It's Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works

Managers who inundate their teams with the same messages, over and over, via multiple media, need not feel bad about their persistence. In fact, this redundant communication works to get projects completed quickly, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal B. Neeley and Northwestern University's Paul M. Leonardi and Elizabeth M. Gerber. At first blush, this redundant communication strategy may sound like nagging or a waste of time. But as it turns out, asking multiple times gets results.

Key concepts include:

• Managers who are deliberately redundant as communicators move their projects forward more quickly and smoothly than those who are not.
• Clarity in messaging matters less than redundancy. It's not the message; it's the frequency of the message that counts in getting the job done.
• Managers without power (project team managers versus managers dealing with direct reports) were much more strategic, much more thoughtful about motivating their team. (Note that a lack of direct power is common in companies today, because so many people work on teams that form and disband on a project-by-project basis. Yet team leaders are still on the hook to achieve their business imperatives despite this absence of authority.)
• Yet both managers with and without power met deadlines and budget goals with the same frequency, regardless of their communication strategy. However, managers without power got employees to move more quickly, and with less mop up needed later.

These results provide a concrete strategy for managers who are struggling with how best to communicate with workers. This is an actual strategy—a communication persuasion strategy.

To read the complete article, click here

Why Manufacturing Matters

After decades of outsourcing, America's ability to innovate and create high-tech products essential for future prosperity is on the decline, argue professors Gary Pisano, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Willy Shih, Professor of Management Practice in the Technology and Operations Management Unit also at Harvard Business School. Yet they are cautiously optimistic that it is not too late to get it back. From HBS Alumni Bulletin. Click here for the full article.

Key concepts include:

• There is a long standing misconception that manufacturing is kind of the brawn and not the brain, and that the country should focus on the brain, i.e., product design and innovation.
• There is a role for public policy in terms of making sure the country is maintaining a broader set of manufacturing capabilities.
• Manufacturing capability takes a while to erode, but the damage is almost irreversible. So now is the time to be doing something about it.

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The authors argue that the United States is still an innovation powerhouse, but the problem comes about as more manufacturing moves offshore and commercialization capabilities diminish. This is true because exporting manufacturing ultimately drains away American innovation.

There has been a naive view that innovation is just about R&D and separate from manufacturing. People in the United States and other advanced industrialized countries say that the future is in innovation, not manufacturing, as if manufacturing is not part of the innovation process. In many sectors that's simply not true. The ability to develop very complex, sophisticated manufacturing processes is as much about innovation as dreaming up ideas.

In my own 30+ years in engineering design and manufacturing, product innovation and product design are only part of what’s needed to produce high quality, low cost products. Manufacturing processes are also key to success. Moreover, close collaboration between design and manufacturing are essential. I use the term “design for manufactureability”. This becomes problematic when the design engineer and the plant are 10,000 miles apart.

So here’s the problem. For any individual company, it is often better, in the short or intermediate term, to outsource production to an overseas supplier. The company can buy manufacturing services at a much lower rate if it goes to China or elsewhere, depending on the industry.

But if everybody is doing that, you get a general erosion in the ability to innovate - to increase quality, reduce costs and develop breakthrough products. This results in the long term erosion of the American economy. An individual company, though, can move assets anywhere. So companies can reward their shareholders regardless of what happens to the national economy. As a result, the interests of companies and the Country have diverged.

The authors point out that one of the issues in developing a national economic strategy has been confusion with the term "industrial policy," which “has been anathema in Washington”. "Industrial policy" suggests some degree of central planning. We don’t and shouldn’t do that.

They further point out that, unlike other nations, we don't currently have a national economic strategy. Note that strategy is different from policy, which is tactical. The authors think that we should develop a national strategy. I agree.

If you look at the United States in the post WWII period, there was a very strong national economic strategy around using science to drive economic growth. We created the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, among others, and the government invested dramatically in building a scientific and technical infrastructure needed to fuel growth. That was the national strategy, and it was not industrial policy.

Pisano and Shih conclude that there's an important need today for having a coordinated national manufacturing strategy at the highest level. I say that the need is more than important, it is critical in order to stop the erosion that we have been experiencing.

On the bright side, there are real reasons to be optimistic: The U.S. economy is quite resilient, and it's quite flexible. “We wouldn't want anybody to interpret what we are saying as the sky is falling. While there are some issues around policy, and there are some issues around management, it's time for executives to be leaders in terms of building the kind of capabilities that are going to make their enterprises great over a longer period of time.”

Keys to being a great leader

In his book, "The Essence of Leadership" Mac Anderson discusses many keys to being a great leader. Here are 13 of them:

1. Develop a service attitude – Service is the lifeblood of any organization. Everything flows from it and is nourished by it. Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude!
2. Love what you do – Many things will catch your eye, but few will catch your heart. Pursue those.
3. Focus on priorities – Focus on the critical few, not the insignificant many.
4. Understand the soft stuff – “There are two things more powerful than money and sex – recognition and praise” Mary Kay Ash
5. Build your brand – In the race for quality, there is no finish line.
6. Embrace humor and optimism – “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement” Helen Keller
7. Embrace excellence – “Excellence is not an act, it’s a habit” Aristotle
8. Take risks – Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.
9. You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
10. Reinforce core values – Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
11. Earn trust – “Trust, not technology, is the issue of the decade” Tom Peters
12. Take action – You cannot discover new oceans if you don’t have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
13. Aim for the heart because they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

I found these keys to being a great leader in 3 minute inspirational movie. Click here to view it. Mr. Anderson's book is available from Simple Truths. Click here for the link to order.

The Right To Lead

If you were asked "what gives a person the right to lead?", you may think the answer lies in position, rank, title, academic degrees, age, experience or ownership of the company. Author John Maxwell would disagree. In his book "The Right To Lead", he explains what gives a person the right to lead, a right that can only be earned. And that takes time.

The key to becoming an effective leader is not to focus on making other people follow, but on becoming the kind of person they want to follow.

To prepare to become a better leader, Maxwell suggests the following guidelines:

1. Let go of your ego.

   The truly great leaders are not in leadership for personal gain. They lead in order to serve other people. Perhaps that is why Lawrence D. Bell remarked, "Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things."

2. Become a good follower first.

   Rare is the effective leader who didn't learn to become a good follower first. That is why a leadership institution such as the United State Military Academy teaches its officers to become effective followers first - and why West Point has produced more leaders than the Harvard Business School.

3. Build positive relationships.

   Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. That means it is by nature relational. Today's generation of leaders seem particularly aware of this because title and position mean so little to them. They know intuitively that people go along with people they get along with.

4. Work with excellence.

   No one respects and follows mediocrity. Leaders who earn the right to lead give their all to what they do. They bring into play not only their skills and talents, but also great passion and hard work. They perform on the highest level of which they are capable.

5. Rely on discipline, not emotion.

   Leadership is often easy during the good times. It's when everything seems to be against you - when you're out of energy, and you don't want to lead - that you earn your place as a leader. During every season of life, leaders face crucial moments when they must choose between gearing up or giving up. To make it through those times, rely on the rock of discipline, not the shifting sand of emotion.

6. Make adding value your goal.

   When you look at the leaders whose names are revered long after they have finished leading, you find that they were men and women who helped people to live better lives and reach their potential. That is the highest calling of leadership - and its highest value.

7. Give your power away.

   One of the ironies of leadership is that you become a better leader by sharing whatever power you have, not by saving it all for yourself. You're meant to be a river, not a reservoir. If you use your power to empower others, your leadership will extend far beyond your grasp.

You can obtain a copy of "The Right To Lead" from Simple Truths. Click here for the link.

Other books by John Maxwell include "Today Matters" , "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership"and "Thinking For a Change".

Building Meaningful Relationships

As social animals, eighty percent of life's satisfaction comes from meaningful relationships with others.

So here's the question: If your relationships are the most important part of your life, what are you doing to make them all they can be?

In his book "The 100/0 Principle" Al Ritter provides us a road map. An excerpt follows.

Click here to learn more

An Excerpt from
The 100/0 Principle
by Al Ritter

What is the most effective way to create and sustain great relationships with others? It's The 100/0 Principle: You take full responsibility (the 100) for the relationship, expecting nothing (the 0) in return.

Implementing The 100/0 Principle is not natural for most of us. It takes real commitment to the relationship and a good dose of self-discipline to think, act and give 100 percent.

The 100/0 Principle applies to those people in your life where the relationships are too important to react automatically or judgmentally. Each of us must determine the relationships to which this principle should apply. For most of us, it applies to work associates, customers, suppliers, family and friends.

STEP 1 - Determine what you can do to make the relationship work...then do it. STEP 2 - Do not expect anything in return.
STEP 3 - Do not allow anything the other person says or does (no matter how annoying!) to affect you.
STEP 4 - Be persistent with your graciousness and kindness. Remember to expect nothing in return.

At times (usually few), the relationship can remain challenging, even toxic, despite your 100 percent commitment and self-discipline. When this occurs, you need to avoid being the "Knower" and shift to being the "Learner." Avoid Knower statements/ thoughts like "that won't work," "I'm right, you are wrong,"

Instead use Learner statements/thoughts like "Let me find out what is going on and try to understand the situation," "I could be wrong, let’s talk some more" In other words, as a Learner, be curious!

Principle Paradox

When you take authentic responsibility for a relationship, more often than not the other person quickly chooses to take responsibility as well. Consequently, the 100/0 relationship quickly transforms into something approaching 100/100. When that occurs, true breakthroughs happen for the individuals involved, their teams, their organizations and their families.

Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution

Successful business strategy lies not in having all the right answers, but rather in asking the right questions, says Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons. In an excerpt from his new book, Seven Strategy Questions, Simons explains how posing these questions can help managers make smart choices. Here are the seven questions Professor Simons suggests:

1. Who Is Your Primary Customer? He emphasizes the adjective "primary". These are the customers to whom you should devote most of your company's resources.

2. How Do Your Core Values Prioritize Shareholders, Employees, and Customers?

Real core values indicate whose interest comes first when faced with difficult trade-offs.

Prioritizing core values should be the second pillar of your business strategy. Most companies with whom I deal would answer "Customers of course". But in practice, it is often not the case.

There is no right or wrong, but choosing and consistently sticking to your choice is necessary.

3. What Critical Performance Variables Are You Tracking? It's your job to ensure that your managers are tracking the right things by singling out those variables that spell the difference between strategic success and failure. Like the preceding two questions, the focus in this question is again on the adjective "critical". These variables should tell where the company is going, unlike your accounting statements that tell you where you've been.

4. What Strategic Boundaries Have You Set? Strategic boundaries, which are always stated in the negative, ensure that the entrepreneurial initiative of your employees aligns with the desired direction of the business. I prime example of failing to do this was the Enron experience.

5. Are You Generating Creative Tension? Sustaining ongoing innovation in organizations is notoriously difficult. People fall into comfortable habits, sticking with what they know and rejecting things that cause them to change their ways. Yet without innovation in a world characterized by rapid change, the company will eventually wither and die.

To overcome such inertia, you must push people out of their comfort zones and spur them to innovate. The author shows how to accomplish this.

6. How Committed Are Your Employees to Helping Each Other? This is a lot of what teamwork is all about. If your organization requires teamwork to succeed (and I believe that most do), then it's critically important to build norms so that people will help each other succeed—especially when you're asking people to innovate.

7. What Strategic Uncertainties Keep You Awake at Night? No matter how good your current strategy is, it won't work forever. So adapting to change becomes imperative. Adapting is critical to survival, but it's extremely difficult to do. With change constantly surrounding us, employees often do not know where to look or how to respond.

Your personal attention is the critical catalyst to focus your entire organization on the strategic uncertainties that keep you awake at night. After all, everyone watches what the boss watches.

Please click here to see the complete article that was published by the Harvard Business School on November 22, 2010. You may want to read Professor Simons complete book, "Seven Strategy Questions"

What Do You Think?

In this month's Corporate Report Wisconsin, Editor Laurie Arendt polled CRW's subscribers about the political environment and its effect on business. This lead to five questions that have been asked of the two Senate candidates, Senator Feingold and Mr. Johnson. Surprisingly, neither has responded. So my questions is "what do you think?"

Here are the five questions:

• Our readers, all of whom are business owners and executives in the state of Wisconsin, are very concerned about the spending that is going on by our federal government. What is your opinion of the current federal spending levels and what must our country do to reduce our debt burden?

• In your opinion, has the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act been a success or a failure? Why?

• What is your opinion of cap and trade and similar type of policies? What do you believe is the real impact on American businesses if this type of mandate is implemented in the United States?

• Many of our readers have responded to the current economy by hunkering down. They have stopped hiring because they are concerned about the cost of mandated health care coverage; they are concerned about the effects and costs of cap and trade. What do you believe our country’s leaders need to do to get business running again?

• What defines a Wisconsin pro-business candidate, and which candidate comes closest to this definition?

So what do you think? Keep these questions in mind when you select a candidate and vote on November 2.

Click here for the link to the editorial.