Leadership Inspiration from the Howard Schultz HBR Interview

July 27, 2010 By 5 Comments

valuesIf you’re looking for a breath of fresh leadership air and some hope in this world after watching CEOs doing the Perp Walk or the Resignation Shuffle, read the interview, “We Had to Own the Mistakes” with Howard Schultz, Starbucks Chairman and CEO, in the July-August, 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.

While Schultz is no stranger to our world as an iconic founder of one of the world’s most successful and formerly fastest growing firms, one might argue that he didn’t earn his leadership stripes until faced with the unexpected challenging of turning the firm around.

Love the coffee or not, it’s hard to leave the interview without a sense that Shultz has a firm handle on what it takes to lead successfully in this era of transparency and extreme employee distrust (well earned) of those in charge. I’ll let you read the interview, but I don’t mind pointing out the areas that particularly resonated with me, including:

  • The frequent use of the phrase: “I am responsible,” in reference to the firm’s troubles following his departure from the CEO seat. (He remained the firm’s Chairman.)
  • His refusal to throw the former management team under the bus for the firm’s troubles: “There was a different team here-very good people who deserve respect and not the burden of responsibility.  I was chairman of the company, and I am culpable.” There he goes again with that responsibility thing! Did you hear that, Tony Hayward?
  • The admission that organizational and leadership hubris created the problems.  “We had never had much competition.  Everything we did more or less worked, and that produced a level of hubris that caused us to overlook what was coming.”
  • His view to leading the turnaround of the firm: “The challenge was how to preserve and enhance the integrity of the only assets we have as a company, our values, our culture and our guiding principles and the reservoir of trust with our people.” That statement takes my breath away.

And without stealing  too much more thunder from a great and inspirational read, Schultz serves up example after example where he and the firm stood up and made the hard call in spite of overwhelming pressure.  Decisions to maintain health care benefits, never sacrifice quality for cost savings, invest in retraining the staff and introduce new offerings when the pundits all said they were horrible mistakes, are a few of the examples of moral courage in action.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I jumped off the Starbucks train a few years ago when the experience began to sour.  Poor service, expensive prices and noisy, cramped stores that no longer facilitated work or networking plus coffee drinking, were enough to send me in search of some local roasters.  After reading the interview, I may just have to learn that funny drink ordering language again and see if Howard’s refreshing leadership approach has filtered down to the store level.

Thanks Howard, for painting a picture of what good leadership sounds and acts like.

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change, Values Tagged With: , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the Week: Coffee, Your Health and 8 Suggestions to Improve Your Team’s Problem Solving Skills

June 8, 2009 By 2 Comments

Great news!  Reading this weekly blog feature with your favorite cup of coffee might actually be proving beneficial to your health.  At least the coffee part, that is.

In “Good News for Coffee Addicts” in the June, 2009 Harvard Business Review, Dr. Thomas Lee cites a number of long running studies that indicate that “drinking coffee cuts the risk of dying early from a heart attack or stroke.  Coffee also appears to offer some small protection against Type 2 diabetes, gallstones and Parkinson’s disease.” 

Dr. Lee offers up additional findings on coffee’s impact on productivity and emotions, with “Controlled laboratory experiments indicate that it (coffee) causes feelings of well-being and increases energy, alertness and motivation.”

That’s enough to convince me that it was serendipitous to name this weekly post, “Leadership Caffeine.”  It’s time to improve your feelings of well-being and jack up your productivity, so grab another cup of black coffee (the benefits wane with sugar and cream) and read on. 

Leaders and the Problems with Problems:

The best learning opportunities in the workplace occur when individuals or teams come face to face with a vexing problem.  These situations provide outstanding growth opportunities and a great chance to generate and implement innovative and creative solutions.  Of course, the manager has to play by the rules.

Unfortunately, there are still a few managers and leaders out there that insist on spoiling these ripe learning opportunities by requiring you to follow a specific approach or steps in solving a problem.  This is micromanaging primed.  A good micromanager (oxymoron by design!) focuses on what you are doing, but a great one takes it a step further and requires you to do it his way.  It is his way or the highway. 

This approach squelches any opportunities for creativity and personal development and reduces the health of the overall working environment to something that no amount of coffee could repair.

Some Sharp People Suffer from this Malady:

While you might read this and quickly scoff at the notion that you would ever dictate to people how to do things, it is more common than you might think.

I see this issue frequently in technical environments where brilliant architects and developers are promoted to lead teams and lacking the insight, experience or even mentoring from above; they proceed to define their job as “telling people how to develop.”  To these individuals, this is almost logical, since in their minds, they were promoted based on the strength of their technical acumen. 

Oh, and you sales pros are not immune either.  Similar circumstances.  Someone in their infinite wisdom promotes the top sales rep into a regional or district manager role with several more junior reps reporting to them, and the same process ensues.

8 Suggestions for Improving Your Support of Problem-Solving as a Leader:

1.  Under ordinary circumstances, you should not tell people how to solve a problem.  Work hard to avoid being prescriptive.  Of course, under extraordinary circumstances such as a life or death situation, this might not be possible.

2.  Do focus on framing a problem and ensuring that everyone understands the gravity of the issue and the goals of a solution.

3.  Don’t shoot down ideas and solutions that are different than what you would prescribe.  Instead ask questions, seek to understand how the approach will meet the goals.

4.  Challenge assumptions, not methods.

5.  Encourage individuals and groups to gain external input and/or to compare their proposed solutions to those already in place in the market.  For product, service or market problems, benchmarking against competitors can quickly uncover mundane, me-too solutions.

6.  Encourage individuals and teams to look in non-traditional places for ideas.  A famous example is how managers at Toyota studied the U.S. Supermarket industry to gain ideas on just-in-time inventory and production techniques.

7.  Screw up the courage to let people try things radically different than how you would have done it.  Provide support, and if failure occurs, see the next point.

8.  Recognize that failure is part of the path to getting it right.  Instead of prosecuting for failures, figure out how to leverage the experience for learning and improvement.

The Bottom-line for Now:

Seek to enculturate effective, collaborative and creative problem solving that does not involve you at the epicenter of every solution.  When problems start getting solved without your involvement, you are starting to succeed as a leader. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Dumb Luck and Employee Happiness-One Works and the Other Doesn’t?

April 14, 2009 By 2 Comments

Every once in awhile, my second favorite publication, Harvard Business Review, serves up some fascinating content that leaves me scratching my head and wondering. The April, 2009 issue doesn’t disappoint, offering a couple of interesting but potentially pointless studies in the Forethought section.

One asks: “Are Great Companies Just Lucky?” and the other serves up, “Employee Happiness Isn’t Enough to Satisfy Customers.”

Both articles offer up some interesting premises and are backed by well-pedigreed professionals that seem to have conducted a fair amount of research to conclude that luck is important and employee happiness is not the silver bullet of customer satisfaction.

My reactions range from, “OK, and the point is…?” to “Huh?”

Let’s tackle the article on corporate luck first. The premise is that the “great” companies singled out in studies like In Search of Excellence and Good to Great are actually not great, but lucky.

The authors suggest that “a firm is remarkable only when its performance is so unlikely that systemic variation (random nature) alone cannot account for its results.” They describe an example of students in a class flipping coins, with those that draw tails sitting down while those drawing heads remain standing. At the end of seven rounds, the sole remaining student is declared “great” for having flipped and drawn heads seven times in a row. In reality of course, he was lucky, not great and it’s unlikely that anything that he did resulted in his favorable outcome.

The authors describe their research methodology which ultimately evaluates “287 allegedly high-performing companies in 13 major success studies.” Their final conclusion: only one in four of those companies was actually remarkable. “The rest were indistinguishable from mediocre firms catching lucky breaks.”

Art’s Comments:

Maybe the authors are giving Jim Collins a little heartburn with this article, however, it’s an awful lot of razzle dazzle to go through to tell us that we should not take success stories literally and attempt to apply them verbatim to our own work environments. And I don’t know about you, but somehow the notion that these researchers quantified “luck” and were able to ascribe accomplishments to “lucky breaks” is making my head hurt just a little bit.

And You Define “Employee Happiness” How?

The second study focuses on establishing or disproving a correlation between happy employees and customer satisfaction. The authors highlight their own survey results that “failed to confirm that service businesses with more-contented staff also have more satisfied customers.” Interestingly, at two firms, they highlight finding a negative correlation. “We observed that factors that increased customer satisfaction decreased employee happiness.” Huh?

Art’s Comments:

Aside from the “Huh?” above, between the study on “luck” and this one, I find myself wondering whether it was a tough news month at HBR. Both stories make me rather irreverently suggest that everyone that conducts these studies should spend a few decades actually working in corporations before they are allowed to study them.

We don’t have the benefit of seeing the questions in the latter article, but it doesn’t’ take too much of a leap to imagine that if “employee happiness” was improperly defined it would be fairly easy to connect doing more work to a reduction in the “happiness” quotient. Also, the reliance on companies that have earned “Best Places to Work” awards and then showcasing their lousy results, shows a profound naivete about the veracity of those workplace surveys. They are typically crap put together by groups in pursuit of p.r. accolades.

For the sake of my own study in over two decades of leading, when employee happiness includes being treated with respect, supported for development, receiving honest, timely feedback and being given challenging assignments, then I guarantee that there is a positive correlation with customer satisfaction.

The Bottom-Line for Now.

I usually look to HBR for sage guidance and provocative insights. These articles feel a bit like tabloid journalism backed with pointless research and ending in useless conclusions. Let’s hope next month’s issue is back on track.

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Filed Under: Leadership, Performance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Detoxing Your Team

April 7, 2009 By 10 Comments

Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could t literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.

For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors.  They rule their teams like Tony Soprano and they manage the higher-ups with diplomatic skills that would make a great politician proud.  And they do all of this in broad daylight, while the people that work for and with them roll their eyes and hope not to fall into the toxic character’s line of sight.

While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment.  Until now.

The April 2009 Harvard Business Review summarizes a study by Christine Porath  and Christina Pearson that offers insights into “How Toxic Colleagues Corrode Performance.”  Porath and Pearson polled several thousand managers and employees from a variety of U.S. companies about the impact of toxic people at work, and the results affirm what we’ve long suspected.  These people extract a costly toll on the rest of the employees and on overall performance.

Selected highlights when faced with toxic or rude co-workers:

  • 48% decreased their work effort
  • 47% decreased their time at work
  • 66% said their performance declined
  • 78% said their commitment to the organization declined.

And so on.

Art’s Observations:

The best advice that I ever learned the hard way took was “fire the politicians.”  In one case earlier in my career, I was the enabler for this toxic individual, preferring to see only his strengths and talents and ignoring the havoc he created in the working environment.

Ultimately, I learned to fire toxic characters fast.  The individuals that did not share and exhibit the values that we espoused or that ruled through intimidation were the first ones out the door, regardless of their capabilities. 

I’ve never regretted firing a toxic employee.

Fair warning.  Toxic employees don’t make it easy for you to fire them.  The best of the worst actually frighten their bosses into inaction, not through overt intimidation or threats, but through more subtle approaches.  Remember, these are skillful politicians with the hearts and minds of gangsters, and they’ve convinced a lot of people about how valuable they are to the organization.  A conscientious manager may find herself swimming against the tide of popular opinion from her peers or higher ups on this issue.

Brace yourself for a fight, don’t be intimidated and stick to your guns.  It’s easier to back down and the toxic employee is betting on this outcome.  Like most thugs and bullies, they don’t expect people to stand-up to them and fight back. 

I’m certain that I read “fire the politicians” somewhere, and I wish that I could provide attribution.  Regardless, it’s good advice, especially in these tough times when teams are shrinking and those left behind must be capable of performing at a high level. 

If you’re on the edge about who should go, you will be well served to get the toxicity out.

 

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the Week of March 8, 2009

March 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Welcome back for this week’s double-shot of leadership motivation.  The gray and wet Midwestern weekend is giving way to a promising new week and it’s time to get going. 

I’m brewing a pot of New Mexico’s award winning Pinon Coffee, courtesy of my sister-in law as just the cure for too much exposure to Sunday morning news shows. 

Can I pour you a cup?

I’m taking my leadership cues this week from Michael Beers, a Harvard Professor with a forthcoming book: High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage.

While I’m not certain that a Harvard Professor is the first one that I seek out to help me lead my way out of a crisis, I like what he has to say.  Mr. Beer’s focus is on building high performance teams and organizations on the back of what he describes as high commitment leaders.

His Thoughts and My Comments:

-Prof. Beer:

“CEOs of High Commitment, High Performance (HCHP) companies think very differently about their employees.  They see them as an asset and care about them as people.  Consequently, they manage the downturn very differently.”

-Art’s Comment:

This fits nicely with last week’s post on Goleman’s research into social neuroscience (Smile, Your Mirror Neurons are Firing Everyone Up.)  In essence: the most effective leaders care about and pay attention to their employees.

-Prof. Beer:

“We’ve realized that the leader can be a limiting factor in a journey to transform an organization into a HCHP organization.”

-Art’s Comment:

Didn’t need too much expensive research to figure this one out.  Your leadership style and effectiveness are the governors on your team’s performance.  It’s you, not them.  What are you doing this week to help not hinder?

-Prof. Beer:

“These CEO’s (HCHP) operate from deep beliefs and values.  Their purpose is to leave a legacy of a great firm.”

-Art’s Comment:

Even if you’re not working for such an enlightened CEO, nothing is stopping you from operating and leading with your own deep, core beliefs and values and making certain that these come through in your dealings with your team. 

-Prof Beer:

“The journey to HCHP is not a straight line up. At various stages of the journey the company will face a crisis in performance. How that crisis is dealt with will determine the organization’s future HCHP trajectory.

Will the company liquidate its investment in high commitment culture and the talented people it took years to develop and impregnate with the company’s DNA? Or will the HCHP organization be able to negotiate the crisis without liquidating its social and human capital? These moments of truth define the organization’s future much more powerfully than speeches, appeals for better teamwork, and mission or value statements.”

The Bottom-line:

You have and will continue to face “moments of truth”  in the days and weeks ahead.  Instead of reacting, seize the remarkable opportunities in this environment to turn yourself into a High Commitment, High Performance Leader.  The formula is simple, although executing on it is not.

  • Stay confident and upbeat, but skip the false enthusiasm.  No one will buy a Pollyannaish view of the world, but no one needs to see the boss sulking.
  • Stay in front of your team members with company news and issues.  Don’t hide from bad news.  If there is a round of layoffs, double your visibility and outreach.
  • Remember Beer’s advice that how you deal with the crisis now will determine your future trajectory.  Provide challenging opportunities for your top talent.  This is a target-rich environment for apprentice opportunities for your up and coming leaders.
  • Set goals focused on helping clients and companies and work relentlessly on achieving those goals.  Provide constant feedback on progress; celebrate victories and leverage mistakes to strengthen team and individual learning.
  • Work darn hard.  Get out of your comfortable desk chair and get out on the floor or into the market.  Better yet, get out and help your customers win.

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OK, pour yourself just one more cup, jot down some action items and then get to work.  You can’t fix anything by staring at the screen!

For additional reading:

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times by Michael Beer in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter. 

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Performance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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