When a company employs somebody, they usually do so for one reason … because that person is competent to do a job.

Heres an idea to ponder.

Dont employ people because they can do a job.resist it, even just once.Instead, employ people who are not scared of being incompetent and who have a track record of cycling continually through the incompetent – competent cycle.

When you employ that person, their job is not to do the job, no …. their job is to work out how to do the job better, not just once but over and over again.

When you employ people purely because of competency in doing a job, the inherent danger is that you employ people who will defend their competency and resist all form of change.

“This is the best way to do this, I should know.”

“This is how I was taught to do this.”

“If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Change is uncomfortable because change means incompetence. And incompetence brings with it the greatest risk of all … the risk of being criticized, being judged as incompetent, and .. heaven forbid .. failing.

Notice that the leaders of many growth companies are young and vibrant people from the younger generations. Why?

Well for one they have not developed competency to the point where they are unwilling to unlearn what it is they know.

No … they are competent in change, in innovation, in moving through a range of new and untested ideas and continually growing. They are not scared of ‘failing’. The memory of falling over in order to learn to walk is still fresh enough in their minds that they remember.

This new order of competence is the most desirable trait in the modern business world.

If you are truly committed to being the best you can, be prepared to be incompetent frequently.

Now … how the hell do I upload this?

WHY CHANGE RARELY STICKS

Whether you want to change your weight, change your relationship or change your company’s bottom line … it all comes down to human behaviour.

You have no chance at sustaining improvements or changes in your business environment without first changing the underlying behaviour and thinking patterns of the people involved.If you don’t address the behaviour and thinking patters that created the existing situation in the first place, a time will come when you relax your regime of ‘change’ and everything will slip back to the way it was; back to the undesirable state.

See … the thinking and behaviour patterns of your people are attuned to the status quo right now.

Take the example of a rubber band.  If you want to change the shape of the rubber band you might pull it and stretch it to a new shape.  You could even hold it extended for a period of time in the shape you desire.  But as soon as you let go it just snaps back into place, back into it’s original state.Your business is like this rubber band – it has an existing state that people are comfortable with.  You can force these people into a new pattern of behaviour but as soon as you relax your guard (which will happen sooner or later) they will begin to slip back into their old patterns.

It’s not your fault – suffice to say this is the greatest challenge business leaders face today; getting people to alter their behaviour willingly and permanently.

THE COMMON ERROR IN LEADERSHIP

The most common error in leadership is to focus on managing people’s actions and use the power of authority to get them to change.

This out-dated ‘Industrial Age’ approach is practiced widely. It is a model that involves managers using authoritarian based command and control methods to coerce staff into greater productivity and higher-level performance.

Granted, this method of leadership does have its place, it absolutely does. However, in today’s social and business environment, if this is the only style employed it will not work!Without addressing the invisible elements of behaviour you will never successfully create lasting change. When an employee’s source of motivation is compliance or obedience, managers have to remain vigilant and continually monitor behaviour. If they don’t, the desired behaviour will not last. Imagine your managers having to monitor employee work continually in an already busy environment. They have less time; more stress; and (in my experience) they also suffer a decline in the quality of their personal life. The change only persists if the managers keep up the monitoring effort.

Today your employees have the power of CHOICE, so authoritarian based models of influence are not without risk. If that is the only style used, your best staff will simply move on to find a more positive working environment where they will be engaged and challenged, not commanded. All you’re left with is the dead wood.

One of the most important things I have learnt in the past three decades of work is this:

All shifts in business results are preceded by a permanent change in behaviour. All permanent behavioural changes are preceded by a step change in thinking … a PARADIGM SHIFT!

This understanding is what has set us apart from the majority of service providers in our industry. We don’t focus our business growth and improvement efforts on KPIs alone or just the technical aspects of behaviour. We positively shift those things that drive behaviour first.

And we do it this way!

THE INVISIBLE ELEMENTS OF PERFORMANCE

The strength and effectiveness of Soarent Vision lies in our intimate knowledge of the INVISIBLE ELEMENTS OF PERFORMANCE and how they can impact business at all levels.

Copyright by George Lee Sye

Let me describe those elements (refer to the diagram above) in this way.

The quality of the RESULT or OUTCOME you experience is determined by the quality of the actions or behaviours you engage in. Undertake the right behaviours and you create the desired outcome; it’s fundamentally as simple as that.

What determines the quality of the ACTIONS or BEHAVIOURS you engage in?

Many people will think the answer is skill. I am here to tell you the quality of your actions and behaviours (within you potential performance range) is determined by the quality of your emotional state … yep, that’s right, determined by how you feel.

What determines whether or not your employee does or does not do something you want? Quite simply it’s determined by how they feel about it. Emotions drive all behaviour; emotional state determines the quality of every single action we engage in within a given range of performance potential.

To change the potential, you change the skill. To change the behaviour, you must alter the emotional state.

Now … the final question. What determines the quality of one’s EMOTIONAL STATE?

I think we all know the answer to this one. The quality of one’s emotional state is determined by the quality of one’s THINKING and BELIEFS.

TWO AREAS OF IMPACT

Through understanding how these Invisible Elements of Performance can be shifted, we’ve been able to consistently experience exception results in two areas:

(1) PERFORMANCE GROWTH

Engaging people directly so they willingly shift their thinking and beliefs as a foundation to behaviour change.

We put a tonne of effort into this aspect of performance in our business execution workshops and leader development seminars. In fact each and every seminar we deliver is designed to give people a set of skills and tools, but more importantly to have the right frames of reference and the vital sense of motivation to actually use the skills we teach.

Always remember … the thinking and motivational aspects of a new skill set can never be left unaddressed if you want people to use those skills.

(2) LEADER DEVELOPMENT

Coaching and developing leaders who can utilise the power of influence and persuasion to create permanent change without the stress they are accustomed to.

It takes time to develop influence and persuasion skills to the point where they can be utilised without thinking in any situation, but it is well worth the effort.

THREE SCENARIOS OF CHANGE LEADERSHIP

I’ve found there are 3 scenarios for which leaders must develop these change leadership skills.

Scenario 1: Informally influencing others around you to engage in some new behaviour or respond to your requests. This can be at home or at work, and even upwards, downwards and sideways.

Scenario 2: Leading a change initiative and guiding people through a roadmap of change that involves a specific sequence of steps from planning through to locking the change in.

Scenario 3: Formally presenting to audiences in order to influence their behaviour and generate some specific response to a request. Audiences can be of any size and both known and unknown to the presenter. This scenario is often a precursor to scenario 2.

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With 37 years of working experience behind him, George Lee Sye delivers some of the most effective leadership development seminars in the world today. To read more about his approach to business leadership and business execution visit his website here – http://www.soarent.com.au/business-leadership/academy-business-leadership

I remember the conversation as if it were yesterday

I had just explained how the company could simplify its approach to business execution so it was more effective in getting targeted business results.

I’d walked the company executive through a strategy for how the foundations could be built around new thinking patterns and greater personal effectiveness of individuals in the organisation, and doing it in such a way that it positively impacted both their working and personal lives.

He asked “What other airline of similar size to ours has taken this approach?”

When I told him that none had, but companies such as Rio Tinto and HBOS had, he said “Well … when you’ve done it with a similar sized airline, come back and we’ll talk about it.”

That was my conversation with the executive of a multiple billion dollar airline. Come on … did he really want me to do my best in helping his company’s competitors achieve greater business success?

We have a problem in business today

One of the major problems today in big business is that a cost cutting mindset and risk averse culture prevents business leaders from doing things that are not tried and tested.

When Bill Gates and Paul Allen originally sold their operating system idea to IBM, the software was untested, in fact it was not even developed.

When Fred smith started the first overnight express delivery company in the world, Fedex, the concept was untested. In fact he was told by a university professor that it was not a workable idea.

When Apple’s Steve Jobs rolled out iTunes and the series of iPod devices linked to the software, the concept were untested.

When Google hit the ground running with a free online search engine, the idea was untested.

When Richard Branson started virgin records, the business was untested.

Always Remember ….

It takes courage to do something new and innovative, just ask any successful business owner who put it on the line and started from scratch with nothing but an untested idea.

It takes courage to give people (who work for you) the freedom and space to try new and untested ways.

It takes courage to allow people to ‘fail’ and learn from experience.

The bottom line …… it takes guts to lead the way and do something nobody else has done.

I take my hat off to those who have the guts.

‘Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.’

Ambrose Redmoon

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With 37 years of working experience behind him, George Lee Sye is now a highly sought after speaker, performance coach and mentor to business leaders in organisations of all sizes and all industries. To read more about his approach to business leadership and business execution visit his website here –http://www.soarent.com.au/business-leadership/academy-business-leadership

Business leaders can have a massive impact on the success of Lean Six Sigma, in fact on the success of any improvement initiative. In this article the author discusses his observations and thoughts about business leaders selling the concept of business improvement with Lean Six Sigma to the workplace.

By George Lee Sye

Some years ago I had a very interesting discussion with the Managing Director of a medium sized company about the implementation of Lean Six Sigma in his business.

He told me about the difficulties he had experienced in keeping the initiative going. In the conversation he said it never really became a part of the way work was done in the business. His next level managers weren’t committed to it and over the short-term focus had drifted away from the philosophies of improving the business PROACTIVELY.

He was concerned about whether or not it was even worth continuing. With so many other things on his plate it was now becoming a distraction.

So I asked him a few questions. Questions like …

• What training did you participate in?
• What tools from the program have you used yourself?
• How do you run your meetings with the management team?

His responses can be summarised in a few words.

He had not attended any formal education or training beyond a very short ‘executive alignment’ session. He admitted that during the session he had also attended to other work commitments, you know phone calls and so on.

He said his work life was very hectic considering his enormous responsibilities, and “he did not really have the time to commit to any training”.

If I had one dollar for every time I have heard that!

Okay, granted he knew quite a bit about the methodology, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. however, he had never used any of the tools or processes or event minor pieces from the Lean Six Sigma toolkit … EVER!

I also noted that his approach to meetings and facilitation was the same as … well the same as everybody else’s approach. His meeting agendas were just lists of discussion topics. No defined outcomes or written purpose. The meetings … in my opinion they were lengthy studies of what had occurred in the past. Plus … one of his greatest challenges was getting the team to agree on decisions.

I noticed that he often used phrases like “I don’t have the time”, “the approach has always worked for me” and “what I’ve always done is this”.

You get the picture.

Here’s what I told him about his leadership of the initiative.

He ESPOUSED the value of engaging in Lean Six Sigma for the business and its participants. More importantly, he truly BELIEVED it … he did, I have no doubts about that whatsoever. He committed RESOURCES by putting in place a team of people who focus on the project work and manage the day-to-day Lean Six Sigma function.

Now … you need to listen carefully to this … when he talks to people about what is happening and he sees the day-to-day operation for himself, he knows that people are INCREDIBLY BUSY (as he is). He’s told by his direct reports that they don’t have time to attend training, he hears EXCUSES for not doing Lean Six Sigma such as ‘there’s nothing wrong with what I do now, it’s always worked’.

Every time he sees or hears this, deep down inside HE KNOWS EXACTLY what these people mean and are experiencing. These are actually HIS REASONS for not really being involved in it. He is emotionally connected to THEIR EXCUSES for not using the initiative themselves, so how can he sell the concept?

The NON-VERBAL part of his communication conveys HIS TRUE FEELINGS.

Here’s my point.

If you want to sell something … and we are ALL SELLING … you have to convey and transfer feeling to the buyer.

What do I mean by that?

My experience with leadership has been that ‘selling’ and ‘leading’ is the same thing! Don’t you think it’s interesting that we use the term buy-in when we talk about leading change?

To sell an idea to your people, to get their buy-in, to CLOSE THE SALE, you have to be emotionally CONNECTED to it, to have feeling for it. You cannot be emotionally connected to the excuses for NOT DOING it. If you were a car salesperson, could you honestly expect to effectively sell Ford or Holden motor vehicles yet drive a different brand of vehicle yourself?

When the customer says she’ll buy the different brand because it is CHEAPER, you’re emotionally connected to that very same reason for not buying the car you’re selling YOURSELF.

I’m not suggesting that all a leader does is sell, but I am suggesting that influencing how people think and what they buy-in to is a significant part of the role. And a business leader or manager cannot expect to get buy-in for business improvement at any level when they do not use the terminology or concepts themselves!

When people give excuses for not doing it a business leader will never be able to lead them beyond that paradigm when the same paradigm is theirs.

The only way we can CHANGE THAT PARADIGM is to DO IT OURSELVES, thus severing the emotional connection to the excuses we get.

I think the phrases used, perhaps to the point of excess, are that leaders have got to not only ‘talk the talk’, but also ‘walk the talk’.

If you say you don’t have time, hold that thought for a moment.

The CEO of Ford (a company with more than 300,000 employees world-wide) had time to undertake Lean Six Sigma training and champion projects. He has 300,000 employees!

[Source: Paton, S.M., “Consumer Driven Six Sigma Saves Ford $300 Million”, Quality Digest, September 2001, http://www.qualitydigest.com/sept01/html/ford.html (2001)]

I’m sure we all can MAKE THE TIME, we just need to learn how.

Any opportunities to include life management training for leaders and managers in the early phases of your business improvement initiative roll-out should be explored.

I now spend the major proportion of my time coaching business leaders and employees in self AND business leadership skills. The intention of this is twofold:

• To help all people realise that CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT is the key to success in ANYTHING, not something you do as an add-on in business.
• To provide participants with the psychology and tools they need to

BECOME MORE EFFECTIVE in all aspects of their life (both personal and professional) and have MORE TIME for proactive improvement.

I believe this is a powerful way to create the mental space and emotional desire to develop business improvement capability and so far this is proving to be true.

Here’s to your continued success.

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With 37 years of working experience behind him, George Lee Sye is now a highly sought after speaker, performance coach and mentor to business leaders in organisations of all sizes and all industries. To read more about his approach to business leadership and business execution visit the comany website here – http://www.soarent.com.au/business-leadership/academy-business-leadership

Every business leader on the planet wants their company or business to grow and maximise its potential to generate sustainable value for all stakeholders; especially its owners.

The way to achieve that is not rocket science. Some people might argue that fact, but here’s the reality. The actions and strategies to engage in for achieving success in business [at any level by the way] can be found on the web, in text books, and through studying and modeling the most successful companies that exist both inside and outside your industry.

Okay, so if that’s true, then what’s the problem?

The business world has evolved quite significantly over the past two decades. The shift we’ve experienced has resulted in six major problems arising that prevent you from realising your potential as a leader, and prevent you from realising your organisation’s potential as a vehicle for creating stakeholder abundance.

Do you really want to make a difference? Do you really want to achieve a level of success in business beyond what most achieve. If you do, consider these for a moment.

1. Stop Managing Behaviour

The focus of behaviour management practices developed during the long gone industrial age was on controlling people. When the leash of control is placed on people today, the real talent and potential of individual employees is not realised. People want to give their all, but if you ask them, my experience in dealing with thousands of people in public seminars has been that they will tell you they are underutilised. People have so much more to give and they know it.

With the choices available to every person in our society, and the willingness of people to move from one career path to another, leaders must shift their approach and create the situation where their people are totally committed to outcomes, they participate in innovation and continual improvement, and they have choices about the actions they take to get those outcomes. Controlled people are only engaged to a level of compliance and never unleash their talent to its full extent.

This idea is perfectly encapsulated by Don Argus, retired Chairman of BHP Billiton, when he delivered a speech at the 2009 Leadership Victoria Dinner. He said:

“Marius [Kloppers - CEO of BHP Billiton] quickly realised many organisations smother the potential of their employees under layer upon layer of control and bureaucracy. As a result, their human assets are painfully underused ….

What is really being underused is what might be called peoples’ discretionary effort, that is, performance above and beyond the expected minimum. It is their initiative, creativity, motivation and loyalty. This discretionary effort is the part of a person’s performance that is liberated or shutdown by the way their leaders treat them and the quality of their work environment.”

2. Reactive Psychology Underpins the Culture

Most people today live in reaction. So many demands are placed on them that they only work on their health when it is a problem, or their relationship when it starts to break down, or their wealth when they realise they are going to retire broke. This subconscious pattern of reactivity underpins the culture of a business, and proactive growth will always be difficult to achieve.

We consistently find that business owners and managers shift their focus to succession planning when they resign, or a supervisor focuses on waste elimination when a cost reduction initiative is rolled out, or an employee focuses on their safety only after a work mate is injured.

3. Movement without Direction

Busyness does not produce results, yet far too many people in every organisation are extremely busy but not moving towards any specific outcome of value. The need to have direction permeate to the lowest levels of an organisation has never been greater, or more challenging to achieve.

We have to work hard on breaking this deeply embedded busyness paradigm and focus on being more effective.

4. Compression of Time and Focus

With our maturity in the use of computers and modern technology, we now realise the two big lies told to us so many years ago. Do you remember what those lies were? We were told that technology would give us more time and make the paperless office a reality.

Technology is now compressing people’s time and pre-computer time management methods are no longer relevant. Prioritisation and personal efficiency methods must now being replaced by a new generation in personal leadership techniques that suit the modern world, and result in time and focus expansion, and working at the appropriate level in an organisation.

5. Misaligned Systems Create Internal Competition

Systems that create internal competition limit the performance of any organisation. When the supply manager is driven to reduce the amount of stock she holds in order to minimise how much capital is tied up, and the production manager is continually frustrated by an inability to get parts from the store to get plant up and running again, the company will never reach its potential.

Does this happen in small enterprise? Of course it does. Without the appropriate knowledge and awareness, a business owner can unwittingly create misalignment in various areas of his or her business.

Our goal now is to align systems more effectively so they create a state of collaboration on how we execute the business plan and grow the business.

6. Low Trust and Accountability, High Bureaucracy

In multiple employee businesses, the first five problems all contribute to a situation where trust and accountability will be low, and leaders get drawn into situation of action and behaviour management. The utilisation of bureaucratic methods to get things done to a level of satisfaction underpins the way a business’ meetings are conducted, how boss to employee conversations takes place and how upward reporting takes place.

Six Characteristics of Remarkable Companies

The characteristics of the most remarkable organisations today reflect the successful elimination of these problems.

1. Fully utilised talent and realised potential at the individual level
2. Proactive improvement at work and at the home – a state of genuine work/life balance
3. Alignment of direction and clearly understood purpose across the organisation
4. Expanded time and focus, all supervisors and managers working at higher levels (less detail)
5. Aligned systems that drive collaboration towards similar outcomes and mutually beneficial rewards
6. High trust, high accountability and the elimination of bureaucracy

Can this be achieved in any organisation?

Of course it can – but not without change to the existing paradigms.

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George Lee Sye is a highly successful author, speaker and personal coach to business leaders around the world. He is also founder of Soarent Vision and the Academy of Business Leadership. For more information go to http://www.soarent.com.au/business-leadership/academy-business-leadership

In the absence of an improvement strategy like Lean Six Sigma, business improvement tends to be approached from a solution mindset.Ideas for making the business better are generated, consolidated and undertaken as improvement projects. These ideas are solutions like install a new piece of software, replace old PCs with new units, re-organise the services division and so on.

Managers genuinely believe they are doing business improvement and have no idea why they would have a need to add a methodology like Lean Six Sigma to what they do. I have even seen the situation where some managers believe they are already doing Lean or Six Sigma.

What’s missing?

The main shortfall with this approach is that many opportunities for genuine performance improvement are missed. When we only work on initiatives for which solutions are known, we miss all of those value adding opportunities for which we don’t know the solution.

By limiting our inquisitiveness to just one question; ‘WHAT CAN WE DO TO IMPROVE OUR BUSINESS?’ (which is the mistake many companies make), we can never realise the full potential of the business.

Read more here – http://www.soarent.com.au/blog/lean-six-sigma-2/is-a-solution-mindset-limiting-your-business/

Standards of business improvement education with Lean Six Sigma methodologies are virtually non existent.

Similarly, there are no standards for certification of practitioners. Now it seems something has been done about it … FINALLY.

Read more about Soarent Vision’s Diploma and Advanced Diploma in Business Improvement Leadership HERE - http://www.soarent.com.au/lean-six-sigma/certification

Read some of his key comments here

People talk about WORK LIFE BALANCE like its the most difficult thing on the planet to achieve, and they want it so much.

They talk about that day off into the future where they’ll be able to relax and leave the stressed life behind, spend time with the family, play golf or whatever it is they do, and enjoy life as they whittle away their final years.

IT’S ABSURD!

When did they decide they can’t have these things right now AND go to work each day and have tremendous success in business?

Who the hell decided that EXCESSIVE STRESS and a FLOURISHING CAREER have to go hand in hand?

A few years ago a friend of mine said something to me that got me thinking ….

… he said  “George, you seem to be able to work long hours, get incredible results in business, be genuinely happy and stress free … almost … and your family still likes you and your kids are really good friends. WHY DON’T YOU TEACH THIS STUFF?”

My response …. “When people decide they NO LONGER WANT TO BE MR OR MRS AVERAGE, I’ll teach it to them.”

SO MY QUESTION TO YOU IS THIS …

… have you decided to become a master of yourself RIGHT NOW —- to consistently get results AND experience genuine quality of life. If you have, congratulations, because you are ready to become a truly extraordinary leader!

It is my pleasure to invite you to an amazing event ……..

THE MOST EFFECTIVE LEADER ON THE PLANET!

The bonus … this is a BUSINESS SEMINAR. How so?

This is the foundation event for making your business improvement initiative thrive while others struggle!

It is designed with 5 specific BUSINESS RELATED OBJECTIVES in mind:

• That you as a leader do not have to rely on bureaucratic and outdated systems to manage behaviour and engineer attitudes; rather you steer a ship that is crewed by a highly motivated and fulfilled team of people that are more accountable to themselves and one another;
• That the greatest assets of your organisation (your people), defy the conditioning of our society and become far more effective in their work and in their personal lives than they have ever been before and play the game of life at a new level;
• All of your most important assets are motivated to experience a massive acceleration in the results they get across all of the important elements of their work and their home life; and
• All of your most important assets (including you) live a long healthy and vital life without the illness and stress that people are now erroneously conditioned to accept as a normal part of life.
• Your people contribute more to the financial success of your company through increased frugality and financial success in their own lives

If you REMEMBER ONE THING, make it this …

… personal mastery precedes mastery of others.

And this event is the foundation seminar in helping you and your people achieve that level of mastery through increasing their understanding of human motivation and personal achievement.

What a neat way to share thoughts that are intended to get you to think. We are socially hypnotized, yet most of us are unaware of it until some apparent crazy person comes along and thinks about things in a different way and then has the hide to express these thoughts in the public domain.

But so what, we need such crazy people to take a different perspective of the things we have been seeing for far too long from only one angle. My hope is that you do read these ideas, open your hearts and mind to the concepts and walk away with strategies you can use to make change in your own life and business.

I dare you to do that.

George Lee Sye