Another soul-less vision statement: speed vs. collaboration

“When I read it my heart sank. The vision statement didn’t reflect our university at all. Our soul and passions were nowhere to be found,” a dean at a major American university explained to me last week.

“How could that happen,” I asked. “Wasn’t this a collaborative process where people came together to talk about possibilities, aspirations, and how to build on your formidable strengths?”

“Nope,” he replied. “The president wanted this to be done fast. He hired  a consultant and had some meetings with him, and then the consultant sent us a vision statement three weeks later. When we read it, we couldn’t tell that it was for our university. It could have been for any major university.”

“But you could have had speed and participation and you would have ended up with vision and beliefs that mean something,” I suggested.

“That’s not the perception. The feeling is that if you involve people, it will take a long time.”

I hear this a lot from executives. It would be “nice” to get people involved, but we don’t have time for that. Here’s the flip side: if you don’t involve people, you’ll end up with something that is ignored, something that requires enormous energy for  “buy in,” something that people don’t feel motivated to make real.  Your vision, plan or strategy will likely get stuck when it comes to implementation.

The real opportunity is to use new talent and techniques for facilitating collaborative planning so that you can achieve participation and speed.

Check out some of the “open source”  collaboration and positive change techniques like the Art of Hosting, World Cafe, and Appreciative Inquiry.  No proprietary methodologies here. Just brilliant approaches that work.

Innovative organizations like Google, The Gates Foundation, the city of Columbus, Ohio, and many more are adopting these approaches into their cultures for one reason: tapping into your own talent in new ways is the best way to ultimately achieve more, more quickly and in more meaningful ways.

CIA’s Carmen Medina on rebels, optimism, leadership

Leadership advice from JetBlue’s CEO

David Barger, JetBlue Airway’s president and CEO, shared some of his insights about leadership recently in the Sunday “New York Times” column, Corner Office column..  Highlights I found particularly interesting:

  • Simplifying complexity: “You have to be able to simplify things that are complex. At the end of the day, if the 13,000 people on the front lines don’t understand what you’re trying to do, forget it. You don’t stand a chance of making it work.”
    •  (Note:  Four years ago JetBlue had 23 objectives, 14 in year two, 10 in year three, and now just two key objectives. Also, the company has just five values and it interviews candidates with those five values in mind: safety, caring, integrity, fun and passion.)
  • To lead doesn’t require titles: “Be mindful that there is incredible leadership all around you. Go find it. Go tap it. Go mine it.”
  • Key question: “Would you want to report to yourself?”
  • Leading is teaching: “I think the best leaders are teachers…You’re not just doing and communicating what you’re doing — you’re teaching people why you’re doing it.”

Rebel awarded Medal of Honor

Marine Dakota Meyer disobeyed orders so that he could  try to save three dozen comrades trapped in an Afghan ravine. Last week President Obama awarded him the prestigious Medal of Honor.

When benevolent rebels break the rules in order to do the right thing, they morph  into leaders. But these people are usually reprimanded or punished for rebelling against orders, policies, people with higher titles.

How inspiring that a man with courage, conviction and a love for his fellow soldiers was recognized for rebelling for the right reasons.

Rules and policy in any organization are meant to guide, not to dictate.  Challenging rules is part of leading, and leading should not be limited to people with certain titles.  The more people understand an organization’s purpose and values, the more empowered they should feel to step in and make decisions that uphold those values and purpose.  There’s little upside to compliance in any organization — especially in life or death situations.

Like many rebels I have studied, Sergeant Meyer wasn’t all that interested in the recognition of the Medal of Honor. His one request: to be able to talk privately with President Obama. Rebel research shows that these folks want to do right, and have an opportunity to be heard.  As The New York Times reported:

Mr. Meyer showed little inclination to celebrate receiving the Medal of Honor. His one request to the president while he was in Washington was that the two men have a beer together, which Mr. Obama and Mr. Meyer did on Wednesday evening in a patio near the Rose Garden.

Congratulations to Sergeant Meyer and to the United States for recognizing what it means to lead, even if it means disobeying orders.

 

 

Keep asking political leaders this one question?

I have an idea about how we regular citizens might be able to focus our political leaders on want we want and need — vs. what they need to get re-elected.

What if every time a political leader sponsored a bill, gave a campaign speech, or pronounced a campaign pledge/message, we asked them this question:

How does this do the most good for the most people?

I’m weary of how politicians of every party cater to special interests and the issues that rile people up — or at least get them the most media sound bytes.  I’m disgusted with the blame game. I’m embarrassed that leaders and potential leaders manipulate people around issues that have little to do with governing, but a lot to do with garnering support to be (re) elected.

I want clear answers to this one question so that I can understand what I’m voting for. Or shouldn’t vote for, as the case may be.

Our country, our states, our cities and towns have limited resources, and are likely to become far more limited as we reduce the rate of government spending. So given these resources, how do we make decisions and support programs and policies that do the most good for the most people?

I’m fairly educated, but man oh man, I can hardly make sense of what I hear and read from our government leaders. Isn’t it time we demanded clarity so more of us can understand what’s what? So that more of us can actively take a role in helping our elected leaders serve us — the big collective us, not fringe and special interest groups.

Asking this question is a small action, but maybe if we all get behind it (or something like it) we can make a difference.

Please take this idea and make it yours. If you think there’s a more powerful way to phrase the question, please share that.

I intend to use this question often and with discipline — during my senator and congressman’s town hall teleconferences, adding comments to politician’s blogs and sites and on general media sites, Tweeting after watching campaign stump speeches, writing personal emails and letters to officials while they are debating on potential legislation.

What do you think?

 

20 ways to be a more effective rebel, maverick, edgewalker, change agent

So many corporate mavericks and rebels have great ideas, but those ideas often never see the light of day because of the way we truth-tellers and fire-starters behave. As a lifelong outlier — yet successful business executive — here are some of the things I’ve learned, often the hard way,  that may help you or the rebels in your organization.

1. Be positive: recommendations that are stated in the affirmative, that show what’s possible vs.what’s wrong, are more likely to be heard and acted on.

2. Frame it: frame how your idea helps the organization’s goals, cause, purpose. The more relevant the idea is to what everyone wants to achieve, the more open people will be to the idea.

3. Ask questions that highlight the possibilities vs. further damn the problems.  Possibilities create energy, problem dissing saps it.

4. Judge ideas, not people.  The first creates useful conversations, the second hurts, disrupts and usually dead-ends.

5. When angry, stop and wonder why. This has been especially helpful to me. I used to get so angry that I’d immediately react, or should I say over-react. Wondering why a person or company did or said something provides helpful perspective. The more we understand hidden motivations the more we can frame our ideas.

6. Strive for influence not power: influence inspires and motivates people to believe and act; power requires them to do so. Influence evokes possibilities, power evokes fear.  Power requires authority, titles and positions. Influence can be earned by anyone, no titles required.

7. Start the flame, tap into the collective brilliance of others to fuel the fire:  Change agents and rebels are the ones with the courage to be the first to stand up. To move from ideas  to action, bring in others who want to help. One person with a contrary idea usually gets little attention. Three people with a shared passion around a contrary idea start to get noticed.

8. Share the glory:  Revel in achieving something that benefits many, sharing the credit and the glory of all involved.  During my freshman year in college a philosophy professor told us, “Those who know know.” Even if it’s never publicly shown.

9. Communicate in ways that create clarity from complexity:  People need to understand what the idea is, why it’s relevant, and how it will provide value. Too often we get caught up in the “how we’re going to change things” before addressing the other important issues: context, relevancy, value.

10. Address the cost/value tradeoff:  are the benefits and value of the new way commensurate with the costs of change?

11. Let it breathe:  people often need time to absorb a new way, think on it for a while. As rebels we see things sooner and clearer than most and  get impatient with other people who aren’t as fast and decisive as we.  If we go too fast, we can mow over people, hurting the chances of being able to affect change.  In my corporate rebel research study, one write-in comment summed it up, “know that our velocity scares people.”

12. Pick the right boss or executive sponsor: find that person who appreciates your creativity, your fire-starting ideas, your naked truth-telling — and who can help guide and protect you  through the complexities of organizational politics and decision making.

13. Ask good questions, become a keen listener:  These two skills will serve as your advanced navigational systems as you chart through often foggy and potentially dangerous corporate seas.

14. Learn how to facilitate messy collaboration workshops to improve on your ideas, get buy in from others. People act on what they believe in. The more people who participate in shaping a new way, the more likely it is that they will adopt that new way.

15. Show how success can be measured.

16. Address the fears:  understand what people fear about the idea; respect, explore and test their assumptions; and/or explain how you plan to remove or minimize those fears.

17. Learn how to have constructive conversations. Most organizations are use to discussions (usually in the form of PowerPoint) that advocate for ideas, a win/lose form of communications. Constructive what/if conversations examine assumptions, open up possibilities, invite everyone to contribute, and value all points of view. A good book on this topic is “Naming Elephants: How to Surface Undiscussables for Greater Organizational Success.”

18. Be thoughtful in all you do: Thoughtfulness engenders support, abets truth telling, brings more humanity to our work, and adds more meaning to our cause.

19. Know when to walk away: perseverance is important. But so is knowing when to walk away, when the support for your idea just isn’t there. It may have nothing to do with you or the idea, the timing might not be right. Or the risks may be too great for the corporate culture.  Or people might not believe it’s really possible.  Don’t let your idea turn into a negative soapbox, where you lose your influence and rob yourself of energy and health. As Yogi Berra supposedly once said, “If no one wants to come, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

20. Believe you are enough.

Solitude and leadership

As I walked the Gap of Dunloe in Southwest Ireland last week I separated from our hiking group, and spent the day walking alone. Thinking. Allowing my mind to gracefully wander.

“Why did you walk apart from us all day,” one of my hiking mates asked. “Were you upset about something?”

“Not at all. I was just enjoying time to think. It helps me with my work.”

As I walked I reflected on the article, “Solitude and Leadership,” by William Deresiewicz, published last year in American Scholar. (http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/)

Based on his speech to the plebe class of West Point, Deresiewicz writes that “solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership.

He also warns that we have a crisis of leadership in America because our leaders are trained and rewarded to conform, to keep routine things going.

What’s missing is the ability to think for oneself, have the courage to argue for ideas even if they are not popular, and have the moral courage to stand up for what you believe.

Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality…The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.”

When I talk to client groups about the need to quiet our minds and find time to think and reflect, they often roll their eyes. “We don’t have time to do that,” they say.  Of course we do. Shut your phone off while driving. Walk in the morning without being plugged into music.  On vacation, find time to break away.

The courage to lead comes from knowing and believing in our own convictions.  And knowing ourselves can only be obtained from giving ourselves the gift of  occasional solitude.

 

 

No easy answer for leaders resolving conflict

 

My most painful professional memories come from being part of teams with brilliant people that brilliantly imploded. Instead of achieving great things together, we clashed and the conflict dragged us into dark, ugly places.

How could it be that such experienced leaders and talented professionals flamed out? I had led big organizations before, so how come I failed to lead these other organizations out of conflict?

In “Leadership Without Easy Answers” Ronald Heifetz says that the root cause of most conflicts are due to conflicts in values. If a group doesn’t honestly surface those values and deal with them, the group blames the leader for not solving the problems, rejects the leader, hires another leader, and the cycle repeats.

Heifetz believes that the role of a leader is to help the organization surface the conflicts and frame and facilitate conversations so people can listen to and appreciate others’ perspectives. Heifitz’ book focuses on tackling big, complex problems in big organizations. But the lessons apply to small groups as well.

Similarly  I heard coach Jeffrey Van Dyk recently say, “There are no problems to be solved, just truths to be revealed.” Conflict resolution requires us to dig deep and honestly to uncover the truths. Then we can see the way forward.

This is hard work. I believe that the aspiration of the organization has to be so compelling that the people commit to doing the hard, messy work of getting to the root cause.  (Of, course you have to know  your “why,” which many companies don’t.)  People also have to truthfully acknowledge what they care about. No saying the words that sound right, but what you really, really believe.  Sometimes that will fit with the group’s values. Sometimes not.

If you pay lip service to your values — and they don’t jive with the group’s values — the conflict will continue.

The leader’s job then is to spot these disconnects and talk privately with those executives or team members. Often asking them to leave is the best course.  Or perhaps you are the executive who needs to walk away.

I’ve experienced both situations. In one case I didn’t ask someone to leave soon enough, letting  an influential executive’s personal beliefs wreak havoc, hurting relationships and the group’s ability to deliver exceptional work. In another, I was the one who had to walk away.

Values strikes many as “squishy” touch-feely work. But there’s nothing soft about conflict, especially the kind that can rip an organization apart.

If you love what your organization is trying to achieve, the hard work will be worth the struggle.

 

PS — Happy Fourth of July to my American friends. The reason why our country was founded and continues strong is that we talk about our issues, grounding those conversations in the values we hold dear. Without deeply sharing the same values, conflict will rage.

 

 

Does you organization support culture of change, innovation?

 

Does your organization support a culture of change and innovation?

While most leaders want to be more innovative, often their cultures, business practices and management values don’t support such an environment.  Foghound’s study on corporate rebels found that just 34% are very satisfied with rebels ability to provide value in their organizations.

Here are six questions for leaders to consider as they assess how “change and innovation-friendly” their companies really are.

  • When you look in the corporate mirror do you see a culture open to new perspectives?

“Rebels often butt heads with their supervisors who want helpers not idea people. Rebels don’t want to hear, “That’s not the way we do things around here.” Foghound Corporate Rebel survey respondent

  • How do you lead management discussions so that people learn how to make decisions within a paradox of innovation?

How do you balance getting work done – with finding new ways to work? With adhering to standards – with taking risks? With rewarding employee cooperation – with recognizing employees for challenging the status quo?

  • Does your culture create obstacles or opportunities for people with the courage to challenge assumptions and ask new questions?
  • If people are your most valuable resource, how are you creating ways to tap into their collective brilliance? How do you make diverse perspectives heard?
  • Who and what filters new ideas? Are they helpful filters — or blinders?
  • Do your corporate values and beliefs encourage behaviors needed to innovate? (Or are your values rather bland and safe?)

Foghound Corporate Rebel Study: Value Rebels Provide to Companies

 

The 90-30 conundrum

Approximately 90 percent of people who participated in Foghound’s recent Corporate Rebel Study said that they agreed that involving rebels more helps improve corporate culture and develop a more innovative company.

BUT only 34 percent percent are “very satisfied” with rebels’ ability to provide that value inside their organizations.

Companies want these rebels’ fresh thinking but many corporate cultures are getting in the way of that happening.   For while companies want to innovate the study found that they are uncomfortable when people challenge the status quo, question executive decisions, go around the rules, and ask too many questions.

If changing quickly to  tap into marketing opportunities and challenges is more important than ever, perhaps it’s time to change what our organizations value, model new behaviors as leaders, and teach rebels how to share their ideas in ways that trigger conversations vs. provoking anger.

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about rebels.  Please feel free to share this research in your organizations.  I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in creating organizations where change agents are valued vs. viewed as trouble makers.

Courage to lead: Providence Mayor Angel Taveras

True leaders are rare. Especially among  elected government officials, who tend to make tough decisions based on how it will affect their re-election chances.

One of those rare leaders is Providence Mayor Angel Taveras,  guiding the city and its people through some exceedingly painful yet necessary decisions in order to fill a $110 million  deficit.  And Providence isn’t just any city. It’s been historically  fraught with corruption, closed-door wheeling and dealing, and an unhealthy influence of self-serving insiders.

I often hear people excuse leaders’ inability to lead, saying things like, “Well he’s got a complicated situation to deal with.” Or, “It will take years for anyone to be able to change this place.”

Yet Taveras is deftly guiding the city through difficult change in order to get on firm financial footing. Imagine being a first-time urban city mayor and having to make tough decisions like closing schools and laying off community teachers, firefighters and police?

Despite these always unpopular decisions, Traveras is earning respect and collaboration from his constituents. The reason? He’s focused on doing what’s right, and working WITH diverse constituents. He isn’t dictating how to get to financial stability; he is collaborating in the true sense of the word with the people in the city who best know how to make changes on a tactical level.

Six critical leadership competencies that Taveras brings as mayor:

  1. Focus on a clear, shared goal: restoring the city to a sound fiscal foundation. Taveras’ message is clear about the urgent need to solve the deficit crisis.  Period.
  2. Honesty: revealing the city’s dire financial situation right after his election. No spinning bad news. No taking time to socialize ideas and tend to politics. Taveras has been a straight shooter, presenting the reality, and calling for people to come together to figure out solutions.
  3. Transparency, sharing: sharing the data to help everyone make better decisions.  Fire union president Paul Dougherty recently said that previous mayoral administrations would withhold financial information and often say, “Find it yourself.”  Taveras’ negotiators, however,  have “been straightforward, and they give you information when you ask for it.”
  4. Admitting missteps: acknowledging mistakes and learning from them. “They’re right,” said Taveras of crticism from the teachers union on how the city revealed teacher layoffs. “We certainly could have done a better job with our teachers and I learned from it.”
  5. Not having the answers: great leaders set goals and ask people with a stake in the outcome to create the best way to achieve those goals.  This approach speeds change. The solution isn’t dictated from above, it’s created by the people closest to the issues who know the issues, and will  be responsible for executing them. Taveras doesn’t claim to have the answers, and believes that Providence’s leaders have the ability to create the “how” now that the why is so vitally clear.
  6. Belief and fortitude: Taveras has a steadfast belief that the city will solve its problems, and he’s steadfast in his belief and his values. “He’s showing me intestinal fortitude that I didn’t think he had,” says Joseph Rodio, a lawyer for the police union. “Most politicians, in their first 60 days in office, become somebody different. He hasn’t.”

Quite simply, Mayor Taveras seems to have the courage to govern for the people and with the people.  That’s the type of leader — not politician — we should be supporting if we really want to make our cities, states and country a better place to live.

 

Extreme frustration = compliance or dissent

What happens when frustrations in an organization reach a boiling point?

People either check out and say, “Just tell me what I need to do.”

Or they get angry and act out, “We’re mad as hell and aren’t going take this crap any more.”

Compliance or dissent. Both  suck the life out of people and an organization.  At least the vocal dissenters are engaged enough to care and want to do something to improve things. The compliant auto-pilots are much more checked out.

Yet my new research on corporate rebels, to be released in two weeks, finds that executives are far more annoyed with the dissenters who challenge the status quo.  They’re even more annoyed when their leadership decisions are questioned.

Last week I heard a story about a well-regarded, passionate physician at a major teaching hospital who questioned his executives’ decisions in a public forum. Her intention was well meaning. But she was shown the door two days later after years of service. Guess how many talented, frustrated people at that institution are likely to slide right into compliance.

Compliance at a time when heath care desperately needs creative solutions.

What’s a leader of a frustrated organization to do?

  • Open your mindset. People are not challenging you personally. They see problems they want to solve. They aspire to do work that means something more than just putting out today’s fires.
  • Articulate a purpose. Yours as a leader (See this great post from Harvard’s Bill George, “Why Leaders Lose Their Way.”)  Yours as an organization. Why do we exist — beyond the generic  “delivering a profit to our shareholders” or “delivering quality health care.”
  • Change how your organization runs meetings so that everyone has a say. Open by going around the table and asking each individual to share his or her observations and insights.  Try it. You’ll begin to accomplish more and people will feel more valued.
  • Involve people in creating the tactics to achieve the big goals and strategy.  People don’t resist change. They want change. They resist acting on plans that they don’t think are the best way to achieve the goals. This is a different, more collaborative way of creating plans. It might take longer than a few people hunkered in a conference room to bang out the plan in three days. BUT if you tap into people’s collective brilliance, they will come up with tremendous ideas and then MAKE THOSE IDEAS HAPPEN.
  • Know that you don’t have to have all the answers. Your job is to inspire people around a simple but powerful vision of what you’re aiming to accomplish, Your job is to ask new questions. To listen.  To provide more ways for more people to have a voice and know that what they do, think and say matters. To let people vent when their intentions are good. (Angry, destructive people should be booted out, of course.)

People want their work to matter. Let their voices be heard. Involve them in creating better ways.  It may be the only way to succeed in a world of  such seismic change.

#Trust30 Day 3: communications can change the world

Day 3 prompt from The Domino/Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Project: The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it? (Author: Buster Benson)

_______________________________________________________________

I believe communications can change the world.


It’s not that my friends and family don’t believe this; they just don’t understand why I’m so, so passionate about this belief.  Maybe, too, they’re tired of hearing me talk about this, but not really acting on my convictions.

While I’ve helped corporations and CEOs communicate in new ways to affect change, have I helped organizations and leaders who are out to change the world?

Not so much.

I see an opportunity calling. Or maybe it’s a responsibility

If we have a gift, as I do with bringing people together to see and articulate new possibilities, shouldn’t we use that gift to give back to the world?

Every time I facilitate  workshops magic happens. People get lit up by being able to talk with other people about issues and questions that they rarely have an opportunity to discuss. They begin imagining different approaches. They start connecting and forming trusted, collaborative relationships. They get energized and into that “flow” zone where work doesn’t feel like work.

My intent in the next year is to focus more on helping leaders who want to change the world.  And I hope it’s a mix of corporate and non-profit leaders. The world needs both.

Why people take risks

 

Day 2 Prompt from The Domino/Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Project: If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day. (Author: Liz Danzico)

People won’t take risks for something they don’t believe in.

 

Leadership lessons from Oprah

It was spring of 1986 and my boss asked if I wanted to go to a women’s conference at the Sheraton in New York City.  Looking at a calendar full of looming client deadlines, I hesitated.

“A woman named Oprah Winfrey is going to be speaking,” he said. “I’ve heard from  friends in Chicago that she’s going to be a big star.”

I went and got my first dose of Oprah.

The conference wasn’t one of the big ballrooms; it was a smaller function room, but boy did Oprah fill it up with energy and a message that we women had the power to change the world — and still be women. ( I remember  her partner Stedman joined her, and Oprah called him the love of her life.) Her style was unpolished but charismatic, genuine and positive. She was a woman who wasn’t trying to act like a man, which was so common during the 80s.

So of course today (and yesterday) I watched Oprah wind up her 25 year show. Looking back on these many years she shared what she’s learned.

  • We all have a calling, what we’re meant to be doing in the world. When we live what we’re suppose to be doing — however small or big — we’re using our life to serve the world.
  • We are all responsible for our own lives. No one can fix us, save us, give us the answers. We create our our own energy.
  • The root of all struggles is not feeling worthy enough to be happy or successful
  • Everyone wants to be validated and be heard.  We can change the world one person at a time by letting a person know that I see you. I hear you. What you say matters to me. Validate their value.
  • The secret to her success has been her staff and God. “My success has been waiting and listening for guidance greater than my meager mind provides,” she said. “What are the whipsers in your life right now. Your life is speaking to you. Are you hearing it?”

Many tweets and Facebook posts have been moaning about Oprah’s long send off.  My sisters laughed at me when I told them I had re-arranged my business schedule to watch these last shows.

What people miss is that Oprah is not just a celebrity. She is a leader.

There are not enough inspirational people in the world focused on serving others.  There are too few role models who give and give and give — of themselves and of their wealth.

Oprah has inspired thousands and thousands to be more than they thought possible – and to pass on that gift and by helping others.

Speakers at leadership conferences seem to all share the same examples of exemplary leaders –  Steve Jobs, Ronald Reagan, Sam Walton, Herb Kelleher, FDR, Churchill. (Notice many are dead, and all are men….)

They’re great examples, but Oprah sets new standards in what it means to be a leader for our times, and is worthy of the label  of leader.

Love you Oprah. Even when we shared all that big hair and shoulder pads in 1986.