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Corporate Culture

Are you a Fighter Pilot?

by Ron Potter April 27, 2017

There are many outstanding characteristics associated with fighter pilots: Confidence, Intelligence, Assertiveness, Self-Discipline, Trustworthiness, Decisiveness, Dedication and others. But, the one characteristic that appears only on the list of fighter pilots is multitasking. Notice that I said “only” on the list of fighter pilots.

Many studies have confirmed that the only group of people who are good at multitasking are highly trained and skilled fighter pilots. And it’s not really the skill that makes the difference, it’s the highly-trained component. Through hours of dedicated and focused training, pilots learn to multitask effectively. The rest of us never put in the time, training and effort to become good at multitasking. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from trying.

A recent study by researchers at Stanford attempted to identify why the current generation of college students seemed to be better at multitasking than previous generations. Researchers are thrilled when their studies identify a single prominent reason for their complex research question. This study concluded with one of those Eureka moments.

What is the clear reason for current student’s ability to multitask better? They don’t! They suck at it. They’re actually promoting damaging effects.

The finding: Their ability to multitask diminishes over time. They also lose ground on other abilities. Multitasking leads to stupidity. That’s not what the study concluded but it seems like a logical conclusion to me.

Research seems to be flying at us from all directions to stop the multitasking. It doesn’t help us think. It doesn’t help us be productive. It doesn’t help us keep on top of things. It diminishes our ability to do all those things and more.

Deep work. Times of silence. Shut out the world. Get into deep thought. These are the things that help us be more productive and happier. But these take discipline, grit, determination, resolve.

Are you a fighter pilot? Are you trying to multitask like one? If so, your hurting your chances for success.

Carve out that time. Get away from the activity. Turn off the electronics (or at least stick them under a pillow or in a drawer). Get into some deep thought. If you haven’t thought about it (really thought about it) you’re not allowed to express an opinion. Our world is being buffeted by thoughtless opinions. The more multitasking we do the more thoughtless the opinions. Stop and think.

“Did you stop to think?” was a question I often heard from my parents. As a teenager, I thought that was just the stock response for when I did something stupid. I didn’t realize at the time it was a recipe to avoid being stupid as an adult.

Stop multitasking. Stop to think!

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Three words that struck fear in the heart of many corporate denizens

by Ron Potter March 2, 2017

Zero Based Budgeting

The trend

This approach to annual budgeting has swept through many industries over the last few years. The old way of doing annual budgeting was to start with what your budget had been last year and then explain how much your budget was going to increase this year (it seldom went down) and explain the reasons for the increase with all kinds of documentation to justify the increase.

The new approach isn’t much different except for the starting point. Now, instead of starting with last year’s budget, you’re starting point is zero. Zero Based Budgeting. Now the justification includes everything and everyone from the ground up. If fact, the really disciplined versions start with the purpose of your group, department or project itself. Every expense from paperclips to the senior vice president must be justified.

Meeting madness

I think the verdict is still out on how this idea will fare over time but for now, it’s certainly in vogue. But there’s one aspect of corporate life that I haven’t yet seen this applied where I think it would be particularly useful: Meetings!

The average corporate life these days seems to be; arrive at the office, grab your coffee and get to the first meeting of the day, followed by back-to-back meetings for six, seven and often eight straight hours or more. People are burnt out and suffering. Ah, but there’s more, they still need to get their work done. When does that happen? Early mornings when the office is quiet or at the coffee shop before you hit the office or get in an hour before the rest of the family wakes up. Staying late, get home when you can see the kids off to bed, get in a few more hours before you collapse. Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, vacations! All because meetings are taking up the entire work day.

The proposal

But what if meetings were required to take the approach of Zero Based Budgeting? Start by justifying the purpose of the meeting itself. Then justify the resources you need; materials, equipment, people and time. Why do we need 12 people in the room when three of them will make the decision? Why do we need to sit through one or two hours when the only piece we needed to be there for happened in the first or last ten minutes? Why do we schedule in full hour increments? Why not 17-minute meetings? All meetings fill whatever time is allocated to them.

A client of mine put together one slide that explained the Vision and Mission of the company followed by the three key initiatives that needed to be accomplished that year for them to be successful. All meetings were required to start with that particular slide along with an explanation (justification) of how that particular meeting contributed to one or more of the key initiatives. If the meeting couldn’t be justified on those terms, the meeting was not allowed to be scheduled. Zero Based Meetings! That approach provided two great benefits. One, the purpose and goals of meetings became abundantly clear and two, they eliminated about 40% of the meetings from the calendar. Zero Based Meetings!

Zero-based budgeting for meetings.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Organizations Change Most by Surviving Calamities

by Ron Potter February 27, 2017

“Like many men and women who have spent their lives struggling and are in many ways better for it, organizations that struggle develop a sense of pulling together, ways of coping that keep them afloat where others sink.”

I was with a group of men the other day and we were going through a set of questions to force us to think and help us grow. One question was “What encouraged you this week?” After we listened to several stories that covered topics of personal, family, work, aging and others, a very clear pattern became visible. Each story of encouragement started with a situation of great pain and struggle. To Farson’s point, great victories and times of plenty are not the first things we think of when asked about encouragement. Encouragement comes through coping with difficulties.

One of the most powerful books I’ve read is The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. The opening sentence in that book is “Life is difficult.” Dr. Peck goes on to explain that avoidance of pain and suffering will lead to mental illness. Life is difficult. We find encouragement dealing with the difficulties.

Farson relates this concept to our corporate world when he says, “Although individuals will acknowledge calamities as important in their development, managers are less likely to cite organizational calamity as the reason for change and growth. Calamities are an embarrassment to management and not likely to be regarded as the key to success.”

Flawless Execution. I’ve heard that concept being promoted in almost every company I work with. Bad idea? Absolutely not. We should always be striving to do our best and execute as quickly and elegantly as we can. Notice that I used the word elegantly, not flawlessly. Take as much friction out of the execution process as you can and operate flawlessly for as long as you can. Increasing your periods of flawless execution is a great goal. But, when you ingrain the idea of continuous flawless execution, you begin to bury the flaws, mistakes, and difficulties that help people and teams grow. You also rob them of encouragement. Encouragement comes through dealing with and overcoming difficulties.

How well do you handle setbacks as a leader? In our work lives, we look at mistakes and setbacks as failures. We need to shift them to learning experiences so that people are encouraged and reduce the number of mistakes and setbacks.

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blog posts about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

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Blog Culture

No!: The key to success

by Ron Potter January 19, 2017

You’ll be seeing a few posts from me around the concept of a good No. It’s critical to decision making, prioritizing and a general sense of wellbeing.

Today I want to pick up on a blog post written by Gustavo Razzetti, MD. His post is titled “How to Focus on What Really Matters to You.” His six step process is:

Write down 10-20 things that you want to achieve.
Divide your goals in three groups:
1. Group 1: most critical
2. Group 2: doubts and not sure how critical they are
3. Group 3: can live with or live without
Eliminate Group 3 and all its content
Take a stand with Group 2. Eliminate those closest to Group 3. Move those that really matter to Group 1.
Rank the items in Group 1. Make time for those that really matter
Accomplish or initiate the top 3 priorities next month.

This is a pretty good list in a pretty good order. But the key to it is right in the heart, steps 3 and 4.

Eliminate Group 3 and all of its content! You need to De-Cide what’s important.

The word decide doesn’t mean figure out what you’re supposed to do, it means to figure out what you’re NOT supposed to do. It means to figure out what to kill. Forcing yourself to finally decide and eliminate some of the options that you’re holding open is a main key to success.

Step 4 continues the same process but gets even tougher because these are items that you have doubts about or are not sure. There’s a fear of letting go of something that might be valuable to you in the future. Let it go!

The other key to the list is step 6. Start now. Do it this month. Don’t delay any more.

An old Chinese proverb says that “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.” But the real power of the proverb is in the second sentence, “The second-best time is today.” Plan the 3 priorities you’re going to tackle next month. Then plan which one you will do in a given week. Then plan which day of that week you’ll set aside time to accomplish your goal. Put it on your calendar and when other demands pop up, simply say “Sorry, I’m already scheduled for that time. Let’s find another option.” Enjoy your new found success.

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Short Book Reviews

Designing Your Life

by Ron Potter December 30, 2016

Ron’s Short Review: My generation had “What color is your parachute?” This is a great book for today’s creative, entrepreneurial environment. Figuring out where you want to head along the way and designing your life to enhance your possibilities. I can easily recommend this book.

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Blog Leadership

The two pillars of great leadership

by Ron Potter November 28, 2016

The temptation in leadership will always be to head toward the dominant preferences inside us and on every side in our environment.
Over the last several years, investors suddenly began looking for CEOs who could shake things up and put an end to what was perceived as a business-as-usual approach. A new breed of corporate leader emerged: the charismatic CEO. A fervent and often irrational faith in the power of dynamic leaders became part of our culture.
Rakesh Khurana writes,

Faith is an invaluable, even indispensable gift in human affairs.… In the sphere of business, the faith of entrepreneurs, leaders, and ordinary employees in a company, a product, or an idea can unleash tremendous amounts of innovation and productivity. Yet today’s extraordinary trust in the power of the charismatic CEO resembles less a mature faith than it does a belief in magic. If, however, we are willing to begin rethinking our ideas about leadership, the age of faith can be followed by an era of faith and reason.

The adventure of looking for the charismatic leader sometimes asked us to turn our backs on attributes such as honesty, integrity, sensitivity, commitment, achievement, nurturing, trustworthiness, peacemaking, and courage.
But as Jim Collins explained so convincingly in his best-selling book Good to Great, it is the non-charismatic leader who seems to endure and shine in the long run. Collins writes:

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders [leaders who have taken companies to unprecedented long-term growth] seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

There are two pillars that support the attributes of a great leader: humility and endurance. Focusing on these two pillars is like so many things (golf included) that are both simple and complex. However, our experience tells us that great leaders allow these two attributes, whether natural or not, to strongly influence their leadership style. They learn how to overcome or “position” their natural tendencies. They let the two pillars “pull them through” their swing of everyday leadership and team building.
Great leaders seek to be humble people who lift up others and keep the spotlight on their companies, not themselves. They have a burning ambition to see tasks completed, and they balance that desire with a deep concern for the growth and development of people. They want to nurture relationships, help others flourish, and shove the fuss away from themselves.

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Short Book Reviews

The Management Myth

by Ron Potter November 2, 2016

the-management-myth Ron’s Short Review: Matthew clearly helps us see how all of the number based management principles are clearly rooted in the 20th-century industrial world and measuring what has already happened while the real principles that make a difference today include putting people first and thinking ahead, not looking back.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Every Act is a Political Act

by Ron Potter September 26, 2016

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous posts about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

Reading this one again was like receiving a body blow. Not so much for the leadership and management perspective but because of the headlines of our newspapers almost every day. Remember, this was written twenty years ago. These statements are not prompted by today’s headlines but look closely at what our author is saying.

“Fighting for the rights of special groups has contributed to an erosion of civility that none of us anticipated. When people are treated as representatives of special groups, society is fragmented.”

“It may even be that progress on rights has been made at the expense of the common welfare. Enmity grows between groups at they compete for rights. “

“Rather than looking after community, each group looks after itself. The common welfare suffers.”

From a business perspective I think we deal with this issue (sometimes well and sometimes not) by emphasizing the team. Many leaders try to optimize each aspect of the business but in so doing set up (and sometimes even encourage) competition between divisions. In the end this never works well. The concept of systems thinking and optimizing the whole rather than the individual parts always works better. To quote Bo Shembechler, the football coach at Michigan when I was in school, “The Team, The Team, The Team.” The name of my business is Team Leadership Culture which puts building team at the forefront of any good organization.

I always keep my comments directed at the business world but this one has so many implications related to the community issues of our day. Farson simply says “It may even be that progress on rights has been made at the expense of the common welfare.” I do worry that all of our labels that start with (fill in the blank) “________ American” lead us down this path.

The issue in the business world seems so simple and trivial by comparison, just take off your functional hat and put on your company hat. The Team, The Team, The Team. Team first.

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Blog Trust Me

Creativity out of Chaos

by Ron Potter June 27, 2016

A certain amount of chaos is necessary because “quality” chaos stimulates creativity. Organizations that do not create some space for creative chaos run the risk of experiencing staleness, loss, and even death.

“Life exists at the edge of chaos,” writes Stuart Kauffman, author of At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. “I suspect that the fate of all complex adapting systems in the biosphere—from single cells to economies—is to evolve to a natural state between order and chaos, a grand compromise between structure and surprise.”
If a leader fears the creative tension caused by chaos, trouble is often not far away. Leaders need to understand that creativity comes out of chaos, and even what has been created needs to be exposed to chaos just to make sure it is still viable and working. Even the new creation may need the chaos of re-creation to survive in a highly competitive world.
Meg Wheatley writes in her book Leadership and the New Science,

“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are also the primary sources of creativity.”

The question is, how do leaders get people from the scary, agonizing, and anxiety-filled feelings of chaos to the liberating place of creativity, change, and steadiness?
Before we answer that question, we do need to look at creativity and chaos. The reality of today’s world is that millions of ideas for innovation, change, and improvement lie within any factory, distribution center, high-tech office, retail storefront, or operations center. You can also multiply that number by millions (or so it seems) when you bring people together in a team setting and allow them the freedom to create, innovate, and change. In many organizations this causes chaos and uncertainty.
Leaders, then, who understand the positive side of chaos can begin leading people through the confusing maze that creativity causes. They can help people understand that disruptions are opportunities. They can focus their attention on a building a culture that understands change and brings teams together, creating synergy among the members. These leaders explain how necessary it is for a company to respond to change in order to remain competitive.
Leaders help their employees understand the chaos going on around them by making meaning out of it. It is not easy, but it is so very necessary. “Leaders must have the ability to make something happen under circumstances of extreme uncertainty and urgency. In fact leadership is needed more during times of uncertainty than in times of stability: when confusion over ends and means abounds, leadership is essential.”

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Blog Trust Me

Calming Chaos

by Ron Potter June 20, 2016

The world we live in is chaotic. A great leader learns how to leverage chaos into creativity, to bring a sense of tranquility to a crazy world.

Dealing with new technology, profit expectations, continual new-product development, the fickle shopper, and global competitors and global teams requires perpetual change and lightning-fast reactions. Markets change, old competitors consolidate, new competitors emerge, and attempts at re-engineering threaten our daily bread. Both leaders and employees can soon feel under siege and at the mercy of chaos.

A creative, energy-filled calm is what we need. A word picture may aid our understanding of this. Imagine you are a surfer. There you are with your board, waiting for the “big one.” If you are in Hawaii, the waves you are playing in might rise to twenty feet. All around you is surging, frothy chaos. Currents, tides, and the weather have combined to create a uniquely unstable environment. Conditions are always changing; every moment the ocean is different. If you try to catch a wave exactly the way you did yesterday, you will take a hard fall. You must stay alert and react quickly to every nuance of water, tide, and wind.

Gutsy leaders confront chaos. No one who is content to just paddle a surfboard beyond where the waves break has ever caught a “big one.” Neither has such a person ever wiped out. If you want to ride a wave, you have to enter into the chaos. If you panic while riding a big wave, you are sure to wipe out. If you stay calm, you can have a wonderful ride while tons of water crash down around you.

Creating calm in the office requires a similar ability to assess the environment, to act quickly, and to stay calm. The economy, products, competitors, consumers, and employees all constantly change. Someone has to have answers; someone must be an independent thinker, able to calmly think things through.

I’m familiar with a banker who had a client ready to sell a branch location of his business. The main location seemed to be prospering, but this particular branch appeared to be a drain on energy, time, and resources. The business owner was upset, but the banker remained calm. He took the time to analyze the underlying causes of the owner’s problems. He visited the location, recast the numbers, and advised the owner not to sell the branch but to move and resurrect it. In reality, the branch location was producing extra cash, and the owner, following the banker’s advice, turned his entire business around.

People will follow leaders who stay steady in the turbulence and work with them to create new answers, new plans, and a new future.

Whatever you do, don’t slip into what we call the “arsonist’s response to chaos.”

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that firefighters in Genoa, Texas, were accused of deliberately setting more than forty destructive fires. When caught, they stated, “We had nothing to do. We just wanted to get the red lights flashing and the bells clanging.”

Do you know any leaders who intentionally start “fires” so they can get the “red lights flashing and hear the sirens”?

Leaders in a client’s organization proudly described themselves as “firefighters.” They were proud of the fact that they were good at hosing down crises. But when they were asked, “Is it possible you might also be arsonists?” it caused a great deal of reflection within the company.

The goal is a creative, steady productivity—not an out-of-control environment that squanders energy and resources on crisis management.

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Short Book Reviews

A Failure of Nerve

by Ron Potter June 1, 2016

Ron’s Short Review: Maybe the most profound book I’ve read in a long time. Goes a long way in explaining the cause of poor leadership and teamwork (as well as government, education and parenting). It will take me a while to unpack all that is contained in this book but it really gets at the core of many issues.

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Short Book Reviews

Teaming

by Ron Potter May 31, 2016

Ron’s Short Review: Fantastic book that turns the noun “team” into the verb “teaming.” Great concept. Our corporations today need to be teaming on almost all fronts. It’s more than building great static teams (still needed). Teaming as an attitude is what creates the greater impact.

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