What are you good at?

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Just another post on playing to your strengths…

 

I am 6 foot 7 inches tall and a smidgen under 300 pounds; you might not know it to look at me, but I’m not going to be a gymnast anytime soon. While I may dream of being a dancer or a distance runner, it’s just not going to happen.

And, while businesses can certainly make pivots almost as drastic as those I outline above, far too many executives talk about them as though they are simple moves.

In our work on business strategy, I often get asked the question “How do we take our company in an entirely new direction?”

It’s a good question, and one that disciplined managers should always explore, at least periodically. But it’s also one that is fraught with blind alleys and red herrings.

Why?

Well, for one, when people ask about what they can do that’s new and different, they’re often in the throes of being seduced by merely what is popular, whether it’s what’s popular in the press or among the management team itself.

The issue is that what’s popular may never fit your strengths—if you’re a 300-pound offensive lineman, you have to ignore the wide receiver who’s getting all the accolades, or at least appreciate both him and yourself for what you both are.

So when companies need to make a significant strategic pivot, the most important thing to do is inventory company strengths, including specific value propositions, talents, expertise, or operational capabilities.

We do this aggressively in our client strategy work. Why?

Because organizations exist for a reason: They exist to deliver on a mission or set of missions that were devised sometime in the past. The organization itself has grown up around those missions, and expecting an organization that has grown up around a specific set of missions to drastically pivot away from many of those missions at once is foolish.  Well, if it’s not foolish, it’s at least naive.

I tend to simplify strategic pivots into three categories:

– Category one is a strategic pivot to a new customer base. This type of pivot requires understanding a new set of customer needs, gathering a new set of insights, and typically adjusting products to meet those needs.

– Category two involves pivoting into new technological fields. This type of pivot typically requires research, product development, and specific new skills in order to deliver on new technologies.

– Category three involves pivots to new delivery models. I typically phrase this as “new routes to market.” This type of pivot may seem easy until you’ve been in a company that has attempted to pivot from a direct sales model to a distributor sales model or vice versa.

Where the trouble starts is when management desires a pivot on multiple categories at once. Pick one category and you have your hands full; pick two and you have the recipe for being overwhelmed; pick three, and unless you’re forming a new company, you’re likely to fail. Why?

Because you have to overcome the inertia of an existing organization.

The innovation literature is rife with potential “solutions” to this multi-category pivot problem, ranging from isolated teams to internal start-ups. I won’t go there with this post, but what I will say is that you must understand whether you’re making a multi-category risk in order to know the risk you’re likely to take in the real world.

Sure, plenty of existing companies have entered new markets with new customers, new technologies, and new distribution models.  But in making that observation, we have to be careful not to ignore a significant survivorship bias–far more companies, I would argue, have failed at multi-category pivots like those described.  So, you’d better watch out!

The good news is, in the business world, a lineman can sometimes become a ballerina–it’s just important for leadership to know what it takes to be successful before starting.

I would love your thoughts on this topic. Please engage below.

Say and Do: Partners In Success!

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People hear what we say and watch what we do…

 

Among the things that people appreciate–whether you’re in professional services, in a corporate organization, or just living life–are consistency and reliability. What you “say” and what you “do” ought to be congruous. Your “say-do” reputation may be the most important reputation you can build.

Anyone who’s been in a leadership position or who has engaged service providers who have inconsistent say-do practices can appreciate this post. If I tell you that I will deliver a product on Thursday at 3 PM and then don’t tell you until the following Monday that the product will be late, you are going to be disappointed. And most people who deliver product understand this–any operator you ask will talk to you about on-time delivery and production schedules.

The issue, however, arises when we talk about services, general delivery, and interpersonal circumstances.

Let me tell you about an example:

I recently had a repair person come to my house to look at an appliance. The appliance required a small part that the repair person committed to ordering and that I was told, on requesting a timeline, would be here within two weeks. The repair person has responded to exactly one request in six weeks, and I am standing here confounded.

This is a true story that is happening right now.

What would you do? I suspect that most of you would say “Fire the repair man!,” and I completely agree. In this case, the appliance in question is not all that important, and I’ve let the timeline run out as a sort of experiment: Suffice it to say, I’m disappointed.

So, when we think about delivering service, whether to out clients, our bosses, or even our spouses and families, what we say and what we do must be aligned. Say-do practices are sacrosanct, but that doesn’t mean that every deadline is immovable.

I’ll give you three examples of delivery via management of say-do.

  • Example 1 is straightforward: I tell you I’m going to deliver and I do it, on scope and as stated.
  • Example 2 is more complicated: I tell you I’m going to deliver, and then I manage timing in order to do so fully. So, I deliver on time–against new time, or on revised time–and otherwise on scope and on quality.
  • Example 3 is even more complex, and generally arises when circumstances of delivery are so ambiguous that quality can’t be guaranteed: Imagine a project that requires market knowledge via primary interviews that may or may not be extremely valuable. In this case, I may revise timing in order to get to the required quality, I may revise scope or quality expectations in order to ensure that expectations are met, or I may just decide the deliverable isn’t worth delivering at all.

Each of these three scenarios has something in common: communication and consistency of commitment and delivery.

The scenario that you don’t see is the one that involves late delivery of a substandard product with no communication. That, my friends, is breaking the say-do rule. No one–not your kids, your clients, your customers, or your boss–wants to hear excuses after the fact.

I would enjoy your comments on this topic. Please feel free to engage below.

Cheap and Costly Leadership

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Real leadership has a cost.

What does it mean to practice sincere leadership?

It’s actually a very difficult question to ask, because the notion of leadership gets so diluted across so many different axes of meaning.  Steve Jobs was an astounding leader, and a really bad one. It just depends on which leadership lens you look at.  He was either a fantastic industrial visionary (true) or he was an awful individual leader (probably true, too).

After contemplating cases like Jobs, I think it’s fair to say that there really are two kinds of leadership…let’s call them cheap and costly leadership.

If you’ve made it this far and are of a certain persuasion, you may recognize “cheap and costly.”  That’s because I’ve stolen the notion from mid 20th century Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship.  In that book, Bonhoeffer outlines two kinds of grace within the Christian faith: cheap grace, which can be “sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares,” and costly grace, which “costs a man his life.”

Cheap and costly leadership are analogous.

Cheap leadership is only winning. It’s the notion of “by hook or by crook.” It’s making your numbers but not your reputation. Cheap leadership is telling people what they want to hear. It’s knowing the price but not the value.

Cheap leadership is handing out books and forwarding memes.

Costly leadership, on the other hand, is winning and building at the same time.  It’s saving something for later.  It’s investing time in both the mission and people. Costly leadership is costly because it takes time.  It’s one on one meetings that do more than check the box on some HR form.  It’s envisioning someone else’s career without doing it to serve yourself. It’s letting people go…and grow…and flourish.  It’s taking the time to think about how your decisions impact others.

Costly leadership is taking that time on a Friday evening when you are utterly exhausted to talk with your team member about his career.

Interestingly, costly leadership is also about delivering a few swift kicks and pointed corrections. Some subordinates may flock to the cheap leaders who never give them real feedback, but their careers will show it eventually.

Costly leadership is what we should aspire to. Why is it costly?  Because it doesn’t have an immediate payoff.  Because it takes time and energy that may not feel on mission.  Because it, in short dear reader, is not about you.

And that may be the final thought I’ll leave you with:  Costly leadership is about what you build, both on the financial balance sheet and the one that shows the people you’ve built up along the way.

Now, it’s your turn… How do you think about practicing costly leadership?  

 

On Weaving Spiders

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How weaving spiders can destroy your career, your organization, and your strategy.

 

Imagine a set of dialogues that goes something like this:

Dialogue 1 – Hotel lounge at an industry conference: 

Jill (a senior manager with a well-known tight linkage to the CEO): “Hey Alex, I’ve been thinking about your career path and how I can be helpful.  We’re sitting here with time to kill… Tell me what you want to do with your life…Just among friends.”

Alex (a seasoned and high performing, but junior manager): “Jill, you know, it’s a tough one.  I love what I do today and could see my self doing this for years.  If it came to truly advancing my career, I would have a very hard time moving to another geography right now to take on a new role due to family concerns, and I certainly wouldn’t take a role that is lower than the one I have now…Just as friends, I’ll tell you that I would have to leave the company if that were the only set of options.”

Dialogue 2 – In the corporate office – 2 months later: 

Alex:  “Hey, Jill, how are things?”

Jill: “Pretty tough. Let me let you in on a secret, but you have to keep it confidential.  You know Bill, over in accounting?  He just got really upset about his lack of career options.  He used you as an example…He said he was a more senior guy than you when you both joined the company 5 years ago, and that he deserved to be advanced beyond you.  Can you believe the nerve of that guy? He’d better watch out.”

Alex:  “Really?  I’ve known him for years.  I’ll have to see what’s up.  Maybe I’ll drop by there to have a chat.”

Jill: “No way, Alex.  If anything, if you ever let him know that you know this, he’ll be even more upset. And besides, I’m telling you this in confidence…right?  Just as friends.”

Alex:  “Okay, but you know, that’s really out of character for Bill…”

Jill:  “Maybe you don’t know Bill the way I do.  Trust me.”

Dialogue 3 – On the telephone:

Alex:  “Hey, Bill…  I need to talk with you.  We’ve been friends for years and I just heard something that I can’t let come between us.

Bill: “Alex, of course.  What’s up?”

Alex:  “Bill, I just heard about your conversation with Jill. I have to apologize that I know about it, but it’s important to me that you and I are above board.  Are you really bothered by my career trajectory?  I mean, I know that you were more senior than me coming in, and I know that I have a more senior title now, but I also know that you are doing a great job and actually making more money than I am… So, I needed to know what gives….

Bill:  “What conversation with Jill?  She and I haven’t talked in more than 2 weeks.”

Alex: “She said you just talked…yesterday.”

Bill:  “Well, that would be tough as I was off yesterday for a colonoscopy.”

Alex: “And, you’ve had no conversation with Jill?”

Bill: “Not a word.  Sounds like somebody has some explaining to do…”

Dialogue 4 – The office hallway:

Jill: “Hello there, Alex,! Whew, I just got out of a meeting with Monica [the company’s CEO].  Wow there is a lot going on.”

Alex: “Jill, I have to ask you something.”

Jill: “Sure, what’s up? I’m always willing to help a friend.”

Alex: “Jill, you said that Bill was upset about me…and I had to ask him.  He said not only was he not upset, but that you hadn’t talked to him.”

Jill: “Alex, how dare you break confidence with me.  Of course he wouldn’t admit that to you.  Bill really does hate you, Alex.”

Alex: “Jill, I’ve been friends with Bill for a decade, you have to understand…”

Jill: “No, that’s not how this works…How dare you!  I trusted you!”

Jill walks away.

Dialogue 5 – The CEO’s office, 2 months later

Monica: “Alex, thanks for taking the time to meet.  We’ve been considering your career path, and I have a fantastic opportunity for you.  We have a role in Argentina championing a new change initiative. I wanted to tell you about it myself!  You can keep the same title, but it does require you to report to one of your peers. I’ve heard great things about you, your willingness to relocate, and your willingness to take a step back in the organization in order to move forward… and this is just the ticket for you!”

Alex: “Monica, I think there has been some mistake… I don’t think this is a good fit at all.”

Monica: “Oh, but this is a done deal.  We need you there. You’ve already said that this is what you want! Jill told me about your conversation…how you wanted new challenges and a faster career pace.  Besides, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.  I have to go now, but I want you to go consider it.”

Alex: “Ok…”

Dialogue 6 – On the telephone, moments later

Alex: “Hey Jill, what’s up?”

Jill: “Alex!  Did you get the word from Monica?  What a great opportunity for you!”

Alex: “Well, not really. And, I know you know why…I told you about my family constraints keeping me from taking a geographic move, and how unattractive a lateral move would be for me.”

Jill: “Hmmm, I guess you have a tough choice to make…I always hate it when people have to leave for the wrong reasons. Talk to you later…That’s Monica on the other line!”

Dialogue 7 – The CEO’s office, 2 months later

Monica:  It’s really unfortunate that we lost Alex.  I tried to give him exactly the career option that he wanted, just like you suggested.  I really liked the guy.  He could have helped us even if he had stayed in his old role!

Jill: Don’t be silly, Monica.  He had some nerve telling me he wanted to move to Latin America and would do anything to get it done then going to you and throwing the perfect opportunity back in your face.  You really don’t need such manipulative people in your midst.  Good riddance!

Monica: I guess you are right.  Thanks for having my back…

Jill: Are you kidding?  Our friendship is so important to me. Thank you for listening to me!

On disordered personalities in your workplace…

What just happened?  Who is the crazy one in the dialogues above?  And how often does this sort of thing go on in our organizations?

I’ll give you my simple answer:  Jill is a weaving spider.  They are more common than you think.

Alex was the mark, the dupe, the victim.  He was the guy who could either be extremely useful in Jill’s web of confidence or, and it happened suddenly when Jill tripped up by attempting to foment discord between Bill and Alex, he would become enemy number 1 because he was suddenly onto her.

The good news for Alex is he got out. Had it not been for his willingness to trust but verify, the revelation from Jill that Bill, his longtime friend, was upset with him might have left him feeling confused and thankful to Jill for unmasking Bill for the “bad guy” he was cast as in Jill’s game. Jill would have had another chip in the game with Alex. Only it backfired on Jill in a minor way.

Jill, instead of admitting her dishonesty when confronted by Alex, doubled down and then resorted to righteous indignation at Alex’s breach of “confidential” information.  She then went on the attack and, because she maintained a web of other “chips” in the game with many others who had not identified her tactics, particularly Monica, she engineered Alex’s exit via the “Great Opportunity.”

There are people, perhaps in your own organization, who thrive on discord.  They thrive on manipulating one person’s perception of another, and in some cases manipulating people into paranoia and instability.  There exists a set of tactics, known as gaslighting, that have been outlined in the research on mental abuse.  The term comes from a 1938 play (coincidentally titled “Gas Light”) about a husband who dispassionately manipulates his wife into believing she is mentally ill.

The tactics are in the toolkit of mental abusers the world over, even those in corporate environments. And, they are often based around manipulating another person’s sense of reality (“Bill really does hate you, Alex.”).  In an office setting, like any other, they depend entirely upon the confidence the mark has in the perpetrator.  In the case above, Alex broke Jill’s gaslighting chain by trusting his own judgment and going to Bill to have a discussion about Jill.  In fact, that single action revealed to Alex all that Jill was about.

Gaslighting is the realm of sociopaths who will manipulate, conceal, appeal to secrets, confidence, and friendship while collecting little tidbits of information (“chips” in their twisted game) that can be used for or against anyone…all while upholding an angry righteous indignation against anyone who questions their honesty or integrity.  Make no mistake, Jill has Monica duped as well, but Monica’s sense of reality is warped by Jill’s ability to keep others at bay and ensure Monica is focused on expediency (“Don’t be silly, Monica” being a great example… Jill might as well have said “Don’t think, Monica.”).

Why write about this?  Well, personalities like Jill’s are fantastic drains on organizational effectiveness. In the case above, Monica’s organization has lost a high potential talent. That is a huge piece of damage to an organization.  Bill will probably leave due to or be eliminated by Jill’s machinations soon as well. So, this is an important leadership and organizational effectiveness lesson in a few ways:

If you are Alex, Bill, or any other bystander, you need to be aware that this kind of personality exists.  When people around you appeal to your confidence for things that really ought to be handled in the open, it should make you wary.  Keep your eyes open for dishonesty and manipulation of all sorts, and challenge yourself not to be blind to it when you are not the mark.  In this case, Alex did the right thing by departing. Monica wasn’t interested in hearing his side of the story because decisions had been made.

If you are Monica, that is, a senior executive who may be being manipulated, the best way to guard against a destructively manipulative subordinate is to actually test for completeness.  Even a strong manipulator can only go so far, and usually, it’s the people deeper in the organization who know how truly dishonest an animal like Jill can be.  If you find yourself with a subordinate who more than a few times gets into “he said, she said” arguments (they will invariably call them “misunderstandings”) with others, you might feel a tinge of concern and go deeper. If you have a subordinate who never lets you out of their sight, you may have a spider near you.  Get a second opinion from someone who might tell you the truth, and be ready to hear the truth.

As a leader, you have to be prepared to hear the truth…Why do I hammer on that point?  Because, unfortunately, true manipulators like Jill are very good at creating self fulfilling prophecies that can make them seem almost clairvoyant about people.  You can bet your bottom dollar that Jill hinted to Monica that Alex was a departure risk before engineering the “Great Opportunity.” So, when Alex left, Jill looked like an expert with amazing organizational feel rather than a manipulative sociopath.  Monica, then, is likely to be blinded by her admiration for what she sees as Jill’s “sixth sense” instead of being justifiably horrified by the truth.

Manipulative, disordered personalities like Jill’s only exist in organizations because they are enabled by apathetic peers and ignorant or opportunistic superiors. The Jills of the world usually have fantastic capabilities (if Jill were not good at surreptitiously managing many people’s realities, then she wouldn’t have risen to senior management), but they foster discord in organizations and in personal lives and can and do lead to the downfall of both.

Be willing to speak up whether you are the CEO, the hapless mark, or an innocent bystander.  It’s time to turn off the gaslights in our organizations.

What do you think about this situation and leadership lesson?  Have you ever had an experience like Alex’s? How would you handle this if you were Monica?  Leave a comment…

About That Winning Streak…

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Winning streaks are both essential and dangerous…know the difference. 

 

How important are winning streaks?

A winning streak is a great thing.  It shows consistency.  It shows advantage. It shows careful attention to detail and general focus on the win.  It may even show talent.

But winning streaks are also dangerous. Just as anyone who has ever played a sport will tell you, a winning streak creates immense pressure within some individuals and immense complacency in others, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who is who.

In the business world, a winning streak might looks like a streak of closed sales against a main competitor. It might look like a streak of earnings increases over prior quarters.  It might even look like a streak of successful product launches or talent acquisitions. Streaks come in all shapes and sizes.

As a strategist, I argue that streaks are important in a few ways.

Namely,

They build credibility where none may have previously existed.  Human minds are really complex but sometimes awfully simple; show your board or your organization a stream of small wins, and they will get it, but show them a string of wins broken by a string of losses, and they will wonder what you are getting at.  In most change efforts, a focus on early and visible wins is a core element.  There’s a reason for that…the wins build credibility.

Streaks also create attraction.  People like to bet on a winner, so it’s great to point to wins when attracting talent or wooing that next acquisition.

But streaks have a downside, and that has to be managed.  I’ll put it in the same two categories that I mentioned at the start of this post:

First, streaks create pressure, both individually and organizationally.  Why?  Because who wants to break a streak?  The downside of this pressure is that it can lead to ethical lapses because the streak must be maintained.  “We never lose” is a very dangerous mantra because it comes with the implication that we either never really challenge ourselves or we play the game in such a way that it is rigged to our advantage.

Second, streaks engender complacency.  I happened to be a part of a global firm during the last economic downturn. Many, many individuals in that firm had grown up as the recipients of a built-in winning streak.  The phone rang, and there was work to be done. However, as the economy changed, many had to suddenly learn how to sell, and a few weren’t very good at it.  Their complacency was complete.

The implications for all of us on this topic really do vary. I’ll try to put a few out there:

If you are leading change, be sure to find ways to create a streak or two. Credibility can depend on it.  Have the discipline, for instance, to leave some low-hanging fruit for others to capture vs. doing it all yourself.

Also, be sure to capture your winning streaks, celebrate them, and use them as strategic tools for talent attraction and relationship building.  Taking a moment to reflect on a streak can be powerful in almost any circumstance.

If you are in the midst of a streak, be sure to test for corner cutting or ethical lapses when the streak is uncannily extended. So, do you have a business unit that has never had a loss?  Check for whether they are burying their talents or their skeletons in the name of earning their bonuses.

Finally, if you are part of an organization that has never had a significant run of bad luck, then take the time to force the “what if” conversation and to build the contingent skills now.  It’s a bad thing to be the guy who has been sitting pretty for years based on a high tide, but who is now grounded and without the skills necessary to get unstuck.

Your career may depend on it.

The Bias That Kills

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Commitment to one’s own correctness is a dangerous thing.

 

On some level, we all want to be right.

We want to be right when it comes to our basic values.  We want to be right when it comes to picking a political candidate.  We want to be right when we root for a football team.

Our minds have a need to be right.  And, that’s ok.  It’s a way that we cope.

But stemming from this desire, a bias exists out there that is the absolute killer of executives and strategist of all walks: It’s the very real bias toward confirming of one’s beliefs.

I won’t go into depth on the issue, but suffice it to say that confirmation bias is a real psychological phenomenon.  We like data that says we are right, and we (as a rule) dislike data that says we are wrong.  It makes us uncomfortable.

Cases in point:

Many confirmation biases exist in personnel decisions.  We like people and it can blind us to their performance.  I once worked with a manager who had a very strong opinion about placing a particular person in an important role.  The executive viewed the placement idea as creative and nonconformist, and, in a highly collaborative manner, asked the candidate’s prospective team members about whether that particular placement would be a good idea.  Unfortunately the feedback wasn’t good.  To a person, the team gave negative comments from the aggressively passive “do whatever you want” all the way down to the directly negative “terrible idea.”

Instead of taking that advice, however, the hiring manager changed the game.  They decided to go ask several more people…people without a direct stake in the decision, and those people, of course, praised the creativity of the “idea” of the hire. The manager, probably not knowing that ego was driving the search for confirming evidence, felt free to make the placement. And the decision ultimately cost untold dollars in organizational support, coaching, and botched decision making, not to mention the friction of frustration in the team that come with dealing with a less than competent team member sponsored aggressively by the boss.

This sort of bias exists in business strategy as well. When we have a good idea about a market, we want to know that the idea is good; we seek validation.  I once worked days, nights, and weekends on a project to build a massive production facility in southeast Asia.  The economics of the facility were bad, the technology the facility depended on was unproven, and,the leadership team was marginal at best.  Behind the scenes, executives viewed evidence that the technology “might” work as highly validating, even in the face of the dominant perspective that it “probably wouldn’t” from the same engineers. In spite of a massive set of evidence that the project should be shut down, the company flushed more than a hundred million dollars into it just because its leadership team said it would work.

These cases provide the micro and the macro of this particular bias…  it’s a bias that kills.  It kills teams when people maintain commitments to non-performers they simply like and validate constantly.  It kills shareholder value when projects are not stopped when the evidence says they should be.  It kills careers when people seek a rationale to stay with a really bad role in a really bad company or under a really bad leader.

We search for confirming evidence, even in the face of massive contradictory evidence.  It might feel off color to say so, but this is the realm of battered spouses who won’t leave their mates; they always find reasons to stay.  Only it’s also the issue of highly “successful” executives who can’t for a moment believe that they might have been wrong yesterday.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

In other words, when we foolishly stick to our guns in the name of commitments made yesterday or the day before, we avoid the ability to explore whether we could be great.  This is not a call to avoid commitment. It’s a call to avoid the pressure your ego places on you to stay with bad commitments.

It’s a call to avoid being “little” in a leadership sense.  It’s a call to be big.

Stop, reflect, and be willing to admit…even just for a moment…that you might be wrong.

Can You Scare People Into Elite Performance?

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The answer: You can’t be scared and elite at the same time.

 

This one might roll off the tongues of elite athletes, entrepreneurs, soldiers, and performers of all types. I will do my best to sum up.

During a recent walk with my wife, Lindsay, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we had a good discussion of what really holds people back from being great performers.  As we walked and talked, the topic of fear came up. You know fear.  Everybody does on some level.  Even for the most narcissistic among us, there is the subtle fear of being found out.  But for the rest of us, there is normal fear and anxiety that come with actually wanting to perform well.

My wife, whose history as a swimmer has put her in league with some of the most elite of her sport and whose current passion as a coach gives her constant concern with what can help her swimmers perform better, summed up some of her swimmers’ performance as being highly correlated with their fear of disappointing their parents.

In other words, they didn’t perform well because they wanted to–they performed well because they were scared of the consequences of not performing well.  To paraphrase our joint reaction to that, let me just put it in a single quote:

“Fear may be a great motivator for performance, but it will never be the great motivator for elite performance.”

That’s what we concluded, and in the midst of a long walk, the applicability of this insight from a sport with highly objective measurements–the clock doesn’t lie–to the world of business rang true.

I once advised a CEO who admitted to me that his go-to move was to induce fear.  Create fear, hold people’s feet to the fire, and they perform.  Oh, and if they don’t, then fire them outright and find someone who will.  It’s quite a philosophy.  It’s one that I absolutely see the merit of, but only so far as one is trying to go from bad to good.  In other words, a turnaround situation can be led via fear, but not a situation that is focused on extending and defending an elite franchise. Ultimately this CEO found great success in the turnaround, but not in the extension of success.

Why?

Because fear is a constraining motivation. In the immortal words of Peter from the movie Office Space:

“That will make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”

And it does. Because when we are scared, we only focus on what it takes to get out of our fear zone.  That means we go fast enough and try hard enough to placate our parents or our boss.

Yes, placate. As in, just do what’s required.  We never get into the mode of doing what may be possible.

This may seem obvious in the world of 12-year-old swimmers trying not to bear the wrath of overzealous (let’s just say it, jerk) parents, but it applies to the workplace you work in (or lead) today.  If you only know how to instill fear in people, then they will only try to work until that fear is mitigated.

If you try to instill possibilities in people, then some of them will answer the call.  They will seek what is possible. They will become elite, and elite organizations can only be elite if at least some of their people are performing at an elite level.

Not everybody can be elite, but every person with the potential to be elite can be held back by a leader who only knows how to wield the constraining force of fear.

I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside truly elite athletes, and have been exposed to Olympians of many flavors thanks to marrying well.  I’ll characterize those elite performers in a few ways:

Some have seemed absolutely oblivious to their greatness.  I get the sense that Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts has this quality.  They just do and things work well.  They answer the call because, well, it’s the thing to do.

Some have gathered their eliteness from the genuine joy of competition, from a combination of pure talent and a positive mindset. I always thought of 12-time Olympic medalist Jenny Thompson as this sort.  They answer the call because winning is fun, by golly.

Some are simply professionals.  They focus on every play as though others depend on them at all times.  I was fortunate to play alongside many men who had this kind of quality.  A few who come to mind are 13-year NFL veteran linebacker Chris Draft, longtime NFL linebacker Kailee Wong, and offensive lineman and coach Chris Dalman of the San Francisco 49ers.  They answer the call because it reflects a commitment to being great.

What you’ll notice is that I name no one who was elite by being scared.  I saw elites motivated by joy, commitment, even anger…

…But not fear.

In short, I’ll put it this way: You can’t be scared and elite at the same time.  

Elite performance results from confidence and the reflected belief of unconstrained possibility.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this one…

Skill, Will, and…Micromanagement?

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Nowhere in the job description are the words “watch their every move.” 

Recently, I had the privilege of leading a classroom of MBA students through a discussion on influencing and team building.  During the discussion I dusted off the old “skill-will” matrix.

You know?  The skill will matrix?  It’s the one that lets you consider the people you lead by their level of skill and their level of will, and to lead or manage them accordingly.  It looks like this:

SkillWill1

It’s a useful tool at a superficial level.  It can certainly help leaders, especially leaders struggling to establish a leadership style, to handle diverse teams.

It’s kind of a Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” approach to leadership:  Know when to guide ’em, know when to excite ’em…

It brought to mind an interesting reality:  “Micromanage” isn’t on the matrix.

A lot of bad leaders (and good leaders in bad times) need to learn this.

Sure, people with a combination of low skill and low will need more direction.  They also might need to be redeployed against different work; and that’s the rub…If you are micromanaging, one of you is redundant.

Micromanagement is neither inspiring nor sustainable.

So What?  

This one is straightforward.  Two sides of the coin deserve discussion:

If you as leader find yourself having to micromanage, you are probably either deploying talent inefficiently (i.e., against problems that are beyond the talent), or you are insecure.

Figure out which it is and fix it.

If you as a follower find yourself being micromanaged, you are either under-delivering, or you need to insist on a heart to heart with your leader.

In either event, it isn’t a sustainable proposition; so why start it in the first place?

Use the matrix, know when to delegate and when to direct.  But, know when too much is too much.

What do you think? 

The Force of Fewer in Strategy

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Fewer words, initiatives, metrics, and complexities just might unlock your strategy.

 

Did you know that Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat using only 236 different words?

Amazing, isn’t it?

But, there’s more to the story. Dr. Seuss’s publisher bet him that he couldn’t write a book using only 50 words.

Seuss’s response?

Green Eggs and Ham. That’s one of the best-known children’s books of all time.

The moral to the story is that few can be good, and fewer can be masterful. This applies to our professional lives as well. How?

Well, if you read my stuff, you already know that I have a healthy skepticism for what I’ll call “one thingism.”  In an earlier post linked here, I used an old movie scene to set off the notion that strategies formed around “one thing” like earnings growth or engaged culture fall short of the richness needed.

But holy cow, how often we over-complicate things.  To wit:

I know professionals who have more than 15 direct reports. It’s a striking executive who can care for and nourish 15 people who all look to her for guidance.  In fact, I have still not met one.

I know people who go through every day with meetings non-stop. I’m one of them. Even when I have days without meetings, I feel naked and go schedule a few. That’s not all bad, but fewer meetings would still work.

I know of strategists who build strategies with more than 20 “key” initiatives.

I know of boards who try to manage 20 “key” metrics.

I know of CEOs who believe that the obfuscation of reporting on many business lines is superior to the clarity of a few themes.

I know of managers who write job descriptions with so many “prime” directives as to be unintelligible.

We can go on and on about fewer when it comes to professional life and strategy. While some of us are sitting around thinking about our professional lives as a massive, thousand-page tome like Atlas Shrugged, others of us are thinking The Cat in the Hat.

Me? I prefer Green Eggs and Ham, and a relentless drive for fewer.

The answer is not “one thing,” but it just might be only a few.

If I were to write a strategy for the world, a few words would work.  Why won’t only a few work for your business strategy? Fewer words, initiatives, metrics, and complexities just might unlock your strategy.

When Engagement Won’t Save You

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Engagement is important, but it can’t solve everything…

 

In the world of enlightened strategic leadership, the topic of employee engagement comes up.

A lot.

But, like so many good ideas in the world ranging from fried foods to financial derivatives, it has to be taken in moderation and in context with other good things.  Why?

Well, employee engagement is, at some level, a luxury.  Sure, there’s a base level of dignified square dealing that a company has to provide to maintain its employee base.  But, the actions that go toward fostering an engaged workforce or an engaged team can be dangerous in the wrong circumstances.

What circumstances are those?

First of all, it’s very, very tough to engage yourself out of a hole. Hard situations require hard decisions made by small groups.  The best Scandinavian consensus driven managers know that when hard times hit, engagement has to take a back seat. Deciders have to decide.  If your company is failing and you are surveying your employees, maybe you aren’t focused on the right things.

Second of all, engagement activities won’t work for you if you are disingenuous about them.  You can have all the free lunches and free snack bars you want, but if people think they are being played, your engagement strategies won’t make you Google…ever!  If you are offering a free t-shirt to your employees and they are spun up about your corporate jet and ten-thousand dollar watch, engagement strategies can backfire.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, focusing on engagement as a way of ignoring your strategic elephants is a bad thing. If you go rah rah when everybody else knows you should be hunkered down, you will look like the fool.  Good work forces appreciate honesty.

And perhaps that the point here.  Employee engagement is absolutely strategic, but it won’t “win” for you any more that a fantastic marketing campaign can win without a fantastic product.  In fact, just like marketing, it can backfire on you.

If your employee engagement plan is merely a topical salve or the business equivalent of whistling past the graveyard, re-think it!

You can’t engage yourself or your company out of a hole.