Gaining alignment around your plan

Rich StillmanPresident, The Upswing Group

Diane RenihanCFO, Bag Borrow or Steal

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Goals for today

• Stimulate your thinking

• Share our shared and individual experiences

• Prompt discussion

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Gaining alignment

• Cultivate hope among your employees

• Make sure your plan tells a persuasive story

• Get everyone on the same page. – Literally. Repeatedly. Consistently.

• Identify and engage cross functional deployment leaders for key strategic themes

• Match your incentives to your goals

• Be the behavior you seek

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Leadership and hope

• “The force multiplier throughout history has often been attributed to the leader's ability to generate hope.”

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Hope: Dictionary definition

• A feeling of expectation and a desire for a certain thing to happen

• To look forward to something with desire and reasonable confidence

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Hope: Business definition

• An activating force that enables people, even when faced with the most overwhelming obstacles, to envision a promising future and to set and pursue goals

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People with a high level of hope:

• pursue goals with "affective zest”

• tend to experience less stress and implement more effective coping strategies

• more able to use feedback diagnostically to determine more successful goal attainment strategies in the future.

• establish positive relationships with others

• serve to make the group not only more productive but also, perhaps equally important, make it more fun

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People with a high level of hope:

• focus their efforts on both individual and collective goal attainment.

• are better able to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty

• are energized by the challenge of journeying into an undefined future without having all the answers yet knowing that in time the answers will be revealed

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Cultivate hope: Tell a persuasive story

• What are the elements of a good story?– Theme– Characters– Beginning, middle, end– Conflict/struggle– Progress and growth– Positive outcome

• Your business plan needs to be a great story!

• Your execution needs to have a beginning, middle and end - don’t lose the momentum

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Example

• Coinstar 2001– Theme: “Make money, have a party, do it

again next year!”– Struggle: we’ve been net income negative

since the company was founded. Let’s work together to be net income positive this year!

– Progress and growth: Aggressive objectives and strategies

– Happy outcomes: Big party and big bonuses!

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Cultivate Hope: Lead from strength

• Link your key objectives to your key strengths

• The higher the perceived likelihood of achieving the desired outcome, the higher the level of hope– Easier (and more intuitive) to build from

strength

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Cultivating Hope: One page plans

• Get everyone on the same page. Literally.

• One effective way: The A3 method– A3 size paper is roughly 11 x 17– Express the entire plan on one page

• Everyone can see how their work contributes to the key objectives– “I’m more inclined to believe when I know that

everyone is pulling in the same direction.”

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A3 Template

Heading / Theme

Plan

Actual vs goal: this yearKey learning

Key themes for next year

Do

Key GoalsStrategies

TacticsTimelines/Due Dates

CheckActr/

Adjust

Footnotes / Sign offs

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Cascading A3’s

• Everyone has an A3– The CEO has the corporate A3– Senior managers have their area A3’s– Manager’s, team leaders, individual

contributors, etc.

• Everyone signs off on their A3 with their manager– Builds commitment

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Cultivate hope: Fight silo thinking

• For each of the key strategic initiatives, identify a leader who is responsible for delivering results– Works across the organization– Encourages departments to work together– Leader has his/her own Initiative A3, and

relevant line managers sign off on their part of the plan

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Implement PDCA

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Check & Adjust regularly

• Reiterate the Story!

• Review progress

• Celebrate what’s going right, without sugar coating

• Identify the gaps: actual versus target

• Get re-confirmation of value of the goal

• Identify causes for the gaps

• What actions, in order of greatest impact can be taken to achieve the desired goal

• Action planning for the key action items, due dates

• Celebrate what just happened - We can do this!

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Match incentives to goals

• Easier said than done, but critically important

• Hope grows as the desirability of the outcome grows

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Be the behavior you seek

• The leadership, starting with the CEO, should meet regularly with groups of employees

• Opportunity to:– Tell the Story!– “Why I believe!”– Get feedback– Listen, respond, build trust

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3R’s: Reinforce Reinforce Reinforce

• “…reinforce the value of the goals and their meaning to the follower and the larger group …work with the follower to identify alternative paths to goal attainment. In other words engage the follower in hopeful thinking.”

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Build alignment now for 2009

• Start planning for next year NOW

• Get all stakeholders involved as co-creators of your future– Employees, customers, partners, suppliers– It’s their future too

• Treat annual planning as an on-going activity

rich@upswingllc.com www.upswingllc.com 206.412.7952

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Sources

• Page 6: Luthans, F., & Avolio, B. (2003). Authentic leadership: A positive development approach. Positive Organizational Scholarship

• Page 7-8 Michael, S. T. (2000). Hope conquers fear: Overcoming anxiety and panic attacks. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Handbook of hope: Theory, measures and applications. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 355-378; Snyder, C. R., Michael, S. T., & Cheavens, J. (1999). Hope as a psychotherapeutic foundation for nonspecific factors, placebos, and expectancies. In M.A. Huble, B. Duncan, & S. Miller (Eds.), Heart and soul of change (pp. 179-200). Washington, DC: American: Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13:4, 249-275: Snyder, C. R., Cheavens, J. & Sympson, S. C. (1997) Hope: An Individual Motive for Social Commerce, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice, 1:2, 107-118: Ludema, J. D., Wilmot, T. B., & Srivastva, S (August, 1997). Organization hope: Reaffirming the constructive task of social and organizational inquiry. Human Relations, 50:8, 1015-1053.

• Page 19: Bruce Winston, “Towards a deeper understanding of hope and leadership.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies (2005)