Archive for February, 2009
Recovering from a Bobby Jindal Moment February 27 2009 no responses
OK, so you know your big speech didn’t go so well when, the next day, you’re being compared in a side by side screen shot with Kenneth the NBC page from 30 Rock. That’s the situation for Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who gave the televised GOP response to President Obama’s non-State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Roundly panned for lack of substance, condescending tone and robotic body language, Jindal (who everyone agrees is a really smart guy), responded to the criticism by immediately leaving for Disney World.
What would have been a more productive response on his part?
A Leadership Stimulus Package February 25 2009 no responses
One of my favorite questions to ask an audience of leaders is, “How many of you, when you look back on your careers, can identify a time when your development as a leader was super saturated? Was there an event or an assignment or a crisis when you had to step up and, in the process, really grew?” Usually, every hand in the room will go up. Every leader has had at least one of those experiences.
Well, with about 800 billion dollars of stimulus getting ready to flow through government programs and into the economy, a whole lot of leaders in federal and state government agencies are about to get the biggest development experience of their careers.
Don’t Choke! February 23 2009 3 responses
One of my favorite leadership thinkers is a guy who writes about golf for the Wall Street Journal. This weekend, John Paul Newport wrote about what frequently happens when players are under pressure. They choke.
More Than Your Job February 20 2009 no responses
A few weeks ago, I was speaking to a group of regional CEO’s. The group was small enough that afterwards, we were able to sit around a couple of tables and talk about some of the issues they’re facing. One woman, a hospital CEO, seemed to speak for many of her colleagues when she talked about the pressure that came with such a visible position in the community. Everyone there had their own version of that story.
It reminded me of a story that I shared with the group. Several years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Bill Russell deliver keynote remarks at a conference I was attending.
And Your Name Is? February 18 2009 4 responses
Last weekend I had a long lunch with Ty Neal, a business leader who is also one of my best friends since second grade. He shared a personal story with me that is a great example of the impact and footprint that leaders can have without even realizing it. I texted Ty earlier today to get his permission to share the story with you. He’s good with it, so here it is.
Ty is the co-owner of a very successful brick oven pizza and bistro restaurant called Matchbox. In five years, he and his partners have built two Matchbox locations in DC – (one in Penn Quarter and another on Capitol Hill) and another in Palm Springs, CA. With great pizza, awesome mini-burgers and a eclectic wine and beer list, Matchbox is always packed with happy customers.
With success has come rapid growth and the Matchbox team now numbers 250 employees across the three locations. Ty and his partners are hands-on owners and leaders and are regularly in the restaurants working with the staff and mingling with the guests. For the past month or so, Ty has been talking and working with a new server named Kevin. Ty’s a friendly guy and interacts with people easily and Kevin is no exception. The only problem is that his name’s not Kevin, it’s Eric. Ty told me how embarrassed he was to recently learn that he’d been calling Eric by the wrong name for a month.
“So, Ty told me, I went to him and said, ‘Dude, I’m so sorry, I’ve been calling you Kevin and I found out your name is Eric. Why didn’t you correct me and tell me the right name?’” Eric replied, “Well, I figured you’re my boss and I work for you and I didn’t have any place correcting you. You could have called me whatever you wanted and I would have been OK with that.”
Here’s the leadership footprint moment. Ty extended his hand to Eric and said, “Eric, my name is Ty and I’m pleased to meet you. I will never forget your name. And, while I’m the owner, I’m not your boss. No one is the boss of you but you. And please don’t say you work for me. I work here too and we work with each other.”
Needless to say that made an impression on Eric and now he’s regularly approaching Ty with energetic reports on how things are going and ideas for improving the operation. Eric came to Matchbox from a well known national restaurant chain and is so happy with his new gig that he’s brought five more server friends of his from the old place with him to Ty’s place. Who says it’s hard to find good help?
There are multiple opportunities every day to stop and connect with the people who work with us on our teams. If you stop and acknowledge the person by making a sincere connection you earn loyalty and passion that can’t be bought. If you want to see it in action, head over to Matchbox for lunch or dinner and ask for Eric. Be sure to tell Ty I sent you.
Two Guys Who Get It February 16 2009 one response
Meet Andres Izquieta and Dee Murthy, co-CEO’s of the menswear company Five Four. These days, stories about retail are at the top of the list of the economic train wreck genre of reportage. As the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday, though, Andres and Dee are completely rethinking their business model and living to tell the tale in the process.
This time last year, Five Four was making a pair of jeans for $14 and selling them for $110. Nice margins if you can get them, but in a world where luxury retailers are knocking prices back by 70% just to get the clothes out of the store, those days are gone. If you take a look at the WSJ story, there are a lot of lessons that any business leader can learn from Andre and Dee about how to survive and, in the long run, maybe even thrive in a down market.
In reading the article, I counted at least 10 different things they did to adjust to a market that changed overnight back in October. Their moves included price cuts, finding cheaper suppliers and extending very flexible terms to their customers. (We could have some fun with this by you going into the article and finding your favorite move they made and calling it out in the comments section of this blog. It could sort of be like that old puzzle game from Highlights magazine where you see how many objects you can find hidden in the picture of the tree. Come on, you know you read Highlights when you went to the doctor’s office. It was all about “fun with a purpose.”)
But, I digress. There are two big lessons that I learned from Andres and Dee that the Journal didn’t explicitly call out. The first is that they didn’t sleep through the change. They were paying attention to their metrics and when the bottom dropped out, they sprang into action. The second lesson is they didn’t spend a lot of time grieving over what they lost. When $110 jeans were no longer reality, they moved onto products and deals that were the new reality.
So, how are they doing? Well, their 2008 net stayed flat at $8 million. Not too shabby for the worst retail environment in forever. The other thing I love about these guys is they still have big, hairy audacious goals for the new reality. As Andre says toward the end of the article:
They are still adjusting to the new world, however. Early in the piece, Andre acknowledged that he had gone out and bought a new Aston Martin sports car (you know, a James Bond-mobile) when times seemed fat. Now, he says, “'What a stupid purchase. What did I think I was proving by buying that?” Still, some luxuries can be affordable even in this economy. In looking closely at the picture above, I’m pretty sure the bottle on the floor beneath the desk is a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Not bad, especially when you get it for around thirty five bucks at Costco.
Adapt and Grow February 13 2009 no responses
One of the great challenges of leadership is to change your approach when the one that has worked in the past no longer does. Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran an excerpt from senior military correspondent Thomas Ricks’ new book, The Gamble, that illustrates how one leader addressed this challenge.
Ricks tells the story of General Ray Odierno who is now the commanding officer of U.S. forces in Iraq. As Ricks explains, over the course of his career, Odierno “had earned a reputation as the best of the Army's conventional thinkers — intelligent and ambitious, but focused on using the tools in front of him rather than discovering new and unexpected ones.” In his book, Ricks outlines how Odierno shifted his approach from the leader of the “kick in the front door and intimidate the enemy” approach of the early years in Iraq to being, along with General David Petreaus, the chief architect of the counterinsurgency “surge” strategy which has brought relative calm to the country over the past year. I share this story not as an endorsement of the war but as an interesting case study in the adaptation and growth of a leader.
In the early days of the war, Odierno and Petreaus were two leadership stars who took very different approaches. As Ricks writes, “Odierno (was) inclined to use the closed fist and Petraeus the open hand.” When he left Iraq for the first time in 2004, Odierno felt that the mission was almost accomplished and that things were going well. When he returned in 2006, he was struck by the desperation of the situation.
For many reasons that Ricks relates in his article, Odierno realized that a different set of results were needed and, therefore, different actions were required. After assessing the situation upon his return to Iraq, Odierno admonished his subordinates that “planners must understand the environment and develop plans from an environmental perspective [instead of] an enemy situation perspective." Along with General Petreaus, Odierno, who had made his reputation through the effective use of force, developed and implemented the counterinsurgency strategy of clear, hold and build. (Click here for a U.S. Army presentation on the basics of a counterinsurgency approach.)
From a leadership development standpoint, Odierno shifted from a single loop to a double loop approach to learning. As the picture to the left (which was originally developed by the great Chris Argyris of MIT) illustrates, it’s all too easy for leaders to get stuck in a loop of doing what they’ve always done because it’s worked for them in the past (represented by the small blue loop in the picture). Effective leaders develop the capacity and the habit of stepping back and looking at the entire system and situation (represented by the large green loop in the picture). They ask themselves questions such as:
- What result am I really trying to get?
- Do the actions we’re taking achieve the results?
- What else could we try to get different results?
I encourage you take a few minutes and read the entire article in the Post. There’s a lot more to it than what I’m able to cover in a short blog post. The article also contains some great lessons about the differences between formal and informal influence and authority along with the importance of listening to the people who are closest to the situation. Take a look and let me know what leadership lessons you take away.
Leading with the Heart and Not Just the Head February 11 2009 no responses
OK, I promise that I’m not going to turn this blog into the internet’s number one site for Obama groupies, but I have to share and briefly comment on this video clip from the President’s town hall meeting in Ft. Myers, Florida yesterday.
One thing that these tough economic times guarantee is that leaders will frequently have to either deliver bad news or demonstrate compassion for people that are suffering.
During the Q & A segment of the President’s town hall yesterday, a woman named Henrietta Hughes made a plea for help so that she could get her family out of the small car they've been living in and into a safe home with a kitchen and some of the other basics of life. Take one minute to watch this video clip of Ms. Hughes and notice how the President responded to her.
What did you notice? Here’s what struck me:
Acknowledgement: With unwavering eye contact and by asking her for her name, Obama acknowledged Ms. Hughes as a person.
Respect: When he learned her name, he didn’t call her Henrietta, he called her Ms. Hughes.
Connection: By walking toward her and bending over to kiss her cheek, the President established a connection with Ms. Hughes.
Relevance: It would have been easy for Obama to just talk about the need to help all of America’s homeless, but he went beyond that to make a commitment to do what he could to help Ms. Hughes specifically.
All of that was conveyed in 60 seconds. Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting that the answer for leaders supporting people in tough times is to always walk over and kiss them on the cheek. What I am suggesting is that, especially in the midst of emotional times, it is vital to slow down, really listen and respond and communicate with your heart and not just your head. Sometime in the next few days or weeks, you’re going to face a tough communications challenge that is focused on helping real people with real issues. Be present for them and yourself and respond accordingly.
Obama’s Carrots and Sticks February 9 2009 3 responses
The back and forth over the economic stimulus bill is providing an interesting case study of the need for leaders to mix and match different leadership approaches. One thing that President Obama showed over the course of his campaign is that he plays a long term game and views the natural peaks and valleys as part of the journey. Still, it’s been surprising to see how quickly he lost the initiative on the stimulus bill which pretty much everyone agrees is the most important thing he has to get done in the short term.
I was looking at this over the weekend through the lens of Daniel Goleman’s model of resonant and dissonant leadership styles. If you’re not familiar with the model, Goleman makes the point that there are two broad categories of leadership styles. The resonant styles establish connection between the leader and the group. Dissonant styles, if overused, create disconnection between the leader and the group. One way to think about it is the resonant styles represent the carrots while the dissonant styles represent the sticks. I’d argue that in the past couple of weeks, President Obama went long on carrots and short on sticks.
Here are the six styles that Goleman has identified that fall into the two broad categories:
Resonant
1. Visionary
2. Democratic
3. Coaching
4. Affiliative
Dissonant
5. Commanding
6. Pacesetting
The research of Goleman and his colleagues show that effective leaders mix and match at least three of the six styles at any given time. The key, of course, is choosing the right styles and deploying them in the appropriate amounts – the carrots and the sticks so to speak.
Here’s my take on how Obama got behind the curve on the stimulus bill. Simply put, he over relied on the affiliative style, over used the democratic style and under used the visionary and commanding styles. Let me break it down a bit. First, as the name suggests, the affiliative style is all about establishing affiliation with people. By going to Capitol Hill for meetings with both parties, throwing cocktail parties at the White House and hosting a Super Bowl party for members of Congress, Obama demonstrated that he is a world champ at this style. People really seem to like the guy. Just being liked, of course, will not get the job done.
In putting the package together, the President turned the initiative over to the House Democratic leadership. In doing this, he was showing some element of the democratic (note that it’s spelled with a small “d”) style which is about inviting input from the group as a decision is made. Good strategy, but it’s important to be intentional about who’s providing the input, what the parameters are for decision making and to be clear about what’s in and out of scope. Based on what I’ve read and seen, I’d argue that the President failed to do that so what he got from the House bill was a lot of stuff that was easy for the GOP to define as the same old, same old list of pork barrel projects. Not a good thing when you’re the president who was elected to bring a new way of doing business to Washington.
To his credit, President Obama recognized pretty quickly that he had gotten behind the curve and has lately been mixing in the commanding and visionary styles that he initially underused in an effort to get things back on track. Last week, he began stating his case for the stimulus more forcefully by pushing back on those who complain that the bill is just a spending bill. Obama pretty much called them out by noting that spending is the point of a stimulus bill. As the bill moves to negotiations between the Senate and the House this week, it will be interesting to see how Obama and his team insert themselves to guide the outcome to something they think will work.
Finally, starting today in Elkhart, Indiana and tonight in a prime time news conference, Obama will deploy his vaunted rhetorical abilities to deploy the visionary style of leadership as he begins to actively sell the stimulus package to the American public. To be successful in this regard, he’ll need to paint a picture of what the bill will do for the economy, why it matters to the average American and issue a call to action (e.g. e-mail your member of Congress and tell them to support the bill).
What’s your take on Obama’s leadership thus far? Would you call it the same way I have or do you have a different analysis?
Entitlement Jumps the Shark February 6 2009 no responses
This was the week when conspicuous consumption and the entitlement mindset that drives it officially jumped the shark. (If you haven’t heard that phrase before, check out this entry on Wikipedia.) Leaders everywhere need to take heed.
How much things have changed hit home for me yesterday when the Washington Post, a left of center organization, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, definitely right of center, both ran columns echoing the famous Howard Beale scene from the movie, Network, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
First up was Post business columnist Steve Pearlstein who opened his column this way:
John Thain never did.
Barack Obama gets it sometimes, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner not so much.
Corporate executives think they get it but aren't even close.
College presidents, governors and union leaders, for the most part, don't have a clue.
"It" is an understanding of how fundamentally the political and economic environment has been transformed with the bursting of the bubble economy and how that has jeopardized basic assumptions and expectations and the way we do what we do.”
Then, I took a look at the Wall Street Journal and found a column by Thomas Frank with the headline, “Wall Street Bonuses Are An Outrage.” That really gets your attention when you’re reading the Wall Street Journal. Here, with pun slightly intended, was the money quote for me in Frank’s column:
“Maybe, in its fury at the millions doled out to bankers who drove their institutions into the ground, the public understands something about moral hazard that the Treasury Department doesn't. Maybe, in its rage for fairness, the public is on to something that the banking industry's remaining defenders need to acknowledge.”
It’s fascinating to me how the public outrage has slowly built over the past three or four months from an indifferent simmer to a rolling boil. It started with AIG executives taking a $400,000 spa retreat a few days after their company got a multi-billion bailout from the TARP. The fact that Bernie Madoff is still hanging out in his Park Avenue apartment after admitting that he scammed his investors out of $50 billion raised the temperature a bit more. John Thain’s Extreme Makeover: Office Edition turned up the heat even further. The tipping point, though, was the Tom Daschle story. Sure, not paying his taxes was a problem, but I think what really sent the public over the edge was the two years of free car service and the reports of how he made $5 million in two years worth of “consulting.”
Apparently, it hit Daschle and President Obama at roughly the same time that Americans have had it with the idea that leaders are entitled to a different set of rules and standards. Unfortunately, not every leader gets it. Following a speech in New England yesterday, I had a conversation with an audience member who is a partner with a major law firm. We were talking about how the expectations of leaders have shifted so dramatically and he told me how he’s trying to convince one of his clients to drop the fractional ownership of the corporate jet. We both agreed that, as cool as they are, this isn’t the time to be flying around on them.
Now more than ever, people are watching their leaders for signs that they get it. What signals are you sending?
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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