it takes a strong leader…

It takes a strong leader to…

…realize that refusing to lose can prevent you from winning.

…hire people who aren’t anything like you and to appreciate them all the more for it.

…develop others past the leader’s skills and potential.

…give glory to the team and carry the responsibility of failure alone.

…be wrong.

…hold others accountable while still seeing and supporting their potential greatness.

…be silly, look foolish, or by joyful.

…recognize, admit, and correct a poor decision.

…be transparent.

…continuously strive to improve their leadership skills.

…shut up and let others talk.

…let others shine.

…not confuse authority with self-worth.

…seek collaboration.

…believe that their way may not be the best and seek to learn from others.

…be authentic.

…understand that people laugh louder and longer at the leader’s jokes.

…wonder where they are getting in their own way.

…support without smothering and empower without abandoning.

…not be defined by their wins or their losses.

…understand that business gets done by and through people.

 

What else does it take a strong leader to do?

diagnosis of organization and human resources (doh!)

Normally, if you want to find out what your company could do better you need to hire big dollar consultants who will come in and talk to the employees you’ve been ignoring conduct an extensive analysis and provide you with a lengthy report complete with graphs describing what you need to do different.

But that’s expensive and time consuming. So, in today’s post, I’m piloting the  Diagnosis of Organization and Human resources (DOH!). This diagnostic tool will analyze your organization and highlight five areas that are, ahem, “opportunities for improvement”. Given the beta nature of this tool, it’s not 100% accurate yet, but I think you’ll find it remarkably close. Give it a minute to run and this diagnostic will provide you with a customized summary specific to your organization.

(It’s working, give it time… give it time…)

If you put your ear up to the screen you can hear the computering electrons working their magic in the background. [it sounds like: whirr whirr whirr]

(Give it time… give it time…)

Done! Scroll down for your customized summary analysis.

Customized Summary Analysis Results of Your Organization:

Your organization fails at: can optimize performance by focusing on:

1. Communication. Seriously, does anyone in your company talk to anyone else? Between the silos, walls, moats, and fiefdoms how do you get anything accomplished? Communicate occasionally and you’ll be amazed at the improvements. No, your passive aggressive emails that cc the everyone in the company do not count as “communication”. Back away from the keyboard and pick up the phone. Better yet, go talk to people face to face.

2. Customer Service. Consider the possibility that not blatantly offending the customer isn’t the same as providing great service. Even being better at customer service than your competition isn’t really enough because that isn’t really a high bar to beat. Try this: make a list of the five companies you will go out of your way to do business with. It’s probably less than half a dozen. Why is the list so short? Because while many companies can do inoffensive, vanilla-bland customer service, very, very few can do great customer service. Remember: better than bad doesn’t equal good.

3. Innovation. Yes, your company wants to be known as innovative, but your company punishes risk taking, frowns on anything different, and dogmatically enforces the status quo. “Innovation” is left to the seasoned senior managers who know how things ought to be done.

4. Diversity. Your organization treats diversity as a compliance issue instead of a way to benefit from many, many perspectives and ideas. Oh, and the lack of diversity is killing your “innovation” efforts.

5. Leadership. Your managers try hard and mean well, but most of them have never been taught how to lead. While there are a few standouts, many have trouble holding people accountable, a few (and you know who they are) are on a power trip, and the rest are doing ok, but just ok. “Sink or swim” is not a development strategy and flavor of the month training doesn’t teach anyone anything but cynicism. Your managers deserve better.

Bonus: As a thank you for trying out this diagnostic tool, we’re including an extra area of opportunity:

6. Hiring. Companies live or die on the quality of their employees and your hiring process is haphazard, misunderstood by some, ignored by others, and ineffective even on the best of days.

 

Analysis Summary:

Face it, your organization is in rough shape. The only thing keeping the doors open is that your competition has the exact same their own growth opportunities. The good news is that most of your challenges are very fixable: Improve your hiring process, focus on developing your current and future leaders, hire people who look and think differently (and listen to them), make customer service a top priority, and communicate to keep everyone connected and prevent isolation.

Yes, I’m in a smart aleck mood this morning. Although I make this stuff sound obviously simple, I know it’s not easy. There’s a reason many/most companies face these challenges. There is also a great advantage that goes to the companies that get it figured out.

Your thoughts?

perspectives

The BBC recently posted an article about John Taylor, the bass player from the ‘80s group Duran Duran, and how his perspective has changed from 1985 to now. He had one comment in particular that really hit home:

“I made a very definite decision a couple of years ago [when he was 50 – ed] that I was now middle aged. And it was actually a really good decision to make, because I’d been feeling like a very tired young man for quite a few years, and making that acknowledgement, suddenly I felt like a very sprightly and hip middle aged guy.“ [emphasis added]

Here’s what I really appreciate about this: he’s the same guy. Nothing has changed, except how he views himself and his corresponding expectations of himself. He’s not doing wishful thinking and clinging to the past and he hasn’t turned himself into an old man before his time. He got rid of his delusions of youth and was able to look at his reality and define it in a way that really works for him.

The great and incomparable Zig Ziglar also spoke of a similar transformation. He grew up poor in a small town in Mississippi and talked about thinking about himself as a little guy from a little town when he started out as a salesman. Then, after encouraging words from a hero/mentor, he saw himself differently. He shifted his perspective and began thinking of himself as a salesman with the potential to be one of the greats. Same guy, same skill set, different perspective, different attitude, different approach, and different results.

Our perspectives and beliefs can inspire us to grow or turn us into our own worst enemies by shrinking, confining, and crushing our potential. There’s a lot in this world we can’t control, but one of the things we have full power over is how we look at ourselves.

What perspectives are you choosing?

assumptions made // reality unknown

Ugh. Saturday morning and the shiny screwhead caught my eye. The screw was buried deep in the shoulder of the tire. Fortunately, it was still holding air, but it would probably be a slow leak.

I pulled the wheel and took it in to the tire shop. They confirmed my fears – unrepairable; too close to the sidewall. They didn’t have the brand/size in stock so they’d have to order one and it would arrive Monday. Double ugh. Their price was reasonable, but it’s a performance tire and reasonable and cheap are two different things. Triple ugh.

Sunday morning and I’m out on a run. In a moment of oxygen depleted clarity I realize: I made some assumptions, but never verified them. The tire shop took me at my word that the tire needed to be replaced.  The tire was unrepairable, but only if it needed to be repaired. There is a screw in the tread, but I don’t know how far in it goes. The tire itself could be undamaged. The tire was holding air, which a punctured tire will sometimes do. So will an unpunctured tire.

I made some assumptions, but never verified reality.

How often does this show up at work?

We hear a credible sounding rumor and make decisions about it as though it were fact.

We ballpark some numbers until we can get better information but then forget to go back and adjust.

We treat our favorite solution to a problem as though it is the only solution, forgetting that there may be other (and better) ways of going about it.

We fear the worst, assume the worst, and react the worst… before anything has even happened.

We speculate something to someone, they pass it along to someone who a passes it along again until our original rumor is mentioned to us as fact. In our minds, our speculation was confirmed, when the reality was that someone just told us the rumor that we’d started.

Someone tells us how difficult or unreasonable a customer is so we go in with either a defeatist attitude or a chip on our shoulders.

An idea is shot down because, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” (Yes, tried it halfheartedly by someone with less skill under completely different circumstances.)

We don’t take on something we’re really excited about because we have ourselves convinced that we’ll fail.

We’ll rarely have perfect information, so assumptions can be useful. Make the assumptions, but check the reality.

the not-so-secret secret to achieving more

I was recently chatting with another fellow at the gym and he was telling me about his daughter’s experience with cross-country track. “My daughter normally finishes 3rd or 4th from last in her cross-country practices. Yesterday, she finished 4th from the front. I asked her how she got so much better. She said she decided to run faster.”

Deep wisdom from a 12 year old.

That’s really the secret, isn’t it? Decide what we want, decide we’re going to get it, and then give more effort.

We generally operate far below our true, focused capacity. We tell ourselves we’re going all out, but often we’re going too fast on the wrong things and too far below our potential on the things that truly matter. We go hard but we often hold back from our absolute best, replacing too much scattered activity for too few focused results.

We can decide to better use the knowledge and skills we already have. Decide to fulfil that potential. And, once we reach the edge, our capacities will grow and expand. We can gain more knowledge, more skill, and make even better use of our abilities.

We can be better, but we have to decide to.

At least, that’s what I see in my own life. Your mileage may vary.

we like to talk

We like to talk about innovation, but hate to talk about change.

We like to talk about taking risks, but hate to talk about failing.

We like to talk about learning from mistakes, but hate to talk about making mistakes.

We like to talk about learning and growing, but hate to talk about what we can do better.

We like to talk about diversity, but hate to talk about differing ideas and perspectives.

We like to talk about shareholders, but hate to talk about the connection to stakeholders.

We like to talk about today’s stock prices, but hate to talk about sustainability.

We like to talk about the bad economy, but hate to talk about budgets and opportunity costs.

We like to talk about all that’s wrong, but hate to talk about everything we can be grateful for.

We like to talk about what others should do, but hate to talk about what we will do.

We like to talk about what went wrong in the past, but hate to talk about what we’ll make right in the future.

We like to talk about blame, but hate to talk about our personal responsibility.

We like to talk about all the differences between those we disagree with and ourselves, but hate to talk about all the similarities we share with them.

We like to talk about the things we can’t control, but hate to talk about the things within our control that we have let slide.

We like to talk about what we would do, but hate to take the actions that would back those words.

innovation is disruption

“What do the most successful companies do? They innovate. We need to start innovating immediately. Form an innovation committee and get going!”

At least, that’s how I imagine it going at a lot of companies. Everyone is all abuzz about innovation and the need for it, but I’m not convinced they completely understand it. I get the sense that so many think of innovation as more of the same, only better. But it’s not. Innovation is disruption.

Innovation is disruption. It goes against the status quo. It’s not how we do things around here. It’s not the way we always done it. It goes against how the average – normal – company does it.

Innovation = disruption. It causes worry and consternation. People oppose it. It’s change. It’s different. It’s weird. It’s messy. It causes problems.

Innovation is disruption. It takes time for people to try it out, to understand it, to appreciate it. It brings out the naysayers. It causes whining, complaining, screaming, and shouting. Terror and temper tantrums.

Innovation = disruption. It is uncomfortable. It slows things down while people go through the learning curve. It feels unnatural – it’s not what we’re used to.

Innovation is disruption. It’s new. It’s unknown. It’s untested and unproven. It’s value may take years to be understood.

Innovation = disruption. It’s a risk. It may take failure after failure before success. It may not pan out. It may make people look foolish if they support it and no one else does.

Innovation is disruption. It’s being out in a place where no one else is. It might pay off (big) or it might fizzle out. Some ideas are ahead of their time, others are simply different yet not better.

Innovation = disruption. But disruption is not always innovation. Innovation can cause trouble, but not all trouble makers are innovators.

Innovation is disruption. We say we want innovation and then our actions support status quo. We want the (perceived and false) safety of the known with all the wild upside of the new. But when push comes to shove and people start looking for someone to blame, Sameness is the corporate value that gets supported. The manager says, “I want you to take risks, but you better be right.”

Innovation = disruption. It means stepping away from the Known. Innovation ALMOST NEVER COMES FROM EXPERTS. Experts are really good at the Way Things Are and not so good at the Way Things Could Be.

You want innovation? Seek other perspectives. Bust up routines. Stop trying to “innovate” and start looking for better answers. Find solutions that no one else is doing. Create products and services that are better at solving your customer’s problems. Give unexpected value. Show that you have really thought it through.

You want still innovation? Develop an open mind and a thick skin. Poke. Prod. Change. Be Different. Put on your emotional flak jacket and get ready for the hate, the doubt, the ridicule. It just might be worth disrupting things.

people, profits, and HR

I bought a car a couple of weeks ago, an experience that has inspired several blog posts. One of the things that really struck me was that, amidst a rather amazing and intimidating amount of paperwork, there was a paragraph in fine print where I had to acknowledge that the dealer might be making a profit off of the transaction.

Huh?

Why wouldn’t they? Why should I have to sign an agreement saying I realize they just might benefit? They certainly don’t need my permission. No other store I’ve ever been in has been concerned that I was aware and ok that they were selling me something for (gasp) more than they paid for it. Stranger still, it was in fine print on a two foot long page of fine print – most people wouldn’t notice or realize or even care. Have car dealers had a problem of people suing when they found out the dealers weren’t losing money on the deals?

Actually the boilerplate fine print nonsense is not what has me concerned. It was more the fear behind it. Why on earth, in a capitalist nation proud of its entrepreneurial spirit, would we resent a business profiting? The doors were open, the lights, were on, the and the employees and owners want to get paid for their efforts. That money has to come from somewhere…

It really got me thinking about where else do we resent profits? How often do those of us in Human Resources think that we’re above business and dollars? That it’s not about the money, that it’s about the people? That the HR department is a humanitarian oasis in a desert of cut-throat capitalism? That we don’t need to understand the business because it doesn’t apply to us?

Here is a simple formula I like to use: Profits = People = Profits. Profits are a direct result of people and people create profits. We cannot remove people from the profit equation, so why pretend that we can? Why pretend that they are somehow separate?

Human Resources, at its very best, impacts organizational performance. We hire, develop, and retain great people who care about the business’ success, who deliver great results. We advise and help leaders get the most out of their people and out of themselves. We assist people when there are things going on in their lives that get in the way of them being great. We help create, shape, and support the very personality of the company.

Human Resources at its most mediocre doesn’t understand, doesn’t care about, or resents the connection between people and profit. When that happens, we fill the slot, check the box, file the paperwork, say “no” a lot, and become an irrelevant barrier.

It’s really our call.

Stability is a dangerous illusion: a brief review of “Adaptability” by Max McKeown

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~ W. Edwards Deming

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. ~ Eric Hoffer

Change.

Everyone talks about it, many fear it, but what do you do with it? The newness and novelty of change can be exciting or the uncertainty can be crippling. The faster and bigger the change, the more crucial our ability to adapt. Those individuals, companies, and even nations, who have long-term success are those who can successfully adapt from where the world was to where it’s going. Yesterday’s success strategy is tomorrow’s failure if the world moves on without us.

Adaptation is vital, but how do we adapt? How do we make the leap from doing what we know has worked in the past to what we think might work in the future? Big questions. Max McKeown (@maxmckeown) offers insights, rules, and steps for successful adaptation in his book Adaptability: The art of winning in an age of uncertainty.

He states, “Adaptability is the most important of human characteristics…. All failure is a failure to adapt. All success is successful adaptation.” (emphasis added). Think about that for a while: all failure, from the fall of nations to your cousin’s ugly divorce to giving up on your goal fit back in your old size is failure to adapt. Failure to change and adjust and evolve our strategies and actions.

Yet, just adapting is not enough. It is completely possible to adapt and still fail. The right solution at the wrong time for the wrong situation isn’t of much use, never mind the wrong solution. Likewise, just succeeding may not be enough either. Max identifies four possible outcomes of any situation, based on how well we adapt to that specific situation: collapsing (this is bad), surviving /coping (better, but not necessarily pleasant), thriving (what we often aim for), and transcending (game changing good).

Max’s focus, as stated in the introduction, is on winning. “Not just winning by playing the same rules, but playing better. And not just winning where there has to be a loser. My interest is in understanding more about how social groups can move beyond the existing rules to find games that allow more people to win more often.” I love this concept: why survive when you can thrive and why thrive when you can transcend?

So often our focus is just on getting by, getting through, putting the change behind us and returning to the way things were. Imagine what we could do if we elevated our game and consciously approached adaptation as an opportunity to radically expand the playing field; to get beyond the silly zero-sum games where someone has to lose in order for us to win; to create the rising tide that raises all ships?

To help us shift our approach to thriving and transcending, Max identifies 17 rules for successful adaption grouped into three steps. Everything is discussed with examples from an incredible variety of topics, some ancient, some still developing even as the book was published. He looks at adaptability through the lens of  Formula One racing, ants, the publishing industry, orange juice, Mini Coopers, NFL, Easter Island, Netflix, Starbucks, an Italian village, a women’s movement in Liberia, video games, Spiderman the Musical, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, baseball, the Occupy movement, Lego, Tata Motors, and more. Through it all, the ideas, rules, and strategies presented are relevant to everyone seeking to adapt better and play bigger.

I am a big fan of Max’s writing style. He consistently makes the complicated simple, the difficult understandable, the philosophical real-world relevant, and the seemingly ordinary brilliant. He has an easy to read approach, but it took me a while to get through the book because I found myself spending time highlighting, underlining, making notes in the margins, and staring off into space contemplating the ideas presented. Good, good stuff.

Adaptation is never easy. It requires letting go of the known, changing our perception, and jumping into uncertainty. Max shows us some ways to make the leap in the right direction.

Note: In the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, you should know I received a free review copy from the publisher. You might have too if you’d been paying attention when they offered them on Twitter.    🙂