Prior Newsletters

I’ve been working on my project The Responsibility Matrix. I hope to create a stand-alone, self-guided instructional set that gently eases leaders into creating an effective performance culture.

Since it’s self-guided, I obviously can’t rely on the same type of instantaneous feedback that I could in a classroom training setting. So, I’m trying something different.

There are only a handful of major concepts that all fit together. I’m organizing the information into a series of static online posts, accessible through my website, that addresses these major topics through four lenses. The reader can easily read about the idea through one of these lenses, then jump to a different lens that addresses the same topic from a slightly different point of view. Maybe it can aid understanding. These four lenses are:

• The high level overview
• How to actually use this concept day-to-day
• How this concept helps the individual
• How this concept helps the organization

As I think about it, there may be a parallel to how internal auditors write findings and recommendations. Something to consider.

On to the next topic …

Everyone wants to be a trusted advisor.

Well, maybe not.

I used to think I wanted to be a trusted advisor.

Then I started reading the book ‘The Trusted Advisor’ by Maister, Green, & Galford.

And I got a fuller sense of why that phrase is special.

‘Trusted advisor’  – I had naively put the two words together without giving much thought.

Sure, I want to be trusted.

And, sure, when I believe I have something valuable to offer, I want people to take my advice.

But those two ideas represent a far lower hurdle than the ideas represented in the book.

The first thing that struck me is that a trusted advisor, in their sense, is deeply committed to the well-being of the other party. It’s listening. It’s being ultra empathetic. It’s being attuned to the other person’s unspoken needs. Maybe there’s some coaching. Or mentoring. Mostly, it’s working together to develop ideas and insights.

At its fullest level, it’s a lot of commitment and a lot of work. And it’s all focused on someone else’s success.

Let’s say you hit the jackpot and you’re the ‘trusted advisor’ (in its fullest sense) to a global CEO. You may be on call 24-hours a day because you’re the one person they’ll call when they need to bounce ideas around.

It sounds heady.

But, being honest with myself, even if I could achieve such a thing (I can’t) I wouldn’t like it. If someone called me at 2am because they had something on their mind, my first instinct wouldn’t be to focus on their well-being. I’m too selfish. And I can’t pretend otherwise for more than a few minutes at a time.

Through most of my career, I was a Chief Audit Executive. I learned how to tamp down that overt authority and become good at providing quiet advice to executives. For me, it’s an approach that works. Up to a point.

And when that point was reached, my job required me to stop being an advisor. At that point, I had to deliver the difficult message and force action. I couldn’t be deeply empathetic to the CEO. I couldn’t be focused on the CEO’s unspoken needs. My allegiance was to the Board.

It’s common for self-identified thought leaders to throw around the idea that internal auditors should strive to be trusted advisors. And, like many trite phrases, it’s rarely considered in detail. Advisor for whom? Is that really consistent with your responsibilities?

Yes. “Trusted Advisor” sounds nice. And maybe it is. For some people.

I’m retired now. And I’m no longer building my career.

But when I was building my career, I simply wanted to create a professional brand that allowed me to use my unique skills, interests, and experience to add value. And that worked. It was the natural and easy path to success.

I knew myself. And I fully understood that I lacked the emotional maturity, patience, energy, and empathy to be a full-fledged trusted advisor. And I also knew that the CEO path required far too much baggage that I didn’t want to carry. That’s not me. And I’m okay with that.

Not that you’ve asked, but here’s some advice.

Don’t worry about what others say you should want. Know yourself. Figure out your goals. Own those.

And while others are wishing and hoping to become ‘trusted advisors’, you’ll be building a brand that’s a true version of yourself.

You win. 

The past few weeks, I’ve been clarifying my thoughts about the role and importance of governance. 

My current project “The Responsibility Matrix” is primarily about organizational governance. And I want to assure that it’s sitting on a foundation that’s simple, practical, complete, and sustainable. 

Governance, in my definition, is simple. It’s the set of rules, practices, and processes (sometimes formally documented, sometimes not) that assures people are doing the right things in the right ways. This implies that people are aligned with organizational goals and they are delivering meaningful results. 

For leaders, governance is a mechanism that they intentionally design, create, and use to fulfill their own responsibility of delivering meaningful results to their various stakeholders.

Practically speaking, it starts with executive leaders creating and communicating top-down guidance about ‘what’ and ‘how’. That’s followed by oversight. They need to monitor whether this guidance is actually delivering expected results and, if not, they should be making adjustments as necessary.

For internal auditors, their organization’s governance mechanism can be a great structure for designing their audits. It creates a universally relevant approach: 

TRM, specifically, fits into this view of governance in two ways. 

First, it provides executive leaders with a simple model for embedding the practices that assure people are doing the right things in the right way.

Second, it helps internal auditors position findings or recommendations, of any sort, as a symptom or example of how the governance system can be strengthened to help executives better fulfill their responsibilities. So it’s always focused on building a stronger future. This helps auditors align their recommendations with the needs of the executive leadership team. 

As for my TRM project, this more-solid image of governance helps me move confidently to the next step. I’m now focusing on creating an overview of how TRM actually works. 

Years ago I developed SPCS.

Or, maybe I just finally discovered something that everyone else already knew.

At the time, I was trying to get to the essence of why some ideas were more worthy than others. Or, maybe, why some solutions were better than others.

Over a few weeks, four words solidified.

Simple. Practical. Complete. Sustainable.

Here’s how I eventually framed these four ideas.

Simple solutions:

• are easily explained
• are broadly applicable
• feel appropriate 

Practical solutions:

• resolve visible symptoms
• fit into the existing culture
• use available resources 

Complete solutions:

• address root causes
• teach new behaviors
• provide supporting tools and processes 

Sustainable solutions:

• convert right behaviors into habits
• are self-reinforcing
• spark a cultural shift

In a case of happy circular logic, the very idea of SPCS is SPCS.

I’m now applying SPCS to the ideas that I’m putting forth in The Responsibility Matrix. It’s an attempt at substantiating SPCS which, to me, was always intuitive. But can I really take a concept like ‘a responsibility’ and use SPCS to validate its worth as the basic building block for an organization’s performance culture?

As it turns out – I can.

Being confident in a solid approach can make all the difference to productivity. SPCS is my approach. And it feels even more solid now.

TRM Project Update

I have finished the introduction. This is where organizational governance and a strong performance culture are defined and logically linked. Governance is the central responsibility for the top leaders. They often define their governance aspirations like ‘vision’, ‘mission’, and ‘values’. But (assuming anyone even knows they exist) these rarely guide day-to-day decisions. Instead, it’s the performance culture that brings these ideas to life. And that’s why it’s important to intentionally shape a performance culture that supports these governance aspirations. And TRM is an SPCS approach to buliding a performance culture.

Now I’m on to describing the TRM approach.

And that, as you may have guessed, starts with ‘responsibilities’.

I recently read “Giving Voice to Values” by Mary C. Gentile.

Here are a few things I found especially useful.

I was impressed with the methodical approach the author took when initially justifying the book and her approach to this topic. She proceeded through a series of twelve clear and explicit assumptions, the first assumption being “I (the reader) want to voice and act upon my values.” She then proceeds, in just a few paragraphs, to justify the reasonableness of this particular assumption. It’s logical. It satisfied my skeptical nature. Then she moved onto “I have voiced my values at some points in my past.” And so on. You find yourself agreeing, point by point. Each one makes sense. And, when finished with the twelve, you’re convinced that this book serves a valid and useful purpose. I was ready to continue reading.

This methodical approach reinforced how a discussion about assumptions can lead to better mutual understanding than simply jumping right into a major point of contention. In this case, each small assumption rightfully stood on its own. I was inevitably led to see things her way, one easy step at a time.

The second thing that I took to heart related to my particular slant on her basic premise.

> Should internal auditors bring their personal values to the job?

I thought about this for a bit. And I’m thinking that it’s a clear ‘yes’. Everyone should. But there’s context to that. I think that a personal value like “People should be treated with respect” has clear relevance to organizational effectiveness. Maybe it’s already part of a Statement of Values at your organization. Or not. But there are undoubtedly other values that may be personally important but are not explicitly adopted by the organization. And, of course, the auditor may have other heartfelt values that, while important to them, may not be as relevant to organizational effectiveness. It can be confusing.

And even if the auditor is convinced that the issue is important, they may not know exactly how to address it. It could be delicate. Is it an audit report item? And what if they’re wrong? Maybe their views are contrary to the broader culture and they worry they’ll be accused of being naive because ‘everybody does it’.

It’s those conundrums that this book addresses. Presuming I feel like I should speak up, how do I find the confidence? And how might I go about it?

This book delivers very practical guidance to help people take action.

At its core, it’s a book about empowerment. Anyone (maybe especially auditors) will benefit from knowing they can find their voice to speak up when the situation may be challenging – but they know they’re right.

This book is filled with a lot of practical ways for a person to understand their motivations. It provides good real-life examples. And, of course, explicit advice. It’s a book about real world challenges and ways to proceed. Accordingly, there’s just too much for me to summarize in a post. It needs to be read, considered, and absorbed. The target for this book is anyone who feels compelled to have a positive impact their organization.

Over the past few weeks, I published a series of posts about The Four Levels of Value-Add. While these posts are primarily about moving from one level of value to the next in order to advance your relationships, it’s also important to recognize that you don’t need to pursue Level 4 value in every relationship. It’s perfectly okay to seek, say, Level 4 at work while being happy at remaining at Level 2 in other relationships. In other words, Level 4 is not a universal goal. It’s really about recognizing that value-add truly exists at different levels. Where should you invest your time and energy in order to move to higher levels? It’s all up to you.

On a completely different tangent, I’ve also been mapping out my two major projects. Neither is ready for broad release or promotion quite yet.

One is The Essential Auditor. With this project, I will be providing internal auditors with a path toward becoming more influential, with the ultimate goal of becoming essential to others. It’s not about becoming a better auditor. It’s about building better relationships by finding the intersection of your unique set of skills, interests, and experiences with i) those who might need your expertise and ii) who can (in turn) help you with whatever you want from life. From a marketing point of view, it’s about developing a high-value personal brand. And TEA shows how to do that, recognizing that internal auditors start out with both a huge advantage and a huge burden when it comes to creating and communicating their brand. But a well-designed and communicated personal brand can set a career on a much higher trajectory. My aim is to help internal auditors take those steps.

The other project is The Responsibility Matrix. With TRM, I’m focusing on how team leaders can implement a straight-forward performance culture. TRM emphasizes simplicity and universality. It shows team leaders how to create a highly-effective performance culture for any team, any size, at any level of the organization. I’ve personally seen that great teams prioritize transparency and accountability in order to build trust and engagement. The Responsibility Matrix takes those ideas and shows how to implement them in the real world.

In line with those two projects, I’m getting their respective websites established so that visitors will understand the mission and the (potential) value of each.

Each website will feature a simple, practical, complete, and sustainable point of view in the form of an ever-expanding body of knowledge. That’s what I’m currently organizing. This body of knowledge will be built as a series of website posts over time. I’ll start at the top, with the big picture. And for those who subscribe to the newsletters and become website members (free, at least for now), they’ll have access to each succeeding post that gets into each topic in greater detail. In a sense, I’ll be creating a series of “post-size” lectures like a college course.

I’m serious about trying to help Internal Auditors (TEA) and team leaders (TRM) become more effective and influential. Much more about these projects in the weeks to come.