Leadership Caffeine-Lessons from the Wilderness

January 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment

image of a coffee cupOne of my favorite (and I believe relevant) articles of the past year is: “Wilderness Leadership On the Job- Five principles from outdoor exploration that will make you a better manager,” by John Kanengieter and Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin in the April 2012 Harvard Business Review (subscription or $).

The authors describe the need for leaders to cultivate TFAU or Tolerance for Adversity and Uncertainty for survival and success in today’s uncertain world. As a long time student of the polar explorers as examples (successful and unsuccessful) of leadership and management role models, the need to expect and adapt to the unexpected at every twist and turn is indeed a wilderness survival and success technique.

While much about our world has changed, the structures, processes and tools that we draw upon in our work as leaders and managers have their roots in times that were more static, more contained, and more accommodating of our need for a sense of order.

Instead of teaching people to work within a self-contained system where the goal is to impose order, this new world demands much more of a sense and respond style of leading. Opportunities or threats flare up, we organize quickly to prosecute these events, and we process on and incorporate the lessons learned as we move forward towards a somewhat fuzzy and ever-shifting future.

While cultivating TFAU and a sense and respond type culture might suggest that cultivating a future vision and backing it with forward planning might be less valuable, I would argue it’s just the opposite. Like the polar explorers or any other explorer, there’s a destination in mind and a well-developed game plan to get there. However, reality says that the destination may need to change and the method for getting anywhere is often one we define on the fly by sensing, responding, learning and rethinking our approaches.

Eisenhower’s famous quote, “plans are nothing, planning is everything” has never been more relevant than in today’s business world.

 5 Ideas for Cultivating Tolerance for Uncertainty and Ambiguity on Your Team:

1. Monitor, Talk and Learn. Constantly refresh on the competitor, customer and global forces impacting your environment. External monitoring is everyone’s job. Create forums (live and online) to talk about the external environment. Teach people to connect external changes to, “And what I think this means for us (or our customers) is… .”

2. Less Vision, More Value. Anchor your culture and even your vision around value creation for some audience(s). Targets and destinations shift…and “becoming the leading provider of… .” is just so much happy baloney. Instead, focus on cultivating a galvanizing theme of value creation through problem-solving for well defined audiences.

3. Agile Please! Adopt practices in project management and even strategic planning that foster intelligent experimentation. No one can be right all of the time, but everyone can learn from clearly defined experiments.

4. Learn to Assess Your Perils. Not every bump or noise in the night is a problem that merits response. Choosing what not to do may be the most important task of today’s agile leader.

5. Measure Progress Properly. Traditional measures of success are often insufficient to gauge progress in the wilderness. Look for measures that reflect learning, improvement, feedback and acceleration.

 A Serenity Now Prayer for Leaders in the Wilderness:

From the article:

“We tell them to plan for things they can control, let go of things they can’t, expect the unexpected, and maintain composure when it arrives. Problems get solved only with calm deliberation.”

Wise words, indeed.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

This fascinating, fast-moving, hyper-connected world we are working and living in is indeed much like a wilderness expedition filled with unknowns and new challenges over every hill. In the wilderness, a good plan plus the ability to adapt on the fly to emerging challenges is the difference between life and death. It’s increasingly the same in our world of work.

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register herebook cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. 

Download a free excerpt of Leadership Caffeine (the book) at Art’s facebook page.

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An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

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Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Professional Growth, Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

In the Battle for Change, Attacking the Culture Usually Proves Fatal

March 2, 2011 by 3 Comments

Real-Time Lessons in Leadership

Jody Weis relinquished his role as “Top Cop” here in Chicago, after what was a tumultuous and a productive three-year run in this thankless job.

Weis was a controversial appointment by Mayor Daley. He was an outsider…a product of the FBI, and someone who hadn’t earned any street cred with the powerful cultural force that is the rank and file of the Chicago Police Department.

He stepped into an environment where scandals and corruption were front-page and YouTube news. He was given a mandate to eliminate corruption, and he attacked the job with a ferocity that alienated him from the rank and file and the powerful union. He changed out most of the top leaders and he went after the scandals and the scandalous, including two cases with officers plainly visible on video beating citizens (one a woman in a bar, the other, a man handcuffed to a wheelchair.)

Adding insult to injury from the perspective of the feet on the street, Weis cemented his poor relationship with his organization by wearing a police uniform to various functions. It was widely viewed as an unearned honor since Weiss did not come up through the ranks on the force.  Another major annoyance included adding some highly compensated administrators to his staff at the same time he was shrinking the number of police out on Chicago’s streets.

Add all of this up, and Weis was excellent political fodder for the recent mayoral election, where the candidates all pledged to not renew his contract if they were elected. This, in spite of the fact that the measures of success…major crime statistics generally improved (some substantially), and the number of scandals declined during his watch.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

As a new leader joining from outside the team or organization, the biggest challenge you face is how to cope with culture. If your mandate from those that sign your checks is radical cultural change, your instinct is to begin wrestling the beast from the start. Unfortunately, you cannot change the culture on your own, and in most cases, you cannot do it simply by trading out the leadership (every new leader’s knee-JERK reaction.)

If change is in order, you had best learn the culture, find ways to show your genuine respect for the culture, and captivate the minds and hearts of those inside the culture that are interested in creating a new day. You might have to break some eggs along the way, but at least you will have a team helping you cook and clean as you go.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance Tagged With: , , , ,

Beware Context Canyon When It Comes to Leading Change

August 19, 2010 by 8 Comments

Don't Fall Off the CliffWe invest a great deal of time talking and writing and preaching about change.  We discuss resistance to change, fear of change, our own need for personal change and the challenges that organizations face when it comes to embracing change.

We’re not very good at changing, but we sure like to talk about it.

Spend a few sleepless nights channel surfing the infomercials (a discomfiting experience in more ways than one), and you’ll realize that there’s a tremendous amount of energy that goes into selling us stuff to help us change in all area of our lives.

In my non-scientific polling and personal leadership anthropological meanderings, I’m comfortable generalizing that most change initiatives fail. From diets and fitness programs to resolutions and new corporate directions, failure to change is epidemic.

While I suspect that our failure to change our own individual habits is a close cousin to change failures in business, I’ll focus on the latter here.

We Create Our Own Context Canyons:

Most managers and management teams spend a great deal of time processing on the drivers of change.  By the time they start discussing or announcing changes, the issues and often the approaches are well-baked in their minds, while the rest of us on the receiving end are left with the deep thoughts of, “Huh?” or, “Why?” or, “Huh?”

The result is a gaping hole that I call the “Context Canyon” between managers suggesting change and employees processing on the implications of change. Depending upon the culture, resistance will range from loud and overt to quiet and passively aggressive.  Nonetheless, resistance will reign supreme until the “Context Canyon” is filled-in not just by the managers, but also by the rest of the organization taking the time to internalize the case for change.

5 Common-Sense Ideas to Help with Change:

1. Recognize the Context Canyon.  You and your peers may have worked through the case for change for months.  You’ve had time to process on the rationale and think through and even debate options and alternatives.  Mentally, you’ve long since accepted the need to change.  Remember that if the first time that your employees hear about the change is when you announce it, they are just starting their mental processing journey.  Your springing it on them has put them on the defensive from the beginning.

2. Involve People in Change Discussion Early and Often.  People typically want to contribute to the discussions on change.  They want to do their part to facilitate changes that will better serve customers and improve value for stakeholders.  Treat them as an extended team of advisors.  You show remarkable leadership courage and you show your respect for your employees by engaging them up-front on discussions about change.

3. Get the Why? Right! Again, beware the Context Canyon.  People might hear your rationale on Why change is required, but that does not mean that they agree with your logic and your case.  A pronouncement from on high typically does not equate to agreement or acceptance.  Create safe opportunities for individuals and teams to ask questions, offer their thoughts and process on the case for change.

4. Ask for Help on the What? After awhile, the discussions on “Why Change?” need to move towards “What to do?”  You’ll gain stronger organizational support by inviting and listening to active input, than you will dictating changes.  Additionally, the shift in discussion from “Why?” to “What?” actually serves to strengthen the case for change. Remember, your organization requires the same amount of time that you do to process-on and internalize the case.

5. Address the WIIFM.  Don’t fool yourself. People might be expressing concern about the organization, but everyone is thinking about, “What’s In it for Me?” (The less selfish sounding version is: “What does this mean for me in my job?”) This is the 600-pound gorilla on the back of the elephant in the room.  The more time that you put into spanning Context Canyon, and the more that you allow your employees to help you “design the way forward,” the easier it is to deal with WIIFM.  Your willingness to allow people to define how they have to change puts a great deal of individual and organizational angst to rest.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

While watching the various infomercials and pitch-people offering all manner of goods to improve our lives in the kitchen, the bedroom and the bank account, it occurred to me that we needed an offering to help us successfully navigate changes in our organizations and jobs.  For only three installments of $39.95, I’ll help you navigate Context Canyon.  And for the first 20 organizations to order, I’ll throw in the knife set.

There are no silver bullets or magic products that promote change.  Use good old-fashioned common-sense based on human psychology.  Context is King and involvement promotes engagement.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leading Change, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: 7 Odd Ideas to Help You Get Unstuck

March 21, 2010 by 13 Comments

A Cup of Leadership CaffeineWhile some argue that the natural order of life is towards entropy (a gradual decline into disorder), I would argue that the natural tendency of most humans is towards a kind of comfortable sameness and consistency in their daily lives.

The pursuit of different requires more energy than the descent into routine.  It is most definitely easier to not change.

There is comfort in routine. It feels good, like the hot shower that you take and the well-worn sweats that you put on after a long day at work.

We like to see familiar surroundings and familiar faces.  Consider a situation as trivial as your health club and your workout routine. There’s comfort in seeing the same, often nameless people at 5:30 a.m.  We belong, we are one of them, and everything is in balance when we assume our place with this familiar group.  Shift your workout to a mid-day routine, and the entire feel of the place changes, although the facilities and equipment are the same.  It’s different and slightly discomforting.

While comfortable and comforting, routine is the enemy of growth and progress and innovation. Routine is carried out in muscle memory.  Spend too much time doing the same things the same way and existence becomes one of pre-programmed decisions and choices that carve deep mental ruts in our minds that make change all the more difficult.

Routine is the enemy of growth.  The false comfort of sameness masks a slow decline and ultimately decay.

Top Performers Fight the Routine:

High performance individuals in all areas of life, from leaders to athletes to great individual contributors work hard everyday to fight the gravitational pull of getting stuck in the proverbial rut.

High performance teams and organizations find their comfort not in sameness or routine, but in embracing the ambiguity of the world and the constancy of change and the constant need to change.

Many of the best leaders that I’ve known, worked for or worked with go out of their way to push themselves and their teams to constantly do things different to keep their senses sharp, their individual and collective minds expanding and their ideas fresh.  They work hard at getting and staying unstuck!

7 Odd Ideas to Help Leaders and Teams Get Unstuck:

1.  Fight the tyranny of the Outlook calendar and recurring meetings.  There are few things worth talking about over and over again, and yet many in organizations perceive that they are doing their jobs by scheduling and conducting these self-aggrandizing events.  Fight the tyranny of others ruling your calendar!

2.  Rotate leadership.  More and more organizations are adopting an IDEO-inspired approach of choosing leaders for initiatives not based on seniority or level, but based on the group’s assessment of who the right leader is to help the team succeed with the initiative or project at hand.  Simple sounding…and in some organizations, heresy, but this is a true opportunity to innovate in management and importantly, to ensure that every new initiative benefits from a fresh way of looking at things.  This is also a powerful opportunity to help your team members build their own leadership skills.

3.  Break the back of bad-habit brainstorming! As odd as it sounds, I’ve observed a “sameness” and routine to brainstorming that is actually counter to the intended creative idea generating intent of the activity.  Groups come together and rehash the same ideas that they didn’t adopt in the last round.  There’s no edge, no excitement and nothing new as an outcome.  Try introducing anonymity into the process (variations of the Delphi technique); add outsiders/newcomers to the group and mix up methods for post-brainstorming idea selection.

4.   From time to time, do something completely off-task with your group. One manager creates vexing cases (business problems, people issues, strategy issues) that are different from but analogous to her work situation and facilitates the group through analysis and solution development.  Just getting people to think about other problems in other fictional settings is helpful in creating new pathways for problems in the current setting.

5.  Introduce your team to the management innovators and great leaders of today and yesterday.  Another manager regularly exposes his team to other leaders, cultures and approaches leveraging the massive volume of content available on YouTube and increasingly at places like Harvard and Stanford.  I do this in my management classes as well and long after the textbook and PowerPoint content is forgotten, people remember meeting (virtually) Jim Collins, Meg Whitman, John Chambers, Guy Kawasaki, Eric Schmidt, Jack Welch, Jim Goodnight and yes, even longtime favorite, Herb Kelleher.

6.  Play a game.  One of my favorite activities to run is the Dollar Bill Auction, which is guaranteed to both be fun and teach everyone about the realities and dangers of escalation of commitment.  Another of my favorite professionals, Kay Wais, at Successful Projects, LLC is creating games for Project Managers, and has recently introduced a well-received Project Risk board game.  I love the idea of introducing different ways of learning about important topics.

7.  Change up your personal routine.  I recall asking one of my senior managers what was up when I noticed a series of changes in his daily routine.  He was dressing different, arriving at work at a different time and even parking on the other side of the building.  His response was something to the effect of, “I’m pushing my team to mix things up in an effort to break out of our sales slump and it’s helping me to think differently by changing up my old routines.”  Sales improved significantly that next quarter.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Take comfort in being uncomfortable about being comfortable. If you followed that, you get my point in this post.  We talk endlessly about the accelerating pace of change in our world and we see it in play daily.  And then many of us go back to our usual routine.  It’s time for you to recognize the need for change in yourself, and as a leader, for you to find ways to stimulate new thinking, promote different approaches and make the existence of change part of the excitement of working in this world.

What are your odd or not so odd ideas to stimulate change?

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , ,

Improving Your Odds of Success in Driving Change

April 28, 2009 by 2 Comments

There is a fascinating article on Change Management in a recent issue (Issue 2/2009) of the McKinsey Quarterly (subscription required) by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, entitled: “The Irrational Side of Change Management.” 

And while much has been written over the years on this important and vexing topic, the authors offer some insights and ideas that they describe as counter-intuitive, but potentially helpful in improving your odds of success with these initiatives.  This article alone was for me worth the hefty annual subscription price.

On a depressing, but not surprising note, the article cites a 2008 study of over 3,000 executives that found that 1 in 3 change-management initiatives fail. These low success rates have been well documented by Kotter as well as other researchers in the field of change management.

Art’s Observations on the Failure Rate: We all know that most change management initiatives fail miserably.  Recall your own reaction to the latest program or makeover handed down from on high.  The majority are met with emotions ranging from curiosity to outright cynicism.  On the other hand, think of the rare initiative that stuck.  Why did this one work?  My unscientific guess is that the leaders worked hard to create an environment ripe for change. 

The authors cite the 4 basic conditions necessary for change according to the theories around the psychology of change management:

  1. A compelling story-employees must see the point and agree
  2. Role modeling-employees must see management and other colleagues behaving in the new way.
  3. Reinforcing mechanisms-systems, processes and incentives must be in line with the new behavior
  4. Capability building-employees must have the skills required to make desired changes

Their thoughts on how these 4 conditions are applied: “The prescription is right, but rational managers who attempt to put the four conditions in place by applying common sense typically misdirect time and energy, create messages that miss the mark, and experience frustrating and unintended consequences from their efforts to influence change.”

The authors go on to share nine insights into application of the 4 conditions that explain why change initiatives might fail and how to improve the odds. My focus in this post is on two of the insights related to the “compelling story” condition for change. 

First: “What motivates you doesn’t motivate most of your employees.” 

While we tend to focus on telling stories about what has changed and why we have to change in kind, or what we want to accomplish, research shows that people respond best to stories that address five forms of impact:

  • Impact on society
  • Impact on the customer
  • Impact on the company
  • Impact on the working team (environment)
  • Impact on “me”

The money quote here: “This finding has profound implications for leaders. What the leader cares about (and typically bases at least 80 percent of his or her message to others on) does not tap into roughly 80 percent of the workforce’s primary motivators for putting extra energy into the change program. Change leaders need to be able to tell a change story that covers all five things that motivate employees.”

Second: “You’re better off letting them write their own story.”

We as executives and leaders go to great lengths to tell our change stories.  We call special meetings, conduct town halls, run webinars, write blog posts and often walk away feeling like we’ve done our job.  We’ve spoken, the message is clear and everyone must agree or we’ll single them out as resistors. 

The authors suggest that while the stories about the need to change (told in ways that address the five forms of impact) have to get out there, we would be better off listening more and telling less. 

“This reveals something about human nature: when we choose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome (almost by a factor of five to one). Conventional approaches to change management underestimate this impact. The rational thinker sees it as a waste of time to let others discover for themselves what he or she already knows—why not just tell them and be done with it? Unfortunately this approach steals from others the energy needed to drive change that comes through a sense of ownership of the answer.”

 Art’s Observations:  While there is much more to the article than I am highlighting here, just the lessons from the first two points alone are worth the price of admission.  My robust translation of these points includes:

  • Leaders, you’re going to have to recognize that just because you say that we need to change doesn’t make it so.  Frankly, there are a lot of reasons why people will distrust or ignore your calls for change.  If you don’t carry leadership credibility (beyond the title), you are likely spewing hot air.
  • I love linking the 5 Impact points to the story-telling process on why change is needed.  Several of these are very personal and as the authors highlight, those things that we choose and value for ourselves are much more powerful than those given to us. 
  • Last and not least, the idea of setting the stage and then shutting up and letting people ferret out for themselves why change is needed and what it means is something you can put in place today.  Quit talking, start listening and if you do have to talk, mind your Questions to Comments ratio.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Like so many things in leading and managing, there are no silver bullets for success. A lot of really smart people try and drive change and fail.  Those that succeed seem to have intuited that change is intensely personal and that their role is to create an environment where the need for change can be processed and where individuals can take control of defining the terms of change.  While it seems that just when the leader thinks that he/she should be hands on, is precisely the time when he/she should step back and let go. 

More soon on this compelling topic.  

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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