Since I wrote this in the middle of the Final Four and March Madness, I thought it was an excellent title. I really feel like I’m in the middle of my professional career and upon reflection; I have come to some pretty vivid conclusions. I don’t expect you to necessarily agree with my conclusions, as they are through my filters and experiences, but I encourage you to just read them and see if anything resonates with you.
As part of my year-end review process, I typically look at the year’s work and see what learnings came from it and how I can apply it to future client situations. This year, for some reason, I didn’t stop there. I decided to look as best I could at the last twenty years to see if anything like significant themes came up for me that had broader implications.
Over the years, I’ve worked in the “Big 8,” public accounting, manufacturing, financial services, retail, government, and, for the most part, management consulting.
Client work has ranged from visioning, strategic planning, organizational design, cultural assessments, process improvement, strategic cost reduction, talent assessment, team building and project management.
As I dumped all of these experiences on the table and stopped to look at them, things began to clump together in ways I hadn’t imagined. The results of this exercise turned out to be the “Ah-Hah” moment of my career.
I realized that most of the projects or initiatives I had worked on over the years were just symptoms of bigger problems. Unfortunately, especially in the early years, I couldn’t work on the bigger problems because they were out of reach. As they say in consulting, out of scope, out of mind. By simply taking the time to reflect, I have come to the conclusion that the root causes of most business problems fall into three categories:
1. Leadership
2. organization
3. People
Leadership
Since management consulting by nature involves projects that require change, they need strong leadership that: a) creates a clear vision to help drive change; b) creates a sense of urgency; c) supports the effort on a daily basis and d) removes barriers to change. I can recall numerous projects that I knew were doomed from day one after spending an hour with the leader or leadership team. It didn’t matter what the initiative was. I could see that they didn’t have the will to make it happen and of course they didn’t.
The skills needed to be an effective leader in today’s fast-changing business environment are more important than ever. Leaders who address change effectively will have a significant market advantage going forward. I believe that the “change management” competency is a major gap in senior leadership today and is the main reason why large initiatives fail to achieve the desired results. More to come on this topic in the future.
organization
Organizations, like the tax code, at one point were small and made sense. Then over time, bit by bit, things are changed, added, removed, or modified. Then, every three to five years, significant overhauls or reshuffles occurred (I’d question if these were true overhauls or just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, but that’s the subject of another newsletter!)
What’s left is a patched-up, band-aid, super-glued organization that really doesn’t make sense to anyone and is certainly not aligned with the long-term strategies and goals laid out in the almighty “Strategic Plan.” .”
Without a strong organizational design that aligns with the vision and strategic objectives, most strategies will fail to achieve the desired results or the results will be sub-optimal at best. I wish leaders would spend more time on organizational alignment. The impact downstream is enormous.
People
I honestly believe this is the most important part of running an organization and the area where leadership spends the least time. There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of lip service to this and most of the time, very little substance behind it. Have you heard any of these phrases before?:
“People are our greatest asset”
· “The company would be nothing without our people”
· “The creativity and ingenuity of our people make us great”
Most employees have heard this dribble for years and are now completely numb. The sad part is that all the claims are true, but none of the employees believe that the leadership believes it. Employees want their leader’s actions to match their words, and in my experience, this doesn’t happen often.
Let’s start with the senior leadership teams. In most of my engagements, I have seen people in leadership positions who should not have been in leadership positions. They lacked the required skills from day one. However, they were deeply trained in the ability to manage the political environment and position themselves for promotion. Some weren’t even that skilled. They just stayed long enough (sometimes 15-20 years) until there was a vacancy.
None of these qualities (political or roaming) are what you’d look for in a senior leader, but organizations around the world (for-profit, nonprofit, government) are replete with them. So the bottom line here is “lots of the wrong people in leadership roles.” Difficult to assemble the troops with that formula.
Another problem is really good people in the wrong roles. I can’t point to any organization I’ve worked with that has spent enough time understanding the gifts and talents of their people and the areas they were passionate about. For each person who was perfectly aligned with gifts, talents, and passion; I could name 100 people who felt underutilized, in the wrong role, or just had no passion for what they were doing.
It’s not about hiring the best people. It’s about putting the right people in the right jobs. There is a big difference. Peyton Manning is an excellent quarterback, but you wouldn’t win a game in the NFL if you fielded eleven Peyton Mannings on offense. He must have the right people in the right roles to maximize his chances of success. Seeing underutilized talent in the wrong roles was a recurring theme in my engagements.
The last problem people have is the “hire to fire” scenario. Organizations tend to be too fast to hire and too slow to fire. More time should be spent clearly defining needs, desired behaviors, and cultural fit and only hiring if appropriate. High performing organizations spend significantly more time and resources hiring the right people.
Organizations that hire too quickly and then realize it was a mistake have an interesting approach to dealing with the situation. They decide not to deal with it at all. Instead, they are shuffled from department to department until it’s time to retire some 30 years later.
High-performing organizations recognize bad hire quickly and deal with it promptly. You’re not doing anyone a favor by keeping them in a position where they can’t succeed.
(Quick note: to me, the organization and people represent culture, so cultural issues are critical to these conclusions. Since I didn’t specifically mention that above, I wanted to point out its importance.)
So there you have it!
A brain dump of more than twenty years summarized in three key points. It is now very clear to me why organizations have trouble succeeding. What do you think?
Look at the issues and problems in your organization and see if my “root cause” theory applies. If so, I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts. If not, I’d love to hear those thoughts too.