On Leadership

Two types of networks: ideas and action

2012-02-15T20:53:00.000-08:00

Andrew Revkin posted a lengthy but quite intriguing commentary from Andrew Hargadon, a University of California, Davis, researcher focused on the roots of innovation. Essentially, Hargadon says that innovation needs to move through two types of networks: ideas networks and action networks. I will admit that I am firmly in the ideas networks realm.

Hargadon notes that an idea has to go through a process of evolution and change. This is the idea network where one collects a variety of ideas and even shares his/her ideas with others to create better ideas. In many organizations, that’s where it stops, right after the brainstorming session. If it doesn’t get pushed into the next network, the idea remains just that – and idea.

This is where action networks kick in. Work gets assigned, supplies are bought, people are hired, products are manufactured, strategies are implemented, etc. In other words, action starts to take place. This is also a different group of people in many organizations or communities.

It is this key transition that makes the difference between idea and reality. When you start thinking of new ideas, start thinking of who is going to be part of your action network. Who will help you make your ideas a reality. It is this second vision that makes good leaders great leaders.

Beyond the Golden Rule

2011-12-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

We all know the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I had never given it much thought beyond the obvious admonition that we should be nice to other people lest they treat me badly. Recently, I learned about that rule taken to its next logical step: The Platinum Rule.

The Platinum Rule is a book by Dr. Tony Alessandra. I haven't read the books, but I like the summary Allesandra shares here. It goes like this: Treat others the way they want to be treated.

At first glance, it may sound like the same thing, right? Well, not really. It’s a matter of perspective. The Golden Rule is said from my perspective. If I follow it, I’m telling people how I want things done. The Platinum Rule is me taking into consideration how YOU want to be treated.

Used properly, this can transform you at the personal and professional level. For example, should I focus on how I want to be treated or on how my family wants to be treated? Which will help to build more harmony and peace at home? Which do I control? At work, should I focus on how I want my team to treat me or on how they want to be treated? Which do I control? Which will create a better teamwork environment?

It can change the nature of your relationship with the people around you.

An effective leader looks at how he/she deals with their team, making sure they feel like they really are part of a team rather than just employees assigned to you. This puts a lot of responsibility on the leader. But, that’s why you are the leader.

7 Life Lessons You Can Learn From 'Star Trek'

2011-11-29T07:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, I love "Star Trek." But that headline is not mine, unfortunately. David Borgenicht posted a neat commentary by that title.

He holds, and I agree, that you can learn some good leadership lessons from "Star Trek." These are the 7 points he makes:

"1. The best way to travel is to boldly go where no one has gone before." From a new restaurant to a new career, this will take you to new places.
"2. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few--or the one." You are not the center of the universe or even the world.
"3. Expressing your emotions is a healthy thing." There are times when you have to let it out.
"4. When estimating how long a job will take, overestimate--and when you do better your captain will always be impressed." Yes, Scottie always restarted the engines with seconds to spare.
"5. Wearing red makes you a target." Think of ideas as color-coded.
"6. When you don't know what to say, pause." It wasn’t just bad acting (though there was some of that) that made Kirk a great negotiator.
"7. The most powerful force in the universe is friendship." Why else would you want to save the galaxy?

Whether you’re trying to save the universe, your business or a local park, these lessons will make your journey a little easier to handle.

How To Think Creatively

2011-11-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

According to a post by Tony Schwartz on the Harvard Business Review blog page, a century’s worth of research has produced some agreement on what leads to creative thinking. Schwartz discusses the left-right brain connections and also has four stages.

“1. Saturation: Once the problem or creative challenge has been defined, the next stage of creativity requires absorbing one's self in what's already known. Any creative breakthrough inevitably rests on the shoulders of all that came before it.

2. Incubation: The second stage of creativity begins when we walk away from a problem. Incubation involves mulling over information, often unconsciously.

3. Illumination: Ah-ha moments — spontaneous, intuitive, unbidden — characterize the third stage of creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? I'm guessing it's not when you're sitting at your desk, or consciously trying to think creatively. Rather it's when you're doing something else, whether it's exercising, taking a shower, driving or even sleeping.

4. Verification: This stage is about challenging and testing the creative breakthrough you've had. Scientists do this in a laboratory. Painters do it on a canvas. Writers do it by translating a vision into words. How do you do this?”

More importantly, this all takes practice. Like all important skills, it needs to be practiced.

Would You Move Away From A Burning Car?

2011-09-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

If you were next to a burning car, assuming there’s no one inside, would you move away? 99% of us would. But, just how far away would you move?

There are two general strands of thought in motivation methods: people move away from something (getting fired, losing the house, getting another heart attack, etc.) or people move toward something (a raise, a bigger house, a new car, etc.). The problem with the first one is that it tends to be short-term.

When that car starts to burn, people in the crowd move quite differently. Some will run away as fast and as far as they can, leaving the scene before the cops can get there to ask questions. Some will walk briskly away. Some will just saunter off a few steps. Most will move a safe distance away, turn around and stare at the car to discuss what happened. A small few will remain too close and get injured or even killed when the gas tank finally explodes.

When the boss comes in and announces that the unit is not producing where it should be and that some people will get fired if performance doesn’t improve, the employees will behave like the crowd and the burning car. Some will really start producing as fast and as much as they can. Some will start producing enough to keep their jobs, but not much more than that. A few will not produce enough and get reprimanded and even fired.

The other problem with this approach to motivation is that it is the easiest thing to do: threaten people with something terrible. It only moves people so far. You have to keep doing it over and over again, and then it becomes a very negative environment.

Moving people toward something is much harder. Which is why most managers don’t do it. You have to know your people and know how their own goals intersect with your organization’s goals. It’s more targeted and requires long-term thinking. That’s hard. Leadership is hard. It requires thinking.

On the other hand,there's the rare organization where people work together to pull everyone away from getting fired, like the crowd that rushed to save a man under the car. That would be a great organization to work for. Is your organization like that?

The answer is not in the spreadsheet...it's in the PowerPoint®

2011-09-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

I use that phrase sometimes: the answer is not in the spreadsheet, it's in the PowerPoint®.

Both really do similar things. They take information and data and organize it. One looks at it in the micro view and the other in the macro view. The spreadsheet provides the dots. The PowerPoint® connects them. This assumes you've done it well. While the meat is in the spreadsheet, people will be able to see the answer in the PowerPoint®.

Good leaders use both effectively but show the answer in terms that are easy to understand and absorb in PowerPoint®. The spreadsheet is the back up when people want details. If all you show is the spreadsheet, it will overwhelm most people. If all you show is the PowerPoint®, it will leave doubts about the details. Effective leaders communicate with both.

Choose your tools well, practice your use of both and use them sparingly.

What's your organizational chart look like?

2011-09-08T06:48:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin has an interesting take on the organizational chart. I like the ones describing Microsoft and Apple. I assume Steven Jobs is the red dot in the Apple chart.

The Microsoft one is particularly telling because it has each unit pointing guns at the other units within Microsft! The Oracle one shows way more lawyers than engineers.

In many organizations, instead of arrows showing connections, you might actually include barbed-wire fences and moats between units. In other units, you might show open doors or even no boxes at all.

So, what's your organizational chart look like? More importantly, how does it really work? Instead of arrows and lines, how would you draw your organization and then your unit within the organization?

The actual way an organizational chart works is not a function of its legal formation. It is a result of the leader's style and what he or she allows or not to happen between individuals and units. What atmosphere are you creating with your leadership style?

Never ask for a raise

2011-09-06T12:31:00.001-07:00

Never ask for a raise. Ask for a raise wrapped in a challenge that will stretch your capabilities.

Chance Favors The Connected Mind

2011-09-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnson has a short but very informative ">video about where ideas come from.

He talks about how some ideas take time to come together and develop. Once they come together, it seems like a stroke of lightning.

Following Steven's line of thought, I will revert to the old Mexican saying, "El diable sabe mas por viejo que por diablo." (The devil knows more because he's so old than because he's a devil.)

Innovation, like good leadership, sometimes takes time to mature.

Steve Jobs as Leader

2011-08-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

All organizations are really about people: the people who work there, their idiosyncrasies, their relationships, what they contribute, how they work or don't work well together and so on. Of course, it is all guided from the top. The person/people at the top set that entire environment.

So, Steve Jobs created that environment of a very tight leadership structure with a distinctive culture (the relationships). If he did it well and imparted his approach to those around him, it will continue. If not, it will last for a while and then fade.

In this case, the true test of whether Steve Jobs was a great leader and not just a genius at creating and developing great products will be told in the future. He has already cemented his genius in design. His genius in leadership will be defined in whether Apple can continue as successfully in the future.

In a sense, leadership is practicd in the now but defined in the future.

The Perfect Job Description

2011-08-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

If you could create your ideal job description, what would it be like?

What would you be doing? What type of work? What kind of people would you require to be part of your work? What would be the limitations and boundaries on your job? What kind of supervision would demand? What kind of leadership would you work under? What would your environment look like? Where would it be? It’s your job. You decide how you want to structure it.

Notice that I did not mention money? I think that the job and what you get paid for it are often not really connected. Besides, that’s not what makes a job enjoyable.

Now, that you’ve written it, it’s time to start creating that job. What would you need to do to create that job? What will it take? How long would it take?

Why would you want to do this exercise? We spend so much time working that it really should be something that is enjoyable. It should be work that is meaningful to you. If it isn’t, why would you continue to tolerate working there unless you have some plan to get to the ideal job.

Our work should be part of our purpose. Without purpose, we cannot be effective leaders.

Design vs Manufacturing

2011-07-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin has a great blog piece today about defining quality. He makes a distinction between two types of quality: quality of manufacturing and quality of design. It’s a lot easier to get to quality of manufacturing. Quality of design is much harder to define and achieve. Guess which we do more of?

Leadership is more about quality of design: the experience of using a product, how much you enjoy working at a business, the real learning when taking a class, the satisfaction you get volunteering in your community or the quality of the dining experience at a restaurant. Not that quality of manufacturing is unimportant. It supports quality of design. Quality of manufacturing should be a means to get to quality of design. Good leadership takes both into account but understands which is the priority.

Short-term Change Leads To Long-term Results

2011-07-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard it many times: I can’t change. That’s just the way I am!

It’s a simple excuse for not making changes. On the other hand, I’ve also seen people who try to do a complete and very dramatic wholesale change focusing on numerous items. My advice has always been to focus one or two things to change in your life, be it personal or professional. It is the small, cumulative changes that are easier to manage and more likely to be long-term successes.

Going for a large-scale transformation (diet, exercise, sleep, work habits, education goals, spiritual goals, etc.) is often overwhelming and less likely to be successful, long-term change. Humans, like many other creatures, tend to deal better with incremental, focused changes.

Whether you are seeking to end bad habits or start good ones, it seems to be best to pick one or two and work on those. Once you have those more or less under control, then you can move on to the next.

In this TED presentation, Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google, offers a simple approach to making changes in your life, one thing at a time. As he points out, after the 30 days, the change has likely become permanent.

Whether you’re trying to change your diet or your poor communication skills, focus on one item that you change for 30 days. Then, see your progress at the end of period and see how much longer you can keep it up after that. You will likely find that maintaining the change will be fairly easy.

If you want to improve your leadership skills, make it a 6- or 12-month plan. Identify 6 or so key changes you want to make in your life. Start with the most important one and go. The next month, go on to the next one and so on. Hopefully, in one year, you will have made some significant changes. You many not make each change completely, but you will be well on your path of improved leadership. You will have some failures, but you can always start a new calendar any day of the year.

Innovation's Nine Critical Success Factors

2011-07-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

Mark Sebell and Jay Terwilliger, managing partners at Creative Realities, Inc., a Boston-based innovation management collaborative, argue that your group needs to have some basic structure in place to innovate productively, in a post at the Harvard Business Review. They cite nine factors. See how your organization rates on these:

1. A compelling case for innovation.
2. An inspiring, shared vision of the future.
3. A fully aligned strategic innovation agenda.
4. Visible senior management involvement.
5. A decision-making model that fosters teamwork in support of passionate champions.
6. A creatively resourced, multi-functional dedicated team
7. Open-minded exploration of the marketplace drivers of innovation.
8. Willingness to take risk and see value in absurdity.
9. A well-defined yet flexible execution process.

Check out the full descriptions in the HBR post. Rate your organization from 1 to 10, with ten being outstanding.

Imagine

2011-06-10T13:20:00.001-07:00

That's all, just IMAGINE.

Spend a few minutes IMAGINING, then get back to whatever you were doing.

Innovation: critical in a down economy

2011-06-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

In a bad economy, cutting costs becomes the first tool organizations resort to when they try to keep their heads above water. The creative group is among the first to go and last to be returned. That is likely a mistake. If anything, the creative team should be kept because you really need to focus on developing new products and services – or at least that’s what PricewaterhouseCooper’s survey of 1200 CEOs from around the world revealed.

“Innovation, along with increasing their existing business, now outstrips all other means of potential expansion, including moving into new markets, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures and other alliances,” the survey determined. The CEOs “believe innovation will generate ‘significant’ new revenue and cost reduction opportunities over the next three years…(M)ore than 40 per cent of CEOs believe their greatest opportunities for growth come from spawning new products and services.”

The study also contents that “the drive for innovation must arise from the CEO and other executive leadership by creating a culture that is open to new ideas and systematic in its approach to their development.”

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the innovation process can be broken down to four phases: Discovery, Incubation, Acceleration and Scale. The study also identifies seven misconceptions about the innovation process:
• Innovation can be delegated. Not so. The drive to innovate begins at the top. If the CEO doesn't protect and reward the process, it will fail.
• Middle Management is the ally of innovation. Managers are not natural champions of innovation. They tend to reject new ideas in favor of efficiency.
• Innovative people work for the money. Establishing a culture that embeds innovation in the organization will attract and retain creative talent.
• Innovation is a lucky accident. Successful innovation most often results from a disciplined process that sorts through many ideas.
• The more open the innovation process, the less disciplined. Advances in collaborative tools, like social networking, are accelerating open innovation.
• Businesses know how much innovation they need. Leaders must calculate their potential for inorganic growth to determine their need to innovate.
• Innovation can't be measured. Leadership needs to identify its ROII--Return on Innovation Investment.

Avoiding the Gotcha Approach

2011-04-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

It starts out as an innocent statement or question. It seems so innocent, you don’t really think about the answer.

Them: I think we should integrate our approach.

You: Yes, I think we should.

Seems so innocuous and rhetorical that you don’t really think about it. For some people, that would be the end of it. But, some people like to use that as a trap. Like a trap, it’s so unassuming that you don’t realize that there’s another question coming.

Them: So, I noticed that you did not include the western region in your presentation.

No matter how you answer that, it will look like your answers are inconsistent – Gotcha! This is particularly troublesome if it is done in public or in front of other people. You get embarrassed and are seen as either incompetent or a liar.

The more direct and professional approach would be for them to have asked directly why the western region was not included.

Them: I noticed that the western region was not included in your presentation. What were your thoughts on that?

It gets directly to the point and isn’t loaded with subterfuge. However, some people enjoy using the Gotcha approach to dealing with people. It’s a way of pointing out that they are smarter than you and a way to keep people in line by setting them up for a contradiction. It creates suspicion and distrust in the atmosphere. It's a way to hammer and intimidate people. They seem to take pleasure in pointing out other people's errors and inconsistencies, especially in public.

As a leader, honesty and transparency has to be a key element of your relationship with the people around you. Avoid the gotcha questions. If you have a question, ask it directly. Ask it as non-judgmentally as possible. Treat people with respect and compassion. Don’t make them out to be something they are not.

11 Words for 2011

2011-04-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

Author and political consultant Frank Luntz offers 11 Phrases and Words for effective communinication. Check out this clip from Morning Joe. It's a good primer for leaders to learn from. Check out the book Win.

The Parable of the Five Gorillas

2011-03-28T15:20:00.001-07:00

This is a story I’ve heard in several forms.

A scientist, according to the story, did an experiment with five gorillas housed in a cage. The scientist hung a bunch of bananas in the cage where the gorillas could not reach them. Then a large tree branch was put up against the wall close to the bananas. One gorilla figured out that he could climb the branch and reach the bananas. But, just as it was about to grab them, the scientist drenched all the gorillas with cold, frigid water. There was chaos. Later, the same gorillas tried to get to the bananas. Again, the scientist covered them with cold water. This went on several more times until at least one of the gorillas made the connection between reaching for the bananas and the cold water.

At the next attempt, that gorilla attacked the one who was trying to get the bananas. The others joined in when it became clear that reaching for the bananas caused the water to start. After that, none of the gorillas tried to get the bananas.

Later, the scientist took out one of the gorillas and included a new one that had not seen what was going on in the cage. As you might think, the new gorilla tried to get the bananas. Of course, the other gorillas attacked it when it tried to do so. They managed to stop it before the water started. It learned not to try to get the bananas. The scientist then removed another of the original gorillas and included a new one. Well, the process repeated itself, including the first new gorilla joining in the attack, even though it did not know why.

The scientist removed the original gorillas one by one, replacing them with a new gorilla every time. Each time the reaction was the same. The new gorilla was attacked when they tried to get the bananas. Eventually, all the original gorillas were replaced. All this time, none of the new gorillas had been sprayed with water. Even though they did not know why, all the replacement gorillas kept attacking the new gorilla every time they tried to get the bananas.

Why? Well, they had all learned, “That’s how we do things around here. That’s how it’s always been done.”

Does that sound like your organization? A leader and potential leaders should determine why people do things the way they do. Maybe there was a good reason at the time or maybe it was just what somebody decided a long, long time ago and it may not be applicable now.

The Paralysis of Uncertainty and the FAQ Office

2011-03-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

As I have commented before, having too many choices can be paralyzing. Uncertainty is another state of mind that can lead to paralysis.

You’ve heard this phrase countless times, a lot more lately it seems: In these uncertain times... I get the unstated threat in that statement. You don’t know what’s coming. It could be good, but don’t count on it, the ad implies. It more than likely will be bad for you, the ad seems to be saying. I get that.

But, where does that sense of foreboding come from? Currently, it seems to be coming from a number of areas: government budget cuts (at all levels) that may impact government employees and the businesses that service those government agencies. It comes from businesses going through difficult times. It comes from the potential for nuclear fallout. It comes from the growing turmoil all over the world. It comes from the growing turmoil in our political environment. It comes from, well, from whatever it is that is bothering you.

Your office or organization is likely going through some uncertainty. The danger is that uncertainty can lead to paralysis. Not knowing, for example, whether you will have a job in six months, some people are paralyzed, unable to really focus and do their work. Why does this happen? Likely, this is an information gap, oftentimes fueled by rumors.

For example, government employees are being threatened with layoffs across the board. The threat is not overt. It is implied as administrators are absorbed with looming budget cuts without really knowing how much their budgets are being cut. Employees want administrators to tell them if their jobs will be safe, but the administrators can’t tell their employees what they don’t know, hence the uncertainty. As a result, there’s a lot of rumors that sound like this: “I heard that they’re going to cut _____________ (insert the latest rumored target).”

This is where good leadership needs to step in and address the rumors. Actually, this something that good leadership should always do, regardless of what the business environment is like. Every organization should have an FAQ/Rumors Office to address these issues. Obviously, some things can’t be known until things like budgets get settled. But, you can tell people how you are planning to respond, possible scenarios and options for employees. The worst you can do is not tell people anything. Your silence seems to reinforce rumors and fears. And the paralysis sets in, dragging down motivation and productivity, all adding to the downward spiral of the organization.

Your FAQ/Rumors Office (FRO) doesn’t have to be a large office. It can be one person who can answer questions or just develop an FAQ sheet to address the current uncertainty. You may not be able to answer all the questions and fears, but you can try to limit the paralysis. In some cases, if your FRO does it well, it could actually spur motivation and productivity.

Living life to the fullest

2011-03-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

There seems, to me, to be quite a lot being written about living life to the fullest. My first thought when I hear that is of someone going full throttle for 22 hours, sleeping a few minutes and then going off on an adventure to the Andes, all the while running a business through their smart phone and meeting people way more fabulous than anyone I have ever met.

I thought about that. What would “living my life to the fullest” mean? Would that mean that I would be running off to SXSW to mingle with all these alternative bands, hanging out at bars till dawn, talking about new Internet-based models for the music industry? Sounds neat.

No, it doesn’t sound neat for me. Maybe for someone else, but not for me.
What would living life to the fullest really mean to me? Honestly, it would be a mix of many things, but it likely would not be about that full-throttle feel that many people tend to give to the idea of living life to the fullest.

Perhaps it’s a function of age and what life means to me, perhaps it’s just a different perspective/personality. What is exciting to me and interesting is different from what others find interesting and exciting. I enjoy being with my family. A family vacation is fulfilling, so is a good dinner or bbq with them. My book sale is thrilling. Playing with my granddaughter is more fun than climbing a mountain and certainly more enjoyable to me than hanging out in a bar till five in the morning.

As much as I am sure that looking out over the beach on a small Caribbean island is magical and awe-inspiring, it does not hold my attention as much as looking at the bench I just finished building.

Living life to the fullest should not necessarily be about the speed of living but about enjoying the moments. For leaders, that means enjoying the experience and not necessarily with the intensity and speed of leadership.

In the end, however, one has to decide what living life to the fullest means to them. What does it mean to you?

A Quick Primer On Presenations

2010-12-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe it's not a primer, but it does deal with presentations.

Fast Comparny expert blogger Mark Suster lists the four types (very generally) of people that you deal with in meetings and presentations. He offers some good pointers here for the personality characteristics.

The only real problem is trying to identify the four types, especially when going in cold. He offers some suggestions on how to deal with each type. It's a skill to be able to respond quickly to the different types, but it's worth it.

Let the future take care of you

2010-12-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

When you take care of “now,” the “future” will generally take care of you.

I’ve discussed before 8 to Be Great: The 8-Traits That Lead to Great Success by Richard St John. I’ve been re-reading it. Like any good work (book, film, art, person), every time you look at it again, you can gain something new. As my mother would say, every time she saw The Godfather, she would always see something she had not noticed before. By the way, my mother never really knew English, but she still enjoyed watching The Godfather.

In my latest read, I came away with the idea that you can only control what you’re doing now. If you do what you’re good and passionate at, you don’t have to worry about the future. The future will take care of you.

Go back to the fundamentals. First, read the book, then follow the 8 steps. Don’t worry about the future so much. You can’t control it. You can only control what you’re doing today.

Motivation versus Leadership

2010-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

I am not a motivational speaker. I tried it once. I failed miserably. I learned my lesson. I should have known better. I knew my skill was in leadership training and development, not in motivation. I know the difference and I should have passed on the request.

I had someone go through one of my leadership sessions. They were impressed and thought I could do the motivational presentation.

I really couldn’t.

The audience had to get up and stretch after my presentation. Maybe that I spoke after dinner had something to do with it, but I don’t think so. So, I’ve avoided motivational presentations ever since. I know I’m not Tony Robbins. I won’t get you to walk in your bare feet over red, hot coals. I may not even get you to clean up your office.

The take away here is that a good leader (or trainer) needs to know where their strengths are. I could probably get better at being a motivational speaker, but that’s not really where I want to be right now. I want to get better as a leadership trainer. That’s where I’ll stay for now.

The Leadership App

2010-12-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

There’s an “app” for just about everything. The neat thing about apps is that you can download them to your phone and have the app accessible at any given moment. Leadership is a lot like that.

My son, for example, has more apps than he really knows what to do with. He has to clear a few apps every so often. It gets too much to keep track. It’s no joke that he needs an app to keep track of his apps.

The neat thing about leadership skills is that they’re always at your finger tips. You carry it around with you all the time. Sometimes, it seems we’re always trying to download a new skill: learn a new way to do this or that, a new approach to handling this problem or that, and so on and so on. But, like my son’s phone, we can overload and fail to keep track of our skills or trying to decide which one to use in this instance.

In leadership, we need to keep our apps down to the essential few that we really need. Keep honing those until you don’t even need to think about it, so that it comes naturally without out having to search for that app.

Positively Getting To The “A-ha!” Moment

2010-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

In leadership, problem-solving is an essential skill. Actually, problem-solving is an essential skill for everyone. New research points to developing a positive attitude to help you develop critical insight to solve problems.

According to a New York Times article by Benedict Carey, Northwestern University neuroscientist Mark Beeman and graduate student Karuna Subramaniam conducted a study which “found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine.”

The two researchers showed college students a Robin Williams video and then asked them to solve puzzles. According to the researchers, the humor creates a positive mood that allows the brain to connect the dots more easily. “The students solved more of the puzzles over all, and significantly more by sudden insight, compared with when they’d seen a scary or boring video beforehand,” Carey writes.

“You’re not only thinking more broadly, you’re literally seeing more,” said Adam Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, commenting about the study’s results.

You can test your insight here.

The take away here is that keeping a positive mood, even through humor, would help you when facing the small and large challenges.

Where is your event horizon?

2010-12-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

It’s something that anyone who has taken a walk through the woods knows. Standing at ground level, you can’t see very far into the distance. Standing on a hill, you can for see what’s happening for miles and miles toward the horizon. I use the phrase event horizon.

The same applies to an individual’s view of life. How far is your event horizon? How far ahead do you see things? How far ahead do you focus your vision?

Some people’s event horizon is very short. For example, when we’re young, we tend to have a very short event horizon. We may only see a few minutes into the future, maybe even a couple of hours, but little beyond that. Tomorrow is lost to us. As we get older, become teenagers, our event horizon may still only be this instance, into the weekend maybe. Good luck getting most teenagers to think beyond that. As we get older, our event horizon starts to get further out, years out even. We start thinking about our kids’ college, retirement, mortgage, etc.

Our event horizon reflects in our work and leadership style. For example, younger employees who are less invested In your organization, may seem less motivated or dedicated, the slacker mentality that many employers and bosses decry, whether it is deserved or not. It seems that their event horizon isn’t focused very far beyond tonight or the next weekend. Some managers don’t seem to see beyond the next quarter’s numbers or today’s stock price. In either case, their focus is on what they can get today. Rather than looking at the long term, both these groups fail to look beyond their immediate gratification.

It is part of what got the country into the mess it’s in economically and in Iraq and Afghanistan. People failed to look beyond the immediate and failing to account for the long-term. It is why we have gridlock in Washington D. C. because they’re really just focused on the next election. It’s why schools focus on the next round of student test scores.

It is the effective leader who takes on the long event horizon, looking at where the organization is going to be in 10-20-30 years. It takes practice and effort to look at the distant event horizon. It means that you have to stop looking down at your feet and pick up your eyes. Too many people are focused on today’s agenda only. It’s easy to look like you’re working hard because you’re only focusing on the to-do list. It’s a lot harder and time consuming to look at the distant event horizon.

How far ahead are you casting your event horizon?

Cat Takes All

2010-11-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

It’s a simple challenge.

“The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” Which is the most effective strategy for your team to use?

It’s a challenge I sometimes use in my leadership training sessions when groups start examining their team’s approach to strategy. It essentially asks about their strategic perspective. Do they want to be the first in their field to try something, to look for the newest technology or practice to achieve their goals (the early bird)? Or, do they want to let others take the risks first to find out if something works and then adopt the new approach after someone else has tested it.

One group I just did this with, chose a different approach, “Cat takes all!”
As they said, it is thinking outside the circle. It is a balanced but challenging approach. The group hoped to find those points where they can adopt a new technology or approach when the risk is not that great and wait at other points to let others try the new technology or approach. The true challenge is figuring out which is which.

It is an attractive approach, trying to take the best of both approaches. Being the cat is a good option because the cat can eat both the bird and the mouse. However, it is the truly nimble and cunning cat that will catch both the bird and the mouse at the same time.

Not that it is impossible, but it must be truly nimble.

So, how nimble is your organization? Is it the early bird, the second mouse or the cat that watches carefully and jumps on both?

Lessons from The Blob

2010-09-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

In my leadership seminars, I play a game called Blob. It's pretty much like what it sounds like, a take-off on the movie. In a defined space, one person starts out as the Blob. When the Blob touches someone, they become part of the Blob, and so the Blob grows. The larger the Blob grows, the slower it gets. The Blob wants to consumer everything and everyone, but it keeps slowing down as it grows.

Organizations are like the Blob, the bigger they are, the harder it is for them to move quickly. It's hard to be nimble when you have to move 1,000 feet in the same direction. An organization can only move as quickly as its slowest member. So, what makes your team members slow? Do they understand where you're going, really? Do they have the tools and training they need to move quickly? Have you removed all the obstacles that get in the way? Have you made your vision so obviously clear and compelling that they know exactly what you want them to do?

In the game, the fastest players generally are the last to be touched by the Blob. However, the Blob always wins. It may be slow, but eventually the Blob plays to its strengths or it can't catch the last few players. Blob members learn to move together, adjusting their speed and placement to bring everyone along without falling down.

How nimble and fleet-footed is your team? Have you done everything you can and removed as many obstacles as possible to get them moving in the right direction? That's the leader's job.

Manage Yourself

2010-09-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've talked about The Nine Critical Leadership Skills: Manage Yourself; Learn to Communicate; Think and Act Strategically; Learn to Be Creative; Take Action, Risks and Initiative; Learn to Motivate; Handle conflict; Build Teamwork; and, Persevere.

I've talked about The Quick and Dirty Strategy as a quick way to develop a strategic mental attitude. I will return to that in the future. Today, I want to start talking about managing yourself.

Manage yourself.

Unless you’re the King of the Universe, the only person you control is yourself. Manage yourself. There are many books that deal with this, and I can't cover it all, but I want to share a few quick points.

1. Set priorities
•Take some time and think about what your priorities are (See The Quick and Dirty Strategy earlier.)
•Write them down
•Develop a mission statement if it helps you clarify your priorities (I will deal with this in my next post!)
•Develop some specific goals for this year and the next few years
•Figure out how you are going to meet those goals

2. Develop your skills set
•Identify what skills you need to improve
•Develop a specific plan to improve your skills
•Develop a specific plan to practice your skills (See the Power of Practice earlier.)

3. Develop your career path
•Decide where you want to be professionally in a year, three years, five years and ten years
•Work back from each point to today and figure out how you will get there
•What do you need to do: education, training, move, find a new job, expertise, etc.
•Who will you need to help you: spouse, family, friends, coworkers, mentor, etc.
•When will all this happen: give yourself some deadlines to meet each milestone
•Develop some partners to help you get there.
•Caution: the plan will need adjusting along the way. Don’t sweat it. It will happen. Just keep working at it.

4. Keep working at it
•This is an ongoing process
•You will have setbacks
•You will make some changes
•Don’t sweat it.
•Things will get better.

The Nine Critical Skills are interlinked and they work together. Start on it.

What do Sex and Leadership Have in Common?

2010-09-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, what do sex and leadership have in common? Previously, I listed nine critical leadership skills. No, sex was not among those skills, though it is critical for other reasons. One of the skills I noted is the ability/inclination to "Take action, risks and initiatives."

Leadership happens in the doing, not in the studying or reading. Like sex, you can read about leadership, listen to others talk about it, watch others doing it or even role play it. However, it doesn't really make sense until you give it a try yourself. If you don't take action and try it out, you will never master it. You have to take the initiative and try to do something (be a leader) to learn leadership.

Likewise, reading and hearing about it tends to make it seem easy: step one, step two, step three, etc. Once you try it for yourself, you find out how much more difficult it is and how complicated it is. Okay, I'm still talking about leadership here, but it does apply to sex as well.

Take action. Take a risk. Show some initiative. Get involved in something where you have to actually practice leadership. Volunteer for some project, committee, group, team, or volunteer opportunity. You get better at leadership the more you do it and the more diverse opportunities you take on.

The Power of Practice

2010-09-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

When Michael Jordan was at his peak, he stepped away from basketball to give baseball a try. Baseball was his original sport in high school but switched over to basketball in his junior year. After winning three consecutive NBA titles, he decided he wanted to give baseball a try.

He spent one year as a AA baseball player. He was not inspiring. The next year, he returned to basketball. Oh, the return was not that pretty. The first few games, Michael was rusty. He failed to make some easy shots, things that might have been easy before he left basketball.

The lesson here is about practice. As great an athlete as Jordan was when he took up baseball, he had not really practiced those skills in almost 15 years. He had a less than stellar turn as a baseball player. When he returned to basketball, his basketball skills had gotten a little rusty. After a while of practicing basketball again, he returned to his legendary form.

There is another example of the power of practice: Tiger Woods. He is legendary for his daily practice, year-round. It is part of what has made him the best golf player today.

As I said in a blog earlier this year, practice is essential to a good, effective leader. Whatever skill is important and valuable to you should be practiced, practiced, practiced and then practiced some more. From running a meeting to public speaking to project management to relationship cultivation, when you stop doing it on a regular basis, you get rusty and make mistakes.

What skills do you need to practice? What skills are essential to your professional and personal success? Which of those skills got you to where you are now? Which will you need to go forward?

It's the power of practice.

The Quick and Dirty Strategy

2010-09-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

There is a time when every organization (and individual) has to pick their strategy for success -- however they measure success. This is a quick and dirty way to decide what your strategy should be. Of course, you need to be very honest about where you are first before you can get to answer the strategy question. I assume you've done that or already know where you are.

There are only four options.

Survive. This is the organization that is just trying to keep its doors open. They want be able to avoid bankruptcy or foreclosure or the IRS or some other calamity that will shutter the organization. This needs emergency action. Drop everything else and reach for any lifeline.

Maintain. This is the organization that is content with where they are. They don't want or need to do anything really different. They may want to polish or clean it up a little, but nothing truly different.

Grow and Expand. This is the organization that has seen a new vision where they can see new growth, maybe by choice, maybe by necessity. They need to move on to the next level and are willing to do the hard work to do this.

Dominate. This is the organization that has already seen success and wants to move to a position where it is the dominant player in an industry, market, segment, product or service. They want to be the top dog and are willing to do the really hard work to get there.

The strange thing is that some organizations can actually be in all four modes at the same time. Take the auto industry. Some companies have so many lines of models that not all of them are doing well. For some their truck line is doing well, but their midlevel cars are not while their cross-over line has seen demand exploding.
The larger and more diversified the company, the more likely they are to have different divisions or markets at different stages, meaning that they have to have multiple strategy approaches.

Of course, this also applies to the individual. We are always at different levels of success in the different areas of our lives.

For many organizations, once they have taken a good hard look at where they are, the choice of which strategy to pursue should be obvious. The problem comes in when organizations (people, really) are not very honest with themselves about where they are, like the car companies before they had to be bailed out.

Take a good, hard look at yourself and make your choice about which strategy you want to choose for your organization and yourself.

Sharpen you axe

2010-07-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

There are many apocryphal stories about Abraham Lincoln. In one, Abe was challenged to a tree cutting contest by an upstart neighbor. Abe took the challenge. The two met the next day at sunrise in a wooded area and started the contest. The challenger started at a furious pace, taking no breaks, and kept on cutting until the contest was stopped when the sun hit high noon. As expected, Abe won.

Afterward, the competitor went up to Abe and asked, “How was it that you were able to cut more trees? I never took a rest and never stopped swinging my axe, even when my arms were ready to give out. Yet, when I looked over at you, you would stop to take rest?”

Abe responded, “Every time you saw me stop to rest, I was sharpening my axe.”
Abe knew that an axe gets dull with repeated use. The more you use it, the less it cuts. With a sharper axe, Abe was able to cut more trees.

The sharper your tools are, the more you can do. Your tools are your skills. Sharpen your skills on a regular basis. Any skill worth learning is worth practicing and getting better at. Learn new skills. Whether it is people skills or technical skills, the good leader never stops learning and improving their toolbox of good leadership, management and technical skills.

What skills do you need to improve? What new skills should you learn?

The three types of teamwork problems

2010-07-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

There are three types of teamwork problems: the ones you can fix with some work, the ones you can fix with a lot of work and those that can’t be fixed. It really comes down to whether the people on the team want to solve the problem or not, and that determines whether or not the teamwork problem can be fixed.

The first is generally some type of organizational or structural problem: goals are not clear, responsibilities are not clear, people with the wrong talents are on the team, the challenge is too big for the team, there is little or no communication, etc. These are things that can be fixed with some work from the team and management. It may take some time and supervision to get it going.

The second is generally some type of personnel issue: people don’t like each other, there’s mistrust, someone is slacking off, etc. This is harder because people issues are harder to identify and fix. Very few people relish working on personnel issues. However if the team and management really want to get the team moving, these types of problems can be overcome. Training on handling conflict, better communication skills, negotiation skills, and other people-time intensive efforts can handle most of these types of issues.

The third type of problem is also a personnel problem, but one is which the people on the team (or at least one or more of them) do not want to solve the problem. In fact, they may not even see that it is a problem. This is the person who refuses to change. They may have a problem with someone else on the team or the organization and will do whatever it takes to fight them at every opportunity, or some variation of this. This person does not want to solve problems. They want to grind their axe.

Okay, maybe this one can be solved, but it will really take a lot of effort – a long-term effort – to make it work. What you have to ask is whether this effort is really worth it. How long will it delay the team? How much time will you lose in getting your project or work done? What is the impact on the organization?

Solutions here are limited: fire or transfer the problem to another position. Firing is never easy. This is especially difficult in public employment where termination is often a long, difficult process. Transferring the person can also be a problem because other managers likely know that you are trying to move a problem person to their team.

The leader has to make that choice and make it quickly. It is hard to terminate a team member, but sometimes it really has to be done. But, the leader has to move quickly before the team suffers any more problems.

The Wallenda Factor

2010-04-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

During my leadership seminars, I pose a thought challenge to my groups:
I have laid down on the floor a 10-foot long board that is very thick and about 8 inches wide. Can you walk across it? While some people think about trying to see if there is some trick in the question, the answer from everyone is always, “Yes.” Next, I’m going to raise it on some solid blocks about six inches off the ground. Can you walk across it? Again, some people look for the trick, but the answer is yes. Okay, now I’m going to raise it two feet off the ground. Can you walk across it? Now, there is hesitation. A one or two may say they’re afraid of heights. Most everyone says yes.

Now, I’m going to raise the board to six feet. This time, about half say they would not cross the board. When I say I’m raising it to ten feet, the group willing to cross gets smaller. At 20 feet, only one or two says yes. At 30 feet, I rarely get volunteers.

I ask the group, what’s the difference whether you walk the board at two inches or 20 feet? Isn’t it the same? The difference is the Wallenda Factor.

The Wallendas were a family of circus performers known for performing amazing feats on the tightrope without a net. Karl Wallenda, the founder, was once interviewed about what it took to become a tightrope walker. He said they start out training on a rope on the ground and eventually raise it as they get better. As you go higher, Wallenda said, you have to work a little harder, pay attention to more details. You have to take greater care, especially when doing an act that involves other people, as the Wallendas did with one that involved up to seven of them.

According to Karl Wallenda, the only real difference between walking the tightrope a foot off the ground and 20 stories off the ground from one building to another is the risk to you and those working with you. The skills and techniques are pretty much the same, regardless of the height – with some added focus and greater attention.

I use this thought challenge when a group or individual gets to the point where they face a decision about taking on a major project, going for a promotion, taking the plunge and going out on their own to start a business or any number of other challenges they might face.

When you are facing that decision, to take the plunge or not, it is the risk that often holds us back. If you have successfully implemented a project, led a team, managed a department, or even run a small business, then you have the basic skills to move up to another challenge.

It is one thing to know that you still need to build up your skills to take on a challenge and try to work at getting better. Don’t let fear and risk be what controls you.

Take your tools and build

2010-04-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

Woodworking, mechanics, and all those other tinkering past-times are often learned best at the feet (or hands) of someone who knows more than you. If you have ever picked up a saw, a torch or a socket wrench, you probably watched somebody else do it first and learned from them.

Most men learned auto-mechanics and woodworking from a father, an uncle, a grandfather or the shop teacher. I learned my mechanics skills from my older brother, Sabino. We worked on his blue on white 1955 Chevy when I was still in junior high. I read the repair manuals, read about the overhaul procedures, went over the timing specs, and tried to decipher the wiring diagram.

He is still passionate about cars. He still tinkers with them, adjusting this or that. I can’t say that I have the same passion, but at least I can make some of my own repairs. A true care lover, though, goes beyond just repairing things. They make them better. Of course, it used to be easier before computers and the emissions systems clogged up the motor.

My brother —- though he probably wasn’t trying to -— taught me about making things better. He could have stayed with the standard equipment the car had, but he wanted something better, something that would make the car go faster, something that would work better. He would adjust the timing, the spark gap, the gas mixture, adjust and adjust and adjust again. It could always be better, he thought.

For me, it was Mr. Soriente, my junior high shop teacher, who got me started on woodworking. For two years, I worked on simple projects. The culmination was a small cabinet that I still have, some 35 years later. I learned about dado joints, butt joints, and rabbit joints.

From Mr. Soriente, I learned the value of using the best wood you can afford, of building something without nails or screws, and of helping someone else build their project.

I can build shelves, tables, cabinets, cases and a host of things. Granted, they generally aren’t square or plum or level. The doors don’t close correctly. The cuts are crooked. The finish is not quite right. The drawers stick, and it takes me forever to finish a project.

I don’t care that I am a bad woodworker. I enjoy it. I like the smell of cut wood. I like the feel of smooth wood. I linger over the tools in catalogs and online. I look at furniture and wonder how it was made. I work at being a better woodworker. I look at the work others do and see what I can learn from them.

Every one has their passion. Each passion generally requires some essential tools. And each passion has its own lessons. It’s the good leader who can take those lessons and apply them elsewhere in their, their family’s, their profession’s, and their community’s life.

What is your passion? What tools and skills does that require? What lessons have your learned? How can you apply all of them to other parts of your life? How can you use that be a better leader?

That's motivation

2010-04-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

In my leadership training work, there are always questions that keep coming up over and over again. One of these questions concerns motivation and enthusiasm. It comes from business executives, teachers, elected officials, government staff, church volunteers ... that is to say, from virtually everyone. "How can I maintain my enthusiasm and motivation, day in and day out, when I keep running into obstacles and problems?"

It is a serious question. But my response is always the same. "Look to a successful model," I suggest. Having a good role model can be incredibly helpful. I add that we need to see how some people manage to maintain their motivation and enthusiasm every day without letting obstacles and setbacks drain their joy. And this is what I tell them:

Let me start by telling you that I know of one group of people who consistently show incredible enthusiasm every single day of the year. They wake up with smiles on their faces. They're ready to go from the moment they open their eyes. They take on the day as if it were a race. They want to get started where they left off the night before.

If you try to distract them from their goals for the day, it can irritate them, but not for long. They bounce back from setbacks with incredible resiliency. And they do it with a smile.

You don't believe that there's anyone like that? Let me assure you there is.
These people don't know the meaning of the word "no." They believe in "now." No door can remain closed to them for very long, if at all.

They celebrate everything. And they celebrate everything every day! When they succeed, their celebrations can make the Super Bowl look like a tea party.
Although they are dynamos individually, they are a virtual hurricane when they join as a team. They can overwhelm any office they might walk into.

If you thought Ronald Reagan was "the Great Communicator" or Barack Obama drew cameras like a magnet, you haven't seen this group show off their networking skills. If one of them were to walk into your morning staff meeting, all attention would be focused on her instantly. They have a way with words and can talk to anyone as if they were life-long friends. They ask any question that comes to mind and answer your questions with brutal honesty.

Unlike most of us, they have no real need to play phone tag or carry cell phones. They live for the face-to-face contact. They thrive on it.

At the end of the day, they fall asleep knowing they have done their absolute best. They never fret over unfinished lists of things-to-do. They never look to the end of the quarter. They measure success in very different terms than you and I.

I would urge you to go find them and study them. Given an opportunity to study the great leaders – Roosevelt, Churchill, Zapata, Gandhi, Caesar – you would probably want to just stand and watch them, hoping to catch a glimpse of what drove them, listening to their ideas, examining their sheer determination to overcome all challenges.

And so it is with the people I am telling you about. Given a chance, you should listen to them and study them. You will never find a better, clearer model of enthusiasm.

Yes, they do exist. The secret is finding them.

But it really isn't a secret. They meet in the same room every single day. But, I warn you, they will suck you right into their tornado of a world. No one walks into their meetings and leaves the same. Prepare to be taken by the hand, literally, and forced to find your own enthusiasm. It is a challenge some people are not up to. If you really want to learn to maintain your enthusiasm and motivation, go there ... if you dare.

Go look for them.

They're in kindergarten.

Shoes versus groceries

2010-03-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

“When you pay for shoes, it doesn’t hurt, but when you buy groceries it’s really painful.” said one young woman to the other as they paid at the checkout counter ahead of me at the grocery store.

Looking at it from the outside, listening to two women in their early twenties, I could just brush it off as two young, self-centered people more interested in their looks than the more important things of sustenance. But, to a certain extent, we are all like that. We all set our internal priorities and make our decisions accordingly.

For example, I don’t think twice about buying musical equipment for my son because he is good at drumming, and it helps him do better. I also don’t think twice about buying things my wife wants because she’s generally very thorough and doesn’t ask for frivolous things, whether its clothing or things for the house.

I also don’t think very much about buying new woodworking tools when I need them. On the other hand, I constantly put off buying new clothes, even work clothes. I know I need new shoes and maybe a new suit, but I keep putting it off. I have told my wife that it’s painful to spend $35 for a new pair of slacks, but it doesn’t seem to hurt to buy my son a $500 electric piano. Why?

It comes back to my internal priorities. I don’t see much value in new clothes for me, but I see great value in musical instruments for my son or a new blade for my table saw. Looking at it from the outside, I can see that I need to keep my professional appearance up, and that perhaps I need to invest in that some more. Yes, I can see that, but it does not align with my internal priorities. However, there was a time when I spent a large part of my income on new clothes.

Acting as a father, I can sacrifice for my family. I can put myself last for most things. However, as a leader, I have to be able to step outside of myself and my internal priorities. I have to examine my decisions to make sure that I am not letting my priorities get in the way of the right decision.

For example, I am a late adopter of some technologies. While I was among the first in my area to buy the first Mac computers that came out, I was skeptical of faxes, cell phones and email. I put off using them when they first came out. I did not want a cell phone, and I kept avoiding the internet. My wife forced me to get a cell phone, and my bosses forced me to use email. In retrospect, it was my internal priorities that valued face-to-face contact. It was my kids who forced me to use texting. I should have had a blog years ago when I first found out about them. I have had to change my internal priorities about many of those things. It is also jarring to learn that I am behind the times and not adapting to change when I should. It is humbling to ask my sons for direction on some things.

What decisions or choices are you not making because of your internal priorities. Too many teams still shy away from certain technologies or opportunities because of their or their leader’s internal priorities that do not value those technologies or opportunities. Too many companies are still under-technologized (Is that a real word? You understand what I mean.), understaffed, undermarketed, etc.

Too many of our leaders’ priorities were set under different circumstances, in a different economy, under different political circumstances, in different social environment, in a different technological era. It is time for them to look at their internal priorities and listen to what is going on now. A good leader looks at her/his internal priorities on a regular basis to make sure they still apply. While fundamental values always last, circumstances change, and we must adapt to that. Too many organizations, teams, groups, communities and companies are floundering because they remain stuck in a previous mind-frame.

Listen to those people around you who question you and how your do things. Like my sons questioning my refusal to use texting, you may find that their ideas are actually good.

When Dreams Are Deferred

2010-03-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

An elderly man struggles to walk down a hospital hallway, a physical therapist on one side and his daughter on the other, trying to get back his strength after a heart attack. He stops at the end of the hallway, looking out from the fourth floor at a community far different from when he was a young man. In the near distance, there is a newly developed subdivision with a few houses already scattered through the empty lots, other houses still under construction.

“Look, Dad,” says the daughter in Spanish, pointing to the houses under construction. “More houses every day.”

“My father used to do construction work,” the daughter explains to the physical therapist. “He used to make cabinets, finish work, installing the trim, that kind of thing. He used to work hard. He would take on extra work at night and on weekends. He was always working when we were little. Sometimes he even did things like yard work or planting trees and grass for the new houses.” The physical therapist nods, looking down at the worn, gnarled hands that gripped his forearm tightly for balance.

The man trembles slightly as he stands looking out at the houses in the distance, searching to distinguish the workers that were really just a blur in his worn eyes.

“I, I always worked in construction, all my life,” he whispers. “But, my dream was…always…to have my own cabinet shop. It was work I really enjoyed doing. But, I was always working. I had to work to feed my children…to send them to school…to make sure they would not have to leave school to work…to send them to college. I never had time to start my cabinet shop…to make my dream a reality. I was always working. For your children, you will give up anything…even your own dreams so they can make their own dreams.” He turns, walking back down the hall to his room.

Tears stream down the daughter’s face as she looks at the houses. “I never knew that was his dream.”

So, what does this story have to do with leadership?

As leaders, we often have to make a choice about how important our dreams are. When do we have to put our dreams aside for the good of the family, the team, the organization, the company, the community, the nation...the world? It is a hard question, but an important question. What is good for ME is not always good for US. This is obvious in such situations as the credit crisis where some people benefited at the tragic expense of many others.

Good leadership depends on making sure my dreams align with the dreams of the people around me, whatever those dreams are. If they are not, then I have to decide whether I want to change the people around me or change my dreams. Sometimes, your have to change or defer your dreams rather than the people around you. Sometimes, it is the other way around. Sometimes, you have to do both.

The Nine Critical Skills in leadership

2010-03-02T10:14:00.000-08:00

While there are many skills that contribute to being an effective leader, most people tend to isolate a few skills that are the most critical. In my work, I have been able to talk to many people and do extensive research about these critical skills. Additionally, during my training sessions with a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and skill levels, I have repeatedly asked people to identify those skills and behaviors that they see as important in the people that they look up to as leaders. Many of these people have repeatedly identified very similar traits and skills in the people that they admire and respect.

These are skills that can be learned. These are behaviors that can be learned. These are the behaviors and skills that we use in dealing with people.

I am not talking about some of the more internal things about who we are. There are certain things that are either in you or not. The most common of these is honesty. Are you honest or not? I assume that most people are. But I’m not sure that I can train someone to be honest. Most of the time, I deal with adults, fully formed adults. These are not people that I can reform in terms of their internal compass for right and wrong.

Certainly, you can learn new skills in the same way that you can learn to use a new software program or a new technology.

I need to point out that many of these skills are skills that we already have within us, to a certain extent. For example, all of us are communicators, effective communicators, to a certain point. Some us, of course are better than others. However, that does not mean that you cannot improve your skill level. We can all become better public speakers, learning new techniques, new approaches, new ways of reaching an audience.

The same thing holds true for virtually any skill that can be learned over time. And there is a key point that needs to be kept in mind at all times. It is important that you learn about these skills, but is just as important that you practice and improve upon the skills. These are not one time trainings that remain unchanged. These are skills that can be improved constantly. Improvement comes with use and practice. I would urge you to use the skills as often as possible, but to also improve upon them as often as possible.

The list of skills that have been identified as being the most critical are:
• Communication skills
• Think and act strategically
• Be creative
• Take action, risks and initiatives
• Motivate
• Manage yourself
• Handle conflict
• Build teamwork
• Persevere

I have put these more less in order of importance. The first one, communication skills, I think is the most critical. Before you can do anything, you have to be able to share it with the people around you. That is essential. Being able to communicate is the start of leadership. You must be able to communicate your ideas, revisions, plans, intentions and goals. All of these are important. It is also important to be able to listen to people. Not just to talk to them, but to actually listen and dialogue. It is the one where you have to start.
In future posts, I will discuss each of the Nine skills in more detail.
Let me know if you think I’ve left a particular important skill out.

Strategic Leadership

2010-02-26T10:17:00.000-08:00

When I met John Hofmeister, then-president of Shell Oil, about four years ago, I asked him what he actually did. He paused for a second and then responded, “I spend about 60 percent of the time looking outside the company. I have to see what is going on around us with other companies, the government, society and across the world.”

He went on to explain that he needed to keep the company focused on its goals. That’s what his staff did. He also needed to keep the strategic view always in mind with long term focus, the 60 percent of the time he looked outside. I understood that he saw strategic thinking as being critical to his job responsibilities.

I was reminded of that this week when Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com and the Hay Group released their annual list of Best Companies for Leadership.

The survey also asked what skills the companies valued the most. The top 20 companies valued strategic thinking (67.6 percent) above execution (47.6 percent), inspiring leadership (37 percent), decision making (31.5 percent, and even teamwork (31 percent).

The top 20 are:
1 GENERAL ELECTRIC
2 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
3 3M COMPANY
4 PROCTER & GAMBLE
5 ACCENTURE
6 WAL-MART STORES
7 NESTLE
8 COCA-COLA
9 MCDONALD’S CORPORATION
10 INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES
11 IBM
12 CISCO
13 UNITED PARCEL SERVICE
14 IKEA
15 ABB
16 ZAPPOS
17 HEWLETT-PACKARD
18 GOLDMAN SACHS
19 UNILEVER
20 GENERAL MILLS, INC.

Strategic thinking is what keeps you moving forward. How fast and how far depends on your vision.

Let’s disagree about consensus

2010-02-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

Let’s say your customers, or at least some of them, are demanding certain products or changes to your products. You know your products are not quite what they should be. You want consensus on what changes need to be made.

Internally, your staff and board keep going back and forth. Maybe we need to make some changes, maybe not. If we do make changes, what should those changes be? Should we do it incrementally or do a drastic rebuild? Should be do it now or just hold off? The debate goes on. Time goes on. Your customers keep getting more frustrated. The debate continues. Your staff and board start to take it personally. The subtle and not so subtle name-calling starts. Then your customers get in on the debate and the name-calling.

You’re sitting at the top, with your executive committee, hoping something breaks loose, hoping all the discussion and debate leads to some compromising and rational discussion. You keep sitting, waiting and waiting. You send out memos, urging everyone to keep the goal in mind, to keep working, to reach consensus. You send out more memos, month after month. Every once in a while, you hold large staff meetings where you urge everyone to keep the goal in mind, to keep working, to reach consensus.

You and your executive committee keep waiting. So do your customers.

Whether you’re running a convenience store, an engineering firm, NASA, a hotel or the U. S. government, it’s all the same. At some point, you have to make some tough decisions. As much as I think consensus is important, there are times when you have to take action whether you have consensus or not. Inaction is more dangerous than the lack of consensus. In the end, your customers really don’t give a flying fig whether you had consensus or not. It makes absolutely no difference to them. They just want you to do something, anything. But, you’re waiting on consensus.

My immediate example is health care. I don’t really see any break in the logjam. The Democratic leadership (the President, Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader) can get this approved without the Republicans, but they seem to be stuck trying to appease the Republicans and middle of the road Democrats.

It’s been a year and still no real action on the legislation.

The fact is that the person whose child needs a life-saving medical treatment doesn’t care whether health reform passed by 100 votes or one.

Ask your customers whether they care if you reach consensus on all your decisions. Ask them whether your internal consensus really makes any difference to them as far what products they buy at your convenience store, use your surveyors, use your space shuttle or stay in your hotels. They don’t really care about your internal decision-making process.

They want their services to be better.

They want their child to get the medical treatment they need.

That’s all they care about.

One of the truths about “teambuilding” activities

2009-12-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

In my work, I do leadership training and development, among other things. I was once asked to do some teambuilding activities with the staff for a law office. The person who contacted me had seen me work with another group and was impressed with how quickly that group had bonded after a long day of activities. Then I had to tell them one of the truths of teambuilding: a group can come together as a team if they want to; if they don’t, they won’t.

In my experience, people who do not regularly do teambuilding with their group believe that they can overcome conflict by having a few activities to smooth over troubles. I have found that not to be the case. If this is a group that is just recently started to work together or who have not been working closely previously, then teambuilding activities would help.

However, if this is a group that has been working for a while and has been having trouble, then it won’t necessarily work. Conflict is rarely a group thing, us versus them kind of thing. Even when you have do have groups or factions formed, it mostly comes down to a couple of people who have the initial or central conflict. Then it becomes an issue of their friends and cohorts getting involved.

If you can isolate that and deal with it separately, then you can move on. For most leaders, the question comes down to how publicly they want to take of the problem – and it IS the leader’s problem. It can be done during a teambuilding/conflict resolution session. The advantage is that it can be taken care of once and for all so that everyone understands that the conflict has to be over with. However, some group shy away from such public confrontations. It can also leave one or more people publicly humiliated. In a private discussion, the leader has more control of the situation and avoids public embarrassments. However, outside the private meeting, people can still talk and push rumors one way or another.

People have to attend a teambuilding session with the attitude that they want to truly work better as a team. Most people do, most of the time. It is the leader’s job to know that before hand or to work on developing the individual members until they are ready to be team members.

The Myth and Paralysis of Unintended Consequences

2009-11-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

During the last 12 months, much has been said and written about the dangers of taking one action or another to address any number of critical issues impacting the region, state, country and world. There is one troublesome caution: beware of unintended consequences.

Regardless of what solution is proposed, there is always someone who will obstruct some proposed solution with the warning that, “We don’t know what unintended consequences might arise from that.” Of course, that’s just an obstructionist tactic. Everything has unintended consequences!

Throwing out the specter of unintended consequences has the unspoken demand that you craft a perfect solution and that you have complete knowledge of the future. How stupid is that assumption?

Everything has a series of consequences and reactions further on down the road. Nothing is completely isolated. No one can guarantee that something does not have unintended consequences.

However, my response to an unintended consequences argument would likely be, “I sure hope so. Otherwise, it’s such a minimal action that we’re taking here. In fact, I hope we have great unintended consequences.”

For a second, let’s look at three examples of unintended consequences in the real world.

One pharmaceutical company was testing a new drug, sildenafil citrate. However, after a few human trials, it looked like it was not really as effective as they hoped. Stopping the tests, they tried to collect the remaining pills they had given their test patients. Some of them were upset. They wanted to keep taking the drug. It wasn’t helping their heart condition, but they wanted it anyway. You would know the drug by its commercial name, Viagra. The unintended medical consequence: it helped treat erectile dysfunction. The unintended consequence for the company, billions of dollars in unexpected profits.

An industrial products company had its engineers working on a better product than what it already had. Sadly, one of its engineers came up with a new product that was actually worse than what they had been offering. It was a complete failure. The company wanted something that was much stronger than what they had. The new discovery was actually way, way weaker than what they were already selling. So, it was shelved. Most companies would have trashed all that research and forbidden people to ever mention it again. Ten years later, that engineer saw a new way to apply his discovery: the adhesive that makes Post-It Notes easy to put up and take down and put up again. The unintended consequences for millions of office workers: an easy way to mark things without tape or glue. The unintended consequence for the company, millions of dollars in unexpected profits.

The last example is perhaps the biggest unintended consequence in history and one you are quite familiar with, Christopher Columbus. He was on his way to India but landed in the Americas. The unintended consequence for Spain, billions of dollars in new wealth that helped make it a world power. For you and me, the unintended consequence is the New World with all its opportunities and challenges.

An Effective Interview

2009-10-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching "Morning Joe" last week when Irshad Manji, Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University, came on to talk about the importance of "moral courage." While I was certainly impressed by her ideas, I was more impressed with her presentation. The video shows what a great presenter she is.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

She was bright, enthusiastic, personable and engaging. I enjoyed just listening to her. She disagreed in a very nice, polite way. It is a great example of how to do this type of public presentation for any good leader. I would look for her again. Actually, she would be a great addition to the show! I think she could be on Fox and handle them well!

When does the leader have a conflict of interest?

2009-09-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

I saw an item on the Internet about a study of doctors’ attitudes about ordering treatments and conflict of interest. I don’t have a link to the item, but I will keep looking for it and hopefully link it later on.

Here is the essence of the item. Some doctors were asked to decide on a treatment for a fictional patient. They were given a set of symptoms and test results. They were given the option of two treatments: one a tried and tested approach; another a new therapy that did not have a significantly greater likelihood of succeeding but that they could bill for a higher amount. Which did they choose? Overwhelmingly, the more expensive therapy. Okay, now, the question was posed with their spouse as the patient. Which did they choose this time? Overwhelmingly, the first one. I don’t know if it was the same group of doctors or a different one.

So, when they have no personal connection to the patient, they chose the one that will make them more money, even if it does not help the patient any more than the other one. When they have a connection to the patient, they go for the tried and tested. Clearly, if doctors have a monetary interest in the way they decide what treatment patients get, then it becomes a conflict of interest.

We trust our doctors but we don’t really know what challenges they face in who treatment to order. We don’t know what conflicts they have along the way. The point I want to make, however, is that we are all conflicted to some extent. Our leaders are especially conflicted. They must often decide whether to do something that is good for the organization versus what is good for them. We have our own battles with those types of challenges.

When I do training, I have to balance how much effort to put into any given session versus how much I’m going to get from it. However, the trainees don’t know that. They don’t know if I have given them everything I could or did just enough to get by. The real test of leadership, in this case, is to figure out what to do when no one else knows. As the old saying goes, integrity is what you do when no one is looking. As patients, we don’t know whether the doctor is ordering something for us because it is the best thing for us or for his checkbook. Likewise, we don’t really know if our organization’s leader is ordering us to do things because it is what he/she thinks is best for us (the organization) or for them.

This just goes to reinforce that trust is part of what keeps people working with you and that your integrity is what they hope keeps you there, too.

We're behind, just where we want to be!

2009-03-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

It was something that was repeatedly said by Sen. John McCain during his presidential campaign. His supporters kept saying that he was known for coming back from behind to win. In October, as his poll numbers kept dropping, he kept telling supporters, "My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

Now, let's talk basketball.

It's halftime, and your team is behind. Should you stay or head for the exit to beat the crowd? Most people would say, "Go now and get a slice of pizza for the drive home." Not so fast, say Wharton professors Jonah Berger and Devin Pope in a research paper titled "When Losing Leads to Winning" that looks at how teams perform when they're behind. The results of that research are summarized in a Knowledge@Wharton article. And, unlike John McCain, your team may still have a chance if they aren't as far behind as he was.

According the research, based on the results of more than 6,500 college basketball games, "(A) college squad that is leading by six points at halftime is the victor about 80% of the time." So, your team is behind by only one point. Do they still lose? Apparently not. According to the data, teams down by only one point at halftime actually win 51.3 percent of the time. Seems counter-intuitive.

As Berger and Pope see it, when a team is behind by such a small margin, the losing team can literally see the game within reach and works that much harder. "Take any situation where someone is so close to a goal that they can almost taste it," Berger noted. "The fact that they're almost there makes them work harder."

There are lessons to be learned here for your team, whether it's a business, community or sports team. According to Pope, "A lot of tools are used in the workforce to motivate people, such as wages, bonuses, etc. While surely these things can have motivating effects, one should not underestimate the potential importance of psychological motivation as well. This paper shows that the psychological impact of being behind by a small amount can cause significant increases in performance."

The lesson is that smaller, more achievable goals are more effective than bigger, loftier goals that may be out of reach. Of course, you need to stop and look around every so often to see where you are and reset your goals on a more frequent basis.

Well, it's half-time, finish reading the Wharton article while the dancers do their routine and the concession stands are still long.

Word of mouth success depends on whose mouth is whispering

2009-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Word-of-mouth buzz is said to be golden, worth more than any advertising. We all do some form of it, as consumers and as leaders. We talk about everything and everyone who we like and dislike. If it's good word-of-mouth, it really helps out. But, getting people to talk about you or your product is the hard part. Where do you start? Who do you start with?

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania marketing professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe Van den Bulte think they have an answer to those two questions. The pair of researchers worked with University of Southern California preventive medicine professor Thomas W. Valente on a research project for a pharmaceutical firm to determine just who is the best carrier for their message within groups of doctors.

I would assume that the more well-known leaders within the doctors' group would be the best targets. Convince them and they would convince others to use your drugs. Makes sense, right? Maybe not.

According to an article in Knowledge@Wharton, it's actually doctors within a subgroup, and not necessarily self-reported leaders, who are the most influential. What distinguishes these doctors? The researchers identified one doctor, "Physician 184," who was not among the most prominent of doctors. Physician 184 did not think of himself as an opinion leader. However, he was well-known among doctors for working with patients suffering from the disease the pharma company was targeting with its drugs. He was also seen as someone who "worked tirelessly and closely with colleagues to solve problems and get things done."

What is different in this work is that the researchers did not try traditional marketing techniques to identify the most influential. They used a more anthropological approach to determine who was doing the heaving whispering in other doctors' ears.

The self-reported opinion leaders, it turns out, lagged behind the "Physician 184" types at adopting new therapies for treatment. "Physician 184" types were more attuned to the latest methodologies in their area of interest and were seen by others as more knowledgeable than the self-reported leaders.

The article has a a link to the down-loadable research report published in the Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series.

While you may not have the money for a complete research project like this one, you should start to think about who you are targeting for your word-of-mouth campaigns, regardless of your business or social marketing goals.

Does innovation time pay off? Google it.

2009-02-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

So, your organization talks a lot about innovation but never really gets around to spending time on it. There are a few meetings here and there when something urgent comes up, but nothing really happens. After the meeting, the idea is forgotten until the next crisis.

That's not unusual. People talk about it but don't do much about it. I think organizations don't think the time is well invested. Let me rephrase that. Leaders don't think time spent on innovation is a productive investment. If you want to find out whether time spent on innovation is a good investment, Google it. But, don't just do a search. Look at how Google spends time being innovative, and find out how effective it can be.

According to an article in the New York Times, Google lets its employees spend 20% of their time "to work on whatever projects fan their passions." The results? Very solid, by any measure.

It's a litany of really neat products: Google Earth, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and SketchUp, just to list a very few.

It has been an excellent investment of time and people. For employees, the freedom to be truly creative and get paid for it is the real bonus.

What Color Is Your Message?

2009-02-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

While color is often a personal choice, it can have an impact on how you deal with people. According to an article in Science magazine, the colors you use affect how your message is received.

Researchers tested the impact of color on how well people performed certain tasks. "For those that required attention to detail--such as proofreading a list of addresses--participants were slightly more accurate when the background was red, compared to blue or white. Blue, on the other hand, stimulated creativity."

Researchers also tested the impact of color on advertising. "Volunteers who viewed two versions of a fake camera ad--one that featured detailed images of the camera's features and accessories, and one that featured more creative photos (see picture)--rated the first ad more favorably when it appeared on a red background and the second one more favorably when it appeared on a blue background."

It's not conclusive, but it's worth considering. What colors do you use in your environment with your team. Makes you rethink beige.

Gaming the Incentives Game

2009-01-20T09:19:00.000-08:00

I've always thought that measuring and rewarding people on tight metrics is short-sighted. I call it "What gets rewarded gets distorted." I remember that one boss justified paying some people more than others by saying, "They're the rainmakers. They bring the money in." So, the rest of us, who produced what they sold, were not really important, only the ones involved at the very end. That we produced a great product and made their job so much easier was not to be considered. That the sales people left other duties behind because they did not contribute to their sales meant that they were added to the rest of our work. So, some saw it as being punished for doing a good job.

Dan Heath and Chip Heath write a great article in Fast Company on what they call the focusing illusion, the way incentives and other metrics tend to distort what gets done in business or any enterprise that uses them. Dan and Chip provide several examples of people who changed their behavior, perhaps to the detriment of the organization but to their own advantage, as a result of the metrics/incentives.

In short, they point to how these metrics, intended to fix some problem, can be gamed by the participants and hurt the organization. They start out with the example of former NFL quarterback Ken O'Brien, who had a problem with interceptions. At one point, when his contract was renegotiated, a clause was inserted that penalized him for each interception. What did O'Brien do? He dramatically reduced the number of passes he attempted, reducing the number of interceptions, which may have hurt the team in the end but made sure that his pay was not cut.

I have one example that irks me, Burger King. After I order at my local BK at the drive-thru, I pull up to the window where I pay and am promptly directed to move forward to a door where they deliver my order. I might understand if there is a long line behind me, keeping orders from being placed. However, this happens at all times, even when there is no one behind me. This is intended to keep workers focused on getting the orders out as quickly as possible and cut the time it takes for customers to get their order, that time being measured by how long you wait at the window. Once you move your vehicle up to the door, the clock stops. So, to the BK managers, it looks like they have a phenomenal 3-5 second wait time for order delivery. It must look great at BK headquarters. Of course, it really ticks me off. I make a point of avoiding BK because of that, except that my younger son insists that he wants the Chicken Tenders only from BK.

I have one more example, except that I can't recall where I read it. However, I remember some of the details. One company, faced with customers complaining about deliveries taking too long to get to them, instituted a metric that tracked every order up through the time the order actually left the plant gate. So, the shipping department would get the orders packed, whether they were actually complete or not, and physically carry them outside the plant to a storage location just outside the gates and marked the order as having left the plant, which was technically true. The managers saw a dramatic reduction in orders left but customers were worse off as delivery time actually deteriorated. In the end, the managers started to give the shipping department more control and responsibility for how they did their work, improving actual delivery times.

The simple lesson is that virtually any policy, metric and incentive system can be gamed unless it is well thought out. Rewards left strictly to metrics can hurt an organization and ignores the crucial role that good managers/leaders play.

This is the way the world ends

2009-01-16T07:52:00.000-08:00

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

So said T. S. Eliot, Nobel Prize winning poet. And, as it turns out, so do the Mayans. According to various sources, mostly on the web, Dec. 12, 2012 will mark the end of one age and the start of an other, or not. The world may end on that day through some sort of cataclysm, or it may just be another day.

With the inauguration of Barack Obama, what will we get? Depending on who you talk to, it is either the start of a new era of progress and hopefulness or the sad end of an era.

In either case, the world will not end or reboot. It will keep going. Remember the year 2000 hype? It was either to be a disaster of crashing planes, closed banks and computer mayhem or it was the start of a new era? It was neither. On January 1, 2000, it was just another day.

So, what's a leader to do? Actually, nothing, I think. We just go on doing what we were doing all along, getting our people and organizations focused and moving forward, always. Just don't wait for the end to come about or some magical change to take place. Get excited for the history of the day, but don't start behaving as if history is taking over for you.

Staying On The Creative Edge

2009-01-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

As a leader, one has to keep a sharp edge at all times. The day-in, day-out struggle of getting your organization moving forward can wear down your edge. After a while, you tend to get dull, as does your thinking. So, how do you keep that sharpness? There are many ways to do it. Today, I will suggest one: find a new challenge to focus on during your off time. It can be related to what you do or not, as long as it is somewhat removed from the daily issues you deal with.

For example, if you work in the insurance industry, you already spend quite a lot of time focusing on risk, projections, HR, customer turn-over, etc. Few people in the insurance industry deal with every type of insurance segment. More likely, they deal with a niche: autos, business, residential, shipping, legal or some other segment. If you deal with auto insurance, create a challenge to think about in, say, shipping insurance issues. You can also take on a challenge about something complete unrelated to insurance. Think about traffic issues in your neighborhood, city, region, state, etc. Think about solid waste disposal issues. Take your pick. Read a magazine in an unrelated discipline: waste disposal, accounting, shopping malls, dental practice, retirement communities, marine construction or any random industry. Pick the current topic in the industry and set a challenge to come up with a solution to some small part of that topic.

Currently, I have my own challenge. I picked economic development. It's not my field directly, but it touches on some things that interest me. Specifically, I picked the topic of creating home-grown industries in the area where I live.

I did some quick research and started looking at what strengths we have: labor with a wide variety of skills but with more on the lower skills level; access to good shipping and international ports; good natural resources within a couple of days' shipping; university support centers; some governmental and private investment opportunities; and training support. I looked at what industries we had in the past and what industries we have now. I did a cursory match of all of these and came up with furniture building as my first result. It does not require great capital investments and is a minimal skills level industry. We have a strong forestry industry nearby. The market may be the biggest challenge, but we need to focus on a niche we can target. It is also an industry that can be developed in small or even cottage-style plants, as opposed to a car factory that needs millions in capital, equipment, land, suppliers and labor.

I attack the problem during my spare moments: driving, waiting at someone's office, early in the morning, doing yard work, etc. Will I solve this problem? Maybe. I might come up with some ideas that I can forward to someone else who might be able to do something with it. Maybe not. So, what does it do for me? It keeps me thinking and stretching my capabilities. It reinforces that the analytical skills I use for my regular job do not get dull. It gives me a break from the routine. It gives me new perspectives–always a welcome dose of renewal.

I will work on this for a while and put it away. Later, I will come up with another challenge and look at that for a while. What I bring back to my regular job, every time I do this, is a new urge to improve what I am doing there.

Down with the state(s), sort of

2008-12-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you've been hired to serve as the CEO of a very, very big company. Everyone is looking to you to guide them through some very perilous times. You have a laptop full of plans and ideas for how to deal with things. You put your team in place. All set to go? Not so fast. In some divisions of this company, there's a middle layer of managers who don't really have to do what you tell them. They don't have to follow your policies. They can even go in the opposite direction. You have some power to give out money to get them to do what you want, but sometimes even that can't guarantee that they will. In fact, they work very hard (and often quite publicly) to get around your policies. They even talk to the media to tell them how bad your policies are. The kicker: you can't fire them. Still, if your policies don't succeed, you get the blame.

Would you want this job? Could anybody succeed under these circumstances? The strange thing is that lots of people want this job. It's almost hopeless. What company is this? The United States of America. No, really. The President is hired to run this country, but there are 50 governors, state legislatures, state court systems and state bureaucracies that stand between the President and the successful implementation of many policies.

What has been said repeatedly in the last few months is the need for the new administration to take decisive action on a number of issues, notably on the domestic agenda: (starting with) the economy, education, health care, energy, environment, etc. While much has been said about what the President plans to do in these areas, it really depends on the states implementing the policy–or not.

The one area where this is egregiously obvious is education. (But, the same problem arises in any number of issues.) Education is a state function. This means that we have 50+ education policies and programs. There is little, if any, consistency between states. What a student studies and learns in any given grade in one state, does not necessarily match with the same grade in another state. In some cases, it can even vary from district to district within the same state. This means that we don't have a national education system. We have a hodge-podge of educational systems without any real sense of what is in the national interest. The country is seriously behind in science and math knowledge and no real plan or way to improve. Theories of all stripes and colors come and go every fall. No matter what policy the President sets, it has very little impact in the classroom. If anything, the federal government is adding to the problem with burdensome regulations and paperwork.

The same goes for virtually all domestic issues. So, what can we do? It is time to rethink this state-federal division of conflicting responsibilities. While not yet advocating the elimination of the states, I think some serious thought needs to be given to cutting some layer of administration out. While it may have worked 200 years ago, this system, like the electoral college, has outlived its usefulness and is even making the situation worse.

Other countries that do not have this middle layer of opposition management, seem to be better at addressing national issues. It's time we took a true national approach to national problems. It's just good leadership.

The Cool Factor in Leadership

2008-12-05T09:11:00.001-08:00

You've seen it before, probably many times. In a crisis or even when a standard level problem arises, the boss or supervisor blows a gasket or something like it. His or her voice gets louder. It rises to a shout. All of a sudden, tensions spread across the department or company like a wave or tsunami, depending on the level of crisis.

On the other hand, you may have also seen the boss or supervisor who remains calm, almost unconcerned, when the same problem comes up. Everyone around them remains just as calm. They discuss the challenge, map out a plan and then get to it. Where would you rather work?

So, what makes the difference here. According to an article
in The New York Times, genetics plays a major role, "But the calm temperament is not so superhuman, nor is it entirely the gift of the chosen few. It can be cultivated, even as the world cleaves around us."

Of course, they make the expected reference to No Drama Obama. They also connect this to the ordinary (if you would ever consider yourself as such) worker.

The article gives this example, "Imagine two people with equally high measures of neuroticism dealing with the same irascible boss. One gets yelled at and leaves the boss’s office perfectly composed; the other gets yelled at and flees to the bathroom in tears or storms out and kicks the wall. The difference is that the first person has learned to regulate the neuroticism."

There's more here and worth reading. But, ask yourself, "how do I deal with crisis and challenges?" If you're the cool, collected type, you're generally doing well. If not, time to learn how to control your responses.

What leads to success?

2008-12-04T09:08:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading "8 to be Great," by Richard St. John. It's an interesting book so far. I was turned on to it by a video I came across on TED. See the video here. Its less than four minutes long:

It's a great presentation. It all started with a simple question, what leads to success? If you ever need to do a presentation about success, this is a ready-made one. You can take the basic outline and put your own touch on it. The quotes in the book help quite a lot. Just give credit to St. John for the ideas.

It's not just socializing. It's hard work.

2008-11-20T17:24:00.000-08:00

You thought surfing the net and working on MySpace pages was all about socializing. How wrong you were. It's all about training for the work force of the future. That's what the New York Times says in an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/us/20internet.html?_r=1&hp) posted recently. Okay, I can't quite get the hang of having the link linked to a word on my blog so that you just click on the word and it will take you to the article. You'll have to cut and paste the link. I'll work on it.

But the point is clear, socializing is a good skill we need to have. It's really part of leadership. As one of the researchers says, "...their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

So, MySpace and FaceBook are really powers for good and not slackering? In a way, yes.

As the recent economic downturn points out, we're turning into a country that is more and more moving toward a service- and computer-based economy and less toward production of goods. We have to start thinking that way. As in some other things, youth tend to point the way, if inadvertently, toward the future. It's not so much that they're looking for the future as that they're just looking and exploring what's out there. But, that's where the future is.

Steve Young: Football Legend, Negotiator

2008-11-17T15:46:00.000-08:00

Steve Young? Football legend, certainly. Negotiator? As it turns out, he's quite a negotiator. To hear him tell it, it's been a skill he's used most of his adult life, on and off the field. In the following audio clip, he tells us gives us an introduction to why he thinks its an important skill. The podcast is part of the Stanford University Technology Ventures Program. I was surprised he was a lawyer, with a real law degree. He worked on it during his time with the San Francisco 49ers during the off-season. That's quite a task and accomplishment. As he put it, he would play in the Super Bowl and then head the following Tuesday for classes. It's quite a story with some good lessons with real world applicability. For anyone working to improve their leadership skills, this is a good resource and inspiration. His comments about his agent are particularly keen.

You can access the video/audio podcasts directly. The audio podcast is superior because it has no interruptions. The video is broken up into 16 sections. I wish Stanford would issue an entire video podcast for download.

Hope you enjoy it.

Leading Through the Noise

2008-11-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

There seems to be quite a lot of noise right now: from the media, from politicians, from business leaders, from economists, from labor leaders and from average folks. What's all the yelling about? You name it, they're yelling about it. The economy, and what to do or not do about it, seems to be hottest topic. Still, there are countless other topics: health care, Social Security, education, etc.

Given the tremendous changes that are coming or just expected, it is natural that people are taking the opportunity to voice their concerns lest their issues be fall to the wayside. However, this all comes back to adding to the noise level. In all that noise, it is hard to focus on one thing. It is not impossible, it just requires focus and discipline.

I do an activity with some of my training groups that has them break up into partners. One of them is blindfolded, and the other guides the blindfolded partner to one side of a room they have not have not seen. On the floor are a number of objects and furniture. At my signal, the "seeing" partners start yelling out directions from across the room to guide them. Of course, it becomes a challenge as each guide tries to yell louder and louder in order to be heard by their blind folded partner.

In this exercise, most teams fail to navigate the room of objects. In some cases, some teams develop some codes to get them through it. For example, rather than yelling, "right two steps" (which everyone else is yelling), they may yell, "red two." Others wait until other teams have finished to let the noise die down.

So, what does this have to do with leadership? There is always noise. There are always distractions. There may be more media attention right now, but the noise is always there. Leaders need to always stay focused and disciplined to not let the noise distract them from what their priorities are. Likewise, the new President, or any good leader, needs to be focused on what their priorities are and keep on going toward their goal. One needs to know the difference between the real voices to listen to and what is just noise. That's what you should be doing, whatever you are doing.