Don't Skip The Offsite

Great blog post on HBR by Melissa Raffoni on the pros and cons of meeting offsite, even in tough budget times. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/07/the-pros-and-cons-of-canceling.html

Melissa is upfront about the expense and the risk, but I would come to the same conclusion -- don't skip the offsite, just make sure it is genuine and adds value. We recommend that all executive teams meet offsite at least quarterly.

Time for Some Visioning

Read an article on Forbes.com about Johnson Controls and an interesting custom there. http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/30/johson-controls-vision-leadership-ceonetwork-week.html Every year, all 140,000 employees in over 1,000 locations gather for sessions to discuss the strategic direction of the company, the overall vision, and the challenges the company is facing. Very admirable. I believe that "weigh in equals buy-in," and I would encourage all companies to copy this best practice.

Here are some highlights:

• Because of financial challenges this year, someone suggested that the vision sessions be cancelled. The CEO said it took about 30 seconds to kill that idea. I've found that most great companies and teams have a "now more than ever" approach to clarity and effectiveness. The hard times are when we really need to do this, not just when things are going well.
• "In an employee survey afterward, 68% said this year's week improved their understanding of how to effectively serve their customers. A surge of organizational and cultural awareness was created as hundreds of operational, sales and marketing, and support teams shared stories and plans." Sounds like a good return on investment.
• Johnson Controls also invites some its largest customers to the meeting. Definitely a good idea. When discussing and sharing vision, get the input of customers.

Stanford Study Confirms "Ordinary Greatness" Principle

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/fast_commongroup.html?cmpid=news) recently conducted a study to determine if performance really matters when it comes to who we talk about and how often we talk about them.

The researchers asked participants to discuss baseball players, and gave them two lists: well-known players who were having mediocre seasons and less-known players who were having All-Star caliber seasons. They told the participants to discuss the players with one another, and more participants selected well-known players (66 percent) than lesser-known, higher-performing players (34 percent) to discuss with their conversation partners.

There are many reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that the participants selected the safer, well-known choice for a conversation topic as a way to seek "common ground." So when asked to select a player to discuss with a partner, performance seemed to matter less than how well the participant felt their partner would know the player.

In "Ordinary Greatness," we talk about blinders that inhibit our ability to see greatness, and this is an example of the blinders of compartmentalization and personal bias. We simply have a hard time spotting greatness if it doesn't fit into our preconceived notions of what greatness is or who can be great. In most companies there are employees who are doing great things who are less noticed because they may be quiet or are just not in a position to be noticed.

If you'd like to take a free assessment to see if there are any blinders you should be aware of in your own leadership, click here for that part of the Ordinary Greatness website: http://www.ordinarygreatnessbook.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=21