Alignment – Dan Greer

When Do We Actually Need To Meet In Person

Dan Greer — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 14:35:28 +0000

In my last post I talked about the importance of alignment with your communication platforms and the activities you are trying to resolve. The days of all the team members meeting to share information updates and to take the time to hear from everyone are over.

Meetings will need to be smaller with hybrid temporary working groups and the use of project management software is essential for keeping everyone up to date. This post by Rae Ringle is excellent and should be a must read and share for all team leaders:

“Three days in the office, two working from home? Or two weeks in the office, then two at home (or some other, more alluring remote locale)? Everyone in all the time, like in 2019?

These are some of the options leaders are considering as they grapple with what going back to work should look like. Some of these new arrangements are landing uneasily. At Apple, for example, employees are pushing back against a policy requiring them to be in the office three days a week, describing a “disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote/location-flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple’s employees.”

Leadership Is An Infinite Game

Dan Greer — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 14:52:10 +0000

The demands for short term results are driving many leaders to make fatal strategic decisions. This type of reactive culture ensures that the organization is not set up for long term success. The investment concept of pay now and see the results later is almost gone. This post by Shelia Goldgrab is well worth the time to read:

“If life is a game, you need to know whether you are playing an infinite game or a finite one. As Simon Sinek and others have pointed out, if you play the games of leadership and business as though winning is central, then you are playing a finite game. However, if the point is to keep the game going, then you’re engaged in a different game — an infinite one. Forming new habits of leadership is definitely playing an infinite game, and that’s a vital distinction.”

The Second Commandment Of Highly Effective Leadership

Dan Greer — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 16:28:25 +0000

Great leaders can see problems or opportunities when most people don’t and they can develop a solution that works. The also can answer the questions of who should be leading this effort and what it the best timing for execution. Beyond all of that, lies the secret sauce of Why are we doing this? This Leadership Council post is a great reminder:

“Do you know why you do what you do? What impact do you want to have, and why is it important to you?

If you’re not familiar with the “why” question, it was introduced by Simon Sinekin his famous TED Talk based on his book Start With Why. He explains that all companies know what they do, and most know how they do it, but very few know why they do it.

I believe that the same goes for individuals, including most leaders. Many have asked me, “Why am I so passionate about helping others succeed?”

How To Deliver On Your Promises As A Leader

Dan Greer — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 15:10:23 +0000

Many times the reasons our change initiatives fail is that we simply moved to fast with all of the who, what and when without thoroughly explaining the why. If the building in on fire you don’t have time. However, that is rarely the case and we need to admit that this is a critical part of the leadership process. This Forbes post was extremely insightful:

“Whenever we announce a change, whether to ourselves, our friends and relatives or our organizations, we make promises. The change might result in a better work-life balance, happily ever after, a greater market share, a larger stock dividend or maybe even environmental healing. We tell ourselves and others that the investment is going to be significant, but the return will be well worth it. If we are honest, we acknowledge that it will take hard work and there will be mistakes along the way — we don’t know what we don’t know”

When Teamwork Is Good And When It Isn’t

Dan Greer — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 01:00:37 +0000

Teamwork can provide many benefits to any organization but their can be down sides as well. When too much work is assigned to be done in teams, many times individuals don’t have the time to do their own work as well. Leaders must evaluate when collaboration is of benefit and when individual delegation will work more effectively. This HBR post is excellent:

“Most work today is done in teams. While teamwork can lead to innovative ideas and strong performance, it can also be stressful. Conflicts arise, people become too dependent on each other, some don’t get their fair share of credit– there are numerous coordination costs that come with making teams work well.

But research hasn’t told us much about just how stressful teamwork can be, and where that stress tends to come from. From studying the effects of teamwork on employee wellbeing, I’ve found that a lot of this stress stems from the pressure that managers put on employees. While some pressure is necessary to get employees to perform at their best, pushing a team too hard can cause big problems, such as poor performance, low productivity, and high turnover.”

A Painful Breakup: Amazon And FedEx

Dan Greer — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 14:06:21 +0000

If you don’t think strategy matters, then you have not been watching this business relationship for the last three years. Regardless of the size of your company you must keep looking outward to see what your market is doing and especially what your customers want. Blake Morgan breaks down the issues:

“Amazon and FedEx have long relied on each other, but Amazon’s recent investments in its own delivery service has frustrated FedEx and led to the companies’ breakup. After ending its contract on air deliveries in June, FedEx won’t renew its contract for ground deliveries that expires at the end of August. The breakup forces Amazon to find new ways to ship millions of packages before the holidays.”

Avoiding Disruption Requires Rapid Decision Making

Dan Greer — Sat, 04 May 2019 14:57:13 +0000

I am working with companies that have to deal with the realities of disruption in their markets on a seemingly weekly basis. The critical issue for leaders is to know when to try to match or exceed what is changing or on the other extreme make a hard trade-off decision and just maintain alignment of existing activities. This HBR post is an excellent framework:

“To thwart possible disruption, pundits give legacy companies such advice as “disrupt yourself before you get disrupted” or “put frontline employees in charge of strategy and execution.” This counsel is of little help. Military history offers a much better way to respond. We call it tempo-based competition.”

The 6 Ways To Grow A Company

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 11:00:40 +0000

This post by Gino Chirio is a gold mine in so many critical areas: strategy, innovation and process improvement. The tension today between lowering cost through process improvement and how many priorities should be directed toward innovation is what makes companies win or fail. I promise the graph alone is worth the read:

“The term “innovation” is often associated with geniuses turning startups into gold mines — the next Google, Apple, or Amazon, with products no one even knew they needed. Private equity firms place hundreds of little bets on these startups, hoping one produces a windfall that covers the rest. These bets on the next growth engine often depend on luck more than insight.”

The Critical Role Of Leadership Development During Organizational Change

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 11:00:21 +0000

I am not working with any company that is not either going through significant change or actual disruption. The pressure to cut costs can be fatal, especially if it is the area of leadership development. If you don’t cast a hopeful vision for the future and develop everyone on your team the results will be disastrous. This Forbes post is comprehensive:

Most business leaders today would agree on two things: (1) organizational change is constant, and (2) leading change is one of the most difficult burdens of a leader’s command. In last week’s article I focused on the seven mindsets necessary for successful leadership development. In this article, I want to take it a step further and look at the role leadership development should play in organizational change.

Why Leaders Need To Embrace Employee Motivation

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 12:00:42 +0000

One of the major issues I face with every client I help with leadership development is how to align managers who many times are Boomers with team members who are Millennials. Productivity and job satisfaction are damaged because they do not understand each others core values and therefore trust is lost. This post by Christine Comaford is the best I have seen in a long time:

“How do we consistently get team members who say ‘I love my job, I trust my leader and l’m ready to rock today!’?

According to Gallup, the purpose of performance management is to improve quality of work, productivity and other business outcomes, but traditional approaches have consistently fallen short.”