Key Strategic Skills Managers Must Master to Become Executives

Why do managers sometimes flounder when they become executives? One reason: their new role requires them to create a corporate strategy. It’s a task for which they have never been trained.

The tale has often been told of the just-promoted manager who, everyone soon discovers, was elevated based only on his technical skills.  As the rubber hits the road, it becomes clear that he is ill-prepared.

Another similar problem occurs when a manager is appointed to the executive ranks. All of a sudden, she finds herself sitting in a strategic planning retreat, failing to contribute. In the moment, she realizes that her well-honed ability to produce short-term results are of little value.

Now, she’s on her own as she struggles to uncover what’s lacking. If your firm recently promoted you to the highest level of leadership, here are three areas you must develop to be effective in creating strategy.

1. Understanding the current environment

Whereas managers are encouraged to stay in their lane, put their heads down and ignore parts of the company that don’t apply to them, that advice won’t work for you. In this new position, you need to comprehend the entire company’s operations all at once.

This means far more than being able to fill out the names in an organization chart. Now, you must see the enterprise as a complex system in which only some of the cause-and-effect relationships are explicitly defined. To gain this level of knowledge, you should study the functions you know little or nothing about, mastering jargon that’s unfamiliar along the way. Also, you should be able to explain how the company works in layman’s language to anyone who cares to listen.

At the start of a planning retreat, you’ll use this skill to bring your team to a joint understanding of the current state of the business. This includes all external trends which may impact the organization, ranging from disruptive technology, competitive threats, to changes in the economy. Your far-reaching, expert contribution is required to complete the exercise.

2. Creating a Long-Term Target Year

Most companies promote managers based on their ability to produce short-term results through teams of direct reports. However, when they are faced with the challenge to create a corporate plan that’s 20-30 years out, they flounder.

As a manager, you knew how to set and accomplish goals you could control. By contrast, executives marshal forces they don’t control in order to hit long-term objectives. The longer the timeframe, the more skill required.

The benefits of such plans are well-established in management practice and theory. It’s not hard to realize that such efforts are the only way to safeguard your firm’s future.

But that’s of little help when you must complete such a task for the first time. Some newcomers to this process even rebel, complaining: “I can’t think that far ahead.”

Don’t be like them. Long before your promotion is finalized, look for (and create) practical learning opportunities to develop long-term plans. This will prepare you for the moment when your role as an executive requires you to craft visionary strategies.

3. Envisioning Details

Most lower level employees are satisfied by overarching vision statements which use vague language. They assume that leaders are effectively managing the next steps.

In your new position, you should go much further.

Now, you must describe a detailed, numbers-based vision of what will happen in the long-term target year. In other words, your team develops a picture of the future painted in concrete metrics such as revenue, EBITDA, headcount and market share.

Furthermore, to ensure that these figures are not just being made up, they need to be “back-casted” to connect with today’s results. While many are familiar with the idea from their days studying for an MBA, doing the task in a real group setting is quite a challenge. Once again, it’s best to practice this ability in advance.

Developing these three skills in concert prevents leaders from running off in different directions, investing time and effort in individual plans. The fact is, your organization is at risk if it doesn’t create a strategy which involves all the relevant points of view. If your team is poorly trained, expect it to conduct planning which is weak, leaving your company vulnerable.

Another trap is to dress up “More of the Same Stuff, But Just a Little Different” as a strategic plan. This is a cop-out—a way to avoid making hard choices based on the most recent information.

Don’t make this mistake. These skills are trainable even though they may be rare. Invest in them early in a manager’s career so they can be practiced long before their promotion occurs. It will save your company from producing weak strategies that ultimately endanger its future. 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20181118/francis-wade-key-skills-managers-need-become-executives

How to Avoid the Exorbitant Cost of Low Turnover

In most Jamaican companies, there’s an unquestioned assumption that long staff tenure is an indicator of strong company loyalty. Maybe it’s not. I suggest that as the economy grows it may reveal a deeper truth: these benefits occur with a high price tag.

As you sit at your company’s service awards function, are you right to wonder if you will ever earn such recognition? Is it disloyal to reconsider the idea of sticking around the same company for decades? After all, your parents advised you to find a good job in a decent organization and cling to it for as long as possible. This was their metric of success.

Were they right? Or could company loyalty and its alter-ego, low turnover, actually be signs that something is wrong? Here are three underlying causes which confound the popular assumption.

1. A Tight Job Market

The general perception has always been that a steady job is a ticket to a car, mortgage, family and stability. Without it, these accomplishments are almost impossible.

However, the Help Wanted section of the Gleaner’s Classifieds has been anemic for decades. This sad fact has led employees to develop the skills of a barnacle – they have learned how to cling to their current employment for dear life. Their practices? Building alliances among colleagues while playing internal political games so that they can move around the company, finding one safe haven after another.

For most, this represents a standard operating procedure. When the odd individual acts differently, striking out for a better opportunity in the form of a different job or (God forbid) some kind of risky startup, they are seen as crazy. Once gone, they are forgotten – dismissed as aberrations. Managers simply search for new barnacles to replace the few who exit.

However, this may be about to change. As the economy improves, workers may begin to act on the fresh opportunities it affords.

I once stood in line at Trinidad’s Piarco Airport and watched as a customer service agent, announcing that “I can’t take any more of this,” simply picked up her handbag and walked off the job. At that point, Trinidad was at full employment. Her behavior was typical of a new attitude: anyone could leave a position, rely on the social safety net to handle their basic needs, and re-enter the workforce later.

Local companies should expect the same practice to emerge. It will reveal “loyalty” as a reflection of lack of opportunity, not true affinity.

2. What Lef’ Mediocrity

But there’s a deeper problem. Today, a firm which is able to attract a young hotshot can fool itself into thinking that a job offer is enough. Managers unconsciously believe that, once hired, she’ll behave just like her barnacled colleagues. In other words, she will cling around “waiting for her time to come”.

In reality, it eventually dawns on her that those who lead the organization, and seal her fate, are clueless. They have failed to keep abreast of developments in technology, their industry, and profession. As a result, they make a series of poor decisions which no-one in their immediate bubble is brave enough to challenge.

That is, until the young talent shows up and, like an Old Testament prophet, starts calling a spade, a spade…to no avail. As she’s ignored and excluded, she becomes frustrated and eventually quits. But it’s not her departure that’s the most dangerous act. After all, a replacement can be found.

Instead, look at what she leaves behind: an organization which systematically repels people like her, while simultaneously encouraging the barnacles to remain. It’s a recipe for perpetual mediocrity.

Survey your company to see if the talents who leave are the ones who challenge the status quo the most. If so, are they leaving behind a stale core of mediocre performers? Under these circumstances, rewarding the “What Lef’” for their “loyalty” is a terrible mistake.

3. No External Value

Finally, if the new, growing economy doesn’t put your company under fresh pressure to retain employees, consider that it’s not because they are loyal. They just might not be valuable.

Most companies have too many insular people. They don’t keep their Linkedin profiles up to date…if they even have one. They have never crafted a resume. Their only email address was given by the company.

They may the only ones who can run the firm’s obsolete XYZ machine in the entire world, but these skills are of no external value. Once again, this isn’t true loyalty.

Instead of being lulled into false accomplishments, push your people hard to become the best, while allowing them to pursue whatever career path makes sense. Putting performance over loyalty may probably increase turnover, but it’s a strategy which will pay off in better results.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20181104/francis-wade-avoid-exorbitant-cost-low-turnover