Hi-tech Company Org Charts
Many a true word is spoken is in jest and I had to laugh when I saw this post showing the Org Charts of some of the large hi-tech companies.
The Org Charts Of All The Major Tech Companies (Humor)
Many a true word is spoken is in jest and I had to laugh when I saw this post showing the Org Charts of some of the large hi-tech companies.
The Org Charts Of All The Major Tech Companies (Humor)
A while back, I lost a good friend and last week, I realized that some of my behavior must have been so irritating for him. For those that do not know me, I am a results orientated person, often referred to a Type A. My friend, let’s call him Curly, had his healthy streak of Type A but he was a Collaborator at his core. He was at his happiest when he got to work with others creating something, especially to improve the life of others.
Me, I tend towards having frank and direct discussions, which for the most part works, because when I misstep, I am able to notice and recover the situation. The fact that I only became aware of this behavior this weekend, is totally embarrassing to me. Hopefully this post will help others learn through my mistakes.
So, the behavior
I tend to make statements or suggestions that certain very collaborative personalities, such as Curly, can easily construe as instructions. OK, in some cases, they were instructions. Well intended but instructions never the less. Intent does not equal impact. While he never said anything about my behavior, I remember one occasion, it was obvious that I had made him angry but then, being the great collaborative person that he was, he smoothed over the situation, cracked a joke and we moved on.
We never revisited the event and I remained blissfully ignorant………..until this weekend when someone else educated me.
Now I wonder, how many other people had this same reaction to my “instructions”….if you did?
How to drive change in a predictable and reproducible manner has been a topic of discussion with three of my mentees. Why predictable and reproducible? The answer is simple, when you shock people, they tend to stop and evaluate what is going on before moving forward. So if our behavior is predictable, then we will not shock them. As leaders, we are expected to reproduce results consistently and being able to do it once, just makes us lucky.
Experience has taught me that I can greatly increase the chances of success by reducing the number of variables or unknowns. As a result, I use a pragmatic approach with as little process as possible and keep things simple, thereby making things easy to explain and easy to understand. For more mature or process heavy personalities or organizations, this approach might not be acceptable.
This approach works as long as the plan takes into consideration the unique situational requirements and evaluates progress / results on a regular basis.  This means that you only need to change where needed and not reinvent the wheel every time.
So, to the plan. There are four key areas of the plan. The first is Awareness followed by a Planning phase before the Execution phase. A much forgotten phase is Monitoring or measuring the progress, or destruction. Here is a visual representation which hopefully makes things clearer.
In this phase we need to become aware of the problem or issue. If is it is a behavioral issue, someone might provide us with feedback. If it is a business opportunity, this might be a customer or prospect sharing with us their business challenge.
Recognizing this phase:
Manager’s Note:
Risks:
If we don’t know where we are going, how are we going to get there? In some cases we also need to take a look at where we are and then determine the gap between where we are and where we want to go before we start down the road. I am not advocating analysis paralysis but at lest know what you are going to do. A very important element of this phase is what are measurements are we going to use to determine if our execution phase is working or not. The monitoring phase will help you determine if the plan is working or not.
Recognizing this phase:
Manager’s Note:
Risks:
This phase is all about delivering the results as defined by in the plan. If you, or the people executing the plan, are not clear about what needs to be done, go back to planning.
Recognizing this phase:
Manager’s Note:
Risks:
This often overlooked phase is key because it provides us with the safety net for the planning and execution phases by monitoring how the execution phase is really addressing the need.
Recognizing this phase:
Manager’s Note:
Risks:
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