12 Principles For Successful Performance Management

Posted August 26, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

For many years now we’ve been helping organizations develop and implement effective performance management systems. Here are ten principles that form the foundation of our approach. I welcome input to help us add to the list. I’ve you are interested in having us elaborate on what each of these principles mean for you or your workplace, feel free to contact me.

1.  Change “performance” to “success.”

2. Change activities to results.

3.  Set high standards and make your expectations for success clear.

4. Distinguish between “operational” and “leadership” accountabilities. Operational accountabilities are unique to your specific job. Leadership accountabilities belong to everyone: they are promises to live the espoused values.

5. Demands and support need to be kept in balance. Results have a much better chance of growing in the soil of trust.

6.  Communication should be so frequent that there are no surprises in the success review.

7.  Give corrective feedback early.

8. Without passion, accountability is drudgery; without accountability, passion is fantasy; passion with accountability is destiny.

9.  Negotiate consequences before you have to.

10. Stay positive in public and keep the negative in private.

11. Hire slowly; fire quickly.

12. Have a clear, explicit process for follow up.

Categories: Leadership and Culture
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Great Cultures Start With Conscious Action

Posted August 2, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

Culture is ultimately about energy – the energy that emerges from the experience of participating in the culture. We are drawn to places – as a customer, employee, patient, or member – that have a high frequency of energy, places where people are engaged, vibrant, and alive. Conversely, we are repelled by places that are bureaucratic, listless, and dead. While positional leaders affect the energy level in a culture, every person – either inside or outside the culture – who participates in the culture contributes to the energy of the culture.

Regardless of what you say or do what face you show to the world, your mental-emotional state cannot be hidden. Everybody emanates an energy field that corresponds to his or her inner state. Most people can sense it even though they may be unaware of it’s effect or unable to articulate it. It’s not what you do, but how you do what you do that determines whether you contribute or  drain energy. The way that you act each moment, regardless of your position or your role, represents a certain vibrational frequency. I’ve learned from Eckart Tolle that if you are not in a state of acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm in any task you do, then you will be creating suffering for yourself and others.

I used to hate housework, and yet I knew that doing housework was a way to contribute and feel a part of the family. Being at war with myself, I would find myself resenting doing any housework, causing stress and suffering to myself and my family. Frankly, I was a pain to live with whenever there was cleaning that needed to be done.

So, I made a decision to accept the simple act of vacuuming. I stopped complaining and resisting and made a decision to stop hating it. In the process, I have actually grown to enjoy housework, and have an improved marriage! Two for one! The enjoyment in the work came, not because the nature of the work changed, but because I changed. I became more present to the experience.

Take an audit of the work you are doing – at home, at your office, or in your community. Become conscious of the actions you are taking and the state of mind you bring to those actions. If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you do, then stop doing it. If, on the other hand, you decide that it is important to do this work at this time, then decide to change your state of mind. Becoming conscious of the actions you take and the effect that your inner state has on yourself and those around you, begins to build a new culture, starting with you. Taking this kind of personal accountability – action with consciousness – is not only the core of a great culture. It’s the core of a great life.

Categories: Leadership and Culture
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BRIDGES OF TRUST and Entrepreneurs

Posted June 19, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

This past week I completed our two-day BRIDGES OF TRUST program in lower Vancouver Island and the Okanagan with my good friend and colleague, Jim Reger. Four different groups – 270 people from 90 diverse organizations went through our program. Represented were amazing companies with amazing leadership at every level. Entrepreneurism is well and thriving in this country and making a significant contribution, at the local, community level, as well as world wide. If you want information about the Bridges of Trust Program, call or email me.

Categories: Leadership and Culture
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Authentic Leadership and Integrity

Posted March 14, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

This week I started coaching a senior executive who was recently promoted to lead a large office in his firm. He approached me for coaching to help him be accountable for living with greater integrity. When I asked him what this meant, he said:

“Reflecting on the leadership responsibility I now face made me take a careful inventory of my life. I realized that in my efforts to advance in the business, I have been neglecting my health, my spiritual life, and my relationships with my family.  Because I lack the discipline to live a life aligned with what matters, I don’t have the integrity, self-respect and credibility to influence people in the way I need to now. I want you to help hold me accountable for living in accord with my values.”

This executive gets it: integrity means being an integrated human being, and from that integration comes self-respect, credibility, and the power of sustained leadership presence. You will never get this kind of power from your position or your title.

Mahatma Gandhi said,”A person cannot do right in one department of life while attempting to
do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole.” A leader will never be able to have the strength to impact others if their life is fragmented or lacking wholeness. Integrity comes from the word “integer,” which means wholeness, integration, and completeness. Great leadership cannot be reduced to technique; great leadership comes from the identity and integrity of the leader. This is why leadership is about presence, not position.

This executive’s clarity, wisdom, and courage, reminds me of a story of Gandhi, which illustrates the power of integrity in leadership. During the time Gandhi was in office a troubled mother had a daughter who was addicted to sugar. One day she approached Gandhi, explaining the problem and asking if he would talk to the young girl. Gandhi replied, “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.” After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to Gandhi. He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit. The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him, “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”

What is your experience of the effect of integrity on leadership and it’s effect on your self-respect, your credibility, and your ability to influence others?

Categories: Leadership and Culture
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Passion, Culture, and Commitment

Posted February 14, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

Valentine’s Day and the start of the winter Olympics has me thinking about passion. Yes, there is lustful passion, but I’m thinking of the passion that inspires people to bring their whole self to their work. You certainly see passion in an Olympic athlete who has devoted their life to mastering a sport. I learned from my father that it’s a lot easier to be disciplined and accountable if you have a passion. For example, when you are lying in bed debating whether you should get  up to exercise it’s a lot easier if your goal is to be an Olympian. Then you have a reason to be disciplined. You are working for a higher purpose that inspires you.

So, in the work of building an engaged organizational culture, how important is passion? I think it’s very important, but I don’t believe you have to find passion in every task. I’ve met hard working janitors that don’t  find passion in cleaning up other people’s messes and I know stay-at-home parents that don’t find a lot of passion in changing diapers or washing clothes. When I was a competitive distance runner, I was passionate about the sport, but I wasn’t necessarily passionate about every one of my workouts. Sometimes it was just painful and hard work. The same is true about being a CEO. Inspired by the results that my clients experience and the work I do, I am not passionate about every aspect of the “job.”  While some are blessed to experience passion in their work (we call that a vocation), for others, their passion lies away from their work (we call that a fulfilling job). Both are valid.

I think it’s unrealistic and even dangerous to think that you have to be passionate about everything you do in order to feel “authentic” or true to yourself. The expectation that you always have to find passion in every responsibility can lead to narcissism, disenchantment, and self-centered resentment. Anyone that’s been married longer than 2 weeks understands this. The real work of marriage begins when the passion wains. Then you discover the true meaning of character and commitment: extending yourself for the greater good – even when the passion isn’t evident.

So how do you ignite energy and engage people in the midst of drudgery? Two ways: first, by connecting with a higher purpose, a vision that provides a strong enough reason for doing the task, and second, by connecting with talent. Both fuel passion and thus engage people. Passion is important in any relationship but it doesn’t necessarily have to come in the nature of the task. It can come with a strong enough reason to perform the task. Passion comes when you connect a task with the context of your life. For an athlete, passion comes in the dream and satisfaction that the tough, lonely workout is taking you toward the vision. It comes in a marriage when you realize that you are serving a more important goal than immediate self-gratification. It comes in a job when you connect the accomplishment of that job with a purpose that matters to you – at work or at home.

Organizations are the stewards of people’s passion and talent, and leadership is about creating an environment where people are inspired to participate with their full selves. This happens when we find out what matters most to people and then support them to experience their day-t0-day jobs as a tool to make it happen. When you are able to maintain this kind of perspective, you don’t just get committed, loyal employees and a better workplace, you get a meaningful life.

Categories: Leadership and Culture, Organizational Culture
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Culture and Leadership – At Every Level

Posted January 31, 2010 By David Irvine and has no comments yet.

Last summer I made a clear intention to re-focus my work on organizational culture. It’s amazing what I have been learning since  then. I have been meeting some incredibly wise people who are doing life-changing work in their cultures. Not only am I working with and learning from some amazing executives about how to create aligned, engaged cultures in their companies, I’m also learning from school teachers how they build a culture in a classroom by engaging students. This week I worked with a group of entrepreneurs and we talked about building a culture in their teams by getting clear about everyone’s values, dreams, and goals, and aligning their business with each person’s strengths and talents.

Not only does culture reside within us as individuals, but it is also the hidden force that drives our behavior between us – both inside and outside our organizations. Each of the cultures we are part of – our families, our workplace, our communities, our churches – are part of us and impact us, just as we impact them. In every environment, whether we are aware of it or not, we function as “leaders” in that we not only reinforce and act as a part of the present culture, but actually are creating (consciously or unconsciously) the culture we live in. This interplay of culture creation demonstrates an interdependency between culture and leadership – at every level. It is, therefore, not enough that the CEO and top executive group  be concerned about and manage the “corporate culture.” Leaders at every level of the organization must recognize that they have a role in creating and evolving the subcultures in their parts of the organization. Deciding that you are creating the culture where you live and work – and therefore you are the one to step into healing it – is the ultimate act of accountability.

I’ve been receiving some wonderful emails about people’s experience of building a culture at any and every level. I’ve learned that culture begins to be strengthened when you get away from your computer and go where people are doing the work. Culture is about being in touch, listening, and really tuning in. I’d love to hear what culture means to you and what you do within your sphere of influence to build a culture.

Categories: Organizational Culture
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