Leadership and Learning

Posts Tagged ‘Thinking for Results’

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.’

There is a great old story about a great old drummer named Bernard Purdie, who, if you’ve not heard of him, played on records by James Brown, Frank Sinatra, BB King, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis and Steely Dan.

Bernard has a beautiful sense of time. When you hear him playing a simple beat, you want to move. (For an example of that, click on the following link.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FX_84iWPLU

The story goes that when Bernard was hired for a session, he would come in, set up his drums, and then before beginning to play, would also put up two signs, one on each side of his drum set.

One sign read: “You done it.”

The other sign read: “You done hired the hit-maker, Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie.”

That’s pretty bold.

If you watch the video clip above, you’ll understand why he was so bold. If you watch this video clip below, you’ll hear Walter Fagen and Water Becker (they are Steely Dan) talking about Bernard’s signs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldtieSEyQM

“Boldness” is a word used in coaching that turns out to have some real significance. Boldness is about confidence, belief, passion and conviction.

It may be easier to understand by its opposite: lack of confidence, lack of belief, lack of passion and lack of conviction.

Boldness comes from processed experience. That means that not only have you lived something successful, but you have thought about it, and consciously concluded you have reason to be bold about something. (Sometimes people are very good at something, but taking a page from the “aw, shucks. It’s just little old me” playbook, they downplay or minimize their contribution. Not recommended.)

A key with boldness is to find where it naturally occurs in your work. Where do you find your voice? What gives you energy? Where does fear dissipate?

Where can you put up your own signs?

What’s not to like about a check-off?

You know, that feeling you get when something is finished and with a satisfied stroke of the pen, you draw a checkmark through that empty box that you drew just so you could put the checkmark through it.

The check-off is particularly satisfying for those whose last letter in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is “J” (Judger). This preference likes closure, completion, resolution and finality. What organization doesn’t like that?  I once worked with a group of coaches who insisted on whiteboarding the tasks for our meetings, each one prompting a “woo-hoo!” when checked. In contrast, “P’s” (Perceivers) like keeping options open, exploring possibilities and continuing to think about what could be. I believe P’s actually experience a kind of grief when something comes to an end. After all, all those exciting other possibilities (which they can sometimes surface late in the process, much to the annoyance of the J’s) are now history – at least for whatever just went out the door.

But Steve Jobs once famously said, “Real programmers ship.” By that, he meant they didn’t just indulge their fantasies around cool code. They complete the application and it goes out the door to be sold. Check.

Jobs and Apple are not a bad place to start a check-in on the institution of check-offs – and yes, they are an institution now. They are such a part of the workplace lingua franca that they occupy a special place right alongside the organizational drivers and DNA strands like “goals, priorities,” and “planning.” They are a huge part of work life.

Think about it. There was a big series of check-offs at the World Wide Developers Conference, where Apple released its new OS and cloud-based connectivity.  But today, millions of other people will check many other things off, big and small.

But the real question for them, and you, is: Is what is being checked off any good?

Immediately, a provocative question like this can create significant discomfort, defensiveness and even confusion among those wedded to check-offs. Check-offs are binary, either/or. Once this question of quality is raised, everything moves into a new realm that is harder to measure, more controversial, certainly more subjective, laden with differing values, politics, assumptions and worldviews.

Wouldn’t the busy, overstressed, maxed-out management team really just rather hear if it got done (binary), and maybe secretly, quietly hope it was good?

Microsoft and Dell and other companies have their big check-offs, but do you hear much about them? Are they good? I hear much less excitement and enthusiasm.

Could it be that Apple cares both about shipping code, and shipping the right code, the good code?

That’s an important question for any organization trying to stay viable, innovative, leading-edge and valued. A simple yes/no can potentially disguises the real issue.

Broaden and deepen the question. What is it that you’re really checking off? How do you know it’s good?

Then, when you’ve answered it satisfactorily, go ahead and draw that checkmark.

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.

It is time to put something in writing that is at the very heart of an unbelievable amount of organizational angst, confusion and turmoil. I hear it in practically every group I work with, and it is extracting a huge toll on employees. Without question, it is worsening.

To kick this off, let’s imagine the prototypical scene when you see an incoming on the work radar, are already juggling multiple priorities, and you ask your boss, “What’s the priority?”

When I ask groups what they hear when they ask their bosses this, the room always answers in unison: “It’s all a priority.”

As my teen daughter would say, “Let’s review.”

First, the root of the word “priority” is “prior.” It means something comes before something else. I don’t know mathematically how everything can come before everything, but then again, I was never very good in math. Maybe it’s just me.

But second, try explaining this concept to anyone managing triage in an emergency room, or to an air traffic controller. It doesn’t make sense.

Third, I can share that when I have worked with effective leaders, there were times when I noticed things not working well in their organizations. Maybe customer service was weak, or IT fragile. When I would bring these to the attention of these leaders, they would quickly acknowledge the situation (rather than denying or blaming). What they also said was where they were currently focusing effort and energy. They said they could not get to these problem areas until other initiatives were finished. Maybe next quarter, or next year. But right now, the focus was being held.

This is discipline, clarity, and more than anything, strategy. This leads us to the next major point.

Michael Porter’s conception of strategy is that it represents the essential choices – the big bets — the organization places in order to succeed. What will happen that operationalizes the best hope the organization has of succeeding? The crucial, vital, unambiguous part of his definition is that this careful choosing is done against the constraint of limited resources. Since the organization can’t do everything, hard choices must be made.

Effective strategists don’t try to be all things to all people all the time. They don’t diffuse and confuse the strategy with efforts that are not aligned. They truly decide what’s a priority and – here’s a new word for you – a “posteriority.” A posteriority is what comes after.

Ever notice how often you hear the word priority, but never posteriority?

But posteriorities are the key to strategy. They represent what the organization is going to say “no” to, at least in the current time period, so that the organization can really embrace what matters.

The next point is about what is called the productivity frontier. The productivity frontier is the maximum output available given the (limited) resource inputs. It is a curve that slopes up and to the right. More resources equal more outputs, but in a non-linear way.

You might be able to violate the productivity frontier in the short run, but it will come back to bite you in the medium and long term, as we shall see. (Another nonsensical expression is working “110%.” If on the perfect day you can only do that amount of work, then that is capacity. That’s all you can do, and that’s 100%.)

The point about all these people trying to do 110% is that they are burning out, and from a sustainability perspective, it is not pretty. Employees virtually everywhere are fried, tired, toast, spent and running on empty. This is not just classroom and dinner party anecdotal evidence. Look at what has happened to the tightened labor force in corporate America, hours worked and productivity levels. In much of the federal government, workloads spiked after the delayering of management in the 1990s, and after 9/11. The squeeze is on.

Further, there are real questions about quality emerging – in products and services, customer service, and everywhere else. Many employees are desperately trying just to respond to everything on their plate, and anything that complicates the transaction becomes a big problem. Minimalist compliance, token efforts and hit-and-runs become commonplace.

If organizations can’t compete without overworking employees, they have a strategy problem.

One problem that prevents an awareness of this is the unidirectional nature of feedback. While managers are trained to give feedback downward, rarely does feedback float up. Organizational, engagement and climate surveys are slowly bringing the problems described above to the fore, but the research is incontrovertible that the higher up in an organization one goes, the less feedback he or she receives, and the less accurate it is.

I hear employees very often talk about the goals that have been set for them, oblivious to the impact those goals will have on them. For example, after another round of layoffs, the existing, remaining staff is simply expected to shoulder the additional workload. It culminates in a story I heard recently. A woman was lamenting a project she had just been handed that required her team – right after her team was reassigned to another area. A crisis had happened elsewhere, but her manager did not want to hear that the project she had been handed couldn’t be done without the vanishing project team. (“Make it happen, Just do it, or “Make the pain go away,” are other crude expressions of non-strategic demands.

Effective leaders don’t make the mistake of trying to do everything. They forge strategy. Telling employees they should do everything makes no sense.

Go into your neighborhood bookstore and you will find countless titles on leadership.
(350,000+ on Amazon.com.) Competency models can contain dozens of things a leader is
expected to do, and we all relate to ideas of what effective leadership is really all about
from our own experience – good and bad.

It can be confusing, and overwhelming.

Given this, an interesting question is: What does the empirical, data-driven work show us
about truly effective leadership? What do we know from real research?

Fortunately, there is exhaustive research in the books cited below that takes us beyond
intuitive, personal ideas about leadership to which we can look to solidly ground thinking
and action. The following mine data in particularly powerful ways:

• The Extraordinary Leader, by Joseph Folkman and John Zenger 
• Good to Great, by Jim Collins
• The Leadership Challenge, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

Let’s summarize each, and then look at some connecting points:

The Extraordinary Leader

Joseph Folkman and John Zenger start out in The Extraordinary Leader with a simple
question: What differentiates the best- and worst-performing leaders, as judged by the
results of 360-degree assessments? They studied more than 200,000 such assessments on
20,000 leaders. They conclude with a metaphor of a tent, with the “long pole” in the
middle representing character. The other keys to leadership effectiveness are
interpersonal skills, focus on results, personal capability, and leading organizational
change.
Good to Great

Jim Collins takes a completely different approach in Good to Great. Rather than relying
on internal perceptions of leadership effectiveness, he takes the analysis outside. He and
his small army of researchers spent 15,000 hours carefully evaluating Fortune 500
companies that had posted significantly better-than-peer results over a sustained period of
time. They simply looked for who had been doing the best, the longest.

Collins took a deliberately agnostic view of everything, holding no theories or ideas
about what differentiated these companies. Instead, he backed up from the outstanding
results to find out what was going on inside the “black box” that accounted for the
results.

His first finding is that these companies had what he calls Level 5 leadership in all cases.
A Level 5 leader moves beyond individual effectiveness, beyond being a good team
player, and beyond being a competent manager or leader into the rarified air of building
enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional
will.

The enduring greatness Collins writes about relates to the organization rather than from
the leader. This view connects to the personal humility he identifies next: the notion that
the leader is not an ego-propelled, publicity-seeking figure. Collins’ leaders stand in stark
contrast to some leader personalities we see today. He even notes that Level 5 leadership
is at odds with the personal ambition that drives many people into positions of leadership.

Collins’ work makes it ultimately practical for any leader to ask himself or herself: Is this
about me, or the organization?
Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman reviewed huge databases of performance in coming to his model of
emotional intelligence, which consists of self-awareness, self-regulation, social
awareness and relationship management.

What is most striking about Goleman’s work is his contention, buttressed
again and again by empirical data, that emotional intelligence is a far better predictor of
success in performance, and particularly leadership, than technical competence. Further,
Goleman’s research consistently shows that emotional intelligence matters more and
more the higher up one goes in a leadership position.
The Leadership Challenge

Kouzes and Posner studied tens of thousands of leaders, using a proprietary
instrument called the Leadership Practices Inventory, as well as interviews and
observations. They identified five fundamental attributes of leadership: challenging the
process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, and
encouraging the heart.
Integration points:

Clearly, this research shows that leadership starts with deeply internal characteristics of
leaders, including character, humility and self-awareness.

From there, and in a more extraverted, behavioral sense, the keys appear to be balancing
unquestioned commitment to the work and organization’s goals with an interest and focus
on the people doing that work. It’s a both/and, rather than an either/or.

The goal focus calls in Collins’ professional will, Zenger and Folkman’s thinking about
results, and the emphasis by Kouzes and Posner on the shared vision that creates the
desire for those results. The need to change in order to meet those goals is underlined in
Kouzes and Posner’s work.

The focus on people is highlighted in Goleman’s work, including his research on self-
regulation, social awareness and relationship management. The interpersonal skills cited
by Zenger and Folkman, and the attribute of encouraging the heart are all evidence of the
people side of leadership.

The net seems to be a combination of caring about something to accomplish, and caring
about the people who are going to do that.

It’s a “both/and,” rather than an “either/or.”