Personal Responsibility and Success: Quit Shooting Yourself in the Foot!
Filed under: Career, Life and Business, Making Decisions, Performance, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I’ve been harping on personal responsibility at least once per week recently, and can’t quite get it out of my system. I’m bombarded daily with too many examples of people that fail to take responsibility for their actions and in the process, often stop one step short of success.
One of my as yet unresolved points of personal inquiry (and wonder), involves those individuals in businesses and in graduate and undergraduate classes that are seemingly armed with their fair share of intellectual gifts and raw capabilities, but that still manage to metaphorically shoot themselves in one or both feet with alarming regularity. Or, if you prefer this visual, they regularly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
My question: “What’s up with you people?”
My advice: “Cut it out!”
Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great and most recently, How the Mighty Fall, suggests that greatness is not a function of circumstances, but rather the result of a series of conscious choices. While Collins is referencing organizations in his point, the same shoe fits for individuals. Or at least the shoe would fit, if people didn’t have their feet wrapped in bandages from all of the foot-shooting going on in the workplace and in classrooms.
All Too-Common Examples:
- Adult students everywhere that don’t show up on time, don’t complete work and don’t participate. What are you paying for? What do you hope to get out of the experience? Jump in, do the work, participate and you’ll learn a lot more and you actually might find the experience enjoyable.
- Individuals that believe that bigger forces are working against them. I hear some remarkable excuses from otherwise smart people. The excuses generally have nothing to do with their own personal failings, and everything to do with a series of events that conspired to defeat them for the task in question. You sound like an idiot making these excuses. Give it up.
- Everyone in the business environment that has 20:20 vision that allows them to see with remarkable clarity the faults of their team members and colleagues. It seems like a big mirror is in order here. If these people don’t start looking in it first before looking around for those to blame, perhaps someone should “metaphorically” hit them over the head with it.
- The Apologists that actually seem to accept personal responsibility and apologize profusely for their transgressions. Every week. Over and over again. And again. Hey, guess what. After the first apology, we all know that we’re dealing with a serial apologizer who uses this tool as part of their survival strategy. Given a little time, you become transparent to all of us.
The Bottom-Line:
You are in control of your own actions. You decide every day and with every activity to be successful or to fail. I respect your right to decide to fail, but don’t blame fate, the forces, everyone else and for crying out loud, quit apologizing every time you decide to fail. And if the failure track is getting old, why don’t you decide to succeed next time…and then do what it takes to make it happen. It actually takes less energy and feels a lot better than all of the other failure-coping approaches that you apply.
The New Employer-Employee Loyalty Prescription
Filed under: Career, Current Affairs, Leadership, Life and Business, Making Decisions, Professional Growth, Social Commentary, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Note from Art: this post is the outcome of some great discussions in MBA and undergraduate class settings on the emerging U.S. and global workplace. I’ve offered blog commentary recently on the issue of the false promise of , “The Disposable Worker,” as well as the theme of self-responsibility. This post extends those discussions to the more fundamental relationship between workers and their firms. I may not win many friends here, but hope to stimulate some critical thinking.
The term and concept of “loyalty” is one that is frequently bandied about in phrases that sound much like, “there is no longer any loyalty to workers,” and “few workers admit any feelings of loyalty to their employers.” The term is also used to contrast today’s transactional workplace relationships with the supposed near utopian state of yesteryear, when our parents and grandparents started at one company early in their lives and ended up retiring from that company 40 years later.
The concept of “loyalty” in the workplace is in need of a makeover, complete with a new definition and fresh examples of what constitute reasonable and professional levels of loyalty for and from all parties.
A Prescription for a New Approach to Loyalty in the Workplace:
Let’s start by extracting the implied promise of “time of employment” as a component of the concept of workplace loyalty. Given the complexity and accelerating pace of the world of business, no one has any idea on how long any business model or business will sustain or survive. Acquisitions, disruptive global competition and the pace of technological change all guarantee that the long-term view for every firm is part mirage. Your firm may be acquired or rendered obsolete. In some cases, the firm will morph and the skills that were required yesterday are different than the skills needed right now and for the next few tomorrows.
As individuals responsible for our own careers, we should eradicate the expectation of a long-term relationship with a firm from our minds. The firm is on trial in the global marketplace every day, month, quarter and year, and as highlighted above, there are a myriad of opportunities where the jury of the marketplace may return an unfavorable verdict.
Freshly armed with a strong and clear perspective on reality, both employees and employers must rethink their responsibilities, expectations and obligations to and for each other.
Employers and Leaders:
- Owe employees a healthy workplace, free from hostility and harassment. Ideally, this workplace is grounded in clear, meaningful values and dedicated to the ethical pursuit of business.
- Owe employees clear context on ever-shifting strategic priorities. This includes the proverbial “heads up” as conditions demand that the firm change, merge or cease to exist.
- Are accountable to employees for fostering an environment that promotes the creative daily execution of core tasks…and that encourages experimentation and innovation as a normal way of conducting business and striving to improve performance.
- Are responsible for discovering, developing and deploying the talent necessary for the organization to survive, sustain and prosper.
- Are not responsible for the career planning and on going developmental support of all employees. Individuals own their careers, not the firm. Of course, the values of a firm may very well support the individual pursuit of career and skills enhancement through education assistance and training. This is a “values” call, not an implied obligation on the part of the firm.
- Are free to choose what they deem as the best choice for engaging and retaining the top talent needed to win. Some firms may consciously choose to extend more than other firms in terms of benefits, structure and even a culture of retention. This is a strategic choice that may prove beneficial for some firms. Regardless, the promise of on-going employment should not obfuscate the reality that the firm must serve customers, compete and create value to sustain. If any of those fail, people go away.
Individuals (Employees):
- Owe their firms their absolute best efforts on daily basis. Anything less is a breach of the basis for the relationship.
- Own their own careers and are wholly responsible for ensuring that their skills remain current and that they are progressing towards a goal of their choosing.
- May very well choose the leaders and firms that treat them the best and that support their efforts. Loyalty and commitment are very powerful when the relationship is based on respect, trust and a feeling of belonging.
- Operate free in the knowledge that they can come and go at their own will or the will of the organization.
The Bottom Line for Now
It’s essential that all parties are clear that their alliance is temporary ranging from days to years and that the basis for the relationship is to realize value creation for stakeholders. And yes, employees are critical stakeholders. While my prescription may sound transactional…and indeed it is in part, the beauty is that if the leaders and employees are good at running their business, their relationship stands a chance of sustaining.
Much like a professional sports team, the firm is a collection of individuals at a point in time, brought together to purse a goal. After that, the analogy breaks down, as there is no system of playoffs and a dedicated championship every year. The real world of business is much more complicated than the world of sports. The rules are constantly being redefined on the fly and the competitors are different every day. While a recession clearly highlights the plight of individuals and challenges the approaches of firms, a realignment of expectations around loyalty is in everyone’s best interests. Be loyal to yourself, your family and to your momentary employer. Just don’t expect much from the last party in that equation and you won’t be surprised.
When Will You Choose to Be Successful? An Irreverent Rant on Personal Motivation
Filed under: Career, Leading Change, Life and Business, Making Decisions, Performance, Social Commentary, Social Satire, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
You can distill an entire shelf of self-help books down to this simple question at the top of the post: “When will you choose to be successful?” Based on my calculation, I just saved you somewhere between $400 and $800 dollars or more at retail on self-help books. Make checks payable to…
It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people have for not succeeding at something they view as important to them personally or professionally. While behavioral psychologists might label this as an issue of “external versus internal locus of control,” as I listen to the excuses flowing for not getting the job, not losing weight, not saving money, not making it to class, not writing a book, not keeping up with blogging, what I’m really thinking is (in very loud terms inside my mind), “YOU HAVE NOT MADE UP YOUR MIND TO SUCCEED!”
Just a Few Examples:
- Let’s take diets. First of all, we’re all on them. Eating is required for life. The type of diet that bedevils most people is the one that involves doing this less often. To my own knowledge, there are very few incidents reported every year that involve someone force feeding someone else donuts and super-sized gargantuan fast food meals. Given the lack of external coercion, we are left to conclude that free-thinking people with free will are jamming the extra calories down their gullets and then lamenting the struggles of dieting. My suggestion is duct tape over the mouth. For multiple reasons.
- Want to write a blog or a book? It’s darned hard to do without understanding the secret behind S.A.I.C. That stands for “Sitting Ass in Chair.” Quit talking, sit down and start typing.
- Interested in reinventing yourself? This is a common topic during these unpleasant economic times, and a few courageous souls are active in pursuit of this challenging activity. However, more than a few know that they need to do something, but suffer from too much S.A.I.C., and need to apply G.A.O.O.C.a.G.G. That stands for “Get Ass Out of Chair and Get Going.”
- Still smoking? Yeah, big tobacco got you. It’s a plot. It may well be, but why are you committing slow suicide along with your donut eating, super-sizing, friends. Same issue. No one is holding the gun to your head saying “smoke me.” I get the nicotine thing…but find some help and get on with it.
- Would life at work be great if only the boss would hurry up and eat/smoke/reinvent himself out of your life? Get over your boss and focus on yourself and your performance. Some of the best performers and most successful people you’ll meet got that way by using the motivation of a lousy leader to help them push forward.
- Sales down this quarter? The last time that I looked, there’s still a lot of money flowing through the global economy. Someone somewhere is selling something. Why not you? Maybe it’s time to reinvent your approach to getting clients to know, like, trust, try, buy and refer you. (Thanks, John Jantsch…those are part of his Marketing Hourglass terms!). Shameless plug…call me on this one, I can help!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Just so that you know that I’m an equally opportunity pain in the ass, I’ve got a few challenges on my plate that I’ve occasionally found myself looking around for good excuses to attach to my lack of progress. However, I know better and the excuses only make me realize that my biggest failure on the issues at hand is that, “I’ve not yet decided to be successful.” OK, I’ve decided. Now back to work. Right after I take a lunch-time workout to make some progress on another goal.
It’s your turn. Have you decided?
The Three C’s and One D of Great Hiring According to Small Business Owners
Filed under: Career, Making Decisions, Management Education, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Experienced small business owners and managers understand the critical importance of making great hires. The right people propel your business and the wrong ones cost you precious time and money. The wrong hires ring up expensive opportunity costs by making less than optimal decisions, inappropriately leading or misleading your teams and not helping you create value and gain a competitive advantage.
There’s an entire industry and ample science and psychology behind the various tools and approaches for assessing personalities, gauging intelligence and conducting interviews that systematically uncover the real individual. That’s all good and important…especially the behavioral interviewing part, however, most small and mid-sized business owners and managers that I know, make key hiring decisions more on gut feeling than on the output of rigorous assessment practices and tools. And while some have finely tuned “hiring guts,” a good number of owners and managers lament the bad calls and the lack of access to help.
I spoke to a number of owners running visibly successful firms and asked for their insights on hiring talent on their teams. The roll-up of their advice is as follows (I paraphrase):
-Understand the nature of the position and your expectations for the individual in that position today and five years from now. Hire people that have the intelligence, acumen and drive to both grow the role and grow with the role.
-A caveat to the first point: don’t be cheap now or you’ll pay for it later. Invest in the right talent today, even if it means paying more than you had hoped for. The right person will pay dividends almost immediately and long into the future.
And importantly, hire for the 3 C’s and 1 D: Character, Critical Thinking Skills, Communication Capabilities and Decision Making Acumen.
-Character: look for evidence through behavioral interviewing and reference checking of core values, handling of ethical dilemmas and commitment to the development and support of others. It’s not hard to discern someone that’s in it for themselves and “win at any costs” versus someone with a more externally oriented focus. One business owner likes to evaluate people by how they compete as part of athletic teams. He’s been known to invite a potential male hires to his weekly basketball game at the Y.
-Critical Thinking Skills: truth be told, the phrase is mine and not one used directly by the business owners that I spoke with, but the meaning is the same. People are looking for individuals that see big pictures or that recognize patterns from the noise in the environment. They make sense out of chaos and are capable of forming plans to exploit the chaos to their firm’s advantage. These are the people that dream up new products, come up with new ways of marketing and selling or see opportunities for gaining efficiencies through improved processes. It sounds lofty, but it can be as simple as the example below.
One manager describes looking for any signs that the individual attacks problems with non-traditional solutions. “I would rather hear a potential sales rep tell me how she landed the deal by investing a business day observing the customer’s team and then tailoring the proposed solution based on what she learned, versus a rep that plays only by the price book. The latter are a dime a dozen.”
-Communication Capabilities: One comment: “I hire people that build credibility every time they open their mouths. I want to be impressed by what they ask and how they answer. It shows me how they think, it provides insight into their character and it tells me whether they have the gray matter that I need to grow my business.”
Another indicated, “I hire great communicators and it starts with how well they listen. If someone proves to me that they are a good listener and that they understand that when someone else is talking, their only job is to understand the real intent of the person talking,” I want to hire that person.
Still another offered that she looks carefully beyond the resume and how an individual expresses himself/herself in writing. “I want to understand the complete communicator, and too often, we forget to look at how an individual presents himself in writing. This is an important indicator of intelligence for me.”
-Decision Making Acumen: Again, my phrase, but consistent agreement. One individual summed it up best: “I look for the individual’s examples of tough decisions. What were the stakes? How did she assess risk? How did she gather her data? Who’s opinion did she seek? How fast did she act?”
Another commented: “It’s important for me to understand how people deal with bad decisions. Some are convinced that they can fix anything and will continue to pursue a clearly bad course of action. Others understand that accepting a bad decision and learning from it is the right next step. If I can find good examples of how someone handled genuine mistakes, I gain great insight into an individual’s approach to business and leadership.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
You can do much worse than improving your ability to gauge the 3 C’s and a D. Character, communications capabilities, critical thinking skills and decision making acumen are the raw materials required for individual and organizational success. Here’s to your hiring health!
Leadership Caffeine-Develop the Courage to Derail the Bad Decision Train
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Skills, Making Decisions, Management Education, Performance, Project Management, Values
“In life, one bad decision often leads to other bad decisions.” These are the words of Andre Agassi, the former professional tennis player describing on 60 Minutes a cascading series of bad decisions that almost ruined his life.
While Andre’s story had a generally positive outcome; he struggled back from depression and drugs to regain tennis glory, find the love of his life and turn into a philanthropist that has raised over $100 million dollars for charity, many business professionals and businesses aren’t as fortunate.
Once the bad decision train starts rolling, we often respond by adding more coal to the fire. This is particularly true for senior leaders that perceive that they have the most to lose if they admit that they were wrong.
Consider:
- It’s common to deal with major project problems in new product development or technology infrastructure for firms to double-down and keep investing when all of the signs say, “pull the plug.”
- Once senior leadership allows a move away from goodness….something that crosses the ethics or values chasm, it can be like pulling the plug on a dam. Think Enron.
- Greed begets greed. AIG’s founder, Hank Greenberg in Business Week on his successor, Martin Sullivan: “I know for a fact that Sullivan told everyone, Just do everything you want, get as much business as you can and don’t worry about a goddam thing.” (See also my post from last year, “The Dollar Bill Auction and a Failure of Rational Judgment.”
- Momentary success creates a blind spot in the front-windshield. “Here’s to a future of more trucks and fewer cars,” toasted a Ford CEO in the earlier part of this decade. He got it half right!
- The gut reaction to a recession is to cut and then quit moving. Firms hunker down and wait for the storm to pass, when they should be moving faster to create in anticipation of the storm passing.
And don’t get me started on the nearly endless examples from history.
The “bad decision train” is difficult to stop or derail once it gets moving. It seems to take extraordinary courage to admit that you are wrong. A combination of ego and fear often prevail, driving us to go all-in when we should fold and walk away.
While the instinct to pursue bad decisions with more bad decisions might be difficult to overcome, it is critical that leaders fight this tendency by fostering a culture that encourages teams and individuals to challenge decisions, particularly when new facts and lessons learned begin to point towards a different direction.
The trick of course is to not err in the opposite direction, and create a culture that second-guesses every decision and results in people constantly rearranging the deck chairs in a never-ending stream of shifting priorities.
Ideas for Derailing the Bad Decision Train
- Carefully develop and communicate the assumptions that underlie major projects. Teach team members to constantly compare initial assumptions to the current marketplace realities and make it safe for them to push the alarm button.
- Recognize that as a leader, it is your job to foster a learning culture. Define what this means for you and your team and ensure that it is supported in actions, not just easy words. Learning includes recognizing mistakes and adapting behaviors.
- Recognize that your behavior sets the pattern for everyone. Shoot messengers and execute teams for making mistakes, and you will create a culture that never questions a decision regardless of how visibly wrong it truly is.
- Encourage dissenters..not toxic employees, but the courageous individuals willing to stand up and tell you that your baby is ugly.
- Manage the second-guessing by challenging teams with cold feet to go through the process of vetting original assumptions and developing alternatives. Hold them accountable to more than complaining. If an idea is wrong, fine. What’s the alternative?
- Accept the reality that you will need to make tough decisions that will fly in the face of prevailing emotions, including your own. This is your job.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The list of suggestions above is just a starting point. Admitting failure and moving on is harder for a variety of personal and sometimes job saving reasons than plowing ahead on a strategy of hope. It takes courage to lead effectively, and sometimes that courage calls for a retreat or a complete change of plans.
Are you courageous enough to derail the bad decision train?
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