Tag Archive for: Leadership

The Best Praise For a Pro

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What it means to be “fire and forget.”

 

“Fire and forget…”

It’s a term used to describe smart weapons that can lead themselves to a designated target.

It’s also quite possibly the best praise a professional can receive. As in: “He’s fire and forget, put him on the problem and tell him to call you when it’s solved.”

The phrase is worthy of a blog post here because, put simply, it’s something that we focus on developing in our work with our clients.  While the vast majority of our work is focused on working closely with our clients, there are times when data just needs to be found, or interviews conducted, or analysis completed in order to solve a problem.

And that’s where being or having access to “fire and forget” resources can make the difference between professional life and professional death.  Being a resource of this kind means a few things.

It means you are competent.

It means you are reliable.

It means you are trusted.

It means you are credible.

It means you are resourceful.

It means you are responsible with resources.

And, so if fire and forget is the ultimate in professional attainment, why are so many professionals lacking this level of trust?

My answer?  A mis-designation.  We think some people are professionals when in reality they are simply role players.  They have a job, not a profession.  There is a difference.  There are plenty of ways to define what a professional is, but I know of only one good way:

The professional gets the job done the right way. 

But, becoming a professional is a process. Sure, there are some intrinsic aspects of a worker that are hard to coach–how curious they are, how resilient they are, whether they act with purpose or watch the clock–you probably know them.  But so much of being a pro has to be learned.  Show up.  Get results.  Do real work.  All these are marks of a great pro.  But, so is sensitivity.  So is practical judgment.  So is empathy.

You want to gain the highest professional compliment?  You want to be “fire and forget?” Better yet, do you want to retain or hire true professionals?  Start looking at their track record on these attributes.  Start looking for people who act with purpose and judgment, even early in their careers.

Oh, and when your professionals aren’t professionals?  Make the move.

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

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?  

 

About That Horse You Rode In On…

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What’s your second act?

 

In 2001, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, it’s arguable that Delta Airlines was sitting in the best position of any other airline in the industry.  With a strong balance sheet and strong industry positioning, Delta was arguably best positioned to weather the impending shocks to air travel that 9/11 would bring.  Only the world changed even more than a strong balance sheet would cover…and Delta’s longstanding brand and culture were forced into bankruptcy.

You could call it a lack of agility.  I might call it a lack of awareness.  The company had seen many changes to airport security and customer mindsets before and was in a strong position.  Its leaders probably didn’t think they needed to change all that much…and that inertia was fatal. Delta’s leaders knew where they were, but failed to understand that how they worked would not work in the new world.

So, as for you: You may know where you are.  You might have a view of your “strategic context.” That’s usually the starting point of a solid strategic plan…assessment of where you are today. The tools are legion: SWOT, MACS, SCP, etc. etc. etc.  Call me, I’ll probably be able to name a few more.

But, strategy isn’t about the tools, it’s about knowing what you want to BE and finding out what you are going DO in order to BE that thing in the future. In other words, it’s about figuring out what the future requires and getting to it.  Having a vision for where you want (or need) to be is all the more important if the world is changing quickly.

So, if you are like the average executive, you’ve probably figured out a play that you run for success. You probably have a routine, an approach to leading people, and a default set of questions you ask…no matter the context.  And, just like the average executive, you probably really can’t figure out how to change your routine.

I’ve got bad news for you…The horse you rode in on is probably tired.

You need a new horse.

So, how do you do find it?

As an individual executive you have to find a source of renewal.  You have to be able to look at the world and try new things.  It’s not a bad thing, and it might even keep you young. That guy who won’t shut up about something new he wants to try?  He might be your key to flexing your muscles a bit.  That advisor who just might have a new idea or two, perhaps you should listen to her.

Organizations are different, and in some ways harder to cause to switch horses. Why?  Well, put simply, they are a collection of individuals.  If it’s hard to get an individual to change, then that level of difficulty is compounded in organizations.  Some executives might be energized to change at one point, while others are not…the whole organization, then, starts to look like a slow speed traffic jam…where some executives are speeding up while others are coming to a stop.

What to do? Half the battle is admitting it. The other half is being thoughtful about how much horse you really have left, and what your next horse really needs to look like.  In our practice, we take the time to listen to the context of an organization before working with our clients on the next step.  If the next step means a new horse, it’s certainly important to know the rider’s style of riding.  Otherwise, the attempt to switch horses will fail.

I encourage you to think about where you are, and (if indicated) be proud of what got you here. But, I encourage you to realize that the horse you rode in on is probably tired.  The chances of that are much higher if you are in a rapidly changing (or shocked) sector.

One thing is certain: the world is change.  That horse you really liked is probably going to mature and decline.  That is true whether the horse is a business, a technology, or even a set of management practices.

You need fresh horses.

Be willing to get help looking for them.

What do you think?  Have you ever seen an organization run out of horse? 

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…

Yeah But, Yeah But, Do!

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With an overabundance of data and information, we have to find a way to get past “yeah, but” and get to “do!” 

 

Did you know that some poor soul on the battlefield at Gettysburg left behind a rifle loaded with 23 projectiles? It’s true. When you understand the vast effort required to load a muzzle-loaded rifle, you start to understand the peculiarity of this anecdote.

Now, do you know any poor souls who toil under a leader who is great at loading but never pulls the trigger? You know him… He’s the guy who, no matter what, needs more analysis. He needs more information in order to make a decision. You get the sense that if he were in the middle of the road with a semi-truck bearing down on him, he would ask for an estimate of its speed before deciding to get out of the way.

I’m betting you know this guy.  He is the Fred Flintstone of business… Only he’s always “yeah, but” and never “do.”  Don’t be this guy…

Our current overabundance of data and information allows us the benefit of knowing so much in so little time that we can forget the need to actually act.  Decision makers make decisions.  That means they take information, perceive it, process it, and decide on it.  When you spend too much time perceiving and processing, the battle passes you by.

You end up with a rifle loaded 23 times and never fired.

Not to mention you end up with an organization that is exhausted by all the loading…the constant analysis and responding and delaying and dithering.

As a provider of strategic insight and analysis, I personally wage war against analysis paralysis in keeping to a philosophy of practical strategic impact. Sometimes, this means helping clients acknowledge when they know enough to fish or cut bait.

When is enough enough?  Well, that depends.  In one of my first blog posts, linked here, I went into a bit of detail on Bayesian Inference as a powerful tool for strategic (and interpersonal) analysis. Knowing when you have enough information to make a decision is a critical skill in all leadership positions. In leadership positions that come with the luxury of delay, determining whether to do more analysis really comes down to the return on investment:  Will the new analysis prove or disprove what you substantially already know?

A lot of times, the answer is “no.”

Make a decision.

Yabba Dabba Doo!

I’m curious what you do to ensure you are acting vs. analyzing… Please share.

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.

How Rogue Can Work For You

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Sometimes, independence is the best policy.

 

Allow me to indulge in a little bit of personal storytelling to make what may be a useful point.

22 and a half years ago, I made a commitment to leave a small town in lower Alabama to head to college at Stanford University. In that day, before the internet, I had barely known what “Stanford” was when the football recruiter first came calling; I literally asked him where it was on the map. As a somewhat highly rated football recruit with a modest national profile, I was known to Stanford more than Stanford was to me. When I made that commitment, a little-known fact is that I received hate mail from my South-loving neighbors…some of it mailed anonymously, some of it sounded off in newspaper columns. My favorite was a column in the Birmingham news that ended with “somebody said go west, young man, and Geoff Wilson did.” It was a tough decision. It’s one that I still to this day don’t fully grasp how my 17-year-old self made. The easy choices were right there (Alabama! Auburn! LSU! Florida State! Tennessee!).

I went for the “total package” that was Stanford–academics, athletics, weather, diversity of thought, and, above all, teammates who seemed to be interested in being more than only ground-pounding hunks of meat. Very, very few people understood my choice. My high school football coach, after hearing (from me) that I had committed to Stanford, simply responded with “I figured that…”

Telling.

20 years ago, I had a life-changing experience on the football field. I had one leg collapsed and twisted in one of those awkward ways that leads to reconstructive surgery and contemplation of one’s future athletic life. It didn’t put me off the field permanently–I missed a season and then was a starting tackle in college for a couple more years followed by a sip of coffee with an NFL club after “recovering.” But, it did blow my confidence in some ways and either physically or mentally cost me a step or two. Physically or mentally…which one, I’ll never know, but it was just enough.

14 years ago, I watched my maternal grandmother take her last breath. A sharp, spitfire (she would say “shit-fire”) of a woman, she ended her life unsure of her surroundings and probably glad of it–I doubt she would have liked the nursing home. She had rescued my immediate family and multiple other wanderers from crisis, she always had a pot of something cooking on the stove (just in case somebody dropped by), and she would not hesitate to, ahem, tan a hide or two. Watching her take a final few gasps was formative.

5 years ago, I went through a rending and private self-evaluation and made a choice to leave a prestigious and altogether fantastic global professional services firm (that I still like and respect today) while on the cusp of partnership. I can still hear the “no, no, no” admonition of a firm partner and friend when I said I’d made that choice.  I was in search of more than I thought that firm could offer in terms of long-term stability, so I went corporate.

3 years ago, I lent moral and physical support as I witnessed a very close 40-something family friend lie on a hospital bed in my mother’s living room slowly choking to death during a brief and brutal fight with lung cancer.

2 years ago, it all came to a head in two ways, almost mystically but doubtless coincidentally.  First, I faced a choice of staying corporate and doing, as far too many corporate types do, what I was told to do because it would mean more money. This choice came to me in such a way that my own purposefully transparent values and aspirations were challenged in multiple ways.

Second, during the somewhat agonizing deliberation over how to consider that choice, I had the experience of being the first good Samaritan on the scene of an awful one-car rollover crash on an interstate highway in Alabama.  The driver, with his young son and their cat in the car, had gone into diabetic shock and run off the road at 70 miles per hour.  As my wife and I saw the dust cloud ahead of us and saw the small SUV rolling multiple times, she called 911 while I shouldered our car and sprinted (as it were) to the scene.  The boy and cat were fine–the driver was not.  As the only person on scene, I was magnificently ineffective.  I clawed and wrestled to open the driver-side door of the upside down SUV only to find…finality.

It put my personal dilemma about “corporate or not” into stark relief at a time when such contrast was probably best needed. I faced the choice of either doing–in the misguided words of another colleague “whatever it took” to be a good corporate player or, in the words of a senior executive I worked with intensely for years, “going rogue.”

I chose rogue.

I think without the formative experiences of a few broken dreams (dammit, I was going to play in the NFL for a long time) and witnessing a few times how we all end with broken bodies (thank you, Chuck, for admitting that the best part was “knowing how you would go.”), I couldn’t have done it.

I think that anyone reading this has areas of life where rogue is right. It might be in work, health, or family, but choosing to go against convention can be exceptionally agonizing but altogether rewarding.  Why?

First of all, there is a binding pressure on so many of us not to be creative.  Wait, what?  Yes. The pressure to be as uncreative as possible–to be proles in somebody else’s totalitarian society–exists.  That can come at work, but I’d argue it also comes in civic society–churches, service organizations, and government.  When you are presented with choices and asked not to think them through–especially when you are scorned for thinking them through–you are facing this sort of pressure.

Conventional thinking comes from doing what you are told, not what is thoughtfully considered.

Second of all, there is a subtle but extremely strong force that holds us in thrall with the herd.  It’s known as “risk.” We view departing the herd and thinking on our own as risky. In fact, many corporate, civic, and church cultures are founded on the notion that people must be trained to feel worthless if they are disconnected from the whole. But it’s just not true–some of the most world-changing observations and decisions have been made by people who ignored the risk of solitude and actually did things.  Do you think Martin Luther ran his ideas by the hierarchy?

I’ll riff for a minute on this second one, because it is an area in which the world has actually changed for the better over the past 10 years or so.  In decades past, individuals attached themselves to firms for the promise of stability. The social contract was that people who did reasonable work didn’t get fired; they were part of the firm.

That all changed during the rise of corporate restructuring and overwhelming (but in many cases necessary) focus on shareholder value.  The baby boomer generation (my parents) walked right into the maw of this reality during the ’80s.  Lifetime employment was no longer real. Defined benefits were gone.  The social contract had changed.

But people’s behaviors did not.  They still joined companies with the thought that the company was entering into a contract with them…to the extent that they would eliminate their own professional voices and outside-the-firm career development options in favor of being “all-in.” I’d argue that such was the case until about 5 – 10 years ago.  The younger generation has gotten wise to it, although not entirely.  The world has changed.  Nowadays, it’s easy to source and sell talent on the open market, and firms play less of a role in the matter.

For young professionals, this means that “what’s in it for me” amounts more to the immediate experience and pace a role in an organization offers vs. merely a “job.”

For talented professionals with a longer and strong track record, this means that the only reason to sign one’s life away to a corporation is that that corporation has committed to an explicit contract with that individual (I’m talking ink and paper–verbal contracts are basically meaningless even when you have recorded the conversation, trust me).  The only other reason I can think of is if the talented professional owns equity in the corporation.

So firms like yours and mine are left with three basic value propositions for the people they employ:  Professional development for younger people to increase their employability within your firm or somebody else’s, ownership of your firm so that they can enjoy the longer term fruits of their labor, or a contract that offers some risk sharing.  That’s what we can offer to today’s “roguish” workforce.

That’s it: Professional development, ownership, or a contract.

But that brings you to the realization that for seasoned, talented people, an employment contract without equity is essentially a consulting contract. So, then what?  Well, the short answer is that in today’s economy, unless you’re an owner or are receiving an out-sized investment in your own professional development, you’re a consultant anyway.

Might as well admit it.

That is the biggest change in the past decade: Senior talent can finally find its own level outside of the politics and impracticalities of a firm structure, and younger talent clamors for more professional development sooner than ever.  It’s the truth. And, the only people I know who lament “their people’s” newfound ability to go get a better deal are people who think that people they employ are “theirs” in the first place.

I’ll offer a couple of implications.  You might already see through my story above and say it’s totally anecdotal. To that, I say guilty.  But still…

For the individual: This article is a long way of saying that life is short.  We all end up the same way…broken.  Once we (that’s you) have invested the time and effort necessary to build an exemplary track record, we might as well have the self-respect to exercise our freedom to choose.  Choose where and with whom we spend our time and efforts, and how we are compensated for the risk we take.  Let’s choose, at least occasionally, to be creative.

For the corporate manager:  It’s important to realize that in today’s environment, exceptionally talented individuals are going to look for ownership or a contract that looks a lot like it.  As a corporate leader, be sure to investigate the benefits that the new epoch of highly talented free agents brings to you and your organization.  Oh, and because you do employ people (just as I do), remember that the contract is different now…  people are looking for an employment value proposition today and not simply a career.  Almost no organization can credibly offer a career anymore, so you might as well offer a value proposition that extends employees’ capabilities immediately vs. promising something in the future that may or may not happen. So, go beyond hire and fire. Consider sourcing talent in a more flexible model.

No matter where you stand, rogue can work for you.

 

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…

The Worst Strategy Metaphor in Use Today

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Choose your business metaphors wisely, because they say a lot about how you view the world.

 

 

One of the minor annoyances present in the business world is the use of metaphors that are resoundingly misfit.

How often do we talk about “blocking and tackling,” or “moving the ball down the field,” or “hitting singles and doubles,” or going for the “Hail Mary” in our everyday professional lives?

How many times have you heard even these simple ones mixed up, as in “I think it’ll be a home run, but the boss keeps moving the goal posts…”

Often. Right?

But every now and then, a metaphor is used so often it becomes a paradigm that is dangerous.

The metaphor of business as a “chess match” is one of them; and I’ll tell you why.

Chess and chess matches, when viewed in the light of the complexity and ambiguity of the business environment, are purely tactical. Chess is tactics. I write this despite the existence of a body of literature suggesting that the preparation, staging, execution, and ultimately winning of chess matches amounts to exacting preparation for business leaders…Strategic nirvana.

I’d argue it’s analytic nirvana–necessary but insufficient for a strategic metaphor.

Alas, chess as strategy is a bad metaphor for business mortals. While chess allows us to illustrate the depth of analytic thought on an issue (the best masters of chess can see deeply into a match to judge moves and patterns); it lacks the breadth of conceptual thought necessary to be an active analog for business strategy.

Mastery of tactical depth counts for something, to be sure. But mastery of strategic breadth, on the other hand, counts for everything.

The issue is that we conflate the two…Badly.

The most magnificent Chess minds spend thousands and thousands of hours mastering tactics. They learn every potential combination of openings and defenses. They spend their lives immersed within the very box of patterns and potential moves that, for some reason, has become synonymous with “strategy.”

They do this, and yet they have been mastered by machines. Think about that for a moment, and you can start to see why the game is based on patterns and repetition vs. intuitive, virtuosic strategic brilliance. The mechanistic logic of chess is its own prison, and thus is the reason chess is a bad metaphor for business.

Allow me to create the mental image of business as a chess match, then you be the judge of whether it rises to the level of a sufficient strategic paradigm:

Imagine that you and I both agree to play in a business arena where we:

  • Start with the same resources
  • Agree to the same set of moves
  • Operate on the exact same game board
  • Disregard comparative advantage
  • Agree not to move pieces in any innovative manner
  • Operate in a purely zero sum environment
  • Keep all moves open and transparent
  • Avoid arbitrarily upgrading or switching out pieces for pieces with more power
  • Prevent the lowly from ruling the mighty (as in the illustration above)
  • Avoid outside sources of power, resupply, or leverage (i.e., capital, partnerships, brand equity)
  • Will on average play to a draw if we both play the game as well as it can be played (“…chess is a draw” according to famous grandmaster Gary Kasparov)

…and so on.

Are we now engaged in a strategic struggle for the ages?

No.

We’ve chopped all the degrees of strategic freedom save two: Our experience and our intellect. All the real world strategic levers I’ve outlined above lie in the negative space of a chess match.

In short, once you’ve taken nearly every strategic variable off the table, you are left with a chess match. It’s two people matching wits. That, folks, isn’t strategy, it’s a contest. It’s a highly regulated, constrained caricature of real world strategy.

Chess is a closed system. Real world strategy is an open system.

Strategy is about exploiting means to achieve ends. The first means anyone exploits in a strategic contest is whether to play on the terms available. While chess matches do offer the option of a “surrender,” to do so is to incur a loss and to provide a massive advantage to one’s adversary.

A second, and very important means, is the means of overinvestment. Overloading a single point of weakness (or strength) at a single point in time is a key real world capability. Put a team together to go after a single customer? Go ahead, it’s the real world. Overload on a chess board is a sequential thing, not an instantaneous one.

Other strategy games offer exit and overload options (like folding or going “all in” in the game of poker)–limiting losses or allowing asymmetric bets based on early indications that the game is or isn’t worth playing.

These moves are analogous to real world actions. But, they aren’t really an option in Chess.

If business were such that one could simply study all the moves in history and play the next match, it wouldn’t be all that tough, would it? That is essentially what has happened in chess. If it were so in business, IBM would have developed the Deep Blue machine for business back in the 1990’s and we would all be working for IBM at this point.

That, my friends, may be the best evidence for the misfit metaphor: If a computer can outwit a grandmaster (and they pretty much all can at this point), the game is one of logic and pure horsepower; not one of strategy.

If it were a game of strategy, the grandmaster would unplug the computer first, and then ask it to make its first move–while smiling of course.

Add to all this the cardinal observation that properly played chess will typically result in a draw (as noted above) and you have a very dangerous metaphor for your organization (implicitly, if you play well and lose, you did something wrong…Not always the case in business and life).

So, what?

I write this not to split hairs, but to illustrate the importance of the metaphors we put in front of our organizations–especially during times of change. So many of the metaphors we use are quirky; but some of them are downright dangerous.

If we are to pursue an enlightened approach to strategy, then using metaphors that speak to openness, flexibility, and canniness are much more on point than those that involve pure intellect applied to closed systems that imply no loss as long as strict discipline is maintained.

The metaphors you choose say a lot about how you view the world: Do you view your organization’s business environment as a closed, zero sum game, or something different?

File this one under strategy, change leadership, and perhaps curmudgeonly explication (as if LinkedIn needs more of that).

Note: The current Carlsen – Anand world chess championship match inspired thoughts for this article. Though the game of chess may not be a good business metaphor, the drama of championship chess matches can be quite a thing to behold and study.

Geoff Wilson is a strategy executive focused on the articulation of practical strategic principles for leadership. He also harbors the specific indignity of blundering into a fool’s mate one time in the 7th grade. He has just started a Twitter presence and still isn’t sure what to make of it, so consider following: @GeoffTWilson