Minding the Gaps

"I'm Sorry We Got Caught"?

Given their precarious hold on a dwindling readership, newspapers should do everything they can to protect their stock in trade, the one thing they have that so many other news sources lack: the presumption of credibility.

They should do nothing, absolutely nothing, that can even remotely be construed as compromising their integrity.

So when the online media portal Politico reported that the Washington Post had offered corporate sponsorships for private dinners at the publisher’s home with Post journalists and political power brokers—at $25,000 a pop, or $250,000 for a series of eleven—it wasn’t just the Post’s integrity that was for sale, it was the newspaper’s future.

There’s dumb, and then there’s dumb dumb. This was dumb-da-da-da-da, dumb-dumb.

In today’s editions, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth publicly apologizes to readers. You can judge for yourself the sincerity and candor of her statement. If the online comments from readers are any indication, she has a lot of hard work ahead of her to restore the newspaper’s credibility. It won’t be easy, but nothing is more important.

A Vision of Fireworks

All across the United States tonight, people will gather in public parks and preserves to watch great displays of fireworks in celebration of America's birthday.

Few people realize that these fireworks began with a vision. Just as your company may have a vision, and just as the United States had a vision (in the Declaration of Independence), our annual displays of fireworks had a vision, too.

The historian David McCullough, writing in his magisterial biography John Adams, quotes a letter that Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, the day after the Second Continental Congress approved a resolution of independence from England, on July 2, 1776. (It would be two more days before the Congress would approve the Declaration, whose purpose was to explain the resolution; and it would be an entire month before the delegates would actually sign the Declaration.)

Listen to Adams, writing to his beloved Abigail on July 3: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

And so it has been.

Note also Adams's vision for the future of the United States itself: "from one end of this continent to the other" prefaced the Manifest Destiny of the Nineteenth Century, and "from this time forward forever more" foresaw the enduring greatness of the nation. Plainly, our founders knew they were doing something profound.  

Never underestimate the power of a compelling vision, fueled by the energy of vivid language, to lay the course of history for years and even centuries to come, and do not minimize the critical importance of an inspiring vision of greatness to the hard work of achieving that greatness.

Looking-glass Leadership

Too many years ago to confess, my high-school English teacher thought I had a few things to learn about respect. I still remember her dismay when I submitted an assignment one afternoon. Instead of gently handing an essay to her, I dropped it on her desk. That was bad enough, but she thought I had thrown it at her.

In retrospect, perhaps I didn’t quite drop it. Perhaps I tossed it. Perhaps I even tossed it with a dramatic, self-important flourish. All right, perhaps I did throw it—but to her, not at her. After all, these things are a matter of perspective.

Some weeks later, in a simple act of leadership for which I never properly expressed my appreciation, she made sure I didn’t carry this adolescent arrogance off to college. Days before graduation, she presented me with a wry verse by the Eighteenth Century Scottish poet Robert Burns, and she asked me to think about it:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea'es us,
An ev'n devotion!

Originally written in Scot two hundred years ago, the verse requires translation today. It laments the fact that you can never presume to know how others view you. You cannot objectively size up yourself, for your character cannot stand before a mirror that doesn’t lie. The measure that other people take of you is theirs alone to determine. Often, it is theirs alone to know.

The bard of Scotland is musing: Oh, for the power of God to see ourselves as other people see us! It would save us from so many blunders, in the way we appear and the way we behave!

His lesson is ever truer amid the superficiality and spin of the early Twenty-first Century. You can try to polish your image—your personal brand, as the new vernacular has it—but ultimately you cannot control it. It is always for others to judge, often by caprice, and always by criteria of their choosing.

Whatever excuses or reasons that you use to justify your behavior and decisions—however altruistic you regard yourself, however honorable, however noble—others are entirely free to discount. They can look at you and easily substitute a low common denominator of self-interest. They can assume that, from the first moment to the last and every moment between, you are looking out only for yourself.

From there, it is a small step to the next question: whether, and to what extent, they perceive your self-interest to be compatible with their own self-interest. If they determine it is not, then the possibility of a leadership connection is slim. You can talk yourself hoarse, but they will not be receptive to your message. As leaders, you are most unlikely to reach them. Moreover, their cynicism can spread like cancer. It can threaten your leadership of others. Change can become impossible.

Conversely, if they find some common ground with you, then the possibility of leadership remains real. You can march forward together. But the common ground is essential.

Recognizing this, a wise leader goes out of his way to accommodate the concerns of all stakeholders. In business, that requires looking beyond the single-minded goal of creating wealth for investors. It requires showing real, not merely rhetorical, appreciation and respect for the importance of the work that every person does and could do, anywhere in the organization, and for the needs and interests of all customers, for the growth and well-being of employees and their families (and of vendors and their families), and for the long-term viability of the organization itself.

Together, this balance beam of concerns is a continuing reflection of the integrity—the wholeness, the oneness—of the enterprise itself. It is inclusive. It appreciates and embraces everyone’s vital interests. Companies that lose sight of this balance have usually paid a costly price—up to and including market erosion, bargaining representation, technology decline, and tarnished brands.

Tilt this way, and investors are happy over the short term, but quality erodes, employees disengage, and customers wander. Tilt that way, and employees grow complacent while investors revolt and customers defect. Tilt yet another way, and process dominates, but you can miss the jump on an opportunity, a new market or a new technology. Balance is critical but precarious.

It is here, at this intersection of perspectives and interests, where we find a leader’s informal voice: explicit and implicit communication between leaders and followers that shapes their essential relationship, if they are to have one. It is both verbal and non-verbal. Some of it is deliberate and calculated. Much of it, alas, is inadvertent and even careless. Almost all of it is subject to interpretation and perception, which depends as much on what people already believe as on what they actually see and hear.

Its impact can be completely at odds with its intent. It is fraught with peril. At first, it will seem difficult to manage. But it carries enormous potential for leadership. In any case, while it can be neglected, it cannot be silenced. It will speak. It will be heard. So it is important that you manage the informal voice. Otherwise, it will manage you.

To appreciate its importance, think over the relationships you have had with a boss. Go back over all the jobs you have had. Begin with the part-time jobs you had as a teenager: taking orders and giving change at a local McDonald’s. Continue on to your present position: giving orders and taking charge as a manager. Single out the best relationships with a boss you ever had, and single out the worst. Think about the ones between.

Quickly you will recognize that every relationship with a boss fell somewhere on a continuum of mutual respect, mutual dignity, mutual trust, mutual dependence, and mutual concern—each a part of the chemistry, a part of the fabric, of relationships.

The best relationships were endowed with high levels of respect, dignity, trust, dependence, and concern by both of you. You hated to see these relationships come to an end. The worst were just the opposite: low levels of respect, dignity, trust, dependence, and concern for each other. You probably couldn’t wait to move on. Furthermore, in the hardship of those difficult relationships, you and your boss probably went to some lengths to conceal your real thoughts. Unless and until you talk it through, as the Scotsman so poetically bemoaned, you can never know exactly how another person truly views you and your relationship. Oh, wad some Power.

Now take this analysis one more step. Ask yourself what determines someone’s perception of relational vigor, especially across the boss’s desk. What do we hear and see and feel that tells us whether a relationship is good or bad, warm or cold, cooperative or competitive, improving or deteriorating?

Chances are your list will come pretty close to ours. On the basis of numerous focus group and discussions in workshops at large corporations, we have identified many such determinants. Each consists of something that managers either say or do, either proactively or reactively. It is often a pattern that reveals deep-seated preferences and priorities.

Together, these are the components of what we term the informal voice. All these determinants offer particular opportunity for nurturing the relationship and therefore leadership. But they need to be managed. To be managed, they must first be seen, acknowledged, and appreciated. Unless and until you see them, you cannot manage them.

For information on the informal voice of leadership, call Thomas Lee at +1-847-247-2241 or write him at tom@arceil.com.

Crises Offer an Ironic Opportunity for Stealth Competitive Advantage

Crises are good for something. They separate the great from the good enough.

Probably most business leaders look at a crisis and curse it. In the crisis, they see problems and burdens.

A few outstanding business leaders do just the opposite. Bold and imaginative, they look at a crisis and grin. For where others see only problems, these exceptional leaders see the gold of opportunity. They see potential for breakthrough competitive advantage.

At this very moment, you have just such a crisis on your hands, and therefore you have just such an opportunity in your hands. It is wise to seize it while you can.

The crisis looks like a leaky faucet of trust. Year after year, the credibility of business has been eroding among all three lifeline stakeholders: employees, investors, and customers. It has truly reached the point of a crisis.

You are well familiar with the litany of reasons: Mergers that haven't worked. Earnings that have to be restated. CEOs who retire with gazillions. Layoffs as a first resort, not last. Corporate values honored in the breach. "Customer service" that is a Jay Leno oxymoron. Broken promises everywhere. Manipulation as a core competency.

If some companies are faultless, all companies suffer the collateral damage. Reputable studies show a broad, significant diminution in credibility affecting virtually every sector and extending around the world. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, some industries hold the trust of fewer than one of three people.

Not surprisingly, no one wants to address this issue. At first blush, it is seemingly thankless. Certainly it is hard to turn this around. To the casual observer, no single company can break out of the pack. If none can, then trying will be futile.

But is that true? Some organizations do manage to hold the public's trust. I can rattle off a list: Northwestern Mutual, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, the Mayo Clinic, Virgin Atlantic, Chick-Fil-A, Southwest Airlines, Apple Computer, Harley-Davidson, the BBC, the Weather Channel.

All these organizations recognize an essential truth: No one wants to do business with someone who is untrustworthy. No one wants to work for an untrustworthy employer. No one wants to invest in untrustworthy management. And no one wants to buy an untrustworthy anything.

The inverse of that is also true. Establish yourself as trustworthy, and people will choose your organization to work for, invest in, and buy from. That's a competitive advantage you can measure. That's a competitive advantage that grows your company. That's a competitive advantage you can take to the bank.

In the work I do, which often involves corporate departments of communication, I am frequently asked: How can we contribute to the company's top-line growth and bottom-line profitability in ways that we can measure and prove? Here's one way: Manage the company's trust both inside and outside systematically.

By systematically, I mean nothing less than putting in place a system that methodically forces consideration of implicit as well as explicit, and distributed as well as centralized, messaging. Such a system will pay for itself in weeks if not days.

What you have here is an opportunity in the robes of a crisis. Smart people will see it for what it's worth. Gold.

Beware thine assumptions

I want to pass along a splendid article that reminds us to question our assumptions.

Often we take for granted what we think we know. Even more often, we take for granted the conventional wisdom that everyone else has acknoledged as true long ago. Neither is constructive or helpful.

In this article, one of the late Peter Drucker's early graduate students reminds us to be cautious. Bill Cohen, a retired Air Force general and the author of A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World’s Greatest Management Teacher, blogged this at www.humanresourcesiq.com.

Let me know what you think.

Why is life like this?

Ever since the spring thaw in the Upper Midwest, when the nearby park began calling my name for spirited 3-mile jogs or brisk 5-mile walks, I have been searching for the black fanny pack that holds a water bottle and my celular phone.

I searched this house from top to bottom, from north to south, from east to west, from inside out--all to no avail. It was nowhere. All told, I must have devoted five or six hours to this hapless endeavor. Probably more than that. It became an obsession, and a futile obsession at that.

I searched through all my closets. I searched in all my luggage, all my backpacks, all the nooks and crannies of this place. I looked through all the boxes that hold stuff I should have thrown out years ago. I even looked in the refrigerator.

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I was fanny packless. There was no fanny pack to be found. No where. No how. No why.

I could only assume that I tossed it out last summer or fall. Maybe it got moldy in all the rain last year. Or maybe I left it somewhere. Didn't remember doing either of those things, but there was no other explanation. Whatever. I would just have to buy a new one.

So today, some errands brought me past the local Sports Authority store. I stopped in and examined the array of fanny packs, and I settled on a snazzy number that set me back $20.32. Before leaving the store, I used the sales clerk's scissors to remove all the tags and plastic marketing straps. One less thing to do at home.

Now, finally, I could once again go for a run or a walk without having to carry a water bottle and telephone in my hand.

I came directly home. I pressed the button on the garage opener. The door opened up. I pulled into the garage.

And there, on the handlebars of an old triathlon bike, lay not one but two fanny packs.

Everyday Heroes, Everyday Leaders

A fellow blogger posed an interesting question online yesterday, in anticipation of Fathers Day here in the United States. He asked: What kind of leader was your father?

I had to think a moment. My dad, who passed away a year and a half ago at the age of 93, was a wonderful man. But probably most people did not regard him as a leader. He wasn't an elected official. Nor was he a high-powered executive. Nor was he active in politics or community affairs.

Yet leadership is not only for the powerful and the prominent. Millions of people offer profoundly inspirational leadership in their everyday lives. So it was with my father. He lived a life of humility, decency, authenticity, and commitment.

Naturally outgoing and happy, he exercised quiet self-control even in the face of considerable adversity. He didn't lose his temper. He didn't curse or cheat or lie. He didn't gamble or drink to excess. He hated war, but he went; and his unit liberated Dachau. He never even got a traffic ticket. In short, he was a rock, always there when it counted.

Most important, he knew how to love, and he did. The late Ann Landers, who could tell us a thing or two about families, often wrote that the greatest gift a father can give to his children is to love their mother completely, deeply, and unconditionally.

My four brothers and I were the beneficiaries of just such a gift. For more than six decades, probably from the moment he first noticed her at another soldier’s wedding in Chicago, my dad loved my mom, and he let it show. He loved her completely. He loved her deeply, and he loved her unconditionally.

I have a particularly warm memory, framed like an old faded photograph in my mind's eye. When I was 10 or 12, I would wander into the kitchen before dinner, only to find my dad and my mom in a bear hug of an embrace while potatoes simmered on the stove. Such a warm sense of security washed over me.

Some of my friends had parents who yelled at each other. Others had parents who brooded in silence. Not I. Not my brothers. We had a security blanket up over our shoulders and snug under our chins. We had the luxury of never, ever worrying. My dad always loved my mom, and my mom always loved my dad, and that’s the way it was. It was just that simple and it was just that wonderful and it was always just that way.

Only a few weeks before my mother died, I visited the two of them in their apartment in Florida. What I witnessed on that visit was like a scene out of an old black-and-white movie starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson or Donna Reed.

My mother sat at the kitchen table, her days so very numbered, and yet with a smile of calm, divine peace across her face, as my dad, who had once aspired to a career in the opera, sang love song after love song to her. He must have sung for an hour, maybe two, and he sang from his heart. He sang: “Everybody loves my baby, but my baby, she loves only me.” My mother died a happy woman.

Most of all, I remember Dad as a man who worked hard, who made the most of what he had, who lived his life with passion for his art as well as for his wife, who humbled himself and honored others, who recognized duty, and who devoted himself to the things that matter, which is to say: to the people around him.

Will you abide one last anecdote? It is from the day I learned to swim, because it says so much about the man my father was.

There was to be a kind of commencement exercise at the old YMCA pool in my hometown. All the kids would swim the length of the pool, and then, one by one, we were to be called up by name and receive a certificate.

Now it’s odd what we remember from our childhood. Of that day, I remember a feeling of anxiety, knowing that my mother was home with my little brothers, and my dad was at work.

Back then, Dad always worked Saturday mornings. So the other kids would have families in the gallery cheering them on. But not I. I was on my own.

That would be okay. I could handle it. I would be fine. I would just buck it up.

So one by one, in alphabetical order, the instructor called the names of all the swimmers. I remember hearing the instructor call out Ade, and Bobby, and Mike, and Steve. And one by one, each of them walked over to get his certificate as the gallery erupted in cheers. The closer the instructor got to the T’s, the more alone I felt. I braced myself for a little polite applause from the other parents.

The instructor called my name. I got up, walked over, and reached out for my certificate. Sure enough, the applause was polite. But just then a voice rang out from the gallery. “Way to go, Tommy!”

It was my dad. Somehow, he had got off work, and he had made it over to the YMCA to watch me get that certificate.

Ever since, whenever I have needed some encouragement, I have harked back to those few words, and I have picked up the pace and tried a little harder. My dad’s voice is never far away. He is my cheerleader, even now, after he is gone.

By my measure, this is certainly the stuff of leadership. My dad was an ordinary, everyday hero. His achievement in life wasn’t winning an election or getting a big promotion or living in a fancy house. Rather, it was leading a fine, long life and filling it with honor and love.

And so now, for a Fathers Day without him, it’s my turn, and I just hope he can hear me: “Way to go, Dad! Way to go!”

In Public

Please make a note of this upcoming speaking engagement:

August 6, 2009

Advanced Learning Institute conference

Chicago, Illinois (3-hour seminar)

This intensive workshop on a systematic process for leadership communication is tied to a terrific two-day conference on August 4-5. If you register right away and drop my name, the good folks at Advanced Learning Institute will cut your registration fee in half. But you have to hurry.

Sign up today!

Leadership for Leadership Communication

Thomas J. Lee is an authority on leadership credibility and communication. He is the founder and president of Arceil Leadership Ltd., a niche consultancy at the crossroads of leadership, communication and change. Tom has more than 25 years of experience, much of which has brought him into close contact with senior leaders of business and government. He works with management teams of large and medium-size companies to enhance their leadership credibility and impact.

A dynamic and popular speaker, Tom has lectured, consulted and led workshops throughout the United States, across Canada, and in nearly a dozen other countries in South America, Europe, and Africa. He has benchmarked organizational communication in nearly 30 major corporations. His first book, Mind the Gaps: The Three Voices of Leadership, is nearing completion. He is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Arceil's programs are a budget-friendly way of building competencies and retaining top talent. They pay for themselves within days through faster change, more team cohesion, and better service. Your employees and your customers will notice the difference.

Our one-day and two-day workshops keep you engaged with real-world lessons, examples, and stories from America's best companies. You and your team will take away practical insights for dealing with present-day issues and problems. Beginning the very next day, you will change the way you work, and that's a guarantee.

A most unlikely business guru

What next? Leadership Lessons of the KGB?

You have to wonder. Vladimir Putin, onetime spy and longtime Russian martinet, has begun writing a magazine column on management and change. The Los Angeles Times reports that his first effort appears this week.

Far from calling for fundamental and far-reaching change in a country that badly needs both, Putin rises as a contrarian. “I’m deeply convinced that constant change is not for the better,” he writes. “Neither for business nor for people. In the end, it will be the same thing as before, if not worse.”

Of course, that stands in stark contrast to the mantra of Western business: the only thing that will never change is change itself. For twenty or thirty years, business here has hurtled itself through dizzying changes.

But at a time when the markets are half what they were and a pink slip is almost a badge of honor, many of us long for a semblance of stability. At the very least, we would like a return to some simple basics, which I suppose would be a radical change in its own right.

Putin’s salute to stability is reminiscent of a 1998 book by a British change guru, John Macdonald, Calling a Halt to Mindless Change: A Plea for Commonsense Management. Macdonald actually argued not against any change but for a greater focus on the things that matter: vision, quality, communication, and engagement—all in the name of customer satisfaction.

I myself like to call these basics the “prime numbers” of business. You’ll recall from algebra that a prime number is an integer indivisible by any whole number other than 1 or 2. In business, we can think of prime numbers as the indivisible, basic components we often take for granted and also often lose sight of. Get them right, and the business will grow. Ignore them, and business will shrink.

Frankly, I never thought I’d see the day when I quoted Vladimir Putin in one of these blogs. But as I reflect on it, we can do worse than ask ourselves several thought-provoking questions:

• What kinds of change are counterproductive?
• What kinds of change are worthwhile?
• Is “stability for the sake of stability” better than “change for the sake of change”?
• What should we be focusing on?
• How do leaders create the right focus?
• What are the prime numbers of our business?
• What are we doing about them?

-- Thomas J. Lee

What Does It Take to Lead?

Exactly what does it take to lead people? And what do successful leaders do that unsuccessful leaders don't?

These two questions—simple in their phrasing but complex in their answers—are at the fault line of a discussion in the blogosphere this week.

The discussion focuses on CEOs, but the sum and substance of the discussion can apply to leaders everywhere. If you are attempting to bring about change through the discretionary effort of other people, in any organization anywhere, you will do yourself a favor by listening in.

After years of research on the real characteristics and abilities of CEOs, three business-school professors published their findings in an academic journal last summer. Perhaps someone, somewhere, was paying attention. But no one talked about it until Tuesday, when New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about the treatise and several hundred readers quickly fulminated in response

In a nutshell, the professors asserted that successful CEOs were more likely to be coolly analytical than fervently emotional, more likely to be aggressive and hard-charging than social and collegial, more likely to be loners than team players, more likely to be self-absorbed than self-aware. Indeed, the authors come close to saying that the post-modern executive who looks and sounds like a cheerful politician is likely to be ineffective as a CEO.

Now this portrait of a cross between Calvin Coolidge and Harry Callahan in the corner office may hardly surprise you. But it flies in the face of two decades of important work by trail-blazing thinkers such as Jim Collins in Good to Great; John Kotter in Leading Change and The Heart of Change; Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence; Warren Bennis in On Becoming a Leader, and Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge, not to mention all those writers (most notably Robert K. Greenleaf and John C. Maxwell) who champion the magical power of servant leadership.

To one degree or another, all of them have found an emotional aspect of leadership, a common search for meaning, and an exploration of purpose and intentionality to be profoundly powerful. That is all the more true now, in a cynical age.

In his column, Brooks blithely ignored all these writers and unquestioningly endorsed the research as he summarized and presented it, which was scarcely the whole of it. Moreover, he then took liberties in a further interpretation that just wasn’t sustainable. Fortunately, many bloggers and even Thursday’s letters to the editor in the Times demonstrated that the public isn’t so easily cowed.

On purchasing and downloading the entire study, I found it self-limiting in key respects, though duly decorated with pages of regressions and factor analysis. I have learned that academic studies often fall on the sword of their own design, which may well be flawed or small or both. 

First, as the study’s authors acknowledge but Brooks ignores, the research was confined to the CEOs of privately held companies with a recent infusion of venture capital or private equity. That probably biases the findings in favor of small-cap and mid-cap companies without well-defined cultures and typically with short time frames for hard returns to investors or at least positive trend lines.

Second, unless I missed something, there is no analysis of characteristics and abilities associated with poor performance. We are left to presume that the absence or opposite of the identified traits will necessarily lead to failure, but we have no data or explicit conclusions in that direction. A personal friend of mine was CEO of two high-tech companies, both of which went bust. She had the traits the authors describe in spades. Granted, that is merely singly experiential and anecdotal, but it raises a question of negative correlation.

Third, the definition of high performance presumably has only the one dimension of profitability. Nothing is said to the contrary, that I could see. It is axiomatic that every company must be profitable, but to judge a CEO's performance by that metric alone begs some pretty big questions. As Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton argue in The Balanced Scorecard, using profitability as your sole measure of success is a little like flying an airplane with only a single gauge—say, for air speed, and no indicators for fuel or altitude or location or air pressure.

In the 21st century, to the chagrin of Milton Friedman and perhaps even the frustration of Peter Drucker, companies cannot focus on profitability to the neglect of everything else. Other financial metrics such as revenue growth, return on equity, inventory turns, debt ratios, and more are critical measures of performance.

Moreover, companies have many other stakeholders beyond equity investors. Apart from financial metrics, companies are judged by the quality of their products and by their treatment of employees, their service to customers, their compliance with the law, their respect for diversity and privacy, their engagement and retention of staff, their advertising and packaging, their lobbying and public policy, the safety and cleanliness of their facilities, their research and innovation, and ultimately their transparency and contribution to society. All that was true a decade or two ago, but it is especially true now.

Missing the bar on any of these metrics, and especially on several or more, is enough to send a CEO home for good, as many of them have learned over the last five or ten years. By extension, we can hypothesize that leaders must operate in multiple frames of reference.

Having watched and worked with senior leaders quite a bit, I can attest to the fact that the most successful among them are fully realized human beings. Those who aren't send powerful signals to stay away.

My guess is that the scholars who produced this research may be on the right track, but only as far as they looked. They just didn’t look very far, and they certainly didn’t think very deeply. As for the columnist, whose work I generally respect, he should have taken a little more time on this one.

Welcome!

 

Welcome to our blog on business leadership, its communication and credibility, and the workplace engagement it seeks to nurture.

A little blog with big ideas, Minding the Gaps strives to build workforce engagement by enhancing the way that corporations and other organizations think and talk about their purpose, vision, values, direction, strategy, priorities, goals, expectations and identity. The more clarity, credibility, and community you can bring to these matters, the better.

Minding the Gaps reflects a philosophy of leadership and communication. In brief, our philosophy holds that:

• Leadership and management are two different things. Individuals who are good managers are not necessary good leaders. Management concerns itself with organizing and ensuring performance to a predetermined standard. Leadership concerns itself with envisioning the future and inspiring people to go to extraordinary lengths to achieve that vision.
  
• Communication for the sake of management is different from communication for the sake of leadership. The former is detailed and directive, and its essential message is accountability. The latter is general and inspiring, and its essential message is opportunity.
  
• Leadership is essential to change, and therefore enduring change is impossible without leadership. The single most important change that most companies can make is a dramatic increase in the engagement of their people.
  
• Many organizations have solid management but few have dynamic leadership and sufficient levels of engagement. Consequently, few organizations are able to marshal change.
  
• Leaders need followers more than followers need leaders. Leaders must connect with followers so as not to leave them behind, and leaders connect best with followers through a systematic process of integrated, strategic leadership communication*.

Offered by Arceil Leadership Ltd., Minding the Gaps is written by the firm's founder and president, Thomas J. Lee, who is solely responsible for its content. We invite you to browse, read, and learn; we ask only that you respect our copyrights and give us full credit for anything printed here.

Thank you, and we hope you will check back often.

To Lead, You Must Listen

I once enjoyed a lengthy conversation with the legendary Bill Veeck. Baseball fans will recall Veeck as the colorful, outspoken and innovative owner of several baseball teams, most notably the Chicago White Sox. But as a young man he also planted the ivy that now greens the outfield wall at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, and he supervised construction of Wrigley Field's historic, manually operated scoreboard, still in use today.

A World War II veteran, Veeck had been standing in the wrong place when an artillery piece backfired and crushed his leg. His foot had to be amputated, and then eventually most of his leg was taken, too. Perhaps because of that experience, he always had a special feel for the underdog. And because of that, he was forever going out of his way to spend time talking with Everyman. Bill Veeck was a man who knew the pulse of people.

At the time of our conversation, Veeck ("as in wreck," he always said) owned the White Sox, who had just finished a successful year. Veeck wanted me to know he was grateful for all the fans who supported the South Side team. He promised that the Sox would go all the way next year. Why, they would bring home a pennant, he declared, and maybe even win the World Series.

But that afternoon he wanted to talk not about baseball, but about something else altogether. Always a maverick, he was preoccupied with a cultural problem. He was worried about bigness, about the loss of identity, about the impersonal distance between individuals and institutions throughout the land.

Ever a mischief-maker, he suggested that people should rebel. He was urging anyone who would listen to protest in ways little and large. Black out account numbers on forms you returned, he recommended. Insist on being known by your name. He even suggested that people should fill out every magazine subscription card with the name of Chris Columbus and the address of his statue in Grant Park, just to force publishers to mail magazines to nowhere.

Most of the work I do is for big companies, whose very bigness is part of the problem they face. It creates distance between customers and the companies, and it creates distance between the executives who run these companies and the workers who actually create value for customers.

That distance erodes the substance and richness of information and insight that one person can transfer to another person and vice versa. Thus people throughout these large companies make and execute policy without the benefit of full knowledge and wisdom of their own circumstances and challenges. As one wit shrewdly observed: "If only we knew what we know!"

Of course, there are solutions, and they can save many times the cost of their implementation. But identifying the situations and bringing the resources to bear on those situations requires a little leap of faith. Especially in times like these, that leap may be the difference between growth and stagnation, perhaps even between survival and collapse.

Bill Veeck took many such leaps during his long and glorious career, and they paid off magnificently. He was able to take those leaps precisely because he refused to wile away his days in an office. He was always out and about, walking on one leg and talking with the people who could and would support his teams. Because he was constantly reaching out to people, he knew their dreams and frustrations, and he had a pretty good sense for what would work in the end.

The moral to this story, apropos to every leader, is that an open door is never enough. You can never count on others to take the first step toward dynamic, candid communication. You must get out there and do it yourself. And once you find someone who will muster the moxie to speak truth to you, have the wisdom and the courage to be quiet and listen.

The bigger your organization, the more difficult that is. And the bigger your organization, the more important it is, too.

Why Your Communication Fails

Let me tell you a little story.

Years ago, I worked as an executive speechwriter for the CEO and board chairman of a Fortune 25 company. He was pretty good on his feet. With a little help, he got even better.

 

I'll never forget one of the most important speeches he gave. It was to the top 350 executives of the company. They flew in from all over the world. They were eager to hear the CEO's new vision and business strategy. For the most part it was a terrific meeting.

 

But one thing went wrong. Actually, one thing went awfully wrong.

 

At the end of his closing address, the CEO laid out an explicit roadmap for change. Then he declared: "Six months from now, if you're still doing basically the same thing, basically the same way, then you didn't get the message. That makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution."

 

Moments later, the crowd rose in a standing ovation. The CEO was exhilarated. He was confident he had communicated his message with clarity, credibility, and cogency.

 

So far, so good, right?

 

Well, no. The message that those executives heard was not the message the CEO sent.

This actually happens all the time. You think you are communicating, but you are miscommunicating. You are speaking, perhaps even eloquently. You are writing God-knows-how-many emails. But that doesn't mean you are getting through. It doesn't mean you are clear or compelling or even collegial, and it certainly doesn't mean you are credible.

Remember this: The communication that ultimately matters is the communication that is received and understood and believed. It is not the communication that is merely sent. Yes, there is a difference. Almost always there is a difference.

 

If you think communication coaching and training is only for young managers, think again. Few senior managers are as good they believe they are.

Most of the time, most senior managers and even most senior executives are sending mixed, muddled and mute messages. Most of the time, people have to read between the lines to derive a message that fits their own reality. That's the message they receive, understand, and believe. And that's the message for which they informally hold the speaker accountable.

The root cause for this phenomenon is fairly simple to explain. All of us communicate both implicitly and explicitly, but we manage only our explicit communication: the words and numbers that pour forth from our announcements and pronouncements. We diligently manage the big stuff, and we gloss over the little day-to-day stuff.

 

We especially neglect to take ownership for the messages we implicitly send all day long, such as the meaning of our visible behaviors, our inaccessibility, our impetuous decisions, our inconsistent priorities, our silences, our penchant for blaming the other guy, our rat-a-tat directions, our refusal to reach across siloed departments, our budgets at odds with our values, our deference to urgency over importance, and on and on.

Moreover, even with regard to our formal voice, we assume that people are paying attention, that they understand what we say, and that they believe what we say. We assume that they remember what we say, that they have no further questions on what we say, and that they see the relevance of what we say. We assume that they know what to do with what we say.

 

Is any of that even remotely realistic to expect? How often do you pay rapt attention to others without mentally multi-tasking? How often do you understand what someone is saying right away? How often do you believe it without casting a doubt? How often do you remember it perfectly? How often do you find it relevant and applicable without a welcoming opportunity to ask questions?

And about that welcoming opportunity: Are you, as a manager, going out of your way to create a safe harbor where anyone can ask any question without fearing a cold, dismissive, or perhaps even explosive response?

The truth is, people do not communicate perfectly because they are human beings. They will never be perfect, and neither will you. But they can be better, much better, and so can you. Look at the work and competencies good communication requires as an opportunity, not a burden. It means we are living in a civilized society.

Let's go back to the CEO's standing ovation. What can go wrong with a speech that draws such sustained, enthusiastic applause by the people the speaker is trying to influence?

Just this: Most of the executives in that room heard the CEO say that in six months he was going to bring down the sledgehammer on the other guy.

 

None of them heard the CEO say that the sledgehammer was coming down on him. Sure enough, after six months passed, the CEO began getting questions: When are you going to do something about Business Unit A? About Business Unit B? After all, you said they were part of the problem.

 

Twelve months passed. Eighteen months passed. The more time that went by without a visible sledgehammer, the less credibility the CEO had remaining. He had said one thing. He had said it sincerely, earnestly, even eloquently. But people had heard him say quite another. That's what they would remember.

Gradually and then suddenly, to paraphrase Hemingway, the CEO had a credibility problem, and it was a problem of his own making.

 

Now ask yourself: Where was the real sledgehammer? More to the point, what messages are you sending implicitly or inadvertently, and how are your messages perceived by people you seek to lead? What is the price you are paying for that, and what are you going to do about it? When?

The Three Voices of Leadership

Little has changed in the decade since the Harvard Business Review published an incisive analysis by John P. Kotter on failures in corporate transformation. In it Kotter listed a handful of reasons why change efforts founder. One major reason was inadequate, slow, unclear, dodge-the-bullet communication.

“Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices,” Kotter wrote. “Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo, unless they believe that useful change is possible. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured.”

Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, went on to suggest that companies undergoing transformation typically devote only a minuscule share of their formal internal communication—newsletters, brochures, Intranet sites—to their new vision. His estimates ranged from just .0001 percent to .0005 percent. In a subsequent book, Leading Change, he generously calculated it at .58 percent, still leaving 99.42 percent of a company’s formal in-house communication to non-strategic matters.

Quibble about decimal points, if you will. Kotter’s essential point is still on target. The messages that an organization’s leadership presumably considers the most important—messages which can make the difference for the company between profit and loss, between innovation and catch-up, between growth and stagnation—are typically lost in the din of minutia and noise.

The bottom line: Transformations fail in large part because of the absence, for all intents and purposes, of clear, compelling, credible, constructive communication. You cannot expect employees who lack awareness, understanding, and acceptance of a strategy to become enthusiastically committed to carrying out the strategy.

We can take Kotter’s argument a step or two further, by addressing another critical fault line in strategic communication. For even the organization that carefully orchestrates its formal media in support of transformation still faces long odds against success—unless and until it brings its semi-formal and informal communication in line with its strategic intent.

Not only is the overwhelming share of formal communication usually given over to non-strategic matters, the overwhelming majority of all communication within an organization stands quite apart from strategic messages in those formal media.

Most workplace communication by far is semi-formal or informal. Unfortunately, many line managers (and even some communication professionals) mistakenly fail to regard semi-formal and informal communication as real communication at all. But it most certainly is, and average employees most certainly realize it.

Semi-formal communication includes those official programs and initiatives, procedures, systems, and processes that carry the organization’s imprimatur. They function as communication because they convey meaning to people and induce or impede certain thoughts or behaviors in response. Specific examples might include a performance management system, the requirement for some but not all to attend a management training institute, or a recognition and reward program, perhaps honored mainly in the breach.

Informal communication consists of relationships and routine conversation—comments, questions, complaints, humor—as well as those myriad decisions, attitudes, behaviors, and choices on the part of leadership that so often “speak louder than words.” Some real-life examples, good and ill: on the positive side, using consistent, focused questions to establish priorities and a sense of urgency; on the regrettable side, a dangerous decision to direct an unskilled worker to repair an electrical box.

Ironically, semi-formal and informal communication is often more strategic, more powerful, more contextual, and more credible than a company’s formal communication. In many respects it is the communication that matters most.

But because it is typically not regarded by management as deliberate communication—at least not as official communication—semi-formal and informal communication is often left to work against the organization’s formal communication. Indeed, it has the potential to corrode employee perceptions of the organization’s strategic intent.


Let’s take a closer look at all three voices—formal, semi-formal, and informal communication—to see the need for bringing them together.


The Formal Voice

Intranet sites, interactive kiosks, and closed-circuit television are rich cousins of the old standbys of formal communication—newsletters, brochures, all-employee mailings, videos, leadership packets, telephone recordings and the like. Irrespective of their technology, they all function much the same as the old-fashioned bulletin board. They transmit information.

Formal media, of course, are an essential component of internal communication. They are the first building block of awareness, and they serve as a reference bank or a universally accessible source of what one hopes is “the straight scoop.”

But relying exclusively on formal media to communicate strategy is a grave mistake—albeit one made frequently even by sophisticated companies. Because its thrust is an episodic, one-directional, top-down flow of information, it cannot generate the ongoing dialogue that is necessary to develop understanding and acceptance, let alone commitment.

Without a dialogue, without mutual listening, formal communication on matters of strategy is unable even to build lasting awareness¾and it cannot begin to create the understanding, acceptance, and commitment an organization needs to execute its strategy. To be successful, strategic communication requires continuing dialogue and a broadly integrated approach, emphasizing semi-formal and informal communication. Only then can it secure the buy-in of employees.

Traditionally, companies have placed too much emphasis on formal communication and too little on semi-formal and informal communication. The danger of overemphasis on the formal media is one of both impact and credibility. It is the semi-formal and informal communication that furnishes context for information. When formal communication is deemed by employees to be irrelevant, or when it conflicts with the reality that employees perceive through semi-formal or informal communication, it renders the organization’s leadership as either out of touch or not credible.

To quote Kotter once again: “Communication comes in both words and deeds, and the latter are often the most powerful form. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with their words.”


The Semi-Formal Voice

All those programs and initiatives and systems that people love to ridicule have a reason for being. They’re institutional tools intended to facilitate or direct some aspect of the organization’s work. Unfortunately, they’re not always designed to serve one of their principal functions—namely, communication.

In fact they are powerful means of communication, simply because they do what internal strategic communication does or should do: create meaning for people, and encourage or discourage certain types of thinking and behaving. Unfortunately, when left to themselves, initiatives and systems may send confusing or wrong messages. Sometimes they inadvertently send negative messages even when they’re used as designed.

Production quotas are a common example. Supervisors may perceive quotas to be in conflict with other strategic goals, such as quality, customer service, or safety. If the quotas are an absolutely rigid requirement while the quality process, customer service conditions or safety precautions are somewhat less rigid, then the quotas will prevail. The implicit rank ordering is a powerful message that quality, customer service, and safety are Jobs Number 2, 3, and 4.

Another example: an annual training requirement for managers. If the content of the training is perceived as too theoretical and not immediately applicable on the job, some managers will complain about the new burden. Meanwhile, those lower-ranking supervisors and staff employees who weren’t required to take training may feel left out—disenfranchised from the organization’s important work.

In the other direction, the manager who abrogates his or her obligation to attend training sends a message of a different sort back to upper management. In response, senior management sends yet another signal in the manner of its reaction to the truant manager.


The Informal Voice

One of my favorite questions to ask employees in focus groups, or while touring plants and factories, is: “What’s really important around here?” And another: “How do you know?”

The responses I get are instructive. In the best operations, the responses align almost perfectly with the strategic vision and the professed values of the organization. And employees will say they know that to be the case because they “see it all around” them, in routine decisions and behaviors on the part of their leaders.

In inferior operations, employees will answer flippantly or caustically: “kissin’ butt” or “keeping your mouth shut.” Pressed for more substance, they will paint a portrait of an organization that says one thing for the record but does something else.

Such are the relationships and routine conversation¾the casual comments, questions, complaints, humor—as well as all those day-to-day decisions, attitudes, behaviors, and choices on the part of leadership that communicate so very powerfully. All of us see them every day. And all of us glean meaning from them.

How often have you heard people say: “The facts speak for themselves.” Or: “What you see is what you get.” Or: “Experience is the best teacher.” Or: “Look at his track record.” Or: “You think she’d have learned by now.” Or: “Actions speak louder than words.”

All these are different ways of observing a central truth: that what people do counts for more than what people say. In the workplace, that may translate to what managers place on meeting agendas and who is invited to which meetings. It may be what standards of work are expected, what tools are provided and what skills demanded (and furnished through training). It may be the indulgence a manager shows to an employee who isn’t carrying his weight. It may be what is purchased and what is not. It may be how much time is given to what kinds of activities.

This isn’t to say that informal communication is never verbal. On the contrary, managers communicate informally through their casual remarks and comments, their sense of humor, their assignments and deadlines, and the questions they ask of employees.

Once, some years ago, the new chairman of a Detroit automaker visited an assembly plant. As he toured the plant and chatted with workers, he asked essentially the same question, over and over, and patiently listened to the answers.

To one employee he asked: “What do you need to do your job the best you know how?” To the next: “Do you have everything you need to build quality cars?” And to the next: “Is management providing you with the conditions and tools you need to help us produce the best cars people can buy?”

After he departed, the employees certainly knew his top priority: quality. And the assembly plant’s management team knew what was expected of them—all from a succession of focused questions and a senior executive’s patience to listen. Powerful stuff.

The lesson here is one of broad integration, addressing with more or less equal attention and vigor each of the three rubrics of communication. The organization that approaches internal strategic communication as a challenge to integrate its formal, semi-formal, and informal communication will succeed where others have failed.

The organization that does not—that instead is captive of traditional over-reliance on formal communication to the neglect of all else—will fail in spite of itself. Taking a broadly integrated approach to internal communication is essential as organizations continue to wrestle with new and better strategic visions.

For further reflection, ask yourself and your colleagues these questions:

• What strategic messages do our formal media convey?
• What messages do people see and experience in the semi-formal voice?
• What messages do our people see and experience in the informal voice?
• What gaps are evident?
• How do we close those gaps?

Leading by following

Copyright 2007. Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

Here are two famous quotations on leadership. Both come from prominent figures in British history. I invite you to read them and then choose the statement that represents the truer path to effective leadership.

 

You can select either statement, or neither, or both—but if you say that both are true paths to leadership, be ready to reconcile the irony.

 

Then, after answering but before reading any further, determine exactly what the statement or statements you deem true should mean for your leadership style. In particular, should you change your style? If so, how? Will you? When?

 

The first quotation, a paradox on its face, was uttered by Benjamin Disraeli, who was prime minister of Britain in the mid-19th century. Disraeli declared:

I must follow my people. Am I not their leader?

The second statement, which collides headlong with modern notions of representative democracy, is commonly attributed to Edmund Burke. In a 1774 address to the electors of Bristol, England, he declared:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

There you have it: two tidy quotations representing two diametrically opposed approaches to leadership. Disraeli beckons the leader to lead only to the extent his followers want. Burke calls on the leader to realize her own vision and to follow not her constituents but her own concience, as a moral duty to her followers.

 

Which statement do you believe holds the key to true leadership? Does either? Do both? If both, how can they not undermine each other?

 

The first statement holds important lessons for business leaders, who typically wear two hats: one as a leader, the other as a manager. We often default to our role as managers, which has the unhappy effect of stymieing and thwarting change. Business leaders would do well to listen more to their followers and to question more often their own assumptions, biases, perspective, and knowledge, for their own arrogance is their biggest enemy. To them, I say: Listen to Disraeli.

 

But there's a fine line between heeding Disraeli's counsel and fatuously putting a finger to the wind without finding a center of your own. Having a core identity, knowing it, and bringing it to the table are vital to the cause of leadership. Yes, of course it will cost you some followers. No leader can appeal to everyone. But willow-to-the-wind navigation is scarcely leadership at all.

 

So we turn to Burke. He asks us to look inside ourselves, to reach deep into our souls as leaders, so that we can find the true north of our own moral compass. Then he commands us to follow it. "If you should be a leader, then lead!" he would say.

 

That approach is enormously appealing. After eons of depending on leaders, we survivors of 100,000 generations of humanoids and humans have a culturally instinctive need for leadership, embodying at the very least an innate sense of direction, a tireless energy, the steady sunburst of hope and perseverance, and frequent articulation of what followers need to know and remember and feel and do.

 

So which, you ask, do I believe is the truer path to leadership? You knew the answer all along, of course. Disraeli and Burke are both on to something big, something important. It is a paradox of leadership, and a profound paradox at that, to realize that they both counsel essential roads to leadership. Far from being mutually exclusive, they are mutually reinforcing. Each is stronger for the other.

 

For further reflection, ask yourself and your colleagues:

• What do we learn from Burke? From Disraeli?
• Why are these lessons from the 18th and 19th centuries important to a 21st century business?
• How do they challenge our leadership? What do they say about our connectivity with followers? About our authenticity as leaders? 
• Can we forge a stronger connection with our people?
• What is the value of a strong, resilient connection with our people?
• What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? When? 
• How can we hold ourselves accountable? 

 

Thomas J. Lee

What are you focused on?

Copyright 2007 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

My next-door neighbor happens to be a wide receiver in the National Football League. One night last summer, while we were both grilling out, he and I got to talking about football. Before we put our steaks on, he said something that I still haven't forgetten. He was describing for me what it was like to play professional football before thousands and thousands of people.

Carl has so honed his craft, so thoroughly ingrained it, that when I asked how it feels to catch a pass in a game, he had to take himself physically through the motions to be able to respond. It was comical in a way. At one point, standing on the patio, he had his arms outstretched, as if he were catching a pass over his left shoulder. He remarked that, as he is running to reach the pass, he cannot hear the stadium crowd.

That just stunned me. I found it incredible. Think about it: Fifty thousand, sixty thousand, maybe seventy thousand fans in the stadium, most of them screaming their lungs out, and he cannot hear them.

Carl went on. He said he can hear his own footsteps, and he can hear his own breathing. But he cannot hear the crowd. As the ball falls gracefully into his arms, almost in slow-motion, his only focus is on wrapping his fingers around it, pulling it in and keeping it close, and then reaching the goal line with it. Those are the only things that matter. Everything else, including the crowd, ceases to exist. It just isn't there.

Now that's focus.

Imagine, just imagine, if the hundreds or the thousands of people in your organization all had such extraordinary intensity of focus around your business goals and strategy. Most certainly they, and you, would be performing at a level you have only dreamed about.

There are tools and techniques to build that kind of focus. But the master key that unlocks it is your own focus. For you cannot ask of others what you have not demanded of yourself. If you yourself, as a leader, are not truly focused on strategic imperatives, no one else will be.

Begin with this simple question, and answer with a bucket of ice-cold honesty: What is it that you are most concerned about? Let's agree to net out the personal stuff: your kids, house repairs, aging parents, weekend plans. As you come to work each morning, what is it about the business that is most on your mind?

If you're like many managers, and probably most, execution of the business plan isn't front and center. Nor is realizing a long-term vision. Living out the company's values isn't close. While your monthly nut and year-end bonus are probably right up there, chances are your day-to-day focus any given morning is on a personnel issue, or a conference call at 9, or a dysfunctional staff department, or a draft marketing plan, or an OSHA inspection, or performance reviews, or squeezing another 1 percent from next year's budget, or any of a thousand other things that compete for your time and attention. That's the reality of life in management.

Because your focus is on these front burners, it is only natural to put truly strategic issues on the back burner. We quietly tell ourselves it is only for a day, only for the week. We'll get to the important stuff next week, next month.

Meanwhile, anyone and everyone with whom we come into contact immediately senses our real priorities, our real focus. We cannot hide. Every question we ask, every comment we make, betrays our real interest, our real concern. Because our real priorities and real focus are something other than the organization's strategic vision and long-term goals, the vision and the goals slip to second place, and then to third, and then off the grid altogether.

We all know that the hardest person to manage, and the hardest person to lead, is one and the same. You say hello every morning in the mirror. Only you can change that person's priorities, and therefore it is you who must.

Tomorrow morning, and for just one day at a time, shift your focus. Throw a spotlight on the strategic. Let the little things fall into place on their own. They will, after all.

For just one day, focus on the truly important things. Govern your questions and comments so that most of what you say, all day, creates energy around your strategic imperatives. Don't neglect or even diminish the lubricants of human relationships, of course. But let any substantive remark about the business revolve around the organization's vision and strategic intent.

Imagine you are Carl, running out and in. Reach out your arms. Look for the ball. Run to it. Listen to your own footsteps, your own breathing. Let the ball fall into your arms, as if no one is watching. It's just you, the ball, and the goal line.

Chances are the game will change.

A quick self-assessment

(c) Copyright 2007 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Here is a little exercise that can serve as both an ignition switch and a road map for discussing an organization's cohesion around its vision, goals, and strategy.

 

If you are already familiar with the Rainbow™, you will recognize the four column headers: Awareness, Understanding, Acceptance, and Commitment. They represent the four stages, one after the next, that any leadership initiative or change program must go through.

 

Arrayed beneath the column headers is a 4X5 matrix. It provides a structure for gauging the relative orientation of employees (or members, or volunteers, or supporters) toward the organization's mission. The five rows reflect levels of disposition. The best level is at the top: strategic focus, curiosity, passion and courage. The worst is at the bottom. In between are three intermediate levels, the higher the better. Here is the matrix:

 

Awareness	Understanding	Acceptance	Commitment
Focus	Curiosity	Passion	Courage
Concern	Insight	Trust	Initiative
Affiliation	Clarity	Appreciation	Compliance
Indifference	Confusion	Denial	Fear
Alienation	Ignorance	Cynicism	Contempt

 

 

 

First, take a moment on your own to pinpoint the level of your management team within each column. Next, do the same for the organization as a whole, thinking in terms of the typical non-supervisory, non-managerial person. Keep your choices to yourself. Now, ask each individual member of your management team to do likewise. When everyone has finished, share the results with one another and ask the following questions for discussion.

 

• What would full strategic focus look like? Where do you already see it? Where do you instead see indifference or even alienation? How do media and social “noise” affect this? What can you do to heighten awareness of your business environment, vision, and strategy? What obstacles are in the way? How do you get around them? What have you done that interferes with strategic focus?

• What would broadly based, strategic curiosity look like? Why do you want it? Why is curiosity even more important than insight? Where do you already see it? Where don’t you? What can you do to cultivate greater understanding of the implications of strategy on day-to-day work? What obstacles are in the way? How do you get around them? Which of your own behaviors must you change to demonstrate by example?

• What would real passion look like? Why is it important? Passion for what? Where do you see it? Where do you only wish we saw it? Do you see it in yourselves? In what ways? What specifically can you do to nurture enthusiastic acceptance of your vision? What is in the way? How does emotion complement reasoning?

• What would genuine courage look like in business? Do you ever see it? Where, if at all? Where instead do you see fear or even contempt? In what ways is courage in the workplace important? What does it have to do with commitment? What specifically can you do to build more commitment to this organization? What should you refrain from doing? What stands in the way?

 

We have found this exercise to be quite powerful. It provides a framework and linear process for the execution of initiatives and strategies. While it doubtless oversimplifies things, it also sheds light on some real difficulties.

 

Let me know how the exercise turns out. Just drop a line to me at tom@arceil.com.

Year After Year, a Missed Opportunity

 

Three or four weeks into every new year, the president of the United States goes before Congress—and, via television, directly before the American people—to deliver his State of the Union address. Year after year, for Democrat and Republican alike, it is a huge missed opportunity.

 

I'm not picking on President Bush here. Every president I can remember has neglected to make the most of the State of the Union address. Though often well-written, these speeches never rise to their potential as an instrument for leadership. Their shortcomings hold a lesson for leaders in other walks of life, especially business.

 

Think first of the audience for a typical State of the Union. Arrayed before the president are virtually every member of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and diplomats from countries around the world. Watching television are probably the vast majority of Fortune 500 chief executives, hundreds of columnists and editorialists, thousands of state and local officials and community leaders, and untold numbers of Internet bloggers, not to mention millions upon millions of U.S. voters.

 

Not bad, would you agree?

 

Now think about what all these people typically hear: bromide after bromide, carefully scripted applause lines, a Sears catalogue of policy prescriptions for everything from embryonic stem-cell research to Medicare reforms, and, for the last 25 years, the saccharine introduction and standing ovation for an American hero, a visiting head-of-state, or a poster child for whatever. (This year, at least we’ll hear something we have never heard before, as the Sergeant at Arms intones: “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States!”)

 

Finally, think of the opportunity that gets away: the chance to focus public discourse on one or two core initiatives or challenges, in a way that enhances the potential for real leadership.

 

Business leaders frequently make the same mistake. They have so many things on their plate that they sacrifice the opportunity to shine a spotlight on their uppermost priorities. They squander an opportunity for focus.

 

The State of the Union speech has its roots in the U.S. Constitution. Modeled after the Throne Speech of monarchies, it calls on the president to give Congress information on the state of the Union “from time to time” and to recommend legislation he deems “necessary and expedient.” But it does not require a speech for that process, and there is no constraint on how the president should structure a speech should he choose to give one. Nor does it specify how often or how comprehensive or deep the communication must be.

 

That allows for flexibility that presidents should use. For more than a century, from Thomas Jefferson in 1801 to Woodrow Wilson in 1913, the State of the Union was a written report without any public oration. Only since 1965 has the speech been broadcast on prime-time television. So the event has evolved, and it can evolve some more.

 

Here’s what a creative leader would do: submit the extensive detail on the “state of the union” to Congress in a written report. Accompany that report with another document describing in detail the “necessary and expedient” legislation he wishes to be enacted. Then, use the televised speech itself to focus attention on one—at the most, two—issues or initiatives that he deems particularly important.

 

Remember, the first step of the leadership process is fixing attention on a challenge or issue. Until people share a common focus, they cannot share a common bond of resolve. The focus is critical.

 

All of us have an inherent need for noble, visionary, resolute leadership. In calling for an annual message to Congress, the founders were simply sketching out the president's role as a policymaking leader. They would applaud mightily a president who stepped up to the challenge.

 

Business leaders take note: Convey detailed information in writing, either as narrative or spreadsheet. Use oral presentations and speeches to focus attention. Get to the point and stay on point. Do so often, and you will define your leadership and shape the future. You will lead.

 

For further reflection, ask yourself and your colleagues: 

What can you do to take advantage of them in the future?

What additional opportunities can you find?

How have you compromised your organization's singular focus?

How well do you manage the communication of complex data?

What competencies do you need to develop?

 

Thomas J. Lee

Building mission-critical focus

(c) Copyright 2007. Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Lou Gerstner, who was so successful in turning around IBM in the 1990s, often remarked that nothing in business is more important than focus.

It must be sharp. It must be true. It must be shared. It must be robust and relevant.

Sadly, few companies have such a focus, even at their senior management. What passes for a vision is typically nothing more than a grandiose dream devoid of real value. Most visions that I've seen lack substance, specificity, priorities, roles, metrics, resources, accountability--any or all of the watchwords that are otherwise the foundation of business.

That's a real failure of leadership. Without a common focus, there can be no real sense of direction. Without direction, there can be no progress. Without progress, there can be no achievement. And without achievement, there can be no success.

To communicate a shared focus, the leadership team must first have one. It must be a clear, well-honed strategic focus. After all, you can't share what you don't have.

Establishing and occasionally refining the strategic focus is the foundational work of leadership. It is absolutely imperative. In the absence of a focus, a company lacks a core, and it tends to jump from fad to fad. Its leaders often carry a long laundry list of initiatives and priorities--programs of the month--few or none of which have their earnest, sustainable commitment.

Those programs of the month just naturally become their own mockery;  people see right through them. Each successive new program invariably betrays itself as another "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more," to quote Shakespeare.

Creating or refining a strategic focus requires first determining your unique selling proposition, the essence of your brand. What is it that truly sets you apart? What do your competitors envy about you? Why do your customers choose you over your competitors? You must get to the beating heart of your distinctiveness.

From the beginning, it's important to keep the end in mind. The end is naturally a high level of employee commitment toward executing the strategy, so that the leader's focus becomes everyone's focus. Thus the prospective focus must have the potential to resonate with your people. Therefore it must have roots in the legitimate, authentic values and in the noble self-identity of your organization.

While the strategic focus is yours to create, the organization's values and self-identity are already there. In the short term, they can only be discovered, not imposed from on high. Over time, with inspiring leadership and supportive stewardship, they can grow to something better and greater, just as a plant leans toward sunlight. But that takes time and leadership.

Once a values-driven strategic focus is in place, the challenge shifts to the hard work of translating the broad theme to particular behaviors: ways of thinking and acting so that the focus can take root and thrive.

On one level, that can be expressed in a concise, memorable phrase, as we have seen at Nike ("Just do it"), FedEx ("When you absolutely, positively . . ."), and the Marine Corps (The few, the proud"). On another level, it must also become specific to each individual job. This process will ultimately require the intimate involvement of all managers.

Then it's a matter of repetition, reiteration, and redundancy. Saying it once is tantamount to never saying it at all. You must say it over and over and over. When you think you have it said too many times, you're just getting started.

For reflection and discussion, ask yourselves:

• What exactly is "the beating heart of your distinctiveness"? Why do your customers choose you? What are your competitors jealous of?
• In the day-to-day reality of your world, what does your strategic focus consist of? Truth to tell, what exactly does your company (or division, department, team) actually focus on? Being candid, is it something extraneous such as office politics or individual financial advantage?
• As it now stands, could your vision statement apply to any company in your industry? Worse, could it apply to any company in any industry?
• Does your vision offer a realistic, specific, clear focus on high-priority challenges?
• How do work teams translate larger strategic focus to their street-level work priorities?

What history teaches

(c) Copyright 2007. Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Last week I had the rare privilege of traveling to Washington and joining in the celebration for a childhood friend, who was elected to Congress in November and sworn in Thursday. On our way to a reception in the Capitol, my head swiveled from one marble monument to another, all glistening under a cerulean sky.

 

Looking down the Mall from Capitol Hill, we could see past the Smithsonian to the Washington Monument. Beyond it, in the distance, loomed the Lincoln Memorial. We could practically hear Martin Luther King's baritone, still echoing from those very steps where King stood as he intoned: "I have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood"; and we could almost see the Mall teeming with those thousands of Americans who shared that dream in 1963.

 

As I absorbed it all, I recalled a little history lesson that still offers an important insight on leadership for us all, regardless of whether we seek to lead in the realm of politics, or in business, or for an unnoticed cause, or in anything else.

 

It is just this: Think back over America's entire 230-year history, and ask yourself a single question about each decade or two: At that particular moment in our history, were we as a people blessed with genuine leadership or cursed by its absence? If we were blessed, what did the leadership look like and sound like, and where was it coming from? (Those of you living and working outside the United States can try the same exercise with your own national history. Let me know how it works.)

 

Here in America, in the 18th century, there was no question of our bounty. Names like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hancock, Madison, and many others were already legendary in the late 1700s. But just a few years later, in the early decades of the 19th century, as our young nation was finding its legs, we had little true leadership. We didn't really need it.

 

All that changed in the 1850s and 1860s, as we faced grave moral and political issues that demanded resolution. Suddenly we again found extraordinary leadership in government, the military, and journalism—not the least of it in the unlikely profile of an unschooled, self-taught country lawyer from the Illinois prairie. In the decades that followed, leadership in the public sector lay dormant, while leadership emerged in great industrial enterprises that built and powered our cities, railroads, factories, ports and canals.

 

Not until the 1930s and 1940s, when the United States faced first an economic depression of unprecedented magnitude, and then a military threat also of unprecedented magnitude, did we again experience compelling leadership in government. In the 1960s, after a shorter period of relative calm, we needed and found leadership yet again: to inspire us in a race to the Moon, to enact laws on civil rights and the environment, and to extract us from an ill-conceived foreign war. In the latter, we witnessed leadership in the least likely of places: the rice paddies of Vietnam and Big Ten college campuses.

 

The inescapable history lesson is that resonant, courageous leadership emerges only as it is deemed necessary. When the need for leadership is not seen as clear and compelling, people will not recognize the relevance and legitimacy of the putative leadership. Consequently, no leadership will take root until those perceptions change.

 

And notice something else: Leaders do not unilaterally determine the need for their own leadership. Followers do. Thus, would-be leaders cannot lead for merely aspiring to lead. They can lead only because followers decide to follow. Leadership is essentially a license that leaders derive from the people they would lead.

 

For further reflection, ask yourself:

• Is this analysis consistent with your own experiences of leadership?
• How does the foregoing analysis apply to the events of September 11, 2001? What was the public's general perception of the U.S. president's leadership capacity as of September 10, 2001? As of September 17, 2001?
• Does the recognition of the need for leadership automatically confer legitimacy on the authority figures who are already in place? Where have you seen that to be the case? Where have you seen examples to the contrary?
• What are the implications of this analysis for leadership in the private sector? On your own leadership style?
• Under what circumstances, if any, can leaders affect perceptions of the need for their leadership? Is it legitimate to do so? If so, how? If not, what alternatives are there?
• How much time and effort do successful leaders invest in building a case for their leadership? Do you invest anything remotely close to that? 

 

Leadership vs. Management

(c) Copyright 2007. Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Management and leadership are two different things. They're both essential to the success and growth of an organization, and they complement each other in ways little and large. But often the differences between them are lost amid the hustle and bustle of running a company.

 

You can think of management as the hard work of ensuring performance to a certain standard. That standard may involve money (such as a budget or a revenue target), or time (in the case of a deadline), or quality (as tolerance for defects), or production (a quota, say, or a truck waiting at the loading dock).

 

By contrast, you can think of leadership as the hard work of bringing about change—cultural, operational, structural—that depends on the discretionary but critical participation of people, who essentially choose the pace if not the direction of change.

 

Management and leadership both require their own energy, as well. But the energy for each comes from different sources.

 

Management takes its energy from the power of an organization's hierarchy, and its thrust is accountability. Persons in a position of authority have the duty and power to enforce a standard.

 

Stylistically, communication for management is typically directive, authoritative, even implicitly threatening, because it reflects the imposition of accountability.

 

Leadership, on the other hand, takes its energy from its nobility, its quest for something big, and its empathy and connection with people. Influential leaders often emerge from relative obscurity or from institutional positions of dependency, not power. They get more from people by asking for and expecting more.

 

Stylistically, communication for leadership is ennobling, inspiring, and purposeful. It recognizes the de facto democratic nature of organizational change, and it reaches for a live-wire connection between leader and led. The thrust is opportunity to achieve and become something more than we are today or were yesterday.

 

To the extent that these differences are overlooked, most organizations default to the accountability of management. That’s not surprising, since the people in charge were schooled, selected, and rewarded for their ability to control results. But it misses the glorious potential for change that looms in opportunity, in the connectivity of real leadership.

 

Ask yourself:

 

• Does your organization value management over leadership?
• Does it appreciate the differences between management and leadership—not so much the differences in their position on your organizational chart, but the differences in their work?
• Does it recognize that the work of management and the work of leadership each has its own kind of energy?
• Does it see the profound stylistic differences between communication for the sake of management and communication for the sake of leadership?
• What could your organization accomplish with a greater appreciation of leadership?
• What should change?
• How can you change to embody the importance of leadership as a force for change?

 

Important essay

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

We'd like to call your attention to an essay in the August 2006 issue of HR Magazine, published monthly by the Society for Human Resource Management.

 

"The Unintended Word," by Eric Krell, makes a critically important but often overlooked observation: as a manager, you are communicating constantly, often when you're least aware of it and are quite possibly oblivious to the messages you are sending. Because this implicit but commanding communication is unintentional, it is also unmanaged. And while you may not notice it, others most assuredly do.

 

Unintended messages can easily undermine and overwhelm your intended ones. The result: chaos. It is difficult, and it can be impossible, to recover. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: "What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."

 

Seeing and hearing such unintended messages, all but the best employees can easily tune out and turn off. The costs can be huge: a hemorrhage of talent, customer defections, employee cynicism, skyrocketing turnover, laborious recruitment, your own stalemated career. All because of messages you never intended to send, certainly didn't manage, and perhaps didn't even notice at the time.

 

We urge you to take a few minutes to read this informative essay. Email or telephone us directly (847-247-2241) if you wish to discuss it.

Count 'em: Fifteen signs of dysfunction

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Short of an exhaustive audit, there's really no quick and simple means of objectively evaluating a company's business-strategy communication for employees. Still, it's important to try. So just how can you assess the clarity, credibility, and coherence of communication around business strategy and priorities?

One way is to look for signs of dysfunction. It isn't pretty, but it tells you what needs attention.

Here are 15 alarms to keep an eye out for. Each is a flashing red light. If you see any of them in your organization, you have work to do. If you see more than a few, you have lots of work to do. If you see most or all of them, you may want to run for the hills.

Alarm No. 1: The terms "leadership" and "management" are used interchangeably. There's actually a big difference between them, though senior people often wear both hats. Moreover, the difference affects the communication for each. Management concerns itself with performance to standards. Control and authority are paramount; deadlines and budgets are common metrics. Leadership, on the other hand, is about inspiring change through people. While framework and direction are important, the real leverage for change is the focus, curiosity, passion and courage of the troops. It follows that communication for management is directive and commanding, and communication for leadership is enlightening, inspiring and empowering. Because the distinction is so often overlooked, companies commonly default to directive, commanding communication that undermines leadership and stymies innovation and change. That's a loud siren of its own.

Alarm No. 2:  Communication is regarded as verbal messages and data only. Everyone knows that "actions speak louder than words" and that "the facts speak for themselves." Yet few companies regard communication with employees as anything beyond words and numbers. Do they honestly think employees have blinders on? A company's internal-communication process should concern itself not just with the "official truths" (verbal messages, as articulated by leadership) but also with the "ground truths" (perceptions and perceived reality expressed by policy decisions, visible behaviors of executives and senior managers, cultural forces, the organization's evident purpose, etc.). Otherwise, the company's credibility with its own people will be highly questionable.

Alarm No. 3:  There's a tendency for positive spin on negative news. Let's leave spin to the politicians and their handlers. In business, we are who we are. More than anyone else, our employees know it. That's the simple truth. When bad things happen to good companies, good companies acknowledge it. They own up to their own responsibilities, and they get busy. They don't try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. That's why good companies are good companies—and it's also one reason why good companies are good places to work.

Communicating your strategic focus

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Here are a half-dozen short, breezy, familiar catchphrases, each of which supports a brand identity:

• Just do it!
• When you absolutely, positively need it overnight.
• We love to fly, and it shows. 
• Nothing runs like a Deere.
• We pick you up.
• The few. The proud.

What do they have in common? They're all splendid examples of successful marketing initiatives, quite obviously. Each takes only an instant to associate with its sponsor.

 

But they have something else in common. They're all statements of strategic focus. For all six organizations, these catchphrases succinctly state what their people must know, do, believe, and ultimately be in order to live out the organization's mission and purpose. Think of them as the verbal foundation of engagement.

 

For Nike, it's initiative and action. For FedEx, it's reliability and speed. For Delta Air Lines, it's enthusiasm for flight. For John Deere, it's unparalleled mechanical performance. For Enterprise Rent-a-Car, it's service and optimism. For the Marines, it's duty and honor.

 

In each case, distilled to a few well-chosen words, the catchphrase captures the essence of the organization's legacy, identity and competitive advantage.

 

Externally, these familiar words convey an image designed to enhance the organization's public persona. Internally, they establish a cultural norm that sets a high bar for work expectations.

 

Both externally and internally, all six statements operationalize a strategy. That is why they work so well as statements of shared strategic focus.

 

Sadly, most companies lack such a sharp, shared focus. It isn't so much a failure of marketing as of leadership. To communicate a shared focus, you must first have a clear, well-honed strategic focus. You can't communicate what you don't have.

 

Establishing and occasionally refining the strategic focus is the foundational work of leadership. It is absolutely imperative. Without focus, a company lacks a core, and it tends to jump from fad to fad. Its leaders often carry a long laundry list of initiatives and priorities--programs of the month--few or none of which have their earnest commitment.

 

Those programs become their own mockery;  people see right through them. To borrow from the Bard, each successive new program soon reveals itself as another "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

 

Creating or refining a strategic focus requires first determining your unique selling proposition, the essence of your brand. What is it that truly sets you apart? What do your competitors envy about you? You must get to the beating heart of your distinctiveness.

 

From the beginning, it's important to keep the end in mind. The end is naturally a high level of employee commitment, so that the leader's focus becomes everyone's focus. Thus the prospective focus must have the potential to resonate with your people. Therefore it must have roots in the legitimate, authentic values and in the noble self-identity of your organization.

 

While the strategic focus is yours to create, the values and self-identity are already there. In the short term, they can only be discovered, not imposed from on high. Over time, with inspiring leadership and supportive stewardship, they can grow to something better and greater, just as a plant leans toward sunlight. But that takes time and leadership.

 

Once a values-driven strategic focus is in place, the challenge shifts to the hard work of translating the broad theme to particular behaviors: ways of thinking and acting so that the focus can take root and thrive.

 

On one level, that can be expressed in a concise, memorable phrase, as we have seen at Nike, FedEx, and the Marine Corps. On another level, it must also become specific to each individual job. This process will ultimately require the intimate involvement of all managers.

 

Then it's a matter of repetition, reiteration, and redundancy. Saying it once is tantamount to never saying it at all. You must say it over and over and over. When you think you have it said too many times, you're just getting started.

Four lodestars of engagement

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Nothing of much significance has ever been achieved, and nothing of much value has ever been created, that wasn't, at some time

• the point of someone's single-minded focus
• the object of someone's intense curiosity
• the subject of someone's deep passion
• and the product of someone's enduring courage.

Think of any significant achievement, discovery, invention or development in modern history: setting foot on the Moon, ending apartheid, transplanting a human heart, cleaning the environment.

 

Think of composing a symphony or translating the Bible or climbing Mount Everest or beating cancer and then winning the Tour de France seven years straight.

 

In business, think of Lee Iacocca as he saved Chrysler, or Sam Walton as he built a chain of discount stores, or a couple of obscure college dropouts as they set up Microsoft and took it public. Think of Google. Think of eBay.

 

Could any of these things, or anything else that rises to their level, have happened without this laser-like focus, this bold curiosity, this all-consuming passion, and this persevering courage? We think not.

 

We believe these four forces—focus, curiosity, passion and courage—are the sine qua non of breakthrough success. They are absolutely essential. What's more, in teams they build beautifully on one another. They bring people together and hold them together. They define the very culture of a high-performance team.

 

Yet, astonishingly and inexplicably, most companies give only lipservice to these four vital forces. In most organizations, these four lodestars are so routinely ignored and neglected as to be mere afterthoughts. Frankly, we cannot recall hearing a single business leader offer a single coherent sentence about all four together.

 

So let us redefine the engagement of a workforce as a culture with a high and ever-rising tide of focus, curiosity, passion and courage. Imagine the impact that it could have. Imagine the potential of your own people. Imagine the places you could go, the work you could do, the standout company you could finally be.

 

Now ask yourself: What would full focus, curiosity, passion and courage look like in your industry? How would their presence differ from the present state?

 

More to the point: What did you do yesterday, and what did your fellow leaders do yesterday, to build, sustain and nurture a culture of single-minded focus, intense curiosity, deep passion, and enduring courage?

 

What are you doing today?

 

What will you do tomorrow?

 

What can you do today? Tomorrow?

Your credibility is on the line

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

No leader deliberately sets out to undermine his own credibility. But in the eyes of followers, just about every leader's credibility is imperfect. Some managers have scarcely any credibility left.

 

How does that happen? Actually, it happens easily--all too easily.

 

It happens because it is easy, too easy, to lose sight of the myriad ways in which you communicate as a leader.

 

The fact is, as a leader you're communicating constantly, often when you're least aware of it.

 

We have a simple, powerful way to keep you and your leadership team's messages on point and on track. It is a structure that identifies three distinct modes or "voices" with which you and your leadership team speak, every day: formal, semi- formal, and informal.

 

The challenge is to integrate or align these three voices. It's really quite straightforward. You just need to know how it works. Here’s a 30,000-foot overview.

What leadership really is

© Copyright 2007 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Leadership and management are two different things. Both are essential for any company that seeks to perform well and blaze new trails. Often, an executive must simultaneously wear the hats of both leader and manager. Still, the two are different from each other, and the distinctions are important.

 

In a nutshell, management is the hard work of controlling a situation or process—typically a series of tasks with particular resources and constraints—for the sake of meeting certain expectations such as production, quality, delivery, or cost. Because it seeks to eliminate deviation, it is inherently pessimistic. It concerns itself with standardization, order, regimentation, and accountability.

 

Leadership, by contrast, is the hard work of bringing about extraordinary change through people. It is much more creative and fluid than management. It is concerned not so much with tasks as with opportunities. Because it seeks to inspire people to do more than they ever thought possible, it is inherently optimistic. It regards a little chaos as inevitable, and it looks to risk, uncertainty and speed not as perils to be avoided but as leverage to be maximized.

 

Most companies put a premium on good management. They nurture and reward managerial competencies. Unfortunately, that emphasis can come at the cost of neglecting the competencies and challenge of leadership. So these companies produce more good managers than effective leaders who connect emotionally, even viscerally with people. That can have serious, adverse consequences for change.

Be your own first follower

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given day, the people you seek to lead may or may not hear, understand, believe, remember or find relevant what you have to say. Nevertheless, say what you must. Say it often.

 

On any given day, the people you seek to lead will always notice, observe and remember what you do and how you do it. Never forget that people are constantly comparing what you do and what you fail to do with what you say and what you said. That's accountability, and you like it.

 

Finally, on any given day, the people you seek to lead are determining for themselves whether to follow your lead. Their decision is theirs alone. It is not yours. It will rest largely on whether they regard you as a person of noble purpose and integrity, as well as of principle, intellect, competence, and wisdom.

 

So speak up, and speak up often, about what matters most, and then be your own first follower. Leading, you see, is all about following.

What can a baseball scoreboard teach us?

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

Can a ballpark teach us anything about leadership? Can we learn anything from a rickety old scoreboard?

Wrigley Field is a ballpark’s ballpark, ensquared by four asphalt streets smack in a yuppity neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. Its decrepit scoreboard towers above the centerfield bleachers and casts a long evening shadow over the Red Line tracks and Murphy’s Bleachers, the Lakeview neighborhood tap across the street at Sheffield and Waveland. This old scoreboard is so 20^th century, it looks like so 19^th.

One rainy April afternoon a few years ago, my daughter and I huddled under a blanket and umbrella along the first-base line, waiting for the game to resume. We share a passion for baseball in general and for the Cubs in particular, but a springtime thundershower was snapping at the diamond. If it didn’t let up soon, the ump would surely call the game.

Looking out over our field of dreams, we found ourselves talking about the century-old stadium and its iconic scoreboard, the kind of scoreboard that ballparks everywhere used to have. The old thing is a drab Army green. It has no twirling gizmos, no firework launchers, no video screen, no neon anything. It is historic and venerable enough to have landmark status. During a game, men work inside it. When an inning ends or a team scores, they reach up and remove the previous number on display and put up a new one—down comes the 3, up goes the 4—using their arms and hands the way men did when Babe Ruth pointed to the bleachers, these bleachers, and swung for them.

Now the essential thing about all scoreboards is that they display a game’s progression and situation in a regular, orderly way.  That is stating the obvious, of course, but it bears pointing out. Scoreboards reflect and impose structure on the game. Without them, the game would be a mess.

That simple fact is of fundamental importance. Imagine playing a game of baseball without the structure of innings, without the structure of a lineup, without the structure of three strikes and four balls, without the structure of a box score, and without the structure of league standings. It would be chaotic and meaningless. The same is true for so much else in our lives. Structure keeps us ordered and productive. It enables us to make progress. And like the scoreboard at a baseball park, the structure in our lives goes unnoticed because it is always there and almost everywhere.

Boot up your laptop, and you can see structure in your qwerty keyboard and your Internet browser. Take a Caribbean cruise, and it is in your itinerary. Pick up an atlas and notice it in latitude and longitude. Go to the library. It is in the Dewey Decimal System.

Balance your checkbook, and it is in the debits and credits. Help your kids with their science project, and notice it is in the Periodic Table or the quadratic equation. Drive across town to grandma’s house, and you can notice it on the dashboard of your car and on the grid of streets and avenues. Run to the grocery store. It is in the aisles of breakfast cereal here and frozen pizzas over there. Assemble a child’s toy, and it is in the diagrams and instructions (if you can understand them!).

In business there’s plenty of structure, but, oddly, it is not quite so universal. Where you find it in business, and where you don’t, is worth noting. Its presence reflects our real priorities at work, and its absence limits our real work.

How much should you spend on leadership communication?

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

There's a never-ending debate over how much money a company should spend on its organizational (or internal or leadership or employee) communication function. Some people say x dollars (or pounds or yen) per employee. Others say y. I listen to the debate with bemusement. If only this work were so easy.

Having benchmarked organizational communication in more than two dozen major corporations, I know the answer is—well, just what is it?

Actually, it depends on the company, its industry, its strategy, its competitive position, its legacy, its location, its budgeting, its professional competencies, its leaders and their expectations, its employees and their expectations, and that's just for starters.

In a nutshell, the problem with budget-based benchmarking of the communication function is that no two companies are sufficiently similar to allow for it. The differences are inevitable and profound.

It's time to share the strategy

© Copyright 2006 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

by Thomas J. Lee

So the annual rite of strategic planning is finally behind you. You're nearing completion of next year's budget, as well. Now you are in a position to communicate the organization's 2006 strategic goals and priorities to the workforce.

Stop right there!

Before you proceed any further, consider this sobering reality: Many companies — probably most companies — botch the job of communicating strategy, just as they botch the job of communicating change, quality, teamwork, safety, customer service, and work priorities in general.

How can we be so certain? The evidence is all around. You need only look.

First, it is a truism that most corporate change efforts fall far short of their goals, quantitatively and qualitatively. Indeed, few management initiatives of any kind are unqualified successes. Few people can name any. (One consequence is the "strategic" sale of companies to their own competitors. After all, that's plainly the last resort to increase shareholder value.)

Second, on both anecdotal and deductive levels, poor communication emerges as a primary cause of these failures. Anecdotally, complaints of poor communication are commonplace; people routinely blame organizational snafus on poor communication. Deductively, workforce surveys and process analyses often find gaps in awareness and understanding on business information and especially strategic initiatives.

Now the reasons for poor strategic communication would take a blog of their own to list. We don't have room for that, and it wouldn't make for inspirational reading anyway. But we can offer you some lessons on how not to botch the job.

You can begin with a simple question. Ask yourself and your colleagues whether and how much a particular strategy or initiative depends for its success on the discretionary effort of people. Most do, to a large degree. But some don't. Spin-offs and recapitalizations are examples that don't.

For strategies and initiatives that do depend on discretionary effort, strategic communication is absolutely critical to execution. Further, the communication must be clear, compelling, credible and constructive. It must also involve active management with a systematic approach, adequate resources, and real-world sensitvities.

Motorola's tragic loss

(c) Copyright 2005 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

 

No sooner had we remarked on the importance of a single scientist or manager to a company's overall performance, and had noted Motorola's satisfying recovery over the past couple of years, than the executive arguably most responsible for that resurgence suddenly died.

 

Geoffrey Frost, 56, chief marketing officer of the diversified electronics manufacturer, died unexpectedly at his suburban Chicago home yesterday. Hailed by Motorola CEO Edward Zander as "a creative genius," Frost was closely associated with introduction of the sleek, metallic Razr mobile phone that is selling faster than the company can make it.

 

The Chicago Tribune called Frost "a key force in revitalizing the company's image" by infusing "edginess and sexiness" in Motorola's advertising and brand, including the quirky slogan "Hello, Moto." Wall Street analysists bemoaned his passing as "a huge loss" for the company.

 

No question, this is a tragic loss, all the more so because of Frost's youth and vitality. Yet the company will survive and continue to grow. That is the magic of anyone's contribution to an appreciative, learning organization. The contribution becomes a life force that lives on and on. People do things because of their late mentor and his way of thinking.

 

Frost's death comes less than a year after Charlie Bell, at 44 the youngest CEO in the history of McDonald's Corporation, died of colon cancer only months after taking over the helm from Jim Cantalupo, who had died unexpectedly of heart failure at 60. McDonald's, too, continues to thrive. Its culture appears to have absorbed the lessons that Messrs. Bell and Cantalupo taught.

 

That's what leaders do. They teach.

 

I believe it was Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, who said: "Never underestimate the ability of one person or a small group of committed, passionate, courageous people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

 

On the occasion of a tragedy for Motorola and for Geoffrey Frost's loved ones, let us remember and remind ourselves that one person can make a difference -- in our place of work as well as in our families, our neighborhoods, and the world. We need only choose to do so.

Measure what you can measure

(c) Copyright 2005 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

Yesterday I received an email from a friend and esteemed colleague, Fraser Likely, who is a highly respected Canadian authority in corporate communication. Fraser, having read my blog expressing contrarian thoughts on measurement, reminded me of an essay I had posted five years ago on an online site available to members of a professional alliance of corporate-communication executives. The essay was in response to an incendiary debate over measurement in organizational communication, for which I shouldered some of the responsibility. And boy, was it ever heated.

Contrarian thoughts on measurement

(c) Copyright 2005 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

How often have you heard the statement: "What gets measured is what gets done"?

Or its buddy: "You can't manage what you can't measure"?

These rhythmic little aphorisms certainly sound compelling. Their simple wisdom is like a lightning bolt of insight: sudden, brilliant, electrifying.

There's just one problem: Some things aren't necessarily so, and these are among them.

Measuring things can be highly valuable, to be sure. It can identify problems and pinpoint their cause. But mere measurement is no substitute for clarity and compelling logic around a vision, goals, and strategy.

In the wrong hands, or for the wrong ends, measurement can blind people to the purpose of their work, push aside common sense, and shout down the voice of experience. In those instances, as no less than Jack Welch argues, it leads you astray.

The mantra of measurement often rears its head when decision makers demand quantitative evidence of qualitative phenomena before committing to something inherently non-quantitative. You see it often in training and in communication initiatives generally. I wince at the reliability of such tests. They are questionable at best.

Here's an example. Several years ago a major consulting firm claimed to measure the actual bottom-line return on investment in corporate communication. The study was immediately hailed as a breakthrough. Finally, there were numbers to prove what previously could only be presumed. Anyone who was professionally active in corporate communication took notice. For a long time afterward, the study was cited as proof that good communication positively contributed to a company's success.

I happen to have both academic training and professional experience in statistical analysis, as well as many years of experience in leadership communication, so I was keenly interested in the research. I wanted to know how the conclusions were obtained.

Unfortunately, the more people I talked to, the murkier and muddier things became. I grew suspect. Could this research meet the exacting standards of a peer-reviewed journal? Was it sufficiently robust to be admitted in, say, a hypothetical courtroom trial or FDA approval process? Should it be believed and respected? If so, why? What exactly was the methodology?

Alas, the answers were not what I was hoping to find. Eventually, one could only conclude that the study was a sham. It was a beautiful sham, but it was a sham.

Unfortunately, numbers can do that. Especially in an era when everyone is so pressed for time, unprincipled or unthoughtful people will rush a project and then cite whatever numbers come out. Presto, they have a microwaveable study that looks terrific.

* * * *

In certain tightly focused respects, you actually can quantify the linkage between a communication intervention and observable results. Some examples are reductions in absenteeism, or in workplace injuries, or in employee turnover, or in product returns and refund requests. Those are specific and well-focused criteria, and they can indeed reflect the impact of a communication intervention. Here, we are on terra firma.

It is quite another thing to attempt to show linkage between a company's overall financial performance and the quality of its internal communication systems. We shouldn't even want to go there. Just consider all the companies whose communication programs earned our respect but subsequently went through hard times - Xerox, Motorola, Intel, Cisco, and many, many others.

If you want communication to take x percent of the credit for a good performance, get ready to accept x percent of the blame -- and someone holding a door open for you -- when times turn sour. Motorola, a company whose communication executives have long been at the top of their game, was trading for less than $10 a share a couple of years ago. Anyone who posits a simple cause-and-effect linkage between communication and overall corporate performance has some explaining to do there. (I am thrilled to see that Motorola is recovering so well in the last year or so.)

The fact is that a variety of factors bear on the overall performance of a company. Competitor actions, the whims of consumers, the efficiency of distribution networks, the intransigence of a labor union, irrational political decisions by governmental units here and abroad, the soundness of business strategy, the creativity of advertising, a quirk of negotiating, the compensation of sales managers, the technical aspects of patents, the brilliance or stupidity of a single scientist or manager, a leader's personality, and even the verdicts of court juries (think silicone implants or asbestos or tobacco) can weigh heavily on a company's overall performance.

Sometimes what is affecting a company's performance isn't even seen for years later. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere and decimates a company within a few months, as Japanese copiers did to Xerox in the 1980s. Sometimes it is a nest of termites inside, and sometimes it's a predator outside.

What's important is knowing certain core truths. If you just think of effective communication as the essential process of building awareness, understanding, acceptance and commitment around organizational challenges and priorities, it is obvious that no organization can meet its challenges and carry out its priorities without good communication. How can it?

That is the plain-vanilla reality, and we must never tire of advocating it.

Peter Drucker (1909-2005)

(c) Copyright 2005 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

No one, absolutely no one, has had greater influence on modern business management than Peter Drucker, who died Friday scarcely a week before his 96th birthday. The author of more than 30 books, Drucker single-handedly changed the focus of legions of progressive, far-sighted business executives.

For the record, it was Peter Drucker who first:

• predicted the importance of computers in business
• suggested that Japan would emerge from the ash heap of World War II to become an economic titan
• regarded employees not as a cost but as a resource to be nurtured and developed
• foresaw the whiplash of inflation and unemployment in the 1970s
• broached the issue of excessive executive compensation and its consequences
  
• urged business leaders to set measurable goals
• criticized mindless meetings as displacing productive work
• revolutionized performance evaluations as a developmental tool
• coined the term "knowledge worker"
• counseled managers to empower employees to complete tasks their own way
• voiced criticism of stock options for promoting short-term thinking
  
• suggested that teams could function as well or better than traditional hierarchies

and so very much more.

Drucker, almost alone and certainly more than anyone else, championed the heroic role of entrepreneurs and progressive managers. Not unlike millions of parents, schoolteachers, and coaches, and far more than all but a handful of presidents and potentates, these unnoticed, unseen managers ultimately shape the course of economic growth and a great deal of social history.

Peter Drucker enjoyed a long and intellectually fruitful life. It is my hope that, in his passing, more companies will awaken to the enduring legacy of his brilliance and wisdom.

Focus. Curiosity. Passion. Courage.

(c) Copyright 2005 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved. Monday's posting on the Lewis and Clark expedition (scroll down to read it) gave me an excuse to wax eloquent on the importance of focus, curiosity, passion and courage as the common denominators of leadership.

You'll recall my thesis:

Nothing of much significance has ever been achieved, and nothing of much value has ever been created, that wasn't, at some time

• the point of someone's single-minded focus
• the object of someone's deep curiosity
• the subject of someone's intense passion, and
• the product of someone's persevering courage.

In looking back over dozens of leaders -- in politics, the military, business, social causes, science, the arts, philanthropy, civil rights, religion, sports, exploration -- you will find few if any exceptions to that profile. I myself cannot think of any at all. The profile seems to apply equally to Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers, Nelson Mandela, Walt Disney, Mother Teresa and Mikhail Gorbachev as it does to Lewis and Clark.

Focus. Curiosity. Passion. Courage. You may want to begin discussing this with your colleagues. Here are some questions to get started. Just ask yourselves, in your organization . . .

• What does full focus look like? Focus on what? Where do we already see focus? Where do we instead see indifference or even alienation? What can we do to heighten awareness of our business environment, vision, and strategy? What obstacles are in the way? How do we overcome them? What are we presently doing that interferes with fuller workforce focus?

• What would broadly based, strategic curiosity look like? Curiosity about what? Why is curiosity important in business? Why is it more important than insight? Where do we already see it? Where don’t we? What can we do to cultivate greater understanding of the implications of strategy on day-to-day work? What obstacles are in the way? How do we get around them? Which of our own behaviors do we change to demonstrate by example?

• What would real passion look like? Passion for what? Why is it important? Where do we see it? Where do we only wish we saw it? Where do we instead see denial or even cynicism? Do we see it in ourselves? In what ways? What specifically can we do to nurture enthusiastic acceptance of our vision? What is in the way? How does emotion complement reasoning?

• What would genuine courage look like in business? Courage to do what? Do we ever see it? Where? Where do we instead see fear or even contempt? In what ways is courage in the workplace important? What does it have to do with commitment? What specifically can we do to build more commitment to this organization? What should we refrain from doing? What stands in the way?

There you have it:

Single-minded focus

Deep curiosity.

Intense passion.

Persevering courage.

As I said the other day: Imagine, just imagine, the possibilities.