Leadership

• Leadership is pursuing and achieving goals with and through others by influencing, inspiring, motivating and directing them with the four “Ps” (Power, Position, Personality and Persuasion). In general, it is whatever makes people want to follow you.

• All leaders have a personal style. But a leader’s manner and methods can vary with circumstances and culture (both national and corporate). The situation can define the style that will succeed.

Leadership Traits• Selfless: credit team, not self• Strong conceptual skills; able to link cause and effect• Visionary; able to see what can be created• Persuasive, energetic motivator able to communicate the vision• Flexible, adjusting to circumstances and people• Good listening skills; able to accept suggestions• Organized, focused and able to set an expert example• Good at judging others’ capabilities and commitment to select the

right person for each task• Courageous; willing to take risk and accept responsibility• Decisive, determined and persistent• Has stamina – can work hard and long• Practical and calm while others are not• Ethical, honest, trustworthy and admirable

Groups and Teams

• A team is more effective than a single person at achieving goals because it has MORE of everything: more brains, more diversity of viewpoint, more ideas, more energy, more time, more resources, and brainstorming capability.

• Team members can balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses and inspire each other’s creativity and innovation.

Group DynamicsConformity and Deviance

• Conformity and Deviance need to be balanced. Too much conformity among team members can stifle the creativity and innovation that can come from deviance (diversity of viewpoints). But too much deviance can derail a team’s discipline and productivity.

Assuring High Team Performance

• YOU GET THE BEHAVIOR YOU REWARD!

• Reward the team as well as its members for high performance (example: Toyota’s two-check bonus system)

Communication

• Communication is sharing information; in business, you do it in order to build shared understanding that enables coordinated pursuit of a plan.

• It is the oil lubricating the cogs of commerce; the foundation of creativity, innovation, teamwork, problem-solving, decision-making and customer satisfaction.

The Communication Process

• A sender encodes a message, transmits it over a medium to a receiver, who decodes it and provides feedback (either questions or confirmation) to the sender. When this circular process is effective, shared understanding is achieved.

• Channel choice (face-to-face, video conference, e-mail, phone, fax, memo, letter, etc.) is important because each has its strengths and weaknesses and may be more or less appropriate for any particular content.

The Role of Perception in Communication

• Perception is the process by which people sort, sift, organize and interpret sensory input to distil meaning, form opinions, make decisions and take action.

• Your experience creates internal “filters” that affect how you perceive input, sometimes skewing the message a sender intends.

• You need to be aware of your filters and wary of their potential effects on your perceptions (“know thyself”); be skeptical of both the situation and yourself.

Managing Conflict and Politics

• Organizational conflict is discord arising when different individuals or groups hold different values or pursue conflicting goals or interests and then try to block one another’s progress.

• It is inevitable in business and you will have to learn to deal with it.

Some Sources of Conflict

• Conflicting goals and time horizons

• Overlapping authority (two dogs/one fireplug)

• Scarce resources (zero-sum mentality)

• Status inconsistencies that lead to envy

Conflict Management Strategies

• Resolution through compromise (share the pain) or collaboration (share the gain)

• Accommodation (one party plays door mat)

• Avoidance (a decision to let the problem fester – not good)

• Competition (survivor wins -- dumb)

Conflict Minimization Strategies

• Increase awareness of potential conflict sources• Increase tolerance skills (empathy, respect for

diversity, etc.)• Practice job rotation (walk in each other’s shoes)• Permanent transfer or dismissal (move or fire

the problem)• Work to make disruptive conflict (versus

energetic consideration of alternatives) unacceptable in the corporate culture

Organizational Politics

Activities managers engage in to increase their power to overcome opposition or achieve their goals.

• Can be negative when used to pursue self-interest.

• Can be positive when used to achieve organizational goals or improve performance.

• Leaders learn to use politics to get things

done.

Some Political Strategies

• Become central to the organization’s mission.

• Become irreplaceable.

• Build both internal and external alliances.

• Convince with objective, factual information.

• Control the agenda.

• Bring in an outside “expert.”

Advanced Information Technology

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

(and the electronic genie is out of the bottle)

How do Information and Data Differ?

• Data: raw, unsummarized, unalayzed facts and – therefore – mostly useless

• Information: analyzed data organized in a meaningful fashion that makes it useful for decision-making

Information Technology

A set of techniques and equipment for:

1. Acquiring

2. Organizing

3. Storing

4. Manipulating

5. And transmitting

INFORMATION

Information and Managerial Control

Managers exert control by:1. Establishing measurable goals2. Monitoring performance against them3. Improving the process4. Doing it again5. And rewarding effective performance

This is PDCA and cannot be accomplished without timely, accurate, complete, relevant and reliable information from both inside and outside the company. Global sourcing and competition is making it ever more complex and fast-paced.

Innovation & Product Development

Quantum Technological Change: an innovative, fundamental and disruptive shift in technology that can obsolete existing products and provide first-mover competitive advantage to the creator (for example, the leap from internal combustion to hybrid drivetrains).

Product Development

Incremental Technological Change: step-by-step evolution that refines existing technology and produces gradual improvement of products over time (for example: carburetors to fuel injection)

Product Life Cycle

Four Stages

1. Embryonic: new with minimal demand

2. Growth: demand increases

3. Maturity: demand peaks and flattens

4. Decline: demand decreases

Life is a bell curve

Product-development Goals

• Maximize customer satisfaction (fit)

• Accelerate development pace (first to market captures longer life cycle and initial price premium)

• Maximize manufacturability

• Maximize quality

• Maximize differentiation

• Minimize waste and cost

Product-development Techniques

• Cross-functional teams

• Concurrent – not sequential – engineering

- Reduces development time and cost

- Enhances manufacturability

- Enhances quality

• Customer involvement

• Supplier involvement

Foundation Conclusion

The ultimate goal of any business is to create sustainable competitive advantage by answering four basic business questions better than your competitors:

1. What is our product or service?2. Who will buy it?3. What do they want?4. How can we give it to them in ways that will

differentiate us from competitors, make money, earn customer trust/loyalty and create sustainable competitive advantage?

Tools

1. Vision (What do we want to be?); Mission (Why are we here?); Values (What do we hold most dear?); Goals (What do we want to achieve?)

2. Base planning on realistic assessment of internal strengths and external circumstances (SWOT)

3. What is our strategy (the road map)? 4. Get organizational feedback and buy-in.5. Assign the three “Rs” (Responsibility, Resources and

Results)6. Create a strong and positive corporate culture based

on a combination of diversity and shared values.

Tools7. Match structure to environment (flat and flexible) and continuously

re-examine base assumptions to assure that your strategy and business model are still effective.

8. Demand, measure (KPIs) and reward positive results (YOU GET WHAT YOU REWARD).

9. Eliminate waste, harvest savings and re-invest in product and process to build competitive advantage (VCM and ZBB).

10. Build and protect brand strength.11. Take a stakeholder viewpoint – partners must prosper for you to

prosper.12. Occasionally force organizational growth with a BHAG that

creates new, difficult-to-copy corporate resources and skills.13. Become an urgent, strictly disciplined, learning organization that

continuously improves and runs scared!

Your Top Five Management Practices

1. Use PDCA to continuously improve

2. Put the customer first

3. Stay flat, lean and flexible for fast response to the customer

4. Take a long-term view

5. Assume that change is the only constant and play the “what-if” game

My Top Five Management Practices

1. Put the customer first

2. Foster a stakeholder culture

3. Take a long-term view

4. Always question assumptions

5. Use PDCA to achieve continuous improvement

My Next Five

6. Hold people accountable

7. Earn trust by always being ethical

8. Play the “what-if” game

9. Find the root cause before acting

10. Look out the window, not into the mirror

Framework

Business is based on a transaction process

You sell…I buy or

I sell…you buy

a product or service

This requires trust

Which requires ethical behavior

THIS IS THE FINAL FOUNDATION

A Final Thought

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows he must out-run the fastest lion or he will die.

Every morning a lion wakes up and knows she must out-run the slowest gazelle or she will starve.

Whether you’re a lion or a gazelle, hit the ground running every morning!