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Becoming a Learning Organization

By 
January 17, 2023
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/becoming-a-learning-organization/

This month we are looking at Organizational Leadership and the importance of becoming a “Learning Organization”.

Why It Matters

For organizations to continue to succeed in today’s ever-changing landscape, they need to fight the urge to settle or be complacent. Many organizations find success and expect it to just last. Please, go buy a Kodak camera or rent a movie from Blockbuster. Both companies were pioneers in their field; Kodak invented the digital camera technology and dismissed it, not taking the time to “learn” what was happening at the frontline.

Leadership Strategy

The first step in becoming a learning organization is to become a great Listening Organization. The best organizations have processes and structures to listen up, down and outside the entire organization on a constant basis, not just in the boardroom.

Starbucks Execs and head office partners spend time in their stores donning an apron, so they are with the customer and their partners and learn firsthand what the organization needs to focus on.

Leadership Challenge

Ask each of your senior leaders to spend some time in the frontline and report back on what they have learned.

Awesome Resources:

The Importance Of Listening For Organizational Success (5-minute read)
Culture of Deep Listening Video (5-minute video)

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

Fall 2022 Program is full


Next program early 2023

Year in Review & Seasons Greetings

By 
December 13, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/year-in-review-happy-holidays/

As 2022 nears completion, we invite you to focus on acknowledging all the wins you achieved in the past year…

Why it Matters

Acknowledging wins allows you to:

1. Show progress and measure where you are at

2. See patterns and trends in your business

3. Remember what challenges you overcame

4. Assess what needs to be addressed to support future success

5. Reward those who stepped up by acknowledging their efforts

Leadership Strategy

Plan a “Year in Review” team meeting to come together and acknowledge/review accomplishments for 2022. So often the norm is for teams and companies to jump to the next thing (i.e.: executing on next year’s plan) without reviewing what happened, and what you already have. Additionally, without review, you are not taking advantage of the learnings to support a leadership mindset and generate future success.

Leadership Challenge

For the “Year in Review” team meeting, request that each team member bring a minimum of 10 accomplishments they feel deserve to be acknowledged. 2-3 acknowledgments are easy but 10 will require a deeper look which can include smaller things that ended up having a huge impact on the business.

Seasons Greetings

The Awesome Journey Team would like to wish you a wonderful holiday season and thank you for having us as part of your transformation in 2022.

At Awesome Journey, we are deeply committed to creating a powerful future together in our communities. In lieu of gifts, the AJ Team has made donations in support of the Calgary Food Bank & the Eva Sophia Project.

Also, check out our 2023 Book List for the leaders in your life. Have a happy and restful holiday season leader!

Leadership – How it Impacts Performance

By 
November 15, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/leadership-how-it-impacts-performance/

This month we are focusing on Performance and how Leadership plays a critical role in its success.

Why it Matters

Leadership is the most important ingredient to increase the performance of any organization.

You can tell the level of leadership by the overall success the organization is generating. They are producing consistent, repeatable, and reliable results.

Leadership Strategy

Leadership and performance go hand in hand with trust. The more leaders both demand and demonstrate their trustworthiness by being sincere, competent, reliable, and involved, the better results they will see from employee performance.

Leadership Challenge

Start to measure your team’s level of trust that improve performance by answering these questions:

  1. Integrity (Sincerity) – How well do we follow through on our promises?
  2. Competency – How well do we provide feedback for improvement?
  3. Reliability – Are we meeting our timelines?
  4. Involvement – How well do we show up for meetings to participate fully?

Answer the questions above and start building trust to improve performance, a key tool to being a great leader!

Awesome Watch (3 min)

Leadership vs. Performance

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

Strategic Execution – Feedback Conversation

By 
October 19, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/strategic-execution-feedback/

This month we are focusing on Strategic Execution, and the conversations needed to support the success of any Strategic Plan. One of these conversations is feedback and, more specifically, what “breakdowns & struggles” have been seen that need to be addressed by having a feedback conversation.

Why it Matters

Feedback is a fundamental leadership practice for improvement! To improve organizational performance, we have to deal with the areas that have low workability. Could you imagine a football team not looking at the game last week to make adjustments for this week? 

So, what stops leaders from receiving or giving feedback? The biggest reason is that we have learned from an early age that feedback is negative, demotivating and possibly hurtful. In most cases, the view of feedback is that it’s bad news, wrong or even career-ending – so let’s just avoid it altogether.

Leadership Strategy

As leaders, we have to be comfortable with giving constructive (useful, beneficial and purposeful) feedback and using it as a tool for improvement versus making others feel small, wrong or judged.

Remember, when you have leaders who are open to giving and receiving feedback, overall performance will improve!   

Leadership Challenge

In the next few weeks, ask 4 people to give you constructive feedback on your leadership. By modelling to others that you are open to receiving feedback, it will impact others’ listening for receiving feedback in a positive way, and as an important tool for success!

Awesome Watch (9 min):

The Joy of getting Feedback by Joe Hirsh

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

Strategic Plan Execution

By 
September 22, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/strategic-plan-execution/

This month we are focusing on Strategic Execution and what it takes to be successful at executing a strategic plan.

Why it Matters

Some recent findings show that 70% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution!

Companies tend to spend more time planning and building the plan rather than implementing and executing the strategy and, more specifically, don’t plan and design the proper conversations needed for success.

Leadership Strategy

Take the time to plan your team’s communication and engagement around your strategy.

Four intentional conversations that your leaders need to be having to ensure the organization’s strategic plan is being executed per defined timelines:

  1. Clarity of specific actions and next steps
  2. Follow-up and accountability for these actions
  3. Acknowledgement of success in completing the actions
  4. Space to deal with breakdowns and struggles completing the actions

Leadership Challenge

In your “Strategic Think Time” this week, reflect on which of the four conversations are happening by your team and which ones need to be upgraded to support the execution of the organization’s Strategic Plan. 

Awesome Watch (7 min)

The Strategy Implementation Challenge

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

The Importance of Leaders Creating Time Weekly for “Strategic Thinking Time”

By 
August 11, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/the-importance-of-leaders-creating-time-weekly-for-strategic-thinking-time/

This month we are focusing on Strategic Design by creating time in your schedule for Strategic Thinking.

Why it Matters

As leaders we create our future, we do not predict our future. Therefore, if you are not intentional about creating time for strategic thinking your future will be the same as the past.

Leadership Strategy

Successful Leaders start by planning their time for strategic thinking. At Awesome Journey we call this “Strategic Thinking Time”, time for reviewing data, time for research, time for thinking about how to connect what appear as unconnected opportunities. It is also a time to challenge your thinking by being in conversations with others who can ask you thoughtful questions to poke at your thinking.

Leadership Challenge

Take some time and answer the following questions:

  1. How much time are you spending on day-to-day operational issues vs time for longer-term strategic thinking and planning?
  2. Are your decision-making efforts on short-term issues or on long-term strategies?
  3. Who are you involving in your strategic thinking conversations?
  4. Is your strategic thinking time focused on rigorous analysis or on hunches & gut feel?
  5. Who are your thought leaders you learn from to cultivate your strategic thinking?

Awesome Read:  Six Essential Skills of Strategic Thinking

https://hbr.org/2013/01/strategic-leadership-the-esssential-skills

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

The Accountability Conversation that Happens Within a High Performing Team

By 
July 12, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/the-accountability-conversation-that-happens-within-a-high-performing-team/

Last month we shared the importance of acknowledgement when a teammate performs in a manner that supports the team and organization. That is one form of an accountability conversation that reinforces positive behaviours. But what if the opposite occurs, or a breakdown, where someone didn’t do what was agreed upon? Then a different accountability conversation needs to happen.

Why it Matters

Account – ability. It’s key to achieving business results and critical in supporting change and growth.

When done right, an accountability conversation leads to business outcomes and increased performance for team members who keep their word.

Leadership Insights

You will, at some point, need to hold someone accountable. This is simply a part of leadership. The good news is team members want your feedback. They want to know where they stand. They want to know what they’re doing right and what needs improvement.

Leadership Challenge

Identify two accountability conversations you need to have with team members to support delivering the business results that we have promised.

Leadership Strategy

Start by ensuring time is planned for follow-up/fallout conversations, both for acknowledgement and feedback around the specific task which will include accountability.

Awesome Read:  How Do Leaders Hold People Accountable?

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

Acknowledgment – A “Must Have” for a High Performing Team

By 
June 14, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/acknowledgment-a-must-have-for-a-high-performing-team/
“Wanting to be recognized is a basic human need. As such, to acknowledge and recognize are key human drivers of employee performance and engagement”. – Lynda Monk, Author

Why it Matters

Teammates need to feel pride in what they do. Acknowledgement not only gives
your team a sense of pride, but motivation to be accomplished. Acknowledgement
creates a culture for others to step-up, so they get recognized as well. This causes
great performance to become contagious within an organization.

Leadership Insights

Acknowledgment also needs to be given effectively or it can actually backfire and
could become a demotivator. Dan Pink’s Video: The Surprising Truth About What
Motivates Us, (11 minutes), points to giving effective acknowledgement that
motivates.

Leadership Challenge

Effective acknowledgement should include these 2 key components:

  1. Be specific about a contribution that the person you are acknowledging
    made.
  2. Speak to the impact that the contribution had to the team, company or to a
    client.

Example:

“Lisa, last week you responded to our newest client’s request within 3 hours. Your
sense of urgency and responsiveness really honors our value of being a client
centric organization. They were very impressed and want to do more business with
us. Thank you!”

Being specific in an acknowledgment may empower others to use their “gifts of
greatness”, like responsiveness, to make a difference.

Leadership Strategy

Acknowledge 5 employees or colleagues this week and make sure you follow the
two (2) steps above.

Awesome Reference

The Powerful Impact of Acknowledging Good Work – https://www.inc.com/laura-garnett/acknowledgment-the-new-charisma-at-work.html

Have an Awesome Month Leading with Impact!

Effective Meetings are a Cornerstone of a High Performing Culture

By 
May 11, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/effective-meetings-are-a-cornerstone-of-a-high-performing-culture%ef%bf%bc/

Great leaders understand the importance of team meetings, the impact on culture, productivity and the understanding that producing a great meeting takes intentional design and deliberate effort.   

Why it matters

An effective team meeting helps teams align on the topics of discussion, air any concerns or obstacles, and have clarity on future actions.

This is fundamental in creating your High Performing Culture.

Leadership Insights

Improving the effectiveness of team meetings is one of the most important things a manager can do as a leader. It’s surprising how many managers are proud to proclaim their dislike of meetings, but to generate action, achieve significant results, solve problems, make decisions, inform, inspire, collaborate, and motivate, managers need to work with their people!

Leadership Strategy

Don’t delegate the agenda planning to another team member. As the leader, it’s your meeting to design and run. To put yourself in the proper frame of mind, ask and answer the following question:

1. What kind of meeting is it? (i.e.: Check-in, strategic etc.)
2. After this meeting are actions being generated?
3. Are my team members clear about how to collaborate well to get the results we are looking to co-create?

Awesome Reference:

12 Team Meeting Ideas to Engage Your Employees
Death By Meeting By Patrick M. Lencioni

Have an Awesome month leader!

“Do Less” So You Have Time To “See More”

By 
April 19, 2022
https://www.awesomejourney.ca/do-less-so-you-have-time-to-see-more/

Every day you hustle to get things done and you plan out what you’re going to do and when. Add on tackling unexpected and new tasks, never losing focus on where you are going. All of this is good because planning helps you achieve your goals. But how often do you take the time to step back and reflect on what happened? Or “watch the game film” as sport teams and athletes do? 

Why it Matters

There is as much to learn from what you do well as in what mistakes you made and the problems you encountered. Accomplishments and “breakdowns” are learning opportunities if you take the time to practice noticing, reflecting, and contemplating to strengthen your mental muscle to “See More”.

Leadership Insights

“To transform your business begins with transforming yourself. Why, because to grow your business you don’t need to do more you need to learn to see more to see the gaps to support change, to grow.” Tony Zampella, Bhavana Learning Group

Leadership Strategy

Identifying gaps starts with developing a practice of “Daily reflection”. Start off simple, when finishing off your day, take 15 minutes to reflect by writing down a couple of things that went well and a couple that didn’t. From here we can look for gaps and create a plan to improve performance.

Awesome Read:

 5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Learning Habit, and How to Do It

Have an Awesome Month Leaders!

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