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Aspiring and professional speakers, alike, are always interested in honing their speaking expertise. There is always room for improvement and innovation in everything we do. There are so many things that we do as speakers which become second nature...
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Why Bother With Distributed Leadership?
I'm an alumni of Boston University Graduate School of
Management, so I receive the Alumni magazine Bostonia. To be
honest, that doesn't mean I read it faithfully at all. But this
issue was different. George Labovitz, a professor in
organizational behavior at the school wrote an article recently
on his research into the application of alignment to achieve
extraordinary results in organizations.
He caught me with the first sentence: "More than thirty years of
research has shown that aligned and integrated organizations
outperform their nearest competitors in every major financial
measure."
He admitted not many organizations do it, but those that utilize
it well also realize a significant competitive advantage!
By definition: alignment is the optimal state in which strategy,
people, customers, and key processes work in concert to propel
growth and profits. When business leaders implement this kind of
alignment, the whole organization enjoys greater customer
satisfaction, employee satisfaction, greater returns for
investors. To do this, they de-emphasize hierarchy and
distribute authority, information, knowledge, and customer data.
As a result, every employee top to bottom, understands the
strategy and goals of the business. Consequently, everyone knows
how his/her work contributes to it.
There are many ways to measure alignment. But you can only
achieve alignment across the board through distributed
leadership. Implementing such strategies develops leadership in
each unit of your operation and at different levels of your
organization. You actually end up empowering employees to act
and give them the knowledge about what must be done.
With this kind of clear vision and strong communication, you can
allow your team to run with tasks and projects
independent of
your day-to day management, freeing you for higher level
leadership tasks and responsibilities.
With this kind of clear vision and strong communication, you can
allow your team to run with tasks and projects independent of
your day-to day management, freeing you for higher level
leadership tasks and responsibilities.
* Keep people connected - so they know what is at stake.
* Help people think holistically. You can't expect them to make
good decisions if they can't see the big picture.
* Keep people connected to the company vision, mission and goals
- raise the horizon of understanding so they are not limited to
seeing only department or job specific goals.
* Reward and recognize people for working toward the main goal -
not just department goals.
* How you bring this into the review process will drive it home
for future behavior.
*Create opportunities for people to interact - they work better
with people they know personally and can empathize with.
* Make the process iterative - taking action is not a one-time
thing.
To answer the question I posed: Why bother? Is it worth it? I
think so. These are the same tactics we all need to cultivate in
business and organizations, to make the leap from good to great.
Excellence is like the family silver, the more you use it and
polish it up regularly, the better it looks.
About the author:
Kerri Salls, MBA runs a virtual business school to train,
consult and coach small business CEO's and entrepreneurs in 10
key strategies to make more profit in less time. Learn more at
http://www.breakthrough-business-school.com/products.html or
sign up for a free weekly newsletter at
http://www.breakthrough-business-school.com/newsletter.shtml
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