When Do You Throw the Fastball?

Imagine that you’re a professional pitcher, or at least a really good nonprofessional pitcher. You’ve got your arsenal of fastballs, breaking balls and change ups. Of course, you decide which pitch you use at any given time.

Who you’re facing is critical in deciding which pitch you use. While you may have a blistering fast ball, you don’t use it every time, do you? Of course not. It’s not suitable every time, and the opposing players soon learn how to deal with you.

Let’s change it slightly. Will you pitch the same to a five-year old as you would to a college ball player? An eight year old? A 12-year old? A 17-year old? Of course not. You would adjust your pitch to each person.
Now, let’s switch perspective. Do you communicate with everyone in the same way? Strangely enough, a lot of people do. Some people use their fastball every time they deal with people. Why would someone do that? Because it’s fast and overpowering. It’s their most powerful pitch, and it makes them feel good when they throw it because they see communication as a competition. However, if the other person is not quick enough, the ball has passed by before then even realize it. It becomes intimidating because they know that, if they’re not careful, the ball can cause some major damage if it hits them.

Yes, there will be times when you need the fastball. In an emergency, perhaps. But, if you can’t tailor your pitch to the person you’re dealing with, people will stop swinging at your pitches. Eventually, they start finding ways to avoid playing on your team. Or, in real life, they stop listening to you. They come to fear interacting with you. Fear has no place in leadership.

As a leader, you always need to work at perfecting your pitches, finding new ones, and improving and modifying them to fit the situation. You can’t be a one-pitch leader and be effective.

In Leadership, Environment Is Part of Destiny

Think of two scenarios.

In the first, you’re back in high school, and your family just moved to a new city where you don’t know anyone. It’s your first day at school. How do you feel? How do you behave? Who do you talk to?

In the second scenario, you’re moving to a different high school where you know a few people but not that many? It’s your first day at school. How do you feel? How do you behave? Who do you talk to?

While the building may be different, the real environment that makes you feel welcome or not is the people you hang out with day after day, your friends and fellow students, the teachers and, to a lesser extent, assistant principals, counselors and the principal.

It’s the same thing when you go to work. It’s not the building or even the work that makes you feel welcome. It’s the people. If it’s your first day on the new job, you’re on shaky ground, not quite knowing how to behave, what the rules are, who’s really in charge, and where the best place to eat at the cafeteria is (just like in high school). It takes a while to learn all of that.

While you a contribute a certain element to the atmosphere, there is already a substantial atmosphere in place that you will mostly conform to. It takes a lot to change the atmosphere.

Contrast that with a start-up or newly formed company. The first couple of generations of workers at the new company get to create the new environment. Then, it tends to take on a life of its own and live on for decades. New CEOs, directors, supervisors, managers and staff come and go, but the culture lives on. Sure, it’s modified along the way with each new generation, but the basic structure of the culture remains.

After that, new leadership (not necessarily management) can change the environment with some dedicated work. It’s long term and needs to be focused. Like most other things, it starts from the top leadership levels.

The Challenged Life

“Because it’s there.” So said British climber George Mallory in 1924 when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine perished later that year as they attempted to get to the top. Since May 29, 1953 when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally conquered the summit, countless people have successfully taken on that challenge. Of course, many have also died in the process. It is one of the essential elements of humans. We all seek challenges. It is the internal drive, to seek a new challenge. While it is certainly not easy to climb Mount Everest, you can only climb it “the first time” once. The challenge is never quite the same. To some extent, we all seek a new challenge every day. It’s when we fail to purse some new challenge that we become bored and uncaring. It doesn’t have to be a new mountain every day, just a different challenge. It could be something small or something huge, as long as it’s something important to you. Every team needs a challenge, a shared challenge, a challenge they all buy into. That’s where team motivation comes from. When you, as the leader, fail to develop a challenge that is important and relevant to all of your team members, then that challenge will not motivate them. I don’t understand climbing a mountain just because it’s there, but Mallory did. What’s your personal challenge? What’s your team’s challenge? If you can’t answer that, you need to take time to find a few challenges to take on.

Playing Baseball in the Fog and The Power of Feedback

Imagine that you’re at home plate waiting for the pitch to come. First, let me set this scenario up. The fog has come in. You can barely see the pitcher and nothing else beyond that. All you can really see clearly is the pitcher’s arm as it comes out of the fog and hurls a pitch at you. Sometimes you swing and miss; sometimes you don’t swing at all. But, the umpire is silent and won’t tell you which are balls and which are strikes. Every once in a while, you swing with all you’ve got and hit it high into the fog. Silence. Was it caught? Was it a base-hit? Did you knock it out of the park? Just silence. The pitch comes again; you swing again. You just keep swinging over and over.

You’re left wondering where the game stands. What’s the count? What’s the score? Is anyone on base? What inning is it? Is your team leading, tied or behind? Should you bunt? Should you go for a sacrifice fly to right field? Should you stop swinging and hope for a walk? Do you need a grand slam homer?

That’s an organization that doesn’t provide feedback. It’s frustrating. You don’t know where you stand. You don’t know where all those hits went. Did they use your ideas? Did the changes you made in your department make any difference for the organization? Where exactly does the organization stand?

Now, let’s look at another scenario. You’re back at the plate. It’s still foggy. You keep swinging. Every once in a while when you hit the ball, you hear someone shout out: you’re out or base-hit or home run! Sometimes the umpire calls a ball or strike. Otherwise, it’s just silence. The pitch comes again; you swing again. You just keep swinging over and over.

That’s an organization with limited feedback. It’s also frustrating. You only get some infrequent comments but not really enough to get a handle on things. You still don’t really know where you and the organization stand.

Now, let’s look at a real baseball game played in bright sunlight. Every time you come up to the plate, you know exactly where everything stands: the score, players on base, inning, who’s pitching, etc. You know if you're facing that pitcher with the lightning fast ball, the quirky knuckle ball or that dancing curve ball. You know whether you need to bunt, sacrifice, get on base, etc. You don’t have to guess. You can take control of what you need to do. You even know if you need to stay in the dugout and call in a pinch hitter because you aren’t the right person to bat in that situation. In this situation, the batter and everyone in the park knows exactly whether they did their job right. He/she can’t hide it or explain it away.

That’s an organization with good, effective feedback. With good feedback, you need less supervision, and you have to accept greater responsibility for your own actions and results. You can’t get out of it without looking like a complete idiot. This goes back to one of the Nine Critical Leadership Skills: communication. Good leadership requires effective communication, both at the personal and organizational level. Too many companies wait until they’re in crisis before they start giving out information to fire up the team. By then, it’s probably too late. What everyone in the park can now see is the critical mistake someone made in keeping their teams in the fog. That’s the power of feedback in any environment.

Two types of networks: ideas and action

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

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'

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

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?

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®

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?

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

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

Chance Favors The Connected Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's all, just IMAGINE.

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

Innovation: critical in a down economy

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.