Leadership: How to manage across functions
As the founder and CEO of Achieve, I was involved with implementation of total quality initiatives for many corporations such as; Black and Decker, Amex, and UPS. My experience suggests that cross functional meetings on any topic have little to no chance of succeeding unless they are viewed (and managed)as part of a comprehensive culture change. To create or reinvigorate a cross functional culture , companies must balance; inspirational leadership and process discipline across all divisions, locations, and work teams. That means:
Inspirational leadership:
- Clarifying and enforcing the company’s cultural values from a doing—not a knowing perspective.
- Helping people at all levels (but particularly the CEO and senior team) focus a “shared” vision of how the quality enhanced culture will feel, look, and perform…(go heavy on WIIFM).
- Developing company-wide rituals that reinforce the company’s cultural values and their related ethics platform.
- Implementing supervisory protocols that will hold people accountable–everybody with direct reports (even the CEO) should be following the same process.
Process discipline:
- Transform from managing by “personal authority” (an inherently dysfunctional Industrial-age pattern) to managing by “process discipline” (a more reliable means of control for the shift-age).
- Exorcise Industrial-age attitudes and patterns by encouraging a 180 degree shift from a mindset of “knowing”, to an attitude of “not knowing”—replacing a trust in knowledge and experience with processes for finding out and taking action faster than the competition.
To avoid being blamed for less than stellar results, folks (who are charged with the responsibility of conducting effective cross functional initiatives–such as quality) should make culture change demands at the beginning of their assignment. Doing so will prevent the initiative from being viewed as… and becoming, yet another passing fad.
I can’t go into all the ramifications here but follow this link to a complimentary copy of my latest E book. It addresses culture change (at the doing level) and it reinforces the relationship between inspirational leadership and process discipline.
http://www.createtransferablewealth.com/scvctw/index.html