Leading Views: Are You Relevant?

Joe Calloway, Chuck Feltz and Kris Young believe that leadership and success will always be intentional and never by chance. In a time when we are required to do more with less, we need to be able to draw the value out of existing resources. One crucial way of doing that is to be relevant. In Never by Chance they write that businesses lose their relevance every day. If you don’t have a clear definition of what relevance means to your business you’ll never see it coming. Joe Calloway writes:

As a leader, relevance is one of lenses through which you should use to make every decision, every single day. Does this decision advance the vision and fit our culture? Does this decision make us more relevant to our customers? The question of relevance is especially vital from a competitive standpoint. You compete to the extent that you are relevant to your customers, and you differentiate to the extent that you are more relevant than your competition.

So how do you find out how to be relevant to your customers? It’s simple: You ask them. Your methods can range from formal market research, to having conversations, to simply paying attention. If you own a coffee shop, are you asking your customers what newspaper they would prefer? If you own an industrial supply business, are you asking your customers what they need in terms of material and delivery? Every employee—not just management—should be asking questions, having conversations, and looking for clues with every customer interaction they have. Part of your culture should be your constant attempt to be more relevant to customers.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:22 AM
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Leading Views: Leadership Without a Pinch of Fear is Like Cooking Without Salt

On July 1, Nitin Nohria will become the tenth dean of Harvard Business School. He brings with him a new perspective that is much needed at this time. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter told Stefan Stern of the Financial Times, “This is about leaders who take responsibility. I could characterize it as the start of a shift to moral capitalism. And not just as a corrective. This is something new.”

Nohria is by all reports a collaborative leader and a reflective one as well. In the 2000 book, The Arc of Ambition that he co-authored with James Champy, they write about the need for positive anxiety in leadership and the need to share power:

Fear chills minds, numbs souls, kills initiative and businesses. And yet, our arsenal can’t be entirely devoid of fear. A certain amount of fear is necessary to improve performance—assuming that by fear one means positive anxiety, the edgy urge to do a great job and not let down the team.

Those incapable of instilling that feeling throughout a company may well invite disrespect for the common enterprise. They flirt with apathy and mediocrity. Leadership without a pinch of fear is like cooking without salt.

But the ambitious don’t take advice easily…Once they are in charge, they may feel their position threatened by other opinions, particularly those that differ from their own.

More likely, ambitious people just believe that they are right. In their minds, they suffer no fools. Time is too short for that.

Sometimes, they also select men and women for their boards who reflect their own opinions. That’s a dangerous practice, especially if somewhere in the exercise of your ambition, you are wrong (it happens, you know). Someone needs to be present who dares to disagree with you.

Coming to grips with our own ambitions is ultimately a forewarning about the myth of omnipotence. No solo ruler of a complex can ever have enough creativity, knowledge, and time to make the right decisions single-handedly. His or her survival depends on sowing and reaping the brilliant work of others. By sacrificing the appearance of power, we achieve the substance—the real reward—of power.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:03 AM
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Leading Views: Donald Powell on the Qualities of a Leader

In Thriving In the New Economy by Lori Ann LaRocco, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Donald Powell shares his view of what a leader should be:

Leadership is vital; it provides hope and stability. We usually know it when we see it. Leaders don’t panic. Leaders have ice in their veins. Leaders are disciplined and have a plan—and they execute. If the facts change, they change their course. Leaders set the tone, and more importantly, they lead through example … they walk the talk!

Leaders must be able to stand the heat. They sometimes have to look people in the eye and say, we thought about doing that and decided not to participate, because we think a product/action has abnormal risk and would not be long-term beneficial to our shareholders. That is hard to do, especially when there is much pressure to perform with peers, but leaders don’t follow the crowd; and sometimes these decisions can have consequences.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 11:29 AM
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Leading Views: Teaching Fire a Lesson

In Linchpin, Seth Godin explains the futility in trying to get others to conform to what we think they should be doing. It’s a form of control which stems from a lack of respect for others. People are going to do what they are going to do and for what seems to them to be very good reasons. Worrying about what other people are doing only clouds our judgment and upsets us emotionally and has little if any effect on them. Accepting people for what they are frees us to be the best we can be. Here’s Godin on teaching people a lesson:

Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change anytime soon either.

Many (most?) people in organizations handle their interactions as though they are in charge of teaching people a lesson. We make policies and are vindictive and focus on the past because we worry that if we don’t, someone will get away with it.

So when a driver cuts us off, we scream and yell. We say we’re doing it so he’ll learn and not in danger the next guy, but of course, he can’t hear you. There’s a media mogul who stole from me in 1987 and I haven’t spoken to him since. He doesn’t know I exist, I bet. So much for teaching him a lesson.

The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:28 AM
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Leading Views: The Leader as Communicator

Clarence B. Randall (1891-1967) was chairman of Inland Steel Co. of East Chicago, Indiana. A celebrated corporate chieftain, author, and civic leader, he held various government posts, including special consultant to President Eisenhower on foreign economic policy. In The Executive in Transition (1967), he shares his views on the need for developing communication skills:

Speech is a part of manners, and the able businessman must learn to express himself in English which is clear as well as colloquial.

There are too many talkers who have never learned to listen. They broadcast but do not receive. The only time they stop the flow of words is when they are out of breath. Their minds are choked by what they want to say and closed to what the other person wishes to offer in reply.

If I were to name the one skill most important to the young man or woman leaving college hopeful of achieving executive status in industry, I would say without a moment’s hesitation that it is the capacity to speak and write the English language with clarity and force. No idea, however brilliant, has value for society unless it can be communicated to others.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:33 AM
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Leading Views: Structure Formally, but Work Informally

In The Right Fight, authors Saj-nicole Joni and Damon Beyer explain that in order for a leader to receive reliable information they need to go outside the constructs of the formal organization:

Great leaders learn how to work out tensions and conflicts through the informal networks that make the formal organization hum. They acknowledge their need for access to unfiltered information and recognize the creative potential in opportunities for unfettered thinking. They leverage their personal and expertise-based relationships in the informal organization to gather information, to gauge employee morale and mood, to allow things to bubble up from the best and the brightest, to test hunches, and to champion ideas.

Beyond that, they set up systems that encourage everyone to participate in the informal knowledge sharing, creating an open culture radically unlike the “mushroom” environment of far too many companies—where the lower an employee is on the org chart, the more likely he is to be kept in the dark.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:33 PM
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Leading Views: Law of Unintended Consequences

In Thriving In the New Economy by Lori Ann LaRocco, Larry Lindsey, CEO of economic advisory firm The Lindsey Group, says that to thrive in time of crisis you need objectivity. It means that you don’t get caught up in the moment. This requires the perspective that history can give you. He writes:

One of history’s great lessons is that policy makers, in both the public and private sectors, tend to underestimate the costs involved when they contemplate the actions necessary to address some adverse change in circumstances. Although this is due in part to long periods of conditioning to the relationships and magnitudes that existed before the crisis, an equally important cause of the underestimation is the Law of Unintended Consequences. Even the most carefully designed policy responses involve unforeseen results, and in a crisis, there is not the time for as careful a consideration of the consequences of policy as might be ideal.

The way we approach this challenge is to imagine ourselves as future historians writing about the events of the present. This causes us to contemplate an outcome, which we as future historians have the advantage of knowing with 20/20 hindsight, and then work back to establish a chain of events that led to that outcome. When you do that, you have to visualize how something is going to happen and decide whether or not your vision is realistic. If it is not realistic, you reject it. Thus, only a small fraction of the speculative ‘‘future histories’’ one considers actually make it into the range of plausible scenarios.

This future-history approach doesn’t guarantee that you will have picked the right future, but it does facilitate objectivity. Once present-day events occurred that differed from what you imagined, that is, once the world ended up somewhere other than where you thought it was going to end up, you would know that, objectively, you were wrong.

Of Related Interest:
  Thriving In the New Economy

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:11 PM
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Leading Views: Toxic Emotions in the Workplace

Peter Frost explains in Toxic Emotions at Work that toxicity is a normal by-product of organizational life. According to Frost, when ignored, toxic emotions betray employees' hopes, bruise their egos, reduce their enthusiasm for work, and diminish their sense of connectedness to their company's community and goals. Compassionate responses to pain, on the other hand, encourage those who are suffering to effect constructive changes in their work lives. Despite their powerful role in employee performance, toxic emotions are rarely addressed by organizations:

It is true that good leadership by its very nature engenders pain. It pushes people out of their comfort zones—which is necessary to get things done in a world of competition and change. Even so, some managers are malicious or lack good decision-making or people-managing skills, and therefore unduly contribute to the frustration, anger and low morale of their employees.

Not just managers but organizations themselves create conditions for toxicity through policies and practices that fail to include the human factor in their execution. Their modes of production, especially the ever-changing technologies of work, squeeze out time for humanity, for civility, for people to reflect on their actions.

We need to recognize that the values we reinforce in our organizations often are a prime source of toxicity. Unbridled attention to the bottom line, regardless of what it takes to achieve a given return on investments, blinds us to the possibilities of even more long-run effectiveness, if we take into account the value and emotional health of our workforce. The toxicity that flows from managers who ignore the emotional costs of their actions (to themselves and to others) can poison the wells of innovation and goodwill in the company. Corporate lies, distortions, and manipulations that cover up mistakes and foster self-aggrandizement do little to benefit any of the stakeholders.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:00 AM
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Leading Views: How To Increase Your Value

In The Unforced Error, Jeffrey Krames is talking about taking responsibility. No Responsibility = No Value. Taking responsibility is about seeing the larger goals of the company and your part in it. It’s about learning to leader from where you are. To not take responsibility is to say “I don’t want to be part of the solution.” In fact, you become part of the problem. Kramer writes:

At Work, people often look at their jobs in terms of tasks rather than responsibilities. But if you don’t view responsibility in the broader sense, you may be committing the most subtle of unforced errors: Over time you may fall off the corporate radar screen. Your boss may feel that you are capable of completing a routine task or matter, but if the assignment is more than routine, or if the boss is looking for someone to take the initiative, she will not think of you. And when it comes time to promote someone or to draw up a list of the valuable people she needs to keep when corporate belt tightening requires a layoff, she will not think of you.

If there is nobody addressing a problem that you observe, or taking advantage of an opportunity that you see, think about whether you should be doing it yourself.

Taking responsibility is about developing a mind-set that says: “I am responsible for what happens in my unit. It’s my job to help get us to success.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:47 AM
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Leading Views: Parker Palmer on Leading From Within

Parker Palmer, founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal, says that we tend to ignore what is going on inside us. Inner issues can distract from the message we are trying to project, the good that we would accomplish. It’s a call to be integrated or authentic. A leader’s personal issues can work their way into the culture of those we lead. Leaders need to not only master the skills of working through and with others, but also the discipline to manage what is going on inside—character issues both good and bad. From Let Your Life Speak, he explains:

We have a long tradition of approaching leadership via the “power of positive thinking.” I want to counterbalance that approach by paying special attention to the tendency we have as leaders to project more shadow than light. Leadership is hard work for which one is regularly criticized and rarely rewarded, so it is understandable that we need to bolster ourselves with positive thoughts. But by failing to look at our shadows, we feed a dangerous delusion that leaders too often indulge: that our efforts are always well intended, our power is always benign, and the problem is always in those difficult people whom we are trying to lead.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:44 AM
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Leading Views: Winning Hearts and Minds

Smart people with great credentials often self-destruct because they fail to connect with the people they are trying to influence. Both teachers and leaders must win the hearts and minds of those they lead. Without an emotional connection, both students and employees are just getting through the day. Leaders must learn to focus on the human side if they are to be effective. In Fierce Leadership author Susan Scott shares the difference between good teachers and bad teachers:

What makes for a bad teacher? Things like rigid control, broadcasting from the front of the room, and yes/no, right/wrong feedback. What makes for a good teacher? Things like creating a “holding space” for lively interaction, flexibility in how students become engaged in a topic, a regard for student perspective, the ability to personalize the material for each student, responding to questions and answers with sensitivity, and providing high-quality feedback “where there is a back-and-forth exchange to get a deeper understanding.”

Sounds like the behavior of a good leader.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:30 PM
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Leading Views: Assume the Guests Point of View

Imagineer John Hench shares in his book Designing Disney, Walt Disney's approach to people:

"To design most effectively for our guests, we learned that we had to observe them up close, waiting in lines with them, going on rides with them, eating with them. Walt insisted on this by saying, ‘You guys get down there at least twice a month. For God’s sake, don’t eat off the lot. Stay there…lunch with the guests…talk to them.’ This was new to us; as filmmakers, we were used to sitting in our sweatboxes at the studio, passing judgment on our work without knowing how the public might actually respond to it. Going out into the park taught us how guests were being treated and how they responded to sensory information, what worked and what didn’t, what their needs were and how we could meet them in entertaining ways. We paid attention to guests’ patterns of movement and the ways in which they expressed their emotions. We got an idea of what was going on in their minds. Disney Imagineers prefer such an experiential process of gathering information from our guests to focus groups or surveys. When designers see guests in their natural states of behavior, they gain a better understanding of the space and time guests need in a story environment.

Walt had the idea that guests could feel perfection.”

As Frank Gehry writes in the forward, "when you’ve got a love for people, you want them to have experiences that make them think differently when they leave."

That's management by wandering around.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:43 AM
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Leading Views: Leadership Isn't a Reward

Tom Peters reminds us that leadership shouldn’t be a reward or a title bestowed as a way of saying thanks. Unfortunately it isn’t confined to business and government. We see it in organizations of all types and most regrettably in schools where it reinforces the wrong concept of what it means to be a leader. Peters told an audience:

"Only in the stupid world of business and government, do we promote the best accountant to the head of the accounting department, the best salesman to the head of the sales department, the best trainer to the head of the training department. You don’t do that in sports, right?!

"The definition of most of our coaches at the professional level is that they were second rate or marginal players who were brilliant students of the game and people. That is, they were good at leading. What are leaders good at doing? Leading."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:04 AM
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Leading Views: PhD in Leadership, Short Course

Dee Hock is the founder and former CEO of the VISA and author of One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization. In Fast Company magazine he reduced leadership to its most basic relational (common sense) element. How often we forget this simple concept or are so unaware that we can’t get a fix on our own behavior.

"PhD in Leadership, Short Course: Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:52 AM
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Leading Views: Why We Need Leaders

Public philosopher Tom Morris expresses something in True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence that speaks to the why of leadership:

"We all need help. We need guidance for our journeys through life. Even the most successful of us need reminders and fresh, crisp articulations of the truths we may only vaguely grasp that have, in one way or another, led us to whatever we have managed to accomplish. We need to rethink. We need to refocus. How can we get where we still need to go? And how can we best convey to others what it takes to get there together?"

Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:32 AM
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Leading Views: Manager as Orchestra Conductor

In Managerial Behavior: Administration in Complex Organizations, Leonard Sayles creates a more realistic picture of the manager/leader as orchestra conductor:

"The manager is like a symphony orchestra conductor, endeavoring to maintain a melodious performance in which the contributions of the various instruments are coordinated and sequenced, patterned and paced, while the orchestra members are having various personal difficulties, stage hands are moving music stands, alternating excessive heat and cold are creating audience and instrumental problems, and the sponsor of the concert is insisting on irrational changes in the program."

Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:47 AM
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