Leading Effectively Series
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You never know when or where you might receive good insight.
My car was in the shop and I had to ride with the ‘courtesy van.’ In my case, a gaudy red and white min-van, plastered with the name of the automobile dealer all over it. Not usually my choice of rides. Similar to many curious cab drivers, the van driver was interested not only in my destination, but also my journey.
 As we talked about leadership and life, he helped me do some learning. He talked about a course he attended that helped him see that when something happened, we had a two choices, not just one. Most people believe that when something happens, we simply have a choice on reactions. He said he learned something different – something life changing. He learned he also had a choice of how to react – before you react.
Continuing the conversation, he described how a person can choose to get upset, get angry, or get even, but that all three were a conscious choice – it may be made very quickly and have many different causes, but the first choice we make prior to a reaction is how to react. I was amazed by his self-awareness and insight – it was clearly not what I expected to hear in the Courtesy Van.
“People don’t stress us out – we choose to be stressed – then we act upon that choice. The choices you make tend to define who you are. I think in many ways that tells us how important the event is to you. Your reactions will definitely influence how the event is remembered.”
As he spoke he reminded me of a lesson I learned here at CCL – the importance of understanding emotion in order to know when and how to become emotional. Because when we become emotional, we are no longer rationally addressing the situation. Instead, we are fighting ourselves to understand how the situation relates to us.
As we pulled into my destination the driver quietly commented, “our choices really define us and I want people to know that I make good choices. That is my definition of leadership.”
I thanked him for his courtesy and as I retrieved my now-working car, I reflected that it was a very insightful journey.
All Best,
Clemson
 Because I have the world's greatest job, I'm often asked by students how they can get to be me. Actually, it’s seldom that blatant, but the other night I was speaking to a group of organizational psychology graduate students in San Francisco and one young woman asked, “how can someone get to where you are?” She meant, of course, how to get into this field and do coaching and leadership development.
After my typical disclaimers I told her and her colleagues about how I got to any of the places I’ve got to in my life. It was similar to a conversation I had with Mia several years ago when she was wrestling with whether to pursue her music or go back to graduate school. In the course of the conversation, it dawned on me that I was the world’s worst career planner and should never give anyone advice. However, it might be useful to hear how I managed to have several of the most interesting, fulfilling jobs I could never have imagined.
Quite simply, I’ve never planned anything career-wise. Instead, I’ve had a firm grip on what matters to me…what would nowadays be called my values, also a highly developed sense of curiosity and an unhealthy devotion to new experiences. There are doors opening before us all the time. I decided some time ago to go through any door that appeared interesting and was consistent with my values.
I can’t recommend it to anyone else. It’s undoubtedly a completely bad approach for most people (especially those who are convinced that their younger self was as smart as they are going to get), but it worked for me.
As I mentioned, I have the world’s greatest job. Actually every job I ever had was the world’s greatest job, even though they’ve all been different.
Why doesn’t everybody?
Doug
(photo credit Kriss Szkurlatowski)
 In executive education, sustainability is all the buzz. In this particular case, it is not concerned with the ability of a financial or ecological system to carry on; rather, it’s about the ability of changes wrought in an educational experience to have an impact over time. Famously, training experiences, even transformational ones tend to have small measurable impact over periods as short as 6 months.
As a result, executive education institutions across the world are investing considerable money and effort in designing systems that transform learning events into learning processes. To a great extent, this requires participant preparation in advance of the classroom event, in addition to providing post-program support to increase their sense of accountability. We use one such system called Friday Fives (forthillcompany.com) with some of our programs. Simply put, it uses email to remind participants of the goals they established during the program, connects them with their coach or peers, and provides a variety of resources (video, text-based lessons, etc.) to help a person fulfill their goals.
Learning and development professionals everywhere know that there’s a problem with these systems: they are poorly used by participants. Except when post-work is linked to compensation, utilization rates can be quite low - in some cases fewer than 20% of participants will take advantage of all the resources available to them. Even executive coaching (and I’m prejudiced here), which has shown itself to be extremely powerful in helping people complete their goals, is terribly underused - even when it is freely available to participants.
Some recent efforts have seemed more promising. A few companies investing in leadership development have put effort into the creation of ongoing social networks of participants. These are often supported by the use of social media and the involvement of learning and development professionals to keep them going.
I’m not persuaded by and large because of some basic difficulties with the ideas so far.
1. Leaders who are involved in learning experiences are already very busy and are not likely to have much discretionary time if it’s not linked to the pile of things they already have to do.
2. As soon as one returns to work from these experiences, the ambient noise of deadlines, demands, and disasters drowns out the small voice of good intentions.
3. By and large, leaders already have existing social networks that require a certain amount of their time. There’s not much room for new connections that require new energy.
I think the critical dynamic is the social component, but it won’t be solved simply by creating new friendships or utilizing Web 2.0 technology. Follow-up that doesn’t build on existing social networks is never going to make much of a difference. It is my contention that we will begin seeing significant improvement in learning impact when we start building awareness of a leader’s existing influencers, supporters, and other social connections into our programs.
To suggest one tool: why wouldn’t faculty encourage the creation of simple network maps by each participant (either through widely available software or by the participant via pencil and paper)? Participants could track the influencers, supporters, mentors, and so forth who matter to them. That map then provides a guide to who should be included in helping participants keep their goals and implement intended changes. Network maps could be effective because they show just who should be enlisted to support and hold a leader accountable: those people who are already playing that role for the executive.
The wheel has been invented already - people already have a social network. Put it to work and we’ll see sustainable change coming out of learning experiences.
Your fond-of-sustainable-change friend,
Doug
Photo credit: Luc Viatour
What do these companies have in common that's related to the current economic situation? Burger King, MTV, CNN, FedEx, Intel and Microsoft?
That’s right; they all began during slow economic times and each has been a significant force in modern culture. There have been 8 U.S. recessions since the Great Depression (1953, 1957-8, 1973-5, 1980 & 81-82, 1990-91, and 2001-2) and interesting things took place in each of them.
-Burger King started in 1954 when the Florida franchisees of the Insta-burger King chain, James McLamore and David Edgerton, began their takeover.
-Fred Smith started FedEx express in 1971 in Arkansas, but lack of support from the airport led him to move to Memphis during the 1973 recession.
-That was also the year that an employee of Honeywell (Paul Allen) and a Harvard student (William Gates, III) were inspired by the appearance of the MITS Altair 8800 computer on the cover of Popular Electronics to create a version of BASIC that would run on it.
-During the double-dip recession that began in 1980 both MTV and CNN got their starts. Ted Turner (CNN) started a music video channel (Cable Music Channel in 1984, but after one money-losing month sold it to MTV who developed it into VH1).
Game-changing innovation doesn’t depend on an abundance of time or resources. It thrives whenever people are energized by possibility. Perhaps it does even better in tough times because a certain discomfort can get us to get up and do something about our discontent. Well, at least, discomfort has been my friend on that front most of my life.
My wish for you this December is sufficient lack of comfort to get you moving on the great ideas incubating in your noggin or that came up in the last late-night bull session. I’m eager to see the next world-changing idea come out of the garage. And this is the right time for it.
Your uncomfortable friend,
Doug
Thanks to Bruce Goodman of the Michigan law firm Varnum in their November Energy newsletter “Watts News," referenced in the ACC news feed: ACC Link 
We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
Doug
The word "entitlement" basically means getting something because it's your right to have it - it's not a matter of earning it. On the other hand "empowerment" is about building confidence and capacity in order to gain access – to rights, to resources, to information, to services, etc. – in order to shape one’s life and surroundings.
The crossroad where entitlement and empowerment meet is charged with emotion.
Those of us in a dominant status group may be so used to certain rights and privileges, we feel entitled to them and abashed at the thought we wouldn’t have them and feel those without aren't doing something "right." Those of us in a non-dominant group may struggle towards empowerment in order to get glimpses of a life others take for granted, wondering why it has to be so hard.
There are a plethora of indicators, but none that give a sense of the overall feeling people have about their lot. I suspect, based on gut feeling, that with the recent roller-coaster economy more people are realizing that what they thought they were entitled to – a job, a house, a retirement - is no longer in their grasp. And those who still “have” are probably holding on a lot tighter.
 But what does that mean for us – all of us?
Germany, among other nations, has adopted kurzarbeit - shortened work hours so more people can keep their job. In contrast to lay-offs, with kurzarbeit everyone loses a little so everyone can keep a little.
I wonder if this feeling can extend to other areas – beyond a paycheck? I suspect that spreading opportunity (becoming collectively empowered) would do more to move our entire lot forward than having the dream of being able to move into one of the narrowing slots reserved for those who are entitled.
I find it telling that folks in the middle class tend to give more (percentage-wise) to charities than those in more affluent groups. Chances are they have a better idea of what it's like to need a break and that sometimes it has more to do with circumstance than personal character.
My recent post about the legacy of Ted Kennedy stirred up an interesting discussion in CCL's LinkedIn Group. Our blog posts are fed in as News items for the group to read and discuss. If you haven't joined us there yet, we'd love to have you in the group.
Two of the main ideas in the discussion are 1) can someone reinvent themselves? and 2) how “perfect” do role models need to be?
Here's what I have been thinking.
I have witnessed high-impact experiences prompt significant changes in people's lives; personal transformations. People can and do make big changes in themselves. Not everyone experiences it, but some people do have a moment (or a time) when they decide – I’m not the person I want to be or that I could be.
What's really interesting to me is how complex personal transformation is and how difficult it can be to foster. I usually think of things like a serious illness, the death of a loved one, or some other major event as a potential prompt. One discussant recommended the book The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back by Waldroop and Butler as a place to read more about personal transformations; I haven't read it but it looks fairly well rated by other readers. Another goes so far as to say “A leader who has been through this comes out a better person and a better leader.” While facing significant challenge is not my idea of a good time, it can be one of the best teachers we have.
Regarding the second idea, all leaders have flaws and experience failure. Having children and entering public office are two surefire ways to find out about your flaws and taking risks is bound to lead to failure at least some of the time. But without a little risk nothing changes - which means nothing gets better.
On a side note, if someone learns from a risk gone wrong, I'm not sure we should refer to it as failure, maybe a mistake.
Anyway, it's difficult to know where to draw the line in terms of when flaws are to great or mistakes too frequent or severe for someone to be an effective leader - and we all have different ideas about how and what we value as the "good" and how we weigh that against the "bad." I guess that's part of what makes leadership so interesting. In one context a leader who is a philanderer is no big deal, in another, it is the leader’s undoing.
I’d be interested to hear what people think are the flaws or mistakes that can revoke a leader’s “role model” status. What do you think?
The acknowledged leader (chief) of a homeless encampment in Providence, Rhode Island, was happy to step down when some in the group of 50 or so challenged his leadership. After all, he’d never been elected. It was just that the 55-year-old former factory supervisor had always been seen by those who gathered around him under the condemned freeway overpass by the river as the leader. However, the American assumption is that followers have a say in who will lead.
It wasn’t long before fights broke out among those who had taken up residence in the little tent city. Food was stolen. Soon John Freitas was voted back in as the chief and the community created a compact that included a 5-member leadership council and rules to guide the little community. By July, it had grown to 80 people with its own organization (tents of young single people and substance abusers are near the road so emergency vehicles won’t have to go through the rest of the camp, for example).
While this community is temporary (the overpass will be torn down) it shows how the right kinds of leadership are critical to the health of any group. It may even suggest that the symbolic value of the identified leader is essential to the process. The compact declares that “no person shall be greater than the will of the whole,” but it seems that having the executive function located with one person (Mr. Freitas) provides a kind of security that ensures the safety of the process.
This story from the NY Times provides a nice illustration of some important aspects of leadership and the role of leaders. I’d be interested in know what you see in it.
Remember the J. Giles tune, Love Stinks?
I've been through diamonds
I've been through minks
I've been through it all
Love stinks
Substitute the word "change" for "love" and this tune then aligns with this post.
My alma mater undergraduate institution, St. Norbert College, has embraced change throughout its 111 year existence. Founded as a school to prepare men for the priesthood, it has evolved to preparing over 500 graduating men and women each year to serve in a variety of global roles. Classrooms were renovated, residence halls built, a dedicated leadership development ropes course created, a new entrance, a new library… Even our beloved icon, a statue of one of founding fathers, Abbot Pennings, was relocated. Now the pictures of kissing the Abbot (or any other pictures with him) are taken in the new library as opposed to outside on a central path. While perhaps not as much fun, this change does denote a bit more respect for the man while still allowing a time-honored tradition to continue.
Change is good. Change helps us grow. Change helps to keep us from going to hell for doing improper things to the Abbott’s statue (not that I ever did that of course).
Then I read our alumni newsletter and realized… Change Stinks.
The opening article of the newsletter announced the opening of the new Fr. Eugene E. Gries, O.Praem., Residence Hall. Great! I love the change. Love that upperclassmen can live in much better accommodations than the dirty, old, college house I lived in senior year where we would blow a fuse every day with the electric heaters we needed to stay warm; The bad 30-year old purple shag carpet; The floors worn down from a party or two. No wireless Internet and only two phone jacks that worked with any regularity. The new dorm is a 59,000-square-foot facility, featuring a brick and stone exterior, wireless Internet, cable, utilities, a reflection space… WOW!
I began to visualize this state of the art building and looked to see where it was located. On the river? Where that old parking lot was? Somewhere else in the lovely town of De Pere, WI?
No… it was on the intersection of Third and Marsh Streets. Third and Marsh? Third and Marsh! It can’t be on that block because that is where my house is. Or should I say was? The old heater; the purple shag carpet; the worn down floors. Further, the block of Third and Marsh is also where my husband’s house is/was. Home to a lot of late night tomfoolery, cook-outs, and impromptu hanging out on the porch. We met senior year because we lived next door to each other. We have graduation pictures in front of those homes. We have pictures in my bridal gown and his tux in front of those homes. How could this be?
Should St. Norbert have stopped their growth, development, and change simply because one alumnus (maybe a few more) is sad about losing the decrepit old house? Of course not. Should I be a bit more rational about the demise of the house especially since there were many more negative aspects about it than positive ones? Of course.
 But as you think of change efforts within your own organization, remember that what is overlooked most often isn’t the vision, strategy, process, or even communication about the change, but the human side of change. The connection of the change from the perspective of the person impacted by the change (Bunker & Wakefield, 2005). For every four or five people cheering that the new dorm is being built, there will be one or two people in the pipe moving at a slower rate of change acceptance and sad that the house is gone. The leadership challenge is to not ignore those that are slower to accept change, but to connect to the person and their feelings so you can “help individuals in the organization let go, deal with the discomfort, rebuild, and learn" (p.11). Essentially, help me let go to a symbol of my cherished college life.
Change is good. Change helps us grow. But every now and again… Change Stinks!
 My favorite hockey player, Joe Sakic of the Colorado Avalanche, retired last week after an illustrious 20-year career as not only a great hockey player, but a great captain and leader. The “face of our franchise for the past two decades” is how the President of the Avalanche organization described him. His teammates, fans, and management were in tears of appreciation and adoration at his press conference. This is truly a valued leader to that organization.
This led me to ponder retirement from the view of those in the talent pipeline. How do people within an organization react where their respected and esteemed leader decides to retire, especially when that leader is the face of the company, the brand, the franchise?
There are many who mourn the loss of the leader and wonder how life will go on after they leave. As a Green Bay Packer fan, we are still wondering about life after Brett Favre, even after his successor has been on the job and functioning quite well for more than a year. GE stockholders wondered who would ever live up to the reputation and legacy of their beloved Jack Welch. Anne Mulcahy retired a couple of weeks ago after leading Xerox in a multi-billion dollar and substantial brand image turn-around the past nine years (in addition to being an icon for demonstrating how to effectively break the glass ceiling).
But what about those in the pipe ready to start demonstrating their legacy? Aaron Rogers held a clipboard for three years waiting to show that he was worthy to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. Jeffrey Immelt held and demonstrated excellence in numerous global leadership positions for almost 20 years before being given the CEO reins. Ursula Burns, I imagine, is eager to demonstrate that she can be the role model for African-American female leaders and as exemplary a CEO as Anne Mulcahy.
In succession management, we often talk about what does a person needs to get to the next “level” without acknowledging that a key criterion is the level needs to be open. The person above you needs to leave, whether by their own promotion, a lateral move, or retirement. So if you are the Aaron, Jeffrey, or Ursula of your organization, is it okay to be happy for the opportunity to shine? The chance to assume the next level (whatever that level may be for you)?
Let me know your thoughts. In the interim, I’ll be seeing how Matt Duchene (the Avalanche’s First round pick this year) does in training camp; excited that they have such outstanding talent on the team yet getting a bit misty eyed as they retire the “19” jersey on opening night this year.
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