Archive for March, 2011

Tim Sanders Shares Leadership Wisdom From His Grandma March 30 2011

Tim Sanders and I haven’t met but the more I learn about him, the more I learn we have in common. We were both corporate executives. We’re both authors and speakers. We work with some of the same people.  And, we both had grandmothers who played a big role in shaping who we became as leaders and adults.

Tim’s grandmother was named Billye. My grandmother was named Bur. Both were kind but strong willed women of faith. They each went through hard times in their lives but never lost their optimism or their concern for other people. They were both pillars of their church and they expected their grandsons to be there on Sunday. They both drove Buick sedans – an Electra in Billye’s case, a Skylark in Bur’s. They both took their grandsons for burgers at Burger Chef every so often. Yeah, Tim and I have a lot in common.

One difference, though, is that Tim has written up his recollections of Billye and what she taught him about life and leadership in a wonderful new book called Today We Are Rich. The title is a quote from Billye that Tim shares in a heart tugging story that opens the book.  Tim goes on to share seven principles that he learned from his grandmother that he had to learn twice.  The first time was in his teenage years.  The second was in his late thirties after what he describes as his “sideways years.”  By literally revisiting his tiny home town in Texas, Tim reconnected with all that he learned at Billye’s side.

If you were lucky enough to have a grandmother like Billye or Bur, you’ll love Tim’s new book. It will feel familiar and remind you of the lessons and experiences that grounded you in the first place. If, by chance, there hasn’t been a Billye or Bur in your life, you’ll value Today We Are Rich for the wisdom that women like them have to share.

Today We Are Rich is available today. Tim was nice enough to provide me with a beautiful signed copy of the book which I’ll send to someone who leaves a comment on this post or subscribes to the Next Level Thinking newsletter.  I’ll be selecting a name at random on April 4 and will get in touch with the winner to get your mailing address.

Have you had a Billye or Bur in your life?  What did you learn from them that’s shaped you as a person and leader?

Can This Marriage (Customer, Team, Leader) Be Saved? March 28 2011

Last week, I got a call from an executive in a client organization. He had just had a conversation with an important customer who said his team wasn’t showing up like they used to and didn’t have that can-do spirit anymore. As we were talking, he said he felt like the relationship with the customer had gotten into a rut and was wondering what his team could do to charge things up again. I said to him that the situation reminded me of one of those articles that ask  “Can this marriage be saved?”  We had a good laugh about that but then realized that maybe we were on to something.

Think about it. A lot of the problems leaders deal with in their work come down to the other party not feeling loved and appreciated. Same thing with marriages. Customer feeling like you don’t care as much as you used to? They’re not feeling loved and appreciated. Employees leaving for grass is greener over there opportunities? They’re not feeling loved and appreciated.  If you’re really honest with yourself, you probably worry yourself sometimes whether or not you’re loved and appreciated.

All of this got me thinking about a book I heard about years ago by Gary Chapman called The Five Love Languages. It’s a how to guide on keeping your marriage strong or getting it out of the ditch if it’s gone off track. I took a look at Chapman’s five love languages this morning and concluded that they’ve got some application to saving customers, teams and leaders as well as marriages.

Here’s how:

The Upside of Troughs March 25 2011

This week I attended a conference where one of the keynoters was an interesting guy named Clark Aldrich. Clark is a designer of business learning simulations and knows a lot about how people solve problems. It turns out that one of the keys is you have to go through a lot of troughs to make progress.

When Clark is designing a business simulation game, he likes to set things up so the participants go through a lot of peaks and valleys in their problem solving experience. You know the drill. You solve a problem and then another one pops up. You get stuck on that for awhile and then you try a different approach that works. Much like real life, it’s the process of going into and out of the problem solving troughs that creates learning that lasts.

The big challenge that Clark deals with is that (this is more or less a quote), “In corporate America today there is very little tolerance for troughs so I have to really even out the peaks and valleys in the game.”  What caught my ear in that statement was the word “today.”  So, I asked Clark, from his perspective as a simulation designer, what’s different about corporate America today than five or 10 years ago. 

His answer was really telling.

Not as Easy as Advertised March 23 2011

A few weeks ago, New York Times Columnist Nick Kristof was arguing for the imposition of a no fly zone over Libya and cited a quote from retired Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak to make his case.

"I can't imagine an easier military problem," McPeak told Kristof.

As we know now, it's not as easy as advertised. The military aspect of the exercise appears to be going well. But, as widely reported, there are big problems with defining objectives, determining who's in charge of the joint operation, what the end game is and lots more.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on The Questions Leaders Need to Ask About No Fly Zones. After a few days of the no fly zone operation, it seems a lot of those questions still need to be answered. You can read the full treatment in the original post but here are the basic questions:

• What’s the goal?
• What’s in scope and out of scope?
• What are the required steps?
• What are the true costs?
• What are the pros and cons?
• What are the possible side effects?

Sometimes I coach executive leaders who are known for underselling the complexity of what they're asking their team to do.  Their team members know when they hear, "This will be easy.  It shouldn't take you anytime at all," that they should be getting themselves ready for something really hard.

One of the jobs of a leader is to help the team define the nature of the work that needs to be done. Often it's not as easy as it might look at first.  If you're the leader, you can raise the chances of longer term success by raising the questions that clarify the goals, the roles and responsibilities, the plans and processes for the work and the norms that define how everyone will work together.

What questions do you think need to be asked at the beginning of a complex endeavor?

Do You Get It or Not? Does It Matter? March 21 2011

One of the most e-mailed articles on the New York Times website for the past several days has been one titled, “Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You.”  My guess is a lot of grown up kids are sending it to their parents to prove that they’re not the only ones who don’t always answer the phone or respond to voice mail messages. The article describes how phone habits have changed over the past five years as people shift to text messaging, email and Facebook to communicate with their friends, families and colleagues. Nielsen Research notes that spending on cellular voice traffic is trending downward and that text traffic spending will exceed voice in the next three years.

I thought about this article last night when I was in a conversation with some old and new friends at a conference I’m attending. Somehow we got into a debate about whether the way people learn new skills and behaviors is changing as a result of the internet and virtual communications technology. On one side of the debate were the folks who were saying that the only real learning is that which comes from a live person teaching one other person or a group of other people in person. I was on the other side of the argument.  We spent a good bit of time and energy going back and forth about how quickly the learning styles of the human species can adapt. My point was that disruptive technologies like the phone or the internet cause people to change their learning and working styles pretty quickly. Of course, the great trump card in a discussion like this is to ask, “What research have you read that backs up your point of view?”  Darn, I just couldn’t come up with any academic citations on the spot.  (Perhaps if I hadn’t had that second glass of wine.)

A guy I’m sitting with this morning just told me that his son is in a good medical school where attending lectures is optional. They’re all online and the students can watch them when they want.

Here’s the thing…

Shadow Weeks? A Jolly Good Idea March 18 2011

A brief article in the Financial Times of London recently reported that Mark Prisk, England’s enterprise minister is drawing up a plan in which government ministers and senior civil servants would have to complete a week’s work assignment in a small business. Prisk’s own staff has taken up the plan. One of his directors, for example, recently spent the better part of a week oiling sprockets at a bike factory in Brentford.

Prisk notes that the typical hour long visit that government officials frequently make to small businesses “can be helpful, but it doesn’t allow you to get under the skin of a business.”  In his own case, Prisk spent a week with a manufacturer of adjustable beds and making sales calls for a company that manufactures devices that measure domestic energy use. 

The point, of course, is to deepen the level of understanding among senior government officials about how the rules they make and enforce affect the businesses that have to follow them. 

By asking his colleagues to spend a week in a small business, enterprise minister Prisk is raising the bar on a practice I’ve been asking my coaching clients to follow for a number of years now.  I’m a big fan of managers and executives taking shadow days with counterparts or more senior leaders in another part of their organization. The big idea is to get a different perspective on your job and what it contributes by watching and talking with someone else about how they do their job. My clients almost always come back with actionable insights and, as I noted last year in a post called Five Traits of the Most Admired Leaders, they often learn a lot about leadership in the process.

Could you implement shadow days or shadow weeks in your organization? Your first reaction might be to say that there’s too much real work for people to do instead of following someone around or working somewhere else for a day or a week. It’s likely, though, that leaders in your organization spend days or weeks in structured training or educational programs. Why not redirect some of that time to shadow days or shadow weeks? It’s possible that your managers and executives would learn more at less cost.

Why Google is Teaching Its Managers to Wash the Dishes March 16 2011

The New York Times recently ran an article about what Google has done lately to share the practices of its best managers throughout the company.  Being Google, a bunch of statisticians started looking for correlations in the words and phrases that came up again and again in performance reviews, feedback surveys and recognition nominations.  The end result was a simple yet elegant list of eight things that the best Google managers do. 

I’d argue that at least five out of eight involve washing the dishes.  Here’s what I mean by that:

Japan: What You Can Do March 14 2011

Like many other people around the world this past weekend, I was transfixed by the news of the epic disaster that hit Japan on March 11.   I’ve noticed that almost all of the coverage so far has been straight news and very little commentary.   In my own case, I find that I can’t get my mind around the scale of the disaster and the impact on the people in the area.  It’s hard to comprehend how the lives of hundreds of thousands of people can be turned upside down for years to come in the space of just a few minutes.

At times like this, the human instinct is to help.  This morning, the editors of SmartBrief on Leadership  offered a list of ways to do so from Inter Action, a consortium of U.S. based non-governmental organizations coordinating and offering assistance to the people of Japan.   If you feel moved to help, I encourage you to review the list and choose an organization to support.

Let’s keep the people of Japan in our hearts, prayers and thoughts as they begin the work of recovery.

Twelve Steps to a Great Networking Conversation March 11 2011

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Five Principles for Building a Strong Network. It proved to be pretty popular and I’ve been practicing and coaching on those principles ever since.  Today, I want to share twelve steps to having a good networking conversation.  With the idea in mind that experience is the best teacher, I’m going to draw on some lessons learned from networking conversations I’ve had lately both as both the inviter and the invitee. 

Consider this as one person’s step by step process to a great conversation.  You may have your own (and I’d love to hear them), but here are mine:

The Questions Leaders Need to Ask About “No-Fly Zones” March 9 2011

Every so often, a word or phrase will pick up so much buzz that everyone starts talking about it at once.  This week, the catch phrase “no fly zone” has achieved that status. As the Libyan dictator Gaddafi and the forces rallying against him continue to battle, more and more commentators and legislators are calling for a “no-fly zone”  over Libya. Establishing a no fly zone may or may not be the right thing to do.  One thing is for sure, though;  it’s not as easy to do as it is to say. That’s the case with most buzz words and catch phrases – easy to say; harder to do.

The US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made clear why that’s the case at a congressional hearing earlier this month:

“Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses … and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down… (In the case of Libya, it) also requires more airplanes than you can find on a single aircraft carrier, so it is a big operation in a big country.”

As I’ve written here before, I often admire Secretary Gates for his clear thinking and plain speaking. In this case, I think he’s offering a good example for all leaders who need to influence the thinking of people who are convinced that the latest buzz word or catch phrase is the answer. Buzz words and catch phrases mean different things to different people. A lot of the people who talk about them really don’t know what they’re talking about.  In the case of the no-fly zone conversation, Gates began the education process by talking about what one requires.

The next time you find yourself leading a lot of people who are excited about the latest and greatest buzz word or catch phrase, do yourself and the organization a favor by asking a few questions to ground the conversation.  Here are some suggestions: