Marc's Blog

More often than not, superior business execution is prevented by the organization’s leadership.  This happens by the leadership team trying to control something outside their circle of influence.   Someone’s circle of influence is what he or she has direct access to and/or direct control over.  The word “control" here signifies being always able to predict the outcome of a specific action or process.

Superior business execution is prevented in two ways by leadership teams
Leaders lead to create results, but oftentimes, the necessity to create results leads them to overstep their circle of influence.  This is when leadership teams start to prevent superior business execution.  Leaders do this in two ways: by giving the workforce too much or not enough latitude, or by keeping too much or too little latitude for themselves.

As a rule of thumb, anyone’s latitude in an organization should be limited to their circle of influence.  When people’s latitude falls within their circle of influence, they naturally take ownership and define and execute the various strategies that are needed to create the desired outcome. 

The leadership team’s circle of influence
Typically, customers fall outside the leadership team's circle of influence.  A leadership team has no direct control over the services that are offered by their workforce (internally or externally).  They have direct contact with their workforce, but have no control over what they are doing and how they are doing it.  Employees have free will. There is always the possibility that they will decide to do the opposite of what they have always done or were asked to do. 

Employees, just like customers, can be led, inspired, influenced, directed, coerced, or manipulated, but they cannot be controlled.   

As an example, an employee may follow a process to stay out of trouble, but may make mistakes or sabotage the results by lack of ownership and involvement in the process.  Another employee may have always followed directions to the letter, but one day decides that he’s had enough and decides to do the opposite.  These two examples and so many others are the reason why it is critical for leaders to learn to tap into their workforce strengths and innovation capabilities, by letting them be the leaders of their circle of influence.

The leaders of an organization are coaches and facilitators
Organizations’ leaders are facilitators. They are there to guide and support their workforce.  Leaders do this by requesting specific results, defining parameters to follow, suggesting best practices and by transferring their expertise to their workforce.  However, because leaders have no direct control over their workforce’s actions, it is counter productive for them to tell their workforce what to do.  Trying to “control" employees leads to the creation of Performance-Drains: resistance, apathy, lack of proactivity, lack of resourcefulness and lack of accountability.

Employees are in direct contact with their customers, and thus know the most direct, most productive and most reliable way to supply their services.   Tapping into this powerful resource is one of the leaders and their organization’s most important competitive advantage and bottom line booster.

Leadership in Action
The only way leaders can be certain that their workforce will do everything it takes to generate expected outcomes  is by allowing them to take ownership of the results they need to create (One of the expected outcomes being customer satisfaction—both internally and externally).  Leaders have to create a supportive environment for their workforce to proactively innovate to generate the desired results.

The first thing to do is to present a clear and detailed business vision to the workforce (see the article “The business vision: The most unclear and unconscious facet of most organizations"). 

An organization’s workforce proactively creates results and customer satisfaction through their ways of working (WoWs).  This is why the second thing to do is to involve the employees in defining their WoWs and adapting and developing the tools they need to generate the expected results (within the specified parameters).  This approach channels the workforce in becoming the leaders of the organization’s performance and success.  It also has the significant advantage of dramatically increasing the adoption rate of new WoWs and processes.

The next step: Identifying the focus of the workforce’s resistance
Survey your organization to find where the workforce resists the processes or methodologies that they are required to follow—Resistance and constant need for monitoring is a symptom of leadership overstepping their circle of influence.   Investigate these processes and methodologies and the ways they have been defined and deployed.  There is a good chance that you will find that these methodologies or processes were imposed on the workforce, with little involvement from the workforce. 

Unless the resisted processes or methodologies are required by law, make amends and launch a process or methodology improvement initiative where the workforce will be made fully responsible for modifying the methodology, and fully accountable for generating consistent results.