I just returned from the West Coast where I conceived and delivered a new crash course workshop on change management.

It started with a call from Jose, a business leader in Southern California  who’d learned of our work integrating the cultural and technical aspects of lean transformations. He wanted help launching lean six sigma with his leadership team and employees. Last week was my only available four day window–day out, day back, two days at the client site.

Jose loaded me up with emails covering every conceivable aspect of his company. Everything I needed to get up the learning curve on the long ride out.  

I used day one to get to know the leaders, conduct a few focus groups with employees and tour the operation. That plus the advance reading gave me what I needed to understand the climate and culture, performance opportunities and likely barriers to achieving them.    

For the next two days we plowed through change management fundamentals and then the advanced course: defining the future condition; identifying the requisite leadership roles and expectations; creating a plan to eliminate root causes of performance problems related to on-time delivery, quality and operating income; building the framework of a continuous improvement process; and prioritizing what work needs to stay on the plate and what must go. 

All in two days!

It worked because the leadership team was business-savvy, enthusiastic, used to doing hard work fast and, of course, (here comes the self-serving part) the content was exceptional.

The team has plenty to work on. We’ll check in at regular intervals for what Jose referred to as “sanity checks.” 

Good work, happy client, nice ride home. 

I’m fascinated by great advertsing. It’s the stuff that pulls, industry lingo for sells. In other words, it makes money for the sponsor. Novel idea in some circles.

But the softie side of me also loves the ads that poke a little or jerk at the emotions. Because I spent a number of years in the advertising/marketing community  I believe I can view spots from the ad guy’s perspective and  from the perspective of the guy watching the game while eating a bowl of chili.

From both perspectives, I thought the Super Bowl ads last night were mediocre compared to previous years.  The Doritos adds were clever and reminded me that they were selling Doritos.  And I’m a sucker for the Clydesdales, especially when a dog brings a horse and steer together for a lifetime of friendship.  Ahhh! Get me another Bud, please.

Otherwise I didn’t see a lot of creativity and wonder if that’s not part of the conservative, risk-averse advertising we’ve been seeing in recent years, especially in the economic downturn. Most of the spots lacked clear selling propositions and failed to make the product or service the hero of the ad, as David Ogilvy importuned young copywriters years ago. The Intel ad for a processor got my vote for the most juvenile and most difficult to figure out.  There was so much noise around the message that it took two airings before I figured out that they were selling processors not robotic toys.

Memory Lane. I miss the great ad days I was part of.  The days of Ogilvy, Leo Burnett and Doyle Dane and Bernbach “Think Small” spots for the Beetle. Here from YouTube is the German version of the famous snow plow ad. For those who missed this great ad era, the tag line at the end is loosely translated as “Ever wonder what the snow plow driver drives to work?”  The spot almost needs no commentary.   http://www.youtube.com/user/beetlejuice150#p/search/1/cUnEbNgHFco

Let me know what you think.

Jim

I alerted our Leadership Report readers to this new CBS “reality” TV show last week.  It came after last night’s Super Bowl. I couldn’t handle it after watching such a great game.  Sort of like chasing a perfectly grilled prime ribeye with a cheap white zinfandel. (Is there an expensive white zin?) 

For those who were watching more serious fare, like I Love Lucy re-runs, Undercover Bossis is about corporate CEO’s who masquerade as someone else so they can snoop on their employees. Some snooping may be perceived as good and some bad by the producers.  But snooping is always disingenuous in my book.

It may be cute TV but a leader resorting to dishonesty to get in touch with his organization and its people is perverse, uproots the concept of authentic leadership and eliminates the leader as a candidate for teaching the corporate ethics class.  Its potential for abuse is horrendous.

In today’s climate, it’s important for leaders to tell the truth. Authenticity has its virtues. CEO’s have immense political and personal influence. They have opportunity to inflict both good and bad. But when you tell people you’re a dockworker when you’re not, you aren’t telling the truth and you compromise yourself and your position. And your real motives come into question.

Some may say that walking incognito “among the troops” is a good thing.  But, I believe there isn’t something fundamentally wrong about the relationship between a leader and his people if he has to fake it to stay in touch?

Some  news media are desperately trying to hang on to the separation between the editorial and business sides of their business, although it’s getting awfully murky out there when advertising appears on news pages and is camouflaged in magazines as news stories) but I wonder about any dilemma CBS might face as its news people seek transparency from leaders while its programmers celebrate CEO’s who lie and hide.

Your thoughts?

According to a piece in The New York Times  a couple of weeks ago, at least one banker attempts to rationalize high pay in the financial industry with the need to fund the industry members’ personal lifestyles.

In an objective article by Steven Brill, a banker defends the need for high pay that’s paid now–with no deferral.  

“A lot of our folks have second and third homes and alimony payments and other obligations that require substantial current cash.”   

So the notion here is that compensation structures should be designed to accommodate the financial needs of the employees rather than to encourage and pay employees to act in ways that are consistent with meeting customer and shareholder requirements. This employee-comes-before-the-shareholder-and-customer mindset is dangerous in any business or industry.  But it’s no doubt the same mindset that encouraged other goofy behavior, including former Merrill CEO John Thain’s decision to spend $1.2 million on his office and a couple of conference rooms. 

It’s putting me over we and that’s dangerous in banking or any other industry.

Is “They just don’t get it” a fair observation?