29 Leadership Practices

The foundation of an adaptable organization

from Dr. Kenneth D. Mackenzie's The Practitioner's Guide to Organizing Organizations

Dr. Mackenzie has uncovered 29 Leadership Practices that are essential and should be working throughout an organization seeking to become and remain simultaneously maximally productive, adaptable, and efficiently adaptable.

These 29 Leadership Practices are the primary knobs of interest in diagnosing your organization.

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LP01 Understanding Environmental Changes

Understanding environmental changes is the strategic process that enables the organization to understand and systematically monitor its external environments. This process ensures that the strategic direction makes sense given the actual organizational environments, and it seeks to assess the impacts of environmental changes. When working throughout the organization, it ensures that the Associates understand the potential and real impacts of external changes.

LP02. Developing and Using the Strategic Direction

Developing and using the strategic direction is the strategic process by which the organization understands and uses its shared strategic direction. This important process assesses the organization's dedication to keeping the strategic direction current, and it insists that decisions are made based on the strategic direction. It ensures that the mission, goals, and strategies driving it are internally consistent and that new technologies selected for the organization are based on the strategic direction.

LP03. Ensuring Unit-Level Strategic Direction

Ensuring unit-level strategic direction is the management process that ensures that Associates know, understand, and use their unit-level strategic direction. It also ensures that the unit-level strategic direction remains consistent with the organizational level direction as it evolves and changes.

LP04. Using Strategic Long-Range and Tactical Plans

The process of using strategic long-range and tactical plans is the strategic process by which the organization establishes and deploys its long-range strategic, tactical, and annual operating plans. It ensures that these important components are used to guide decision-making throughout the organization, and that the tactical and annual operating plans are implementable with effort.

LPO5. Updating Organizational Assumptions

Updating organizational assumptions is the strategic process of discussing, updating, and acting upon changes to the organizational assumptions as the organization evolves. The process ensures that the consistency of the assumptions (about strategies, actual environments, the strategic direction, and the basis for organizing) is maintained. The organizational assumptions are the basis for how the organization arranges itself, therefore, they need to be reviewed and updated to maintain a good fit between how the organization is organized and what is needed to keep it succeeding.

LP06. Linking the Organizational Rewards to Performance

Linking the organizational rewards to performance simultaneously links the organizational-level rewards system to individual performance, the unit performance, and accomplishment of the organization's strategic direction. Each employee understands that his or her total compensation is linked to the success of all three. Success at one level is not enough. Performance at all three levels must be successful. This process ensures consistency between individual rewards and organizational rewards. It ensures Associates that the organization is committed to linking individual performance with personal career and financial growth.

LP07. Updating the Organizational Logic

Updating the organizational logic is an administrative process to define the many task processes in the organization. It ensures that the organizational logic is consistent with the organizing assumptions, and that the organizational logic is kept up-to-date. It also ensures that each unit and individual understands their role in the organizational logic and how they relate to other units and individuals. At the job level, individual job logics are derived from the organizational logic.

LP08. Updating the Organizational Architecture

Updating the organizational architecture is an administrative process to ensure that the organization and unit organizational charts accurately mirror how Associates actually work together. It ensures that the organizational logic is congruent with the organizational charts, and that the organization keeps these charts up-to-date. Additionally, this process seeks to align the strategic direction with the means developed to implement it at the organizational, unit, and individual level.

LP09. Ensuring Consistency of Organizational Rewards

Ensuring consistency of organizational rewards is the administrative process that enables the organization to professionally manage its organizational-level rewards systems, so that they apply to all Associates and are updated as conditions in the environments change. The process supports and is consistent with the organizational architecture.

LP10. Ensuring Results Consistency with Strategic Direction

Ensuring results consistency with strategic direction establishes a formal set of procedures and processes to ensure the consistent and current measurement of organizational-and unit-level results. The measurement process is updated as conditions change and it verifies that the results produced are consistent with both the strategic direction and how the organization operates.

LP11. Ensuring Successful Goal Achievement

Ensuring successful goal achievement demands systematic problem identification throughout the organization. Once a problem is identified, a plan supported by tough and realistic performance standards - is developed to solve the problem. The plan is crafted to the organization's specific situation and it is aimed at achieving the strategic direction. The problem solving process involves deciding what to do and how to do it. It fosters successful goal achievement. Additionally, an accountable manager audits and reviews progress toward the goal and ensures that project plans are implemented.

LP12. Ensuring Compatible Interests of Results

Ensuring compatible interests of results links performance and rewards among individual Associates, the Associates' unit, and the organization as a whole. It recognizes that, within the organization, individuals rise and fall together; that is, gain and pain is shared as profits increase and decrease respectively. As part of this process each employee's personal goals within the organization are consistent with achieving the strategic direction.

LP13. Using Tough and Realistic Standards

Using tough and realistic standards is the basis for individual rewards. The standards are based on the strategic direction and reinforce unit activities and the work performed by individuals. They ensure development at the employee level by supporting the growth of an employee's skills as the organization continues to evolve.

LP14. Ensuring Job Performance Standards

Ensuring job performance standards involves setting performance standards that must be attained if the employee is to remain employed and receive average total compensation. A formal set of procedures exists to measure job performance and the outcome of the performance evaluation affects job rewards.

LP15. Applying Total Compensation Process

Applying total compensation process ensures that individual job performance, unit success, and organization success playa role ~ changes in employee compensation. Differences in total compensation are based on actual differences in individual performance. This process ensures a good fit among personal goals, strategies, and commitments, and the organization's strategic direction.

LP16. Integrating Job with the Organization

Integrating job with the organization ensures that each employee understands how his or her job logic fits into the larger Organizational Logic from which it was derived. Furthermore, this process ensures that Associates are well suited for the jobs they hold based on skills, education, training and development, and commitment. The job logic is consistent with achieving the organization's strategic direction and makes sense given the formal Organizational Architecture.

LP17. Ensuring Compatible Interests

Ensuring compatible interests strives to achieve harmonious interests as a matter of policy among the organization's Associates, units, clients, customers, and suppliers. The organizational rewards systems and human resource policies foster and support working together to ensure unit and organization success. Associates view these policies as fair, reasonable, and ethical. Furthermore, the policies ensure that individual rewards systems are consistent with the organizational rewards systems. They help Associates replace "lone wolf' mentality and recognize that unit-and organization-level success depend on working together.

LP18. Developing Associates

Developing Associates is the administrative process that encourages Associates to go beyond specific job requirements, to exhibit initiative, and to actively prepare themselves for skills and knowledge beyond current job specifications. Additionally, this process ensures that Associates are involved in making plans at their level within the organization, their knowledge, the strategic direction, and their roles in implementing the plans.

LP19. Aligning Associates with the Strategic Direction

Aligning Associates with the strategic direction ensures that, when Associates are assigned jobs or promotions, such assignments are based on achieving the strategic direction. Furthermore, how the organization hires, selects, orients, and trains its Associates is determined by the evolving strategic direction. Associates are hired and trained to go beyond current job assignments and their personal goals are aligned with the strategic direction.

LP20. Encouraging Best Decision-making

Encouraging best decision-making fosters decision-making compatible with the interests of the organization. It ensures that management uses best decision-making to lead and direct the organization. It educates and trains Associates about the principles driving the organization. This important process asks and enables Associates to take responsibility for making best decisions and participation in the process is supported by the organizational rewards systems.

LP21. Ensuring Ethical Decision-making

Ensuring ethical decision-making encourages Associates to do the right thing in their decision-making. This important leadership process discourages Associates from engaging in behavior that is legal but unethical. It encourages them to adhere to ethical standards. And -- most importantly - it rewards them for being ethical.

LP22. Using Organizational Forums

Using organizational forums is the management process that establishes and deploys a systematic series of regular meetings, throughout the organization, to communicate and share information. Forums are arenas for problem solving. The sharing of information is a means to conduct and update operations. Forum participants consistently work to improve the quality of the forums.

LP23. Ensuring Healthy Problem Solving

Ensuring healthy problem solving is a leadership process driven by three purposes: First, the object is not to pick winners and losers. Second, ascertaining what is right is more important than identifying who is right. Finally, leadership ensures that the problem solving process is not political. Healthy problem solving is practiced to resolve conflict. And when conflict cannot be resolved at one level, the organization's conflict resolution process brings the unresolved issues to the next higher level for review and resolution. The object of the process is to make a best decision.

LP24. Ensuring Results Oriented Problem Solving

Ensuring results oriented problem solving is a general problem solving process described by seven characteristics: (1) decisions are made at the lowest possible level; (2) the best available resources are brought to bear on problem solving; (3) these resources are utilized; (4) there is a clear identification of who is the accountable manager and who is in support; (5) problem solving is healthy; (6) rewards for the problem solving are clearly defined; and (7) the result is an implementable best decision. In LP24, the organization supports and consistently applies Results Oriented Problem Solving. In addition the focus of problem solving is to make something happen with a positive impact on the organization's success.

LP25. Nurturing and Rewarding Innovation

Nurturing and rewarding innovation is a problem solving process for encouraging and rewarding all Associates to seek opportunities that benefit the organization and to encourage innovation. Typically this process is applied to group projects cutting across internal organizational boundaries. In LP25, Associates are encouraged to seek opportunities for innovation and to believe that this is their right and their responsibility. Furthermore, for such projects, the organization establishes a one-time reward for the project team based on anticipated results, which is distributed according to each employee's contribution. Following successful implementation of the solution, additional rewards, based on actual results, are publicly distributed to members of the team.

LP26. Ensuring Quality

Ensuring quality consists of processes to ensure that the organization's products/services meet the customers' quality standards. The organization actively supports its products/services to meet customers' needs; makes every effort to ensure that the customers properly use its products/services; avoids providing products/services that fail to meet customer requirements; works to eliminate and/or prevent situations in which Associates fail to meet the quality standards set for them; and finally, the organization seeks to improve the quality of its administrative task processes.

LP27. Ensuring Improvements in Technology

Ensuring improvements in technology is the forward-looking strategic process of keeping abreast of relevant new developments in process and production technologies and in information systems. It consists of processes to select such new technologies to meet customers' requirements and to improve the organization's competitive position.

LP28. Managing the New Technologies

Managing the new technologies is the process of integrating new technologies (process and product technologies and information systems) with changes in the organization's means and in its applications. The organization listens to problems and searches for opportunities to ensure consistency among the organizational means, its technologies and their application. Finally, the organization regularly monitors the results produced by the introduction and application of the new technologies.

LP29. New Technologies Integration

New technologies integration is the planning process of integrating advances in new process and product technologies and information systems. In new technologies integration, the development of the organizational means is integrated with how the organization manages its applications and how it applies these new technologies. Furthermore, new applications are integrated with changes in the organizational means and the new technologies.

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