What does Scooby Doo have to do with leadership?

Have you had a 'Scooby Doo' moment?

Probably the funniest moment of a great speech I recently heard, was when Tyrone Pitsis told an ATA NSW Chapter executive luncheon gathering about his ‘Scooby Doo’ moment. If you’re wondering what he meant by that, the look on Scooby’s face above should give you a clue! To see more, you’ll need to catch Tyrone in full flight some time… something I highly recommend.

While Tyrone was having a laugh about a hiccough along his own leadership journey, I think the overall points he was making are extremely important ones. First, great leaders – and even good ones – make mistakes, dust themselves off, learn from it and keep moving towards their personal and organisational goals. And second, often, if something is worth doing it may not come easily.

Tyrone himself has had a colourful life, filled with challenges and what you might have considered mistakes (at the time). But each of those difficult times and so-called mistakes has contributed to his happy and stimulating life and career choices.

As a result of his own experiences and also his professional research into leadership and management, Tyrone shared with us his 6 key elements of leadership. I found myself nodding all the way through. You can see them either by clicking on the link or I’ll list them at the bottom of this post.

Leadership is so personal and great leadership is hard to define. But I believe it’s one of the most important traits to strive for.  Not everyone is born a leader, but – if you want to – everyone can develop leadership skills that will smooth the way in life and in business.

I’d love to know if you agree with Tyrone and, if you don’t, what you think is instrumental to visionary leadership. How do you define good leadership?

PS – You can read all about Tyrone’s leadership journey here – his tale takes us from life as a young Greek Australian in the rough Newtown and St Marys of the 70s, all the way through to his current role as Executive Educator and Researcher at the Centre for Management & Organisation Studies at UTS.

6 key elements of leadership

1. Lead how you would like to be led
   1. Respect others
   2. Be compassionate
   3. Be passionate, in key roles always surround yourself with passionate people and avoid the ‘yes men and women’
2. Keep your reputation (that is the only thing in your control)
   1. We live in unparalleled conditions of uncertainty, risk and ambiguity. It’s easy to compromise your values, don’t do it, it’s not worth it. Never compromise your values
3. Be liked, be feared but most of all be respected
   1. Create a positive environment to work
   2. Ask powerful questions
      1. Germany has a job title, ‘Director Powerful Questions’; Australia does not
         1. A question: “What service do we provide?”
         2. A powerful question: “What service do our customers want?”
         3. A really powerful question: “What services can we create with our customers both for now and the future?”
   3. Challenge common sense and the structures that lead to it
      1. Just because the world may look flat from where we are standing, it doesn’t mean it is
4. Celebrate ideas, and most of all, people with ideas
5. Invest in knowledge, development and education
   1. Break this Australian propensity to view academic ideas as ‘purely’ academic. The greatest organisations (especially those in Northern Europe), collaborate and involve universities and educational institutions heavily (be it Google with Stanford, Imperial College London, and so on)
   2. What’s worse in your eyes “spending money on people’s development with the risk they might leave”, or “not spending money on people’s development, and have them stay?”
   3. People are not your most important asset, talented people are
      1. The leader develops talent
6. Network (beyond just business networks), and collaborate

Training changed my life

Well, you’d expect me to say that because my business is training. But that’s exactly why my business is training. I could have chosen to sell widgets that make fridges work or business shirts. But I didn’t. I chose management training because, even on a bad day, I can feel like my business is making a difference to people’s lives.

If we’re lucky in our jobs, and we work for a company with a view to learning and development, we have the opportunity to enjoy some corporate training. Other of us elect to fund such training ourselves and do courses, big or small.

Management training ‘Eureka’!

My own training ‘Eureka!’ moment happened during my MBA in early 2003.

A university lecturer and corporate trainer (who now works with academy!) called Tyrone Pitsis was ‘railing from the pulpit’ as he was wont to do during a Managing People lecture.

He asked us if we had the guts to really ask ourselves two challenging questions, questions that have stayed with me a business leader and manager since then.

The first was “how do you know you are a good leader of others?” and the other was “why do people want to work for you?”.

My top two leadership questions

These two questions became light bulb moments for me.

I realised in the first instance that you could never, and should never, be able to answer the first, and that the business of leadership was a journey and not a destination.  True leadership is something to be continually strived for, and it’s different from person to person. Hints you are good, however, come when people actively want to work with you!

To this day, the second question is one that I ask myself many times each week (and I know my partners do too) – and in doing so, I hope we always find new and innovative ways to inspire and engage the people that make our business a success. Sometimes we succeed, other times we are less successful, but thanks to Tyrone I always ask the question. I’m still very grateful to him for that. Being challenged during training has taught me to challenge myself.

So, how has training changed your life? I’d love to see your comments.

About ‘I learn therefore I am’

My name is Mark Raven and I’m the chief executive of academy.  I run the company with my two partners, Michael Wolf and Neil Bowman, and we are very hands-on.  We’ve built from two part-time employees in 1999 to 25 full-time employees in 2010 and we train 2,200 people a year in everything from customer service through to executive leadership.

I feel lucky to do what I do for a living.  Running a training company means I am indirectly helping hundreds of people a year; as they update or learn skills, they develop professionally and personally.  For me, that’s exciting stuff and certainly what gets me to my desk at eight every morning. Well, that and the coffee.

Naturally enough I spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about learning. I believe in learning. I learn at work and I learn in my spare time too (as I head towards the end of what’s been dubbed by my family as ‘the world’s longest MBA’).

So the purpose of this blog is to pose questions about learning and development, management training, leadership training, call centre training, customer service training, sales training, talent management and so on… to put out the occasional opinion, share interesting ideas, to learn from my readers and to have fun – something we at academy think all learning has to include. While I will mostly cover management training issues and trends, there will be the occasional more general topic.  Please feel free to suggest any topic you’d like to explore.

Relationship Of Financial Management to Other Organisational Services

The financial management of a company is the very core of business as it brings the past, present, and future together. Organisations that are poorly managed in the financial area impact every other department from marketing to credit and collections. All eyes in the company must turn to the numbers at some point and all financial managers must develop the ability to communicate essential financial information in a way that makes it useful for decision making.

The financial dynamics of an organisation can be complex and impact every function of a business. Marketing can only build a campaign based on an allotted budget. Managers can only give salary increases to staff if the company is earning enough profit. Obtaining organisational credit relies on sound financial performance. Adequately outfitting a business with appropriate levels of management, staff, and operating resources relies on the company being financially successful.

Presenting…the Finances!

When you think about presentation skills, it’s normal to first look to the sales department meeting with customers or the call centre taking client calls or even debt collectors contacting clients. But financial management also requires developing presentation skills because financial managers must be able to present relevant information that leads to sound decision making.

In fact, financial managers require business training on many levels in order to be effective integrators within the organisation.

• Develop, interpret, and manage critical data
• Identify relevant financial information which assists departmental managers with decision making related to staffing and other resource management
• Identify areas where financial performance can be improved such as through increased debt collections
• Identify financially high risk areas within organisation
• Manage assets within company that leads to product or service improvements
• Manage accounts to produce increased sales and collections
• Develop cost savings measures
• Identify financial resources available which enable organisation to pursue strategies supporting mission

Personnel working within the financial management areas are employed in a variety of positions ranging from executive officers to front line managers. The interesting aspect of financial management is that it can be position which focuses solely on financial issues or it can be a job function included in a larger job structure.

For example, an accountant working in the finance department may only work with financial data and reports. A debt collection department manager may use financial management skills to monitor results but also manages staff, communicates with customers, and serves as the contact point between his or her department and other organisational functions.

Organisationally Pervasive

For that reason, it is important to determine all organisational positions which can benefit from financial management training. It is an essential function that is pervasive. Managers can use the skills to look back to see what has been successful and unsuccessful; to the present to determine if current strategies are successful; and to the future to establish long term financial goals.

Good financial management is essential for quality customer service, strategic planning, credit management, and marketing success. Financial management provides a barometer for competitive status and customer satisfaction.

Role of Management in Building Sales Through Accounts Control

Management plays a critical role in building sales through accounts control. One of the best strategies which can be employed to increase the bottom line is to improve the quality of the effort put into the management of accounts. Quality accounts control is concerned with building a sales organisation around the customer’s needs as opposed to attempting to sell products or services which are developed independent of the customer.

This may sound fairly obvious in the reading, but becoming a customer focused business requires that everyone within the organisation commits to the vision of customer satisfaction. From the executive office to the line employee working in a call centre, there must be a mission driven focus on the customer. In other words, after any contact with your business, the customer should come away with a sense the company has a pervasive interest in the satisfaction of the customers’ desires and will do what is necessary to achieve that goal.

One of the areas where a business has a clear opportunity to manage its customer relations in order to build sales is through accounts control. This is true for all businesses including those responsible for debt collection.

In the Business of Quality

Accounts control is a management function that can play an important role in the integration of internal business functions. Within accounts lies the power to retain customers, increase revenue streams, integrate ancillary departments including finance and customer service, and improve overall company quality.

When accounts are managed from the quality perspective, it means a number of things.

• Success measurements are well defined
• Performance data is useful for decision making
• Customer satisfaction drives management strategies
• Staff have been properly trained

In most businesses, failure to manage accounts leads to lost revenue and poor customer service. But accounts control is much more than just reading some management reports and deciding which accounts require additional collection effort. It should be seen as a strategy for improving sales through effective structuring and communication.

For example, the manager responsible for controlling accounts is often responsible for a call centre or a particular department within a company responsible for debt collection. To effectively implement account control techniques in a way that promotes business quality requires:

• Having well trained staff able to complete their job functions in a way that supports the company vision
• Developing staff competencies in conflict resolution
• Developing effective communication skills among staff within the department and between the department and the company
• Providing high quality customer service
• Being able to use information obtained through debt collection efforts to provide essential and ongoing feedback to company management

Accounts control is an essential function which touches on every other business function. It requires accurate report and data management, people management skills, communication skills, customer service skills, and an enormous amount of sensitivity. Poorly managed accounts usually lead to lost revenue and poor customer relations.

Proper management of accounts will increase collections, sales, and thus profits while contributing to the quality of the organisation.

How to Promote Teamwork Within an Organisation

It’s easy to assign people to a particular team, but how do you actually get those people to operate as a team that works towards a common goal? Volumes could be written on this subject simply because each team creates its own unique dynamics. Channelling those dynamics in a way that leads to success in meeting goals is a challenge best met through team development activities.

How do you build an effective team? It begins by building team member participation in the vision of the company which is then moulded into team participation. A team member must feel committed, empowered and able to use a particular expertise in a way that promotes team goals.

Promoting teamwork within an organisation requires that certain critical issues be addressed first in order to give members the information and desire to commit to the team. One of the biggest problems organisations experience with teams is the inability of team members to understand how the success of the team will play an important role in the success of the company.

Teamwork is promoted by developing the following.

• Clear understanding of the mission of the company
• Mutual trust between team members
• Open communication between team members
• Open communication between team and organisational management
• Development of creative thinking skills
• Development of coordinated action plan with common goals
• Development of mutually acceptable team conflict resolution practices

For a team to be effective, it must be empowered to achieve its goals. One of the most common mistakes a company makes is creating a team which is discouraged from presenting new ideas or approaches to achieve goals.

Promoting Teamwork Through Dialogue

In essence, teamwork is developed through effective dialogue. Open dialogue is how teams learn about the company mission, resolve conflict, communicate within the organisation, and communicate with customers. Learning how to dialogue in a way that promotes the vision of the company is critical. Looking at it from another angle, if managers and staff are unable to communicate in a productive manner, it will be almost impossible to build a team.

Teams within an organisation can take several forms and dialogue is important to them all. Teams can be department teams, special project teams, or the organisation as a whole. It doesn’t matter what team you want to develop, promoting teamwork begins with team members learning how to effectively communicate.

One of the main complaints heard within an organisation is, “This company doesn’t care what I think.” The employee may say, “My manager never listens to me.” Another frequently heard statement is the following: “I tried to tell them it wouldn’t work.” Upon consideration it’s easy to see each of these statements addresses lack of good dialogue between members of the organisation.

Many companies choose to add communication skills training to their organisation for this reason. Effective communication transmits reliable information and includes feedback given in a non-threatening manner. It is open dialogue that enables a company to develop the skills and environment needed for successful teamwork.

Importance of Ongoing Management and Staff Training

When you talk about the people in an organization, it refers to everyone at every level from the Chief Executive Officer to the mail room worker. It is the people who accomplish the tasks necessary to fulfil the mission of the organization. Unfortunately, it is also the people who can become the barriers to progress unless they buy into the mission of the organization and understand their roles in achieving success.

But just as important is the fact people must be trained to do their jobs the right way and with an understanding of how their job fits into the overall scheme of things. Dysfunctional organisations are often unable to build quality business environments because they have one basic and critical flaw: lack of people unity due to lack of training.

This is true for the top, middle and line managers and for the staff doing the day to day customer work. When you read about the principles of project management, you discover that one of the first principles that must be addressed is the matter of governance and control. But how do you teach these important principles?

It all comes down to leadership training. The CEO must learn to lead the entire organization and be prepared to handle conflict along the way. The middle managers must be prepared to supervise the front line staff in a way that supports the mission of the organisation. The staff that have the most contact with customers need to understand how their jobs support the organization and how their treatment of customers is one of the most important factors determining overall profitability.

Unifying Themes

You see people draw organisational charts that show who answers to who by position within different functional areas. It begins with the CEO and the arrows normally flow downward through the levels. Instead of drawing a traditional organisational flow chart, you can draw a training flow chart. On this chart, the mission of the company would be at the top, and the arrows would flow through the various levels such as management training, sales team training, customer service training, and business training.

On the training flow chart though, the arrows would flow in a circle from top to bottom and back up to the top again in a circle. Training people to become business leaders within the organisation is an ongoing process which relies on constant feedback. This constant feedback takes the form of effective communication within the organization, communication between the organization and its customers, and a flow of training information that keeps people attuned to the organizational mission and how their jobs fit within the big picture.

Never Working Alone

One of the most important principles the people within a company must learn is that they are never working alone even if they work alone. This may sound odd at first, but an organization has to operate as a whole. Even the customer service representative working alone in an office answering customer complaints must always operate with a business mindset that he or she must do the job in a particular manner in order to help the entire company to succeed.

Management and staff training is an important and critical function if a company hopes to become and remain profitable. Without proper training and leadership development, people tend to create mini-kingdoms within the workplace and then rule to their own advantage which may or may not be to the advantage of the business. Teaching people to be leaders within their own company roles is how you can build a strong and well developed organisation that is able to flourish through all economic times.

How to Promote Teamwork Within an Organization

It goes without saying it’s important to learn how to promote teamwork within an organization.  Though the word “teamwork” is sometimes treated in conversation more like a buzz word than a valid business concept, teaching staff to operate as cohesive team can increase personal and business success.

An organization should have an in-house training program which gives staff the knowledge they need to do a good job.  The training program should cover a lot of areas such as communication and marketing skills.  One of the core components of any staff training program should be the promotion of teamwork.

Finding the “We” in the “I”

Having a staff that works together as a team is important for many reasons.  When employees are concentrating only on themselves the results are obvious.  There will be higher turnover, less productivity and too much conflict.  That’s because the employees have a personal agenda that does not incorporate the values, culture and goals of the company.

Having personal goals as related to a job is important, but those goals should incorporate the good of the company.  That is where teamwork takes on its importance.  When the staff have shared goals, they will work towards company success and not just personal success.

Everyone who works in a business environment knows of a situation where a staff member operated alone on a project and caused more problems than necessary by excluding other staff.  The lone staff was concentrating on personal goals and success at the exclusion of everyone else.  This is not effective performance and can lead to many different kinds of problems from miscommunication to lack of creativity.

Changing “I” to “we” is the goal of teamwork training.

Team…Works

When company employees function as a team, the company will experience a number of benefits.

• Increases operational efficiency
• Improves work quality
• Reduces staff competition
• Enhances ability of company to respond to competition
• Encourages creativity
• Makes employees feel as if they are making a significant contribution to business success

There is a reason why sports teams celebrate so vigorously together after a win.  They played as a team and celebrate as a team, because each member contributed to their success.

Working the Teams

There are many ways to promote teamwork within an organization.  A professional trainer is experienced at designing team exercises that encourage staff to work together, but in an inspiring manner.  The exercises may be real life scenarios that replicate what staff experience on the job, or they may simply be fun exercises that effectively deliver a lesson.

Teamwork training has been embraced by companies around the world, because it works.  Teamwork exercises include both managers and their staff.  The goals are simple.

• Improve communication between staff members
• Develop common goals as related to the business
• Improve time management
• Reduce management and staff conflict
• Teach employees how to get ahead by being a team player

Teamwork builds trust between staff members.  Staff members learn to trust each other to do the best job possible while keeping the common goals in mind at all times.  Developing good communication between staff members is crucial to a company’s success, and that’s exactly what teamwork accomplishes, and the best way to create a sense of “team” is through specialized training.