Measuring Leadership Effectiveness Podcast

Measuring Leadership Effectiveness Podcast

Hosted by Kevin McManus, Kaizen Facilitator and Coach

Welcome to my somewhat weekly Real Life Work podcast. This week’s podcast looks at options for measuring leadership effectiveness.

My experiences and learnings have taught me that we must improve how we track two dimensions of leader time use. Too many leader jobs include high levels of leader standard waste.

These waste levels limit the amount of time available for improvement of any type. More importantly, they constrain leadership effectiveness.

Content exists on my Great Systems website relative to measuring leadership behavior specifically. However, I have yet to comment on measuring leadership effectiveness from an overall job performance perspective.

Until now … I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please subscribe and share!

Why is it tough to sustain operational excellence?

Most organizations rely on a few process improvement teams to help achieve and sustain some level of operational excellence. Unfortunately, the use of that strategy typically requires a bit of time to get there. Plus, you end up with only a few pockets of ‘tough to sustain’ excellence.

Your success remains dependent on the team leadership skills of your people. Unfortunately, an ‘improvement teams only’ approach tells people “If you are not on a team, you don’t have to learn and use process improvement tools.”

A better tactic is to require all formal leaders to model and practice daily proactive process improvement. This requires a different measurement approach.

Do you enough improvement time built into your job design?

Remember, the primary operational excellence initiative constraint is a lack of consistent time for improvement. This is a problem for any staff member. Plus, those leaders who have time set aside for growth process efforts fail to effectively use this time. Often, this is for reasons outside of their control.

A second key constraint is the fact that in most organizations, only a small percentage of the leaders actually use process improvement tools. We are not taught how to use these tools in our formal education.

Also, most people never get enough tool use ‘practice reps’ with the benefit of feedback from an experienced coach.

Should Process Improvement Be Optional for Leaders?

It is not uncommon to see today’s organizations only engage 10-15% of their workforce in the pursuit of operational excellence. In other words, if you are not on a process improvement, lean six sigma, or operational excellence team, you are not required to improve the processes you own. However, this results in a slow improvement rate.

The high performers already know this. Plus, my own personal experiences with operational excellence successes and failures, and my Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Examiner learnings, reinforce it. When you allow process improvement to be optional, your pursuit of operational excellence will be slow and painful.

The design of the leadership development process I share in this podcast helps you take away this option. It helps you save money, reduce waste, and accelerate improvement rates. More importantly, it helps you sustain operational excellence.

How does it do this? Its design and use helps leaders change their leader standard work job designs and practice new daily work habits. In turn, you significantly accelerate your organization’s progress towards higher levels of operational excellence.

Would you like to learn more about my Personal Kaizen Operational Excellence® Certificate Process?

I hope that my perspectives and strategies encourage you to think a little about how work system design drives the potential for operational excellence in your organization. If so, this certificate process can help you make those system changes and engage more people as you pursue kaizen and operational excellence.

Great Systems! can help you design and improve your leadership measurement and development system in three VIRTUAL ways – system assessment, one day design workshop, and development workshop facilitation.

DISCOVER MORE: How Great are Your Work Systems?