Ron’s Short Review: I’ve liked many of Lencioni’s books but delayed digging into this one because I thought it might be just one more topic. However, he does a great job of pulling many of his concepts together in the form of a “healthy” organization.
In Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question, he writes
“The term stepping back is often used when we talk about questioning—step back and ask why, step back and reconsider, and so forth. But what are we stepping back from?”
Image Source: Tim Green, Creative Commons
Later he says:
“It’s necessary to stop doing and stop knowing in order to start asking.”
I have noticed—as has Warren—that the stop doing part is actually the hardest in the business environment. In another blog, I write about a destructive attitude that I see in the business world today. That’s the attitude of quick deciding. When we enter meetings with the attitude that we must decide quickly we tend to shut down the diversity of thinking and questioning that may “slow down” the deciding process and yet it’s those diverse thoughts and “why” questions that most often lead to better, more innovative decisions.
Stepping back from the fast paced, globally connected, task oriented work world is difficult.
Years ago one of my CEO clients asked me what key elements I had observed in building great teams. I was pretty quick to answer because I had seen the pattern so quickly and consistently.
Teams that get offsite twice a year to focus on team building and leadership continue to improve year over year. But, it’s critical that during these meetings you have to put down the bats and balls. You can’t be reviewing the business and the numbers. You’ve got to kick off your shoes, get real with each other and deal with each other as human beings, not human doings.
I can elaborate later on the importance of these meetings and the things that tend to sabotage them, but for now, notice that this is a way of stepping back from the business in order to gain clarity about the business. I’ve experienced time and time again that stepping back from the numbers, pressures, and routines of the business and focusing just for a couple days on team, leadership, and culture brings a tremendous amount of clarity about the business.
Management is about providing answers; leadership is about figuring out the right questions. Are you and your team stepping back enough to see that questions that will propel you in the future or are you simply frazzled trying to come up with answers day after day? Step back! You, your team, and your company need it.
Image Source: Steve Snodgrass, Creative Commons
I don’t know if this is blogworthy or not but last summer I found myself in desperate need of a new attitude. I’d been in the hospital for over a week and was facing probably another week. My patience had worn thin, I didn’t tolerate the foibles of people like I had earlier this week and I could hardly tolerate the thought of the upcoming recovery time from the next surgery. In short, I was finding it hard to find much hope in my future.
One cause for this despair was my total loss of control. There was hardly a thing in my environment that I had any control over at the moment. Not much motivation exists when there is no control.
We’ve talked about the issues for years with my leadership team. I’m usually working with the executives and leaders of the organization.
These leaders often have more control of their working lives than the rest of the organization. It almost always shows up in culture surveys with what has been labeled “The muddle in the middle.” Culture survey results almost always look better at the top and bottom of the organization with the worst results in the middle (management) level of the company. We usually attribute that to control. The top is more in control of their daily lives and environments and the bottom don’t expect much control. (However, as you’ll see later they’ll perform substantially better when granted even a small bit of control) It’s the middle that feels less in control and therefore provides lower scores about the culture.
In my book Trust Me I write about an experiment conducted decades ago that speaks very directly to this issue.
Individuals were given a very difficult assignment to accomplish. It was going to take a lot of concentration, mental gymnastics, and problem solving skills over several hours of effort.
Each person was placed in a sound proof both with all the tools they needed and asked to solve the problem the best they could. But as soon as they settled into the booth, the controllers began to pump in as much disrupting sound and calamity as they could. The participant’s goal was to do the best they could.
However, while the second control group was given identical conditions, they were also given a button on their desks that would shut off all the distracting sounds for several minutes and they could push the button a certain number of times during the exam.
Once all of the exams were scored, it was obvious that the group with the shut off button had substantially outscored the group without the button. But… no one had pushed the button. Just having a sense of control over their environment allowed them to perform at a much higher level than the group with no control.
Try giving your people as much control over their environment as you can afford (and that’s likely a lot more than you’re willing). The more people can control how, where, and when they work the more productive they’ll be.
Ron’s Short Review: Outstanding book. Being from the Detroit area and working around the auto industry, I had heard most of the stories (except those about the Ford Family), but Hoffman really puts them together well. Mulally really puts team first and you can see how that attitude saved Ford during some of the toughest days in its history. Every leader, present or future should learn from this book.
Ron’s Short Review: Pretty good book on identifying the competencies and organizations in the future but ends up identifying the classical competencies of humility, patience, courage, and faith.
Ron’s Short Review: Assuming we need to continually foster insights in an ever changing world, Klein provides some good tips for not missing, not interfering and fostering insights.
What are you willing to pay for?
Maybe it’s that nicer car or maybe just the nicer option package on the car you’ve already decided to buy.
Maybe it’s shopping at Whole Foods versus another grocery store.
Maybe it’s those concert tickets in the center stage seats.
There are certain things beyond our necessities that we’re willing to pay for. But why? That less expensive car still gets you from point A to point B. Sitting farther back at the concert may even provide better sound. So why do we pay for these items? Perceived value!
Image Source: 401(k), Creative Commons
We’re willing part with our hard earned resources because our perception is that it will provide us with value that we appreciate.
Have you noticed that from our elementary school days, we’ve been told to pay attention! Why do we have to pay to give someone our attention? Because it takes focus, concentration, discipline, and, most importantly, there will be a value received for the price paid.
Therein lies the problem. If we don’t actually believe that we’ll learn something by paying attention or that the other person has nothing of value to offer, we’re not willing to pay. This relates closely to another blog I wrote about listening with the intent to understand. If we’re not willing to discipline ourselves to truly understand the other person or pay to give someone our attention then we’re exposing our own ego and arrogance.
When our ego and arrogance is the driving force behind our inability to understand another person or we’re not willing to pay the price of granting another person our attention, we’ve violated the first principle of great leadership: humility.
When great leaders are willing to work from a foundation of humility by offering to pay to give others their attention in order to truly understand the other person, they begin to create a culture that develops great teams that are able to grow together to generate a synergy that surpasses their own expectations.
Be willing to pay attention, you’ll be blown away by the value you’ll receive.
I think of doctors in clinical environments. I consider my cardiologist one of the best doctors I’ve ever had because while he is with me it seems that I’m the only thing that matters to him. Although I know he is paying a great price by giving me his attention and not being distracted by all of the commotion going on outside the room. I appreciate the price he pays.
Share with us about the time when someone paid the price to give you their attention.
One of the more popular episodes of the Seinfeld television series was the Soup Nazi. The story line centered on an aggressive man who owned a small restaurant where the locals stood outside in long lines to enjoy takeout orders of his delicious soup concoctions. However, these same customers were forced to tolerate this man’s rigid rules:
“Only one customer in the restaurant at a time.”
“Place your order immediately.”
“Do not point.”
“Do not ask questions.”
“Pay and leave immediately.”
Customers were forced to do what this man said, or they were told, “No soup for you! Come back in three months!”
Image Credit: Seinfeld, Season 7, Episode 6, Shapiro/West Productions, Castle Rock Entertainment
Leaders with a Soup-Nazi style have one way of doing things—their way. Their focus is totally on themselves. They do not want (nor do they take) any suggestions. They “know” what is best for the organization and everyone in it. They “allow” people to “help,” but only under their carefully prepared set of rigid rules. They are a proud leader.
An “unhumble” leader is notoriously self-focused. Writer and scholar Henri Nouwen once said,
“It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people.”
Isn’t that the perception most people have? It is far easier (and seemingly satisfying) to be focused entirely on ourselves and not on the needs of others or the opportunities presented by others.
A proud leader seems to “know” the truth and are usually its source. They take every measure to protect their point of view; they deny any effort to clarify the thought process; they do not encourage debate; they resist building a community of advisers.
A proud leader is critical. Such leaders develop self-centered standards and then tend to criticize anyone who does not follow their rules or who shows creativity and independence.
Yet, in today’s fast changing environment we need creativity and independent thinking and ideas more than ever.
Why are so many leaders resistant to change and innovation?
A leader willing to change brings about change in the organization. Embracing change fosters an attitude of success and can deliver us from the quagmire of sameness.
Have you demonstrated willingness to:
Change?
Be open and seek new, maybe novel ideas?
Help your teams understand and experience experimentation?
Check your need for control or your fear of failure. It’s a great barometer of future success.
My wife is a very organized person in most of her life. But like all of us, there are a few areas that just get out of control over time and you usually need help to get it back under control. She hired a personal organizer.
For the most part, I tried to simply stay out of the way, but I admit I was curious. I thought the organizer did a good job of seeing what the issue was, stepping back and looking at the overall picture; noting what was working overall and what portion of my wife’s life felt like it was under control and what portion was not, gaining the bigger picture.
Then she began to dive into the issue and started to ask the very direct, tough questions:
• How long have you had this?
• When was the last time you used it?
• What do you want it for?
After several pointed and pertinent questions, she calls for the decision:
• Trash it?
• Recycle it?
• Donate it?
• Keep it?
If she gets the “keep it” answer, she immediately recycles through some of the previous questions and then comes back to trash, recycle, donate, or keep.
Now here’s what I found interesting, she had provided bins for the three “non-keep” answers and the item would immediately go into one of those bins. At the end of the day, she put all of those bins in her vehicle and she made sure they were trashed, recycled, or donated.
Image Source: Katie Chao & Ben Muessig, Creative Commons
At first I thought this was a nice service she provided, but then she began to explain why she did it. This way the decision was final. No turning back, no rethinking the decision, no second guessing.
This is exactly the issue I was getting at in an earlier blog, “Decide: we’ve got it all backwards.” In that post, we explored the word decide and learned that it didn’t mean figuring out what to do, it means figuring out what to kill.
My wife had made the decision to “kill” certain items into the trash, recycle, or donation bins. The organizer wasn’t going to let those items be an issue any longer—they were gone!
All too often in our corporate decision making, we let things linger, be second guessed, never really put them in the trash or recycle bin. Because of this lack of decisiveness uncertainty thrives. It consumes the resources you need for top priorities. If you will actually “decide” and make sure the paths you’ve decided not to follow are actually killed off, publicly executed, thrown in the trash, you and your organization will become much more productive, nimble and responsive to current needs. We waste a lot of resources because we don’t finally decide.
I remember one CEO saying to me “I’ve tried to kill that initiative three times and it keeps coming back.” His frustration was caused by the continued wasted resources and people’s attention that were being dedicated to a project he thought they were over and done with. But he had never “Publicly” killed the program. He had never made the global announcement that “We are no longer pursuing this initiative!” He simply turned his focus and his team’s focus to the things they had decided to pursue.
I can’t tell you how important this concept is. My clients are constantly looking for resources to pursue much needed projects, changes or new initiatives. But they never really put the needed energy or public face behind killing off the old, outdated, or lower priority issues. Figure out how to decide. It will pay huge dividends.
Take a look at your personal life, home or work; would you share with us some areas that would save you a lot of grief and energy if you simply publicly ended the pursuit? Maybe you do have a very clear corporate situation that emphasizes this very issue. Share with us what caused it and what helped alleviate it (or what should be done to alleviate the issue).
Have you ever noticed that the dirtiest public bathrooms are the ones with the log pasted to the wall with the signature of the person who cleaned it and when? In fact, the log itself looks so nasty that I usually give it a wide berth for fear that something contagious might jump off the page and infect me.
Image Source: Anjana Samant, Creative Commons
Why is this so? This culture obviously has rules and regulations and a check list system for accountability and yet the place is filthy! But that’s exactly the point. Is your culture built on rules, regulations, guidelines, and check lists for accountability to make sure people are doing what they’re told? Or is your culture built on ingrained values like, “We want our customers to experience a cleaner bathroom than they would at home!”?
Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many annual review processes work like that bathroom log. The annual review starts with the check list of goals that was created the previous year. Then we check to make sure the employee signed off on each item of the list and the date of accomplishment. There, goals accomplished, bathroom clean!
No discussions about innovative approaches they tried to take to make sure the bathroom stayed cleaner longer. No discussion about lessons learned from failed attempts at trying something new. No discussion about new approaches they are proud of that did work. No discussion about where they would like to apply some of their ideas elsewhere.
Are you really inspiring your employees with values and visions or are you expecting them to do their job and check off their list? How clean are your bathrooms?
Tell us some stories from both perspectives – leaders evaluating people with annual review processes or being the victim (sorry) recipient of an annual review process. What made it great? What made it suck?
Ron’s Short Review: The concept is that doing small things can lead to big results. But what a slog. I don’t often give up on books but after reading for days and getting to chapter 10 which was only 20% of the way through the book, I gave up and read three other books in a few days. I think there are good nuggets and I’ll get back to it but can’t complete it now.
Ron’s Short Review: Edgar Schein is probably the father of Organizational Consulting. Great pitch for starting with humility.
