Category Archives: Moving to Work of Higher Value

Alan Weiss interviews Wayne McKinnon in this third book in the new Million Dollar series by Alan Weiss. The book is published by McGraw-Hill and endorsed by the renowned uber-coach Marshall Goldsmith

MillionDollarCoaching

Alan Weiss: What is the most difficult aspect of coaching executives and senior people?

Wayne McKinnon: Ironically, or perhaps as expected, the people that can benefit the most from coaching are also the ones who make the least time for it or treat it as a quick hit that will have lasting results without taking the time to deal with their thoughts. These people tend to be more difficult to coach.

They move from meeting to meeting without leaving time in their schedule to contemplate what is going on around them, their role in the organization and the input they have received. This should not be confused with the type of person who has a quick mind, is extremely decisive, makes consistently good decisions and yet still values input from others. This second type of person consumes very little of the coaches time but seems to derive the greatest benefit.

The first type of person needs to separate the activities that require their actions or simply their presence, from those activities where their judgment and influence is really needed and is highly valuable. Almost anyone in the organization should be capable of word-smithing, grammar checking and ensuring meetings run and finish on time. Ensuring that the right things are being discussed, written about, implemented, delivered or reported on requires someone with the greater perspective and clear judgment of the senior person.

Being honest with themselves as well as with the coach about why they are not making progress can also be a challenge that is often masked by the “I have been too busy” response. If change is required and the person wants to avoid that change, keeping busy in meetings and tasks that could easily be delegated to staff seems to be a common diversionary tactic.

Sometimes the way the person is measured contributes to this behavior. The person they report to delegate to them tasks that they in turn should delegate, but the language used or the measures in place may appear to say, “this task must be done by you.” In my experience this type of misinterpretation represents a small but important subset of people. They tend to take requests and commands too literally and fail to translate it into the true intent, which goes more like “ here is a tasks I am trusting you to have your team take care of.”

Often the person simply does not have the personal or team capacity to do everything they are currently trying to do, either because they have not been decisive and strategic enough to develop the team; the fortitude to focus on the best things to do versus all the things they can try to do; or the willingness to push back when they are clear on what they can and cannot do and something has to give. This is the paradox of coaching executives who can benefit the most from coaching yet tend to be difficult to coach to the level befitting an executive.
 

Alan Weiss has coached over 2,000 executives and entrepreneurs all over the world. 

The following points apply equally to internal as well as external customers of your services:

• The focus should be on the service, and the value that it provides, not the system or tools, nor the cost.

• Costs should be considered as part of calculating ROI, but really have no bearing on value. (Sometimes cost exceeds value resulting in a negative ROI which is not good, and a warning that you should not proceed, and some services are extremely cheap, but provide little or no value).

• Cost should include fixed + variable as well as one time + ongoing.

• You should also consider how quickly the benefits will be realized.

• Defining the market means looking at who is and is not your type of customer, as well as where your potential value sits in terms of commodity vs. strategic, or low value vs. high.

• Value is not always strictly monetary, and may be tangible as well as intangible. (Increasing revenues while also keeping you out of jail for example).

 Winter came late this year and the river behind our house only recently froze solid. When I went down to check out the ice I found these peculiar tracks.

Every winter a group of coyotes make their way along the river, and at first glance this looked like their footprints but it wasn’t, but what was it?

Perhaps it was some prehistoric life form climbing out of the primordial ooze, something forced to adapt to its environment that has suddenly changed. If I had only arrived a few minutes earlier would I have witnessed a change so dramatic that it defies the laws of natural evolution as hypothesized by paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould?

Gould postulated that while most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability, it is punctuated by rare instances of branching evolution. Just as I have observed in my own work with corporations, real change is a result of rapid bursts of change at irregular (punctuated) intervals. Trusting natural evolution to create necessary change can take forever. Further, if change does begin, it is not unusual for those creatures who have not changed, to reject it, and squash it before it gains a foothold in the environment, thus maintaining the status quo. In corporate environments that change has to be nurtured, supported and in many cases, valiantly protected.

As for my back yard, the question remains: What was the sudden change that caused this creature to leave evidence of its own rapid evolution?
 

You can decide for yourself based on the evidence that I have provided, however, a better question that you "otter" consider is what will your own evolution look like, and what direction will it take you?

This week Research In Motion (RIM) announced that it will focus on its server technology as a way of creating more revenue.

In my opinion, any discussion of servers or smartphones is a prime example of low value thinking. The Blackberry handsets or the servers do not represent the higher value. The value exists within the services that those technology components support.

While RIM’s competitors relegate the blackberry device to status of a commodity item as far as smart phones go, this ignores the true value that RIM provides. Unlike the Google Android, or the Apple IPhone that simply allow cel phone users to make calls and send email, RIM also provides a secure message transfer service, enabled by its handsets, BES servers and subscriber services.

In my opinion, RIM should be trumpeting the utility of their secure messaging service, rather than focusing on promoting products (even servers) that are being viewed as commodity items. After all, many corporate clients buy blackberries, BES servers, and Blackberry service subscriptions for this specific reason, rather than relying on internet email which was never designed to be secure, or even provide authentication that the sender is who they say they are.
 

The geese in our back yard are getting ready to leave for the season. The first snowfall of the year hit today and it reminded me of a song in my Itunes collection that I haven't listened to in a long time.

It is performed by Laura Baron, the wife of my good friend Seth Kahn. (BTW, Seth and Laura became new parents this year, congratulations!)

LauraBaronMusic.com

 If you have attended an event that I have been speaking at, you'll be familiar with this term that I frequently use.  

Apple has embodied the philosophy of "instantly productive" in their products, designed with their intuitive interfaces.

Siemens also embraced this almost 15 years ago by designing their new employee process in such a way that from The H.R. meeting, to the employee’s desk, each step triggered the next. By the time the employee sat down to work, their employment records were filed, the payroll tracking had begun, their building pass was issued and their network and email accounts had been provisioned.

That’s what I mean by instantly productive!

What are you doing to contribute to the removal of productivity roadblocks in your organization?

I worked at a hospital in the mid 80s. On Christmas eve a critical system that was used to schedule operations and assemble the surgeon’s tools and prepare case carts failed. I stayed all night to get things back up and running.

My job was to save lives.

My skills were easier to obtain than those of a surgeon, but my position was no less critical to the service of saving lives.

What's your job?

My own career has evolved over more than 20 years to the point where I now modify corporate DNA, dramatically altering my client's evolutionary course from extinct to distinct. 

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 This weekend we were out visiting shops and interesting locations when I came across this top hat.

I’ve never actually seen a real top hot other than in Fred Astaire movies or at the hands of some magician, and since I can’t dance, the first thing I did was check the lining.

Out of necessity, as I rose up through my career I became very talented at pulling rabbits out of these things.

If your people continually have to act as magicians in order to satisfy your customers, something is wrong with the inner workings of your organization.

I think this particular hat was all used up.

The inner lining contained no rabbits, although I did find the receipt for a can of smoke, a claim ticket from a mirror repair shop, and the address of a tap dancing studio (should you need that sort of assistance in place of other more suitable tactics).

Use the comment feature to write me about what improvements you would make to improve service delivery in your environment.