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The Difference Between Process and Product Layout Manufacturing

In an effort to make your production line more efficient, look at the different ways to lay out the production line or overall manufacturing plant. Two of the most common layouts are the process layout and the product layout. Each layout provides a systematic approach to production, with each serving a different type of product assembly. Consider your business needs before you choose the best manufacturing layout for your company.

Process Layout

The process layout, also called the functional layout, is designed to keep everything organized in a manner so that everything has its place. Think about an auto mechanic's shop. New tires are stored in one section, whereas wrenches and other tools are stored in another section. The cans of oil are stored together, as are other groupings of supplies or power tools.

Although this is an organized layout in which everyone always knows where all supplies and tools are located, it isn't the most efficient for production lines, where the same job is performed every single time. The process layout is effective when each job is a custom situation. The mechanic's shop illustrates this well. One customer may come in needing only an oil change, but another may come in needing the entire transmission overhauled.

Product Layout

The product layout is the opposite of the process layout. Rather than have a specific section for each group of tools and supplies, the product layout is an assembly line. The required tools and supplies are located at each section of the assembly line, based on where the product is in production. This is common in auto manufacturing where the car being made is moved down the line and stops at stations where different things are assembled. One section might be where doors are attached, whereas another section inserts the engine.

This is an efficient system when the same product is being made without variation. Workers don't need to search or collect tools or supplies to perform their job. Giving workers one job to perform repeatedly reduces potential mistakes in the product assembly.

Choosing a Layout

The manufacturing layout will depend on business leaders determining the best process. Even though the functional layout requires more professional skill, automation can counter unskilled workers in the product layout. Because the process layout requires one worker or a small team to complete the entire task, the workflow is generally not as fast nor as smooth as it is with the product layout. However, the quality of the final product in a process layout is usually better than with the product layout.

As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. Evaluate your production space, your workforce and your ability to automate, before deciding on which layout will be the best solution for your business.

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The Difference Between Process and Product Layout Manufacturing

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In an effort to make your production line more efficient, look at the different ways to lay out the production line or overall manufacturing plant. Two of the most common layouts are the process layout and the product layout. Each layout provides a systematic approach to production, with each serving a different type of product assembly.

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People who manage to get a lot accomplished each day aren't superhuman; they've just mastered a few simple habits. Some may be easy to guess: Keep your desk organized and aim for around eight hours of sleep a night. But others, like taking a mid-day nap or complaining, might surprise you.

Here are 15 easy ways to make every day more productive:

1. Declutter your desk.

Messy work space:

Creativity may arise from chaos, but a litter-strewn office probably isn't helping you get stuff done. "Attention is programmed to pick up what's novel," says Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Two Awesome Hours. Visible files remind you of unfinished tasks. An unread book is temptation for procrastination. Even if you don't think you're noticing the disorder, it hurts your ability to focus.

Tidy workspace:

People with neat offices are more persistent and less frustrated and weary, according to a recent study in Harvard Business Review, which found that a clean desk helps you stick with a task more than one and a half times longer. "While it can be comforting to relax in your mess, a disorganized environment can be a real obstacle," says Grace Chae, a professor at Fox School of Business at Temple University and coauthor of the study.

2. Be part of the 20%.

No matter how crazy your days get, make sure you carve out and ruthlessly protect just 90 minutes-20% of an eight-hour day-for the most important tasks. "Even if you squander the remaining 80% of the day, you can still make great progress if you have spent 90 minutes on your goals or priorities," says Charlotte, North Carolina-based productivity coach Kimberly Medlock.

3. Work less.

Think you can get more done by tacking on extra hours? According to a 2014 study by Stanford professor John Pencavel, who examined data from laborers during World War I, output was proportionate to time worked-up to 49 hours. Beyond that, it rose at a decreasing rate, and those who put in 70 hours had the same productivity as someone who worked 56 hours.

4. Stop phoning it in.

You might believe you're ignoring your iPhone, but unless it's fully turned off, it's a major distraction. In a report published this year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, researchers from Florida State University found that even if you don't look at your phone when it buzzes, the sound makes your mind wander.

5. Try this email hack.

How Alexandra Samuel, author of Work Smarter With Social Media, avoids getting distracted when she's waiting for an important message:

1. Find the email-to-text format for your cell-phone provider with a quick Google search. Verizon, for example, is @vtext.com, so if your mobile number is 555-123-4567, your address is 5551234567@vtext.com.

2. Using that address, set up your email so it forwards messages from a specific sender to your cell phone via text (in Outlook, find "Rules" in the "Tools" task bar).

3. Shut down your inbox and ignore your emails while focusing on more pressing tasks, knowing you'll be alerted when the important message comes in.

6. Go heavy on HVAs.

People are more efficient at things that come naturally, while tasks that feel like a struggle are likely to impede progress. If you can, delegate the duties that feel like an effort, and instead focus on "high value activities." "HVAs are within your mission, leverage your strengths, and create impact or change," says Hillary Rettig, author of The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block. "They also create clarity and open your schedule." Delegating your non-HVA activities also helps create community. After all, they could very well be someone else's HVAs.

7. Meet smarter.

Three ways to get the most out of your group sessions:

1. Make a plan

Many meetings don't have a particular agenda, but it's important to know what you want to accomplish going in. "Keep meetings short by limiting the agenda to three items or less," says Alan Eisner, professor of management at Pace University's Lubin School of Business. "Afterward, send out minutes using your agenda so everyone knows what to work on."

2. Banish distractions

Put non-agenda thoughts into an "idea parking lot." "People bring up ideas that are important to them but not on topic," says Cary Greene, coauthor of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace. "Instead of losing them, write them down." Don't let the parking lot be a black hole: Assign follow-up steps right at the end of the meeting.

3. Play musical chairs

Walking meetings are gaining popularity, but you can get a similar benefit without hitting the hallway. Set a timer for 30 to 45 minutes. When it goes off, have everyone get up and move. "You can stand and shake it out a bit as a group, which lightens everyone up," says workplace psychologist Karissa Thacker. "Moving regularly is good for us in all kinds of ways, including improving our ability to focus."

8. Sleep on the job.

It might be tough to convince your boss, but researchers from the University of Michigan found that taking a daytime nap counteracts impulsive behavior and boosts tolerance for frustration. The findings also suggest that workplace dozers could be more productive.

9. Beware these productivity killers.

Identifying distractions is the first step to avoiding them. Here are the top five workplace attention destroyers, according to a 2015 survey by CareerBuilder:

10. Make prioritization a priority.

To get more done, be mindful of everyday choices, suggests Lisa Zaslow, founder of the New York-based Gotham Organizers:

1. Follow your brain

"We can't operate at peak performance all day long," says Zaslow. "When I'm feeling my best, I concentrate on important activities like writing. When I'm feeling tired and foggy, I do relatively mindless tasks like dealing with routine emails."

2. Practice strategic procrastination

"In order to focus on urgent or meaningful activities, let some other things slide," she says. For example, open your mail just once a week; these days, nothing urgent arrives with a postage stamp on it. And while some organizers will tell you to touch any piece of paper just once, Zaslow is more forgiving. It's okay to toss less-pressing work in a pile for later, she says.

11. Stay in the slumber "sweet spot."

It's not surprising that getting more done starts with a good night's sleep, but it turns out getting too many hours is as bad as too few. Analyzing the sleep and work habits of 3,760 people over seven years, researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found that under-sleepers and oversleepers were both more likely to take extra sick days.

12. Seek out the sun.

An office with a view sounds like a recipe for mind wandering. Actually, access to sunlight boosts productivity. In a study by the California Energy Commission, workers who sat near a window performed better, processing calls 6% to 12% faster and performing 10% to 25% better on tests that involved mental function and memory recall.

13. Want to motivate people? Be human.

Energize staff by clearly defining expectations and routinely offering positive feedback. According to a recent study by Gallup, companies that engage their workforce see a 65% decrease in turnover, a 21% bump in productivity, and a 10% increase in customer ratings.

14. Complain.

But do it the right way. Present your beef with an idea for improvement. "Framing things in terms of solutions lessens the focus on the problem and who might be at fault," says management professor Russell Johnson, coauthor of a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. "It evokes pleasant emotions instead of negative ones that cause mental fatigue."

15. Hit the elliptical.

Exercise not only improves health, it boosts output. And you don't have to kill yourself in CrossFit-a jog will do. Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand found that a daily 20-minute run helped lab rats complete problem-solving tasks more quickly and efficiently than their nonexercised counterparts.

Related: How Much Does Lack Of Sleep Really Affect Your Work?

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15 Habits That Will Totally Transform Your Productivity

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People who manage to get a lot accomplished each day aren't superhuman; they've just mastered a few simple habits. Some may be easy to guess: Keep your desk organized and aim for around eight hours of sleep a night. But others, like taking a mid-day nap or complaining, might surprise you.

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Because Ratio Analysis is based upon Accounting information, its effectiveness is limited by the distortions which arise in financial statements due to such things as Historical Cost Accounting and inflation. Therefore, Ratio Analysis should only be used as a first step in financial analysis, to obtain a quick indication of a firm's performance and to identify areas which need to be investigated further.

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Discussing the Benefits of Production Control

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Manufacturing companies use quality assurance programs to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace and reduce defect rates on the production line. Production control is a critical part of such programs, because it aims to remove waste from manufacturing processes through planning and organizing. Its many ...

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Workplace motivation is a topic you probably give little thought, until of course your employees need a major boost of motivation. But let's be honest. At that point the ship is sinking and you're the only one with a bucket trying to bail the water out. The key to keeping team members motivated is keeping them motivated at all times, not just when a big deadline is approaching or when you may need a few overtime hours.

Motivating your team can be simplified by using employee recognition software. The right software can help you recognize employees when they hit a goal or work beyond their job description. It can make it easier to encourage workers to better their performance. Just a click of the mouse can change the work environment in your office.

What is Employee Recognition Software?

Treat your employees how you want your customers to be treated. If that suggestion leaves you thinking it's time to raise the bar with how (and how often) you motivate and give your employees a pat on the back, you're not alone. Online employee recognition software allows you to give meaningful appreciation for a job well done. Praise, reward, and thank your team members in a way that reinforces productive, valued behavior. Employee recognition software, like what you'll find at Reward Geek, not only allows business leaders to reward employees, but coworkers can celebrate a job well done by recognizing another team member.

Why use Employee Recognition Software?

If you're reading this post thinking that wouldn't work for my business. I need real employee recognition solutions, let's talk about the benefits that come with online employee recognition software.

Keep top talent: CareerBuilder reports 34 percent of employees are regularly searching for job opportunities. If you want to keep your best workers, make them feel they are appreciated and valued.

Repeat positive actions: Want your employees to repeat their most productive actions? Reward them for doing it in the first place. Reinforce what you want to see in each worker, which motivates employees to repeat the same behaviors with a goal of again being recognized. This cycle will improve the workplace environment and grow your business. Yeah, we'll call that a win-win-win.

Support one another: Employee recognition software isn't just for the manager. Employee recognition solutions like Reward Geek, help better your work environment by letting workers reward each other. What a novel idea - let your team members motivate one another to the point of bettering your company. Ok, that's another win.

Motivate with Employee Recognition Software

Anyone can bark out a "thank you" in passing, but successful leaders, the kind that employees refuse to leave, know that employee motivation is more complicated than that. One easy solution is Reward Geek employee recognition software, which is customizable to your office. For example, you can create personalized badges to recognize an employee for a specific success. You award points, which can vary depending on the accomplishment, that can be turned into cool rewards. Rewards can be gift cards, charitable contributions, or company specific rewards like lunch with the CEO, a prime parking spot or a day off. The customization doesn't stop with employee rewards. Your Reward Geek metrics tell you who is using the platform, most popular rewards, and who is being nominated for rewards. Use this information for performance analysis and better feedback for your team.

With 46 percent of workers desiring a good work culture, a solid employee recognition program will help grow your business and keep the talent that gets you to the top.

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Improving Workplace Motivation with Employee Recognition Software

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Workplace motivation is a topic you probably give little thought, until of course your employees need a major boost of motivation. But let's be honest. At that point the ship is sinking and you're the only one with a bucket trying to bail the water out.

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Anger Quotes Ankle Tattoos Arm Tattoos Back Shoulder Tattoos Bicep Tattoos Bobek Tattoos Butterfly Tattoos Chest Tattoos Childhood Quotes China Confidence Quotes Courage Quotes Curiosity Quotes Education Quotes Elephant Tattoos Finger Tattoos Flower Tattoos Foot Tattoos Forearm Tattoos Front Shoulder Tattoos Full Back Tattoos Half Sleeve Tattoos Hand Tattoos Jealousy Quotes Kindness Quotes Knowledge Quotes Leadership Quotes Leg Tattoos Life Quotes Love Quotes Owl Tattoos Phoenix Tattoos Red Dog Tattoos Rose Tattoos Shoulder Tattoos Side Rib Tattoos Skull Tattoos Sleeve Tattoos Star Tattoos Thigh Tattoos Tiger Tattoos Upper Back Tattoos Valentine's Week Valentines Day Quotes Wrist Tattoos

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Some people believe that leaders are born, not made. Others, however, think leadership skills can be developed and honed, just like any other ability.

Members of tend to agree with the latter theory, as many of them work closely with up-and-coming professionals to help them become better, more effective leaders. Thesecoaches are also finely attuned to workplace trends, and based on today's changing environment, they know what skills leaders will need to succeed.

Here are 16 leadership skills that will be imperative to the future of work.

The speed of the market and our workplaces, powered by the constant stream of new technology and the "on demand" expectations it has created, will continue to accelerate. Leaders who can quickly yet effectively think, decide and inspire will be critical to keep up with these fast-changing competitive demands. - Bonnie Davis, Destination Up

As the workplace evolves to become more transparent, collaborative and mindful, leaders must be equally diligent to earn respect from their team. Leaders must hold themselves responsible and accountable for the effect their influence has on their employees and the organization as a whole. Leadership should be earned anew each day. - Sheri Nasim, Center for Executive Excellence
3. Empathy
The future of leadership will revolve around our capacities to build emotional intelligence within ourselves as leaders, and those whose lives we touch. Empathy and compassion aren't just ideals of ancient spiritual teachings; they are cornerstones for bringing people together in mutual understanding around vital, complex and sometimes alienating socio-political and economic issues. - Dave Ursillo, DaveUrsillo.com
4. Selflessness
Leaders of the future will know how to tirelessly encourage the dreams of those around them while diffusing their fears. This requires leaders to have unshakable certainty in themselves and a willingness to be generous with those they lead. - Monique Alvarez, Monique Alvarez Enterprises
5. Flexibility
The days of cubicles and 9-to-5 routines are winding down. Teams are quickly transitioning to work from remote locations, on their own time, on platforms that change every single day. Flexibility may be an old-school idea, yet it's a principle leaders will always need. Adapting to the changing technology and millennial-created cultures continue to keep leaders fresh and effective. - Hanna Hermanson, Dream Life is Real Life
6. Committing To A Clear Vision
Upholding a vision for the future is nothing new to leadership, as are other key traits like emotional intelligence and being willing to take necessary risks. But there is something to be said for being unwavering in the pursuit of a mission and vision. Leaders who can capitalize on ways to make that future vision a reality will take their companies and staff further, faster. - Laura DeCarlo, Career Directors International
7. Listening
The pace of work, innovation and change continues to accelerate. Leaders need to be highly skilled listeners to stay ahead of the curve on what's happening with their teams, their clients and their partners. That will require learning to listen on multiple levels, including being able to tune in better to the emotional soundtracks of those they lead, serve and work with. - Joe Casey, Princeton Executive Coaching
8. Humility
Humility is one of the behaviors I observe least often. Recognizing that, simply put, it is not all about you, is how leaders can enable their teams and their organizations to prepare for the future. Leaders should not view themselves as the most important person. Be modest about your value. Encourage others to shine rather than looking for the light yourself. - Leila Bulling Towne, The Bulling Towne Group, LLC

9. Communication And 'Soft Skills'

"Soft skills" like communication, listening and public speaking have become crucial in the day-to-day leadership environment. Without effective communication, leaders are just figureheads. By focusing on the interpersonal interactions, leaders can reach individuals where they are and connect. - Jennifer Oleniczak Brown, The Engaging Educator
10. Steadiness While Remaining Adaptable
Technological advancements are happening at a rapid pace, which affects the way leaders do business often. Inflexible leadership causes companies to lag behind competitors, which could ultimately lead to losing market share - or worse, becoming obsolete. Staying on the cutting edge of any industry requires flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly to the changes in the marketplace. - Tamiko Cuellar, Pursue Your Purpose LLC
11. Learning Quickly
The well-known skills of top leaders in the past, such as effective communication and personal branding, will always be around. But the often-overlooked trait of a top leader that has never been more important is the ability to learn quickly, over and above just the ability to recall and reformulate current knowledge. Coachability and adaptability are critical in an age of tech overwhelm. - Yuri Kruman, Master The Talk Consulting
12. Cultural Intelligence
Experience and business acumen will only take a leader so far. High-touch experiences with stakeholders and employees and the ability to deftly maneuver in social settings have become the rule, rather than the exception. Because we are becoming more globally entrenched as a society, understanding, appreciating and leveraging differences each become critical to effective leadership. - Karima Mariama-Arthur, Esq., WordSmithRapport
13. Understanding The Individual
With multiple generations in the workforce at the same time, the need for individual attention is crucial. Gone are the days when leaders could enforce blanket policies and expect results. Acknowledging the differences in each team member goes a long way when leaders are trying to communicate, motivate and inspire. - Dominique Anders, Dominant Media / Dominique Anders Coaching
14. Authenticity
Authenticity encompasses trustworthiness, openness, empathy and being real. We are wary of leaders who are fake, narcissistic, secretive or self-serving. Teams are getting bolder at calling out destructive character traits that impact their livelihood and the corporate world. The best leaders today are authentic; it's how we connect and build trust in our teams and companies. - Frances McIntosh, Intentional Coaching LLC
15. Leading Through Change
Leaders of the future have to get better at leading teams through change. The talk of the importance of change is pervasive in business conversations today, but few leaders actually understand and are good at executing change. The most powerful change skill is leveraging your people's natural inclination to be creative through transitions. Harness that energy, and leaders will be unstoppable. - Dr. Rachel MK Headley, Rose Group, Intl
16. Versatility
Versatility across multiple areas of business is proving to be a coveted leadership trait. Gone are the days of singular expertise; businesses covet skill diversity and agility. The greater the exposure to various job functions, the easier it can be for leaders to navigate the ever-evolving world of business, adapt to changing business demands, and provide beneficial solutions. - Adrienne Tom, Career Impressions

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16 Essential Leadership Skills For The Workplace Of Tomorrow

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Some people believe that leaders are born, not made. Others, however, think leadership skills can be developed and honed, just like any other ability. Members of tend to agree with the latter theory, as many of them work closely with up-and-coming professionals to help them become better, more effective leaders.

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What is the difference between a group of employees and a team? A group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their individual efforts. On the other hand, at team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and a number of challenging goals. Members of the team are mutually committed to the goals and to each other. This mutual commitment also creates joint accountability which creates a strong bond and a strong motivation to perform.

Without purpose and goals you cannot build a team. The purpose must be worthwhile and create a sense of doing something important together. The goals must be challenging and specific so that each member can understand how they contribute to the success of the team.

A well-defined strategic plan outlining the purpose, values, goals and objectives of the team becomes the glue that binds the group together and helps transform them into a team. Participation in developing that plan helps to build understanding, consensus, and commitment. As a leader, you use the plan to set expectations for individuals and the team as a whole.

The power of a team emerges from the sense of community that develops and exerts strong influence on the attitudes and behaviors of the participants. Peer pressure and a desire to be a productive member of the team helps to shape priorities and direct efforts where they will support the team goals.

As a leader and manager, you are no longer limited to managing individuals. You have an opportunity to manage the team as a whole and enlist the support of the team to help manage the individuals.

Jim Sisson is a principal of Vantage Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in strategic planning. You can reach him at jsisson@vantageassociates.com.

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The difference between a group and a team - The Business Journals

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What is the difference between a group of employees and a team? A group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their individual efforts. On the other hand, at team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and a number of challenging goals.

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Lead
7 Ways to Build Influence in the Workplace

Influence has countless benefits, and is a particularly lucrative asset in the business world. Here are seven ways to build your influence!

Influence is power. No matter who you are, where you work, or what your professional goals are, achieving more influence in the workplace is critical for success. Gaining influence on a team can help you work together more effectively. Gaining influence in a supervisory position can make you more respected and appreciated. Gaining influence in a meeting can make your voice more likely to be heard and acknowledged.

Influence has countless advantages, but gaining that influence, like learning a skill, takes time and effort. Fortunately, there are many strategies you can use to cultivate this characteristic.

1. Build Trust With Your Co-Workers. Influence is most often and most easily carried through trust. Only when a co-worker trusts you will he or she be open to your influence. If you're in a higher position in the company hierarchy, it's possible to convey a demand or assign a task that must be carried out by your employee, but true influence suggests a free will component. If you assigned the same task but didn't carry a higher authority, would your employee still listen to you and believe that the task is necessary to execute?

This hypothetical may not be relevant to your situation, but regardless of your position in comparison to the positions of your co-workers, if you want a healthy and influential working relationship, you're going to have to cultivate trust. The easiest way to do that is to be open and honest, no matter what. State your opinions, disclose your apprehensions, and don't keep secrets. It's as simple as that.

2. Cultivate Reliability Through Consistency. Inconsistency is the fastest way to ruin your reputation. Consistency, on the other hand, is slow but sure--if you execute your tasks effectively and on time, day after day, eventually people will come to rely on you. The same is true when you execute a consistent style of leadership, setting consistent expectations with your employees and giving consistent rewards for good work. People will come to rely on your behavior and expect you to be a consistent performer.

That consistency is vital for building influence. Otherwise, you'll have an air of unpredictability about you, and people won't know whether to trust or impugn your suggestions. If you're consistently motivated by the same principles, people will trust that your ideas are solid and reliable as an extension, and that will make it easier to get people on your side. Consistency is especially important when you're in a lower position, since it demonstrates a degree of dedication.

3. Be Assertive, Not Aggressive. Being assertive is the only way to get your ideas noticed, especially when you're competing with others for visibility, such as in a meeting. However, there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive. You'll need to present your thoughts and ideas with a high degree of confidence, indicating your convictions, but any excessive degree of confidence could be mistaken for needless arrogance, which will compromise your perceived authority. Tread carefully, especially when you're unfamiliar with your audience or if you're presenting your thoughts on an area outside of your expertise.

This assertiveness should extend as a general quality to all your interactions, regardless of whether you're speaking to employees above, below, or at your level, and regardless of the conversation format. Being assertive, so long as you truly believe in what you're saying, is a way to cultivate a reputation of authority and earn the ability to influence your peers and employees.

4. Be Flexible. Flexibility is also important. While this may seem like it conflicts with the need to be assertive--after all, it's difficult to assert yourself fully if you're open to changing your opinion--being too stringent or adamant in your beliefs will work against you. In this case, people will come to see you as a stubborn, immovable monolith, incapable of believing in anyone other than yourself. This can decrease the respect people have for you and compromise your overall influence.

Instead, work actively to show your flexibility while holding firm on your beliefs. Negotiations and compromises are often the best ways to do this. Stay rigid in your beliefs when someone contradicts you, but work with them to find a mutually acceptable solution. When people believe you to be flexible, they'll be more likely to listen to you even if they're stubborn in their own right.

5. Be Personal. A little personality goes a long way, especially when you're trying to build influence in the workplace. This is especially important when you're in a higher position, as a boss or a supervisor. If you isolate yourself, or try to build your perceived authority by distancing yourself from the others, it might only serve to alienate you and put you in a position where you're viewed with distrust or even resentment.

Instead, go out of your way to have personal exchanges with your employees and co-workers. You don't need to build friendships, but there's no reason why you can't get to know each other. Personal working relationships are important for cultivating a sense of team, and if people see you as another person on the team, they'll be more receptive when you disclose your ideas or opinions. The key here is to seem imperfect, approachable, and human.

6. Focus on Actions Rather Than Argument. Trying to build influence through words is useless. Even a leader with perfect diction and a background in rhetorical strategy can't hope to win the influence of his or her peers through speeches and arguments alone. If you're going to build influence in the workplace, you need to speak through your actions, or at the very least have the actions and history to back up whatever it is you're saying.

Part of this comes into play when you build consistency. Working hard consistently and getting consistently good results shows people that you're able to walk the walk. Demonstrating your ideas through real examples is the next step in this process. Instead of arguing about how your structure will work in theory, put it to the test. Show instead of tell.

7. Listen to Others. Finally, remember that influence is a two-way street. The more you believe in the people around you and incorporate their ideas into your vision, the more they'll believe in your ideas and incorporate them into their work habits. If you want to build up this kind of relationship with your co-workers and employees, you first have to listen. Listen to everyone's opinion, and encourage people to speak up, especially if they don't often voice their opinions. Take time to respect and acknowledge everybody's opinion, and let people know that you value them.

This creates an atmosphere of mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual teamwork. If you're spearheading the initiative to build this environment, they'll come to see you as a leader, and your opinions will naturally be heard, acknowledged, and respected as a result.

Influence is an extraordinary asset in the professional world, but remember, your goal here should be to become more respected in the workplace, not to increase the likelihood of getting others to do your bidding. One is a respectable journey to greater prominence and productivity, while the other is simply a Machiavellian power trip.

Influence is power. No matter who you are, where you work, or what your professional goals are, achieving more influence in the workplace is critical for success. Gaining influence on a team can help you work together more effectively. Gaining influence in a supervisory position can make you more respected and appreciated. Gaining influence in a meeting can make your voice more likely to be heard and acknowledged.

Influence has countless advantages, but gaining that influence, like learning a skill, takes time and effort. Fortunately, there are many strategies you can use to cultivate this characteristic.

1. Build Trust With Your Co-Workers. Influence is most often and most easily carried through trust. Only when a co-worker trusts you will he or she be open to your influence. If you're in a higher position in the company hierarchy, it's possible to convey a demand or assign a task that must be carried out by your employee, but true influence suggests a free will component. If you assigned the same task but didn't carry a higher authority, would your employee still listen to you and believe that the task is necessary to execute?

This hypothetical may not be relevant to your situation, but regardless of your position in comparison to the positions of your co-workers, if you want a healthy and influential working relationship, you're going to have to cultivate trust. The easiest way to do that is to be open and honest, no matter what. State your opinions, disclose your apprehensions, and don't keep secrets. It's as simple as that.

2. Cultivate Reliability Through Consistency. Inconsistency is the fastest way to ruin your reputation. Consistency, on the other hand, is slow but sure--if you execute your tasks effectively and on time, day after day, eventually people will come to rely on you. The same is true when you execute a consistent style of leadership, setting consistent expectations with your employees and giving consistent rewards for good work. People will come to rely on your behavior and expect you to be a consistent performer.

That consistency is vital for building influence. Otherwise, you'll have an air of unpredictability about you, and people won't know whether to trust or impugn your suggestions. If you're consistently motivated by the same principles, people will trust that your ideas are solid and reliable as an extension, and that will make it easier to get people on your side. Consistency is especially important when you're in a lower position, since it demonstrates a degree of dedication.

3. Be Assertive, Not Aggressive. Being assertive is the only way to get your ideas noticed, especially when you're competing with others for visibility, such as in a meeting. However, there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive. You'll need to present your thoughts and ideas with a high degree of confidence, indicating your convictions, but any excessive degree of confidence could be mistaken for needless arrogance, which will compromise your perceived authority. Tread carefully, especially when you're unfamiliar with your audience or if you're presenting your thoughts on an area outside of your expertise.

This assertiveness should extend as a general quality to all your interactions, regardless of whether you're speaking to employees above, below, or at your level, and regardless of the conversation format. Being assertive, so long as you truly believe in what you're saying, is a way to cultivate a reputation of authority and earn the ability to influence your peers and employees.

4. Be Flexible. Flexibility is also important. While this may seem like it conflicts with the need to be assertive--after all, it's difficult to assert yourself fully if you're open to changing your opinion--being too stringent or adamant in your beliefs will work against you. In this case, people will come to see you as a stubborn, immovable monolith, incapable of believing in anyone other than yourself. This can decrease the respect people have for you and compromise your overall influence.

Instead, work actively to show your flexibility while holding firm on your beliefs. Negotiations and compromises are often the best ways to do this. Stay rigid in your beliefs when someone contradicts you, but work with them to find a mutually acceptable solution. When people believe you to be flexible, they'll be more likely to listen to you even if they're stubborn in their own right.

5. Be Personal. A little personality goes a long way, especially when you're trying to build influence in the workplace. This is especially important when you're in a higher position, as a boss or a supervisor. If you isolate yourself, or try to build your perceived authority by distancing yourself from the others, it might only serve to alienate you and put you in a position where you're viewed with distrust or even resentment.

Instead, go out of your way to have personal exchanges with your employees and co-workers. You don't need to build friendships, but there's no reason why you can't get to know each other. Personal working relationships are important for cultivating a sense of team, and if people see you as another person on the team, they'll be more receptive when you disclose your ideas or opinions. The key here is to seem imperfect, approachable, and human.

6. Focus on Actions Rather Than Argument. Trying to build influence through words is useless. Even a leader with perfect diction and a background in rhetorical strategy can't hope to win the influence of his or her peers through speeches and arguments alone. If you're going to build influence in the workplace, you need to speak through your actions, or at the very least have the actions and history to back up whatever it is you're saying.

Part of this comes into play when you build consistency. Working hard consistently and getting consistently good results shows people that you're able to walk the walk. Demonstrating your ideas through real examples is the next step in this process. Instead of arguing about how your structure will work in theory, put it to the test. Show instead of tell.

7. Listen to Others. Finally, remember that influence is a two-way street. The more you believe in the people around you and incorporate their ideas into your vision, the more they'll believe in your ideas and incorporate them into their work habits. If you want to build up this kind of relationship with your co-workers and employees, you first have to listen. Listen to everyone's opinion, and encourage people to speak up, especially if they don't often voice their opinions. Take time to respect and acknowledge everybody's opinion, and let people know that you value them.

This creates an atmosphere of mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual teamwork. If you're spearheading the initiative to build this environment, they'll come to see you as a leader, and your opinions will naturally be heard, acknowledged, and respected as a result.

Influence is an extraordinary asset in the professional world, but remember, your goal here should be to become more respected in the workplace, not to increase the likelihood of getting others to do your bidding. One is a respectable journey to greater prominence and productivity, while the other is simply a Machiavellian power trip.

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7 Ways to Build Influence in the Workplace

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Lead Influence is power. No matter who you are, where you work, or what your professional goals are, achieving more influence in the workplace is critical for success. Gaining influence on a team can help you work together more effectively. Gaining influence in a supervisory position can make you more respected and appreciated.

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Image credit: Shutterstock

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

From wearables to rugged tech, the digital world has infiltrated every aspect of business, and everyone is drooling over the latest gadgets.

But although technology is front-and-center in today's corporate world, that doesn't mean you can forget about the employees -- those very important people behind the scenes.

As author Daniel Pink notes in his book , Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, as the number of jobs that require cognitive skill increases, people are more important than ever.

These "thought jobs," as Pink calls them, require a higher level of creativity, problem-solving prowess and out-of-the-box thinking, meaning that in order for a business to be successful, it needs to learn how to leverage its unique human element.

Every part of your business boils down to people. And by understanding the human element, you'll be more profitable, lead more effectively, create brand loyalty, close more deals and do better work. Taking this approach also forces you to consider your own motivations, and this can lead you to become more empathetic and understanding.

To enjoy these benefits, however, you have to build the human element into your company's core values. Here are four steps to get you started.
Related: 10 Behaviors of Genuine People
1. Tie individual goals to company goals.

Pink suggests that people aren't necessarily motivated by money, especially those involved in thought jobs. Instead, they're motivated by a desire for " autonomy, mastery and purpose."

Employee performance improves when you tie individual goals to company goals in a meaningful way. The best leaders understand what makes people tick, so give your teammates what they need to succeed and hold them accountable to your expectations.

2. Connect with your customers on a deeper level

Marketing and sales are no longer about getting as many eyeballs as possible on your advertisements. People are so inundated with ads and sales pitches that they're not very effective anymore.

It's much more important to build meaningful relationships with consumers. Harley-Davidson discovered this, and now people get tattoos of its logo. Apple discovered this, and now people put its logo on their cars. Effective marketing gets at the heart of what drives people.

Encourage your team to build real relationships with customers. This will foster trust and brand loyalty. My personal key to success has been to network and build authentic relationships. After I build the relationship, it's easy to find ways to help each other grow and succeed.
Related: 7 Ways Toxic Managers Stifle Employee Motivation and Productivity
3. Put health first

I've found that my employees perform better when wellness and work-life balance are prioritized. If you want employees to perform at maximum capacity, they need to take care of themselves.

Tony Schwartz's book, The Way We're Working Isn't Working, changed my perception about integrating health into my company's culture. Charlie Kim's fantastic keynote at the 2014 Colorado Health Symposium also sheds light on this topic.

To inspire employees, we're implementing matchup.io for a team fitness and accountability system. We also provide unlimited paid time off and free healthy snacks, and we host "Coplex Clean Eats" on Wednesdays.

4. Center yourself

Being an entrepreneur isn't easy, and things don't always go as planned. I initially struggled to balance my work life with my personal life. It was hard to be the "rock" for my employees, my friends and my family.

During this time, I read several books about personal growth -- classics such as Think and Grow Rich and Man's Search for Meaning -- and they focused on understanding your own psychology. Once you know yourself, you can control your emotions, exude gratitude and live with a purpose.

No matter what business you're in, the human element is omnipresent. You need to understand that just like your family members, employees and clients, you're only human. Leading with empathy is the best way to attain success in business. And by cultivating a culture that prioritizes the human element, you can get back to what really matters -- people.
Related: 8 Ways to Effectively Lead Entrepreneurial Employees

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The Human Element: Your Most Important Business Resource

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. From wearables to rugged tech, the digital world has infiltrated every aspect of business, and everyone is drooling over the latest gadgets. But although technology is front-and-center in today's corporate world, that doesn't mean you can forget about the employees -- those very important people behind the scenes.

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Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It's what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.

Positive workplace culture attracts talent, drives engagement, impacts happiness and satisfaction, and affects performance. The personality of your business is influenced by everything. Leadership, management, workplace practices, policies, people, and more impact culture significantly.

The biggest mistake organizations make is letting their workplace culture form naturally without first defining what they want it to be.

Why Workplace Culture is Important

Culture is as important as your business strategy because it either strengthens or undermines your objectives. Positive culture is significant, especially because:

It attracts talent. Job candidates evaluate your organization and its climate. A strong, positive, clearly defined and well-communicated culture attracts talent that fits.

It drives engagement and retention. Culture impacts how employees interact with their work and your organization.

It impacts happiness and satisfaction. Research shows that employee happiness and satisfaction are linked to strong workplace culture (Source: Deloitte).

It affects performance. Organizations with stronger cultures outperform their competitors financially and are generally more successful.

What Impacts Culture in the Workplace?

The short answer is everything. A multitude of factors play a role in developing workplace culture, including:

Leadership

The way your leaders communicate and interact with employees, what they communicate and emphasize, their vision for the future, what they celebrate and recognize, what they expect, the stories they tell, how they make decisions, the extent to which they are trusted, and the beliefs and perceptions they reinforce.

Management

How your organization is managed-its systems, procedures, structure, hierarchy, controls, and goals. The degree to which managers empower employees to make decisions, support and interact with them, and act consistently.

Workplace Practices

Practices related to recruiting, selection, onboarding, compensation and benefits, rewards and recognition, training and development, advancement/promotion, performance management, wellness, and work/life balance ( paid time off, leave, etc.), as well as workplace traditions.

Policies and Philosophies

Employment policies including, but not limited to, attendance, dress code, code of conduct, and scheduling, in addition to organizational philosophies such as hiring, compensation, pay for performance, and internal transfer and promotion.

People

The people you hire - their personalities, beliefs, values, diverse skills and experiences, and everyday behaviors. The types of interactions that occur between employees (collaborative versus confrontational, supportive versus non-supportive, social versus task-oriented, etc.).

Mission, Vision, and Values

Clarity of mission, vision, and values and whether they honestly reflect the beliefs and philosophies of your organization, how inspiring they are to your employees, and the extent to which the mission, vision, and values are stable, widely communicated, and continuously emphasized.

Work Environment

Objects, artifacts, and other physical signs in your workplace. These include what people place on their desks, what the organization hangs on its walls, how it allocates space and offices, what those offices look like (color, furniture, etc.), and how common areas are used.

Communications

The manner in which communication occurs in your workplace. Importantly, the degree, type, and frequency of interaction and communication between leaders and employees, and managers and employees, including the extent of transparency in sharing information and making decisions.

Defining Your Workplace Culture

Most of us let our workplace culture form naturally without defining what we want it to be, and that's a mistake. For example:

We create policies and workplace programs based on what other employers do versus whether they fit our work environment.

We hire employees who don't fit.

We tolerate management styles that threaten employee engagement and retention.

We don't create and communicate a clear and inspiring mission, vision, and set of values.

Our work environments are lackluster.

We don't consider how our everyday actions (or inactions) as leaders are affecting the formation of our culture.

For these reasons, it's important to step back, evaluate, and define your workplace culture-both what it is now and what you want it to be in the future - and how all of these factors either contribute or take away from your desired culture.

Although it can be very difficult to define, assessment tools and surveys can help you gauge your culture. They may reveal gaps between the culture you want to attain and the culture you currently have.

In addition, observation, examination of workplace behavior, meetings, discussions, and interviews can expose your workplace climate. The important part is to start somewhere and open a dialogue with your leadership team about it.

Keep in mind that culture is always a work in progress. It can and will change. Make culture as important as your business strategy. It's too significant to ignore, and shaping it is one of your most important responsibilities as leaders and HR professionals.

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Workplace Culture: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Define It

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Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It's what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes. Positive workplace culture attracts talent, drives engagement, impacts happiness and satisfaction, and affects performance. The personality of your business is influenced by everything.

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Shankar Achintya Lahiri

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Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd - Truly Proud to be 3rd Generation LAHIRI to serve L&T !!

Authority, Responsibility and Accountability In Management

It is necessary to have brief understanding of three terms intimately connected with the concept and process of delegation.

Authority Responsibility Accountability

These terms are: 1) Responsibility, 2) Authority, and 3) Accountability.

Responsibility

Responsibility indicates the duty assigned to a position. The person holding the position has to perform the duty assigned. It is his responsibility. The term responsibility is often referred to as an obligation to perform a particular task assigned to a subordinate. In an organisation, responsibility is the duty as per the guidelines issued.

Responsibility

Definitions of Responsibility

According to Davis, "Responsibility is an obligation of individual to perform assigned duties to the best of his ability under the direction of his executive leader." In the words of Theo Haimann, "Responsibility is the obligation of a subordinate to perform the duty as required by his superior".

McFarland defines responsibility as "the duties and activities assigned to a position or an executive".

Characteristics of Responsibility

The essence of responsibility is the obligation of a subordinate to perform the duty assigned.

It always originates from the superior-subordinate relationship.

Normally, responsibility moves upwards, whereas authority flows downwards.

Responsibility is in the form of a continuing obligation.

Responsibility cannot be delegated.

The person accepting responsibility is accountable for the performance of assigned duties.

It is hard to conceive responsibility without authority.

Authority

Authority is the right or power assigned to an executive or a manager in order to achieve certain organizational objectives.

A manager will not be able to function efficiently without proper authority. Authority is the genesis of organizational framework. It is an essential accompaniment of the job of management. Without authority, a manager ceases to be a manager, because he cannot get his policies carried out through others. Authority is one of the founding stones of formal and informal organisations. An Organisation cannot survive without authority. It indicates the right and power of making decisions, giving orders and instructions to subordinates. Authority is delegated from above but must be accepted from below i.e. by the subordinates. In other words, authority flows downwards.

Authority

Definitions of Authority

According to Henri Fayol, "Authority is the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience."

According to Mooney and Reily, "Authority is the principle at the root of Organisation and so important that it is impossible to conceive of an Organisation at all unless some person or persons are in a position to require action of others."

Accountability

Every employee/manager is accountable for the job assigned to him. He is supposed to complete the job as per the expectations and inform his superior accordingly. Accountability is the liability created for the use of authority. It is the answerability for performance of the assigned duties.

Accountability

Definition of Accountability

According, to McFarland, "accountability is the obligation of an individual to report formally to his superior about the work he has done to discharge the responsibility."

When authority is delegated to a subordinate, the person is accountable to the superior for performance in relation to assigned duties. If the subordinate does a poor job, the superior cannot evade the responsibility by stating that poor performance is the fault of the subordinate. A superior is normally responsible for all actions of groups under his supervision even if there are several layers down in the hierarchy. Simply stated, accountability means that the subordinate should explain the factors responsible for non-performance or lack of performance.

Authority, Responsibility and Accountability are Inter-related

They need proper consideration while introducing delegation of authority within an Organisation. In the process of delegation, the superior transfers his duties/responsibilities to his subordinate and also give necessary authority for performing the responsibilities assigned. At the same time, the superior is accountable for the performance of his subordinate.

Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd - Truly Proud to be 3rd Generation LAHIRI to serve L&T !!

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Authority, Responsibility and Accountability In Management

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It is necessary to have brief understanding of three terms intimately connected with the concept and process of delegation. Authority Responsibility Accountability These terms are: 1) Responsibility, 2) Authority, and 3) Accountability. Responsibility indicates the duty assigned to a position. The person holding the position has to perform the duty assigned.

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One of the objectives of the management is to establish a sound organisational structure and to do this, effective authority and responsibility relationship should be created, i.e. Who is accountable to whom? Who are superior and subordinate? Who can give orders? Whenever authority is used, responsibility ensues. Authority is the legal right to give the command, order or instruction and compel the subordinates to do a certain act.

On the other hand, Responsibility is the outcome of authority. It entails the obligation of the subordinate, who has been assigned the duty by his superior.

Thus, these two are coextensive and commonly misconstrued by the people, however, they are different. This article attempts to describe the difference between authority and responsibility, take a read.

Content: Authority Vs Responsibility

Comparison Chart

Definition of Authority

We define 'authority' as the legal and formal right of the manager or supervisor or any of the top level executives, of the organisation to command subordinates, give them orders, instructions and directions, and access obedience. The manager is entitled to make decisions, concerning performance or non-performance of a task in a particular manner, so as to accomplish organisational objectives. It comprises of some permissions and the right to act for the organisation in a particular area.

Authority is derived by virtue of the position of an individual in the organisation, and the degree of authority is maximum at the top level and decreases consequently as we go down the corporate hierarchy. Therefore, it flows from top to bottom, giving authority to superior over the subordinate.

One cannot occupy a superior position in an organisation if he does not have any authority. It is the authority; that distinguishes one position from that of another and vests the power to the concerned individual, to order his subordinates and obtain necessary compliance.
Types of Authority

Official Authority: The authority which gives the manager, power to command his subordinates, by virtue of his designation in the organisation.

Personal Authority: It indicates the ability by which a person influences the behaviour of other persons in an organisation.

Definition of Responsibility

Responsibility is the obligation of an individual, whether a manager or any other employee of the organisation to carry out the task or duty assigned to him by the senior. The one who accepts the task are held responsible for their performance, i.e. when an employee takes the responsibility of an action, at the same time, he becomes responsible for its consequences too.

The obligation is the kernel of responsibility. It is originated from the superior-subordinate relationship, formed in an organisation. Hence, the manager can get the tasks done from his subordinates, by virtue of their relationship, as the subordinate is bound to perform the tasks assigned.

Key Differences Between Authority and Responsibility

The following points are noteworthy so far as the difference between authority and responsibility is concerned:

1. The power or right, inherent to a particular job or position, to give orders, enforce rules, make decisions and obtain conformity, is called authority. Duty or obligation to undertake and complete a task satisfactorily, assigned by the senior or established by one's own commitment or circumstances is called responsibility.

2. Authority refers to the legal right of the manager to give orders and expect obedience from subordinates. On the other hand, responsibility is the corollary, i.e. result of the authority.

3. The position of an individual in an organisation determines his/her authority, i.e. the higher the position of a person in the corporate ladder, the more is the authority and vice versa. As against this, the superior-subordinate relationship forms the basis for responsibility.

4. While authority is delegated, by the superior to subordinates, responsibility is assumed, i.e. it is inherent in the task assigned.

5. Authority needs the ability to give orders and instructions, whereas responsibility demands the ability of compliance or obedience, to follow orders.

6. Authority flows downward, i.e. the extent of authority is greatest at the top level and lowest at the low level. On the contrary, the responsibility exacts upward, i.e. from bottom to top, the subordinate will be responsible to superior.

7. The purpose of the authority is to take decisions and execute them. Conversely, responsibility aims at executing duties assigned by the superior.

8. Authority is inherent with the position, and so it continues for a long period. Unlike responsibility, which is attached to the task assigned and hence it is short-lived, it ends as soon as the task accomplishes successfully.

Conclusion

A point to remember in connection with authority and responsibility is that while assigning certain responsibility to an employee, the required amount of authority should also be conferred on him so that he/she can be able to perform it.

Hence, the delegation of authority can only be effective when it matches with the assigned responsibility, i.e. if the authority assigned to a person is greater than the responsibility, it ultimately results in the misuse of authority. Likewise, if the responsibility assigned is greater than the authority, then also the tasks will not be carried out properly due to the lack of necessary authority, thus making it ineffective. So, a balance should be maintained between the authority and responsibility.

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Difference Between Authority and Responsibility (with Comparison Chart) - Key Differences

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One of the objectives of the management is to establish a sound organisational structure and to do this, effective authority and responsibility relationship should be created, i.e. Who is accountable to whom? Who are superior and subordinate? Who can give orders? Whenever authority is used, responsibility ensues.

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Decision making. It's the bread and butter of managers and executives, who make about three billion decisions each year. Indeed, Bain researches found that decision effectiveness is 95% correlated with financial performance .

Despite this, very few of us keep track of the decisions we make and how they turn out. Think of it: you track sales, you track web clicks, you track your Starbucks receipts. But you don't track the most important thing you do at work - the decisions you make.

As a result, most organizations are not very good at decision making. It's no surprise that our study of 500 managers and executives found 98% fail to apply best practices when making decisions.

If decision making is so important, why are we so in the dark?
The Lie At The Heart Of Business
It's because we're lying to ourselves. As renowned futurist Stowe Boyd writes in his free white paper, "How to Untell the Lie at the Heart of Business ":

There is an enormous lie underlying business, the lie that decisions are made rationally, applying logic and expertise, sifting evidence, and carefully weighing alternatives. However, the science is clear: in general, we don't really make decisions that way - we fake it, instead.

The combination of cognitive biases, limited attention spans, and our tendency to overestimate our abilities in areas we know little about add up to a insidious tendency towards bad judgment. We think we are great decision makers. And since we rarely write our decisions down and check them later, it's easy to keep convincing ourselves that we're right.

We're wrong. But we can change.
Using Best Practices To Defeat Bad Judgements
We can get to better, faster decision making by using best practices and technologies based on behavioral economics.

Consider this: In a three-month study of 100 managers, managers who made decisions using best practices achieved expectations 90% of the time, and 40% of them exceeded expectations. Meanwhile, managers following best practices for setting goals achieved expected results only 30% of the time. Other research showed that decision-making best practices increase the number of good business decisions sixfold and cut failure rates in half.

In the course of this research, w e discovered that the most successful decision-making approach can be summed up in a simple checklist. The result? Research shows that businesses using this checklist make 75% better decisions twice as fast with half as many meetings and 20% better performance.
Seven Steps To Faster, Better Business Decision Making
The methodology is described in detail in our Harvard Business Review checklist for decision making. Spending a few minutes to follow these steps each time you face a business decision will save 10 hours of discussion and drive better decisions 10 days faster. Here's what to do:

1. Write down five business goals that will be impacted by the decision. Avoid the trap of rationalizing your decision after the fact.

2. Write down at least four realistic alternatives. No other practice improves decisions more than expanding your choices.

3. Write down the most important information you are missing. Don't let what you know distract you from what you don't know.

4. Write down what's likely to happen in the future, good and bad. Telling the story of what you expect will help identify similar scenarios.

5. Involve a team of at least two but no more than six stakeholders. More perspectives reduce bias and increase buy-in...up to a point.

6. Write down what was decided, why, and how much the team supports the decision to increase buy-in and set a basis to measure results.

7. Schedule a follow-up in a couple months. We tend to forget decisions after we make them, missing the opportunity make corrections and learn from what happens.
Change The Game By Keeping Score
If you follow this approach, not only will your decision effectiveness improve, but as an added bonus, you will have a clear record to track your results.

When it comes to improving decision execution across your organization, that really changes the game. Once decisions are tracked, they become data to be measured. What gets measured gets managed, because when leaders are measured, their competitive instincts motivate them to improve and win.

Check off these steps, start measuring decision making, and you'll start making it better!

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Don't Fail At Decision Making Like 98% Of Managers Do

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Decision making. It's the bread and butter of managers and executives, who make about three billion decisions each year. Indeed, Bain researches found that decision effectiveness is 95% correlated with financial performance . Despite this, very few of us keep track of the decisions we make and how they turn out.

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You've likely heard that nine out of 10 organizations fail to execute their strategies.
The natural question, then, is why? The answer is complex. Strategies fail for hundreds of reasons: Some are poorly researched, some don't involve the right people, and others simply don't track the right elements.

But you can be in the 10% of businesses that actually make their strategic plan stick-and we can help you with that.

Introduction

It's for that very reason we created this ultimate guide to strategic planning. Below, we'll walk through the three critical phases:

1. Prepare for strategic planning.

2. Create your strategic plan.

3. Put your strategic plan into practice.

Over the years, we've helped hundreds of clients beat the odds in the strategy planning and execution game. Based on our experience, we know that following this three-phase approach will help you end up with high-quality results.

Before we dive into these topics, let's quickly debrief on what strategic planning is and why it's critical:

What is strategy planning and why is it important?

Strategic planning is the practice of looking forward, outside the immediate future for your organization, to reach a particular set of goals. It also involves laying out-step-by-step-how you're going to get there. Without this foundation in place, you're likely to get caught up in a tornado of urgent activities that may not actually benefit your organization in the long term ... and that's no way to run a company.

A note about strategic planning "buzzwords":

You've probably read a lot of strategic planning jargon around the web and may be wondering, "What's the difference between strategy and tactics?" or "How do I tell if I need OKRs or a SWOT analysis?"

If you're wondering how one (or many!) of these terms fit into the grand scheme of strategic planning, click on the links below for more information. Then decide for yourself which of these buzzwords you will use in your organization, or which concept you will adapt (even if you don't use the exact phrase).

Chapter 1: Prepare For Strategic Planning

Step 1: Gather your team and create a timeline.

Get the right people involved.

Let's get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) and requested that you "make a strategic plan and then report back to the leadership team when you're done"-stop right where you are. That's not an effective plan. Why? You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning.

Now let's talk about the major player needed for this process: The strategic planner. The strategic planner's job is to align thoughts from the leadership team with a process the organization can use to execute on their strategy. If this is your role (or even if you're just highly involved in the process), this guide will be immensely helpful as you navigate the coordination of the strategy.

The strategic planner will also need the help of a cross-functional team that involves members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. We'll discuss this further when we talk through the Office of Strategy Management.

1B. Create a reasonable timeline.

Next, you need to work out a timeline in which you can complete your strategic plan and move through the process. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organization's maturity level with regard to strategic planning.

If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks.

If you've never done strategic planning before, 6 months could be more realistic.

Whatever the case, don't expect this to be done by the end of the week. You'll be disappointed.

Pro tip:

It's important to understand . Strategy is focused on the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics are focused on the specific actions you plan to take along the way.

So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. your long-term goals and how you'll achieve them), we'll be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. practices, resources, initiatives) you'll take to get there. Make sure your leadership team knows the difference between strategy and tactics going forward! Sometimes it is smart to keep leadership out of the tactics, but other times, you might need a strong hand to guide the organization through some details.

Step 2: Gather the inputs to your plan.

Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan.

Now it's time to dig into your internal and external information.

Internal inputs-Do you know if one branch of your business is growing faster than another? If so, does this mean you'll focus more energy on the faster growing area, or shift to help the underperforming areas? These are key questions you'll have to assess.

External inputs-You may find that parts of your business have shifted, or outside factors are playing a role in where your business is headed. For example, in the late 1990s, the music industry evolved from albums to streaming, impacting many businesses who were associated with the industry. Or if you're in the manufacturing industry and do a great deal of business overseas, political unrest or a trade dispute between your country and the foreign one you operate in could impact your strategy.

Once you've gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, you'll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources:

Discuss the above findings with your leadership team and managers to see what their thoughts are about the future of the business.

Talk with board members, customers, and industry experts to see what they think your organization is doing well and what needs improvement. These suggestions could deal with anything from operations to company culture.

Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business.

Organize your raw data with one of the following tools.

A SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data.

What are your organization's strong points?

What are your organization's weak points?

Where are your biggest opportunities in the future?

What are the largest threats to your business?

Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering.

Porter's Five Forces is another tool used to find these inputs. It's a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Who are your rivals? What are they doing? You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. Could you change an energy input from coal to natural gas, for example?

Pro tip:

You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. If you're wondering where these tools fit, they're all relevant to this first stage of strategic planning. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. If you have worked through one of these tools before, the results can act as inputs to help you in the next stage.

Now that you've prepared for your strategy...

You have a team of people who can help you with the strategic planning process.

You have the raw material for strategy evaluation, including internal and external data.

You can organize your raw data into a SWOT analysis, Porter's Five Forces, or another strategy planning framework as you begin to create your strategic plan.

Chapter 2: Create Your Strategic Plan

You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! But this plan doesn't live in a vacuum-so we'll start by revisiting your mission and vision statements and then get into the nuts and bolts of the planning process.

Step 1: Confirm your mission and vision statements.

Mission & Vision

If you haven't created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.

Your mission statement Your vision statement describes a future state of what your organization wants to achieve over time. describes what your company does and how it is different from other organizations in your competitive space.

Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.

Read more: How To Write A Vision Statement: 6 Best Practices

Two tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:

OAS statement-OAS stands for Objective, Advantage, Scope. Talking through these concepts as they apply to your organization will help formulate a vision that is tangible and interactive. Note that while this exercise may be helpful to you, it is optional. You can read more about creating your OAS statement here.

Strategic shifts-A second tool some people find helpful is called Strategic Shifts. These are exercises for the leadership team to help them define today's strategic priorities vs. tomorrow's. For example, your leadership team may say, "We want to shift from central control to autonomy when it comes to our decision-making capability." If the whole team can get on the same page with these shifts, it can help tremendously once you define your objectives, measures, and projects.

Pro Tip:

During your search for strategic planning tools, you've almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isn't what's important. The importance lies in ensuring you've chosen the elements in the pyramid that work best for your organization, and making sure those components are going to help you achieve strategic success.

If you've already created mission and vision statements, confirm that both are aligned with your current strategy before proceeding to the next step.

Step 2: Build out your five-year plan.

Develop the framework that will hold your high-level priorities.

You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectives-but more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. The way to do that is by selecting and developing a strategy management framework that will bring all your priorities together in one cohesive format.

Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Many management teams fail at this point simply because of their disorganization!

Note: Choose only one of these three frameworks, as they have numerous similarities!

The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard, developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the world's top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization, and track their strategy progress and performance.

The BSC divides up your objectives by perspectives-financial, customer, process, and people-and themes, like innovation, customer management, operational excellence, etc. (The idea of perspectives is fully developed in Norton and Kaplan's book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action.) Here's an example:

1. Financial goals-"What financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?"

2. Customer goals-"What things are important to our customers, which will in turn impact our financial standing?"

3. Process goals-"What do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?"

4. People (or learning and growth) goals-"What skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?"

For an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example.

Theory Of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change is a logic model that describes a step-by-step approach to achieving your vision. The TOC is focused on how to achieve the change you're looking for, and is popular amongst mission-driven organizations who are describing a change they're making in the world instead of putting change in their pockets.

The idea behind TOC is that if you have the right people doing the right activities, they'll affect change on your customers, which will impact your financials, and bring you closer to your vision. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE.

According to the Harvard Family Research Project, the steps to create a TOC are:

1. Identify a long-term goal.

2. Conduct "backwards mapping" to identify the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal.

3. Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create these preconditions.

4. Develop indicators for each precondition that will be used to assess the performance of the interventions.

5. Write a narrative that can be used to summarize the various moving parts in your theory.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

OKR was originally created by Intel and is used today in primarily two ways: At the enterprise/department level and at the personal performance level.

Key results are quantitative measures that define whether goals have been reached.

The idea is that your defined objectives and measurements help employees, managers, and executives link to and align with overall strategic priorities. Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are.

Note: This Medium article offers a number of real-world examples of OKR.

Define your objectives, measures, and projects.

The strategic planning frameworks above are all meant, in different ways, to help you organize your objectives, measures, and projects. So it's critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined.
You have a high-level goal in mind-your objective. Your measures answer the question, "How will I know that we're meeting our goal?" From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, "What actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?"
Here's how objectives, measures, and projects interact:

We've defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples:

Objectives are high-level organizational goals. The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives. Examples include:

Increase Market Share Through Current Customers (Financial)

Be Service Oriented (Customer)

Achieve Order Fulfillment Excellence Through On-Line Process Improvement (Internal)

Align Incentives And Rewards With Employee Roles For Increased Employee Satisfaction (Learning & Growth)

Measures help you understand if you're accomplishing your objectives strategically. They force you to question things like, "How do I know that I'm becoming an internationally recognized brand?" Note that while your measures might change, your objectives will remain the same. You may select 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level. Examples include:

Cost Of Goods Sold

Customer Satisfaction & Retention

Percentage Of Product Defects

Percentage Of Response To Open Positions

Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. You'll see initiatives referred to as "projects," "actions," or "activities outside of the Balanced Scorecard." Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives). Examples include:

Develop Quality Management Program

Install ERP System

Revamp Supply Chain Process

Develop Competencies Mode

Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model.

Whether or not you're using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, you'll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together.

If you're just becoming familiar with how strategy mapping works, this article will teach you exactly how to read one-and what you need to do to create one.

Now that you've created your strategic vision...

You have a fully-defined mission and vision to use as you move forward with your strategy implementation process.

You have chosen a strategic framework that will hold your five-year strategic plan.

You have defined objectives, measures, and projects, and you know how they work together.

You have a graphic representation of your strategic model.

Pro Tip:

Feeling the strategic fatigue? It's okay! This is a tiring process-so be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. Putting your strategic plan into practice (our final step) is the key to making it all work during the strategy implementation plan, and getting these details 80% right in a timely fashion is much more important than getting them 100% right in a year.

Chapter 3: Put Your Strategic Plan Into Practice

You've made it this far-now you have to be sure you launch correctly! To do so, you need someone from the Office of Strategy Management to push that process, ensure resources are aligned to your strategy, put a solid strategy communication program in place, and get technology to keep you organized.

Step 1: Launch your strategy.

Ensure the Office of Strategy Management (OSM) is pushing things forward.

The Office of Strategy Management is comprised of a group of people responsible for coordinating strategy implementation. This team isn't responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance department-or it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO.

Create your internal and external strategy communication plan.

Internal-Be sure all elements of your strategy-like strategy maps or logic models-are contained within a larger strategic plan document. (If you use strategy software, the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasn't involved in the creation process.

More broadly, the strategy must be communicated throughout your organization. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. People won't give it a passing thought unless you engage them-so every department head should be charged with explaining how their team fits into the strategy and why it matters. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization.

External-You also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organization-with board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties.

Align your resources to your strategy.

In the short term-which would be your next budgeting cycle or something similar-work to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. You don't need to completely rewire your budget, but you do need to create direct linkages between how your resources are allocated and how those efforts support your strategy. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund.

But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how you'll align your strategy to projects in the future. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the "work planning process") to your strategy. Your expectation should be that the process of aligning your resources to your strategy can happen within year two of your strategic planning execution.

Step 2: Evaluate your strategy.

At this point, your strategy has been launched: Now you need to know whether or not you're making progress! Here's how to do that.

Create reports to highlight your results.

Ten years ago, you may have evaluated your strategy annually. But in today's business environment, that's not a feasible option. At a minimum, you should be reporting on your entire strategy on a quarterly basis, or breaking down your strategy into pieces and reporting on one of those pieces each month.

The report you use should highlight progress on your measures and projects, and how those link to your objectives. The point is to show how all these elements fit together and relate to the strategic plan as a whole.

Hold regular strategy meetings.

The best way to report on strategy progress is to hold a quarterly or monthly review meeting with the leadership team. (Other key individuals might be in on this meeting depending on the agenda and the content.) It's important to note that throwing together an impromptu meeting to go over results isn't going to get you anywhere. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized. To make the most of your meetings, it's critical to have an agenda for before, during, and after the meeting- you can read about running efficient meetings in this article.

For your leadership team to be receptive to the idea, be sure you're not adding yet another meeting onto their plate. Instead, look at current meetings and replace or refactor so there's time to for strategy discussion.

Deploy strategy reporting software (if you haven't already).

To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, you'll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page.

If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management process-and how strategy software can help with that- take a look at our ClearPoint tour.

Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward:

Pro Tip:

You've probably seen reference to the "Plan, Do, Check, Act" framework before. If you want to integrate this checklist, this is the time to do so. Here's a breakdown on what it means:

Plan refers to creating your strategic plan.

Do refers to making progress on or executing on the plan.

Check refers to the reporting and monitoring process.

Act refers to taking action through projects, work plans, or the budgeting process to continue to manage and execute on the strategy.

You've made it through these steps....

...but be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on rightsizing this process for your own organization.

Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Don't do it again. Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs? Use them. Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure they're focused and move on.

Rather than doing everything, it's more important to realize there is overlap between these steps. Understand how they all fit into your own process, and then move forward with the sections you're missing. And if you have any questions along the way, get in touch with us. We live and breathe strategic planning and are here to help!

Final pro tip:

For a process that takes you through these steps start to finish, try out our Strategy Execution Toolkit. You'll get a purpose statement, change agenda, and strategy map template with measures and initiatives. Download it below!

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Strategic Planning: The Ultimate Guide To Preparing, Creating, & Deploying Your Strategy

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You've likely heard that nine out of 10 organizations fail to execute their strategies. The natural question, then, is why? The answer is complex. Strategies fail for hundreds of reasons: Some are poorly researched, some don't involve the right people, and others simply don't track the right elements.

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Executive Summary

You've seen the practice. A group of managers get together at a resort for two days to hammer out a "strategic plan." Done and dusted, they all head home. But have they produced a plan with a strategy? Often, the answer is "no." The most basic mix-up is between "objective," "strategy," and "action." The essence of strategic planning is in positioning - in other words, describing how your firm will out-compete specific rivals. And putting a strategic plan together involves describing how the different parts of the business will coordinate with each other so that the organization as a whole can win. In essence, it's system design. So yes, you can kick-start this process with a two-day retreat. But that's really just the beginning of a long and winding journey.

Busá Photography/Getty Images

It happens all the time: A group of managers get together at a resort for two days to hammer out a "strategic plan." Done and dusted, they all head home. But have they produced a plan with a strategy?

At the start of my public seminars on strategic planning I ask attendees, who rank from board members and CEOs to middle management, to write down an example of a strategy on a sheet of paper. They look at me quizzically at first as they realize that this is a tough assignment. I reassure them that this is indeed a hard question and they plow ahead.

The results are always astonishing to me and them. Here are some of the responses from the list I received at my most recent session: actions ("launch a new service"; "review our suitability to the retirement business"); activities ("marketing our products through the right channels"); objectives ("achieve $100m net revenue") and broad descriptions of what goes on ("planning process from beginning to end of product"; "working for your stakeholders").

Sorry folks, but not even one of these responses is a strategy.

Unfortunately, while C-suite executives talk "strategy," they're often confused about what it means. Why this confusion? The problem starts with the word itself - a scarily misunderstood concept in management and board circles. The most basic mix-up is between "objective," "strategy," and "action." (I see this frequently in published strategic plans as well.) Grasp this, I tell my audience, and your day will be well spent.

An "objective" is something you're trying to achieve - a marker of the success of the organization. At the other end of the spectrum is "action." This occurs at the individual level - a level that managers are presented with day after day. So naturally when they think "strategy" they focus on what they do. But this isn't strategy either. "Strategy" takes place between these two at the organization level and managers can't "feel" that in the same way. It's abstract. CEOs have an advantage here because only they have a total view of the organization.

The key to strategy is that it's the positioning of one business against others - GM against Ford and Toyota, for example. What exactly is positioning? It's placement on the strategic factors relevant to each key stakeholder group.

An organization exists as part of a system composed of transactions between itself and its key stakeholders such as customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders. Organizations differ in the detail of these sets, of course, depending on the complexity of the industry in which they're located.

The task of a strategic planning team is to produce positions on these factors that deliver value to the organization's key stakeholders and meet the objectives of the organization. Let's go back to our seminar list and take one of the responses: "achieve $100m net revenue." This is an objective, rather than a strategy. A strategy serves an objective by providing a position on the relevant strategic factors - in this case for customers.

Let's say the strategic planning team identifies "price" as one strategic factor. In this case let's make the business Dan Murphy's, Australia's largest liquor retailer with a national footprint. It has stated its position on this factor unequivocally: "Lowest liquor price guaranteed. In the unlikely event that a customer finds a lower price, we'll beat it on the spot." This is that company's position on price. Alternatively, let's look at Toyota. A strategic factor relevant to the same type of objective for customers is "safety." By reviewing its materials, we can construe the company's position on this as: Safety is paramount, and our cars are among the most advanced, reliable, and safest on the road.

Now to ensure implementation, a strategic planning team must identify some project- or program-level actions. McDonalds had to do this when on "product range" it took this position: Traditional meal range but with an increased emphasis on salad items and with the option for customers to design their own burgers. Periodic special offerings to spur customer interest. You can envision the high-level actions that might follow such as: Design a training program for all staff in made-to-order food handling procedures.

If you take a helicopter view of the process I've outlined, you can see that it involves system design. Each key stakeholder group is taken in turn to work out what an organization wants from it (an objective) and what the key stakeholder wants from it (strategic factors) - for example, customers want effective performance on factors such as price and customer service. The strategic planning team must then decide on the organization's position on these factors (strategy). This will be conditioned, of course, by customer research. Having done this, key stakeholder by key stakeholder, the next step is to ensure congruence - a fit between employee relations and customer relations, customer relations and supplier relations, and so on - system design.

My experience in working with clients over many years is that executive teams fail to approach strategic planning from a system-design perspective. A major cause of this is that managers within these teams approach the task from their own functional-management view, e.g. finance, HR, marketing, operations. Consequently, they think "action" when they mean to think "strategy." Taking a stakeholder approach to strategic planning induces managers to raise their thinking to the organization level.

Remember. Strategic planning is a journey, not a project. Plans require on-going adjustment. Yes, kick-start yours with a two-day retreat. But never end it there.

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Your Strategic Plans Probably Aren't Strategic, or Even Plans

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Executive Summary You've seen the practice. A group of managers get together at a resort for two days to hammer out a "strategic plan." Done and dusted, they all head home. But have they produced a plan with a strategy? Often, the answer is "no." The most basic mix-up is between "objective," "strategy," and "action."

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Wasn't aware this was going on until this assignment.

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One Step Closer to More Choices for Marriott Rewards Members

A LETTER FROM ARNE SORENSON

We're excited to announce that we've secured shareholder approval for Marriott International to join together with Starwood Hotels & Resorts-a significant milestone towards creating the world's largest lodging company and strongest loyalty program in the industry. Since we announced our plans to merge with Starwood, you've raised questions about the impact of the merger on your membership and the Marriott Rewards® program. I want to take this opportunity to provide an update on where we stand.

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Marriott Rewards | Marriott - Starwood Merger

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A LETTER FROM ARNE SORENSON We're excited to announce that we've secured shareholder approval for Marriott International to join together with Starwood Hotels & Resorts-a significant milestone towards creating the world's largest lodging company and strongest loyalty program in the industry.

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking to J. W. Marriott Jr., who is the Chairman of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world's largest lodging companies. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company with more than 3,700 properties in over 73 countries and territories. Known throughout the industry for his hands-on management style, Mr. Marriott has built a highly regarded culture that emphasizes the importance of Marriott's people and recognizes the value they bring to the organization. Today, approximately 300,000 people wearing Marriott International name badges are serving guests in Marriott managed and franchised properties throughout the world.

His new book is called Without Reservations: How a Family Root Beer Stand Grew Into a Global Hotel Company. In this interview, he talks about how he grew his family business, the obstacles he encountered, the five rules that led to his success, his best career advice and more.
Why did you decide to write this book right now? What do you think makes your story relevant in today's world?
After working for Marriott for over 50 years, I decided to step down from the CEO position and hand the reigns over to Arne Sorenson. With such a significant change in our leadership taking place, now seemed like the appropriate time to write. I am so very proud of the company that my parents started as a root beer stand in 1927, which grew over the past 85 years into a global success comprised of over 3,700 hotels in 74 countries.

Companies are under an ever-sharp magnifying glass. The values that have served as Marriott's guiding principles over the past eight decades transcend the hotel business. I think they are valuable for other companies to consider.
As you grew your business, what obstacles did you encounter, how did you overcome them and what were the major milestones?
One of the largest obstacles was when we had to deal with the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the unknown effects it would have on the travel industry. Not to mention the changes it would impose on our global expansion and the recovery of all the Marriott associates and guests impacted that day.

More recently, the global economic downturn that began in 2008 and the previous similar experience of the early 1990s were also significant obstacles to overcome. We drew upon the previous 1990s layoffs to handle the human side of the equation again in 2008. Some were inevitable, but we were able to temper the pain by keeping many people on board at reduced hours but with full health benefits.

Some of the largest milestones were when we expanded globally. Our first hotel built outside the United States was in Mexico in 1969. The first Marriott located in Europe was built in Amsterdam. The first in the Middle East was the Riyadh Marriott Hotel in Saudi Arabia in 1980. In Africa, our first hotel was the Cairo Marriott in 1981. In Asia, it was Hong Kong in 1989.
In your book, you mention five rules that led to Marriott's success. What are they and how did you originally come up with them?
First and foremost, we put people first. Then we pursue excellence, act with integrity, embrace change, and serve our world.

The first item of the five has been our company credo since my parents' era. "Take care of your employees, and they'll take care of your customers" was the daily mantra that my brother, Dick, and I heard from our father while we were growing up.

The other four values stretch back in time to the earliest days of the company, 30 years before we ever thought about building our first hotel, to our popular Hot Shoppes restaurants. Customers could count on spotless dishes and shiny floors ("Pursue excellence"), an ever-growing menu ("Embrace change"), honest value for their money ("Act with integrity") and a true sense of community second to none ("Serve our world").

Marriott has come a long, long way from the days of being known as a regional family restaurant chain, but our values haven't budged an inch. In fact, they've deepened over time into a commitment to do what great companies should do: make a lasting, positive difference in the world.
What do you think led to the success of Marriott when other chains have failed?
Well my father used to say take good care of the employees, and they will in turn take good care of the customers who will return again and again. That's putting people first! And of course it leads to profit and market share gains and ultimately a successful business.

I believe you succeed in business by being true to purpose beyond profits. From the very beginning of Marriott we believed in opening the doors to a world of opportunities for our associates.
What are your top three pieces of career advice?
1. I believe that you have to challenge yourself personally - constantly strive to improve and we believe at Marriott that success is never final.

2. We need to continue to reinvent ourselves and embrace change because our environment is constantly changing and our customers are always looking for the new big thing.

3. We need to build stronger communities and serve our world. As we do so, we create the conditions for business and personal success as well as a successful future. When the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, we did not have any properties in the country. Like many other companies and communities in the days immediately following the quake, we answered the call for supplies and contributions. But it didn't feel like enough - particularly considering how incredibly loyal our Haitian associates are. So we started thinking about what else we could do that would make a difference - a tangible long-term difference - to the island's recovery. Our answer? Help development a Marriott hotel to provide jobs and signal to the world that Haiti is "open for business." Our hotel project will have a multiplier effect as we attract investors to Haiti to do business.
Dan Schawbel is the author of the upcoming book, Promote Yourself: The New Art of Getting Ahead (St. Martin's Press, Sept 3rd). Listen to his Promote Yourself Podcast on iTunes for more interviews and career advice.

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J. W. Marriott Jr: From Root Beer Stand to Global Hotel Company

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J. W. Marriott Jr. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to J. W. Marriott Jr., who is the Chairman of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world's largest lodging companies. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company [...]

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The phenomenon of Globalization is a fact of life today.

Cross-border trade and immigration are increasing; Technology is connecting people seamlessly from around the world; Communications, transportation & travel solutions are both cheaper and faster; The use of common languages is lowering communication barriers; all leading to an increasingly interconnected and thus smaller world.

At the same time, new marketplaces are opening up. With the exception of the USA, the UK, the Eurozone & Japan, the world's top 25 Rapid-growth markets are almost all "Developing countries", with populations in the multi-millions and billions. Driven by their cultural divides, they carry very different values, beliefs, expectations, etc. On the flip side, unified by technology and social media, Customers are more discerning and more demanding about their expectations. Far more than ever before, Customer retention is the key to an Organization's profitability & long-term survival. Service organizations mandatorily need to develop insights into cultural diversity in order to engage their multi-cultural customer bases.

On the other hand, getting the right resources with the right skills at the right cost to perform planned work is also becoming easier, with the advent of telecommuting and virtual teams. Organizations are no longer limited by hard constraints such as the reduced availability of cost-effective real estate & work spaces - The world is literally at your fingertips! But here too, cultural diversity plays a critical enabling as well as disabling role.

This is leading to a situation where Remote employee/ team management is now becoming a must-have skill for leaders and managers.

Managing remote customers is also becoming a business-as-usual requirement - The variety of mechanisms now available to connect to customers and assess customer engagement is enabling Service organizations to deliver their services more efficiently & cost-effectively than before - once again, driving up expectations on "standard" performance.

This Cheat sheet provides a 10,000-feet view of the 3 top enablers which a Global Manager must understand and leverage, in order to deliver his/ her Service delivery objectives more efficiently.

A key conclusion from this paper is: Leaders must not view the adoption of Global teams merely as a cost-takeout exercise. Without the right levels of preparedness and investments of funds, efforts and time, Global teams will not yield anticipated benefits. Indeed, inadequately planned implementations can end up poisoning the well for future initiatives by converting believers into skeptics.

Readers who require a more detailed picture than what is provided by this paper can go through the links provided in the References section at the end of the sheet. A big thanks to all the thinkers who have shared their insightful thoughts & inputs, which I have blended with my own thoughts to develop this model.

I welcome your thoughts & feedback on how this model can be improved.

Note: This article was first published on LinkedIn Pulse.

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Cheat sheet - Global Project Management | PM Excellence Services

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The phenomenon of Globalization is a fact of life today. Cross-border trade and immigration are increasing; Technology is connecting people seamlessly from around the world; Communications, transportation & travel solutions are both cheaper and faster; The use of common languages is lowering communication barriers; all leading to an increasingly interconnected and thus smaller world.

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Zhou Xiaobu runs from one end of a table to another, grasping a piece of a jigsaw puzzle her team is assembling as part of a leadership training exercise for McDonald's (MCD) managers. "Go, go, go!" yells their instructor, exhorting them to work for the prize, a box of Danish butter cookies that will go to the first group to build the company's trademark Golden Arches. Above their heads a sign reads: "Learning today, leading tomorrow." The thick green binders stuffed with paperwork on each of the 31 students' desks indicate this is no place for slackers.

Such is the seriousness of purpose found at McDonald's new Hamburger University near Shanghai, where the chain aims to crank out a new generation of leaders to fuel big expansion plans in China. While the 20th-floor training center is no Harvard, landing a spot at the Chinese campus of Hamburger U. (McDonald's has seven worldwide) is actually more difficult than getting into the Ivy League icon. (Less than 1 percent of McDonald's applicants get in, making Harvard's 7 percent acceptance rate look downright welcoming.) Zhou was one of only eight people hired from among 1,000 applicants for a management trainee position in the central Chinese city of Changsha. She then had to compete with 43 other workers at her store to be named first assistant manager, earning her a slot at Hamburger U.

Getting into the school is so competitive because more than 26 percent of China's 6.3 million college graduates were unemployed as of July 1, compared with a 4.2 percent jobless rate for its urban workforce. That has caused grads who wouldn't normally consider a food-service career to give Mickey D's a look. "The main reason McDonald's put up Hamburger University is to professionalize the sector, making it easier to recruit better people," says Joel Silverstein, president of Hong Kong-based consultants East West Hospitality Group.

McDonald's is counting on students schooled in store operations, leadership, and staff management at the Shanghai campus to power its mainland growth. So far it's been outpaced by rival Yum! Brands (YUM), parent of KFC and Pizza Hut. McDonald's operates 1,300 stores in China and aims to have 2,000 by 2013. Yum already has 3,700 in China, where it earned 44 percent of its $1.33 billion operating income in the first three quarters of 2010. An approving Wall Street sent Yum's market value up 40 percent last year, vs. McDonald's 23 percent.

McDonald's plans to raise investment in China by 40 percent this year after boosting such spending by 25 percent in 2010. It opened a record 165 outlets in China last year and plans 1,000 more by the end of 2013. Analysts say the chain can't meet that goal without minting more local managers to run individual stores and chart regional strategy. "They are preparing a base that will allow them to accelerate that rate of expansion," says Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer of OakBrook Investments.

Hamburger U., which will cost McDonald's 150 million yuan ($22.8 million) in the five years through 2014, trained 1,000 of McDonald's almost 70,000 Chinese employees last year, says Susanna Li, its head. An additional 4,000 will attend classes through 2014. "We'll make sure the people pipeline is ready," she says.

The bottom line: McDonald's has big growth plans in China. It has opened a Hamburger University campus there to train managers to run those new stores.

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Hamburger University Shanghai Is Sizzling

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Zhou Xiaobu runs from one end of a table to another, grasping a piece of a jigsaw puzzle her team is assembling as part of a leadership training exercise for McDonald's (MCD) managers. "Go, go, go!"

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Generations working together

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If your company is like practically every company I've known, it's been working for years to add diversity to its leadership ranks. Why doesn't it have more to show for its efforts? I don't doubt that your managers sincerely want to reshape the talent pipeline. My exposure to countless diversity initiatives suggests that you're tripping yourself up in four ways.

You've distributed the responsibility for increasing diversity.

It's standard: You probably have a campus recruitment team, a separate group driving lateral hiring, and a diversity department concerned with retention and inclusiveness. Recruitment teams focus on hiring goals, but they aren't accountable for how well new employees perform or how many remain after two years. Diversity departments, which do track new hires' success (and, unlike recruiting, can commit funds to programs beyond the current budget cycle), are disconnected from recruitment strategies.

If no one person or group is responsible for building a diverse senior management pipeline, it's hard to develop an integrated, game-changing strategy. And outside experts, faced with your multiple stakeholders' distinct agendas, can't even have a strategic discussion with you, let alone get buy-in for a comprehensive approach. So you're not getting the "better mousetrap" solutions you get from innovative supplier ecosystems in other areas of your business.

You're managing activities, not outcomes.

Your diversity initiatives probably focus on "inputs" such as the number of mentoring programs, event sponsorships, or résumés collected, and you count them as successes that demonstrate senior management's commitment to change. Instead you should think about performance as strategically as you do in your core operating businesses: Be very clear about what success will look like in five years. Define metrics to track progress toward that vision. Prioritize among competing tactics, and drive increased investment toward initiatives that produce results. Use feedback to make refinements along the way.

Your focus is on fixing the culture.

Changing the organizational culture to level the playing field is important. But culture change happens very slowly-and usually not at all until new faces have appeared in your company's leadership ranks and new perspectives have begun to reshape its strategies. Your first priority should be to improve performance and promotion rates in underrepresented groups. You'll find that culture change comes more readily from a critical mass of diverse executives than from a series of diversity and inclusion seminars or one high-profile minority hire.

You prioritize minority candidates for diversity department roles.

This practice is everywhere, and it's understandable. But minority managers are usually struggling themselves with the issues their companies want them to solve. They may be risk-averse-especially given their awareness that, with so few senior minority members around, they and their new strategies are highly visible. A company that wants its diversity executives to advocate for bold new approaches should think about rotating high-performing line executives (whether minority or nonminority) into diversity roles. Having already established their reputations internally as revenue producers, they can navigate any setbacks that come from new approaches.

Don't undermine your own efforts to make your leadership pipeline more diverse. Instead, incorporate the same rigor and results orientation that you apply elsewhere in your operations. The problem is entirely manageable-if you're willing to manage it.

A version of this article appeared in the June 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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If your company is like practically every company I've known, it's been working for years to add diversity to its leadership ranks. Why doesn't it have more to show for its efforts? I don't doubt that your managers sincerely want to reshape the talent pipeline.

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Why Diversity Can Backfire On Company Boards

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Too often, efforts to tap into the benefits of diversity in the boardroom can lead to personal battles and inhibited discussions. But there are ways to make it work. The chairman especially needs to be alert to cultural differences that can lead to misunderstandings, introduce new directors in ways that are supportive of their expertise, and be careful not to limit their contributions by pigeonholing or labeling them.

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In the business world, fiscal imperatives often prevail over values-even the values of social responsibility and ethical behavior-as corporations strive to mitigate costs and reduce uncertainty. Nowhere is that drive for certainty and cost containment more compelling than in the corporate supply chain.

The global marketplace demands that supply chains be nimble and diffuse. Their broad distribution has elevated their significance beyond the functionality of manufacturing and transport, and they are transformative in the way they remake a corporation and the effect they have on local economies. An efficient supply chain is responsive to changing priorities by keeping costs in line, schedules on time and, more importantly, giving companies the room to scale for growth.

In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. companies set aside much of their supply chains for outsourcing. Globalization, technology and the desire for profit made it possible to manufacture parts in one nation, put them together in another and sell them in a third. While controversial in some quarters, outsourcing proved to be expedient and profitable.

This revolution in the supply chain did not diminish the need for corporate citizenship, however. In fact, it demands citizenship that is even more robust, capable of encompassing both the parent company and its many contractors, even if they are on distant shores. The supply chain cannot be divorced from corporate social responsibility ( CSR) concerns about the environment, health and safety.

Envisioning a seamless world of corporate citizenship that extends beyond U.S. borders is far easier than achieving it. Outsourcing brought with it a host of new challenges, not the least of which was entirely different sets of standards with regard to health and safety and environmental regulation. U.S. corporations that might have been described as CSR supermen in the United States have found it more difficult to capture the accolades in their overseas manufacturing operations.

CSR advocates have always argued that U.S. companies have an ethical responsibility that isn't constrained by geographic and political borders, or even cultural traditions. It has been a sobering enterprise to put that notion into effect in countries that do not share the United States' affinity for regulation and compliance, although it must be argued that many U.S. companies shifted operations overseas to avoid the heavy hand of U.S. regulation and the costs that came with it.

The experience of Nike in the 1990s illustrates this quandary acutely. Like many U.S. corporations that outsource manufacturing, Nike was driven by a desire to assemble products at a fraction of the cost of producing them in the United States-indeed Nike was one of the great innovators in overseas manufacturing. What made Nike particularly remarkable is that it was one of the first U.S. companies to sever the connection between the independent contractor manufacturing a product and the company that contracts the work. Nike insisted that labor conditions in its contractors' factories were not its responsibility. "Nike's company line on the issue was clear and stubborn: without an in-house manufacturing facility, the company simply could not be held responsible for the actions of independent contractors," wrote Debora L. Spar in "Hitting the Wall: Nike and International Labor Practices" in the Harvard Business Review in 2002.

Confident in its position, Nike was still sensitive to the potential public relations nightmare an unrestrained local manufacturer could wreck on its good name, and it drafted a code of conduct for its contractors. This code outlined best practices in the areas of safety standards, environmental regulation and worker insurance, and suppliers were required to certify that they were following the code and local regulations.

There was no effort, of course, to determine if contractors complied with the code, and, eventually, Nike's factories came under attack for their workplace practices, including the use of child laborers. Watching its reputation sullied by stories of abuse, facing a backlash on college campuses from irate students, Nike began to see its profits dip. In fiscal year 1998, beset by the Asian currency crisis, oversupply and weak demand, Nike saw its earnings fall 69 percent and was forced to lay off workers.

"Nike's fiscal woes did what hundreds of harsh articles had failed to do: they took some of the bravado out of Phil Knight," wrote Spar, of Nike's chief executive officer and founder. "In a May 1998 speech to the National Press Club, a humbled Knight admitted that, 'the Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.'"

Faced with significant earnings losses, Knight moved to turn around Nike's policies on contractors and encouraged monitoring of local factories. In recent years, Knight has gone beyond monitoring to embrace a more collaborative approach to reforms, sharing workplace and human resource best practices.

As Richard M. Locke, Fei Qin and Alberto Brause noted in "Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards? Lessons from Nike" in 2007 in the Industrial & Labor Relations Review, monitoring alone is not able to accomplish the tasks necessary to ensure a safe and healthy workplace. They wrote that, "global brands and labor rights NGOs would do well to complement their current emphasis on monitoring by providing suppliers technical and organizational assistance to tackle some of the root causes of their poor working conditions. Perhaps not all suppliers would be willing to collaborate with global brands and NGOs on these efforts, but refusals to collaborate could provide global brands with a justification to shift orders and consolidate production in more efficient, cooperative, and perhaps even 'ethical' suppliers."

The lessons learned from the Nike experience have a particular appeal in 2012. After all, the world has shrunk considerably in the last decade, and the workplace abuses on the far side of the globe can come back home with a swift and uncompromising speed. Additionally CSR and corporate citizenship has taken hold, not only in the imaginations of academics but also in the real world inhabited by consumers.

Today another corporate behemoth-the charmed Apple -finds itself facing a tsunami of criticism for the practices of yet another overseas supplier with a less than savory reputation for workplace safety and fair wages. Apple has been buffeted by attacks in the United States for much of the last year for the workplace conditions and wage rates of its Chinese manufacturer, Foxconn, which makes the incredibly popular iPhone.

In February Apple became a participating company in the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and, in doing so, it agreed to abide by the FLA's Workplace Code of Conduct throughout its supply chain. The FLA quickly launched a series of independent investigations of Foxconn's factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China. A report detailing the FLA's findings at Foxconn facilities and recommendations for a broader strategy to address workplace rights issues is due in March.

Launched in 1999 by a coalition of industry, labor and nonprofit advocacy groups, including Nike, the FLA assesses working conditions and monitors attempts to remedy violations in factories, farms and facilities used by its affiliated companies. Independent assessors schedule random visits, although critics complain that they do give warnings of their imminent arrival, to facilities supplying participating companies.

"We believe every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment free of discrimination, where they earn competitive wages and can voice their concerns freely," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in February. "Apple's suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple."

Apple has taken its newfound responsibility to heart. Cook says the company will refuse to let any of its suppliers cut corners in the future and will soon reveal new workplace standards for its entire supply chain. He said the company would continue its efforts to make any number of benefits available to individuals working within its supply chain, including English language lessons.

Apple is an exceptionally able company to walk the minefield of workplace standards at this moment in time. Arguably one of the most agile and intellectually authoritative corporations operating today, Apple has the creativity, reputation and scope to find solutions to workplace standards and compliance for contractors that have eluded many other companies.

By exhibiting a genuine commitment to social responsibility and ethical business practices, corporations like Apple have the power to not only transform their organizations but also their supply chains. A robust corporate citizenship isn't limited by the vision of its shareholders and customers, and its reach certainly doesn't end with its company headquarters.

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Building Sustainable and Ethical Supply Chains

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In the business world, fiscal imperatives often prevail over values-even the values of social responsibility and ethical behavior-as corporations strive to mitigate costs and reduce uncertainty. Nowhere is that drive for certainty and cost containment more compelling than in the corporate supply chain. The global marketplace demands that supply chains be [...]

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The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs

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Six months after Jobs’s death, the author of his best-selling biography identifies the practices that every CEO can try to emulate.

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My name is Ashley Smith and this is my first chance to soak up information as I work towards my Bachelors in Supervision and Management. I am married and have four children, one named Summer. I also work 30 hours a week. There really isn't time to lay around, the waves of work never end. I enjoy every minute of the busy, even when the sand in the timer seems to be going faster than it should! Looking forward to the information in this class and hoping I don't get burnt!

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My fave word <3

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Loyalty is not a virtue, even though it feels like the indispensable virtue. And the loyal person is not a saint, even though she feels like the chief of saints.

Technically, loyalty is neither virtue nor vice. It's simply a tendency, a temperament, a compulsion. But in practice, it fuels the worst movements and developments in human history, as well as much of the rot within ordinary offices today.

Loyalty is what allows followers to not merely overlook the crimes of their leaders, but to spin them into acts of heroism. It sires the worst in our politics today. It allows leaders to overlook the worst sins of their worst followers, thus helping to turn their company or their cause into a toxic, sycophantic moral wasteland. It allows board members to tolerate or rationalize the bad behavior of their chief executive cronies.

Loyalty is such a force for destruction because it readily clashes with genuine virtues such as honesty and fairness-all while seeing itself as superior to those virtues.

The "loyalty bind," as some psychologists call it, keeps the members of an organization from being able to see tumors metastasizing in their midst. It's what leads to scandals and cover-ups in churches, city halls, companies and ideological movements.

If one person finally finds the courage to speak up and point out an injustice committed by a leader, the loyalty bind is what causes angry followers to retaliate. Usually viciously. They slam the person's motives or integrity, and they assert that the good of the organization involves unyielding loyalty to the hierarchy as it currently stands.

Think of organizations you may have worked in, in which disgruntled and disengaged employees kill many hours by grousing about senior management. Yet if any actual whistleblowers emerge to take on the bosses, these cynics often seem shocked or torn, as though it's bad form to actually turn the disloyal complaining into disloyal action. Such is the pernicious power of loyalty.

To criticize loyalty in this way is not to say that all problems and conflicts must be dealt with in the most brutal and public fashion possible. They can often be better dealt with through processes offering some confidentiality and discretion. But loyalty is the force that typically keeps them from being dealt with at all.

"Charity is neither weak nor blind," Thomas Merton wrote. "It is essentially prudent, just, temperate, and strong."

But while loyalty can be confused with charity, it is quite weak, quite blind, and rarely prudent or temperate.

The challenge is to move organizations away from the notion of loyalty to persons and toward the notion of loyalty toward first principles. These principles include transparency, integrity, accountability and a constant readiness to reform in whatever way necessary-no matter whose personal interests may be affected.

This isn't easy, because humans are tribal-we evolved to be in the society of other humans and to instinctively sacrifice our own safety in order to defend them against outside threats. The notion of defending shared principles came later, and it still hasn't taken root fully.

It's something of a management cliché to suggest that good leaders inspire loyalty. But the reality is that it's often the bad ones who focus on that. Good leaders inspire principled behavior, not loyalty or obedience.

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Loyalty Isn't A Virtue, It's The Enemy Of Workplace Ethics

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The challenge is to move away from the notion of loyalty to persons and toward the notion of loyalty toward first principles. These first principles include transparency, accountability and a readiness to reform in whatever way necessary-no matter whose personal interests may be affected.