Leadership for Organizational Excellence
The road to organizational excellence starts here.
The Blind Spots Syndrome
Even one of these 13 blind spots can kill or seriously damage an otherwise healthy business!
Too many leaders don’t know what they don’t know and are not interested in finding out. However, there are predictable ways that blind spots develop and how they can be mitigated. Much like driving a car, you can’t be effective with large, dangerous blind spots all around you.
Start Your Journey to Organizational Excellence by Removing Your Blind Spots
Sandler’s Leadership for Organizational Excellence is the antidote to blind spots, which sets your organization on the road with eyes wide open and keeps you moving forward toward success.
Leadership Training Curriculum
STEP 1:
Developing Your Personal Vision
You create your picture of your life from this point forward.
STEP 2:
Building the Organizational Vision, Mission, and Values
You identify what and where you want your organization to be in the future, who needs your organization, and how your values and beliefs will fulfill your mission and vision.
STEP 3:
Analysis of External Environment
You acknowledge that growth and success is impossible unless you look objectively at the forces affecting your current and future opportunities. You analyze the reality in which your organization operates.
STEP 4:
SWOT Analysis
You further refine your analysis by assessing your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a way of internalizing the External Environment, which you can’t control, by identifying and minimizing the negative effects of adverse external realities.
STEP 5:
Revisit Organizational Vision
Based on what you learned in steps 3 and 4, decide whether you need to make any changes to your Organizational Vision. If you do, update accordingly.
STEP 6:
Identify Key Priorities
Several opportunities or threats will emerge from the work done thus far. Building on that work, you identify the three most critical Key Priorities.
STEP 7:
Establish Expectations for Key Priorities
When you quantify expectations, you create a target to aim for and the motivation for achievement.
STEP 8:
Action Items, Due Dates, and Assignment of Responsibility
You have a much better chance of achieving the expectations established in step 7 when people know what they need to do and by what date they need to achieve the goal.
STEP 9:
Allocation of Resources to Accomplish Action Plans
You ensure the accountable people have the resources available to be able to accomplish the Action Item(s). You create the appropriate budgets.
STEP 10:
Regular Planning Review Process
Like an airplane pilot who constantly monitors his course, you must constantly monitor the progress of your plan. When the plan is documented and reviewed against a checklist regularly, the odds of success increase.
STEP 11:
Determine the Structure Needed to Implement the Plan
You create an Organizational Chart that defines the major Functions and the roles and responsibilities for each in your organization.
STEP 12:
Identify Skill Sets and Other Attributes Needed for Each Function
Without using any names of actual employees, you identify the Skills, Experience, Attitude, Results, Cognitive Skills, and Habits required for each Function.
STEP 13:
Create/Update Job Descriptions for Each Function
You define the specific requirements needed for the successful completion of the job Functions and responsibilities. Each employee should know and agree to the expectations of the role required in his or her Function.
STEP 14:
Assess Current Employees to Determine Who Fits
Without getting emotionally involved, you decide who, from your current team, is best able to fill the Functions required to achieve the Organizational Vision. Some current employees will fit well where they are; some will fit better in a different role from what they do now, and some will not fit at all into the new structure. Stay objective as you use the right tools to make these decisions.
STEP 15:
Determine New Employees Needed and Recruit
Once you have determined which of your employees provide the right fit for your company’s various Functions, you will find that some will remain vacant. This means recruiting from outside of your organization to fill these Functions.
STEP 16:
Establish a Budget for Training and Development
Excellence organizations set aside budgets every year for the development of their people. Setting aside the time and money to develop your people sends a strong, positive message to your employees that you care about them. Remember, you are developing more than just skills. Attitudes and behavior play a major role in the ultimate success of your people
STEP 17:
Create Individual Development Plans for Each Employee
You continually assess what it takes for your employees to improve their performance. This is vitally important if you wish to develop and retain the right people. Communicate with your employees and agree to an active, collaborative plan for individual growth and development.
STEP 18:
Evaluate and Revise Processes
You look back at your Vision and your Plan for the organization, evaluate the effectiveness of your current processes, and make any necessary improvements. You confirm that there is, in each Process, a series of steps that lead each Function to the desired outcome you determined in Planning. You then identify other areas of the organization that would benefit from good Processes … and create them.
STEP 19:
Establish Individual Metrics for Each Employee (Accountability)
Establishing individual metrics for each employee is one of the most effective ways of introducing accountability into an organization. This must begin at the top level.
STEP 20:
Conduct Regular Performance Appraisals/Evaluations
Each job description should be up-to-date so that the manager and the employee know the current expectations for the position (Function). The evaluation then becomes a simple matter of confirming whether those expectations are being met.
STEP 21:
Conduct Employee Surveys
Employees will feel listened to and included when their input is sought and, when appropriate, acted upon.
STEP 22:
Create Tracking Reports to Maintain Control of the Business
Identify a few key outcomes that you monitor on a regular basis. Use measures of past performance and reliable indicators of future performance when making business decisions. This helps you to control performance by making minor adjustments before they become major impediments to accomplishing your Vision.
STEP 23:
Monitor Board/Advisory Group Performance
You make sure those who are advising you are providing valid and effective advice. You also confirm that you are coachable and listening to the insights of your advisors.
STEP 24:
Acceleration
You start all over again … and pick up speed. You realize that everything you do, every day, should be undertaken with the aim of sharing your organization's Vision and accelerating the process of achieving Excellence. You set the goal of returning to each of the six P’s on the path to Excellence with renewed vigor and energy … as a team.