Leadership and Learning

Posts Tagged ‘decision making’

Spring has sprung early this year. From the rescheduling of the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, to the record setting pollen counts in Atlanta, no one can argue that Mother Nature decided to exit her Winter hibernation a bit sooner than usual this time around.

And with Spring comes a few rituals that we’ve come to embrace over the years: the Easter Egg hunt on the White House grounds, the Spring practices of college and pro football teams, longer days and shorter nights, and all the other outdoor activities that we associate with warmer temperatures.

My question for you, however, relates to the indoor activities of your workplace. We can certainly engage in physical Spring cleaning activities: throwing away outdated files, rearranging some of our furniture, and scouring our office surfaces with pine-scented cleaners. But what about the internal opportunity we have to start something new and fresh? What can we commit to doing differently to become even more effective in our work? How do we break from those habits, behaviors, and activities that are not serving us well?

Here are five simple steps you can use to begin the Spring Cleaning of your psyche.

1. Take an honest look at what you’re doing. This one is simple enough. For one week, track all of your activities. If you’re the person who says, “There aren’t enough hours in a day,” or you frequently tout your multi-tasking skills, ask yourself why. Why do some people get a lot more done, while not seeming to work as hard as you? The key here, as with all of these steps, is to be honest.
2. Take an honest look at what you’re not doing. Every time you choose to do something, you’re intentionally choosing not to do something else. This one can be difficult for people to understand. If you’re a leader with an “open door” policy, you’re also choosing not to give yourself some needed down time. If you’re constantly responding to email and other distractions, you’re also choosing not to give your brain time and space to focus on the other, perhaps more important, tasks at hand. Only you know what the true cost is of what you choose to do.
3. Engage in scenario planning with yourself. After you’ve taken some time to examine where you’re spending your time and energy, play a few what ifs. What if you closed your door from 8-9, and then 4-5 every day? You’ve taken time to focus, plan your day, or plan your tomorrow. What if you responded to emails less frequently? Again, only you know if a strategy like this will work for you and in your environment.
4. Choose one thing to do differently. The great thing about scenario planning is during the planning phase, all of the results are hypothetical. You don’t know how things are going to play out. Only once you begin doing something different (or differently) can you see the actual results on your workload.
5. Practice. You may have heard that it takes 21 days of doing something differently to become habit. While that’s a convenient rule of thumb, the actual time it takes for a new behavior to become internalized may take more or less time, depending on how long you’ve been doing it in the first place.

Spring is a great time to take stock, recalibrate, and try something new. If we’re not afraid to examine what we’re doing, we may be surprised at what we can do.

Many of you probably recognize the German word for “attention.” Did I just capture yours? How long did I keep it? What’s important to you about “attention?” Why do I keep asking you rhetorical questions? How many more questions will I ask? Hmmm…

I recently attended a webinar. The topic of the webinar had intrigued me, and I had never heard one from the organization presenting it before. So I dutifully registered and looked forward to seeing (and hearing) a new perspective on the topic at hand.

About five minutes into the webinar, the presenter posed a “yes/no” question to the audience; however, the answer(s) offered were in a multiple choice format. I sat and scratched my head, thinking that I must have missed something. I opted not to answer the question, thinking that the other 175 or so people on the webinar who had answered quickly had clearly heard (or saw) something that I had not.

Since they had (what I perceived) to be more or different information than me, I would defer to their thinking. I mean, after all, I was sitting in a virtual room with 175 of my newest colleagues, so I decided to go with the majority.

I then decided to pay a little more attention than I had been. As I listened and watched the webinar unfold, it became apparent (at least to me), that the information was a bit spotty. I perceived the presenter was navigating between key points in a way that was totally logical to her, but clearly was not logical to me. I wondered about the others on the webinar. Was I the only one witnessing this? Did it matter? Was I still missing something?

I had a choice to make. Do I continue on the webinar? Or do I bail?

At that precise moment, I recognized that I was doing something that I frequently coach my clients (who are leaders) not to do.

I was judging the webinar.

Because of my inability to connect the dots, I had begun to judge the entire experience. Surely I couldn’t be part of the problem. I had, in a nanosecond, begun to formulate beliefs about the presenter, the company she worked for, and the organization she was representing. My beliefs may or may not be accurate, but that wasn’t the point. The point, for me, was how I had begun to pay attention. And that was troubling.

I had begun to look and listen for reasons not to pay attention. I looked and listened only for the things to reinforce my ever-increasing intense belief that the presenter wasn’t prepared (she was), or that her information wasn’t relevant (it was).

I chuckled. Out loud. At myself.

No matter how much I learn, read, investigate, analyze, or “know,” the more I realize that the type of attention we pay to others is critical in informing our world view. When we observe the world from a place of curiosity, not judgment, the world becomes a different place.

I intentionally changed my frame of mind. I made my brain ask questions like, “I wonder what she’s going to cover next” rather than “I’m sure the next point isn’t going to follow.” I curiously anticipated what was coming next, rather than sitting and waiting to judge the next statement. The rest of the webinar was very informative, and the information was presented in a way that was not how I would do it, but was equally (if not more) effective.

As leaders, we get to make a choice. Moment by moment. What captures our attention may not be what keeps our attention. But in a world of competing demands for our attention, shouldn’t we be curious rather than judgmental? I’m curious to hear what you think…

Anaïs Nin: ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.’

Many people like to make New Year’s resolutions. That’s fine, and sometimes they actually keep them.

There are two things that are good to know about these things. First is that courtesy of neuroscience, we now understand much more about why it is better to gradually, progressively and steadily move toward change than to engage in a big bang on day one. *(It has to do with brain rewiring.) Second, you can make a resolution on any day of the year, particularly when you have learned something new. Don’t have to wait until the 31st.

So why only 11? Why not 12, or 10, or at least some round number? That’s because I invite you to submit your personal favorite — the one that is most powerful for you. And remember, the door does not swing shut at the end of the year; you can submit a resolution for change anytime you want!

Here are 11 good ones for supervisors, managers and leaders, from my seat.

1. I will take an extra minute to listen to people.
2. I will ask people for input on things that affect them.
3. I will become better at noticing what emotions I am experiencing – especially the negative ones – and instead of automatically, instinctively operating out of them, ask myself, “How do I want to show up? What would be best long-term?”
4. I will not read or type emails while employees are trying to talk with me.
5. I will ask employees the most motivating question: “What do you think?”
6. I will let my manager know what people are thinking and feeling, particularly during change, rather than sugar-coating or withholding.
7. I will make time to think strategically about what is happening at work, and carefully examine the need for reactive, tactical responses that seem to consume so much of every day.
8. I will work to understand things as employees understand them.
9. I will admit mistakes and share what I learned from those.
10. I will give feedback for only one reason – to help the employee do better next time.
11. I will examine my intentions in conversations, decisions and work.

The subjective perception of time is fascinating. After all, it objectively ticks away one reliable second at a time. There is no deviation. The atomic clock rules.

Yet, there are times when time seems to slow down. We sit at a long traffic light, ensure a boring speech, clean out a basement – we might feel like, “How long has this been going on?” and be surprised it was just a few minutes.

On the other hand, it is good to know there are at least two things that happen really fast — shockingly fast — so you can be prepared. The first is brief and personal; the second relates to you and your career.

Kids leaving home happens fast. I remember bringing my daughter Emma home from the hospital after birth, and in a blink, she is headed off to college. As my colleague Scott Boozer would say, “Yay!” We are thrilled for her, and (we think) we’re all ready. We’ll see about that with some experiential learning in the drive back from drop-off, and yes, we know it is uncool for parents to linger or get all emotional.

Here’s the other thing that happens really fast: your career.

We go to work day by day, navigating the terrain as best we can, getting a promotion here or there, an assignment to here or there. We do what we do, and the days roll into weeks, the weeks into months and then “Wow! I’ve been here 5 years!” What happened?”

That turns into a decade faster than the first 5 years took, and then amazing things start to happen. People start talking about retirement more, the little ones go to college (see above) and start their careers, you notice the retirement account and wonder about how your lifestyle will be. There are more and more retirement parties, the people in your office get younger and younger (and gosh, certainly dress and behave differently than you do!).

It all flies by. In a blink, and maybe before you know what happened, your career is over.

What was your plan? What was your vision for your working life? To get by? To make the mortgage?

Only you can figure out the vision for you. This means the mental picture of the future you want. HR will not tell you, neither will your boss. It’s yours.

It’s good to know what it is that you want, because the clock is ticking. It feels like it is speeding up.

Readers of this blog know I like to play the electric guitar (I turn it up to 11), and I like Arlington Fretworks. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/home

Proprietor and craftsman Daniel Carbone repairs and builds guitars there. I have written previously about his standards of excellence being off the charts. (One client wrote that he would trust him to work on his kids’ teeth.) http://blogs.managementconcepts.com/lm/leadership/2010/09/a-thousandth-of-an-inch-or-%e2%80%9cgood-enough-for-government-work%e2%80%9d/

Daniel’s website notes that an interesting question has arisen in the music and physics world of whether a wood-based instrument improves the more you play it. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/articles

Sounds pretty virtuous if it’s true. According to a New York Times story, Dr. David G. Hunt of the School of Engineering Systems and Design at South Bank University in London believes it is. He says vibrations aimed at the instrument subtly alter the physics of the wood in a way that empirically increases sustain (the Holy Grail of guitar players), and more subjectively improves the sound.

So what leadership lesson can we apply from world of musical instruments and physics?

Every time you do something positive, constructive, helpful, engaging, uplifting, inspiring, motivating or other-centered (music), I believe you change yourself (wood).

By actually doing whatever you have learned and think might work better than whatever you were doing, you behaviorally rewrite some of your operating system source code; you rearrange the molecules in the wood.

There is actually a neuroscientific explanation for this, as you change behavior, you lay down new neural pathways in your malleable brain; it is about plasticity. It is how habits – good or bad – get formed. One phrase is, “what fires, wires.” Synaptic connections become the new reality.

You can also pick up good vibes by associating with people who operate at a high level. By observing, maybe by  osmosis, you are influenced in a positive way — but you still have to act on what you are noticing.

Keep in mind that overnight, radical development usually doesn’t last. It takes time.

I once worked with a woman in Atlanta in a leadership position in a federal agency. She said in workshop that one thing she does now is really listen to employees. She also said she could not do this several years ago. (Actually, she could have at any time; she just chose to start trying it at some point.) Her comment was that it still requires some effort, but it is much easier now than it used to be.

Her molecules got rearranged. Without belaboring the point about the very significant benefits of true listening, we can say she is somehow different as a result of all the times she was ready to jump in with The Expert Opinion, but chose to hold back and listen longer. I would lay a heavy bet her employees appreciated this.

The opposite way to think about this is the old phrase, “To know and not do is to not know.”

A final point: The author of the study mentioned above said in an interview that “People don’t understand entirely the structure of wood, even after using it and studying it for centuries.”

So there’s something a mystery in this (but not enough to prevent guitar players from keeping their axes by their speakers). Think about it: We have some real gaps in our knowledge of wood.

How about our knowledge of people and relationships?

I recently served on a grand jury, which is definitely some experiential learning. It allows one to discover many facets of the community that may not be encountered so regularly in the course of everyday life.

The way a grand jury works is that you hear many, many case summaries, each of which takes anywhere from less than a minute to just a few minutes. The grand jury only decides if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a trial, not guilt or innocence.

With dozens of cases to hear, the question came up: Should we work through lunch and get out early, or take a break and stay later?

In my experience, almost everybody today advocates for “let’s go faster and get done earlier” under the relentless pressure of the clock. “Hurry up, compress cycle time, be just in time” and “now” seem to be the words of the age.
There was an immediate — I would say almost unconscious — push toward “Let’s get it over with.” So I had to say something.

Having recently read the phenomenal book “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working,” and knowing what would happen at least to my attention span, energy, blood sugar and focus on an empty stomach, I had to push back.

And so I said, “We could work through lunch, but I think we would feel it later this afternoon. And I don’t think we were brought here to be fast. We were brought here to decide whether many people would be indicted by a grand jury. I think we owe it to them to give our best thinking and decision making.”

The room was quiet for a second. I was ready for pushback, but somewhat surprisingly, they all agreed.

I had a steak and cheese sub. (I know. This was not the best choice, but it was a small sub.) We reconvened after an hour and I would like to think we gave our best effort. We asked lots of questions, had high-quality discussion and worked productively as a group.

It wasn’t our fastest effort. Just our best.

There’s a difference.

One problem with writing blogs is that you have to admit when you do things you wish you hadn’t.

After all, how real is the post, if not?

In this vein, I need to make an embarrassing confession: It started at home, then quickly spread to the office, and now I hardly notice it anymore. It was so innocent at first.

Yes, I am now multi-tasking while in meetings.

To those of you who were expecting something more shocking or salacious, or those of you who have been doing that a long time, hold on – we’re going to circle back to the damage done.

But first, the slippery slope. It started while I was on a conference call while at home. The topic had nothing to do with my part of a project, and so I just sneaked a quick peek at email, where potentially something far more relevant may have popped up.

But I instantly realized it, right then; I was no longer really hearing or processing what was said.

Then it happened again: marginal topic, quick diversion of attention to something else. I had stepped into the waters.

Then, while in the office, I noticed in one meeting that half the participants were doing something on their smart phones. I was waiting to learn about something “important” through email, and so I joined them. I felt guilty, and passively disrespectful of the speaker.

But I am putting a stake in the ground now, am going to “Just say no,” and here’s why.

What I really noticed while multi-tasking was that although I may technically have heard what was being said, I was — and this is crucial – not able to process it in the same way.

I think the implications of this are pretty profound.

Not fully processing content means that although you get the quick “hit,” you do not:

• Think about what it means
• Connect it to other things
• Explore how it could be used to improve something
• Creatively play with it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that these four qualities are what everyone keeps saying is missing in a high-speed, reactive, hit-and-run culture. It means thoughts run out of steam, and everyone just goes back to work.

Maybe it’s just me, but I keep seeing examples of failure to connect dots, particularly in customer-service interactions, political debate, problem-solving sessions and any time the topic is the future.

You can also sense the superficiality, impatience and craving of one fast, right and simple answer to life’s problems and challenges. People are encouraged to “bottom-line it, boil it down,” or “get to the point.” Not that this kind of communication is sometimes useful (such as an emergency), but it has become the default mode almost everywhere.

The other two things to know about multi-tasking are that A) There is no such thing; people rapidly bounce from one thing to another, but they do not do two things simultaneously of any cognitive complexity. B) Performance degrades the more multi-tasking occurs.

Please join me in putting away the smart phone. Listen. Pause. Process. Think.

If you find vast amounts of your time are being wasted, focus on the meeting design and agenda. That’s probably where the real problem is. Otherwise, see what single-tasking can do for you.

The November, 2010 issue of Vanity Fair offers a fascinating and in-depth, if depressing, insight into the world of Merrill Lynch’s leadership before and during the financial crisis, when Stanley O’Neal was at the helm.

The piece, “The Man Who Blew Merrill Lynch’s Billions,” by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera truly reads like an archetypal fairy tale, or myth. Perhaps Greek drama is a better characterization. It’s all here in the story — all the elements of leadership that run an organization into the ground. (See the summary at the end of this blog.)

O’Neal joined Merrill in 1986 as a junk bond trader. He quickly worked his way up, impressing his superiors in each position as a top performer – and one who could be ruthless in chasing the performance imperative. The authors write that he was
“proud, prickly, intolerant of dissent and quick to take offense at perceived slights.”
Within 16 years, he was CEO.

Once he got the top job, he immediately pushed aside those he had competed with to get there. But he went further. The article authors write, “O’Neal had been insular before; he was the kind of man who liked to play golf by himself. Now he became isolated. He had been wary; now he became suspicious of everyone around him. Patrick and Zakaria (two officials) had been extremely competent executives; he replaced them with more pliable lieutenants.”

Other executive mirrored this; they were vindictive, surrounding themselves with a small group of those who would only say “yes” — a process that ultimately had catastrophic results. He once said, “You don’t understand. Dysfunction is good on Wall Street.”

During this time, O’Neal developed a fixation with Goldman Sachs, the money printing press that quarter after quarter was churning out enormous profits. O’Neal’s jealousy was such that one executive commented that you did not want to be in O’Neal’s office the day Goldman released its financial results.

Beyond the differences in financial performance, there were others. The authors write, “O’Neal insisted that the company’s executives speak only to him about their businesses and not with one another. The Goldman brass insisted on knowing bad news; Merrill executives trembled at the thought of giving O’Neal bad news. O’Neal rarely asked for input when making a decision. And under no circumstances did he want to be challenged once he had made up his mind.”

Some basic economics: One hugely important strategic decision O’Neal made was to not only sell, but also own, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs are one example of those derivatives that precipitated the U.S. financial crisis. They are essentially your mortgage, mine, others’ car loans and other forms of debt all bundled together and resold to investors who like the stream of income as debt is repaid.

The only problem is that when individuals cannot make the debt payments, the system comes unhinged. Since the credit rating agencies gave top marks to any CDOs with a pulse – even when they were shaky – they were freely bought and sold with Triple A confidence, until the music stopped. In reality, many of the debts in these CDOs were perilous, and O’Neal kept pushing for Merrill to embrace higher coupons – Wall Street parlance for increasingly risky debt instruments. Merrill had grown up as a nice, stable stockbroker, selling shares to middle America, but as it embraced CDOs to increase profits, it was in a new game, with all new risks.

This rush to CDOs was propelled by O’Neal’s envy of Goldman profits, and woe to the man or woman who warned of the risks as Merrill’s profits, too, rose. In fact, O’Neal’s force of temper meant that no one would tell the truth, even as the first explosions in the debt market began happening. Executives downplayed the risk Merrill faced (remember, it now owned, not just sold, the debt), saying the earliest market tremors would blow over, and the little “rough patch” would end. One internal estimate from the O’Neal clones of Merrill’s exposure at $83 million came to be known within the firm as “The Fantastic Lie.”

But as you know, the facts have an inconvenient way of not going away. As it became increasingly clear that the financial system was encountering systemic disruption, firms’ positions were flushed out. The $83 million lie ballooned to $6 billion. Just like that.

At this point, it is an entirely fair question to ask why, when you keep track of a few dollars error in your checking account, a company can mistake nearly $6 billion.

You actually already know the answer. The authors write. “Always a loner, he had become isolated from his own firm. He had no idea that key risk managers had been pushed aside or that people he had put in important positions were out of their depth. Amazing as it sounds, the CEO of Merrill Lynch really didn’t have a clue.” They also write that as Goldman executives were cancelling vacations, O’Neal played golf by himself.

The rest is history. The reality became undeniable, and O’Neal – almost overnight – went from the arrogant, resentful, irritated defender of Merrill to a shell-shocked shadow of his former self. There was no way out. Except out, with $161 million in retirement benefits as Bank of America bought Merrill.

When he was later hauled up before Congress, mostly to defend his retirement package, the authors write that he spent his time “dwelling on the mistakes of the men he had surrounded himself with, mostly blaming others for his downfall.”

So what’s the message? Here is the O’Neal Leadership Playbook, for your consideration:

 Don’t let people communicate freely with each other

 Keep an enemies list, and get rid of them

 Make sure people know you can’t stand to hear contrary information

 Operate out of competitive jealousy

 Tear up the strategy

 Be emotionally volatile

 Isolate yourself

 Blame everyone else

It is always fascinating to read the biographies of failed leaders. These are the folks who went to jail, lost many billions, resigned in accounting scandals or lost the confidence of employees. Bad Leadership by Barbara Kellerman and Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington are packed with examples of such leaders.

We are talking Chainsaw Al, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernie Ebbers, John Rigas, Ken Lay et al.

In the stories of these leaders, a familiar pattern emerges with uncanny consistency. It goes something like this: Person of humble means pulls himself up, gets a job, gets promoted, starts putting results on the board, makes a big leap or two to the next levels, more results and then the top job — after which, everything eventually unravels.

Along the way is where it gets interesting. When former colleagues are interviewed, they invariably talk about how the person had some kind of singular vision or steely – almost scary — sense of direction, and executed to that with incredible will and strength. Hence, the results on the board. Along the way, slashing and burning were commonplace, dissent was not tolerated, and hey, as long as the results were coming in, who cared? Certainly not Wall Street with its quarterly earnings per share attention deficit disorder.

All this may have worked in the climb up, but once people like this arrived at the top, things started to change.

The resistance to hearing other ideas, the suppression of alternative points of view, and very often the command-and-control mentality ultimately wore down any goodwill, sense of genuine cooperation and social capital. In the end, all they had was rule by control, power and fear. Threats to subordinates and public humiliation were common.

What is really interesting about these narratives is how often the failed leaders bragged about their leadership style. They not only admitted, but celebrated and reveled in their take-no-prisoners methods. “My way or the highway” or “You’re either with me or against me” challenges were common. Self-congratulatory autobiographies as the makers of tough decisions or conveying that they did what had to be done are not hard to find.

There may be a temporary place for such leadership in crisis situations, but for most modern organizations, it just doesn’t work – at least in the long run.

Andrew Ashore, an analyst who met Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap, was reported to have said, “”I didn’t necessarily like him or trust him, but I thought my clients could make money on him. I knew they just had to get out at the right time.” In other words, this pattern is so well-worn that stock analysts can try to market-time CEO trajectories.

At some point, the social capital is exhausted, relationships are non-existent and goodwill has vanished. When the hammer falls, there is no one to support the leader. And the rest, as they say, is history.

And this may all be just a history excursion except for one thing. Recently I have been talking with employees in the federal government about their perceptions of their leaders. Familiar patterns emerge: unwillingness to listen, no tolerance of disagreement, rule by force and threats to those who do not toe the line.

Sound familiar?

Michelle Rhee, the D.C. Schools Chancellor, has been one of the most controversial, polarizing figures in educational reform in years. She was pictured on the cover of Time magazine with a broom in hand, symbolizing the clean sweep she would make of the much-criticized D.C. school system. She has consistently forged a take-no-prisoners style in her decision making and communication, shrugging off growing criticism of her leadership style.

This blog post is not about the politics or merits of what she has done, or not done. Instead, it is about a fascinating quotation contained in today’s Washington Post, in a column by Courtland Milloy.

Milloy referenced a line Rhee delivered to an interviewer when she was asked about how her approach was being perceived in different parts of the city.

“That’s not how my brain works,” she said. “I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about the what-ifs. I’m a much better thinker when it’s, ‘Here’s the situation, now what?’ ”

One thing you cannot fault Rhee for is her unflinching honesty. Saying “That’s not how my brain works,” is much more straightforward than many other officials would have said.

Still, it leaves a nagging question: Are leaders just a product of how their brains work, or can they adapt, flex, change or grow in response to events and reactions? (The smart money, by the way, is on Rhee being out of a job with D.C.’s new mayor.) If you can excuse any perceived weaknesses with “That’s not how my brain works,” then you’re off the hook for any potential adaptation. People sometimes complain about assessment instruments, such as MBTI, or Disc, that they “put me in a box.” Saying your brain only works one way is a real, no-kidding box.

Beyond this, almost everyone in organizational life can relate to the law of unintended consequences, or how culture creates pushback on unpopular initiatives. Saying one does not explore what-ifs or perceptions of actions is cognitively limited and culturally naïve, respectively.

The what-ifs are often the stuff of organizational change. Not exploring those is a set-up for failure. The “if’s” have a real track record of becoming “is’s,” even by surprise.

Finally, there may be an argument for crisis leadership here. The D.C. schools were at the bottom of the barrel, and one could legitimately make the case that bold actions were required. But Rhee may be discovering the hard way that bold action works better when thought through for long-term and sometimes surprising consequences, and when supported by others.