“ Lean is about being accessible to and more influenced by the voice of the customer and having the flexibility to adapt and adjust as you move along.”

Running time 25:10

Have you participated in a lean start-up process? What was your experience?

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Summary
Intro – Lean and lean start-ups – how are they the same and how are they different.
1:24 – Lean start-ups focus on customer discovery combined with agile techniques.
4:57 – Lean looks at how to eliminate waste and focuses on customer value.
10:10 – Using the lean start-up model, setting up hypotheses to test a product or service.
14:43 – Types of organizations and/or products that utilize a lean methodology.
16:14 – What does leadership look like in lean start-ups?
19:12 – Incorporating lean methodologies in the larger organization.
22:41 – Scarcity of knowledge workers in various industries.

Resources
Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything, Harvard Business Review
Kaizen Continuous Improvement

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Partnership & Possibilities: A Podcast on Leadership in Organizations
EPISODE 4: THE STAR

“In a team situation, having a star performer becomes a threat and an opportunity. If a person is a star performer, their job is to spread their skills around to other members, to mentor and pair with people so other people’s skills are lifted up to where theirs are.”

Running time 40:50

Have you encountered a star performer in your organization? Was it a positive experience? How did your organization respond to the star performer?

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Summary
Intro – Brief overview of a case study from the Harvard Business Review: the unmanageable star performer. How does an organization leverage a star performer for the benefit of all?
8:40 – Acknowledge the star performer’s achievement and introduce new opportunities to them to become even better.
13:05 – An organization should prepare itself for the potential exit of a star performer. There should be a succession plan in place to mitigate risks.
21:21 – Having a star performer can be a threat and an opportunity.
30:05 – Beyond generating revenue, star performers can possess rare skill sets that are in high demand and which can make the person indispensable.
38:37 – Star performers can enhance their standing in the organization and increase the knowledge base by sharing their skill set with others in the organization.

Resources
Case Study: The Unmanageable Star Performer, Harvard Business Review

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“Using self-awareness and self-knowledge for self-management seems to be key in becoming an effective leader.”

Running time 26:38

What instruments have you experienced that have been helpful to you? When has really good self-awareness and self-knowledge helped you self-manage as a leader? If you’ve experienced the Hogan, tell us about it. We’d love to hear your stories.

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Summary
Intro – Using assessments in organizations to develop self-awareness and self-knowledge to become effective leaders.
1:55 – Introducing the Hogan assessment – richer, more subtle and provides more nuanced information.
5:56 – The Hogan assessment considers three parts: individual values, leadership potential and challenges or derailers.
13:12 – Comparing the Hogan assessment with the Strengthsfinder by Gallup.
19:54 – One differential aspect of the Hogan assessment – it can be used to map teams.
23:50 – Assimilating assessments like the Hogan in academic programs.

Resources
Hogan Assessment
Myers-Briggs
StrengthsFinder

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“Leadership really comes from the nature of the questions you ask rather than the statements that you make.”

Running time 32:54

What questions have been particularly powerful for you? What questions have you asked or have been asked that have made a difference in your life or which have stimulated learning in others (and in yourself)?

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Summary
Intro – What role do questions play in leadership? What does the process of asking questions look like?
3:32 – Using questions to help discern patterns as described in the Human Systems Dynamics model
9:00 – Leaders do not have to know all the answers – asking questions is not a sign of weakness, rather it opens the door to innovation, engagement and new learning opportunities for all agents in an organization
13:49 – Asking questions without judgment enables the asker to be open to receiving new information without preconception
18:34 – Having a holistic understanding of the approach you use to asking questions is essential
22:53 – Using a set of guidelines in asking questions can also lead to a greater depth of understanding and learning
30:19 – Change begins to occur from the moment the question is asked

Resources
HSD Institute Wiki
The 2R Manager: When to Relate, When to Require, and How to Do Both Effectively by Peter E. Friedes
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work by Marilee Adams PhD
Insights You Can Use by Esther Derby
The Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander
Fearless Change by Linda Rising

What resources have you found useful as a way to think about improving your ability to ask good questions? Email us at leadershippodcast@gmail.com and we will share them with our audience.

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“Membership in the secret club carries with it the need to behave in certain ways that may not be your personal inclination. My advice would be to get some experience to get a clear-eyed understanding of what it looks like because it’s not a one size fits all.”

Running time 32:37

Have you made it in the secret club? What has your experience been like? If you opted out of the secret club, what prompted you to turn away and go in a different direction?

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Summary
Intro – How do you get into the secret club?
7:37 – The secret club ideology may impact or alter one’s view of the meaning of leadership.
11:17 – What does it mean to be part of the secret club? Being aware of the demands and how will it impact your professional and personal life.
15:01 – Secret clubs are not one size fits all – understanding the differences and knowing what to expect.
20:17 – Leadership at the top – It’s about willing to work hard and building field experience.
25: 12 – The effect of generational differences on organizational leadership.
27:55 – Skewed perception of what it means to be at the top.

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“One of the guiding thoughts about simple rules is that not only are they pretty short and action oriented by starting with a verb, but they are also generalizable and scalable so that they can help you in many different kinds of context in any situation, whether it’s a big or small decision to be made.”

Running time 30:54

Are you using simple rules in your work? Have you found ones that work particularly well for you and your team? Do you have questions about how simple rules can be applied in your organization?

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Summary
Intro – Introducing simple rules: how we use them, why we use them and how they might be different then values or goals.
4:49 – Simple rules allow for cohesive action and serve as guidance for the individual and/or team.
7:46 – Looking at the difference between simple rules and values or goals.
11:00 – Simple rules are a reflection of the organizational culture.
14:08 – Simple rules serve a different purpose then a checklist.
17:53 – Do simple rules change over time? Simple rules tend to be the most stable because they reflect the organizational culture and it is the culture that needs changing before the simple rules.
21:40 – Simple rules are also different from a company’s tagline or vision. There may be echoes of each in the simple rules, but they are not simple rules.
28:08 – “In a world of hard trade-offs, [simple rules] are one of the few ways managers can increase alignment, adaptation, and coordination all at once.”

Resources
Simple Rules Foundation
Simple Rules for a Complex World by Donald Sull
Human Systems Dynamics
HSD Institute Wiki
Amazing starlings murmuration – YouTube Video

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“How can a leader be an innovator or expect innovation in their own organization if they’re not willing to experiment with the idea of innovation about what leadership is and how you do it?”

Running time 29:00

How is leadership defined in your organization? Does it stay confined at the top or is it a shared function throughout the organization?

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Summary
Intro – Leadership in complex adaptive systems.
8:20 – The simple rules explained and exemplified.
11:49 – Applying a flexible approach to achieve change in a dynamical organization.
16:50 – Viewing organizational change in terms of human systems dynamics.
19:04 – Making the leap towards understanding human systems dynamics.
25:29 – A new way of looking at leadership: shared leadership – not defined or represented by only one individual in an organization.

Resources
Human Systems Dynamics
Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

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“To really accept that the world and change are emergent is to accept a kind of stance that says ‘I really can’t know the future and I really can’t do a whole lot to prepare for it’ and that makes people, including me, sometimes uncomfortable.”

Running time: 38:45

What kind of changes are you encountering in your organization? How is your view of change changing and what are you learning from that?

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Summary
Intro – Change is changing quickly. How do organizations and leaders adapt to this “new” change?
2:52 – Looking at change as an emergent process vs one that is linear, predictable and manageable.
4:41 – Discerning patterns to give us clues on how to approach change.
10:38 – Defining three different kinds of change: static, dynamic and dynamical.
16:22 – Dynamical change in a volatile complex world.
17:50 – Three conditions in an organization to look at what’s going on: containers, differences and exchanges.
21:24– HSD models help navigate through the chaos that may arise in complex problems.
25:15 – Applying models to real life situations through an Adaptive Action analysis.
30:23 - Whatever issue you are dealing with, you really have to be careful with where you start, because that dictates what conditions, differences and exchanges you look at and the level that you choose to intervene.
36:20 – Taking very small very simple steps along the way, not letting things get too big and complex or complicated until you know what’s happened.

Resources
HSD Institute
HSD Institute Wiki
Accelerate! By John Kotter

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More and more I think of Agile Retrospectives as an opportunity for the kind of learning that leads to real adaptive action in complex situations. I’m also looking forward to the publication of Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization by Glenda Eoyang and Royce Holladay.  Adaptive Action is a close cousin with our flexible framework for designing retrospectives.

If, as Steve describes, you want retrospectives that generate valuable learning, look for just enough structure in the group process design to help team members learn, think, and choose useful improvement experiments.

“You can’t really be a good negotiator if you can’t hold boundaries …And to hold the boundary you have to be able to see it, you have to be able to perceive where the boundary lies.”

Running time 45:49

What kind of negotiations are you involved with every day? Have they been successful or unsuccessful? Where are you using power and love? If you’re a woman, what strengths are you using in negotiations and where are your boundaries?

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Summary
Intro – Women and negotiations – gender dynamic.
3:47 – What’s the purpose of negotiation – it’s about how to move forward and how choices are made between individuals.
9:00 – Defining negotiation based on context and environment.
10:45 – Participative negotiation: when a third party is essential to a positive outcome for all parties involved.
16:42 – Compromising in a negotiation and having the power to say no.
22:44 – The importance of setting boundaries in a negotiation.
28:15 – Understanding the needs of and where the other person comes from can be valuable for a successful negotiation.
33:35 – Demonstrating respect for all parties involved in a negotiation is critical.
37:56 – Acknowledging the presence of power and love in every single dynamic instance for an effective negotiation.
42:50 – Incorporating the elements above and arriving at a win-win situation based on consensus leads to a beneficial outcome for all parties.

Resources
Breakthrough Bargaining by Deborah M. Kolb, Judith Williams
Center for Gender in Organizations
Managing Participation: A Critical Dimension of Leadership by Victor H Vroom
The Power of a Positive No by William Uri
Solving Tough Problems by Adam Kahane
Power and Love by Adam Kahane

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