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 (36303 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 (35310 downloads )

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.

My colleague would religiously refer to this quote every time we set out to pursue a challenging initiative. Many a times even when we have embarked on initiatives somewhat similar to what we have pursued before.

This quote is apt, especially, in today’s business scenario where customer requirements are ever changing, requiring organisations to be agile and dynamic. Organisations and its people need to continuously do things that they have never done before.

To do things you have never done before we need to navigate through what we have done before. We have over the years, accumulated many methods and processes that have worked for us. We tend to apply this while executing, in almost every goal that we pursue.

Does this mean that the earlier experiences are not relevant?  In today’s business scenario, we doubt it very much as many of methods and mental models that you built your career on may be irrelevant, incomplete or ineffective. They can be made relevant only when contextually applied to the job on hand. So you unlearn what you already know and learn new ways to get the job done.

“Unlearning” is popularly defined as “to make an effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and sometimes better way”

Let’s take the game of golf; if you have not pursued sports earlier you would be more likely to pick up the game faster than the person who has been playing tennis, simply because you do not have any preconceived method or process of hitting a ball. The tennis player has to unlearn a fair bit to learn golf!   When we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.

In organisations, unlearning is the ability to work on alternative mental model than what we already know. By doing this, we constantly develop new methods and skills to execute agile objectives in this ever changing business landscape.

Imagine a typical organisation where leaders are operating with mental models that may have worked for them earlier, but these may have grown ineffective. We believe this to be one of the contributory factors to execution gaps.

Learning in organisations may not be the problem: it’s unlearning. Mental models are useful when utilised diligently. So, what does it take to unlearn and build newer mental models?

Old mental methods and habits
· Identify all reactions and automatic actions coming from past methods and become aware of it.
· Acknowledge that some methods are outdated and not relevant.
· Let go even if you need to start a fresh.

Creating new methods and ways
· Be open and think beyond the logic you know
· Create new methods to better execute your goals

Making new mental methods a habit
· Catch yourself falling back on the old mental habits
· Follow a routine that encourages new methods
· Reward yourself for every new method

To make new mental methods a habit here is a process that can be followed every time you embark on a new initiative / objective.

“Understanding” the objective, the uniqueness and the big picture.
> Understanding objectively the different “Customer Needs” who are directly impacted by the objective
> Listing out a set of activities to achieve the objective while satisfying customer needs
> Identify and mitigate risks along the defined set of activities
> Identify contextual (on ground) capability requirements along the defined set of activities
> Identify and get buy-ins from collaborators who are required to complete the defined set of activities
> Review the objective and activities every week to improve and make changes

Metis interventions are designed using our Individualised Value Proposition (IVP) method to bring in relevance and facilitate participants to; appreciate, identify, develop and apply skills to achieve individual goals and objectives. The participants need to improvise and think out of the box to get things done. Do write in to us on shweta@metisindia.com  or enquiry@metisindia.com  if you require more details on the methodology.

• Strategic intent gives a common purpose, lays emphasis on opportunities to pursue and      inspires    every stakeholder in the organization.
• Strategic intent is usually derived from the company’s vision (or) many a times strategic  intents form the basis for creating a vision for the organisation.
• Strategic Intent directs the organization’s focus, thoughts and actions to the present.
• Strategic intent defines the purpose of your organisations’ existence in the ecosystem. It  defines your actions around growth, operations, innovation and customer.

Strategy execution practices – Organisation goals formalises the key success factors required to execute the intent

• Organisation goals translate the strategic intent into actionable, relevant, measurable goals.
• Organisations goals should be holistic and necessarily span across organisation growth,  operations efficiency, innovation and customer delight.
• Involve all key stakeholders while arriving at organisation goals. Stakeholders buy-in is  critical for business success.

Strategy execution practices – Department goals enable organisation goals

• Key stakeholders across functions and operations must converge and create goals that make  everyone accountable for the execution of the organisation goals.
• Every department / function should involve key stakeholders while arriving at goals and  KRA’s for successful execution.
• Department goals have to be transparent, objective and communicated effectively to all  stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• Each department should necessarily have at least one KRA for every organisation goals. This  way all departments contribute to the overall achievement of the goals.

If organizational performance is but merely its ability to translate market potential into financial success, then it is imperative that “people capability” is a crucial success factor for any organization.

While numerous studies, research, thought & action have gone into developing fairly advanced models & frameworks for competence management, on the ground facts reveal that the largest impediment to organizational success is strategy implementation (for which competence is a vital contributor). So, if competence was indeed being managed well, why doesn’t it reflect in organizational performance?

Global studies reveal that over 50% of managers worldwide attribute lack of capability of their teams to sub optimal performance. Furthermore, our own study reveals that the average capability, as seen by the leadership, vis-a-vis the requirement to implement organizational strategies stands at 67% with the best figure pegged at 72%!

Now, isn’t this shocking! Well, it was for us. So we dug deeper. We wanted to find out what caused this lack of capability & here’s what we found!

While there was no dearth of knowledge (education) or skills (experience) in an organization, the biggest impediment came from the ability to apply the available knowledge & skills in the context that was required by the strategy / for the job at hand.

So, while education & experience could be at best indicators of potential, capability is actually the ability of an individual to adapt & apply the understanding in the present organizational context. It is the consistency & adaptability of one to continuously transform understanding into application and vice versa.

So, apart from the individual’s attitude (which is beyond the control of the organization other than plausibly providing the appropriate work environment), is there a lever that can be perused to coax better application of knowledge?

The answer is yes! If we cull capability requirements from smaller activity chunks, the context in which a particular skill or understanding is to be applied can be called out, thus reducing bias which otherwise hampers contextual application.

Role based capability building: If we draw out a process chart to achieve the goal at hand, we can then identify specific capability requirements for each of the activities that get called out.  Addressing specific capability gaps would then help enhance execution and ultimately performance.

For example, let’s look at a typical vendor development process:

Let’s say negotiations skills is an imperative requirement for the process above. Although the underlying skills of negotiation would remain for all organizations with similar processes as above, the context of vendor relationship (price v/s value) that is unique to each organization, would essentially determine the context in which the negotiation skills are to be applied.

In other words, negotiating with vendors for quality and timeliness requires different adaptability of negotiating skills than negotiating with vendors for price, even though the underlying skills requirements are the same. To perform the activity at hand, hiring the right person with the right skills or training existing people with specific inputs is sure to get better results.

For us to be able to coax our organization to better execute our strategies, isn’t it imperative for us to translate our plans into objective goals for each strategy implementing entity at our firm? Isn’t is important for us to ensure that all the entities in our organization are aligned to our plans? Aren’t these threshold requirements?

Our study of over two dozen organizational leaders across industries & organizational sizes revealed quite another thing!

The clarity in what an organization wished to achieve was found to be a mere 70%

Since optimal execution of business strategy begins with a clear & uniform understanding of what needs to be achieved as an organization, we dug deeper to figure out the causes of this low score, and here’s what we found!

1) Although leaders were quite clear about what to pursue as an organization & what direction to take, this wasn’t necessarily communicated effectively to all layers within the organization. In certain cases, there was an absence of objective goals. In certain others, goals were centered around sales & revenues which essentially meant that the necessary thrust for customer focus, operational efficiency, quality, evolution and other success factors required for sustenance & performance were missing!

2) Yet another crucial factor that determined clarity was the number of goals that an organization pursued. While no goals or for that matter sales only goals obviously meant ineffective management having too many goals was also a problem. Having too many goals blurred priorities thereby reducing clarity on what actually mattered the most to the organization. A global study based on the law of diminishing returns suggests the following

3) The third crucial factor owing to a low clarity in the what, was an inherent disconnect between strategies & the customer! Oxymoronic? Well, its true! Although customers are an indispensible partner for success, not enough attention was being paid to understanding their precise needs. (In case you missed the article, please click here).

4) The fourth crucial factor were the goals themselves! On the one hand, certain organizations provided more impetus to an extrapolation of past achievements while setting goals, thereby not factoring organizational & market potential. On the other hand, organizations laid a lot of thrust on aspirations while setting goals, in which case the market realities were not factored. In effect the desirable balance between market realities, past performance & aspirations remained unachieved.

5) Last, but not the least was a missing alignment from the organizational stakeholders who were actually responsible for implementing the strategies on the ground. We found that the average alignment achieved by organizations was 72%!

The gap stemmed from factors like,

 a) No buy in

b) Only one or few entities could see how they impacted the organizational goals. The remaining organizational entities really did not see the connect between their contributions and the organizational goals.

 c) The measures for any given goal seemed to remain the same across various levels, thus blurring accountabilities & alignment. The following pyramid showcases the typical distribution of focus areas for success.

This really set me thinking how the poll predictions went so horribly wrong!

I don’t doubt for one moment the mathematical models or the competencies of the data analysts. In fact, I do believe that poll analysts would have some amazing models built from years of election research and experience that would most likely predict, to a great deal of accuracy, what the election would turn out to be.

As a person who is obsessed with data, this story reminds me of a fundamental principle of data analysis or for that matter life; that of removing biases! I wonder what the predictions would have looked like if the sampling for the poll surveys had been done with lesser biases. In fact, one of the local English channels covering the US elections reported a few people arguably from the Clinton campaign coming out of the White House exclaiming “where are these people who are voting coming from?”

Isn’t it as simple as the equation,

Even great models fitted to samples with bias = Biased predictions = Biased decisions

Now, to think about it, I realized biases are everywhere and define the way we manage our personal and professional lives. As simple as it is and I’m sure this is no eye opener for anyone, but the question is, how open are we to question our own assumptions and how often do we actually see ourselves doing it?

One of my three commandments I follow in my professional life reads: “Challenge the Status Quo. Question everything, but assumptions & not ideas.” For me, the need for this commandment just gets reinforced and I pledge to myself to follow this more vigorously.