Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog @ LeadershipNow

What You Need to be Doing Now

2009-07-03T21:42:43Z

Geoff Colvin, Fortune’s senior editor at large and author of The Upside of the Downturn, offers much to savor and chew on, but his list of five things this recession demands from a leader are essential.

One of those behaviors is Be Decisive. He writes, “Leaders in a crisis must not lose their rare opportunity to act. The difficulty is that just when decisions are most easily accepted, they’re hardest to make. All business decisions are made with incomplete information, and that’s especially true in the heat of a crisis. At the same time the stakes are higher than usual. Every instinct tells you to decide more slowly than usual, yet it’s vital that you decide more quickly.”

Read more on the LeadeshipNow July Communiqué.

10 Rules For Leading the Turnaround of a Declining Business

2009-07-03T17:44:35Z

I have been involved in turnaround situations at Topco Associates, Kayser-Roth Corporation, and Cordiant. The similarities between these situations were greater than the differences.

In each case, they were companies that had fallen on hard times, but there was a belief that they could rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. Additionally, the fact that the companies were not doing well was by no means a secret to the employees, who were always eager to have the leadership that could bring it all back together and get things moving again.

Here are my ten rules for a successful turnaround:

Rule 1. When formulating goals, start with the answer and work your way back to the solution. Do not get bogged down in the morass of yesterday. Get going toward where you need to be in the immediate future. At Cordiant, we developed a five-year financial forecast within three months of arrival that we used as the basis for refinancing the company. Subsequently, we exceeded every benchmark of that forecast.

Rule 2. Get out in front of people immediately and position yourself as the new leader in the company. Tell them who you are, what you believe in, why you are there, your perspective on the situation, and how you intend to proceed. At Cordiant, I visited all the principal people and major locations in London and New York in my first two days.

Rule 3. Bring an extraordinarily high sense of urgency to what you are doing, but also look before you leap. People are anxious for results, but this is no time for dead ends. Think carefully about everything you do, but keep moving. At Topco, we immediately commenced development of a line of environmentally-friendly products because there was an obvious niche and need in the market for them.

Rule 4. Do not sit around headquarters! Get out to where the work is done—plants and field offices. You need this input, and you need to be a motivating force for people. At Cordiant, I got around to offices accounting for 60% of our revenues in the first six months.

Rule 5. Go out and listen to customers and clients. At Kayser-Roth, one of my first visits was to Wal-Mart. They told me, “Mr. Seelert, we are concerned about the viability of your company as a supplier.” Two years later, we were named their vendor partner of the quarter. If I had not personally gone there to listen and learn, I doubt that this would have happened.

Rule 6. Listen to everybody in the organization who offers an opinion about the business—don’t just hang around with the people who report to you. There are two sides to all coins and stories. You need to understand both. If you can, meet with your competitors or the heads of similar organizations. When I went to Cordiant, I met with the heads of other holding companies, agency networks, consultancies, and service organizations.

Rule 7. Recognize that you cannot get the job done alone. Open communications and clearly assigned accountabilities are essential. Your visits to locations provide the forums for rallying and directing the teams, as well as quickly identifying the true talents across the organization.

Rule 8. Lay out your vision, purpose, values, beliefs, objectives, strategies, and plans for accomplishment as quickly as possible. People cannot really get going until you set the right direction. At Cordiant, I laid out my initial vision on day one: to be the “World’s Best Creative Communications Resource.” I indicated that I would be a good listener and that together, we would drive the vision forward from there.

Rule 9. If you do not have the internal resources to get the jobs at hand done, do not be afraid to use outside resources. At Cordiant, we employed Price Waterhouse Business Turnaround Services. At Kayser- Roth and Topco, we hired Luther & Company.

Rule 10. Develop the short list of critical priorities and stick to it. At Cordiant, it was two things: stabilize clients and staff, and refinance the company. Accomplishing these two goals set the stage for everything else.

BOB'S WISDOM: Turnarounds are intensely difficult 24/7 situations. Follow the ten rules and you will prosper.

Adapted from Start with the Answer: And Other Wisdom for Aspiring Leaders by Bob Seelert.

Cast a Vote For the Best Leadership Blog of 2009

2009-07-02T08:23:36Z

Kevin Eikenberry's 3rd annual Best of Leadership Blogs competition is underway. We are honored that this blog has again been nominated as one of the 10 best leadership blogs on the web. Here is a list of the ten finalists:

Leading Blog by Michael McKinney
Great Leadership by Dan McCarthy
Seth Godin’s Blog by Seth Godin
Jon Gordon’s Blog by Jon Gordon
Leadership is a Verb by John Bishop
All Things Workplace by Steve Roesler
Work Matters by Bob Sutton
Leader Talk by Mountain State University
Next Level Blog by Scott Eblin
Leadership At Work by John Baldoni

We appreciated all the support we got last year, so again, if you like what you've been reading here, then cast your vote for the Leading Blog by July 31. The 2009 winner will be announced Monday, August 3rd on Kevin’s Blog. Casting your vote does more than voice your opinion, it also gives you a chance to win a product worth $199 or more during each of Kevin Eikenberry's weekly drawings. Good luck!

Thanks for the vote!

First Look: Leadership Books for July 2009

2009-07-01T09:02:42Z

Here's a look of some of the best leadership books to be released in July.

Why Loyalty Matters: The Groundbreaking Approach to Rediscovering Happiness, Meaning and Lasting Fulfillment in Your Life and Work by Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy with Luke Williams
The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath
Performance Intelligence at Work: The 5 Essentials to Achieving The Mind of a Champion by Julie Ness Bell and Robin Pou
Preparing for Leadership: What It Takes to Take the Lead by Donna J. Dennis Ph.D. with Debbie Meola
The Golden Rules for Managers: 119 Incredible Lessons for Leadership Success by Frank McNair

For bulk orders call 1-800-423-8273

LeadershipNow 140: June 2009 Compilation

2009-06-30T18:09:43Z

Here are a selection of tweets from June 2009:

Survive company mergers: Business leaders will soon see opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. FT: http://tinyurl.com/kth2e4
To lead you must come from a context larger than the self.
What you don't know about Ed McMahon by @wallybock http://ow.ly/fNhY
RT @innovate: "Know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible: Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible about tactics" - Jeff Bezos
RT @scottmckain: It's the label on a wine bottle ... What can YOU do to get more business? http://budurl.com/smvp Now that's thinking!
RT @MichaelHyatt: RT @human3rror: Overheard: Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook are merging together: "YouTwitFace.com"
Make a list of your most basic assumptions. Are they still true?
Effective networks lead to innovation : You need to understand how informal networks can work to your benefit. http://tinyurl.com/lqhx5l
Relevance: Are you answering questions no one is asking?
Raising Kids: Our revolutionary leaders wanted the best from their children. http://ow.ly/feoG
Twitter: Tips, Tricks and Tweets http://ow.ly/f3vd Very helpful book-esp for people like me!
How to rebuild trust: (Registration Required) http://tinyurl.com/m3zvqe
Most leadership is not out front and heroic. We don't see it because we don't know what we are looking for.
If you do not have some bad loans, you are not in business.” ~Paul Volker
The undercover boss: The CEO went undercover in his own business, disguised as an office worker (Registration Required) http://tinyurl.com/mmapv4
Developing leaders is a long term solution. Recruitment is a short-term answer to a long-term problem.
Counselors should quit trying to determine who is right and instead guide people on how to apply the correct principles in their situation
Are you getting enough sleep? http://ow.ly/d899
Are you building margin into your life? Emotional, physical, schedule and financial margin?
Leaders take note: Disappointment breeds cynicism.
Real success or failure is hard to measure especially in short term. Targets and personal gain are attractive alternatives ~How Rome Fell
When we start with our eyes on our needs, we are never able to see anything else.
If you’re just maintaining the institution, it’s difficult to see beyond the old and allow the new to emerge.

See more on Twitter.

The Upside of the Downturn

2009-06-30T07:26:22Z

While we recognize that nothing good can be said about the misery that people are experiencing as a result of the current financial crisis, it is a “rare moment when we all face the greatest possible opportunity to make ourselves winners for a long time to come,” says Geoff Colvin in The Upside of the Downturn.

In his standard brisk, clean and engaging style, Colvin argues that the recession has created a new world in which the U.S. economy will be less consumer driven and consumer focused, social attitudes toward working, saving, spending, and borrowing will shift, the world economy will become less U.S. centric, investors will remain spooked for a long time, and, as you might expect, government will play a much larger role. He contends that the best companies will respond in ten particular ways beginning with resetting your priorities. To borrow from Max DePree, "the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality" and then to understand exactly what that means for you and your organization or as Colvin puts it, “to understand the challenges of what you see, is the first crucial step toward finding opportunities in this recession.” Colvin then advises:

Protect Your Most Valuable Asset. Layoffs are more costly than you think, and are not always the best answer. Toyota’s policy of keeping employees on staff during recessions (and giving them extra training) means that when the economy turns up, those employees are in the plant, ready to go, and far better prepared than the employees of any competitor.

Reexamine Your Strategy and Business Model. Excellent companies are certain of their core, and focus their attention there. Kohl’s actually spent more on marketing in the recessionary 2008 holiday season than it had in 2007, because marketing is an essential part of their core.

Create New Solutions for Customers’ New Problems. Instead of cutting prices, Hyundai offered US consumers a different value proposition that was entirely original – buy one of our cars, and if you can’t make your payments, you can give the car back to us and we’ll cancel the debt. While sales of most carmakers fell, Hyundai’s sales rose by double digits.

Get Fitter Faster. American Express recently made an unusual offer – pay off your outstanding balance and close your account, and we’ll send you a $300 prepaid gift card. They figured it was worth paying people to clear their debts now rather than let those debts go bad, at a much higher expense to Amex later.

In addition, he advises that we engage the outside world, manage for value, price with courage, understand all our risks, and don’t forget to grow ourselves. He says that faced with the fact that the recession pushes us past our current abilities, the question is “how will we respond to being shoved outside our comfort zones.” Now “is the very best time for us to surge, to push ourselves ahead and develop the new skills and abilities that will change us and stay with us forever.” Agreed.

5 Leadership Lessons: Business Wisdom from Bob Seelert

2009-06-24T09:15:45Z

How do you gain business wisdom—the understanding to “do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons”? It is most easily gained by learning vicariously from other people’s experience like from the lessons found in Start with the Answer. Bob Seelert, Chairman of global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, has written a compendium of wisdom gained from over 40 years of wide-ranging experience in the business world.

Seelert says that the most fundamental lesson is that you need to start with the answer in mind and work your way back to the solution. “You have to know where you are going, have the courage to take the first step to get there, and constantly hone the means by which you will reach your destination. Today, too many companies are solution-obsessed and don’t spend enough time up front figuring out the destination, the true answer and outcome they are aiming for. You can waste a lot of time and money implementing solutions if you don’t know where you are going.”

He has organized his lessons into eight categories representing aspects of personal development in business life: preparation, building and managing a career, business strategy, business operations, finance and economics, leadership, culture and communication, and personal spirit and style. From the very practical advice of “Your Clothes are Talking about You” (when in doubt, dress up) to the more subjective perspective of “Evaluating High Performers,” (consider the size of the footprint) anyone in any context will benefit from the 95 down-to-earth experiences and lessons offered here.

Seelert encapsulates each instructive story with a lesson:

BOB’S WISDOM: Leadership is intangible. The first step is earning the trust of people you work with. Everything else follows from that.

BOB’S WISDOM: Taking the best of the past, and linking it to the present and desired future is the most dynamic way to build a business.

BOB’S WISDOM: Once you’ve identified the company’s best resources, blowing up the old and beginning anew can be the fastest way to put a troublesome past behind you.

BOB’S WISDOM: Closing a plant is a sad day, so treat people adversely affected as fairly as possible. Your larger obligation though, is to make the company a great place for the employees who are staying on.

BOB’S WISDOM: When a message is important, never be afraid to repeat yourself. People rarely get it the first time around.

lead:ology - Leaders versus Managers: A False Dichotomy

2009-06-22T17:56:43Z

The 1989 leadership classic On Becoming a Leader contains what has become one of the most discussed and frequently misunderstood concepts in leadership literature. I’m referring to, of course, Warren Bennis’ insightful list of twelve differences between leaders and managers. Before we begin, let me reproduce the list:

The manager administers; the leader innovates.
The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
The manager maintains; the leader develops.
The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
The manager has an eye always on the bottom line; the leader has an eye on the horizon.
The manager imitates; the leader originates.
The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his own person.
The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

The distinctions made by Bennis are important as they expose two very different and equally valuable mindsets. As each works best in the presence of the other, it is to our advantage that we possess and practice both. As the Teacher so wisely expressed in Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for everything.” It is through a developed sense of awareness and experience that we are able to determine which mindset we need to employ, relative to what and when.

We are inclined by our own nature and encouraged by our educational system to favor management. We are content reproducing what we already know—or think we know. We have learned from the neurosciences that the mind is wired for efficiency and is most comfortable reproducing a limited range of responses to help us to better manage and make sense of our world. Management would seem to be our biological default as we tend toward the status quo—to equilibrium—and often for very life-sustaining reasons. But we need leadership to move us out of our comfort zone and grow to new possibilities. It is in the tension between the two—management and leadership—that we can be effective and relevant. Thus, both of these roles are needed not only on a personal level, but also on a larger organizational level if we are to function efficiently and grow.

Management is based on the response to the questions we had yesterday. Today, some of those responses are still valid, many are not. Leadership is needed to address the questions of today and bring us to a different place. This is especially true in times of great change. As noted in Presence:

“Our actions are most likely to revert to what is habitual when we are in a state of fear or anxiety… . Even as conditions in the world change dramatically, most businesses, governments, schools, and other large organizations, driven by fear, continue to take the same kinds of institutional actions that they always have… . At best, we get better at what we have always done. We remain secure in the concern of our own worldview, isolated from the larger world.”

Debates about which role is better misses the point. The list isn’t about labels. It’s about different roles that produce different results. By creating a leader-manager distinction, by pulling them apart, we get a better sense of how they fit together. John Kotter makes this clear in What Leaders Really Do:

The point here is not that leadership is good and management is bad. They are simply different and serve different purposes. The fundamental purpose of management is to keep the current system functioning. The fundamental purpose of leadership is to produce useful change, especially nonincremental change. It is possible to have too much or too little of either. Strong leadership with no management risks chaos; the organization might walk right off a cliff. Strong management with no leadership tends to entrench an organization in deadly bureaucracy.

Management gives leadership a foundation to work from. Leadership keeps us growing and relevant. If a leader can not manage what they have created, then their leadership is not effective and serves no end.

I asked Warren Bennis about his thoughts concerning the Leader-Manager distinction twenty years after they were first put into print:

Unfortunately and unintentionally, my '89 book, On Becoming a Leader doesn't emphasize the role of and the need for effective managers. I thought then and still think that the distinction is a valid one. At the time I wrote about the differences, I believed that most organizations were under-led and over-managed. I still believe that's true of many of today's organizations. So while I still believe that distinction is still important, what I should have made much, much clearer is that both are important and sometimes those qualities are embodied in many exemplary leaders and, to repeat myself, both are important. If I had made that clearer and added that it's ridiculous to get polarized on the horns of a false dichotomy, I think a lot of folks would have welcomed that distinction. The best leaders I know are both leaders and managers.

Warren Bennis’ list of distinctions helps us to understand that as leaders, we can get so busy serving the system that we actually create barriers to leadership. We can easily fall into the trap of leading only to manage what we have created. Leadership is about continually asking the right, challenging questions. It is about renewal. Curiously, we manage better when we chose to lead.

* * *

What History Can Teach Us About Leadership

2009-06-18T08:15:56Z

A couple of years ago while browsing in a local bookstore in Naples, Florida, for something interesting to read, I came across Hannibal Crosses the Alps by John Prevas. It’s the story of the ancient Carthaginian commander who accomplished something that neither his allies nor his enemies thought possible: He led an army, including horses and elephants, over the Alps in winter and then defeated his Roman adversaries in their own backyard.

As I reviewed the book in Forbes magazine, two thoughts occurred to me about leadership: (1) Anyone who accomplishes something great, something unique, whether in business or in politics, often does so by defying the conventional thinking of his time. (2) Even though more than two thousand years have passed since Hannibal crossed those Alps, the elements of what it takes to be a successful leader have not changed. They are simple and obvious, or should be: motivating those who follow you to share your vision; inspiring through example; a sense of duty and responsibility to those who trust and depend on you; the capacity to see a problem and the skill to fix it; developing and maintaining a proper perspective on yourself in the face of success or adversity; setting and achieving goals; understanding people’s limits and knowing when to drive hard and when to ease up on both subordinates and competitors.

The ancient Greeks tell us that nothing is more important than good leadership for the harmonious functioning of society and nothing hurts more than the lack of it. Our times cry out for leadership— political, financial, and even ethical. Many people are asking today, “Where have the good leaders gone?” In a recent New York Times column about global gridlock entitled “Missing Dean Acheson,” David Brooks posed this question, noting that Americans are about to enter their nineteenth consecutive year of Truman envy. Ever since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Brooks observed, people have yearned for a return to a time when leaders such as Harry Truman and George C. Marshall were able to create successful, forward-looking global institutions and policies to confront the challenges that faced America at the end of the Second World War. Brooks asked, “Why can’t we rally that same kind of international cooperation to solve our current economic crisis, confront terrorism, slow down global warming, limit nuclear proliferation and a host of other pressing problems today?”

Ours is a complex and stressful time. We face the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s and foreign policy issues that if left unsolved could bring us to the brink of nuclear war. Rising new powers in the world today, such as China and India, are changing traditional Western ways of conducting worldwide politics and business. Old powers such as Russia and the members of the relatively new Europe an Union are seeking to advance their influence in the international community. Responses to these developments require effective leadership. The financial crisis and America’s recent foreign policy setbacks can be traced directly to a failure of leadership.

But where do we turn for leadership, and what do we want in our leaders? History is one place to look. The past is filled with leaders who possessed extraordinary capabilities, enjoyed tremendous success, and directed societies that experienced problems similar to our own. Their successes and failures as leaders can help us develop a valuable perspective as we grapple with our problems and try to prepare for the future. Similarities between those who ruled the empires of the ancient world and many of today’s corporate and political leaders are remarkable. Times and circumstances may change, but the principles of sound leadership do not.

Adapted from Power Ambition Glory: The Stunning Parallels between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today . . . and the Lessons You Can Learn by Steve Forbes and John Prevas

Iconoclast: Learning to Think Differently

2009-06-17T20:42:13Z

Creativity and imagination is in the space between revolutions and everyday life. They fuel change and most of the time, progress. Bringing new thinking to old patterns is the job of the leader. In a sense, leaders are to varying degrees, called to be iconoclasts. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns says that not only is an iconoclast a person who does something that others say can’t be done but their mind functions differently than the average mind. Those functions are perception, fear response and social intelligence.

Because the mind is designed to function as efficiently as possible, it serves as its own barrier to being an iconoclast. (The brain runs on about 40 watts of power. There is partial truth to the myth that you only use 10-15% of your brain. We use all of our brain, but only a fraction of the brain is active at any given time to conserve energy.)

In Iconoclast, Berns explains that “when confronted with information streaming from the eyes, the brain will interpret this information in the quickest and most efficient way possible.” This “efficiency trap” blocks us from seeing alternatives to what we perceive as real; it imposes limitations to what we believe is the only way of seeing something. Iconoclasts don’t allow themselves to fall into the efficiency trap as often as the average person does. “Automatic thinking destroys the creative process.” Berns adds—and the implication is very important—“iconoclasts, either because they were born that way or because they learned how to do it, have found ways to work around the perceptual shortcuts that plague most people.” Thus, we can learn to do this too. Fundamentally, we need to create novel experiences.

Iconoclasm begins with perception….Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories….Unfamiliarity forces the brain to discard its usual categories of perception and create new ones….When confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.

The iconoclast’s fear response—specifically the fear of uncertainty and the fear of public ridicule—are different than that of the average person. Fear is damaging to creativity in the workplace. “In many people the brain would rather avoid activating the fear system and just change perception to conform with the social norm.” You can not eradicate the fear response but you can learn to tame it. “Neuroscience is showing how the rational part of the brain can regain control over such toxic emotions like fear.”

The individual who feels overwhelmed by uncertainty or social stresses in the workplace may benefit from taking on projects that have defined endings. Although these may increase in the short term, their completion may actually decrease overall stress.

All of this is well and good, but to be a successful iconoclast, you must be able to sell your ideas to other people. That boils down to social intelligence. “As well-respected, upstanding citizens, connectors form the glue of local society. Iconoclasts, by their very nature, upset this delicate web of connectedness. But iconoclasts need connectors. Without them, the iconoclast stands no chance of achieving success. Sometime iconoclasts have to create the connectors themselves.” Additionally, it is a challenge to leaders to be able to find ways to connect iconoclasts to others so that their talents and insights can be capitalized on organizationally.

It is extremely rare for one person to have all three qualities of a successful iconoclast. But you can compensate by building a team around you in areas where you aren’t strong. Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently is supported by research and persuasive stories. The immediacy of the topic will be helpful not only to individual development, but to organizations seeking to bring new thinking to old patterns of thought.

The Disease of Me

2009-06-15T08:11:27Z

"The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation"
—Hailliard

Pat Riley argues that whether we know it or not, all of us are team players and it is through the team that we find significance. Yet the team can be undermined by the Disease of Me. In The Winner Within, he describes it as the overpowering belief in the importance of oneself. “The most difficult thing for individuals to do when they’re part of the team is to sacrifice. It is so easy to become selfish in a team environment.” The Disease of Me is ever present, but it can be anticipated and overcome. Riley lists the following symptoms of the disease:

Inexperience in dealing with sudden success
Chronic feelings of underappreciation
Paranoia over being cheated out of one's rightful share
Resentment against the competence of partners
Personal effort mustered solely to outshine a teammate
A leadership vacuum resulting from the formation of cliques and rivalries
Feelings of frustration even when the team performs successfully

Riley cautions, “Without that sacrifice, you’ll never know your team’s potential, or your own.”

What about the teams in your life? Are they due for a checkup?

Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions

2009-06-12T17:34:53Z

Why do good leaders make bad decisions? This question is at the heart of Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell’s book, Think Again.

The authors begin their analysis with the notorious 2005 hurricane Katrina disaster. As the retelling of the events are explained, you might even find yourself compelled to stop waving your placard, change your t-shirt, pull up a chair and listen for understanding. A series of understandable mistakes—errors of judgment—were made by very competent people. The same kinds of errors of judgment that we all make.

A bad decision starts with at least one influential person making an error of judgment. But normally, the decision process will save the day: facts will be brought to the table that challenge the flawed thinking, or other people with different views will influence the outcome. So the second factor that contributes to a bad decision is the way the decision is managed: for whatever reason, as the decision is being discussed, the erroneous views are not exposed and corrected.

Drawing on the findings of brain research, they conclude that “our brains use two processes that enable us to cope with the complexities we face: pattern recognition and emotional tagging.” Neither of these is inherently bad, in fact they are quite helpful and necessary much of the time. The problem is when we are faced with new types of input that do not match up with our previous experiences. This most often leads to flawed thinking.

They describe four conditions under which flawed thinking is most likely to happen. The first two are pattern recognition problems and the latter are emotional tagging issues.

Misleading Experiences: If we are faced with unfamiliar inputs—especially if the unfamiliar inputs appear familiar—we can think we recognize something when we do not.
Misleading Pre-Judgments: When we connect previous judgments or decisions that are inappropriate or inaccurate with our current situation, they disrupt our pattern recognition processes causing us to misjudge the information we are receiving.
Inappropriate Self-Interest: “The reason why self-interest is such a pervasive influence is that it is particularly difficult for decision makers to be self-aware about how their personal interests are affecting their choices….We are particularly prone to screening the effects of self-interest from our conscious mind.”
Inappropriate Attachments: While attachments add greatly to our lives, they can also trap us without realizing it. This includes inappropriate attachments to colleagues when cuts must be made or to a strategy we have an emotional investment in.

How do we avoid these traps? Good judgment is not enough. It is important to take the steps necessary “to guard against the inevitable distortions and biases that can lead to a flawed decision.” The authors offer four safeguards:

Provide decision makers with new experience or data and analysis to reduce the risk of failure at source.
Introduce processes that challenge entrenched views.
Include a governance team to stand in the way of any flawed judgments that make it past the decision team.
Put in place a special ongoing monitoring and reporting process from the beginning of the decision-making process.

You can’t eliminate bad decisions, but Think Again offers a fresh and readable method to reduce the risk of them.

Books To Read Before You Lead - Paradigms

2009-06-11T18:44:46Z

If you were born in the 80s you probably missed Joel Barker’s Future Edge (now titled Paradigms) that was published in 1992. It is an important book and is well worth going back and reading. It will help you to imagine new possibilities by examining your own thinking.

While the word paradigm has been worked to death, understanding the rules that govern the behavior and thinking of individuals and groups is no less important. Paradigms reflect our view of the world and to a large extent predict our behavior. Adam Smith wrote in Powers of the Mind, “When we are in the middle of the paradigm, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm.” The point is, if you can change the rules, you can change the future.

Barker argues that paradigm pliancy is the best strategy in turbulent times. Paradigm pliancy “is the purposeful seeking out of new ways of doing things. It is an active behavior in which you challenge your paradigms on a regular basis by asking the Paradigm Shift Question:”

What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but, if it could be done, would fundamentally change my business?

And then asking the question:

Who outside my field, might be interested in my unsolved problems?

For leaders he offers the following thoughts. Keep in mind that managing and leadership are not mutually exclusive functions, but are best served in the presence of the other.

You manage within a paradigm.
You lead between paradigms.

That is the relation of paradigms to leadership. What allows you to “manage” within a paradigm”? The rules, the guiding principles, the system, the standards, the protocols. Give a good manager the system and a manager will optimize it. That is a manager’s job. It is called paradigm enhancement.

Paradigm enhancement is taking the rules and making them better….Paradigm enhancement is what the Total Quality movement is all about. To be able to paradigm enhance is crucial to success and is the domain of the manager.

But you don’t manage between paradigms. Remember, leaving one paradigm while it is still successful and going to new paradigm that is as yet unproven looks very risky. But leaders, with their intuitive judgment, assess the seeming risk, determine that shifting paradigms is the correct thing to do, and, because they are leaders, instill the courage in others to follow them.

This kind of change, paradigm shift change, occurs during less than 10 percent of our lives. Yet it is as important as the paradigm enhancing that consumes the other 90 percent. I don’t say it is more important, but it is surely equal.

To be successful in the twenty-first century, you will need to be competent at both these kinds of changes for your organization to flourish. One without the other will not work.

Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way

2009-06-08T19:15:47Z

Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way by Ron Karr provides more evidence that leadership isn’t just about a few titled people at the top. It is a choice to think differently. Leadership is a choice to think differently about anything you do. Selling is no exception and is closely linked to the functions of a leader. Leadership is not always about people we “lead” in the conventional sense, but is frequently about people we must influence. Karr writes, “Whether you sell a product, a service, or an idea, you must be able to influence other people as leaders do.”

It begins with being able to and understanding the need to engage others in continuous strategic conversations as part of the normal way of doing things—a process Karr has termed Integrated Dialogue. Integrated dialogue is a conversation of shared purpose that draws people out “to create a powerful relationship, one that identifies whole new zones of mutual opportunity, addresses far-ranging issues, and positions you as an invaluable resource: a leader.”

As with all leaders, sales people too will succeed when they fully appreciate the many relationships inherent in their success. Sales leaders lead a whole cast of people in their own organizations from the customer service, tech people to accounting and senior management. In addition they lead not only their customer or end user but also many points of contact in their customer’s organization that are likely to have some input on the buying decision like operations, accounting, purchasing and senior management. Gone are the days where everything filters through the salesperson. “Your success as a salesperson depends on your ability to build and sustain coalitions both inside and outside your organization. You must create and lead the coalition, no matter what you are selling.” This will resonate with any leader:

Your job is to manage multiple constituencies and alliances, and to use those alliances to identify new and better ways of generating the desired results. Your job is to do what most salespeople don’t do: lead the conversation with your prospects and customers about the results they need, the problems they have, and the obstacles they face.

To make this happen you must possess and develop the belief that you have everything you need and can build on that, the belief that you can improve any area of your life, everything is possible, preparation maximizes your potential, and your customers—the people you need to influence—come first.

After laying the groundwork, Karr defines and explains the seven traits that great sales leaders share:

Visualize: Begin with the end in mind
Position: First impressions lay the foundation for the entire relationship
Build Alliances: They reach out; sales leaders leverage their influence
Ask Good Questions: Sales leaders ask powerful questions that uncover opportunities to enhance customer outcomes and results
Create Powerful Value Propositions: They create and deliver a powerful value proposition based on a simple formula that is based on both tangible and intangible incentives that motivate buyers to take action
Communicate Persuasively: They inspire action in others by delivering messages that are congruent with the larger purpose
Hold Themselves Accountable: Personal accountability matters. People are accountable to other people—not organizations

Karr demonstrates how to move from task-oriented selling (which is what most salespeople do) to purpose-oriented selling. These principles are worth bearing in mind on a personal development level as well. Karr encourages, “The bottom line is that you have the ability to increase your sphere of influence and sales just by the way you act toward those you are trying to influence.” Change your conversations, change your outcomes. Leaders in any field will find much here to assimilate into their daily activities. Read it and grow.

Newswire: Herbert Hoover and His Times

2009-06-05T15:22:48Z

The following is from the American Heritage magazine Summer 2009 edition and is excerpted from Herbert Hoover (The American Presidents Series: The 31st President, 1929-1933). It is a good analysis of Herbert Hoover’s time in office.

The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time
by William E. Leuchtenburg, American Heritage Summer 2009

On March 4, 1929, Herbert Hoover took the oath of office as the thirty-first president of the United States. America, its new leader told the rain-soaked crowd of 50,0000 around the Capitol and countless more listening to the radio, was “filled with millions of happy homes; blessed with comfort and opportunity.”

He spoke in a monotone, but his words were oracular. “We are steadily building a new race, a new civilization great in its own attainments,” he claimed. “I have no fears for the future of the country. It is bright with hope.” One assertion more than any other articulated the theme of his inaugural address: “In no nation ‘are the fruits of accomplishment more secure.”

Through much of his term, critics would fling those words back in his face. He had been, in the phrase of the day, asking for it. “Never in American history,” observed a journalist in 1932, “did a candidate so recklessly walk out on a limb and challenge Nemesis to saw it off.”

Hoover believed that the country was going through a short-term recession much like that of 1921, and hence that drastic remedies were not required. Businesses continued to report year-end profits; the stock market recovered by several points; and, in contrast to past panics, no large bank or corporation had collapsed. Hoover has been roundly criticized for not realizing that the stock market crash signaled the onset of the Great Depression, but no one else—including liberals—had any perception that the slump would last over a decade.

The president had no sense of how to reach out to a desperate nation. Hoover, observed Sir Wilmot Lewis, Washington correspondent of the Times of London, “can calculate wave lengths, but cannot see color. . . . He can understand vibrations but cannot hear tone.” The biographer Henry Pringle wrote that Hoover didn’t use a single gesture when speaking in public but read with “his chin down against his shirt front—rapidly and quite without expression.”

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