The Last and Largest Burden of Leadership Communication

/0 Comments/in /by

If you are the leader, it’s your responsibility to ensure understanding.

I had an amusing reminder of a critical communication concept a few months ago.  It was one of those wake up calls that starts softly and ended with a laugh; but it had a serious lesson.

The situation was this:  In working through a strategic planning exercise with a client, I took the time to outline a concept in the strategy labelled, simply:

“Change Leadership”

The concept, which I had not yet outlined in detail, was (in my mind) to pull in all of the tools, approaches, management behaviors, and other actions required to ensure that the strategies being outlined had a chance of permeating the business.  It was, admittedly, a bit of jargon used as a placeholder for a critical set of leadership elements.   I knew all this, of course; because I had written it!

The rub, as I found out, was that the concept of “Change Leadership,” a noun whose full outline I was intent on conveying at some later date; was possibly going to be interpreted by leaders in the organization as a verb; as in “this is where we change leadership.”

As in “this is where leaders get fired.”

For those of you who may not know, consulting with a top team and having them believe that you’ve outlined the conceptual means of their demise may come with some difficulties!!!

Luckily, this misunderstanding was more of a comic moment than a serious one–a leader on the client’s executive team mentioned it in passing. But, it brings up an important, timeless issue…One of clarity in communication and understanding.

George Bernard Shaw once said that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

There’s a lesson in there for those of us who spend our time leading others through concepts.  (Hint, that’s pretty much any executive leader.)

In my case, I thought I had outlined a work stream for change management; but somebody read what I wrote and thought I might want to fire management.

Your cases may vary:

You think you’ve given sufficient direction and clarity; but others have no idea what you are talking about.

You are getting exasperated at having to repeat yourself on all the “easy” stuff; but others think you just aren’t communicating and that it isn’t at all very easy.

You, in short, may be missing a significant part of communication:  The moment where you check for understanding, and adjust your delivery for clarity.

It happens to us all.

Unfortunately, many of us have a tendency to blame the victim.  We use phrases like “he just doesn’t get it,” or “she’s a poor listener” to cover for our own inadequacies as a leader and communicator.

Be sure to take the time to understand whether those around you understand.  If you are the leader, it’s on you, not them.

It’s one of those peculiar burdens that comes with being a leader.

It could save you from some scary circumstances.

Please share your thoughts and experiences with leadership mis-communication and misunderstanding. 

6 Challenges Today’s Executives Face

/1 Comment/in , /by

Periodically, I’ll post on some of the implicit but common executive challenges I observe while carrying out my practice.  This is one of those posts…

The context of this post is simple:  I have the opportunity to work across numerous executive teams and within institutions of various sizes.  In nearly every case, individual leaders consume themselves with how different their organizations or their problems are.  I figured I’d take a moment to reflect on some of the common themes that I see leaders dealing with.  Perhaps it will strike you in a way that’s helpful.

So, here are six challenges that executives I’ve worked with face–whether they know it or not–and an accompanying quick note on ideas to overcome each of them.

The Six Challenges

1. Ego Depletion

The Challenge: We have only a limited capacity to make considered, controlled decisions.  But, many of us (you and me) have an unlimited number of decisions we could make in a given day.  Executives have a relentless access to decisions. The pace of information flow these days enables it.  If you are like me, you probably get up and check email sometime in the morning, starting the flow of decisions you must make.  You also (possibly) check email at the end of the day, and fire off a few more decisions or opinions.  In between, you’ve probably had to make decisions all day.  Such is life, but if you think about your ability to make decisions in a given day as finite, you’ll understand the concept of Ego Depletion.  You may laugh and say you know people whose egos never deplete, but still.

Ways to Overcome it:  This one is easy and hard at the same time.  Delegate choices.  Be deliberate about the scope of decisions you’ll take.  Keep your focus on the major things in your professional (and personal) life.  Know what matters to you (and, hopefully, it’s not everything).  Also, and most critically, realize that your capacity to ponder and decide on minutiae may be exceptional, but that you–as executive–can deplete the capacities of the people around you.  Yes, you can exhaust your subordinate’s ability to make good decisions simply by placing too much focus on things that may not matter much.

2. Separating Signal and Noise 

The Challenge: We face a tremendous amount of information flow that amounts to noise in our daily professional lives. By noise I mean, literally, junk that has no meaning or implication for work or play.  Examples that executives face include internal rumors, short term changes in customer behavior, and macro-level news that people will view as significant, but whose impact is negligible on daily business.  The challenge arises when executives feel the need to justify a response or reaction to the noise.  One of my favorite momentary pastimes is to flick the “Stocks” app on my iPhone a few times a day and get a look at the headlines for the S&P 500.  Without fail, the headlines attempt to explain a 0.50% change in the market index.  It’s linked to jobs, or Greece, or some other secular trend.  It would be amusing if you didn’t actually think about the people spending their lives conjuring such headlines.  Folks, sometimes it’s just noise.  Know the difference.

Ways to Overcome it:  I’m a fan of the old Army saying “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.”  It’s okay to level yourself out and wait out the first bit of information as potential noise.  Practically speaking, when presented with challenging but not-yet-significant information, be willing to ask “what would make this information more than just noise?”  Know when enough is enough.

3. Making Talent Mobility an Advantage

The Challenge: In the immortal words of Billy Joel:  We Didn’t Start the Fire.  Talent mobility is not really new anymore; but the amount of information that talented people have at their fingertips has changed drastically.  What this means is that the most driven, talented individuals–usually the ones who actually know their value in the marketplace–are much more likely to vote with their feet.  This challenge is common, but it’s increasing as talented people have more and more access to inside information on both their own company and companies they might consider joining.  The implication of this challenge is that some employers will suffer mightily from adverse selection as their best employees decide to ply their trades elsewhere.  The current generation of 50 something’s may cling to the notion of loyalty as something an employer gets value from, but younger workers are starting to know better. Your cost of talent is high if you can’t engage people and propagate vision. It is infinite if you are dishonest and people catch on.

Ways to Overcome it:  In reality, talent mobility is only a challenge to companies and leaders who place limited focus on engaging and exciting people.  Companies who have great places to work will get richer because they will have a lower cost of talent.  Companies who can no longer hide their really bad workplaces will get poorer and engage in more mercenary practices to attract talented people.  Propagate a vision, engage people, know what they think.  Most of all, seek understanding. Listen.

4. Avoiding A False Sense of Disruption

The Challenge: Make no mistake some sectors are being disrupted mightily, and the challenge for executives is how to move faster.  Still, there is an unhealthy proportion of executives out there who, like Don Quixote, are out tilting at windmills when it comes to disruption.  They are looking for a disruptive fight at the expense of handling daily business.  So much ink is drained on the topic of disruption, innovation, and creativity that the average executive sees it as a panacea; when in reality–and in the average business–there is far more value in having a healthy business with solid people, processes, performance, and prospects.  True disruptive innovation takes a long time in MOST sectors.

Ways to Overcome it:  First of all, you need to know what disruption really is.  Are you truly changing the basis of competition, or are you simply selling that notion.  When it comes to disruption, be careful not to assume your sector is different in terms of the pace of change without testing the notion.  Know that investments in disruptive business models and technologies are important, and needed; but be sure to pursue them as a piece (often a small but focused piece) of a healthy business portfolio.  Saying that you are going to make a business healthy by creating the next better mousetrap ignores the history of disruption.  Avoid the false security it provides.

5. Avoiding Tyrannical Short-Termism

The Challenge: Short-termism is the opposite challenge from the “False Sense of Disruption” outlined above.  Because I see many different companies in operation, I see both of these faces show themselves. Sometimes they show themselves within the same company.  The challenge here is that executives, faced with near term earnings targets and expectations; actually underinvest in capital assets and innovative improvements to process, product, or people engagement.  They lack an emphasis on longer term, disruptive, or even incremental business model or product improvements because they can’t afford them. In reality, they can’t afford not to have them in the portfolio.

Ways to Overcome it:  A balanced portfolio is the key here.  The average executive gets this notion; but the average executive also needs someone to keep him or her honest when it comes to rationalization of investment levels in new or interesting businesses.  Typically, this challenge rears its head at the margin.  It’s in questions like “Do we really need to have that many sales people pushing our new product?” or “Does that expensive training program really need to be held this year?” Keep people close who can argue for the balanced portfolio.  Oh, and listen to them.

6. Making Strategy Flexible

The Challenge: I am approached monthly by companies that desire a way to think about strategy differently.  They want a strategy.  The biggest challenge of strategy formulation, however, is breaking through the mindset that a “strategy” is a set thing.  Set piece battles are getting increasingly rare in business (they will exist as long as privileged assets exist, but that’s a different post).  The proverbial strategy in a booklet gathering dust on the shelf is proverbial because it has happened far too often. Usually, this occurs when a strategy is built to placate senior management or a board vs. to truly inform the approach to business.  This is a continuing challenge for executives.  Strategy is not deterministic.  It is subject to random changes. It is subject to competitive moves.  It has to be adaptive.  Executives face the challenge of making it so.

Ways to Overcome it:  Strategy is a living thing.  The first way to overcome this challenge is to embrace the adage that “no plan survives contact with the enemy.”  In business it’s perhaps more polite to say “no plan survives implementation intact.”  Strategic plans are no different, so start with that in mind. Understand the boundaries within which a given strategy remains intact, and the triggers that would make a refreshed or different approach appropriate.  This is a big challenge, and one I have spent a lot of time on in the past several years.

There you have it.  Six challenges that I see as pivotal for current executives.  If I’d had more time and a better text editor, I might have made this shorter, but I hope you get the gist.

I’d love to have your thoughts.

When Jazz is Your Leadership Style…Leave the Symphony!

/0 Comments/in /by

If you lead like a jazz artist, then trying to conform to a leadership culture that runs like a symphony might not be the best thing for you or the organization.

I was reminded last night of a fantastically prescient article written by John Clarkeson, former CEO and Chairman of The Boston Consulting Group.  It might be useful to you.

Here’s the link.

Written in 1990 and entitled Jazz vs. Symphony, the article starts with an ominous set of questions…

Is there a leadership crisis? Are we really lacking executives to lead our organizations into the twenty-first century? Or are the specifications for the job changing: should we reexamine what kinds of leaders our organizations need?

Clarkeson then goes on to compare, with compelling anecdote and imagery, the leadership styles of the past (the symphony conductor) with what he poses as the leadership style of the future (the jazz ensemble leader).

He states–in 1990 no less–that the accelerating pace of change will make room for creative leaders who don’t have all the answers and who understand the quirks, nits, and foibles of their teams without demanding that their team be functional robots.

His outline of the “Jazzy” leader and their impact on teams is excellent.  He writes:

Leaders will be in the flow, not remote. Teamwork and cooperation will increase at the expense of individual competition. Cooperative support will moderate anxiety and encourage risk-taking. Talented people will be attracted by the ability to see and influence the whole process, to learn from other knowledgeable people, and by the opportunity to create and grow.

More importantly, he gets at what leaders really must do in order to embrace the Jazz metaphor.

Leadership will flow to those whose vision can inspire the members of the team to put their best abilities at the service of the team. These leaders will create rather than demand loyalty; the best people will want to work with them. They will communicate effectively with a variety of people, and use the conflict among diverse points of view to reach new insights. They will exert influence by the values they choose to reinforce. They will make leaders of their team members.

Note those concepts:

“Leadership will flow to those whose vision can inspire…”   It doesn’t flow to those who see it as a matter of position.

“Leaders will create rather than demand loyalty…”  Loyalty is a two way street.

“They will exert influence by the values they choose to reinforce.”  In other words, stated values flow less and less from a company and from textual artifacts and more and more from the actions of its leaders (even behind closed doors).

“They will make leaders of their team members.”  Leadership comes with an imperative to develop people as much as to direct them.

Clarkeson’s concepts hit home for me because they get at the most basic question of a person’s fit within a given organization’s leadership culture.  To be sure, 25 years after the publication of this delightful article, there are still a LOT of symphonies out there.

The imperative for you and for me is to know the difference between joining a symphony and joining a jazz ensemble.   Specifically, it gets at the question of whether one can be a Jazz musician in the symphony.

And, I’m not sure.

I suspect that Duke Ellington–the giant of jazz that Clarkeson cites–could have held his own riffing with any given philharmonic orchestra. But, I doubt he would have been special.  His lasting impact on music comes from his ability to adjust, cajole, entertain, grow, and create… Not to conform.

In Clarkeson’s words:

…he would offer up a scrap of an idea, suggest in general what he wanted, and then rely on his players to take cues from each other and to fill in their parts as they thought best.

His players were good but not without equal. He knew their quirks, their gifts, their problems, and he encouraged them to learn to do things they didn’t think they could do. Some players came and went, but many stayed for years. They developed through their membership in the group, and they learned from each other. Most of all, their capacity for innovation grew as they built on their cumulative experience.

I suspect that the moment a hypothetical symphony conductor attempted to stuff Duke in a chair and cut off his avenues of creation, he would have voted with his feet.

There, my friends, is the message.  If you and I aspire to play in a symphony, so be it.  Find a symphony.  Many, many leadership cultures still look to a single conductor for “truth” and bear the scars of such approaches in terms of wasted talent and difficulty adapting to change.

If we, instead, hope to play in a jazz ensemble; then let’s find one.

I suspect there is great pain and frustration awaiting a person with a jazz philosophy who chooses to play in the symphony.  In fact, I’ll bet that when such a thing happens…It’s all about the money.

Perhaps we should reflect on two implications of Clarkeson’s article for us as individuals:

First, the article was written 25 years ago, and there are still plenty of symphony conductors out there in leadership. Change toward a jazz style is slow and you likely won’t make it happen unless you are the key leader.

Second, which follows from the first: When jazz is your thing…leave the symphony behind.

Just for fun, and in case you never had a sense of what jazz can do; I’ll leave you with a short Duke Ellington piece.

 

Avoid The Focus Group of One

/0 Comments/in , /by

The broader your sphere of influence, the broader your sphere of listening has to be. Don’t let conviction get in the way of listening to others.

Mature professionals listen.

But, on the path to maturity, those same professionals learn to trust their gut, rely on convictions, and assert.

This is nothing new:  You become truly effective by moving from a regime of telling to a regime of asking.  In making this shift, you learn more, you lead more, and you do more.

But…

Many leaders who are very effective at listening to those around them make a mistake that only tends to come from the isolation that leadership brings.  They stop (or never start) listening to people who are two and three levels removed from them.

The lesson here is this:  As your sphere of influence expands, your sphere of listening must expand in kind. 

This concept is especially critical when you contemplate so-called transformational changes to your organization that can impact customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Why?  Well, it stems from a phenomenon I’ll call the “Focus Group of One.”

A focus group is a gathering of a group of people, usually from a target demographic, intended to collect impressions about an issue, product, or strategy.

When you make assumptions about how your decisions will impact not simply those who meet with you regularly, but also those in the field, stores, plants, or factories; you can fall into the trap of using your own intuition and experience as a guide instead of collecting impressions that may differ from your own.

You use a focus group, it’s just a focus group comprised of your own experience over time–the many different “selves” from your experience–instead of a focus group of people facing the impact of your decisions here and now.

“When I was a salesperson, all I cared about was making my numbers; and I didn’t want the distraction” might be a refrain a CEO would make when deciding not to extend training to a portion of his sales force.

This can have negative consequences.

Why?  Here are a few ideas:

  • People are different – People have different wants and needs than you do, and you should beware making decisions based on what you want and need.
  • Experiences are different – People have different experiences in the field, plant, or line than a given executive might have had.  The mere fact that the executive is an executive may show that his or her experience was different (or coddled) and a bad reference case for making decisions today.
  • Your recollections change – You may forget what it was like in the field.  You may only remember the wins and forget the hard times. You also, given your experience, probably ended your time in the field pretty well.  There is a cognitive bias called peak-end bias that shows how our brains tend to remember the most intense part of an experience, and the way we left it.  We forget the run-of-the-mill times; and generally you as an executive are making decisions that affect the run of the mill.
  • You are muddled by your biases – Knowing the right thing to do and overcoming your incentives to do otherwise can be very, very challenging. If you face a defining moment that can have big impact on your organization, it might be best to listen to those impacted first.

So what?

To get out of the focus group of one, you can employ a few different methods:

Easiest is to just go and listen to folks.  That takes time, and in some organizations comes with a substantial hierarchy filter.

Next would be to listen to those closest to you on their impressions of the impact.  But, keep in mind they are biased as well.

Finally, and probably most effective, would be to send a few trusted agents into the field to gather real impressions of possible changes.  Reflect on them.  Then make the decision.

Don’t fall into the Focus Group of One trap.  Listen to those you lead.

Please share your thoughts and experiences on the impact of and how to avoid this trap.

There Are No Executive Training Wheels

/0 Comments/in /by

Once you are an executive, the future is now…

Ben Horowitz of Loudcloud and Andreeson-Horowitz fame posted a while back on “The Sad Truth About Developing Executives.”

Here’s a LINK.

I encourage you to read it; and if not, at least give it a click.

The Insight:

Horowitz lays out the essential reasons that a CEO can’t afford to hire executives that must be developed.

He opens the article with a heartfelt and somewhat (for me) convicting notion…  Namely:

My greatest disappointment as CEO was the day I realized that helping my executives develop their skill sets was a bad idea. Up to that point in my career, I prided myself on my ability to develop people and get the most out of them.

 

Ouch.  Right?

He then goes on to explain why.  And, it’s compelling.

He gives 6 reasons.  First he outlines how time spent developing under-performing executives is a misappropriation of the CEO’s valuable time and skills.

Then he outlines the consequences ranging from bad results, poor cultural impact, and, in the end, a clear undermining of the person being “developed.”

The Application:

I like stretch roles.

But, assigning a person to a stretch role (that is, one they are not currently fully practiced to take) requires that they have the credibility within the organization to fill it and you have the confidence to let them fill it without undermining them.

Because of these two factors–credibility and confidence–at some level in an organization, the notion of “stretch” as “potential” has to be shelved.

The stakes get too high.

You and I wouldn’t want our neurosurgeon to walk into the operating room, pat us on the shoulder, and say “I’ve never done this before, but I’m really smart and savvy and my medical director thinks I’m going to be great…Let’s see how it goes.”

The horror.

He has no credibility, and neither you nor I have confidence in him…regardless of what his medical director thinks.

The executive level of most organizations comes with the same horror when incompetent or under-apprenticed executives are placed and then expected to “develop.”

The difference is that an incompetent neurosurgeon affects a single life; and an incompetent executive can affect thousands.

There are no executive training wheels.

As Horowitz explains quite nicely:  Once you are an executive, you are compensated based on your existing ability, not based on your potential.

Executives either gain or lose the confidence of those around them… There is no “wait and see.”

The organization, customers, and board members are watching.

They see when a CEO steps in to answer for an incompetent or under-apprenticed exec.  They see when a given executive is the project of a CEO.  They also feel the pain of incompetence when an executive leader just doesn’t have “it” when it comes to the business.  “It” might be the ability to work with customers or it might be the ability and knowledge of how not to significantly mar sensitive personnel issues.

So What? 

When you boil it down, allocation of talent is perhaps the most important activity in an organization.  It is strategy just as allocation of capital is strategy.  That is, unless the executive team allows it to become a hobby (or worse, a clubby exercise).

In thinking through executive roles, CEOs have to look toward demonstrated competence as the top criterion for a position.  Everything else pales, and I do mean pales, in comparison.  Executive presence, savvy, speaking ability, golf handicap, sense of style, etc. all need to be relegated (or, for most of these, disregarded).

The time for development was last year.   Humane talent management, just like capital investment, requires vision.  If you are staffing an apprentice into a master’s role, you probably lack vision.

One Disclaimer and One Beef:

I’ll offer one slight disclaimer here:  Some of you will read this and think I’m writing that everybody has to have been there in order to get there, and thus the talent for executive or “high stakes” jobs in an organization must be sourced from outside the company.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Smart executive teams create apprenticeship roles with definite time periods and demonstrable tasking to build the credibility and confidence required of an individual who will take on an executive role.

And, then, the beef:  I agree with Horowitz that CEOs shouldn’t expect to coach their own people; but I believe in a strong focus on continuous improvement. Every executive has areas of emphasis that can be shored up with some coaching or counseling; and a good CEO enables that kind of coaching.  I doubt Horowitz meant that a CEO shouldn’t coach occasionally or enable continuous improvement; but I’d want to be sure.

Look for credibility in your executives, and lose the training wheels.

How To Salvage Sunken Trust

/2 Comments/in , , /by

You can salvage trust that is sunk. But some kinds of trust sink deeper than others.

Have you ever faced the need to recover from breaking trust?

Most of us have, and the ones who haven’t just haven’t admitted it. All of life is a web of trust, and arguably the more trust you build, the better off you are.

The author L. Frank Baum wrote in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that “A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.”

Trust likewise ought to be judged not by how trustworthy those around you are, but by how trustworthy you are.

If you think about trust as a ship at sea, then it’s easy to envision how breaking trust essentially sinks the ship.

But, not all breaches of trust are the same. How far must you go to salvage it?

There are four depths that breaches of trust sink to, and our ability to salvage trust depends on how deep it’s sunk.

The Trust Equation

I’ll start with an illustration that is not my own, but provides a useful context for the discussion. The “Trust Equation” is a very interesting piece from author, advisor, and trust guru Charles Green, founder of Trusted Advisor Associates.

Green, working with co-authors David Maister and Robert Galford in the book The Trusted Advisor, outlines an equation for trust that looks like this:

That is to say, trust derives from how we view others’ credibility (our assessment of what they know)…

…Reliability (Our view of how reliably they deliver)…

…Intimacy (Our level of emotional and intellectual comfort with them) and…

…their Self-Orientation (how selfish we think they or their actions are).

The really cool part of the “equation” structure is the insight that all the “good” aspects of trust are additive, but that self orientation undermines it all. The more selfish you are (or even appear), the more you undermine any trust and goodwill that exists.

Self-oriented people are not trustworthy, regardless of their positive attributes.

I’m going to use the four component parts here to outline the four depths of trust recovery.

The Four Depths of Trust Recovery

Recovery of sunken trust is a lot like recovery of a sunken vessel. It depends on the type of vessel as well as the depth of the water. That said, here are four depths of recovery, and some explanation of what it takes to get there and to salvage it.

1. The shoals of trust:

The shallowest form of trust breach to recover from is related to abuses of reliability. Because it is the most visible, reliability is also the easiest to demonstrate and therefore recover from.

Recovery from the shoals of trust (that is to say, the shallow water) can be as simple as improving on clarity and communication of deadlines. Trust sunk through reliability can be recovered relatively quickly because it’s a shallow recovery. People can see you becoming more reliable.

The shoals are where breaches of trust–like missed deadlines or partially completed work–reside. To be clear, they are a breach of trust. But the individual can regain this sort of trust by changing behavior.

Reliability trust is usually the most flexible of trust types out there.

2. The shallow seas:

The next depth of recovery relates to abuses of credibility. When a person is trusted for what they know and chooses to abuse that trust through posing as something they are not, they abuse trust.

In the professional services arena, we see this sort of abuse far too often. “Experts” in one area might represent themselves as expert in another area. They “fake it until they make it.” This is a sort of trust abuse that can only sometimes be surfaced, and then often too late.

Even though the shallow seas are where trust is frequently sunk, it’s a relatively recoverable area. Most of us respect people who stretch their capabilities and expertise. Most of us are willing to offer a person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to testing their boundaries.

Credibility trust is thus relatively flexible. If it is bent, it can be caused to go back into shape with demonstration of more credibility. Brands do this all the time through credibility-stretching brand extensions (remember chocolate Jello gelatin? How about Dr Pepper Marinade? Yep).

Recovery from this sort of trust abuse means just sticking to or falling back on what works to rebuild credibility. It’s not easy, but it is straightforward.

3. Open ocean:

The open ocean of trust abuse–areas where shipwrecks often stay put–is in abuses of trust related to self-orientation. Loss of trust due to selfishness gets into an area that is far less transparent than reliability or credibility, and that makes recovery from a breach of this sort far less likely.

Once someone abuses trust for personal gain, people tend to be wary of working with them again.

Salvaging trust sunk in the open ocean is very tough and takes a lot of time. The magnitude of the breach certainly matters; however, once a person is viewed as self-oriented, trust tends to be extremely hard to build.

There’s a reason that self-orientation undermines all else in the trust equation above.

The open ocean is where shirkers, self-dealers, executives with hidden incentives, and embezzlers reside.

On the lighter side, it’s the realm of the me-monster at your conference table and the credit hog on your team.

4. The Mariana Trench:

The deepest depth of trust recovery–one where recovery is usually impossible–is where breaches of trust that relate to abuse of intimacy lie. This is, and should be, the most brittle type of trust that there is. It is a deal killer, particularly when combined with an abundance of self-interest by the abuser.

Witness the trusted colleague or leader who exercises a highly cynical abuse of an “intimate” professional relationship to manipulate others for personal gain and prestige, and you’ll know how deep the Mariana Trench can be.

The Mariana Trench is the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. Things sunk there are lost.

This is the depth where lie the ravages of trust in cheating spouses and con artists in the long game.

It is the realm of the corporate sociopath revealed only too late.

Breaches of trust which abuse intimacy often take time. They rely on the most basic aspects of human relationships: friendship, common cause, and warmth. As such, the average person may disbelieve when a close friend is abusing intimate trust until it is far too late.

Thus, this type of sunken trust is very tough to salvage.

Intimate trust is like a diamond: extremely hard, often forged through pressure, sometimes exotically beautiful, but brittle…

…once bent, it breaks.

I don’t see a way to recover this sort of trust, but I am open to suggestions.

So what?

Why does this stuff matter?

Because we deal in trust as a currency every day of our lives. We do it in personal and professional relationships. We do it through our brands and our corporations.

I illustrate these four depths only to provide the reader with a perspective on how damaging the breaches of different kinds of trust can be.

If you haven’t noticed it yet, let me put this last: Breaches of trust related to what is knowable and transparent–reliability, for instance–are much easier to recover from than those related to what is concealed and largely unknowable–the selfish or cynical disposition of an individual or a company.

Don’t sink trust, and know when trust is sunk too deep.

I’d enjoy your thoughts and reflections on this topic.

How Shared Vision Prevents Small Thinking

/1 Comment/in /by

When we’re not able to see that we are part of something bigger…We become part of something smaller.

Recently, I read the book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr. Atul Gawande. Gawande is a surgeon and author.  The book is an excellent read about how individuals, cultures, and the medical profession deal with the concept of mortality.

In a decidedly challenging but altogether interesting narrative, Gawande surfaces an interesting concept that is directly useful to those of us thinking about strategy, talent, culture, and inspiration.

Namely, in one part of the book, Gawande outlines research by Laura Carstensen at Stanford University on how mindsets related to aging cause us to close off our horizons.

It seems that as young people with boundless time ahead of us, we (that’s you, me, and every other person in the world) think expansively, we seek new things, and we value unfamiliar experiences.  We “plug into bigger streams of knowledge.”

The world is our oyster.

Interestingly, as we age, and as we come to terms with the waning amount of time we have in the world, we become much more interested in spending time with people we know and love, focusing on what is tangible and immediate, and enjoying the things we are familiar with.

As you age, “your focus shifts to the here and now.”

Carstensen did multiple studies to test this hypothesis.  The survey based research on this topic shows that young people generally value adventure…expansive vision and activities. Older people generally value a smaller view of the world…their circle and its inhabitants.

But there is one shocking revelation about this that the book provides…

The closing off of horizons isn’t about age.

It’s about perspective.

For instance, among the ill, the age differences in mindset disappear. Young people who are terminally ill think “like old people”–small horizons, immediacy, and intimacy are important.

On the other side, when posed with hypothetical questions of how they would spend their life if a medical breakthrough extended it for another 20 years, old people think like young people–expansively and in terms of adventure.

Similarly, young people faced with major crises or uncertainty start to think “like old people.”  A great example is given from the research, which happened to bracket some very uncertain times for its subjects. To wit (and this is from Gawande’s book with my emphasis added):

“…A year after the [survey team] had completed its Hong Kong study, the news came out that political control of the country would be handed over to China.  People developed tremendous anxiety about what would happen to them and their families under Chinese rule.  The researchers recognized an opportunity and repeated the survey…Sure enough, they found that people had narrowed their social networks to the point that the differences in the goals of young and old vanished.  A year after the handover, when the uncertainty had subsided, the team did the survey again.  The age differences reappeared.

“They did the study yet again after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and during the SARS epidemic that spread through Hong Kong in the Spring of 2003 killing 300 people in a matter of weeks. In each case, the results were consistent.  When, as the researchers put it, life’s fragility is primed, people’s goals and motives shift completely.

It’s perspective, not age that matters.”

People with a view of being part of bigger things–a longer future, for instance–think bigger, more creatively, and more adventurously.

People with no view of bigger things think smaller.

How this applies to you…

This insight is not about aging… It’s about how our minds deal with vision, purpose, and inspiration.

For instance, there are people in your organization right now who have no view of a bigger, longer term purpose for themselves in the organization.

It might be just a few…

…It might be every. single. one. of. them.

The research cited above says something very simple:  When people believe they are part of something bigger…that they have a future–No, strike that, even that they believe they could have a future that is long and interesting–they think more expansively and creatively.

When they don’t?

They worry about themselves.

Their world becomes smaller, intimate, and guarded.

So what?

You want to cultivate an organization that is creative, expansive, and vibrant?

Try helping people understand their future within it.  Be explicit about the long term, about how people are cared about; and about the prospects for the future for them and for the organization.

You want to cultivate an organizational culture that is insular, turf driven, selfish, dull, and dogmatic?

Try focusing people on the short term.  Ensure that word gets around that nobody is safe. Manufacture crisis and ambiguity. Conduct layoffs right along with your annual budgeting cycle. Fire people for taking risks. Create uncertainty and fear. Propagate a vision of the future that is inscrutable for the rank and file or simply insensitive to their goals.

The research cited above says that you and I think “old” when we undergo times of strife, uncertainty, and major change.

In short, we think “old” when we have no positive or stable vision for what the future holds.

Insularity, selfishness, and small mindedness are the insidious outcomes of a lack of vision.

So, when we’re not able to see that we are part of something bigger, we become part of something smaller…Namely ourselves and our own immediate circle.

A healthy vision of the future and what’s in it for the people in the organization just might be the key to keeping your organization forever young.

I’d be interested in your comments.

When Hard Choices are Easy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Sometimes, things we call “hard choices” are easy…If you look at them the right way.

So much is made about hard choices.

I’ve had it posed to me by a few people as I made the decision–with the encouragement of a couple of close colleagues–to set off on new adventures over the past year:

“Wow, that must have been a really hard choice to make.”

Hmmmm…

Well, okay, it came with some anguish because I had fallen in love with the people and mission of the organization that I worked within and had at least partly helped to build and lead…

…but it wasn’t a really hard choice.

The truth is, the segment of society that I live within only faces really hard choices intermittently.

Sometimes, easy choices are lauded too much.

Within the past week or so, a couple of good examples come up.

Example 1:  When moral choices are viewed as “hard.”

Last week, David Boren, former U.S. Senator and current President of the University of Oklahoma, made a decision to shutter the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter at the university and to expel a couple of its members after an almost unbelievable display of racist ignorance was caught on tape and revealed.  Students were filmed chanting a little ditty that invoked not only racist exclusion, but also imagery of lynching.

It was as disgusting as it was unbelievable, and I write this as a middle-aged guy who grew up in the deep south of the U.S.

Boren acted quickly, and correctly.

Reactions were interesting on this one.  People have been impressed with how quickly Boren acted.  Here’s one example (and I emphasize, example… no endorsement or disparagement implied):

Now, this tweet is an honest expression that arises no doubt out of many kinds of frustration with prior examples of foot dragging in the face of such decisions. However, look at the words:  Awe, moral, steadfast.   Wow. David Boren had the easiest moral decision to make.  He threw a couple of ignoramuses who just might be racists off the campus of a university, and he shuttered a student organization that had clearly propagated the chant and the mindset to deliver it with impunity. We are in awe at the morality of his decision because it’s unusual, but shouldn’t confuse that with hard. 

Example 2:  When personal resource tradeoffs are viewed as “hard.” 

Also last week, Google’s CFO, Patrick Pichette, announced his resignation with a candid and interesting memo.  The gist?  It’s time to spend time with family. I get that. I also applaud the tone of the memo. But, it has been, once again, interesting to see some of the reactions to the announcement.

The language:  Honest, refreshing, and heartwarming.

Let’s be clear, the choice to leave a high profile leadership position at one of the world’s “great” companies to spend time with one’s family may be a tough one for a given individual.  But, what we are seeing is simply a guy making a different choice in life.

He has made a fortune as an executive, has watched his kids leave the house, and has had an epiphany that he just might need to allocate his resources (read that: time) differently before it’s too late.

differently

Perhaps, unusually.

But this isn’t a “hard choice.”

We hold up people making “unusual” choices as if they are heroes, and confuse “unusual” with “hard.”

Perhaps these are roads less traveled, but they aren’t “hard” choices in the traditional sense of the word.

What hard choices really are

Hard choices are more like:

– Do I make payroll or pay the bank?

– Should I send my last $20 to the power company or the water company?

– Do I quit my job to take care of my sick relative?

– Do I leave this abusive marriage?

– Do I blow the whistle on corporate or executive malfeasance, or just leave?

– Do I really need to go to the doctor to get this back pain and cough figured out?

– Should I opt for treatment, or for quality of life?

Those are hard choices.

See what I did there? Hard choices are about choosing between two different forms of pain.  There is no clear outcome.  Hard choices come where there isn’t enough to go around, or there isn’t a clear moral, ethical, or [insert standard of judgment here] win.

Choosing between two different forms of pleasure or choosing to do the patently right thing may sometimes be difficult, but it’s not a “hard” or “moral” choice as the implications tend to get noted.

Let’s not confuse the notion of opportunity cost with the notion of making really hard choices.

I write this because I have personally failed in making this distinction too many times.

How this applies to the world of business leadership and this blog…

Somebody reading this is facing a dilemma, and they are posing it as a “hard” choice to themselves.  It might be the dilemma of leaving a toxic culture or relationship, or taking a personal risk to make a big strategic move on behalf of the themselves or a company.

I encourage that person to reflect on the choice in, perhaps, a different way:  Is the choice hard because there is no morally or painfully clear outcome, or is it hard because doing the morally clear thing is simply difficult?  What happens if you don’t make the choice?

It’s important that we avoid confusing clear but painful decisions with truly ambiguous “hard” choices.

This matters in business, and it matters in life.

Coffee and a Do Not: Delegating Vision

/0 Comments/in , /by

 The one leadership aspect that you cannot delegate is all too often the one that under-apprenticed leaders want to give away first.  

You see this situation play out all the time…

A person with good management skills flies up the corporate ladder because he can execute.

He can control, direct, and manage details with impunity; and that is a terribly valuable thing early in one’s career.

And then…he gets to a point and a position that requires him to do something very different.  He has to go from being “the guy” to being the guy behind the guy.  He goes from solving the problem to ensuring that the problem gets solved.

Through span of control, volume of work, or simply the sheer complexity the high performing manager has to make the leap to being an executive.  He has to be a leader.

And, wow, what a leap it is.

Why the leap from management to leadership is hard

The complication of the leap is that high performing managers, unlike executives, have the privilege of operating without having to have vision. Vision is provided to them in the form of budget directives, strategic plans, and senior management dialogues.

When our friendly manager makes the leap, he has to figure out how to “do” vision.

But, an odd thing happens to high performing managers promoted too fast…

…They suddenly realize that since vision is coming from no one else above them in the organization, they start to look for it from below them in the organization.

After all…it has to come from somewhere, right?

They feel the need to find things to manage, like budgets, or headcount, minute deal details, or–too often–how their subordinates do their jobs.  They are good at doing those things.

They ignore the need to provide vision because, well, they’ve never had to…and success has come on the merits of a strong management approach.

Thus, they “delegate vision” into the organization.

They say to their subordinates (sometimes explicitly, even!): “I don’t know where we are going. You show me and then I’ll know; but until then, here are some details I’ll dig into.”

The outcomes for our under-apprenticed “leader”

Three outcomes are possible for our manager. Two are good for the organization and one is bad…very bad…

First, if he is a good learner (which typically means good listener) and is able to absorb clues, training, and mentorship about what it is that leaders do vs. what managers do, he makes the leap.  He crafts his own vision. He learns to deliver that vision and to get out of the way.  This is a good outcome.

Second, if he isn’t a good learner but the organization is well governed, he “peters” out.  The Peter principle catches up to him. He has risen to the level of his incompetence, and in well-governed companies his sniff at an executive position is ended quickly, humanely, and soundly.  He returns to a solid management position.  This, likewise, is a good outcome.

Third, if the organization isn’t good at evaluating executive talent and/or acting on evaluations, he–shockingly–sticks.  In poorly governed companies–typically those centered on personality cults and favoritism or those with absentee hierarchies–high performing managers can populate executive positions (albeit ineffectively) for long periods of time.

The third scenario is a bad one:  The brutally bad reality of the manager sticking in such a position is that because he doesn’t know what it means to be an executive, he very often serves as an absolute antagonist to people with real executive talent.  They don’t “manage” like he does; and so they can’t be senior.  He blocks progression by the very virtue of his ignorance.

The more senior the high performing manager “sticks,” the more his foibles and contra-indicated style will metastasize in the organization.  It’s bad for the organization not only because the organization has a sub-optimal leader in an executive position; but also because latent executive talent votes with its feet.  It finds its place elsewhere. They know better.

So what? 

The leap between manager and executive is every bit as big as the leap between a high performing analyst with a spreadsheet and the manager of a pool of analysts.  The skillsets and mindsets are worlds apart.

The lessons of this particular “Coffee and a Do Not” are these:

First, executives should never, ever delegate vision.  Doing so is confusing to the organization and the result of it–a micromanaging executive–is actually a very strong indicator of a disengaged, demotivated organization.  (If you are interested, here’s a study from Stanford University that backs that assertion.)

Second, companies must have solid executive development, evaluation and coaching processes. People can learn. While executive talent is an intrinsic thing to some degree, executive behaviors are teachable. Ideally, high performing managers get to understand these things before they get their first bite at the executive apple.

Third, high performing managers and under-apprenticed executives need to develop themselves. If you are one of those lucky, high velocity, high performing managers who finds yourself in a senior executive role before really being apprenticed well enough…Go home at night and entertain the remote possibility that you might not be all that in your new role.  Be willing to listen…up and down in the organization.  Look for mentors.  Reflect.  Think.  Improve.

Delegation of leadership vision is an upside down, bizarre outcome of a leadership culture that under-prepares people for the next steps in their careers. This is a situation that individuals need to guard against and that companies need to watch out for.

Being a high performing manager and being an executive are very different things.

Executives need to be visionary.  No, not Steve Jobs visionary; but at least “next three years” visionary.

If this is your particular weakness, know this:  Trying to delegate vision will frustrate your organization, handicap its performance, and (assuming a well-governed company) shorten your tenure.

Do not delegate vision.

Finding the Yin and Yang of Leadership Culture

/2 Comments/in , , /by

All I ever needed to know about leadership culture came from two stickers on a desk 30+ years ago.

This is an article on reflection on and appreciation of the lessons one’s childhood can provide. As a parent, I’m fond of thinking about how kids see the world. As I’ve grown, I’ve realized many of the lessons I needed for later in life were right in front of me. It only took time to understand them.

First, some autobiography…

I had the great privilege to grow up around a couple of entrepreneurs.

No, let me rephrase that…

I had the great privilege to grow up around a couple of drop dead risk takers.

Few people get to do that.

That privilege came with the ups and the downs of business ownership in an era of significant change. I was immersed in both the elation of business success and the absolute devastation of bankruptcy.

My childhood included vacations in Aspen and L.A.–a real treat for a kid living on the Gulf Coast–followed by an extended stint living with relatives and years of palming a “free or reduced lunch” card to the lunch lady at my high school.

Such is life, and I’m a lot better for it.

Still, I learned about what risk is and isn’t; and about what accountability, likewise, is and isn’t.

The cool part, though, is what I learned by osmosis in those years of walking around smaller businesses and the people in them. In that environment I had free rein to explore all kinds of cool equipment, and to interact with all sorts of people.

One of the businesses was a private ambulance service, the other was a telephone answering service.

In one business, I got to play around in an old Cadillac ambulance like this one:


Yes, it was Ghostbusters style (or, for a more apt but obscure cinematic description of the operation as I remember it: Mother, Jugs & Speed).

Ours was blue.

I can still smell its interior and see the duct tape on one of the seats where the rotary-dialed radio telephone (yes, rotary) was installed.

In the other business, I was witness to the transition of telephone answering services from old-fashioned telephone switchboard operators–no kidding, like Lilly Tomlin’s “Ernestine” character–
to computerized switching. I spent so much time around those operators that I can still today recite some of the customers:

“M&M Patio, may I help you?”

Those operators doing their thing still ring through the ages for me. All this was in the time before voicemail largely displaced that particular profession.

Enjoying my free rein, I could play with old telephone equipment to my heart’s content, and I could explore the emergency medical equipment and tools in all directions.

I knew what an Ambu bag and mass trousers were before I could diagram a sentence.

I learned how to patch a switchboard at the same time I learned to ride a bike.

I had full access. In retrospect, it was a part of my childhood that was replete with lessons.

What I learned

Both businesses were 24x7x365, reactive operations. As the son of entrepreneurs running businesses of this sort, I grew to expect that mom worked the holidays.

More significant than that: I never, ever, witnessed an adult say “that’s not my job” or “I’m off today, somebody else will handle it” or “I’m calling in sick today.”

Never.

It was no big deal…we knew why.

Accountability.

Ownership.

Risk taking.

That simple reality alone has had a profound impact on my life and work, not to mention on the (low) level of my appreciation for paycheck players and iron bureaucrats of all sorts.

The entrepreneur’s life wasn’t easy, but it was colorful.

To this day, I’ll take colorful over easy anytime.

But, I digress.

It was about the people…

The part that was most interesting is what I took away from the people; and that’s what this article is about. 24X7 professional operations of these sorts have a lot of downtime for the people in them.

To wit, I can remember building model airplanes with one of the EMTs, learning how to properly wash a car and change out spark plugs from another; and getting to know all sorts of people who worked in the business–old, young, men, women, black, white, creole, Asian, serious, funny, mean, nice and all points in between on each.

Such personalities and the inherent downtime of the operations mixed to produce some amusement and some lessons for a kid like me wandering around the operation.

Which brings me to this:

How I found the Yin and Yang of leadership culture in the bunk room of an ambulance service

In the sleeping quarters for the overnight ambulance crews–replete with bed frames hammered together with pine 2x4s and framing nails–was a steel desk. I’d be willing to bet it had been picked up at an army surplus auction back in the 1970s.

At some point, a person had used a cool-for-that-time-period Dymo label maker, one like the one in the picture here, to leave behind some wisdom on its right side pull-out writing surface.

That person, likely bored beyond comprehension and enjoying a moment toying around with the label maker; pressed out a phrase.

It read:

It’s the basic definition of accountability. The Yang of leadership culture.

Probably thinking it was a good phrase to live by (or just a way of ribbing other crew members), the person peeled and stuck the phrase to the writing surface of the desk.

At some point later, a second person took the same labeller and pressed out Phrase 2. It read:

Phrase 2 was stuck just below Phrase 1… as a sort of quasi-professional, realpolitik-driven retort to the self righteousness of Phrase 1. The Yin of leadership culture.

I suppose I discovered the two stickers when I was 8 or 9 years old. I have never spoken or written of them until I decided to write this short article.

Probably half of that is because of the language they are written with isn’t all that polite; and half is because it has taken me a long time to really grasp the significance of their brutal and ironic simplicity.

The significance of the Yin and Yang…

Now, language aside–and, yes, I spent all of my childhood around a crew that could curse the paint off the walls–these two phrases encompass two very different and very relevant sides of leadership culture.

One one side are the people who take responsibility. On the other side are those who duck responsibility.

The dark and the light.

The Yin and the Yang.

You have, in the form of two very basic phrases, the foundations of organizational and leadership culture.

Just as the Tao I’ve used in the opening image for this post implies that light and dark reinforce one another, and to a small degree reside within one another; these two sides of leadership culture reinforce and infiltrate one another.

In most organizations, there is a competitive equilibrium between the accountable set and the avoidant set. The accountable ones find positions and actions that are profitable, and the avoidant ones do the same.

It is in the behaviors that we, the leaders, reward that we determine which set gets to be dominant.

Which animals do you feed, and which do you slaughter?

I’ve seen organizations feed both sides. Based on that, I’d choose accountable.

Why this matters

I hope you’ll take away two things from this story:

First, this matters because great leaders give credit and take responsibility.

Do you find yourself in a culture where people do that? Or, at least, do you find that accountable people are rewarded more than avoidant ones?

Or, do you find yourself in a culture where people give responsibility and take credit? They lay off risk and lay on the stories of their successes.

It’s a simple assessment. Are the most accountable people in your organizations also the ones most likely to be “slaughtered” when the fan stops spinning?

It’s an existential question for individuals and for organizations.

Second, I hope you’ll see that this story matters because your organization and community is training its next generation of leaders.

No, it’s not doing so through your training programs.

It’s doing so through the equivalent of a label maker and a desktop.

The informal culture wins the day. The behaviors that get fed day in and day out are the ones that grow.

It really doesn’t matter what speeches, brochures, or PowerPoint documents you distribute.

The reason I went into detail on the autobiographical vignette is that I was made a better professional and leader by the diverse and sometimes “not-fit-for-kids” environments that I was able to explore and experience.

The diversity of experience I was blessed with has made me better.

I’m sure, somewhere out there, there are kids (and young professionals) who still get those types of experiences; and I hope all of us as parents and leaders will encourage them.

In the meantime, the rest of us can learn by osmosis from this particular Yin and Yang of leadership culture.

Feed the accountable ones.

Please share your thoughts on this article below…