Leadership Caffeine: How to Cope With Organizational Alchemists
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Middle Management, Performance, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders
The modern-day practice of alchemy is only metaphorically about the search for a method to turn lead into gold.
Instead of the medieval pursuit by alchemists of a magical chemical conversion process to change one element into another, modern practitioners are focused on the magical and easy transformation of people and organizations from one level of performance to another.
Modern day, organizational alchemists are looking for great results but aren’t interested in participating in the hard work required to produce these results.
Organizational Alchemists at Work in the Modern World:
While the vocation of Alchemist is long dead, you see current practitioners at work every day. These include:
- Executives who talk endlessly about the need for change, yet, never put any effort into the hard work of enabling change.
- Executives who turn their quarterly prognostications into actual numbers, offering up this weak proof that their Alchemist’s Ways work. Jim Goodnight, CEO of privately-held (by him) software firm, SAS Institute, offered in an interview aired on 60-Minutes a number of years ago: There’s only one way that I know of to accurately hit the quarterly numbers, and that is to cook the books. Dr. Deming shared a similar perspective.
Others:
- Leaders who use leadership training programs as easy substitutes for the hard work of developing others on their teams.
- Firms and executives who delegate the identification of value-creating and differentiating strategies to consultants, and ignore the hard-won experience and knowledge of their own employees.
- Management teams that talk about being market-driven and customer-focused, without actually translating those nice words into anything meaningful in terms of processes and performance standards.
- Leaders who expect employees to be creative on command.
- Managers and leaders who refuse to say “No,” and consistently flood their employees with a dizzying and disorienting array of projects. Everything is a priority, but nothing gets done.
First, Recognize that Alchemy Doesn’t Work:
Have you heard this before? “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth working hard for.” This goes for creating hit products, improving sales performance, developing people, improving customer service, creating high performance teams and every other single activity worth doing and worth improving in your organization. There are no shortcuts.
11 Questions to Help Keep the Alchemists In Check (or at least make them squirm):
1. How do you envision this helping us?
2. Why is this a good strategic direction?
3. What do you mean by customer-focused? And the logical follow-on: What we will look like when we’re customer focused?
4. Similar theme as the customer questions: What do you mean by market-driven?
5. If we’re going to invest our hard earned money in this training program, what are we going to do differently after the program to apply the lessons learned?
6. How are you and the other executives going to help us knock down some of the impediments to progress that we all see and know but don’t talk about?
7. What does that feedback mean? Specifically, what behavior do you want me to change?
8. How many customers did we talk to in the making of this strategy?
9. Why do you trust outside advisors more than the people that work here?
10. Which project do you want us to drop to take on your new top priority?
11. What’s your part in our team’s success?
The Bottom-line for Now:
Here’s to a year of less crap, fewer alchemists and a heck of a lot more focus and progress on the hard work of sustaining, developing and improving.
If you’re in a leadership role, ask and answer the above questions yourself before opening your mouth and exposing your Alchemist’s Ways to your team members.
If you work for an Alchemist, recognize that the above questions won’t magically transform this person. Use the questions carefully. Teach the questions to your team members and politely, firmly and consistently seek answers.
Yours in hard work,
Art
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Art develops and delivers powerful and pragmatic workshops and programs on leadership, professional development and building high performance teams. Contact Art to discuss your needs for a program or keynote.
Beware Contracting “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease?
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
It’s time to add another malady to the long list of things that bedevil the many lousy leaders walking unencumbered through our workplaces. It’s called, “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” (IRYW) disease, and while it’s not fatal, it’s clearly annoying to people and debilitating to performance.
Frankly, leaders that suffer from IRYW disease just piss other people off, while stifling creativity and innovation and casually squashing the souls of everyone they encounter.
IRYW sufferers take on many forms, depending upon how far along the disease is in warping their personalities. You might recognize it in one of the following forms:
- The boss that encourages input but never takes it. Ever.
- The boss or co-worker that gets visibly angry when someone disagrees with him/her.
- The manager that habitually throws dissenters under the bus.
- The manager or co-worker that always has to have the last word.
- The leaders that look at you as if you’ve grown two heads when you gather up the courage to share an idea or offer an alternative option.
Unfortunately, we run into this malady in our personal lives as well. We almost all have the relative or friend that is the self-anointed expert and this can be particularly problematic in households when it is a significant other or even an in-law. Feel free to offer up your own coping strategies from these examples…we’ll all learn in the process.
How You Can Avoid Catching “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Take a daily dose of humility. Remind yourself when you walk in the door that your role is to help others to succeed, not to show everyone how smart you are.
-Set up an early warning system. While granted that it takes a fair amount of emotional intelligence to recognize that this is good, many brilliant and successful leaders cultivate peer relationships where they encourage feedback, including the “quit acting like a jerk” kind. I’ve had two of these colleagues for years, and their occasional clubbing over the head has been remarkably helpful.
-While it’s cliché, hire people smarter than you. Do this right and you’ll not only gain the benefits of their considerable intelligence, but you’ll double your efforts to help them and earn their respect, as you certainly won’t be able to play and get away with IRYW.
-Stay out of environments where you might be tempted to incorrectly assert yourself and damage the group dynamics. Some bosses have no business in group brainstorming sessions. If you’re one, find something else to do.
Surviving a Boss with “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Recognize that for this individual, it’s really important to feel like they are right. Since were not psychologists here, we’ll have to pass on analyzing childhood issues or assessing other compensating factors and fous on developing some patience.
-A fair number of IRYW sufferers are harmless. They revel in their own seeming brilliance, but their survival instinct allows them to accept ideas and input…especially if they think they prompted the ideas. Again, we’re not psychologists, but you should use some psychology here. Hey, if you are as smart as you think you are, this one should be easy!
-For those that are in the advanced and more dangerous stages of IRYW, this is truly a challenge. I have no qualms attempting to give my boss quality feedback, even if I’m politely telling her that she is an ass, but in these lean job times, many will shy away from that tactic. Either develop moral courage, developing a coping strategy or start looking.
-If this boss provides you latitude to do your work, stay out of his/her way, execute, provide clear, formal updates and if you face a controversial decision, ask for input. Your very professional demeanor may have a neutralizing affect (to some extent) and your asking for input is a reasonable form of managing upwards in this case.
If you as readers have any other advice, we’re all ears!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Make no bones about it, my emphasis is on working with good people wanting to become great. The failing in all of the writing and talking about effective leadership is that the lousy leaders rarely pay attention and definitely don’t recognize themselves. To those non-readers, enjoy your life For those of you aspiring and growing as professionals, take this as a polite reminder that you don’t need to be right all of the time. If you suddenly finding everyone agreeing with you, you may want to phone a friend and ask for a quick attitude adjustment.
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