STRATEGIES FOR WORKING REMOTELY want to do their job better when they return. Challenge programs can be done between executives or teams, and have proven to be extremely developmental because growth is inevitable.
The Science of Dream Teams
CAPITALIZE ON INCREASED RESULTS
succeed while others — made up of equally talented people
Capitalizing on increased results is critical to maximize opportunity. If sales have started to flow, change processes to capitalize on the increase in flow. Leaders might not do certain things they were once doing to garner success; breaking into a different mode of management could be an option. For example, I worked with a large mortgage broker team. We had structures in place to manage each broker around generating relationships with real estate agents. They had daily and weekly reporting structures in place. These architectures were wonderful in garnering expansion of results. However, when the refinance industry exploded, it didn’t make sense to spend all this time cultivating referral partners for homebuyers. We quickly instituted new sets of actions for automated touches through email and text to keep those relationships simmering, but not directly driven so we could free ourselves up to capitalize on the influx in lowhanging fruit. (Notice, however, we figured out a way to keep a bit of momentum in those relationships in preparation for the inevitable turn back the other direction.) Something that is important in these times of flooding results is, leaders should take away a bit of the reporting mechanisms and allow people to run more freely. The burden of scrutiny when creating any reporting mechanism is, “What do I need to see, and how often do I need to see it to guarantee the result will be produced?” This principle doesn’t change when things start going impressively well. However, “What do I need to see?” and “How often do I need to see it?” should be significantly less.
LOOK AROUND THE CORNER
A great leader is always looking around the corner for what’s next. When times are good, it’s the appropriate move to focus intensely on what could possibly go wrong. When everyone is focusing on how great everything is, it is incumbent on our leaders to have the maturity to see where things could possibly go wrong, and either prepare for them or prevent them. This takes a discerning eye and a bit of intuition, but when intelligent people look, they will find good answers to answer or prepare for. In the example above, we knew that the refinance market wouldn’t last forever and made certain to not only keep the relationships in place, but also instituted cultivation long before anyone else did. The result was that we didn’t get hit at all with the pain other brokerage houses felt when the market shifted.
How does an employer find the perfect person for the job in a stack of hundreds of resumes? Why do some teams — stumble? If the quality of a business’s workforce is the business’s most important asset, then why are its managers still basing these critical decisions primarily on interviews and their gut instincts? In The Science of Dream Teams, Mike Zani details a data-driven approach to talent optimization that makes hiring, motivating and managing people more efficient and effective than ever. Whatever the business or industry, this game-changing approach has the power to unlock an unbeatable competitive advantage. The Science of Dream Teams: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness Mike Zani
One of the most important things leaders can do is to make sure to know where each one of their people wants to be in the next three years in their career. It is a manager’s job to get them where they want to be.
Available 7/6/2021
$30
Scaling for Success Managing a high-growth organization requires both strategy and adaptability. Unfortunately, startup founders and executives seeking to scale up to the next level find all too frequently that growth turns into chaos. Rather than laying the groundwork for the future, organizations get stuck by covering up complex problems with unsustainable band-aids and duct-tape fixes, implementing anecdote-based solutions from the latest tech-industry unicorns or leadership books, and relying on too much on-the-fly learning from inexperienced managers. Practical, actionable, and supplemented with numerous diagnostic tools and illustrative examples, Scaling for Success helps readers identify the core people-management programs and practices that are best for an organization at its current stage and size while also supporting a foundation for continued development and the capacity to adapt to inevitable surprises. Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations Dr. T. Brad Harris and Andrew C. Bartlow Columbia Business School Publishing
208 pages
Available 7/6/2021
TRUE DIVERSITY Pie Graphs are commonly used by corporations to illustrate
RAISE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Lastly, when times are good, elevating the emotional intelligence (EQ) of team members is a must to keep functions within a company from stagnating. An easy way to build EQ is through team building. For instance, with a team of 12, ask three people on the team at the beginning of each meeting to highlight one person and acknowledge what that individual brings to the table and what’s truly unique about how that person operates — making sure to be creative about it. Another key for elevating EQ is for people to self-identify weaknesses in their own development or what weaknesses they have for the next job they want to obtain within the company. When times are good and the floodgates of productivity are open, leaders should always be pointing in a direction and taking their group of people there. Leaders should never be happy with where things are or how things are running. Something can always be created. I’d recommend sitting with leaders to come up with where they are going to point next and make sure there is a designated plan for how they will get there.
240 pages
McGraw-Hill Education
their diversity. Improvements in pie graph analytics have been accepted as progress by corporate standards. True Diversity challenges this conventional wisdom, exposes the inherent weaknesses of pie graphs and challenges companies to “Go Beyond the Pie Graph.” Is it possible that these individuals who would occupy the same slice of a pie graph may actually be more dissimilar than they are similar? Is it even remotely possible that the only reason we group them in the same slice of the pie graph is to make ourselves feel better? How can we harness the power of their True Diversity that is not captured on a pie graph? TRUE DIVERSITY: Going Beyond The Pie Graph Jesus Leal and Nathan Williams BookBaby
242 pages Available 7/22/2021
$16.95
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