Ron’s Short Review: Ray builds on Life Principles such as: embrace reality, understand that people are different, and effective decision making. He moves into Work Principles with get the culture right, trust in radical truth, and others. Very thought-provoking.
In one of my recent posts about Balance, I spoke to the human need of balancing certainty and uncertainty.
A really good quote from Warren Buffett is “The five most dangerous words in business are: ‘Everybody else is doing it.”
He’s speaking of the need for Social Proof. When we are uncertain, we observe those around us to figure out how we should behave or how we should think. This need for certainty plus the need for belonging (also addressed in the Balance Blog) can combine for a deadly combination. That’s why Buffett describes them as dangerous.
This combines with another experience I (and likely you) have had when one of my parents discovered that I had done something stupid and asked “Would you jump off a building just because all your friends were doing it? Unfortunately, there are a few examples in history of people doing exactly that.
So how do we turn a moment of Social Proof into a moment of Social Poof? Magicians make things go “poof.” They disappear in a poof of smoke or a flurry of bright handkerchiefs. Why did they go, poof? Because they were illusions. They weren’t real. They were figments of our imaginations. The magician wanted us to “see” them so he could make them disappear.
Our marketing world is full of these Social Proof poofs.
You’re really somebody when you drive one of our cars.
Everybody who’s anybody drinks our beverage.
“Hi, I’m a professional actor and I endorse this product. You should want to buy it.” (Check out the Ted Danson Smirnoff commercials. They’re a great spoof of this concept.)
But, back to the purpose of this post. “The five most dangerous words in business.” Social Proof is a dangerous practice for leadership teams. I’ve seen these environments emerge when
Great teams break down these barriers and attempts at Social Proof by trusting and respecting diverse points of view and honestly dialoguing through them.
Make your Social Proofs go Poof! You and the team will be better off and better balanced.
Ron’s Short Review: Learn some habits from this book and you’ll be amazed how much wasted time is eliminated from meetings and how much understanding between people is accomplished.
Abraham Lincoln united his followers with the vision of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Lincoln successfully gathered people to his vision, based on a strong set of personal values, and he accomplished an incredible feat. How was Lincoln able to do this? How is any leader able to set vision into reality?
Consider the following suggestions:
Have you ever taught someone to drive a car? As teens learn to drive, their first instinct is to watch the road directly in front of the car. This results in constant course correction—the front wheels turn sharply as the car swerves from roadside shoulder to the center divider, back and forth. When you approach a curve, the swerving worsens! But when young motorists learn to look as far down the road as possible while they drive, the car’s path straightens out. They are then able to negotiate corners, obstacles, and other dangers much more smoothly. A distant reference point makes the path straighter.
We often focus on too many methods and alternatives. Building vision means focusing our attention on that vision. Focus is necessary so that lower priorities do not steal time from the central vision. If the vision is deeply planted in your heart and mind, you can proactively, rather than reactively, respond to outside forces and issues.
Leaders need to clearly express their inner values. On what values is a vision based? Team members need to know—and leaders need to share—this basic insight. People knew that Abraham Lincoln was a man of integrity, honesty, hard work, and fairness. These basic values supported his vision of a unified country.
In his book Leading Change John Kotter writes:
No one individual, even a monarch-like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all the key obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new approaches deep in the organization’s culture. Weak committees are even worse. A strong guiding coalition is always needed—one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective. Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure, reengineer, or retool a set of strategies [or, I may add, move a vision to reality].
Leaders who want to create and implement a vision need to start a fire in the belly of the people they lead. They need to use all available forms of communication to get the word out. It is akin to brand management. A company that wants to launch a new brand will use every form of communication available to get people to try the new products. The same is true with implementing a vision. Leaders cannot overcommunicate what they see in the future.
In order to implement a vision, leaders need to encourage clear buy-in from the people. This requires moving beyond communication to collaboration. The goal is to develop a supportive environment and bring along other people with differing talents and abilities. It also means that when the followers truly understand the vision, the leader needs to step aside and let them do the work to “produce” the vision. The leader needs to give them the authority and responsibility to do the work necessary in order to bring his or her vision to fruition.
I witnessed a meeting recently in which the leader brought together a crossfunctional group to brainstorm some marketing campaign ideas for the company. People from different departments assembled and were led through a planned exercise on corporate marketing focus for the following year. The best idea came from a person far removed from the marketing department. She quite innocently blurted out just the right direction and even suggested a great theme for the entire campaign.
If the leaders of this organization had simply called together the “marketing types,” they would have missed a tremendous idea. Or if the leader had done the work alone and not opened it up to input from others, he might not have secured the necessary buy-in from the staff to implement the project. Studies show that when people understand the values and are part of the vision and decision-making process, they can better handle conflicting demands of work and higher levels of stress.
Ron’s Short Review: The word “Decide” actually means to figure out what you’re going to say “No” to. This book helps you figure out how to do a great job saying No.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.A client said to me the other day “No matter what my motives are, everyone else believes I’m making some sort of land grab with my suggestions. How do I get them to see I’m not trying to control things, I’m just trying to come up with some good answers to our problems?”
My answer was to do good anyway. Not a very satisfactory answer in their mind. We want people to see us as being honorable and pure in our motives. They won’t. Our minds are very good at both projecting and remembering. People tend to project their own motives and intentions on others. If they would act in a less than honorable way in this situation they assume you will also.
We also have an interesting memory system that continually revises our memories. If we’ve had experiences in the past with people who didn’t have very good motives or intent, we’ll assume that may be the case here as well.
Do good anyway. It’s our only viable approach to life. We can’t worry about what other people believe our motive to be. We can only do good or not. Do good anyway.
Headlines from a wonderful little book titled Anyway by Kent Keith
Zero Based Budgeting
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.
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.
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.
Feedback. That word alone strikes fear in some and appreciation in others. The word was originally coined during the early days of rocketry. When the rocket scientist pioneers were trying to figure out how to design, build and fly rockets, they quickly found that they could generate enough thrust to make the rockets fly. What they couldn’t do was hit a target. They had to spend more time and brain power developing what they termed “feedback systems” so they could adjust the thrusters to hit the desired target.
If you look around any corporate team, thrust is not usually the problem. There is enough education, experience and drive to accomplish almost any goal. The problem is aligning all of that thrust to hit the desired target. Feedback is needed.
So why do we resist or ignore feedback? Farson tells us “One study shows that people wanted for themselves not something that was missing in them and that others might think important to them to have – but more of what was already their special attribute. When people described what they wanted for themselves, they seldom mentioned qualities that others would later suggest were missing from their personality or performance.”
Leadership teams are filled with people who have been good at what they do. It’s their expertise, knowledge, and productivity that has rewarded them through the years and brought them to a leadership role. The problem is that leadership requires trust, influence, and alignment of goals. Farson puts it this way “The difficulty for all of us is that our absorption with what we do well may blind us to what will enable us to do even better. The particular challenge for managers is to remain mindful that organizations can set themselves up for trouble when they rely solely on the things they are already doing well and fail to see what they really need to do.”
We seldom need feedback on our technical skills or expertise. We need feedback to get better at leadership which includes building trust, aligning goals and creating a commitment to the overall good of the team and company.
Feedback is required to hit a target. What’s your target? Are you soliciting the needed feedback?
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.
Is your fingerprint unique or is it just like everyone else’s? Without even know you I know what your answer will be. Why would the FBI keep a database of fingerprints if they were not unique enough to identify every person on the planet?
One of the books I’ve read recently is Idiot Brain by Dean Burnett and one statement in there struck this chord with me. If we assume and accept the concept that we each have a unique fingerprint that’s simply made up of a few swirls, curves and lines, why would we think that two brains that are infinitely more complex than a fingerprint reach the same conclusion or see things in exactly the same way or start with a common set of beliefs and assumptions. That’s ridiculous.
We are complex, messy human beings. Our backgrounds and experiences are all different. And if we are complex, messy human beings, how much more so is a team of people.
I remember working with one team when the first day of a three-day team building session was a disaster. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. All night I kept running through the issues and looking for the cause of their inability to come together as a team. I would think to myself, they’re smart, they’re experienced, they’re well intentioned, what’s the problem. Smart, experienced, well intentioned… Smart, experienced, well intentioned… Finally, about 4am it hit me. They’re smart! That was the issue. For every problem that hit the table, they could almost instantly come up with a list of variables that was overwhelming. And then, because they were smart, they would be totally convinced that they’re personal view of the issue was the only correct view. After all, they were smart.
We are complex, messy people who make up even more complex and messy teams. So how do we cope?
Aristotle in his four levels of happiness describes level 4 (the highest level of happiness) happens when there is Truth, Love, Beauty and Unity.
In a team we must have great respect for each person’s perspective. We’re complex, messy people. Each of us has a perspective that is true as far as we can see. Honoring the fact that each person has a perspective that should be understood and valued is the first step.
The concept being used today that would most closely parallels what Aristotle was implying is Psychological Safety. When the team environment is psychologically safe, there is great respect for each other, confrontation of ideas is often and easy, everyone takes responsibility for group decisions, the team talks openly about mistakes and problems, not just successes and above all, there is a lot of humor and laughter.
The word used here refers to elegance and simplicity. Smart people tend to make things more complex. Wise people tend to simplify.
After hearing everyone’s perspective on an issue, demonstrating the patience and kindness it takes to fully understand and integrate those perspectives and then simplifying the issue down to the basic core, unity has a much better chance of being accomplished. Teams that build great unity are the happiest (and most productive).
We’re complex, messy people. It takes a great process to get at the “truth”, great love to appreciate and understand each person’s perspective, a great effort to simplify things to their most elegant form (a lot more energy and brain power than it does to make things complex) and a great desire to move forward in unity. But it also provides great happiness.
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.
Last week, we began to unpack what builds up healthy team dynamics. You can read part I here. This week, we continue with part II.
In his book The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book in the series The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien describes the camaraderie of a diverse group banded together by a common cause. Called “the fellowship of the ring,” their quest is to destroy the power of the Dark Lord by destroying the ring in which that power resides. Though they differ in nearly every way—racially, physically, temperamentally—the fellowship is united in its opposition of the Dark Lord. In a section omitted in the movie, a heated conflict breaks out among the crusaders. Axes are drawn. Bows are bent. Harsh words are spoken. Disaster nearly strikes the small band. When peace finally prevails, a wise counselor observes, “Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”
Conflict causes estrangement within teams, even the best teams. Therefore, managing conflict is at the heart of the dilemma of the leader who has good relations with individual team members but cannot get the group to work together.
Rivalry causes division. Debate causes hurt feelings or a sense of not being heard or understood. How does a leader keep an aggressive person and a person who easily withdraws engaged?
Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann created the Conflict Mode Instrument, which is “designed to assess an individual’s behavior in conflict situations.” It measures people’s behavior along two basic dimensions: “(1) assertiveness—the extent to which an individual attempts to satisfy his or her concerns, and (2) cooperativeness—the extent to which an individual attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns. These two dimensions of behavior can be used to identify five specific methods of dealing with conflicts.”7 The methods are described as follows:
Leaders need to use the peacemaking qualities defined by the two pillars of humility and endurance to bring conflict to the highest level of resolution: collaboration. The cooperative environment means “I need to be humble.” The assertive environment means “I need to endure.” The two pillars, taken together, cause people to listen, yet hold firm in solving conflict through collaboration. When collaborating, individuals seek to work with others to find a solution that satisfies all parties. It involves digging into hidden concerns, learning, and listening but not competing.
It is interesting to watch privately held companies that seek to go public. They hire IPO (Initial Public Offerings) coaches who work hard with the CEO, CFO, and COO to train them to attract investors. They work with these leaders to help them say the right things in order to sell their companies. They teach them which messages work and which do not.
Our question: “Why don’t companies do the same thing with employees?”
If you do a quick study on employee relations over the last several decades, we think you will discover that how employees are viewed and described has moved along a continuum from workers to commodities to assets. We do not believe that referring to employees as “assets” is a satisfactory description because so many leaders look at assets as disposable or upgradable. Leaders and companies would be more successful in building organizations if they thought of their employees as “investors.”
Leaders need to give their people the same compelling we’re-a-great-company-and-here’s-why-and-where-we-are-going reasons for success that are promoted to IPO investors or current stockholders.
Leaders need to ask, “How can we get employees excited about what we are doing?” This approach is basic to team building and goes beyond vision and mission. It’s a way to engage the greatest resource of people—their energy!
Alan Loy McGinnis, in his book Bringing Out the Best in People, tells us, “Talk may be cheap, but the right use of words can generate in your followers a commodity impossible to buy…hearts on fire.”
Isn’t that what all leaders want—team members with hearts ablaze for the company’s vision and goals? The leaders certainly want investors who are loyal, happy, and motivated to give resources. Treating your employees as investors will produce similar results.
Often, the basic question from leaders is reduced to “How do I build teams without blowing the place up?” Following are some suggestions.
This book is centered on eight principles of successful leadership. What we call the “two pillars”—the key principles that support and are intertwined with the others—are humility and endurance. A leader who desires to build a great team must first become a leader of humility and endurance. Pride and despair always force leaders to choose incorrect methods and solutions.
It is difficult to build a team when you need to be the center of attention, the only voice, the only one with an idea, and the only one who can make a decision. It is also difficult to build a team when, at every sour turn, the team stumbles and fails or doesn’t learn from failure. Endurance means pushing through struggles together until the results are positive. Leaders, by the way they respond to crisis and chaos, often cause teams to quit sooner than necessary.
Michael Gershman, in his book Getting It Right the Second Time, squeezes forty-seven case studies into 256 pages. All teach one lesson: humility. And one credo: Try anything. Keep trying. Maybe you’ll get it right someday. Endurance.
The two pillars, humility and endurance, produce leaders who are ready to excite, energize, and develop teams.
The business world has begun to see the need for entirely new models of management in order to succeed in regaining and defending competitiveness in today’s world economy. The old paradigm of management that had guided the U.S. economy since the rise of the railroads and the large corporations of the Industrial Revolution no longer seems to work. Firms struggled to remake themselves in order to be competitive.
Today we live in a rapidly changing postindustrial society that is becoming increasingly complex and fluid. It is an environment that requires decision making and sometimes rapid change within organizations. Surviving and thriving in this rapidly changing landscape becomes a function of an organization’s ability to learn, grow, and break down institutional structures within the organization that impede growth. Organizations that are ideologically committed to growth and change will be at an advantage in the postindustrial era.
In his book Leading Change, John Kotter explains how leaders can effectively communicate change in their organizations. All of us at one time or another fully understand the confusion caused by change. Kotter writes,
Because the communication of vision [change] is often such a difficult activity, it can easily turn into a screeching, one-way broadcast in which useful feedback is ignored and employees are inadvertently made to feel unimportant. In highly successful change efforts, this rarely happens, because communication always becomes a two-way endeavor.
Even more important than two-way discussion are methods used to help people answer all the questions that occur during times of change and chaos. Clear, simple, often-repeated communication that comes from multiple sources and is inclusive of people’s opinions and fears is extremely helpful and productive.