Tony Mauro, Author at Perficient Blogs

Do you want a more engaged team? Here is an approach

Tony Mauro — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 21:32:32 +0000

How To Increase Team Engagement

If you are reading this, you are most likely a leader that sees value in teams with a high level of engagement. Personally, I have been passionate about employee engagement throughout my entire career, but I have had varying levels of success mobilizing efforts that really move the needle.

Gartner customer experience research shows the value of team engagement:

Two-thirds of the drivers of customer satisfaction are due to “feel factors,” or how customers feel during and about their experience. HR leaders should take this same approach to employee experience, focusing on influencing and improving employees’ feelings about their overall experience through the use of psychological, motivational and social principles. Improving the way the experience feels can lead to a boost in employee engagement and support a positive company culture.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen some great progress increasing our employee engagement with our team at Perficient and we feel really good about it. Even as we transitioned to a virtual environment, we accelerated progress on our initiatives and fostered even more connection among the team. So I thought that I would share our approach and provide some insights that may work for other teams and organizations.

READ MORE: A Cultural Celebration Happy Hour

There have been lots of studies that indicate improving employee engagement also improves productivity by 15-25%. It is also one of the central components of an organization’s culture. However, since the ‘why’ and benefits of employee engagement are well documented, this post will focus on the ‘how’. Here are a few thoughts on how to implement an engagement plan in your organization.

Getting Started With Team Engagement

One of the first major lessons for me was that not everyone is into it. I learned that some people just want to go to work, do their job, and go home. It doesn’t mean they aren’t happy with their job, they just don’t need engagement opportunities the same way others do.

There is also a set of colleagues that have a great appreciation and take pride that engagement opportunities are available, but don’t feel they have the time or desire to actively participate among the other things going on in their lives.

At Perficient, we want to make sure everyone has space to participate to the best of their wants and abilities, with no pressure but still facilitating team engagements throughout the year. The approach below focuses a bit on the team members that do value a concerted focus on engagement at work, but with the overall goal to benefit everyone in the organization.

Mobilizing the Team for Engagement with Momentum

The second major lesson that I learned is that those grassroots efforts taking action build more momentum than relying on business case presentations in the boardroom aimed at asking for permission. Although executive sponsorship and support are critical to success, you don’t necessarily need (or want) the executive team to lead the charge.

Indeed does a great job of breaking down the different roles management and leadership play in initiatives like team engagement:

Leadership is often based on a mission, while management is often based on a specific task being completed.
Management is more quantitative, while leadership is more qualitative.
The results of leadership are often intangible, while the results of management are easily measurable.

By leading and managing within your own team, you create the process that best suits your team’s personality. If you allow those that are most passionate to take the lead and build the right team, you won’t need leadership to take it on when you can create an organic, authentic movement that is employee-led.

How To Embrace and Begin Team Engagement

Try these tips for beginning the momentum for your team engagement plan.

Focus your recruiting efforts on building the team on those that desire to have a high-level engagement.
The “voluntold” model doesn’t work and assigning someone to lead this kind of work will likely not produce the kind of results that you desire.
It’s not a first-come, first-serve. The first person to volunteer to take the lead may not be the right fit.
Watch out for the ‘monopolizer’. There may be a team member that always jumps in to take on everything (this can be me sometimes), but maybe it’s time for some new voices
Leverage a co-lead model. Since this is usually “work on top of work” for employees, the co-leadership model distributes the responsibility and continues momentum when one person’s day job becomes intense or they have a lot going on outside of the office. It’s also a great model to support accountability.
Representation matters: Ensure you have representation on the team that reflects your organization. In addition to ensuring a focus on diversity and inclusion, also include a balance of senior and junior team members, along with new and tenured employees.

Focusing the Team for Engagement

To dive a bit deeper on the first bullet above, even though you may believe that you know who has a high level of engagement, it may be best to just ask.

Creating a Team Engagement Survey

All it takes is a simple survey to the team to ask where they fall on the spectrum of desired engagement:

High: “I want to take an active role in shaping and executing engagement and cultural initiatives”
Medium: “I will participate, but I really don’t want to own or lead anything”
Low: “I’ll participate if it is something that matters to me or when I can”
None: “I just want to do my job and I’m all good”

Follow-up with those that show a high and medium level interest with some probing questions:

What is the one thing that we could do to increase/impact your engagement?
What is your take on one thing that we could do to increase/impact the engagement of the entire team?

Once you have your team in place, you can establish your key initiatives, timelines, meeting cadence, task ownership, and more. Make sure to regularly document your efforts and share them with other leaders for feedback and to inspire their own leadership plans. Acknowledge and champion your team for supporting and recognize their input individually along the way.

Establishing the Priorities for Team Engagement

Insights may come from a variety of places. Employee engagement surveys, one-on-ones, exit interviews, leadership retreats, or the good old suggestion box. You can also review answer sites like Quora and Reddit, social media, and review sites like Glassdoor to learn what people are talking about outside of work. Start by capturing the input from various sources and then establish themes. It’s important to name and frame the themes into something that can easily be identified as a clear area of focus.

Tips to Plan Your Team Engagement Strategy

Don’t sugarcoat the gaps or challenges. Your team is too smart, aware, and will see right through it.
Be transparent. Share the themes not only that the employees have surfaced, but those coming from the leadership team, as well.
Leave the ego at the door and beware of going into a defensive posture; remember everyone is working towards the same goal and while it can be difficult at times, you’ll all be better on the other side.
Give yourself the time to do it right. This is a listening phase.
Don’t try and tackle everything at once. Stick to the top 3-5 priorities that surface to the top.
Don’t assume you already know the focus areas before you start, dig deeper and validate your hunch with data.
Evaluate the entire employment journey: Interview -> Pre-hire -> Orientation -> First Assignment -> Tenured Employee -> Alumni.

Executing the Engagement Initiatives

The most difficult part is executing employee engagement initiatives with continuity and consistency so that they become ingrained in the organization’s culture. It’s easy for the changes in the business environment and customer demands to take priority over time and resources allocated to internal initiatives, but it’s your job as a leader to keep the long-term vision integrated, which is why the first two steps above with regards to mobilizing the right team and focusing on the top priorities are so important. Let this be a team initiative.

Best Practices to Launch Your Team Engagement Initiative

Autonomy rules. Providing autonomy for the teams to explore and topics and collaborate among their teams. Innovation is one of our Perficient values and we don’t get there by restraints.
Establish parameters rather than provide direction to let the teams get creative.
Assemble a team with a mix of strategic thinking skills, along with those strong in execution and follow-through.
Governance matters. Establish a decision-making process for activities that need approval and try and establish budgets in advance.
Implement accountability forums such as a weekly stand-up or a bi-monthly/monthly meeting that bring the leads together to share successes and capture feedback.
Celebrate wins along the way and let the team have some fun with it.

READ MORE: The Power of Gratitude

Measuring Team Engagement Success

There are some key metrics you should track that will show the impact of your employee engagement efforts. Make sure to establish a baseline prior to starting and document each major moment to attribute it back to trends you see in other channels. Your HR team can help you with this.

Annual Employee Engagement Surveys
Employee Absenteeism and Turnover Rate
eNPS – Employee Net Provider Score
Diversity Retention Rates

It’s also important to understand and capture the intangibles of the culture. How does it feel when you are together? Can you sense a high level of connection among the team? Does it feel like a place of safety, friendship, and teamwork? What are your employees saying to family and friends about your workplace? You can document this in your notes after meetings (a simple 1-5 rating scale could work) or capture responses to these questions in team-level check-ins to stay close to changing trends.

How To Measure Team Engagement

Step back and look at how people are showing up to staff meetings.
Establish a plan for stewardship and continuous improvement.
Take a look at how active team members are in recruiting and retention efforts.
See how your employees are promoting the company on social media.
Do you feel proud when you describe your organization to others?

I mentioned it before, but leading team engagement isn’t always easy. Engagement fluctuates with changes in personnel, business cycles, and economic conditions, which is why it is so important for it to be on everyone’s radar. Everyone plays a role in team engagement. Having an approach that enables commitment, consistency, and continuity is really important. It requires focus and attention, but most of all, it requires leadership. That’s where you come in! Share your team engagement efforts in the comments below.

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.

Learn more about what it’s like to work at Perficient at our Careers page.

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Designing the Business Process Model to Implement Strategy

Tony Mauro — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:02:32 +0000

This is part 2 of a 5 part blog series on defining an operating model for your organization.

In this post, we explore Step 2: Establishing the Business Process Model

A number of industries are currently facing disruption and change. In addition, the daily grind of running the business can knock us around a bit and we can lose track of the strategic direction. For an operating model to be effective, there must be a clear strategy. For a refresher, check out my first blog on step 1, Capturing Key Insights to Define Strategic Priorities.

Once the strategy has been set, leaders must effectively mobilize their teams and work among their peers to put plans in place. So whether you are in the C-Suite or a functional leader in a large enterprise, you can build and implement an operating model for the company or your team.

One of the tools that we leverage to design the operating model and to stay on track is a business process model.

What is a business process model?

It’s a structured set of processes, sub-processes, and activities that are grouped together to provide value and specific outcomes
The major components of a process model include: Inputs, Outputs, Actors/Owners, Activities, Systems/Tools, and KPIs/Metrics
Like onions and ogres, process models come in layers. The processes roll-up into each other and can be mapped to the vision and aligned with the strategic priorities

Process Model Considerations & Tips:

Scope Matters:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when creating a process model and determining the right structure.

Start by listing the processes and subprocesses that produce outputs that your team is accountable
Iterate on the process list and groupings will appear and the model will take shape
Use the strategic priorities to shape what processes should be in or out of scope
Focus on the processes that have the biggest impact and provide the most value to the organization
Evaluate the processes that are not adding value or contributing to outcomes and begin eliminating them

Clear Boundaries

Right now, there are hundreds of organizations evaluating roles and responsibilities and leaders are trying to understand how their team fits into the organization. As an organization grows, there can be gray areas of responsibility.

Once again, it starts with alignment on the strategic priorities
Be clear on process ownership and accountability vs. contribution (more to come when we explore the organizational structure)
Identify the critical inputs, outputs, and dependencies to the process and understand their importance to the effectiveness of the process
Map the demarcation points across multiple processes
Understand the dependencies across the processes

Engagement

Can your employees see how they fit into the process model and make a connection with their responsibilities and the execution of the strategy?

Reinforce the strategic priorities frequently to keep what matters most top of mind
Make connections between the big picture and the day-to-day
Celebrate the wins when executing the process moves the needle on achieving strategic objectives (we’ll talk about this more when we dive deeper into performance measures)
Foster continuous improvement and capture feedback. Process models are never complete, they are dynamic and constantly change.

Once the process model is defined, the next step is to ensure you have the right team to deliver it. We’ll explore that in the next blog on Step 3: Aligning the organizational structure.

To learn more about effectively defining an operating model for your organization, you can download our guide below or you can find it on our website here.

Capturing Key Insights to Define Strategic Priorities

Tony Mauro — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 17:26:35 +0000

This is part 1 of a 5 part blog series on effectively defining an operating model for your organization.

In this post, we will explore Step 1: Defining the Strategic Priorities

Strategic planning is often done in the C-Suite. However, it is important for functional leaders to develop a strategic plan and an operating model that aligns their team to the corporate strategy.

I’m not going to dive too deep into the approach for defining a strategy in this post. Rather, I do want to focus on the need to define the top 3-5 strategic priorities that will move the needle for the organization.

Sounds fairly simple right? There is definitely an art to identifying and landing on the right list of strategic priorities that are going to make a significant impact on the organization. So whether you lead the entire company or a large functional team, you can use strategic priorities as the foundation to build your operating model and rally your team around.

Below are a few key considerations when establishing the right strategic priorities for your organization.

Be Open to Learning

Start by performing a comprehensive environmental scan, (Customers, Industry, Competitors, Environment, Internal Assessment) to truly uncover key insights. My favorite description of key insights comes from Willie Pietersen, in his book Strategic Learning. He defines key insights as the “The brutal truths” about the external environment and internal realities which will enable us to make the most intelligent choices. He also outlines the importance of framing the “do or die” issue or issues that must be dealt with.

Too often, information is filtered as it works it’s ways through the organization into the executive ranks. It can get so watered down that it is no longer addressing the “brutal truths”. By fostering a culture and commitment to learning, leaders will have a higher likelihood of seeing the information through an objective lens. It’s so important that the team members accountable for delivering the insights are operating in a safe environment. That they can share information without risk.

Therefore, leaders also have to demonstrate an openness to receiving the insights. Brutal truths are not easy pills to swallow and the initial reaction may be to take a defensive posture. By establishing a learning mindset, leaders can protect themselves from rationalizing away the insights.

Foster Collaboration

Upon collecting the key insights from within and outside of the organization, leaders can get laser-focused on defining the strategic priorities.

So leaders have an opportunity to engage members of their teams that have a strong pulse of the organization and access to the insights. This doesn’t have to involve an executive retreat or being locked in a room with whiteboards of flip charts. It involves engaging the key folks that are interacting with your customers, suppliers, partners, and employees. The show Uncover Boss does an excellent job showing the impact on leaders when they are able to capture the insights directly by rolling up their sleeves.

Sometimes insights surface clear as day. But many times it takes a process of iteration and debate to find the right set of strategic priorities. So allow time for the insights to breathe and the opportunity to capture feedback from a variety of stakeholders to hone the priorities. Getting the right strategic priorities isn’t something that just happens in one night. (Unless you are Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry McGuire).

Put Energy Behind the Rollout

The strategic priorities will be the guideposts on which the operating model is built. In addition to shaping organizational decisions, they have a significant impact on initiative execution, employee behaviors, and shaping the overall culture.

Effective Strategic Priorities Are:

Clear, concise, and easily understood by all stakeholder groups
Critical inputs into the decision-making process (Value Proposition, Markets, Channels, Customers)
Relevant to the day-to-day processes and desired outcomes
Structured for organizational effectiveness
Tied to measures and rewards
Communicated through champions and leaders in the company to win over the employee base

The most significant takeaway from Willie Pietersen’s Strategic Learning process is that the strategic planning process is a cycle. So often, we think strategy and operational design as a linear process that has a finish line. Today’s economic forces are requiring the strategic assessment cycle to be more and more frequent and dynamic.

Building the Operating Model Around Strategic Priorities:

In the upcoming posts, I’ll focus on how an organization can put the operating model in place to achieve the strategic priorities in order to achieve the desired outcomes.

I’ll provide considerations and tips for implementing the components of the operating model, including:

Taking a process model approach
Structuring the organization
Putting the right systems and tools in place
Establishing the right performance measures

P.S. I learned the mission statement in Jerry McGuire was influenced by a memo sent by Jeffrey Katzenberg, in 1991 at Disney. It called for Disney to return to its roots and focus on storytelling.

P.S.S. You can read the whole 25 page Jerry Maguire memo here.

To learn more about effectively defining an operating model for your organization, you can download our guide below or you can find it on our website here.

What is the one word that will define success in 2019?

Tony Mauro — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 08:38:39 +0000

We turned the page on another year and over the next few weeks, organizations and individuals everywhere will be communicating their strategic priorities, goals, and objectives for 2019.

This year, I would like to challenge you to identify the one word that describes the success you desire for 2019. Then, ensure that your strategic goals and performance measures are aligned to achieve it.

Background:

I recently had a career based conversation with Kathy Henely, our recent COO at Perficient, who is retiring this year. I wanted to capture some insights on career management and personal development. Two things stood out from that conversation.

Think about how I want to feel when I look back on my career
Pick a single word that represents your goals and makes success very clear.

She ‘had me at hello’, and this is exactly the reinforcement that I needed at this time in my career journey. I’ve been exploring both questions over the past two years, and the word that I had landed on was ‘engaged’. This was mainly to keep my work/life balance intact and focus on my wife and 2 daughters (now 2 and 4-years-old). It started as the word to describe the ‘life’ half of the equation, but then I saw that I could use it to assess how engaged I was with my work, with my colleagues, and really in everything that I was doing. (I shared some additional insights on how my home life has influenced my professional life in a blog this past March, 7 Ways My 3 Year Old Improves My Relationships at Work)

I’ve definitely embraced using this one word approach in my personal life. My 2019 word is ‘commitment’. I dive into it in my personal blog that I just launched at mixingpods.com.

Back to Business:

However, I believe that there is no reason why this one word approach can’t be applied to how we measure success of our operations.

For manufacturing companies, the words may be: Accuracy, Volume, Quality, Margin
For service oriented companies, we may use words like: Relationships, Detail, Value, Trust

In the coming weeks, I’ll be diving into a blog series on operating model design and when we talk about measuring performance against strategic priorities. We will explore the need to establish a metric hierarchy to ensure all performance measures are aligned. With this approach, when you assess the metrics hierarchy, identify the one word that stands out and can serve as the umbrella over all of your key metrics and provide the heart and soul behind the numbers.

Why I love this approach:

It’s simple
It’s focused
You can share it and rally the team behind it
You can anchor all you actions to it
It’s easy to assess if what you are doing contributes to the spirit behind your chosen word
It’s easy to get back on track

So this time next year, when you look back and assess your performance against your strategic priorities, what end result do you hope to accomplish? What one word describes it best?

Creativity?
Innovation?
Discipline?
Compassion?
Engagement?

Can you rally your team around this?

Go for it!

Sometimes You Need to Manufacture Momentum

Tony Mauro — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 12:00:59 +0000

The past few months have been very busy in all aspects of my life and it has felt like one of those grind it out kind of periods. A major project was stalling, I hadn’t put out a blog in a while, and I wasn’t feeling great about my accomplishments. Work/life balance was ok, but I just wasn’t in a groove and definitely not feeling that I was operating at my best. I didn’t have momentum.

Then a couple of weeks back, while I was driving into work, I pulled up next to a black Ford Explorer and the driver caught my attention. His windows were down and loud music was pouring out of the SUV. I looked over and he was air drumming, air guitaring, and singing all at the same time. His head was bobbing and I think he was even biting his upper lip. He was in a groove. I have no idea who he was, where he was going, or anything about his story. I just saw a person that was in a really good place.

It made me smile. I’ve been there before and it is awesome. It’s that feeling when everything is going your way and you have momentum in your favor. It was the trigger that I needed to put things into perspective and reignited the desire to get my mojo back. I called a friend of mine, Candace Mau, who is a firm believer in the power of the proper mindset, as she has started hosting Joy Workshops. We brainstormed our favorite ways to manufacture momentum and get into the right mindset.

Our Top Ten List:

1) Turn up your favorite playlist

Music has an amazing ability to influence our mental state. In 2014, I published an article published in Consulting Magazine Run your Project Like a Rock Concert, where I connected rolling out a major project to putting on a show and engaging the crowd. It was inspired by listening to an upbeat and live album while on a morning run during a time that I was in my groove. I like to think of it like the soundtrack to this movie called ‘your life’ that you are writing, directing, and staring. You most likely know the songs or genre that does it for you. Get them queued and turn them up!

2) Clear the deck

My wife teases me about this one and calls it ‘sorting, sorting, sorting’, inspired by a flight attendant on a trip to London. The flight attendant resorted the entire galley before we took off and clearly needed it to be set up just the way she liked it for this long flight. I end up doing the same thing before starting a big task or even when I’m not exactly sure where to start. I’ll organize my desk space, files on my computer, and deleting all the e-mails that have no more value. I feel more focused when I’m operating with a clean slate. I used to view this as procrastinating, but now I embrace it as a productivity hack.

3) Eat that frog

Brian Tracy wrote a great book, Eat that Frog, based on the famous quote from Mark Twain “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”. Reinforcing that you have to prioritize the important tasks because you will never get to everything on your list. Accomplishing these most important things is what really creates the momentum. I’ve started listing out my top 3 MVP items in categories (work, project, personal) that I must complete that day and treating the rest like a backlog. If it is too big to get done in one day, break it down into smaller parts that make progress towards the ultimate goal.

4) Get moving

Today’s work environment provides us with so many tools that we hardly need to leave our desks, or for some, not even leave their home. It has gotten to the point that we now buy watches that tell us when to stand up and bracelets to track our steps. Yes, physical movement literally (or figuratively… I never know which one to use), creates momentum. I’m amazed at how many great ideas or thoughts on how to do something come to me while I’m walking down the hall or have stepped away for a minute. Nothing beats engaging with someone face-to face anyway, so walk over to that person rather than pinging them on chat or sending a text. Walk around while you call them and find ways to put motion into your day-to-day activities.

5) Stop taking things so seriously and start laughing

Things are so heavy today. The divisive politics, the volatile stock market, climate change, (insert headline here). On top of that, we take our jobs so seriously and sometimes it feels like we lose sight of the great opportunity that we have for connection every day. My wife shared with me a book that her school embraced called the Energy Bus, by Jon Gordon. The parable shows the power of positive energy and its transformational impact on a businessman. It resonates because I can definitely see it, and feel it when positivity is contagiously flowing through a group and creating energy. I’ll sometimes resort to a dad joke to break the ice and kick start the momentum (that’s a topic for another blog). Work is always going to be work, so we might as well have some fun while we are at it.

6) Show gratitude

Honestly, this is a fairly new one to me and one that I am embracing more and more, especially after becoming a father. I used to view momentum and success by the number of tasks I accomplished or by achieving certain results. It was all about me. I was so focused on the future and used the fear of failure as the motivator. Although a clear vision is necessary, being grateful and engaged in the present is what fuels positive momentum and makes the journey so much more enjoyable.

7) Engage in your passion

We get energy when we are doing what we enjoy most. Find the time to reengage in one or two things that you enjoy the most and the benefits will carry over to your day-to-day. Whether it is spending time with friends, reading, exercising, or any of the other million great things you can do in this world. When you do it, go all in. This is your passion, so you should be doing it passionately. Let the engagement with your one of your favorite activities be the catalyst to get your momentum flowing in the right direction.

8) Establish your routine

If you feel like you lost momentum, there is a good chance that you are out of routine. I don’t think there is a self-help book, coach, or therapist that doesn’t preach the importance of routine. Redefine what is going to make up your daily, weekly, monthly routine and start executing on it. Ensure the routine includes engaging in your passion from #7 above. Getting into routines can definitely help you manufacture momentum, but most importantly, help you maintain your momentum.

9) Celebrate success and make adjustments

Take a step back and look at where you are on your journey. What goals have you met, what things have changed, and are you holding on to the past or focused on something that isn’t important anymore. It’s not only about what you are going to do, but also deciding what you are NOT going to do. This is the first year that I have tracked my progress against my annual goals on a weekly basis. Every Sunday night, I rate my performance (Red, Yellow, Green) against my personal goals for the year. It’s made a difference in keeping me focused on what I deemed as important and making changes real-time. This ensures that I’m committed to goals and not just making resolutions.

10) Just Do it!

We all know this Nike slogan and it is brilliant in so many ways. Just getting started can be the hardest part. Sometimes you just need to jump in, take the leap, and get started to manufacture the momentum.

I know there are hundreds of articles and books a on this and related topics (I think I own most of them). However, sometimes you just need to see it in action, like the guy at the stoplight or come across someones blog to get you going. I hope that you find your top 10 ways to your momentum going!

Other Blogs by Tony Mauro:

Why I love the marathon relay as a team-building event

Are You Book Smart or Street Smart? Maybe Neither!

7 Ways My 3 Year Old Improves My Relationships at Work

Use a Simple Approach to Achieve Your Strategic Goals

Why I Love the Marathon Relay as a Company Team-building Event

Tony Mauro — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 03:46:22 +0000

Our company participated in the Colfax Marathon Relay again this year. It’s a great event with the marathon broken up into 5 legs (6.5, 4.0, 5.5, 4.1, and 6.1 miles). While I was running my leg, I started thinking about why I like running this race every year with my coworkers (mainly to distract me from the hill I was running up).

Some teams are in it to win it. Some are all about outfits and fun. Then there are those that just want to finish (the survivors). Our team has been made up of all of the above over the years, just a bunch of outdoor cats.

Anyway, somewhere around mile marker 5, I landed on 3 reasons this is such a good team builder for corporate the world:

There is a clear goal

Complete 26.2 miles. It’s that simple. The distance is fixed and everyone knows their part in achieving the goal. There is no misalignment, misunderstanding, alternative motives, or miscommunication (unless someone sleeps in and misses their hand-off). It’s just not that complicated and doesn’t require a change management plan to implement. Apply that kind of simplicity and focus to your daily goals in the workplace and you are off and running.

A different kind of teamwork

Although each person runs 4-6 miles as an ‘individual contributor’ in business speak, there is a great sense of accomplishment completing the marathon as a team. Each member of the relay team wears the same bib number and you really feel the team pride when you pass the baton at the end of your leg. This year, I ran the first leg and our team captain, who was running the last leg (over 2 hours later in a different location), texted me to ask what corral I was in to start. I just thought he was making sure that I made it to the starting line on time since the run started at 6:00 a.m. Then I saw him standing there with his coffee and he said, “I felt it was important to be here for the start and show support for the team”. That level of connection and commitment really touched me.

It’s bigger than you

You’re not running for your own success, you are running your hardest in order to not let the team down. The results are not controlled by one individual and the overall outcome is based on everyone’s contribution and effort. The cool thing about this race is the Corporate Cup, with the top 3 teams in a division winning monetary awards that are donated to one of the many qualifying charities. This allows the team to make even a bigger impact. We were fortunate to win our division a few times and had the privilege to hand over that giant check to Colorado Canine Rescue.

So next time you are using a cheesy metaphor at work; Instead of saying, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint!” Change it up and say, “It’s not a marathon or a sprint, it’s a marathon relay!”

Other Blogs by Tony Mauro:

Are You Book Smart of Street Smart? Mayb e Neither!
7 Ways My 3 Year Old Improves My Relationships at Work
Use a Simple Approach to Achieve Your Strategic Goals

Are You Book Smart or Street Smart? Maybe Neither!

Tony Mauro — Mon, 14 May 2018 10:50:28 +0000

Back in 2011, I was getting to know my new team on a project. I’m not exactly sure how the conversation started, but the question came up if we thought we were book smart or street smart? So rather than make up my rationale for one or the other, I thought the best answer would come from asking a friend.

I called Derrick, one of my best friends from high-school and after warning him that he was on the speaker phone with my colleagues, I asked “Hey, am I book smart or street smart?” Without hesitation and with confidence, he replied, “Ohh… You are definitely neither!” The room chuckled and I thanked him (while thinking this might be the end to his free help desk support every time he had a computer problem). But then Derrick said, “You’re people smart, you have a knack for bringing people together to get stuff done.” (and he totally redeemed himself!)

My career as a management consultant is centered on working closely with people on projects to achieve a desired outcome. I frequently look back on this feedback, especially when I am feeling stuck and need to get back to leveraging my strengths. So I thought that I would dedicate this blog to providing advice to my fellow “Neithers” out there with the 5 tips below:

1. You’re Not the Smartest Person in the Room, So Don’t Try and Be

We work with so many amazing people on a daily basis. The best collaboration takes place when egos are left at the door (including your own) and different perspectives are brought together. True collaboration is harder than it sounds, and many times, each individual is focused on driving their vision and ideas forward. Active listening is not always easy, especially for the leader, and it can be difficult stopping yourself from being the a meeting monopolizer and knowing when you should just sit on your hands (I know, kind of a weird trick).

For me, it all clicked when a client executive complimented me for sitting back and letting the team do its thing, and then wrapping it all together and ensuring alignment on next steps. I honestly didn’t recognize it, but his right words at the right time helped me see that the designated lead does not always have to be in the driver’s seat, and that is OK. It also showed the importance of letting creativity flow among the most qualified and passionate with different perspectives. Most importantly, the need to stay focused on the big picture and overall outcome.

2. Break Down Barriers

During the Great Recession in 2008, I was on a large post-merger program integrating the new organization, processes and systems. I was definitely in a stretch role, with the largest team that I’ve ever had to manage and totally unfamiliar with the new system. I was extremely overwhelmed. After a few tough weeks, I felt that I didn’t have the competence for the role, and tried to get myself rolled off the project and thought I was at risk of being fired.

Instead, I received some of the best advice and support of my career. The engagement lead said something like, “we have lots of team members that know the system, the client likes working with you, so we need you to use your skills to break down barriers for the team”. It triggered an immediate paradigm shift in my mindset from worrying about my book smarts, to making it my purpose to enable the team, navigate the organization, and remove the obstacles in our way. My job was not to be the expert, but to connect people and create an environment that the subject matter experts could collaborate, make decisions, and hit the milestones.

3. Be the Glue

One of the most street smart characters that comes to mind for me is ‘Red’, in the movie Shawshank Redemption, played by Morgan Freeman. He was “the guy that could get you things” and his survival in prison was based on the value of his relationships. So my version of being street smart is what one of my clients described as being the ‘glue’. Just about every role in my career has been working on large cross-functional projects that require various groups to get the project done. Sometimes it amazes me how little the various functional teams interact with each other and just focus on their area of responsibility.

There is great value by bringing the teams together, sharing how they operate, and putting together an integrated solution. Sometimes you are met with resistance and misalignment of goals. To get through this, you have to be authentic, relationship focused, and establish trust. Once you have done that, you will gain advocates and can focus on capturing and demonstrating the shared value.

4. Just Ship It (and Iterate)

In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin, describes the importance of ‘shipping’ and battling through the resistance that we put up that prevents our ‘art’ from getting out the door. Things like procrastination, self-doubt, and fear make up the resistance that many of us face on a daily bases. Creating something from scratch can be difficult and overwhelming for a lot of us, but we are excellent at making things better. Agile methodologies are not only for software development and can be applied to everything we create.

It’s not about creating something perfect, it’s about creating something effective. Once you get momentum, the amount of effort required to get to the next level of maturity is a much smaller step. We went through a phase when everything we did was a one-pager. This forced us to keep our messages simple, direct, and easy to understand. Our pieces were never perfect and we would iterate to make them better each time. Most importantly, we got them out the door and into our client’s hands.

5. Establish an Approach and Implement it

It was my older brother that had the most influence on forming my study habits when I entered college. I’ve never been book smart (as Derrick established later in life) and reading comprehension and retention has always been a challenge for me. My brother’s tip was to take notes in outline format during the lecture, transition it to note cards, and use those note cards when studying for exams. This became my approach for my course work, no matter what the subject and it worked so well that I ended up graduating Cum Laude.

I later learned from taking StrengthsFinder 2.0, that ‘Arranger’ is one of my top strengths and have since become a serial arranger. As consultants, prior to starting a large program or project, we take the time to map out the approach in what we call a POV (point of view). It ensures everyone is on the same page and is aligned on how we are going to execute the program. I very seldom start a project, no matter the size, without outlining and sharing the approach with key stakeholders.

Coming Full Circle

So the other day, I mentioned to Derrick that I was going to write this Blog and thanked him for his insight 7 years ago. He thought it was funny and we chatted about some other things going on in our lives. However, before getting off the phone, he said, “oh yeah… you are still neither!”

There are so many personality/skill evaluations out there, but sometimes it’s best to just ask a friend or look at how you interact with family as wrote about in the blog, 7 Ways My 3 Year Old Improves My Relationships at Work.

7 Ways My 3 Year Old Improves My Relationships at Work

Tony Mauro — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 10:00:36 +0000

My wife and I met in college, married after 4 years, waited 13 years before having children, and we now have 2 daughters. We have a 3-year-old (Maggie) and 18-month-old (Addie). I knew that I would continue to grow as a parent, but had no idea the impact kids would have on my professional development and relationships . I definitely have a better perspective on what all those work/life balance presentations were all about.

1. Avoiding Tantrums at Target

I’m pretty sure every parent knows the consequences of a toddler in need of a nap, food, or change of scenery. You know the 3-year-old is tired, but you just want to get in that quick errand to Target. Next thing you know, you’re in the checkout line, trying to articulate why you are NOT going to buy that candy necklace hanging there at your child’s eye level. It escalates, you feel embarrassed and frustrated, and set-up by the head of merchandising. Two minutes into your drive home, she is out cold in the car seat, candy necklace everywhere, and you contemplate if you should even tell mom how it went.

The funny thing is that we make this mistake on a daily basis in the workplace with our colleagues, and only compound it when things get really busy. We schedule meetings over lunch, we take that only 30 minute slot available on the calendar, and we send urgent e-mail requests at 4:30 pm assuming that they’ll be online later get it . We focus on when we need things, rather than factoring in what others have on their plate or applying context on what else may be happening that day. I have to remind myself to ask if this a good time to initiate this discussion? Should this be a face to face meeting? Does the person need a heads up this conversation is coming? If you don’t think it through, you may be on the other side of a tantrum.

2. Creative Time isn’t Just for Kids

All those years as a DINK (Dual Income, No Kids), I would get my best work done between 10:00pm and midnight. There were no interruptions, I could turn on some tunes, focus, and crank out deliverables. I have struggled a bit with the transition to a family-centered life and have to figure out a new daily rhythm. My nights of productivity have been replaced by stumbling to the fridge in the middle of the night to fetch a bottle. I’ve also learned that my girls are definitely more creative and excited to learn at certain times of day.

This applies to most of my clients as well. For example, when defining the strategies and operating models like I mentioned in my first blog, Using a Simple Approach to Achieve your Strategic Goals, the timing of these conversations varied greatly by client. For example, with one client, we did all of our strategic planning work in the morning and after 3:00 pm was off limits. We usually had these meetings early in the week on Monday or Tuesday, by the end of the week he was totally fried and didn’t have the positive energy needed to talk about transforming the organization. On the flip side, Friday afternoons work better for another client. He finally has a chance to escape the day-to-day demands, the barrage of e-mails and urgent requests, to spend a few hours reflect on the organization and do some big picture thinking.

3. When You Wet the Bed… Get Cleaned Up, and Move On!

The first time Maggie wet the bed, she was kind of freaked out and we weren’t exactly ready for it (she was in our bed). It took some time to get her to relax and she was really upset. However, in the few times she did it after that, it really wasn’t a big deal because we didn’t make it a big deal. I can be pretty hard on myself after I make a mistake or if I think that I could have done something better. This can creep into how I work with others and I can let disappointments bring me down for way too long.

As I teach a 3-year-old that accidents happen, that we clean up our spills, and we dust ourselves off, etc., I have to model the same mindset. At work this means acknowledging mistakes, talking to team members and clients about what we can do better, and moving on. After action reviews and real-time lesson learned sessions are great, just don’t let these things fester. Maggie has been doing a good job of reminding me of this lately since she has chosen to carry around the book ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… And It’s All Small Stuff’, by Richard Carlson. If she only knew!

4. Discovering Who has the Screen Time Problem

I’m now in the world of trying to monitor and reduce screen time for our kids. However, I’m pretty sure I’m the one with the screen time problem, and I don’t know if I see it going away anytime soon. More and more of our daily activities are done on our devices. It’s more than social media and texting, and includes banking, taxes, calendars, volunteer work, watching sports. Any more, it’s about reducing the number of screens in use at one time. The shouts of “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy” are a clear indicator of when I am not present and distracted by my phone. I’m pretty sure my adult co-workers know it as well, but don’t shout my name 3 times until I acknowledge them. I spend hours of the business day in front of a computer and now many interactions with my business colleagues comes through texts.

So I try to win the battle by walking to someone’s desk rather than shooting them a message via Skype. I try to make a personal call and leave a message. Recently, a client answered my call with “Hey Tony!”, which I responded with a “So you have my number memorized?”. The answer, “Nope, you are the only one that calls this number.” I think you can differentiate yourself these days just by being present and making an effort to connect in person.

5. Don’t Give Lame Answers to Good Questions

I am amazed at how quickly my 3-year-old can see through a quick, half-baked response to a question. It doesn’t take a whole lot of extra time to explain something more clearly and provide a great learning opportunity. I find myself wanting to provide better answers and taking the time to see where the conversation goes. How often do we either provide or accept lame answers to some of our good questions at work?

We have an opportunity to really develop deeper relationships, share valuable knowledge, and learn new things. So many times we are afraid to ask someone what an acronym means, or get a clarification in a meeting out of fear that others may think we are incompetent. Chances are that you have a good question and you aren’t the only person that wants the answer. Getting or providing good answers allows everyone involved to be more accountable for the overall outcome discussed. The best part is that if it is truly a lame question, just like a 3-year-old, everyone moves on to the next thing.

6. Be More Unscripted

I’m definitely not suggesting going around wearing pajamas and cowboy boots or insist on doing a twirls in your office chair. (Which is awesome by the way, just hang out in your office for 2 minutes with a 3-year-old and I guarantee it happens at least once). There is nothing better than watching toddlers just do their thing, learn something for the first time, try and make sense of the world, and get a kick out of the simple life.

I am finding the more unscripted that I am at work, the more that I am getting to know my colleagues. It’s in these moments that we develop personal relationships and enjoy the day-to-day work that takes up such a large percentage of our time during the week. That small talk in the elevator puts me in a much better mood than if I just stood there with everyone else staring at the doors. Applying a little humor in a meeting engages team members to participate and makes it a comfortable environment to ask those good questions. I tend to be a serial planner, basically ensuring that everything is in place the night before a big working session. I get feedback from folks that they want more opportunity to contribute. I’m learning being less scripted brings out more in others and relationships form naturally, contributing to overall better outcomes.

7. Be Aligned as a Leadership Team

You would think that years of watching 80’s and 90’s family sitcoms (Growing Pains, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Full House, etc.) that based hundreds of episodes on the consequence of parents not being aligned and being exploited by the kids would have sunk in. Well, it turns out this is harder than it looks and my wife and are learning how to get on the same page to ensure we are reinforcing the right behaviors. (I should definitely let my wife know that I am posting this blog). It doesn’t take long to do, but making sure your aligned on intentions, behaviors, values, will help you set expectations on how your team operates.

The leadership team needs to take the time to get aligned when it comes to major things impacting the broader team. I hear from team members that misaligned leadership and mixed messages annoys them more than the changes being relayed. However, each leadership team member needs to be authentic and transparent in how they deliver the messages. At the end of the day, we must be truly vested in the relationship and trust trumps everything… my 3-year-old is teaching me that!

Q2 is Here! Use a Simple Approach to Achieve Your Strategic Goals

Tony Mauro — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 11:00:26 +0000

We are heading toward the end of Q1. Organizations have finalized budgets and have set their strategic direction. Do you feel like you have the right operating model in place for your team to meet company objectives? Do you have your priorities sorted out? What does success look like?

Stepping back and taking a simple operating model approach to implement your strategy will yield immediate and long-term benefits:

Ensuring alignment with the overall enterprise vision and strategy
Aligning your function with your peers and partners
Driving focus with your team on the priorities and measurable outcomes
Providing clarity to others in the organization
Establishing an introspective and continuous learning culture

This exercise isn’t just for those at the top, you can do it with your team over a series of small working sessions.

1. Define The Strategic Priorities

Define the top 3-5 things you can do that will move the needle for your organization. Sometimes the priorities are obvious and clear, sometimes it requires some serious churn to land on the right set of priorities.

Collaborate: Reach out to your peers, engage your team, find partners in the industry, and get different perspectives on strategic direction.
Iterate & debate: Test the priorities against each other, dive a bit deeper until the priorities become specific, achievable, and don’t require explanation.
Incubate: Let your priorities soak for a bit and breathe. What might seem like a priority out of the gate may fade as you get into a more strategic mindset.

Once you have landed on your top strategic priorities, turn your focus towards aligning your processes, team members, systems, and performance measures to achieve the desired outcomes.

2. Establish the Process Model:

Clearly articulate the what your team is accountable and committed to deliver to the overall value stream, shared services, or foundational operations.

Clear Scope: Understand the processes you own versus those that you contribute or only need to be informed. Be able to articulate what is NOT in your scope.
Clear demarcation points: Understand the inputs and outputs with your organization and the others in the enterprise. Overtime, these boundaries can get blurry, so taking some time to clarify roles and responsibilities with your peers will help avoid confusion and go a long way and avoid turf wars.
Ogres and Onions: Processes are like ogres and onions, they come in layers. By breaking down your processes into a layered inventory, you can get to the detail necessary to clearly define the inputs and outputs, responsible owners, the required tool, and control points.

3. Align the Organization Structure

Now that you have clearly defined the processes, put the right organization structure in place to effectively manage the process.

Right leaders: Surround yourself with great lieutenants. Many organizations reward top performers with promotions into management positions and these great individual contributors are thrust into leadership roles before they are ready. Transitioning from an doer to leader is an art and it takes time to hone management skills.
Right person in right role: Many employees don’t flourish until they are in the right role at the right time. Think about where it may make sense to make some personnel moves to find a better fit for a team member and make it a win-win situation.
Right mix of skills. Proactively diversify your team and embrace a mix of skills to maximize the strengths across the team. Put together a well-rounded team that combines deep subject matter experts with generalists that can be flexible across roles. It’s also important to balance technical skills with soft skills such as effective communication and emotional intelligence.

4. Select the Right Systems and Tools

In today’s business climate, there are so many tools to support business processes and provide unique capabilities. It is so easy to fall into the trap to believe that if you only had the right systems, everything would be just fine.

Keep it simple: Find the right tool suite stick to it in order to maximize the value. Every time you introduce a new tool, you increase variability and lose some of the coveted benefits you seek to achieve. However, if it is definitely not working, reassess what you need and move on quickly.
Be real: It takes discipline and commitment to maximize the ROI on technical investments used across organizations. Expectations on what the tool set will provide need to be set at all levels of the organization.
Right-sized: Spend the time up front to ensure that you are selecting the tools that meet your requirements and are appropriate for your business. There is no reason anymore to buy more than you need or to introduce complexity that your team doesn’t gain benefit.

5. Implement Performance Measures:

Establish a Hierarchy. Like a value tree, start with the #1 performance measure that effectively shows progress in achieving the strategic priorities. Then define the 2-3 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can used consistently measure and show trends against the performance measure. From there, you can then define each of the metrics across the organization that impact the KPIs.
Business Rhythm: Establish the frequency that you are going to assess your performance against the strategic priorities. You will gain credibility and trust by sharing your progress and providing transparency across your leadership, peers, and employees.

Do it all again: Taking an operating model approach to run an organization is a continuous improvement activity that should be refreshed, revised and takes discipline and commitment. The most effective leaders are constantly evaluating where to make improvements and seizing opportunities. They are honest with their progress, understand they will mature over time, and get genuinely excited about the opportunities to come.