Transforming Strategies into Actions

It's that time of the year when senior management revealed the business plans of their respective organizations complete with business goals, performance targets and measures as well as the corresponding implementation strategies. While many strategic documents are impressive in form and intent, a great number of organization failed in implementing their strategies. Kaplan and Norton estimated that 70% of these failed cases was caused by bad execution.

From my experience as a strategy advisor, bad execution is caused by the absence of or a lack in seven (7) key competencies on the part of a manager. What is needed is the implementing manager possessing the following P-ACTION competencies in Project Management, Achievement Orientation, Change Leadership, Building Trust, Information Seeking, Sense of Ownership, and Networking to ensure effective implementation of all planned strategic initiatives. A brief description of each competency is as follows:

• Project Management - The P-ACTION manager must have project management skills to ensure no cost overruns, timely completion of tasks and activities, and delivery of high quality products and services to customers.
  
• Achievement Orientation - The P-ACTION manager is motivated by a passion to achieve result excellence. The greater the challenge, the higher the level of satisfaction and joy in accomplishing desired results.
  
• Change Leadership - The P-ACTION manager not only initiates and implements change programmes but also encourages creativity and innovation by team members to overcome obstacles. In addition, she is also flexible and adapt to change by meeting challenges and opposing demands caused by external environment.
  
• Building Trust - The PACTION manager operates with transparency and communicates openly. He provides an environment encouraging colleagues, customers and suppliers to talk and act without fear of repercussion.
• Information Seeking - The P-ACTION manager is driven by a desire to know more about all matters and people related to the tasks at hand by asking questions beyond those required in the job.
• Sense of Ownership - The P-ACTION manager possesses a sense of ownership by thinking and behaving like the business owner who maximises all potential opportunities and yet at the same time, protects the organization against all possible risks. He also is accountable for all actions. For those managers in the government and non-profit organizations, the equivalent competency is the sense of stewardship.
  
• Networking - The P-ACTION manager builds relationships with team members, peers, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders. This network of relationships with internal and external parties is useful to obtain information, identify opportunities, and seek differing opinions and feedback to problems and issues at hand.

Project Management is a technical/functional competency. The leadership/managerial competencies are Change Leadership, Building Trust, Information Seeking and Networking whereas the remaining two competencies of Achievement Orientation and Sense of Ownership are behavioral in nature. Both the technical and managerial competencies can be developed through specially-tailored skill enhancement training courses. However, developing the desired behavioral competencies is much more challenging and takes much longer time as it involves a change in attitude and mindset. This could be achieved through proper coaching, mentoring and facilitation by an experienced senior manager acting as a role model.

Many organizations made mistakes of formulating business goals, strategies and related performance targets, allocating necessary financial resources to acquire people and facilities and then hoping every manager executes as expected. However, most of them tend to overlook the importance of having the P-ACTION managers to transform corporate strategies into business results. Without the P-ACTION managers , these organizations are likely candidates in the same mold as those failed cases studied by Kaplan and Norton.

Why Good Employees Leave

In this challenging economic times, news of people losing their jobs doesn't hit the headlines anymore as it would have about six months ago. Job losses had become a kind of an expectation of just who's going to be next. Those who still have their jobs are all working very,very hard to hold on to them despite all odds. However, there seems to exist a group of highly competent and confident people who would just pack their bags and move out of their jobs, even under these trying times. This group of high performance individuals encounter little difficulty in securing new jobs elsewhere as they are always on the headhunters' priority lists. Such migratory actions are more often than not triggered off by managerial ineffectiveness and talent mismanagement.

Any manager worth his or her salt is able to discern what are the real reasons why good employees leave. According to Leigh Branham, an employee leaves when one or more of the following fundamental human desires are not fulfilled:

1. The Need to Feel Competent - Due to downsizing and restructuring exercises, there may occur job-person mismatches. When such a situation arisen, the affected employee would be compelled to search for new opportunities elsewhere to ensure that this need to feel competent is fulfilled. Stress from overwork and an imbalanced work-life can triggered similar feeling for such need.

2. The Need to Feel a Sense of Worth - In the relentless search for results to stay in the black, managers paid scant or no attention to their "most valuable asset" - people in their organization. If the efforts of people went continually unnoticed, unrecognized and unappreciated, then the people would start to make plan to leave as they felt that their sense of worth has been "devalued" or "depreciated".

3. The Need for Trust - When the job and workplace environment failed to live up to expectations, employees will start looking for new openings outside the organization. This same phenomenon will happen when there's a loss in trust and confidence in the senior leadership
and management team. It could be due to an issue of integrity.

4. The Need to Have Hope - This need is always expressed during every exit interview. Employees place high priorities on available opportunities for self development, career growth and advancement. Young talents are always looking out for coaching and guidance from senior members of the organization. An organization that is able to satisfy this need to have hope would have a higher probability of retaining its talents.

Not knowing or doing anything to keep good people is costly to the organization. Therefore, a competent manager not only knows the reasons why good people leave but also knows how to create an authentically attractive environment acting as a magnet to attract and retain loyal and long term productive employees.

The heART of Performing Well Always

Business owners always find some inadequacies in their employees' quality of work performance. These performance inadequacies continue to be present despite large amount of money spent on training, counseling and incentives in enhancing employees' skill, knowledge and competency. Over time, however, these business owners especially those from the small and medium industries, begin to lose faith in so-called modern management concepts and theories as well as their accompanying tools and techniques as promoted by management consultants.

Only the other day, I was discussing with a very hands-on lady entrepreneur on the subject of employees' behaviors at work place. From her experience, she's always on the look out for potential employees who possesses good attitude and have certain character traits related to the "heart". To her, knowledge and skills can be acquired. Even negative attitudes can be changed to positive. However, employees with the heart-qualities are most fundamental to the sustained growth of a company.

In the ancient art of Chinese fung shui, there exists the five elements of Wood, Fire, Water, Metal and Earth. These elements when in balance, will create great harmony in the environment and thus strengthening relationship, maintaining good health, and generating great wealth and prosperity.

Applying the concept of five elements in an organizational setting, it would be a joy to all business owners to have an employee who always protects the organization and colleagues; is passionate about the job; has patience with others; holds fast to a set of life principles, and is a person who persevere through all stumbling blocks. The exemplary employee with the 5 P's of heart-qualities can be described as:

1. Protective (Wood) - Like a tree providing shelter and shade, this person defends the organization and shields fellow workers against external threats. There's also a caring aspect;

2. Passionate(Fire) - Like a ball of fire providing light and heat, this person with "fire in the belly" possesses a burning desire to achieve success and yet at the same time, finds joy in working;

3.Patience(Water)- Like the water of a river taking centuries to carve out the rocks beneath, this person always demonstrates patience when dealing with co-workers, customers, and suppliers;

4.Perseverance(Metal)- Like a piece of metal which is strong, hard and yet malleable, this person shows perseverance and is steely determined to overcome all odds and barriers to achieve what is ardently desired;

5.Principled (Earth)- Like a mountain, this person possesses integrity and is ethical as he/she holds strongly to a set of beliefs and values.

In addition to the normal criteria of selection and recruiting new employees, all HR and hiring managers should start looking out for the 5P's heart-qualities of the potential new hires. This is to ensure that the heart of performing well is always present.

Developing Managerial Effectiveness

Many companies today are in deep trouble. Even global corporate icons across the globe were not spared from the financial turmoil. Here are some notable cases. Bear Stearns, one of the largest global investment banks had collapsed. The Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, a global financial services firm with assets worth more than US$600 billion had filed for bankruptcy protection and making it the largest bankruptcy filing in US history. The Royal Bank of Scotland has to be bailed out by the UK government. In late December 2008, Toyota Motor Corp of Japan announced that it expected to suffer its first operating loss in 70 years amounting to US$1.7 billion.

While the US auto giants, General Motors and Chrylers are currently lining up for a second round of massive government aid of around US$20billion, Malaysia's budget airline, AirAsia, announced that that it had secured funding from Barclays Capital to finance the purchase of 15 new A320-200 aircrafts worth nearly US$700 million. Hats off to Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes and his management team as it is not easy to raise fund under the current worst conditions in the credit market. Another glimmer of light coming out of Malaysia is Public Bank Berhad. As the Malaysia's leading bank in terms of market capitalization, Public Bank Berhad achieved a record breaking RM2.58 billion in net profit as a result of a 22% growth in 2008.

Many factors, internal, external or a combination of both, contributed to corporate successes and failures. One critical factor is people with their passion and potential. All organizations have people in positions with management responsibilities to maximize resources and increase profits. While these managers are efficient, they may not necessarily be effective. According to William J Reddin (1970), "effectiveness is the extent to which a manager achieves the output requirements of his position". Managerial effectiveness has to be defined in terms of what a manager's achieves rather that what he does. Ineffective managers are those who failed to create an enabling environment for their employees, both individually and collectively, to achieve their potential.

The degree of success of a company is often attributed to leadership which sometimes, mistakenly refers to the top echleon of the company. However, leadership is only an attitude. Every employee, irrespective of rank and level, is a leader when he demonstrates leadership in a situation. There's no formal position of a "leader" in an organization but on the other hand, manager is a position. For a manager to be effective, he has to possess four essential leadership competencies - Thinking, Influencing, Achieving and Leading (acronym TAIL).

Thinking is how a manager makes quality decisions which will generate great impact. It involves the three different modes of strategic, innovative and critical thinking. Influencing is how a manager convinces others and enables them see what activities will provide the greatest leverage for improvement. It involves conviction, conversation and communication. Achieving is how a manager drives the achievement of goals and targets though strategic performance planning and measurement. Leading is how a manager creates an environment in which others can realise their potential. It involves the manager "walking the talk", being a role model and coaching others in attitude motivation, accountability, integrity and business ethics.

James Rieley sums it very well when he said that these four leadership competencies can either make or break a company. Therefore, managers should start demonstrating behavioral actions of Thinking, Influencing, Achieving and Leading to achieve a high level of managerial effectiveness.

Family Values - The Bedrock of Corporate Values

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by Mr. Howard Khoo, CEO and Executive Director of the Hing Yiap Group of Companies, a public listed company in the business of lifestyle fashion and F&B. The title of his talk was " Shuffling Family, Work & Play".

Among the many points shared by him on how he balances family, work and play, one particular message stood out very prominently. He owed his successes to the family values which have shaped the lives of his family members over the generations. He shared with the participants of how the values of sharing, caring, diligence, respect, tolerance, patience and risk taking were inculcated among the young and younger ones by his grandmother, parents, uncles and aunts through their respective beliefs, words, deeds and actions. Likewise, his children are now being exposed to and instilled with the same set of family values by his own unique way of incorporating these values while on business cum holiday trips and participating in sports activities.

We have witnessed and still witnessing how decades old corporate giants had fallen like bowling pins and consigned to the corporate scrapbooks. Many experts have put forwarded several plausible reasons for these modern day corporate failures. The absence of integrity and the presence of unsatiated monetary greed and unethical business practices have been singled out to be the principal causes.

If the researchers were to go back into the genesis of each of these fallen giants, they would have uncover the corporate principles, values and business practices of these organizations laid down by their respective founding fathers based on their own family values. It is not wrong to say that family values form the bedrock of corporate values. However, when these organizations grew by leaps and bounds over the years, professional managers were hired to lead and run the businesses with the founding family members taking a back seat.

As these professional managers were rewarded based on the level of corporate performance, they would have thrown caution to the wind and took extreme risks in the pursuit of corporate and also personal successes. Along the way, someone somehow lost his/her moral compass and whatever espoused corporate values stay at lip-service level with no inkling of the original intention of those values.

To me, this undesirable situation can be avoided if the affected corporations had put in place a set of values-based core competencies to be demonstrated by all levels of employee at all times.

Competency + Attitude = Extraordinary Performance

In a special seminar last Saturday, I had the benefit of listening to Ms Helen Seibt, founder of the IDC Group of Companies (www.idc-training.com) which is involved in a wide range of businesses covering training, engineering, plant technology, bio-degradable products and flora and fauna. During her talk entitled "Attitude is Everything", she shared with the participants on how she overcome all odds and barriers to transform IDC to what is it today.

Eleven years ago, when she first set up IDC as a language training centre, her business income was not enough even to cover the monthly rentals. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 had caused the East Asian economies to go into a recession. However, seeing the strong determination to succeed of a young enterprising businesswoman, the shoplot owner allowed her to be in arrears. This opportunity enabled her to continue until business conditions improved later on. Today, IDC occupies two adjoining business units in the Amcorp Trade Centre in the city of Petaling Jaya. The lesson learned here is that "It's not about the choice you made but the chance you take!"

Helen is an avid backpacker and despite her busy business schedule, she could still find time to go off alone to somewhere to learn and experience life. Her toughest expedition was when she embarked on a journey to Tibet and then to the Mount Everest Base Camp. Without any specialized training nor any idea of how difficult the journey would be like, she managed to reach her destination within 10 days. The lesson learnt here is that "Attitude conquers altitude".

Where does Helen get her strong desire to achieve and the determination to succeed in both her personal and professional life? The secret of her success lies in the application of techniques pioneered by Success Motivation International, USA (SMI) which she learned through the SMI's programs of "Dynamics of Successful Management" and "Attitude is Everything". With Helen as an ardent believer and practitioner of SMI techniques, therefore it is no wonder that IDC holds the sole rights to represent SMI and markets its programs in Malaysia.

In competency management, Helen possesses the core competencies of achievement-orientation, continuous learning, and goal-orientation. A person who has knowledge and skills is not enough as that person is only technically competent to do a job. For the same person to perform excellently and achieves extraordinary things, that person has to also have the right positive attitude and behaviors too.

In short, Competency + Attitude = Extraordinary Performance.

Dealing With Under-performing Employees

In every organization, we can identify three categories of employees based on their level of work performance. The first category consists of the A players or star performers and they represent a minority group making up to 5% of the total staff strength. The second group which forms the bulk is the B players or core players. Research has shown that about 90% of employees fall into this group. The remaining 5% of the employees are the C players or the under-performers who aren’t meeting their established goals.

Under-performing employees are not unqualified or incapable people. Today's A or B players can become tomorrow's C players. The causes of under-performance may be due to a lack of competencies, mis-match into a job role, ineffective management, lack of commitment and/or poor communications, or purely personal problems.

Let's take a look at the case of Johari, a senior researcher in a premier R&D institute. Johari holds a PhD in economics from a well known foreign university and worked as a lecturer in a local university. He was then headhunted to join the policy research unit of his present employer. As a senior researcher, his new job required him to develop a knowledge-based economic model for purposes of national development planning. During the first two years, he worked very hard and put in a lot of time and effort to emerge as a star performer.

However, things changed in his third year of service. Due to frequent changes in strategic directions, his organization went through a series of restructuring and reorganization. The policy research unit where Johari worked in was disbanded and its staff redeployed to other departments within the organization. Johari himself was first assigned to the Corporate Strategic Planning but subsequently, he was posted to two other departments i.e. Market Development and Product Commercialisation respectively within a span of 3 years.

During these times, Johari's work performance suffered and deteriorated year after year. Johari found himself trapped in a vicious cycle of decreasing morale, low motivation and non-performance. From a star performer, Johari became a C player shunned by almost all department heads and colleagues. Management was on the verge of a decision to terminate his service with the organization.

Meanwhile, the Corporate HR Division introduced a new performance management initiative known as the Employee Performance Improvement Program(EPIP). The EPIP aims to offer those non-performing employees a second chance to improve their work performance with the guidance of an external performance coach within a mutually agreed time duration. Johari was one of those non-performers recommended and he also agreed to be put under the EPIP.

The first two months were very challenging indeed for both Johari and his performance coach. However, once trust was established, Johari opened up and shared his problems, both personal and professional with his coach. Having understood exactly the causes of Johari's poor performance over the years, a specially designed work program with specific goals, deliverables and timelines were drawn up by his coach with agreement from top management.

After 3 months, there was a marked improvement in Johari's performance. His morale and motivation were up. The last I heard about Johari was that he is now back in the mainstream of things. Obviously, he has resurrected his career from a C player to become a B player and begins to contribute positively to his organization in a different capacity. It will take some time for him to become an A player again. In most situations, not many C players are as fortunate as Johari.

Dealing with under-performing employees is a tough challenge for the direct superior of the under-performer. Apart from having to deal with several team issues, they have to handle the difficulties in achieving performance targets and yet at the same time, thinking of how to retain the A players. Most managers or supervisors often take the easy way out by firing the C players with dire consequences to the organization with damages taking the form of future recruitment costs, termination benefits, or prolonged industrial court cases and hefty compensations.

Most of the times, what is really needed is just an external person to converse and coach the under-performing employees. However, at other times, when the organization has no choice but to let the under-performer go, then do so in a manner that allows the person to keep his/her dignity.