Minding Gaps

Kudos for Walter Isaacson's Biography of Steve Jobs

2011-10-30T16:14:19-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

For the last four or five days I have been immersed in Walter Isaacson's fabulous new biography of the late Steve Jobs, which was published only last Monday. It is a terrific read, and I can recommend it enthusiastically to anyone with even a passing interest in business, leadership, or technology—or even, I am tempted to add, narcissistic personality disorders.

There's no question that Jobs changed the world far more in the last fifteen or twenty years than all but a handful of people do in their entire lifetimes. Along with the creative geniuses he assembled at Apple and Pixar, he pretty much invented or reinvented whole industries, from computers to animated movies to telephones to retailing to music and more. The company he founded in his mom and dad's Silicon Valley garage grew up to be the most valuable corporation in the world, surpassing the likes of Sony and IBM and Exxon.

As I write, I myself am listening to the purity of a Chris Botti trumpet solo ("When I Fall in Love") on iTunes, which arguably saved the music industry from itself. Santa knows how much I want an iPad under the tree this year. When this old ThinkPad dies, and it will, my next computer will most likely be a Mac, too.

Isaacson duly credits the Apple founder with a long list of triumphs, but his biography of Jobs is anything but servile or sycophantic. Rather it is bracingly candid, finely balanced, richly insightful, and powerfully revealing. Isaacson, who has also written acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Benjamin Franklin, personally interviewed Jobs more than forty times, and he talked to anyone else who knew Jobs well, from Joan Baez to Yo-Yo Ma, from Larry Ellison to George Lucas, from Steve Wozniak to Bill Gates, and many more. Just weeks before Jobs died, Isaacson sat on a bed with Jobs, who lacked the energy even to get up, and sorted through old family photographs.

But as insistently iconoclastic and innovative as Jobs was, he was also a temperamental tyrant, whose frequent tirades reduced colleagues and competitors alike to self-doubt, paralysis, and years or even decades of hostility that didn't have to be. In reading Steve Jobs, you just want to grab the man by his black Issey Miyake turtleneck and shake some empathy into him.

Here are a few of my margin notes:

A billionaire several times over, Jobs could have lived an insular life like his friend Larry Ellison but chose not to. Though large and comfortable, his residence in a Palo Alto neighborhood was completely unprotected. No guards, no gate. Thousands of people knew exactly where he lived. Anyone could ring his doorbell. When Bill Gates came to say good-bye a few months ago, he parked in the driveway and knocked on the back screen door, and Jobs's daughter, who was doing homework at the kitchen table, just nodded and pointed to the living room where her dad was sitting.
Jobs cried often. For most men, including me, crying does not come as naturally as perhaps it should. It came easily to Jobs. Sometimes it was out of appreciation, as for purity or truth or beauty; other times it was out of anger or jealousy. Occasionally he used it just to get his way.
Apple colleagues coined the phrase "reality distortion field" to describe their boss's frequent and longlasting delusions. Jobs never let cold facts get in his way. If he wanted to believe something else, he did. He would also convince others of his world view.
Far from decisive, Jobs would take forever to make simple decisions that take other people hours or even minutes. He never got around to furnishing, even minimally, a 17-room mansion he owned in ritzy Woodside, California (except when he lent it to the Clintons on visits to their daughter at nearby Stanford, and then he would rent furniture for it). After proposing to his girfriend, he didn't buy a diamond ring or even mention marriage again; nine months later, she bolted. Only then did he get serious. When he and his new wife bought their Palo Alto home, he took weeks to decide what brand of washer and dryer to buy.
Humility was for other people. He was all about arrogance and intimidation. He refused to put license plates on his car, and he routinely parked in stalls reserved for handicapped people—sometimes even stradding the painted line to take up two stalls. He also had a reputation for body odor. For years he insisted that his strict vegan diet made attention to personal hygien unnecessary. Everyone else disagreed, to no avail.
He was profane, and he was binary. Everything was either this or that, with no possibility for shades of gray. Designs for new products were always "shit" until their final, slight modification. Then they were perfect.
The fact you cannot replace the battery on your iPod, or watch a Flash video on your iPhone, or create something on an iPad, is a reflection of Jobs's personality. He insisted on total control and abject simplicity, often at the expense of the convenience and utility of Apple products. He even initially fought the user-created proliferation of apps, which now make the iPhone and iPad so wonderful.

Steve Jobs is jam-packed with insights on Steve Jobs. I can't wait for the inevitable movie, and you shouldn't. My binary advice: Buy the book now, and read it now.

A personal note from the blogger: I appreciate your continuing interest in Minding Gaps and your patience while I have been away. My desire for a respite from the blog was deeper than anticipated, and then the press of business prolonged my absence. I am back now, on a less-imposing schedule. You'll find new posts here once a week (or more often if and when I have something topical to contribute). Remember, you can search for subjects in the box at the upper right.

—TJL

Next Week

What People Fear, and What They Need from a Leader

Our New Twitter Address: @LeadAloud

2011-08-15T15:22:41-05:00

Would you take a moment and change your Twitter address for us to @LeadAloud? Or begin following us at that address if you aren't already? We're consolidating several Twitter addresses to just one.

Also, if the spirit moves you, kindly pass along @LeadAloud to any of your friends and colleagues who have an interest in leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement.

And in the meantime, remember to check back here (at www.MindingGaps.com) for more short essays. We have nearly 500 original essays on various aspects of leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement just fingertips away.

We're taking a respite for reflection, restoration, and hopefully a little renassance. We'll be back in a month or two on a regular basis.

—TJL

The Work Product of Leadership Is Engagement

2011-08-11T09:41:25-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

You can easily tell the difference between a manager and a leader in business.

Managers are striving for alignment. They are concerned first and foremost with consistency. They want to make sure that the people on their team or throughout their organization are getting things done to such-and-such a standard, on time and within budget, and by various other constraints such as process controls, laws, safety precautions, quality parameters, and so forth.

Moreover, because managers naturally want to avoid or prevent any shortcomings, they are on the lookout for negative deviations from the norm. They want to spot problems early, so they can intervene and correct them before they explode. It follows that managers are just a little on the pessimistic side, ever watchful for anything that may signal an issue.

Now every business worth its name needs good, solid managers. Businesses make commitments to stakeholders such as customers, investors, employees, and suppliers, and to third parties such as regulatory agencies, communities, and so forth. They must honor those commitments. The better the managers they have, the more commitments they will keep, and the fewer disappointments they will experience.

But any business that wants to grow and prosper in the future cannot settle for good managers. It also needs leaders—and not just in the corner office or the C-suite but completely up, down, and across the organization.

Leaders are different from managers. Leaders strive not for alignment but for engagement. They are concerned first and foremost not with consistency but with change and commitment. They want to make sure that the people on their team are bringing everything they can muster to the challenge at hand, which is typically so big that it demands significant risk and perhaps even sacrifice amid great uncertainty.

Common scenarios for this kind of commitment may involve merging two companies, spinning off part of one company as a stand-alone enterprise, restructuring an organization in such a way that its teams and reporting relationships change, introducing new products to the marketplace, adopting a process modification, expanding or consolidating or restructuring territory, facing down a new competitor or product, integrating a new technology, and any number of others. Just look at companies such as Ford, Kodak, IBM, Virgin, and many others. You will quickly see the degree of change they have undergone and continue to undergo.

Now because leaders are focusing not on consistency but on change, they're looking to their people for full involvement—physically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally. They're on the lookout for positive deviations from the norm: ideas, suggestions, thought-provoking questions. The leaders themselves see their role as supporting, not controlling, the people who may or may not rise to the challenge. Thus the disposition of leaders is just a little optimistic, in the belief that people can contribute more with the right kind of support.

Companies need managers to meet the demands of the present. They need good leaders to meet the opportunities of the future. Anyone in any position of authority should view himself and herself as both manager and leader, and every company should equip its managers with the skills and tools to lead as well as manage.

Next

The Paradox of Respect

Publisher's Note

2011-08-07T19:16:30-05:00

Beginning this week, new essays in Minding Gaps will appear just once each week while we focus on writing a book. Also, for the time being, our twice-monthly feature Numbers will appear irregularly and infrequently.

Keep in mind that nearly 500 original essays on various aspects of leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement continue to be available on this site. Just scroll down or, for a particular topic, enter a term (a relevant word or phrase) in the search box at the right.

At some point in the future, we will return to our regular publishing schedule. We appreciate your forbearance until then.

—TJL

{Side Roads} Climbing Mount Rainier in the Middle of Night

2011-08-05T06:40:44-05:00

Life shouldn’t be all work and no play. So a few years ago we began publishing Side Roads, an irregular, infrequent feature here at the Minding Gaps blog. It recognizes and celebrates passions, milestones, excursions, pleasures, relationships—everything that we ultimately work for. It’s all about life’s joys, both little and large.

We post these diversionary Side Roads columns only on occasion and only on weekends. The rest of the time, we stick to the mission of this blog, as explained on the Our Philosophy page.

Our previous Side Roads columns introduced you to my heretofore secret recipe for pesto; recounted my climb to the summit of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park; took you along on an African safari; shared the story and a few pictures of a visit to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; looked at the 90-year rivalry between two National Football League teams, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears; and described a classic Midwestern snowstorm.

Today we recall my ascent of Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot volcano in the Cascade Range just south of Seattle, in the middle of night ten years ago this summer. (For the record, I am no longer climbing mountains.) Mount Rainier is the fifth-highest mountain and the single most-strenuous climb in the lower 48 states. Though stopping a little short of the summit, I still regard the climb as successful for lots of good reasons. Here’s the whole story.

Mount Rainier

by Thomas J. Lee

The first goal of any mountain climber is just to come back alive. That is especially true for tenderfoots like me on a heavily glaciated peak like Mount Rainier. So anyone who returns from climbing Rainier has already achieved his primary goal. If that’s a little simplistic, it’s also as real as a heartbeat; some climbers don't make it back.

There are two kinds of amateur mountain climbers. I call them the “reachers” and the “searchers.” For some climbers, reaching the peak is everything. The destination is all that counts, and they are determined to get there. For others, the journey matters more; the adventure and thrill are paramount. I was always proud to be a searcher.

All along, summiting this 14,411-foot volcano was secondary to the experience and to the knowledge and insight I was searching for. I took away profound lessons for my life, a grasp of nature's incredible power and beauty, terrific memories to last forever, and lots of deep, soulful satisfaction.

True, it all came at a cost: nasty scratches and hockey-puck bruises, feet full of blisters, a high-altitude sunburn, grime that wouldn’t wash away, legs that couldn't climb stairs, and a body that ached so completely and so severely that I constantly had a jar of Advil within reach. Worse yet, I was registered to run the Chicago Marathon a couple of months later, and running was out of the question for a couple of weeks.

I actually made it farther up the mountain than I had hoped, and I am convinced that we would have made it all the way if we had departed high base camp according to our plan, preferably by 1 a.m. and certainly by 1:30 a.m. at the very latest. Instead, my team finally embarked at 2:45 a.m., which was much too late (thanks to our guide, who chose this occasion for some extra winks).

The beauty we saw was phenomenal. Even from the elevation I reached, we were looking down at Little Tahoma (the state’s third-highest peak, visible to the far left in the photograph above), Mount Adams (the second), the ash-gray and hollowed Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker (the fourth) and, in Oregon, Mount Hood and the Three Sisters. The mountain snow was glaringly white but the glaciers were pockmarked with granular pumice. The air was thin, and the sunlight was almost painfully brilliant. We wore SPF30 sunblock on any exposed flesh and even inside our nostrils. People without sunglasses have actually burned their retinas.

After a day of training, we had set out in the morning and reached high base camp, at 10,100 feet, by 5 p.m. It was already a grueling climb with 35-pound packs on our back. Camp Muir turned out to be nothing more elaborate than a tarpaper shack with sheets of plywood on which we could stretch out our sleeping bags. But by the time we got there, it looked like an antebellum mansion. We enjoyed a marvelous one-course dinner consisting of all the hot water you could want.

Each climber carried his own pre-packaged heat-and-eat food like oatmeal and soup, along with plenty of Gatorade and candy bars. Stretching out on the hard plywood felt wonderful after climbing all day.

Our party consisted of 24 climbers and six professional guides, a couple of whom had done Everest. It was a group of overachievers. Among the climbers were four physicians, an attorney and his two grown kids, several executives, a Harvard grad student from Israel, an accountant, a magazine publisher, a couple of college students, a high-tech entrepreneur, a small businessman, a Microsoft programmer from India, a honeymooning couple, a manager, and I. There were 19 men and five women. From the main base (5,400 feet) to high base camp we hiked all together, through montane meadows and up rocky bluffs and finally onto year-round snowfields (different from glaciers inasmuch as snowfields don’t move).

After reaching Camp Muir, we had time for dinner and then bunked down for some ersatz sleep with blindfolds and earplugs. By 7:15 p.m., it was quiet. Everyone was tired. We dozed lightly until being awakened at 1 a.m.

That seems early but it was really too late, and we didn’t set out for a final attempt on the summit until much later. It's a strenuous, 11- or 12-hour hike just from Camp Muir to the summit and back. Thus, setting out at 2:45 a.m. means that you don’t return to high base camp until mid-afternoon, after the sun has had six or seven hours to bake the front of glaciers. That creates a serious hazard of avalanche, especially in late summer.

Just three days earlier a huge wall of ice (probably the size of an eight-story building) had come crashing down over the main trail across the Cowlitz Glacier, one of 26 glaciers that so gloriously drape Mount Rainier's summit. We would normally have followed that very trail. Because of the debris, we detoured around it; and from a high precipice we could survey the truck-size blocks of ice now littering the trail. Anyone in the way would surely have been killed by these colossal snowballs.

The night sky was bright with a million stars when we embarked from high base camp. We were roped together with carabiners in teams of four, each team three or four minutes apart and headed by a professional guide, as we traversed glaciers and climbed through ridges of rocks and
scree in the darkness. We all wore crampons and helmets with headlamps. Within each team we were usually about 10-12 feet apart from one another, but in especially dangerous spots we were “short roped” to about three or four feet. That way, if one of us fell, he would have no momentum to carry down the others.

To compensate for the late start from Camp Muir, my guide wanted to hike double-time up the mountain. I could do that for a few hours, but at my age and at such a high altitude, I just couldn't keep it up even with all my physical training. (On registering for the climb, everyone is advised to be in the best shape of their life and to train rigorously for months beforehand. I was and I did, but hey, there’s only so much a guy can do.) I also determined that, at least for someone like me, to continue on would be to court more danger than I wished. In that situation, a single misstep could be fatal. Better to be humbled and alive than to be proud and dead, I figured. Finally, after climbing steep inclines for four or five hours through the nighttime cold and a face-scraping wind, I had to confront my own limits.

We were atop a steep, rocky ridge known appropriately as Disappointment Cleaver when a couple of us (the Microsoft guy and I) chose to hunker down and watch the sun rise slowly on the mountain's eastern flank. Though the summertime temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was gusting to 40-45 mph, it was phenomenally pretty, unlike any other dawn I have ever seen: first a scarlet eyelash, then a brilliant splash of magenta across the horizon for more than an hour.

Later a few more climbers came down the slope in retreat. We roped ourselves together, found our sunglasses and goggles, and began the slow trudge back down to high base camp in the light of day. Only then did we realize how close—just three or four feet, really—we had hiked in the darkness past glacial crevasses so deep we couldn't see their bottom even in daylight. The glaciers that we had crossed were massive (several miles in length and 300-500 feet thick) and repeatedly fractured with crevasses, some of the cracks just inches across but others wide enough to swallow a city block of houses. It was incredible.

Back at Camp Muir, we met up with others who had retreated earlier. All of us waited for the return of those who had soldiered on. After regrouping, it took several more hours of steep, knee-buckling descent (in double-time again!) to get back down to the main base camp.

By then, we could scarcely stand and couldn't walk another step. Our feet were covered with blisters. Our shoulders felt like stone. We were all in serious pain. But we were thrilled that we had tried, and we knew that we were forever changed by the experience. We were also profoundly grateful; two other climbers died in high-altitude falls nearby the previous week, so our own blessings were real indeed.

What did I learn from it? Well, things little and big.

At the very least I learned how to use an ice axe to stop sliding for miles down and off a mountain, whether on my face or on my back, and whether feet first or head first. I learned how to walk in crampons across a glacier and up a wall of ice or fragile, old igneous rock. I learned that volcanoes are covered with pumice that stings your face in the wind. I learned how to breathe at high altitude (frequently and fully expel the carbon dioxide from your lungs). I learned the importance of carrying as light a load as possible up a mountain; every pound, every ounce, counts for far more. I learned just how big a volcano can be and just how deep a crevasse can rive its glaciers. I learned the joy of eating cold pizza for breakfast and consuming a dozen candy bars a day while still losing five or 10 pounds. I learned that I really don't enjoy wearing a beard, and so it's gone already after only a couple of weeks.

I also learned some things that other people learn earlier in life. I learned to be much more careful than I have been, for each step I take through life may be my last, figuratively and literally. I learned that a timely start spares haste. I learned to cherish the moment, to see more in life than I have seen in the past. I learned that things around us may be vastly greater than we, but that we are no small creatures either. I learned that respecting both the fragility and the power of nature is a real and a vital paradox. I learned that reliance on oneself and on one's team is the same thing, for all of us must do both; we must respect both the individual and the team. I learned to go slow, one little step after another, ever upward. I learned to see compelling beauty in self-fulfillment and in the satisfaction of a challenge well met. I learned that we have more courage and strength in our being than we know but, for me anyway, it will be found only for the searching, never for the wishing.

The following quotation, attributed to the legendary Swiss mountaineer Edward Whymper in 1871, was posted inside the door of that tarpaper shack at Camp Muir: "Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end."

Indeed. Indeed.

Coming Next Week

The Work Product of Leadership

Leaders Must Know and Respect Internal Gatekeepers

2011-08-03T16:32:16-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

It's natural, perhaps even inevitable, for managers and leaders to assume that they hold the authority in an organization. After all, even a junior manager commonly has the power to hire and fire, and senior management can merge, sell, or even shutter a company. That is real authority.

Alas, it is only one kind of authority: the legal authority to run the company. There are other kinds of authority, distributed throughout the organization, that also bear heavily on whether, when, and how anything gets done and on whether, when, and how anything really changes.

Managers who neglect these informal centers of authority often delude themselves into thinking that their mission or strategy is fully deployed, that people up, down, and across the company are acting in accordance with the strategic direction. The managers are surprised when the results don't bear out the promise of their strategy, and they wonder why things apparently just hit a wall.

Savvy, successful leaders approach things differently. They look for these gates of leverage and then recruit the gatekeepers to support the strategy. They realize that each gatekeeper can determine whether a strategy slows, stops, or proceeds through the gate. The more gatekeepers a leader has in the fold, the more likely the strategy will move through these gateways.

Here are four kinds of authority—each its own strategic gatekeeper, if you will—well beyond the legal authority that managers already have:

Economic authority is the power of the purse. Externally, economic authority rests with customers who decide whether to buy the product of a change. Two legenday case studies in business school are the decisions by Ford Motor Co. to introduce the Edsel in 1958—it would last only three years—and by Coca-Cola Co. to change the recipe of Coke in 1985. In both instances, customers rejected the new products. Internally, it is whoever exercises practical control over spending, which typically depends on the size of an organization, its controls, and its authorization levels. It can reside with the receptionist who holds the key to the petty cash drawer, or it can be the auditors who wave a flag on p-card abuses.

Technical authority resides with holders of any unique competency that a strategy or change requires. It can range from engineering (the design of packaging or manufacturing equipment, say) to supply chain to legal counsel, and more. Any of these gatekeepers can open or close their gate. When it closes, so do the prospects for a strategy or change initiative.

Functional authority belongs to anyone who is in an informal position to close a gate and thereby stymie a change. Some years ago I stopped at a high-tech store—one of a nationwide chain—only to discover a complete absence of sales personnel on duty. Customers were just milling about. The sales team was upstairs in the store manager's office loudly protesting a new compensation system. All afternoon, customers came and went without buying anything, as there was no one to make a sale. The sales personnel were exercising their economic authority. It's little wonder the company declared bankruptcy shortly afterward.

Social authority is informal influence among others that rests on personality, social order, and networks. Some people have outsize influence over the thinking of their peers. When it comes to a business strategy or change initiative, they can put the brakes on without the leader's knowledge. Generally speaking, it isn't the office cynic who has the most influence, as many employees just discount that person's constant quibbling. Nor is it the office cheerleader, whose enthusiasm grates on nerves. Rather it is the sober, thoughtful person in the middle whose voice others seek out and respect.

There are other kinds of authority, as well: moral authority, political authority, and strategic authority, just to name a few. The wise manager is alert to all of them.

The need to recruit these critical gatekeepers comes back to the crucial differences between managing and leading. Managers have official command of their team as a matter of the organization's hierarchy; people are assigned to a team and to a manager. Leaders must earn their influence, because the people they would lead have a choice as to whom they will follow. To lead successfully, leaders must enroll as many supporters as they possibly can.

Coming on Friday

Climbing Ice-Covered Mount Rainier

{Numbers} New Managers Get Little or No Training in Leadership

2011-08-01T05:55:00-05:00

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception two years ago, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business and in management, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

by Thomas J. Lee

American companies have not consistently been rising to the challenge of cultivating the next generation of leadership, it appears.

According to a nationwide survey sponsored by CareerBuilder, promotions to management usually come with little or no formal training, and many managers continue to flounder in their new roles.

Some 26 percent of managers said they were not prepared to take on their new challenges, and 58 percent said they received no training at all to meet the responsibilities of leadership.

Managers identified their biggest challenges as resolving issues between co-workers on their team, motivating team members, and reviewing employee performance.

Primary concerns that employees have about their manager are playing favorites (23 percent), not delivering on promises and not listening to concerns (both 21 percent), not providing feedback (20 percent), not motivating (17 percent), and providing only negative feedback (14 percent).

Coming on Wednesday

Leaders Must Know and Respect

Other Kinds of Authority

Quote / Unquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

2011-07-29T07:43:34-05:00

Recently we resumed publishing a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Our quotation today comes from the leading voice of American Transcendentalism in the 19th century. The wisdom of this quotation is as valid and as relevant today as ever.

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, laid the cornerstones of Transcendentalist thought in the United States. A reaction to both stolid religious doctrine and objective intellectualism that found no room for intuitive faith, Transcendentalism offered a path for spirituality that resided in the individual's heart and mind. It required no confirmation from either ecclesiastical or academic authority.

A prolific essayist and frequent lecturer, Emerson had a silver tongue for aphorisms, many of which have survived more than a century since his death in 1882. You may recall one from ever-present dorm posters in college: "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." You can easily find many others in a quick online search.

One of my favorite Emerson quotations speaks to every business manager and, for that matter, any leader in any walk of life:

What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.

We have often used this venue to explain that words count, for they set expectations, but that decisions and behavior count even more as communication, for they either validate or invalidate the words.

Moreover, we have asserted that nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of: body language, facial expression, and vocal intonation. It is actually the totality of what you think and do.

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say—to employees, to customers, to shareowners, and to regulators—at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. All too often they devote more time to crafting just the right words than to committing themselves to following through.

Take a few moments to reflect on Emerson's quotation, and then consider the following questions:

Why is it so common to say one thing and do another?
What are some inherent difficulties in seeking to speak with authority and influence?
Why can it it be especially problematic to say the "right thing"?
How often do you fail to live up to your own words? Who is usually the first to notice it? Do you sometimes not notice it at all?
What built-in constraints can you identify to talking? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression? Vocal intonation? Or something bigger?
What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more?
What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
How are you working to lead with more integrity?

Coming on Monday

Data on Leadership Training

Coming on Wednesday

Types of Authority

How to Manage Yourself (Part 4 of 4)

2011-07-28T11:29:19-05:00

(Fourth of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

We come to the end of the our series of essays on how leaders should manage themselves.

Regular readers of Minding Gaps are familiar with our basic distinction between managing and leading, and with our argument that good managing is at the core of good leadership.

We define both managing and leading as a function not of position but of work. For both, their nature derives from their purpose. But that is where the similarity ends.

You can think of managing as the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. Typically it involves meeting deadlines, coming in under budget, complying with standards or procedures or requirements, or producing or selling a sufficient number and quality of something.

Leading is quite different. You can think of it as the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

Now to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. That's right: you.

Only by managing yourself can you lead others. That's because only those leaders who embody the change they advocate will be taken seriously by the people they wish to lead. Wannabe leaders who cannot or simply do not embody the change will be unable to lead. Their would-be leadership will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which we began on July 11, we have broken down the day-to-day implications of managing yourself. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. The second installment was on managing your thoughts. The third installment was on managing your attitude and energy. For the final piece, we turn to managing your own behaviors.

* * *

Last week we asked you to imagine a big circle in the sky with three equidistant points at 2 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 10 o'clock. You were to label the 2 o'clock point Attitude, the 6 o'clock point Behavior, and the 10 o'clock point Consequences. Along the rim of the circle, we asked you to draw curving arrows between the points clockwise, such that Attitude points to Behavior and so forth.

We initially used this model to highlight the importance of attitudes. Today we will use it to throw a spotlight on your own behavior. Everything you do sends a message of one sort or another to other people.

Here's an example from one company, certainly not atypical. Senior executives have gone hoarse talking about the importance of safety. They are genuinely concerned about the physical well-being of employees. But they have also maintained aggressive financial and operational targets. That sets up an inevitable conflict.

One senior manager told me how it plays out. Mid-level managers, knowing they will be held to account for their performance, tend to cut corners to save money and speed production. Those corners can impinge on safety. A common scenario in such circumstances is directing a worker to use broken equipment, perhaps having been set aside and waiting to be repaired, "just this once" in order to complete something on time and under budget. Workers have a right to refuse such assignments and to blow the whistle on the manager, but in practice few do so. They don't want a reputation for whining.

Similar conflicts can arise over all kinds of cultural and operational vectors: product quality, customer service, process improvements, innovation, design, and so much more.

Here are some strategies to use in managing your own behaviors on the job:

Translate your business strategy to actionable behaviors that apply to everyone, and to behaviors that also apply only to managers, and to behaviors that also apply only to executives. Make certain you are visibly and consistently demonstrating those behaviors, especially when you are in a hurry and tempted to neglect them "just this once."
Scrutinize your day-to-day behaviors for the implicit messages they send, especially messages that run counter to formal and verbal strategic messages that establish direction, norms, and priorities. Neglecting to do examine your routine behaviors is all but inviting to be perceived as a hypocrite, though that's the last thing you want to be or to think of yourself as.
Pay particular attention to patterns of incidental behaviors, such as showing up late for meetings, frequently going to lunch with the same colleagues, rolling through stop signs, and so much more. These things can be grist for griping by the people on your team. Violating rules is never permissible simply because someone of high rank is doing the violating. Think goose and gander.
Adopt a new rule for yourself: no multitasking when it involves anyone else's time, voice, or dignity. That means not checking your email in anyone else's presence, and it means not searching for anything online while someone else is speaking. You must be careful about even taking notes on a computer, as it will appear to others as though you aren't paying attention.
Consider challenging cultural conventions in your organization to send an implicit message that you appreciate doing things differently. For example, if you are a relatively senior manager, and subordinate managers always go to a senior manager's office for meetings, switch it around. Better yet, commit to spending most of your day out and about rather than closeted in your office.
Make strategic communication a routine, day-to-day priority rather than a weekly, monthly, or quarterly event. After all, if the people throughout your team or operation don't know what you're thinking, how can you possibly expect them to act on it?
Control your temper. Yes, work is stressful, but that is never an excuse to lose it. If you have frequent difficulty with this, get some help. If you don't, it can derail your career or worse. In the 21st century, even the frequent use of profanity is out of place.
Be sure you are present and accessible physically (that's the easy part), intellectually (that's more difficult), socially (that make require a personality transplant for some of you), and emotionally (that's especially difficult for many of us). You must show up for work as a complete person, simply because it is easier for other people to relate to a whole person than to an empty suit.
Remember that the single most powerful means of communication you have is the decision. Which decision, you ask? That one. And that one, and that one, too. Every decision you make defines your character in the eyes of other people.

Gandhi's essential message for posterity was: You must be the change you seek in the world. Any leader who wants to leave a legacy of change must take the first steps. That means managing himself.

Coming on Friday

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

If Open and Honest Communication Is a Problem

2011-07-21T07:57:04-05:00

(To read all our posts on leadership, communication,

change, and engagement of employees, just scroll down.)

You may work in a high-performance organization. Perhaps your company is already on a list of best places to work, either locally or nationally. Perhaps your employee survey scores are above the norm. Perhaps you are an employer of choice.

Or you may work in a challenging environment. Perhaps you have a rumor mill that moves at warp speed. Perhaps you have front-line supervisors who are openly cynical. Perhaps your employee surveys come back with low marks for "open and honest communication."

Or—and more likely—you may work at an organization, large or small, that is good but could be a whole lot better.

Wherever you are on this continuum, you and your managers can benefit hugely from our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication. High-performance companies can move to the next level. Struggling organizations can begin to get their act together. Middle-of-the-road companies can identify their next opportunities for improvement.

A great deal is at stake. Because the competition is always changing, no organization can remain where it is. Always, you are either improving or worsening relative to competitors. Product quality, personnel costs, employee engagement, and ultimately customer satisfaction and your profitability are on the line. At the very least, as our economy recovers, every company must worry about retaining the loyalty of its talent.

We have a solution: our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication, an intense, sophisticated, on-site workshop that changes the way managers and supervisors communicate business strategy and information, manage their own priorities, and build affirming relationships of mutual dignity and respect.

Here are just some of the benefits of Boot Camp:

Bottom Line Value. Research shows that between 2.1 and 2.5 percent of an organization’s revenue is lost to the active disengagement of people. That’s as much as $2.5 million for every $100 million of revenue, and it is just for the active disengagement. (Passive engagement adds still more to the cost.) Recover it, and it goes straight to the bottom line.

Big Impact. Leadership and management are two different things. So are engagement and alignment. (Remember this: “Assign to align. On page to engage.”) The communication that drives each is different, too. Use the wrong one, and you get the wrong result. We bring clarity and explanation to these important distinctions. Executives will understand the importance of distributive leadership—after all, no one can be everywhere—and managers will understand why they must stand up as collateral leaders of the enterprise.

Practical Examples. We have scoured top-tier companies for best practices, and we bring them to you. Your managers will see practical examples from companies like Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, and many others. Your people will remember the vivid stories for years to come.

Quantitative Data. We present hard, factual, quantitative data to support our argument on the power and value of communication around business strategy. You and your managers will get facts and figures on change, trust, engagement and disengagement, perceptions of managers by employees, ROI, message clutter, employee frustrations, rumors, and so much more.

Simple, Powerful Models. Our flagship models, the Rainbow and the GearBox, have been used by such iconic companies as Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch, Harley-Davidson, Royal Dutch Shell, FMC, John Deere, Northwestern Mutual, and the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The Rainbow Model identifies unintended, and previously unnoticed, credibility gaps: mixed messages, muddled messages, mute messages. Another model, the GearBox, serves as both a structure and a self-assessment tool at the intersection of strategy and employee engagement. We guarantee you will find them enlightening.

Robust Credibility. Any leader is communicating constantly, often (and most especially) when he is least aware of it. We hammer home the point that communication is anything—verbal or nonverbal, explicit or implicit—that either conveys information or creates meaning. That forces managers to rethink their routine, their habits, and their own unnoticed behavioral ticks, for those nasty, inadvertent messages they didn’t intend to send—but did, more than once.

Talk Traps. The work of leading people isn’t easy. If it were, anyone could do it well. But we have been around long enough to know the landscape of difficulties—and talk traps are a big one. Inexperienced or unskilled leaders often run into the classic talk traps: small talk, sunny talk, scare talk, sweet talk, smart talk, simple talk, song and dance talk, slick talk, snarky talk, or self talk. What they should rely on is straight talk. But even that isn’t easy. We’ll take your team through the challenge of straight talk, so that they can do it right.

Healthy Culture. Good communication of business information in a company is more than a process. It is a culture. In a healthy culture, communication is clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. For each, we have powerful diagnostic questions that will open eyes, minds, and hearts to change.

Practical, Proven Strategies. We have distilled our teaching down to neat lists of strategies and tactics. They all make abundant good sense, but many of them never occurred to managers beforehand.

Boot Camp is available in a one-day or two-day format. It can be customized to your industry, your strategy, and your legacy. Leading companies in manufacturing, technology, finance, retail, and service industries have made it a staple of their professional development.

Evaluations of our workshops are consistently high. After sitting in a windowless room for a day or two, more than 95 percent of participants recommend the experience for their peers and superiors. Here’s what past participants have said:

“This was a top-notch program directly geared [to] the success of managers. It was a continuing education program among peers.”

—a senior manager of a Fortune 100 consumer-products company

“I have worked for this agency for 25 years, and I have never had a day of in-service training as valuable as today’s.”

—scientist, agency of the U.S. government

“Excellent presenter, measured pauses, superb, enthusiastic, thought-provoking, excellent material, first-rate, will definitely recommend.”

—a guest participant

“I have gone through a lot of leadership training. This is one of the two best. The other was at Carnegie Mellon, and this workshop is more applicable to my day-to-day work.”

—senior engineer, aerospace company

“Tom is terrific! Original, enthusiastic, motivating . . . the lessons are applicable, useful, and real.”

—senior manager for an international food and beverage company

Call or write now for best availability.

+1-847-247-2241
info@arceil.com

How to Manage Yourself (Part 3 of 4)

2011-07-20T13:56:52-05:00

(Third of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

Minding Gaps is midway through a series of essays on how leaders should manage themselves.

In order to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. Only by managing yourself can you lead others. Pretenders who cannot or do not manage themselves will be discounted and discredited by the people they seek to lead. As potential leaders, they will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which we began last week, we are breaking down the day-to-day implications of managing yourself. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. The second installment was on managing your thoughts. Now we turn to managing your own morale: your attitudes toward yourself and others.

* * *

Imagine a big circle in the sky with three equidistant points: one at 2 o'clock, another at 6 o'clock, and the third at 10 o'clock. Label the 2 o'clock point Attitude, the 6 o'clock point Behavior, and the 10 o'clock point Consequences. Along the rim of the circle, draw curving arrows between the points clockwise, such that Attitude points to Behavior and so forth.

The clockwise direction is important. It makes plain that attitudes do have consequences. It also establishes that behaviors are a critical link between our attitudes and the consequences we experience, and it acknowledges the force of consequences on our attitudes.

We use this simple A-B-C construct as a template for identifying the drivers of performance, both in terms of building people engagement in a team or enterprise and in terms of managing one's own performance. We'll use it today in the latter sense, as we analyze the role of managing your attitude. So we will home in on that 2 o'clock point on the circle.

To get started, think first of the broad categories of attitudes you can have in the workplace. Probably the most obvious category is attitudes toward your own boss. Another obvious category is attitudes toward your peers. Still another obvious one is attitudes toward the people on your team.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some others, a little less obvious: your atttitudes toward your work, toward travel and relocation for your job, toward work-life balance, toward customers, toward competitors, toward your accomplishments, toward the missed opportunities of your career to date (don't kid yourself, we all have them), toward personal and professional growth, and toward the future.

Perhaps the least apparent of all attitudes is your attitude toward yourself. Are you ashamed of yourself? Proud of yourself? Is your attitude toward yourself closer to recrimination or forgiveness? Closer to applause or humility?

Together, all these attitudes can define us through the day-to-day behaviors that they naturally bring about. An attitude of gratitude leads us to say thanks. An attitude of greed leads us to demand more.

Attitudes even have an effect on our health. An attitude of patience lowers our stress and hence our blood pressure, while an attitude of impatience increases both.

One of the critical fulcrums of attitude is empathy: the degree to which we understand and appreciate the perspective and point of view of other people unlike ourselves. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Are they inclined to trust or distrust us? To be patient or impatient with us? To believe or disbelieve us? To give us the benefit of the doubt, or insist on zero-tolerance accountability? Then we can ask the same questions of ourselves toward them, and we can apply the Golden Rule or ignore it. Big differences in all these.

As you reflect on attitudes, you may wish to wrestle with these questions:

Just what are your most common attitudes in the workplace toward your boss, your colleagues, and the people on your team?
Is your atttitude toward your work one of pride or disappointment? Toward its requirements and impositions one of burden or opportunity?
Do you view your career to date mainly with pride or regret?
How do you regard your customers? Do you see their requests as interruptions of your work or as the purpose of your work? Are your customers more often irritating or satisfying?
What about competitors? If you could, would you want to drive them out of business?
Do you regard your company's professional-development requirements as a burden or an opportunity? Do you think of the future as basically exciting and potentially glorious, or as basically depressing and potentially disastrous?

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Fourth of Four Parts)

Publisher's Note:

We'll be off Friday and Monday for a family wedding.

We will return on Wednesday the 28th.

{Numbers} Workers Trust Managers More Than Executives

2011-07-18T17:39:32-05:00

Since its inception two years ago, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

by Thomas J. Lee

Corporate employees trust their own managers more than they trust their company's senior executives, according to a survey of more than 7,000 employees at all levels of American companies.

Only 20 percent of people strongly trust the top management of their organization. Some 36 percent moderately trust their top management, while the remaining 44 percent range from not trusting to strongly distrusting their top management.

The same study, conducted by Leadership IQ, found that people were more trusting of their direct boss than top management.

It concluded that 34 percent of people strongly trust their direct boss, 35 percent moderately trust their direct boss, while the remaining 31 percent range from not trusting to strongly distrusting their direct boss.

As you reflect on these numbers, ask yourself:

What do you think can account for the difference?
In your company, is the CEO's communication too polished, too artificial?
Does your company promise more than it delivers to employees?
Have company policies trampled over high-minded corporate values?
What can companies do to restore trust?

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

Of Champions and Leaders

2011-07-16T16:29:16-05:00

Two years ago in this space we waxed eloquent on the amazing final holes of the British Open. Any weekend duffer who has ever pretended to hear the roar of the gallery while approaching the 18th green will recall the thrill that ageless Tom Watson, then 59 years old, gave us that July weekend in 2009. Here is what we wrote:

by Thomas J. Lee

If love like youth is wasted on the young, as Sammy Cahn wrote, so perhaps is sport. Yes, everyone savors the thrill of victory. Yes, everyone feels the sting of defeat. But only the properly aged among us can bask in the warmth of an ever-flickering candle of one more time, just one more time.

For anyone of a certain age or better, watching 59-year-old Tom Watson on the final holes and then in the playoff of the British Open at Turnberry, Scotland, today was to indulge in a little reverie.

Watson had earned his first Open championship in 1975, years before some of the other professional golfers of today were born. But here he was again, where he wasn’t supposed to be. Hadn’t he graduated to the senior tour a decade ago?

In the end, Watson squandered a one-stroke lead on the 72nd hole to end the four rounds in a two-way tie. Then, in a four-hole playoff, he drove into the rough and finally lost to Stewart Cink.

The victor is a relatively unheralded American, but he is no youngster himself. Winning his first major championship today at the age of 36, Cink is already three years older than Watson was when he won the last of his eight majors, 26 years ago.

Nevertheless, the story of the day belonged to Watson, still in the hunt after all these years.

“It would have been a helluva story,” Watson said afterward. “It would have been a helluva story, but it wasn’t to be.”

The spectacle took me back to a triathlon in St. Petersburg, Florida, several years ago. I was competing in the 40-something age group. Having swum a mile in Tampa Bay and ridden the 25-mile bike course through the streets of old St. Pete, I was running strong only a couple of miles from the finish line.

My legs still felt fine, and I was thoroughly enjoying the experience when a pretty young woman, probably half my age, pulled up alongside me. For a few minutes, our banter made me feel as if I were in my 20s again.

Then she casually remarked, “You know, when my dad gets to be your age, I sure hope he is in your shape.”

Her well-intended words were like a brick wall in my path. Could I actually be older than her dad?

Nah. You don't think, do you? Suddenly I felt like walking, or crawling.

My legs slowed. I felt weak. Keeping the same pace we’d both been running a few seconds earlier, she sprinted ahead.

Age, it now seems to me, is permission to reflect and appreciate in ways we couldn’t, or just didn’t, when we were rushing headlong into life. Tom Watson seems to know that intuitively.

Reflecting aloud today in the clubhouse after the last hole, he asked himself what impressions or insights he would take away from the week’s experience. He thought a moment and answered: “A lot of warmth, a lot of spirituality.” It was scarcely the answer of a brash young man.

The ageless golfer is a gentleman who knows what it means to be a gentleman. He has always let his integrity do the heavy lifting of inspiration.

No one should forget his courageous decision in 1990 to resign from a Kansas City country club after it refused membership to a Jewish couple. He explained his reasoning only privately, but when the club reversed its policy, he rejoined immediately and publicly. There was no loud grandstanding, and yet there was no mistaking the message.

Stewart Cink won the British Open today, and my hat is off to him. He deserves to be congratulated. But in my book Tom Watson is the real champion. Thank you, Mr. Watson, for a marvelous weekend of golf, and thank you for the splendid example you continue to give to us all.

* * *

Two years later, Tom Watson, now 61, is competing in the British Open again this weekend, and as of today he is only nine strokes off the lead at Royal St. George in Kent, England. [He would finish the tournament eleven strokes off. The winner was 42-year-old Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland.]

Of equal note, Watson was coincidentally paired with his namesake, Tom Lewis, a 20-year-old amateur whose parents so loved golf and so respected Watson they named their newborn son after the golfing legend. Imagine the thrill it must be for the youngster to be sharing the fairways with him.

Some things get better with age, and Mr. Watson is one of them.

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

Holy Kaw! Minding Gaps Is Now On Alltop.com!

2011-07-15T12:16:00-05:00

I am thrilled to announce that Guy "Holy Kaw!" Kawasaki—best-selling author, Apple's original evangelist, and co-founder of the Alltop aggregator—has just added Minding Gaps to the Alltop blogroll.

Alltop readers can now access this blog under the Leadership tab or by searching for Minding Gaps from the Alltop home page.

Holy Kaw is right!

—TJL

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

How to Manage Yourself (Part 2 of 4)

2011-07-13T09:52:00-05:00

(Second of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

As regular readers know, Minding Gaps defines managing and leading in terms of the work they involve, not in terms of positions on an organization chart. Anyone with responsibility for the work of the other people wears the hats of both manager and leader. That's especially true in an organization that recognizes the need for and embarks on a course of change, growth, or improvement.

As we explained a couple of days ago, the two roles are different but closely related. Managing is the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. Leading is the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

In this four-part series, which began Monday, we are breaking down the day-to-day implications of this concept. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. Now we turn our attention to managing your thoughts.

* * *

As we explained Monday, the first thing you must manage is your mouth: your words. The second thing you must manage is your mind and the access to it. What you think has a powerful bearing on what you say and do. People who pollute their minds with cynicism, falehood, scorn, and prejudice invariably emerge as pitiful. No one admires them, and few follow them of their own accord.

My late grandmother had a pillow with this aphorism in needlepoint:

Mind your thoughts, they are the words you say;

Mind those words, they are your deeds from day to day;

Mind those deeds, they are your habits, hard to break;

Mind those habits, they are the soul you ‘lone make.

There's truth as well as rhyme in this verse.

Here are some specific suggestions for managing your mind:

Cultivate intellectual curiosity. Just as Albert Einstein valued imagination over knowledge, so we should value curiosity over insight. It is more important and of more value to ask good questions than it is to know and remember things, simply because imagination and curiosity are critical to the knowledge and insight of tomorrow. (If you're still not convinced, ask yourself whether you would rather own shares in a company that makes slide rules or a company that makes tablet computers.) Encourage your colleagues and staff to probe deeper and to challenge one another, including yourself.
Set a good example; question your own assumptions constantly and relentlessly. Assume that you have less information than you need to come to the conclusion you are already at. Ask yourself what additional information you should have and where you can find it. Also, think rigorously about your reasoning process. You can find plenty of online resources that will teach you about errors in logic and reasoning.
Challenge yourself to think at a higher plane. Sports and hobbies are good and even important parts of your life, but find time also for serious reflection and conversation. I favor journaling. You'll rarely find me without my leather-bound journal within reach. I reserve it for serious observations, thoughts, excerpts and quotes, ideas, and questions to which I want to give more thought. I also keep a date-ordered Word file that functions as a chronicle of my business life.
Give yourself regular intellectual nourishment. Read books, serious books—biography, literature, essays, history—as well as magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Vanity Fair. Make a point of reading the editorial and op-ed pages of at least one well-regarded and internationally recognized daily newspaper.
Especially if, like me, your Myers-Briggs score tilts the N side of the iNtutive/Sensory scale, be skeptical of the ideology you bring to any issue. Question your beliefs and the framework of assumptions and expectations you have. Search for data that either supports or undermines them. All of us weave a narrative about people, institutions, and issues. If yours is bereft of objective, provable facts to support it, then it's probably a product of your presumption—or perhaps of someone else's agenda.
When you feel yourself rushing toward a conclusion, stop and ask yourself (a) what you know for sure about the situation, (b) what you think you know but aren't quite certain, (c) what you have been told but have no independent reason to believe, and (d) what you don't know at all. By thinking a little about those four questions, you'll slow yourself down and refrain from jumping to conclusions.
Take pride in having not just an open door but an open mind. Make it easy for anyone at any level of the organization to approach you with information or a perspective that challenges your thinking. When someone does approach you, pause to admire her courage, and be predisposed to accepting and believing the information or point of view, if only for the time it takes to investigate.
Finally, exercise regularly, eat right, and drink moderately. The healthier your body, the healthier your mind.

Just as Grandma Lee's needlepoint suggested, our thoughts are powerful precursors to our words, and our words largely determine our actions and the actions of others within our sphere of influence. Bring a high standard to your thoughts, and the rest of your job suddenly becomes much, much easier.

Coming Next Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

Coming Next Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

What Really Matters

2011-07-12T05:41:00-05:00

This is too good not to share with you. I am borrowing it from the Character Counts program, which has been embraced by many schools.

—TJL

What Really Matters

by Michael Josephson

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,

not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched,

empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,

but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories of those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.

It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

How to Manage Yourself (Part 1 of 4)

2011-07-11T12:13:54-05:00

(First of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

Regular readers of the Minding Gaps blog are familiar with our basic distinction between managing and leading, and with our argument that good managing is at the core of good leadership.

We define both managing and leading as a function not of position but of work. But that is where the similarity ends.

Managing is the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. It usually involves meeting deadlines, coming in under budget, complying with standards or requirements, or producing or selling enough of something.

Leading is the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

Now here's the crux: In order to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. That's right: you.

Only by managing yourself can you lead others. That's because only those who manage themselves effectively will be taken seriously as leaders. Those who cannot or do not manage themselves will be discounted and discredited by the people they seek to lead. As potential leaders, they will be lifeless.

But what does managing yourself mean in practical, day-to-day terms? What exactly are we saying when we are urging you to manage yourself?

In today's post and three more than follow this week and next, we'll break it down for you.

* * *

The first thing you must manage is your own mouth. It is not true, and never has been true, that you should feel free to say anything that occurs to you. Nor is it true that your role as a manager anoints you as an expert in all things, that your opinion should trump everyone else's.

Sometimes, and probably rather often, you, like anyone else, are wrong. Keep that in mind before you offer your opinion as if you enjoyed the divine right of kings and anyone who would dare disagree is a knave or a jester.

It then follows that you should:

Develop a judicious sense as to what requires your voice. Speak up on the important things, both strategic and personal, especially when remaining silent would implicitly convey a false or a counter-strategic message. On strategic matters, it's especially important to speak up often on the fundamentals: the organization's core purpose, strategic intent, values, vision, and operating priorities. On personal matters, it's especially important to acknowledge (sometimes privately, sometimes publicly) life-changing events such as a surgery, a graduation, and the like.
By the same token, recognize the value of stifling thyself. You don't have to be the first to speak and the last to speak. You don't have to talk louder than others. You certainly shouldn't interrupt. Get in the habit of letting others enjoy the spotlight.
On the other hand, do use casual conversation as a social lubricant that can break down barriers and bring people together. The weather, vacations, sports, movies, hobbies, and recipes all reach across the hierarchy. Never pass anyone in the hallway without greeting, unless you're passing them constantly and it would be awkward to greet them repeatedly.
Apart from an appropriate level of casual conversation, minimize diversionary topics that compete for strategic focus. Most workplace communication should involve work processes, product quality, customer expectations, improvement suggestions, scheduling changes, and so forth. Use this formula: 5/95, or 5 percent of conversation for non-business matters, 95 percent for business-related topics.
Especially if you live or work in a small or midsize community, remember that you are constantly on display. If you are curt with or dismissive of someone in a service capacity—a waitress or grocery clerk, for example—you can expect to be noticed by someone you don't recognize but who knows who you are.
Refrain from uttering anything of a cynical nature, regardless of the target. When someone else waxes cynical, call them on it. Here's what I say: "If you have evidence of wrongdoing, by all means offer it up. Let's see it and examine it." (If it's evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it should be presented to the authorities.) "Otherwise let's grant people the benefit of the doubt. Isn't that the Golden Rule at work?"
Stop rumors in their track. Don't pass them along. Let people learn over time that they can expect to hear reliable, strategic information from you first.
Avoid subjects that demean people or that polarize them for no reason. Don't bring up politics, religion, or any hint of sexuality or sexual orientation. Don't even think personally or professionally disparaging thoughts, in either content or tone. It goes without saying that adolescent behavior, such as off-color humor or mimicry of ethnic accents or disabilities, is absolutely verboten.
As a general rule, offer praise in public (unless something about the environment tells you otherwise) but criticism only in private. Even then, seek out details and attenuating circumstances before criticizing, and keep your criticism brief and tightly focused.
Learn to rely more on questions than commands, but make certain your expectations are clear and agreed upon. Favor open questions—typically how, what, and why—over closed questions. Avoid short-circuiting discussions by offering your own opinion too early.

Not infrequently, the comment that most damages your reputation is a loose, thoughtless, impulsive remark that reveals the character at the core of your being. I'm not asking you to pretend to be someone else. I am asking you constantly to be the best of the person you are. Bring the best you to the party.

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Second of Four Parts)

Six Months Ago It Wasn't So Hot Outdoors

2011-07-10T06:46:00-05:00

As much of the United States broils under the mid-summer sun, we thought we would bring you a refreshing break.

Here is a link to our observations of six months ago, when it wasn't so warm outdoors. The occasion was one of the Midwest's worst blizzards ever.

Stay cool, and enjoy.

Be Your Own First Follower

2011-07-08T06:48:45-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given day, the people you seek to lead may or may not hear, understand, believe, remember, or appreciate what you have to say. Nevertheless, you must say what you believe, and you must say it often.

On any given day, the people you seek to lead will always notice, observe and remember what you do and how you do it. Never forget that people are constantly comparing what you do and what you neglect or decline to do with what you say and what you said. That's accountability, and you like accountability.

Finally, on any given day, the people you seek to lead are determining for themselves whether to follow your lead. The decision is theirs alone. It is not yours. It will rest largely on whether they regard you as a person of noble purpose and integrity, and as a person of principle, intellect, competence, standards, and wisdom.

So speak up, and speak up often, about what matters most, and then be your own first follower. To show the way, you must first go the way, for leading is all about following first.

Coming on Monday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(First of Four Parts)

Presidents and Social Media

2011-07-07T10:31:36-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Twitter is fine for its original purpose—updating friends on an ETA or changing plans at the last minute—but its 140 characters are scarcely enough for the nuances and complexity of serious discourse.

Until someone invents a robust social-media bullhorn, presidents (and anyone else with a big message) should stay off it.

Just one man's opinion, worth what you're paying for it.

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

2011-07-06T07:26:00-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given issue, people may or may not hear what their leaders say. But they will always see what the leaders do, and seeing is believing.

Does that strike you as true? It certainly does me.

And yet there's a problem with such a facile analysis: The opposite is also true.

Believing is seeing, too. That's right. Just as seeing is believing, so is believing seeing.

Think about that. We're not just playing with words here. It's an important if complicating point for leaders and for anyone who counsels leaders on communication.

Not only do people believe what they see with their own eyes (that's the seeing-is-believing part), but they tend to see mainly that which they already believe (the believing-is-seeing part).

Their eyesight—yours and mine, too—is naturally selective. We see things first, notice things most, and remember things longest that conform to our own perspective and that confirm our own judgment.

It's certainly no secret that two intelligent, reasonable persons can experience the same event—a concert, a movie, or a dinner in a restaurant, say—and come away with sharply divergent impressions.

How often have you and a friend read the same book and disagreed on it? Listened to the same political debate and disagreed on the candidates?

The fact is that each individual processes new data through his own lens of preconceived expectations, needs, experiences, opinions, and concerns. This frame of reference changes slowly, if at all.

That basic dynamic holds as well for news and announcements about the workplace. What people already know and believe bears heavily on their reaction to additional information and messages.

Does that make leadership communication in the workplace pointless? Not really, no. It does make it more difficult though.

As a practical matter, it underlines the need to educate employees constantly on the company's strategic reality. The more that people know, the more likely their beliefs will reflect the company's real-world environment.

Moreover, it reminds us that, as the best comedians and orators have long understood, we are always speaking to an audience of one. Never to a crowd, but always to each individual person in the crowd.

The distinction is critical. Ever notice how a riveting speaker works a room? She fixes her eyes on one person at a time. Afterward, almost to a person, people say: "I felt as if she was talking just to me." That's what we mean.

What are the implications of all this for business leadership? Even in the largest organizations, any leader must keep uppermost in mind who it is that he is hoping to lead, and must address their issues as they see them.

He should ask: How much do people already know about the situation, the direction for the future, the organization's progress? What do they think of it? What is their emotional state? Exactly what are they worrying about, fearful of, concerned about, hopeful for?

That—even more than the nuts and bolts of the message—is the most important consideration in leadership communication. In it lies the secret of great communication. Speak to the human heart and what lies inside, and you cannot go wrong.

So just remember this: It is always, always the who before the what. Never the other way around.

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

A Vision of Parades and Fireworks

2011-07-04T02:51:00-05:00

After the thirteen colonies declared independence from the British crown 235 years ago, the American patriot John Adams wrote to his beloved Abigail back in Massachusetts:

“I am apt to believe [the anniversary of the declaration] will be celebrated by succeeding generations . . . with pomp and parade; with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations; from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forever more.”

Now that, we can all agree, was an extraordinary leadership vision.

Today is the Fourth of July, the official anniversary of the declaration and the quintessential American holiday. Lo these many years later, we continue to celebrate our independence with parades, flags, cookouts, and of course fireworks.

Lest you ever wonder whether a vividly articulated vision is worth the effort, look skyward after dusk tonight, and see for yourself.

Celebrate exuberantly but safely today, and enjoy a glorious Fourth of July.

Coming on Wednesday

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

Quote / Unquote: Rod Tidwell on Primitive Communication

2011-07-01T04:56:19-05:00

It has been a while since we published a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Today we turn to Rod Tidwell, the fictional National Football League wide receiver in the 1996 Cameron Crowe movie "Jerry Maguire," which starred Tom Cruise in the title role, along with Cuba Gooding Jr. as Tidwell and Renée Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd. To my thinking, "Jerry Maguire" should have won the Oscar for best picture that "The English Patient" did win.

by Thomas J. Lee

In "Jerry Maguire," the 1996 movie that Cameron Crowe both wrote and directed, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Rod Tidwell, a self-centered professional football player, to Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire, his agent.

Crowe gave Tidwell several powerful lines, one of which is among the most memorable in the history of movie making, for it was Tidwell who said: "Show me the money!"

But another of Tidwell's line's in the same movie is even more relevant to the subject of this blog and to your work as a manager and a leader:

Talking is just a primitive form of communication.

One of the fundamental points we have made repeatedly in Minding Gaps over the years is that your words count, but your intent, behavior, and decisions count as much or more. They are your identity, your character. They are you.

Moreover, nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of. It is the totality of what you think, say, and do.

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words.

Reflect on Tidwell's line about primitive communication, and then consider the following questions:

Why does he call talking "primitive communication"?
What are the limitations of talking in business? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression?
What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more than body language or facial expression?
What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
Is it deliberate or accidental?
How specifically are you working to improve your nonverbal messages?

Coming on Monday

The Vision of a Celebration

The Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

2011-06-29T05:47:00-05:00

We have been on our annual study and renewal period throughout June. During this time we have reprised some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. Now that we're turning the calendar to a new month, we'll return with all-new essays beginning on Friday.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

For most managers, listening to people is a significant challenge.

Part of the problem is you are just so busy. You have so much on your plate, and you have so many accountabilities, that you often just want the information you need—"the data that matta"—right here and right now. Any further explanation feels burdensome. A long, rambling conversation is like a Sunday stroll in the park when the temperature is 105 F. and dark thunderheads are gathering on the horizon. You just want people to get to the point and, frankly, to get out of your way so that you can get some real work done.

But that's only part of it. Another big part of the problem is your own intelligence. That is true, and I am not being patronizing. By and large, managers are bright people. But here's the rub: Smart people are worse listeners, not better listeners, than most people are.

That is because smart people process information faster than other people do. Smart people think approximately three times faster than most people talk. You take in more information, you churn it faster, and you come to more conclusions. Then you look for more information to churn, and the process continues.

Now you may think that someone who absorbs information so fast and so well would be a terrific listener. But smart people are constantly evaluating and judging others. You yourself do so much evaluating and judging, and you do it so routinely and so instinctively, you don't even notice. You have already been doing it about me and about this very essay less than 250 words into it. (You're thinking: Gotcha! It's "fewer than 250 words into it!")

Listening is something I myself struggle with. My friends will tell you that I often drift into what they call a zone. To become a better listener, I am using an eight-point checklist to remind myself of some basic requirements of deep listening.

Here's the eight-point checklist I have been using. Maybe it will help you, too:

In any conversation of any sort, have a predisposition to learn something of importance and consequence. Avoid thinking of conversations as random, purposeless activities that just clutter your day. Rather, look at everyone as a potential teacher, and regard yourself as an eager student. The fact is that everyone does have something worthwhile to teach you.
Turn away from all distractions. (This is a particular challenge for me personally, as my friends will tell you.) Thrust yourself into the conversation with the entirety of your body, mind, heart, and soul. Be fully engaged. By body, I mean making full (but not scary or intimidating) eye contact, and having a pleasant disposition of your physical bearing. Do not multitask here. By mind, I mean being intellectually curious. By heart, I mean acknowledging the decency of the other person. And by soul, I mean having a constructive, affirming purpose for the community of persons in the conversation.
Suspend evaluation, and grant good faith to everyone involved in the conversation. Be on their side, and let them be on yours. Assume they have entered into the conversation not for their own advantage but for the sake of creating value for everyone. For the next few minutes, everyone is an angel, and everyone's purpose in angelic. That includes you: Do not play the devil's advocate, even for a moment. Instead, be the angel's advocate.
Probe for detail, and seek real-world examples. It is one thing to discuss a situation at a theoretical level, quite another to notice how it plays out in real life. Here is where the data that you usually seek takes on situational context and greater import. Notice what has actually happened, how people have reacted or coped, what the antecedents or causes were, what the effects and consequences were, and so forth. Don't overlook what hasn't happened that you might surmise would happen in such circumstances.
Absorb and synthesize information, intuition, and insight. Notice the presence or absence of connections to important concepts and doctrines (such as your company's values and mission or purpose). Remember the examples as illustrative of the larger ideas. Use them as grist in the future. Remember, data will always tell a story. You just need to be open enough and alert enough to read the narrative before your very eyes, as it is, which may or may not be as you want it to be.
Ask relevant, open, and constructive questions—and then stop talking. For the uninitiated, a closed question seeks a specific fact: a date or an age or a name, whether the flight is on time, when the meeting begins, who your brother is marrying. In contrast, an open question doesn't preclude the range of responses. It often begins with how, what, or why. Craft your questions in such a way as to build more potential intellectual capital. Then, after asking each relevant and open question, be quiet. Enjoy the stillness of the moment. Let your silence lift the conversation to a higher plane. Then think about what has been said. Record any important observations or reflections in a journal you carry with you for that purpose (and keep its content clear of day-to-day minutia like telephone numbers, reminders, and so forth).
Clarify the meaning of it all, and translate the implications. Figure out where the conversation has taken you. What have you learned? What didn't you learn that you might have? What additional information do you need, and where might you get it? Does the situation require action? If so, immediately or at some point further in the future? Are there issues of personal safety and security here? Is there a question of ethics? Of business strategy? Are the data coherent and cohesive? What matters and what doesn't?
Promise and deliver a response by a certain date. Do not, do not, do not offer a substantive reply of which you are not certain. Do, do, do take the time you need to get whatever additional information or authority you need to respond with credibility and clarity. Resist the temptation to go to closure unless it is something you definitely want; unnecessary closure can be a roadblock to continuing exploration and even greater understanding. Give the other individuals a sense as to when you will get back to them, and be sure to follow up.

That's my list. Surely you can improve on it. Send your additions and refinements to tom@arceil.com or telephone me at +1-847-247-2241. I enjoy hearing from Minding Gaps readers.

Coming on Friday

Ron Tidwell on Primitive Communication

Intelligent People Have a Problem

2011-06-27T05:58:00-05:00

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays beginning Friday.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Most of our regular readers are successful business managers, and they, which is to say you—you regular reader, you—are smarter than the average dormouse. If you aren't necessarily a card-carrying member of Mensa, you certainly aren't a member of Densa, either.

What you probably don't realize is that your above-average intelligence—the sheer power of cognitive discernment that helped get you this far—is a problem for you. Yes, a problem.

That's because your intelligence interferes with your listening. It is quite a paradox, but it is true. Intelligent people have greater difficulty, not less difficulty, in listening to other people.

Why is that? By definition, intelligent people are quick to absorb and process information. The brighter you are, the more you tend to think analytically and evaluatively.

Strictly as a quantitative measure, you can listen intelligently at the rate of 400 to 500 words per minute, perhaps even more, all while analyzing the message you are hearing and evaluating the speaker.

Meanwhile, the speaker is in the slow lane. He is probably speaking at 125 to 150 words a minute, or 175 to 200 words a minute if he is talking fast. The bottom line: Listeners are always faster than speakers, and smart listeners are especially fast.

That isn't good. It means you are probably missing some or perhaps even much of the robust information, the subtlety, the emotion, and the crosscurrents of what is being said. You're reading the headlines and maybe the first couple of paragraphs, and then you're psychologically turning to the comics page.

In coaching leaders, I nudge them toward what I call intellectual patience. Be slow to understand, I counsel. Be very, very slow. You will find yourself more reflective, more appreciative, and more nuanced, and therefore wiser than you otherwise would be.

Intellectual patience is just a predisposition of cautious, deliberate exploration and discovery. Imagine yourself walking in the dark, as if you have awakened in the middle of the night and are stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water. Without a night light, you need to walk slowly, lest you trip over a child's toy on the staircase (as I once did, seriously).

That is how you should listen. Be quiet. Pay rapt attention. Do not preoccupy yourself with judgments about the speaker or with your own list of things-to-do. Don't interrupt. Don't think of what you are going to say next. Just listen.

Listen patiently, and let the speaker finish, even if you are busy. Enjoy the balm of silence on your psyche. Reflect before asking a good, thoughtful question, and then let silence work like yeast. Finally, given a choice between interpreting a message harshly or generously, let yourself be big.

Maybe, just maybe, your intelligence will get out of your way, and you will actually hear what the other person is trying to tell you. You may even understand and accept it.

Coming on Monday

Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders: Microvision Statements

2011-06-24T04:23:00-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us regard vision statements as the province of the CEO and the board of directors. That's only natural, as vision statements set forth an ideal future state for their entire enterprise.

But collateral leaders throughout the organization can use microvision statements to advance their own leadership, too. By microvision statement, we just mean a vision statement with a tight field of view. It paints a vivid picture of an ideal future for only a part of an organization.

Any leader at any level of any organization can use a microvision statement to describe an ideal future state for a subset of the enterprise, be it a division, a department, a team, even an individual—perhaps for the leader himself or herself.

Don't confuse microvision with micromanagement. Microvision is useful and conducive to leadership, and the best people on your team will generally appreciate the effort. Micromanagement—a manager's overbearing and distrustful meddling in the day-to-day work of individuals—is destructive and corrosive to leadership. The best people on your team will resent it.

Micro or macro, a good vision can be worth gold. While the worst vision statements are riddled with clichés and rhetorical flatulence, the best are noble, inspiring, even glorious. They are very, very powerful, too.

For one thing, a well-crafted vision statement brings everyone together on the same page, and it gives everyone a mental image of success. That imagery enables people to order their work around a crystal-clear picture that energizes and directs them. It's like having a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

A good vision does more than that though. It gives you a means of testing your stated values against a picture of the future. Does your vision rest on the bedrock of your values as applied in the real world? It should. If it doesn't, then it's just counterfeit currency.

Moreover, a good vision lets you deduce the appropriate strategies and tactics that can make the vision a reality, and it inspires you and your colleagues to go to extraordinary lengths on its behalf. Finally, it serves as a useful landscape for milestones that help you measure and assess your progress.

To do and be all that, a vision must be specific to its business and social context. It must get beyond the boilerplate that so many organizations settle for. It must reach for the stars, but more than that, point to the North Star as a beacon. That is true for macrovision and microvision statements alike.

Microvision statements need not be florid or evocative, and they most certainly should not be replete with clichés, as many of their bigger siblings are. Indeed, these small-bore vision statements may not be narratives at all. They may come closer to a matrix, a little spreadsheet, or even a Gantt chart than to a descriptive narrative.

To begin thinking about a microvision for just a piece of the enterprise, take the bigger enterprise vision statement (the macrovision) and extract its essence. List its key phrases and translate them to real day-to-day work. Look for parallels here to the work you and your team do or can be doing. Then imagine, or envision, what the result of that work would be. Describe it in detail. Now give some thought to exactly how you and your team make it real. In other words, what does the enterprise vision become in your hands?

See? It's easier than you thought.

Before you go too far, make sure you understand the difference between a vision, a goal, and an objective. To borrow a metaphor from sports, the vision is tantamount to the visual image of players hoisting a trophy and parading down Main Street after winning the championship. In contrast, a goal is winning more games than the other team. The objective is winning today's game or even just scoring a point.

Now some of you may prefer a structure to the traditional narrative of a vision statement. That, too, is fine. Here's a structure you can use for a microvision.

On a single sheet of paper, draw a 3x3 matrix with each of the nine cells large enough for 25 to 35 words. Across the top, label the three columns with years. Choose the years that make sense for you and your team. Young people and mature organizations (trust me, that isn't the paradox it may appear to be) will want long-range years—say five, ten, and twenty years out. Older people and startups or turnaround companies will want short-range years—perhaps one, two, and three years out.

Down the left side, label the three rows Have, Do, and Be. Thus the top row captures what you or your team want to have (that you do not already have) by each of the years you listed. The middle row describes what you want to do or be doing (again, that you have not already done) by each year. The bottom row identifies who you want to be (that you are not yet) by each year.

Invest a lot of thought in this. Let it evolve. Give yourself permission to change it over time. As it does change, however, be sure to think critically about why you are changing it. Is it because you are growing? Because you have shrunk from your challenges? Because your interests have changed? Because other people have come into your personal life or joined your team at work? Because new opportunities have opened up?

One final point. Allow your vision, even a microvision, to be large. Let it be big. Let it be grand. That is what a vision should be and must be so that it can inspire. Small things are just small, but something big must be reckoned with. It demands to be.

Just be sure to do the work that follows, the work of bringing your vision down to earth. Give it legs. Then get on with the work of making it real.

Coming on Monday

The Special Problem That Intelligent People Have

Coming on Wednesday

The Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

Emotion Is Central to Leadership and Thus to Change

2011-06-22T05:17:00-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its leadership communication on business strategy? Especially in the consumer-products sector, but elsewhere to an extent, it can be dramatic.

Advertising is often unabashedly emotional. TV commercials for new cars, for example, commonly appeal to the pride of ownership and, at the holidays, even the joy of giving. They play down or ignore things like horsepower or trade-in value. Advertising for life insurance tugs at the heartstrings of family, and 30-second spots for beer invoke friendship and fun.

In contrast, a company's employee communication on business strategy is typically straightforward, sober, and matter-of-fact. There is little emotion. Yes, you see sporadic articles and photographs in newsletters on dedicated employees or extraordinary service. But the fundamental purpose of business is often reduced to quarterly goals, and the bulk of information is on new procedures and controls.

Canadian neurologist Donald B. Calne observes: "Reasoning leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action."

Conclusions are important. Facts and logic have an important role. But action is essential. If emotion brings us to the brink of action, then it is an essential component of employee communication. We neglect it to our peril.

Always be mindful of the fact that people find a great deal of motivation in positive, affirmative appeals of emotion. Employees need straight information, of course. But they also need to hear the emotional cause for working hard, doing the right thing, persevering through adversity, scratching the creative itch, and taking risks. They need to hear of pride, service, loyalty, and so much more. Anyone who has ever succeeded at anything knows the importance and the truth of this.

Coming on Friday

Microvision Statements for Collateral Leaders

The Business Case for Communication on Change

2011-06-20T04:56:00-05:00

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days I have been involved in two discussions—one as an observer in an online forum, the other as a participant in an exchange of emails—regarding the necessity for communication in support of leadership and change.

It appears some people out there are not yet convinced that communication matters.

Frankly, I find that astonishing. The factual basis is so solid, and the logic is so compelling, that I cannot understand why any serious business executive has any doubt. The evidence is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is conclusive.

Surely we can stipulate that the world is always changing. Technology changes. Economies grow and shrink. Older people retire, and younger people with new ideas come along. The market for goods and services changes as consumers and businesses decide they want and need different things. Companies merge and spin off. Trade barriers come down. Management fads come and go. Innovation creates new competition. Companies form and enter the marketplace. Always, things are changing.

Now, follow along with me. Wouldn't you agree that:

Companies cannot control the changes around them, but they can control (a) whether and how they initiate change and (b) whether and how they respond to external change. Both the direction and the pace of their own change are variable, and both are controllable.
Organizations that fail to change will invariably become irrelevant. Then they will whither and die. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company and AOL, history is filled with the bones of giants that failed to adapt.
If what made you good is alone enough to make you great, you would already be greater than you are. In fact you will always need new ideas, new competencies, and new practices to grow and meet the demands of the future. That's life, and life is change.
The work of leadership is largely the work of envisioning, articulating, and supporting change, commonly requiring discretionary effort and even self-sacrifice by many people, often in a state of uncertainty and risk. That fairly describes the business world of the 21st century, doesn't it?
Communication is the energy of leadership and thus of change. You know this to be true because all of history's great leaders, those individuals who have brought about the greatest change in the most trying of circumstances, have consistently been articulate and inspiring communicators. Think of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The reason this is true is equally obvious: People cannot act in concert with a leadership vision and agenda unless they have the big ideas, the information, and the incentive to do so, and they get all that through communication.
Every organization is always communicating with itself—thinking out loud, as it were. People talk. Rumors spread. Leaks occur. The communication may be managed well or poorly or not at all. It may be clear, credible, compelling, constructive, collaborative, continuous, civil, and concise, or it may not be. The degree to which it is managed well and purposefully is the degree to which the organization can change in accord with the leadership vision and agenda and thereby determine its own destiny.

Now forgive a little hubris, but executives who choose to deny these propositions are denying some very obvious truths, perhaps because it is comfortable for them to remain in denial. After all, it is easier to deny the need for communication than to assume responsibility for communicating and perhaps even to confront some long-festering professional competency gaps.

Executives who acknowledge these facts, and we hope this includes you and your colleagues, will properly ask what they should do first. I would suggest they consider the possibility that a systematic process of integrated strategic communication just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. At the very least, they should get moving on a needs assessment to better understand their situation and the opportunities it presents. Remember, every problem in life is an opportunity.

Call us. The number is +1-847-247-2241. We can help if you call, but not if you don't.

Coming on Wednesday

The Role of Emotion in Leadership

Coming on Friday

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders

My Dad, a Humble Profile in Leadership

2011-06-17T04:08:00-05:00

A year ago this weekend, the Chicago Tribune published my Father's Day tribute to my late dad. We reprise it today.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

A fellow blogger posed an interesting question online, in anticipation of Father's Day. He asked: What kind of leader was your father?

I had to think a moment. My dad, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 93, was a wonderful man. But probably most people did not regard him as a leader. He wasn't an elected official. Nor was he a high-powered executive. Nor was he active in politics or community affairs.

Yet leadership is not only for the powerful and the prominent. Millions of people offer profoundly inspirational leadership in their everyday lives. So it was with my father. He lived a life of humility, decency, authenticity, and commitment.

Naturally outgoing and happy, he exercised quiet self-control even in the face of considerable adversity. He didn't lose his temper. He didn't curse or cheat or lie. He didn't gamble or drink to excess. He hated war, but he went, and his unit liberated Dachau. In 75 years of driving a car he never had an accident, not even a fender bender. He never even got a traffic ticket. In short, he was a rock, always there when it counted.

Most important, he knew how to love, and he did. The late Ann Landers, who could tell us a thing or two about families, often wrote that the greatest gift a father can give to his children is to love their mother completely, deeply, and unconditionally.

My four brothers and I were the beneficiaries of just such a gift. For more than six decades, probably from the moment he first noticed her at another soldier's wedding in Chicago, my dad loved my mom, and he let it show. He loved her completely. He loved her deeply, and he loved her unconditionally.

I have a particularly warm memory, framed like an old faded photograph in my mind's eye. When I was 10 or 12, I would wander into the kitchen before dinner, only to find my dad and my mom in a bear hug of an embrace while potatoes simmered on the stove.

Such a warm sense of security washed over me. Some of my friends had parents who yelled at each other. Others had parents who brooded in silence. Not I. Not my brothers. We had a security blanket up over our shoulders and snug under our chins. We had the luxury of never, ever worrying.

My dad always loved my mom, and my mom always loved my dad, and that's the way it was. It was just that simple and it was just that wonderful and it was always just that way.

Only a few weeks before my mother died in 2004, I visited the two of them in their apartment in Florida. What I witnessed on that visit was like a scene out of an old black-and-white movie starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson or Donna Reed.

My mother sat at the kitchen table, her days so very numbered, and yet with a smile of calm, divine peace across her face, as my dad, a gifted tenor who had once aspired to the operatic stage, sang love song after love song to her. He must have sung for an hour, maybe two, and he sang from his heart. He sang: "Everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me." My mother died a happy woman, for she was loved.

Most of all, I remember Dad as a man who worked hard, who made the most of what he had, who lived his life with passion for his art as well as for his wife, who humbled himself and honored others, who recognized duty, and who devoted himself to the things that matter, which is to say, to the people around him.

Will you abide one last anecdote? It is from the day I learned to swim. I tell it because it says so much about the man my father was.

There was to be a kind of commencement exercise at the old YMCA pool in my hometown. All the kids would swim the length of the pool, and then, one by one, we were to be called up by name and given a certificate.

Now it's odd what we remember from our childhood. Of that day, I remember a feeling of anxiety, knowing that my mother was home with my little brothers, and my dad was at work.

Back then, Dad always had to work on Saturday mornings. So the other kids would have families in the gallery cheering them on. But not I. I was on my own. That would be okay. I could handle it. I would be fine. I would just buck it up.

So one by one, in alphabetical order, the instructor called the names of all the swimmers. I remember hearing the instructor call out Ade, and Bobby, and Mike, and Steve. And one by one, each of them walked over to get his certificate as the gallery erupted in cheers.

The closer the instructor got to my name, the more alone I felt. I braced myself for a little polite applause from the other parents. The instructor called my name. I got up, walked over, and reached out for my certificate.

Sure enough, the applause was polite. But just then a voice rang out from the gallery, loud and clear and echoing around the pool: "Way to go, Tommy!"

I looked up. It was my dad. Somehow, he had got off work, and he had made it over to the YMCA to watch me get that certificate.

Ever since, whenever I have needed some encouragement, I have harked back to those few words, and I have picked up the pace and tried a little harder. My dad's voice is never far away. He is my cheerleader, even now, after he is gone.

By my measure, this is certainly the stuff of leadership. My dad was an ordinary, everyday hero. His achievement in life wasn't winning an election or getting a big promotion or living in a fancy house. Rather, it was leading a fine, long life and filling it with honor and love.

And so now, for another Father's Day without him, it's my turn, and I just hope he can hear me: "Way to go, Dad! Way to go!

Coming on Monday

The Business Case for Communication on Change

What Are They Saying About You?

2011-06-15T05:56:00-05:00

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Every workplace is a conversation. The nature of the conversation—its content, its tone, its energy—reflects the degree of engagement or disengagement of the employees.

The conversation is about the organization, its purpose, and its leadership. To the extent the conversation understands and appreciates the nobility of the organization and of its leadership, the employees will be inclined to follow the lead of leaders.

If and when the conversation cannot find the nobility, or if and when the conversation determines that the supposed nobility is a lie, the employees will be disinclined to follow the lead.

It’s pretty much that simple.

Coming on Friday

A Humble Profile in Authentic Leadership

Finding Strength in Uncertainty, Because of Uncertainty

2011-06-13T05:42:00-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Are you often sure of yourself?

Are you often certain you are right?

I confess that I am. I dislike that about myself.

Not that I announce it loudly, or at least I don't think that I do. But I feel it. Often it is stirring in me as other people are talking. I quickly find myself concluding—prematurely, on little evidence—that I know more and have thought more about the subject at hand. Rarely is that true. I just think it.

It is an omniscient self-certainty, and, even when it is talking quietly to me, it is obnoxious. It is arrogant. It is corrosive to thoughtful, reflective leadership.

You see it in politics all the time. Tune in either of the two more dogmatic cable networks here in the States (that's Fox News for the right, MS-NBC for the left), and you cannot go an hour without coming across it. All the pundits and politicians are absolutely, positively convinced of their own point of view.

I fear their arrogance is contagious. More and more, people are just so certain of their own viewpoint—so certain that they have no time for anyone else’s.

Justice Learned Hand once wrote: “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” That is just so profoundly true.

Many years ago, when I wrote a weekly newspaper column, I confessed to my own doubts about the Vietnam War. In one column, I told of a high-school class reunion that I had recently attended. Before dinner, we had memorialized a classmate who died in Vietnam. His parents were there with us. His mother told us that she was always so patriotic, but that she still couldn’t quite understand exactly what her son died for. Neither could I.

After the column appeared, I received a thoughtful, gentle letter from a conservative reader. He wrote to comfort me. He said: “I wish I were as certain about anything as some people are about everything.”

Indeed. Indeed.

Coming on Wednesday

What Are They Saying About You?

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

2011-06-10T05:15:00-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

One balmy evening after dusk I was relaxing on the patio with my legs outstretched. Crickets had begun to sing, and Venus was slipping toward the western horizon. I had enjoyed another productive day. Everything was perfect. I wanted nothing to change.

Just then I noticed a small animal of some sort off to the right. It was already dark, so I couldn't quite make out what it was. Slowly approaching me, the furry thing waddled right up to my shoes and stopped.

You can imagine my horror when I realized the animal wasn't a neighbor's kitten, and it wasn't a squirrel. Nor was it a raccoon or an opossum. It was a skunk, a polecat. I kid you not. For minutes

that seemed like hours, it sat on its haunches just inches from my feet. I was never so perfectly still in my entire life. I didn't breathe. I didn't swallow. I didn't blink.

In an instant I went from wanting nothing to change to wanting everything to change, immediately and radically. Yet I could do nothing. If I had so much as burped, this little beast would have fouled the entire neighborhood. Everything within a quarter mile would have stunk for days. I could only wait it out, in perfect stillness and utter silence.

Eventually the skunk moved on, and I could exhale and blink again. Five minutes later I felt a sneeze coming on, and I prayerfully thanked the heavenly stars that I had not sneezed while my uninvited guest was sniffing at my feet.

This incident occurred two or three autumns ago. I recalled it this week when the subject of change came to mind. I've noticed that, for some people and some companies, the thought of change can bring about such anxiety they react with terror and paralysis.

That isn't a problem in the presence of a skunk, figuratively or literally; the paralysis suits you just fine. But if the challenge you are facing requires that you change for the sake of innovation, or personal growth, or subject-matter mastery, or credibility, or a behavioral correction, or relational empathy, or anything else of importance or value, it most certainly is problematic. Your paralysis is part of the problem.

Regular readers will recall that a couple of my recent posts (here and here) focused on helping people to identify the need for change and to muster the will to change. Indeed, change is a continuing theme of the MindingGaps blog, for change is the currency of leadership.

In my own experience, most companies do want to change either their culture, or their operations, or their performance. Yet few actually change as much or as fast as they wish.

It is true that some recognize no need to change, so they never even set out to change. Others say they want to change when they actually do not. Many others genuinely want to change but do not know how. And many, many others seek to control and constrain their path of change, rather than create a culture of self-energizing and self-sustaining change that can redefine their marketplace. Over-engineering change can have the effect of stifling it altogether.

In any case, companies that are most in need of change but refuse to do anything about it are those that most risk being forgotten or marginalized in the years ahead. Anyone my side of 40 can name brands or products that are scarcely known to young people today—CompuServe, the Sony Walkman, Oldsmobile, Pan-Am, Schlitz, the DC-10, Zenith, Gourmet, camera film and slide projectors, DEC computers—and dozens of companies that are now subsidiaries or mere historical footnotes: Maytag, Gillette, TWA, Amoco, McDonnell Douglas, NCR, Ameritech, Warner-Lambert, A.G. Edwards, and so many more.

Even among extant companies, the tales of coulda-woulda-shoulda read like ghosts from a Dickens novel. I think of Xerox, whose share of the copier market plummeted from 90 percent in the 1970s to just 20 percent in the 1980s after Japanese manufacturers began selling better machines at lower prices. I think of IBM, which was so busy selling Selectric typewriters that it took a pass on the operating system and applications for personal computers, and instead let a couple of college dropouts start a cute little company they called Microsoft. I think of Blockbuster and Sears and Border's, whose stores today are almost empty.

On the other hand, there is Apple, which has changed radically, and there is Google, whose culture is all about innovation, and there is Ford Motor Co., which is leading a resurgence of American auto manufacturing, and there is Amazon, which is becoming an online main street. American Express and Wells Fargo both got their start running stage coaches across the West, and today they are vibrant and dynamic. Even IBM has learned from its mistakes and reinvented itself.

The CEO of a Fortune 25 company put it well in an inspiring 1993 speech to his senior leadership team: "We need to embrace change—not for its own sake but for our sake. We must understand that the world isn't standing still and that we can't stand still either. People and organizations that delude themselves into thinking they do not need to change are on a course of self-absorption and self-destruction. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company, history is full of giants that failed to adapt."

The choice we face isn't merely between changing and not changing. The choice is between changing and dying. Indeed, in these times of rampant mergers and acquisitions, the choice is as much between changing and being eaten alive for breakfast by a competitor.

It's just that sometimes, the mere thought of change is so intimidating, it is paralyzing. I know. I have been there.

Coming on Monday

Finding Strength in Uncertainty

Ten Tactics and Tips for Better Power Point Presentations

2011-06-08T04:14:10-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Relax. You aren't alone. No one else can understand a PowerPoint slide like this one, either. We have all seen too many of them, haven't we?

Recently I sat through yet another PowerPoint presentation that left me numb. Three weeks later I still don't know what the speaker, an official of a major university, was really trying to say.

He was knowledgeable, to be sure; he certainly had the academic credentials and the impressive position to deserve our attention, and his topic was compelling. But he left just about everyone shaking their head. In particular, his PowerPoint slides were a mess. They were worse than the slide you see above, which is just something I stumbled across on the Internet.

Like many presenters, he apologized for the tiny fonts and cluttered layout, but that didn't solve the problem. The members of the audience were squinting their eyes, and one woman told me she had a migraine just trying to decipher the slides.

This phenomenon is all too common. I don't blame the technology, as some people do. Long before there was PowerPoint, there were boring speakers who used overhead projectors. Long before there were overhead projectors, there were boring speakers who read their speech in a droning monotone.

Rather, I point to priorities. Many executives and managers place a premium on data at the expense of connecting with people. Thus, they see little need to invest in and master the art of speaking.

I have no illusions about changing the world. Still, I am offering ten tips and tactics to help the busy executive or manager with presentations. There's a lot more to meeting this challenge, and I stand ready to help. But this will get you started.

I actually hope these tips and tactics are not helpful to you, that you are already well beyond them. But in my experience, few executives are. Just about all managers and all executives need training in public speaking. Alas, according to data published in The Wall Street Journal, few managers think they need any instruction or coaching in communication.

Here are ten tips and tactics you may find helpful:

Know your audience. Make an effort to talk with some of the people beforehand, even if only over coffee or lunch, especially if it's a new or special group. If it's a conference, get there early and mill around. Try to gain a sense of the audience's knowledge of the topic, their disposition toward your subject and toward you, their willingness to learn, their inclination to be influenced, and their overall expectations. Then speak to people where they are, both cognitively and emotionally. Take into account the time of day and whether you are speaking immediately after a meal. If the audience appears lethargic, ask people to stand for a moment before you begin. (If your session is long, take a short break every 75 to 90 minutes.)
Don't speak down to people, but don't use acronyms or jargon that some persons may not know, either. Present your message and explain yourself without patronizing anyone, but remember that members of an audience can vary enormously in terms of education and experience. Give real-world examples that everyone will understand. Here, specificity is your friend.
Know that you have the “curse of knowledge” working against you. Because you are expert in your subject, you are probably taking certain facts and logical relationships for granted that other people will not. Look at your presentation with a fresh eye. Ask someone who is unacquainted with the material to glance at it, too.
Do not prepare or use your slides as talking points. Rather, have talking points on the lectern if you need them. Use the slides mainly for illustrations and mnemonics: pictures, graphs, simple tables and maps, quotes, oversize numbers, and so forth. Slides should never be a substitute for a Teleprompter.
Avoid data dumps. Don't try to capture much detail at all in any one slide. Complexity will smother and overcome your message. If you have detailed information to convey, distribute it on paper at the presentation or, better yet, by email attachment beforehand. Complex diagrams and data-heavy tables are especially toxic. Avoid them. Use your oral presentation to explain, persuade, and inspire. Find one or two on-point stories to tell that capture the essence of your message. People remember good stories for a long, long time. Twenty-five years later, you can probably still recall a couple of stories Ronald Reagan told.
Prepare the slides so that people in the back row can read them without squinting and that people in the front row can read them without getting a migraine. That means using a large, sans serif font with colors chosen specifically to be easy on the eyes. My preference is navy blue type on a white or off-white background, at least 18 points, preferably larger. It also means using few bullet points and few words on each line.
Face the audience. Never turn your back and read from the slides. Speak loudly and assertively, with your lungs full of air. Present yourself with confidence. Give your voice some energy and range. Before you get up to speak, breathe deeply for two or three minutes. Pause whenever you need to. Vary your tone and timing. Make brief eye contact with individuals as you speak.
Avoid the hackneyed opening of saying "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" and then repeating it, only louder. Instead, jump headlong into your material. Give two or three riveting facts, or ask a succession of unsettling questions, or quickly relate a relevant anecdote. By the same token, make sure any technology you are using is ready to go beforehand. You should never be fiddling with it while people wait for you to begin speaking.
If it's necessary or expected to distribute your presentation, consider doing so as a narrative rather than a succession of bullet-point slides. This way, people will get your message, and you can freely concentrate on the context and core assertions. Set aside more time than usual for questions and answers. Place a high premium on dialogue. Truly listen to people who ask questions, and show that you appreciate their initiative and even their courage. Be especially welcoming of the "elephant in the room" question that everyone is thinking about but few are bold enough to ask.
Finally, remember that your slide deck isn't your message. You are. Make yourself and your thinking, not your slides, the focus of everyone in the audience. Avoid distracting slide transitions or anything else that draws attention away from you and your presence. Remember, connecting with people is more important than delivering information. Everyone will feel it and know it if you succeed, and people will remember it as one of the few good presentations they have ever seen.

One more thing: Be sure you practice, and try to memorize your opening lines.

In all my years in business, I have seen very few truly powerful PowerPoint presentations. That doesn't mean it cannot be done. It can, but it takes discipline, creativity, and work.

Call me if you need further advice. I'll be glad to help.

Coming on Friday

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

{Numbers} Who Works the Longest Hours?

2011-06-06T05:11:00-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Who works the most?

You may be surprised by the answer.

If you assume it is the hourly laborer who racks up the most hours, you would be wrong.

According to Gallup, almost half of self-employed Americans (49 percent) work more than 44 hours a week, compared with only 38 percent of Americans who work for companies or the government and 30 percent of those who work for non-profit associations and institutions.

But across all those categories, it is people who earn more than $75,000 a year and people with advanced degrees who work the most. Some 53 percent of each group report that they work more than 44 hours a week.

Coming on Wednesday

Ten Tactics and Tips for Better PowerPoint Presentations

Let's Break Out the Champagne!

2011-06-04T07:49:06-05:00

I was still sleeping at the time, but just before 4 a.m. Central (U.S.) Daylight Time today, Minding Gaps welcomed its 50,000th reader.

Almost all of you are looking for insights to help your leadership in business, government, nonprofit associations, churches, fraternal clubs, social networks, and advocacy organizations.

We hope you are finding what you are seeking, and we are humbled that so many of you have placed your confidence in us. Thank you.

Minding Gaps has nearly 500 original essays on various aspects of leadership, communication, staff engagement, and change in the workplace. Take your time and scroll through our archives. And be sure to click on Subscribe so that you will automatically receive our new posts, three times a week.

At any time you aren't finding what you want, or if I can serve you in any other way, please write to me directly at tom@arceil.com.

Thomas J. Lee

A Leadership Lesson from Elvis

2011-06-03T05:58:00-05:00

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

I'll take a lesson in leadership wherever I can find it. The other day, I found one while listening to a golden oldie on my iPod, and it came from Elvis Presley.

The song was "Suspicious Minds," written by Mark James, who also wrote "Hooked On a Feeling" for B.J. Thomas and "Always On My Mind" for Willie Nelson. Of course, Elvis burned "Suspicious Minds" into our collective consciousness. It is one of the truly great popular songs ever produced.

You can probably sing the lyrics from memory:

Why can't you see

What you're doing to me

When you don't believe a word I say?

We can't go on together

With suspicious minds

And we can't build our dreams

With suspicious minds. . . .

Now, plainly these lyrics have to do with a rocky romance. But with a little imagination you can see striking parallels to a dysfunctional corporate culture, too.

In many industries, the collapse of the implied contract after decades of widespread downsizing and offshoring, along with sporadic instances of financial malfeasance and chicanery, has decimated the trust, confidence, and affinity in business that everyone took for granted a couple of generations ago. (Other institutions, particularly government, have fared even worse. That's another issue altogether.)

Perhaps your industry and your company have emerged relatively unscathed. Nonetheless, the social carnage that other companies have left in their wake is problematic for you. All companies find it difficult to enlist the enthusiastic support of employees who suspect they are getting, or who expect to be getting, the short end of the stick. (Note: Whether or not employees are actually being shortchanged is irrelevant, for perceptions and expectations are everything. The only objective reality is someone's subjective reality; the perception or expectation of distrust is the fact of distrust.)

Any organization whose culture is characterized more by suspicion than by trust, confidence, and affinity is not likely to succeed for long at much of anything. In a strong economy, it can float on a rising tide. But when times turn difficult, or when competition or innovation redefines the marketplace, the same company will very likely encounter more than its share of difficulty.

Further, for a couple of very compelling reasons, a culture of suspicion can readily grow out of the managerial process itself. It's a little like noxious weeds sprouting in a well-tended garden of rich, fertile loam.

For one thing, good managers will focus on meeting pre-determined expectations: a budget, a quota, a deadline, or a standard. So they are usually on the lookout for any early sign of failure, in order to correct it in time. But their constant, anxious vigilance can be seen by employees as doubt or even distrust in them. Some employees will take it personally and return the volley with doubt and distrust of their own. Their distrust can become a contagion.

For another thing, many managers rely on the legal authority of their position, and the asymmetrical power it reflects, for their moral authority. These managers are often disinclined to invest the extra time and attentiveness it takes to nurture relationships with subordinates, especially at the ground level. Goodness knows, managers are already too busy. But the absence of frequent, casual, authentic face-to-face conversation is another dynamic that can breed a sense of distance and suspicion among employees. Again, what goes around comes around.

Managers and employees alike would both be better off to acknowledge the difficulty but also the enormous value of trust in the workplace. As the song goes, you can't build your dreams with suspicious minds. In a culture of distrust, everyone loses.

Elvis may have left the building, but his voice is ever echoing off the walls.

Four Rules for Growing Engagement

2011-06-01T05:31:00-05:00

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months.

—TJL

by Thomas J. Lee

Here are four important rules any organization can follow to build a culture of engagement, so that employees welcome change and can break on through to the next level:

Make sure everyone on your staff knows and understands the strategic direction, customer expectations, competitive pressures, operating sensitivities, and day-to-day priorities. Insist on clear line of sight between everyone's job and the organization's strategies. Use the word "customer" only in reference to the ultimate, external customer, and make certain that the customer's reasons for choosing your organization over a competitor in the marketplace are clear. Share metrics and strategic information promptly and directly.
Create an atmosphere of critical and creative thinking about the business. Encourage collaboration and the open, free exchange of ideas and suggestions. Be certain there is a safe harbor for tough questions that can even strike you as impertinent. Ask deep, probing questions about the business, and invite everyone to a dialogue around them. Above all, avoid any implication of punishing the messenger for the message.
Recognize that people find motivation both in reasons that reach their mind and emotions that touch their heart. Communication that enables an organization to meet its commitments is usually the stuff of prose: dry, factual, logical. Communication that enables people to reach their full potential is often the stuff of poetry—not of poems per se, but an inspiring and evocative narrative that celebrates and encourages ordinary people to go to extraordinary lengths for something important to the soul. People want and need this.
Prize fresh thinking. Maintain a safe harbor for suggestions and tough questions about the business and even your own leadership. Welcome unorthodox ideas. Teach everyone how to build on someone else's kernel of creativity. Ask not just why something should be done by why it couldn't or shouldn't be done. Encourage people to experiment. Remove barriers to the casual, quick exchange of information and insights. Always be looking for the next big thing.

By following these four rules, you will find yourself creating much more focus, curiosity, passion, and courage in the workplace. That's important, for, as we have said over and over in this space, nothing of much significance has ever been achieved, and nothing of much value has ever been invented or developed, without a lot of focus, a lot of curiosity, a lot of passion, and a lot of courage.

Coming on Friday

A Leadership Lesson from Elvis Presley

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T06:53:51-05:00

Today is a national holiday in the United States, where this blog is published. We will return Wednesday.

Ten Strategies for Straight Talk in the Workplace

2011-05-27T04:19:00-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the past week or so we have been exploring ten “talk traps” and their alternative. Talk traps are conventions of internal communication (for leadership in companies or other organizations) that often prove problematic.

The ten talk traps are Small Talk, Sunny Talk, Scare Talk, Sweet Talk (or Smooth Talk), Smart Talk, Simple Talk, Song and Dance Talk, Slick Talk, Snarky Talk (or Surly Talk), and Self Talk. We identified an eleventh, too: Snarl Talk. You can click here or scroll down to read all about these common talk traps.

As we explained, some of these talk traps work just fine in the right place and the right time, but they can backfire in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are always ill-advised.

We also took a long look at some difficulties that beset Straight Talk, the preferable alternative to those ten talk traps. It turns out that Straight Talk can often pose its own challenges, few of which are obvious to the leader.

Here are ten strategies to make sure that Straight Talk, not one or more of the common talk traps, is undergirding your leadership communication in the workplace:

Lay a good foundation. You cannot begin talking about your business environment early enough. If you’re not in the habit, start now. You needn’t talk about future plans that are not yet finalized. Just talk about the past and the present. If you don’t begin now, people won’t be prepared when you do. The straight talk you eventually offer will very likely come as a shock to the system.
Establish a broad context. Address the weaknesses of your processes and products as well as the strengths. Talk about changes in technology, customer expectations, and speed to market. Deal openly with your culture, its advantages and its disadvantages. Discuss the business from multiple perspectives. It’s important to view reality from the point of view of customers, investors, hourly employees, even competitors.
Consider forming a small communication council consisting of articulate individuals at various levels of the organization or team, both non-management and management, who can provide diverse perspectives on what’s going on.
Recognize the fact that senior management has the luxury of time and typically a sophisticated educational background to help it absorb the need for change, while rank-and-file employees typically do not. By the time a new policy or strategy comes down, its imperative is clear to senior managers but can still be a mystery to ground-level employees.
Be sensitive to the words and phrases you use to describe the business landscape and to establish the direction and the case for change. Jargon and acronyms that are part of your own day-to-day vernacular can be meaningless to others, especially to employees who must execute your strategy. Language that has no meaning cannot possibly have any credibility or impact.
Test your stated values against the real drivers of your decision making. It’s easy to invoke a list of pretty values and nominally pay homage to them. It’s quite another thing to recognize the powerful impetuses that truly direct and shape policy. What really matters? That’s what your values are, like it or not. (One good test: Ask yourself whether you're willing to fire a senior manager you personally like but who violates a value.)
Set a high bar on standards and accountability, but acknowledge that none of us is perfect or perfectible. Make clear what rises to a capital offense and what doesn’t, and underscore the hard importance of aspirations. Don’t be impetuous or fickle. Do insist on common rules. If you expect an hourly employee to pay a parking ticket on company time out of his own pocket, the same rule has to apply to a senior vice president.
Appreciate the problems inherent in cascading. By cascading, we mean disseminating strategic information through an organization one level at a time. Cascading spawns rumors and creates a tangled web of misinformation and misunderstanding. It is a big problem in a lot of companies, yet it is routinely accepted as necessary and even desirable. It’s neither.
Take emotions into account. Emotions are a big part of everyone’s personality. Ignore them at your peril. Probably no emotion is more ubiquitous at work than fear: the fear of speaking up, the fear of questioning authority, the fear of offering an idea. If you’re not dealing with it, you’re being victimized by it.
Get into the nitty-gritty of specifics. It is one thing to lay out a grand strategy. It is quite another thing, and much more difficult, to translate that big strategy into detailed implications for rank-and-file employees. You must do this; the failure to do it is all but an abdication of management in support of leadership.

There’s more, but that’s enough to give you pause as you move forward. Don’t let it paralyze you, and certainly don’t allow it to keep you from speaking the truth. Honesty is still the best policy. Just be careful out there.

Coming on Wednesday

Four Rules for Growing Engagement

(We will be off Monday for a national holiday in the United States.)

Eight Common Scenarios When Straight Talk Backfires

2011-05-25T05:30:00-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days we have explored ten “talk traps,” or conventions of communication in business that often prove problematic for managers. Many of them work just fine in the right place and the right time, but they backfire in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are always ill-advised.

The talk traps are Small Talk, Sunny Talk, Scare Talk, Sweet Talk (or Smooth Talk), Smart Talk, Simple Talk, Song and Dance Talk, Slick Talk, Snarky Talk (or Surly Talk), and Self Talk. We identified an eleventh, too: Snarl Talk. You can click here or scroll down to read all about these common talk traps.

Then a couple of days ago we took a long look at some difficulties that beset Straight Talk, the preferable alternative to those ten talk traps. It turns out that Straight Talk can be difficult indeed.

Not only can Straight Talk be difficult, but occasionally it backfires altogether. If you have ever watched Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, you know what we mean. Straight talk can turn into a mess.

Here are eight scenarios we have seen, even when leaders have the best of intentions:

Perhaps a leader has been taciturn in the past and then realizes she must communicate a new business strategy. She may assume that employees have a depth of knowledge about the company’s competitive situation that they actually do not. She speaks about the strategy as if it is a foregone conclusion, and she fails to explain its rationale. Employees can only wonder what she is talking about and why the particular strategy has found favor.
Or the leader sets out to communicate about the organization’s direction and priorities using words and phrases that are foreign to employees. The leader is speaking naturally and forthrightly, but employees perceive attempts to manipulate and spin the information.
Sometimes a new leader comes on board from another department or even another company in another industry. He wants to “hit the ground running,” as they say, so he lays out a vision before taking the time to fully appreciate the situation he has inherited. That leaves employees mystified over his selection in the first place.
The leader wants to set a high standard, so he invokes values that put a premium on integrity and team spirit. In the weeks and months that follow, decisions on policy and day-to-day management are seen as conflicting with, or only nominally conforming to, those values. Employees decide the leader is weak.
Not uncommonly, a leadership team relies on cascading to “get the word out” about a new policy, program, or priority. By cascading, we mean disseminating strategic information through an organization one level at a time. Cascading spawns rumors and creates a tangled web of misinformation and misunderstanding. It never works, and worse, it teases leadership into thinking that it has communicated when it actually has only miscommunicated.
Senior management devotes weeks or even months to crafting a new strategy, and the strategy is a glorious thing. But it exists only at the level of the enterprise or the division. It has not been translated or interpreted to its practical implications, so employees and their supervisors don’t know what to do with it. Mystified, they naturally ignore it. It’s dead on arrival, but management doesn’t realize it for months to come. So leaders continue talking about something that is a mere historical footnote in the minds of employees.
In harsh economic times, employees have reason to worry about their own economic security. Many are naturally fearful. The organization needs everyone’s full involvement, but only those people who like to hear themselves talk are willing to speak up. The need for open dialogue has yielded to a cacophony of the loud.
Having just read the latest best-seller from Harvard Business Press, the leader is pursuing a new management fad that employees think is just plain silly. Having seen so many fads come and go, they’re naturally resilient. They let the leader talk, of course—no one in her right mind will interrupt or fall asleep—but they’re thinking about their own projects and deadlines. The leader is serious but irrelevant.

If you have been around a while, you have seen scenarios like these more than once. None of them is the product of the ten talk traps. All of them involve leaders who think they are talking straight, and yet their very straight talk is actually part of the problem.

On Friday we will look at some strategies and tactics a leader can use to keep straight talk straight.

Coming on Friday

Ten Strategies for Talking Straight

Welcome, Mister Mayor

2011-05-24T19:29:21-05:00

I note with more than a tinge of pride that Chicago's former mayor, Richard M. Daley, has chosen my alma mater, the Harris School of Public Policy at The University of Chicago, as his first commitment after leaving City Hall.

Hizunah will offer ten lectures each year for the next five years.

As the academic home of 85 Nobel laureates, The University of Chicago is often regarded as airy and rarefied. It is that, but it has long had its feet planted firmly on the ground of Chicago's neighborhoods and its heart in the bosom of Chicago's business and political elite.

Since graduating more than 20 years ago, I have maintained a close relationship with the Harris School as a mentor to graduate students. It truly keeps me thinking young.

Perhaps we can enlist the former mayor to join us. After all, a certain former U of C law professor and his wife each served as Harris School mentors before moving to Washington, D.C. The mayor would be a splendid mentor indeed.

Welcome, Professor Mayor!

— TJL

Coming on Wednesday

When Straight Talk Backfires

Coming on Friday

Ten Strategies for Talking Straight

Six Reasons Why Straight Talk Is Difficult

2011-05-23T03:39:51-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

A few days ago in this space we explored ten “talk traps,” or conventions of communication that managers often fall into. Some of them can work in the right place and the right time, but don't work in the wrong place or the wrong time. Others are ill-advised all the time. Each of them poses its own challenge, and they all are tricky.

By far the best overall approach to communication in business is Straight Talk: just speaking the truth—gently and respectfully, of course—and letting the chips fall where they fall. But even it is difficult, and occasionally it, too, can backfire.

I can think of six powerful reasons why Straight Talk is often difficult.

First, it isn’t always clear what the "facts" are. What you see often depends on what you’re looking for and on what you have seen before. Moreover, the facts of a situation can change rapidly and repeatedly, nowadays with blinding speed. What was true yesterday isn’t necessarily true today or tomorrow.

Second, it isn’t always easy to distinguish between fact and opinion. Again, where you stand often depends on where you sit. For example, try to find some factual ground that politicians on the left and right both acknowledge to be true. Not so long ago, my older brother, whom I have always admired, and I got into a little tiff over the telephone because we happen to disagree on politics. It happens.

Third, the facts can be very unpleasant, to the point that you may not want to face them. Probably all of us have something or someone in our life that we are avoiding. Unfortunately, ignoring or neglecting these simmering problems just lets them fester. Eventually, they are bound to explode like Mount St. Helens.

Fourth, not all facts have an equal claim on your judgment. The facts that you think mitigate your own decisions and behavior are usually, and systematically, ignored by others, and vice versa. It is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that people can excuse themselves for a mortal sin but rush to condemn others for every venal sin imaginable.

Fifth, the facts can force you to confront your own vulnerabilities: perhaps a professional competency that you should have mastered, or a relational skill that has proved elusive, or a loose command over your own time and resources that threatens to undercut your effectiveness. In those situations, it is tempting to look the other way, isn't it?

Sixth, the facts can challenge and bring into question the values you claim, and even undermine your integrity as a leader. No leader exercises such total and abject control over an organization that it fully lives up to the leader’s aspirations. But when the organization falls short, everyone looks to the leader for an explanation or accountability. For the leader, those moments are not enjoyable.

Not only can Straight Talk pose difficulty, but it can backfire. Wednesday, we’ll explore some of the ways it backfires.

Coming on Wednesday

When Straight Talk Backfires

Coming on Friday

Ten Strategies for Talking Straight

Ten Talk Traps Every Leader Must Carefully Manage

2011-05-20T05:46:00-05:00

Editor's Note: In the past we have presented lists of three and five talk traps. Some of you suggested additional kinds of talk traps, so we grew the list. Here is a revised and larger version incorporating your suggestions. Thank you!

by Thomas J. Lee

Business leaders are supposed to value communication.

But not all communication is created equal. In tone or substance, the wrong kind of communication often backfires. We all know that, because we have all been there.

Here are ten kinds of "talk traps," along with a bonus. Some have their place and their moment when they serve you well, but at the wrong place or the wrong moment, they gravely compound problems. Others are always ill-advised.

In every case, they are tricky. They can easily send the wrong message or confusing and contradictory messages, and their patronizing or presumptuous attitude can alienate employees or other constituents.

Lots of leaders unwittingly fall into these traps. So here is a little guide.

Small Talk is useful for exchanging pleasantries and greetings, of course. As a social lubricant, it is usually harmless, and occasionally it can be informative. Be sure you don’t neglect it. But if small talk is the totality of your communication as you wander about the workplace, you’re missing a great opportunity. Small talk is no substitute for relevant, substantive information about the company’s direction and decisions.
Sunny Talk, also known as Sunshine Talk or Pumping Sunshine, is the tendency to paint a rosy, simpleminded picture on an unrosy situation. As a leader, you’re supposed to be optimistic and resolute. Just don’t be a Pollyanna. Employees who hear an endless stream of Sunny Talk eventually stop listening. Who can blame them? Everyone knows the real story is rarely if ever so wonderful. The problem with Sunny Talk is its patronizing assumption that employees need to be manipulated in order to be influenced. How sad.
Scare Talk is just the opposite. It constantly paints a picture of woe. It, too, can cause all kinds of problems. Just as the future is never entirely pretty, it’s never completely dismal. Employees know that. By the same token, a leader should have the courage to share unhappy news, as, for example, the reason a big customer is jumping to a competitor. It can be just what’s needed to help sharpen the edge of customer service, product design, or service quality.
Sweet Talk, also known as Smooth Talk, seduces people into taking shortcuts they probably shouldn't, or to accept a deal or situation that is not in their best interest or the company's best interest. Managers under pressure to meet deadlines, budgets, or quotas are often to blame. At its worst, Sweet Talk can result in shipping goods of poor quality, overlooking safety precautions, violating labor agreements, or disappointing customers—any of which can do severe damage to the company's reputation and cost customers or even human life.
Smart Talk is the tendency, all too common in both business and politics, to let words substitute for action. You will often see it when someone is trying to sound smarter than he actually is, or when he is pretending to have information or answers that he doesn't have. It backfires when the real information becomes available, which, in the 21st Century, is invariably sooner than the smart talker anticipates. You will also see Smart Talk in action—or, more aptly, inaction—when organizations are averse to the change they must undertake. They find it easier to talk about change than to actually change. They are in a state of paralysis by analysis.
Simple Talk underestimates, ignores, or glosses over the nuances, uncertainty, difficulty, or general complexity of a situation or challenge. It offers iron-clad directives in spite of frequent circumstances that cry out for exceptions. As a result, it leaves people feeling like cogs rather than individuals, as units rather than persons, as a machine rather than a team. People are inclined just to shrug their shoulders rather than exercise discretion and judgment, and then to blame their management. Often customers will sense the air of resignation. Not good.
Song and Dance Talk is full of excuses. Any veteran manager or frontline supervisor has heard his share of Song and Dance Talk from underperforming employees. When managers themselves indulge in the same thing, employees quickly realize they are working for a can't-do management team and a never-will company, and they begin looking for the exit.
Slick Talk is an effort to distract someone from a legitimate concern or to mislead someone about something of legitimate concern to them. It takes its name from high-gloss, high-polish production values that call attention to themselves such as an expensive video, a lavish meeting, a slide presentation with brilliant graphics, or such extensive collateral documentation that a reader doesn't know where to begin. Spin often accompanies it.
Snarky Talk or Surly Talk frequently rears its ugly head in pressure-cooker situations when patience is wearing thin. This is just the uncivil, demeaning treatment of people. It may consist of only a single word, such as "Brilliant" or "Genius," uttered in a scornful, mocking tone. Or it may consist of extensive unnecessary background information that is implicitly condescending. It may even be a sneering, if looks could kill facial expression. Managers who frequently resort to Snarky Talk are often intellectually intelligent but emotionally unintelligent, perhaps narcissistic and sometimes even belligerent.
Self Talk is perhaps the most difficult of them all, for no one else ever hears it—but everyone can see its consequences in your choices, behavior, and regard for others. Think of it as covert communication: what you are saying, and how you are saying it, to yourself. What happens to your outward dignity when you are alone in your thoughts? What are you explaining away in a mean-spirited way? How much vitriol do you heap upon yourself? Do you curse yourself? Or are you critical of others for things you excuse or overlook altogether in yourself? Are you ever privately racist or sexist in your thinking? How do you account for personal slights to your ego?

Here's the bonus, though I hesitate to use the same nomenclature. If I did, I suppose it would be Snarl Talk. Like the snarl of tangled cords behind your television or stereo, it refers to the tendency to pack too much information and too many themes into a presentation, publication, or report. Anyone on the receiving end senses a data dump and usually shuts down for want of a tighter focus.

Yet another kind of talk is the leader’s most valuable tool: Straight Talk. But all too often, leaders think they’re talking straight when they aren’t necessarily.

Post Script: I couldn't resist using the picture. For the record, I am not suggesting that business leaders are like this caricature of a used-car salesman. Well, a few are, but fortunately only a few.

Coming on Monday

Why Is Straight Talk So Difficult?

Like It or Not, You Are Your Message

2011-05-18T07:25:21-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked: "What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."

Probably all of us react knowingly to that insightful statement, yet all of us are its intended target, as well.

If you think it is only apt for the other guy, think again. It is you, and I, and he, and Emerson himself, whom Emerson had in mind. We are all our walking message.

Some of the work I do involves communication troubleshooting. Typically, a company will ask me to determine why it has so much misunderstanding or so many rumors. Or it will bring my methodology to bear on issues around open and honest communication. Or it will ask me to work
with eight or ten or twelve particular managers whose technical expertise is great but whose communication skills are not.

On arriving at the scene I often find complicating factors. The process of disseminating information may be creating all kinds of problems. Not uncommonly, the communication competencies of the senior executives who hired me also contribute to the problem. Their own messages may not be entirely clear or credible or cogent, and that leaves other people wondering what they meant or even whether they are serious and sincere.

You can hardly blame the others, then, for interpreting a message for themselves, or for patching it together on the basis of what they think they know to be true.

One common problem is something I call rogue communication. These are just the messages that we send implicitly and usually obliviously. They can be verbal or non-verbal. Typically we are clueless that we are sending them at all. But they are no less powerful because of that. They can have severe consequences, even derailing or prematurely ending a career.

Here are a couple of real-life examples. A former colleague was meeting with the chief executive officer of a Fortune 100 company. The CEO leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. A moment later, my colleague did the same thing. That was a mistake. Deliberately or not, he was communicating his own sense of parity with the CEO, and the executive most certainly did not share it.

Come to think of it, I wonder whatever happened to Ben.

Another time, the board chairman of a major corporation made some unprepared after-dinner remarks to a weekend retreat for the company's senior executives. Afterward the executive vice president rose to cap the evening's proceedings and send everyone on their way. In referring to the chairman's remarks a moment earlier, he said: "I think what John was trying to say was . . . " A few weeks later Fred decided to retire early.

More commonly, we send messages day in and day out about our priorities, concerns, and values. Calling someone or not calling someone can send such a large message to that person that it overwhelms whatever was said on the call. Positive messages such as a token of friendship or appreciation, a gentle word of reassurance, a note of gratitude or consolation, or an appropriately light tough on the elbow can be remembered for years.

By the same measure, unfortunate messages such as a sharp tone of voice, delays without explanations, an ill-timed smirk, offensive humor, a pattern of excuses, evasive eye contact, the hurried neglect of etiquette, or an appearance of boredom can all send messages that are taken very seriously. They are rarely thoughtful and intended, and they may not even be real. But their mere perception makes them real.

Here's the thing: The people who are doing the reading, listening, or observing get to decide what the message is. For all intents and purposes, the message as sent is immaterial. The message as received is what counts.

All of us are, as Emerson observed, what we do as well as what we say. When the two collide, what we do speaks the loudest. And all of us—you, I, and the other guy—need to keep that in mind.

Coming on Friday

Beware These Ten Talk Traps

{Numbers} Effective Managers Repeat Themselves

2011-05-16T03:31:43-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Ever since the pioneering work of Frederick Winslow Taylor a century ago, managers have been trying to do more with less. Efficiency is good.

For many managers, that is certainly true of communication. They want to say something once and be done with it. Especially in a time when we are all assaulted daily by thousands of messages—emails, advertising, announcements, complaints, questions, Google searches, conversations, requests for this and that, the news—brevity is the soul of clarity as well as wit.

There's just one nagging issue: Does it work? Can we truly say something only once to someone and seriously expect to communicate well?

The answer isn't so simple.

In some circumstances it can work. Probably all of us remember hearing some particularly pleasant or hurtful words on the job: "We want you to start work next Monday" or "You have to go to Fresno again" or "We won the Smith account" or "Everyone has to take a pay cut."

On the other hand, when I am troubleshooting poor communication, one-off instructions often emerge as a problem. For routine information, saying something once is tantamount to never saying it at all. People don't remember hearing things that they were told just last week.

Now comes intriguing new research on the importance of redundant communication. A study reported in the current (May 2011) issue of Harvard Business Review found that managers who deliberately repeat themselves are significantly more effective than managers who don't. The key word there is deliberately.

The researchers noticed that the effective managers were building redundancy into their communication plans. Even before they communicated the news the first time, they were planning how to do it a second and even a third time.

The pattern was especially pronounced among managers without formal authority. These days, that includes more managers than ever before, as companies form ad hoc project teams for special assignments and limited periods of time.

The study of six companies shows that 21 percent of managers without formal authority routinely sent redundant messages—for example, following up a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation with an email—while only 12 percent of managers with formal power did likewise, according to Paul Leonardi of Northwestern University and Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School.

The powerless managers got things done faster and with fewer hiccups, presumably as a result of the redundant messaging, the professors said. Meanwhile, managers with official power tend to rely on their authority. They apparently assumed that employees would just follow their directions, and they believed that communicating once was enough.

"We’re so bred to believe that clarity is the key to being a better communicator," said Leonardi. "The literature says pick the best medium for the [message], and anything else is wasteful. This research suggests that’s not true. You need to use multiple media.

"It’s not necessarily just about clarity. It’s about making your presence felt. Employees are getting pulled in many directions and reporting to lots of people and getting tons of communications. So how do you keep your issues top of mind? Redundancy is a way to do that."

For many of you, this will confirm your lingering suspicion and our intuition. You know from your personal lives the importance of repetition. After all, how many of us are content to hear our spouses say "I love you" only once?

If there is anything I have learned over the years, it is that people are not robots, and that business is all about people. As advertisers and politicians seem to have known all along, managers should repeat themselves. I say: Managers should repeat themselves. I say . . .

Coming on Wednesday

Rogue Communication

When Leaders Just Cannot Speak Clearly

2011-05-13T10:35:25-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

A client who truly understands the energy that clear, compelling, credible communication brings to leadership has a memorable way of explaining it.

"A funny thing happens to leadership in the absence of communication," Charlene likes to say. "Nothing."

That sums it up fairly well.

Sometimes, though, a leader comes along who has many other important qualities—passion, resolve, intensity, vision, knowledge—but who cannot articulate his thoughts in a coherent sentence. Similarly, sometimes a leader has a knack for saying things that are unintentionally funny, in the manner of Yogi Berra.

Anyone who has lived in or near Chicago for the last 22 years is familiar with the phenomenon. Richard M. Daley, the city's mayor since 1989 who will leave office on Monday, regularly manages to mangle and tangle the English language out of all recognition. Often you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Consider some of the things Mayor Daley has said:

Insisting to reporters that public scrutiny doesn't bother him: "Go scrutinize yourself! I get scrootened every day, don't worry, from each and every one of you. It doesn't bother me."

In the heat of debate over the obligation of railroads to make street crossings safer: "They have a responsibility, they can't get away with it. I mean, they stole the land from the Indians. They took all that land. They got it free from us."

Responding to appeals for a business casual dress code in City Hall: "If somebody takes their tie off, I'm not going to take my tie off. If somebody takes their pants off, I'm not going to take my pants off."

Asked to clarify his position on capital punishment: "I'm pro death! I'm a death-penalty opponent!"

In the wake of concerns about poor sanitation in restaurants: "If a rat is on your sandwich, you hope to know it before. If a mouse is on your salad, it's common sense."

Replying to complaints about police brutality to protesters: "It's just a group of people, yuppies and yippies and hoppies or whatever they call them, I don't know. Who are they? Are they worried about the moon coming out or something? The sun is changing and I don't know. This is unbelievable."

There are countless more.

Daley's father, the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley—they were not Sr. and Jr. as their middle names differed—was similarly afflicted. He was legendary for saying: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder."

And: "I resent insinuendo." And: "No man is an Ireland." And: "We will reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."

The thing is, few Chicagoans ever doubted either mayor's loving commitment to the City of Chicago. I didn't live here when the elder Daley was mayor, but I have been here throughout the tenure of the younger Daley. This city is far cleaner, far prettier, far safer, far nicer, and generally far better now than it was 22 years ago. I invite all of you to visit and see for yourself. You'll love it.

I tell business managers: You need not be eloquent, but you must speak, and the more clarity, cogency, and credibility you can bring to your communication, the more energy your leadership will have.

Every rule has the exceptions that prove it. Somehow, both Mayors Daley managed to wreck the English language with abandon, but no one ever doubted what they meant or how much they cared.

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Repeat Thyself. Repeat thyself.

What Is a Meme, Anyway? And Why Should Leaders Care?

2011-05-11T04:40:00-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Yesterday I was going through a cardboard box of old clippings, which I was saving for a very important but (ahem) very forgotten reason, when I came across an 11-year-old Wall Street Journal article headlined "The Words of Tomorrow." It offered definitions for words and phrases that we would need to survive in the 21st Century.

Some of these words and phrases have rapidly come into common use in the decade since: identity theft, time suck, and Frankenfood. Others were near misses: blosphere, for what we now refer to as the blogosphere. Still others deserve wider usage, such as voice novel, for an endless voice-mail message, and 404, for clueless (from the Internet error message). Of course, the article could make no mention of words or phrases that were yet to be coined—app, smart phone, or social media—that would become part of our vernacular with lightning speed.

One entry caught my eye. It is a word I see with irritating frequency online, usually on sites devoted to technology and media—but only online. I have never seen the word in print—on paper, that is—other than in this Wall Street Journal list. Apparently that is because I never read Richard Dawkins's 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which is now on my Kindle wish list, and which introduced the word to readers who apparently saw no particular need to adopt and use it. Thirty-five years later, maybe they still don't.

The irritating word is memes, which the Journal's glossary defined as "building blocks of culture, similar to genes but passed on by imitation, not heredity." The Journal cited examples of memes such as "tunes, ideas, catch phrases." A meme may be technology (a way of building arches, for example) or a belief (in life after death, for example), or any other concept, preference, habit, or what have you—in other words, it is anything that can be copied from one person's mind to another's person's.

For a long time, whenever I came across this word online I winced. Though short and arguably useful, it struck me as pretentious and obnoxious. Maybe that's because it was never accompanied by a brief definition. It was just there, an ugly verbal scar. I didn't quite understand it, and I saw no need to try.

I have gotten over that, and I now do see some use for this word. Not that I will begin using it—especially without defining it—but I do think it can be useful in certain contexts, one of which is gaining insight into leadership.

For anyone interested in the management and leadership of large organizations, applying the concept of memes to leadership helps us understand the importance of leadership development up, down, and across an organization.

Altogether too many people, many of them managers and leaders themselves, are walking around with an outdated meme of leadership. They think of leadership as the sole responsibility of executive-level administration, and conversely they see management as the province of middle tiers and front-line supervision. This coarse distinction shows up even in the pages of the Harvard Business Review.

The outdated meme creates two problems. First, it tends to remove senior management from the gritty, day-to-day reality of the company. Not that all senior managers become remote, but many of them do. Second, it absolves the middle and lower tiers of a company's administration from active responsibility for change, for they are likely to see themselves not as engines of change but as mere cogs on the gears.

A newer and better meme of leadership is to think of it not in terms of a hierarchy or a pecking order at all, but rather as work—as responsibilities, as tasks, and especially as communication. The rival responsibilities of leadership and management leverage each other, but they are fundamentally different.

In this meme, the work of management is all about ensuring steady, reliable, consistent performance. A manager who is managing well is ensuring the performance of a team to certain predetermined expectations.

If the expectation involves spending money, we call it coming in under budget. If it involves completing a project by a specific date, we call it meeting a deadline. If it involves doing something or producing something within acceptable parameters, we call it complying with a standard—quality, perhaps, or safety. When it involves making or selling or issuing enough of something, we call it clearing a quota. There are many other kinds of similar challenges around production processes, contractual obligations, legal procedures and requirements, ethics standards, cultural imperatives, and much more.

When successful, management creates alignment. Alignment is the deliverable or work product of good management. It is the equivalence of expectation and performance. Alignment is a good thing; misalignment is bad. But remember: Alignment is not the product of leadership. It is the product of management.

Further in the same meme, the work of leadership is altogether different from the work of management. Leadership is all about change. A leader who is leading well is successfully bringing about a particular, big change, either culturally or operationally.

Leadership entails envisioning, articulating, inspiring, and supporting change—attitudinal or behavioral—or a breakthrough performance of some sort, typically requiring the discretionary and self-sacrificing efforts of people, and often in an environment of uncertainty and risk to oneself.

The change or breakthrough may involve launching a new product, or expanding geographically, or merging cultures after an acquisition, or fending off a unionization vote, or adopting a new technology, or meeting the changing needs of customers. There are many kinds of such challenges.

When successful, leadership creates engagement. Engagement is the deliverable or work product of good leadership. It is the predicate of change. Engagement is a good thing; disengagement is bad. But engagement is not the product of good management. It is the product of good leadership throughout the organization.

This, then, is the new meme of leadership we need to spread: Good leadership creates people engagement. Good management creates people alignment. Both are important. Companies need engagement to change, and they need alignment to fulfill their commitments. Clarifying and exploring that distinction, it seems to me, should be the first task of any leadership development initiative.

For the few of you who want to read more on the concept of memes,

here is the Wikipedia entry, and here is a link to amazon.com, where you can buy

a copy of Richard Dawkins's 1976 book, The Selfish Gene.

Coming on Friday

When Leaders Just Cannot Speak Clearly

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss

2011-05-09T06:56:51-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Whenever a snowstorm paralyzes the U.S. capital, the word goes out that non-essential government workers should stay home.

That begs a few questions. What makes an employee non-essential? Why is the government even employing anyone who isn't essential? And how does it feel to be labeled anything less than essential?

I can't imagine it feels very good. Even recognizing that the non-essential workers plainly get the better part of the deal on a snow day—they can take their kids skating and sledding—who would want to be labeled non-essential?

Isn't that akin to be called trivial? Unimportant? Insignificant?

Here's the irony for managers and team leaders in the private sector—or, for that matter, in the public sector and the social (or non-profit) sector. Managers and team leaders should actually strive to be non-essential. They should take pride in becoming non-essential.

For a manager or a team leader, becoming non-essential means that the people on their team have the priorities, competencies, attitude, and initiative to do what their manager or team leader would want them to do anyway. There is no difference in the work they do. It is the same as if the boss were present. If anything, it is even a tad better because it is more adaptive to new circumstances.

That doesn't mean the managers or team leaders are suddenly irrelevant. To the contrary, they are all the more vital to the process, because they are using their own position and leadership more comprehensively and more proactively. They are free to think and work more strategically, too.

So if you're a manager or a team leader, commit yourself to becoming non-essential. You will be doing your people and your organization a big service.

Coming on Wednesday

Why Do Memes Matter to Leaders?

President Obama Finally Finds His Voice

2011-05-07T06:43:15-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Last summer I went public with my criticism of President Obama's plodding, lawyerly style of communication. The silver tongue we had heard it on the campaign trail was tarnished and twisted. He often seemed like a cross between Dwight Eisenhower and Walter Mondale, with a little Jimmy Carter thrown in for good measure. You can read that essay here.

So it's only fair that I go public with a little approbation when it is due. The president finally found his inspiring oratorical voice again Friday afternoon in some powerful remarks to the 101st Airborne troops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

It was a radical and refreshing change. Stylistically, he delivered this speech with confidence and verve, something that has been sorely missing. Substantively, he packed it with bold calls to greatness. Americans want to be summoned to greatness. Every president should know that and always remember it.

I don't wade into partisan politics very often in this blog, but it seems only fair to give credit when credit is due if I am already throwing barbs when barbs are due.

You can watch the speech here.

Coming on Monday

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss

Doubt and Fear, the Hobgoblins of Change

2011-05-06T03:41:39-05:00

by Thomas J. Lee

Mr. Doubt and Mr. Fear were hitchhiking alongside the highway. They looked forsaken: dirty, dreary, dangerous. Car after car passed them by.

After only a few minutes Mr. Doubt declared: "I doubt that we will get to the town where are going. We may as well give up and begin walking there."

Mr. Fear replied: "I am afraid it is too far for us to walk. We should stay put."

An hour went by. Then another hour, and another hour. Gradually, the traffic thinned, and the sun began to set.

Finally, Mr. Fear declared: "I am fearful of staying out here much longer. We are cold, and we are getting hungry."

Mr. Doubt nodded.

So they picked up and bags and unhappily headed back to where they had come from, never to reach their destination.

Not once did they look at each other or at themselves and ask the obvious question: Who would stop to give such awful looking characters a ride?

M any of us wrestle with doubt and fear at some point, but few of us realize the damage these nefarious travelers can do.

Doubt and fear are the hobgoblins of change. They invite defeat and failure. They see barriers that do not exist. They preach mediocrity and stagnation. They reach for nothing, and they achieve nothing. They offer succor to cyncism, for they teach the expectation of cannot.

Because they expect they cannot, they do not; and they never realize why not.

Individuals who are filled with doubt and fear are their own barrier to success. Organizations that tolerate too many such persons will risk developing a culture of doubt and fear. Their best days will soon be behind them.

If this sounds like a person or an organization you know, the first thing to do is recognize the situation for the danger it poses. Point out the toxicity of cynicism, and campaign for hope and confidence. You may or may not succeed, but at least you will have a chance that you otherwise would not.

Coming on Monday

The Irony of the Non-Essential Boss