It’s hard to imagine a bigger time-suck than a meeting. That noise you just heard was the collective groan of meeting-weary professionals everywhere. It’s no surprise, given that most of them suffer through more than 60 meetings per month. And more than half of that meeting time is — you guessed it — nonproductive.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Martin Murphy’s book, No More Pointless Meetings: Breakthrough Sessions That Will Revolutionize the Way You Work, offers plenty of universal advice on how to make your meetings more effective and productive.
Incorporate the following five tips into your meetings to improve your team’s idea-generation and problem-solving productivity.
1. Kill the Critique
Nothing crushes creativity and enthusiasm faster than criticism. At the outset of a project, focus on generating ideas and worry about evaluating and fine-tuning them afterward. Think quantity, not quality; you can cherry-pick the best ideas later.
2. Ban the Boss
Politics is often unavoidable at work, and politicking can often derail the stated agenda. If you’re the big boss, you can minimize the issue and improve productivity by having someone else run the meeting.
3. Stand Tall
Whoever runs the meeting should do so while standing. The moderator’s presentation will be more energetic, which will engage everyone in the room. Added bonus: it might even shorten the meeting.
4. Switch the Seats
When the meeting participants return from a break, have them sit in different seats. This will increase alertness and nudge folks out of their comfort zones.
5. Boost the Brain
Instead of energy-sapping foods like soda, chips and pizza, provide healthier, protein-packed options along with veggies and lots of water.
Lauren Simonds is managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com. This article was adapted from “Ten Ways to Run a Successful Meeting,” by Dennis McCafferty at BaselineMag.com.
6 Things Really Powerful Leaders DoNot everyone is ready or willing to lead. Here are six things you'll need to master to move masses, inspired by Seth Godin's latest talk.
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According to Seth Godin and his new book The Icarus Deception (Portfolio), more than 100 years of industrialization have led to institutionalism, and the glorification of being a follower. Living in the safety net of what has already been proven allows for a modicum of success, if any, and a whole lot of mediocrity. Most importantly, the impact you'll leave on those around you by doing only what is expected is sure to be minimal. As Seth asked from the stage Wednesday, "Will anyone really miss you when you're gone?"
No need to reiterate exactly what else Seth says in his new book. Buy it yourself. But I will share the inspiration I took away, and how it's already driving my own actions as a leader. Use these tips to masterfully lead your tribe and as Seth encourages: "Ship your art."
1. Build on Your Own Authenticity
You know when you are in your zone, and when you are just playing the game to get ahead. Everyone does what they need to do to make the machine work. But powerful leaders are authentic. That doesn't necessarily mean they are well liked. They are however comfortable in their own skin, and they create an environment around them that supports their worldview. This way they can thrive and create with little resistance. Own who you are and wear it proudly.
2. Clearly Define YOUR Following
Today's technology and Internet connectivity more than ever provide opportunity to attract followers and lead. Accept, however, that not everyone is your follower. Determine the attributes of those who will gain from what you can teach, share, and sell. Don't assume that just because you're a boss, you're a leader, or that being an entry level employee makes you a worthless cog in the machine. Your followers exist around every corner. Broadcast your vision. Attract them with your inspiration. Ignore everyone else. Truly, there just isn't enough time and energy to make everyone a convert. The most powerful leaders focus on where they are going and trust that the right people will follow. Make your voice heard so they'll find you.
3. Break Away From What You Know
No one has it all figured out. Even Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison had to experiment to discover the truths of science and invention. But today knowledge is easily accessible. Experience brings comfort but that comfort can become a prison or worse, a death chamber as the world changes around you. Today's world is moving fast and you need to constantly explore. Learn broadly so you can assess where the opportunities and dangerous hazards lie ahead. Respect every day as Seth's concept of a blank slate, applying what you know and re-exploring the status quo. Then you can create new art that is moving and valuable.
4. Make Yourself Vulnerable
Failure is painful, embarrassing, hard, frustrating, and at times, devastating. Yet without it growth and massive success is all but impossible. Limits will never be truly tested without the risk of breakage and destruction. On a smaller scale, learning new things is filled with constant, disheartening failure. I remember four weeks of Spanish immersion as an adult. I spent five hours a day being wrong and feeling stupid. Yet the breakthroughs were exhilarating and beneficial. Just a simple mind expansion opened doors beyond my expectations. The CTOs who never really explore marketing or the CEOs who never learn to write will forever limit themselves and leave room for their competitors to blaze new trails. You don't need to be an expert in everything, but the broader your exposure, the more language you have to connect. Learn the things you need to learn, meet the people you need to meet. Stretch, risk, grow, and revel in the risks and rewards ahead.
5. Be Generous to Your Tribe
What's the point in having a following if you are not going to lead them anywhere? Followers sign on because they believe you can enlighten and enhance their existence. Share what you are learning and what you produce. Don't worry that it's not perfect. Include them in the process. Let them engage and share in the experience. Give them the gratitude, recognition, and encouragement to step up and lead in synergy with your vision.
6. Allow Time to Work Its Magic
So many people race against the clock as if time is their enemy. But people who lead use time as a powerful tool for change. People need time to absorb new ideas and determine a course of action. Following a leader helps but credibility comes with time and consistency before followers will amass. Lasting impact comes not from a single incident but from a steady consistent march forward. Embrace the blessings that come with patience.
People choose to lead for different reasons. Some can't help themselves and others find it the only way to maintain their material needs. Whatever your motivation, leadership brings great responsibility. It's hard. It's intricate. It's risky. It's certainly not always pleasant. But the highs from the successes well outweigh the lows from the failures. I for one will continue to risk and ship my art. Thank you Seth for the added inspiration.
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An Inc. 500 entrepreneur with a more than $1 billion sales and marketing track record, Kevin Daum is the best-selling author of Video Marketing for Dummies. @awesomeroar
You want your employees to perform at their best, but there's a fine line between being a tough boss with high expectations and being an unreasonable jerk. Business coach Mike Staver, founder of the The Staver Group, a Fernandina Beach, Fla., business performance consulting firm, advises using these four rules to avoid crossing the line.
1. Appreciate different work styles. Be clear about the outcomes you expect, but don't create conflict just because your employee has a different style of getting something done, warns Staver. "If they're effective, give them latitude to develop their own solutions and add value," he says. "When the leader is saying, ‘I don't want you to do it any other way than the way I want you do to it.' I think that's where the ‘demanding jerk' side comes in," he says.
Related: How to Start New Hires on the Right Track
2. Give your employees a sense of purpose. In his book, Leadership Isn't for Cowards (Wiley, 2012), Staver says business leaders need to give their employees a reason to care. It can be tough if you're providing a basic product or service versus curing cancer, but everyone is in business to serve a need--so make sure employees understand that. For example, if you sell machine parts, it's because someone needs them to keep their equipment running. The receptionist at an insurance company helps protect people from financial catastrophe. Clarifying the big-picture importance of what your people do helps employees stay focused and committed, even when the demands are great.
Related: Seven Steps to Superstar Employees
3. Recognize good work. If you've set rigorous performance goals or expectations employees must meet, don't change the rules after the fact or fail to recognize success. Include your expectations in resources such as employee manuals, training materials or job descriptions. Conduct regular performance reviews and be sure to acknowledge when expectations have been met or exceeded. Whether it's a simple "good job," in front of the team for hitting a tough deadline, or a small perk for landing a big new client, recognizing a job well done enhances motivation.
4. Be respectful. Regardless of how demanding you are, treat your employees with respect and dignity. While it takes courage to tell the truth, it should be done in a way that doesn't devastate your employees. That means no "sucker punches"--blindsiding them with expectations they couldn't have anticipated--and avoiding destructive communication styles like screaming and insults. Explosive or reckless behavior hurts productivity and will likely cause you trouble retaining your best employees, Staver says.
Related: How to Give Employees Independence Without Losing Control
Read more stories about: Leadership, Managing employees, Management style
The Emotional Adventure of Leadershipby Peter Bregman | 2:55 PM June 14, 2012
I was lost.
I looked at the map and my heart raced as I admitted to myself — only to myself — that I had no idea where I was. It felt too humiliating to let the others know.
This was the summer of 1990 and I was leading a group of students on a 30-day mountaineering expedition. It was the first day of our trip and the students had no experience in the outdoors. They were relying on me. My anxiety level had been creeping up and was now at full tilt.
We were already one hour late for our rendezvous with two other groups with whom we planned to camp and we had been hiking for about three hours. Where were we?
My uneasiness grew as I looked at my watch and realized I was running out of time. The sun would be setting soon and it was dangerous to go on much longer. We would have to make camp while we still had light.
I bit my nails as I looked obsessively from the map to the mountain range and back to the map. We weren't in immediate danger — we had plenty of water and plenty of food — but I was embarrassed. My hands shook nervously and I could feel my heart beating.
Thirty minutes later we hit snow. In July. Which, though not uncommon at a certain altitude, confirmed that I couldn't hide my failure any longer. We were far off track and we needed to set up camp. The jig was up.
I gathered the students in a circle and told them we would have to set up camp by ourselves on the snow, and that we would find the other groups in the morning.
"So, we're lost?" a student asked me.
I felt so lame and inadequate. This was not at all what I had thought it would feel like to lead. Leaders are supposed to have the answers. They're supposed to be confident, self-assured, and knowledgeable. They're supposed to know where they are and where they're going at all times.
But here is what I have discovered in my subsequent 25 years of leadership experience: leadership is, as much as anything, an emotional adventure.
If you want to be a powerful leader, you have to become familiar with the sweat-inducing, anxiety-producing, adrenaline-generating emotions of being lost while people are following you. Because that is, as often as not, the emotion of leadership.
One of the defining characteristics of strong leaders is their ability to endure uncertainty and ambiguity. They are willing to move through shame and embarrassment and anxiety and fear. Those are the feelings of leadership as much as courage and persistence and faith. In fact, it's because those feelings are ever-present that we need courage and persistence and faith.
It takes tremendous confidence to lead. Not the confidence of having all the answers — that's arrogance — but the confidence to move forward even without the answers. You have to be capable of feeling awkward and uncertain without giving up. You have to believe that you and your team have what it takes to see yourselves through — or, if need be, to pick yourselves up and start again.
Here's what not to do: pretend you're in control. Because that erodes trust, increases your shame, and robs those around you of the opportunity to step in, learn, and help.
"Yes, we're lost, " I admitted, "And, to be honest, I'm really embarrassed. But we'll be fine. We'll find the other two groups in the morning. Let's use this as an opportunity to learn how to camp on snow."
I wish I could say that erased my anxiety. It didn't. I stayed anxious until I actually found the other groups the next day and figured out where I had gone wrong.
But coming out of hiding did ease my suffering. And that night turned out to be an exciting bonding experience for everyone on the trip. It gave us — all of us — the confidence that, even though we could get lost, we would find our way.
Below is a TEDx talk I gave about these unpleasant emotions of leadership and how we can use them to become better leaders and increase innovation:
Dealing with a Bad Bossby John Beeson | 12:32 PM June 28, 2012
It's often said there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes. The parallel in organizational life is that at some point in your career you'll have a bad boss — or at least a boss who's bad for you. Bad bosses come in all shapes and sizes: abrasive and insensitive, indecisive, inconsistent and unfair, the micromanager who stifles your ability to perform and grow, and "matador managers" adept at sidestepping every tough issue that comes their way. So, the question isn't whether or not you'll have a bad boss. Rather, it's how you'll respond when you do.
Faced with a bad boss, many managers retreat to commiserating with co-workers or adopt a passive "this too shall pass" attitude. Or in the case of an extremely bad boss relationship, they are driven to jump ship to take a job with another company — often with negative consequences.
Your starting point in dealing with a bad boss is confronting some important realities. First, your boss, regardless of whether she is effective or not, is a major factor in your ability to perform well in your job, and she plays a key role in shaping senior executives' perceptions of your performance and career potential. Second, in most organizations it's difficult if not impossible for a subordinate to dislodge a boss in the short term. Frequently, if you do some digging, you'll find that your manager has some special ability his manager values — for example, a close relationship with a key customer or specific expertise that the boss lacks. As a result, rather than get demoralized or seek comfort from peers in your misery, it's better to take steps to try to address the situation proactively.
Start by doing some diagnostic work. What are your boss's goals and interests? What does he value? A sense of urgency, attention to detail, getting everyone on board before advancing a proposed initiative? How does he take in and process information: reading, verbal updates, fact-based analysis? How does he make decisions: analytically or based on the endorsement of trusted lieutenants? What issues is he vitally interested in — and which is he prepared to delegate to you with only periodic updates? By helping your boss achieve his goals and communicating actively on those issues he cares about — and doing so in his preferred style — you can begin to build the boss's confidence and make an imperfect relationship acceptable for the period of time you report to him. Also, try to identify your boss's base of knowledge and expertise and convey a desire to learn from him. Often when a boss feels valued and confident that he is receiving all of the information he feels necessary to do his job, the seeds of a more positive relationship are sown.
Clearly, however, these tactics aren't foolproof — and in some cases you may need to try to engineer a move to a new position within your organization. As you do, make sure your boss knows about your career goals and the career discussions you've had with other executives in the past. Your boss may or may not agree with your career goals. However, informing your boss about past career conversations makes it easier for you to set up meetings with other executives with whom you have a relationship since it won't seem like you're going around her. In such meetings be professional, but let the executives know that you'd be interested in pursuing a new assignment — sooner rather than later. In those conversations listen for any information that might shed light on your boss's actions and give you a sense of whether her behavior is temporary or well-ingrained.
For example, your boss may be on the hot seat with her boss or on edge about an impending reorganization. Unless you know an executive very well, be careful not to criticize your boss directly. However, if you've reached the point where you either need to find a new manager or leave the company, let your tone convey your strong desire to move to a new assignment. If you are a high-performer the company wants to retain, an uptick in your sense of urgency to find a new role may well signal to other executives that it's time to intervene.
Dealing with a bad boss can be one of the most nerve-wracking events of your career. However, you can learn from the experience. In their landmark study, The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job, Morgan McCall, Mike Lombardo, and Ann Morrison found that having a bad boss was actually one of a future leader's most formative developmental experiences since those leaders were able to identify the ways they didn't want to manage. Beyond that, the techniques described for building a relationship with a bad boss (focusing on the manager's goals and values; deciphering how he processes information and makes decisions) can also be applied to forging more productive working relationships with peers you need to work with inside your company's matrix organization.
The old distinctions between leaders and followers are gone. Great followers follow by leading. Here’s 11 ways to make sure you do just that.
In 1982 I left a great job at MTV: Music Television for what is now the A&E Network for one reason: to work for Jim Collins. A highly successful executive, Collins poured wisdom into my head by the bucket while keeping me in stitches with his big-hearted Irish sense of humor. One day he said:
“Remember Augie, everybody got a boss. The vice president reports to the president and the president reports to the CEO. The CEO reports to the chairman of the board and the chairman reports to his wife. All God’s children got a boss. If you want to be a great leader you must also be a great follower.”
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According to Louis Mobley, my mentor and the director of the IBM Executive School, Albert Einstein did far more than reinvent physics. Human beings are no longer just passive cogs in Newton’s mechanistic machine inexorably driven by the iron wheel of cause and effect. Instead we are all conscious agents, thinking for ourselves, just as capable of causing change as being driven by it. Einstein’s universe is a fluid place of feedback loops where cause and effect are interchangeable and often indistinguishable. Does the media lead public opinion or merely reflect it? Do parents produce children or children produce parents? Are consumers hapless victims of marketing or are marketing folks just hapless victims of a fickle consumer?
For leadership, Einstein’s revolution means that the old, neat distinction between leaders and followers no longer exists. Those bright lines between kings and subjects, nobles and serfs, bosses and “workers” are gone. We often switch between leader and follower many times in a single day, and success depends just as much on being a great follower as it does on being a great leader.
Great followers follow by leading and here are 11 ways to do just that.
1) Great Followers Seize the Initiative: The days of leaders saying “Jump!” and subordinates asking “How high?” are over. Today’s leader desperately needs followers that bring fresh ideas not passive worker bees waiting to be told what to do. Great followers say, “This is what I think we should do.” not “What do you want me to do?”
2) Great Followers Create their Own Job: Collins taught me a model for every new job I took. Moving quickly I’d identify a quantifiable goal that I could achieve in a reasonably short amount of time. I would then write up a plan for achieving that goal along with a weekly reporting process. But most importantly, I always presented my plan before my boss asked for it. In this way I demonstrated that I could lead myself. The side benefit of creating my own job was getting the autonomy that turns work into fun.
3) Great Followers are Coachable: One time Collins shared a “secret” with me. Rather than lug around a notebook, he folded a sheet of paper into thirds and put it into the breast pocket of his jacket for notes. I faithfully imitated him, but the first thing I did after leaving the company was stop carrying that damn sheet of paper. It may seem that I was just playing the phony to ingratiate myself, but I had a nobler objective. I wanted to demonstrate to Collins that I was coachable. I used a little thing to signal that I was coachable on the big ones.
4) Great Followers Anticipate: One of the most humorous bits from the TV series M*A*S*H is Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly consistently anticipating Col. Blake and later Col. Potter. They can barely open their mouths before Radar finishes their sentence by assuring them that whatever they are looking for is already done. Like Radar, great followers stay a step ahead of their boss by proactively asking: “If I were my boss what would I want next?” My 23- year -old sales assistant at MTV, Sheri Gottlieb was so good that within weeks 90% of the work that hit my in-box went straight to my out-box with only “Sheri, please handle” for instruction. Soon and without being asked, like Radar, she was intercepting most of my office work before it even hit my desk. Sheri, unsurprisingly, quickly rose from “lowly secretary” to vice president.
5) Great Followers are Great Communicators: If your boss ever has to ask for a status report, you are failing as a follower. Great leaders are great worriers. Great followers preempt worry by proactively communicating in writing. If you do not communicate your boss will naturally worry that you are hiding bad news. Besides, unbidden information is treated far more credibly than information demanded. Poor communicators consistently find themselves on the defensive and perpetually wondering why.
6) Great Followers are Goal Driven: Leaders are busy. The last thing they want to do is “supervise.” Great followers reason backwards: they use future goals to prioritize today’s “activity.” Poor followers reason forward: They react to their in-box and email in the forlorn hope that just staying busy will magically produce results somewhere “down the road.” Your boss is not paying you to “stay busy” or even to “work hard.” He is paying you to strategically deliver on clearly defined goals that materially impact the mission. This is true no matter where you are on the corporate ladder as my assistant Sheri repeatedly demonstrated.
10 Business Clichés That Prove You're LazyRecognize any of the platitudes on this list? Here's why you should stop using them--now.
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Whipping out a platitude isn't just annoying. Using some platitudes also shows you're lazy--and not just in words but in actions:
"Work smarter, not harder."
What happens when you say that to me?
One: You imply I'm stupid. Two: You imply whatever I'm doing should take a lot less time and effort than it does. And three: After you say it, I kinda hate you.
If you know I could be more efficient, tell me how. If you know there's a better way, show me how. If you think there's a better way but don't know what it is, say so. Admit you don't have the answer. Then ask me to help you figure it out.
And, most important, recognize that sometimes the only thing to do is to work harder. So get off your butt and help me.
"There is no I in team."
Sure there is. There are as many I's as team members. Those individuals, the more "individual" the better, serve to make the team stronger. The best teams are often a funky blend of the members' individual talents, perspectives, and goals.
If you want a team to work hard and achieve more, make sure each person feels she can not only achieve the team's goal but also one of her own goals. Spend time figuring out how each individual on the team can do both, instead of taking the lazy way out by simply repressing individuality in the pursuit of the collective.
"It just wasn't meant to be."
Fate had nothing to do with it. Something went wrong. Figure out what went wrong and learn from it.
"Oh, it wasn't meant to be" is not just lazy but also places responsibility elsewhere.
"Let's figure out what we can do next time" is empowering and places the responsibility where it should be: on you.
"That's probably not what you want to hear."
It sucks to hear bad news, no doubt. But when you say that something isn't what I want to hear, you shift the issue over to my side of the table. Somehow it's become my problem.
Don't shift. Explain why you made a decision. Explain the logic. Explain your reasoning.
I still may not want to hear it, but that way the focus remains on the issue and not on me.
"Perception is reality."
Yeah, yeah, I know: How I perceive something is my version of reality, no matter how wrong my perception may be.
But if other people perceive a reality differently than you, work to change that perception. Make reality the reality.
Besides, perceptions are fleeting and constantly changing. Reality lasts forever, or at least until a new reality comes along to replace it.
"We want your feedback."
You see and hear a similar line everywhere: websites, signs, meetings.
Don't be passive if you truly want feedback. Don't just make it easy for people to provide. Go get it. Be active.
Ask.
People who really want feedback take responsibility for getting that feedback--they don't wait to receive it.
"Do it now and apologize later."
You're not a bold, daring risk taker; you're lazy and self-indulgent. Good ideas are rarely stifled. People like better; if they don't like your idea, the problem usually isn't them: It's you.
Don't take the easy way out. Describe what you want to do. Prove it makes sense. Get people behind you.
Then whatever you do has a much better chance of succeeding.
"Failure is not an option."
This one is often used by a leader who gets frustrated and wants to shut down questions about a debatable decision or a seemingly impossible goal: "Listen, folks, failure is simply not an option." (Strikes table or podium with fist.)
Failure is always a possibility. Just because you say it isn't doesn't make it so.
Don't reach for a platitude. Justify your decision. Answer the hard questions.
If you can't, maybe your decision isn't so wise after all.
"Let's not reinvent the wheel."
Because hey, your wheel might turn out to be a better wheel, which means my wheel wasn't so great.
And we can't have that.
"It is what it is."
Here's another shutdown statement. "It is what it is" really means, "I'm too lazy to try to make it different, so for gosh sakes stop talking about it."
"It is what it is" is only true if you take the easy way out by letting "it" remain "it."
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Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden
TED Talks Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers ...
4 Things Great Leaders Do Better Than YouGood news: Becoming a great leader isn't rocket science. Here are four skills you can master that will set you on a path to greatness.
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We've all met them. That one person who is not just a great leader, but who also makes a lasting impression. We remember them, quote them, and refer to them long after our interaction has ended.
These are the leaders who become our mentors and role models. They affect us to such a degree that we channel them when faced with tough decisions, pondering what they would have done in a similar situation. These are the leaders whose attitudes, approach, and style we regard as touchstones for our own.
What is it that makes such a transcendent leader? What do they have that others don't? In my career, I've had the privilege of working with many truly great leaders--individuals who left a lasting legacy and impact--and I've noticed they all share four characteristics:
1. Serious time management. The most notable characteristic of transcendent leaders is their ability to be resolutely in the moment. Seemingly untroubled by overflowing inboxes, unhurried by over-scheduled calendars, not distracted by ever-growing to-do lists, the best leader seems to always have time for the task at hand.
As a result, they are sharply, intently focused--on you, on the issue under consideration, and on the needs of the team around them.
2. Prioritization. Great leaders are highly focused, but they also focus resolutely on the right things. They're skilled at the art of triage; they can prioritize many demands, and always ensure they spend their limited time on those issues that are central to the enterprise's needs.
This is one of the reasons a transcendent leader can remain so focused in their interactions with others. They know that what they are doing is important for the enterprise as a whole, and they're able to zone out the competing demands of lesser priorities.
3. Crisis management. Even a strong leader can buckle in a crisis. Blindsided by the unexpected, it's easy to get caught up in the gravitational pull of a sudden emergency and lose sight--and control--of the rest of the organization's needs.
Great leaders, conversely, excel in crises. They refuse to have their ongoing priorities (and those of the enterprise) distorted inappropriately by individual events.
Instead, like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into a pond, the transcendent leader will react to crises with just the necessary response--no more, and no less than is required to address the new situation, correct it, and return to equilibrium.
4. Delegation. Finally, the best leaders are masters of delegation.
Acutely aware of their own limitations, and driven by the knowledge that they can't possibly do everything they're asked, the transcendent leader entrusts tasks to others not by exception, but by default.
As one such leader put it to me: "I try only to do, what only I can do."
Do you wish to not just lead people, but to be seen as a mentor and a role model? To leave a legacy? Doing so is surprisingly straightforward: the four individual skills that differentiate the transcendent leader are each in themselves surprisingly mundane. These are skills which any good leader can learn. But together, they combine to transform an average leader into a truly transcendent one.
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Les McKeown is the author of the best-seller, Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There and is the CEO of Predictable Success, a leading advisor on accelerated organizational growth. His latest book is The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success. @lesmckeown @lesmckeown
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Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming HBR Single Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?
If You're Not Micromanaging, You're Not Leading11:45 AM Wednesday May 23, 2012 | Comments
The single most revealing moment in the coverage of JPMorgan's multibillion dollar debacle can be found in this take-your-breath-away passage from The Wall Street Journal:
On April 30, associates who were gathered in a conference room handed Mr. Dimon summaries and analyses of the losses. But there were no details about the trades themselves. "I want to see the positions!" he barked, throwing down the papers, according to attendees. "Now! I want to see everything!"When Mr. Dimon saw the numbers, these people say, he couldn't breathe.
Only when he saw the actual trades — the raw data — did Dimon realize the full magnitude of his company's situation. The horrible irony: The very detail-oriented systems (and people) Dimon had put in place had obscured rather than surfaced his bank's horrible hedge. What he'd dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" less than a month earlier had turned into a multibillion dollar humiliation. If Dimon had seen those positions — naked and unsummarized — back then, could his bank have saved itself and its CEO a lot of money and embarrassment?
Dimon (whom I've met and admire enormously) acknowledges he was too complacent. But this vignette affirms my belief that leaders need to "go to the source" even before they turn to their best people. Seeing the data raw instead of analytically pre-chewed can have enormous impact on executive perceptions. That's not to minimize or marginalize the importance of analysis and interpretation. But when tempests threaten to outgrow their teapots, nothing creates situational awareness faster than seeing with your own eyes what your experts are trying to synthesize and summarize. There's a reason why great chefs visit the farms and markets that source their restaurants: The raw ingredients are critical to success.
At one global telecommunications giant, for example, a critical network software upgrade was not only slipping further behind schedule, but the bug density was slowly creeping up, as well. The program managers' key performance indicator dashboards showed nothing alarmingly unusual except the seemingly usual slippage and delays associated with a complex project with moving parts worldwide. The executive responsible for the deliverable (but not the software engineering itself) felt something amiss. The error rates felt too high and the delays too long, given the clarity of project milestones. He wasn't technically sophisticated enough to read the code or analyze the testing, but he asked several project managers to share how their code was being documented. The raw material astonished and appalled him. The code was both hastily and poorly documented; the result was confusion and ambiguity that not only created delays but introduced errors into the software. The deadline-driven programmers, unfortunately, thought nothing of improvising just-in-time documentation via email, and misunderstandings and typos quickly propagated program-wide. The result was a worsening mess.
The executive intervention — making documentation a priority, streamlining version coordination, and changing the testing protocols — didn't get the complex program back on schedule, but stopped things from getting worse, and dramatically improved both product quality and post-launch maintainability. It could never have happened unless leadership had the courage and competence to go to the source. Is this micromanagement? You bet! But real leaders are constantly called upon to create new contexts for people to succeed. Sometimes holding people accountable is the path of least resistance rather than what's best for the organization.
There's both a cultural and personal difference between this kind of micromanagement and being a control freak. In the former, leaders want to see — and feel — what's going on with their own eyes and gut; they want to draw upon their own experiences and expertise. In the latter, they want a greater command of detail in order to tell people what to do. The best micromanagers (like Dimon) go to the source, so they can see, listen, and understand better; the control freaks do it to remind people that they run the whole show.
Yes, there's something vaguely mistrustful and distrustful about insisting on a diet of raw data rather than a richly prepared presentation of nutritious analytics. The core message — that you want/need to see for yourself — may feel disempowering to some. But there's a fundamental difference between trusting your people and trusting their data. Trust me, you'll breathe easier if you go to the source when those teapots start whistling a little too sharply.
In our last blog, we discussed the importance of competence for fostering the trust you need as a manager to influence others. We stressed that management competence includes not just technical knowledge of the work but operational and political know-how as well.
Here we want to focus on the other great component of trust — character — but by taking a different approach.
Think of the most chilling villain you've seen in the movies, the one who shows up in your nightmares, the one you would avoid at all cost if he really existed, the one, in short, you absolutely cannot trust. We don't know what villain comes to mind for you, but one of our most memorable is Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, played by Anthony Hopkins. Lecter is a genius, especially at reading people's minds; in other words, he's super competent. Whatever he sets out to accomplish, we're confident he knows or will figure out what to do and how to do it. Think about that. An idiot villain would be a joke. That's why serious villains are virtually always highly capable: Darth Vader (Star Wars), Dr. Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes' archenemy), and one of our favorites, Magua (the embittered Huron warrior played by Wes Studi in Last of the Mohicans).
But what makes these characters so frightening isn't just competence. That forces us to take them seriously; it makes them compelling. But, for the most part, competence is neutral. What truly chills us, what virtually defines villains, are their evil intentions. Their purpose is to do harm. What they seek to do with their competence is what terrifies us. Intentions are the heart of what we call character — the values, norms, goals, and priorities that drive someone's actions and choices.
Our visceral reactions to villains illustrate an important point — that our feelings about someone, whether we fear or trust them, are largely determined by their intentions. By divining what they want, we answer the question we all instinctively ask about someone new: ally or enemy? Intentions are how we distinguish a villain from someone whose influence we accept, whom we move toward. Competence may be appealing, but intentions are what attract or repel us and foster trust or mistrust.
Thus, if you want to lead and influence others, you must reveal your intentions. People won't believe you will do the right thing unless they're convinced you genuinely want to do it.
That requires more conscious effort than most bosses understand. We all more or less assume that others will see our positive motives or at least give us the benefit of the doubt. But it often doesn't work that way. As a leader and manager, you must often make tradeoffs among the competing interests of your own group, other groups, the organization as a whole, important outsiders, and the individuals who work for you. That obviously creates many opportunities for people to misinterpret your intentions.
That's why it's often critical to take conscious and purposeful steps to reveal your motives and values and to open yourself so others can see inside you. Here are three important ways to reveal your intentions and convince others of their sincerity.
1. First, talk explicitly about your intentions — what's important to you, the goals you seek, the values and motives that guide your actions and decisions. Talk as well about the sources of your intentions — the experiences that forged them. When you do something or make a choice, explain both the business and personal reasons. Don't assume people will see them. Say them outright. Invite a discussion of them.
This sounds easy, but many managers resist the idea that the boss must stoop to explain himself. Being the boss, they think, means not having to do that. But if they want to generate the kind of trust that gives them real influence and elicits the best from their people, they will talk about their intentions. This is important because intentions often aren't obvious, and they're always open to interpretation — especially, as we said, in a complex setting like work. So relying on others to guess what's in your head and heart is, at best, a problematic way to produce the outcome — trust — that you want.
2. The second way to reveal your intentions is through integrity. Walk the talk. Keep your word. Be sure that what you say is consistent with what you do. This will prove your authenticity. If you tell people to be open to new ideas, but you're not, they will doubt what you say. If they don't understand or believe your intentions, how can they trust you to do the right thing?
3. The third way you reveal your intentions is through consistency. The intentions you speak about and practice should be the same from day to day, from person to person, from situation to situation. If they're not, and there's no reason for the difference, your lack of consistency will lead people to doubt you as well. If there are differences, be sure to explain them. Be sensitive to how others see and interpret your reasons for what you do.
So far we've argued that intentions — character — are the foundation of trust, that they must be supported by competence, and that you must take pains to reveal them. But we haven't addressed the question of your intentions themselves. Does it matter what your intentions are?
Yes, of course it does. We don't trust anyone simply because they have clear intentions. Otherwise, we'd trust Hannibal Lecter and other villains. People trust us because we have the right intentions, which are those intentions people accept and agree with.
What are "the right" intentions? That's not an easy question to answer, especially for a boss, and it's the subject of our next blog.
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Good Managers Lead Through a Team12:22 PM Tuesday April 3, 2012 | Comments
We consider the ability to manage a team so important that, in a recent book, we made it one of the "3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader:" Manage Your Team — the first imperative — is about creating a real team and managing through it. For the record, the other two imperatives are Manage Yourself — which is about building relationships based on trust, not authority — and Manage Your Network, which is about connecting and collaborating with those you don't control.
"Manage your team" might seem clear and straightforward. Yet when we talk about it, we often find it's not an intuitive concept for many managers and for some it even cuts against the grain of what they think they should do as bosses.
Perhaps the easiest way to explain the problem, as we've come to understand it, is through the phrase we used above — manage "through the team." By that we mean you should use the social dynamics of the team to manage individual members, rather than managing members primarily one-by-one. This is a critical distinction that many managers miss. Though they extol the benefits of teamwork, they insist on managing their teams individual-by-individual. Thus, they virtually ensure that their groups will never become true teams.
Every group is not a team. Most are not, in fact, and so it's good to start with a definition.
A team is a group of people who do collective work and are mutually committed to a common team purpose and challenging goals related to that purpose.Teams are more productive and innovative than mere work groups. They produce results that exceed what groups of individuals can do through simple cooperation and coordination. Such results reflect a "team effect:" members perform better when they feel they're part of a team. The root of this benefit is members' strong mutual commitment to their joint work. This commitment creates compelling social and emotional bonds among members, who come to believe that "we" will all succeed or fail together and that no one can succeed if the team fails. In every team, "we" trumps "I." Unless you've been part of a team yourself, it's hard to understand the exhilaration produced by this sense of what "we" can accomplish together.
This mutual commitment, this "we," the potent interpersonal bonds among team members, spring from two related sources:
- A mutual sense of purpose. Every high-performing team believes it exists for a compelling reason and that the world will be better for what it does. Its purpose is not the task or work it does but the benefit it delivers. It's the difference between "We scrub hospital floors" and "We prevent the spread of deadly infections." This is what pulls people together and makes them feel part of something bigger than themselves.
- Tangible goals based on that purpose. Purpose must be made concrete or it will quickly wither. To sustain its sense of purpose, every team needs to strive toward specific, real achievements that will fulfill that purpose.
In short, purpose and related goals are the glue that holds a team together. Purpose without concrete goals is just a dream. Goals without purpose are aimless activity. But although they are critical, purpose and goals are not enough. A team also needs clarity. In particular, team members need clarity about:
- Members' roles and responsibilities — not everyone can do everything
- Important work processes — the way the team does its work, such as making decisions
- Values, norms, and standards that define what members expect of each other — how conflict, for example, may and may not be expressed
- The kinds of feedback and metrics needed to measure progress.
These may be the more nitty-gritty aspects of team infrastructure but they're needed to keep the team's work flowing smoothly and to minimize destructive conflict. And when all these conditions are present and a group becomes a true team, members perform at a high level not because the boss demands it but because their team colleagues expect it. Members work hard so as to support each other and not let the team down. In effect, then, the team manages itself. If a team member fails to perform, other members will let him know. In this way, performance is guided by the social and emotional bonds among members, not the expectations of the boss. When this occurs, the manager is managing through the team by using the social bonds among members to shape behavior.
It's a more effective way to manage because it elicits more commitment and effort from the individuals involved. But it's obviously not a comfortable approach for those bosses who need to be "in charge" and want to believe that their team will succeed because of their direct influence. They dislike, in particular, the fact that creating a team requires such an indirect approach, like a pool player making a bank shot off the side rather than straight into a pocket. They don't realize that the more direct approach they prefer will most likely prevent their group from becoming a real team. Real teams emerge spontaneously when the right conditions are present; a team can't be created by decree. The boss cannot dictate a compelling purpose; the team members must choose one, though it certainly can be one the boss has suggested and the team discussed.
Thus, instead of imposing and directing, you as group leader must suggest, support, define, focus on, talk about, expect, hire for, lead discussions about, and evaluate performance against the conditions that foster the spontaneous formation of a team. Your formal authority can be useful for directing people's time and attention to the right issues and conditions. That's far from nothing, but in the end only your group's members can make themselves into a team by freely committing themselves to a mutual purpose.
Your job as team leader is to foster and then sustain the conditions that help them do that. You may not feel completely comfortable with such an indirect approach, but that's how teams work.
This post is part of the HBR Insight Center on The Secrets of Great Teams.
The Biggest Mistake You (Probably) Make with Teams10:09 AM Thursday April 5, 2012 | Comments
Throughout most of my career, I've made a big mistake in the way I've lead teams — and wouldn't be surprised if you have, too.
Which is more important to promoting collaboration: a clearly defined approach toward achieving the goal, or clearly specified roles for individual team members? The common assumption — and my personal approach for many years — is that carefully spelling out the approach is essential, while leaving the roles of individuals within the team open and flexible will encourage people to share ideas and contribute in multiple dimensions.
But our research has shown that the opposite is true: collaboration improves when the roles of individual team members are clearly defined and well understood — in fact, when individuals feel their role is bounded in ways that allow them to do a significant portion of their work independently. Without such clarity, team members are likely to waste energy negotiating roles or protecting turf, rather than focusing on the task.
We've also found that team members are more likely to want to collaborate if the path to achieving the team's goal is left somewhat ambiguous. If a team perceives the task as one that requires creativity, where the approach is not yet well known or predefined, its members are more likely to invest more time and energy in collaboration.
Consider a team of doctors and nurses working in a hospital emergency room. Before the next ambulance to arrives, they have no idea of the nature of the task ahead. Will the patient require surgery, heart resuscitation, medications? The condition of the next patient is unknown; the tasks that will be required of the team, ambiguous. But at no time while the team waits, do they negotiate roles: "Who would like to administer the anesthesia? Who will set out the instruments? Who will make key decisions?" Each role is clear. As a result, when the patient arrives, the team is able to move quickly into action.
At the BBC, we studied the teams responsible for the radio and television broadcasts of special events and daytime television news. These teams were large — ranging from 66 people in one case to 133 in another — and included members with a wide range of skills and from many disciplines. One would imagine, therefore, that there was a high possibility of confusion among team members.
To the contrary, we found that the BBC's teams scored among the highest in our sample with regard to the clarity with which team members viewed their own roles and the roles of others. Every team was composed of specialists who had deep expertise in their given function, and each person had a clearly defined role. There was no overlap in the responsibilities of the sound technician and of the camera operator, and so on. Yet the tasks the BBC teams tackle are, by their very nature, uncertain and to some extent ambiguous, particularly when they involve covering breaking news. The trick the BBC and others in the film industry have pulled off has been to clarify team members' individual roles with so much precision that it keeps friction, internal competition and the possibility of mistakes of omission to a minimum.
In the same research, we also studied successful teams at Reuters — teams that worked out of far-flung locations and, in many cases, didn't speak a common language. (The primary languages were Russian, Chinese, Thai, and English.) These teams, largely composed of software programmers, were responsible for the rapid development of highly complex technical software and network products. Many of the programmers sat at their desks for 12 hours straight developing code, speaking with no one. Each individual was given autonomy for one discrete, well-defined piece of the project; the rapid pace and demanding project timelines encouraged individual members to work independently to get the job done. Yet because each individual's work had to fit seamlessly into the final product, shaped with an eye toward achieving the overall team goal, these teams judged collaborative behavior to be high among their members.
The leader's role, as I learned from this research, is to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the team members are clearly defined for the specific project at hand (members' roles may change from project to project to provide variety and broaden experience). Conversely, leaders should help team members understand the project's importance and ultimate objective but leave the exact approach to the discretion of the team.
This post is part of the HBR Insight Center on The Secrets of Great Teams.
The One Skill All Leaders Should Work On11:30 AM Thursday March 29, 2012
by Scott Edinger | CommentsIf I had to pick one skill for the majority of leaders I work with to improve, it would be assertiveness. Not because being assertive is such a wonderful trait in and of itself. Rather, because of its power to magnify so many other leadership strengths.
Assertiveness gets a bad rap when people equate it with being pushy and annoying. But that shouldn't stop you from learning to apply it productively (that is — in service to your strengths). More harm is done when people aren't assertive enough than by being too assertive. At least you know what pushy people think, but those who don't assert themselves can be keeping vital ideas hidden and useless when they don't speak up or speak too softly. So I'd assert that when you are able to balance this critical skill with your other leadership abilities, you greatly amplify your power and impact.
Here are some specific ways in which assertiveness complements a wide range of the critical leadership skills you may already have:
• Creating a culture of innovation: A couple of years ago I conducted a study to determine the characteristics of the most innovative leaders in one of the largest companies in the world. One of their most powerful traits, their peers and direct reports told me, was their ability to push back on the hierarchy. These leaders were by no means rebels; rather, they were perceived to be fearless. Coupling assertiveness with their ability to foster innovation enabled them to take on difficult issues — to fight for resources for new projects or openly disagree with more senior managers about policy changes that could have severe unintended consequences. Being challenged required people to think more deeply to justify a course of action, which frequently produced much better ideas.
• Being customer focused: We typically think of service or business development professionals as being good at, and focused on, building relationships. But the most successful sales professionals, as Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson point out in their blog and their book, The Challenger Sale, are not the ones who build relationships. They're the ones who push back, challenging their clients to see problems they hadn't anticipated. Essentially, Dixon and Adamson's research finds, assertiveness creates more value for clients than conciliatory relationship building does.
• Fostering teamwork and collaboration: It might seem like assertiveness has little to do with the skills you need to be a team player. But teams thrive when their members are able to express their not-always-popular points of view. Excellent team players (who generally are already inclusive and able to defer to others) would improve considerably by learning when to assert such views. And team leaders who are assertive in creating a safe environment for less-popular opinions will make their teams all the stronger by increasing all team members' ability to participate fully.
• Leading change: Constructive change rarely happens passively. Change requires the leaders to challenge the status quo and find new ways of doing things to further organizational goals. It's nearly impossible to lead change without some measure of assertiveness because in most cases, even when change is generally viewed as positive, some kind of resistance still needs to be addressed.
• Acting with integrity: There are plenty of highly principled people who are too timid to speak up in meetings — to question a decision that appears to violate a corporate value or is otherwise not in the best interests of the organization. Assertiveness doesn't cause honesty or vice-versa, but when the two operate together they give people the courage not only to know what is right but to stand up for it as well.
• Creating a safe environment: This might seem self-evident — there are times when it's vital to speak up in the face of danger. And yet there are so many times when people don't, even in cases of life and death. The National Transportation Safety Board, for instance, has traced the cause of some plane crashes to co-pilots who were so deferential to their pilot in an emergency that they made suggestions too subtly. While most of us are not faced with life or death decisions each day, plenty of leaders are responsible for the safety of those they lead.
• Communicating effectively: Assertiveness adds power and conviction to a message and enables a leader's voice to be heard. You can clearly tell the difference between a message communicated with passion and vigor as a leader asserts his or her point of view and one that lacks the energy of conviction. Assertive leaders also tend to communicate more often, as their passion leads them to capitalize on every opportunity they can find to deliver a message.
Many leaders (though certainly not all) struggle with being assertive enough, whether through self-doubt, a lack of confidence, a fear of not being liked, or a host of other reasons. Most people who know me personally would probably say that I possess a reasonably strong level of assertiveness. Yet there are times (like when I'm with people whom I admire or whose opinion is particularly important to me) that I become relatively timid and less likely to assert my point of view. Ironically, when I review those situations, I recognize that they may be some of the most important times for me to speak up.
We’ve written a fair amount on the connection between poker and trading. The overlap is huge: math, psychology, selective aggression, risk control, and so on.
In addition to those things, poker tournaments are an excellent venue for human observation.
Watching my fellow players at the table, noting their habits and playing patterns under stress, I sometimes feel like B.F. Skinner running a behavioral experiment.
In a recent tournament environment, a question occurred to me:
Why do decision making skills deteriorate so rapidly under stress?
First some background:
If you are familiar at all with the structure of poker tournaments, you know that they start out mild and finish wild. The volatility starts off like a gentle summer breeze — and builds to a class 5 hurricane.
This happens because, with each successive round of play, the blinds and antes relentlessly rise in relation to the players’ stacks. To do nothing is to get swallowed up.
This steadily increases the pressure, or “stress,” of staying alive — and the pressure ratchets up nonstop until, out of the hundreds (or thousands) of players who began the tournament, only one rises triumphant at the final table.
What’s more, though 10% of the field gets paid, the structure of the typical tournament is skewed towards “winner take all.”
For example, in a typical small field $1,000 buy-in tournament with 150 entrants, 19th place might barely get their entry fee back… while 1st place makes a whopping $40,000.
And at the final table of a major event, the difference between, say, third and second could easily be six figures.
Can you imagine half a million dollars — or even more — riding on the outcome of a bluff?
Stress Lab
Point being, a poker tournament is an ideal “stress lab:” A proving ground for performance under pressure.
And recently, after watching some experienced players fall apart in surprising ways, I started wondering anew about the stress deterioration factor.
It’s a funny thing: In the early stages of a tournament, you will observe players making careful, reasoned decisions in respect to pots that are small to medium sized. With only a modest amount of chips at risk, these players will stop, think, calculate odds in the back of their minds, and so on.
But then, later on — when the pressure is cranked up and survival is paramount — these same players will make hasty snap decisions, often bad ones, when their entire tournament life is on the line!
From a logic perspective, it makes no sense.
Why would a careful, reasoned player in low-danger situations become a reckless, foolish player in high-danger situations?
The short answer: Because of stress. High-stress situations mess with your brain… and potentially impair your decision making capabilities.
After doing some digging on this, I had an “a-ha” moment.
This piece, Decision-Making Under Stress, helped me understand the tendency to go for the gamble in heavy pressure situations (emphasis mine):
It’s counterintuitive, but under stress we tend to focus more on the rewards than on the risks of any decision…
A new review shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the pros and cons, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative consequences of a decision.
The research has implications for everything from obesity and addictions to finance, suggesting that stress may modify the way people make choices in predictable ways.
…This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while stressed out — at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind. But the findings further suggest that stress may prompt relapse with a double whammy. Not only are rewarding experiences, like a drug high, remembered better, but negative consequences, like the crash afterward, are also less easily recalled.
- Decision-Making Under Stress: The Brain Remembers Rewards, Forgets Punishments
Bingo! This is a spot-on explanation for why smart players do stupid things at the poker table — and why that stupidity tends to come out at the worst time.
When the pressure is cranked up, decision making skills are impaired by rising adrenaline levels and the fight-or-flight response — and the natural tendency of the brain in those situations (especially for men) is to bias towards reward: To overweight the positive outcome and underweight the risks.
So, remember that dumb adrenaline-fueled decision you made to call a big stack all-in bet with a lousy pair of nines, throwing away hours of smart play in one stupid hand?
Yeah, that was Mother Nature’s fault.
RADUS
Acronym geek that I am, this train of thought led me to the shorthand word “RADUS:” Risk Awareness Deteriorates Under Stress.
When you make bad decisions under pressure, with a lacking balance of risk control, that’s RADUS at work. It’s a sort of mental condition, like being on tilt.
The RADUS phenomenon explains why big decisions are often made too quickly, whereas lower pressure decisions are more thought out. Like night blindness or hay fever allergies, some will be more prone to RADUS than others. And there are countermeasures that can be taken.
Stress and Trading
Blowing up at the poker table is not so different than blowing up a trading account. RADUS leads to both via heat-of-the-moment risk management decisions that really aren’t that smart.
And if the hypothesis is correct — that the brain overemphasizes positive outcomes in stressful situations — it also explains why undisciplined traders tend to “double down” at the worst time, focusing on the rewards of a big comeback if they’re right.
It’s a built-in booby trap: As danger increases and processing ability short-circuits, we think about reward more and danger less!
Why would the brain be wired like this?
My rough guess is because, from an evolutionary perspective, a species increases its odds of survival — for the species as a whole, that is — by encouraging risk taking at the margins.
This in turn is linked to a natural propensity for novelty (i.e. exploratory risk-taking):
One-in-20 honey bees are thrill seekers, say University of Illinois entomologists who have identified distinct patterns of gene activity in the same molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans. Their study, published in Science, suggests that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates and that novelty seeking is an important trait.
…”People are trying to understand the basis of novelty-seeking behavior in humans and in animals,” Robinson explained. “And a lot of the thinking has to do with the relationship between how the [brain's] reward system is engaged in response to some experience.”
- Bee thrill-seekers reveal evolutionary importance of novelty
As with honeybees, not all humans are “thrill seekers.” But those of us who ARE thrill seekers have a nature-assigned job to do: Go out and take risks for the sake of the gene pool.
It’s Mother Nature’s way of ensuring survival of the species: Take 5% of the population and make them a little crazy, increasing the odds they’ll come up with the next food source or the next innovation for survival.
Some thus have a built-in propensity to gamble — and to go “all in” — because it ultimately benefits everyone.
In his excellent book The Poker Face of Wall Street, Aaron Brown even talks about how the vital infrastructure of Chicago and the grain trading midwest was built on risk taking (gambling). It was very hard to amass large enough pools of capital to build out city infrastructure and make the large capital investments needed.
The solution? It was to get a bunch of traders (and poker players) together in a “winner take all” environment — like a poker tournament — after which those who had amassed very large pools of capital (through their risk-taking tendencies) had the wherewithal to go ahead and build out the city.
So conservative Republicans have it wrong: Gambling helped build the nation! Read Aaron Brown’s book for much more on this.
The modified ideal: Calculated Risk
The thing is, Mother Nature’s design is too blunt.
The smart poker player or trader — who has greater odds of being a “thrill seeker” in the first place by dint of self selection — wants to routinely engage in calculated risks.
We are much less interested in playing Mother Nature’s lottery, and more interested in getting as much of an edge as possible befo.
In practice this means the following:
- Recognize that decision making skills deteriorate under stress. This is half the battle right here. If you understand that adrenaline and pressure tend to degrade your reasoning ability, pushing you towards “fight or flight” mode, you can combat those tendencies in simple ways: Practice and rehearse beforehand. Get used to employing “counter measures,” like deep calming breaths. Count to 10 and deliberately reengage your analytical brain.
- Recognize that the brain over-weights positive outcomes under stress. Once this hardwired tendency is recognized, you can counteract it with a set of learned response patterns implemented by your conscious mind. This can be as simple as saying to yourself “Think about the risk” repeatedly, knowing that, if stressed, you may well be NOT thinking about the risk enough.
- Avoid the “Four Poisons of the Mind” — fear, confusion, hesitation, and surprise. There is a sword-based martial art called Kum Do based around this philosophy (avoiding the four poisons). With practice, you can reduce the number of situations where you feel stress in the first place. If you mentally rehearse and develop a sense of what could happen, then no scenario — even a stressful one — should catch you off guard. At the very least, through planning and preparation, you can greatly reduce the instances where the four poisons come into play.
- Cultivate mental awareness. Know yourself — habits, emotional responses, mental tendencies — on a deep and intimate level. Make a deliberate practice of self observation. You would be surprised how many people don’t do this at all! Sun Tzu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear a hundred battles.”
JS
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"Leadership" has changed when a decentralized group of people can take down a government. "The Value Chain" has changed when the customer is no longer just the "buyer" but also a co-creator. "Human Resources" have changed when most of the people who create value for your organization are neither hired nor paid by you. "Competition" has changed when individuals can create value through a centralized network of resources: for example, designing a product from anywhere, producing it through a 3D factory, financing it through community and distribution from anywhere to anywhere.
Yet our business models have not changed to keep pace with these shifts.
This five-part series has shared case studies and examples of how the social era affects all areas of the business model: how we create, deliver, and capture value. (See part one, part two, part three, and part four.)
Here's a quick visual summary of what we've covered so far:
These changes are not transitory or reversible, but fundamental and irrevocable. The social-era models are inherently more fast, fluid, and flexible than the models that preceded them. The big question is: how are we actually going to do this thing?
And it is a huge question: it is a life's work-sized-question that can't possibly be answered in a blog post, or even a series of posts. But I can offer three actionable, thought-provoking exercises that you can start with, today:
From paid to purpose-driven. In the social era, purpose precedes scale. And as we discussed in part two of the series, shared purpose allows many communities to engage with you — without you having to invest resources in controlling their actions. When TED unleashed TEDx, they created a force multiplier. Shared purpose aligns people without coordination costs.
Purpose is also a better motivator than money. Money, while necessary, motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. Purpose does.
Actionable exercise: Have the people you work with write down the purpose of your work, then compare answers. Then ask, are any of these purposes something that would create a multiplier effect? Engage hearts and minds?
From isolated organizations to communities. The social era will reward those organizations that understand they can create more value with communities than they can on their own. Communities of proximity, where participants share a geographic location (Craigslist is an example but co-working locations are another) will allow people to organize work differently. Communities of passion who share a common interest (photography, or food, or books) can inform new product lines. Communities of purpose will willingly share a common task to build something (like Wikipedia) that will carry your brand and its offer to another level. Communities of practice, where they share a common career or field of business, will extend your offer because it extends their expertise (like McAfee mavens). Communities of providence that allow people to discover connections with others (as in Facebook) and thus enable the sharing of information, products and ideas.
Actionable exercise: Imagine that if you asked, you could get communities to co-create with you. What could you do together? What would be one way to try it out?
From centralized to distributed. While management often espouses the notion that good ideas can come from everywhere, in practice there are "thinkers" who create strategies and designated "doers" who execute those strategies. But that only leaves an air sandwich in the organization, where debates, tradeoffs, and necessary discussions are skipped. This air sandwich is the source of all strategic failure. Instead of centralized decisions, we need distributed input and distributed decisions.
Actionable exercise: Rather than making command and control a "bad" thing, discuss what areas needs which controls. Then examine how more, if not most, areas and decisions can distributed (and thus made radically more flexible). For the purpose of the exercise, say that you want 50% or 70% all decisions to be free of permission-seeking and check-ins. What would it take to get there?
When we emphasize purpose, engage communities, and distribute decision-making, we begin to stop talking about being fast, fluid, and flexible, and actually begin to make our organizations become fast, fluid, and flexible. This can change how we organize every single part of these organizations — from what we make, to how we product and distribute, to how we market and sell. Everything.
Disrupting How We Work
Many of you know of Clay Christensen's iconic work the Innovators Dilemma. Small newcomers eat off bits of an established leader's business through lower cost structure and a willingness to accept lower margins. This phenomenon has been seen in industry after industry, and usually focused on the cost of delivering goods and services. In other words, "Look how the steel mini-mills making rebar disrupt the established integrated steel mills making sheet steel." At each point in the disruption, it makes economic sense for the big company to surrender that bit of the market to the disruptor, and so big companies logically put themselves out of business.I think there is an analogous process going on with the organizational structure of businesses themselves; that aside from market-specific competition from below, there is also competition from disruptive organizations that are finding new ways to get work done. This change is just as threatening to established businesses as the process competitors Christensen identified, and just as difficult to respond to.
Where once you could reexamine the organization's model (the how) every few years to support the rest of the business (the what), reinventing the how becomes its own muscle to develop.
How does this lead to disruption? To answer this question, let's look at Singularity University, which I mentioned earlier in this series. You might recall that they deliver an education curriculum of 300 hours with seven full-time staff. Their organizational model lets them then fluidly reinvent what they create next, thus baking innovation in with their disruptive design. In particular some 80% of their business resources are fluid. Their purpose doesn't change, but their "what" does. Their business model allows them to persistently review "what's the next big thing" and adjust. Using Christensen's metaphor, educational institutions are the sheet steel with its ever-increasing tuitions to support their tenured staff, while Singular University is the rebar. But their flexible design gives them the chance to keep being the "rebar."
What Happens Now
Rather than try to power through with size, we'll have to find power through shared purpose.Rather than hiring and directing inside the walls of an organization, we'll tear down those walls altogether and allow everyone to own a part of the big picture.
Rather than taking long stretches of time to perfect something, we'll build fast, fluid and flexible organizations.
What we create in the end will be a different type of organization, one that embodies a culture of innovation.
Since I began writing this series, many of you have written publicly and privately asking, doesn't this just mean the "800-pound gorilla" dies? Entrepreneurs and the startup ecosystem who embody fast / fluid / flexible attributes certainly believe that the established players are fated to die. Many think of these big organizations as the dinosaurs of our time. But one can look at the history of dinosaurs and see that dinosaurs didn't really die. Paleontologists have suggested that dinosaurs are all around us today actually, as birds.
Applied to today's business giants, the analogy probably holds. The "species" that adapt to the changes in the environment faster will do better. That is for sure. What is less clear is what they will become as they adapt. Perhaps the new model for a successful business should be "Nimble." Or "Flux." Or "Humanized." Or "Networked." Frankly, I find the search for naming less-than-fruitful. We have plenty of names already; will another name really help you act?
Over time, there will be a lot more dots filling out this picture. But the fundamental principles of the social era are already clear enough to form a new set of organizing principles for business. The world has changed; how we create value has changed. Organizationally we have not. It's time to pay attention to these emerging business models now, to benefit our organizations, our economies, and ourselves.
This post is the fifth in a series on how the social era will reward fast, fluid, flexible organizations. Read the other posts here:
Part 1: Rules for the Social Era
Part 2: Social Means Freedom, for Better or for Worse
Part 3: Why Porter's Model No Longer Works
Part 4: Why Social Marketing Is So Hard
Firing Someone the Right Way1:00 PM Tuesday March 20, 2012 | Comments
Perhaps the most difficult part of any manager's job is telling a subordinate that he can no longer stay with the company — that he's been "fired," "let go," "dismissed," or otherwise taken off the payroll. It's a gut-wrenching conversation, knowing how this simple act affects a person's career, self-esteem, and livelihood. Firing an employee also affects everyone else on your team. Not only does it change work assignments, but it also makes people wonder about your judgment as a manager and their own job security.
Given these emotional undercurrents, many managers let anxiety drive the firing process instead of intellect, making a difficult moment even worse. For example, I know of a senior manager who walked unannounced into his employee's office, junior HR person in-tow, and declared: "You've been fired. Our HR associate will answer your questions and then escort you out of the building." The manager then exited, leaving the shocked (former) employee and the ill-prepared HR person staring awkwardly at each other. What made this situation even worse is that the senior manager had given no previous indication of the employee's performance difficulties and had given him nothing but positive feedback in the previous six months. Now, suddenly, the reason for the firing was "lack of teamwork." And because it was "for cause," no severance was offered and pay was terminated immediately.
From the manager's perspective, this approach avoided the anxiety associated with firing. He didn't have to engage in any difficult performance discussions or justify his actions. He also avoided any kind of emotional scene and (temporary) budget impacts. Of course, he also probably generated a major lawsuit that left the company liable for far more than the cost of a severance. And once the story got out, he likely lost the respect of his team.
Clearly this may be an extreme example,but there are too many stories like this one. Because firing is so emotionally charged, it's easy to act counterproductively. To avoid that, here are some guidelines for those times when firing an employee becomes a necessity:
First, make sure that letting your employee go is the last step in a careful, thoughtful, fair, and transparent process that started long before the actual firing. In other words, if the dismissal is for poor performance, then it should occur after a series of performance discussions, plans, and documented actions. If it's due to reorganization or job elimination, it also should follow conversations, announcements, and a reasonable "fair warning." The key is that, if possible, firing should not come as a surprise. In most companies, the HR function has guidelines for how this process should unfold.
Second, come to the "firing meeting" prepared to address the practical logistical questions that the person will have about leaving her job: When is the official end date? Are there severance arrangements? Are there opportunities elsewhere in the company? Is career counseling available? What happens with benefits? You may need help from HR to make sure that these answers are available.
Third, at the meeting be ready to listen but not react. Losing a job can be traumatic, and your employee may display a range of emotions, which he might direct towards you. Try not to get caught up in responding. Listen with respect and then direct the person towards the practical realities of moving on. Offer to talk again later when the emotions are not so raw, or ask a trained HR counselor to join you.
Finally, after the firing, talk to your team about the process, the reasoning, and the implications for them (within the limits of confidentiality). In some cases, they will fully understand the decision. In others, they may have a very incomplete picture. In either case, you need to be sensitive to their emotions, and then help redirect their focus back on work.
Firing a subordinate is one of the most difficult and painful tasks you'll ever have to do as a manager; and for most of us it never gets easier. Unfortunately, avoiding the anxiety associated with firing only makes things worse. So if you have to do it — do it right.
What's been your experience with firing — or being fired?
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Sally Augustin is a practicing design/environmental psychologist, an expert on person-centered design, and a principal at Design With Science. She consults with organizations and individuals to inform optimal design solutions.
Your Coworkers See Your Office Differently2:35 PM Tuesday March 13, 2012
by Sally Augustin | CommentsWhen people from several different countries share the same workplace, misunderstandings can generate friction. Sure, there are language issues and not everyone likes the way other people manage their time, but the most insidious and intractable problems between coworkers from different parts of the world often arise from variations in how colleagues perceive (literally) and prefer to use space. The most commonly recognized difference is the amount of personal space people need to feel comfortable when they're conversing — but that's just one of many cultural preferences that affect the way people interact with each other and their surroundings. The psychology research described below may help smooth some discussions and provide explanations for behaviors that you might otherwise find baffling.
In North America, people are very attuned to what spaces and objects look like, but vision doesn't reign supreme everywhere. Edward Hall, in The Hidden Dimension, noticed differences in sensory sensibilities several decades ago, and his work is still relevant today. In Japan, people are much more likely to attend to smells, sounds, and tactile sensations when in a space or using an object. Functionality of sense organs is not the issue here; what does come into play is the attention given to information collected through the senses. Traditionally, in Arab cultures, the smell of a conversation partner's breath is felt to convey all sorts of important information — and people need to stand close enough to each other during conversations to pick up those olfactory signals. So keep in mind that your colleagues may respond differently to a space or an object than you do because they register different aspects of its sensory profile.
Geert Hofstede, in Cultures and Organizations, discusses five dimensions of national culture. One of them is whether a culture is more individualistic or collectivistic. People from more individualistic cultures expect to be able to spend more time alone than people from collectivistic cultures, which has implications, for example, for how people may respond to the design of a public space, such as a workplace. People from more individualistic cultures are also more likely to modify a space or object to meet their individual needs — if the design of those places or objects resists modification, they will "ugly up" fast. Countries that are relatively more individualistic include the United States. Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries. Some of the more collectivistic cultures are China, Costa Rica, and Indonesia.
Hofstede also points out that cultures vary in their acceptances of differences in power. Countries that are more accepting include Malaysia, Russia, and Mexico, while those that aren't include the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. This has clear implications for workplace design. People from countries more accepting of differences in power can be expected to clearly differentiate the workspaces of those of higher status from those of lower status and include workplace amenities tied to relative status, as well.
The various structures of language can come into play, as well. You may have suspected this if you've ever distributed product prototypes or drawings of potential work or retail environments, for example, among colleagues in different parts of the world. If the noun used to connote whatever's being talked about is associated with a particular gender, for example through the use of different articles (think "le" and "la" in French), discussions of the physical form of the thing connoted by that noun are affected. The classic related research, reviewed along with similar material by Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, involved the word "bridge," which is masculine in some European countries and feminine in others. In countries where "bridge" is feminine, bridges are more apt to be associated with elegance, while in countries that speak languages where "bridge" is a masculine word, bridges are more likely to be associated with sturdiness — even when native speakers of other languages speak in English. The word "office" is masculine in some European languages and feminine in others, which may cause native speakers to think about those spaces in subtly different ways.
There's a lot more to consider when you're working with people who grew up in another country than making sure you astutely manage interpersonal distances.
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David Aaker is the vice chairman of Prophet and the author of Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant. He writes the davidaaker.com blog on branding.
Steve Jobs and The Bobby Knight School of Leadership10:45 AM Tuesday March 13, 2012
by David Aaker | CommentsI believe that Steve Jobs was among the best CEOs of this generation because he created entirely new categories six times in a decade, and built the largest company market cap ever. Yet two recent and excellent books (Inside Apple, by Adam Lashinsky and Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson) describe a management style that was disturbingly harsh.
To understand Jobs's success, I find it helpful to look at the success of Bobby Knight, the fabled basketball coach at Indiana. Knight was one of two coaches to win over 900 games, won the NCAA championship three times, and was the national coach of the year four times yet had a management style similar to Jobs (described in detail by John Feinstein's book A Season on the Brink). What are the common success characteristics shared by these two? Before answering that question, it is useful to elaborate the two management styles.
Jobs's treatment of employees and partners has been described as brutal and even cruel. He routinely denigrated the ideas and accomplishments of employees, expected a commitment to work but seldom appreciated loyalty, arbitrarily fired people, disregarded the feelings of others, excluded people from "secret" projects, routinely took credit for the accomplishments of others, and did not allow others to have a public face. It is the very opposite of the supportive and nurturing Theory Y management pioneered by MIT's Douglas McGregor over a half century ago.
Knight's treatment of players has been termed abusive. He shouted, pushed, denigrated, humiliated, threatened, and harped on faults. Other coaches were loud and negative but Knight took it to a whole new level. He was so cruel that a key job of assistant coaches was to council distraught players to ignore what he said. Among his many examples of loutish behavior was throwing a chair across the basketball floor during a game. After many warnings, he was ultimately fired from Indiana 28 years after being accused of choking a player.
Knight and Jobs shared four common success traits that seem more obvious when looking at the two together.
This analysis reminds us that there are many routes to CEO success; there is no one style that is the best. In particular, it highlights the truism that it is not necessary to be well-liked or even supportive and encouraging. The Bobby Knight style worked for Knight and for Jobs. Could Jobs or Knight have been as successful or even more so by being a bit more sensitive and less emotional and negative? Or would an effort to temper their style taken the edge off and undercut their performance? We don't know the answer. It is not clear that style adjusting, which is the goal of many training programs and performance reviews, will result in improved executive performance.
- They were incredibly knowledgeable and insightful. Jobs would make decisive decisions on large and small issues and again and again would be proved right by the market or technology. With that ability to make the right decision came respect and a tolerance for his negativity. Knight not only had an amazing knowledge of the game, but he also had insight into competitors and an ability to tailor the efforts of players and a team to get them in a position to win. The knowledge for both in part came from discipline and hard work. Each was obsessive about their jobs and put in astonishingly long hours. But the insight also came from a talent that simply could not be taught.
- Both were perfectionists and micromanagers. They did not stop at strategy but got into tactics at a very micro level. Jobs was famous for getting involved in details for all aspects of a product including design, packaging, and advertising. He wanted perfection and expected everyone else to have the same aspiration. Knight was the same way as he would teach fundamentals, blocking out, passing, and defending and expected each player to know the right way and to execute. There was no room for anything less than ongoing perfection in Knight's world.
- Both were winners. They hated to lose and could virtually gain victory just by the force of their wills. Winning was crucial to their success over time. People like to be associated with winners and to be on a winning team. The people under both Jobs and Knight in general felt that that these two leaders pushed them to achieve above their natural limits and that result was exhilarating and worth the pain.
- They had a higher purpose than just winning. Jobs wanted to generate insanely great products and use them as a vehicle to change the world. Knight wanted to go beyond winning to produce players and teams that reached or exceeded their potential. Many of his players, few of whom were NBA-level gifted, said that the coach got them to perform beyond their personal limitations. His purpose extended to the classroom where also demanded discipline. Nearly all of his players graduated, a rare achievement when it comes to elite college sports teams. Winning a championship was not enough for Knight.
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time8:53 AM Wednesday March 14, 2012 | Comments
Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?
It's not just the number of hours we're working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.
What we've lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It's like an itch we can't resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.
Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you're taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you're driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn't?
The biggest cost — assuming you don't crash — is to your productivity. In part, that's a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you're partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it's because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you're increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.
But most insidiously, it's because if you're always doing something, you're relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.
I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.
If you're a manager, here are three policies worth promoting:
1. Maintain meeting discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, rather than an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what's been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.
2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it's urgent, you can call them — but that won't happen very often.
3. Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a midafternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap.
It's also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. Consider these three behaviors for yourself:
1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you'll be. When you're done, take at least a few minutes to renew.
2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don't, you'll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that's relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.
3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you'll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.
A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you're engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you're renewing, truly renew. Make waves. Stop living your life in the gray zone.