Leading Effectively Series
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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.
When organizations merge and the cultures clash, what do you do? I just returned from the 2009 MiL Days International Conference conference in Sweden, at our CCL partner MiL Institute, with a side trip to Gothenburg, where I spent time talking with leaders at the Volvo Car Company. Volvo Car you may remember was acquired by the Ford Motor Company in 1999 when Ford was the world's most profitable carmaker.
Big culture clash: Ford is about the values of efficient operations and production discipline. Volvo is about community and the values of respect and trust. Ford was the buyer, so Volvo had to take it on the chin. They had to make some dramatic adjustments. Among these was removal of slack in the production process. Volvo had always encouraged ongoing experimentation with the manufacturing process. Workers were encourage to find and implement solutions to problems locally and then spread the knowledge. Ford on the other hand solved problems through centralized expertise, comprehensive analysis and standardization. Under Ford’s ownership, the world at Volvo got colder and more impersonal, and less like the Swedish national culture that gave birth to Volvo.
Now, Ford may sell Volvo Car. Where would that leave Volvo? Some of those I spoke with think that Volvo can come out of this with a stronger culture. Two developments are especially interesting. First is that Volvo got a fresh influx of cultural DNA from Ford. Volvo has learned some important lessons about accountability and efficiency. Even more importantly, Volvo learned that its culture can change without breaking, and some of that change can be for the better.
Volvo Car is now creating leadership development in which “the culture goes to school.” In other words, leadership development at Volvo is focused beyond just individuals and teams, deliberately developing shared beliefs and behaviors that fit the changing strategic direction of the company.
This is a lesson of merit for almost any organization: Take your culture to school and shape it to fit your strategy.
Salted away in the midst of San Diego's glossy urban renewal is the Kansas City Barbecue and I stop by for a pulled pork sandwich and a Karl Strauss amber now and again. The restaurant is tucked next to the Trolley stop and surrounded by the fancy multi-story hotels of the Marina district. Young upwardly-mobile residents of the area run by, led by their mini-dogs, and sometimes conferees from the Conference center and hotels across Harbor drive will find their way to a red-checked table.
But mostly, the denizens are regulars who pack the bar every afternoon: bikers and construction workers, retired navy enlisted, pedicab drivers, and all the other kinds of people urban renewal is designed to displace. The restaurant prides itself on being the location for the “sleazy bar scene” in the Tom Cruise classic “Top Gun” and also on its various collections (over 350 navy caps, license plates from all over the world, signed brassieres, and life preservers from naval ships). The restaurant had a serious fire a couple years ago and was closed for most of a year and reopened this year looking pretty much the same it did before the fire.
I realize I’m a tourist here. Whatever my roots as the son of a working man (my dad was a plumber), I’ve joined the tribe of the over-educated and rootless. We are a nomadic bunch and tend to meet our kin in airport lounges and at tribal conferences. But this is a place that is a place.
It’s a place because there is the sense of community. Although one of the most diverse groups in the city, they are bound together because of a shared culture of respect and pleasure. The collections are signs of respect for the experiences of the regular navy people (navy hats, license plates, life-savers...even brassieres) who have passed through San Diego and decided to stay.
When the restaurant was shut down after the fire, for many months the restaurant held a Thirsty Thursdays happy hour event on the patio. They offered hot dogs and drinks, all for a donation, and the money went to support the staff who were without jobs during the time it took for insurance adjustments, permitting, and reconstruction. That was ‘right’ on so many counts: right for the community, right for the staff, right as a demonstration of smart business and good leadership.
I love all these things about the joint, but there’s a part of me that loves it most because it feels like old San Diego...the San Diego of my dad, the enlisted Navy man...thumbing it’s nose at the fancy new, upscale, just-like-every-other-new-downtown-in-the-country San Diego.
 Even though I'm a working stiff like most people I know, now and again I visit more exotic worlds. Recently we were working with the executive team of a five-star hotel and had the privilege of staying at the hotel. Of course, everything was lovely: the property, the staff, the resources, the rooms…really, everything.
Now, I’ve stayed at very high end (and not-so-high-end) lodgings all over the world, but this recent work got me thinking more carefully about what makes a true five-star experience. I suppose I thoughtlessly assumed it was the kinds of measures used by online aggregators like Hotels.com, Expedia or Orbitz: more amenities or features means more stars.
That’s not what does it, really. The key is not more marble in the bathroom or fluffier towels, uniformed room service or cookies on the pillow. The key is the attention paid to the individual. It comes down to this: a hotel is measured by the importance it communicates to its guests. Here are a couple of illustrations:
My colleague’s preference for Earl Grey tea with milk was known and provided whenever tea was ordered because it was noticed at her first meal. My favorite English breakfast tea likewise arrived without further requests.
When I first arrived at the hotel, after a long drive, I went for a swim. Every day thereafter, an enormous, thirsty pink pool towel was neatly folded on a chair in my room in case I wanted to start my day with a dip.
One evening I went by the popular hotel bar. There were no seats available at the time and the maitre d’ (whom I’d not yet met) approached me, addressed me by name, and offered to call me at my room as soon as a table was free.
Money can buy you access to five star service, but it can’t create it. It has to come from a genuine commitment to the care of others and attention to the very personal and idiosyncratic. It comes down to something the general manager said: “It’s all about love. Love for your guests and love for your fellow staff.” That’s five-star.
May all your experiences be five-star!
Doug
My good friend Vidula Bal (at least I hope I'm still on that list) had some useful advice in this space for President-elect Obama. She seems to be a fan of surrounding oneself with smart people and then exercising discernment about what they have to tell you. It would probably be easier to take Vidula along to ride shotgun, as my experience suggests her BS detector is a finely tuned instrument with no lack of calibration opportunities.
That being said, I was interested in what discernment might look like and have started reflecting on some pieces of that puzzle. The question I started with was “who would I call discerning and what do they do that merits that term?” Here are two elements that rose from the mist early on. As predicted by Vidula, they all involve the way one uses one’s social context.
One aspect of discernment is the capacity to forsee the implications or consequences of choices one makes for others. This requires a broad acquaintance with and concern for people who are different from you and each other and a determination to eschew imperial ambitions. I'm reminded of a negative example I saw earlier today when I walked back from the beach to the coffee shop where my writing takes place. I saw a man and woman with two small boys, each about 3 years old. The boys were the typical tow-headed beach tots, each with a boogie-board in tow. My attention was drawn because the woman was unhappy with one of them who ignored his companion’s plea to stop running into him and she was grabbing him away. As they walked by me, I saw that each of the boys had large tattoos on his back and around one arm. While cute in that “my child is really my pet” kind of way, I couldn’t help wondering how happy these boys will be in a dozen years when they are wanting to join their own adolescent culture but they wear the parental “brand.” Cultural imperialism is no less coercive just because it is “counter-cultural” in the local context.
For our President, discernment means that rich or poor, native, early immigrant, or just-immigrated, male, female or whatever new gender we invent this week, all will be affected by your choices and forethought given to the impact on the rich diversity of this land will pay off.
Another element of discernment relates to the obligation and opportunity the President has to make meaning for the collective of the Nation. The care and feeding of the American soul is in his hands and if one does not see that there is such a (metaphorical) thing, how will one preserve it? Now that everyone is re-reading Team of Rivals, we may have a resurgence of awareness that reputation really is something important. Lincoln wanted, above all things, to be esteemed by his fellows. To him that meant that he would do the right thing and thereby preserve his name and the name of the Union. The world has chosen to suspend its judgment about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave in hopes that we will, once again, stand for more than personal aggrandizement and greed. Discernment in this case means that the President and those who surround him recognize that every choice, every conversation (whether in public or in private) define the identity of this country: its soul. Our kryptonite has always been the fear that separates us into categories of race, wealth, culture, gender, and every other possible division. Since we seem to have elected a president from across the great divide, wouldn’t it be nice to become a whole nation?
Just a thought or two, Mr. President-elect. You’d still be better off putting Vidula in the Cabinet. How about Secretary of State?
Your basic presidential non-advisor,
Doug
I'm writing this post on Labor Day in the US. Which has me thinking about, well, labor of all things. Specifically how much has changed (or not) since Labor Day started back in the early 1880s - when the US was just emerging from the changes brought by industrialism and not that long after our Civil War.
Child labor laws were starting to take shape around the time the Labor Day movement, though nothing was on the federal books yet. The Fair Employment Act showed up in the early 1940s - and was followed decades later by the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Labor Day Parade, Buffalo, New York, circa 1900.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
So how is all this connected to leadership? I'm thinking mostly of the changes in labor in terms of the workforce and what that means for leaders and leadership. The workforce is increasingly inclusive. Partly because of labor laws, like those mentioned above, partly because it is an economic necessity,and partly because of the rise in multinational organizations (both for profit and not for profit).
This increased diversity in the workforce is a change that provides potential to build a more inclusive and functional organizations and ideally society itself. It also places a greater burden on us to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones. The payoff, I believe, is well worth the disequilibrium (and in some cases discord). Leadership is a factor that can help move us through the discomfort to see and seize the opportunity therein. What strikes me is the importance of good sense balanced with good policies and practices. There's no good answer about how to get it right, and if I had "the" answer, chances are you wouldn't full agree.
Our sense of "good sense" gets challenged in an increasingly inclusive workforce (where we come into contact with different perspectives, experiences and different ideas about "good sense"). Leadership, from my perspective, is about being aware of and anchored in one's values, identity, expertise, etc. and, paradoxically, being willing to reflect and change based on new experiences and information.
"Good" policies and practices are tricky too. While I think policies and practices should represent collective wisdom, I can think of times that something unpopular did a great deal to move an organization or a country forward (and vice versa - something popular that had negative consequences). And, of course, a lot depends on how policies and practices are enacted and enforced.
The "answer" is a verb more than a noun. Paying attention to one's own ideals and values, those of others, and the greater context - and doing the best we can to be fair, just, and productive.
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