Leadership

disengaging the engaged

Last post, I talked about the difficulty of creating employee engagement for “zombies” – people disengaged from their own lives and just going through the motions. If it’s highly unlikely to engage them, where does that leave us? Are engagement efforts all for naught? Not a bit, but I suggest looking at our efforts differently.

If engaging the disengaged is a wasted effort, consider the possibility that our real engagement risks are disengaging the engaged. “Fink” commented on the previous post:

Sometimes “giving a hoot” also includes wanting to change a process or start a conversation to take away a pain point in the workplace. Those pain points push me towards the “zombie state.”

This is a committed, passionate person – fully engaged – sharing a warning and putting us on notice. They aren’t asking for more “employee engagement programs”, they’re telling us to stop making it so difficult to do great work. (If it sounds like I’m overstating or reading too much into a simple comment, I’m not. I know this person and can say that you would move heaven and earth to have them on your team. It pains me to think there are idiots leaders idiots blocking them from doing the great work they love to do.)

I’m not convinced we can engage the disengaged, but am confident that we can destroy the engagement of the people we need most.

What if the easiest way to harm engagement is to treat it as a separate program – a Human Resources initiative – instead of being every leader’s responsibility? It almost seems that treating it as a program makes it someone else’s problem and excuses poor leadership. I can almost hear it, “Of course my people are disengaged, HR needs to create better engagement programs.”

But engagement is never a separate event or program, it’s how we do daily business. Engagement is very difficult to create, yet so easy to tear down and destroy.

Your thoughts?

Some Business and Leadership Lessons from Downton Abbey

I really enjoy Downton Abbey and I’m super excited about the new season. A friend turned me on to it this Fall and my wife and I quickly watched the first two seasons. I really shouldn’t be able to relate to it – after all, it’s a period drama (soap opera?) about British aristocracy and their servants in the early 1900s.

Except it’s not. It’s about humans dealing with the inevitable change of FutureNow. The tried and true traditions of the 19th Century have been blown up and burned down in the onslaught of change in the early 20th Century. Industrialization, automobiles, air travel, women’s rights, democracy, revolutionaries, class systems (and duties and obligations), a world fighting a new kind of war and the horrors it brings all get thrown in the societal blender. The characters, rich or poor, weak or powerful, are just humans trying to find their way and make sense of it all as what was battles what is and what should be.

Kinda like business and leadership today.

Any strength pushed too far becomes a weakness and the best ideas become frightful distortions and caricatures at their limits. Taylorism and scientific management brought much needed consistency and efficiency to manufacturing. But it was pushed to the point of removing all thinking and judgement  Design out the need for critical thought, problem solving, and creativity from the workers and (surprise!) we end up with workers who can’t innovate, who are comfortable with micromanagement, who push responsibility for their results higher in the organization.

Command and control is a self-serving, self-justifying cycle. Create an organization structure and leadership approach that fosters a lack thought, creativity, or innovation and you end up needing an organization structure and leadership approach to manage people who lack thought, creativity, and innovation. And it works. Until it doesn’t.

Right now it really doesn’t. We can argue it does because we’ve never seen an alternative or because we prefer to stick with the devil we know. Doing different is scary, it’s uncertain, we don’t know how it will work out. But ask yourself this: how successful would you be in 1920 trying to lead and live in the world that existed in 1870? How successful will you be in 2013 trying to lead and live in the world the existed in 1963?

Here’s my challenge to the world: name one person, one team, one company that has gained a successful advantage doing things the way they’ve always been done, doing things the way everyone else does them, and gets ahead by running with the herd. Should it be telling that there are no awards for doing sameness better than everyone else?

So why then do we insist on trying to stand out by blending in?

 

Some Lessons From Downton Abbey:

What are some of the lessons we can take from Downton Abbey as we face our own FutureNow? Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. Just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean it will work in the future, or even now.

2. Just because it seems to work now doesn’t mean it’s the best solution.

3. Resist it, complain about it, long for the good old days all you want. Change is inevitable and happening regardless of our opinion of it.

4. The changes we resist today will be the traditions the next generation fights to keep. The world we resist and resent today will be someone else’s good ol’ days tomorrow.

5. We’re all just humans trying to figure out how to be happy and successful (however we define happiness and success).

6. No single group of people, gender, generation, race, profession, social class, etc. has a monopoly on all the good ideas. Or all the bad ones.

7. Traditions for the sake of traditions are silly and useless. Traditions that still serve a purpose provide continuity and community. Just because we’ve always done it doesn’t make it useful; just because it’s never been done doesn’t make it useless. AND just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t make it useless; just because it’s never been done doesn’t make it useful.

8. Experience is important, but you’ll never win by preparing to fight the previous war. We need to learn from the past but in a way that recognizes that even small changes will make a big difference.

Your thoughts?

 

 

knew ideas

Steve Boese recently ran a post called Lessons of an Man #1. In it he summarized a key lesson gleaned from David Ogilvy’s book Confessions of an Advertising Man, which was published in 1963. You might ask: What on earth is relevant from a book published back in the “olden days” (as my daughter calls anything before about 1990)?

I won’t spoil the surprise – go read Steve’s post for the full story – but the biggest insight is that it’s a lesson leadership experts are preaching today. Steve concludes his post by saying: Ogilvy had it figured out in 1960. How long do you think it will take the rest of us to catch on?

How long indeed?

Neil Usher coined the concept “Knew Ideas” (he’s the first I heard use the phrase, so I’m giving him credit). Knew Ideas are simply ideas we already know, repackaged as new. Us humans so desperately want the latest and greatest, the new and different, the simple and easy, that we ignore what we know works and leap from Shiny to Shiny.

The weight loss industry is a great example of Knew Ideas. How many more ways can we repackage the simple concept: eat less, exercise more? They are an easy target, but the personal and leadership development industries don’t lag far behind.

Interestingly, because there isn’t much new when it comes to leading and dealing with other humans, we eventually loop back around to where we started.

Today’s “innovations” in leadership and interpersonal skills have been around for years, only recently re-discovered, re-packaged, and soon to be re-discarded.

Your thoughts?

 

control freakout

Times of great change (now), times of uncertainty (now), and times when yesterday’s formula for success is tomorrow’s expressway to failure (now) cause us humans to feel out of control, insecure, and stressed. It’s hard to know what to do next or move forward with certainty in a world where there aren’t templates and formulas; where you can’t get to where you want to go by just checking the boxes along the way; where the new maps haven’t been created yet.

Disruption is what is. The music, book publishing, and movie industries have changed in ways barely imaginable less than five years ago. Stable, conservative, aeon old industries with long histories are being taken to their foundations, blown up, and rebuilt in amazing ways – even if the practitioners don’t realize it yet. My humble, supersecret prediction is that the industries that have changed the least in the last 50 years will change the most in the next five. The FutureNow is here.

When your business is caught in the maelstrom of change you can choose one of three paths: 1) focus on what you can control; 2) focus on what you can influence; or 3) become the disruptor that creates the change others have to deal with.

The third path is really hard to do because there is a very, very fine line between being the company that goes against the grain and changes the industry and the company that goes against the grain and becomes irrelevant. I really want to focus on the first two choices.

In the past, industries drove change and the pace of change. Now, the ability to access and transmit information faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper means technology, customer demands, and off the radar upstarts are fueling change. There is less and less that we can actually control and more and more we can only influence. I assume it’s like sailing – we can’t control the waves or the wind, only anticipate and ride them. In fact, the more we try to control, the more out of control we get. Paradoxically, the more we go with the flow and focus on influence, the more control we actually have.

But us humans really like to feel in control. We like the feeling of security and certainty that control brings. If we can control it, we can prevent it from harming us. So, in a time of change (read as: time of FEAR) it’s tempting to concentrate on the unimportant things we can control instead of the big, important, and uncertain things we can only influence. Caught in the storm of change we seem to focus on polishing the ship’s brass and mopping the deck rather than anticipating the wind and the waves. Cleaning the ship is completely within our control and makes us feel successful right now, but the ship is adrift and about to sink. The painful paradox is that the more out of control we feel, the more we often try to control, which means we focus more and more on things that matter less and less. It’s an ugly downward spiral

Here are a  few simple questions to help determine whether your company is trying its hardest to influence a new path through the storm or headed for the rocks with the cleanest ship around:

Are you spending your time on principles and experimentation or policy and tradition?

Are you most concerned with finding ways to delight customers or ways to minimize change and disruption?

Are your most passionate and creative people at the helm, relishing the challenge or are they preparing their life rafts while you hand out mops and tins of polish?

There are no guarantees to success and every path is uncertain, but there are no awards for having the cleanest ship at the bottom of the ocean.

Your thoughts?

 

another amazing person

“How am I so lucky that I keep getting these amazing groups of people?” It was question that I asked myself several times. Several years ago I facilitated 4+2 day leadership programs that focused on enabling people to bring out the best in themselves and others. It was introspective, different than most participants expected, and could be fairly intense as leaders grappled with who they were, who wanted to be, and how they were going to make it happen.

The very first group I facilitated was phenomenal. They were concerned, caring, had big dreams, and were striving to make a difference. I was surprised and humbled. And the next group I facilitated was just as amazing. And the one after that. And the one after that. Different companies, different countries, it didn’t matter. All were incredible people.

How could it be? Sure, some groups were going to be above average, but all of them? Where were the normal people? The ones who cut others off in traffic, the ones who make complaining their personal mission, the lazy and unmotivated folks, the jerks? Where were they?

It took me an embarrassing long time to realize that the participants in the program were the normal people. Normal people want to be successful (however they define success) and want to be happy. They are caring and concerned and have big dreams, hopes, passions, and inspirations. Strip away the filters and masks and superficial layers we all wear as armor against the world and we’re all amazing, interesting, compelling, phenomenal.

But there’s the challenge. It’s those very filters, masks, and layers we create to protect ourselves that ironically prevent us from being our best. They are the overused strengths that become weaknesses and trip us up. They are the barriers that keep us from being real, authentic, transparent; the walls that keep us from connecting with others (and even ourselves) in ways that matter.

The people who stand out are the ones comfortable with their vulnerability, confident with their strengths, and open about their challenges. What will you do today to be more of the person you really are yet rarely let others see?

Your thoughts?

unshrink (book review)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? ~ Marianne Williamson

 

I cannot tell you that Unshrink is the most important book you’ll read this year. I can tell you that it’s one of the most important books I read this year. It expresses, challenges, and expands thoughts and ideas about unbinding and unleashing humans and business and allowing us to expand and grow beyond our current constraining beliefs.

We are limited. Reduced. Operating so far below our potential because of the myths that we have believed, accepted, and perpetuated. We don’t need to expand our potential, we need to shed the myths that keep us shrunken and small so we can expand into the enormous potential awaiting us. We have the tremendous opportunity (obligation?) to unshrink ourselves, others, business, and the world.

That’s the premise of Unshrink by Max McKeown and Philip Whiteley. First published in 2002, I just came across it this year and have read it twice so far. It’s no secret that I’m an enthusiastic fan of Max McKeown – his books are consistently thought provoking, accessible, practical, and enjoyable to read – and this book is no different. At only 116 pages (133 with notes), Unshrink is also a quick read – assuming you can get through it without filling the margins with notes, which I couldn’t.

Why, though? Why unshrink? At the individual level, it’s painful to see (or be) someone hobbling themselves with the shackles of misguided myths about who they are and who they should be. Us humans are so amazing yet consistently play so small. Our potential is there yet we ignore it, dispute it, deny it.

Now expand that out. Businesses, communities, and countries are made up of individuals. When individuals are constrained below their potential so are the groups they are a part of. Businesses are less competitive and less profitable. Communities are more dysfunctional, less likely to attract newcomers. Countries, fueled by the soundness of communities and commerce, are likewise as restrained, hobbled, and shrunk as the individuals.

We often confuse short term spikes in performance measures with actual sustainable results. We think in terms of all or nothing. If a little of something is good, then an extreme amount must be extremely good. Yet, life consistently shows that few things are all or nothing. There is always a tradeoff based on points of diminishing returns.

The authors focus on replacing seven common, deep-seated myths with guiding principles. The myths are so familiar and entrenched that they are generally unquestioned as common sense. Yet, they are not common sense and rarely stand up to the light of real-world outcomes. The myths may have had truth in them at one time or been useful in a limited capacity, but have become dangerous when pushed to the all or nothing extremes. Better than an unquestioned myth is an adaptable principle.

Without giving too much away, the myth of “you are what you do” becomes the principle “you are what you can become”. It sounds like such a small shift, but is key to unshrinking ourselves. The myth of “work always comes first” is replaced with the real-world observable principle “life always comes first”. Holding to the extremes of the myths shrinks us and keeps us shrunk. The principles enable us to unshrink and expand.

Common management theories are driven by the myth that “organizations are machines.” Under this myth, people become easily and equally replaceable cogs, gears, and parts. Leading with this belief means stripping out our humanness, our individual strengths and weaknesses, our passions, and all the things that make us unique in order to make us conform into parts that really are the same. This comes at tremendous cost at both the individual and organizational level.

Replacing that horrible myth with the more accurate principle that “the organization is a community”. Thinking about it as a community means understanding that our differences can be important and valuable, each person’s contributions are unique, and each member of the community is interdependent with – not separate from – every other member. False rigidity is replaced with organic fluidity. The illusion of control is replaced with the power of influence. Machines are built, but communities are fostered. Machines are static and soon outdated; communities dynamic and ever changing and evolving. Machines break down, yet communities adapt.

There is much more. The authors delve into four other myths and principles aimed at unshrinking ourselves, others, and our businesses. All are worth more time and attention that I can offer here.

This book is for those who see that we operate below our potential, who are discouraged by the artificial separation between people and business, who imagine and hope for better. The authors conclude: We have been brought up to believe that there is always a trade-off or a choice between doing that which is good and that which leads to success. Such an assumption is wrong, and this is a tremendously liberating realization.

Your thoughts?

 

yet another thing they didn’t tell you in business school

Conventional wisdom holds that: Profit = Income – Expense. Formulas don’t get much simpler than that. Increasing income or reducing expenses increases profits. Intuitively, that sounds right and LOTS of business decisions are made on this basis. Stock analysts and the companies that pander to them love this formula. Announce significant expense reductions (perhaps through massive layoffs) and stock prices jump up in anticipation of the profits to come.

The problem is, this formula is nice in textbooks but a gross oversimplification in the real world. It pretends there is no relationship between income and expense and makes the implicit assumption that the other variable is being held constant. But that’s not how it works. The real interpretation of this formula is this: Increasing income while holding expenses the same OR reducing expenses while holding income the same increases profits.

Income and expense are connected in a very real way and cannot be completely isolated. Why? Income is determined by your customers, not by you. Let’s play with some “what ifs”:

What if you cut your inventory on hand to zero? Your overhead costs would drop tremendously. You’d save a ton of money and your profits would go through the roof, right? Nope. Your customers would get torqued off that you had nothing in stock and they’d go shop elsewhere. Cutting expenses cut income.

What about maintenance expenses? You’ll save a bundle by “deferring maintenance” for a year or two. Bingo! Except you’re going to have a hard time convincing your best customers to shop in a dingy, dirty, broken down building. They go across the street to your competitor’s modern, bright, clean store. Cutting expenses cut income.

What if you laid off all your employees? No salaries or benefits to pay – there’s a major expense gone. Big time profits, yes? No. Without employees to help customers it won’t be long before there aren’t customers. Cutting expenses cut income.

What if you just forced all your employees to take a pay cut or cut benefits? You’ll save some money then, oh yeah! Um, well, no. Disgruntled employees don’t take care of the customers. Your best employees have other options and they leave. Your customers are now consistently receiving poor service. Wait, I mean your former customers. Cutting expenses cut income.

What if you invest heavily in technology and facilities that make shopping easier, convenient, pleasurable, and more fun for the customer? What if you spend more to find, hire, train, and reward outstanding customer service driven employees? Is it possible that increasing expenses could actually increase income? Only if the variables of income and expense are in some ways interconnected.

It’s worth saying again:

Expenses and income are often directly connected. They are not independent variables because your customers determine your income, not you. Customers have choices of who they give their money to so income can never be assumed to be constant. If you cut expenses in ways that negatively affect the customer, your income will go down. Likewise, if you increase expenses in ways that positively affect the customer, your income may go up.

Some expenses are worth reducing, but all expenses are not equal. Choose wisely.

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?

follow the money

Detective shows sometimes say that they need to “follow the money” to see who is behind the crimes they are investigating. The phrase makes sense in the leadership/HR world too. Whenever people are consistently doing something different than intended, it makes sense to follow the money to see why. Chances are, somewhere along the line, they are being rewarded for the behavior.

I mentioned this a couple of months ago when a co-worker bought a car and was pestered, hounded, and bullied to give the salesperson top scores on the follow-up customer service survey. The company’s emphasis on measuring customer service and ultimate reward/punishment for the salesperson was creating behavior exactly opposite of what the survey was supposed to create. How do you explain an emphasis on customer service creating really poor customer service? Follow the money.

On a lighter example, my son participates in Tae Kwon Do. One day while they were doing light sparing, the instructor kept complementing my son’s punches and then telling him to work on his kicks more. However, the instructor was so complimentary towards my son’s punches, that it was little surprise he kept using them, even when he was supposed to be working on kicks. Why do people do something other than what we ask them to? Sometimes it’s because we ask for one behavior and reward another. Follow the money.

As a third and final example, I recently purchased a new car and ended up buying an extended warranty. I think extended warranties are generally unnecessary and a waste of money, so why did I buy it? The sales and finance managers were so insistent on selling it to me and I resisted for so long that they finally dropped the price to where it was silly to say no. What started out as being $2500 for an extended warranty to 100,000 miles, ended up being $216 for an extended warranty to 75,000 miles. I find this example interesting because: 1) the purchasing experience was pretty mellow and friendly and low-pressure except for the warranty; and 2) the price dropped by a factor of 10. How is this possible? Follow the money.

I nixed the extended warranty early on and then the sales and finance managers brought it up again near the end: “If you could get it for $X, would you do it?” No, no, and no. They tried the prudent / concerned approach: “These cars don’t break much, but when they do it’s expensive and I want you to be taken care of.” The you owe me approach: “I’ve come down on all these other things, why won’t you get the warranty?” The subtle emasculation: “It’s only $10 more dollars a month, but if it’s a matter of money, I understand…” Every “no” brought them back with a different approach and a lower price until it became almost comical.

Why? How? I’m guessing at this point, but the warranty is through a third party. I suspect the sales and finance managers get a bonus for each warranty they sell (and I suspect it’s a flat bonus, unadjusted for the price the warranty sells for). I also suspect that there is a lot of margin built into the price of the warranty so there’s room to negotiate. Finally, I suspect that the dealer ended up subsidizing the warranty. That is, I’d bet that on paper the price of the car was reduced to account for the warranty and keep the monthly payment almost the same. Again, I’m completely guessing, but if all my guesses are correct then two managers worked together to increase their income at the expense of the dealer’s profit. Counterproductive behavior, so why do it? Follow the money.

It makes me wonder how often poor behavior and performance is a nearly direct result of how we choose to praise, reward, and compensate our employees. People do what you reward them for. Are we rewarding them to do the right things?

Follow the money…