CEO Objective Driven Leadership
for
building great team of employees.
Does everyone at your company know the company objective? Without a company objective,
each employee is unable to due their share in helping the company -team- meet the company goal(s). With a company objective, each employee can help achieve the goal. For example, an objective to minimize pollution might tell an employee to do their work from left-to-right instead of right-to-left or buy from company-A instead of company-B. Some changes may be small but they're all important in building a winning team.
Training: in school students are taught how to solve problems with that we call a "Find X" mentality. The students don't know why to find X. So when a student becomes an employee and you ask him/her to design your next gagget they design one. As they learn more about the industry and/or company they would prefer another design. Give the same problem to ten employees and you'll get ten or more designs! Why no agreement in designs? Those designing lack years of experience. But this can be solved by asking for a solution with a "Find X (why?) to Optimize Y" mentality.
Problem-Examples: need several team players to meet across country for a meeting. If each player is told to take a flight without more info then no one will show up for the meeting. If told where the meeting is to be then one or more might make it. Too often it is assumed that employees know this and that. Tell them the objective and let them figure out what's best. In this flight problem "Attend Jan 22 meeting at headquarters (while minimizing pollution)" where the objective was a company/department objective set some time ago.
Objectives: most industrial companies have a maximize profit as their main objective. Other common objectives include minimize pollution and maximize efficeincy. These are common and are helpfull in directing a company's team. Say your company is concerned with all three objectives; profit, pollution, and efficeincy. Determine which is the most important and thus the others become sub-objectives. Given a problem to solve, team members are to see if making a decision to optimize a sub-objective will affect their main objective in the wrong way. If it will they should discuss it with others to see if their is a way of solving the problem and all objectives in a positive way. If not and the member feels strongly about optimizing the sub-objective and no other team member feels its wrong then do it. In such a case, try to flag such a decision for reconsideration in 'n' weeks, months or years. The point of an objective is to get team members thinking and talking of alternative ways to solving problems -not- set boundaries.
Future: Finding & Setting Objectives is the first step toward building a great team. Next scientists/engineers need to focus their problem definitions on Objectives. Then their problems could be solved in a day or two with the use a Calculus level compiler. After fixing all math model errors, these solutions would be optimal with parameter tolerances at a maximum. Last point is that total systems could be solved by nesting of sub-systems and components in one run. See our Oil Refinery example to visualize these levels of simulations/optimizations.
We offer a 2 hour class on Finding & Setting Objectives.
Are Processes are doing well?
A feedback system like Statistical Process Control is essential for answering how well things are going. Statistical Process Control helps management understand how a system works and allows them to deal with reality and to make changes in a system so that the system will be as effective as they can make it. If your company has such a system, great; otherwise, get one! Both an Objective-driven Employee and a Feedback system are recommended.