Minding Gaps

What Leaders Can Learn from the Best TV Commercial Ever

 

By Thomas J. Lee

You may be too young to remember the best TV commercial ever. If you’re not, don’t blame me for reminding you of the fact.

As far as we’re concerned, the best TV commercial isn’t necessarily the cutest or the funniest. It isn’t necessarily titillating or provocative. It doesn’t necessarily have terrific cinematic or artistic qualities. It didn't necessarily run during a Super Bowl.

It’s the best TV commercial ever simply because it makes its point so well. As proof of that, just about any American old enough to remember it can, almost 25 years after it first aired.

And it’s the best TV commercial ever because it hammers home a business case for the service it is selling, which, for our purposes, just so happens to reinforce important insights of value to any manager or leader. Even today, you occasionally hear people citing that TV commercial in business discussions. Nothing rivals face-to-face human contact, they’ll say, and they’ll be right.

Here it is, and here is a little background to it. Do you remember it?

The best TV commercial ever was produced by the legendary Chicago advertising firm of Leo Burnett for United Airlines, and it began airing in 1989. It was filmed in dramatic hues of black and white to intensify the warmth of the characters. It featured Ben, a beleaguered manager whose company was just fired by a longstanding and highly valued client.

The spot has Ben, in shirtsleeves and vest, convening a quick management meeting to announce the news. His message is blunt and compelling. The company is losing touch with its clients. It has to reinvigorate its lifeblood of relationships.

An assistant hands Ben a stack of United tickets—back then they were on card stock—and Ben begins handing them out to the individual managers. A manager objects: "But Ben, that's more than 200 cities." Ben is unmoved. Someone asks Ben where he’s going, and he replies: “To visit that old friend who fired us this morning.”

You’re smart enough to draw your own conclusions and applications from this commercial for your work. What are they?

Here are mine: Don’t lose touch with people. Don’t rely on email and telephone. Don’t think of social media as synapses or nutrients of relationships; they are neither. Remember that human beings thrive in community with other human beings. The more you nurture and strengthen that sense of community, the better your leadership will be.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved. 

When Strategy and Culture Collide

 

By Thomas J. Lee

As most of you are aware, Ronald B. Johnson was sacked Monday as chief executive of J.C. Penney. A retail marketing wunderkind whose high-profile credits included Target and Apple, Mr. Johnson was hired in 2011 to lead a turnaround of the venerable middle American department store.

Instead of turning it around, however, he sent it reeling. In just seventeen months the chain's annual revenue plummeted from $17.7 billion to $12.9 billion, and its net income dwindled from a profit of $1.63 per share to a loss of $4.49 per share. Not surprisingly, the company's ticker teetered and tumbled from the mid-30s in early 2012 to the mid-teens this week—all during a bull market in which its rivals Kohl's and especially Target have been performing quite well.

Now I do not present myself as either a stock analyst or an expert in retail sales, and I do not pass judgment here on Mr. Johnson's turnaround strategy. However, I do know a thing or two about leadership and its challenges in large, complex organizations. One of the things I know is this: When strategy and culture collide, one of them will win and the other will lose. The same one always wins: culture. If there are exceptions to that rule, they are few and far between.

In our Master Class workshops, we put it thus: Culture is the judge, jury, jailer, and janitor of strategy. No strategy, however well designed, can survive a clash with a culture than doesn't embrace it. No amount of shouting and demanding by senior management can change that, either. Instead, senior management must begin with the culture. Ignore that reality and you ask for failure.

Now I am a big fan of both Target and the Apple stores that Mr. Johnson helped create. According to experts on retailing strategy, his approach to reviving the fortunes of J.C. Penney was creditable. He wanted to upgrade the merchandise and make the store something of a first among equals in its category. That kind of a strategy has worked elsewhere.

Mr. Johnson's big mistake seems to be a condescending attitude toward the people of J.C. Penney and their values. He often ridiculed them, and he quickly replaced many of the senior managers he inherited. He never moved to Plano, Texas, the company's headquarters, but instead spent long weekends back in California. Soon the sarcasm that frequently came flowing out of the corner office was volleyed back at it. The strategy didn't stand a chance.

A smarter approach to leadership is to begin with the culture. Initiate a discussion as to who we, the people of this organization, are, and what we believe, think, and value. Explore the legacies we inherited, and build a consensus around our destination. Show everyone what is possible, and then bring them along on a journey of change.

It will take longer, but it will pay huge dividends in cohesion. You can ignore that hard work of leadership, but you cannot expect to reap the benefits without doing the work.

 

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Can Managers Ever Manage Change? Is Change Even Possible?

 

By Thomas J. Lee

A few years ago The New York Times asked the chief executive of a big Silicon Valley company—you have probably bought or sold something on its popular site—what he had learned through all his years in senior management. His answer both startled me and saddened me.
 
He replied, and I paraphrase, that he had learned an immutable fact of life: Real change was unrealistic because you cannot change people.
 
His response startled me because, in a curt statement, this CEO revealed himself to be blithely abdicating the hard work of leadership. He was implying that he saw himself not as a leader—rising to the challenge of inspiring big change, market-shattering innovation, and breakthrough performance—but as a manager responsible for meeting budgets, quotas, and deadlines. And in fact, during his tenure, the company has changed little while other high-tech companies continue to reinvent their business and while other whole industries not especially known for innovation do likewise: energy and retail to name but two.
 
His response saddened me because, after 20 years of working in the vineyards of leadership and communication, I was meeting another executive who just didn’t get it. There are altogether too many of them. They give lip service to leadership and communication, and then they shrink themselves to the quotidian tasks of administration. They are better at saying no than yes, better at rolling out programs and restructuring departments than articulating and pursuing a strategic destination, better at buying companies than bringing their own new products to market, better at maintaining market share than growing a customer base.
 
Perhaps all this shouldn’t surprise us. Most senior executives were educated and trained to manage, not to lead; and they have always been rewarded and promoted for managing, not for leading. So it’s only natural that they think like managers, not like leaders.
 
Major business publications like the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal compound the problem by glossing over the differences between managing and leading, and by broadly referring to senior executives as “leaders” and to the executive suite as "the leadership" of a company, as if leadership were a function of a hierarchy, as if when you get a promotion you suddenly become a leader.
 
We would do well to take a step back, and we would gain a lot of clarity if we instead understood leadership and management as work—not as people in a pecking order, but as responsibilities, tasks, and, especially, communication.
 
Up, down and across an organization, anyone with accountability for a team's performance and culture must both manage and lead. Front-line supervisors must bear some responsibility for collateral leadership, and even the CEO has some basic managerial tasks.
 
The work of management is all about ensuring steady, reliable, consistent performance. A manager who is managing well ensures that a team performs to certain predetermined expectations held by stakeholders such as customers, investors and lenders, regulators and inspectors, senior management, the employees themselves, and myriad others: vendors, recruiters, the courts, visitors, agencies, job applicants, the news media, neighbors—a list of this sort is practically endless.
 
The predetermined expectations, too, are variable. If an expectation involves spending money, we call it coming in under budget. If it involves completing a project by a specific date, we call it meeting a deadline. If it involves doing or producing something within acceptable parameters, we call it complying with a standard—quality, perhaps, or safety, or emissions. When it involves making or selling or checking or issuing enough of something, we call it clearing a quota. There are many other kinds of similar challenges around production processes, contractual obligations, legal procedures and requirements, ethics standards, cultural imperatives, and more.
 
When successful, the work of management creates alignment, which is the deliverable or the work product of good management. It is the equilibrium of expectation and performance. Alignment is a good thing; misalignment is bad. But remember: Alignment is not the product of good leadership. It is the product of good management.
 
The work of leadership is altogether different from the work of management. Leadership is all about change. A leader who is leading well is successfully bringing about a particular big change, either culturally or operationally.
 
Leadership entails envisioning, articulating, inspiring, and supporting change—attitudinal or behavioral—or a breakthrough performance of some sort, typically requiring the discretionary and self-sacrificing efforts of people, and often in an environment of uncertainty and risk to oneself.
 
The change or breakthrough may involve launching a new product, or expanding geographically, or merging cultures after an acquisition, or fending off a unionization vote, or adopting a new technology, or meeting the changing needs of customers. There are many kinds of such challenges.
 
When successful, the work of leadership creates engagement, which is the deliverable or the work product of good leadership. It is the predicate of change. Engagement is a good thing; disengagement is bad. But engagement is not the product of good management. It is the product of good leadership throughout the organization.
 
Alignment is critical to meeting the needs of the present. Companies and other organizations—associations, governments, universities, charities, teams—make commitments they must fulfill. Alignment is necessary to fulfilling those commitments.
 
Engagement is critical to meeting the needs of the future. Companies and other organizations must always adapt to changing circumstances, environments, and opportunities, lest they wither and die as so many erstwhile giants that failed to adapt have withered and died before them. Without engagement, organizations cannot survive long into the future.
 
It is another big mistake to use the tools of one to accomplish the goals of the other. Companies often try that, and they routinely fail, whenever they launch a “change management” initiative while overlooking the need to lead change, which is something entirely different. Similarly, an energetic and charismatic leader without an eye for detail can lose sight of the basics.
 
Management and leadership differ most dramatically in the purpose, substance, style, and tone of the communication that supports them.
 
Communication for the sake of managing is authoritative, directive and influencing. It carries an implicit “stick” of accountability. It says don’t worry about tomorrow, just do this thing now or else.
 
Communication for the sake of leading is visionary, collaborative, energizing and inspiring. It carries an implicit “carrot” of opportunity. It says believe in the future, and come along on an exciting journey that will make everyone better off.
 
I like to draw two concentric circles to illustrate. I label the inner circle management and the outer circle leadership, to convey the point that good management is at the core of good leadership. That is because good managers must lead themselves, and paradoxically they do so by managing themselves. Good leaders are their own first followers. They show the way so that others know the way.
 
Many companies and other organizations are well-managed. They meet the needs of the present just fine. But they are not necessarily well-led. Thus they are duly anxious about the future. They are anxious not because they are unable to predict the future—no one is able to predict it—but because they are not ready for whatever it may bring. They are not ready because they know so little about change, about engagement and ultimately about leadership.
 
Managing and leading are two different things, and so are alignment and engagement. Both are important. Both are necessary. They’re just different. Quite dramatically different at that.

 

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Important Reading on Servant Leadership

 

By Thomas J. Lee

I don’t often use this space to trumpet articles from the general news media, but this is an exception.

For any and all of you with an interest in servant leadership, this article is must reading.

In our Master Class workshops, we devote a great deal of attention to servant leadership. As a closing summary, I like to ask each class how many people like to think of themselves as go-getters. Invariably, almost everyone raises a hand.

Servant leadership challenges that ethic. Instead of championing go-getters, it celebrates go-givers. It recognizes and rewards the act of giving, especially among managers to and for the people on their team.

The linked article, by Susan Dominus, will appear Sunday (31 March 2013) in the magazine of The New York Times. Do read it, and let me know what you think. (Then, sign up for Master Class!)

 

 

Yahoo's New Remote-Work Policy Needs Flexibility

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Yahoo’s new chief executive, Marissa Mayer, has moved quickly to turn around the company’s stolid culture and position it for change. Within days of her celebrated arrival last summer she purchased thousands of new iPhones for employees. That was only one of several initiatives intended to make the company more innovative and productive.

So perhaps we should cut her some slack on Yahoo’s new policy regarding remote workers. Like many other large companies, Yahoo has encouraged employees to work part of their time or all of their time from home. That has had a number of people-affirming consequences. It has enabled couples to balance two careers more readily, and it has facilitated child care for working moms. It has also saved corporate funds on real estate.

Yahoo’s support for remote working will end in June, according to reports on All Things D, a website devoted to the technology and digital industry. (You can read the two stories here and here.) Citing the need for more and better collaboration, and in the hope of nurturing more innovation, Ms. Mayer is requiring all Yahoo employees to work physically in offices alongside their their colleagues.

While there is an argument for people to work together in the same space, Yahoo’s new policy strikes me as overreach. I say that for four reasons.

First, any large company has multiple offices—not uncommonly in an array of countries and time zones—and therefore remote collaboration is already a way of life. Yahoo itself has offices in Bangalore and Beijing. The drawbacks of remote working are part of business in the 21st century, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Second, a significant number of high-value employees have made major life decisions on the basis of the prior policy. Home ownership, spousal employment, and court-ordered child-care arrangements are not easy things to change in a matter of several months. Moreover, as a matter of simple equity, some employees have undoubtedly left prior jobs and joined Yahoo in part because of the flexibility and freedom of its remote-working policy.

Third, like a layoff or any other management decision with tectonic consequences, this policy shift is likely to divert the focus of Yahoo employees away from business strategy and operations to the policy change itself, at a time when Yahoo can least afford the diversion. In some cases that kind of collateral damage is unavoidable, but when it can be avoided or minimized, it should be.

Fourth, in my own experience, remote working is every bit as productive as office-based working is—perhaps even more so. I personally work with several executives of Fortune 100 companies who maintain home offices, and they are some of the most efficient, productive people I know.

There is some potential middle ground here, and if my voice were heard in Sunnyvale, it would say this: In-office work arrangements are indeed conducive to collaboration and innovation, as opposed to sheer efficiency and productivity, which seem to thrive in remote arrangements. When people work together, they run into one another and share ideas in the cafeteria, washrooms, corridors, and elevators. People also develop more appreciation for one another’s special expertise by working in their presence. All that is good.

But that can be accomplished equally well by bringing remote-working teams together for a few days every month or every quarter, by having regular online conferences in between, by coming together for sophisticated professional-development programs, and by using several new programs and apps to facilitate remote collaboration. As an aside, companies should be budgeting more for airline travel and meetings anyway. That is money and time well spent.

By modifying the new policy, Yahoo can avoid the trauma of forcing high-value employees to choose whether husband or wife is able to keep a job or remain on track for an MBA, and it can demonstrate that new policies need not take the form of Draconian reversals that rattle everyone.

Just my two cents.

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Related articles

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Yahoos Can No Longer Work From Home

Master Class: Communication for Servant Leadership

 Venue for Master Class: Communication for Leadership

 

 “Communication is the real work of leadership,” says Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria. We emphatically agree.

We have been saying it for years: Successful leaders communicate their vision or concern or priority with clarity, with coherence, and with credibility. People know what the leaders think, what they feel, and what they believe. There is no doubt, no confusion, no vacillation.

Think of Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall. Think of Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Think of Abraham Lincoln himself at Gettysburg. Think of Nelson Mandela emerging from 27 years of imprisonment. Think of England's legendary King Henry V, memorialized by Shakespeare, rallying his outnumbered and outgunned troops at Agincourt.

Think of any coach or teacher, any sibling or parent, any doctor or writer, any volunteer or political candidate, any manager or entrepreneur, anyone at all who influenced and ultimately inspired you to want something or do something or become something more.

Think of any influential, inspirational leader—at any time, in any place—and you will probably envision that leader in the act of speaking with conviction, clarity, and credibility.

Successful leaders communicate with whatever mechanism they can. They have a message they passionately believe in, and they speak it. Their message is one of aspiration, of need, of confidence. They describe, they declare, they demand. They cite examples. They tell stories. They ask questions, a litany of them, one after another on a single theme. They craft memorable aphorisms, little ditties, or clever quotations. They cajole. They persuade. They needle.

More importantly, they engage in dialogue—lots and lots of dialogue—and they repeat themselves over and over and over again.

Finally, and most importantly, they live their message. They are their message. They offer themselves as a working example of the leadership they preach. Their behavior and their decisions are part and parcel of their communication. They become their own first follower. 

It's for this very reason—the fact that communication, both explicit and implicit, both verbal and non-verbal, sometimes even latent, is the real but difficult work of leadership—that we throw such a bright spotlight on communication in our Master Class workshops, and it is why we offer a system to ensure that your leadership messages are clear, compelling, and credible.

 

*          *          *

 

Master Class: Communication for Servant Leadership is a sophisticated, high-level look at the real energy of leadership. Far from typical training, it delves deep into relationships: the live-wire connection that makes leadership possible. Appropriate for any experienced manager or executive, regardless of level, it will reawaken and reignite the leader in you.

What makes Master Class stand out?

First, it approaches leadership not as a position on the org chart, and not as a function of static traits, but as hard work that anyone with responsibility for the work of others should do. The hard work focuses on the clarity, credibility, and cogency of communication—its substance, its style and tone, its frequency, its practical applicability, and its stickiness, or memorability.

Second, Master Class recognizes communication as anything that conveys information or creates meaning for people. That includes many kinds of silent, or behavioral, communication, as well as conventional, verbal communication. It’s up to every manager to manage not just the messages he or she is sending, both spoken and silent, but also the metamessages that people are receiving. As any manager knows, they may or may not be the same.

Third, Master Class takes a close look at people engagement. If there is one thing that enables a company to define the future, it’s the full focus, curiosity, passion, and courage of employees. That's engagement, and it is NOT the same thing as alignment, morale, loyalty, or commitment. Engagement is the deliverable, or work product, of leadership. You must know how to cultivate and grow engagement if you are to lead people to a new and better tomorrow.

Fourth, Master Class introduces and explores the powerful concept of servant leadership: the doctrine that leaders lead best by serving first, as opposed to expecting to be served. We call it 5th Degree Leadership. Modeled on the late Robert K. Greenleaf's trailblazing work, Master Class broaches difficult challenges of empathy, humility, self-awareness, vulnerability, and more. We're no longer surprised that this chapter is among the most memorable and well-received of the entire session, even among technically trained managers such as engineers and scientists.

Fifth, Master Class shows the hidden differences between communication for the sake of managing people and communication for the sake of leading them. The two differ profoundly in terms of their purpose, their content, their style, and their tone, yet few leaders understand or appreciate it. Use the wrong kind of communication, and you get the wrong result. This is a common phenomenon in business, and it goes a long way toward explaining why so many change initiatives fall flat on their face.

Finally, Master Class is filled with case studies and practical examples that will rivet your attention. People tell us they remember our stories for years and years, and that they share the stories with friends, colleagues, and even relatives. One of the highest compliments we receive, and it comes to us surprisingly often, is that our course even helps families come closer together. That isn't our strategic intent, but we're glad to be of help.

Master Class is taught by Thomas J. Lee, an expert on leadership communication who has been working with companies of all sizes for more than twenty years. A former journalist and executive speechwriter, he has benchmarked nearly 30 major corporations for their best-practice secrets. He has spoken and taught throughout the United States, across Canada, and in a dozen other countries in Europe, South America, and Africa. He blogs at www.MindingGaps.com.

Master Class has been a staple of corporate training programs at many Fortune 500 companies. Now, on a trial basis, we are offering it by open enrollment. You can register by yourself, or you can sign up several of your colleagues as well, for a fast-paced, two-day immersion or for a three-day session with a special chapter on leadership for introverts.

We have seats available in Master Class sessions scheduled for the following dates:

• July 24-25, 2013 (two-day immersion)
• August 7-8, 2013 (two-day immersion)
• September 11-12, 2013 (two-day immersion)
• October 15-16, 2013 (two-day immersion)
• October 22-23-24, 2013 (three-day with a special unit on leadership for introverts)

In addition, we occasionally schedule executive briefings over breakfast to introduce the program to corporate executives. Reserve a place or two at the next breakfast by calling us at 650-464-1770.

All sessions (including the executive briefings) take place in a charming, old Tudor-style hotel in an affluent, lovely North Shore suburb of Chicago. It's as far-removed from a cookie-cutter chain hotel as you can imagine, and we have negotiated favorable lodging rates just for you. The site is easily accessible by car or commuter train from the Loop, and it is just 45 minutes from Chicago's O'Hare Airport or 60 minutes from Milwaukee's Mitchell Field. Registration for Master Class includes continental breakfast and lunch both days, so you'll have additional opportunities to get to know your peers at other organizations.

Take a moment to read this course description of Master Class. Then let us know (by emailing us directly at info@arceil.com or by telephoning us at 650-464-1770) how many places we should hold for you and on which dates.

The two-day Master Class immersion has these benefits:

Bottom Line Value. Research shows that between 2.1 and 2.5 percent of an organization’s revenue is lost to the active disengagement of people. That’s as much as $2.5 million for every $100 million of revenue, and it is just for active disengagement. (Passive disengagement is more pervasive and adds still more to the cost.) Recover it, and it goes straight to the bottom line. Few such professional-development programs pay for themselves so easily. This one clearly does.

Big Ideas, Big Impact. Leadership and management are two different things. So are engagement and alignment. The communication that drives leadership and engagement is different from that which drives management and alignment, too. Use the wrong one, and you get the wrong result. Master Class brings clarity and explanation to these critical distinctions. Executives will come to understand the importance of distributive leadership—after all, no one can be everywhere—and managers will learn why they must stand as collateral leaders of the enterprise.

Case Studies. We have scoured top-tier companies for best practices, and we bring them to you. You will see practical examples from companies like Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, BP/Amoco, Federal Express, and many others. You'll remember the vivid stories for years to come.

Analysis of Engagement. Master Class identifies five levels of engagement—creative engagement, active engagement, passive engagement, passive disengagement, and active disengagement—and then analyzes each for its consequences, behaviors, and antecedents.

Simple, Powerful Models. Our flagship models, the Rainbow and the GearBox, have been used by major companies to get a fix on their level of staff engagement. The Rainbow Model identifies unintended, and previously unnoticed, credibility gaps: mixed messages, muddled messages, mute messages. The GearBox serves as both a structure and a self-assessment tool at the intersection of strategy and employee engagement. We guarantee you will find them both enlightening.

Managing the Metamessage. Master Class acknowledges the obvious: what people hear you say isn't necessarily what you said. It's one thing to choose your words carefully, and you certainly should do that. But if you neglect to manage your implicit communication, you still have a problem, and you haven't begun to address it. We'll show you how you are communicating 24/7 through your semi-formal and informal voices as well as your formal voice.

Quantitative Data. Master Class presents hard, factual, quantitative data to explain the power and value of communication around business strategy. You and your managers will get facts and figures on change, trust, engagement and disengagement, perceptions of managers by employees, ROI, message clutter, employee frustrations, rumors, and so much more. Most importantly, we realize that data always tells a story. Discerning the stories in the data is critical.

Trust in Leadership. Remember trust? Everyone pays lip service to it, and yet compromises to trust are all too common. Surveys show that senior management teams routinely and dramatically overstate the level of trust in their organizations. For leaders, trust is the product of their personal and institutional honesty, their professional competence, their presence and accessibility, and the affinity that people on their teams perceive in terms of common interests, needs, and concerns.We'll show how tenuous all these factors can be, and what you can do about it.

Practical, Proven Strategies. We have distilled our teaching down to neat lists of strategies and tactics. They all make abundant good sense, but many of these strategies never occurred to managers beforehand. Master Class puts them in your hands.

 

Our alumni include executives and managers from top-tier companies whose products you see and use every day. Evaluations of these workshops are consistently high. After sitting in a class for two or three full days, more than 95 percent of participants recommend Master Class for their peers and superiors.

Here’s what past participants have said about Master Class:

 

“This was a top-notch program directly geared [to] the success of managers. It was a continuing education program among peers.”

—a senior manager of a Fortune 100 consumer-products company

“I have worked for this agency for 25 years, and I have never had a day of in-service training as valuable as today’s.”

—scientist, agency of the U.S. government

“Excellent presenter, measured pauses, superb, enthusiastic, thought-provoking, excellent material, first-rate, will definitely recommend.”

—a guest participant

“I have gone through a lot of leadership training. This is one of the two best. The other was at Carnegie Mellon, and this workshop is more applicable to my day-to-day work.”

—senior engineer, aerospace company

“Tom is terrific! Original, enthusiastic, motivating . . . the lessons are applicable, useful, and real.”

—senior manager for an international food and beverage company

 

Tuition for the two-day programs is just $1,695 per person (or $1,495 by the early-bird deadline, 30 days prior to a class); add $500 for a three-day session. Registrations are non-refundable but fully transferable to a later date or to a colleague. We offer substantial scholarships for schools, for non-profit organizations, and for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Also, be sure to ask about our attractive packages, which offer substantial discounts for groups of five or more registering at the same time (they may attend different sessions).

Call us (at 650-464-1770) or write to us (at info@arceil.com) to indicate your interest, and we'll get back to you right away. (Note that payment can only be made by credit card over the telephone, as our web presence is not yet secure.)

 

When Should You Manage, and When Should You Lead?

 

By Thomas J. Lee

You may be a front-line supervisor in a factory, or a mid-level manager, or a senior executive in a large corporation like IBM or Microsoft.

You may be the principal of a school, or the president of a community bank, or the nursing administrator of a hospital. You may be the managing director of a law firm, or a commissioned officer in the military, or the editor of a newspaper. Or you may be the head of a research team at a pharmaceutical company.

You may be the conductor of an orchestra, or the associate dean of a college, or the vice president for manufacturing of a mid-size company. You may be an entrepreneur with dreams of an IPO, or a small business owner who just wants to meet a payroll.

Whatever you do and wherever you do it, if you have responsibility for the performance of other people, you wear two hats.

One is the hat of a manager. The other is the hat of a leader.

That is true regardless of whether you have the word manager or leader in your job title or your job description. You must function as both a manager and a leader. It is even true if you merely aspire to responsibility for the performance of other people. You must learn to manage and lead, both.

Both hats, both roles, are important, but they are important in different ways. It’s imperative that you understand how they differ, lest you make the mistake of doing one when you should be doing the other. If you make that mistake, you can wind up with unintended results.

The two roles, manager and leader, are often confused. In part that’s because of simple-minded slogans. One classic slogan is: "Managers do things right, and leaders do the right thing." Another is: "All leadership is influence, and all influence is leadership." Both are leaky boats.

It's also in part because the two labels, manager and leader, are often mistakenly understood as jobs, as boxes on an organization chart. No less than The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review routinely use the term "management" to refer to an organization’s broad official authority and the term "leadership" to refer particularly to an organization’s senior officers and executives.

By doing so, they place narrow boundaries on the purview of leadership, and that ultimately hamstrings an organization. No wonder so many executives have given up on change—the whole point of leadership—and now just wish everyone would do as they're told. That's an immature, egocentric approach to managing, and it doesn't come close to the magic of leadership. Unfortunately, it's common.

Instead of falling into that trap, think of managing and leading as work, and especially as particular kinds of work. Just that little conceptual shift will bring clarity to the murky confusion.

With this new clarity you will be able to see the path to becoming a better manager and a better leader. For up and down and across any organization, anyone with responsibility for the performance of other people must do the work of both managing and leading. That means wearing both hats, the hat of the manager and the hat of the leader.

Let's go into more detail.

Wearing the hat of the manager, you seek to meet the pre-determined expectations of acknowledged stakeholders. My definition of stakeholder is simple: anyone who can make my life difficul if his expectations are not met.

One stakeholder is the organization's senior executive authority, for it has certain expectations of its own. Other stakeholders can include customers both current and prospective, the owners or investors in a business, employees, certain government agencies and authorities, and, depending on your circumstances, perhaps also labor unions, the news media, subscribers and donors, and vendors and suppliers.

All those stakeholders have present-day expectations, which the stakeholders expect you will meet. The work of meeting those expectations is the work of management.

When management is successful, it creates alignment of people with those expectations. Thus you can think of alignment as the work product, or the deliverable, of managing well.

Wearing the hat of the leader, you are seeking instead to bring about a breakthrough in performance or a change on a large scale. The change may be strategic or tactical. It may be operational or cultural. It may be vertical (as in a hierarchy) or horizontal (as in areas of activity and responsibility).

Here's the big difference: Instead of meeting predetermined expectations, you are identifying new expectations. Instead of replicating something you have done before, over and over again, you are doing something new and different. Instead of valuing reliability and consistency, you are valuing agility and creativity. Instead of seeking compliance, you are seeking innovation.

These are the needs of tomorrow, so leadership is inherently oriented to the future. The work of forging new expectations is the work of leadership.

When leadership is successful, it creates engagement of people. Thus you can think of engagement as the work product, or deliverable, of leadership.

When should you do which?

The answer to that is a little complicated, because you must always be managing yourself in order to lead other people. How you conduct and present yourself—which is to say how you manage yourself—is the beating heart of your leadership. It determines the degree and nature of your credibility as a leader: whether, how much, and in what ways people trust you to do right by them.

Beyond yourself, you must also manage people when the situation calls for meeting those pre-determined expectations we discussed.

Examples abound. You may have a revenue target or a budget to meet. You may have a production quota or a sales quota to meet. You may have a regulatory inspection coming up. You may face a due-diligence process for a pending merger or spinoff. You may be under an order of some sort to do this or that by the first of next month. You may have a design parameter or a quality standard to meet. Whatever the expectation is, if you already know it and you are responsible for meeting it, you are really doing the work of managing.

On the other hand, you must lead people when you are venturing into new territory, and there are no pre-determined expectations are that you must meet.

Perhaps you are designing a new product, and its features are yet to be determined. Perhaps your organization has merged with another, and you must forge a new culture from the legacies of two cultures. Perhaps you are taking over a troubled department, and the people are looking to you for a new vision and energy. Perhaps your organization is moving into a new territory, where you are an unknown quantity. Perhaps something in your community is wrong, and you are speaking up.

In all these and in countless other similar situations, someone must step forward and lead. If that someone is you, the work you face is the work of leading. Do that work, not the work of managing.

For further reading, we recommend these previous posts:

Engagement and Alignment Are Two Different Things on February 12, 2012.

Core Competencies in Communication for Leadership on April 1, 2011.

How Great Leaders Communicate on December 17, 2012.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

What You Can Learn from the Super Bowl Blackout

By Thomas J. Lee

Hundreds of millions of people enjoyed perhaps the greatest Super Bowl ever yesterday. At halftime it looked like a blowout, with the Baltimore Ravens leading, 21-6, over the San Francisco 49ers. Moments later, after the Ravens returned a kickoff for another touchdown to make it 28-6, the New Orleans Superdome lights went out. The blowout was now a blackout.

The lights remained out for 34 minutes, and that gave the 49ers time to regroup. When play resumed the game was altogether different. The 49ers soon caught up. Both teams were playing against the clock. It was a terrific, exciting game down to the final minutes.

I see four good lessons in this game for leaders everywhere.

One, only a prideful fool counts on momentum to continue. Momentum is like lady luck. When you have it, it's great. When you don’t, it is difficult to find optimism.

But momentum, like luck, often turns unpredictably. In sport, a fumble or an injury or a missed block—or an electrical outage—can change everything. In business, a competitor can introduce a new product, or two rivals can merge, or the economy can collapse.

The only thing you know about the future for absolutely, positively sure is this: It will be different from the present. It always is. You just don't know how the future will be different, or when things will change. So never say "if present trends continue." The one thing you know for sure is that they won't.

Two, you are never in control of all the variables. In fact, you typically have much less control than you think. That's all the more true if you have a position of official power.

Moments before the Super Bowl electrical failure, no one would have predicted that the lights would go out. Then they did, and it changed the dynamics of the game in unforeseeable ways. Suddenly the 49ers were playing as if they believed they could actually win. They didn't win, but they certainly came close.

In business and in life generally, you never have the control you want. All kinds of things happen that you cannot control. Don’t assume otherwise, even if you are a CEO or a general or a president. Especially if you are a CEO or a general or a president.

Three, when things go wrong, and they will, people will naturally want to know why. Too often a leader’s first instinct is to explain what went wrong. The what is simple. The why is difficult.

After the Super Bowl blackout, Entergy, the electric utility for New Orleans, offered a classic what explanation: that “a piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system. Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue.”

Maybe that explanation satisfied an electrical engineer, but it did nothing for the people who were literally left in the dark. For them, it only added to the confusion. It didn't explain why the “abnormality” happened. People want to know why.

Four, as exciting as the game itself was, Super Bowl audiences are always paying attention to ancillary things: to the halftime entertainment, to the national anthem, and especially to the television commercials. This particular Super Bowl also had other human-interest angles, such as the fact that both head coaches (John Harbaugh of the Ravens and Jim Harbaugh of the 49ers) are brothers. All these things diverted attention from the play on the field.

The same thing happens in business and in life generally. People are always distracted and sidetracked by other things: food, money, romance, weekends.

One of the central tasks of leadership is to create and sustain a strategic focus. That is rarely easy. It requires communicating the group's purpose, plan, and priorities repeatedly, energetically, and memorably. In this Super Bowl, it was especially difficult for the coaches to do this during the 34-minute power outage.

There's one more lesson in all this, too. Even when the lights go out, you can keep on learning.

 

 © Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Why You Shouldn't "Light a Fire Under" Anyone

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever given a moment’s thought to the imagery of fire in leadership?

Fire comes up surprisingly often as imagery for the work of leaders, especially in business. When I speak of fire, it's the noun for combustion I have in mind—not the verb for dismissal.

In a bad case, you may look back on a busy day of little crises and tell a friend you were “putting out fires all day.”

Or you may anticipate stakeholder reluctance by saying you expect “a firestorm of opposition” or "a firestorm of criticism."

In better circumstances, you may come back from a terrific workshop or conference all “fired up” to put some new ideas into practice.

If you are trying to persuade a lot of people to embrace a new product or priority, you may speak of “lighting a prairie fire” of support for it.

I have found two other fire-related images particularly helpful. That is because they draw such a vivid contrast between a popular but ineffectual approach to motivation and a less popular but spectacularly successful approach.

The imagery for the popular, so-so approach is to “light a fire under” a person. Essentially, that refers to motivating someone from the outside in. Follow the logic, and you are soon relying on extrinsic inducements for people: rewarding Jones with a bonus and penalizing Smith by sidelining her for a promotion. Both, of course, are common. But while they may affect the work that people do, they rarely lead to extraordinary and sustained levels of engagement.

The imagery for the spectacularly successful approach is to “light a fire inside” a person. It refers to motivating someone from the inside out. Follow the logic, and you find yourself reaching for intrinsic inducements: the joy of camaraderie, the excitement of working with talented peers, the satisfaction of reaching an ambitious goal, the beauty of work well done.

Now, be forewarned: The better approach does come with some risk. The risk is convincing yourself that the intrinsic reward is real when it isn't, when people don't actually feel the satisfaction but instead feel neglect because they didn't receive any reward, intrinsic or extrinsic. That's an easy error for leaders to commit, so easy it happens almost by default. On the other hand, if the intrinsic satisfaction is genuine, it can be a very, very powerful motivator.

You actually know all this from your own experience, and so do I. Moreover, if you have gone through one of our Master Class workshops, you'll recall that we like to begin by asking everyone to describe the coolest project or team they ever worked on. Nine times out of ten, they describe something that gave them enormous pride and satisfaction. It's rare for anyone to speak in terms of a monetary bonus or a raise or a promotion as part of the cool factor.

Under. Inside. Just two words, two prepositions, themselves unrelated to fire, but when coupled with the imagery of fire, they are enough to separate an uncommonly good approach from a commonly bad one.

Don’t try to light a fire under people. Instead, light a fire inside them. You'll be glad you did, and so will they.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Worm In the Apple: Tim Cook's Apology for iPhone's Lousy Maps

 

By Thomas J. Lee

By now surely everyone knows that Apple's new iPhone 5 has a map function that leaves something to be desired. The Washington Monument is on the wrong side of Constitution Avenue, for one thing. The Battersea Bridge in London looks eerily like the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed in 1940. Satellite views everywhere are obscured by cloud cover.

But an odd thing happened Friday. Apple's CEO apologized for the mess. Even more astonishing, he recommended that iPhone 5 buyers use online maps from rivals Google and Microsoft until Apple fixes things. It was a little like that scene in Miracle on 34th Street, when Kris Kringle advises Macy's shoppers to see if Gimbels has the item they want.

Now a few weeks ago we devoted this blog to the problem of executives who say the wrong thing in very public ways. In passing, we briefly discussed the public apology: whether and how executives and other well-known persons should fess up.

The standard is: Are their apologies prompt? Are they voluntary? Are they sincere? Are they humbling? Are they reassuring? Are they credible?

The acid test for any apology is whether the offended person (the apologee, to coin a word) accepts it on its face. That question usually answers itself intuitively and emotionally: whether the apologee wants to have anything more to do with the offending person.

This question is always for the apologee, never for the rest of us, to answer. It is only the apologee who can weigh the pain of the offense against the relief of the apology.

A widely cited example was Hillary Clinton's acceptance of Bill Clinton's apology after the Lewinsky scandal. Many people believed at the time that she should not have accepted the apology as she did. But it was not their decision. It was hers and hers alone. Only she could decide.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, a leader who is apologizing for saying or doing the wrong thing must remember that he is never the judge of his own apology, any more than he is the judge of his own leadership. Rather, it is the people with whom he is communicating who cast judgment on his communication; just as it is would-be, could-be followers who decide whether to recognize or reject the leader’s leadership.

The apology from Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook is a case in point. Last week, in an effort to make amends for bringing the iPhone 5 to market with an inadequate and inaccurate maps function, Cook publicly apologized and suggested that consumers try alternative services from Google and Microsoft. "We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers," Cook said. "We are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

My own sense of things is that Cook's apology met the standards that people need an apology to meet. It was prompt, not delayed. It was voluntary, not forced. By recommending services from competitors, it certainly was sincere. It struck me as humbling and reassuring, too. All in all, pretty good.

I'll let my money do my talking, though. My current cellular contract is expiring soon. I have been inclined to get an iPhone 5. If the Maps function appears to be improving, then Cook's apology will be self-evidently credible, too. So will my acceptance of it.

What do you think?

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Servant Leadership: The Secret Sauce of Extraordinary Cultures

 

By Thomas J. Lee

The concept of servant leadership has been around for more than a generation now, but too few businesspeople understand and embrace it. That's a shame.

I like to think of servant leadership as the secret sauce that accounts for the towering differences between shopping at Macy's and shopping at Nordstrom, between flying on United and flying on Southwest, between having lunch at McDonald's and having lunch at Chick-fil-A.

Nordstrom, Southwest, and Chick-fil-A have all publicly declared servant leadership as a pillar of their cultures. They have woven it into their leadership fabric. So have SAS, Wegmans, AFLAC, Zappos.com, Marriott, the Container Store, REI Outfitters, U.S. Cellular, Yum Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, A&W), Herman Miller, Kaiser Permanente, Darden Restaurants, and the U.S. armed forces, among others.

In a nutshell, servant leadership turns the tables on the relationship between leaders and the led. It moves from command to collaboration, from control to stewardship, from narrow accountability to broad opportunity. It lights a fire not underneath people but inside them.

Perhaps the best way to approach servant leadership for the first time is to recall President John F. Kennedy's famous words in his 1961 inauguration address: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Now tweak those words just a little. Substitute your people or your employees for your country: "Ask not what your people can do for you. Ask what you can do for your people."

Servant leadership will admittedly rub old-school, 20th century managers the wrong way. They will bristle at the thought of it. They will regard it as an abnegation of their rights and duties as managers.

In fact just the opposite is true. I have had the pleasure of working for a couple of genuine servant leaders over the course of my career, and I can attest to its power. Because they were serving me, I was able to accomplish things that otherwise would have remained beyond my grasp. The companies grew and prospered as a result, while our competitors were stagnating.

The 21st century is not the 20th century. Times have changed. People are different. They want different things. Companies that don't realize this core truth, and respond to it, will continue to have difficulty finding the right people and attracting them to their organization.

Our new Master Class features a robust introduction and overview of servant leadership in business. Scroll down three posts (or just click on Master Classes above) for more information, and then join us on June 26 for a special one-day seminar.

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Three Common Myths of Leadership

 

By Thomas J. Lee

In one way or another, I've been working in the vineyards of leadership for most of my career. I have interviewed senators and presidents. I have worked with CEOs of big companies. More recently, I have taught thousands of managers how to lead people.

Through all these experiences, the subject of leadership keeps getting more and more fascinating. The more you dig into it, the more golden nuggets of truth you find—and the more fool's gold of misunderstanding you find, as well.

Today I'd like to address some of the common misunderstandings around leadership. They are so pervasive that they color everyone's grasp of the subject. You can call them myths. Let's briefly explore just three of these myths.

Myth Number 1: Leadership is a position on the org chart. This belief is so entrenched that The Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review both commonly use the word "leadership" as a synonym for "senior management." Rarely does either publication use "leadership" to describe the hard work that goes into taking people along on a journey of change.

Leading and managing are actually both hard work, but they are fundamentally different kinds of work. Moreover, in both substance and style, different kinds of communication drive the two things. Finally, and this is key, the work of leadership must extend far into the ranks of any company that wants to grow and prosper.

Think of managing as the hard work of ensuring compliance with predetermined expectations: deadlines, budgets, standards, laws, quotas. In contrast, think of leading as the hard work of imagining, describing, and bringing about a new and better tomorrow, often in periods of uncertainty and risk.

Those new and better tomorrows are vital. They mean the world. Companies that don't embrace the challenge of change, that don't continually reinvent themselves, gradually disappear. Look at TWA, Maytag, Gillette, Schwinn, McDonnell Douglas, Oldsmobile, Wyeth, Ameritech, Amoco, and many more. Some of their brand names survive in the marketplace, but all these companies have disappeared in the last fifteen years. Just disappeared!

Few managers regard themselves as collateral leaders of the enterprise, and few executives provide for the professional development of managers into leaders. And because so many successful managers were schooled as managers, hired as managers, promoted as managers, and rewarded as managers, they are trapped in a default state of only managing things.

They even invoke the phrase "change management" to describe what should be the work of leadership. They can do better.

Myth Number 2: Communication for leadership is rudimentary, easy, and simple, and it need not be a strategic concern. After all, senior managers assume, they have been talking ever since they were toddlers, and they have been making presentations since they were management trainees. What could be simpler?

The reality is that clear, credible, compelling communication for leadership in business doesn't come naturally and intuitively to most managers. It involves all kinds of implicit, non-spoken messages that you send by means of decisions, habits, standards, assumptions, attitudes, schedules, and so much more, as well as explicit statements and questions that may inadvertently convey messages you don't intend.

Indeed, your unintentional communication can easily overwhelm your deliberate, intended messages. When you think of communication as only the stuff of PowerPoint presentations or email messages, you miss the impact of most of your communication. That's self-defeating.

Good communication for leadership requires a great deal of time, effort, and skill. Most of all, it requires sensitivity to people. But the investment is worth all the work. It pays huge dividends.

Myth Number 3: The mark of successful leadership is full alignment. Again, not true. The mark of successful leadership is full engagement. Alignment and engagement are not the same thing. In fact, they are almost opposites.

You can think of alignment as the work product, or deliverable, of good managing. You meet the pre-determined expectations that I mentioned a moment ago by aligning people and other resources with results.

Engagement is completely different from alignment. Think of engagement as the work product, or the deliverable, of good leading. It is all about people who are focusing on the right things, who are constantly searching for solutions, who are excited and enthusiastic, and who have the backbone to change themselves and to insist that others change as well.

Thus it is true that the mark of successful managing is alignment, but as we have already seen, the work of managing and the work of leading are two different things.

Companies need both good management and good leadership, and it follows that they also need both alignment and engagement. They need alignment to meet the challenges of today. They need engagement to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

 

Unfortunately, companies often get low marks for engagement on employee attitude surveys, but the companies don't understand engagement well enough to know what to do. So they keep on focusing on managing the company. Next year, they survey employees again, and they get similar scores. Surprise, surprise.

We discuss all this, and much more, in our celebrated Master Class workshops. We have an inaugural, one-day, open enrollment Master Class scheduled for June 26. Call us (at 847-247-2241) today to register.

 
 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Goldman Sachs Replies to Mr. Smith

 

Here is a response from Goldman Sachs to the essay by Greg Smith published in this morning's editions of The New York Times and referenced in my own blog post (just scroll down).

Backlash Against Goldman Sachs Op-Ed Writer Begins in Earnest - Business - The Atlantic Wire.

In the interest of fairness, I recommend reading it as well as Mr. Smith's essay.

TJL

Engagement and Alignment Are Two Different Things

 

By Thomas J. Lee

There's a lot of confusion, even among senior executives and their advisers who should know better, around engagement and alignment in the workplace.

Everyone speaks approvingly of both engagement and alignment, of course. But many executives and consultants use the terms interchangeably—though in fact they are very different—and don't see the particular nature of their own work as producing one but not the other.

So let's carve out their distinguishing features. To understand these two terms, you need to begin with basic distinctions between leadership and management.

It is only when we unpack leadership and management from each other that we can see the unique challenges, tools, and rewards of each. It's also only when we unpack leadership and management that we begin to understand engagement and alignment as two different, but complementary, things.

For starters, companies make a big mistake when they use the words leadership and management to refer to positions or levels in a hierarchy. We would gain a lot of clarity if we instead understood leadership and management as work—not as persons in a pecking order but as responsibilities, tasks, and especially communication. They do different things, though they certainly leverage each other.

Up, down, and across an organization, anyone in authority must do both. Front-line supervisors must bear some responsibility for collateral leadership, and even the CEO has some basic managerial tasks.

The work of management is all about ensuring steady, reliable, consistent performance. A manager who is managing well is ensuring the performance of a team to certain predetermined expectations.

If the expectation involves spending money, we call it coming in under budget. If it involves completing a project by a specific date, we call it meeting a deadline. If it involves doing something or producing something within acceptable parameters, we call it complying with a standard—quality, perhaps, or safety. When it involves making or selling or issuing enough of something, we call it clearing a quota. There are many other kinds of similar challenges around production processes, contractual obligations, legal procedures and requirements, ethics standards, cultural imperatives, and much more.

When successful, management creates alignment. Alignment is the deliverable or work product of good management. It is the equivalence of expectation and performance. Alignment is a good thing; misalignment is bad. But remember: Alignment is not the product of leadership. It is the product of management.

The work of leadership is altogether different from the work of management. Leadership is all about change. A leader who is leading well is successfully bringing about a particular, big change, either culturally or operationally.

Leadership entails envisioning, articulating, inspiring, and supporting change—attitudinal or behavioral—or a breakthrough performance of some sort, typically requiring the discretionary and self-sacrificing efforts of people, and often in an environment of uncertainty and risk to oneself.

The change or breakthrough may involve launching a new product, or expanding geographically, or merging cultures after an acquisition, or fending off a unionization vote, or adopting a new technology, or meeting the changing needs of customers. There are many kinds of such challenges.

When successful, leadership creates engagement. Engagement is the deliverable or work product of good leadership. It is the predicate of change. Engagement is a good thing; disengagement is bad. But engagement is not the product of good management. It is the product of good leadership throughout the organization.

Alignment is critical to meeting the needs of the present. Companies and other organizations—associations, governments, universities, charities, teams—make commitments they must fulfill. Alignment is necessary to fulfilling those commitments.

Engagement is critical to meeting the needs of the future. Companies and other organizations must always adapt to changing circumstances, environments, and opportunities, lest they wither and die as so many erstwhile giants that failed to adapt have withered and died before them. Without engagement, organizations cannot survive long into the future.

It is another big mistake to use the tools of one to accomplish the goals of the other. Companies often try that, and they routinely fail, whenever they launch a “change management” initiative while overlooking the need to lead change, which is something entirely different. Similarly, an energetic and charismatic leader without an eye for detail can lose sight of the basics.

Management and leadership differ most dramatically in the substance, style, and tone of the communication that supports each of them. Communication for the sake of managing is authoritative, directive, and influencing. It carries an implicit "stick" of accountability. Communication for the sake of leading is visionary, collaborative, energizing, and inspiring. It carries an implicit "carrot" of opportunity.

I like to draw two concentric circles to illustrate. I label the inner circle management and the outer circle leadership, to convey the point that good management is at the core of good leadership. That is because good managers must lead themselves, and paradoxically they do so by managing themselves. Good leaders are their own first followers. They lead the way so that others can follow.

Many companies and other organizations are well-managed. They meet the needs of the present just fine. But they are not necessarily well-led. Thus they are duly anxious about the future. They are anxious not because they are unable to predict the future—everyone is unable to predict it—but because they are not ready for whatever it may bring. They are not ready because they know so little about change, about engagement, and ultimately about leadership.

Two different things they are, managing and leading; and two different things they are, alignment and engagement. In both cases, both are important. Both are necessary. They’re just different. Quite dramatically different, at that.

 

(c) Copyright 2012     Arceil Leadership Ltd.     All rights reserved.

The Work Product of Leadership Is Engagement

by Thomas J. Lee

You can easily tell the difference between a manager and a leader in business.

Managers are striving for alignment. They are concerned first and foremost with consistency. They want to make sure that the people on their team or throughout their organization are getting things done to such-and-such a standard, on time and within budget, and by various other constraints such as process controls, laws, safety precautions, quality parameters, and so forth.

Moreover, because managers naturally want to avoid or prevent any shortcomings, they are on the lookout for negative deviations from the norm. They want to spot problems early, so they can intervene and correct them before they explode. It follows that managers are just a little on the pessimistic side, ever watchful for anything that may signal an issue.

Now every business worth its name needs good, solid managers. Businesses make commitments to stakeholders such as customers, investors, employees, and suppliers, and to third parties such as regulatory agencies, communities, and so forth. They must honor those commitments. The better the managers they have, the more commitments they will keep, and the fewer disappointments they will experience.

But any business that wants to grow and prosper in the future cannot settle for good managers. It also needs leaders—and not just in the corner office or the C-suite but completely up, down, and across the organization.

Leaders are different from managers. Leaders strive not for alignment but for engagement. They are concerned first and foremost not with consistency but with change and commitment. They want to make sure that the people on their team are bringing everything they can muster to the challenge at hand, which is typically so big that it demands significant risk and perhaps even sacrifice amid great uncertainty.

Common scenarios for this kind of commitment may involve merging two companies, spinning off part of one company as a stand-alone enterprise, restructuring an organization in such a way that its teams and reporting relationships change, introducing new products to the marketplace, adopting a process modification, expanding or consolidating or restructuring territory, facing down a new competitor or product, integrating a new technology, and any number of others. Just look at companies such as Ford, Kodak, IBM, Virgin, and many others. You will quickly see the degree of change they have undergone and continue to undergo.

Now because leaders are focusing not on consistency but on change, they're looking to their people for full involvement—physically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally. They're on the lookout for positive deviations from the norm: ideas, suggestions, thought-provoking questions. The leaders themselves see their role as supporting, not controlling, the people who may or may not rise to the challenge. Thus the disposition of leaders is just a little optimistic, in the belief that people can contribute more with the right kind of support.

Companies need managers to meet the demands of the present. They need good leaders to meet the opportunities of the future. Anyone in any position of authority should view himself and herself as both manager and leader, and every company should equip its managers with the skills and tools to lead as well as manage.

 

Next

The Paradox of Respect

 

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Leaders Must Know and Respect Internal Gatekeepers

by Thomas J. Lee

It's natural, perhaps even inevitable, for managers and leaders to assume that they hold the authority in an organization. After all, even a junior manager commonly has the power to hire and fire, and senior management can merge, sell, or even shutter a company. That is real authority.

Alas, it is only one kind of authority: the legal authority to run the company. There are other kinds of authority, distributed throughout the organization, that also bear heavily on whether, when, and how anything gets done and on whether, when, and how anything really changes.

Managers who neglect these informal centers of authority often delude themselves into thinking that their mission or strategy is fully deployed, that people up, down, and across the company are acting in accordance with the strategic direction. The managers are surprised when the results don't bear out the promise of their strategy, and they wonder why things apparently just hit a wall.

Savvy, successful leaders approach things differently. They look for these gates of leverage and then recruit the gatekeepers to support the strategy. They realize that each gatekeeper can determine whether a strategy slows, stops, or proceeds through the gate. The more gatekeepers a leader has in the fold, the more likely the strategy will move through these gateways.

Here are four kinds of authority—each its own strategic gatekeeper, if you will—well beyond the legal authority that managers already have:

Economic authority is the power of the purse. Externally, economic authority rests with customers who decide whether to buy the product of a change. Two legenday case studies in business school are the decisions by Ford Motor Co. to introduce the Edsel in 1958—it would last only three years—and by Coca-Cola Co. to change the recipe of Coke in 1985. In both instances, customers rejected the new products. Internally, it is whoever exercises practical control over spending, which typically depends on the size of an organization, its controls, and its authorization levels. It can reside with the receptionist who holds the key to the petty cash drawer, or it can be the auditors who wave a flag on p-card abuses. 

Technical authority resides with holders of any unique competency that a strategy or change requires. It can range from engineering (the design of packaging or manufacturing equipment, say) to supply chain to legal counsel, and more. Any of these gatekeepers can open or close their gate. When it closes, so do the prospects for a strategy or change initiative.

Functional authority belongs to anyone who is in an informal position to close a gate and thereby stymie a change. Some years ago I stopped at a high-tech store—one of a nationwide chain—only to discover a complete absence of sales personnel on duty. Customers were just milling about. The sales team was upstairs in the store manager's office loudly protesting a new compensation system. All afternoon, customers came and went without buying anything, as there was no salesperson to make a sale. The sales personnel were exercising their functional authority. It's little wonder the company declared bankruptcy shortly afterward.

Social authority is informal influence among others that rests on personality, social order, and networks. Some people have outsize influence over the thinking of their peers. When it comes to a business strategy or change initiative, they can put the brakes on without the leader's knowledge. Generally speaking, it isn't the office cynic who has the most influence, as many employees just discount that person's constant quibbling. Nor is it the office cheerleader, whose enthusiasm grates on nerves. Rather it is the sober, thoughtful person in the middle whose voice others seek out and respect. 

There are other kinds of authority, as well: moral authority, political authority, and strategic authority, just to name a few. The wise manager is alert to all of them.

The need to recruit these critical gatekeepers comes back to the crucial differences between managing and leading. Managers have official command of their team as a matter of the organization's hierarchy; people are assigned to a team and to a manager. Leaders must earn their influence, because the people they would lead have a choice as to whom they will follow. To lead successfully, leaders must enroll as many supporters as they possibly can.

 

Coming on Friday

Climbing Ice-Covered Mount Rainier

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ten Talk Traps Every Leader Must Carefully Manage

Editor's Note: In the past we have presented lists of three and five talk traps. Some of you suggested additional kinds of talk traps, so we grew the list. Here is a revised and larger version incorporating your suggestions. Thank you!

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Business leaders are supposed to value communication.

But not all communication is created equal. In tone or substance, the wrong kind of communication often backfires. We all know that, because we have all been there.

Here are ten kinds of "talk traps," along with a bonus. Some have their place and their moment when they serve you well, but at the wrong place or the wrong moment, they gravely compound problems. Others are always ill-advised.

In every case, they are tricky. They can easily send the wrong message or confusing and contradictory messages, and their patronizing or presumptuous attitude can alienate employees or other constituents.

Lots of leaders unwittingly fall into these traps. So here is a little guide.

• Small Talk is useful for exchanging pleasantries and greetings, of course. As a social lubricant, it is usually harmless, and occasionally it can be informative. Be sure you don’t neglect it. But if small talk is the totality of your communication as you wander about the workplace, you’re missing a great opportunity. Small talk is no substitute for relevant, substantive information about the company’s direction and decisions.
• Sunny Talk, also known as Sunshine Talk or Pumping Sunshine, is the tendency to paint a rosy, simpleminded picture on an unrosy situation. As a leader, you’re supposed to be optimistic and resolute. Just don’t be a Pollyanna. Employees who hear an endless stream of Sunny Talk eventually stop listening. Who can blame them? Everyone knows the real story is rarely if ever so wonderful. The problem with Sunny Talk is its patronizing assumption that employees need to be manipulated in order to be influenced. How sad.
• Scare Talk is just the opposite. It constantly paints a picture of woe. It, too, can cause all kinds of problems. Just as the future is never entirely pretty, it’s never completely dismal. Employees know that. By the same token, a leader should have the courage to share unhappy news, as, for example, the reason a big customer is jumping to a competitor. It can be just what’s needed to help sharpen the edge of customer service, product design, or service quality.
• Sweet Talk, also known as Smooth Talk, seduces people into taking shortcuts they probably shouldn't, or to accept a deal or situation that is not in their best interest or the company's best interest. Managers under pressure to meet deadlines, budgets, or quotas are often to blame. At its worst, Sweet Talk can result in shipping goods of poor quality, overlooking safety precautions, violating labor agreements, or disappointing customers—any of which can do severe damage to the company's reputation and cost customers or even human life.
• Smart Talk is the tendency, all too common in both business and politics, to let words substitute for action. You will often see it when someone is trying to sound smarter than he actually is, or when he is pretending to have information or answers that he doesn't have. It backfires when the real information becomes available, which, in the 21st Century, is invariably sooner than the smart talker anticipates. You will also see Smart Talk in action—or, more aptly, inaction—when organizations are averse to the change they must undertake. They find it easier to talk about change than to actually change. They are in a state of paralysis by analysis.
• Simple Talk underestimates, ignores, or glosses over the nuances, uncertainty, difficulty, or general complexity of a situation or challenge. It offers iron-clad directives in spite of frequent circumstances that cry out for exceptions. As a result, it leaves people feeling like cogs rather than individuals, as units rather than persons, as a machine rather than a team. People are inclined just to shrug their shoulders rather than exercise discretion and judgment, and then to blame their management. Often customers will sense the air of resignation. Not good.
• Song and Dance Talk is full of excuses. Any veteran manager or frontline supervisor has heard his share of Song and Dance Talk from underperforming employees. When managers themselves indulge in the same thing, employees quickly realize they are working for a can't-do management team and a never-will company, and they begin looking for the exit.
• Slick Talk is an effort to distract someone from a legitimate concern or to mislead someone about something of legitimate concern to them. It takes its name from high-gloss, high-polish production values that call attention to themselves such as an expensive video, a lavish meeting, a slide presentation with brilliant graphics, or such extensive collateral documentation that a reader doesn't know where to begin. Spin often accompanies it.
• Snarky Talk or Surly Talk frequently rears its ugly head in pressure-cooker situations when patience is wearing thin. This is just the uncivil, demeaning treatment of people. It may consist of only a single word, such as "Brilliant" or "Genius," uttered in a scornful, mocking tone. Or it may consist of extensive unnecessary background information that is implicitly condescending. It may even be a sneering, if looks could kill facial expression. Managers who frequently resort to Snarky Talk are often intellectually intelligent but emotionally unintelligent, perhaps narcissistic and sometimes even belligerent.
• Self Talk is perhaps the most difficult of them all, for no one else ever hears it—but everyone can see its consequences in your choices, behavior, and regard for others. Think of it as covert communication: what you are saying, and how you are saying it, to yourself. What happens to your outward dignity when you are alone in your thoughts? What are you explaining away in a mean-spirited way? How much vitriol do you heap upon yourself? Do you curse yourself? Or are you critical of others for things you excuse or overlook altogether in yourself? Are you ever privately racist or sexist in your thinking? How do you account for personal slights to your ego?

Here's the bonus, though I hesitate to use the same nomenclature. If I did, I suppose it would be Snarl Talk. Like the snarl of tangled cords behind your television or stereo, it refers to the tendency to pack too much information and too many themes into a presentation, publication, or report. Anyone on the receiving end senses a data dump and usually shuts down for want of a tighter focus.

Yet another kind of talk is the leader’s most valuable tool: Straight Talk. But all too often, leaders think they’re talking straight when they aren’t necessarily.

 

Post Script: I couldn't resist using the picture. For the record, I am not suggesting that business leaders are like this caricature of a used-car salesman. Well, a few are, but fortunately only a few. 

 

 

Coming on Monday

Why Is Straight Talk So Difficult?

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss

by Thomas J. Lee

Whenever a snowstorm paralyzes the U.S. capital, the word goes out that non-essential government workers should stay home.

That begs a few questions. What makes an employee non-essential? Why is the government even employing anyone who isn't essential? And how does it feel to be labeled anything less than essential?

I can't imagine it feels very good. Even recognizing that the non-essential workers plainly get the better part of the deal on a snow day—they can take their kids skating and sledding—who would want to be labeled non-essential?

Isn't that akin to be called trivial? Unimportant? Insignificant?

Here's the irony for managers and team leaders in the private sector—or, for that matter, in the public sector and the social (or non-profit) sector. Managers and team leaders should actually strive to be non-essential. They should take pride in becoming non-essential.

For a manager or a team leader, becoming non-essential means that the people on their team have the priorities, competencies, attitude, and initiative to do what their manager or team leader would want them to do anyway. There is no difference in the work they do. It is the same as if the boss were present. If anything, it is even a tad better because it is more adaptive to new circumstances.

That doesn't mean the managers or team leaders are suddenly irrelevant. To the contrary, they are all the more vital to the process, because they are using their own position and leadership more comprehensively and more proactively. They are free to think and work more strategically, too.

So if you're a manager or a team leader, commit yourself to becoming non-essential. You will be doing your people and your organization a big service.

 

Coming on Wednesday

Why Do Memes Matter to Leaders? 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Does Accountability Actually Thwart Your Potential?

by Thomas J. Lee

Probably every business manager regards accountability as an invisible but veritable whip, which ensures that people actually do what they're supposed to do.

Without accountability, the assumption holds, managers would have no way of enforcing standards of any sort. Things would be a big mess.

That certainly seems logical. But what if we were to substitute an ethic of opportunity for our reliance on accountability? What if we were to make more use of the carrot and less use of the stick?

On a large scale, what if we were to think and talk more about our potential and less about our problems? If we were to get away from "the burning platform" and instead dream more of "the promised land"?

Would people necessarily ignore deadlines, budgets, blueprints, recipes, parameters, or instructions of any sort? Would they refuse to change?

For now, it's just a hypothetical. But give it some thought.

My instinct, and perhaps yours, is that it would indeed create some real headaches. It would complicate and confound things.

But here's the thing: My experience is different. I have a hunch my instinct is wrong.

In my experience, people want to be about solutions. They are drawn to big opportunities. Daniel Burnham once declared: "Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men's souls." That does indeed seem to be true, and it holds important lessons for anyone who aspires to lead.

In the workshops I run, we always ask the managers in the room to describe the coolest project or team they ever worked on. They are free to cite any example from their entire life, as long as it is true. It can be something in business or something in their personal life.

Their examples are fascinating. Most of them are from business, but some are from coaching Little League teams, or singing in a church choir, or starting a business of their own, or raising up a child, or earning an advanced degree, or serving in a military conflict or on an emergency rescue.

The thing that all the best stories have in common is a large, quasi-spiritual reward, a huge emotional return that people experience from accomplishing an ambitious goal, or from being of service to the community, or from finding an inner fortitude they didn't realize they had, or from simply working on an important project with other dedicated, talented people.

They remember these experiences in detail forever. Forever!

Moreover, few managers use negative words to describe the experience. Few dwell on the problem they encountered and set out to solve. Nor do they cite the application of technical expertise or the availability of ample resources. They don't talk about those things. It would be too small, too mundane.

Rather, they choose to speak of the achievement itself, of the resourcefulness or creativity or perseverance of the team, or of the collaboration they experienced on something so big.

Maybe, if we were to focus more on opportunity and less on accountability, we would all go a lot further together. Just maybe.

 

Coming on Monday

25 Years of Incredible, Exhilarating Change

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Counterfeit Currency of Leadership

by Thomas J. Lee

Just as money is the medium of exchange for any transaction, so communication is the medium of exchange for any transformation in business.

Apart from barter, no transaction can take place without money. Apart from fiat, no transformation can take place without communication.

Moreover, just as the money that enables a transaction must be credible and legitimate, so the communication that enables transformation must be credible and legitimate.

In either case, anything that is not is counterfeit.

For leaders, counterfeit currency in communication buys only alienation, denial, cynicism, and resistance. That's a bad deal at any price.

 

Coming on Friday

Precisely What Is Employee Engagement?

 ©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

One Year Later, a Persistent Reminder and Prodding to BP

 

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, we call BP's attention to our special report and comment of August 18, 2010, outlining a comprehensive approach to best practice in leadership and integrated communication for workplace safety.

We believe it continues to be timely and relevant.

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Few Companies Have a Bias for Innovation

 

by Thomas J. Lee

In your personal and professional relationships, are you more inclined to look for excuses to say yes or reasons to say no?

In my experience, too many business people look for reasons to say no. They say no to customers. They say no to suggestions. They say no to innovation.

Largely because of their propensity to say no, they don't try out enough new ideas, and they keep on doing the same old thing in the same old way.

What a shame. Hubris never opens the door to tomorrow.

 

Coming Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

© Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

A Leader's Robust Credibility Requires Affinity With People

(Part Three of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility)

 

by Thomas J. Lee

You can slice and dice leadership in a lot of ways. One useful way is to distinguish between transactional and transformational leadership. This distinction is both important and instructive, for it helps shed light on the role of affinity in the work of leadership.

As you will recall from the first two articles in this series, a bond of affinity is one of the three cornerstones of robust credibility, which is essential for leadership. The other cornerstones are organic respect and authentic trust. We addressed respect last Wednesday, and we will look at trust next Wednesday. Today we will examine affinity.

Transactional leadership is a quid pro quo: You, as a leader, are asking me, a potential follower, to do (or refrain from doing) this thing in exchange for that thing: either a reward or a penalty as the case may be. It is a transaction, like a purchase or a barter. It is based on the classical behaviorist thinking of B.F. Skinner. Rational, thinking people do that for which they are rewarded, and they avoid doing that for which they are punished.

Usually, transactional leadership has a specific purpose and a tightly focused bore. It often reaches for changes in personal behavioral patterns: earning a sales commission or losing weight or doing household chores as a child. Still, in certain circumstances it can be highly productive on a large scale. A few prominent examples are offering the GI Bill of Rights for World War II veterans, or persuading people to quit smoking, or inoculating millions of people against a disease. 

Transformational leadership is different. It is an inspired, emotional journey of change. It is big, and it is all about a better tomorrow. It doesn't offer anything in compensation for the dedication to a cause, because the cause is its own reward. Think of people flocking to the polls on Election Day in support of a candidate, or donating money to a favorite charity, or protesting a government policy, or boycotting a company's products.

The thing of it is, even transformational leadership must address the WIIFM question: what's in it for me? If the only or the primary beneficiary of the change is the leader, and if the potential follower is out in the cold, then people will be much less willing to go along on the journey. Rather, the transformational leader must demonstrate that he appreciates and shares the interests, needs, and concerns of the people he seeks to inspire and lead. He can lead only if, and to the extent that, he does.

All this is the fodder of what we call affinity. By affinity, we mean an important bond between leader and followers that recognizes and respects their individual interests, needs, and concerns, even and especially in transformational situations. The hand is never far from the head and heart.

Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose, passions, and priorities run counter to their own. Rather, people look for a leader who is compatible with their own well-being. What is important to the leader must be, or must become, important to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

Moreover, the mutuality of interests, needs, and concerns is the foundational clay of something we call nobility of intent. In the context of transformational change, followers decide for themselves whether a would-be leader is a person of noble intent and thus worthy of following. It is important for any transformational leader to realize that followers, and followers only, pass judgment on the leader's nobility of intent. It is never, and it never can be, a matter for leaders to decide.

Now a word of caution. My thinking on leadership is decidedly Western, and it is heavily imbued with an American and (lower-case d) democratic frame of reference. It does not necessarily hold true universally, as I am reminded from time to time.

Once I spoke to a conference in Africa. Afterward, a well-dressed gentleman from Nigeria (if memory serves) approached me and explained that, in his country, leaders are strongmen who rule by fear. No strength, no fear. No fear, no leadership.

I acknowledged the limits of my thinking. On further reflection later, I had to admit that, certainly in extenuating circumstances, the Nigerian gentleman's equation can prevail even in a Western environment.

In a turbulent situation—a pitched clash of factions in a street gang, perhaps, or a tussle on a school playground, or the violence of an urban riot, or an insurrection, or a military battle—power and ultimately the mantle of leadership can accrue to whoever is perceived the strongest. In those circumstances, though, people are choosing more as a matter of survival. It is the rawest kind of transactional leadership: You get to reign, I get to live.

But all that just proves the rule, it seems to me. Far more often than not, we are seeking to lead or deciding whether to follow in a transformational context, and that requires an alignment of interests, needs, and concerns that enable people to acknowledge the leader's noble intent and to choose to follow in part because of it. Leaders who ignore this will be unable to forge or sustain a leadership direction. 

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} We Have the Data on Meetings

 

Coming next Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

© Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   Arceil Leadership Ltd.

What Is Your Change Quotient?

by Thomas J. Lee

Everyone is familiar with IQ, and anyone who keeps up with popular psychology is familiar with EQ, a parallel calculation based not on cognitive ability but on emotional intelligence.

Today we are introducing another, similar metric. We call it CQ, for change quotient. It reflects neither intellectual capability nor emotional strength. Rather, it measures capacity for change.

You apply it not to individuals but to whole organizations. It measures how much and how well your entire company (or association, or team, or batallion, or garage band, or whatever) is changing, not how well a particular person is doing.

It is only intended as a rough, quick measure. What it lacks in academic rigor, it makes up in ease and convenience.

Here is how it works.

Just poll a cross-section of managers and employees. Ask them all to give the entire organization three subjective scores between 1 and 5—whole numbers only, the better their assessment the higher the number—on how fast it moves through change, how much it needs to continue or begin changing, and how wise or prudent its present course of change is.

Add the three numbers together; the sum will be a whole number between 3 and 15. Multiply it by 10. We'll call it A. This is your numerator.

Now invite the same people to answer the same questions about your competition generally. Ask them to assign a single score to all the entities in your marketplace (despite the likelihood of variability among them), giving any benefit of the doubt to better and faster-changing companies, as they are setting the pace for the future. You are seeking a composite score for the entire marketplace.

Calculate it similarly (taking care to multiply the sum by 10, just as you did before) and write it down. Let's call it B. This is your denominator.

Now divide A by B and multiply by 100. The result is your CQ, your change quotient.

Theoretically, it can be as little as 20 and as high as 500. We expect most companies to score somewhere between 50 and 200.

A score of 100 would mean that, in the view of the employees you polled, your company is just keeping up.

The higher the score, and especially if it is well into the triple figures, the faster you are already changing relative to your competitors, the more your people recognize the need to change, and the more likely your change is on course.

The lower your score, and especially if it is mired deep in the double digits, the less all that is true, and the more work you have to do.

Try it out and let me know how it works.

 

Coming on Monday

Part One of a Five-Part Series on Robust Credibility

 

 © Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

{Numbers} Shareholder Return Rises With Employee Engagement

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. Formerly known as By the Numbers, it appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

The financial value of employee engagement has long been obvious to some managers, particularly those who appreciate the importance of psychological anchors such as pride, belonging, and meaning on both the quality and the quantity of work, and those who understand the systematic role of communication in creating engagement.

But to managers who focus first and last on mechanical drivers of performance, such as unmistakable authority and the certainty of accountability, the financial metrics of engagement are not so plain to see. To them, engagement has largely seemed a wasteful annoyance.

Now we have new data to prove the business case for high employee engagement. It turns out to go beyond the bottom line and straight to the curve on the shareholder return graph.

New research by Hewitt Associates, which was recently acquired by Aon Consulting, has found that companies with relatively high levels of employee engagement (at least 65 percent) outperform the total stock market. They posted shareholder returns 19 percent higher than the average in 2009, the most recent year for which comparisons are available.

Meanwhile, companies with very low engagement (less than 40 percent) underperformed the total stock market. They posted returns 44 percent lower than the average for the same period.

That's a total difference of 63 percentage points attributable to employee engagement, which, as we know from other reputable studies, is driven by nothing so much as clear, compelling, credible, collaborative communication.

If this doesn't make the business case for a strategic process of internal communication in support of engaging employees, nothing will. After all, how many other processes or improvements can even come close?

 

Coming Wednesday

Just What, and Who, Is a Communicator?

 

(c) Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

It's Raining Like Cats and Dogs . . . and Alligators and Bears

   

by Thomas J. Lee

Here is a little hierarchy for prioritizing issues you face, either personally or professionally. We use the order of the alphabet—D, C, B and A—and the imagery of four animals. We list them in reverse order of their urgency.

Dogs, the least urgent of the four, are issues that don't seem to be issues at all. Think of old Fido, curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace or greeting you with a slobbering kiss when you come home from work. He doesn't demand much attention, but if you don't take him out for a walk when he wants to go out for a walk, you'll have to clean up the mess on the living-room carpet. As issues, dogs remind you that you must look after the basics.

Cats are issues that would be evident if you ever saw them. You don't see them, because they would just as soon hide from you on the basement window sill. As issues, cats remind you that you must always be vigilant for what you don't see and don't know. That can be far more important than what you do see and do know.

Bears are issues that will overtake you if you are going downhill. As long as you are going uphill, you have the advantage. As issues, bears remind you to take on the big challenge, to think bigger than the competition is thinking, and always to be moving upward and forward. Remember, a grizzly is nothing to mess with.

Alligators, the most pressing of the four, are issues that are constantly nipping at your feet. Their snouts can reach your hands and arms. Moreover, alligators cannot regurgitate, so once they grab hold of you, you're finished. As issues, alligators remind you to keep a constant lookout and always be a step ahead.

Now here's a little exercise. First, list the issues that are confronting you and your organization. Then put each of them into one of these four categories.

Now ask yourself: What do you you realize that you didn't realize before?

 

Coming on Wednesday

 Executive Presence and Why It Matters

 

(c) Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Facebook and Force Multipliers

by Thomas J. Lee

Those of us in the United States, Europe, and the Commonwealth take Facebook for granted. We use it mainly for social banter and individual expression. We post our whereabouts, family pictures, interesting articles or videos, and occasionally a political sentiment. We find old friends, and we keep in touch with far-flung relatives.

But in countries with despotic governments, Facebook is that and much more. There it is also the equal of Tom Paine's printing press. People use it seriously, frequently, even predominantly for political expression and organization. We certainly saw that in Tunisia and Egypt over the last few weeks, and it appears we are also beginning to see it in Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen.

All this says something wonderful about the security of our freedom and hopeful about freedom elsewhere, but also something unsettling about our own lack of appreciation for all that we enjoy. And it says something that ought to be worrisome to despotic governments everywhere.

Military parlance has a term for the effects of phenomena like Facebook: force multiplying. It refers to the outsize impact of anything that leverages something else. Force multipliers need not be social media or even technology. Commonplace force multipliers are the weather, logistics, topography, espionage, training, communication lines, morale, timing, missionary cause, strategy and tactics, and more.

You can use this metaphor to identify and cultivate force multipliers for your own leadership, in whatever context (a business enterprise, a neighborhood or homeowners association, a church, a social organization, a Scout troop, PTA, athletic team or club, a political campaign).

What force multipliers are already leveraging the impact of your leadership and engagement? What potential force multipliers could you use to enhance your leadership?

Conversely, and coining a term, what are some force divisors in your environment that threaten to, or that actually do, interfere with and undermine your leadership? 

 

Monday: The Shrinking Office Cubicle

(c)  Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} U.S. Companies Continue Improvement on Safety

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.  Formerly known as By the Numbers, it appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Work-related injuries, both fatal and nonfatal, continued a long decline in the United States in 2009, the most-recent year for which statistics are available.

According to preliminary data, there were 3.6 cases of work-related nonfatal injury or illness per 100 full-time workers in the United States in 2009. That represents a 7 percent decrease from 3.9 cases in 2008, and a 14 percent decrease from 4.2 cases in 2007.

Also by a preliminary tally, there were 3.3 work-related fatalities per 100,000 full-time workers in 2009. That represents a 10 percent decrease from 2008, when the comparable figure was 3.7, and a 17 percent decrease from 2007 when it was 4.0. Most dramatically, it is a 41 percent improvement from 1994, when the comparable figure stood at 5.6.

Still, there were 4,340 workplace fatalities in the United States in 2009. While that figure also reflects the significant improvement over time, each fatality leaves a gaping hole in the lives of people. In many cases, a family loses a breadwinner, a spouse loses a best friend, and children lose a role model. No one can rest until the figure is zero.

 You can obtain complete data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics here.

As you reflect on this data, explore the implications on workplace safety from trends in the workplace that you have observed or experienced, including budgetary constraints, job eliminations, and multitasking on smart phones and personal data devices. Also, to what extent do you believe the decrease is a function of the recession, and do you expect an increase in the figure as the economy recovers?

  

(c) Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Is Communication Really Essential to Change? To Leadership?

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days I have been involved in two discussions—one as an observer in an online forum, the other as a participant in an exchange of emails—regarding the necessity for communication in support of leadership and change.

It appears some people out there are not yet convinced that communication matters.

Frankly, I find that astonishing. The factual basis is so solid, and the logic is so compelling, that I cannot understand why any serious business executive has any doubt. The evidence is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is conclusive.

Surely we can stipulate that the world is always changing. Technology changes. Economies grow and shrink. Older people retire, and younger people with new ideas come along. The market for goods and services changes as consumers and businesses decide they want and need different things. Companies merge and spin off. Trade barriers come down. Management fads come and go. Innovation creates new competition. Companies form and enter the marketplace. Always, things are changing.

Now, follow along with me. Wouldn't you agree that:

• Companies cannot control the changes around them, but they can control (a) whether and how they initiate change and (b) whether and how they respond to external change. Both the direction and the pace of their own change are variable, and both are controllable.
• Organizations that fail to change will invariably become irrelevant. Then they will whither and die. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company and AOL, history is filled with the bones of giants that failed to adapt.
• If what made you great will make you greater, you would already be greater than you are. You aren't, so it can't. You will always need new ideas, new competencies, and new practices to grow and meet the demands of the future. That's life, and life is change.
• The work of leadership is largely the work of envisioning, articulating, and supporting change, commonly requiring discretionary effort and even self-sacrifice by many people, often in a state of uncertainty and risk. That fairly describes the business world of the 21st century, doesn't it?
• Communication is the energy of leadership and thus of change. You know this to be true because all of history's great leaders, those individuals who have brought about the greatest change in the most trying of circumstances, have consistently been articulate and inspiring communicators. Think of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The reason this is true is equally obvious: People cannot act in concert with a leadership vision and agenda unless they have the big ideas, the information, and the incentive to do so, and they get all that through communication.
• Every organization is always communicating with itself—thinking out loud, as it were. People talk. Rumors spread. Leaks occur. The communication may be managed well or poorly or not at all. It may be clear, credible, compelling, constructive, collaborative, continuous, civil, and concise, or it may not be. The degree to which it is managed well and purposefully is the degree to which the organization can change in accord with the leadership vision and agenda and thereby determine its own destiny. 

Now forgive a little hubris, but executives who choose to deny these propositions are denying some very obvious truths, perhaps because it is comfortable for them to remain in denial. After all, it is easier to deny the need for communication than to assume responsibility for communicating and perhaps even to confront some long-festering professional competency gaps.

Executives who acknowledge these facts, and we hope this includes you and your colleagues, will properly ask what they should do first. I would suggest they consider the possibility that a systematic process of integrated strategic communication just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. At the very least, they should get moving on a needs assessment to better understand their situation and the opportunities it presents. Remember, every problem in life is an opportunity.

Call us. The number is +1-847-247-2241. We can help if you call, but not if you don't.

 

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Bring More Heart to Employee Communication

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its employee communication on business strategy? Especially in the consumer-products sector, but elsewhere to an extent, it can be dramatic.

Advertising is often unabashedly emotional. TV commercials for new cars, for example, commonly appeal to the pride of ownership and, at the holidays, even the joy of giving. They play down or ignore things like horsepower or trade-in value. Advertising for life insurance tugs at the heartstrings of family, and 30-second spots for beer invoke friendship and fun.

In contrast, employee communication on business strategy is typically straightforward, sober, and matter-of-fact. There is little emotion. Yes, you see sporadic articles and photographs in newsletters on dedicated employees or extraordinary service. But the fundamental purpose of business is often reduced to quarterly goals, and the bulk of information is on new procedures and controls.

Canadian neurologist Donald B. Calne observes: "Reasoning leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action."

Conclusions are important. Facts and logic have an important role. But action is essential. If emotion brings us to the brink of action, then it is an essential component of employee communication. We neglect it to our peril.

Always be mindful of the fact that people find a great deal of motivation in positive, affirmative appeals of emotion. Employees need straight information, of course. But they also need to hear the emotional cause for working hard, doing the right thing, persevering through adversity, scratching the creative itch, and taking risks. They need to hear of pride, service, loyalty, and so much more. Anyone who has ever succeeded at anything knows the importance and the truth of this.

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.  All rights reserved. 

By the Numbers: Open and Honest Communication

 

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Most companies of any considerable size survey their employees from time to time on a raft of issues relating to satisfaction, morale, commitment, and engagement. The questions on these surveys vary considerably, but a few questions are typically devoted to the frequency and quality of managerial communication.

(Better companies go so far as to field annual communication audits. If the surveys are well-constructed and well-interpreted and acted upon, so much the better.)

One survey question in particular always interests me. It has to do with the candor and credibility of communication. Often it is phrased as the degree of "open and honest" communication. (Ideally, it should be two questions, but that is another matter for another day.) The results say a lot about the organization and its future.

The only acceptable score on this kind of question is (a) a score that is better than the comparable score of your most recent previous surveys, and (b) a score reflecting approval at or above 85 or even 90 percent of all cohorts, most especially ground-level and customer-facing employees.

If you think 85 or 90 percent is too ambitious a target, I would remind you that it is still shy of three sigma. No self-respecting manufacturing company tolerates a defect rate of less than six sigma. 

On questions of this nature, reference to an industry norm is irrelevant and perhaps even counterproductive. Let's say the external norm is 72 percent, and your score is 75 percent. You may be feeling heady, having beaten the norm by 3 percentage points, but you must realize that one of every four employees regards your communication as something less than acceptable.

Having said that, you should be less concerned about validating your management team's efforts than about assessing your present situation and mapping an approach to improving it. So even if your scores are improving from survey to survey, you should still use the data to determine how you might improve further. Of course, if your scores are deteriorating, consider it a five-alarm alert. You need to get busy, fast.

Now, here are some discussion points for you:

• Has your organization conducted such a survey recently?
• Did you even ask about communication?
• Did you specifically inquire about candor and credibility?
• Did you also inquire about clarity? Coherence? Civility?
• Did you collect data by grade level? What were the results?
• How did they compare with previous surveys?
• What are you doing in response?

 

By the Numbers is a twice-monthly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. By the Numbers appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, By the Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 

(c) Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

What a Culture of Engagement Really Looks Like

 
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, transplanting a human heart, demolishing the Berlin Wall, ending apartheid in South Africa, negotiating peace in Northern Ireland, or winning World War II.

Think of filming an Oscar-winning movie or tunneling under the English Channel or composing a symphony or climbing Mount Everest. Think of beating cancer and then winning the Tour de France seven years straight.

Think of any successful organization of any sort: a victorious political campaign, a world-class orchestra, a championship sports team, an army on the battlefield.

In business, think of Richard Branson as he sold vinyl hi-fi records out of his car in downtown London—the precursor of Virgin Atlantic and the first step on Branson's road to becoming a billionaire. Think of Amazon.com and its Kindle, or Apple and its iPad.

Think of Sam Walton and Warren Buffet. Think of a couple of obscure college dropouts as they set up Microsoft and took it public. Think of the work that the Gates Foundation is doing in Africa. Think of Google. Think of Facebook. Think of Netflix.

Or think of a simple, humble Albanian nun who begged for food and supplies to begin a mission in the slums of Calcutta, decades before she won the Nobel Prize as Mother Teresa.

Could any of these things, or anything else that rises to their level, have happened without a laser-like focus, a bold curiosity, an all-consuming passion, and a persevering courage?

No. It could not. Of course it could not.

So it is that we recognize these four forces—focus, curiosity, passion and courage—as the common denominator of breakthrough success. All four are absolutely essential to employee engagement. What's more, in business 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 lip service 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—ever.

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 team or company you could finally have.

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

 
(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Why Should Anyone Listen to You?

   

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us in management just assume that the people on our team will pay attention to what we say, simply because we're the boss.

If this describes you, then I have some good news and some bad news for you.

First the good news.

It is that, happily for you, sometimes they will. They will pay attention to what you say for no reason other than the fact of your position. You're the boss, so they will listen. Sometimes.

Now the bad news.

It is that, unhappily for you, often they will not pay attention. Occasionally they may go so far as to ignore you deliberately. More commonly, they will just let your voice vanish in the din, the noise, the clamor of the day-to-day chaos of their working life. They won't even notice that you have said anything.

Now I have a question for you.

It is just this: In what other aspect of your managing would you tolerate such a roll of the dice?

 

(c) 2011  Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

To Communicate a Strategic Focus, You Must First Have One

 

We're reprinting a few of our favorite posts for two weeks while we go through a year-beginning strategic review. We will return in full force, with completely new essays, next Monday, January 10, 2011. (The following day will be 1-11-11. It will be a good time to begin anew.)

In the meantime, here's another little essay that many of you liked when we first published it. Feel free to forward it to your staff and colleagues.

 

by Thomas J. Lee

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

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

What do they have in common? They're all splendid examples of successful marketing initiatives, quite obviously. At least here in the United States, virtually everyone is familiar with all of them, and anyone can fill in the two blanks with Deere and Marines. Each phrase 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 employees 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 United States Marine Corps, 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.

Unfortunately, few companies successfully communicate a sharp, compelling focus. It isn't so much a failure of marketing as of leadership. To communicate a shared focus, you must first have a focus, and it must be clear and coherent. 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.

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

Job Titles Can Be Barriers to Teamwork and Collaboration

 

We're reprinting a few of our favorite posts for two weeks while we go through a year-beginning strategic review. We will return in full force, with completely new essays, next Monday, January 10, 2011. (The following day will be 1-11-11. It will be a good time to begin anew.) In the meantime, here's another little essay that many of you liked when we first published it. Feel free to forward it to your staff and colleagues.

by Thomas J. Lee

I just got off the telephone with an executive at one of America’s leading retailers. With dozens of stores throughout the United States, this company is well-known for its classy merchandise and well-respected for its terrific customer service. To my thinking, it should be equally well-regarded for its culture of innovation and humility.

After years of loyally shopping at this store, and having benchmarked it several years ago, I thought I knew the company’s culture pretty well. But even now, it became clear today, I had something to learn.

Our conversation had wandered around to job titles. The executive shared her opinion that job titles are a distraction—and a divisive one at that. Whether someone is a senior sales associate or a regional vice president or the director of this department or that function isn’t material. With few exceptions, no one but the betitled really cares.

What truly matters is whether someone is helping a customer, how someone is helping a customer, and whether or how someone is helping a colleague help a customer. We should think of ourselves in terms of what we actually do and how we do it, not in terms of who we artificially are. In effect, we should think of our role as a verb, not as a noun.

The difference is partly a question of focus. By reframing our place in an organization, we can throw a spotlight on the actions and behaviors that give life to our mission. That's a good thing.

It is also a subtle matter of perceived status. Lofty titles create the illusion of relative importance. They imply that certain persons in an organization are more important than others. That can only mean the others will come to see themselves as less important. When that happens, they will naturally reduce their value to the organization and ultimately to the customer. After all, they aren’t so important.

Thus, job titles actually create distance between and among colleagues and teammates. They erode the fabric of an organization, and they undermine the value proposition. That’s a dumb thing to do, isn’t it? Why create distance when what we need is connection? Why let value and service decline?

I realize I am kicking a hornet’s nest on this one. Many of you think of yourselves largely in terms of your title. You worked long and hard to get your title, and you feel—well, entitled to it.

I used to think that way myself. No more. From this point forward, I am what I do.

 

 (c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

How Concise Is Communication in Your Organization?

 

(Tenth in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Three weeks ago we introduced the concept of a culture of communication. (Click here to read the November 24 post).

Then we explored each of the eight hallmarks of a healthy communication culture: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. (Click here to read the November 26 post.)

Since then, we have been presenting lists of diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up concise. More than just brevity, our use of concise extends to issues of speed, duplication, detail, hesitancy, and caution of communication.

Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of these issues of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

 

• Does formal communication get right to the point?
• Do business proposals make use of a one-page or two-page format requiring concise statements of purpose, budget, impact, reasoning, and so forth?
• Are managers routinely sent CYA copies of emails, other correspondence, meeting minutes, proposals, and so forth?
• Are managers trained in the use of one-minute conversations and one-minute coaching of employees?
• Do internal company publications have a lot of extraneous, nonstrategic information?  
• Do middle managers hoard information that would be of strategic use to subordinates or peers?
• Do meetings begin on time and proceed according to schedule?
• Are data-intensive presentations and complex information circulated in advance of meetings?
• Are presentations couched in circuitous language?
• Are PowerPoint slides crowded with fine print and indecipherable diagrams?

 

We would be happy to help your organization assess and improve

its culture of communication. Just call us at +1-847-247-2241

 or write to us at info@arceil.com. 

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

Management Has a Rose-Colored View of Communication

 

 

 By the Numbers                                               

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Ask a typical executive how well his or her company communicates important business information to employees, and you will very likely hear a song of praise: Quite well, thank you for asking.

You shouldn't settle for such an answer, and neither should the executives offering it. Almost always, there is more to the story.

According to data collected and synthesized by the Organizational Research Forum, a respected survey research firm based in Vernon Hills, Illinois, the regard for communication within an organization varies according to grade level.

ORF has found that managers at high levels of a company naturally tend to have high opinions of communication, while hourly workers at low levels have low opinions of it. These findings are consistent with my own observations from focus groups and discussions with people at client companies.

ORF has asked a simple question of people at all levels of numerous companies in a wide range of industries: Are you satisfied with communication in this company? The firm tracked and analyzed the responses by level of hierarchy. The percentages replying yes at each of five main levels appear in the graphic above.

 

While 85 percent of senior managers say they are satisfied with communication in their organizations, only 66 percent of supervisors agree, and only 42 percent of non-exempt employees agree.

 

Part of the problem is reliance on cascading: disseminating strategic information through an organization one level at a time, from the management committee to vice presidents to site leaders and so forth. Cascading teases senior managers into thinking they have communicated, when in fact they rarely have. For a good analysis of cascading, see our July 28, 2010 post on the subject.

For more information on the ORF data, contact Andrew Mosko at 847-816-8611 or write to him at amosko@orf-usa.com. For more information on solutions to the problem, contact me directly at 847-247-2241 or write to me at tom@arceil.com.

 

By the Numbers is a twice-monthly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. By the Numbers appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception in mid-2009, By the Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

 
(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Edison Peña, Running In Defiance of 'Destiny'

 

by Thomas J. Lee

In need of a little inspiration today?

Look no further than Edison Peña, one of the Chilean miners trapped underground for two months. All the miners are paragons of endurance, to be sure. But among them, Peña stands apart: not only through the 69 days of imprisonment that he shared with the other miners, but in his own dauntless courage and in the sheer resilience of his own human spirit.

Yesterday this 34-year-old man ran the New York City Marathon, its 26.2-mile course wending through the five boroughs before ending in Central Park. Running a marathon is a big achievement for anyone. Running a marathon after training on 3-mile and 6-mile runs through dark tunnels a half-mile underground, with every reason to doubt his own survival and only a miner's lamp to light the way, is just this side of phenomenal.

For the first 17 days of the miners' ordeal, Peña did no running. There was little point, for there was little food and little hope of survival. He curled up in a fetal position and waited to die. But when the first drilling bore reached the miners and brought more food, he was able to recapture hope. So he did what a runner would do: he trimmed a pair of work shoes and began going for daily runs.

"I ran to forget I was trapped," he told the New York Daily News last week. "I became two people: the weak person who wanted simply to give up and the person who chose to be strong, to run and survive. Eventually, I chose to live."

Asked what he thought about during those runs in the mine, he offered a sentiment that could very well serve as a mantra on a beleaguered day for any of us: "What I thought about as I ran in the mine was that I was going to beat destiny. I was going to turn the tables on destiny. I was saying to that mine, I can outrun you. I'm going to outrun you. I'm going to run until you're just tired and bored of me. And I did it."

On hearing of his daily runs underground, marathon officials invited him to New York as their guest to ride in a pace car. He replied he would actually prefer to run in the marathon. He did just that. Though he needed an ice pack at mile 20, he finished more than an hour ahead of his goal to the cheers of thousands of spectators. The cheers were nice, but he was already on top of the world, quite literally.

There is a mighty lesson for all of us here. It is altogether too easy to prostrate ourselves on the doorstep of destiny, to tell ourselves that whatever our lot appears to be is meant to be. So let us take a little inspiration from Edison Peña and his fellow miners.

Let us stare down whatever destiny looks to have in store for us, and just say No thanks. Let us rise up and go for a run today, as if in miner's shoes through dark tunnels. Let us finally and defiantly cheat destiny of all its dark and dreary doomsaying, just as Edison Peña did, and one day we, too, will emerge to the cheers of throngs and taste the sweet sunshine of a different destiny, a destiny we create for ourselves.

Thank you, Señor Peña, for your inspiration to us all.

 

(c) 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Let's Begin to 'Mind the Gap' on Credibility

 

by Thomas J. Lee

One of the many little charms about London is the stern, disembodied voice in the Tube that booms forth whenever the doors of a subway train open. "Mind the gap," the voice reminds us. The gap, of course, is the few inches between the subway car and the platform. Catch your heel in it, and you can sprain your ankle, or worse.

I use the word gap to describe the chasm of credibility that afflicts, burdens, and undermines so much corporate rhetoric. Continuing the metaphor, Minding the Gap is my way of reminding you to look after your credibility as a leader, regardless of the position you hold. It is critical to your leadership.

No one needs to be told that the last five or ten years have seen more than their share of frontal assaults on credibility. It isn't just a matter of Enron and Tyco. The real wars over integrity play out in little offices and cubicles. It is there, day in and day out, that compromises can so easily occur. It is there that we can fall short of our promise, and short of our potential, in so many ways.

Often it seems we lose our way because we have no compass to point us northward. So we have developed a little diagram that can help companies map their own integrity. They can use it to analyze how their credibility was damaged in the first place, or they can use it to avoid damaging their credibility in the future, or both. Moreover, in support in a leadership vision, it actually enables the achievement of the previously unachievable.

We call this model the Rainbow™, because it looks like one. It identifies three distinct modes or “voices” of communication, and it brings them together. We have designated these three voices formal communication, semi-formal communication, and informal communication.

Be careful: formal communication has nothing to do with tuxedos or taffeta, and informal communication has nothing to do with denim or dungarees. Rather, they are both terms of art. Each voice has a specific meaning and role associated with it. Like the Three Musketeers, they need to work together -- all for one, and one for all.

Let's get more specific:

Formal communication is the traditional mainstay of organizational communication. It consists mainly of information and messages expressed in newsletters, banners across factory walls, glossy brochures, closed-circuit television, announcements, and bulletin-board postings, along with their high-tech kin such as intranet sites and interactive kiosks, and through external communication such as advertising, press releases, investor advice, and government filings. All these are vital and basic components of a communication system. However, too often organizations rely on them excessively or even exclusively. When asked to do too much, they ultimately fail even in their modest efforts to build awareness.

Semi-formal communication is commonly thought of as a management toolbox. It consists of all those programs, policies, processes and procedures that companies use to manage their affairs. These things function as communication because they do what conventional communication does: convey information, direction and meaning to employees, establish priorities and concerns, and encourage or discourage certain thinking and behavior in response. Examples of the semi-formal voice include meeting agendas, training mandates, job descriptions, standard operating procedures, ISO 9000 processes, spending authorizations, accountabilities, sales quotas, cubicle sizes, and employee surveys. The semi-formal voice is always sending either complementary or inconsistent messages. It primarily facilitates both understanding and acceptance, but it can thwart them just as easily.

Informal communication is a live-wire interpersonal connection. Not to be confused with the rumor mill or body language, informal communication consists of relationships between leaders and the led, driven and defined by routine conversation -- comments, questions, complaints, anecdotes -- and by all those countless decisions, behaviors, choices, and attitudes on the part of leadership that so often “speak louder than words.” It is the bond or connection between a leader and her followers. When this connection is strong and resilient, great things can happen. When it is weak and fragile, they cannot. Informal communication is always there whether it is recognized as such, and whether it is integrated into the whole system, or not. It is the fulcrum of commitment.

Only when an organization’s formal, semi-formal, and informal voices are all sending much the same message, only when they are facilitating a mutually respectful dialogue with employees, only when they are honoring the organization’s values, and only when they are encouraging the alignment of behavior with strategy, can the organization reach its fullest potential.

Otherwise the semi-formal and informal communication will prevail over the formal communication, and employees will perceive a lack of integrity and thus a lack of leadership.

The key point to remember is that an organization’s formal (or rhetorical and official) voice can never operate in a vacuum. It must either compete with or complement the semi-formal (institutional and programmatic) and informal (individual, relational, and behavioral) voices. Management’s credibility hangs in the balance.

If left unmanaged, the three voices will generate their own messages. Each message may contradict the last, and employees may be left in a state of confusion that sets the stage for cynicism and complacency or even contempt. That’s a recipe for disaster. We all know of companies that unwisely chose it. Some of us worked for them, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

The alternative holds more promise -- much more. If managed well, the harmony of the three voices can resonate throughout the organization to clarify and reinforce important strategic priorities.

The bottom line is just this: Organizations are wise to develop a broadly integrated, widely decentralized system of communication as a vital management tool to deploy strategy and to leverage change. Semi-formal communication and informal communication, by fostering relationships of sincerity and respect, of integrity and mutuality, build understanding and acceptance as an indispensable foundation for commitment.

Employees hear, see, and feel a consistent and noble message, and they have the dignity of speaking up and being heard. Leaders have the benefit of followers who enthusiastically participate. It’s a win-win all around.

 

(c) 2010   Arceil Leadership ltd.   All rights reserved.

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Sometimes, the Thought of Change Can Be Paralyzing

 

by Thomas J. Lee

One balmy evening after dusk I was relaxing on the patio with my legs outstretched. Crickets had begun to sing, and Venus was slipping toward the western horizon. I had enjoyed another productive day. Everything was perfect. I wanted nothing to change.

Just then I noticed a small animal of some sort off to the right. It was already dark, so I couldn't quite make out what it was. Slowly approaching me, the furry thing waddled right up to my shoes and stopped.

You can imagine my horror when I realized the animal wasn't a neighbor's kitten, and it wasn't a squirrel. Nor was it a raccoon or an opossum. It was a skunk, a polecat. I kid you not. For minutes 

 

that seemed like hours, it sat on its haunches just inches from my feet. I was never so perfectly still in my entire life. I didn't breathe. I didn't swallow. I didn't blink.

In an instant I went from wanting nothing to change to wanting everything to change, immediately and radically. Yet I could do nothing. If I had so much as burped, this little beast would have fouled the entire neighborhood. Everything within a quarter mile would have stunk for days. I could only wait it out, in perfect stillness and utter silence.

Eventually the skunk moved on, and I could exhale and blink again. Five minutes later I felt a sneeze coming on, and I prayerfully thanked the heavenly stars that I had not sneezed while my uninvited guest was sniffing at my feet.

This incident occurred two or three autumns ago. I recalled it this week when the subject of change came to mind. I've noticed that, for some people and some companies, the thought of change can bring about such anxiety they react with terror and paralysis.

That isn't a problem in the presence of a skunk, figuratively or literally; the paralysis suits you just fine. But if the challenge you are facing requires that you change for the sake of innovation, or personal growth, or subject-matter mastery, or credibility, or a behavioral correction, or relational empathy, or anything else of importance or value, it most certainly is problematic. Your paralysis is part of the problem.

Regular readers will recall that a couple of my recent posts (here and here) focused on helping people to identify the need for change and to muster the will to change. Indeed, change is a continuing theme of the MindingGaps blog, for change is the currency of leadership.

One reader objected to those columns. A successful business consultant, and a friend whose tone belies abundant personal warmth, he impetuously dashed off an email to me, which I reprint verbatim:

 

what the hell is all about this  "CHANGE" crap...

why do I need to change ?

I am successful and know what I am doing - why do YOU insist on changing me?

It's like women who hook onto a man and then want to change him?  WHY?

I'm satisfied with my life and work and manage my team without being overbearing or micro-managing - I motivate each team member and treat everyone that way I want to be treated.

NOW - my Government wants change !  Why, because they think if they need to change themselves, (because they are screwed up) it might be easier to CHANGE everyone around them first.  Kinda f***ed up if you ask me.

 

Well, that's one viewpoint, I told myself.

On the other hand, in a meeting a few weeks ago with a pair of executives of a large company, one of them asserted that every company wanted to change; no company did not want to change. I had to admit, that's another perspective.

In my own experience, most companies do want to change either their culture, or their operations, or their performance. Yet few actually change as much or as fast as they wish.

It is true that some recognize no need to change, so they never even set out to change. Others say they want to change when they actually do not. Many others genuinely want to change but do not know how. And many, many others seek to control and constrain their path of change, rather than create a culture of self-energizing and self-sustaining change that can redefine their marketplace. Over-engineering change can have the effect of stifling it altogether.

In any case, companies that are most in need of change but refuse to do anything about it are those that most risk being forgotten or marginalized in the years ahead. Anyone my side of 40 can name brands or products that are scarcely known to young people today—CompuServe, the Sony Walkman, Oldsmobile, Pan-Am, Schlitz, the DC-10, Zenith, Gourmet, camera film and slide projectors, DEC computers—and dozens of companies that are now subsidiaries or mere historical footnotes: Maytag, Gillette, TWA, Amoco, McDonnell Douglas, NCR, Ameritech, Warner-Lambert, A.G. Edwards, and so many more.

Even among extant companies, the tales of coulda-woulda-shoulda read like ghosts from a Dickens novel. I think of Xerox, whose share of the copier market plummeted from 90 percent in the 1970s to just 20 percent in the 1980s after Japanese manufacturers began selling better machines at lower prices. I think of IBM, which was so busy selling Selectric typewriters that it took a pass on the operating system and applications for personal computers, and instead let a couple of college dropouts start a cute little company they called Microsoft. I think of Blockbuster and Sears and Border's, whose stores today are almost empty.

On the other hand, there is Apple, which has changed radically, and there is Google, whose culture is all about innovation, and there is Ford Motor Co., which is leading a resurgence of American auto manufacturing, and there is Amazon, which is becoming an online main street. American Express and Wells Fargo both got their start running stage coaches across the West, and today they are vibrant and dynamic. Even IBM has learned from its mistakes and reinvented itself.

The CEO of a Fortune 25 company put it well in an inspiring 1993 speech to his senior leadership team: "We need to embrace change—not for its own sake but for our sake. We must understand that the world isn't standing still and that we can't stand still either. People and organizations that delude themselves into thinking they do not need to change are on a course of self-absorption and self-destruction. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company, history is full of giants that failed to adapt."

The choice we face isn't merely between changing and not changing. The choice is between changing and dying. Indeed, in these times of rampant mergers and acquisitions, the choice is as much between changing and being eaten alive for breakfast by a competitor.

It's just that sometimes, the mere thought of change is so intimidating, it is paralyzing. I know. I have been there.

 

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"Suspicious Minds": A Leadership Lesson from Elvis

 

by Thomas J. Lee

I'll take a lesson in leadership wherever I can find it. The other day, I found one while listening to a golden oldie on my iPod, and it came from Elvis Presley.

The song was "Suspicious Minds," written by Mark James, who also wrote "Hooked On a Feeling" for B.J. Thomas and "Always On My Mind" for Willie Nelson. Of course, Elvis burned "Suspicious Minds" into our collective consciousness. It is one of the truly great popular songs ever produced.

You can probably sing the lyrics from memory:

Why can't you see

What you're doing to me

When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together

With suspicious minds

And we can't build our dreams

With suspicious minds. . . .

Now, plainly these lyrics have to do with a rocky romance. But with a little imagination you can see striking parallels to a dysfunctional corporate culture, too.

In many industries, the collapse of the implied contract after decades of widespread downsizing and offshoring, along with sporadic instances of financial malfeasance and chicanery, has decimated the trust, confidence, and affinity in business that everyone took for granted a couple of generations ago. (Other institutions, particularly government, have fared even worse. That's another issue altogether.)

Perhaps your industry and your company have emerged relatively unscathed. Nonetheless, the social carnage that other companies have left in their wake is problematic for you. All companies find it difficult to enlist the enthusiastic support of employees who suspect they are getting, or who expect to be getting, the short end of the stick. (Note: Whether or not employees are actually being shortchanged is irrelevant, for perceptions and expectations are everything. The only objective reality is someone's subjective reality; the perception or expectation of distrust is the fact of distrust.)

Any organization whose culture is characterized more by suspicion than by trust, confidence, and affinity is not likely to succeed for long at much of anything. In a strong economy, it can float on a rising tide. But when times turn difficult, or when competition or innovation redefines the marketplace, the same company will very likely encounter more than its share of difficulty.

Further, for a couple of very compelling reasons, a culture of suspicion can readily grow out of the managerial process itself. It's a little like noxious weeds sprouting in a well-tended garden of rich, fertile loam.

For one thing, good managers will focus on meeting pre-determined expectations: a budget, a quota, a deadline, or a standard. So they are usually on the lookout for any early sign of failure, in order to correct it in time. But their constant, anxious vigilance can be seen by employees as doubt or even distrust in them. Some employees will take it personally and return the volley with doubt and distrust of their own. Their distrust can become a contagion.

For another thing, many managers rely on the legal authority of their position, and the asymmetrical power it reflects, for their moral authority. These managers are often disinclined to invest the extra time and attentiveness it takes to nurture relationships with subordinates, especially at the ground level. Goodness knows, managers are already too busy. But the absence of frequent, casual, authentic face-to-face conversation is another dynamic that can breed a sense of distance and suspicion among employees. Again, what goes around comes around.

Managers and employees alike would both be better off to acknowledge the difficulty but also the enormous value of trust in the workplace. As the song goes, you can't build your dreams with suspicious minds. In a culture of distrust, everyone loses.

Elvis may have left the building, but his voice is ever echoing off the walls.

 

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Road Rage, Catcalls, and Online Flaming

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the parallel between road rage, catcalls, and online flaming?

There certainly is a parallel. Moreover, it has implications for your leadership.

All of us have seen road rage and heard its cousin, the earsplitting volume of heavy-metal music bursting from a huge pick-up truck, its driver revving the engine in the next lane. I swear, some of those speakers have woofers that can vibrate ten inches of steel-reinforced concrete pavement.

Anyone who's attended a ballgame with a losing hometown team or with a Mr. Magoo in a striped shirt has heard profanity-laced catcalls, too. Sometimes, it can be so bad you have to feel for the family with kids at the game. They surely don’t want to hear all those f-bombs, and they shouldn’t have to.

And sooner or later, anyone who subscribes to an online bulletin board—or even just reads the comments posted to articles on politics at the web site of any newspaper—will come across flaming, too. Hardly a day goes by that you don’t see an abusive, caustic comment. The comments rarely carry the writer’s real name and email. They are usually anonymous and gratuitous insults.

Now beyond the mean spirit and disregard for the dignity of others, all these assaults share one other thing: a wall of anonymity. All three occur primarily because their perpetrators enjoy a kind of shield that keeps them anonymous and protects them from the consequences of their actions and statements.

For road rage, the shield is the sheer tonnage of vehicles and the driver’s intent to squeal his tires when the light turns green. For catcalls, it is the numbers of people and the noise of the crowd. For online flaming, it is the virtual reality of the Internet.

What does all this have to do with leadership and communication in your company? Just this.

The "social distance" between people is their perception of anonymity and aloneness. Where it is high, it creates a wall of separateness, of isolation. This wall can breed cynicism and incivility. The greater the social distance, the taller the wall, and the more isolated people feel.

Social distance comes in three types. It can be affective, in which case it determines how groups of people feel about one another. It can be normative, where it bears on attitudes of exclusion and inclusion. Or it can be interactive, a reflection of the interpersonal contact that groups have with one another.

Businesses should do everything they can to reduce social distance. The more inclusive a culture they build, the more cohesion and teamwork they will experience.

Frequent face-to-face, eye-to-eye communication helps tremendously. When people talk in the physical presence of each other, and look into each other's eyes, they cannot hide behind their own anonymity, for they are suddenly revealed to one another. Intentionally creating a culture in which people speak their truth with calm civility can go a long way, too.

Remember, any organization—be it a business, an association or foundation, an agency or bureau of government, a symphony or an army or a team or a congregation or even a family—is fundamentally a collection of people, very often working together under pressure.

The more that people require of themselves to get along with one another, the more productive an organization will be. If no one makes an effort to get along, the organization is probably on a road to ruin. Part of making an effort to get along is holding accountable people who are unwilling to make any such effort, who think they can say and do whatever they damn well please, just because they can.

Getting along is a straightforward thing, and it is absolutely critical to achieving whatever we are seeking to achieve by working together.

It's pretty much that simple, isn't it?

 

 

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Leadership Is All About Inspiring Change

 

Minding Gaps has been taking a few weeks of respite to rejuvenate, write, and plan. During our absence, we are reprising some of our own favorite posts from the past year. Today's post explores the myth that people refuse to change. We will return to this space with all-new essays on Monday.

— Tom      

 

by Thomas J. Lee

A year or so ago, a big-name chief executive of a big-name high-tech company was asked by The New York Times what he had learned through all his years in senior management. His answer startled and saddened me.

He replied, and I paraphrase, that he had learned an immutable fact of life: You cannot change people.

The response startled me because, in a curt phrase, this big-name CEO was all but abdicating the hard work of leadership. He was saying that he saw himself not as a leader—rising to the challenge of inspiring change—but as a manager, responsible for meeting deadlines and quotas and budgets.

The response saddened me because, after fifteen years of working in the vineyards of leadership and communication, I was meeting yet another senior executive who just didn’t get it. There are altogether too many of them. They give lip service to leadership and communication, and then they shrink themselves and their work to the petty tasks of administration.

Anyone in a position of visible responsibility in any organization—even a parent in a family—inevitably and invariably changes people every day, all day long. Every little thing the leader says or does has some impact, for better or for worse. Every comment and every behavior can be influencing, even inspiring. That is especially true for younger and newer people on the team.

I vividly remember my first weeks and months at the corporation I joined fresh out of graduate school. It is fair to say I was a little rough around the edges. But I was alert to any cultural cue that would enable me to fit in and feel comfortable.

Within days, I noticed that all the men in the headquarters office were exceedingly polite, that etiquette was in. Men held open the elevator doors and chivalrously pulled back chairs for women. No one used profanity. Everyone’s shoes were always polished. Men wore only gray suits with starched white shirts. Within days, I bought an etiquette book, another couple of suits, a half-dozen more white shirts, and another pair of black wing tips.

That is a banal example, to be sure. But it illustrates a young employee’s eagerness to adapt to the cultural environment. Leaders inevitably and invariably define and shape that environment.

The reality is that people change all the time (just try to find a treadmill or a stationary bike at your gym in January!), and leaders have an enormous, outsize impact on people. The wise leader appreciates that fact and earnestly accepts responsibility for influencing and even inspiring people.

You can’t change people? Nonsense. You cannot not change people.

  

(c) Copyright 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Decoupling Leadership and Management

 

Minding Gaps is taking a few weeks of respite to rejuvenate, write, and plan. During our absence, we are reprising some of our own favorite posts from the past year. Today's post explores disengagement that is hiding in plain site. We will return to this space with all-new essays on Monday, September 27.

— Tom      

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee 

It is essential to distinguish the work of management from the work of leadership.

 Anyone in any position of authority in any organization has the burden—and the glorious opportunity—for both.

But it is only when we unpack the work of leadership and the work of management from each other that we can see their unique challenges, tools, and rewards.

The work of management is all about steady, reliable performance. The manager ensures the performance of a team to certain predetermined expectations.

If the expectation involves spending money, we call it coming in under budget. If it involves completing a project by a specific date, we call it meeting a deadline. If it involves doing something or producing something within acceptable parameters, we call it complying with a standard—quality, perhaps, or safety. When it involves making or selling or issuing enough of something, we call it clearing a quota. There are many other kinds of similar challenges.

When successful, management creates alignment. Alignment is the equivalence of expectation and performance. Alignment is a good thing; misalignment is bad. But remember: Alignment is not the product of leadership. It is the product of management.

The work of leadership is altogether different from the work of management. The work of leadership is all about change. It entails envisioning, articulating, inspiring, and ensuring change—often attitudinal or cultural—or a breakthrough performance of some sort, typically requiring the discretionary and self-sacrificing efforts of people.

The change or breakthrough may involve launching a new product, or expanding geographically, or merging cultures after an acquisition, or fending off a unionization vote, or adopting a new technology, or meeting the changing needs of customers. There are many kinds of such challenges.

When successful, leadership creates engagement. Engagement is a good thing; disengagement is bad. But engagement is not the product of good management. It is the product of good leadership—up, down, and across the organization.

Alignment is critical to meeting the needs of the present. Companies and other organizations—associations, governments, universities, charities, teams—make commitments they must fulfill. Alignment is necessary to fulfilling those commitments.

Engagement is critical to meeting the needs of the future. Companies and other organizations must always adapt to changing circumstances, environments, and opportunities, lest they wither and die as so many erstwhile giants that failed to adapt have withered and died before them. Without engagement, organizations cannot survive long into the future.

It is a big mistake to use the tools of one to accomplish the goals of the other. Companies often try that, and they routinely fail, whenever they launch another “change management” initiative while overlooking the need to lead change, which is something entirely different. Similarly, an energetic leader without an eye for detail can lose sight of the basics.

Management and leadership differ most dramatically in the substance, style, and tone of the communication that supports each of them. Communication for the sake of managing is authoritative, directive, and influencing. It carries an implicit "stick" of accountability. Communication for the sake of leading is visionary, collaborative, energizing, and inspiring. It carries an implicit "carrot" of opportunity.

I like to draw two concentric circles to illustrate. I label the inner circle management and the outer circle leadership, to convey the point that good management is at the core of good leadership. That is because good managers must lead themselves, and paradoxically they do so by managing themselves. Good leaders are their own first followers. They lead the way so that others can follow.

Many companies and other organizations are well-managed. They meet the needs of the present just fine. But they are not necessarily well-led. Thus they are duly anxious about the future. They are anxious not because they are unable to predict the future—everyone is unable to predict it—but because they are not ready for whatever it may bring. They are not ready because they know so little about change, about engagement, and ultimately about leadership.

Two different things they are, managing and leading. Both are important. Both are necessary. They’re just different. Quite dramatically different, at that.

 

(c) Copyright 2010 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Four Worrisome Alarm Bells of Employee Disengagement

Minding Gaps is taking a few weeks of respite to rejuvenate, write, and plan. During our absence, we are reprising some of our own favorite posts from the past year. Today's post is on four glaring signs of employee disengagement. We will return with all-new essays on Monday, September 27.

— Tom        

 

How can you tell if your organization is teetering toward disengagement?

Here are four common warning signs. None of them will surprise you, but from time to time you should remind yourself just how ominous they are.

If you notice even one, you should take action. If you don't act, you will soon notice another one, and then another, and eventually all four.
 

1. Not in My Silo. Companies consist of divisions and departments. In the best organizations, these divisions and departments work together. There are lots of cross-functional efforts to resolve issues and develop new products and services. The “enemy” is understood to be the competition, not another part of the same company. In the worst organizations, the various divisions and departments keep to themselves and scorn one another. They never exchange best practices or collaborate on common challenges. The executives in one division or department may not trust or even know their counterparts elsewhere in the organization. So you hear blame and recrimination when you should hear camaraderie and collective good will. Most organizations are somewhere between the extremes. Which way you're trending is an important indicator. When in doubt, ask the smokers who take breaks outside with smokers from other departments. They have the inside scoop.
    
   
2. The Proverbial Gorilla. Let’s say you are planning the agenda for an important management meeting. Everyone knows that a particular issue needs to be addressed. But no one is willing to say so. The planning proceeds apace, and the agenda gains final approval—without any mention of the critical issue. What you have here is fear and cynicism. No one wants to risk censure for speaking up, and no one expects anything to change anyway. So everyone just goes along. You can bet the issue will come up at the important management meeting. It just won’t be on the agenda, and it won't have a microphone. It will be in the hallways, in whispers.
    
   
3. The Three Monkeys. Japanese folklore offers a wonderful metaphor for this common problem: the three wise monkeys who hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. Similar to the Proverbial Gorilla, this phenomenon instead describes the reluctance of employees, supervisors, and middle managers to alert senior management to imminent delays and problems, until it is too late to do anything about them. Research shows that almost everyone is aware of a pending issue of some sort, but few people have the courage and confidence to speak up. Management that “shoots the messenger” is usually why.
    
   
4. The Naked Emperor. We all remember the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale about the emperor who buys new clothes from swindlers who sell him such fancy silk that only the smartest and wisest people can see it. Of course the emperor is embarrassed to admit, even to himself, that he cannot see the fabric. So he proceeds to dress in his new "suit," and he goes out in public stark naked. No one dares tell him he is naked, save a little boy who is too innocent to know better. If, as a manager at any level, you do not have relationships of candor and honesty, you risk walking naked in public. At the very least, you need someone to tell you the truth about your leadership. If you have no one, get a coach and listen to her or him. Above all, don’t shoot the messenger!
   
   

There are others, but in most organizations with engagement issues, these four are the most common. The good news is you can see them plainly. The tough part is turning things around.

 

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The Price You Pay for Poor Leadership Communication

Companies pay a huge price for poor leadership communication, but few of them realize it. To appreciate it, you need to begin by distinguishing between managing and leading, and then compare the communication that drives the work of managing with the communication that drives the work of leading. They are different.

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with our core distinction between managing and leading. For the rest of you, here is a brief primer. It's important to note that we define each as the work it involves, not as a position in an organization.

Begin with Clear Definitions

We like to think of managing as the work of ensuring performance to predetermined criteria of some sort. If the criterion is time, you call it a meeting a deadline. If it is quantity (as in sales or production), you call it a beating a quota. If it is money, you call it coming in under budget. If it is a matter of ethics or the law, you call it being in compliance. If it is quality, you call it exceeding a standard.

Managing is all about diligently fulfilling specific expectations and promises of this nature. The deliverable of managing is workplace alignment around all this.

In contrast, we think of leading as the work of envisioning a future, articulating it, and inspiring people to do more than they think they can to achieve that vision, of their own volition; in circumstances that are unique, variable, changing, or distantly removed, and often requiring extraordinary effort and considerable sacrifice or peril.

Leading is all about bringing about change or a breakthrough performance through the discretionary effort of people, often without the immediate presence of oversight. The deliverable of leading is workplace engagement.

The Two Are Reinforcing

The two are not mutually exclusive. Just the opposite: They are mutually reinforcing. In our leadership-development workshops, we teach that anyone in any position of supervising authority in any organization must wear both hats, as a manager and as a leader.

That is true for the front-line supervisor, for the middle manager, and for C-suite executives. Indeed, looking only to senior executives for leadership is a common reason for the inability to change, for these organizations lack collateral leadership throughout.

Unfortunately, many business people confuse and conflate the two terms. They gloss over the differences between them and between the substance and style of communication that fosters each. They do not fully grasp the cost of doing either or both ineffectively, either.

Communication for Managing and Leading

In both substance and style, the communication that supports and drives the work of managing is different from the communication that supports and drives the work of leading.

Communication that fosters the work of managing is detailed, authoritative, and directive. It strives for consistency, compliance, and continuity. It seeks to limit negative deviations from the norm. Its tone can thus be somewhat negative, and its essential message is accountability.

Here is why: Managers often fret about not meeting a performance expectation or promise, so they are constantly on the alert for any indicator of failure. The quicker they spot a failure, the faster they can fix it. They err on the side of pessimism, because pessimism keeps them and their people wary and alert.

Communication that fosters the work of leading is general, inspirational, and empathic. It strives for the unprecedented, the extraordinary, the phenomenal. It prizes positive deviation from the norm, because it wants the exceptional. Its tone is therefore usually positive, and its essential message is opportunity.

Here is why: Leaders have confidence in an ambitious future, so they work to encourage people to strive for it. They err on the side of optimism, because optimism keeps them confident and energetic. Moreover, they know they must relate emotionally to people if they are to extract an emotional commitment from them. That requires a live-wire connectivity. Too much negativity deadens the connection.

The Cost of Managing or Leading Ineffectively

Now, with all that as a foundation, ask yourself about the cost of managing ineffectively and the cost of leading ineffectively. It’s really quite simple, but it isn't often noticed and appreciated.

The cost of managing ineffectively is misalignment. Here, people are not doing the particular work that needs to be done, or they are not doing it in the particular way that it needs to be done. Projects may be late, or they may exceed their budget, and products may be returned for rework. The misalignment means that you are missing your performance expectations and promises, and therefore that you are disappointing customers.

The cost of leading ineffectively is stagnation. Here, people may be meeting old performance expectations, but they are not moving up to the next level. They are still doing the same things in the same way, without regard to the need for change or breakthrough performance. Because people are too comfortable doing things the old way, they may voice denial or cynicism toward leadership. The stagnation means that your organization isn't changing, and in all likelihood you will not meet the demands of the future.

The Role of Communication

Because it reflects misalignment, the failure to manage effectively is often blamed on a refusal or reluctance of people to do as they are told. That may be part of it, but unclear or unstated expectations and instructions are also often part of it.

Because it reflects stagnation, the failure to lead effectively is often blamed on the refusal or reluctance of people to change. That’s an easy excuse, but incoherent and uninspiring communication is also often part of it.

Just think about it. People undertake change on their own all the time. They are constantly going on diets, proposing marriage or getting divorces, becoming parents, heading off to college, taking new jobs, getting different hairstyles, tasting sushi for the first time, learning to dance—the list is endless. People often inspire themselves to change just fine. It is not true that people are inherently averse to change. Life is change.

'Change Management' versus Leading Change

Good leaders know how to bring people through large change. They know they cannot merely manage change; rather, they must stand up and lead it. They know that leading change requires inspiring, credible, compelling communication. Big change is the work not of managing for accountability, but of leading for opportunity.

Companies need both managers and leaders. By default, they typically have far more of the former than the latter, and thus their feet are on the gas pedal of performance, not change.

It behooves every company to develop its managers at all levels into collateral leaders. That enables a company to change, and that is how every company can define and determine its own future.

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How BP Can Change Its Safety Culture: A Case Study in Leadership

A Special Report and Comment

BP’s new chief executive, Robert Dudley, states that his top priority is changing the company’s culture around safety. That’s a tall order. Behemoths the size and complexity of BP don’t change overnight.

Fortunately, Mr. Dudley has a remarkable, highly successful case study in his own company’s archives. He should dig out the musty file and look it over.

One of the companies that BP purchased in its heady 1990s expansion was Chicago-based Amoco Corporation, itself the product of a 1950s merger of Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) and the American Oil Co. of Baltimore. Indeed, Mr. Dudley cut his professional teeth at Amoco. He worked there from 1979 until BP acquired Amoco in 1998.

Amoco once faced a grave safety problem of its own. Through a comprehensive intervention, in which I played a role, that company dramatically changed its safety culture. If Amoco can do it, so can BP. It won't be easy, but it can be done.

Amoco's Safety Challenge

As a matter of public record, from 1986 to 1996, Amoco lost 121 lives of employees and contractors worldwide. That's an average of one death per month.

For most companies in most industries, such a rate of fatalities is unimaginable and intolerable. BP’s numerical death toll over the last five or six years is roughly similar, though BP is larger than Amoco was, so its rate is somewhat less.

For a long time, Amoco's management looked the other way. Eventually, however, the senior leadership got fed up with the drumbeat of fatalities. Larry Fuller, the company's change-minded CEO, finally declared that creating a new culture of safety was his No. 1 priority.

He formed a cross-functional team to address the issue. The team was headed by Richard Spies, who subsequently worked with Mr. Dudley in BP Russia. As an internal consultant, I lent support to the Amoco team. (I have never had a connection to BP.)

The first thing the team did was to examine the causes of all 121 fatalities. That was important, because oil industry lore held that many fatalities were inevitable due to the flammability and lubricity of its products.

As one executive told me, “You have to remember that almost everything we make is fully designed and intended to explode sooner or later. We just want it to explode inside an engine.”

The inevitability assumption was a balm to the conscience of executives. But it didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The team’s rigorous analysis showed that only a minority of the 121 fatalities worldwide were even the nominal result of explosions or fire. Most, by far, were actually the result of carelessness. Undoubtedly most employees were usually working carefully, but the tragic toll pointed to serious problems.

The Real Causes Come to Light

In fact, the analysis found the real culprits to be a pattern of haste, neglect, and flagrant disregard for safety. More than anything, there was a pervasive and wrong-headed culture that gave priority to production over people. The company never intended to create that culture. It just happened. 

Day in and day out, too many employees and contractors were failing to take routine safety precautions: attaching fall-protection equipment, tying down ladders, locking out and tagging out valves, buckling seat belts, insisting on hard hats and steel-toe shoes, respecting no-smoking areas, and even simply obeying traffic laws.

In focus groups with employees, we came across vivid anecdotal evidence that gave color and immediacy to the problem. The conclusion was inescapable. To altogether too many managers, other things mattered more than safety. A litany of their day-to-day decisions said so.

The analysis and its conclusions were bracing but not shocking. As a company, we had given only lip service to workplace safety. Our ongoing business conversation back then was all about exploration, production, and marketing. The prevailing message to employees, both explicit and implicit, was straightforward: Success was measured in dollars.

A Comprehensive Approach Was Essential

None of that would do any longer, and we knew it. Looking for solutions, we took a bold, comprehensive approach. In ways large and small, we set out to create a new culture that would truly put safety first. We were successful.

Words had to come first, but words alone would not suffice. In a three-page letter to staff signed by all the company’s top executives, senior management emphatically said that financial results would henceforth take a back seat to safety. The leadership had to be just that blunt; otherwise, employees would continue to believe the opposite. In a culture dominated by engineers, the company also appealed to an engineer’s ethic of process control. They imposed individual goals and plans for safety performance.

Then came resources. The company created a process-driven safety management system. Thousands of managers underwent training in the system, so that everyone was on board. It included an in-house investigative agency, modeled after the U.S. government’s National Transportation Safety Board. Our trained experts, deployed around the world, would speed to the site any serious mishap, fatal or not. They would determine the fundamental “root cause” and share it with management.

The final ingredient was the visible commitment of leaders. Employees wouldn’t believe the new culture until they saw it, so they had to see it, day after day after day.

Here, management pulled all kinds of levers. Executive promotions would rest heavily on safety records. All operations around the world were to stand down so that personnel could focus on safety issues. In a company that lived in meetings, every agenda of every meeting was henceforth to begin with discussion of workplace safety—even the meetings of the board of directors and the annual shareholders meeting. 

Many other interventions and policy changes reinforced the central message. Together, all these things sent a powerful, persuasive message that safety finally did matter more than anything else.

The Happy Result . . . Until Things Changed

In the months and years that immediately followed, the company's safety performance improved noticeably. Fatalities and injuries plummeted. Today, we can confidently say that somewhere, people are alive because of the work we did.

I left Amoco in 1997, prior to its acquisition by BP. For a while afterward (BP also acquired ARCO about the same time), the toll of fatalities for BP as a whole was approximately what Amoco alone had been experiencing in the 1980s and early 1990s. It continued declining for several years.

Then, something at BP changed. I don’t know what. It does appear to be systemic, as evidence of serious problems long predated the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe this spring.

Persistent issues with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a crisis on another Gulf of Mexico platform known as Thunder Horse, and the disastrous explosion at the Texas City refinery in 2005 are corroborative.

(Just last week, BP was fined $50.6 million for safety violations at the Texas City refinery in 2009, four years after the 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers. The company has also committed to spending $500 million on safety at Texas City alone.)

Plainly, the safety culture that Amoco went so far to establish in the late 1990s is long gone. It desperately needs to be brought back.

Recognizing and Applying a Best Practice

If, as former Shell USA president John Hofmeister maintains, the industry has “earned the right” to continue drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by dint of its 30,000 successful wells over the course of decades, it will absolutely require a culture that truly values safety above production. For the sake of human life, nothing else is more important.

Turning around the BP safety culture will plainly be a formidable challenge. It won’t happen soon or quickly. But, as Amoco’s experience convincingly shows, it can be done. Mr. Dudley should just ask around.

— TJL          

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By the Numbers: Jobs, Salaries, and Budgets at Hewlett-Packard

 

By the Numbers is a bimonthly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.

Since its inception last summer, By the Numbers has explored numerical aspects of a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, the productivity of meetings, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling down. For a particular subject, use the search button in the right column.

 

 

Last week in this space we waxed eloquent on the dismissal of Mark V. Hurd as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Before we move on, we offer this statistical picture of the company in the wake of his five-year tenure.

These facts and figures have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and other publications.

 

Hewlett-Packard’s revenue has skyrocketed from $80 billion in 2004 to $115 billion in 2009, while Cisco Systems’ has risen proportionately even more, from $22 billion to $36 billion, but as IBM’s has stagnated, growing only from $95 billion to $96 billion, in the same time frame.

In 2009, Hewlett-Packard announced across-the-board cuts in employee compensation. Mr. Hurd took a 20 percent reduction, but only on his salary, which accounted for a small share of his overall compensation. Managers took a cut of 10 percent, salaried workers 5 percent, and hourly workers 2.5 percent.

HP’s famed research and development budget was 4 percent of revenue in 2005, and hovers just above 2 percent now, a potentially devastating reduction for a company that is known for its innovation, and whose slogan is Invent.

Under Mr. Hurd's tenure, more than 15,000 Hewlett-Packard employees lost their jobs, while his total compensation during the last two years exceeded $72 million.

HP employees recently gave the company only 1.6 stars, out of 5 possible, as a place to work. By comparison, two companies with whom HP competes for labor, Cisco Systems and IBM, get much higher marks: 3.5 stars for Cisco and 3.7 stars for IBM.

Employees of Hewlett-Packard give their former CEO an approval rating of only 30 percent, while employees of IBM give their CEO a rating of 40 percent, and employees of Cisco give theirs a rating of 60 percent.

Prior to Mr. Hurd’s dismissal, almost two out of every three HP employees said they intended to seek employment elsewhere as soon as the economy improved.

 

Questions: What do these facts and figures tell you about Mr. Hurd as a chief executive? What lessons can you derive for your own leadership? Do you believe that economic adversity invariably depresses employee engagement? How can a company whose employees suffer under a CEO restore their engagement in the wake of his departure?

 

 

 

 

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Should Hewlett-Packard's Board Have Fired its CEO?

Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors demanded and received the resignation of CEO Mark V. Hurd last week after an internal investigation, prompted by a complaint of sexual harassment from a vendor, uncovered irregularities in his expense account.

The allegation of sexual harassment proved unfounded, and the amount of money in question for the expense reimbursement was reported to be between $1,000 and $20,000. Mr. Hurd said an assistant had prepared his expense vouchers, but he took responsibility and offered to reimburse the company for the difference. The board insisted he go.

By all accounts, Mr. Hurd was performing very well as chief executive of HP since 2005, when he took over from ousted CEO Carly Fiorina. Investors enjoyed an average annual total shareholder return exceeding 25 percent. Many employees were chafing, however, under his cost-cutting regime. Pay cuts were the order of the day even as the company was making a great deal of money.

A few more complicating details: Under terms of his contract, Mr. Hurd is walking away with a stipend of $12.2 million; counting stocks and options, his total package may approach $40 million. The company's employees are, for the time being, without a leader. Investors suddenly lost billions of dollars in valuation, perhaps temporarily, as the stock plummeted. The woman who filed the complaint turns out to have a checkered history, and she has stated publicly it was not her intent to have Mr. Hurd dismissed. Shortly before she filed the complaint, HP had decided not to renew her contract.

Here is a report from The New York Times that describes the board’s decision making. The article points out that the board was primarily concerned with public-relations damage control. Here is an Associated Press account, and here is another report, from Venture Beat, a Silicon Valley newsletter.

There are two schools of thought here.

One school is zero tolerance. It holds that the CEO must set the ethical tone for the entire organization. Any deviation from propriety—indeed, any appearance of impropriety—condones ethical laxity. This perspective argues that it’s unreasonable to hold other employees accountable for standards that senior executives only wink at. By this thinking, the board was fully justified in firing Mr. Hurd. Indeed, any other course of action would be unimaginable.

The other school of thought is minimal deviation. It recognizes that all people are imperfect, and it acknowledges ambiguity and complexity, so it expects rigid perfection from no one. It still expects leaders to set the moral example, but often in a gray cloud of uncertainty. By this thinking, the board should have taken into account the complexities of the situation. Instead of dismissing the chief executive, it might instead have imposed a penalty of some sort, taken the reimbursement, and perhaps responded in other ways as well, short of dismissal.

Jack Welch, the iconic CEO of General Electric in the 1990s, had the practice of using a 2 X 2 matrix for evaluating managers on both their demonstrated values and their business acumen.

For those managers in the northeast quadrant, who consistently both honored the values and performed well, Mr. Welch said the future was clear and bright: onward and upward. For those managers in the southwest quadrant, who did neither, the answer was equally obvious, if not so pleasant.

The difficulty came in the northwest and southeast cells: managers who did one but not the other.

Mr. Welch suggested that managers who honored the values but didn’t perform well should be given a second chance in a different role, perhaps even a third chance. If they consistently failed to perform, they would have to leave on that reason alone.

He further suggested that managers who performed well but ran roughshod over the values be counseled as to the importance of the values. If, over time, they continued to flout the values, then they, too, would have to leave for that reason alone, in spite of their good business performance.

In the case of Hewlett-Packard and Mark Hurd, one could argue that a serious financial penalty coupled with intensive values-based coaching might have served the company and its stakeholders better than outright dismissal.

Mr. Hurd’s friend Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of Oracle, was quoted yesterday in The Times as essentially taking that point of view. He was critical of the Hewlett Packard board. But Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, professor of management at Yale University, argued just the opposite. He applauded the HP board's decision last week, though he also had harsh words for the contract that Mr. Hurd negotiated with the board.

What do you think? Why do you think the way you do?

Here are some questions to ponder:
 

• Have we created a kind of third rail in business, such that any chief executive demonstrating errant judgment is automatically dismissed, with a large payout to boot?
  
  
• Should the company's public image in a situation like this be the board's most important concern? If not, why not?
  
  
• Can we reasonably expect perfection from any leader?
  
  
• What ethical transgressions do justify a zero-tolerance policy? What issues require something less?
  
  
• What do you think of executive contracts that provide for substantial payouts on dismissal?
  
  
• Should the executive's business acumen and performance be taken into account here, at all?

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The Single Most Powerful Means of Communication You Have

The single most powerful means of communication that you have, and the single most powerful means of communication that your company has, is: the decision.

Yes, the decision. Yes, this decision, and yes, that decision.

Your organization—be it a team, a department, a division, or a whole enterprise—probably makes dozens, perhaps hundreds, or conceivably even thousands of decisions every hour of every day.

Some of these decisions are modest, like whether to let a ringing telephone go to voice mail. Some of them are middling, like whether to elevate a complaint. Some of them are momentous, like whether to hire this person or fire that person. 

Each of these decisions is an opportunity to communicate, for each decision naturally communicates powerfully.

Think of each and every decision you make as a text message 

in neon lights, as a 120-point headline across the front page

of USA Today, as a YouTube video that goes viral and gets 

millions of hits, as a televised presidential address in prime 

time, all of them declaring publicly and globally and lastingly 

what really matters, and what doesn’t really matter, to you 

and to your organization.

That, after all, is how decisions actually do communicate.

Decisions communicate powerfully.

Noble decisions powerfully communicate the primacy of enduring values. Strategic decisions powerfully communicate the importance of business priorities. Public-spirited decisions powerfully communicate respect for people.

On the other hand, careless decisions send a powerful message that prudence doesn’t matter. Slow decisions send a powerful message that speed doesn’t matter. Erratic decisions send a powerful message that consistency doesn’t matter.

Whatever is true of your decisions is the powerful message of your decisions, for decisions tell the truth about you and your intentions. Words may lie, but not decisions. Decisions speak truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared: "What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say." Indeed it does. Moreover, what you do is the product of your decisions, some of them thoughtful and others not, some of them conscious and others not, some of them prudent and others not.

You say you want to communicate better? Begin with your decisions. Change your decisions, and you will change your message.

Question: What decisions should you change, and how should you change them, to send a message that is important to your customers, employees, investors, and other key stakeholders?

 

Note: This compelling observation is just one component of our workshops in leadership communication. If you are interested in a workshop for your team, kindly contact us at +1.847.247.2241.