Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • 3 Steps to Actually DO Succession Planning

    3 Steps to Actually DO Succession Planning

    With the great resignation still continuing and baby boomers, who many feel delayed retiring, now retired or retiring in large numbers due to the pandemic, succession planning has never been more important. 

    But as we’ve seen through many of our clients (and ourselves!), the need to get something done and getting it done are two different things.  When it comes to succession planning, I think the key challenge is not knowing where to start and the steps to take once started.  Overall, you need to:

    1. Know your current talent state.  This involves several sub-steps of determining: 

    a. What’s your talent funnel? This means mapping how people progress through the organizational hierarchy, determining the number of people needed at each level of hierarchy, realizing how turnover affects each level, and getting a good picture of the number of people needed to fill key vacancies. 

    b. What are your performance standards? This should be mapped out through your mission, vision, and values as an organization and connected to the KSAOS of each position. 

    c. And how do you measure them? A performance evaluation tool should be used, and in the case of succession planning especially, a way to measure performance potential should be deployed. 

    d. How is each person performing towards your company’s performance standards? Your measurement tools give you the way to determine how people are performing towards standards.  In this step, it’s critical that leaders deploying the tools should be trained on how to use them effectively and given the bandwidth to execute this process effectively. 

    e. And what do they want out of your career? Understanding what individuals want and expect out of their career progression is imperative to this process.  If you don’t know what people want, you may plan for progression that ends up being sabotaged because it doesn’t meet people’s needs or expectations.  For more on this, read about our Leaders as Career Agents Process (Taylor is also speaking about this at the Birmingham SHRM meeting in May if you want to learn more!)

    2. Know what you need to fill talent gaps both in terms of the number of people as well as the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOS) needed for each position vacancy.  This should consider not only what is needed to fill key vacancies in the current state, but also what will be needed to facilitate organizational growth.  It also includes an accounting of what training and development are needed to equip people to fill the gaps.  

    3. Execute a talent management and development system and plan to meet the needs found in your gaps.  Again, to execute effectively it is essential that leaders deploying the process are 1) trained to deploy it and 2) are given the bandwidth and support to deploy it well.  In addition, it is critical that there be a calibration process done through collaboration to work across department lines to facilitate effective succession planning. 

    Want to learn more about this process through a real-life case study?  Mary Ila is speaking at ALSHRM 2022 today (May 3, 2022) about this, but you can also catch her at Florida SHRM speaking on the topic in August 2022. 

    How do you successfully execute succession planning for your organization? 

  • Servant Leadership

    Servant Leadership

    I recently helped a top security government employee with developing a resume. His leadership philosophy centered around supporting his employees (as opposed to the other way around); he believes in empowering subordinates with authority, as opposed to responsibility. His view of leadership embodies serving which is what great leaders do.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Servant leaders are a revolutionary bunch—they take the traditional power leadership model and turn it completely upside down. This new hierarchy puts the people—or employees, in a business context—at the very top and the leader at the bottom, charged with serving the employees above them. And that’s just the way servant leaders like it. – The Art of Servant Leadership, SHRM.org

    At HPC, we have a textbook servant leader. Our CEO lives this out daily and truly makes our staff want to be better every day, for our company and our clients.

    Here are a few things servant leaders do differently:

    • Servant Leaders share power.
    • They consistently put the needs of others first.
    • They help people develop and perform at their highest level of potential.

    Check out 10 Principles of Servant Leadership from Indeed.Com for more insight.

    Are you a servant leader? Do you have servant leaders in your life?

    If you’d like to learn more about this type of leadership, hit us up at HPC. We love to train & empower servant leaders!

  • Design Thinking as a Leadership Practice

    Design Thinking as a Leadership Practice

    In an ever-changing world, it’s more important than ever for leaders to have the tools to be able to navigate change and innovate. It’s also important for leaders to have opportunities to spur creative thinking in a world that is cluttered with a lot of noise and distractions. Most importantly, though, leaders need support in connecting with people and building empathy.   

    When frameworks are provided to help spur innovation and build valuable people skills, we find that leaders are better equipped to move forward.  It seems counterintuitive to use a process to try to break away from routine thinking and/or to build relationships, yet the design thinking process helps to spark creativity in order for organizations to adapt and grow. The process begins with building empathy and because of this, we believe it is a valuable tool for anyone wanting to create better workplaces.  

    There are multiple trainings, models, and tools out there if you want to apply design thinking in your organization.

     

    Our favorite Stanford’s d School’s tools.  In particular,  we like this resource because it has all the tools you need to conduct a design thinking boot camp for any type of organization or group:

    (archival resource) Design Thinking Bootcamp Bootleg — Stanford d.school

     

    Other good sources of training and resources can be found through Harvard and MIT: 

    Design Thinking Course | HBS Online

    MIT Sloan Design Thinking | Online Certificate Program

     

    A good (although dated) video to watch that captures the design thinking process can be found here: 

    ABC Nightline – IDEO Shopping Cart – YouTube

     

    How do you spur innovation and creativity in your workplace? 

  • 6 Steps for Choosing Leadership Training Content and 7 Recommended Frameworks

    6 Steps for Choosing Leadership Training Content and 7 Recommended Frameworks

    We’ve had the opportunity to begin training a group of leaders for a client using a global curriculum the client developed.  As facilitators, we have the opportunity to take the quality content developed and structure learning in a way that allows the participants to apply the content to impact their behavior at work. Hopefully, this will lead them to invoke positive influence on those they lead and interact with. 

    Any good training frames learning around well-researched models or theories.  And there are a lot of models and theories out there! How you sort through them all and determine what to use can sometimes be difficult. 

    The keys, we believe, are to do a few things: 

    1. Create your content around key organizational values or outcomes you are trying to achieve.
    2. Choose well-researched models that follow the scientific method.
    3. Use models/theories that help convey the values/outcomes you are trying to achieve.
    4. Less is more! Don’t overload people with theory! 
    5. Encourage synergy across models and frameworks. How does one model connect with another, and more importantly, how do all the models connect with the overall training purpose? 
    6. Engage participants in applying their learning during the training as well as post-training on the job. 

    Here are some models that we rely on frequently based on these above recommendations. Some of these we will cover in more detail in the coming weeks!

    For innovating:

    For leading effectively:

    For navigating team development and success:

    What leadership models and frameworks guide the way you lead?

  • Are Your Company Policies Holding You Back?

    Are Your Company Policies Holding You Back?

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my almost 20-year career in HR it’s that the world of HR is ever-changing. And while sometimes we all sit back and take a big sigh and think “not again”, it’s a good thing. Change allows us to grow and adapt. But are there policies that we are holding on to because we’ve always done it that way or everyone else is doing it that way? 

    In this time of the “Great Resignation”, I find myself thinking about what could be changed to make the biggest impact. Not only in the short-term to get people in the seats, but to keep them there for the long haul. 

    Throw out the 40-hour workweek: Henry Ford implemented the 40-hour workweek to give employees a work-life balance that they didn’t have in the 1920s. There were no regulations on working hours, but Ford took a chance, a risk, and did what he knew was right for his employees. One hundred years later, we’re still pushing a 40-hour workweek, even though it’s estimated that the U.S. Labor production has increased by over 300% since 1950. Iceland conducted a study to test out a shortened work week and the results were so powerful that 90% of the workers in Iceland no longer work 40 hours per week. Shorter workweeks have led to happier employees and in many cases an increase in productivity. Other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, are following suit. 

    While reducing the workweek may not be an option for all organizations, what are some options you could explore? Maybe flexible work schedules, shared shifts, or compressed workweeks. 

    Rethink your background checks: A recent study by RAND Corporation shows that by age 35, 64% of unemployed men have a criminal history. This figure doesn’t even account for unemployed women who struggle to find work due to a criminal history. And many of those who struggle to rebuild their lives and find gainful employment don’t have violent histories, they have drug histories. In recent months we’ve been talking the “great resignation” to death, trying to figure out how to keep employees, how to recruit new hires, and what we need to do differently. But rethinking our background check requirements hasn’t been a part of that conversation. Why does your organization conduct background checks? What are your guidelines for what gets past and what gets passed on? Yes, there are industries that have bona fide background requirements, I understand that. But if you’re not one of those industries, does your background check policy really make sense for your organization? Is it helping you or hindering you? Imagine the potential talent you could tap into by making changes to that requirement or doing away with it completely. 

    Rethink your benefits program: Why do we create benefits packages that are “one-size-fits-all”? A recent study conducted by Lighthouse Research & Advisory shows that employment priorities are different by age group, with the #1 priority for younger employees being work-life balance, while older employees are focused on finances. How can we as employers create a benefits program that meets all of their needs and wants? Imagine a plan that would allow younger employees to elect extra PTO while older employees could elect a cash incentive. Could creating an al a carte benefit program be the wave of the future? Where employers offer a benefit stipend and employees could pick and choose how they want to use that stipend, and their options include conventional benefits such as health and dental coverage and unconventional benefits such as gym memberships and extra paid leave, or even just a payout? 

    These are just a couple of examples of rethinking your company policies using a growth mindset. I challenge you to take a look at your policies, read your Employee Handbook, and ask yourself why your company policies are what they are. Start with your workweek, background, and drug testing policies, benefits, paid leave, and go from there. If the answer you come up with is “we’ve always done it that way” or “it’s similar to what other companies are doing” then you’re focused on a fixed mindset. Ask yourself if there’s a different option that would work better for your organization.