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Don Fornes is CEO at Software Advice, a trusted resource for software buyers. Based in Austin, Texas, he founded Software Advice in 2005 after previously holding positions as a software analyst at an investment firm and as a corporate development executive at a pioneering CRM software company. He blogs at A Million Little Wins. You can follow him on Twitter @dfornes and on Google+.

Don Fornes

Implementing Time Management and Productivity Enhancing Principles

Principles for Effective Organization

“What’s the difference between leadership and management?” "Ha,” you might think, “that’s easy”:You manage things but lead people.Anyone can learn to manage, but real leaders are born.Leadership is getting people to do what they don’t want to do. Each of these dances around the concepts, but don’t truly hit the mark. Let’s take them in reverse order. Leadership is getting people to do what they don’t want to do.This one is close—often, leaders must get their people to do undesired or unpleasant things. But this is just a piece of leadership—motivation, specifically. Anyone can learn to manage, but real leaders are born.This is the classic struggle between “trait theory” and “behavioral theory,” the question of whether people are born leaders or if leadership can be learned. Let’s cut through the noise, shall we? Leadership can be learned. After all, if leadership is based on the traits you’re born with, what’s the point of spending billions of dollars on leadership development programs every year? What’s with all that science and those books and magazine articles? Do the traits we’re born with determine our leadership potential? No, but they influence it. Sure, being intelligent, brave, and well-spoken are examples of traits that help you become a better leader. But they’re not mandatory. And how many leaders have you known who are too smart for their own good (“intelligent”), foolhardy (“brave”), and who are all talk and no action (“well-spoken”)? Traits, undisciplined by leadership behaviors, can hurt your leadership ability. You manage things but lead people.This one is a classic. And it is dead wrong! The implication here is that management is a way to control objects, processes, projects, and so forth. That part is right. But it’s also very true that people are managed. There is even a job title for people who do this: managers! Leadership—the interpersonal kind—is considered one of the functions of being a manager. However, it’s a limited way of looking at leadership and management, as if we happily chug along managing our responsibilities until we need to pull out some leadership in dealing with our people. No, it’s much more fluid than that, a lot more challenging, and a lot more fun.All right, so what is a good distinction between leadership and management? As things unfold in this article, you’ll see why this one works:Management is keeping things on track. Leadership is going someplace new.Let’s look at these two ideas and see how they’re different.Management is keeping things on track. Back in the day, railroad engines ran on steam. In the early days, they got that steam by burning wood in a furnace that, in turn, heated water, which created the steam that powered the engine. In the cabin was a conductor who drove the train, and a “fireman” responsible for keeping the furnace stoked with wood. He was also required to keep an eye on the pressure gauge, ensuring it didn’t get too high (and explode) or too low (the train would slow down or even stop). The fireman managed the furnace/boiler to ensure it ran correctly and knew what adjustments to make to keep it that way. Leadership is going someplace new. Let’s stay with trains for this one. Have you ever flown with Southern Pacific Airways? Or Baltimore-Ohio Air? Of course not. You can’t; they don’t exist. But trains used to be the fastest way for passengers to travel around the country. (Southern Pacific and Baltimore-Ohio were passenger train companies.) Not anymore, of course. And when passenger plane service was introduced, it was with new companies. Why not train companies? Why didn’t they introduce air travel so they could keep their valuable (and lucrative) passenger service? Because they saw themselves as train companies. But what if, instead, they had the foresight to imagine themselves in the people-moving business? It would have been natural for them to upgrade their technology (from trains to planes) to stay in the business of passenger travel. Instead, a lack of leadership—the ability to go someplace new—took them completely out of that business. (The passenger train business was completely wiped out, reduced to one publicly subsidized company—Amtrak—operating at a loss each year. And don’t even get me started on how the long-range bus companies suffered the same fate!) Leadership could have brought them into the future. Instead, a lack of leadership (and a key component of it: vision) took them out…for good.So, you manage people and lead them on an interpersonal level. Organizations require strategic leadership to guide them into the future. Which are you (and will you be)? Hopefully, both!

Classic Distinctions Between Leadership and Management—Why They’re Wrong

The intent in writing this article is to raise awareness of the problem with leadership training the way it exists now and to encourage people like you to be a part of the solution. Your managers need help. They need help delivering results and doing it in a way that people feel good about. If you stop reading right now and go to work on solving that, our work here has been successful.The way most companies are training managers and supervisors isn’t working. The Harvard Business School recently published The State of Leadership Development Report. Take a look at these statistics their researchers uncovered:Seventy-five percent of organizations rate their leadership development programs as not very effective.Only 18 percent of organizations say their leaders are “very effective” at meeting business goals.A mere 19 percent of organizations say they are “very effective” at developing leaders at all levels.Pretty startling, huh? It gets worse. Imagine reading those reviews on a product that costs $400 billion dollars! That’s how much companies spend collectively on leadership training annually, according to Forbes. This isn’t an indictment of any one particular company’s approach or any HR or L&D professional reading this article. It’s simply a suggestion that the industry needs to take a step back and acknowledge there’s a problem. So, what’s going wrong? Here’s what the data says about what’s wrong with the current approach to leadership training in most organizations:Disconnected From Business OutcomesYour managers are paid to deliver results. And yet an audit of LinkedIn Learning’s leadership courses revealed 97 percent of the content never referenced business outcomes. How is that even possible? While managers need help learning how to do effective performance reviews, be a better coach, have hard conversations, and build trust, none of those things will matter if they can’t deliver organizational outcomes. More Is Not MoreLeadership training companies deserve a lot of the blame for the state of the industry. In trying to get L&D teams to pay large licensing fees for access to their content, they’ve decided to go with the “more is more” approach. We were a bit surprised to discover 947 courses on video gaming strategies in LinkedIn Learning’s manager training programs. Although the courses on acne removal and clown makeup caught us off guard too. We didn’t watch any, so we can’t comment much on their overall instructional design.When 75 percent of people rate their leadership development training as ineffective, we can safely presume “more is not more.” Your managers don’t need access to more content, they need less.Too Theoretical – Lack of Immediate ApplicationManagers don’t want two full days of content or three books to read. The way current training programs are structured doesn’t lead to retention or application. Multiple studies show the typical learner retains 10–20 percent of what they’re taught in a full-day class. They retain more than 80 percent of what’s shared in one hour. Our brains and bodies don’t like long meetings or classes. They’re inefficient.Humans learn best with a blended approach, in cohorts rather than alone, with start and end dates, and with things they can apply immediately. Lack of Accountability and Follow-UpOne of the four fundamental flaws with existing management training programs is a lack of built-in accountability and follow-up. All too often we’re onto the next class teaching a whole new set of behaviors or competencies when the manager forgets or neglects what was taught in the last one. When we say follow-up, we don’t mean an email a week or two after the course with some reminders. No, effective accountability and follow-up are facilitated discussions where managers share how they’ve been trying to lead differently and what obstacles they’re running into. Additional models or learning tied to the core competencies already taught are introduced, helping the learner improve their skills in that critical area.It’s Time for a ChangeLeadership is more than just a set of skills; it involves making critical decisions about when and how to apply those skills. Leaders often rely on a pattern of responses based on their past experiences. These can become habits that may not be effective in changing situations. This happens because unconscious encoding processes shape responses, especially under stress. Adapting behaviors requires conscious effort and openness, which can be challenging in the high-pressure environments many leaders face today.

The Leadership Training Industry Is Broken

In pursuit of technological development and scientific advancement, too often innovation is created in a vacuum with little to no foresight into the broader applications and usability beyond the intended customer or market. It is easy to have tunnel vision when sprinting toward the finish line but that laser-focus that drives product development can significantly deter long-term success.
Many times the failure doesn’t stem from the technology or field of study itself, but rather the lack of storytelling. It is one thing to communicate your ideas. It is another to communicate the impact of your ideas in a language others understand. All too often ideas fail because coalition building is ignored or deemed unnecessary.
Bridging the chasm between applied research and technology transition is difficult. The trick is to build effective coalitions so you don’t have to forge the path alone. Successful transition is rarely a linear path and business opportunities are still people driven. In this webinar, you will learn the key steps to building a successful coalition, including:
• discovering your value proposition
• creating a messaging strategy to properly communicate value and impact
• identifying end-goals and planning the path ahead.

 

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