Tag Archive for: Leadership

Why Leadership Is Like Country Music

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The leadership industry is doing to leadership what “Nashville Country” has done to Country & Western music.  How do you avoid it?

Every now and then, a thought strikes me that is really over the top but perhaps relevant to some of the, ah, freer thinkers out there.  Perhaps this is one of them.

The background

A few days ago, I ran across a post on LinkedIn that has received a lot of play (to the tune of 35,000 views as of this writing–quite a lot in today’s crowded LinkedIn Pulse area). It’s by the Chairman of Jet Blue Airways and fellow Stanford-ite Joel Peterson. The title?  Beware the Pseudo-Leader

Your link is here. I encourage you to follow it.

The gist of the article is that real leaders don’t become real leaders by being phony opportunists or jerks (my words, not necessarily Mr. Peterson’s). He puts his thoughts out there directly.

Great leaders are rarer than those occupying positions of leadership. The real leaders rarely got there by being jerks. Real leaders don’t bully those over whom they have stewardship.

Relatively straightforward stuff…except that it isn’t. We are in an age of leadership that is overwhelmed by an industry peddling leadership potions, tools, and approaches, all devoid of the foundational values that sometimes must be formed through experiences and trials.  We can read books that profile leaders and distill them into any number of frameworks.  We can attend seminars that show “how” to lead. But, we rarely can find the framework, tool, or tidy case study that tells us how to apply our values during defining moments.

To wit, Mr. Peterson says:

Some [today] have dismissed altogether the role of leaders in outcomes, arguing that leadership is little more than a vague attribution of causation to an individual – and therefore doesn’t matter. But other commentators have lamented that today’s “leadership industry” has altogether failed to produce real leaders. These commentators are coaching wannabe leaders to hoard power, claim credit, and ignore fidelity to values in pursuit of benighted self-interests.

The thought…

Did you get the core issue from the quote above?  Some people today are essentially saying that “leadership” is only vaguely related to outcomes. You and I know them.  Others are saying that leadership is merely about ploys, plays, and practices focused on gaining position and power.  You and I know them, too!

Witness executives attempting to install “leadership” models in their organizations, but excluding any reference to values, and you have a great example of this.

Why?  Because such models pedaled by the “leadership industry” have no heart.  They are, frankly dangerous to organizations of any kind, because they reduce leadership to a check the box thing and allow outcomes to subvert sustainable enterprise thinking. It’s up to you and me to watch out for it.

Leadership in this model is a lot like modern day country music–so called “Nashville Country”–where one only need reference a truck, beer, tight jeans, a dirt road, sitting on a tailgate drinking moonshine, and then claim “country.”

The leadership equivalent is the executive leadership model (and we see them in many companies) that starts with a toolkit on functional talents, peppers in a few platitudes about purpose, and closes down with a checklist of leadership “behaviors.”  These are the corporate equivalent of soulless country pop.

They may form a catchy tune for a while, but nobody will remember them 10 years from now.

As with all things, “leadership” can be destroyed by distillation into unrecognizable substances. A hard fought perspective from a legendary leader (think Mohandas Gandhi or Winston Churchill) gets distilled into a quote on a t-shirt.  A challenging business leadership issue like growing Southwest Airlines or Apple computer gets distilled into a framework of undeniable elegance but questionable usefulness.  Such things are meaningless without the values underpinning them.

So what?

Okay, so then what’s the answer?  How do we take leaders that think leadership is Florida Georgia Line or Luke Bryan and help them think it’s more like Johnny Cash or Hank Williams (senior, folks…senior) or George Jones?

As with most things, I like to start with admitting it.

If you think you might suffer from the country pop leadership deficiency (and today, you probably do), perhaps you should stop and write down your own leadership philosophy.  There are many models out there.  A couple that come to mind are Ed Ruggero’s The Leader’s Compass work here and Mike Figliuolo’s One Piece of Paper here.   Both Ed and Mike are great resources on avoiding the country pop disease. 

If, in doing so, you come up with a list that is only results, position, influence, power, procedures, processes, behaviors and praise, then you likely have a problem.

If your list excludes values–and by values I mean some sense of what is right or wrong to you outside of results and process–then you are far more Florida Georgia Line than you may think.

May we all avoid being pseudo-leaders (and listening to pseudo-country music).

Please share your thoughts in the comments area below!

 

 

The Art of the Self Scout

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You have to know your tendencies to improve yourself, so learn the art of the self scout.

 

How often do you really stop and look in the mirror?

No, I don’t mean literally.  I mean figuratively.  How often do you look at your performance, your style, your language, your approach to life and assess it?

Such an assessment isn’t easy.  Most of us would rather watch the latest rerun of Modern Family than have a moment of self reflection.

But…You know what?  It’s the only way to get better.

In sports, the art of the self scout is practically sacrosanct. In most major sports, teams at higher levels of competition spend a lot of time scouting their own approaches to playing the game.  They treat themselves just as their competitors would. They break down their tendencies, their tells, their strengths, and their weaknesses.  They have to, because their competition will.

Might as well find the problems first.

At the most elite levels of American football–the sport I have the most intimate experience within–self scouting goes all the way to the individual level, and then even to the situational level.  So, players not only evaluate themselves on how they play; but also how they play while facing 3rd and long against Tampa 2 press coverage.

Professionals go deep into how they play the game.  They watch film of themselves, seek guidance from coaches (who in the elite ranks are as much counselors and performance monitors as they are true coaches), and they adjust.

Did you get that?  They adjust.  They fix their tendencies and gaps.  Either that, or they get exposed by competitors who find the gaps.

Deliberate self reflection–self scouting–is a useful mindset for professionals of all sorts.

Go ahead, fire yourself…

One of the best examples of self scouting leading to action comes from the earlier days of Intel Corporation.  Mired in a price war with non-U.S. memory chip makers, Intel leaders Andy Grove and Gordon Moore engaged in an interesting conversation.  As recounted by Andy Grove, it went like this:

I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon and I asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?” Gordon answered without hesitation, “He would get us out of memories.” I stared at him, numb, then said, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?

They had the presence of mind and just enough ability to subvert their egos to step outside themselves and evaluate what they were doing…And change it.

How you do it

There are many ways to self scout.  You can ask for feedback from others on behaviors and performance.  You can look back at your body of work and critique it as if it were the other guy’s.  You can engage in the Andy Grove experiment and simply fire yourself.  Walk into your job one day as if you were new to it, and think about what you need to shake up first.

That last point might be the most powerful.  In my practice, when we talk about helping new executives get up to speed or digesting an acquisition, we use the tried and true (and maybe a bit trite) concept of the 100 day plan.  A 100 day plan is a way of galvanizing action against a vision of what needs to happen to quickly re-form and re-direct a role or company under new leadership.

The question I’ll ask you is this:  Why does it take turnover for a person to form a 100 day plan?  Why do you have to wait until the other guy has your role before you acknowledge the gaps in performance?

Why not self scout and close the gaps yourself?

Try it… Starting today, try forming your 100 day agenda as if you were new to your job.  I’m betting you’ll find something of value.

 

 

When Your Client Doesn’t Get It…

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Blaming your client or customer for their confusion is a good way to get yourself fired.

Ever get into a situation where your audience (of any kind) just doesn’t seem to understand or get comfortable with your drift?

For those of you who follow my writing across platforms, you may have run across an article I wrote this summer titled “It’s Never the Audience’s Fault.”  Here’s a link to it.

Based on circulation, you had to look pretty hard to catch it.

The thesis:  The audience’s discomfort with your performance, as a rule, says a lot more about your performance than about the audience.  So, refrain from blaming them.  They have brains, too!

I had the privilege to witness an exceptionally good example of bad behavior on this topic recently. A consultant I happened to be near witnessed behavior from a client that just didn’t make sense to the consultant.  The consultant, an expert with decades of experience, kept receiving requests from the client for guidance on process and approach.

The client was uncomfortable, confused, needy, and absolutely un-versed in the consultant’s approach to business. The client was naive. This created a morass of nerves on the client side.  And, I could tell, wasn’t all that pleasant to the consultant, either.

So, what did the consultant do?

The consultant blamed the client.

Openly.

In an exchange that was almost amusing if it weren’t terminal, the consultant referred in short form to the consultant’s expertise, the client’s lack of trust, and how the client’s communications and questions were driving cost and time.  To add a dessert topping to the interaction, the consultant proceeded to lecture the client on what “right” looks like for a professional services practice in terms of process and value.

What the consultant didn’t do was address the root issue:  The client’s discomfort.

The consultant sought to be understood instead of seeking to understand.  And, in the process, the consultant sapped any remaining client confidence that the consultant could actually deliver on a satisfactory experience.

The chemistry wasn’t there.

The consultant was fired–not for performance, but for lack of openness to the idea that the client’s discomfort just might be justified.

Professional services relationships provide a stage (and an economic stimulus for immediate feedback) for practicing leadership principles that matter.  This was a good example of one:

When your customer doesn’t get it, you have to look inwardly first.  It might not be their fault.

In Defense of Honesty

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Drama is worthless except for those who profit from it.  Find your best, graceful, honest self…and bring it.

I’ll just start with this:  I tend toward an idealistic world view.  I believe in establishing and testing core principles and doing my best to live by them. I launched a firm based on that.  I’m not perfect, and I’ve been around the block enough to know that a principled world view is one that can be dangerous to one’s career and to one’s reputation–even when principles are otherwise “right.”

It’s a little acknowledged fact that, as a western culture, we applaud and crowd around feats of physical courage.  We love people who “put their life on the line” and laud them accordingly.   People who are physically courageous might face questions of why they take such risks, but such risks are appreciated.  We saw this recently with a few U.S. citizens who stopped what might have been a much worse shooting incident on a train in France.  We laud them, rightfully so.

On the other hand… Moral courage is actually a very lonely thing.  The courage to stand on principle in the face of really rotten circumstances, to give up power, prestige, or even (gag!) money to have the ability to sleep well at night is…to put it bluntly…tough.  Why?  Well, it usually has to do with a matter of reflection.  When we are morally courageous, we cause other people to reflect on their relative lack of courage.  It’s easy for an individual to look at a selfless feat of physical courage and say “oh, my, I don’t think I could ever do that” and still maintain a solid self image. Change the circumstances to one of moral courage, and people are suddenly confronted with their own foibles more directly.

For the average person, It might be hard to put one’s self in harm’s way to save someone from being shot or run over by a car, but it’s (conceptually) actually pretty easy to walk away from an unethical leader.  However, throw in a bunch of other people following the same unethical leader, good money, and good old inertia, and the person who opts out of such a circumstance has to foster a lot more courage (again, conceptually) than a person who saves the damsel in distress.

Wait, do you mean that it’s harder to be morally courageous than to be physically courageous?

Yes, of course.  If such weren’t the case, we would see a lot more instances of whistle blowers and conscientious objectors vs. physical heroes.  We would see fewer instances of closed ranks, cloistered leaders, and silent exits of key executives. Instead, whistle blowers and conscientious objectors know that they can be vilified, ostracized, and ultimately damaged by the very act of calling out issues.

On a more micro level–one that I hope affects us all vs. the more macro issues faced by whistle blowers–if we saw more flexing of moral courage, we would see a lot less drama in the average group endeavor.

Why?

Because the core of moral courage is honesty.  It’s bringing your best, honest self to bear on any situation.

Drama typically ensues in organizations when there is ambiguity, passivity, apathy, and manipulation.  Drama, true to the metaphor, comes as much from what is happening behind the scenes as on stage.  And, believe you me, there are predatory minds that relish the ability to foster drama and discord.  They thrive on it.

So, my point:  If we are to flex our moral courage, we have to start practicing some level of honesty.  Honesty with ourselves is where it has to start.  Have we examined ourselves, our lives, our professional approaches?  The average human mind (and ego) really doesn’t do that well.  And, make no mistake, we are, on average…average.

Honesty with others is the next step.  Have we offered up, in careful but clear terms, an honest appraisal of situations and the mindsets around us, or do we let drama stir?  Have we examined our relationships in this manner?  Have we been willing to say “no” to those who foster discord? Keep in mind that it is possible to be honest without being brutal.  Most corporate jerks I know are “honest” on some superficial level, but they are also absolutely brutal at it.

Honesty requires grace, and honesty without grace is brutality.

Some might wonder why “honesty” rises to the top of a blog that is ostensibly about leadership and strategy and organizations and transformation.  I’ll just put it this way:

If you can’t be honest with yourself and those around you, you can’t be an effective strategist.  Drama–and the dishonesty underpinning it–obfuscates.  It creates ambiguity.  It creates friction.  It creates frustration.

I’ll say it again:  I’m an idealist. That means, for instance, that I don’t mind being called naive while acting in defense of honesty.  I have found that defending an honest point of view helps the predators and pretenders to reveal themselves for who they are much faster than if I play along.  I sleep well at night.

Bring your best honest self to the situation, and see what happens.  You might not like the reaction, but I guarantee you will like the outcome.

 

What You Can’t See Can Hurt You

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Blind spots can limit your effectiveness and derail your career. As you get more senior, they can make other people’s lives miserable, too. Ask around.

I’ll state this out front:

I’m not sure an article of this kind can be written without a taste of irony. If you know me, you will see my blind spots pop out from the text or in your mind. If you don’t know me, you know somebody like me and will see the same. It can’t be avoided. Writing an article on other people’s blind spots is an invitation for the “pot-kettle-black” defense.

I can live with that.

The Curious Case of Blind Spots

What’s a blind spot?

To answer that question, I’ll refer to a tool called the Johari window.

Johari what you say?

The Johari window is an interpersonal evaluation tool that is fantastically simple and at the same time fantastically powerful when used in honest feedback cultures. It looks like this:

johari

Basically, it’s a shorthand way of categorizing all the things that either help or hurt you in interactions with others.

There are things you know about yourself (that means you admit that their impact is real, not that you know that the thing exists) and that others know about you (like, for instance, that you have a massive temper).

That’s the “Arena.”

There are things that neither you nor others know about you (like how you might perform in a life or death circumstance). Those things might be revealed to be good or bad.

That’s the “Unknown.”

There are things you know about yourself that others don’t know about you (like that you have massive anxiety attacks before walking into a high-stakes meeting, but are good at hiding them from others).

That’s your “Façade.”

And, finally, there are things that other people know about you that you do not know about yourself.

Those are your “Blind Spots.”

By the way, I encourage you to study the Johari window. It’s a simple tool that I have used throughout my career, although not with everyone. For those who have been the victims of a personalized Johari window session with me, I’ll admit now that the time I spent on the topic is a fantastic indicator of how much I care for them. It’s a tool of caring…seriously.

The Johari window is fully contextual. You may have a professional façade that drops the moment you walk through the door at home or at your local pub. You may have a personal façade at home that hides the tyrannical manager you actually are at work. It works both ways.

But why blind spots?

Blind spots can be brutal. They don’t have to be necessarily bad, but they can be brutal. And I’ll get to that in a moment.

Why focus on blind spots rather than the other areas of the window?  I’ll put it this way:  Your blind spots are a direct measure of both the integrity of the people around you and your own openness to feedback and change. The other areas are either your willful submission to feedback (Arena), your willful withholding and manipulation (Façade), or, as we say in the business, TBD (Unknown).

But blind spots are the people around you willfully withholding from you and manipulating you, which makes them dangerous.

How they are dangerous…

The danger of blind spots comes either from the distaste they create or from the lever for manipulation they create.

I’ll demonstrate with a benign examples, then extend to something more malignant.

Imagine a highly capable manager who has a habit of chewing a pen. Yes, it’s objectively a bad habit, but it’s one that is tolerated at many levels of the organization. Everybody the person is in meetings with witnesses the person chewing on his pen. Even the manager himself knows he chews his pen, so you might say the action isn’t really a blind spot. But blind spots aren’t about the actions themselves—they’re about the impact of the actions. And so when half the people who witness our manager with a writing instrument between his teeth are genuinely disgusted by it, our friendly manager is slowly and gently blackballed from higher management because of “presence” issues or some other HR euphemism.

Our highly capable manager is now capped out by a habit that could be solved by one bit of feedback. The manager thinks he has a crutch, but others think he has a disgusting habit. Somebody needs to talk to him, and he himself needs to ask about his own blind spots.

A more malignant blind spot that is endemic across workforces relates to good traits being used by others for ill gains. This is the realm of gender and equitable pay discrimination. One worker works for $60K a year, while the person in the next cubicle is doing the same (or less) work but making $90K. Some managers rely on these sorts of disparities. They rely on loyalty and trust as a kind of blind spot. The manager is aware of the disparity and knows that the worker is selling their time cheap, but the worker thinks the company is fair and worthy of loyalty.

Loyalty, then, can be a highly blinding trait (in at least some cases, it can even be considered blind loyalty). When a person who buys into the “team player” work mentality is working for managers who are covertly playing an “every person for themselves” game, these sorts of disparities become real. A pay culture built on loyal, naïve, and willing “suckers” is the pain of blind spots writ large.

Of course there are blind spots that are so bad they are almost comical. I once knew an executive who had a deep and abiding habit of bending the truth in highly visible ways. And I don’t mean white lies like “you look great today,” although those were legion. I mean lies that are so obvious and known to so many people that the executive became a bit of a hall-talk laughing stock because of it. This particular individual would frequently launch a whopper that was verifiably deceptive to the tune of “I just had a meeting with so and so” when so and so was never in such a meeting and perhaps not even in the building. Of course, as is often the case with highly effective liars, executives like this only need to fool the people who feed them.  That particular executive’s skill at and focus on upwardly targeted deceptions overcame the reality of their ineptness in all the others. Everybody, except their superiors, knew they were generally dishonest.

Don’t be that guy!

Which brings me to my final point. Really bad situations come from blind spots in high places. A senior executive who has a blind spot about his habits or weaknesses or tells, or the foibles of ego (or loyalty, for that matter), is susceptible to manipulation in ways that perhaps lower level employees are not.

Why?

Because typical senior executives have positions of power. They can make decisions that allocate real resources, and because of that, they are studied by others more thoroughly than anyone else. Nearly everyone these execs interact with in a professional context is looking for resources or sales or even just favor. Therefore, nearly everyone studies their interactions with these higher-ups looking for their blind spots. The only antidote is to maintain a set of healthy, close relationships with people who will challenge you and reveal your blind spots. Still, combine aggressive character study with ego, and you have a recipe that no close relationship can overcome. Years of flattery make some people impervious to the truth in these circumstances.

So what?

Why take the time to write on blind spots?  Because they are actually solvable, but they require diligence and discipline, and because they are highly deleterious to most true strategic approaches to career or company leadership. You may not chew pens, but you might ignore subordinates or interrupt peers or fall victim to flattery. All you have to know is that your blind spots can work against you, or in the worst of cases, actually be used against you.

Ask around, and if people say you have no blind spots, ask some new people.

The Pain of Virtual Leadership

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We all talk a big game.  It’s what we do when the chips are down that shows the kind of leader we are.

In case you missed it, today fed us an interesting anecdote in the world of fast growing companies.

Lauded startup Zirtual, a darling of the flexible work scene, announced that it was “pausing operations” in a terse and terminally unfunny email from founder and CEO Maren Kate Donovan delivered to customers just after 6am ET today.

“I realize this news comes incredibly fast and I am truly sorry for the Z-shaped hole this will leave in your lives and business.”

The Z-shaped hole?

Yes, that was in the letter to customers.

Now, the impact on customers of a sudden and absolutely unforeseen shutdown of a key administrative service is tough.  But, what about the impact on the more than 400 employees Zirtual had?  Of course, they knew.  Right?

Wrong.  Zirtual’s assistants found out by being locked out of their email accounts.

Yes, that’s right, the company folded and didn’t tell its employees until afterward.

So what?  Right?  Happens all the time.

Well… Sorta.   This one comes with a lesson.

It’s a lesson called: Don’t let your mouth write checks your character won’t cash.

To wit:  just 21 days ago, erstwhile Zirtual CEO Maren Kate Donovan wrote an article titled “How to Manage Chaos during a Company Shakeup” in Fortune.  Here’s your link.   It’s juicy with “you gotta be kidding me” quotes.   Such as:

“My team is without a doubt my biggest asset, which is something I never take for granted. So it’s vital to keep them in the loop during periods of change and consistently show support. Because what my employees don’t know could ultimately hurt the entire business. The sooner your team knows about upcoming shifts in the company—the better.”

Yeah.  She wrote that.

And…In a section titled “Don’t worry about your image” she drops this whopper:

“Oftentimes being honest about your own uncertainties in tough times relays a stronger message than being stern.”

Now, thanks to an early career stint at a venture-lending operation, I’ve witnessed the pain of a company shutdown in a few (perhaps half a dozen) instances and actually liquidated one. I understand the pain. I do not write this to stomp on a company that obviously has just imploded for some as-yet-to-be determined reason.

I write it because of one reality:  We all talk big.  Some people with big platforms and bullhorns talk the loudest.  They talk the loudest about being “reassuring” and being “vulnerable.”

We all talk big.

But, when the chips are down, all the big talk is useless.  It’s how you act when you are in the worst of circumstances that defines your (and my) character.

In good times, it’s easy to write for Fortune about your warm fuzzy leadership style.  Rarely is such commentary revealed to be hooey so quickly as in the Zirtual case.

Maren Kate Donovan doubtless has had a bad few days lately.  And, I’m sure there will be more written about Zirtual over the coming weeks as the facts of a 400+ employee company abruptly imploding comes to light.

Still, it’s a case study in failed communication; and a case study in faux leadership.

 

Independence Day and Leadership Tyrannies

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Maybe the Declaration of Independence has some seeds of wisdom for those of us who would govern or follow within even the smallest of enterprises.

It’s Independence Day in the U.S.

And, while many Americans revel in the holiday by drinking, eating, gathering, and–yes–blowing a few things up (I know I do); it’s good to remember the underpinnings of the holiday…Namely a few, disgruntled subjects who decided that enough was enough.

There’s a lesson in the Declaration of Independence for those of us who lead and govern other people.  That lesson applies whether we are governing as a part of an actual government or governing as a leader in a company or other bureaucracy (a term used in the real sense, not the pejorative).

Those British subjects who decided it was time to vote with their feet, their fortunes, and their futures knew that it wasn’t without risk.  But the words placed in the Declaration ring throughout the years, and perhaps throughout your own head as you lead.  They should ring throughout your head if you are led by a despot, a tyrant, or a jerk.

To wit:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Kind of applies to your life as a professional and as a citizen, right?

As someone who has lived his professional life as a consultant to top management and as a corporate executive, I’m utterly sensitive to old irony of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The Declaration gives a model of what leaders and “subjects” need to watch out for in its list of grievances against George III.

I’ll pick a few, you read the rest.

The “Yes Men” brought to you by George III:

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

The imposition of corporate taxes through time, compliance, and worthless initiative:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

The squashing of entrepreneurial spirit:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.

And, of course, the mercenary manager or consultant as proxy for direct tyranny:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

I figured I’d write this not to make light of the Declaration of Independence or of your and my own personal circumstances as leaders and followers, but to make a parallel to a nearly forgotten time when a land’s wealthiest people decided that their leader had done enough to merit severing of ties; and when a leader who was possibly not as despotic as the Declaration declares lost a treasure trove of talent and resources through insensitivity and stubbornness.

If enough was enough for those subjects of Great Britain, what’s your threshold as follower?

On the other side of the coin, if enough was enough for the King to lose the colonies, what are you doing as leader of your own realm that is driving away the most valuable of your people and resources?

It’s worth pondering.

For my fellow Americans:  Happy Independence Day.  For all my other friends, connections, and readers, it’s worth reading that most extraordinary of political and philosophical documents for what it may mean to you.

I welcome your comments.

Your Sleeping Dogs Can Bite You

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In sales, customer service, and leadership, the cultivation of ignorant customers and followers is common, and figuratively lethal.

“We call those customers our sleeping dogs.”

The senior executive who said this was referring to customers who were being overcharged. You know, the customers who are really profitable?  The ones who are ignorant of their bad deal?

The executive referred to them as his “sleeping dogs” to honor an unspoken policy that loudly said “let sleeping dogs lie.”  As in, don’t bother a customer who is content to stay with a bad deal.

They exist in many businesses. In the cable and wireless space, they are the ones whose better deal is literally a few minutes away by phone. In the industrial space, they are the customers who have taken annual price increases loyally until their current deal is so far out of market that they could hire the procurement professional they sorely need if they only asked for a market price re-set.

The problem with this executive’s thinking is this:  Sleeping dogs bite.

A Matter of Service, and Ethics…

It’s a fact of life that if you choose not to serve your customers, somebody else will. A corollary to that is that if you bank on the ignorance of your customers, you are banking on a very fleeting thing.

Now, I’ve gone far enough so that some of you are thinking I’m writing about really unethical behavior, but that is only partly the case.

Sure, a company that charges your grandmother $25 a month for the Sunday paper (true story…) is profiting from the ignorance of a customer, but such behavior rarely passes the red face test when it’s found out.

The Lost Art of Calling on Customers

The reality is that in the realm of good sales and customer service, we treat far, far too many customers as sleeping dogs even when we are making only a fair profit from them.

You know why?

It’s the same reason our executive at the start of the story had: We are scared of our customer. We are scared that we might learn of our own shortcomings, or how unhappy the customer really is (but just hasn’t gotten around to firing your company).

In the modern world of sales and service (well, at least dating back to the fax machine), many transactions can be carried out virtually and without human interaction. Also, because many younger people have grown up without actually calling on people or interacting with them (I’m talking to you, Millennials), customers are being left alone as sleeping dogs far more often than in the past.

Combine that with a healthy dose of conflict avoidance on the part of many of the sleeping dogs, and you have a recipe for customer defection.

The Learning Applies to Leaders, Too

Don’t kid yourself that there aren’t also a lot followers who could be considered sleeping dogs as well.  You know them?  They are the people who are making 70% of the salary of the guy next to them while doing twice the work.

They deserve better customer service, too.  If you know this inequitable circumstance exists, and bank on it; you are right there with the friendly senior executive in my starting paragraph.  No, I’m not saying that we should all go out and re-trade our employees’ comp plans, I’m saying that your tolerance for inequity is a defining trait of your leadership profile.  We all have some tolerance for it, some of us to the extreme.  If you are found out by your followers as a leader who readily and enthusiastically allows a follower to sell himself too cheaply; you will lose their trust.

Count on it.

So What…

What this means is that in your customer service, sales, and leadership approaches, you have to embed a much better appreciation for sensing what customers are thinking. Sometimes, it’s a simple phone call from a customer service rep to see what is working (or not). Sometimes, sure, it’s a customer survey. Sometimes, yes, it’s an active sales effort to re-set pricing with customers or employees whose deals are, shall we say, out of market.

In doing so, you will create better customer and employee loyalty, you will learn more about your own company’s strengths and weaknesses, and you just might generate a moment of truth that brings in a few more customers via referrals and good press.

A customer loss is a damaging thing. In most industries, the cost of customer acquisition is far higher than the true cost of retention. The same is true (in spades) for employees.  A customer or employee lost to negligence is far worse—kind of like a dog bite.

When it comes to your sales, service, and leadership approach, beware letting sleeping dogs lie.

The near-term profit is rarely worth the long-term pain.

I welcome your thoughts and reflections.

How Improv Can Reinforce Your Strategy

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For business strategists to be flexible and responsive, they must work like the best of improv performers.

A few months ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to take our children to an improvisational comedy workshop. In the midst of getting to watch my better half pantomime milking a cow in front of 50 people, I was reminded of one of the more interesting leadership realities.

The best leaders, like the best improv performers, are constant in their ability to give and take. The best improv performers can charm the hardest of audiences, and the best leaders can lead in the most challenging of circumstances.

But. Rather than go into leadership as improv—a well-trodden trail at this  point (just Google it)—I thought it interesting to explore another very current application: business strategy as improv.

The Core of Improvisational Anything

In any sort of improvisational performance, be it music, comedy, dance, or otherwise, a core tenet is called “Yes…and.” Yes…and is the shorthand for how performers improvise together. They take something someone else has said or played, interpret it, and then take off on their own with it before teeing it up for the next performer.

It goes something like this:

Performer 1:  “Today, I tried to walk the cat.”

Performer 2:  “Yes…and you probably found that the cat walked you…”

Except with a wittier writer, you might have laughed out loud.  It’s important to note that Yes…and is an idea in practice, so you don’t hear performers actually saying “yes…and” out loud during an improv performance (well, not often).

At its core, improv requires a few things.

It requires perception; the performer must be constantly focused on what others are doing, not on what they will do. Being self-focused is a surefire way to failure as an improv performer. So, you listen, and watch, and look for insights.

It requires agreement and acceptance. Improv starts with “yes” no matter what is said. Your counterpart flubs it, and you say yes; you start with yes and shape the conversation from there. Sure, you interpret action and revise approach, but you do it while moving forward.

It requires interpretation. The joy of improvisational comedy is that it often results in comedic insights through unique interpretations of a stated fact.

It requires action. The wheels of an improv performance don’t—can’t—stop. You never see an effective improv act that taps the brakes in the middle to “get things right” or “study further.”  Improvisers take the “and” part of “Yes…and” seriously. It’s where they deliver.

Applying Improv to Strategy

There is a great, growing insight in the world of management strategy that strategic planning approaches are mistimed to the real world. Some companies do 3- or 5-year strategic plans as deep studies and then go to “execute,” when meanwhile, the world is working at a much faster pace. The strategy that’s written today is out of date in a month if not a week; it’s a script in a world that requires improv.

Strategy is becoming constant motion and revision. It’s becoming improvisation within a framework vs. scripting and perfecting all actions and plans. So, we seek agility. We seek to plan and execute as a perpetual thought process versus a periodic one.

Yes…and that is where improv comes in.

As strategic leaders, we must establish the framework of our strategy. Study hard, know what you know (and don’t), and ensure alignment on core values and mission areas for the organization. And then, encourage and lead your organization through constant (or at least much more frequently periodic) perception, acceptance, interpretation, and action.

Effective strategists perceive by listening to their people, customers, markets, and macro trends and seeking insights.

They accept by ensuring that the facts they perceive, whatever they might be, are the facts. They avoid spin, confront reality, and say “YES!”

They interpret what they have perceived and accepted by formulating and reformulating their strategies in microcycles and being explicit about the microcycles.

And they act by ensuring that their initiatives, messages, and personal actions have integrity.

The strategist as improvisational artist is a new animal. For too long, we have thought of strategists as long-range thinkers devoid of any action orientation. But now, it’s time to embrace “Yes…and” in our strategies.

I welcome your comments.

Always Do It Again Like the First Time…

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Is the secret to life and professionalism finding the ability to lead, love, and perform with the fervor you once had?

Remember the first time you had to really perform in a meeting? Or the first time you had to give a subordinate a performance review? Or maybe the first time you were responsible for the sales call?

How about the first time you said “I love you” to a significant other and meant it?

Maybe you remember the first time you tried really hard to master a sport, or an art, or a language. You found a link between passion and performance. You went through pain or anguish or nervous uncertainty to get there.

Maybe these things don’t resonate for you, but still, there’s a first time for everything. And for those things we very much want to do well on, we do the work, we deliver with feeling. We, in short, find a way. The first time is hard won.

Unfortunately, for a lot of the things I just listed, there’s also a one hundredth time. For some performances, there is a ten thousandth time.

The Professional’s Call

This weekend, I had the opportunity to witness the performance of a virtuoso jazz musician in an intimate setting. I was able to see and hear the music flow from someplace within him that I couldn’t see. As is sometimes the case when we witness amazing talent in action, I struggled to understand how perfect the performance seemed, even when almost all of it was improvised (it was, after all, jazz).

During an intermission, the musician–acting as our host–told those of us in the audience an interesting anecdote about the great performer Burt Bacharach.

Bacharach is known for his performance of the song Alfie, a somber, meaningful song about life. Here it is:

Through some mental math, our host related that Bacharach, over his career, has likely performed Alfie more than 10,000 times. That’s 10,000 instances of a performer’s finding the same passion and emotion in an activity that he had the very first time. Our host explained that being able to perform every time with the passion of the first is, in a lot of ways, a secret to life.

A Lesson for Life and Work

The anecdote is a profound illustration of what it means to be a professional. It’s also, I think, a profound illustration of what it means to maintain curiosity, wonder, and passion within a world of banality and repetition.

Think about it. Can you imagine being able to experience the joy and wonder you felt during your first kiss during the goodnight kiss on your 30th anniversary? Can you imagine being able to say “I love you” today to your spouse with the same trepidation and sense of the future you had the first time?

What a rush!

A friend and mentor of mine once related to me that she knew she was doing well as a professional when she no longer felt nervous walking into meetings with senior executives; the act of leading meetings had become a rote exercise. I respect this point of view. I’ve lived through the maturation that she mentioned, and I’ve delivered the same insight to others. But while the maturity of professionalism is important, so is the passion.

I’ve witnessed countless professionals “going through the motions.”  They do endless meetings with no soul and no passion for vision or values. They work to their incentives like coin-operated machines. They look elsewhere for their passion and in the meantime demolish the hopes of their audiences. Except that their audiences are the people in their organizations or, in the worst cases, their potential business partners and customers.

We professionals, like the performers we really all are, must remember to go back to the passion (if not the nerves) of the first time if we are to deliver our own virtuosic performance on the hundredth or the thousandth time. If we seek to move others, we have to break out of the professional monotony that comes to us and deliver with feeling, and this matters whether you are a jazz pianist or a financial analyst.

Find an insight. Find something new in every repetition. Rediscover the first time you did it. Find the passion that comes with the first time—the hard-won first time—every time, and I do think that you’ll find at least one secret to life.