Minding Gaps

Lao Tzu and an Ethic of Leadership

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, left a veritable canon of wisdom on leadership. Many of his observations and insights are as vital today as they were when he lived twenty-six centuries ago.

Here are a few you will recognize:

 

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists;

when his work is done and his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

If you do not change directions, you may wind up where you are heading.

He who does not trust enough will himself not be trusted.

 

And here is one that may not be familiar to you. It may also puzzle you:

 

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

 

What do you think Lao Tzu meant by this?

Take a moment to think about it. Turn the statement over in your mind a few times: Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

As you play with these words, you begin to realize that even the most daunting challenges in life are merely a series of easier tasks you already find simple and straightforward. On a macro scale, that was true of sending astronauts to the moon, of inventing the computer, of transplanting the first heart or lung. On a micro scale, it is true of getting a college education, of losing those 40 pounds that came out of nowhere, of raising a family, of managing a team of people.

Once we begin to see the large and complex as just a myriad of the small and simple, we can make real progress. We can anticipate meeting the difficult challenge by preparing to manage it as a lot of easy things.

As a foundation for leading people, this is a penetrating insight. It points us toward the importance of managing ourselves for the purpose of leading others toward something important for us all. It reminds us to be our own first follower.

Let me know what you think. Drop me a line at tom@arceil.com or leave a comment below.

 

© Copyright 2013   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

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.

Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" Has Big Lessons on Leadership

 

by Thomas J. Lee

More books have been written and more movies filmed about Abraham Lincoln than anyone else in modern civilization, and for good reason. His life and his presidency offer timeless lessons in leadership, character, and communication. Steven Spielberg’s new, eponymous movie captures it all with color and verve. The film is excellent, and I urge everyone to see it.

Lincoln opens nationwide on Friday, but it is already showing in a handful of cities, including here in Chicago. So a few days ago I took time out of my workday to see it. My commute to the theatre included a Chicago River “water taxi” ride, which floats right past the site of the old Wigwam (on the river at Wacker Drive and Lake Street) where, in 1860, the nascent Republican Party nominated the Illinois prairie lawyer for the presidency. Of course, little could anyone at the time imagine the historic repercussions of the selection.

Like many of you, I have long been fascinated by Lincoln. This year alone I have read two full biographies of him, Lincoln by David Herbert Donald and A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, both of which are masterful (if you read only one, choose the White volume), as well as three lesser works about his presidency and assassination. Anyone who studies leadership as a calling should devote a great deal of attention to Lincoln.

Spielberg has said he wanted to make a movie about Lincoln for more than a decade, but he didn’t know how to squeeze so much material into a couple of hours. He got his answer when he read Team of Rivals, the marvelous book on Lincoln’s bipartisanship by Harvard historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The final two chapters of that book focus on Lincoln’s single-minded advocacy, in early 1865 just weeks before his assassination, of the Thirteenth Amendment, which would ban slavery. (As a point of history, the constitutional amendment was necessary because the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier had been a wartime measure, and therefore it would be of dubious legality after the war’s end.)

But here’s the crux of the matter: Lincoln’s re-election in November 1864 had long coattails. He would enjoy larger majorities in Congress beginning in March 1865. The commonsense thing to do was wait till then, when approval of the Thirteenth Amendment would be easier. Lincoln refused. He insisted on moving quickly. As he declares in the movie (portrayed exquisitely by Daniel Day-Louis), he wanted Congress to act “now, now, now!”

That is one of six insights on leadership that I drew from the Spielberg production: Bring a sense of urgency to the important. If it’s important to do tomorrow, it’s important to do today. Do whatever you can now. Don’t wait, even when waiting would make things ostensibly easier. Do what you must do, do what you can do, and do it now.

Here are five other lessons I took from the Spielberg movie:

Communicate through storytelling, analogies, example, and anecdotes of personal experience whenever possible. Lincoln, like other leaders before and since, relied heavily on storytelling. Stories are powerful tools, because they give people a vivid way to remember a theoretical point. Our ancestors have been telling stories for millennia. We are hardwired to love stories. Lincoln knew it. Spielberg and Goodwin know it. As a leader, you must know it.

Go to the people whose support you need. Listen to them first, and then appeal to their nobility. Do not wait for people to come to you. Do not expect them to come to you. You must go to them, and you must listen before you speak. Then speak to their concerns and issues. As a general rule, when you speak publicly, invoke their values and beliefs. People want to be about something larger than themselves. (It is true, as the movie illustrates, that Lincoln was not above scratching backs for votes. He knew his power, and he used it when he had to.)

Recognize and accept practical limitations, and work within them. “Politics is the art of the possible,” Lincoln’s contemporary Otto von Bismarck would say a few years later. That is not a license to do nothing. Rather, it is worldly acknowledgement that the perfect can be the enemy of progress. In the movie, Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), who knows that people are inherently equal, is forced to say in House debate that he favors equality of legal rights only. Had he claimed more, the Thirteenth Amendment might very well have lost.

Know that ideas have consequences, and the consequences can be grave. The movie is filled with poignant scenes. One of them involves the president’s son Robert watching soldiers dump a barrow of human limbs in a mass grave. Another shows the president on horseback touring a battlefield of human carnage. There are more. For us, too, even in our day-to-day business, even in comparatively modest endeavors, ideas can have consequences from livelihoods to security in retirement to more. Never dismiss an idea as “merely a theory.” Ideas matter.

Abandon the pretense of perfection. We are all human. Few historical figures rival Lincoln for integrity, but even Lincoln was an imperfect man. There is evidence he fudged on an expense account as a congressman, and he could stretch the truth when he wanted. He pulled rank as commander-in-chief to discourage his son Robert from joining the military; and when he lost that argument, he inveigled General Ulysses S. Grant to give Robert a safe sinecure. This is not to excuse or justify such behavior, only to acknowledge the imperfectability of the human animal.

As you watch Lincoln you will doubtless come to your own insights. Please capture them in a note to me (at tom@arceil.com), or click on Comments below and share your thoughts with other readers. Whatever you do, don’t miss this movie. Be sure to take your kids, too, and talk about it afterward.

 

© Copyright 2012   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.

Eight Archetypes of Dysfunctional Listening

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Here's an important question: Does anyone really listen to what you say?

Here's another, even more important question: Do you really listen to what other people say? Really, really listen?

Be honest with yourself. For objectivity, ask a colleague, a partner, a spouse. Believe what they say.

None of us wants to admit it, but few of us listens as well as we should. For many readers of MindingGaps, a big part of the problem is your intelligence. When it comes to listening, you can be too smart for your own good. We dealt with the problem of intelligence in an earlier post, which you can read here.

We have identified eight types of dysfunctional listeners. We describe them more fully in our Master Class workshops. Here's a sneak peek:

The Brick Wall. This dysfunctional listener (also known as the "Teenager") is often impassive and shows little eye contact. You really don't know whether he is listening at all. Because he is so detached, he rarely connects with other people, and so he feels isolated and removed. Talking to him is like talking to a proverbial brick wall.

The Donald Trump. The brash, outspoken real-estate mogul is an ideal archtype for another kind of dysfunctional listener. He is a screamer's screamer, constantly peppering people with loud, aggressive questions and never waiting for a thoughtful response. Like his persona on television's "The Apprentice," he is more interested in belittling people than in learning anything.

The Bobblehead. These dysfunctional listeners are eager to convey their interest by nodding their head and interjecting verbal tics ("Hmmm" and "Yes, I see") at the appropriate moment. But ask them what was said or how they feel about it, and they'll find a creative way to have the statement repeated for their benefit. (Note: In the Bobblehead's defense, he is often in conversation with the Auctioneer, described below.)

The Stephen Colbert. Like the comedian's television persona, a Stephen Colbert listener manipulates the words that other people speak to his own needs and expectations. He is quick to interrupt and quick to misinterpret, so that whatever other people say will serve only his own interests. Alas, other people don't have an opportunity to clarify their message. He doesn't have time to really listen.

The Auctioneer. The Auctioneer is really a non-listener because she is talking all the time. She doesn't pause long enough to hear anything that anyone says, except perhaps a single word of confirmation. When she takes a breather, and others are getting a word in edgewise, she may abruptly speak up with a new topic, apparently without realizing that she is changing the subject. That's possible only because she wasn't listening to the conversation before she spoke up.

The Sgt. Joe Friday. Most of our readers are too young to remember Sgt. Friday from television's "Dragnet" series, but even they will recognize his legendary refrain: "Just the facts, ma'am." As dysfunctional listeners, the Sgt. Fridays of our world believe that they know what information they want, and they only want factual data that fits their framework. Thus they don't hear anything unexpected, and they don't hear any expressions of emotion.

The Search Engine. The Search Engine is the person who is a little (or a lot) remote from a conversation until she hears mention of her own name or responsibility. Then she is all ears. Like a Google algorithm, she is programmed to notice only those things that matter to her. That's usually herself or her job.

The Multitasker. This dysfunctional listener deserves its own essay, because it is perhaps the biggest listening problem in business. People are so busy they believe they must do more than one thing at a time to get everything done. When it comes to listening, that is a fool's paradise, because it creates more, and more serious, problems than it solves. Smart executives have stopped trying to multitask in conversation.

There you have it, eight types of dysfunctional listener.

Do you see yourself in any of them?

If so, you now have some idea of how to change.

If not, you certainly aren't alone. In fact, that's the real problem for so many of us.

 

Next: Three Myths of Leadership

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

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.

Quote / Unquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

 

Recently we resumed publishing a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Our quotation today comes from the leading voice of American Transcendentalism in the 19th century. The wisdom of this quotation is as valid and as relevant today as ever.

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, laid the cornerstones of Transcendentalist thought in the United States. A reaction to both stolid religious doctrine and objective intellectualism that found no room for intuitive faith, Transcendentalism offered a path for spirituality that resided in the individual's heart and mind. It required no confirmation from either ecclesiastical or academic authority.

A prolific essayist and frequent lecturer, Emerson had a silver tongue for aphorisms, many of which have survived more than a century since his death in 1882. You may recall one from ever-present dorm posters in college: "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." You can easily find many others in a quick online search.

One of my favorite Emerson quotations speaks to every business manager and, for that matter, any leader in any walk of life:

 

What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.

 

We have often used this venue to explain that words count, for they set expectations, but that decisions and behavior count even more as communication, for they either validate or invalidate the words.

Moreover, we have asserted that nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of: body language, facial expression, and vocal intonation. It is actually the totality of what you think and do. 

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say—to employees, to customers, to shareowners, and to regulators—at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. All too often they devote more time to crafting just the right words than to committing themselves to following through.

Take a few moments to reflect on Emerson's quotation, and then consider the following questions:

• Why is it so common to say one thing and do another?
• What are some inherent difficulties in seeking to speak with authority and influence?
• Why can it it be especially problematic to say the "right thing"?
• How often do you fail to live up to your own words? Who is usually the first to notice it? Do you sometimes not notice it at all?
• What built-in constraints can you identify to talking? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
• When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression? Vocal intonation? Or something bigger?
• What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more?
• What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
• How are you working to lead with more integrity?

Coming on Monday

Data on Leadership Training

Coming on Wednesday

Types of Authority

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Of Champions and Leaders

Two years ago in this space we waxed eloquent on the amazing final holes of the British Open. Any weekend duffer who has ever pretended to hear the roar of the gallery while approaching the 18th green will recall the thrill that ageless Tom Watson, then 59 years old, gave us that July weekend in 2009. Here is what we wrote:

by Thomas J. Lee

If love like youth is wasted on the young, as Sammy Cahn wrote, so perhaps is sport. Yes, everyone savors the thrill of victory. Yes, everyone feels the sting of defeat. But only the properly aged among us can bask in the warmth of an ever-flickering candle of one more time, just one more time.

For anyone of a certain age or better, watching 59-year-old Tom Watson on the final holes and then in the playoff of the British Open at Turnberry, Scotland, today was to indulge in a little reverie.

Watson had earned his first Open championship in 1975, years before some of the other professional golfers of today were born. But here he was again, where he wasn’t supposed to be. Hadn’t he graduated to the senior tour a decade ago?

In the end, Watson squandered a one-stroke lead on the 72nd hole to end the four rounds in a two-way tie. Then, in a four-hole playoff, he drove into the rough and finally lost to Stewart Cink.

The victor is a relatively unheralded American, but he is no youngster himself. Winning his first major championship today at the age of 36, Cink is already three years older than Watson was when he won the last of his eight majors, 26 years ago.

Nevertheless, the story of the day belonged to Watson, still in the hunt after all these years.

“It would have been a helluva story,” Watson said afterward. “It would have been a helluva story, but it wasn’t to be.”

The spectacle took me back to a triathlon in St. Petersburg, Florida, several years ago. I was competing in the 40-something age group. Having swum a mile in Tampa Bay and ridden the 25-mile bike course through the streets of old St. Pete, I was running strong only a couple of miles from the finish line.

My legs still felt fine, and I was thoroughly enjoying the experience when a pretty young woman, probably half my age, pulled up alongside me. For a few minutes, our banter made me feel as if I were in my 20s again.

Then she casually remarked, “You know, when my dad gets to be your age, I sure hope he is in your shape.”

Her well-intended words were like a brick wall in my path. Could I actually be older than her dad?

Nah. You don't think, do you? Suddenly I felt like walking, or crawling.

My legs slowed. I felt weak. Keeping the same pace we’d both been running a few seconds earlier, she sprinted ahead.

Age, it now seems to me, is permission to reflect and appreciate in ways we couldn’t, or just didn’t, when we were rushing headlong into life. Tom Watson seems to know that intuitively.

Reflecting aloud today in the clubhouse after the last hole, he asked himself what impressions or insights he would take away from the week’s experience. He thought a moment and answered: “A lot of warmth, a lot of spirituality.” It was scarcely the answer of a brash young man.

The ageless golfer is a gentleman who knows what it means to be a gentleman. He has always let his integrity do the heavy lifting of inspiration.

No one should forget his courageous decision in 1990 to resign from a Kansas City country club after it refused membership to a Jewish couple. He explained his reasoning only privately, but when the club reversed its policy, he rejoined immediately and publicly. There was no loud grandstanding, and yet there was no mistaking the message.

Stewart Cink won the British Open today, and my hat is off to him. He deserves to be congratulated. But in my book Tom Watson is the real champion. Thank you, Mr. Watson, for a marvelous weekend of golf, and thank you for the splendid example you continue to give to us all.

 

*     *     *

Two years later, Tom Watson, now 61, is competing in the British Open again this weekend, and as of today he is only nine strokes off the lead at Royal St. George in Kent, England. [He would finish the tournament eleven strokes off. The winner was 42-year-old Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland.]

Of equal note, Watson was coincidentally paired with his namesake, Tom Lewis, a 20-year-old amateur whose parents so loved golf and so respected Watson they named their newborn son after the golfing legend. Imagine the thrill it must be for the youngster to be sharing the fairways with him.

Some things get better with age, and Mr. Watson is one of them. 

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

 

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

 

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given issue, people may or may not hear what their leaders say. But they will always see what the leaders do, and seeing is believing.

Does that strike you as true? It certainly does me.

And yet there's a problem with such a facile analysis: The opposite is also true.

Believing is seeing, too. That's right. Just as seeing is believing, so is believing seeing.

Think about that. We're not just playing with words here. It's an important if complicating point for leaders and for anyone who counsels leaders on communication.

Not only do people believe what they see with their own eyes (that's the seeing-is-believing part), but they tend to see mainly that which they already believe (the believing-is-seeing part).

Their eyesight—yours and mine, too—is naturally selective. We see things first, notice things most, and remember things longest that conform to our own perspective and that confirm our own judgment.

It's certainly no secret that two intelligent, reasonable persons can experience the same event—a concert, a movie, or a dinner in a restaurant, say—and come away with sharply divergent impressions.

How often have you and a friend read the same book and disagreed on it? Listened to the same political debate and disagreed on the candidates? 

The fact is that each individual processes new data through his own lens of preconceived expectations, needs, experiences, opinions, and concerns. This frame of reference changes slowly, if at all.

That basic dynamic holds as well for news and announcements about the workplace. What people already know and believe bears heavily on their reaction to additional information and messages.

Does that make leadership communication in the workplace pointless? Not really, no. It does make it more difficult though.

As a practical matter, it underlines the need to educate employees constantly on the company's strategic reality. The more that people know, the more likely their beliefs will reflect the company's real-world environment.

Moreover, it reminds us that, as the best comedians and orators have long understood, we are always speaking to an audience of one. Never to a crowd, but always to each individual person in the crowd.

The distinction is critical. Ever notice how a riveting speaker works a room? She fixes her eyes on one person at a time. Afterward, almost to a person, people say: "I felt as if she was talking just to me." That's what we mean.

What are the implications of all this for business leadership? Even in the largest organizations, any leader must keep uppermost in mind who it is that he is hoping to lead, and must address their issues as they see them.

He should ask: How much do people already know about the situation, the direction for the future, the organization's progress? What do they think of it? What is their emotional state? Exactly what are they worrying about, fearful of, concerned about, hopeful for?

That—even more than the nuts and bolts of the message—is the most important consideration in leadership communication. In it lies the secret of great communication. Speak to the human heart and what lies inside, and you cannot go wrong.

So just remember this: It is always, always the who before the what. Never the other way around.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders: Microvision Statements

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us regard vision statements as the province of the CEO and the board of directors. That's only natural, as vision statements set forth an ideal future state for their entire enterprise. 

But collateral leaders throughout the organization can use microvision statements to advance their own leadership, too. By microvision statement, we just mean a vision statement with a tight field of view. It paints a vivid picture of an ideal future for only a part of an organization.

Any leader at any level of any organization can use a microvision statement to describe an ideal future state for a subset of the enterprise, be it a division, a department, a team, even an individual—perhaps for the leader himself or herself.

Don't confuse microvision with micromanagement. Microvision is useful and conducive to leadership, and the best people on your team will generally appreciate the effort. Micromanagement—a manager's overbearing and distrustful meddling in the day-to-day work of individuals—is destructive and corrosive to leadership. The best people on your team will resent it.

Micro or macro, a good vision can be worth gold. While the worst vision statements are riddled with clichés and rhetorical flatulence, the best are noble, inspiring, even glorious. They are very, very powerful, too.

For one thing, a well-crafted vision statement brings everyone together on the same page, and it gives everyone a mental image of success. That imagery enables people to order their work around a crystal-clear picture that energizes and directs them. It's like having a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

A good vision does more than that though. It gives you a means of testing your stated values against a picture of the future. Does your vision rest on the bedrock of your values as applied in the real world? It should. If it doesn't, then it's just counterfeit currency.

Moreover, a good vision lets you deduce the appropriate strategies and tactics that can make the vision a reality, and it inspires you and your colleagues to go to extraordinary lengths on its behalf. Finally, it serves as a useful landscape for milestones that help you measure and assess your progress.

To do and be all that, a vision must be specific to its business and social context. It must get beyond the boilerplate that so many organizations settle for. It must reach for the stars, but more than that, point to the North Star as a beacon. That is true for macrovision and microvision statements alike. 

Microvision statements need not be florid or evocative, and they most certainly should not be replete with clichés, as many of their bigger siblings are. Indeed, these small-bore vision statements may not be narratives at all. They may come closer to a matrix, a little spreadsheet, or even a Gantt chart than to a descriptive narrative.

To begin thinking about a microvision for just a piece of the enterprise, take the bigger enterprise vision statement (the macrovision) and extract its essence. List its key phrases and translate them to real day-to-day work. Look for parallels here to the work you and your team do or can be doing. Then imagine, or envision, what the result of that work would be. Describe it in detail. Now give some thought to exactly how you and your team make it real. In other words, what does the enterprise vision become in your hands?

See? It's easier than you thought.

Before you go too far, make sure you understand the difference between a vision, a goal, and an objective. To borrow a metaphor from sports, the vision is tantamount to the visual image of players hoisting a trophy and parading down Main Street after winning the championship. In contrast, a goal is winning more games than the other team. The objective is winning today's game or even just scoring a point.

Now some of you may prefer a structure to the traditional narrative of a vision statement. That, too, is fine. Here's a structure you can use for a microvision.

On a single sheet of paper, draw a 3x3 matrix with each of the nine cells large enough for 25 to 35 words. Across the top, label the three columns with years. Choose the years that make sense for you and your team. Young people and mature organizations (trust me, that isn't the paradox it may appear to be) will want long-range years—say five, ten, and twenty years out. Older people and startups or turnaround companies will want short-range years—perhaps one, two, and three years out.

Down the left side, label the three rows Have, Do, and Be. Thus the top row captures what you or your team want to have (that you do not already have) by each of the years you listed. The middle row describes what you want to do or be doing (again, that you have not already done) by each year. The bottom row identifies who you want to be (that you are not yet) by each year.

Invest a lot of thought in this. Let it evolve. Give yourself permission to change it over time. As it does change, however, be sure to think critically about why you are changing it. Is it because you are growing? Because you have shrunk from your challenges? Because your interests have changed? Because other people have come into your personal life or joined your team at work? Because new opportunities have opened up?

One final point. Allow your vision, even a microvision, to be large. Let it be big. Let it be grand. That is what a vision should be and must be so that it can inspire. Small things are just small, but something big must be reckoned with. It demands to be.

Just be sure to do the work that follows, the work of bringing your vision down to earth. Give it legs. Then get on with the work of making it real. 

 

Coming on Monday

The Special Problem That Intelligent People Have

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Emotion Is Central to Leadership and Thus to Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its leadership 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, a company's 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.

 

Coming on Friday

Microvision Statements for Collateral Leaders

 

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

The Business Case for Communication on Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

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 good is alone enough to make you great, you would already be greater than you are. In fact 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.

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Role of Emotion in Leadership

 Coming on Friday

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders

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

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

 

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

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.

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.

 

Coming on Monday

Finding Strength in Uncertainty

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ten Tactics and Tips for Better Power Point Presentations

 

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Relax. You aren't alone. No one else can understand a PowerPoint slide like this one, either. We have all seen too many of them, haven't we?

Recently I sat through yet another PowerPoint presentation that left me numb. Three weeks later I still don't know what the speaker, an official of a major university, was really trying to say.

He was knowledgeable, to be sure; he certainly had the academic credentials and the impressive position to deserve our attention, and his topic was compelling. But he left just about everyone shaking their head. In particular, his PowerPoint slides were a mess. They were worse than the slide you see above, which is just something I stumbled across on the Internet.

Like many presenters, he apologized for the tiny fonts and cluttered layout, but that didn't solve the problem. The members of the audience were squinting their eyes, and one woman told me she had a migraine just trying to decipher the slides.

This phenomenon is all too common. I don't blame the technology, as some people do. Long before there was PowerPoint, there were boring speakers who used overhead projectors. Long before there were overhead projectors, there were boring speakers who read their speech in a droning monotone.

Rather, I point to priorities. Many executives and managers place a premium on data at the expense of connecting with people. Thus, they see little need to invest in and master the art of speaking.

I have no illusions about changing the world. Still, I am offering ten tips and tactics to help the busy executive or manager with presentations. There's a lot more to meeting this challenge, and I stand ready to help. But this will get you started.

I actually hope these tips and tactics are not helpful to you, that you are already well beyond them. But in my experience, few executives are. Just about all managers and all executives need training in public speaking. Alas, according to data published in The Wall Street Journal, few managers think they need any instruction or coaching in communication.

Here are ten tips and tactics you may find helpful:

1. Know your audience. Make an effort to talk with some of the people beforehand, even if only over coffee or lunch, especially if it's a new or special group. If it's a conference, get there early and mill around. Try to gain a sense of the audience's knowledge of the topic, their disposition toward your subject and toward you, their willingness to learn, their inclination to be influenced, and their overall expectations. Then speak to people where they are, both cognitively and emotionally. Take into account the time of day and whether you are speaking immediately after a meal. If the audience appears lethargic, ask people to stand for a moment before you begin. (If your session is long, take a short break every 75 to 90 minutes.) 
2. Don't speak down to people, but don't use acronyms or jargon that some persons may not know, either. Present your message and explain yourself without patronizing anyone, but remember that members of an audience can vary enormously in terms of education and experience. Give real-world examples that everyone will understand. Here, specificity is your friend.
3. Know that you have the “curse of knowledge” working against you. Because you are expert in your subject, you are probably taking certain facts and logical relationships for granted that other people will not. Look at your presentation with a fresh eye. Ask someone who is unacquainted with the material to glance at it, too.
4. Do not prepare or use your slides as talking points. Rather, have talking points on the lectern if you need them. Use the slides mainly for illustrations and mnemonics: pictures, graphs, simple tables and maps, quotes, oversize numbers, and so forth. Slides should never be a substitute for a Teleprompter.
5. Avoid data dumps. Don't try to capture much detail at all in any one slide. Complexity will smother and overcome your message. If you have detailed information to convey, distribute it on paper at the presentation or, better yet, by email attachment beforehand. Complex diagrams and data-heavy tables are especially toxic. Avoid them. Use your oral presentation to explain, persuade, and inspire. Find one or two on-point stories to tell that capture the essence of your message. People remember good stories for a long, long time. Twenty-five years later, you can probably still recall a couple of stories Ronald Reagan told.
6. Prepare the slides so that people in the back row can read them without squinting and that people in the front row can read them without getting a migraine. That means using a large, sans serif font with colors chosen specifically to be easy on the eyes. My preference is navy blue type on a white or off-white background, at least 18 points, preferably larger. It also means using few bullet points and few words on each line.
7. Face the audience. Never turn your back and read from the slides. Speak loudly and assertively, with your lungs full of air. Present yourself with confidence. Give your voice some energy and range. Before you get up to speak, breathe deeply for two or three minutes. Pause whenever you need to. Vary your tone and timing. Make brief eye contact with individuals as you speak.
8. Avoid the hackneyed opening of saying "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" and then repeating it, only louder. Instead, jump headlong into your material. Give two or three riveting facts, or ask a succession of unsettling questions, or quickly relate a relevant anecdote. By the same token, make sure any technology you are using is ready to go beforehand. You should never be fiddling with it while people wait for you to begin speaking.
9. If it's necessary or expected to distribute your presentation, consider doing so as a narrative rather than a succession of bullet-point slides. This way, people will get your message, and you can freely concentrate on the context and core assertions. Set aside more time than usual for questions and answers. Place a high premium on dialogue. Truly listen to people who ask questions, and show that you appreciate their initiative and even their courage. Be especially welcoming of the "elephant in the room" question that everyone is thinking about but few are bold enough to ask.
10. Finally, remember that your slide deck isn't your message. You are. Make yourself and your thinking, not your slides, the focus of everyone in the audience. Avoid distracting slide transitions or anything else that draws attention away from you and your presence. Remember, connecting with people is more important than delivering information. Everyone will feel it and know it if you succeed, and people will remember it as one of the few good presentations they have ever seen.

One more thing: Be sure you practice, and try to memorize your opening lines.

In all my years in business, I have seen very few truly powerful PowerPoint presentations. That doesn't mean it cannot be done. It can, but it takes discipline, creativity, and work.

Call me if you need further advice. I'll be glad to help.

 

Coming on Friday

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} Effective Managers Repeat Themselves

 

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. It appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception two years ago, 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, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

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

Ever since the pioneering work of Frederick Winslow Taylor a century ago, managers have been trying to do more with less. Efficiency is good.

For many managers, that is certainly true of communication. They want to say something once and be done with it. Especially in a time when we are all assaulted daily by thousands of messages—emails, advertising, announcements, complaints, questions, Google searches, conversations, requests for this and that, the news—brevity is the soul of clarity as well as wit.

There's just one nagging issue: Does it work? Can we truly say something only once to someone and seriously expect to communicate well?

The answer isn't so simple.

In some circumstances it can work. Probably all of us remember hearing some particularly pleasant or hurtful words on the job: "We want you to start work next Monday" or "You have to go to Fresno again" or "We won the Smith account" or "Everyone has to take a pay cut."

On the other hand, when I am troubleshooting poor communication, one-off instructions often emerge as a problem. For routine information, saying something once is tantamount to never saying it at all. People don't remember hearing things that they were told just last week.

Now comes intriguing new research on the importance of redundant communication. A study reported in the current (May 2011) issue of Harvard Business Review found that managers who deliberately repeat themselves are significantly more effective than managers who don't. The key word there is deliberately.

The researchers noticed that the effective managers were building redundancy into their communication plans. Even before they communicated the news the first time, they were planning how to do it a second and even a third time.

The pattern was especially pronounced among managers without formal authority. These days, that includes more managers than ever before, as companies form ad hoc project teams for special assignments and limited periods of time.

The study of six companies shows that 21 percent of managers without formal authority routinely sent redundant messages—for example, following up a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation with an email—while only 12 percent of managers with formal power did likewise, according to Paul Leonardi of Northwestern University and Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School.

The powerless managers got things done faster and with fewer hiccups, presumably as a result of the redundant messaging, the professors said. Meanwhile, managers with official power tend to rely on their authority. They apparently assumed that employees would just follow their directions, and they believed that communicating once was enough.

"We’re so bred to believe that clarity is the key to being a better communicator," said Leonardi. "The literature says pick the best medium for the [message], and anything else is wasteful. This research suggests that’s not true. You need to use multiple media.

"It’s not necessarily just about clarity. It’s about making your presence felt. Employees are getting pulled in many directions and reporting to lots of people and getting tons of communications. So how do you keep your issues top of mind? Redundancy is a way to do that."

For many of you, this will confirm your lingering suspicion and our intuition. You know from your personal lives the importance of repetition. After all, how many of us are content to hear our spouses say "I love you" only once?

If there is anything I have learned over the years, it is that people are not robots, and that business is all about people. As advertisers and politicians seem to have known all along, managers should repeat themselves. I say:  Managers should repeat themselves. I say . . .

 

Coming on Wednesday

Rogue Communication

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    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.

Doubt and Fear, the Hobgoblins of Change

by Thomas J. Lee

Mr. Doubt and Mr. Fear were hitchhiking alongside the highway. They looked forsaken: dirty, dreary, dangerous. Car after car passed them by.

After only a few minutes Mr. Doubt declared: "I doubt that we will get to the town where are going. We may as well give up and begin walking there."

Mr. Fear replied: "I am afraid it is too far for us to walk. We should stay put."

An hour went by. Then another hour, and another hour. Gradually, the traffic thinned, and the sun began to set.

Finally, Mr. Fear declared: "I am fearful of staying out here much longer. We are cold, and we are getting hungry."

Mr. Doubt nodded.

So they picked up and bags and unhappily headed back to where they had come from, never to reach their destination.

Not once did they look at each other or at themselves and ask the obvious question: Who would stop to give such awful looking characters a ride?

M any of us wrestle with doubt and fear at some point, but few of us realize the damage these nefarious travelers can do.

Doubt and fear are the hobgoblins of change. They invite defeat and failure. They see barriers that do not exist. They preach mediocrity and stagnation. They reach for nothing, and they achieve nothing. They offer succor to cyncism, for they teach the expectation of cannot.

Because they expect they cannot, they do not; and they never realize why not.

Individuals who are filled with doubt and fear are their own barrier to success. Organizations that tolerate too many such persons will risk developing a culture of doubt and fear. Their best days will soon be behind them.

If this sounds like a person or an organization you know, the first thing to do is recognize the situation for the danger it poses. Point out the toxicity of cynicism, and campaign for hope and confidence. You may or may not succeed, but at least you will have a chance that you otherwise would not.

 

Coming on Monday

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss

 ©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

A Surprising Insight on Influence

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Most leaders see the essence of leadership as influence, and that is understandable. People who follow in the footsteps of a leader have generally been influenced by the leader to think, speak, or behave in a certain way.

Ironically, leaders can be far more effective by first allowing themselves to be influenced, both by others and by themselves.

First, just by seeking out and listening to others, the leader conveys the important message that she sincerely appreciates the experience, knowledge, and perspective of the people she would lead. When genuine, and only when genuine, this reciprocity renders people more receptive to her influence than they might otherwise be.

Second, by influencing herself, she serves as a walking example of the message. She becomes, to paraphrase Ghandi, the change she seeks. People can watch her model the message, and they can emulate it. They will watch and emulate her, too, in ways she cannot possibly imagine beforehand.

Look back over your own life and career. Think back to the individuals you have held in high regard: teachers, parents, coaches, perhaps even peers. Notice how many instances you tried to be like those persons you so respected.

Inasmuch as leaders lead by example, they transcend the act of influencing people to the beauty of inspiring people. That is the real power, even the magic, of leadership.

 

Coming on Friday

Fear and Doubt, the Hobgoblins of Change

 ©  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.

Big Lessons in Leadership from 'I Love Lucy'

 

Madelyn Pugh Davis died on Wednesday, April 20, at the age of 90. Together with her collaborator Bob Carroll Jr., she wrote every episode of the legendary television comedy I Love Lucy. Original episodes of the Emmy Award-winning program aired from 1951 to 1957. Sixty years after it premiered, reruns of this pioneering situation comedy continue to be broadcast around the world.

For the uninitiated, I Love Lucy depicted the misadventures of a wacky New York City homemaker whose husband was a Cuban-American bandleader. It starred Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo, Dezi Arnaz as her husband Ricky, and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as their neighbors and landlords Ethel and Fred Mertz.

In 1998 I wrote an essay for the Journal of Employee Communication that celebrated I Love Lucy and teased out some truths about leadership and organizational communication from three of its episodes. Here, in commemoration of Ms. Davis, is a condensed and updated version of that essay.

—TJL                

 

 

  
 

by Thomas J. Lee

Probably everyone remembers the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and her pal Ethel go to work on an assembly line in a candy factory.

Their job is simple. As candy comes down a conveyor belt, they must wrap each piece of chocolate in paper and place it back on the conveyor.

Their boss is a humorless drill sergeant of a manager with no tolerance for mistakes. The dour supervisor warns that if even a single piece of unwrapped candy gets past them, they’ll both be fired. Then the boss bellows: “Let ‘er roll!”

Suddenly the conveyor belt begins moving, and it rapidly picks up speed. Trying to keep up, Lucy and Ethel work faster and faster. But they fall further and further behind.

Growing desperate, they clumsily hide the evidence. Unwrapped candies go in their pockets, under their caps, into their mouths, down their blouses—anywhere they can think of.

The scene is hilarious, and untold millions of viewers have chortled over it. First broadcast in 1952, the episode has frequently been rerun ever since. Other Lucy shows are equally precious, the work of comic genius.

So novel and popular were those early episodes of I Love Lucy that Manhattan traffic actually fell quiet each Monday evening when Lucy came on. Telephones around the United States went silent. Marshall Field’s, the grand Chicago department store, shifted its evening hours from Monday to Thursday. “We love Lucy, too,” the sign on its doors said.

Today only the eggheads among us would dare attribute anything remotely philosophical or high-minded to such a wonderful, light-hearted program. Yet it must be said: I Love Lucy was truly more than comedy. Between its lines lay bright little nuggets of wisdom on issues of leadership communication.

Indeed, more than a half-century after Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz invented the live-audience situation comedy, a selection of I Love Lucy episodes can be viewed not solely as terrific television comedy, which they surely were, but also as provocative reflections on how people in organizations attempt—and so often fail—to communicate for some higher purpose. 

Several well-known episodes of I Love Lucy offer lessons in this regard, though many of the situations are dated and, by today’s standards, arguably sexist or at least quaint. Here is a look at some insights or lessons you can draw from three of them: "Kleptomaniac," "Lucy Tells the Truth," and "Job Sharing."

 

"Kleptomaniac"

First broadcast in April 1952, “Kleptomaniac” has Lucy concealing from her husband, Ricky, the fact she is chairman of the annual bazaar and in charge of holding onto prizes prior to the event.

Ricky discovers a wad of currency in her purse and a closet full of valuables. Later, he and Fred catch Lucy apparently red-handed in the act of stealing. Without any other information, they conclude that she is a kleptomaniac.

Of course, Lucy could just as easily have told Ricky she was chairman of the bazaar. Instead she decides that he doesn’t really need to know, and she appears oblivious to any sense of risk associated with withholding the information.

Forgetting the wad of currency, she even tells Ricky to check her purse for cab fare, whereupon he discovers the money. Then she proceeds to lie about it.

Her gambit is necessary to set up some television laughs, of course. But for us, decades later, it’s terrific grist for some second-guessing about "need to know" communication.

The episode raises a number of issues. Why, and why not, should people share information? Who ought to know information of what kind? What compels a person with information not to share it? What happens when people glean incomplete information for themselves? How does one form impressions on the basis of incomplete information? What happens when people reach too far in attempting to verify a hunch?

 

"Lucy Tells the Truth"

Another episode, “Lucy Tells the Truth,” raises issues such as applying spin, dodging the bullet, and telling the complete truth even to the point of hurting people.

In this episode, which first aired in November 1953, Lucy enters into a $100 bet with Ricky, Ethel, and Fred that she can tell the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth, for 24 hours. (Two movies—Nothing But the Truth (1941) starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard and Liar Liar (1997) starring Jim Carrey—were based on a similar premise.)

Of course, that isn’t easy for a gal like Lucy. Telling the whole truth at bridge club the next day, she roundly insults each of her partners. They get revenge by forcing Lucy to confess her age, weight, and original hair color. Lucy complies but offers: “It feels good to tell the truth. You should try it. We’d all be much better friends if everyone told the truth.” To which Ethel retorts: “Somehow I doubt it.”

Sure enough, Lucy, having already unburdened herself of the truth, becomes brutally frank and nearly loses all three friendships. The particular issue raised by this show, and I think worth discussing in a management team, is the appropriate role of truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—in organizational communication.

Naïve appeals for complete candor imply there are no circumstances warranting discretion or self-restraint, and we certainly know better. On the other hand, the rule in most organizations seems to be excessive reticence, even to the point that, at one large international corporation, the director of employee communication learned of a billion-dollar merger involving her company as she drove to work one morning, listening to her car radio. The question is: Who should know what? When? How?

Moreover, does “spin” really serve any legitimate purpose? Some would argue that, by selectively reporting or distorting facts even a little, it invariably backfires. Every manager should remember that employees are always there to see the truth for themselves. Indeed, they are constantly on the alert for any sign of hyprocrisy, and when they find it, they do not soon forget it.

 

"Job Switching"

I save the best for last. “Job Switching”—the episode that puts Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory—is surely one of the funniest ever, and it offers more grist for discussion than Lucy and Ethel’s shenanigans alongside the conveyor belt would suggest.

Dating back to September 1952, the program raises questions of communication in teams and of misunderstandings about the work and contributions of coworkers.

In this episode Ricky and Fred exchange roles with Lucy and Ethel. The two men begin cooking and keeping house while the two women go to work in the candy factory. Ricky and Fred, obviously too self-confident to bother reading written instructions and follow directions, turn out to be terrible housekeepers and even worse cooks.

Ricky makes sure he uses “plenty of starch” in laundering Lucy’s hosiery. Fred’s seven-layer cake comes out less than one inch tall, and the two men agree that a pound of rice per person is “just about right” for dinner that night. The volcano on the stove erupts just before Lucy and Ethel get home. The women don’t fare any better. Lucy is assigned to make chocolate dough balls alongside a stoic, stone-silent coworker. Obviously unskilled, Lucy cannot get the assistance she needs, for want of any communication.

At one point, spotting a fly buzzing around, she slaps her chocolate-laden hand first into the chocolate dough, then against the face of her coworker, who goes tit-for-tat. More than hilarious, the slapstick underlines the importance of collaboration.

Lucy and Ethel, having each failed at other assignments, get one last chance, wrapping candy. The speed of the conveyor belt is a little metaphor for the increasing expectations that management holds out for workers. At first, Lucy and Ethel are able to keep up appearances, if only by hiding the evidence.

The supervisor returns, judges everything all right, and declares: “Fine. You’re doing splendidly.” Then she calls to the conveyor belt operator: “Speed it up!”

By day’s end Lucy and Ethel have eaten more chocolates than they ever wanted. Before the credits roll, Ricky and Fred predictably acknowledge a newfound respect for Lucy and Ethel’s work, and vice versa.

Though formulaic, the story works; and it prompts us to ask whether, in the workplace, we truly do appreciate the contributions made by other individuals and departments. What with all our silos and rivalries, the answer is plainly no.

There’s another moral to this story, too. Lucy and Ethel must feel the way that contemporary employees feel as they are constantly pushed to produce more and perform better without adequate or appropriate training, support, or understanding. Better and more communication can bridge that gap between the needs of employer and employee. So it should. So it must. 

You could take a similar analytical look at many other episodes of I Love Lucy (or of other television programs, movies, and plays) and find many more insights on organizational communication and leadership. Or you could just sit back and watch these comedies for the purpose they were intended: as harmless fun.

Either way, it's reason enough to rediscover the many reasons we all loved Lucy.

 

Coming on Wednesday

What We Measure When We Measure Engagement

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Precisely What Is Employee Engagement? And What Isn't It?

by Thomas J. Lee

Many companies have begun to take the engagement of their employees as a serious strategic imperative, and that's a good thing.

I fear, however, that quite a few companies regard engagement as just another kind of "positive mental attitude," in the words of the late American insurance magnate W. Clement Stone. These companies are not yet perfectly clear as to just what people engagement is, how it resembles and differs from other kinds of PMA, and why it is so very, very important.

Until we gain clarity around the definition and singular importance of engagement, the imperative of engagement won't sink its roots deep into the work and ethic of leadership. Rather, it will be widely regarded and marginalized as "soft" stuff, not truly material to the company's success. It will likely be seen as the next closest thing to a fad, and it will be in danger of fading as quickly as it arrived. That will be tragic.

So as a public service, we are here to clear up the confusion. Today we will distinguish between engagement and other kinds PMA—all of which are better than their opposites, of course. In particular, we will distinguish engagement from commitment, loyalty, morale, satisfaction, and especially alignment. They're all good things, but they aren't the same.

Trumpets, please:

• You can think of real commitment in the workplace as doing whatever it takes, and perhaps more, to satisfy the customer and therefore the enterprise within the constraints of safety, the law, fairness, and ethical decency. People who demonstrate commitment make sure they follow through. They do what they say they will do—no excuses.
• In contrast, loyalty is the disposition of employees to continue serving the needs of their employer in an honest, productive manner in exchange for agreed-upon compensation. It is the unwritten workplace contract. Employees who are loyal are generally not devoting much time and energy to looking for new opportunities, unless they have a reason (a pending merger or staff reduction that imperils their job security, for example).
• For our purposes, employee morale and employee satisfaction are synonymous; if there is a distinction between them, it is so subtle as to be meaningless. We think of both morale and satisfaction as the degree of happiness or contentment that employees derive from their employment. That may be a function of their compensation, benefits, workplace conditions, stress, personal and professional relationships at work, employment security, and the opportunity to learn new skills and take on more responsibility. It may also reflect their personal circumstances such as financial security, home life, health, activities, spirituality, and fitness.
• By employee alignment, we mean the reliable performance of duties necessary for the organization to meet the expectations of its customers, most commonly in terms of product quality, delivery and service requirements, production and sales quotas, and work processes. We think of alignment as the deliverable, or work product, of good management.
• Finally, we define people engagement as the discretionary effort—the focus, the curiosity, the passion, and the courage—that employees may or may not bring to their work in support and service to the organization's purpose and its customers. When we see commitment in action, we often call it "going the extra mile." We think of engagement as the deliverable, or work product, of good leadership. Often, and most significantly, the work of leadership involves asking and inspiring employees to mount this discretionary effort in times of great uncertainty and in circumstances of considerable risk to the employee's personal security and well-being.

To grasp fully the distinction between alignment and engagement, we recommend you read our February 16, 2011 post. You will find it here, or just scroll down a few pages.

To appreciate the importance and value of building employee engagement, we recommend you read our posts on March 7, 2011, on January 14, 2011, and on September 3, 2010. 

 

Coming on Monday

Leadership Lessons of I Love Lucy

 

Coming on Wednesday

What We Measure When We Measure 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.

The Refreshing Humility of Butler coach Brad Stevens

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of you are watching a lot of exciting college basketball this weekend, as first the surviving sixteen and then the surviving eight men's teams compete in the second weekend of the annual NCAA Division I Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. Yesterday's two games were both thrilling. Butler defeated Florida by just three points, and UConn defeated Arizona by only two, to advance to next weekend's Final Four.

After the Butler-Florida game, I was struck by the humility of Butler coach Brad Stevens. Looking at Stevens, who is all of 34 years old and appears to be even younger, you just wonder if he is remotely up to the task of big leadership.

I'll admit to being a little jaded. In the consulting and training I do, it's common to come across ambitious young managers whose instincts on leadership are about as wrongheaded as they can be. They are so eager to get things done, they make every mistake their elders made and then some, and all the while they just assume they are smarter, wiser, and better. It's a shame. Ego can be a powerful driver of performance, but it can also be an obstacle to learning and to professional or personal growth.

Something about the young Butler coach is different, profoundly different, from those young managers. Not only has Brad Stevens proved his mettle by taking a team to the Final Four two years in a row, he has done so with a refreshing humility and abundant self-effacing tribute to others.

Talking to a TV reporter on the basketball court moments after the final buzzer yesterday, Stevens was ever classy. He said he was plainly "out-coached" by Florida's Billy Donovan, and he credited his Butler players with coming to his own rescue.

Curious about that rare humility, I did a little digging on the Internet. I quickly learned that Stevens is "not about the money," in his own words. He isn't in coaching for fame or glory or riches. He is in it because he loves the game. It is that simple. After four winning seasons he signed a long-term contract with Butler University despite its modest size and obscurity. He is there through the 2021-2022 season.

I also learned that Stevens was humbled early this season after his team, which had gone all the way to the championship game a year ago and ultimately lost to Duke on a buzzer-beating shot that almost went in, got off to a disappointing 4-4 start last fall. Butler was dragging a three-game losing streak.

Stevens knew that Donovan was a man of uncommon generosity and good will, always eager to help other coaches. He also knew that the Florida Gators had gone to the Final Four two years in a row under Donovan in 2006 and 2007, and he knew that he wanted his Butler Bulldogs to replicate that feat against some very long odds. So he put in a call to Donovan for advice.

Here's an interview with both coaches, taped the day before yesterday's big game, about their conversation last December. After that conversation, Butler went on to win 23 of its next 28 games, including Saturday's overtime victory that kocked Donovan's team out of the NCAA championship. 

 

 

Refreshing, isn't it?

Stick with me now: As regular readers know, over the preceding two weeks in this space we have discussed the concept of robust credibility, a higher level of credibility that leaders require in order to lead effectively. (You can begin reading those essays here.) I wasn't remotely thinking of Brad Stevens when I wrote those essays, but as a leader he certainly is working at the intersection of authentic trust, organic respect, and a bond of affinity. There's no question about that. If you want a role model, he is a good one.

We will have more to say about March Madness and leadership communication tomorrow. Be sure to come back.

 

Coming on Monday

March Madness and Leadership Communication 

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} The Tyranny of Meetings

 

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, 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 popular humor columnist Dave Barry once remarked that if you could summarize in a single word the reason civilization hasn't made more progress, the single word would be meetings.

Probably almost everyone with a job would agree. Many people spend much or even most of their day in meetings, and few meetings have the satisfying air of getting something, anything, done.

In fact, Bain & Company research has found that two out of every three meetings end before participants can make important decisions, and 85 percent of business executives say they are dissatified with the efficiency and effectiveness of meetings in their organizations.

I like to remind myself that some of the most important things in history happened in meetings: writing the Magna Carta, signing of the Declaration of Independence, and adopting the Bill of Rights. Granted, that's only three meetings in a thousand years, but it's a start.

 

Coming Wednesday

A Closer Look at Trust

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

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.

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.

You Have Nothing to Lose and Everything to Lose

—on the summit of Mt. Everest, 2002

 

by Thomas J. Lee

A leader must lead as if he has nothing to lose and everything to lose—nothing to lose, so that he can find the courage to take on the big challenge, and everything to lose, so that he can find the energy to take on the big challenge.

Thus it is your charge to proceed, to move ahead. You must not stand still. Go forward. Reach for the stars. Put it all on the line. Think big.

If possible, do no harm and leave things better than you found them.

But above all, try. You must try. Never, ever stop trying.

 

Friday: Leaders Need Followers More Than Followers Need Leaders 

 

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

Engagement and Alignment Are Two Different Things

 

By Thomas J. Lee

There's a lot of confusion, even among senior executives and their advisors 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.

 

Friday: Facebook and Force Multipliers

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

Newton's Laws of Motion and Your Leadership

 

by Thomas J. Lee

You studied Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion in school. More than four hundred years after Newton published them, they continue to explain our physical world.

They actually do even more than that. They explain something about our social world at work, too.

The First Law of Motion declares: A body at rest tends to remain at rest, and a body in motion tends to remain in motion.

The Second Law of Motion asserts: The momentum of an object in motion is equal to its mass times the acceleration upon it. (It's actually a little more complicated, but that will do for our purposes.)

And the Third Law of Motion states: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Notice those three words: equal and opposite.

Now think in terms of people at work and your own leadership.

Surely we can all agree that teams of people at work tend to continue doing what they have been doing. That's the First Law. It offers the potential for leadership in the first place.

We can probably also agree that a larger organization is more difficult to change course than a smaller organization, and vice versa. That's the Second Law. Applied to leadership, it suggests that you can readily do things working with an individual that are much more difficult when you are working with a large group.

Finally, you know from experience that when you push someone to do something, his natural reaction is to push back at you. It is an equal and opposite reaction, isn't it? But if you pull someone along in the direction you are already going, he comes along with you. That's the Third Law as it applies to people.

As you reflect on this, ask yourself:

• What experiences have you had as a leader that are consistent with these three laws as they apply to people?
• What policies and practices in your organization are futile because they ignore these three laws?
• How can your leadership improve out of recognition of these three laws?
• What does the Third Law in particular mean for the challenge of leading by example?

 

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

At the Vital Intersection of Focus, Curiosity, Passion, and Courage

by Thomas J. Lee

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with our thesis: Over the course of human history, nothing of much value has ever been created or invented, and nothing of much consequence has ever been achieved, that wasn't at some time:

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

and not much else.

Recognizing the fundamental truth of this proposition, we assert that focus, curiosity, passion, and courage are the essential building blocks, the amino acids, of work-force engagement. By leveraging just those four things, we can bring about significant and sustainable change. 

Now here's a wrinkle that's worth another minute of your time.

Consider how all four of these dynamics play off one another. Ask yourself in just what respect each of the four things needs the other three. I believe that each is much more in the presence of the others, and that all four together have some sort synergistic chemistry.

Focus needs the complement of curiosity, passion, and courage. In their absence, focus is unproductive. It is mere preoccupation. Without curiosity, passion, and courage, you could find yourself in a dead-end habit or a rut where you remain until you are seized by something that drives you toward real productivity. That's the power of focus in the presence of curiosity, passion, and courage.

Curiosity needs the complement of focus, passion, and courage. In their absence, curiosity is rudderless. It is just a "fishing expedition" without benefit of purpose and direction. People often refer to it as "idle curiosity." It's one thing for an old-fashioned tinkerer to be working alone in a garage, just meandering. It's quite another thing for an organization of some real size and complexity. For them, curiosity has to be more than idle wondering. That's the power of curiosity in the presence of focus, passion, and courage.

Passion needs the complement of focus, curiosity, and courage. In their absence, passion is mere cheer leading without a team on the field. It lacks a structure or context for the power it offers. But imagine if you could harness the enthusiasm of every newly hired employee and transfer it to every callused 20-year veteran. You'd really have something. That's the power of passion in the presence of focus, curiosity, and courage.

Courage needs the complement of focus, curiosity, and passion. In their absence, courage is meaningless. It is mere bravado--empty, hollow, and without purpose. Most organizations of any real size and complexity need quite a bit more courage, but courage in the absence of focus, curiosity, and passion is courage without a reason or any possibility of reward. That's the power of courage in the presence of focus, curiosity, and passion.

See what I mean? We really need to build cultures of all four: focus, curiosity, passion, and courage. Any of these four things in the absence of the others isn't enough. They belong together.

 

(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.

The Best Way to Change Is Just to Change

by Thomas J. Lee

Throughout the Upper Midwest at this time of year, you will see groves of several species of tree—pin oaks, white oaks, and immature beeches—with dry leaves still clinging to their twigs, like infants hugging their mothers at the knee, long after brisk autumn breezes have brought down the leaves of other trees to the ground.

I walk past just such a grove of pin oaks, lean and shivering against the steel-gray sky, on my way to coffee with friends almost every morning. Until recently, I hadn't really noticed. Now, thanks to a fellow blogger, Michael Hyatt, I not only see these particular leaves, but I also appreciate a parallel between them and the prospect of change for so many people. Let me explain.

You already know that trees generally fall into two broad categories; evergreen and deciduous. Evergreens like the pine, cedar, and spruce replenish their needles continually throughout the year. They are always shedding some needles and quickly replacing them with new growth, but they are never naked to the sun. In contrast, deciduous trees like the ash, maple, and elm shed their leaves in a blaze of autumn glory. Then they are barren for months until springtime.

What I had never fully recognized was a subset of deciduous trees. Like other deciduous trees, these few species lose their leaves annually. But unlike other deciduous trees, they retain their leaves for months after the leaves stop growing, lose their chlorophyll, and turn first a burnt crimson and then a rusty orange.

These trees are known as marcescent (the first c is soft, as in incessant). Marcescent trees keep their leaves all winter, until the warming sun of spring. Even powerful gusts of arctic air sweeping down from Canada week after week through a Midwestern winter cannot pry the leaves loose. But finally, new buds emerge. The growth of buds literally pushes last year's leaves out of the way. Only then do the old leaves fall to the ground.

Here's the parallel to change and people. As the great Earl Nightingale observed, we are creatures of habit. We will do tomorrow what we are doing today, and we are doing today what we did yesterday. Like the leaves on those marcescent trees, dysfunctional behavioral patterns will persist—unless and until we recognize them and act decisively to change, like new buds emerging from twigs.

Now the thing is, the change we undertake must be constructive. It must reflect an affirmative alternative. People don't just stop doing things, even things that are hurtful and destructive, without an alternative. They can try, but they will usually fail; they will usually lapse back into the old pattern.

Rather, to be successful, we must substitute something else. Only by replacing one behavior with another do we stand a realistic chance of changing once and for all.

As a young parent, I experienced this phenomenon with my daughter. At one point her grades weren't what they should have been, only because she wasn't completing her homework assignments and preparing for tests. Instead, night after night, she was playing video games.

Her mother and I intervened. We forcefully substituted a productive activity for an unproductive activity. It worked. She turned her grades around. (Years later, I can report to you that she has graduated from the University of Chicago and is midway through Northwestern Law School.)

For people, as for marcescent trees like the pin oak, the old way persists until a new way replaces it, because until then the new is not fully present and real. The lesson here is to underscore the importance of identifying an alternative behavior and arranging for it to replace the previous behavior. Otherwise, people will probably never find their way out of the rut they are in.

Questions: What behavioral pattern are you in that you must replace with something else? What will you replace it with? When?

 

(c) Copyright 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.

How Compelling Is the Communication in Your Organization?

  

 

(Fifth in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee

Last week 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.)

We're taking a look now at diagnostic questions a company should ask itself to gauge its culture on each of the eight hallmarks.

Today we take up compelling, or cogent. Here are some of the questions I like to ask to get a sense of the cogency—the power and the energy—of communication around strategic direction and work-place priorities:

• Does the organization rely on hit-and-miss cascading important strategic information down through the ranks one level at a time?
• How much information ultimately gets through?
• How problematic is the erosion of context and rationale around messages as a result of cascading?
• On introducing a new initiative or program, does senior management think through the day-to-day implications on the work performed by rank-and-file employees?
• How does it convey those implications and expectations?
• Is the passive voice common?
• Are strategic messages put in proper context, and do they carry an explicit rationale and explanation?
• How often does the organization repeat itself on mission-critical messages? Are the challenges of social noise and the curse of knowledge fully appreciated?
• Does management shift focus frequently as new programs are adopted or periodically re-emphasized?
• Is management communicating more than a few strategic priorities?
• Are you providing front-line supervisors with adequate information to explain strategies and critical principles?
• Are senior leaders manifestly preoccupied with the strategies? 

 

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.

What Is Your Organization's Communication Culture?

 

(First in a Series.)

by Thomas J. Lee 

Just about everyone takes corporate culture for granted. It is a well-established concept. No one disputes that their company has a culture, for better or worse.

But you may be surprised to learn that, less than a generation ago, corporate culture was unheard of. Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy introduced the term in their trailblazing 1982 book, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.

The concept was initially controversial. Companies resisted the notion they were about anything more than their numbers. Since then, of course, many companies have come to compete on culture as much as on goods and services. You see it whenever a company touts its ranking on the Best Places to Work list.

Sociologists define culture as the totality of attitudes, norms, and behaviors that distinguish one group of people from another. In business, culture is commonly regarded as "the way we do things around here."

There are profound cultural differences between Google and Microsoft, for example. Similarly, there are significant cultural differences between Toyota and General Motors, between Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, between Nordstrom and Macy's, and between Bank of America and Chase Bank. The list could go on.

Just as cultures vary from company to company, so do cultures within a single company. Each corporate culture consists of many smaller subcultures. The closer you examine subcultures, the more variability you see. Some experts believe there is more cultural variability within companies than among them.

For example, in any one company, you may notice cultural differences between headquarters personnel and field representatives, between the engineering geeks and the marketing mavens, between salaried staff and hourly workers, between grizzled veterans and young turks, between teams supporting a growth product and teams supporting a cash cow, between the day shift and the night shift, between manufacturing and sales, between legacies of an acquired company and legacies of the acquiring company, and so forth.

All these fault lines reflect the priorities and sensitivities of various perspectives, owing to various circumstances, backgrounds, and values of people.

Another kind of subculture, equally important, gets even less attention. It reflects particular processes, such as quality or planning. Of special importance to me, not surprisingly, is the culture around communication of business issues and information.

Think about it. All the variables around communication are powerful determinants of culture and subculture. In some key respects, communication is culture. And the culture of communication is critical to everything.

By culture of communication, I mean the tendency of people throughout a company to share information, ideas, and their intuition on business matters in a particular way. It is less about the flow of official information and more about the countless decentralized eddies of information converging and diverging throughout a company. Here it's important to remember that communication is more than just words, numbers, pictures, and images; it is anything that conveys information or creates meaning for people, and it is often unintentional, implicit, and unmanaged.

Now corporate cultures and subcultures of any sort are very, very powerful. They are tantamount to being "the judge, jury, and jailer" of strategy. In other words, whenever companies adopt a new strategy or policy or initiative or program, their culture can make it or break it.

Any strategy (or any policy or initiative or program) depends on compatibility with the culture for survival and growth. If the strategy and the culture are compatible, then the strategy can survive (not that it necessarily will, just that it can). If they aren't compatible, then all bets are off, and the strategy is probably doomed.

That's especially true of the culture of communication. Because communication is the very energy of leadership, the culture of communication determines to a large extent whether leaders will be able to lead.

Ideally, any company's culture of communication has as its hallmarks eight descriptors that just coincidentally begin with the same letter: clear, credible, compelling (or cogent), constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. That's a tall order, but it's mightily important to a company's success.

You can easily think of examples, for better and for worse. A worst-case scenario might involve the proverbial Mushroom Theory, keeping employees in the dark and feeding them—well, you get the idea. A best-case scenario would embrace employees as intellectual partners in the enterprise, whose thinking is integral to the company's success. You can easily see just how critical communication is to performance.

On Friday, I will explore the eight attributes of a healthy culture of communication. Then over the next couple of weeks, I will post some diagnostic questions for each attribute that a company's leadership should ask itself to recognize and improve its communication culture.

 

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.

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Ten Tips and Tactics for Better Power Point Presentations

 

 

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Relax. You aren't alone. No one else can understand a PowerPoint slide like this one, either. We have all seen too many of them, haven't we?

Recently I sat through yet another PowerPoint presentation that left me numb. Three weeks later, I still don't know what the speaker was really trying to say.

He was knowledgeable, to be sure; he certainly had the academic credentials and the impressive position to deserve our attention, and his topic was compelling. But he left just about everyone shaking their head. In particular, his PowerPoint slides were a mess. They were worse than the slide you see above, which is just something I stumbled across on the Internet.

Like many presenters, he apologized for the tiny fonts and cluttered layout, but that didn't solve the problem. The members of the audience were squinting their eyes, and one woman told me she had a migraine just trying to decipher the slides.

This phenomenon is all too common. I don't blame the technology, as some people do. Long before there was PowerPoint, there were boring speakers who used overhead projectors. Long before there were overhead projectors, there were boring speakers who read their speech in a droning monotone.

Rather, I point to priorities. Many executives and managers place a premium on data at the expense of connecting with people. Thus, they see little need to invest in and master the art of speaking.

I have no illusions about changing the world. Still, I am offering ten tips and tactics to help the busy executive or manager with presentations. There's a lot more to meeting this challenge, and I stand ready to help. But this will get you started.

I actually hope these tips and tactics are not helpful to you, that you are already well beyond them. But in my experience, few executives are. Just about all managers and all executives need training in public speaking. Alas, according to data published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, few managers think they need any instruction or coaching in communication.

Here are ten tips and tactics you may find helpful:

1. Know your audience. Make an effort to talk with some of the people beforehand, even if only over coffee or lunch, especially if it's a new or special group. If it's a conference, get there early and mill around. Try to gain a sense of the audience's knowledge of the topic, their disposition toward your subject and toward you, their willingness to learn, their inclination to be influenced, and their overall expectations. Then speak to people where they are, both cognitively and emotionally. Take into account the time of day and whether you are speaking immediately after a meal. If the audience appears lethargic, ask people to stand for a moment before you begin. (If your session is long, take a short break every 60 to 75 minutes.) 
2. Don't speak down to people, but don't use acronyms or jargon that some persons may not know, either. Present your message and explain yourself without patronizing anyone, but remember that members of an audience can vary enormously in terms of education and experience. Give real-world examples that everyone will understand. Here, specificity is your friend.
3. Know that you have the “curse of knowledge” working against you. Because you are expert in your subject, you are probably taking certain facts and logical relationships for granted that other people will not. Look at your presentation with a fresh eye. Ask someone who is unacquainted with the material to glance at it, too.
4. Do not prepare or use your slides as talking points. Rather, have talking points on the lectern if you need them. Use the slides mainly for illustrations and mnemonics: pictures, graphs, simple tables and maps, quotes, oversize numbers, and so forth. Slides should never be a substitute for a Teleprompter.
5. Avoid data dumps. Don't try to capture much detail at all in any one slide. Complexity will smother and overcome your message. If you have detailed information to convey, distribute it on paper at the presentation or, better yet, by email attachment beforehand. Complex diagrams and data-heavy tables are especially toxic. Avoid them. Use your oral presentation to explain, persuade, and inspire. Find one or two on-point stories to tell that capture the essence of your message. People remember good stories for a long, long time. Twenty-five years later, you can probably still recall a couple of stories Ronald Reagan told.
6. Prepare the slides so that people in the back row can read them without squinting and that people in the front row can read them without getting a migraine. That means using a large, sans serif font with colors chosen specifically to be easy on the eyes. My preference is navy blue type on a white or off-white background, at least 18 points, preferably larger. It also means using few bullet points and few words on each line.
7. Face the audience. Never turn your back and read from the slides. Speak loudly and assertively, with your lungs full of air. Present yourself with confidence. Give your voice some energy and range. Before you get up to speak, breathe deeply for two or three minutes. Pause whenever you need to. Vary your tone and timing. Make brief eye contact with individuals as you speak.
8. Avoid the hackneyed opening of saying "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" and then repeating it, only louder. Instead, jump headlong into your material. Give two or three riveting facts, or ask a succession of unsettling questions, or quickly relate a relevant anecdote. By the same token, make sure any technology you are using is ready to go beforehand. You should never be fiddling with it while people wait for you to begin speaking.
9. If it's necessary or expected to distribute your presentation, consider doing so as a narrative rather than a succession of bullet-point slides. This way, people will get your message, and you can freely concentrate on the context and core assertions. Set aside more time than usual for questions and answers. Place a high premium on dialogue. Truly listen to people who ask questions, and show you appreciate their initiative and even their courage. Be especially welcoming of the "elephant in the room" question that everyone is thinking about but few are bold enough to ask.
10. Finally, remember that your slide deck isn't your message. You are. Make yourself and your thinking, not your slides, the focus of everyone in the audience. Avoid distracting slide transitions or anything else that draws attention away from you and your presence. Remember, connecting with people is more important than delivering information. Everyone will feel it and know it if you succeed, and people will remember it as one of the few good presentations they have ever seen.

One more thing: Be sure you practice, and try to memorize your opening lines.

In all my years in business, I have seen very few truly powerful PowerPoint presentations. That doesn't mean it cannot be done. It can, but it takes discipline, creativity, and work.

Call me if you need further advice. I'll be glad to help.

 

(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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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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The Jiminy Cricket Test for Decisions

What is the minimal threshold for a good decision in your company?

How low is the bar set?

If managers often make decisions that set your organization on a course to do things that are dangerous or illegal or unethical, then it is set too low.

Just look at the litany of companies whose managers have made disappointing decisions: This year alone it has included such iconic names as Hewlett-Packard, BP, and Toyota. In recent years it has included Enron, HealthSouth, Tyco, and many others on a lesser scale.

Some of these decisions looked innocuous at the time, but they rocked the companies to their core. It goes to show you that decisions at any level of a company can ultimately cost billions of dollars, the confidence of investors and customers, and the good name of the enterprise.  

I believe every organization should put all its managers through rigorous training on how to make basic decisions that accord with responsible conduct.

Here is a simple template you can use. We call it the Jiminy Cricket Test for Decisions.

(If you were deprived of Walt Disney cartoons as a child, you may be wondering who Jiminy Cricket was. He was a dapper little guy who served as Pinocchio’s conscience. If you have to ask who Pinocchio was, you’ll just have to look it up.)

The idea behind the Jiminy Cricket Test is to hold every decision, no matter how small, to a set of clear minimal standards.

Here it is. Just get in the habit of asking yourself these six short questions before you say or do anything of consequence:

• Is it safe? If what you are about to say or do endangers anyone, now or in the future, it doesn't pass this test. If it encourages anyone to act dangerously or take unseemly risks, it doesn't pass this test. If it ridicules safety standards or procedures, it doesn't pass this test. If it relegates safety to anything other than your No. 1 concern, then it doesn't pass this test.
   
  
• Is it legal?  Ask a good attorney whether your comments and conduct comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law, here and in any other jurisdiction that is involved. Ask also whether your course of action respects everyone's legal rights. If not, don't do it. If you are unclear or uncertain, gain clarity and certainty before proceeding. If it “pushes the envelope,” you should have serious reservations.
   
  
• Is it ethical?  In other words, does it do right by all parties? Is it inherently honest and fair? Or, truth to tell, are you trying to trick or deceive anyone? Are you fully living up to all your obligations, explicit and implicit? Are you honoring the Golden Rule?
   
  
• Is it strategic?  Only now, after clearing hurdles on safety, lawfulness, and ethics, do we get to a standard business issue. By strategic, we simply mean “of or relating to strategy”—nothing more. But that’s enough. In most companies, altogether too many activities are undertaken that have little or nothing to do with the firm’s business strategy. Anything you are doing or managing should be connected to one or more components of your organization’s strategy. If it isn’t, question the need for it.
   
  
• Is it smart?  Does it have a foundation in factual research, and is it the consequence of rigorous thinking that frankly tests assumptions and looks for bias? Or is it the whim of an executive who is convinced he or she is always right? Does it reflect the advice of experts you have consulted? Does it incorporate all relevant data you have available?
   
  
• Is it wise? Does it look down the road to its likely consequences? Is it respectful of all constituencies and stakeholders? Does it reflect the values your company espouses? Does it take account of all the organization’s responsibilities and its full purpose? Is it farsighted rather than shortsighted? Is it noble? Does it make you proud to be doing the work you are doing for this organization?
  

That’s it in a nutshell. Just six short questions that every manager would do well to ask before saying or doing anything that matters.

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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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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.

 

Quote / Unquote: Margaret Mead on Teams

Quote / Unquote is a feature that appears irregularly but frequently. It offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, or business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion.

Thirty years after her death, Margaret Mead remains the world’s most famous anthropologist. Her name is emblematic of field research in primitive societies. By traveling to remote places and studying little-known cultures, she was able to arrive at insights in Western culture—and she had plenty of terrific stories to tell when she got back.

The daughter of a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Mead earned her Ph.D. in 1929, at a time when most women didn't even graduate from high school. She was always blazing new paths; when her own daughter was just an infant, she took her to a young pediatrician who was just establishing his practice. His name was Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Late in her life, Margaret Mead offered this gem on the power of small groups with a well-defined purpose:

Never doubt the ability of a small group of thoughtful,

committed individuals with a common purpose

to change the course of history.  

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

As you reflect on this insight, ask yourself and your colleagues these questions:

• What groups can you think of that exemplify this insight?
  
  
• What is the purpose of your organization?
  
  
• How does it serve the needs of your customers, patrons, or sponsors?
  
  
• What specific and unique strengths does each member of your team bring to bear on realizing this purpose?
  
  
• What barriers stand in the way?
  
  
• How will you overcome those barriers?
  
  
• What will be your legacy?

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Query: The Path of Least Resistance

Appearing irregularly but not infrequently, Query is a short, simple, and hopefully powerful feature. It consists of one, two, or several questions chosen to encourage readers to think deeply about some aspect of leadership in the workplace.

That’s it. Nothing more. It is intended only, in the style of Socratic teaching, to ignite or reignite a flame of introspection, reflection, exploration, and reinvention.

We won’t belabor the point. We won’t build an elaborate context. We won’t try to manage your thinking. All we want to do is start or restart some deeper thinking about your role as a leader, your efforts to engage people, and the effectiveness of your communication.

As you wrestle with each particular question, also ask yourself why we're posing it and what it means for your impact, influence, and inspiration as a leader.

Here are the questions for today's edition of Query:

• If management views itself in the role of overcoming the resistance of employees, what then does the role of employees become?

• In this scenario, is more resistance or less resistance likely to result?

• How is that likely to work out for everyone?

• On the other hand, if management views itself in the role of collaborating with employees to meet challenges together, what does the role of employees become?

• In this scenario, is more cooperation or less cooperation likely to result?

• How is this likely to turn out for everyone?

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Are You Using the GearBox Yet?

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

If you haven’t begun using the GearBox to analyze your employee engagement, you should start now. It is always an eye-opening exercise. It never fails to spark creative, structured thinking around the execution of business initiatives and strategies.

For the uninitiated, the Arceil GearBox is a simple but powerful analytic model that imposes a straightforward structure on the work of leadership to build engagement for change or breakthrough performance.

It consists of a 4 x 5 matrix. The four column headers—­Awareness, Understanding, Acceptance, and Commitment—refer to dimensions of employee orientation and disposition toward an organization’s success and growth. The five rows represent levels of alignment around leadership vision and strategy.

The best level is at the top: strategic focus, curiosity, passion, and courage. The worst is at the bottom: alienation, denial, cynicism, and resistance. In between are three middling levels, the higher the better. Here it is:

 

	Awareness	Understanding	Acceptance	Commitment
Overdrive	Focus	Curiosity	Passion	Courage
Drive	Attention	Clarity	Trust	Cooperation
Neutral	Acquaintance	Familiarity	Ambivalence	Inertia
Park	Distraction	Confusion	Apathy	Neglect
Reverse	Alienation	Denial	Cynicism	Resistance

This 4 X 5 matrix provides a structure for gauging the relative orientation of employees (or members, or volunteers, or supporters) toward the organization's mission or toward a particular initiative or strategy. The five rows reflect levels of disposition. We named them for the gears of a transmission. (The model and its use are protected by copyright.)

Five Levels of Performance

Think of the top level as creative engagement. For casual reference, we have dubbed it Overdrive. We regard this as an operational definition of engagement in the work place: employees in a state of strategic focus, curiosity, passion, and courage.

Here is where you find high-engagement organizations like the Mayo Clinic, Apple Computer, Nordstrom, Google, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, championship sports teams, victorious political campaigns, and the legendary Skunk Works R&D operation of Lockheed Martin.

The next-best level appears one level down. Think of it as active engagement. For the sake of the metaphor, we call it Drive. We regard this as basic employee support: attention, clarity, trust, and cooperation. It is hard to imagine a cohesive, competitive work force in a dynamic market without this basic support.

Importantly, any organization competing on the basis of innovation, service, technology, creativity, culture, research, speed, or quality must minimally be at active or creative engagement. Anything less runs the risk of abrupt defection of key customers or employees and the sudden erosion of market share.

The middle level is Neutral. You can think of it as passive engagement. It is really mediocrity. We regard it as a sense of affiliation, not much more. The descriptors we chose for this level are: acquaintance, familiarity, ambivalence, and inertia. A work force at this level may be enough to survive in commodity or generic markets, but it is inadequate for competing on turf any more demanding than price discounting.

Another level down is Park. Think of it as passive disengagement. It is inferiority, a state of internal, corrosive disregard. Here you will find distraction, confusion, apathy, and neglect. It is dangerous territory. Unfortunately, all too many organizations find themselves here after years of treating their people like depreciable assets. From here, it is imperative to climb out and up, lest you stagnate or even slip further down.

The very worst level we call Reverse. Think of it as active disengagement. We regard it as an operational definition of toxins in the work place. It consists of employees (or even the executive suite, as in the cases of companies whose management was corrupt) in a state of alienation, denial, cynicism, and resistance. Only the saddest organizations find themselves here. This is where non-represented labor forces are actively seeking to organize, where unions threaten to strike at any perceived offense, or where particularly venal employees engage in sabotage or other demonstrations of contempt. It is possible to climb out—indeed, I have seen it—but it requires a sustained and concerted effort.

The Exercise

The exercise is simple in form but quite compelling in impact. Here is an overview; in our consulting engagements and workshops, the discussion goes quite a bit deeper and drills into the particulars of your organization.

Begin by reflecting on the entire chart, one column at a time. Now, in privacy, pinpoint the level of your management team within each column. Next, do the same for the organization as a whole, thinking in terms of the typical non-supervisory, non-managerial person. Keep your choices to yourself.

Now, ask yourself these questions:

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

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

• What would real passion look like? Why is it important? Passion for what? Where do you see it? Where do you only wish you saw it? Where do you instead see apathy and cynicism? Do you see real passion in yourselves? In one another? In what ways? What specifically can you do to nurture enthusiastic acceptance of your vision? What is in the way? How much apathy and cynicism are there? How does emotion complement reasoning toward full engagement?

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

An impartial third party should be asked to interview each member of the senior management team, in confidence, so as to collect a true self-portrait of the management team as well as its perception of the state of ground-level employees. Then it becomes imperative to close whatever gaps emerge within the senior management team and between senior management and the workforce. The shorter the "distance" between leader and follower, the more taut will be the line that connects them.

Our clients have found this exercise to be quite powerful. It provides a framework and linear process for the execution of initiatives and strategies. While it may oversimplify things a little, it also sheds light on some real difficulties, and it’s a powerful inducement to a large, overdue conversation.

*           *           *

For onsite/offsite facilitation of a GearBox exercise, contact Thomas J. Lee

by email at info@arceil.com or by telephone at +1-847-247-2241.

Please note that the GearBox is protected by copyright.

  

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Play the Angel's Advocate, Not the Devil's Advocate

Have you ever noticed how many good, really good, ideas in business go crashing to the floor after someone responds with the words, "Well, let me play devil's advocate here . . ."?

It happens a thousand times a day. It is probably happening at this very moment. Somewhere, another idea is getting shot down, for no good reason.

Over time, the net result is that fewer and fewer people muster the courage to offer good, creative ideas. No one likes rejection, after all.

Here’s a radical idea: Let's abolish the entire concept of devil's advocate.

Think about it. What if we and everyone else in our companies agreed to banish the phrase? What if we further agreed to look not for the weaknesses in someone else's good idea but for the strengths?

What if we took pride not in a skeptical, argumentative devil's advocacy but in a supportive, nurturing angel’s advocacy?

Would we not see more courage and creativity in people? Would we not nourish more courage and creativity, as well?

Most of the truly lousy ideas will fall by the wayside anyway. The few bad ideas that do get through will, by and large, eventually flame out.

As for the very few that survive amid the flames—well, maybe they weren’t so lousy to start.

So stop playing the devil's advocate. Just stop. Start playing the angel's advocate. Start today.

(And whatever you do, don't respond to this little essay by saying, "Well, let me play the devil's advocate here"!)

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56 Seconds of Truth

Why is it that so many business leaders so rarely speak their unvarnished truth with candor, clarity, conviction, and credibility?

Here is an example of one who did. It’s a video of Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, commenting on the demise of Friendster and MySpace. He was speaking at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference last week in New York City.

It deserves 56 seconds of your time, if for no other reason than it is a refreshing bucket of cold water.

Just click here.

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