For the last 15 years, I have maintained 6 to 10 coaching clients and all our company’s  professionals serve as coaches, in addition to facilitating and leading organizational development projects.

Our goal is ambitious — to help transform individuals so that they can be more effective in their jobs.

As Robert Hargrove says so eloquently in his book, Masterful Coaching, “A successful coaching relationship is always a story of transformation, not just of higher levels of performance.

“It’s a story that takes people beyond their immediate passion and pride and helps them come to grips with the fact that to reach what is really possible and achievable for them, they must be willing to fundamentally question who they are, what they do, and why they do it.”

A good coaching model

The coaching model that we use with our clients is based on three foundational concepts: diagnose, plan and coach.

To diagnose means knowing precisely where an individual is now – strengths and areas of struggle.

To plan means starting with the individual’s vision of the leader he or she wants to be and creating a development plan with specific action steps and goals for self-improvement.

Then to coach is the process of working together to achieve the goals in the development plan.

Our coaching model’s success depends on working effectively with people as you talk about issues.

In a Harvard Business Review article “The Executive as a Coach,” authors James Waldroop and Timothy Butler offer some very practical advice as you engage in coaching sessions:

Practice active listening. Play back to the person what you heard her say. You should paraphrase in your own words so that the person knows you truly understand – or so that you can clarify any misunderstanding if you didn’t.

Support learning through action and reflection. One role of the coach is to make the individual realize how his behavior affects his ability to succeed. One effective strategy: Ask him to imagine how others might react to his behavior: What happened? Did the action succeed? How did he feel before, during and after? How did other people react?

Move from easy to hard. Do not expect behavioral goals to be reached without trial-and-error along the way. If you are working on several behaviors with an individual, pick one that is most likely to change quickly and with the least amount of trauma. Let them experience some success before moving on to harder goals.

Set ‘microgoals.’ Set goals that approximate the ultimate goal and form the basis for reflection and discussion between you and the person you are coaching. For example, if the ultimate goal is to stop overly controlling behavior, a ‘microgoal’ might be to hold back your opinion in a meeting until every else has spoken or to delegate an important piece of work.

Practice script-writing and role-playing. A coach can help a person who has problems communicating by encouraging her to write scripts and then to role-play possible scenarios.

Encourage more positive feedback. When coaching, don’t just dwell on the negative. Remember to celebrate small and large successes.

You may not have heard the term “time abuser.”

But almost all of us have labored in workplaces where a perfectionist colleague doesn’t share his work early enough – so that leaves everyone else rushing to meet a deadline.

We’ve all had coworkers who routinely take on extra chores to please a boss – and get too swamped to move forward on an important collaborative project.

Or where a team member procrastinates and puts stress on the whole string of other people involved.

Regardless of our work patterns, most of us blame schedules that are way too busy when things don’t get done on time — and in harmony.

It is true that many of our to-do lists are way too long. Productivity expert David Allen says that the average executive has 170 interactions a day and has 200 to 300 hours of projects and actions backlogged. No wonder we are stressed.

But sometimes the problem isn’t time. It’s us.

While getting a better handle on time management is certainly important, lately I’ve come to think a big part of the problem isn’t how we manage time but rather how we manage behavior patterns that waste time: people-pleasing, procrastination or perfectionism – in others and ourselves.

A great deal is at stake: As time management expert Alan Lakein puts it, “To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life.” His book, “How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life,” has been a best-seller and got a bump in attention after former President Bill Clinton praised its guidance in his autobiography “My Life.”   It has been a favorite of mine since I got my first copy in graduate school.

First, understand your inner conflicts

We all know people who are chronic time abusers — people who work for you, your peers, your manager, or, (heaven forbid) you. Two things are certain: 1) Time abusers can be highly disruptive, and 2) Suggesting time-management techniques rarely helps.

In an excellent Harvard Business Review article, Steven Berglas explains, “While the vast majority of us can benefit from practical insights on how to better organize our lives, lessons in time management will have little impact on time abusers. That’s because real time abuse results from psychological conflict that neither a workshop nor a manager’s cajoling can easily cure.”

Berglas, a clinical psychologist, executive coach, and research associate who writes a blog for Forbes, describes a number of time-abuse patterns and suggests some appropriate interventions. Three important cohorts are the People Pleaser, the Perfectionist, and the Procrastinator. Know anyone who might be a candidate?

Time abusers are generally highly inflexible individuals who believe deeply they are doing the best possible job, Berglas says. If you have one or more of these individuals in your organization, recognize that time abuse is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. So the key is to “understand your time abuser’s need for control and fear of evaluations…helping them confront their inner demons.”

So here’s a look at several patterns and some tips for managing each.

The Perfectionist (eager for that A-plus)

Perfectionists are people who need to satisfy extremely unrealistic but deeply internalized standards of excellence, making it difficult for them to stick to a schedule.  They get away with it, explains Berglas, “because they do first-rate work.” For a perfectionist, “good enough” will never suffice. The perfectionist requires absolute control over the quality of the product he produces.

The perfectionist is driven by a fear of being criticized, Berglas says, reasoning that “if my work is beyond reproach, then no one can find me wanting.”

According to Berglas, managing a perfectionist is “almost impossible.” But he suggests exposing perfectionists to frequent low doses of evaluation – progress reports, updates, and assessments to lower their fears.

The People Pleaser (saying “yes” when they shouldn’t)

As Berglas explains, “When a person chronically takes on more and more responsibilities out of a fear of confronting authority, he will inevitably commit too much of his time to unproductive projects.”

Berglas believes that people pleasers’ feelings were not sufficiently valued in their early environments. “Much like Cinderella, who was forced to clean house so her stepsisters could go to the ball, people pleasers are taught to subordinate their desires for the good of others.”

According to Beglas, “While people pleasers seem humble and self-effacing, the truth is that like everyone else – possibly, more than others – they need public acclaim. The good news is that they can benefit from assertiveness training. Berger also suggests that if you manage a people pleaser, you may need to send them this clear message: “If you don’t hear it as a direct request from me, don’t do it.”

The Procrastinator (Late may be great for them…but miserable for others)

The most common time abusers, procrastinators, leave assignments until the 11th hour and then throw themselves and others into a panic as they work furiously to meet a deadline.

According to Berglas, procrastinators resemble perfectionists in that they both run shamelessly late. “But while a perfectionist is sweating to achieve an A-plus, a procrastinator postpones doing any work because he secretly fears that he cannot produce an A-plus.”

Berglas suggests that such chronic self-doubt stems from being raised by parents who praised the child too early and too. Mistakenly, they believe that only positive feedback is good for the child’s self-esteem.

Sometimes a procrastinator doesn’t start the work till too late. In other cases,  he gets interrupted by other assignments or is sidetracked by unexpected crises: unexpected customer demands, broken machinery, illness, or just plain old car trouble. In extreme cases, the procrastinator will unconsciously sabotage his own work — “If I don’t get up to bat, I can’t strike out.”

So, what’s a manager to do? You must strike at the heart of what the procrastinator  fears most: failure. Berglas suggests a technique he calls “empathic catastrophizing,” which involves helping the procrastinator feel more comfortable imagining all the bad things that might happen if he were to turn in work on time but not up to par.

“By helping a procrastinator air his anxieties,” Berglas explains, “you can help him understand he can do remarkable work even if he is not always the superhero his parents wanted him to be.”

Another technique that Berglas suggests is to put off the day of reckoning. “If you can convince your procrastinator that judgment will hit only in the distant future – long after the project is due – then the threat associated with not succeeding on the immediate tasks is greatly diminished.”

Is there hope?

Berglas suggests that helping the time abusers change their ways is a slow process, and one that may require professional therapy.

“Yet the rewards of that kind of investment in your people can be great, indeed,” he says. “The motivations that cause the time abuse are often the same ones that drive people to perform well.”

So it is very likely your company’s worst time abusers can become its top performers.

As a manager, you must ask yourself if you are willing to invest the time and effort to “reform” a time abuser.

And you must be brutally honest in assessing your own behavior. Are you a time abuser? Are you making life unnecessarily hard for those around you this way? And, if so, what are you willing to do about it?

It happens to almost all of us at some point in our work lives:

We climb … and then hit a plateau in terms of our job or our skills.

We get offered a new job opportunity that requires us to step up our game – fast.

Or today’s rapidly changing work environment suddenly deals us a new set of challenges that demand new strategies.

One great solution is an executive coach – a skilled resource who can offer perspective, insight, strategies and support to help pave the way for better performance.

In short: a catalyst and trained guide to help you move to the next level.  “A personal trainer for your work” is one way to describe it.

Improving your skills

The role of coaches has been changing.  Far less often are they drafted “to fix toxic behavior at the top,” concluded a Harvard Business Review article by executive coach Carol Kauffman and editor Diane Coutu, who interviewed more than 100 top coaches across the country. “Today, most coaching is about developing the capabilities of high-potential performers.”

Fortune Magazine reported on a survey by the American Management Association that found almost half of participating companies use coaching to prepare individuals for a promotion or new role.  Coaching’s three most common uses: leadership development, remedial performance improvement, and optimizing strong contributors.

In “Personal Best: Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?” Atul Gawande – a Harvard surgeon and MacArthur “genius” grant award winner – described his decision to recruit a retired surgeon and former mentor to help him improve his skills.  He asks the retired surgeon to observe in the operating room and make specific practical suggestions. Gawande proposes many other professions could benefit from similar coaching and “with the growing pool of retirees, we may already have a ready reserve of accumulated experience and know-how.”

I’ve written about executive coaching over the years with the help of Wunderlin Company colleagues.

Here are key ways it can make a difference.

Can you run, block and shoot?

First, a coach provides a strong assessment of your skills using tools that range from  gathering 360-degree feedback to assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Birkman Method or Hogan Assessments. You will be challenged to ask yourself: What am I doing well? Where do I need to improve? How am I doing in relation to my goals? What’s important to me?

It’s also invaluable to get 360-degree feedback from colleagues, says Susan Wilkes, an organizational psychologist who managed the Workplace Initiatives Program at Virginia Commonwealth University and created a popular 360-degree feedback instrument.

Second, a coach can help you define ways to challenge yourself – to stretch outside your old role or comfort zone. Challenges can be on specific action steps and goals or larger explorations of values and beliefs.

Third, coaches provide support – A good coach will either know approaches and techniques to share with you or have resources to recommend.   Executive coaches can be rich sources of understanding, inspiration and learning resources like books, websites and video clips from business journals or TED talks on leadership.

What happens when you have a healthy challenge coupled with support but no assessment? Your likelihood of success is slim. It would be like running a marathon with your own cheering section and no honest review of your capabilities or adequate preparation.

What happens if challenge and assessment is present but no support? You may not have the appropriate resources and you may lose your motivation.

Assessment and support without challenge? You may find yourself “always doing what you’ve always done…and getting what you’ve always gotten.”

This ACS model (Assessment, Challenge, Support) was created by the Center for Creative Leadership based on its research on leadership development. Its “Handbook of Leadership Development”, edited by McCauley, Motley, Van Velsor, is an excellent source book.

So how do you choose a Coach?

Fortune Magazine’s article,“Can You Handle the Truth About Your Career?” by Patricia Nakache, has become a classic. In the article, Ms. Nakache cautioned readers to ask themselves some tough questions before hiring a coach.

Are you open to changing? Are you realistic about what coaching can do? Do you have achievable goals? Are you willing to work hard?

She noted that coaches come with widely varying credentials and experience – work coaches, life coaches, organization-oriented coaches.

To choose a coach who is a good match, the authors of the Harvard Business Review story “The Wild West of Executive Coaching” found the most important qualifications are: Experience in coaching in similar settings, clear methodology, and quality of client list.

So folks often ask me if coaching works. In my 15 years of executive coaching there are two factors that determine successful outcomes:

• Was the person being coached open to learning?  If others are telling an individual what they need to work on or change but they aren’t convinced, if coaching is their bosses’ idea but doesn’t seem particularly necessary to them, or if they want to explain their strong rationale for doing things the way they do, this may not be the time for coaching. If on the other hand, they are intrigued by the idea of learning and practicing new approaches, they know they want to add skills and are interested in improvement, coaching will deliver.

• Did that person have the time to invest in his or her development?  We all have times when our jobs are more demanding than others.  Coaching does require some amount of work each week — so just ensure that there is enough time for it in addition to existing responsibilities.

A success story

If you have the motivation and time to invest, it can pay off.

“You may be able to find your way to the next level of success on your own,” said one manager who went through a complete round of assessment, challenges and support. “But that timescale is far more definite with executive coaching.”

As someone with a strong technology background, she’d been taught that “people skills” were not likely to be her strong suit – but she had an “amorphous” desire to stretch in new directions.

As it turned out, her Myers-Briggs testing and coaching gave her direction and the courage to focus her efforts on more entrepreneurial challenges within her company.

She was able to develop the skills to lead a team and develop a network to generate more business – and she’s advanced to a much more satisfying leadership position.

“You have to put in the work,” she said, “and if you do, it will take you to the next level and can set your trajectory for long-term career fulfillment.”

If you want to learn more about executive coaching services, drop me a line.

“As if we were done,” he said.

In truth, his team realized it was time to take a deep breath and focus on their next  task – implementation.

“The tough work was just beginning.”

Companies typically realize only about 60 percent of their strategies’ potential because of defects in planning and execution, said Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele in their article “Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance.”

The most common reasons: Lack of resources and poor communication.

As this newsletter was being planned, it made sense to turn to some Wunderlin Company clients with recent experience developing visions, values and strategies – and then following through.   Because strategic plans are highly privileged information, no names are used, but we thank them all the people interviewed for their contributions to making this newsletter relevant.

Those interviews yielded six best practices.

1. Design your strategic planning process with the intent for execution. 

In their book  Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan note that “an astonishing number of strategies fail because leaders don’t make a realistic assessment of whether the organization can execute the plan.”

Management has to ask itself tough questions and have the courage to answer them realistically: Do we have the organizational capability to execute the plan—and the right people in place? What do we need to do in the near- and medium-term to make the plan work in the long run? Can we adapt the plan to rapid changes in the business environment?

Here are some further insights from our clients’ experiences:

“We wanted to make sure we could implement our strategic plan so we designed the process with that in mind,” said another manager. “We were in a time of transition in leadership … and our strategic plan actually helped attract our new CEO to the organization. He had never seen a plan quite like it and so he bought into the plan before he arrived at his new job.”

“Once we were well into the process of strategic planning we realized that we simply did not have the level of skills and systems in place to execute our strategies,” another client said. “The first year or so we spent correcting weaknesses, rather than exploiting strengths. We focused our efforts on rebuilding the company in a more robust fashion. Now we are positioned for growth and strength. This recognition of weaknesses would never have surfaced if we had not gone through a strategic planning process.”

2. Leadership is critical to follow-through

“An organization’s leadership must buy into the strategic process and the outcome of the plan,” said one client.  Senior leadership has the line of sight– the vision– to see into the future while keeping the whole organization in its peripheral view.

It is the job of those managers to juggle the challenge of allocating scarce resources to both the strategic and operational needs of the business.

Bossidy and Charan put it this way: “You’ve got to link your strategic plans specifics to your operating plan, so that the moving multiple parts of the organization are aligned to get you where you want to go.”

Here’s what another one of our clients had to say about the role of leadership: “You have to have leaders who can see across the organization. You can’t implement strategy in functional silos. Strategy, by its very nature, causes groups and coalitions of people to come together and think about improvement beyond what we can do on our own.”

3. Translate plans into manageable “bites”

A Harvard Business Review article entitled Action Plans: The Architecture of Implementation, noted that leaders must be skilled at turning strategic plans into action plans executed at the unit level. They set forth five tips for crafting action plans:

• Keep it simple. An overly complex plan will confuse and frustrate.
• Involve the people who will execute the plan. Implementation plans are more likely to succeed if they are not simply imposed on the people asked to push them forward.
• Structure your action plan in achievable chunks. Build an action plan that is both manageable and achievable.
• Specify roles and responsibilities. Every planned outcome should be the acknowledged responsibility of one or more individuals. Those individuals should publicly state that they accept their roles.
• Make it flexible. A good implementation plan is a living document open to revision.

4. Weave strategic thinking into day-to-day operations

One company has made it a part of every day’s operation to focus on broadening its customer base – a key point in its plan.

“Our strategic plan helped us identify new markets and helped us see how vulnerable we were because our market focuses were so narrow.”

“Our values need to be reinforced in all we do,” said another leader. “That ranged from developing employee rewards tied to our values to stepping forward and acknowledging when one of our values has been breached.”

5. Measure progress

The late management guru Peter Drucker was known for saying: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

No truer statement can be made for improving your odds of success in implementing your strategic plan.

The type of measuring system is not as important as choosing one and using it rigorously.

A number of our clients have adopted a balanced scorecard approach to measuring progress. Others have found successful approaches that tie part of the existing management reporting into strategic plan measurement. Still other clients have implemented a project management process that increases their ability to analyze opportunities and have higher levels of accountability.

All are designed around performance metrics that are both relevant and clear, and feature both financial and nonfinancial performance measurements. All link their strategic plans to their annual business plans and budgets.

One of our clients recommended putting one person in charge of measuring progress: “Someone has to be the watchdog of the process.”

6. And finally: Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more.

All your strategic activities must be tied together so that employees understand the strategy and progress toward the goals.

Here’s how one of our clients explained this best practice: “People understand the strategy when you do something that changes their world. For example, once they could see and experience lean strategy, everyone in the building understood the strategy better. We would not have gotten the same result if we had shown a slide show on lean manufacturing. You have to bring the learning and the execution close together.”

Provide updates at all-employee meetings, track it in performance reviews, feature it in your newsletter and keep it front and center as you go about your day, week, month and year.

And if changes happen in the world or your field that affect the plan, it’s important to share that, says Holly Green writing for Forbes. “Make the development of strategic agility in execution a priority for your organization”

Follow these six best practices and I promise: Results will follow.

Think about it: How can you define what to do without a strong picture of your desired destination?

And how can all the units and individuals in your organization move forward without the same destination in mind?

Your envisioned future can serve as your compass and your engine powering you forward even in turbulent times.

You are ready to envision the future once your organization has nailed down its core ideology. Core ideology is the combination of an organization’s values, the three to five basic tenets that define its character; and its purpose, the organization’s key reason for being.

Core ideology is central to the strategic planning framework Jim Collins and Jerry Porras describe in their classic article, “Building Your Company’s Vision” and core purpose and values are discussed in other Wunderlin Company newsletters.

Vision is the next step. It is critical whether your organization is struggling or leading the pack.

When Ford Motor Company was recruiting Alan Mulally from Boeing in 2006 to lead its turnaround, Mulally reportedly listed one of the first items of business as:  “Clear, compelling vision going forward.”

If you go to Amazon’s website, its vision statement begins with a clear picture: “We seek to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for …consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators.”

Brown-Forman’s website starts its vision this way: “We enrich the experience of life in our own way by responsibly building beverage alcohol brands that thrive and endure for generations…”

So in this edition of this newsletter we look at developing an organization’s vision we focus on your trajectory and charting the best course forward.

Designing a Vision

Experience shows the powerful effect of defining a clear and ambitious “desired future.”

Here is a classic experience: One of our clients kicked off a round of strategic planning. The leadership group began by going back to a simple one-afternoon vision and goal-setting session we had held three years earlier.

To everyone’s surprise and satisfaction, the company had achieved their “vision” sales target two years ahead of schedule. And, when that target was first stated, it was clearly ambitious beyond the team’s wildest imagination. That success has propelled the company to set a new vision for increasing those sales five-fold.

A vision is a short, clear statement of what you want to be true for you or your organization at a specific stated point in time. The time frame will be set by the industry in which your organization operates.  We have worked with time frames as short as two years for high- tech companies and as long as 20 years for infrastructure and utilities organizations.

From our view, the benefit of visioning can be comprehensive. Personal planning is a tremendously useful endeavor. Work teams, departments and entire organizations have all engaged in successful visioning work.

How Do We Make Sure Our Visioning Is Meaningful?

Several attributes distinguish successful visioning efforts from those that are limited to being “words on a wall.”

• Involve lots of people. You benefit from diverse perspectives and are more likely to win support if people feel included in the process. With several educational institutions, we have held visioning sessions that included every stakeholder group, with the attendance pushing 100 people.
• Work deliberately. You need a balance of purposeful speed and time for work groups to complete their tasks. Overnight “percolation time” can lead to fresh ideas and breakthrough thinking. This is a process that is both introspective and collaborative.
• Widen your perspective. Be sure to allow time for “external scanning.” Steep yourselves in emerging trends, best practices and big ideas from other organizations.

“It’s the Process!”

It’s no accident that “process” is a word that appears frequently when we discuss strategic planning: The work of thinking about the future is as valuable as the final statement.

The process plants seeds that grow naturally… often subconsciously. This is another reason to be inclusive.

Getting Started: Just Do It

Setting a vision is a process you learn by doing. And, the more you do it, the better your visioning skills become.

So jump in – the current is strong, the thrills are great and the rewards are immeasurable.

Start with this simple exercise based on one of Stephen Covey’s habits “Begin with the End in Mind.”  Purpose: To imagine fully the compelling future toward which you want to work.

It is January, 20XX you select the appropriate time horizon for the organization.  You have just learned that your organization will be featured in Fortune or your industry’s most highly regarded magazine’s or website’s next issue. In addition to a cover photo, the magazine will include a full feature on your organization.

Your organization’s outstanding success over recent years is the driving force behind your selection for the cover story.

1. What/who is on the cover of the magazine?
2. What is the title of the article?
3. Write an outline of the article. Be sure to include quotes from customers, professional staff and employees, industry experts, and competitors. Describe the factors that have contributed to your outstanding success. Note the barriers that had to be overcome. How did you do it?

Your article should describe events that are realistic and accomplishments your people are capable of doing. Do not let cost or the challenge limit you.

This will help you decide what you want. The result should be a scenario you can whole-heartedly believe in – and work toward.

‘Future Search,’ Another Way Forward

Another effective way to define a vision is called “Future Search.” Future Search is built on the notion that the people in any given organization or system know best how to define the desired future. And, the more of them who are included in the vision process the better.

• The Future Search process begins with an assessment of the past; frequently employing 30-foot timelines on brown butcher paper to create a collective view of the journey thus far.
• Then, the process is enriched with the insertion of external trends and developments that can and will affect the organization’s future.
• The process then moves forward to creating a “map” of the current reality. This map organizes the trends and factors that the group names as important, and in the process moves from their individual listing of “my issues” to a collective view of “our issues.” The mapping process is one of the most powerful aspects of the Future Search process because it enables the group to build a picture of what is often a complex and changing environment. For many groups, just creating the map helps them embrace and understand their future direction.”

Once the map is created the group works to analyze it, defining the most critical forces going forward.

Then the group assesses today’s organization – and looks ahead. Participants are encouraged to build a picture of their reality as if the desired changes have already happened.

That draft is then brought forward to larger groups of the organization for validation and refinement. It is translated into the work ahead for individuals segments of the organization and for the entire team.

Future Search enables groups to articulate their future by providing experiential structures, and creating a high energy, focused environment for defining common ground. We recommend it highly.

The magic of envisioning

One of the most exciting part of creating a vision is seeing the process change the way your team looks at its challenges.

It is a focusing tool, an empowerment exercise and an energy boost to many individuals and organizations.

It pays off in ways you can’t predict.  So please share your stories about visions – and their aftermath.

From our Bookshelf

There are a number of excellent books and articles on the power of visioning. Here is a short list of our favorites:

• Built to Last, Collins and Porras.
• How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, Alan Lakein.
• Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground for Action in Organizations and Communities, Sandra Janoff and Marvin Ross Weisbord.
• Whistle While You Work; Heeding Your Life’s Calling, Richard J. Leider and Daivd A. Shapero.
• The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, Peter M. Senge (Editor), Art Kleiner (Editor), Charlotte Roberts, Rick Ross, Bryan Smith.

On the Web

Jim Collins’ excellent website provides useful tools for working on your organization’s vision.

Google has an interesting list of “Ten Things We Know To Be True,” from “Focus on the user and all else will follow” to “You can make money without being evil.”

You may be part of a large group for whom values are just the dreaded “words on a wall.”

So take a deep breath as you read this and start fresh.

To plan strategically for your organization’s future, you can help identify and shape in the core values that are a critical element in the life and future of your organization.

Ask: What guiding principles shape the way your organization works – and how you work together? 

If we walked around your organization for a week, observing internal interactions and how you relate to customers, what would we notice?  Can you distill them to a short list?

Are they part of how you would operate in the long term regardless of a changing business environment or management fads?

“Three to five core values are typical foundations for high-performing organizations, said management experts Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras in their classic strategic planning article in the Harvard Business Review: “Building Your Company’s Vision.”But you can find companies like Zappos that stretch their list – the online giant has 10 “family core values” on its website – from “Be humble” to “Embrace and drive change.”

Along with core purpose, core values sum up the basic ideology of your organization – the philosophy that guides you as you plan for the future and as you bring new people onto your team.  In fact, they may help define the people you hire and those who ultimately rise through the ranks of leadership.

Got Integrity? Competitiveness? Imagination?

Think of it this way: Core values are a small set of timeless guiding principles. They are the essential and enduring tenets of an organization.

They are so fundamental and deeply held that they will seldom change. They require no external justification. They are important to people inside the organization. “To identify the core values of your own organization, push with relentless honesty to define what values are truly central,” advise Collins and Porras. And don’t confuse your values which do not change with operating practices, business strategies, or cultural norms which should be open to change.

One way to begin discerning your organization values is to take a look at a long list of value statements and rank how important each value is to the organization and how well the organization is living out that value. If a number of people in your organization go through this exercise, the information gleaned becomes the focus of continued conversations about what are the truly essential and enduring tenets of your organization. Values can include things like “product excellence” at Proctor & Gamble, “service to the customer” at Nordstrom, “imagination and wholesomeness” at the Walt Disney Company, the authors said. Think about traits like innovation, collaboration, job ownership, continuous improvement, being a pioneer… affordable quality and reliability.

If you would like a little help with a long list of values, you can find many online to use as starting points for discussion, like this one from the consultants at Cirion (from “accomplishment” to “Zen”) or this one from organizational expert Andrew Mellen (from “abundance” to “wisdom.”)

Ask Some Questions

To assess core values, Collins and Porras suggest:

• Work from the personal to the organizational. Ask individuals questions like, “What core values do you think you bring to your work?” Or “What would you tell your children are your core work values … and values you would like to see them adopt as adults?”
• Ask about each potential core value: “If the circumstances changed and penalized us for holding this core value, would we keep it?”  And, “Can you see it being as valid 100 years from now as today?”
• Also try a test they call the “Mars Group.”  Imagine your organization has been challenged to re-create its best attributes on another planet but you can only take five to seven people.  Consider who you would choose – and why – and you are likely to find these individuals have special traits and are exemplars of the company’s “genetic code.”

Moving Forward

Once you have nailed your core values and your core purpose, you have the core ideology that is the first big step toward articulating a vision for your organization.

The next step: an ambitious goal for the 10- to 30-year future, vividly described. You can find it on this website. 

Extra Resources

Collins’ website is a generous resource with articles, news stories and several free and excellent exercises. They include:

• Where are you on your journey from good to great?
• Book discussion guides
• Diagnostic tools, including a framework for developing a vision for the future.
• Recommended reading and listening – a rich list that inlcudes Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August,” Frans de Waal’s “Chimpanzee Politics,” “The Panda’s Thumb” by Stephen J. Gould and “Means of Ascent” by Robert Caro.

For someone whose books are business bestsellers, it’s interesting that Collins suggests keeping business-book reading to a minimum.

“Executives should read fewer management books,” he writes on his website. “I don’t mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.”

With a name like Wunderlin, I have always been fond of Lewis Carroll’s classic books “Alice’s Adventures in Wunderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.” One of my favorite quotes from Cheshire Cat is: “If you dont know where you are going, any path will do.”

Many organizations lack clarity about their path forward. So this column leads off a series that will look at strategic planning-the foundation that helps us lead and inspires great work.

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts and experiences. So if these issues hit home, please drop me a line.

If you ask friends and colleagues about their favorite business books, my bet is that Jim Collins will land on almost every bookshelf or e-reader.

Collins, who wrote “Built to Last” “Good to Great,” and “How the Mighty Fall” is a best-seller for the best reasons.

His work focuses on how companies and organizations grow, achieve top performance and make the leap to become truly great.

Collins’ work provides guidance and inspiration for strategic planning defining your organization’s purpose and values and then an envisioned future.

And he provides practical free tools on his website. At The Wunderlin Company, we draw heavily on Collins’ insights and approaches to help organizations create their strategic plans.

Purpose: What Does Your Organization Exist to Do?

Back in 1960, David Packard was making a speech to Hewlett Packard employees – and he talked about the purpose of their work.

No, he told his staff, contrary to general opinion, it was not to simply make money.

Purpose is something more ambitious, he said, a “real reason for being … that makes a collective contribution to society.”

“To make a product, to give a service, to do something which is of value.”

Collins uses Packard’s speech as an example of purpose in his classic article written with Stanford University professor Jerry I. Porras for the Harvard Business Review, “Building Your Company’s Vision.”  Like so much of his work, this article is a rich resource because it grew out of extensive research into successful organizations. It provides helpful practical resources which are expanded at the website.

Purpose or mission, along with a handful of core values shape a company’s core ideology, as Collins and Porras see it.  (For more about core values, read this column. (link to that column)

It is the deep “enduring character” of an organization, what it stands for and why it exists. It doesn’t change over time, regardless of the evolving business environment or changing strategies. “It is the glue that holds an organization together as it grows.”

A purpose statement isn’t a vision. It isnt a strategy, a goal, or a tactic. It concisely describes your organization’s unique reason for being.

For Inspiration: Some Ambitious Examples

3M: To solve unsolved problems innovatively.

Fannie Mae: To strengthen the social fabric by continually democratizing home ownership.

Sony: To experience the joy of advancing and applying technology for the benefit of the public.

The Walt Disney Company: To make people happy.

Mary Kay: To offer unlimited opportunity to women

University of Texas: To transform lives for the benefit of society

So How Do You Define It?

If those core purposes sound lofty, they should.

Core purpose is the “guiding star on the horizon,” Linked with your organization’s core values, they define your “secret sauce”-those aspects we want to preserve and nurture as we instigate change and growth in the strategic plan.

If you ask your management team to define your company’s purpose and they say something like: “We exist to maximize shareholder wealth,” that’s not good enough. It does not inspire anyone and provides precious little guidance.

To identify your core purpose, authors Collins and Porras offer several exercises:

• “If you woke up tomorrow morning with enough money in the bank to retire, what is it about this organization that would make you want to continue working here? What deeper sense of purpose would motivate you to continue to dedicate your precious creative energies to this company’s efforts?”
• “Ask what is it about your organizationthat will last 100 years? If you can answer this question, chances are you are close to defining your organization’s core purpose or mission.”

Working on purpose can be some of the most difficult work you do, a consensus reached by conversations among senior leaders over time.

If you start strategic planning efforts with a clear sense of why you exist, it will strengthen and focus your strategic plan.

In short, you will start to articulate the very soul of your organization.

How Missions Evolve

The goal of a core purpose is not to sell others – but to give people in your organization a rich understanding of their mission and not lose sight of it.  As new people are hired and promoted, it becomes part of their commitment to the company.

Core purpose wording can evolve, but its spirit seldom changes.

When Collins and Porras wrote their HBR article, Nike used as its core purpose: “To experience the emotion of competition, winning and crushing competitors.”

Today its website mission still focuses on the joy of competition: “Our mission: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world….If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

In case you wondered, The Wunderlin Company has a core purpose, too:

“To help companies identify and implement change.”

So you will hear more ways to do that  … as a series of columns as this website explores core values, creating a vision for the future and bringing your strategic planning to life.

When you look over your work schedule for the week ahead and see a checkerboard of meetings and more meetings, do you…

A) Groan over the possibility of tedious hours sitting in meetings where there is little progress, time gets wasted and no decisions are made?

B) Complain that you spend so much time in meetings you can’t get your real work done?

C) Put your mind to work getting ready for those meetings to ensure they will be productive?

All three answers might hit home for a lot of folks.

But the best answer is the last one: Despite their bad rap, meetings are often at the heart of the work we do.

The problem: Too often meetings are called without clear purpose. They last too long, get sidetracked, and don’t involve follow-up. It can be frustrating to a degree that inspires humor in comic strips like Dilbert and TV shows like The Office. But the best rendition of challenges—and solutions—may be in an excellent management training [KW1] video “Meetings, Bloody Meetings” starring John Cleese of “Monty Python” fame. (For a clip, click here.)

The good news is: Anyone can plan and conduct effective, efficient and enjoyable meetings.

And that’s important because leadership increasingly means using our interpersonal skills to get things done, frequently in meetings.

Why are we here anyway?

There is nothing less valuable than individuals gathered around a table reading reports to each other. Whether your group is gathering for a weekly staff meeting, teleconferencing from different corners of the world or coming together for an annual off-site planning session, there are some easy-to-apply practices that can ensure each meeting’s value.

Meetings should be held for two reasons: To solidify the group as a team and to forward a group’s work.

To make sure that happens, the greatest responsibility may rest with the leader who organizes a meeting—but every one who attends should feel they have a stake in the meeting’s success.

1. Decide if the meeting is necessary before you schedule it: Ask yourself: “What needs to be accomplished?” Will an e-mail, voicemail, note or website posting take care of it? Can you just walk down the hall to visit with someone or pick up the phone?

These are three questions to help you decide:

• Do decisions need the expertise and agreement of different people?
• Do teams need to apply themselves collectively to solve problems?
• Are there individuals whose interests conflict, so issues must be resolved for the greater good of the organization?

People no longer have time to spend in meetings when information-sharing is the sole goal: Far better to send materials ahead of time, then work together on what to do with the information.

2. Create and use a detailed agenda. It should include the meeting’s purpose, topics to be addressed, the lead person for each topic and the time allotted. Share it with meeting participants ahead of time, along with any necessary supporting information. If an agenda cannot be developed before the meeting, start the meeting defining the agenda. You can provide handouts or project the agenda on a screen to keep it clear in people’s minds.

3. Choose a good meeting space. Not long ago, I got to an off-site meeting and was told we couldn’t put anything on the walls. Hard to do brainstorming that way!Make sure everyone can be seated comfortably, and that the room has the right tools — whether it’s white boards, flip charts and markers, adequate space for laptops or iPads or walls for posting work and projecting presentations. Plan appropriate refreshments and meals.

4. Set clear ground rules. These guidelines, generated by the group, ensure a productive, cooperative climate. If the same group meets regularly, the guidelines can be developed early on and reviewed regularly. Guidelines can cover issues like how to encourage participation, how to manage conflict and how to stay on track. In productive meetings, everyone is part of the discussion and no one person dominates. If you are familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, this means those who tend to be extroverts – and organize their thoughts by talking – need to reign themselves in enough to make room for others’ contributions. For those who tend to be introverts – and organize their thoughts internally – this frequently means an explicit commitment to speaking up in each meeting. Roger Schwartz, in his book The Skilled Facilitator offers terrific behavioral guidelines to help group effectiveness. My favorite is: Discuss the undiscussable.

5. Make periodic process checks. The group should periodically pause to check on how the meeting is going. This can be as simple as asking, “What is working?” and “What do we need to do differently?” The most important thing is that the group act on suggestions.

6. Take and distribute action minutes. These do not have to be Robert’s Rules of Order minutes that capture everything that is said. Rather, your teams need minutes that briefly recount decisions made, and most importantly, detail the action items with who is responsible for each item and a completion date. Many teams we work with have the commitment that a rotating team member brings a laptop to the meeting, does the minutes and distributes them within 24 hours. Here’s one template for minutes. If your group’s work is an ongoing process, you can usually develop the agenda for the next meeting from the decisions and actions of the current session.

7. Invoke the 100-Mile Rule to avoid interruptions. In The Team Handbook, the authors propose a way to ensure that participants give you their full attention. They explain the rule this way: “Once a meeting begins, everyone is expected to give it his/her full attention. No one should be called from the meeting unless it is so important that the disruption would occur even if the meeting were 100 miles away from the workplace. The 100-mile rule will need to be communicated to those who take phone messages or who would interrupt the team’s work for other reasons.”

Interruption includes texts and emails. Invoke a “no-electronics zone” to ensure everyone is focused. Then take breaks to enable folks to stay current with other responsibilities.

8. Take special care with teleconferences. When folks can’t see each other, it can be “a special kind of meeting hell” where it’s easier for conversations to drift and for some members of the group to cheat by multi-tasking, said consultant Keith Ferrazzi in a Harvard Business Review blog post last year. His main tip for remote gatherings: Use video to keep people more focused.

9. Always have a facilitator, timekeeper and note-taker. Meetings need these three roles.

A facilitator (not necessarily the meeting leader) is responsible for keeping the meeting focused so that the group is listening to each other and working productively. The facilitator also posts ideas on flipcharts or whiteboards as the discussion unfolds so that everyone can see them. The facilitator helps the group be sure to follow its ground rules.

The timekeeper makes certain the group follows the agenda, and manages time.

The note-taker – or scribe – records key topics, main points raised during discussions, decisions made, action items and items to be discussed at future meetings. Many groups rotate these roles.

10. Begin and end on time. Demonstrate your respect for participants by keeping to the time planned.

In a recent New York Times column, management consultant Carson Tate proposes a “meeting revolution” that features shorter meetings – even meeting standing up.

I do know this: I have never heard anyone complain when a meeting signed off early.

Want to learn more?

Resources abound for improving your meetings.

The Team Handbook, by Peter R. Scholtes, Brian L. Joiner and Barbara J. Streibel.

Facilitating with Ease, by Ingrid Bens.

The 3M Company has an extensive website loaded with tips for improving your meetings. For example, in their reading room they have articles covering everything from meeting activities and exercises to brainstorming techniques and running a video conference.

Two other sites that we recommend for planning effective meetings:

www.effectivemeetings.com

http://www.meetingwizard.org/#http://www.meetingwizard.org/

Do you have great resources you’ve found? Do you have hard-earned advice about meetings? If so, we’d like to hear from you.

In the meantime, meet well.

Star chef David Chang hit dead ends in his quest for a winning restaurant.

Martina Navratilova faced a difficult turning point in her tennis career.

Their stories – how they resolved their challenges – are among the three dozen interviews in a brand-new book, The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield.

There are lessons here for many of us, the authors say: We all tend to focus on goals and relentlessly pursue them in a single-minded way. That’s “single-loop” learning. Once we hit a roadblock, we think we try harder but often get stuck in old patterns… and wind up frustrated.

The answer, they say, is “double-loop” learning – becoming more self-aware, dropping our defenses, looking at our assumptions and exploring a wide variety of new strategies.

In a recent New York Times story, they summarized “double-loop” thinking this way: “We question every aspect of our approach, including our methodology, biases and deeply held assumptions… honestly challenge our beliefs and summon the courage to act on that information, which may lead to fresh ways of thinking about our lives and our goals.”

Sweeney and Gosfield credit Chris Argyris, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and author of a classic article “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” for the “single-” and “double-loop” learning framework.

Argyris argues that high achievers are so afraid of failure that they stick to rigid patterns of behavior even when things are not working. He argues for “fresh approaches and productive reasoning” that truly lead to continuous improvement.

As for the folks mentioned earlier:

Laura Linney got over her fear of failure – and hit her stride as an actress in her 30s.

David Chang embraced creative cooking beyond his original vision for a noodle bar, owns eight restaurants and other enterprises and appeared on HBO’s series “Treme” last season.

After a serious loss, Navratilova questioned her assumption that talent and instinct alone would keep her a winner. She explored every aspect of her game, embracing rigorous cross-training and a new diet to make a comeback.

Curious about all the folks interviewed for “The Art of Doing?” You can get a peek here.

To read their interview with Alec Baldwin, here is a story in the Huffington Post.

And if you have had single- and double-loop learning experiences you want to share, I’m interested in your story. Just drop me a line.

Emotional intelligence: You Can Learn It from ‘Lincoln’ at the Movie

No one knew the term “emotional intelligence” back in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

But that story – as told in the new movie “Lincoln” – is a great illustration of those qualities popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman in best-selling books and a landmark article in Harvard Business Review.

I confess that I didn’t expect to be thinking about emotional intelligence when I settled into my movie seat over the holidays.

But the story hit home for me.

In my experience working with individuals and organizations for more than two decades, I have come to believe that emotional intelligence is the single strongest predictor of success – not that Ivy League degree, not technical know-how, not logging the longest hours on the job.

The key: a capacity for understanding ourselves and others.
And the best part: emotional intelligence can be cultivated throughout our lives. We can all work on it with practice, reflection, reading, feedback and personal enthusiasm for the challenge.

Emotional Intelligence: the Movie

How did Lincoln display emotional intelligence? We’ve captured examples below of his self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship-building skills shown in the movie.
First, self-awareness: Emotionally intelligent people know their own emotions, strengths, values and goals, and recognize their impact on others.

Lincoln became famous, of course, as a stirring speaker – a man of few words, all well-crafted, the movie reminds us, as a series of young soldiers recite the 10-sentence-long Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s body language is equally expressive – surprisingly intimate and warm for a tall and imposing man, whether he is touching a young Army veteran or leaning close to talk with telegraph clerks as a key message is relayed. He is also a good listener – whether he’s hearing out constituents, legislators, soldiers or members of his cabinet. And he recognizes that his strengths in story-telling and humor help him break the ice, make a point or dissolve a fierce deadlock among members of his cabinet.

He is a master of many styles of persuasion – from anecdote to powerful metaphors to the rare blunt directive: “I am the President of the United States… clothed in immense power…and you will procure me these votes.”
Most of us learn about our skills, strengths and vulnerabilities through trial-and-error in life. We can strengthen our understanding by paying attention to how others see us and respond to us. And we can seek honest feedback from family members, friends and colleagues at work.

Second, self-management: Clearly it’s important to have your emotions in reasonable control to work effectively with others.

This movie’s Lincoln is a man of patience and perseverance. In one memorable early scene, Lincoln lays out his plans to press for immediate passage of the amendment to Secretary of State William Seward … who immediately and furiously declares the timing impossible. Lincoln smiles and says pleasantly, “I like our chances now”. . . and carefully explains the opportunities of that time frame, including lame-duck Democrats who might be persuaded with the promise of jobs.

At another key point in the movie, Lincoln retreats to think as he weighs his two challenges — timing the vote on slavery with a negotiated end of the war. “At times like this,” he says, “I’m best alone.”

So how restrained are you under pressure? What helps you manage your emotions well – and what regularly sends you off track? What strategies help you weigh difficult decisions? Do you retreat-and-think as Lincoln did – or have you found it helps you more to talk through decisions?

Emotionally intelligent people recognize that it takes personal commitment and perseverance in the face of setbacks to achieve goals. Lincoln is conscious of the need to stay the course: “The compass points you true north,” he says at one point, “but does not warn you of obstacles and swamps along the way.”

In an interview, Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the book, “Team of Rivals,” upon which the movie is partly based, put it this way: “Because he lost so many people when he was young — his mother and his sister and his first love — he came away with the thought that if he could accomplish something worthy then he would live on in the memory of others.”

Many of us can relate to the goal of a legacy – of having your life and work matter. And we can learn from Lincoln how we must continually shape new strategies as setbacks and obstacles arise.

Third, social awareness: It’s important to build relationships and understand people – recognizing diverse values and motivations.

Lincoln excels at this component of emotional intelligence, whether he is bargaining for support in a cabinet that is famously brilliant but not always like-minded or persuading diverse legislators to support his cause.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. He uses praise as he urges abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens to temper his arguments. He talks about the honor of a dead brother to another legislator. “It’s so very close,” he urges someone else gently. “Please see what you can do.”

Being a good listener and a thoughtful observer can help us build our capacities for empathy.
Fourth, relationship-building: Emotional intelligence relies on building relationships and motivating teams – ultimately to move people in the desired direction.

“Lincoln” reminds us of the diverse skills it takes to lead a team – from strong one-on-one conversations to rhetoric and action that persuade many. Doris Kearns Goodwin says his speeches were “filled with such poetry and clarity that people felt they were watching him think and that he was telling them the truth.”

Or, she says, “he’d be in the middle of a terrible Cabinet meeting, and tell this funny story and make everyone laugh.”

At one point in the movie, Lincoln comes up with a powerful metaphor about ending slavery to keep his team motivated. As the vote on the amendment draws near, he compares them to whale-hunters “who finally have the harpoon in … on a whale we’ve have been chasing a long time.”

Most of us are not pursuing goals as ambitious – but we can all relate to the challenge of helping our teams find the most meaning in an ambitious goal and stay the course for the last big push.

A final point: Doris Kearns Goodwin – in many interviews as her book was published – used the term emotional intelligence to describe Abraham Lincoln.

In a talk on public radio, she said:

“What he had going for him, which I think is so unusual in political life, is that he had a set of emotional strengths that today we might call emotional intelligence. So when all sorts of rivalries sprung up … when they got hurt with one another, when they would call each other names, he was somehow able to be in the center of that storm.”

“When their feelings would be hurt, he’d be able to write a letter saying, ‘If I hurt you in any way I did not mean to do so. Forgive me for things that I might do hastily.’
“When he was upset with somebody, he would write what he called a ‘hot’ letter and put it aside until his emotions cooled down, and then write: ‘Never sent. Never signed.’”
“What he essentially did is what a great politician does, which is to understand that human relationships are at the core of political success.”

Amen.

Want to learn more?

• Daniel Goleman’s website is a strong resource, with articles, video and blog items, including a TED Talk on compassion.

• This website from the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace is packed with research, model programs, business cases for EI, practice guidelines and downloadable reports.

• These books are also recommended: “Working with Emotional Intelligence,” by Daniel Goleman,; “Emotional Intelligence at Work,” Hendrie Weisinger; “The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace” by Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman; “Primal Leadership” by Richard Boyatzis, Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee and “Social Intelligence,” by Daniel Goleman.

• Harvard Business School professor Nancy F.. Koehn recently wrote in The New York Times about Lincoln’s leadership during passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. “Resilience and Careful Listening, as Learned in 1862.”