Here are 6 things that will make you (and your manager) a better leader. Shifts more rapidly and competitive pressure impacts the bottom line faster. That will make you (and your manager. After many years of working with managers to “redesign,” “restructure,” or “reengineer” their departments and organizations, the authors have decided to share a procedure that frequently maximizes the effectiveness of this type of change effort, which ultimately leads to a better organizational design.
Read to help improve your corporate entities, other businesses, and for career advancement opportunities.
The game of business has changed dramatically over the years, and will continue to change due to global economic dynamics-the changes in the economic system over time, particularly those reflected in the behavior of the market, businesses, in the general economy. It is therefore imperative for leaders to accept and strictly follow the golden rule for leadership if they are ever to succeed in their role as leaders. The golden rule states that: “Leadership is a process of learning, not the position. Leaders are learners and it is a continued process of learning to achieve organizational goals and objectives, and for career advancement.” Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. It is the quality of this relationship that matters most when we are engaged in getting extraordinary things done. Therefore, it is natural to look at the relationship between leadership and management. He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, as well as corporate or organizational success and goal achievements. But whosoever ignores correction, leads others astray including multi-billion corporations.
Purpose means commitment to the right priorities. “What good is it if a man gains the world but forfeits his soul?” This quote from Matthew in the Bible reminds us that for many leaders and companies, the ultimate success is not just in “the numbers” or even the spread of a radical new product or concept. Example: Anita Roddick, CEO of The Body Shop, felt that a purpose of being merely “the biggest or the most profitable” would not sustain her company or inspire the employees to reach the ambitious goals the company attained. What Roddick was saying from my understanding is that if your aspirations come from the values of your culture, church, temple or mosque, you have something beyond your livelihood creation, and that is true. On the other hand, leaders without purpose are those whose sense of purpose did not extend beyond them. A case can be made that despite their talents and strengths, such people are not really leaders at all. Their modern counterparts are those “leaders” whose main “purpose” is pure material gain and personal aggrandizement. Talk about purpose and people will listen, but to get them to follow, you must act with purpose.
It is important to know that leaders set the agenda; leaders influence the organization culture and the long-term effectiveness of an organization. Performance management includes the following three stages: (1) goal setting and motivation (usually done “in the beginning” before much action has taken place), (2) encouragement (applied while the task is being accomplished), and (3), rewards and consequences (applied after the task has been completed). When correctly applied, performance management spurs people on to even greater accomplishment in their next desire, and successfully achieves organizational goals. Leaders and managers set the context in which the organizational members strive to achieve organizational goals. Leaders model the way if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, the leader must be models of the behavior they expect of others, as they must clarify values. Leaders inspire a shared vision - they have to enlist others in a common vision, and the process. They have to enable others to act, and should encourage the heart of their constituents to carry on.
Management is concerned with-efficiency, planning, paperwork, procedures, regulations/control, and consistency, while leadership is associated with-risk taking, dynamics, creativity, change, and vision. Leadership is fundamentally a value—choosing, and thus a value-laden activity, whereas management is not. Leaders are though to do the right things, whereas managers are thought to do things right. This is more dealt with in organizational leadership theory and practice. Thus leadership theory deals with what a leader is (character) and what the leader does (competence).
Here are some guides how leaders and managers impact organizational performance through effective and efficient performance. The first stage of performance management consists of helping people set ambitious yet realist goals and motivating them towards the achievement of those goals:
It is important to note that if effective and efficient performances are developed and leveraged, they have the potential to create unparalleled success and growth in business, whether it is a corporate entity, firm, or other forms of organizations. Leaders with great ambition build a great company, and leave their good name and footprints in the company’s history books, and one of their aims is to develop a good team as continued leadership development and leave a successful successor as a legacy to the company because in today’s global business, conscious and conscientious development of competent caring leaders is critical to organizational survival.
Here are some guides also to help leaders impact their organizational performances and to achieve organizational goals:
The reason why I have taken the time to give these few guides, is that from my professional experience, the development of new leaders is not only a key to profitability, it is also very satisfying in terms of feeling like you have left a legacy, not just an income statement. “How am I doing as a leader?” The answer is how the people you lead are doing. Do they learn? Do they manage conflict? Do they initiate change? You won’t remember when you retire what you did in the first quarter say like 1999--what you will remember is how many people you developed.
Leaders-as a leader you should know that communication with your peers clearly helps the organization’s performance. Leaders who cannot communicate clearly, powerfully, and succinctly, barely qualify as leader. The best ideas are useless if not communicated in a compelling way. To motivate others to reach your goals, you must constantly communicate your message, use a variety of communication methods, don’t neglect the power of face-to-face communication since it is a time-honored method often missing in today’s barrage of impersonal electronic messages. Effective leaders are equally comfortable communicating to individuals, small groups, and large gatherings, and customizing their approaches for each audience. It is also important to remember that repetition is an important tool, but use varying words and media so your message doesn’t become stale. Use languages, images, and metaphors that hit your audience at a “good level.” It is important that management constantly communicates performance: “before,” “during” and “after,” and set ambitions but (“stretch”) goals. Encourage goal attainment with the promise of meaningful rewards-extrinsic and intrinsic. Be foregoing of honest mistakes made and risks taken in pursuit of performance goals, and to give positive and negative consequences in a fair and timely manner, based on performance, nor partiality, and help employees make the connection between their actions and bottom-line organizational success. Acknowledge the unique talents and motivation of each team member, and remind team members that even the most powerful, competent leader can’t do it alone and that you need their help, and delegate to team members according to their strengths and development needs.
Finally, justice and fairness is extremely important in organizational management to impact organization performance and organizational growth. Honestly and integrity, primary relate to dealings between individuals. Justice and fairness extend into the group arena. Questions like this also arise in organizations: Does the leader treat all people with respect for their basic human rights? Are the rules and procedures applied even-handedly, without favoritism, across all segments of the company? A corporation is not a democracy, but managers who do not lead with a sense of justice and fairness soon find that they will lose the trust and loyalty of their followers. Moreover, they will also gain a reputation with customers, suppliers, and society at large that in a crunch, they will use their personal power to make and enforce arbitrary decision. Management should take great caution with matters of justice and fairness with their peer; it has a positive or negative impact in performance management in an organization, but if well developed and leveraged it has unparallel success and organizational growth. Here are a few guides also to help your management and leadership to impact your organizational performance:
I hope this professional guide would help those in management as managers and those in leadership positions such as a CEO and a Managing Director. If you need professional advice or business guide to help you or your business, you can e-mail me at: [email protected], by fax at: (253) 922-8528, by phone at (530) 255-7722 and please leave a detailed message and we will return you call as soon as we can. You can access more of my articles on my journal by visiting one of my websites. Go to: www.jakoroma.com and click on journal, and you can also find me on LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, g+, and on other social media and business journals.
Published by: James A. Koroma Sr. CMA. MBA. BSc. AIB. AMA
Chartered/Certified Marketing Analyst, Business & Management Consultant.
How to Restructure an Organization
If you’ve ever been part of restructuring of an organization, you know that the very mention of it can induce a sense of worry. Restructuring a company is tough and takes a great deal of careful planning. Moreover, business renewal is never easy nor is it fun because big decisions need to be made that affect the firm, its employees, and their families. But as we’ve mentioned here at MRH, businesses need to remain nimble and adaptable to the ever-changing environment. So unfortunately, when there are external forces and headwinds that impact the organization, we have no choice but to realign, restructure and reorganize to maintain competitiveness.
Restructuring is a Form of Change Management
It goes without saying that reorganizing a well-established company is likely to be difficult, emotional and complex. After all, restructuring is a classic example of change management. It involves lengthy, often emotionally charged, discussions on what’s working, what is not working, and what needs to work better. Additionally, restructuring a business demands thorough cross-examination from a variety of perspectives and stakeholders. Plus, there are constraints and existing commitments that limit what you can do. Employees will be impacted, some of whom may no longer have a job following the restructure. And ideally, any changes that are made should have minimal impact on customers.
However, reorganization is about more than just the end result and implementing new, fresh and shiny business processes. How the business actually goes about making the changes is just as important as the changes themselves.
Because restructuring is an infrequent occurrence, many managers are not experienced in the process of business renewal. Consequently, many managers are simply not prepared when they embark on a restructuring campaign.
5 Tips for Implementing a Corporate Restructure
Identifying what the changes are is only part of the process. Often times, the bigger challenge for managers and executives is actually the detailed planning aspects of the changes as well as communicating a new vision and reasons why change is needed in the first place. Managers must remember that changing an organization is like riding a roller coaster – the people in front can see what’s coming. However, the people in the back will typically experience more sudden change with little warning because they have limited visibility to what is coming.
If you are planning to restructure your company or make organizational changes in the near future, here are five things to consider before you begin:
1. Communication
Communication is easily the most important piece of restructuring and organizational change. Change is difficult and can leave the organization uneasy. For many employees, ambiguity leads to fear and uncertainty. When it’s time to announce the changes, take great care in talking to your staff and answer questions. Make yourself available to answer concerns. Moreover, throughout the process, make regular announcements to the entire organization that identify key decisions and notable progress.
According to an MRH survey, 50% of people say that effective communication is the most important aspect of being a good boss.
Even if there is little to report, communication to this effect is also beneficial. Silence results in concern. Remember that it is equally as important to communicate why the changes are needed as it is to explain what the changes are. Explain the needs, explain the goals. Being open and clear will help you achieve buy-in and support for what you’re trying to do. Gaining employee support will help build a positive momentum towards the future state.
2. When Restructuring, Plan Ahead
Implementation of change requires careful planning ahead of time. Before introducing anything to the organization, look at each change you plan to make, and evaluate the impacts to your business. Here are 7 questions you should ask yourself make.
7 Questions On Restructuring You Must Ask Before Doing Anything:
Unfortunately, many business leaders get trapped in thinking just about the benefits the renewal will bring, but forget to conduct thorough impact assessments of core processes, and do not map out timelines for implementation. Failing to do these fundamental things may reduce some of the efficiency improvements offered by the new structure.
“How the business actually goes about making the changes is just as important as the changes themselves.”
Establishing contingency plans is also wise, as unforeseen challenges will likely emerge. Do your homework before you make the decision to restructure public knowledge. How smoothly you implement the changes will impact how quickly and efficiently it goes. Announcing changes before figuring it out is bad practice, and is likely lead to problems down the line.
3. Meet in the Middle
When you are simply realigning teams and people to make your business more effective, don’t forget to talk to your employees. The higher up you are in the organization the less in touch you are with the working level. It’s a fact that many upper level managers choose to ignore.
Talk to your people to see what input they may have on the situation. Seek out a small focus group of key talent or knowledge holders to battle-test your ideas. Gain feedback. Actively seek your employees’ suggestions in terms of gaps. And listen to them. Often times, your vision combined with their ideas will lead to the best solution. The employees will live in the new structure every day and will easily be able to identify challenges you may have overlooked.
4. Structure for Success
Keep in mind a virtue in the world of organizational management: your structure must bring you success. If you’re struggling with technology growth, separate a team to focus only on technology. If your customers feel neglected, create a team dedicated to taking care of customers. There are many ways to create an organizational structure, and all have the merits. Examples include product based teams, process based teams, regionally based teams and functional teams. The key is to find the sources of pain and weakness and center your efforts around addressing them.
5. Follow Up
Once you make the formal announcement that a restructure is coming, you’re not likely to get a great deal of feedback in the public setting. Remedy: talk to your employees on an individual basis after you announce the changes. Again, seek out a focus group. At the individual level, understand what parts made sense to them and those that didn’t.
5 Questions to Ask Employees After a Restructure is Announced:
You’ll probably find a couple of trends or areas where your communication was not clear. Following up will help you address concerns and gain support. Further, major restructuring is likely to take time, so communicate regularly through out the process of change. Doing so keeps people working hard and reduces distracting rumors.
Take Away Points on Business Renewal
Restructuring a company or organization will always have its challenges. There is no perfect play book – every change is different just like each company is unique. However, by closely planning out your implementation strategy and communicating effectively to your organization, you can pave the way to the future far more effectively. Remember that while a few managers and executives at the top may have a vision for what the future structure may look like, it’s the people within the organization who are the real change agents. Let your employees be part of building the future you seek.
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