The Productive Leadership™ System: Maximizing Organizational Reliability

By Thomas J. Moriarty

Typical leadership training never seems to ‘move the needle’ in terms of creating more effective leaders. That’s because the system that supports leadership hasn’t changed. To get true improvement in leadership, organizations need to focus on accountability. There must be an asset management system that defines and assigns accountability. Then individual leaders can learn and apply productive leadership.   
 The author has coined and trademarked the Productive Leadership™ System (PLS) which includes:
*A Productive Leadership Policy*The Organizational Reliability Model™ (ORM)
*The Productive Leadership Model™ (PLM)*A Productive Leadership Development Program

The ORM overtly defines and assigns accountability across each leadership level. The PLM identifies the leadership roles, attributes, skills, sources of power and other aspects that productive leaders must master. The development program creates a leadership pipeline for professional development of current leaders and prospective leaders, and on-boarding the right people for leadership positions. 

The author includes a chapter on the human brain to show that leaders and followers are capable of learning throughout their lives, and the science behind creating habits and cultures. The book has several tools and exercises to help reinforce important concepts.

Appendices include details on the Team Effectiveness and Motivation Survey (used in the 2015 Alidade MER/Plant Services Magazine Leadership Survey), an ISO 55000 overview and the Guidance and Execution Model™, an example for developing processes and procedures.

Features
 
Recommendations for a full Productive Leadership Development Program and training, including:
 

• Characteristics of individual leaders: The desire to be responsible and having a personal mission, vision, and values that align with the leadership position.
• Leadership roles: Expert/technician, manager/administrator, coach, systems thinker, and visionary.
• Leadership attributes: Consistent, attentive, respectful, motivational, and assertive.
• Leadership skills: Time management, communication, empowerment, giving and receiving feedback, and conflict management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Industrial Press, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780831195250

Thomas J. Moriarty

Tom Moriarty has over 39 years of experience in leadership, asset management, maintenance and reliability engineering, from technician, through work crew supervisor, project engineer, program manager and corporate director/president.  He is an expert in managing physical asset maintenance and reliability engineering programs, leadership development programs and strategic improvement programs.  Tom is President of Alidade MER, Inc., a consulting company in Florida.

Book preview

The Productive

Leadership™ System

Maximizing Organizational Reliability

Thomas Moriarty

INDUSTRIAL PRESS, INC.

Industrial Press, Inc.

32 Haviland Street, Suite 3

South Norwalk, Connecticut 06854

Phone: [phone]

Toll-Free in USA: 888-528-7852

Fax: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Author: Thomas Moriarty

Title: The Productive Leadership™ System: Maximizing Organizational Reliability

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938038

© by Industrial Press.

All rights reserved. Published in 2020.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN (print):       978-0-8311-3642-0

ISBN (ePDF):      978-0-8311-9524-3

ISBN (ePUB):      978-0-8311-9525-0

ISBN (eMOBI):   978-0-8311-9526-7

Editorial Director/Publisher: Judy Bass

Copy Editor: Judy Duguid

Compositor: Patricia Wallenburg, TypeWriting

Proofreader: Alison Shurtz

Indexer: Jack Lewis

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

The following are registered trademarks by Thomas J. Moriarty:

The Productive Leadership™ System (PLS)

Productive Leadership Model™ (PLM)

Organizational Reliability Model™ (ORM)

Productive Leadership™ Development Program

Guidance and Execution Model™

Limits of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty

The author and publisher make no warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, with regard to the documentation contained in this book.

All rights reserved.

industrialpress.com

ebooks.industrialpress.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I dedicate this book to my wife Martha

for being supportive and strong

throughout our time together.

Also to the people that have had a profound effect

on my personal mission, vision, and values:

my parents, Edward and Beverly Moriarty,

early mentors Robert Dion and Lucian Brunelle, Sr.,

my Coast Guard mentors James Carlin,

Hank Kocevar, and James Underwood.

Finally, I dedicate this book to those who are,

or who become, Productive Leaders,

and to all the people they lead.

Contents

Foreword

ONE        What’s the Problem?

Workplace Environment Exercise

Working on the Right Problem

Problem 1—Accountability

Problem 2—No Leadership Standards

Problem 3—Leadership Development and Sustainment

The Productive Leadership™ System

Do Your Job

The Business Case

What’s in It for You?

TWO        Our Brains

Is the Human Brain Anything Special?

Neurons and Connections

Brain Sections

Brain Processes

Encoding

Memory and Habits

Short-Term Memories

Long-Term Memories

Habits

Important Things to Remember

THREE          Organizational Reliability

The Organizational Reliability Model

The Environment

Control and Stability Realm

Proactive Improvement Realm

Performance Rings

Organizational Reliability Problems and Solutions

General Approach

Changing the Status Quo

Common Problems and Solutions

FOUR           Productive Leadership

The Leader

Leadership Levels

Responsibility

Personal Mission

Personal Vision

Personal Values

Leadership Roles, Attributes, and Skills

Leadership Roles

Leadership Attributes—Good CARMA

EXERCISE: Respecting Yourself and Others

EXERCISE: Assertiveness

EXERCISE: CARMA

Leadership Skills

EXERCISE: Time Management

EXERCISE: Empowerment

Sources of Power

Power Bases

Power Sources

Other Considerations

Influencing Others

Trust

Group Dynamics

Triads and Dyads: The Importance of a Chain of Command

Capability and Motivation

Human Resources Support

Setting Goals

Productive Leadership Summary

FIVE          Creating a Productive Leadership™ System

Productive Leadership Objectives

Productive Leadership System Policy

Assess the Productive Leadership System

Define Improvements and Develop an Action Plan

Implement the Gap Closure Strategy

Execute and Proactively Improve the System

SIX            Summary and Concluding Thoughts

Concluding Thoughts

A                Standard for Asset Management Overview

B                Requirements and Execution Model®

The Model

C                Team Effectiveness and Motivation Survey®

Demographic Section

Team Effectiveness Section

Motivation Section

Recommendations for Surveying

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

I have known Tom Moriarty for more than 26 years. We served together on a Coast Guard cutter, and I’ve observed his military and civilian career since. Tom was the Engineer Officer, responsible for the engineering department—in charge of all hull, mechanical, and electrical systems and the people who operated and maintained those systems. As the Commanding Officer, I had the opportunity to observe Tom’s leadership practices firsthand. It came as no surprise when he informed me he was writing a book on leadership.

Tom was an expert at preparing the ship and crew for deployments. Coast Guard ships and crews operate in harsh environments and have strenuous demands placed upon them. Under these conditions, leadership is critical.

He often said he was responsible for tactical and strategic performance of the ship and its crew. Tactically, his job was to ensure the ship and crew were Semper Paratus (the Coast Guard motto meaning always ready). That meant ensuring people had what they needed to operate and maintain the ship to be ready for the next deployment, being able to support all missions including drug interdictions, search and rescue, international relations, etc. Strategically, Tom believed his job was to prepare the people under him to assume more responsibility and for the then 30-year-old ship to continue serving the nation into the future.

Many enlisted personnel who served under Tom were promoted, and a few even followed his footsteps to Officer Candidate School. Junior officers who served under Tom have been promoted to high rank. And the Coast Guard Cutter Confidence (WMEC-619), commissioned in 1966, is still standing the watch in 2019.

The principles by which Tom led and managed his department onboard Confidence are proven leadership methods used in the Coast Guard and, in fact, in all the military services for decades. There is no rocket science involved. However, there are similarities and differences between the military environment and nonmilitary environments.

Similarities between military and civilian organizations are that leaders are expected to get things done through other people; and people respond somewhat predictably to situations. Leaders get things done through other people by being accountable, by setting direction, and by creating and requiring compliance with guidance. With respect to how people respond to situations, the biology of how the human brain functions is the same. We all have a fight-or-flight instinct. We all have the ability for reasoning. Leaders and followers have to balance logic and emotion. Leaders in military and civilian organizations must understand and effectively lead people who have diverse personalities and needs.

The dissimilarities between military and civilian organizations are important as well. In the military, people are recruited at a very young age. They are indoctrinated under strenuous conditions. They are trained to a very high degree of discipline and a code of conduct. Once indoctrinated, service members are assigned to a duty station where there are constant cultural reinforcements. In addition, there is a strong culture of leadership development through mentoring and training. That is extremely rare in civilian organizations.

Another dissimilarity is that an enlisted person is under contract. Military persons are assigned to a duty station in some part of the world, or in a position they may or may not care for. They cannot give two weeks’ notice or simply say, I’m not coming in today. While civilians may feel trapped in a job, they can still leave if they choose. For a military person, doing so can land you in the brig.

In my post–Coast Guard career, I have had the opportunity to gain extensive knowledge of civilian organizations. I’ve worked for a large, global engineering, construction, and services company. I’ve had firsthand knowledge of other organizations, public and private, and seen what leadership looks like at the executive level and at all levels below the executive. Oftentimes there are difficulties with getting organizational strategies to permeate from the top to the bottom of organizations. Things tend to fall apart in middle-management and lower levels in the organization.

The concept of the Productive Leadership™ System adeptly identifies the qualities of leadership excellence in the military and blends them with the realities of the civilian world.

Accountability is the essential quality that makes leadership possible. Most organizations have some accountable people. But other people deflect or avoid accountability. It’s not because they are opposed to being accountable. People who deflect or avoid accountability do so because the system they are working in doesn’t support accountability.

To achieve optimal success, organizations of all sizes need to establish a system that defines and clearly assigns accountability. The Organizational Reliability Model is such a system. Across each level of leadership, the senior person is accountable to provide direction, guidance, and the assets that are required to carry out the guidance. Accountability for direction, guidance, and assets is, as Tom says, a double-edged sword. When direction and guidance are put in place, the senior leader must support them with the proper assets and training. Otherwise, direction and guidance must be adjusted to what will be supported.

Subordinate persons are accountable to execute their assigned responsibilities with the direction, guidance, and assets they have been provided. Subordinates are also responsible for notifying their superior when there are discrepancies in direction, guidance, or assets. This ensures accountability for direction, guidance, and assets stay with their senior leader.

Many leadership training initiatives fail to generate noticeable changes. That is often because of the lack of an accountability-based system and the legacy culture. That is why Tom emphasizes the importance of organizational reliability.

Leaders must also have the characteristics, knowledge, and skills they need to be productive leaders. The Productive Leadership™ Model addresses the fact that leaders must want responsibility and that they should have a personal mission, vision, and values that align with their position, and with the organization within which they work. Leaders need to understand leadership roles, leadership attributes, and leadership skills. Productive leaders also properly use their power bases and sources of power. They study needs and motivation theories. In addition, they set goals that motivate people to achieve, or exceed, objectives.

Accountability, productive leadership knowledge, and leadership skills are critical to support and enable individual leaders. Tremendous value is created by establishing a pipeline of productive leaders. Tom addresses this by recommending a Productive Leadership Development Program to create a common leadership culture through defining, consistently training, and evaluating leaders relative to their accountabilities and their leadership performance.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911. In light of his most dangerous and challenging mission, his preparations had to be exacting—he is quoted as saying, When you become a leader, you give up the right to be human. Over a hundred years later, society now requires its leaders to be human, but the exacting demands of leadership have not changed.

By reading this book, civilian leaders will get the opportunity to view leadership from a different angle. There are hundreds of books written to show a path to becoming the next CEO of global enterprise. Hundreds more have been written to teach individual leadership skills. This book is intended to shine a light on the reasons why many leadership improvement efforts fail, and how to create a culture of accountability and productive leadership. It’s practical. It’s professional. Just as I have known Tom Moriarty to be.

Rear Admiral James W. Underwood

U.S. Coast Guard, Retired

ONE

What’s the Problem?

Abraham Lincoln once said, The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. The dogmas of our quiet past are the beliefs or habits that have created the status quo. We are indeed deep in the throes of the stormy present that is piled high with difficulty: the skilled labor crisis, global competition, and the accelerating availability of technological advances. We must rise to the occasion. To do that, we must view our circumstances differently.

To rise to the occasion, the first thing that must be done is to recognize what the problems are and select the most impactful problem to solve. Solving the problem means looking at the problem with a fresh set of eyes. Then, apply new thinking. Respond to the situation by understanding what is and what can be. Look for examples that show what works. Adopt models that can be communicated, applied, and sustained. Act anew and achieve a new status quo of higher performance.

Workplace Environment Exercise

Think about the worst leadership environment you have worked in.

1.   List the three to five words or phrase you would use to describe that workplace?

2.   Were you given clear direction on mission, vision, values, and objectives, and did the organization live by them?

3.   If you wanted to know how to do something, or whether you were doing it correctly, was there a document for the policies, plans, processes, procedures, and measures?

4.   Did you have all the assets or resources you needed to do your job properly?

5.   Were the assets, resources, knowledge, or skills that were needed documented in policies, plans, processes, and procedures?

6.   If you didn’t have enough information on the organization’s direction or guidance, or if the assets or resources you needed were not available, did your leader listen and resolve the issue? (Or were you told to deal with it or do the best you can?)

7.   Did the organization provide productive leadership training? Did the organization provide that training early in your role as a leader? Did it provide the training at least every two or three years to all leaders?

When I ask the first question during workshops, I get responses like stressful, confusing, had to be defensive in everything I did, miserable, and hated going to work. For the rest of the questions, the answers are usually no.

In poor leadership environments:

   People are not given clear direction.

   There is insufficient documentation of policies, plans, processes, procedures, or measures.

   Managers and supervisors are not trained in a standardized set of leadership principles, are not trained regularly, and are not expected to apply productive leadership principles.

Having experienced your worst workplace environment probably means you have experienced what doesn’t work. In most workplaces some or many of these same traits appear. So what can we do to change your organization, or at least your portion of the organization?

Working on the Right Problem

In the early 1950s, the shipment of goods by oceangoing freighter was in decline. Costs were accelerating. Because of the way freight was handled, it was taking longer and longer to get cargo processed and delivered. One port after another became badly congested.

The way cargo was being loaded, unloaded, and staged was a very manual process. If you ever saw the classic 1954 movie On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, you would see the process of unloading cargo ships during that period. A cargo net or sling was lowered into the ship’s hold. Stevedores on the dock and in the cargo hold of the ship physically lifted sacks, barrels, or boxes to or from a cargo net or sling to load and unload ships.

Before being loaded onto a ship, and after the load was delivered to the destination dock, there was another problem. It was difficult to keep track of the cargo. There were delays while locating specific cargo that was to be loaded or transferred by rail or truck to inland destinations. People with not- so-good ethics figured out ways to profit from the poor management of valuable materials. Cargo was being delayed and, in some cases, stolen.

Cargo ships are a major capital expense. Ships provide value only by getting paid to deliver cargo. Every hour a vessel is waiting to onload or offload is an hour that delays revenue. The greater the delays, the fewer voyages and the fewer deliveries and revenues.

The ship owners, a subgroup within the seagoing freight system, tried to address the problem by improving the economics of operating ships. Naval architects started designing ships that were faster, that carried bigger loads, and that could be operated by fewer crew members. Transit time was reduced, but bigger cargoes meant more time at the dock to load and unload. There was very little impact on the overall system.

Voyage transit time was not the biggest problem. The biggest problem was the bottleneck created by loading and unloading at the dock. Ships would arrive at a harbor entrance but would have to wait their turn to get to the pier to onload or offload cargo. The problem that needed to be fixed was the onload and offload process.

Initially, the concept of creating a better system for onloading and offloading seemed too big. After all, there were hundreds of ports and thousands of vessels that were designed to handle cargo the same way; this was the status quo. Modifying port facilities and ships to accommodate a different way of loading and unloading would require billions of dollars in investments.

A new system was conceived. The new system relied on containerized cargo. Full adoption of the model would require proof that it would solve the right problem. It started with a handful of ports and ship owners. Containerized cargo was proven to have several advantages:

   Preorganizing and loading cargo into standard-sized containers supported further standardization of how cargo was transferred to and from the ports by rail or truck.

   Port facilities could be updated with systems and equipment that were designed to transfer standardized containers.

   Containerized loads could be planned and scheduled prior to the cargo vessel arriving at the dock. Each container could be staged for rapid loading.

   Based on a ship’s route schedule, containers could be loaded on the ship in a specific order, reducing time spent at the destination dock.

   At the destination dock, each container could be offloaded and organized based on the mode of transport and the ultimate destination of the cargo.

Over time, the containerized cargo transportation system was updated. Containers became easily handled and transferred to and from ships and transferred shoreside by railcars and trucks.

With the right problem identified and a good model put into practice, the new cargo handling system created a dramatic improvement. Over the 30 years between 1955 and 1985, the following were achieved:

   Oceangoing cargo volume increased over 500%.

   Overall unit costs per ton shipped were reduced by 60%.

   Time spent in and around ports was reduced by 75%. Less idle time meant increased velocity or turnover on expensive capital assets.

   More voyages meant that the investment in capital assets could be distributed over more tons of cargo; the profit margin per ton increased.

   Because the containers could be locked, staged in secure areas, and better controlled, theft was drastically reduced.

   By the 2010s over 90% of global trade was being transported by sea, using well over 700 million containers per year.

What does this story have to do with leadership? It’s a lesson in identifying and solving the right problem. Organizations spend millions of dollars on new enterprise asset management (EAM) software, Lean, Six Sigma, and the latest production or maintenance technology. Recently there has been a lot of buzz about the industrial internet of things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

I’m not saying that these tools, or any others, are bad tools. I am saying that if the underlying fundamental system to leverage these tools is not in place, then most of the capital and effort expended on optimizing parts of the system will be ineffective. The fundamental, or foundational, problems are the issues that need to be solved first.

The cargo loading and unloading problem was not solved by optimizing components of the system (improving speed, size, and crewing of cargo ships). The fundamental problem was the system model that developed over time. The solution was having a better system model. With an improved system model, all entities within the system were able to align with the model. Standardized and disciplined ways of interacting created massive benefits.

So what are the fundamental problems with organizations? When I analyze my experiences in the Coast Guard and all the organizations and case studies that I’ve been involved with, a common set of fundamental problems can be identified.

Problem 1—Accountability

Most of the major change projects that organizations implement tend to fail. They don’t achieve the return on investment (ROI) that was expected. That’s because the programs are laid on top of an underlying foundation that cannot support the change. It’s like having a house built on ground that can’t support its weight. The money and time expended to build the floor, walls, ceilings, and roof will be wasted when the foundation sinks and the structure fails.

The problem for these organizations is a lack of accountability between senior leaders and subordinate leaders. Large organizations can have between five and seven organizational levels. At each organizational level there is a senior leader and a subordinate leader. There is a binary or reciprocal accountability that must be maintained between each set of senior and subordinate leaders.

Senior leaders are accountable to provide direction, guidance, and assets (resources) to enable subordinate leaders to execute or perform their responsibilities. The senior leader delegates responsibility to execute to subordinate leaders. Subordinate leaders are accountable to lead their teams using the direction, guidance, and assets that are provided.

Subordinate leaders are also accountable to provide senior leaders with feedback when direction, guidance, or assets are deficient in some way. Senior leaders are then accountable to revise direction, guidance, and assets. This is a generalized description of organizational reliability: Each level of leadership is accountable and mutually supportive of each other.

The problems most organizations have relative to accountability include:

   Mission, vision, values, and objectives (direction) are not clear, not stable, or not used as the basis for assessing and defining requirements or for executing. Certainly, modifications to direction must be considered from time to time, but the direction should be consistent and overtly used for assessing, defining, and responding to issues.

   Policies, plans, processes, procedures, and measures (guidance) have ambiguities, gaps, and overlaps that create disharmony, silos, and other difficulties for subordinate leaders and team members. Senior leaders abdicate their accountability to authorize what is to be done and how, and how performance will be measured. Too much latitude means best practices cannot be defined. Alignment among peer groups is less likely.

   Subordinate leaders are not provided with the assets they need to execute the direction and guidance they are accountable for. This happens when new or modified requirements are implemented or when assets dissipate. Sometimes senior leaders assume subordinate leaders have sufficient resources to absorb new requirements while continuing to execute existing guidance. This happens when assets are not properly accounted for. Assets dissipate when employees leave, when support equipment is not maintained or repaired, or when software licenses are not renewed. Senior leaders avoid accountability when they tell subordinates to figure it out or when they issue 10% across-the-board budget cuts. Certainly, subordinate leaders that are closer to the problem should be asked for recommendations, but accountability to adjust or prioritize direction, guidance, and assets must remain with the senior leader.

Organizational reliability means that each leader in the organization is accountable for specific aspects. Accountability for those aspects must be explicit, and the accountable persons must adhere to their accountabilities. For any hierarchical organizational system to be efficient and effective, accountability is critical.

To illustrate how this model works, let’s look at an example. A client that I worked with stated that his organization’s objective was to have its facilities be in the top 10 among its peers. This was critical to the organization’s objective to attract and retain top researchers and a top workforce and to ensure high customer and stakeholder satisfaction. Yet the senior leaders provided funding for only 55% of the workforce staffing level needed to achieve a high level of performance. The compensation (wages and benefits) provided to the workforce was more than 15% below the region’s compensation level for similar tradespeople. That resulted in over a 20% turnover.

The organization’s senior leaders had provided direction, but they did not walk the talk. They did not provide sufficient guidance that would enable managers to quantify the number and type of tradespeople needed nor the training, skills, equipment, tools, software, etc., that would enable the expected levels of performance.

Subordinate leaders did the best they could, but they were not enabled to execute. None of the subordinate leaders knew how to challenge senior leaders the right way—to put the onus on senior leaders to address the situation. Senior leaders had several alternatives:

1.   Do nothing. Keep direction, guidance, and assets as currently provided and expect something to change (Einstein’s definition of insanity).

2.   Improve guidance and increase assets (through staffing and compensation) to enable achievement of the stated direction and desired level of performance.

3.   Reduce the direction and performance expectation to match what is achievable with guidance and assets provided.

This client chose option 2: increasing compensation and the number of authorized persons in the workforce. The leaders are gradually making these changes over two to three years because that’s the rate at which they can annually increase compensation, and because it will take a year or two to get all their guidance and asset requirements identified and implemented. They are now on the right path.

The organizational reliability system is like the containerized cargo system. It standardizes accountability for how things will be done. It requires those involved with the system to abide by a common set of accountabilities. Each entity is accountable to do its part.

Problem 2—No Leadership Standards

Is there such a thing as born leaders? And if so, can organizations identify, hire, or promote only born leaders? What knowledge, tools, and skills do leaders need? How do leaders obtain leadership knowledge, tools, and skills?

For the record, I do not believe in born leaders. After studying contemporary brain science, I believe a person’s leadership potential or ability stems from the things that person has experienced and how deeply those experiences were driven into the person’s long-term memory. We are all products of our experiences. There are some biological influences. Specifically, parts of our brains develop at different rates, and what gets experienced during developmental periods can affect how a person interprets those experiences. Socialization has a much greater impact. What and who a person is exposed to shapes their personality. The experiences that are picked up by our senses interacting with the world determines what gets stored in our brains.

Because of the way our brains function, we all have the ability to learn throughout our lives. So if to this point in your life you have not experienced the right things to attain the knowledge, tools, and skills to be a productive leader, you can still learn. However, to learn, you must also have the desire to learn—to expose yourself to learning by studying and applying leadership skills.

Some people arrive at an organization with great leadership skills. They may have learned those skills by having spent time in the military or by having worked for an organization that invested in their leadership capability. Sometimes people had the good fortune to have had good mentors earlier in their career. Your organization may have great leaders by luck-of-the-draw or because someone recognized that they were great leaders and was able to bring them aboard.

In many organizations supervisors and managers are selected based on tenure or because they seem to be good at getting things done. Oftentimes a person that might be an excellent candidate declines the position. She or he sees the additional administrative burdens or loss of overtime pay as not worth it. Sometimes a prospective leader just lacks confidence in her or his leadership knowledge and skills. The organization settles for a less qualified person that wants, or is willing to take, the position.

There needs to be a definition of what the organization expects its leaders to know and what skills they need. In short, there needs to be a model such as the Productive Leadership Model®. The model must be anchored by:

   Direction from senior leaders (mission, vision, values, and objectives)

   Guidance (policies, plans, processes, procedures, and measures)

   Assets (personnel, tools, equipment, software, etc.) needed to carry out that guidance

These anchors should sound familiar. They are the things that senior leaders are accountable to provide from the organizational reliability discussion in problem 1.

Assuming that direction, guidance, and assets are all sufficient for a leader to execute, the leader must have:

   The desire to be a leader. A person in a leadership position needs to be responsible and have a personal mission, vision, and values that are compatible with their position.

   Knowledge of leadership roles, attributes, and skills. Leadership roles include expert/technician, manager/administrator, coach, systems thinker, and visionary. Depending on the leader’s level in the organization, different roles get more or less emphasis. Leadership attributes include being consistent, attentive, respectful, motivational, and assertive. Leadership skills include time management, communication, empowerment, giving and receiving feedback, and conflict resolution.

   Sources of power. The leader also must know how power is enhanced or degraded. Position power is formal power that is delegated downward from a senior leader to a subordinate leader. Personal power is earned when other persons voluntarily give power based on how the leader interacts with others. Leaders should lead as much as possible with personal power, but they must use position power when appropriate. Using power appropriately enhances or increases power. Not using power appropriately reduces power.

   An understanding of needs theories and how to influence subordinates, peers, and senior persons. People’s behaviors are based on their motivations, and motivations are based on needs. Only unsatisfied needs create motivation.

   The ability to set goals that drive teams toward achieving organizational and functional direction: mission, vision, values, and objectives. Some direction will be long term and will require time and effort to achieve and maintain. Creating goals that allow teams to experience wins on the way to the objectives creates positive energy. It is also critical for team members to know that their leaders are engaged, attentive, and assertive. A leader that sets and manages goals is sending that message.

Organizations need to articulate the knowledge, tools, and skills they expect for each leadership position. This allows clear standards for training and evaluating current and prospective leaders. In cases where leadership ability is lacking, there will be an established standard of knowledge, tools, and skills expected of the position. Classroom training, on-the-job practical training, and coaching can be used to close the gap.

Knowing what knowledge, tools, and skills will be required also creates the opportunity to solve a third problem: What should be done to develop and sustain a productive leadership culture within an organization?

Problem 3—Leadership Development and Sustainment

Here’s a typical scenario: The plant manager knows there’s a problem with leadership at the supervisor level. Policies and procedures aren’t followed, turnover is too high, grievances are increasing, and safety incidents are on the rise. So the plant manager asks the human resources director to find some leadership training.

The HR director identifies several training firms and asks them to submit proposals. The contractor that has the best combination of the glossiest brochure and the lowest cost is selected. This amounts to an investment of about $6,000 for the training contractor, plus the time for a dozen attendees; about 8 hours per attendee at about $40 per hour is about $5,120 in labor. Coffee, cookies, and a box lunch are provided for the one-day event—maybe another $300 in cost.

A dozen supervisors and junior managers attend the workshop. The training covers the usual topics: time management, communication skills, etc.

Only two of the current trainees attended the previous leadership training workshop that was held about five years ago. Four other attendees had leadership training from a former employer. This trainer presents similar topics, but not in the same way that the last training contractor did, nor in the same way that those with previous leadership training experienced. The trainer delivers the course, provides an invoice, and gets paid.

After the training is completed, the attendees are asked how the training went. A couple of them report that it was great training and they’re appreciative of the opportunity to learn. A couple of others grumble that it was a waste of time. The rest feel like it was good information but are skeptical that they will be able to apply what they learned. The attendees go back to work. Nothing changes.

Morale among the workers improves for a while, but only because they are making jokes about the managers and supervisors having attended the training. The members of the workforce have seen it before. They expect no real changes. At best there will be a short-term change that fades within a few days to a few weeks.

This is what I call a one-and-done leadership training event. It is characterized by the recognition that something needs to be done followed by an insufficient response. Why do one-and-done leadership training events fail to make a difference? The main reasons are these:

   There’s no effective Organizational Reliability Model®. Senior leaders and subordinate leaders don’t have reciprocal accountabilities. Direction, guidance, and assets are lacking, and there’s no definition of individual leadership knowledge, tools, and skills.

   The leadership training content changes with the training provider. There is no consistency in the terminology or specific subjects covered because the required knowledge, tools, and skills have not been defined in a model such as the Productive Leadership Model. There’s no consistency in emphasis, importance, or depth in the way that each subject is covered.

   Leadership knowledge, tools, and skills are not defined for each leadership level. There’s no way to standardize evaluation criteria for each position.

   When leadership training is infrequent and/or inconsistent, there is no socialization to develop a productive leadership culture.

   Senior leaders do not ensure that the leadership knowledge, tools, and skills provided to the leadership training attendees are actually applied. Without using or practicing the knowledge, tools, and skills, they will not be driven into memory and will not become habits.

The 2015 Alidade MER/Plant Services Magazine Leadership Survey asked participants how often they received leadership training. Figure 1-1 shows the results. Note that:

   26% of supervisors and 18% of managers have never received leadership training.

   19% of supervisors and 36% of managers received leadership training not more than once in five years.

Figure 1-1   Leadership training received by leadership level

The same leadership survey also showed that there is a direct correlation between the frequency of leadership training received and the level of motivation that the leader experiences (Figure 1-2). The lowest motivation scores were seen for leaders that never received leadership training. Motivation scores increased with frequency of training. The average motivation score for supervisors, managers, and senior