Who is culpable, for instance, for extraordinarily high CEO wages?   Considerable finger wagging has been going on in the press at CEOs about this.  It isn’t the CEO who sets his or her own salary; it is the board of directors.  Yet boards of directors were invisible to the press in these stories.  Often our assumptions may lead us to conclusions that malign others without full consideration for the facts.  This disturbs me greatly but I know I have done it, too.  Why is that?

Walking with a friend, I mentioned a situation that was just this kind of wrongful maligning, and she asked me, “How long does it take to find a witch?”  She was referencing the days in Europe from 1480 to 1700 when legally sanctioned and official witchcraft trials resulted in from 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It was decided someone was a witch, and that person was immediately burned at the stake.  Perhaps it is popular to not trust CEOs because the media are on a CEO witch-hunt.

While we’ve moved beyond flagrantly burning people at the stake, we still do character assassinations every day in the form of judgment and gossip.   Some of this finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting is projection — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible.  So I ask myself, is my promise about business leaders leading with integrity and love and listening for people’s greatness about convincing leaders to be that?  Or is there some culpability in how I, and others listen for a leader to be great?

I believe there’s a pandemic malaise that creates its own dissonance and a noise within which leaders are trying to lead.  The expectation that leaders should be responsible for all wrongs is abdication of personal responsibility, and in the United States anyway (where I live), it is a serious problem.

I would like for EVERY individual in an organization, be it government, non-profit or for-profit, to SEEK OUT and TAKE UP their part in building successful entity, using the energy they spend criticizing leadership and putting it into taking personal responsibility to own their own accountability for results.

For more on this topic you can request on this website, www.accountabilitypays.com, the larger thesis from which this excerpt was taken.

Seeing into the future is rather like running in heavy fog eyes wide open.  I was recently invited to participate in a strategic planning session for a not-for-profit organization where the CEO wants to see 30 years out into the future.

I proposed a people analysis as part of this process because there is an assumption that some of those folks who are currently in the organization will still be there to carry out this vision.  Some will not, the math doesn’t work.   Age is not your friend in this exercise.  Or in Steve Jobs’ case, illness was not his friend nor was his illness our friend.  I don’t know about you but I miss him!

In the fuzzy environment of the global financial crisis, technology advancements, and unpredictability of the environmental issues, there is something exciting about skipping all of those considerations and saying “this is where we WANT to be.”

Our favorite recent runaway successful leader Steve Jobs said, “ A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them.  Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” That is vision in the face of a crumbling economy, yes? At Accountability Pays we use all Apple products.

Vision is an inside job that belongs to the leader. Moreover, it differentiates a successful leader from an also-ran leader.   But it isn’t enough to just envision the future, without giving it legs.  Warren Bennis said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Jobs could have believed in putting quality products into the market and flopped but general consensus says he tenaciously adhered to a winning combination of innovation AND a veracity about quality AND an incredible sensibility for design to differentiate those products from ANY competitor.  He had the capacity and the drive to translate his vision into more market share than any company anywhere in any industry.

Here is a teaser quote to send you on your way to visioning.  Who said this?  “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?”

Your comments are welcome and invited.  Feel free to give your examples, your stories.

Transparency is core to trust, which has been covered in prior blogs.  So is authenticity.   Here is what the foremost author on emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Primal Leadership:  Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence says about authenticity and leadership.

“The triad of self-awareness, self-management, and empathy all come together in the final Emotional Intelligence ability: relationship management.  Here we find the most visible tools of leadership — persuasion, conflict management, and collaboration among them.  Managing relationships skillfully boils down to handing other people’s emotions.  This, in turn, means that leaders be aware of their own emotions and attuned with empathy to the people they lead.

“If a leader acts disingenuously or manipulatively, for instance, the emotional radar of followers will sense a note of falseness and they will instinctively distrust that leader.  The art of handling relationships well, then, begins with authenticity: acting from one’s genuine feelings.”

In building the biotechnology company Amgen, that “over the next 20 years went from a struggling entrepreneurial enterprise into a $3.2 billion company with 6,400 employees, they delivered consistent profitability and growth.”  How did CEO George Rathman avoid what is called by Jim Collins the “entrepreneurial death spiral?”  Amgen was a culture of discipline. Rathman “understood that the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline — a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.”  Jim Collins, Good to Great.

If you have been following my blogs you know Jim Collins sings my favorite song.   Get the right people paired with discipline and business grows, authentic dialog and transparency are natural expressions in the organization.  Get the wrong people and it is impossible to get great results from poor performers with excuses in lieu of results. Before dismissing these people, however, some authentic mirror work is required to determine if it is their ineptitude, or your lack of leadership that is the source of poor performance in results.  Last week’s blog invited the possibility that you are accountable for everything.  Certainly you are accountable for choosing to fire, tolerate, or educate poor performers.  Before choosing, are you measuring what matters?

In a fully functional, authentic business environment, your key executive team will have authentic conversations making it popular to take responsibility, to seek failures sooner, to be completely transparent.  And Daniel Goleman points out that fully functional leaders have conversations that include real feelings, not posturing and not pretending.

Is this your daily experience?

Personally, I got appointed the babysitter when I was the oldest of 4 children.  It has taken me YEARS of committed introspection into the topic of accountability and what is available out of being accountable, to bring any lightness to this topic.  I did name my company “Accountability Pays,” so I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless we want to suffer the consequences, we are accountable at work and at home, however we define it.

What if we could bring fun, play and ease to the conversations we have about being accountable?  The conversations I’ve usually had were focused on making someone wrong.  And if you’ve gotten to adulthood, you already know how that plays out!  It is not pretty for either party, when being made wrong or making another wrong.  It is the blame game, sound and fury signifying nothing, some version of “If you were different, if you were responsible, if you did things like I do them then all would be fine.”  That conversation does not usually go well UNLESS you are committed to coming out the other side with both people whole and complete, no kidding.  One of my fellow thinkers on this topic said it this way;  “The relationship is committed to workability for everyone.”

If being accountable — all of us being accountable — were fun, playful, easy what would be available?

Some of you think I’ve been smoking some illegal substance.  No, I have not.  What I know from my own experience, and sharing experiences with others, is that when everyone is accountable (clear, focused, results oriented) then the entity (relationship, organization) exudes vitality.

Think about a time when everyone did what they were supposed to do and you experienced what some call “flow.”  Stuff just got done!  People supported the whole with whatever was required, without being asked, even if it didn’t fit neatly into their job description.  Almost every one can think of one experience like that, and it was memorable, but seemingly not repeatable.  Why is that?  What I just described is the experience of being accountable with fun, play, and ease.

Here are a few quick rules that I’ve found work to bring fun, play, ease — and therefore vitality — to conversations for accountability.

1. Don’t make people feel that they are wrong for doing it the way they are currently doing things, even if you don’t think they are right.
2. Engage them in a discussion of what is possible if all pull on the oars of the boat headed in the same direction.
3. ASK for their impression of what could be done, and LISTEN.
4. Assume that if they do not understand you, it is because you did not communicate fully, not because they were stupid/not listening/whatever you made up about them.
5. Remind them of how great it will be when celebration time comes around.
6. Make them feel part of something bigger than themselves, something that is important.
7. Watch them come alive.  Watch them dip into their inner reserves.  Watch them perform beyond your expectations, as a valued and valuable team member.

Why do I say all hell breaks loose?  Because any organization cannot move together in syncopation without clarity of a common future view, and people cannot do their jobs if there isn’t clarity of their required contribution.

When clarity is present, people have the freedom that is created by clear boundaries.  Employees are freed up to do their work, not protect themselves from attacks by others with different expectations.

Clarity is influenced by the amount of confidence one has in one’s opinion, which is all we really have regarding our view of the world.  Research into successful people in the workplace by Dr. Dan Harrison* showed a paradoxical relationship between two independent variables:  confidence in one’s opinions (certainty), and the tendency to reflect on many different viewpoints (open/reflective).

As a leader desiring to provide a clear vision of the future, or clear boundaries around the responsibilities of a particular role you would want enough certainty to have clarity.  Caveat:  an excess of certainty is dogmatic, when others hear the underlying message, “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right, and I am not changing my opinion.  Ever.”

Conversely, too much open/reflective is inconclusive.  The line outside the door of an inconclusive decision maker who is taking input on a decision favors the last guy in line!  Those in between will hear, “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea too!”

The optimal relationship between these paradoxical positions is high certainty AND high open/reflective; the tendency to explore different viewpoints and formulate conclusions without becoming fixed in one’s opinions.

My friend Mary Lore wrote a book called Managing Thought.  In addition to selling the book, she delivers it for free one page a day.  http://www.managingthought.com.

Managing our thoughts and clarity go hand in hand.  Can you see this connection?  Your thinking clearly precedes providing clarity for anyone else?  Clear thinking comes from managing thoughts by asking the right questions, by engaging in thinking deeply and long-term about the impact of your words, your actions, and the potential responses from others.  For instance, being reactive (what Mary calls the “faithful-dog brain” and our reticular activation system) will focus on making us right.  The problem is, when stuck in that thinking, you risk becoming dogmatic.

*Evaluation of the impact of paradoxical relationships is unique to the Harrison Assessment which is a hiring assessment.  Dr. Harrison is coming to San Diego June 29th and will present a workshop in the morning on this topic.

Practical Implications: The results provide the most granular view to date of how individuals with complex meaning-making may think and behave with respect to complex change initiatives. This provides insight into the potential future of leadership. Social Implications: This study is an initial exploration of what leader development programs may need to focus on in order to cultivate leadership with the capacity to address very complex social, economic, and environmental challenges.

So what is consciousness?  Webster’s top four definitions are “1. a. the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself; b. the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact; c. awareness; especially concern for some social or political cause. 2. the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind. “

Consciousness is often associated with a connection to a higher power, an inner knowing that comes from reflective states such as meditation.

Being conscious means you really do not lose your temper when you might have before.  It means attending to the triple bottom line (profits, people, planet) when strategically planning for the company’s future — recycle, give employees time and money to support causes outside the organization.  It means getting involved in the industry to create sustainability practices that shift the entire business model, not just your own organization’s actions.  It means caring about things like the environment, politics and its effects, the global state of affairs.  For example, if your business uses dry ice, find a replacement.  Dry ice pollutes.

It means setting aside your ego’s need to be liked in exchange for something greater than your organization and greater than your self-interest.  Consciousness is access to deeper meaning, deeper awareness.  It is access to fulfillment not found anywhere else.  And yes, it takes intention and discipline.

I would wish it for everyone who leads anywhere, any time.  That means all of us!

Where have you seen it?  When have you practiced?  Have you missed the opportunity and kicked yourself?

Generative is an adjective, which means it describes something — in our case, performance.  The definition of generative is: having the power or function of generating, originating, producing or reproducing.  Thank you Miriam Webster.

Let’s stick with generative as “having the power or function of originating or producing.”  That means something moves or changes when generative power or function is applied.  There is a powerful energy associated with generating.

My friend and mentor Bill Schwarz in Atlanta wrote a book called The Generative Organization.  The book is somewhat autobiographical, somewhat mystical.  Its story line focuses on moving an organization from reactive behavior to inspired performance.  In it he points out that if you only see what others see that cause a reactive state to exist — things like recurring events, problems, quick fixes, long-term consequences — then you are still part of the problem.  Until you, as a leader, go through the other four generative steps, including recognizing leverage points and aligning the organization around them, to see yourself as the designer of the organization, you are still at the effect instead of being the cause of a future.

This is a deep conversation greater than the length of this blog, so I encourage you to read Bill’s book.  You will find it at www.inspiredperformance.org. I have personally witnessed an entire company go through his weekend program and come out a different kind of company — generative, inspired, and ready to get focused on what matters.  Talk about courage.

Being truly generative makes a difference that no one will ever forget, not just for the company, for the larger community.  When your organization is organized to do that, you are truly generative.

Is your organization organized to be truly generative? If not, what do YOU think stands in the way?

Serious truth seekers don’t fit well in organizations that stifle the flow of information, or place significant value in the pecking order/hierarchical management structure.  They don’t take kindly to gossip or the blame game, either. Then again, truth can be a slippery slope.

Mark Twain said, “Get the facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please.” Twain was speaking of human nature.  Is there really THE truth? Facing the truth may be admitting that you don’t have the answer.  Or you can’t make the deadline, in which case the sooner you communicate that truth, the sooner others can adjust to a new reality.

Once you have identified what you think is the truth, what do you do with it? Is it YOUR truth, or do you hold it as universally true for others and assume they are on the same page as you? Do you hold it up for scrutiny?

In businesses that are working hard to move toward a common goal, most of the breakdowns stem from the damaging impact of believing others have access to, or share your version of the truth.

I conduct a team-building exercise with senior executive teams, first assessing participants’ behavioral preferences using the Harrison Assessment then identifying their version of the company’s challenges.  So the inquiry is made in the context of individual impressions of how the company is held back from the goals.  Once everyone is debriefed and feedback is gathered, then together we examine their “filters” on the truth. This four-hour team exercise sucks the judgment right out of the room and makes way for a whole new version of truth exploring, putting it where it will best serve, i.e. exploring the boundaries of one’s own version of the truth.

If the leadership of the company is focused on measuring people against the right indicators — actions that produce desired results — and everyone is questioning their own truth, the resulting cultural synergy is a perfect backdrop for stunning breakaway success.

Is your organization poised for success by exploring “truth” in healthy ways?

Look further and you will find many companies distinguishing themselves by pursuing the triple bottom line; Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Panera Bread, The Container Store, Whole Foods — being purposeful in a larger sense while pursuing self-interest.  The proof of effectiveness is in the financial, social, and environmental effects and is often associated with the monikers “sustainable” organization, or corporate citizenship, or conscious capitalism.  For more examples,  http://www.forbes.com/impact-30/lander.html.

Besides being the conscious thing to do, the triple bottom line has appeal for ‘A’ players — people who want to work for a purpose greater than themselves, who will work harder for the privilege of making a difference.

Breakaway Success is accomplishment beyond measure.  And yes, to get there, measure, measure, measure!  But only measure what is meaningful.

What is meaningful?  Most accountants measure what has already passed, and that has to be measured — sales, profits, ROI, G&A, etc.  Nothing new here and not necessarily meaningful to top performers, particularly younger workers who decide where to work based on the green/social capital of the organization.

And yes, financials are important. The Harvard Business Review, January 2010 issue’s presentation of The Best-Performing CEOs in the World said their objective was to present a long-term measure to assess CEOs and to inform CEO searches and succession planning, looking at stock returns, the fundamental scorecard for CEOs of public companies.  They looked at three measures:  country-adjusted return, industry-adjusted return and change in market capitalization during their tenure.

The following are words and phrases emanating from the 2011 CEO Summit on Conscious Capitalism. http://vimeo.com/33738729. Well-being of the people, the world.  Value for stakeholders.  I win, you win, the world wins.  Businesses operating from higher ideals that animate business. Profit is the byproduct, and purpose underlies that.  If you make a difference, often the money will take care of itself.

Paradoxically, NOT focusing wholly on profit will provide more profitability because the focus is on win-win.

How is your organization measuring its success?  I am eager to hear your stories.