Effective Communication for Flash Organizations (Part 1)

Flash organizations are interestingly, rapidly becoming more popular in the world today. In an economy where jobs are no longer secure because of layoffs and other unfair treatment by some employers, it is not surprising that people have found a way out for themselves.

A flash organization is the name that Professors Melissa Valentine (Management Scientist) and Michael Bernstein (Computer Scientist), both of Stanford University, call ephemeral setups to execute single, complex projects in ways that are traditionally associated with corporations, nonprofit groups and governments . A flash organization is developed by a pop-up employer, who just sets up the team to carry out a project, and thereafter disbands the team.

Flash organizations are not new. Industries like the movie, software development and events, have lots of pop-up employers; putting together the best hands that they can find to execute the production of a movie or an event, after which the team is disbanded.

It is important to note that this system best works with project-based organizations, and there are three key factors to making a flash organization work effectively: a reliance on data and computing power, the establishment of clearly defined roles (organizational structure), and – believe it or not – middle management or a project manager (PM). For a collection of people who don’t know each other and perhaps, are working remotely on the same project, clear direction is important.

This idea already works with outsourcing and contract work.  Many companies already allow their employees to work remotely. It’s a short jump to shift toward hiring remote workers per project and saving the overhead of having them on full-time staff.

What is the implication of this new paradigm on labor? People are definitely going to loose more jobs. They will have to worry about things like healthcare and retirement plans. They will also have to bother on the source of their next jobs and other competition.

No matter how this turns eventually, some skillsets will still be important and some people will still dominate this market.

In my next blog post, I will be preparing you for this new paradigm.

Building trust with people at your workplace

If you are interested in growing your career, then I bet that you are interested in building trust with people, especially at your workplace. Trust is not a matter of emotions; it is not given away out of kindness or as charity. Trust is earned and built. It is a product of character and behavior. Trust is everything; everything is trust. Relationships, businesses, and every other thing are built on trust. The certificates issued by educational institutions say that that the holder should be trusted to have been trained at the institution, in a particular area, for a stated period of time and also shows how they have rated the performance of the holder. When a cheque is issued to a person, the issuer is telling the financial institution to trust the person that has been issued the cheque, and give him the stated amount of money on the cheque.

It is not a really simple thing to build trust, especially in a business environment. People find it difficult to trust others for some reasons. Stephen Covey and Greg Link highlighted some in their book- Smart Trust:

·         Trust is risky. The cost of being wrong about someone is expensive. People have learnt this from past experiences and even current happenings.

·         The rule of the game these days does not allow people to trust. People and things are not really as they appear or seem. Packaging and branding have affected originality. Before the World War I, people focused on the originality of their person, organizations, products and services. After the war, the attention shifted to packaging and developing techniques in order to win friends, do better in business, and in other areas of life.

·         There are misleading schools of thought about trust. Some years ago, I was reading an article by a supposed world expert on trust-based relationships and sales, and I just said to myself, “if people follow what this man has written, they will definitely find it difficult to trust anyone, even the Creator”. The effect of not trusting people does not always take long to begin to manifest.

·         Misleading body languages. No matter what you say, people will always believe your body language more. For example, you can’t say you trust your employee or subordinate at the office, and keep hovering around the person when you give the person a task. Also, when your body language says you are over ambitious, self-centered or a politician, it does not matter what you say or what your intentions are, you cannot be trusted.

There are so many more challenges with trust at the workplace. But trust is important to business growth, career building, and everything. Warren Buffett once said that trust is like air we breathe in- when it is present, nobody really notices; when it is absent, everybody notices.

In building the trust of people in your workplace, the following are important:

1.   Develop a strong character: There are rules that naturally govern human effectiveness, knowing and living by these rules are termed as having character. There are a very few people who possess strong character, but these people are loved, and trusted by others. These set of people are always calm, courageous, empathic, confident, polite and respectful. Even to your subordinates or employees you don’t need to show hierarchy, treat them as equally important people for the organization’s growth.

2.   Learn and practice your workplace ethics and policies: I am separating this from developing a strong character because I realize that some people, who ordinarily lack character, can learn workplace ethics, practice them and grow their career. What happens is, they become successful career people and other aspects of their lives are not as fantastic.
Companies have their policies. It is best you learn your company’s policies. This way you remain in the good books of the management and other members of the entire ecosystem of your workplace. A friend of mine that works in one of the big 5s in consulting shared with me that it is against their company’s policy for any member of staff to be found on a motor cycle on the high way. The simple thing to do is to keep to the rule.

3   Be accountable: Being accountable is for your own success. It is a skill-set that anyone can learn. Be accountable to yourself and everyone else in your workplace. If your actions or inactions as a superior have affected someone that works under you, the person needs to know, needs to be apologized to. He or she deserves an explanation.

4  Create personal rules and hedges: People trust people with personal rules and hedges more. It is usually not enough to create personal rules and hedges, it is important to let people know your rules and hedges. This will not only keep them from treading on your rules but you also earn their trust and respect.


5     Be intentional about building trust: There is a difference between having good intentions and being intentional. People cannot see good intentions but being intentional involves doing the right things you need to do to be trusted. When there is a controversial situation, let your intentions be known, and be sincere about it. Honor your promises. Be consistent. Volunteer useful information. Keep secrets. Show commitment to your job and relationships with people at your workplace.

6.      Associate and connect with people: People don’t easily trust people who keep to themselves. In many situations, the quietest is usually the suspect if anything goes wrong.


7.     Be competent on your job: If you are good on your job, people will tend to trust you more.

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WORKING WITH A NEW BOSS

People spend more time thinking about how to work and be close with their bosses than any other business relationship (often times more than the customers or clients who are supposed to be ‘the king’); still they manage to get the relationship very wrong. Instead of making their careers, the relationship actually breaks it.

 Even if you have had a sour or not so-good relationship with your former boss, a new boss is an opportunity to get it right, and begin a rise to the top of your career. If you want a good relationship with your new boss, here are some useful tips:

1.  Be loyal: Disloyalty is an unforgiveable character flaw and you cannot and will not be trusted. People that cannot be trusted by their bosses cannot be recommended for promotions or even assigned any special duty or responsibility. This is because loyalty is more important than competence. Samuel Godwyn once said that he will take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty. Loyalty shown publicly also results in leverage privately; when the decisions that will bring about your promotion in the office are made, they are usually in private when you are not there, and the truth is, people always want their own man on the top job.
2.   Keep the boss informed: No one has ever lost a job because they told the boss too much. Do so till he says stop. This quality is known as communication skills, and it is a major quality that everyone that must rise to the top of their career must possess. Your communication with your boss doesn’t have to be formal always, sometimes, it is better to make it tactfully natural; a good sense of humor but don’t tell unkind stories and silly jokes. Keep your mails and texts well-crafted too; this is a way of positively selling yourself.
3. Embrace changes instigated by your new boss: The ambition of every new boss is to bring change. Sometimes, they don’t even know what change or how to go about it; they want to make a change anyways but please dear reader, just make sure you are not resisting change that is instigated by your new boss, especially if it is not part of your job to do so. Helping the new boss in driving change to the organization, whether or not he is coming from the organization is very important for a career-building relationship with your boss. You can help by supplying useful information and resources. You can do this by mailing him useful materials you find online or linking him with people you know can help him achieve his goal for those few that have one and a strategy.
4.   Respect the boss’s time: If you need thirty minutes with him, don’t take sixty, better yet take twenty. The truth is, the more time you spend talking with your boss, the more you give him chance to weigh you and rate you, which is not very good for you because he might realize things he naturally does not like about your person. No need for irrelevant talk.
5.     Don’t tread his turf: ‘oga’ stay on your lane. He must give you permission if you must enter his lane. Treading the turf of a new boss especially when he has a superior or superiors he has to impress is ‘dan-ge-rous’. This is not to say that you should become a robot or you should not be proactive, what I am simply saying is that even if you are the next in line in authority, let him exercise his authority every time.
6.      Deliver in time: I always teach people that work with me in any organization my personal work strategy, “please deliver remarkable results in the shortest possible time”. Bosses don’t pull out a stop watch when they assign a task to you, but their internal clock is ticking. When you are competent, you will n0t have to do so much to win the love and trust of your new boss. Competence makes the office assistant closer to the new boss than even his assistant.
7.  Pray without ceasing: Funny isn’t it? I have learnt from experience and by studying very hard about relationships; I tell you the truth, when you pray, your mind is conditioned to function better and relate better with God and man. As much as many people will not like to consider this point very important, you must know that you have not done anything about any situation until you have prayed about it. This point is something I wish we could exhaust in this article, but E.M Bounds has written a very good book on this topic called ‘The possibilities of prayer’ and I recommend the book for you.                                                                                                                                                                                              If I was to write one more point, it will be the most important part of the article, and that is for you, my reader to be careful to observe to practice the seven points above. There is so much value in information, but the reward of applying knowledge is priceless.

BEING THE NEW CEO- PART 2 (THE FIRST MEETING)

Now you are the CEO, you decide whether this will be trouble for you, or another feather to your cap. A lot of people usually allow their over excitement to destroy their future in the new position of CEO. I usually advice my clients not to hurry into calling a meeting upon appointment; that is dangerous! You need to take time to allow the over excitement wear out, especially if the appointment or promotion is a long expected one. The problem with entering your first meeting with your team or staff still overexcited is that you might make a lot of mistakes that will cost you that position; over excitement kills at times.

To help you make the better of your first meeting, I have these tips.

DON’T DO.

• · Don’t let them measure you:

People can determine your worth, or weight from the words you say, don’t give them that privilege sir; don’t give them that privilege ma; not on the first meeting you are having with them, no, please, not on the first meeting. A leader that will succeed must first of all seek to understand his team, before he seeks to be understood. In your first meeting, the team should do more of the talking. Don’t go into that meeting telling them about yourself and how you want things to be done. You will need to do that ok, but not on the first meeting. To achieve this, you need to keep the meeting short: be introduced and have everyone introduce themselves, then they can share their experiences working in that organization. Period

• ·         Don’t talk about change first:

Change is scary at first, so don’t try to sell them the idea or your dream of changing things in the first meeting. Oh my dear friend, please don’t.  You need to make them feel relaxed on your first meeting. It is better to make them know that you are willing to learn from them and work with them. That is how to make a success out of your first staff or team meeting

• ·         Don’t sell yourself cheaply:

First impressions matter, but first impressions don’t have to be made on your first meeting. By avoiding making impressions on your first meeting, you maintain a level of unpredictability, which is sometimes good for you as the new CEO to buy you enough time to settle down and at the same time, not lose value or respect of your team. Some people in their first meeting, try to make good impressions on their team or staff, make promises that they cannot keep, and setting goals they cannot achieve, which mars their integrity, thereby leaving a negative impression in the minds of their team or staff eventually.

"first impressions matter, but they do not necessarily have to be made in the first meeting" 

DO

• ·         Appreciate

Appreciate the team or staff; let them know that you see your new position as a privilege and not a right or a proof of your expertise. Thank everyone and don’t make anyone feel less appreciate than another, even if you have worked in that organization before and you know a couple of exceptionally brilliant folks in your team.

• ·         Accept their contributions

Don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t say you should carry out all their contributions, I said you should accept them. Do not discard any suggestion or contribution in your first meeting, let them know you have accepted it and will consider.

• ·         Fix another meeting not very close to the first one

Because you did not tell them about what you want to achieve on the first meeting does not mean you should call another one the next day. See, whatever must last and have good effect must not be done hurriedly. Take time, schedule your next meeting for a time when you are sure that you must have understood what team or staff members said at the first meeting, and when you have fine-tuned your agenda for the organization.

Apart from these things you need to look out for, holding an excellent first meeting is not difficult but it is important to the results you get in your following days in that organization.

Author: OKUAZUN, Gideon Jayeola.brooksdaniels.com

Being The New CEO (Part 1)

As you trail the path of this piece, it is important to note that this is not just for Company Chief Executives but for everyone that  has decided to become responsible either by being saddled with leading people, or has the vision of doing so to achieve any task.


A major task that daunts many in life is being a point’s man in any project. Most of the time, people prefer to either lead from the middle wrung of the ladder or to back up a much more flashier partner; due to the fact that the point’s man takes all the risks associated with the task, accepts responsibility of the failure in any endeavor of the team and as a good leader, must share the victory with the entire team. This is a responsibility; few people are willing and able to take.


A whole lot is attached to being a leader especially someone who is prime at it such as a new CEO, that if not properly handled can affect one’s stay in that position. It is no gainsay, to mention that everyone is a CEO at some point in their lives, as there are some persons he or she leads, and in reality, no one can force himself on people to lead them and really be successful. If you are leading any group and you are making progress, it owes to the fact that, you are doing it right working with the people, otherwise, the management or board that put you there with expectancy of results, won’t hesitate to replace you with a more promising option.


Leading people requires you to show yourself responsible and credible: taking initiative, making sacrifices, having competences in certain areas, both soft and technical. In leadership, mere personality, that is, a mere public image, and not your true character, which is the real principles of living that you have imbibed, is danger impending. Therefore, to be successful especially as the new leader isn’t laborious when leadership isn’t just your personality but your true character. The reason is as the point’s man, your life gains maximum attention, your flaws become apparent, your subordinates have an extra duty of understanding you, and your reports which is a reflection of your real person becomes the enthusiasm of the board or management that has set you in that position.


 So, here is how to get started with being the new CEO:

Be the leader: Leadership is beyond position; it is the ability to lead yourself and others effectively. One very useful tip in being the leader is to view the new position as a privilege, realizing your accountability to your followers and higher authorities.


During my undergraduate days in Crawford University, at my new appointment as a director of the largest group on campus, after we had been introduced and congratulated by the Vice Chancellor and all the management of the organization, we had a meeting with our then president. In the meeting, the president said something that got to me, and I reiterate “if there is noise during your departmental meeting where you are the director but your effort to restore order seems futile, and there appears someone from the crowd who asks the people to be quiet, if they all obey him without hesitation, consider yourself a figure-head”. Certain things can be responsible for that; the chief of them might be lack of interest in following you due to lack of trust in you, their unbelief in your leadership abilities, or your character flaws.


While I occupied that position, I had an assistant who had been in that department even before I gained admission. He knew everything about the department and had sacrificed a lot for that organization. He had enough strength, knowledge and connection to be the point man, but for some reasons, I was picked. I had a lot of personal issues with this assistant because he was bitter about my privileged appointment. Honestly, I was initially intimidated. I felt like a round peg in a square hole.


On our first day working together, he made me carry heavy equipment and do tasks that revealed he was the real leader…That continued till the end of the session which made our president worried, and he asked me to do something about it. During the holiday, I spread out my wings and did the following which helped me resume as the leader of the department:

I got a vision for the department. I drew a blue print, and wrote out clearly the role everyone had to play in achieving the vision.

I developed more technical skills by reading and learning from my contemporaries elsewhere.

I kept in touch with all members of the team, putting a call through to each of them as regular as I could, preparing their minds for the things I wanted us to achieve as a team upon resumption of the new session.

 I also planned, for our first meeting in the new session.

Catching a vision for the organization
My holy book says “where there is no vision, the people perish”. Perishing not only pertains to the physical body. When there is no vision, an organization will perish, and usually the point’s man, the CEO, the man at the helms of affairs is the first to perish. In fact, others that are wise may escape before the perishing gets to them.


Knowing where you are going as leader that is having a vision, is very essential; it determines who you will take along, it determines if the people you intend to take along will be willing to follow you, because nobody follows a man without a definite vision. Having a vision keeps you going in the face of challenges.

Developing the required skills to be the effective CEO

Having a vision is not sufficient in itself, it is equally essential to know how you intend to get there. A wise man once said “The labor of the foolish wearies every one of them because he knows not how to go to the city”. The destination in view here is the city, the CEO must know how to go there, and he must be able to confidently lead the organization in their journey to the ‘city’.


In every organization where I have worked and lead with results, the first thing I learn about is the goal or vision of the organization, and how I can lead in achieving their goals or vision.

This article is by Okuazun Gideon Jayeola,