Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

Patti Cotton

When Stakes Are High-How to Make Better Decisions

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When Stakes Are High-How to Make Better Decisions
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We are faced with thousands of micro-decisions daily…what to eat, where to park, whether to stop and get coffee…

Then, there are stop-and-reflect decisions that take more contemplation…where to go on vacation, how to juggle family time with a current big project, when to get that new car…

And finally, there are high-stakes decisions. Those “bet-the-company” decisions that require careful consideration, weighing impact to the immediate and future state of the enterprise.

In this last case, how do you decide what is gambling and what is calculated risk?

How do you make sure you have everything you need in order to take action – and how do you prepare for this?

Often, we base our decision-making on previous experience – ours and those of others – and what has worked in the past. Or we gather our executive team together because they embrace the vision and culture of the company, and we thus use the collective brain trust to come up with solutions we feel are best.

But there are dangers in using one or the other of these approaches by themselves, even though this is how most executives arrive at “bet-the-company” solutions. And unfortunately, making a wrong move might set your enterprise back significantly.

How do you make sure you have what you need in order to make a best decision for the company that will lower risk and maximize return?

Here is a checklist for good decision-making with some practical tips you can use right away.

1. Be sure your brain is functioning at top capacity.

Your days are filled with meetings, phone calls, and other interactions that require non-stop information download. However, your brain has little time to process all this so that you can integrate and use the information into situations where it would be helpful.

Be sure you take a minimum of two 10-minute breaks daily where you literally sit and do nothing, allowing your thoughts to wander. When you do this, you permit the brain to process what it has been fed so that it can apply the information.

2. Identify the real problem before coming up with options.

Be sure you separate issues from root causes.

For example, if you are weighing whether to reorganize, why are you doing so? And what is underneath that?

Get to the root cause to be sure you are addressing what really matters. For more, see my article on Toyoda’s 5 Whys.

3. Keep the bigger picture in mind.

Remind yourself of the vision and revisit your organizational goals and objectives before considering solutions. This will provide a solid framework of reference as you go into brainstorming mode.

I have seen many an enterprise run after a shiny object because the competition is doing so, without fully considering whether it makes sense for the vision, mission, values, and key objectives.

4. Be smart in gathering research.

You will want to consider best information and multiple perspectives. Identify best sources as you gather information, and develop a set of questions that shed light on lessons learned.

Play the devil’s advocate and include information that argues against popular practices.

And as you reach out to tap into the wisdom of others, involve only those key stake-holders/best thinkers that can put aside personal agendas and undue influence because of the personal relationship they share with you. Invite those who aren’t afraid to get creative and to think outside the box.

5. Shine light on your assumptions and biases.

Write these out so that you can ask yourself how much these are interfering with your best thinking. This will be especially helpful as you gather to brainstorm with others on the short list of potential solutions.

Articulating your assumptions and asking others to do the same as you meet together to discuss will help surface potential hidden roadblocks to bigger thinking.

When a company becomes focused on one magic answer, it can distort a greater perception of reality. If the executive team heads down this path with such a flawed mindset, it will become arrogant and defensive to other ideas outside of its own. This can eclipse answers that bring greater return on many levels.

6. Keep your eyes on the horizon as you weigh risks and impact to support short- and long-term goals.

If you find that you or your team become granular before completely assessing business impact at the organizational level, stop and regroup.

If people jump into problem-solving mode at division and individual levels, they may be inadvertently blocking a best answer. If you or a colleague begin making comments like, “We’d have to shut down the XYZ division if we did that, and this would cause a loss of LMNOP,” or, “Well, if we do that, James will quit and we don’t want to lose James!” then you need to table those.

Once you come up with answers providing best and greatest impact to the company as a whole, the next line of questioning involves examining what this would impact – and if there are alternative solutions to what seems apparent.

Further, you might find that you are allowing certain personalities or pet divisions to dictate strategy – a deathly path.

7. Don’t forget to factor in the cost of indecision.

Very often, the plethora of ideas that come to play can be overwhelming. Be careful not to allow the process to trail out too far.

Many a top executive has tabled a critical situation for so long that the costs associated with inaction have been irreparable. K-Mart, Borders, and other companies that decided to wait come to mind.

If you are in a first round of brainstorming discussions, collectively agree on a deadline by which you want to target a best solution. Reverse-engineer meeting times from there, and be sure you have someone track the discussion with notes so that you can drive a powerful agenda going forward each time.

And a last word…

  • Good decision-making requires that you rely on intuition and experience while remaining open to new ideas.
  • It asks that you involve people in the process who are not afraid to get creative while keeping the company’s best interests at the helm.
  • And It demands courage and fortitude to do the right thing once you have made your decision.

I’d be interested to hear about your current decision-making process and how it is working for you!

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC

© Patti Cotton and patticotton.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that attribution is made to Patti Cotton and patticotton.com, with links thereto.

Are You Holding Your Employees Hostage?

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Are You Holding Your Employees Hostage?
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Five Ways to Find Out…

Do your employees feel happy and secure at work?

Or do they feel as though they are being held hostage?

You may not realize it, but when an enterprise is trust deficient, its employees suffer, which means the company does, too.

In fact, if your culture isn’t emotionally connected, your employees can experience the same stressful range of emotions as a hostage does, feeling anxious, fearful, and with the ambition to get out quickly.

It’s difficult to detect the emotions – but you can readily see the effects. What should you look for? And what’s causing it?

Here are five ways to identify whether your culture is lacking in trust, and what is causing it.

  1. Your executive team hasn’t had a new idea in ages.

Your executives are aware of changing trends, but they aren’t exhibiting the creativity and innovation needed for the company to retain its competitive edge. This usually indicates an atmosphere where new and creative is not welcome, or where the opinions of others are not valued.

Are you surrounded by “yes” people who always think your ideas are wonderful?

If so, you will want to take a look at your listening skills and determine if you are encouraging the perspectives of others – not being first with all the answers.

  1. You have a manager who is a chronic complainer.

Your managers tend to shy away from solutions and wait for you to solve problems. One of them consistently brings complaints to your door.

Are you holding them accountable for results?

I’m guessing you are. But are you empowering them with the ability to come up with possible solutions to problems?

If you have complainers or those who wait for orders, this means you need to exercise providing feedback to help them take that responsibility.

  1. One of your teams doesn’t play well with others.

Teams have trouble getting the work done when they must involve other teams to complete an initiative.

Does one of your teams have a chronic “bad kid” reputation? If they can’t connect well with others to get the job done, this means a conversation about their performance with the rest of the enterprise.

Of course, this can’t be done in isolation – chances are, if you have a “bad kid” team in your company, the culture supports it. Time to revisit.

  1. You put up with a key employee who is rough around the edges.

This person is great at technical skills, but very poor when it comes to getting along with others.

This is close to #3 above – the “bad kid” team. However, if you have put up with a key employee who is rough around the edges, this probably means you don’t want to touch the situation for a reason.

Perhaps the person is a star performer or some kind of genius who can do something for your enterprise that no one else can.

Think again – when an employee is allowed to mistreat or disrespect others, this is a de-motivator to the rest of your employee base. Demotivation leads to productivity loss, turnover, etc. – so, no matter how good they are, their behavior is not worth putting up with. Find a solution.

  1. One or more of your teams or areas is less productive than others.

This can manifest in ways such as sub-par productivity, continually missed deadlines, and finger-pointing and blaming in meetings.

Who is steering your ship? If you find that you are continually taking that team’s manager to task on poor performance, this means you haven’t defined what productivity looks like – or you aren’t holding him or her accountable to that shared agreement.

Being transparent about how this is affecting the larger body is pivotal. You are otherwise disrespecting your entire employee base.

These five scenarios cultivate a culture that is devoid of trust. And when trust is lacking, the enterprise will suffer. Where do you need more trust in your organization? Download the infographic to find out.

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC

Why Downsizing May Not Be the Answer

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The Hidden Costs of Downsizing
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Tom S., CEO of the Jansen Company (fictitious individual and company names, real client), called me a short time after downsizing.

The company had lost quite a few customers due to the bad press it had received for this.

Employee morale and engagement were rapidly sinking.

There was a loss in productivity due not only to the occurrence itself, but also because the remaining employees had to absorb the work previously done by those having lost their jobs.

The cost in dollars to Jansen was significant and surprising.

The move to restructure had been a move to stop profit bleed. But just totaling money spent on loss of market share due to bad press, severance packages for those laid off, and current training costs for those who needed to absorb the work left behind, was more than the company had projected.

Additionally, employee turnover was on the rise, as people didn’t trust what the company might do next. The search for replacements was also costing Jansen money, time, and effort, as well as the onboarding and training to get the new people up to speed.

Things were a mess as a result of the downsizing.

It appeared that Jansen’s downsizing had been an incredibly poor idea that did not pay off.

It’s a fact that a majority of layoffs do not turn out well. Downsizing has become a default response to an ambiguous future marked by swift advances in technology, volatile markets, and growing competition (for more on this, see “Layoffs That Don’t Break Your Company” by Sucher and Gupta, Harvard Business Review, May-June 2018 issue).

There are new and more successful alternatives emerging – but in Jansen’s case, this was now water under the bridge.

The CEO had called me in because the executive team members were under extreme stress. A couple of them who had never worked well together were simply not talking to one another. He was afraid that some of these executives might secretly be job hunting, and the company couldn’t afford such a final blow.

He wondered if executive coaching might be the answer to supporting his team with the agility they needed as they faced managing this unexpected situation.

I agreed to meet with each one of the executives individually to get a sense of where they were vis-à-vis their commitment to the company and to assess their ability to manage change.

As I did so, I learned that their effectiveness as team members and as team itself had been compromised long before the decision to downsize took place.

And I wished I could have coached them sooner – before they found themselves in such a difficult situation. Because what I identified were some areas in their leadership that, had these been strengthened, might have circumvented the downsizing and what led up to it.

Here were the chief team and individual behaviors I uncovered. These led to high COI (costs of inaction).

  • Poor communication and conflict management (by the way, this one area account for around 67% of all productivity loss in any enterprise)
  • Slow and poor decision-making processes leading to less-than-optimal outcomes
  • Ineffective approaches to bring others along in the process for buy-in and commitment
  • Poor ability to keep eyes on the horizon for trends and shifts while managing the present
  • Poor stress management from high productivity and little return
  • Unwillingness to consider multiple perspectives leading to better creativity and innovation

I believe Jansen would not have had to consider downsizing, had decision-makers recognized the value of intentional and consistent leadership development.

Leadership directly affects all levels of the organization’s success.

Is your leadership producing a great ROI? Here are some questions to help you gauge this:

  1. Are people clamoring to work for your company? Are your employees highly engaged and productive?
  2. Is your business consistently increasing revenue and profitability? Or are there areas that need help?
  3. Are you retaining your current market share and capturing more? Or are you stalled at a certain point?
  4. Where do you stand vis-à-vis the competition? How well are your products and services reflecting the innovation you need to be on top?
  5. What does overall performance look like for your enterprise? Are there any silos or broken parts needing your attention?

Schedule a Complimentary Discovery Session!

Five Reasons Your Team May Not Be Candid With You

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Five Reasons Your Team May Not Be Candid With You
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How engaged is your team? Do the team members come in every day, energized, committed and excited about the work you are doing together? Are they huddled in groups brainstorming and coming up with new ideas?

Or do you get the feeling they need a vitamin shot? Are they sitting around with a second cup of coffee waiting for you to direct them?

What’s the problem?

If your team engagement is low, or its creative juices have dried up, your team members may have decided they just can’t be candid with you.

Why would they think that?

Here are some chief reasons employees aren’t candid with their leader:

1. You suffer from one-way thinking.

Are you really open to other perspectives, or do all your meetings end with your ideas as the only sound ones? If you aren’t open to encouraging and appreciating the ideas of others, people will quickly detect this and shut down. After all – why contribute when it doesn’t ever go anywhere? You will eventually surround yourself with people who simply agree to your ideas, and lose out on the brain trust you have in the room.

2. You don’t do feedback well.

If you don’t genuinely listen for the “gold” in growth opportunities, you are missing out. Your team members may have tried to give you helpful criticism in the past, but if they were met with defensiveness or denial, they will back off and stop trying to work on a better working relationship with you.

3. You’re a self-perceived super hero.

You don’t allow others to contribute. Your mantra is, “I need to start delegating more,” or, “When I ask others to help with X, Y, or Z, I get sub-par work back. It’s easier to do it myself.” If this is you, you aren’t developing your people and taking advantage of their ability to contribute. This will absolutely kill motivation in others.

4. You don’t include them.

You don’t bring others along in the process. If you don’t provide regular and meaningful updates to developments in the company and team initiatives, you aren’t empowering your people to stretch their critical thinking skills about how this affects what they are doing. If you find yourself simply telling people what to do all the time, you are probably guilty of this.

5. You’re a perfectionist.

Do you tend to come across as critical or judgmental, or demand perfection the first time around (ask your spouse or significant other if you don’t know – he or she will tell you!)? If so, you aren’t leaving room for your team to consider failures as learning points, and creative ideas as possible innovation for your company. Your team will tend to play safe and play small, so that you get smaller, safer work that appears perfect. But you will lose out on the new and innovative ideas and work they might bring. Consider this: Life, work, and leading are not about you and everything else being perfect. It’s about all this being exceptional.

If you suspect that your team is holding back, not being genuine, have a conversation with them. Ask them what they need in order to be more candid – and be prepared to receive their feedback as your own point of learning.

Schedule a Complimentary Discovery Session!

Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail

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Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail
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You realize that developing your leadership and that of your team gives you a competitive advantage. After all, behavior is what drives your company’s strategy, structure, culture, and systems.

You are also starkly aware that what got you to this point won’t carry you into the future. In this complex world, a commitment to developing talent at all levels of the enterprise is not a nice idea – it’s a necessity.

Where do you start? You’ll want to model from the top, and so you are probably thinking that a first good step would be to hire a coach for you and key members of your executive team.

Executive coaching has been highly recommended to you as leader as the best answer to your development.  You’ve read the statistics and they sound promising. The ROI for executive coaching has a healthy average of 7 to 10 times the investment, with some even reporting up to 49 times.

But you have a nagging doubt that has kept you from making a move to start the process. What if it doesn’t work for you? You’ve heard of a couple of stories where another decision-maker’s coaching experience didn’t meet expectations. Wasted time, energy, and money.

How can you make sure you get the same great results you keep reading about – and move confidently as you meet the future, now?

Here are 5 reasons that executives might not get the kind of return you read about – and how to start out right so that you can make an investment that pays off well for you.

Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail

1. You don’t know what kind of coach you need.

Opening a coaches’ directory will reveal different kinds of coaches, and the choice can be overwhelming. Here are the three primary types of coaches so that you can see the difference:

a. Life coach – focuses on the whole person, personal and professional goals, aspects of life such as health, wellness, personal finances, life direction, and more.

b. Business coach – brings processes, tools, and concepts to team and enterprise growth (business coach and business consultant are closely related with quite a bit of overlap). Works on a variety of goals, including strategy, marketing, overall performance, and more.

c. Executive coach – helps unlock leadership potential, facilitating change in someone’s personal behavior that will ultimately result in achieving business goals. Executive coaches are typically hired to help C-suite, VPs and other executives with setting, supporting, and achieving personal improvement goals. Examples of focus can include developing greater leadership skills, managing staff, improving communication, managing conflict well, increasing productivity, increased agility, decision-making, and more.

2. Your coach doesn’t have the formal training and certification to be most effective.

Has your coach had the benefit of a robust accredited coaching program that utilizes proven methodologies for best adult learning and development?  And are they certified with the International Coach Federation or similar accrediting body so that you can be sure they meet highest standards in ethics and in practice?

3. Your coach doesn’t use a solid model and framework for results.

Unless your coach can use a solid model and process that keeps you focused on the goals you set with them, keeps you moving forward, allows you to assess progress as you move forward, and has the ability to truly measure outcomes, then you will not be able to bank on best results.

4. Your coach can’t meet you at your level to provide the support you need.

Coaches vary in their own levels of personal development and leadership experience. A coach does not need your industry background, or to have held the same position you now hold. However, they need to be able to help you navigate your growth and understanding where you are in your development and how you meet the world is vital to their asking the right questions to do so. The coach’s own leadership background, as well as their past client roster and client testimonials should be helpful indicators as to whether they can support you well in this regard.

5. You aren’t willing to do the work.

Change is challenging, and it requires great courage and vulnerability to look at one’s own “growing edges.” Many clients have hired coaches, only to go through the motions and not give the initiative the focus necessary to truly develop self. If you recognize that you are ready to step into a higher level of leadership, make the commitment to do the work. The results are life-changing when you give it 100%.

In order to manage well in an ever-evolving, complex world, having an able thought partner who helps you to see the landscape and navigate well is priceless. The ROI of executive coaching can be a game-changer for you, your team, and the company, if you are confident in how to go about selecting a coach, and if you make a strong commitment to change.