Researchers also found that senior leaders tend to think they communicate more effectively and act more consistently than their employees think they do. For example, 81% of surveyed managers told Hay researchers that their actions are consistent with their verbal communications, but only 53% of workers thought so.

Only about 20% of workers say their managers coach them regularly to help them improve their performance, and only about 40% say their manager plays an active role in their career development.

There are many factors which contribute to these gaps. Out of these factors, the most important one we found is the ability and the skill set of leaders to get things done (27 % leaders receive no training on essential management skills)

In this article, we have focused on functional skills essential for strategy execution. The behavioural and technical skills required, we believe have direct correlation to the functional skills required to complete the job on hand.

Here are the 20 skills that are essential for leaders to be better strategy executors;

Customer focus (Keeping the customer in mind and in the center of every decision you make and everything you do at work). Ability to identify the persona of both, internal and external customers. Ability to objectively understand customer needs. Ability to make decisions keeping the customer in mind.

Alignment (Aligning individual goals and obtaining buy-ins across the team on the goals and strategies). Ability to involve team members while setting goals. Ability to cascade and align objectives across the team. Ability to convert goals into specific objectives and doable tasks.

Collaboration (Collaborating with people within the team, different departments, levels of organization, and different offices, different areas of expertise and culture to achieve a common goal). Ability to ensure smooth flow of communication across departments. Ability to collaborate along the supply chain to ensure business continuity, Ability to optimise team collaboration to enhance service levels to customers.

Negotiation (Developing strong interpersonal relationships by creating a win-win for team members, vendors and customers). Ability to evaluate alternatives and find the best route to optimally execute. Ability to negotiate with suppliers to find optimal cost & mitigate supply risks. Ability to negotiate with customers to deliver customer needs without burdening the firm with unrealistic expectations.

Continuous Improvement (Exceed expectation and add value to everything that you do). Ability to build a culture of innovation. Ability to encourage out of box thinking, acknowledging and rewarding innovations. Ability to continuously review and work towards stretch goals and targets.

Risk Management (Commitment to mitigate operational risks). Ability to foresee and manage operational risks. Ability to develop appropriate contingency plans to enable quick recovery and avoid inconvenience to customers.

Motivation (Lead by example and motivating your team to execute). Ability to create an environment where all team member are clear about their roles and their contribution towards a common goal. Ability to promote knowledge sharing. Ability to encourage sharing of ideas and creativity.

Mentoring (Effectively transfer knowledge, be compassionate and achieve team’s potential). Ability to nurture and develop potential leaders. Ability to inspire people through knowledge transfer. Ability to ensure continuous learning to plan succession.

Delegation (Assign work, trust and allow space to perform). Ability to accurately assign responsibility to increase efficiency and drive results. Ability to optimally allocate resources based on individual strengths.

Discipline (Being clear, strong-minded and living the process). Ability to live the values and achieve unison. Ability to execute complex tasks in a systematic manner. Ability to be disciplined and strong minded.

Recruitment (Identifying and deploying the right fit). Ability to identify activities, specific tasks, responsibilities and behavioural requirements for all positions. Ability to analyse, assess and hire the right fit.

Planning and Organizing (Ability to prioritise and work on both urgent and important tasks). Ability to prioritise, conceive and develop plans. Ability to systematically execute plans. Ability to continuously focus on short term and long term outcomes.

Communication (Careful listening, prompt & clear top down communication). Ability to actively listen and get complete clarity from leadership. Ability to communicate complex ideas through simpler understandable language and methods. Ability to ensure the message reaches the last person in the link.

Change management (Open to change, being agile and implement change). Ability to judge the scope, effort and impact of the proposed change across your team. Ability to timely and effectively communicate changes by aligning and getting buy-ins from team members.

Performance Enablement (Enabling and ensuring individual and team success). Ability to clearly define metrics which can inspire and accurately measure performance. Ability to conduct continuous evaluation and enable performance. Ability to provide complete clarity and growth opportunities to motivate and attain full potential.

Agility (Willingness to change). Ability to stick to deadlines without compromising service levels. Ability to clearly understand and exceed expectations. Ability to consistently meet changing customer requirements.

Attention to detail (Quality of work). Ability to collate different points of view and take appropriately steps for thoroughness & accuracy. Ability to plan in relative order based on the importance of tasks. Ability to focus on details while not losing track of the big picture.

Handling Tasks (Prioritising and multitasking). Ability to form and understand a logical sequence of the tasks. Ability to understand the complexity and intricacy of the processes and the criticality of task at hand. Ability to allocate and optimally use resources to handle important tasks.

Managing Initiatives (Seeing new initiatives yield desired results). Ability to accurately forecast the resource requirement and allocate accordingly. Ability to effectively judge and going after initiatives which can add value to the organization. Ability to align new initiative to the company’s value proposition.

Bottlenecks (Ensuring smooth flow to deliver on time). Ability to completely understand the processes and systems. Ability to allocate resources to optimally approach bottlenecks. Ability to avoid resource wastage due to repeat activities.

Metis has developed an on-line assessment tool to assess leaders on these 20 essential skills. The assessment tool is based on situational judgement inventories and direct questioning techniques. This tool can be used to assess incumbent leaders and while recruiting for leadership roles. Do write in to us on shweta@metisindia.com or enquiry@metisindia.com for more details.

To be competent goal executors, Leader should consider gaining better understanding of their internal operational risk profiles. Effective management of operational risks will aid better decision making and encourage more informed risk taking.

Leaders should build their own internal risk culture where operational risks are openly discussed and individuals in the team are encouraged to identify, evaluate and address their operational risks.

Our effort is to assist Leaders in identifying top 5 operational risks namely People, cultural, collaboration, customer and technology risks.

Please download the document(pdf) here:
Leadership responsibility #3 - Operational risk management (46094 downloads ) The post Leadership responsibility #3 -Operational risk management first appeared on Driving Success through Effective Execution.]]> https://metisindia.com/leadership-responsibility-3-operational-risk-management/feed/ 0 https://metisindia.com/interview-questionnaire-execution-skills-for-leaders/ https://metisindia.com/interview-questionnaire-execution-skills-for-leaders/#respond Fri, 15 Mar 2019 07:18:18 +0000 https://metisindia.com/?p=4105 Interview Questionnaire - Execution skills for leaders
The right questions can help you identify execution skills for leaders. Though it is not exhaustive, the interview questions and rating scale given below will reveal a candidate’s leadership skills to get things done. Hope it is useful to you.

Context matters. Even though capability required to perform a particular task may seem similar in a given Industry, It can be starkly different. It could vary depending on the organisations location, culture, values, vendors, customers, market and so on…

Our effort is to assist you in identifying contextual capabilities essential for strategy execution. The behavioural and technical capabilities required, we believe, have direct correlation to the functional capability required to complete the job on hand.

We have presented it as a checklist to make sure you address all aspects of contextual capability building.

Please download the document (,pdf) here: 
Leadership responsibility #2 - Contextual capability building (44592 downloads )

“Accountability” is known to most people. One should also know that there is more to it than just writing job descriptions and if incomplete can reduce the chances of implementing your organisation goals by 75%. Accountability should be used as a tool to inspire people to unlock their potential.

Accountabilities are dynamic and constantly require scrutiny and realignment. It should be treated as a relationship building exercise between its people.

The word “Objective” has been extensively used in this document, to imply that all responsibilities and accountability should come with utmost clarity and should contain numbers and timelines.

Accountability should fall to one (and only one) “person” per task, even if the task requires input and contributions from others. Making sure that the “person” understands his accountability, in all and specific situations, that are critical across the organisation.

We have put down important aspects to be well thought-out to ensure accountability for a leader and his team. We have presented it as a checklist to make sure you address all aspects while arriving at accountability.

Download the document (.pdf) here:
Leadership responsibility #1 – Role clarity & accountability (8435 downloads )

Engagement purpose: To enhance the ‘quality of customer service’, as part of an overall goal, to achieve ‘excellent customer experience’.

Method: well-knit engagement with conceptual input sessions, one-on-one coaching sessions, with real time on-site support.

Start point of the engagement: Based on pre-assessment the score on the parameters identified for the quality of customer service was 3/5.

Key components of our engagement: On-site support, the exercises, and the one-on-one sessions revealed a number of issues that need to be addressed. An analysis was made to give a reasonably consistent measure to quantifying customer relationship and customer centricity. The results of analysis were used in the feedback to the participants in the concept session, followed by correction as required in the one-on-one session, and further monitored in the on-site support during the real time conversations with the customer. This iterative process was continued throughout the programme.

Accomplishment: Post intervention assessment score on the parameters identified for the quality of customer service was 4.2/5.

Engagement purpose: Organizational development intervention (planned approach to align and improve the effectiveness of the organisation)

Method: Individualised Value Proposition (IVP) method for “goal orientation” to aligning people and processess to achieve organisation goals. Workshops, discussions, coaching and training programs.

Key components of our engagement: Collaborative meetings with key stake holders to arrive at key objective and time bound short term and long term milestones for the organisation. Worked with the various functional teams to evince a “buy-in” on the organizational objectives and to “align” their objectives with that of the organization. Evinced goal oriented processes for all entities to achieve the desired state for all functions including HR, recruitment, production, logistics etc.. Developed policies and processes that would enable achievement of the planned goals. Powered “right fits” for every job through dynamic job descriptions, tests, contextual evaluation of requirements for hiring and training. Drove “discipline” to ensure process adherence and “adaptability” to power continuous improvements. Powered the implementation of a “value centric” performance management system to enable performance for success.

Accomplishment: Soft outcomes – Realistic goals and buy-ins from all department heads. Percolation of organisation goals across the organisation. Set up greenfield policies and systems across the organisation.

Engagement purpose: To convey, decipher and act in accordance to “shared expectations” of the management stakeholders at the India Office of the US headquartered gaming organization to achieve the organizational goals.

Method: Individualised Value Proposition (IVP) method for “cultural orientation” through coaching, workshops and learning programs

Key components of our engagement: Evinced the “expectations” of key management stakeholders from the US headquarters as well as the Indian HO.

> Unearthed the underlying cultural belief systems and perspectives of various stakeholders       on the “expectations”.
> Formulated methods to unambiguously “communicate expectations”.
> Sensitized stakeholders from both cultures on their own as well as the others’ underlying         cultural traits in the specific context of their everyday work. This opened up the thought          paradigm for stakeholders on what to expect as well as what was expected of them.
> Subsequently, arrived at a “common understanding” of the “organizational objectives” and       the way forward plan.

Accomplishment: Soft outcomes – Cohesive working environment resulted in enhanced productivity. They got timely work done resulting in more projects.

Engagement purpose: To implement sustainable practices that would help the organization scale and achieve planned revenue growth. Goal orientation was the focus of the intervention.

Method: Individualised Value Proposition (IVP) method for “revenue growth” through coaching, workshops and learning programs

Start point of the engagement: Revenue achievement the previous year was 50% of the planned target

Key components of our engagement: Facilitated the founders to arrive at a “common vision” for the organization. Facilitated the identification of key “values” that would power the organization forward. Facilitated the organization to arrive at a “holistic set of objective and time bound goals” that the organization would pursue in lieu of its vision.

> Worked with the various functional teams to evince a “buy-in” on the organizational     objectives and to “align” their objectives with that of the organization
> Worked with team managers to help them “percolate” their objectives down to the last      employee
> Developed policies and processes that would enable achievement of the planned goals
> Powered the implementation of a “value centric” performance management system to       enable performance for success

Accomplishment: Revenue achievement – 75% of target planned for the year

Engagement purpose: Our client set up shop in India to take advantage of the “low production costs”. However, the productivity in India was 40% to that of their US counterpart thus negating any advantage. Our engagement was to power an improvement in productivity to at least 80% of that of the US HQ.

Method : “Business process re-engineering” through a unique blend of group discussions, learning-by-doing, coaching and training.

Start point of the engagement: Productivity 40% of their counterpart in the USA

Key components of our engagement: Arrived at the key objective and time bound milestones en-route to the success state

> Established “alignment” and “buy-ins” for all entities to achieve the desired state
> Evinced goal oriented processes for all entities to achieve the desired state for all functions        including HR, recruitment, production, logistics etc.
> Powered “right fits” for every job through dynamic job descriptions, contextual evaluation of     requirements for hiring and training
> Drove “discipline” to ensure process adherence and “adaptability” to power continuous      improvements

Accomplishment: The India center matched 86% of the productivity levels of their US counterpart