Tag Archive for: management

The Most Important Distinction A CEO Makes

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As CEO, be explicit about the state of conflict you face, and only go to war when it’s fully warranted.

 

“The board looks at us like we are the Navy Seals,” the executive told me. “We agree on a number and go get it—year in and year out—and we need someone on the team to soften that view.”

The exec was looking for a “softener” in the form of a person who could put a strategic wrapper around what amounted to a reputation for being single-minded financial performers. The Navy Seals comparison might have even been a little strong since the half-dozen or so Navy Seals I know would say that frogmen rarely just “follow orders.”  That’s what the Marines do, and they do it well, but it’s not as sexy to compare yourself to leathernecks.

But I digress. The gist is that the “person” the executive was looking for would be sorely misplaced. Let me tell you why.

Wartime vs. Peacetime

When it comes to C-level executives, there really are two different leadership mindsets: wartime and peacetime. This is covered very well by author, venture capitalist, and former CEO Ben Horowitz on his blog, here. I’m going to take a slightly different angle than Ben and say that a great executive can dial up both mindsets, but he or she has to be explicit about it. Specifically, in wartime, there is no tomorrow, and in peacetime, it’s all about tomorrow.

I write a lot about respect and healthy strategic outlooks for high-performing organizations, but I don’t spend a lot of time on financial and value-based performance. Why?  Because it’s a prerequisite; If you don’t create value or enable it as an executive, you’re probably not going to cut it. As I wrote nearly a year ago: Performance is the prerequisite. The latest management article on how mindfulness unlocks your team’s performance is all nice, but financial performance is where the median CEO is going to be evaluated. So, balancing performance needs and organizational “health” is, fundamentally, what value-based strategy is all about. In the purest sense, and in the short term, performance and health can be highly conflicting, and that is why executives—really leaders of any stripe—need to manage the balance, which is where the wartime/peacetime mindset conflict comes into play.

A wartime mindset means that decisions get made, by me, every day. It means I don’t have time for debate and discussion, that emotion and, yes, intensity are a part of the puzzle. In wartime, there is no comfort in comfort—it’s win or else. You fight through injury.  You forego pleasantries. Wartime mindsets are most appropriate in business during times of economic crisis, customer crisis, or product transition/launch/retirement, during deals, and, most importantly, during times of competitive attack. As Horowitz puts it, during times of existential threat.

In wartime, a leader makes an objective or else. Take that hill!  Hold that beach!  Cut 50 FTE!  Close that deal!  They are all the same. Mind if I curse? Was I rude? Oh, you didn’t like that I threw that document on the table? It bothers you to have to work past 7?  Comes with the territory. It takes a strong stomach. Suck it up. It’s wartime.

A peacetime mindset is one of building. It means that studies can be done. It means that I might defer a decision for a year (or more in some companies) because…bluntly…I don’t have to make it. It’s where investment and improvement come into play. It’s the mindset that focuses on people’s careers, the future of the company, and the weaknesses that need to be addressed (but not until the next employee conference). As Horowitz puts it, it’s the time to “focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths.”

It is a mistake to think of wartime as better than peacetime. They are different, and executives must understand the difference. Some will be much better leaders in peacetime than in wartime, although that’s beside the point.

What’s important is that great companies are built  with a peacetime mindset and sustained with a wartime mindset.

And so, the most important distinction

Executives, especially CEOs, must be explicit about the state of war a company is in; that distinction drives all others. Why must the CEO be explicit?  Because it’s not always obvious to others in the organization. To use the U.S. military’s old DEFense CONdition ratings:  When the CEO is at DEFCON 1 (signaling nuclear war) and the organization is at DEFCON 5 (signaling peacetime), things get discombobulated.

A CEO might be at war based on things the CEO and only the CEO knows, while the rest of the organization might be at peace because, well, things seem to be going well. This is a recipe for disaster as the CEO continually churns through people, disregards ideas,  and thinks short term without real rhyme or reason. If you operate as if it’s wartime and everyone thinks it’s peacetime, you will demoralize your people. CEOs who have overweening focus on the short term (layoffs, cost cutting, and general pressure) while extolling their company’s strong financial performance year in and year out run into this problem. They create cognitive dissonance in the organization.

A CEO might be at peace in an organization that knows it’s at war, and then the opposite thing happens: the CEO is fiddling with transformation or branding while the customer base is burning. If you operate as a peacetime CEO and everyone thinks it’s wartime, you will lose credibility quickly. There’s a reason we still talk about Nero: a CEO who fails to acknowledge that there are existential threats will lose his or her organization.

That is why leaders, CEOs and others, need to be clear on how they view their worlds. They need to be clear that DEFCON 1 behavior (slashing product lines and replacing people) is only warranted by DEFCON 1 threats, so they need to get people on the same page. Everyone also needs to be clear when DEFCON 5 behavior (delaying decision on a project viewed as critical by others or by a faction within the company) is warranted as well.

This is the most important distinction a CEO will make in the day-to-day operation of a company:  Wartime or peacetime.

A cautionary note on “artificial” wartime

Yeah, but we want a team of warriors, you say. So you continually keep the pressure on through artificial means—even lying to people about the true state of things to make them seem more dire—in order to ensure that people keep an edge or a warrior mindset.

I get it. It’s sexy, like saying you’re a Navy Seal. But it’s also dangerous.

From analyses on the topic of combat fatigue, it’s a known fact that normal people cannot sustain a wartime mindset for an extended period of time. Those who are in active, continuous combat for more than a month generally start to lose effectiveness. Those who are in active continuous combat for more than a couple of months typically become psychiatric casualties. This is true in actual combat, and I’d propose that it’s true in figurative combat.

Dave Grossman, a researcher on the science of combat and killing, outlines from an earlier study that after the beaches of Normandy in World War II, 98% of soldiers who survived constant combat for 60 days had become psychiatric casualties. The other 2%?  They were characterized as “aggressive psychopathic personalities.”

Let that sink in for a second.

The negatives of manufacturing a wartime mindset for your organization are legion. Not only do you (1) place focus on survival vs. building as outlined above, you (2) create an environment in which normal people struggle to thrive for any extended period of time and (3) facilitate the rise of psychopathic personalities who actually can handle the sustained pressure.

It makes no difference whether the artificial pressure is placed by the CEO herself or by some proxy, another C-Level executive or consultant tasked with “cracking the whip” so that the CEO can be the good cop.

So, be explicit about the DEFCON you face, and only go to war when it’s fully warranted. Again, this is the most important distinction you will make as CEO.

While executives (like the one in my opening story) may recognize that their boards see them as mercenaries who propagate a state of war because they act like it, they can’t solve that by adding peaceniks to the team; the peaceniks won’t be heard if the entire organization is charged for combat or thinks the C-level executives only expect combat mentalities. Culture, as I’ve written before here, will crush even the best change agents. The executives have to acknowledge—themselves—a credible state of war or peace within the organization and actually live it out.

And if they can’t change?  Well…

How Is Your Team Like Your Teeth?

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A team can be naturally beautiful, or just pretty on the outside…Know whether your team has good hygiene, or just a good set of veneers.

 

One of the striking things about celebrities today, particularly U.S. celebrities, is that they rarely have questionable teeth. Their teeth are all pearly white, straight as a keyboard, and larger than life.

How can that be?

I mean, anyone need only look as far back as the 1980s to see natural teeth on actors of all types; perhaps the best illustrations would be Tom Cruise’s and Kelly McGillis’s choppers in Top Gun.  They weren’t bad by real people’s standards…they were real.  But by today’s standards, they were…subpar.  Both actors have taken steps since then, and both doubtlessly invested plenty of cash.

Today, even the lowest level budding stars get work done on their teeth (and other things) to the point that it’s hard to tell what’s real anymore.  The fundamental question one might reasonably ask is:  Who has good hygiene vs. just a good fixer?

That doesn’t matter when you’re picking your movie stars, but it does matter when you’re picking your next team, and that’s the point of this post.

Your teeth, your team

Like the glamorous celebrity’s grill, the team you are joining might be forged out of natural beauty, strong roots, and superb genetics, or it might be held together with a high-tech patchwork of braces, veneers, and chemicals.  It might be the result of great hygiene and spectacular care, or it might be the result of a shortcut to the local strip mall for some tenderness.

Is there a difference?

When it comes to teeth?  No.  But when it comes to your team?  Absolutely. That team you’re thinking of joining needs roots, genetics, and good hygiene.  It needs good relationships, alignment, and constant care.

But how can you tell whether your team is composed of veneers held by a brace?

Easy, test for hygiene.  Test for relationships, alignment, and—yes—joy; there is no joy in a team of artificial players.  Test for values. Ask whether team members regard each other as people; ask how they spend their time out of work. Plenty of teams will talk about concepts of doing good, values, camaraderie, and such, but those are veneers.  Fewer teams can point to times when fundamental values have been challenged and how they resolved the challenges.  That’s where teams are made…the defining moments.

This is a short post that is more about your career and your personal choices than it is about the team you’re a part of.  It’s rare that a single member can change the position of an entire team unless that member is the leader. So when it comes to your team, you can either grin and bear the reality of a team of veneers, or you can smile at the opportunity to be a part of something deeper.

Now it’s your turn:  What does a team you can smile at look like?  Leave a reply if you have a moment.

Top WGP Blog Posts of 2015

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In case you missed them, these were the top posts of 2015…

 

Dear readers:

2015’s top posts were comfortably eclectic.  Top posts in 2015 had a good mix of behavioral, strategic, ethical, and practical leadership topics.  I thought you might enjoy a digest of the top posts along with an honorable mention list of hot posts from LinkedIn Pulse.

Though not an essential aspect of a blog targeted to managers and leaders of all stripes, your comments are always welcome; and form perhaps the best kind of feedback and “reward” I receive.

In fact… If your favorite post isn’t in the top lists, let others know what it is.

2015 has been a time of finding this blog’s voice.  I suppose that will never fully end.  Looking forward, I’m always interested in suggestions and topics for the blog.  Send them my way via info@wilsongrowthpartners.com.

Here’s to a great 2016!

Geoff

 

Top 10 posts on WGP in 2015

 

  1. In Defense of Honesty 
  2. Being Strategic Means Naming Your Elephants
  3. Good Governance Depends on Whom You Ask…
  4. When “Strategic” Cost Reduction is Really Just Whacking
  5. 90 Percent of Everything is Crap
  6. The Pornographication of Motivation and Values
  7. Why Your Entrepreneurs Leave
  8. One Habit to Create Action From Every Meeting
  9. The Pain of Virtual Leadership
  10. Coffee and a Do Not: Multi Tasking in Meetings

 

Honorable mention:  Top WGP posts as rated on LinkedIn Pulse in 2015

 

  1. #Likeagirl, evidence, and leadership
  2. New England Patriots and Uncanny Perfection
  3. Best Advice:  How to Assess Your Next Leader
  4. 8 Things Your Consultants Say About You
  5. Let’s Face It, I’m Smarter Than You

 

You Have Voted

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When it comes to strategy, leadership, and life, you vote more often than you think you do.

 

Choices are everywhere.  You make them from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you fall fast asleep at night.

This is an article about choices…Votes, if you will.

When it comes to your life as a professional, you vote all day every day. No, it’s true. You vote for lunch (you know…”What do you want for lunch?” “Salad.” Easy, right?). You vote for when the next meeting will happen.  You may even be in a position to vote for what direction your company will go.

All of these are moments when you cast a vote.

But what about all the votes you make that you don’t even know about? The seemingly little votes that are actually huge?  You may know them as votes for poor sales strategy or a bad leader or a toxic company culture, but whatever the case, you are likely making them because you are staying put and shutting up.

One of the aspects I absolutely loved about the large professional services firm that I spent a good portion of my career within was a concept called the obligation to dissent.

The obligation to dissent was the notion that all people, whether the least tenured or the most, had the obligation to put their dissenting point of view on the table during any interaction.

Disagree with the path a strategy is taking?  Put a competing point of view out there. Think someone isn’t living up to the values espoused by the firm?  Say so. You had an obligation.  Voting “present” was not expected of you.

So how does this apply to you, today, as a professional?

I’ll give you one hint, and I ask that you act on it—here it is: Ask a question.

Yep, that’s all.

Ask a question.

You see a strategy that is poorly structured or conceived?  Ask “What about this better structured alternative?”

You see a leader who is behaving in a way that does not reflect the values of the company?  Ask “is this how you expect me to act with my people?”

You see people complaining about the status quo?  Ask “so what are we going to do about it?”

You might be listened to, and you might just retain a little bit of your own self respect.  In fact, the way people around you react to your placing a thoughtful, constructive question on the table will tell you plenty about where you stand.  Try it out.

Legendary rock band Rush has a classic track out there called Freewill, and it contains this doozy of a lyric:

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

So, yes, you bear the blame for choices (or “votes”) you didn’t make. You work for an unethical leader?  Well, you voted for him, so stop complaining. You are executing a strategy that might be termed “crappy?”  Well, you voted for it. You live within a corporate culture that is toxic?  You got it:  All on you, my friend.

Some might say I’m blaming the victim here. They will say that I’m ignoring the personal situations of people who stay with bad leaders, companies, spouses, what have you.  To them I’ll say this:  You have a choice to be constructive or destructive. Endorsing a bad leader, environment, family situation, or whatever is destructive to you and to the people who are the victims of your tacit consent.

The sincerest form of constructive behavior, whether it be in forming global corporate strategies or simply deciding how to live your life, is to name the issues and work on them diligently.  If you are one who is content to run out the clock on your career by passively voting for a world you wouldn’t intentionally subject others to, just remember…

You have voted.

When the Core Cracks

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How’s your team doing…Really?

In the world of Collegiate football, we saw an interesting lesson on team yesterday.  It goes to the notion of “Core Cracking” first put forth by longtime NBA coach Pat Riley years ago…Namely that when the core of your team cracks, you are in trouble.

The Story:

The defending national champion and erstwhile Big 10 juggernaut Ohio State Buckeyes endured their first regular season conference defeat in years yesterday.  The Buckeyes fell to the Michigan State Spartans 17 – 14 on a last minute field goal.  Close game, worthy opponent (well, worthy to all but the most insufferable Buckeyes), tough loss, great team.  Not much to argue there.

However, after the game, the team’s core cracked.  Elite Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliot attacked his coaches’ play calling acumen in the press and announced his intention to leave the school for the professional ranks.

“Honestly, this is my last game in the Shoe, I mean, there’s no chance of me coming back next year.”

and

“I deserve more than [12] carries. I really do. I can’t speak for the playcaller. I don’t know what was going on.”

That was followed quickly by the announcement (on Twitter, of all places) of last year’s hero quarterback, Cardale Jones, that he would not return to Ohio State.

https://twitter.com/CJ12_/status/668222222906040321/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

This has resulted in some amusing posts and analysis, like this doozy from Lost Lettermen:

But, there’s more to this story.

A quick analysis

I’m not one to elevate 18 – 22 year old young men in entertainment industries to hero status.  Full stop.  That’s why you rarely see me leverage college sports in discussing leadership and strategy.  Young people are…young.  It’s clear that Elliot and Jones were both very disappointed in a tough loss; and they put their disappointment on display in some very public ways.

But…

They also displayed a very important leading indicator of a team core that has cracked.  They brought things out of the locker room that would have best been handled inside it.

They also betrayed a more selfish focus in a very public forum than one would necessarily expect from team sport athletes and entertainers.  They showed, in moments of honesty, that it was time to move on.

To be clear, that’s fully okay.  It’s also not a team mentality.

Applications for us all

Any one of us is at any point a team member or leader. That applies to family and it applies to work.  We lead or are part of teams.

But a team isn’t just a group of people doing their jobs.  It’s a group of people doing a job.  Note the difference.

When you cultivate a group of people who focus on doing their jobs, and who focus on the paycheck that job gets them, you have only cultivated a means to an outcome.  A team, with all its implications of loyalty, leverage, and performance, is far, far more than that.

The Ohio State University has had an outstanding football program for a long time, and is really more the object of this post and not the subject.  The subject is team.  If you have a team, it has a core.  If that core cracks, you no longer have a team.

When your most senior leaders repeatedly reference their own self interests, their own careers, and their own intentions more often than those of the overall organization…Well…

Dear Strategist: Euthanize Your Gerbils

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When it comes to strategy…  The first thing we do, let’s kill all the gerbils.

On the heels of an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago titled “Being Strategic Means Naming Your Elephants,” I thought it useful to go to the other end of the spectrum…

Do you ever find yourself focused on the wrong things?

It’s ok… Admit it.

Sometimes we all get focused on things that don’t really matter to our missions.  They come in the form of shiny objects or minor brush fires that we chase to either develop or quash.

An old colleague of mine once referred to such things as “gerbils.” Gerbils are small, hairy, cute, hungry, and long-tailed. In other words, gerbils are a waste of time.

And we need to euthanize as many of them as we can.

First, a little background from my own professional life

As someone who has historically kept a very full calendar, and who continues to do so today, I have an interesting means of testing where I spend my time…  I can simply look at my calendar.

A couple of years ago, while serving as an executive in a diversified firm, I did such an analysis of my time. I was able to pull my calendared time into a spreadsheet, categorize it, and look at the results. For the record–or perhaps the hall of shame in some people’s books–the analysis covered 1,943 work hours over the course of 272 days. That’s an average of 7.14 hours a day, including weekends…about 50 hours scheduled per week.

I found that a significant minority of my time was being spent on activities for a function that was outside of my own organization’s mission.  It was remarkable to see that being “helpful” and focusing on what was at any moment labeled “important” in the micro led to what an objective observer might call a dilution of mission through allocation of time available in the macro.

To be clear, I found the split of time rewarding because I was able to get things done. I was able to help people.  I was running to fire, helping where the help was needed most.

And I was probably wrong.

I shared the analysis with other key executives and with my team and quickly explained what I saw as “wrong” with my time allocation.  I then set about to do more of the things that were important to my own mission, and to do less of (or delegate) those things that were not important.

I guess you could say I set out to euthanize the gerbils in my own agenda.

But teams and corporations have gerbils, too…and that’s where this gets juicy.

Gerbils in your company

Gerbils, like the unnamed elephants that I mentioned in my previous animal-analogy post, suck the life out of your agenda.  They tend to come in the form of executive flights of fancy or risk-averse “toe in the water” efforts.  They, by definition, are:

  • Small – They generally don’t “move the needle” for the agenda they embed within.
  • Hairy – They come with risks or needs for attention that are completely out-sized to their impact.
  • Cute – For some reason, they tend to captivate attention…examples are new products that have no market or initiatives that are vain pursuits.
  • Hungry – They eat a lot of resources to execute, and those resources have a much higher return on investment when deployed elsewhere.
  • Long-tailed – This is where the gerbil analogy really takes flight–your gerbils have long tails…they last a long time…they are persistent.

With that description, are you seeing any gerbils in your company’s corporate agenda?  Perhaps it’s a new product that’s eating up time and money that should be used to grow the company elsewhere.  Maybe it’s a cautious deployment of resources in a sub-scale manner against an opportunity that management just isn’t sure about.  Maybe it’s an initiative focused on engaging employees that the employees already view as a cynical ploy.  Maybe in your company it’s the kabuki theater of strategic planning itself that is a gerbil.

You get it?  Small, Hairy, Cute, Hungry, Long-tailed…akin to worthless.

In the midst of a strategy development discussion, a leadership team of one mid-sized company found 130 strategic initiatives to place on its agenda.

130!

It’s a rare management team that can generate much less manage 130 truly strategic initiatives.

Time to kill some gerbils.

But how?

Some of your are sitting and thinking, “Yep, I see the gerbils in my company’s agenda,” but you may be missing the point:  Gerbils exist at all levels of abstraction.  For a corporate leadership team, a gerbil could be a sub-scale acquisition millions of dollars in size but made for looks, not impact.  For a business unit leader, gerbils might be a product launch hundreds of thousands of dollars in size that is already DOA.  For an individual, it might be the waste of time on Facebook or useless blogs (not this one, others…).

Gerbils are everywhere, which is why I started with the personal anecdote.  If you can become better at finding the gerbils in your own agenda, you can get better at finding them in your company’s agenda.

All this means is that one person’s elephant is another person’s gerbil.  A circumspect leadership culture acknowledges this.  They also realize when they need help. A healthy fact base (like my calendar exercise above) can give them a start.  When it comes to corporate agendas, sometimes they simply need an outsider to help structure and organize the discussion. Sometimes they need outsiders to bring the fact base to bear.

Your mileage may vary.

In our practice at WGP, we have engaged with clients looking for structural support on their corporate and business unit agendas.  In this type of engagement, we play a challenging and facilitative role for management.  We have also engaged deeply with corporate teams and business unit teams who need a more intense and full understanding of facts and options.

In any event, a great strategist focuses on naming elephants and murdering gerbils.

May you have success in doing the same.

I would love to have your thoughts on this topic in the reply section below.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

90 Percent of Everything Is Crap

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Learning this one adage can release you to focus on what matters.

What’s the difference between a performance culture that focuses on the positive and one that focuses on the negative?

It’s okay to focus on the negative—the misses and the missteps—in defining performance, but success doesn’t live in the negative.

Here’s a funny observation: When we are down on people and processes and investments and strategies, we focus on what’s not performing.  We find the flaws.

You’ve probably seen it in play.  You read the performance review of a person who’s out of favor, and it’s rife with articulation of the negatives. “Fails to do this, avoids this, lacks this, shirks that.”  We become so quick to criticize based on flaws that we don’t realize something critical: Doing so is a losing strategy.  Why?  Because 90 percent of everything is crap.  This phrase, commonly known as Sturgeon’s Law, implores us to evaluate things based on their strengths, not their shortcomings.

Even the best of performers have a flaw, or ten.  If you focus on the negative aspects of people, strategies, and performance, you will inevitably find them, no matter where you search. So the most honest appraisal of anything is to look at the peak of its performance.  It’s to look at the 10 percent of a person’s work that reflects their best effort—what reflects their best performance—and then to compare and act.

I’ve witnessed talent processes that have clearly focused on strengths, and I’ve witnessed others that focused on flaws, but one thing stands out:  Talent systems that focus on flaws reject more good talent than those that focus on strengths.

Why? Because when their talent ecosystem focuses on flaws, business leaders who take on the hardest assignments run the highest risk of being fired, regardless of their intrinsic talent. When the same leader is in a talent ecosystem that focuses on strengths, their tough assignments become opportunities to show strengths that are not evident in other circumstances.  At worst, a very strong manager in a tough situation gets reassigned, not resigned to the dustbin.

The same can be said for strategy.  A strategy that racks up a few losses early can be thrown out when flaws are the focus, but long-term success depends on defining strengths, not avoiding weaknesses.

So, 90 percent of everything is crap.  Knowing that, focus on the strengths in the people and concepts around you.