Assessing the Managers

The bottom line is that the Managers need to understand that the assessment can provide an insight into how well they lead and manage, and also an insight into how to motivate Employee productivity – one of their key responsibilities. The Manager sets the tone and the overall feeling of community in their departments. If it’s a community of inclusion, the better the results; exclusion, a worse result.

*The Manager needs to be aware that certain Manager attributes create a negative rippling effect among the workers. People will perform poorly if they feel:

• Left out and disconnected
• Envious of others
• Not good enough or of lesser value than others or their own esteem
• Resentful to the Manager
• Finally becoming resigned to having low morale; putting forth less effort
• No use in trying; certainly not innovative, customer-focused or a team player

*Exerp from The DNA of Leadership, Judith E. Glaser

As you process the results with the Manager, your conversation might open up deeper insights into other issues facing the Manager, such as their lack of empowerment – and the Manager’s lack of empowerment might be caused by issues arising from further up the chain of command. All the Coaching Conversations you will have will provide a view into issues that impact the whole organizational community such as low morale, confusion or failure to provide direction – more rich areas to be explored. As HR, your role is also to be the voice of the Employees; that includes Managers.

Coaching Conversation

The Coach has two jobs to prepare for a healthy Coaching Conversation. The first is to understand the data analysis and be prepared to meet with the Manager for a healthy, constructive conversation which will build “foresight” into the future success. Second is the coaching experience itself – designed to help the manager see more clearly what they can do to enhance their leadership in the future.
For Data Analysis, the Coach must spend the time to learn about the Manager’s work group with the view of enabling the Manager to see and recognize the strengths and developmental opportunities of their unique group.  Results must be granular enough that there is a clear picture of the realities of the workers’ attitudes and perceptions pertaining to each of the Categories, Factors and Items served up by the survey results.
For help in data analysis, the Coach needs to put into mental columns the strengths, developmental opportunities and mid-ranges and then decide what and how the coaching approach should be for that Manager. In other words, to determine what are the most important areas to focus upon for maximum growth.

Why use tools?

Some executives believe that you turn to tools, such as InfoTool, when a business is in trouble. You certainly don't need to be in a business struggle to justify using an advanced data collection/analysis system. Many companies use data to improve what's working well, to making it better, faster and more productive. As users are learning the new science of data analysis with built-in diagnostic tools, they will see how the use of these tools advances the organization’s capacity to drive productivity. At the same time, they will infuse the workplace with a high level of energy and passion for getting results.

Each unique department in the value chain supports its own culture, personality, process features, leader, strategy, people and unique customers – and at the same time is part of a larger overall system – the brand, the company and the culture. If each department can improve, or even recognize how to create a more cohesive team culture – and can integrate into the overall organizational culture – the organizational productivity will benefit: improved productivity equals improved profitability.

Communication is Key

Establishing an open and honest conversation between the Coach and Manager is vital to their mutual success. For coaching conversations to be successful, both parties need to see feedback as an opportunity to explore what elements will contribute to future success, and the basis of coaching will be strategies for successfully getting there. If the Manager approaches the coaching conversation with fear, then that fear (or even more dangerous – the fear of retribution) will be interwoven into the fabric of the entire experience. Trust and openness cannot be built – even when both parties have the best intentions in mind. This team effort must be focused on how to create environments that break from the past and allow connectivity and positive conversations to flow between the parties.

The Fusion of Technology and Technique

I was recently asked the questions: "How do you apply the TQM process in church-based/Faith-based organization?" and "how do you apply the power of Alignment in developing leaders is established denominations in a Church that is 60 years old today with so many challenges especially in the area of Management and Administration?".


NOTE: This inquiry is from a leader honest enough to admit that he is troubled about the way the organization is being run and managed from the top down and may have lost the way. I would not be surprised that the motivation to ask the 2 questions might well be due to events impacting customers or parishioners-the ultimate concern of good leadership!


I responded  that these are two complex questions usually asked by leaders struggling to find the most effective path to efficiently meet their customers’ needs. Issues most common to "finding the way" seem to be found in organizations where business systems are misaligned,  people are uninvolved and uncommitted, and there is a weak communication policy in place.There is an overwhelming need for a strong vision and defined strategy for people to rally to divert away from the siloed leadership hierarchy. A church-faith based organization, which is trying to run efficiently, has the same characteristics and leadership restraints as any other type of business. Alignment analysis is the best way to crystallize a new path or reestablish a good path; then the use of a Diagnostic will blueprint the statistically calculated treatments. (Alignment defined: http://www.orgdynamics.com/odi_demo/odi.html)

Alignment is a very powerful process in analyzing causes and impacts. Its starts by dissecting a troubled or uncertain business strategy into its basic Alignment components, including the assessment of the current state, confirming the business purpose with the strategy to get there, insuring it's contemporary to the current economy and customers/prospects, then to making sure the organizational culture encourages or engages its people to support and execute that strategy.

This Alignment approach is exceptionally effective if the process is being championed by and partnered with the senior team. The actions to be taken by leadership, and expected to be executed by the people cannot be deemed as simply "another flavor of the month". Unfortunately, this has become the common practice, sponsored by so many, with diluted, disappointing and ineffective results.

So change starts at the top. The Alignment Process is the way to answer your second question, the Diagnostic answers the first

The activities are to be phased:


ALIGNMENT STEP: ( Delivered by Dr. George Labovitz, Author of Power of Alignment)

1. Articulate where you and your senior team want the organization to be in the next 12 months. Get consensus amongst the senior group. This 1-3 day off site session is the core to aligning the senior team around the agreed upon business purpose; the essence for sustained change.

2. Get agreement that, within the culture of your organization, what is needed as to how your organization will get to the goal in the #1 above, along with the barriers you expect along the journey. This prerequisite demands an honest consensus from the team. In the Alignment Analysis, each of the six critical Alignment components will be examined and becomes the core of the Diagnostic Survey Tool. Power of Alignment, Wiley 1999,Dr. George Labovitz
DIAGNOSTIC STEP:

3. The Diagnostic becomes the tool kit to path the way to align the rest of the organization and path to execution of the strategic goals established in #1 and #2 above.


A well-designed diagnostic survey illuminates, through the lens of each work group, the barriers and strengths specifically established in 1 and 2 above. It will reveal silos that exist between critical and related workgroups, identify alignments and misalignments between leadership and rest of staff, reaffirm processes that are working well and those not, illuminate obstacles to achieving desired results, determine whether your culture is toxic and validate effective leaders and managers. Determine whether your customers are receiving your promised value from your brand marketing, measure integrity and value behaviors, measure the values and integrity of your brand to the employees, and so much more-by each workgroup. Remember, each question asked in the Diagnostic must be directly correlated to the goal achievement in 1 and 2 above.
The diagnostic delivers individual action steps for each workgroup and each manager. Now, each work group manager will have their own individual road map for action taking, correlated to support the business purpose. This is Dr. Deming’s "Continuous Improvement" theory.


Lastly, the Diagnostics. Internally calculated correlation analysis delivers to leaders the precise organizational action steps needed to achieve the corporate purpose. This will be the fast track to rapidly align the organization and achieve your stated goals. In a short time frame, you have a reinvigorated corporate goal along with the blueprints to achieve success.
Now the TQM work begins...

IT: The X-ray Machine for the Modern Day Consultant

Today's Information Technology capability has advanced to such a degree that both internal and external advisors have a new suite of tools in driving the "engaged workforce."


IT diagnostics provides the means to rapidly collect information to separate the valued from the non-valued, especially in the realm of organizational assessments. Business leaders, Consultants and HR Professionals are looking for answers but most information is simply underutilized.

Diagnostic Information Technology is the new standard to rapidly make the right decisions. This means an ability to create an x-ray of each department; an ability to dissect an organizational skeleton to see strengths and developmental needs of each unit. As hard as it is to believe, targeted corrective actions can be within the realm of possibility and influenced by each manager.

If you think focus groups, one-on-one conversations or simple survey tools are enough detailed information to effectively represent your client, I fear you are limiting yourself. Regardless of which survey tool you use, find one that will generate real value from the information you hold. It is not just information which will drive culture and corporate growth, it is diagnostics.

Its Time to Start Winning

Let's get a dose of reality. Corporate strategies, overarching principles, culture and corporate ethics are traditionally incubated at the senior level of management. In the new world of "we-centric leadership" leaders need to understand how to engage their employees so that leadership is not set at the top and implemented at the bottom. Instead, it becomes a more organic process that engages the workplace in being part of the head, the heart and the hands of leadship and business growth.

Engagement is vital, and every Manager/leader needs to learn how to make these vital shifts. Without this change in leadership practices, businesses will fail to produce against competitors.

Every business, organization and department has a culture. The culture and how leaders interpret it, drives how business gets done every day. Research suggests the Manager's capabilities, behaviors attitudes and skills - and how they interpret the cultural norms- will determine the success of productivity in each department. So, how do we know that the leader is "leading" or "pushing?"





"If leaders know the actions to take, leaders will take the action" is a truism, and especially brings value when you tie manager and department incentives with performance.

Vital Relationship Between Culture and Innovation

Culture dictates the "rituals of the way things get done", Judith Glaser writes in her best-seller, The DNA of Leadership. She establishes seven traits vital to measure in order to first establish a culture baseline. The premise is that your organization will NEVER leap forward toward goals of driving worker productivity if the work environment is toxic. Leadership defines the culture of the organization and of each department, says Ms. Glaser. Be aware that a style of "leadership defines the way you motivate or de-motivate those you depend upon for the development of your organization. As you engage with others through conversations and actions, you either expand others' potential and catalyze growth, or limit others' contributions and perpetuate stagnation."

• What motivates employees to give it their all?
• What causes them to form sub groups with defined barriers?
• What causes groups to withhold information, build turfs, lose faith in the company and themselves?
• What causes companies to go out of business?
• What causes well-intended leaders to fail to stimulate loyalty?

The most startling discovery is that each department has its own mini-culture, which might, or might not, coincide with the organizational cultural strategy. If different, can they both co-exist? If the intended strategically-designed culture is one of trust, openness, communication, values, yet the department is being run by Attila the Hun, will profitability be possible? The toxic, dampening impact on innovation, teamwork, collaborate culture, worker "go get 'em" spirit in that department is not only a key barrier to profitability, but will easily infect other departments in the value-chain. Amazingly, senior management will be the last to know before a large portion of the organization is irreparably contaminated. Kiss the ability to innovate successfully "Goodbye!"

So what is the answer? A survey diagnostic that reaches into each department is the best defense to the creeping tentacles of a poisonous culture. Beware; it can spread like the common cold. If this is so, then culture change is the precursor to organizational change.