Executive Engagement – the Lean Thinker’s Approach
Posted in Adam Zak, Employee Engagement, Happiness, Leadership, Lean Business Strategy, Lean Executive Search, Operational Excellence on April 6th, 2010 by LeanThinker – 1 CommentYour executive search was a smashing success. Done in record time. Attracted the interest of top players in your market sector. Interviewed the best of the “A players”. And won over Sarah, a true global leader and supply chain visionary, who’s ready to jump in as your new executive vice president of operations in just a few weeks’ time. Now comes the really tough part: making sure that Sarah becomes a long-term success in her new role by getting her fully engaged from that very first day on the job.
- Deploy search process intelligence strategically. During the course of the recruitment we gather a tremendous amount of information about the candidate’s strengths, development areas, career and personal objectives, etc. We share these insights with the new hiring manager in a post-search debriefing. Used to build a pro-active development plan for the new executive, this kind of early collaboration helps the newly-hired executive rocket to a fast start and immediately address mission-critical issues, while also more rapidly assimilating into your company’s culture.
- Sarah wants specific feedback early and often. And so does the new “A player” executive you just brought on board. Just-in-time performance reviews, based on the concept of PDCA (plan-do-check-act) found in Lean & Six Sigma thinking, are possibly the best coaching and feedback system designed for high-performance individuals. Feedback - specific, relevant and timely – (delivered as quickly as manageable after the activity), presented informally and from a mentoring perspective, just simply works. These are coaching and mentoring opportunities which allow the new executive to more clearly grasp the senior leaders’ perspectives on strategic and tactical problem solving, customer relationship priorities, operational issues, and the information channels that keep the business running along. Plan for this kind of informal performance feedback mechanism, and executive religiously. Your “A players” thrive on it.
- But you promised me I’d be running the whole show in six months! Well, didn’t you? Managing the new executive’s expectations for opportunities, promotions and specific responsibilities is critical to his or her immediate engagement and long-term success. Sarah came in to our client’s organization with excellent capabilities and high ambitions for herself. The company’s CEO took the time on a regular basis to help her calibrate those ambitions with her achievements, against those of her peers, as well as relative to the company’s expectations for her. The result: a more team-focused and realistic understanding of how everyone’s ambitions and contributions build corporate growth, profitability and sustainability.
