Tag Archive for: Transformation

Christmas and The Real Meaning of Business

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Finding “real meaning” in business gets personal, gritty, and small. 

 

‘Tis the season. Christmas season, I mean.  And, it has me thinking.

We sit on the threshold of a holiday that for most comes to symbolize the warmth of gift giving and the joy of a pause in life to reflect on gifts received.  Sure, it’s commercial.  Sure, it’s loaded with obligation to dangerously hollow things like no other holiday in the western world is.

But it sure is fun.

Driving along a few days ago, I was fortunate to hear an ad on the radio.  “Come, learn the real meaning of Christmas” it said.  It then went on to outline the extravaganza that a large church was investing the time, money, and people into to outline the “real meaning of Christmas.”  It was the “real meaning” that struck a chord with me.  I wondered what innocent bystanders (that is, people who are neither Christian, nor steeped in western “Christmas” tradition) would say the “real meaning” of Christmas is by observing the actions we take during the season.

Would they say the real meaning was entertainment?

Gift giving?

Celebration of the birth of a single individual so long ago?

Establishment of the basis of a world religion and interpersonal philosophy?

I suspect that the innocent bystander would attend the Christmas extravaganza and come away with a sense that Christmas is quite a show, but perhaps not a sense of the”real meaning” of Christmas.  They wouldn’t understand the deeper personal and metaphysical meaning of Christmas from watching a show any more than from seeing a Christmas tree…

…and, you know what?  That’s fine.  You know why?  Because real meaning comes from experience, not an extravaganza. A life changed through the Christmas story rarely (if ever) happens because “you said so.”  It happens through reflection and immersion and individual commitment and confession.

In other words, It’s what’s inside the box that counts…Not the wrapper.

And that, my friends, is where real meaning in the Christmas sense has applicability to real meaning in a business sense.

A legion of consultants, practitioners, executives, and managers have put their faith in the power of extravaganza to create change.  They–like the church in the radio ad above–put together light, sound, and live animal shows (ok, maybe not the live animals) in hopes of creating an emotional experience for their organizations or clients. They hire outside speakers, event planners, and communication experts to expound on the great position a company is in or the great new direction it will take.  They make it clear that a charged emotion is the key to alignment with strategy.

And they are right.

But they are wrong.

Because a charged emotion may be necessary to conversion, but it’s insufficient for sustained change.  All the focus is on the wrapper, and not on what’s inside the box.

So, if excitement about a clear vision delivered in a compelling way is the wrapper, what is inside the box when it comes to corporate strategies that actually steer an organization?

Well, personal meaning may come first.  Does the steering of the strategy touch on the personal hot buttons of the organization.  This can be purpose (what are we doing for the community, our customer, etc.?).  It can also be self interest (what’s in it for me and my career?).  It can also be about others (how does this strategy impact Milton down in the basement?).  Personal meaning comes in different flavors.  One wrapper can seldom hit on them all.

The second is probably leadership credibility.  If I see the extravaganza, it hints at credible change to come. A leader is born.  A changed organization, renewed purpose, or new challenge are all both frightful and compelling things. They need credible leadership.

The third thing inside the box may have to be an honest appraisal. And, this is where the wrapper of an extravaganza most often falls short. In the push to put a glossy finish on the strategic vision of a company’s strategy, we lose the factual appraisal that we just rode for miles in pain on the back of a donkey and gave birth in a stable after being rejected from the local hotel.  Our circumstances aren’t glossy.  They are as humble as possible.  Sometimes, we have to admit it once we are inside the box.

The fourth thing inside the box deals with what people have to bring…It’s the requirements.  Our glossy wrappers tend to minimize requirements.  They tend to underplay the difficulty of actually steering an organization in a new direction. They underplay the late nights.  They underplay the hard conversations.  They underplay the personal commitments that will be challenged, change, or even cancelled. In the Christmas story, we focus so much on the baby in the manger that we often forget the journey of the kings, or the sacrifices of the parents. Transformative change comes with requirements.  Those are hard to convey in a glossy wrapper.

And, finally, I’d have to say that from personal experience we all need to have a sense of the consequences likely from the strategic vision.  Glossy extravaganza wrappers are great at booming out a new vision, but awful at being candid about the consequences of that vision. The Christian tradition actually does this quite well, once you get past the secular Christmas wrapper.  Adhering to the true meaning of Christmas is actually hard. It was likely hardest for the man the baby in the that feeding trough eventually became. But, it was still hard for anyone who chose to actually follow.  In corporate terms, consequences belong inside the box. Not all will make it to glory in a given strategy.  It’s ok to say so…Humane, even.

In this holiday season that has become so overrun with glossiness.  Let’s not forget the dank and, yes, small circumstances that underpin the real meaning.  The thing that corporate strategies that actually create changed organizations have in common with Christmastime conversions that stick is a focus on the gritty, dirty, and simple realities inside the box at the expense of the glossy, gold plated wrapper on the outside.

Maybe your organization can benefit from some time inside the box.  If you are reading this…Maybe it’s up to you.

Merry Christmas.

 

 

Google’s Team Traits and Your Executives

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On elite teams, it’s about honor, not safety

 

Google is an interesting company to say the least.

In the midst of a behemoth company that has a very thin historical record to draw from (seriously, the company is essentially 15 years old as a player on the global stage) lies a fascinating combination of entrepreneurship, hard-core, old-school competitive behavior, and analysis of people issues.

It’s that last thing that has me questioning whether Google has gotten something wrong.  A month or so ago, Google explained the traits that make its best teams click, and here’s an article that hits on the topic; it’s a quick read. The list is a little bit ho-hum for any active observer or participant in strategic management culture development—that is, clarity, purpose, dependability—except for one piece: Psychological safety.

Psychological safety. It sounds like the latest in a long line of management theory gobbledygook, but it’s not. Google (and any number of academic papers out there, and a TED talk here) basically says that people tend to stay and produce better when they believe their teams are safe places for intellectual exchange.

I have no problem with that notion—not one. In fact, it makes good sense. If I’m being listened to on my team and not belittled for the things I don’t know, I will like it better.  Makes good sense, right?

But as a practitioner who has worked at and continues to work at the top levels of organizations, I think Google’s prescription is only half right, which means partially wrong.  And the part that Google gets wrong is the part that matters to the strong functioning of the highest parts of complex organizations—the elite parts, if you will.

The higher you go, the less “psychological safety” matters…

 

Here’s the rub: In the run-of-the-mill team, psychological safety matters.  As you go higher in the organization, people worry less about “safety.”  Safety isn’t a big issue to the average executive, or at least, it shouldn’t be; an executive who is worried about safety probably is not confident enough to be in the role.

But what does matter? Honor.

In other words, this difference in perspective between that of a mid-level team member and that of an executive team member is like the difference between a weekend rock climber and a global mountaineer.  The weekend climber is signing up for an experience for which safety is key to the integrity of the experience, and death isn’t part of the deal.

The mountaineer, on the other hand, is signing up for a gig that involves making choices that could very well end in his or her death, and bad choices aren’t even necessary for the gig to end in death.  The most elite mountaineers in the world run into bad luck now and then, and death is actually a very real part of the integrity of the experience.

Thus, such is the difference between low-level and elite teams when it comes to “psychological safety.”  Low-level teams sign up for gigs that involve performance, but not necessarily at the peril of their careers if they are wrong about something. So, a safe environment for sharing encourages risk taking and less selfish political posturing, and these are important things.

Elite teams, however, with their high-stakes choices and high-level visibility, are inherently less “safe.” A career-limiting move is always possible for executives who are actually trying to get things done; safety might matter, but what really matters for these executives is that they are part of organizations—as part of the executive team or as a CEO with a board–that will act honorably on commitments and policies when things go poorly or opinions differ.

Honor, as in fulfilling agreements and obligations—that is, fair dealing in the face of adversity.

To extend the mountaineer example, a mountaineer’s mindset is to weigh risks in light of the physics of a situation.  Gravity pulls down, certain rocks have certain levels of traction, equipment holds certain loads, and muscles and bones perform in certain ways.  You want your mountaineers (and executives) to think this way.

Now imagine that the mountaineer makes a choice, but then in the middle of acting, the physics change.  Gravity suddenly pulls sideways, not down. That carabiner now only holds half a ton, not 2 tons.  The honor of the situation is compromised, and the mountaineer is doomed.

Think about the roots of effective elite team functioning as being similar to establishing the direction of gravity or the load rating of a carabiner. A fall is a fall, but a fall in which the carabiner breaks far short of its load rating and gravity dashes the climber into the rock wall at a diagonal is an entirely different matter: it can be deadly.

On an executive team, gravity is all about how things fall when there is a slip. Usually, gravity is set by policy and values, but it can also be set by the caprice of a specific executive.  There is no honor when elite leaders change the direction of gravity mid-course, unaccountably and, potentially, only for individual members of the team.

What this looks like in real life

 

Okay, so perhaps there is some interesting imagery around the mountaineer vs. the rock climber, but what does executive dishonor look like in real life?  I’ll list a few tactics, and perhaps you can take it from there.

The most common tactic is scapegoating.  It’s used by the most insecure leaders and is one of the more dishonorable moves, and it goes like this:  An executive team outlines a high-risk move for one individual to take.  The team agrees to it, and the stakes are known; that is, gravity is established for the team. Then, the individual takes the risk, and the individual takes the fall, and gravity has no effect on the rest of the team or the leader. This happens a dozen times a day in business culture.

A second tactic is the bait and switch. Gravity is established as one direction in order to elicit a decision, but it is then switched to another direction after the decision is made.  It’s a corrupt influencing tactic in any context, but is one that some executives resort to. A good example of this on a poorly functioning elite team is when the leader establishes implicit cover for a decision and then pulls the cover back after the decision is made.  It’s “I’ve got your back” writ small.  Usually, a bait-and-switch move at elite levels starts with “we agree” and ends up as “you agree.” “We agree” to spend millions of dollars on a change program slowly transforms to “you agreed” to spend the money. Gravity is switched, and only one team member falls.

Bait and switch tactics are common in recruiting and hiring—almost to the point of being the expectation vs. the exception. Some recruiters and executives will entice top talent with the promise of milk and honey—an aggressive agenda (or promise) focused on change and growth–only to reduce the talent to a real life of drudgery, order taking, and politics once the job starts. Executives who do this are typically small minded and posturing…not strategic and expansive.

The final tactic is the non-obligation move.  This one is really a test of values, and it encompasses all of the rest of honor as far as I can see: it’s the question of how organizations honor the gravity that has already been  established even when they don’t have to.  A good example of this is when executives allow ambiguity to overwhelm organizations during “good” times because they individually don’t “have” to clarify things.  All is well. The health of the organization suffers.  To paraphrase clergyman Eugene Peterson: Often the values of an organization can be measured by what its leaders do when they don’t have to do anything. Non-obligation moves are prevalent at all levels of organizations.

How to watch out for it

 

Do your due diligence, and ask around. Specifically, ask how organizations or individual teams honor their commitments to individuals over both the short and the long terms. Ask what would happen if an individual executive took a reasonable risk but failed.  Ask what the implicit contract will look like. Ask whether policies exist for tough circumstances (and whether they have been followed in the past when the circumstances arose).

In other words, be diligent.

Even more direct, and once you are actually in or around an elite team, observe.  As with all people and things, you will know (dis)honorable people by their fruit.  Watch for the hallmarks of dishonorable bureaucracies everywhere:  CYA as a course of business.  If senior executives constantly confirm their commitments and expectations, and reconfirm them in writing, but they don’t act without reciprocal confirmation, they are operating in a dishonorable senior culture. When senior executives constantly exchange explicit contracts—or say that they should have after getting burned—you can bet that the culture is one that is based on contracts and not honor.  An elite team should have the honor necessary not to have its individuals constantly protecting themselves from shifts in gravity.

So what?

 

This topic should be dear to any executive, particularly to those who want to either join or build cultures of honor.  I care deeply about this after having witnessed dozens of senior management teams, including a handful that could be categorized clearly as dishonorable.  The dishonorable ones have invariably struggled to attract and retain talent, and as a result, they have struggled to form and enact any semblance of a strategic approach to growth and improvement.

If you are reading this and are a part of a mid-management level team, you probably get the notion of psychological safety implicitly: Teams are effective when people feel like they can share without repercussions for them personally. Google at least got this right.

The danger lies at the elite levels, where the safety to share shouldn’t really matter; if a person is on an elite team and won’t share perspective, they aren’t elite in the first place and should be removed; at the elite level, honor matters, and even a choice well made can still result in removal from the team.  The world is a tricky place, but what matters to honorable executives is that they will be treated honorably in return, and Google may have gotten that wrong.

Elite executives don’t mind taking big risks, but they do mind when gravity can’t be estimated. Thus, the call to action on this one is simply this: Watch out.  It only takes an instance or two of dishonorable behavior to label an organization and its leaders as either actively or passively dishonorable. If you’re in a situation like this, know what you are getting, and if you’re contemplating going there, weigh your options closely: There are other fish in the sea.

In sum, if you are an executive leading an elite team, the answer is short:  Establish gravity and honor commitments.  Dishonorable executives are well known and can have long lives, but they have short reputations

On elite teams, it’s about honor, not safety. Now, go figure out which way is up.

As Yahoo’s Case Shows…Somebody is Always Watching

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Somebody, somewhere is doing the analysis…

 

Yahoo made a big splash by hiring Marissa Mayer as its CEO.  The bloom has come off the rose a bit.  As is sometimes the case with CEOs who are celebrities or otherwise insulated from common criticism, Mayer has been defended heartily for a few years for her decisions and record.

But the criticisms are accelerating.  More and more people are calling out the transparency of the empress’ clothing.  To wit, fund manager Eric Jackson, in a scathing 99 slide document released recently, outlined all the reasons that Yahoo’s supposed turnaround is no such thing.  He goes from comparable analysis to comparable analysis, then to a breakdown of the business, itself, then to a breakdown of other shareholders’ proposed plans…

…and then to an excoriation of the Mayer “strategy” overall, from the hire to the actual execution of change within Mayer’s tenure.  And, it’s a bloodbath.

This slide says it all:

What shareholders got instead…

When a “transformative” CEO’s tenure can be summed up as diametrically opposed to the “story” that got her hired, you know one thing:  The CEO hasn’t delivered.

Now, the Mayer story is getting a lot of play because of the potential severance package she stands to receive if Yahoo’s board actually fires her (valued at up to $110 million by some estimates).  That’s all fine…A deal is a deal.  But what is interesting here is that Yahoo has gone years with Mayer as its CEO, running a play that is clearly not what was advertised.  Just look at the slide above.

So, what’s the point?

The point in this case is less about Yahoo and more about the perils of “story” sales from executives.  Yahoo, in fact, is one tough turnaround situation.  As Jackson outlines, remove the Alibaba stock holding and what you’ve got is a very, very sick business.

What about “story” sales?  Well, no matter how good the story, somebody is watching the results.  Your CEO may “say” that new products are going to drive the company to new heights, but at some point that check has to be cashed.  Did they deliver on new product sales?  Did the video match the audio?

Have you been sold a bill of goods?

It’s an important question for shareholders everywhere. But, more importantly, it’s an important vignette for executives everywhere.

When it comes to highly visible executive roles, a story can only go so far.  At some point, the numbers will tell.  At some point, the power of personality and persuasion will cross the threshold of shareholders’ own financial interests.  Lincoln said it:  You can’t fool all the people, all the time.

At some point it becomes clear that somebody is watching.  And when that is clear, you no longer own the “story,” dear CEO.

The Yahoo case shows this in spades.

 

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.

 

 

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 Last and Largest Burden of Leadership Communication

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

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

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

“Change Leadership”

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

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

As in “this is where leaders get fired.”

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

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

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

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

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

Your cases may vary:

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

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

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

It happens to us all.

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

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

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

It could save you from some scary circumstances.

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

When Jazz is Your Leadership Style…Leave the Symphony!

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

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

Here’s the link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note those concepts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, I’m not sure.

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

In Clarkeson’s words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

What To Do When You Can’t Save Everyone

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In times of strategic tension, change, and stress; be sure to use the strengths you have to create the value you can.

This post was inspired by some commentary on a prior post regarding strategic cost reduction efforts.  In the course of thinking through the comments I received, I realized that there is a real gap in knowledge on some of the pitfalls that come with good, honest, and necessary restructuring activities.

If you read no further, read this:  In times of really hard choices about cost reduction, leaders, particularly mid-level leaders, can become so fatigued that they stop managing for value and start managing solely to the numbers.  It’s incumbent upon all of us as executives, advisors, and leaders to watch out for these attitudes of fatigued resignation.

The Insight: 

In the lives of nearly all business leaders comes a time when hard personnel choices have to be made.  Very few leaders escape it.  Even well known, visionary growth titans like Steve Jobs (who chopped Apple to a fraction of its workforce in the 1990s) have to experience these times.

But what happens when leaders having to make such choices to preserve value instead start making them out of a sense of resignation and duty?

They stop focusing on the value remaining, and start focusing on themselves…getting their job done.

And, then you start to hear a familiar refrain used by exhausted, resigned leaders facing tough choices.

“Well, we can’t save everyone…”

In the business environment, we often use such thinking to cope with making the hardest personnel decisions.

Constraints are real, and we all face them at some point.

However, you and I have to be careful not to let a truism about not being able to save everyone mean that we harden and decide not to save anyone.  Such a tragic false dichotomy has, in my experience, reared its head far too often in organizations making hard choices; and it results in the demoralization that people associate all too often with cost cuts.

Leaders harden.

They stop coaching.

They stop caring.

They “do what they are told.” And, often, nothing more.

They stop, in other words, leading.

I have witnessed, firsthand, fantastic people leaders turn into cold, distant souls following years of having to make challenging cuts.  The stress and pressure along with the cognitive dissonance of removing livelihoods to save corporate life build until each further action comes with that lament…

“You can’t save everyone.”

Yes.  But you can try to create a valuable solution that saves someone.

Think about how to redeploy, re-think, and, above all, sell!  Be willing to stand up and look for value.

An Applicable Parable:

One of my favorite apocryphal  parables touches on this topic. It is referred to as The Boy and the Starfish.

It goes like this:

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water.

He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the back into the ocean past the breaking waves and said, “It made a difference for that one.”

The boy in the story took a bit of energy to save a few starfish from certain death.

Others thought he was doing fruitless work.

He knew he was making a difference.

So What?

Times of crisis or stress or pressure are the times we must think about how to create value the most, even in our own small corner of the world.

Other leaders may look at you and say “why bother? You can’t save everyone…”

When you face them, know that you can’t save everyone; but don’t use that as an excuse to keep from saving anyone.

I’d enjoy your thoughts and comments.

Avoid The Focus Group of One

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

Mature professionals listen.

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

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

But…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This can have negative consequences.

Why?  Here are a few ideas:

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

So what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Waste Your Life: Overcome The Endowment Effect

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Never, ever let your current situation adversely define your future situation.

Here’s a quick hit in the spirit of Saturday and “Coffee and a Do Not.”

How often do you “stick” where you are not because it’s the best place, but because it’s “your” place?

You keep a crappy job, or a good job within a crappy culture.

You keep a car that constantly breaks down.

You own stocks that have been perennial losers.

Perhaps you are business owner that keeps holding onto an underperforming management team, or a set of underperforming businesses.

In really nasty situations, you stay close to bullies, abusers, cheats, and other ugly people because they are the ones you’ve grown up with.

It happens to all of us.

The explanation

In social psychology is a cognitive bias known as The Endowment Effect.   In short and simple words, this effect means that, as humans, we have a tendency to value things we currently own more than we would value them if they were somebody else’s.

A bird in the hand is worth more than a bird in the bush.  But worse, even when faced with a better bird right in front of us we keep the bird in the hand.

That car you have that constantly breaks down?  You’d never buy it from someone else, because better ones are on the market right now.

That crappy job you’ve stayed in for years?  You’d never take it again if you knew what you know now because, again, better ones are on the market right now.

That loyalty you feel to that clearly unethical leader?  You’d criticize anyone else who did that because you know better.

But, these are yours, and so you ascribe higher value to them–in many cases defending them irrationally–than you otherwise would.

The impact

The result of the endowment effect isn’t all bad.  It allows us to have some comfort in difficult times.  How many times have you heard people justify their current awful situation as a “blessing” when pretty much anyone else would say it was a curse?  That is, at least partly, the endowment effect in action.  Loyalty has some roots in this effect, and loyalty can be good…to a degree.

But, on the downside, the endowment effect has a highly insidious effect on your career, finances, relationships, etc.

It causes you to let your current situation define more of your future situation than it should. 

That’s right, you “stick” in bad situations, investments, relationships, and jobs longer than a “smart” person would, because your brain is wired to make it so.

Why else do people look back on years working for a particular leader and say “what was I thinking?”

The truth is, they weren’t thinking.  They valued where they were, irrationally so.

How to guard against it

I’m not one who believes that absolute objectivity is either possible or really a good thing.  We have emotional and irrational ties to everything; and in general they help us to function.

But…

Because this particular bias can cause you to waste valuable years of your career (or, even valuable time repairing a crappy car), you and I need to watch out for its effects.

The best way to guard against the endowment effect is to think.   Yeah, that’s right, just think.   Stop for a minute and ask yourself if you are valuing the abuse you take, or the ethical stretches you have been ordered to execute, more than a sane person on the outside would.

Stop for a minute and ask yourself whether you’d be better off making a trade.  That works whether we are talking investments, jobs, subordinates, superiors, or that priceless artwork you own.

You guard against the endowment effect by considering a trade.

A parting, and partly personal anecdote

One of the very interesting people I had the opportunity to work with and then know for years was the famous “genius” of American football, Bill Walsh.

Bill was famously effective as a general manager in the NFL–that is, he was great at making personnel decisions.  In fact, he made a lot of very high profile athletes very angry by trading them to other teams while they were still “good” players. Bill wanted to trade players a year before their production fell off.  This facet of Bill Walsh’s approach was chronicled nicely in the recent NFL Network documentary Bill Walsh a Football Life.

A famous aspect of Bill’s objectivity was that he asked his staff what they thought Joe Montana’s trade value was…during Joe Montana’s prime.  Joe Montana, for those who do no know, was and is one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the NFL.  Bill was willing to test the market for his quarterback–the lynchpin of his offensive gameplan–while his quarterback was still building a hall of fame resume.

Bill didn’t suffer from the endowment effect, at least in his player personnel decisions.

I guess I should call it a privilege to be a guy who was recruited by, hired by, and cut by Bill.  You knew where you stood.

As brutal as that seems, and I’ll write on the brutality of NFL talent management at some point in the future, sometimes we need to adopt a little bit of that mindset to protect ourselves.

Where does the endowment effect show itself in your life and experience?  Please share…