Gary Hamel framed on HBR a list of 25 challenges for 21st century management strategies. Here is the comment I posted with suggested additional challenges:

Thank you, Gary. This is a great list! The fulcrum of the 25 points is number 11. “Dramatically reduce the pull of the past.” May I suggest reframing the challenge to say – “Be ready to engage in a newly emerging future, free of the limitations of the past.” In that sense it becomes the pivot point and the context for the other 24 challenges.

Here are five elements to add to the list of 25 management challenges for the 21st century:

26. Help integrate the multi-generational society at work and in life. Facilitate the emergence of a new multi-generational partnership vitally needed to meet organizational, national and global challenges. We need each other’s help and contribution. This will help ease the engagement of the young (22-32) and redefine the participation of the elderly (70-95).

27. Facilitate the emergence of new role models and images of success. Cultivate and encourage new heroes and heroines—champions that integrate and embody these challenges in their own practice and innovation.

28. Reframe the imperatives and the relationships of the short, mid and long terms. Create a system that incentives long term sustainable results to help free up the organization from the dictatorship of the short term (quarterly earnings). (Expand the context of your 14th point.)

29. Redefine economic value, its expression and service. Facilitate practices that integrate the professional and the personal, passion and competence, where whole-person, whole-leader, whole-community, whole-society can be exercised and expressed with the support of market economy.

30. Facilitate the evolution of an innovative learning and development function. Discover and support new developmental frameworks and processes to help individuals and teams realize greatness and act on opportunities to fashion their collective future.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Feb.10.2009 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

As a CEO, an executive and a leader, you must realize that the three most precious assets you have are your time, your energy, and your focus.  You must direct these to what matters most for the success of your business. It’s time for “back to basics” management. To lead you must be transformational. Participation is not leadership. Make output and results the focal point. Focus on solutions not on problems. You lead because your services and products help people transform their lives.

Here are Top themes for CEOs and executives for the coming year:

1. Have a solid value proposition understood by all stakeholders.
2. Clarify goals and objectives.
3. Be relentless in aligning all activities and resources to deliver on your strategy.
4. Repurpose resources trapped in non-critical activities.
5. Understand your core strengths. Build and develop on these strengths.
6. Cultivate a proactive culture. Help people move forward and take action.
7. Remove blockages. Increase speed and agility.
8. Cultivate operational excellence. Deliver exceptional quality.
9. Build trust. Encourage initiative. Create full engagement.
10. Institutionalize world class. Optimize processes and practices. Innovate.

To thrive in today’s economy, your focus must be on helping clients meet their needs and realize their dreams while they preserve precious resources. There are great opportunities to create breakthroughs even in uncertain times.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jan.06.2009 :: Coaching, Leadership :: No Comments »

Executives in their own words…

Anurag Asthana

Laurent Poujol

Rahul Biswari

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Dec.04.2008 :: Entrepreneur, Leadership :: No Comments »

What is the leadership test in tough times?

1. To stay clear, cool and centered, and to focus on what matters most.
2. To recognize and assimilate the situation you are in, without being overwhelmed.
3. To free your people to engage in the most essential tasks and to help them create your organization’s future.
4. To uphold your core values and principles, while being ready to adapt in a shape-shifting situation.
5. To resist the downward spiral of diminishing returns and defeat.
6. To identify and frame opportunities amid fear and uncertainty.
7. To stay open minded and at the same time execute your strategy.
8. To invest in creativity and innovation.
9. To build confidence and trust.
10. To create a vision that rallies all stake holders

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.27.2008 :: Leadership, Tough Times :: 1 Comment »

In their BusinessWeek What Change Agents Are Made Of, Jack & Suzie Welch focus on four traits: power, vision, bravery, and support. The Welchway says that “…change is made by people with some sort of authority. It’s driven by managers who have a platform to advocate for a new direction and the ability to hire, promote, and reward those who embrace it. Change agents in business, in other words, have to be leaders.”

We agree that power, vision, bravery and support are key traits of change agents. We have three caveats.
First, authority is never the beginning of leadership power. Authority comes later, after you have been a leader without a title.

Second, being an adaptive learner is as critical as having vision and bravery. You have to be able to assimilate feedback, to change, course-correct and adapt.

Third, we need to redefine power. The greatest power in the world is not power over others – it is knowledge of self. True leaders and agents of change have deep self insight. They understand their strengths and vulnerabilities, and find their authentic voice. The foundation of power, charisma, vision, bravery, support and the ability to learn and adapt is the knowledge of self. It is also the key to renewal and the ability to see and lead oneself and others into a shape-shifting future.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.16.2008 :: Leadership :: No Comments »

The greatest tax increase is neither in McCain’s programs, nor in Obama’s plans.

The greatest tax increase is in the breakdown of communication and civil discourse, the breakdown of trust and the ability to work through differences to find optimal solutions. Breakdown of trust and leadership is going to cost individuals, families, organizations and the economy as a whole, and the consequences will be greater than any tax change we will see under either presidential candidate.

The arts of conversation, of trust building, of open collaboration and of true leadership bring the greatest gains. These are the kind of gains the government cannot penalize. Developing the Three Pillars of Trust and collaboration is the ultimate leverage – it produces dividends that cannot be taxed.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2008 :: Leadership, Money & Market Behavior, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

To the Toronto Blue Belt Top Talent participants of 2008 – Thank you for the opportunity to work together and be on this discovery journey with you. Here are my notes from our last mornings briefing:

1. You are the most important person in this world! The people you serve and work for, the people you support and help, the people to whom you bring a smile and who you make laugh, your loved ones – they can all only have the benefits of your time, energy, talent and wisdom because of who you are!  Your good health, knowledge, experience and wisdom provides you with something to give. What you do and bring to them, the way you help, serve and give are extensions of what you are – of your being.

2. Always seek to be in your optimal zone! You are always better, more efficient and to the point when you come out of optimal energy. When you drop below your “90V” you are less effective and less productive. When you drop below “70V” you tend to be ineffective and produce negative results. Below “60V” you are susceptible to illness. (You can find more about how this works in our Emerald Keys.)

3. Practice learn-ability! Develop and practice the ability to learn from every situation and experience. Learn-ability is your top competency in times of rapid change. Debrief, harvest and apply your learning.

4. Develop communication and framing skills! Your second critical skill is the ability to frame ideas and the communication and influencing frameworks and skill-set we practiced at the Blue Belt. By practicing these regularly you get one percent better every day – the compounding result of which is getting 100% better in 70 days!

5. Separate “musts” from “wants”! Be clear about the difference between “Musts” and “Wants”. Do not confuse “I want this” for “I must have this”. Be clear about your priorities. Let top priorities guide your actions.

6. Align short and long terms! Work on your long-term aims and goals with a practical and pragmatic mindset by creating step by step progress. Bring to your short-term endeavors the energy and conviction of your long term intentionality.

7. Invest in your growth and development! Along with your career goals, set internal goals for yourself. Never work solely for an outer goal. Balance and complete the outer goal together with an internal goal. Your internal goals are not about what you will have or what you will do – they are about the person you are becoming and what you will be. Develop a “Being” goal for every “Having” and “Doing” one.
Examples for “Being” goals:
A. “I am becoming a more patient and understanding leader.”
B. “To be happy and grateful.”
C. “I am clear in mind and conscience.”
D. “I develop an energized presence.”

8. Be a tool maker! Go beyond problem solving and into tool making. Be the tool maker of progress, growth and innovation.

9.  Be confident! Everything big started small. Do not be intimated by others however brilliant they may be. You are brilliant in your own way. Be sure and confident about the contribution you can make. Success is not about perfection, it is about always taking the next step forward. Take the next step confidently.

10. Find glory in the inglorious! Find the little noticed or ordinary places and attend to them with special care. Give yourself and those around you small moments of recognition when it’s least expected. Allow for quiet moments of peace inside a crowded life. Look to make something right even when no one else sees or knows what you did, simply for it to be right. Find glory in the inglorious!

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.07.2008 :: Consultant Journal, Leadership, Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

The greatest leadership act in the world is growing and developing new leaders and then empowering and releasing them to lead.

Leadership development and the management training field have seen many formulas: ‘the 5 steps…’; ‘the six ways…’; ‘the seven, the nine and the twelve of something else’. All these frameworks are good, and they all carry wisdom and powerful teaching, but there are two problems:
The first is that all maps are only an extrapolation of reality.
The second is the formulaic and prescriptive proposition they make.

True, we all have maps in our mind. Even when you say “I don’t have a map,” it only means you don’t have a clear map, you’re not aware of your map, or your map isn’t working or is confusing. That’s the point of downloading new maps. It is a great learning experience. What then is the problem or danger with maps?

It’s called – forcing the map onto the landscape. That is what I did one night when we learned to navigate: I had made a thorough study of the topographic map. I memorized how many steps I’d have to count to the first fork, to then go around the first and second hill and climb the third hill that would appear on my left. It was all in the detailed topographic map.

It was a summer evening and off we went, each leaving for their solo navigation on their own. In the beginning it all looked clear. But then something happened. The turn I was looking for in between two hills did not look exactly how I expected it to look from my study of the map. But then I looked at it again and found a way to justify the landscape, and of course got lost. It’s called forcing the map onto the landscape. We do this all the time. We fight situations by trying to coerce onto them our mental map, and it brings to us grief and distress.  I had to trace back to the point where I started, by which time it was nearly morning. But first I had to let go of the fixation of forcing the map onto the ground reality.

As a leader, maps can help you a lot, but you need something even more important than maps—You need your own compass. You need to know yourself and have the capacity to enter an unknown terrain that has not been mapped, where you draw the map as you walk the terrain. This is the nature of leadership. You find a path forward in a place you have not travelled before. “To lead is to take the next step, to go where you have never gone, to open a way forward into the unknown and the uncharted.”

The best and most impactful leadership programs help leaders find and develop their own compass, sense of vision and direction and offer tools to draw the map as you walk the terrain. In our leadership summits and retreats we take the view that you are unique. Your strengths and success formulas are unique. While all formulas and maps carry helpful teachings, the greater reward is in discovering yourself, and understanding your values, areas of passion, personal capabilities, learning inclinations, energy cycles, and your own way of creating and achieving success. Successful leaders first lead themselves.

The greatest leadership programs are those that help you lead yourself and then help you get on the path of developing leaders around you.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Aug.10.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »

To lead is to go where you have never gone before, to open a way forward into unknown, uncharted possibilities. Then it is to encourage, coach and help others release their greater capacity to achieve the seemingly impossible, to realize a potential beyond their self-concept.

The first breakthrough is inside, in your capacity to reframe reality and lead your own life. Coaching others into their self-discovery and leadership is the natural next step.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.01.2008 :: Coaching, Leadership :: No Comments »

Time Magazine article, The Rage to Engage, says that “Engagement is an amorphous concept, but as anyone who ever worked on a team can tell you, it’s critical—the unengaged undermine—even if it’s tough to pin down.”

At the end of a recent “Blue Belt Top Talent” program we gathered with the management team for lunch. People exchanged impressions about their experience and learning and there was a lively feeling around. One of the participants stood up to tell the executives how much she valued the opportunity and what she learned through the program. She concluded by saying: “It is very inspiring to know that the organization in which I make a living is so committed to ensuring that I make a life.”

In a few short days we created a community of purpose, wherein people were energized and committed to act on their values in life and at work. The theory we have been successfully testing for many years with very consistent feedback is that reclaiming our humanness in the work place is good for business; that happier and healthier teams are more resilient and agile, faster to adapt to change and more effective in delivering on goals.  We continue to hear from participants, years after they complete the program, that it feels different to go to work and meet their colleagues, that they are more engaged.

Here are 15 points you can use to assess your own engagement and the engagement of your team. You can evaluate these 15 points to identify strengths and opportunity gaps in the Anatomy of Engagement as it applies to your team. Ask them to grade each of the 15 statements below on the scale from (1) to (10) — (10) representing “very much so” or “always” and (1) representing – “hardly” or “never”.

1. I enjoy open communication with my manager
2. I have a clear understanding of objectives – I know what success looks like
3. My activities are organized to support and deliver on the objectives
4. I see how my work helps the organizational strategy
5. We create trusting relationships at work
6. My job offers me opportunities to express my talent
7. There are great role models in our organization that I try to emulate
8. I am evaluated on how well I deliver on the objectives
9. I am incentivized to deliver great results
10. My job provides me opportunity to grow and learn new skills
11. I have the tools I need to support my work
12. I receive feedback on how my efforts and performance help the company achieve success
13. I value my team members and their individual contributions to our work
14. I am proud of the work we do and how we make the world a better place
15. I enjoy and get energized when I see the people I work with

Ask your team to respond to these statements. You can then discuss this engagement anatomy profile with each person independently or with the team as a whole if appropriate. Here are a few questions you can use to get the debriefing conversation going:
1. Which of the points above got the highest score? What can we learn from these?
2. Where are the lowest scores? What can we learn from these items?
3. What are the differences in how we see our organization and how can we bridge the engagement gaps?
4. What opportunities do we have to improve and cultivate an even greater engagement?
5. What other new ideas can we think about to help strengthen our own engagement as well as the engagement of other stakeholders?
6. If we focus and take one or two things into action – which will have the most impact?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: May.19.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »