January 2019 – Glenn Sommerville

Relationship are flowers. They thrive on commitment but wither with complacency. Nourish them a little and they return great beauty. What have you given to nourish your relationships today?

Leadership, Personal Development

Is A Professional Network Even Necessary?

January 28, 2019January 20, 2019 Glenn Sommerville

Do you have a professional network?

A professional network is very important for your career. A healthy network takes years to build. How’s yours? Is it active and healthy?

What Is a Professional Network?

Well, let’s start by saying that it is not having 10,000 connections on LinkedIn! Sure, LinkedIn is a very powerful networking tool, but professional networking is much more than having many connections on social media.

A professional network is a system of business contacts with the intent to connect with each other for career, business, or developmental purposes to the benefit of all involved. Sure, a professional network may help you find your next career move, or your next great hire, but it is much much more. They may also assist with problem solving, recommend vendors, suppliers, or professional services. Professional networks can also establish life long mentorship relationships.

How I Got Started.

Way back, I was one of those that thought that a professional network was only necessary if you were looking for a new career opportunity. As I was challenged in my position at the time and not seeking new external opportunities, I did not maintain a professional network. Maintain? Well, I really didn’t have one! Then, a colleague of mine that I hadn’t heard from in a number of years contacted me. He was currently between positions and suggested we get together for a coffee. Believing that my employer wouldn’t be a good cultural fit for this individual and not aware of any openings that would be suitable for him anyway, I declined. But that didn’t stop him. To me, he was relentless and eventually I gave in and met him for a coffee.

That’s ok if you don’t know of any opportunities for me. Let’s just get together and catch up. You never know how we’ll be able to help each other. If not now, someday.

I met this leader that time and to this day have continued to meet with him, exchange phone calls on a regular basis, and we have helped each other out in one way or another countless times over the years. Today, he is the CEO of a large company, and I feel pretty confident, no I know, that he is still there for me today. And I’m there for him. In fact, I spoke to him just yesterday.

If you wait to create a professional network until you need a new career opportunity, it’s too late!

Why Have A Professional Network?

Of course a professional network is critical if you are searching for new opportunities. Or as a leader, your network can be an important source of new hires for your organization. In fact, in this regard your network can be a great form of a “pay it forward” system. You can help others find their next new career opportunity or colleagues find their next superstar hire and some day, they may repay you with the same.

However, the benefits of having and sustaining a healthy network go much further. Below are some examples of additional advantages to having an established professional network:

Your own growth and development by learning new skills, technology, and approaches
Give/receive career advice. Others’ points of view are healthy when evaluating careers, next steps, evaluating opportunities, and making career choices/decisions
Connect others to your connections or each others connections
Provide mentoring to other leaders
Receive mentoring from other leaders
Increase your exposure in an industry, technology, or field of focus
Exchanging non-proprietary business ideas
Benchmarking opportunities and exchange of best practices
Learn of development opportunities such as seminars, training, on-line learning, books
The social interaction beyond those you interact with daily within your organization can be extremely motivational and inspiring

In a future post, we’ll review the steps necessary to build your network and the investment necessary keep it healthy and active.

So what do you think, is a healthy professional network necessary?

What are other benefits of having a professional network?

#22 Together We Can, Values In Action!

January 23, 2019January 20, 2019 Glenn Sommerville

Today, raise the ceiling on your expectations. Remember, we don’t get what we want, we get what we expect. If you expect less than the best… you most certainly will not be disappointed.

Leadership, Personal Development

Setting Personal and Professional Goals and Objectives – Tactics or Action Plans

January 21, 2019April 27, 2019 Glenn Sommerville

The tactics or action plans are what brings goals and objectives to life and make things happen! Whether setting personal or organizational action plans, this is also a step that if not done well, can lead to disappointing results.

In the last post, Setting Personal and Professional Goals and Objectives – Goals and Objectives, we discussed the various important points of strategy or focus areas and how these then lead to goal development and then SMART objectives. In this post, we discuss the critical execution stage of developing Tactics or Action plans used to deliver a successful objective.

The tactics or action plans clearly describe the tasks that you and/or your teams will do to achieve an objective. Action plans are typically developed annually describing the tasks to be taken by whom, and when they are to be completed.

Action Plans are the detailed and specific tasks that will be taken to achieve one or more goals.

When determining the action plans, be sure to review all the information gathered during the strategy brainstorming such as the SWOT analysis. Involve as many of the stakeholders as possible when determining the action plans. You need to define as many tasks or actions necessary to achieve the objective. The more detailed you are, the more likely you are to achieve the objective.

Each action to be taken should include the following details:

What action is to be taken
Who is responsible for taking each action
When is each action to be completed
What resources are required to make the action happen

A key step I believe that is very important, is to identify the main barriers or risks to completing the individual tasks. These are the things that can block progress or achievement of the task, or distract you or your teams. Identify what they are up front and then invest time and focus to determine what mitigation steps can be taken to reduce the risk of impact. For each barrier determined, consider multiple mitigation ideas or steps you can take to avoid or reduce these risks. Build those into your plans. These barriers and mitigation ideas can then impact or cause you to revise multiple parts of your action plan such as the what, who, when, or how.

For example, let’s say you have a personal objective to develop a 3 year strategic plan for your team. While considering the barriers that can stand in your way, you identify that the day to day operational nature of your responsibilities may prevent you from having time to spend thinking strategically. As mitigation to this you may decide to block a certain number of hours per week in your calendar for the entire year specifically for “Strategy Development”. You go further by selecting a day of the week or afternoon in which you can work off-site to reduce the chances of casual interruptions. Reviewing your calendar, you find that the best day to do so, would be Thursdays as there are typically less head office meetings, your team is heads down on priorities for the week, and you have the most control of your calendar. Blocking your Thursdays across the horizon for “Strategy Development” will go a long way towards removing this identified barrier.

“When something is scheduled, it is 92% likely to happen!”

In the post Setting Personal and Professional Goals and Objectives – Goals and Objectives, we used the following objective examples:

Personal Objectives: Reduce my weight to 165lbs by June 1st and sustain through an active lifestyle.
Organizational Objective: Reduce operating costs by 12% within 12 months.

While considering the barriers to achievement of these objectives, we determine that in the case of the personal objective the dark and cold mornings during the winter months are a real deterrent from a morning run. Furthermore, for the organizational objective, a barrier is determined that many of the operating costs are governed by existing contracts and purchase agreements. What action plans can be taken to achieve the objectives while taking these barriers into account? The following are potential examples:

Personal Action Plan: Purchase a treadmill for less than $1500 by 1 September.
Organizational Action Plan: Establish a cross functional team comprised of operations, engineering, procurement and legal and identify top 10 contracts based on annual spend and opportunity, to review/renegotiate by 15 March.

The next step is a step that is often overlooked. The problem is that after the action plans are determined everyone goes back to “normal life”. However, soon after returning to “normal life” the action plans are forgotten. Why? Usually because the action plans are not integrated into daily routine and cadence. The action plans will not happen on their own; you need to make them happen.

Here are some methods to “operationalize” your action plans:

Personal Action Plans:

Add repetitive actions to your Leader Standardized Work
Add an action plan review cadence to your Leader Standardized Work
Post a copy of your objectives and tasks where you will see them daily
Integrate into your regular weekly planning routine by adding specific tasks or actions you need to take that week as well as to review your progress and adjust as necessary
Set repeating calendar reminders or scheduled tasks in your calendar to review objectives and action plans on a regular basis

Organizational Action Plans:

Involve your team throughout all phases of developing the goals, objectives, and action plans
Create charters for each goal that clearly describe the problem, objectives, inputs/outputs, action plan, milestones, deliverables, and team
Post or make visible to the entire organization the goals, objectives and the teams responsible for the action plans. Regularly post updates on progress and performance.
Create a project plan and schedule, complete with gantt charts
An entirely separate topic is to implement the Hoshin Deployment Matrix to deploy and align your entire organization on your most important organizational objectives
Add an action plan review cadence to your Leader Standardized Work
Schedule regular cadence reviews with your team in which they report out on action plans and metrics, request your help, and you can provide direction
Conduct a gemba to review the results of actions within the operations
Celebrate and recognize accomplishment and completion of tasks.

What do you do to “operationalize” your personal or organizational action plans? Leave a comment.

#21 Together We Can – Values in Action!

January 16, 2019January 14, 2019 Glenn Sommerville

How do your values shape your community? Stop and imagine the people whom you identify as part of your community. Decide what your contribution to their quality of life will be. the quality of your life will be closely attuned to the quality of theirs. You are the individual unit, the multiple of which is us.

Jennifer James

Month: January 2019

#23 Together We Can, Values In Action!