Managing Director

Ever wonder how tough a puzzle would be to put together without the box cover? The cover is all important because it has a picture of the completed puzzle. The cover acts as a guide, it gives you clues. Just think how hard it would be to find that right piece if you didn’t have the picture that lets you know where that tiny red spot goes.

A vision is a lot like the puzzle box cover, it lets you know where things are supposed to go. Although you can put a puzzle together without the cover it takes a lot longer and it’s more difficult. Without a vision and the corresponding strategies to go with it, running a business is much more difficult and is more likely to fail. Recently one of my clients indicated he didn’t want to work on his strategy until he had hired a new general manager. I asked him what was he looking for in a GM? He indicated he wanted someone who will handle the day-to-day operations. I then asked him whether his new strategy would have an impact on his choice – he said “I really hadn’t thought about it that way”. With a well-established vision it would provide a guide to the various pieces that are needed to complete the picture. Do you need another operations person or someone who can help build an organization that will help you execute your strategic vision? The importance of a vision and subsequent strategy is so important that we shouldn’t wait. It is often the desire to get all the pieces in place then articulate a vision. But just like having the puzzle box cover, having a vision and well developed strategy will ensure you put the right piece in the right place.

ODHR Consultants are experts at helping you develop your vision and strategies. We listen to understand your business, understand your challenges, and your desired outcomes. We help you build your vision to guide your organization to success and achievement of your goals. We design and facilitate strategy sessions that give form to your vision, articulates your mission, defines your goals and lays out your strategies!

Let ODHR Consultants help you develop your puzzle box cover.

Managing Partner

In the post titled “ How to Be The Leader of the Pack”  we asked, if your team had what it takes to help them leapfrog the competition and capture market share? To consistently grow both the top and bottom-line, successful organizations focus on PSP—the 3 essential components of the Alpha Strategy—People, Strategies, and Processes.

People –

In every successful endeavor, the one essential ingredient is people.  Why? Because people can single-handedly catapult an organization forward and destroy it. To quote Starbucks, “We always figured that putting people before products just made good common sense. So far, it’s been working out for us ….the connections we make in communities create a loyal following”.

Unfortunately, many organizations still haven’t fully recognized the awesome power imbedded in their people. They ignore, mis-communicate, frustrate, and fail to develop or appreciate their most critical asset and wonder why earnings are flat. At the same time, Starbucks and other people-centered organizations enjoy the rich rewards that go far beyond financial returns and market share.

Strategy –

Strategy, once reserved for boardrooms and annual planning sessions, has now become the indispensable business tool of every successful professional. News and Financial sources confirm that for companies like Google, Pepsi, and General Electric, strategic thinking is everyone’s daily modus operandi.

Managers, supervisors, team leaders and business professionals at all levels must be ready, like pilots, to make mid-course adjustments. Just like a state-of-the-art aircraft, business today moves at an incredible speed and demands that you develop strategies for every eventuality – otherwise, you may crash!

Processes –

We all know that good health demands a yearly physical examination. The same is true for every business, every project, and every professional. Just as a doctor can tell a person’s overall health from a few simple measurements like blood pressure, weight and temperature, a few basic things can reveal the health of any organization.

The following 3 areas can tell you a lot about your organization or department.

1. The Presence of a CD Mindset: Visible evidence of a marriage of creativity and design in products and services are hallmarks of a healthy organization. Especially today when a design revolution is sweeping our product landscape.  We need look no further than at the order backlog for cool products like razor-thin phones and sleek trendsetting mp3 players. To join or win in this highly competitive arena calls for creative, critical-thinking and problem solving skills. That is why Business Schools like Stanford, MIT, and Wharton are quickly establishing Design School courses such as “Integrated Product Design”, “Developing New Products and Services”, and “Design as a Strategic Business Issue”. There is no doubt about it, creativity and innovation are center stage in future-focused healthy organizations.
2. The Areas of Focus: Healthy organizations know that to be successful, they must allocate and balance resources between initiatives that will advance the organization, and projects that have a high probability of success. Therefore, they base their decisions on sound judgment supported by proven processes and techniques. They operate in what is called the “strategic leverage zone” in order to maximize their results.

Imagine your assignment was to successfully knock down 15-20 dominos or pins. By hitting them down 2-3 at a time, it would take you 7-10 moves to accomplish your goal. However, what if you could achieve success faster with less effort? What if you could strategically determine that by hitting just the right 1 or 2 pins, they in turn, would knock down all the other pins? That is the kind of results you can get when you operate in the “strategic leverage zone”.  You will profit by leading the rest of the pack.

1. The Alignment of Goals & Culture: Organizations regularly call on us to assist them with developing goals and strategies.

However, winners go beyond developing and aligning goals and strategies to addressing the critical component of culture integration. Let’s say a company grew 5% last year and now wants to shift into high gear with an aggressive 14% growth spurt. Let’s also assume that they have a very conservative culture; one where people are punished for making mistakes and therefore where decision making is agonizingly slow and cautious. Can you see that we would have a major misalignment?

Your organization’s goals and strategies must therefore also be aligned with your culture. If they are not, you would be like a man removing water from a boat with a hole in the bottom – your efforts will yield only limited results until you fix the leak. And if you leave it unrepaired, you will wind up in a sinking ship.

How would your organization fare based on these 3 areas from our “Health Organization” checklist? Do they have what it takes? Or are they in need of organizational CPR?

To maintain great business fitness, you must focus and develop your PSP – people, strategies, and processes. Mastering these three critical components is one of the best ways to ensure success for both you and your organization.

Managing Partner

As part of every company’s competitive business environment, Workforce Management offers a formidable challenge that is not easily sustained. Our employees today are more demanding.

They arrive on the scene expecting to be challenged intellectually in their own way. They also expect an opportunity to become the most valuable player in your organization. Fortunately, these are not bad things.

Leadership must stay connected to the key strategies that “maximize the yield,” from these most valued resources. Their focused strategies must be fundamentally sound and able to provide the platform for employees to achieve.

It is encouraged that most organizations that utilize people, include some aspects of the following workforce environmental elements.

1. Employee Engagement – There should be a range of expectations at all levels of the organization. These expectations should be a part of discussions about strategies and action plans that communicate a clear set of directions.
2. Strong Line Management Capability – Management must recognize the vital role line managers play in every aspect of the employment relationship.
3. Support Employees Health and Well Being – Make sure the workplace supports provisions that reduce stress and discomfort. Be sensitive to issues that impact the abilities of the employee.
4. Cascade Goals and Objectives – Help each employee understand how the work that they do, impact the goals and objectives of the company.
5. Develop Solid Resources for Human Capital – Insure that there are clear, concise policies about things like compensation, retirement, benefits, retention, discipline, culture, values, and principles.
6. Knowledge Management – Provide employees all information about the business, in a format that is accessible and easy to understand.
7. Performance Management – Create a system for written feedback about employee’s performance, including opportunities for improvement, and strengths.
8. Career Management – Develop written criteria of requirements for advancement, including competencies and skills.
9. Workforce Capabilities – Inform employees about planned business growth or expansion, that may result in enhanced skill requirements.
10. Bridge the Gap – Be available and be present. Listen to what employee’s issues and concerns are. Provide the facts.

We must remember that all of the previously mentioned initiatives are “dynamic” and should be monitored, measured and adjusted on a set frequency.

Usually, there is a direct correlation to the business successes and failures.

Managing Director

By now we all know who Enron is and the name is synonymous with scandal. I often hear it used as a metaphor of what a company doesn’t want to be. Unfortunately, that pains me because I spent many of my formative years as a young executive working there.

Long before the scandal Enron was a well-run cash cow of a pipeline company that everyone envied. In the days prior to a series of mergers Enron was known as Northern Natural Gas Inc.

This was the largest of the companies and it was a company with solid Midwest values that focused on hard work and integrity. It was merged with a series of other pipeline companies i.e. Houston Natural Pipeline, Florida Gas and Transwestern Pipeline just to name a few.

It became a formidable company with formidable problems, disparate cultures with different ways of doing things, different accounting systems, and different ways of managing people.

The early days of the merger mania were difficult but we also knew that we were on to something that was going to be big in the industry. There was an excitement and an energy that was transformational.

The challenge of finding a way to meld all these divergent cultures into a top-notch company was both a daunting task as well as an OD manager’s dream. During the years of merger activity I learned a tremendous amount about organization design, organization culture, strategic planning and operating excellence.

I learned even more after I left the organization. (The scandal unfolded several years later)

What were those lessons you might ask?

First and foremost, “leadership matters!” The leaders of the organization stopped leading the organization and focused on CYA. That seems obvious now but as things unraveled and I contacted my friends and colleagues that were still there, it became obvious that the leadership was busy taking care of themselves and had abandoned the people that had invested their time, effort and money in the organization.

We now know that the leadership had been corrupted by power and money but could this, would this have happened if they had been more focused on the people and their investors rather than on themselves?

The second lesson is, “establish and stand by your values”. The leaders abandoned the long-standing values that had been established through many years of hard work. The values that many admired and had been utilized to forge a solid long-standing company went by the wayside.

These values had been established around respect for customers, investors and employees. Again it’s obvious after the fact but critical, that decisions and actions be linked to values that are established well before a crisis takes place.

The third lesson, “clearly define and execute your strategy”. This one sticks with me more and more everyday because if you cannot explain your strategy to the people within your organization and have it make sense, you have no strategy at all.

Warren Buffet is famous for stating that if he can’t understand a company’s strategy then he can’t invest in that company.

Well, I’m here to tell you that this still rings true today. If you can’t explain the key working parts of your value proposition then it will be equally hard for your employees to execute that strategy.

Although these may seem overly simplistic, think how many lives would have been changed and how many billions of dollars would not have been lost if these lessons had been applied. Organizations today that fail to heed these lessons are destined to repeat history.

• Leadership matters
• Establish and stand by your values
• Clearly define and execute your strategy

Managing Partner

Workforce management includes the activities and processes that a business requires to sustain a highly productive workforce. Unfortunately, many smaller organizations are not equipped to manage in these areas.

As we look at the ever changing behavioral characteristics of employees in the current and future workforce, the concept becomes increasingly important.

Workforce management sub strategies should flow from business strategies aimed at achieving key results.

The workplace must have embedded action plans and tactics that create and maintain an environment that challenges the employee to exceed expectations.

Our twenty first century employees thrive on engagement in the business at every level. That engagement must come regularly from line supervision and include opportunities for business input, as well as performance feedback.

This will require the supervisor to possess a more in-depth knowledge of employee personalities and behaviors. Interpersonal skill development should be considered as essential in their growth and development of supervisor capabilities.

The ability to handle difficult situations well, while minimizing risk, is a must in today’s workplace.

The workplace should provide information about the company in several formats that are viewed as accessible by employees.

This information should include subjects like purpose, mission, values, training, medical benefits, career, employee expectations, etc. While this information is important, it should not replace opportunities for face to face dialogue.

We regularly hear the old cliché that “people are our most valuable resources.” However, it is most important to remember that people are more complex than any other resource in the workplace.

These complex resources, the employees, can consistently deliver improved business results when attention to the workplace attributes is well managed.

Managing Partner

Have you noticed that certain individuals seem to consistently defy the odds and, like cream, rise to the top?

Have you also noticed that some organizations, even in volatile and fiercely competitive markets, continually lead the pack while others never make it or simply fade away?

Over the last five to ten years, many organizations have re-engineered, cut costs, and implemented six-sigma. For some, these were both necessary and long overdue. However, much more is required to separate you from the rest of the pack and win.

Sure, we can increase profits by cutting the fat and being more efficient, but at some point we will need to go beyond cutting to growing.

Why, because market savvy investors look at both revenues and profits. Real long-term success requires focus, not just on the bottom line, but also on the top line – revenues from actual sales of products and services.

That is why winners defy the status quo, and go beyond. They have the unique ability to move from the old and boring to the new and sexy revenue producing — phones that double as computers, cars that park themselves, or entertainment like Cirque du Soleil.

They consistently create products and services that address needs we never knew we had, but to which we immediately connect and crave.

What about your organization? Is it ready to prosper in a radically different and exciting future? Does your team have what it takes to help them leapfrog the competition and capture market share? Stay tuned for my next blog post on the 3 Essential Factors to the Alpha Strategy.