems for success. We returned a response to the auditor within a few days and 3 weeks later the client received the certification. When all was said and done, the client said to me, they couldn’t have done it without me. They were panicked and needed a guide to see them to the finish line. In these times, we must be that steady hand to listen, ask questions and guide. 

The point of this story: When the team is down, but you can see a path forward, you can energize the team through the challenge for which their pride will shine through. Now I turn to you to provide a framework you can apply to your teams: 

Emotional Consistency as a Leader Framework

It’s so easy to get caught up in the details and firefighting. It’s time to show consistency in how you behave. A few simple tips will enable you to be emotionally consistent for your team: 

  • Breath / slow it down / take a moment before jumping in.
  • Listen and ask clarifying questions – slowing it down
  • Ask for their opinion or how to address and continue to listen
  • With clarity, come forward with clarify the problem and path forward based on the collective input
  • Ask, how can you help with next steps?

 What this has done is slow things down for you and the team. You remain calm because you’re buying some time to think and process. Your team will feel a sense of calm because you’re not reacting as they may in the moment, but instead responding with steadfast confidence on the course of action.

This consistent calm and clarity seeking persona will help your team remain optimistic and excited to do what is needed.

I once had someone say my voice is so calming despite chaos and I now turn to you to find the calm that is  needed for your internal self and what your team needs.

Remember: Slow it down / Listen & clarify / Ask for input/ Ask for solutions/ Clarify the path forward / How can you help.

On a personal note:  a past client said my voice is so calming and how  it helped the team focus on the problem at hand. When you hear feedback like this, you know you’ve mastered the skill of managing optimism and creating excitement. 

Now is the time for you to collect your thoughts and take action. 

To hear more about my story about How to create emotional consistency as a leader, please tune into my podcast that is releasing this Friday 5/5/23. 

Maybe you simply need a support system to apply these new insights. I find leaders simply need a place to talk through the challenges and that’s why I created The Drop In CEO Collective, a forum for C-Suite leader support. To learn more about our next event, you can visit our page and register. 

Would you rather have a quick 1-2-1 to discuss your specific challenge? Could The Drop In CEO be your support system? Direct Message me on LI or contact me via my website and let’s have a conversation. Until then, I wish you much success. 

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