Archive for September, 2011
An Admiral’s Take On Admiral Mike Mullen’s Leadership September 30 2011 2 responses
Oct. 1, 2011 marks the retirement of Adm. Mike Mullen from the U.S. Navy and from his role as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius offers a nice recap of the Mullen years in an exit interview column with the Chairman. I’m an admirer of Mullen and his leadership but have not had the opportunity to meet him.
So, as he retires, I thought I’d ask someone who knows and has worked with Admiral Mullen for his perspective on the leadership qualities he has shown over the course of his career and in his final job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. George Sterner is a retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral. His career included command of two nuclear submarines and the Naval Sea Systems Command. He is also the first person I interviewed for my book, The Next Level.
In this guest post, Sterner uses stories to illustrate the leadership qualities of Mike Mullen including his preparation, collaboration, listening, action orientation, courage, honesty and thoughtfulness for others.
Let’s hear from Sterner:
Are You Accountable or Responsible? September 28 2011 4 responses
Are you accountable or responsible? What’s the difference and why does it matter?
The first time I heard this distinction was years ago in one of my first coaching engagements. I was interviewing colleagues of my client and a senior executive said, “He needs to be more accountable and less responsible.” That made a lot of sense to me and the distinction ended up being one of the nine leadership pick up and let go distinctions in my book, The Next Level. The idea is that to grow and be effective as a leader, you have to pick up accountability for many results and let go of responsibility for a few results.
Since the book came out, I’ve had a lot of conversations with leaders about the difference between being accountable and responsible. The most recent one was yesterday in a wrap up session for our group coaching program, Next Level Leadership™. As we talked through the progress the participants have made over the past seven months, one of them said he was still struggling with getting a handle on the difference between the two.
I probably gave the most succinct and clear answer I’ve ever given to what the difference is between accountability and responsibility. It worked for the leaders in the room yesterday. I hope it will be helpful to you.
How to Quit Kicking the Can Down the Road September 26 2011 no responses
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is one of the smartest people I don’t know. His GPS (Global Public Square) show on Sunday afternoon is an oasis of civil and intelligent discussion on world events in a desert of babble and blather.
He opened this week’s show with a commentary on the burgeoning economic crisis in the Eurozone. You can read the full transcript of his remarks on his blog, but here’s the conclusion that really caught my attention and stimulated my thinking:
“Everywhere leaders all seem to assume that if they just keep things steady, something will miraculously happen to solve the problems and jumpstart growth. It won’t. The problems are actually getting worse and by sticking their heads in the sand, leaders are only deepening the inevitable crisis.”
Of course, that dynamic is not limited to the Eurozone. I’ve noticed that the phrase of the moment is “kicking the can down the road.” When you want to ignore a problem, defer it to someone else’s watch or wait for it to magically get better, you kick the can down the road.
It’s a strategy that almost never works. Take a common, everyday example. How many times have you seen a manager with a non-performing or disruptive employee not act to correct the situation in the hope that things would get better on their own? I’ve seen it lots of times and it never gets better.
So, why, as human beings who sometimes happen to be leaders, do we kick the can down the road? More importantly, what can we do to deal with problems instead of avoiding them? Here are some ideas.
How to Get Fired in Less Than a Year September 23 2011 4 responses
There are a lot of things you could say about the board of directors at Hewlett Packard but being afraid to pull the trigger is not one of them. With its dismissal of Leo Apotheker, the HP board has fired three CEOs in the past six years. Apotheker lasted 11 months at HP. He came to the company from the enterprise software giant SAP and had a vision of transforming HP from primarily a hardware manufacturer to a software services and cloud computing leader.
Earlier this week, I wrote a post called How to Save Your Change Management Program from Cancellation. Of course, the first step to keeping it from getting cancelled is to avoid getting cancelled yourself. Apotheker is the second high profile CEO I can think of to get fired this year after less than 12 months on the job. The first was Jack Griffin, the former CEO of Time Inc.
Together, the stories of Griffin and Apotheker represent the top two reasons managers fail as determined in a study conducted by the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. In Griffin’s case, it was failure to demonstrate the relationship and interpersonal skills needed to lead significant change in a complex environment. I shared my lessons learned from his tenure in Five Ways to Avoid Being Fired in Five Months. The headlines back then were:
1. Do Your Homework
2. Pace Yourself
3. Genuflect When Necessary
4. Build Allies
5. Don’t Paint Targets on Your Back
One or more of those factors may have been in play at HP. Based on the reporting around Apotheker’s case, though, it sounds like one of the big reasons he got the boot because of the number one reason managers fail – ineffective communications skills and practices.
How to Save Your Change Management Program From Cancellation September 21 2011 4 responses
Earlier this week, I was leading a workshop for a group of leaders in a company that’s been around for a long time. They’re at the beginning of an enterprise wide, top to bottom reimagining of the business. There’s a mix of excitement, ambiguity and uncertainty in the air. Everyone knows that big changes are needed. What’s not clear is whether or not, after years of success doing things a certain way, the necessary changes will take root.
As luck would have it, I’d just heard a story on NPR that offers a lot of clues about why change management programs fail so I shared it with the group. The story was about the annual Fall premiere week on the television networks. The Variety TV editor, Andrew Wallenstein, pointed out that every year dozens of new shows are launched in the same week and every year more than 75 percent of them are cancelled after the first season. It’s not so much a program quality program as it is a math problem. This year, for example, 58 new shows are launching during premiere week. Given that most people only have so many hours a week that they can dedicate to watching TV, most of the new shows never gain an audience.
It costs a lot of money to produce a TV show. You’d think that the networks and producers would want to improve the odds of a return on their investments by spreading out the premieres over the course of the year and giving more people a chance to actually watch more of the shows. Pretty simple fix, right? So why have they been doing the same thing every year for the past 50 years? Wallenstein offered the answer.
Being Busy Makes You Stupid September 19 2011 6 responses
Being busy makes you stupid. And when I say, “you”, I mean me. Heck, I’ll just say it out loud. Being busy makes me stupid.
I realized this in a conversation with my wife on Friday night. We were out for a long, relaxed “just the two of us” dinner. Of course, we had scheduled that months in advance because of our calendars. Anyway, there we were, relaxed and focused on the conversation. She’s starting a new business and was telling me about her plans and what she has already accomplished. I was blown away. One reason for that was because she’s got a totally awesome plan and is executing it with precision. The other reason is because, until that moment, I wasn’t aware of about 80% of what she’d been up to in the past month.
I know that makes me sound like a jerk. Maybe I am.
Picking Up and Letting Go at Sea September 16 2011 3 responses
About a month ago today, I was a guest on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Venturous leaving their station in St. Petersburg, Fla., and getting under way for a patrol in the Florida Straits. In this last of the videos from the trip that I’ll be posting on this blog, you can see what it looks like when a Cutter gets underway with a lot of new crew members that need training.
Most of the video is shot on the bridge and you’ll see that there are a lot of crew members up there as the ship gets underway. In normal circumstances there might be 5 or 6 people on the bridge. Because about a third of the crew was new to the Venturous on this patrol, there were about three times that many on the bridge on day one so that the experienced crew could teach and train the newcomers.
One of those experienced officers was the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Troy Hosmer. He’s a 39 year old career Coastie and the Venturous is his fifth ship. You can spot him in the video by looking for the guy with the scrambled eggs on the bill of his cap. When you see him, you’ll notice that he’s a pretty quiet presence on the bridge.He’s clearly the final authority onboard but he gives his crew plenty of room to teach each other and make decisions.
Cmdr. Hosmer is a great guy to talk with and I was fortunate to spend a fair amount of time in conversation with him. One of the things he shared with me that first day was that he would have loved nothing more than to drive the ship himself. It’s his passion. He understands, however, that that is no longer his job. There may be no one on the Venturous who’s a better ship driver than Cmdr. Hosmer. He’s an expert in that domain. As he’s taken on higher leadership roles within the Coast Guard, however, his technical skills have become less important and his leadership skills have become more important. He’s not the take charge, be the hero ship’s captain that you often see in the movies. He’s a quiet leader who knows when to let go and step back so his crew can pick up new skills and step up.
By approaching his job in that way, Cmdr. Hosmer creates the bandwidth to do the things that only he can do in his role as captain of the Venturous. The only way that he can rise up to fill his role is if his crew rises up with him by building their capacity to run the ship.
How does that same dynamic apply to you in your leadership role? What do you need to let go of and let others pick up so you can do the things that only you can do given the role that you’re in?
A 5 Step Plan for Speaking Truth to Power September 14 2011 2 responses
Let’s hear it for Doug Elmendorf!
It’s possible that, as was the case with me until yesterday afternoon, you don’t know who Doug Elmendorf is. He runs the Congressional Budget Office and was the star witness at a hearing yesterday of the Congressional Super Committee charged with reducing the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. I heard parts of Elmendorf’s appearance in a story on NPR and knew immediately that I was blogging about Doug today. When it comes to effectively speaking truth to power, Doug rocks. He’s a role model for any leader who has to sit or stand in front of a group of powerful people and tell them things they may not want to hear.
You owe it to yourself to listen to the NPR story. It’s a little over four minutes long and you may want to stand up and cheer when it’s over. In the meantime, here’s my breakdown of Doug Elmendorf’s five step approach to speaking truth to power:
3 Things Resilient Leaders Do September 12 2011 7 responses
Watching the ceremonies on TV yesterday, I was struck by the beauty of the 9/11 memorial in New York. It’s a park built around the footprints of the World Trade Center towers and waterfalls flow into the footprints. Looking at the memorial, I was reminded of the first time I saw Ground Zero after the attacks. I had worked on Wall Street a block and a half from the WTC in the late 1980’s so I knew the area pretty well prior to the attacks. The Trade Center had been my subway stop in those days.
My first trip there after 9/11 was in the Fall of 2005. I had a client in the Wall Street area and flew from Dulles to Newark on an early morning flight and eventually caught the PATH train to go underneath the Hudson and into lower Manhattan. What I hadn’t realized when I booked the arrangements was that the PATH train station was at Ground Zero. As the train came out and up from under the river, it emerged into the foundation where one of the Towers had stood. My first view of the site was literally from the inside out. The view out the window was so unexpected, that it literally took my breath away. It almost overwhelmed me. I started looking around the train to see if anyone else was having a similar reaction.
No one was. It took me a few moments to realize why. These people who were on the train, reading their newspapers or listening to their music, were on another daily commute to their jobs. They took this trip everyday of the week. A lot of them had probably made the same trip prior to 9/11 and now, a few years later, they were back to doing what they do.
It hit me then how resilient human beings can be. I’ve thought a lot about that since then and have, in observing my own life and the lives of others, identified what I think are three characteristics of the kind of people who bounce back. Whether they’re bouncing back from a world changing tragedy or a common disappointment, here are some of the things I’ve noticed about resilient people and resilient leaders:
What It Takes to Be Ready September 9 2011 no responses
There are a lot of memories coming to the surface as the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches. Of course, some of the most vivid memories are of the first responders who showed so much courage and skill in the minutes, hours and days after the attacks. Even though they had never dealt with such a situation at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon, they were ready to respond and saved lives in the process.
Last month, I got to spend a weekend with a ship full of 80 people like that when I was onboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Venturous. In the past couple of weeks on this blog, I’ve shared What I Learned on a Coast Guard Cutter and 3 Things The Coast Guard Does to Prepare for Emergencies. Today, I want to focus in one member of the Venturous crew that I spent a lot of time with – Main Propulsion Assistant Jim O’Brien. Jim is from Boston and is a 28 year veteran of the Coast Guard. He knows every inch of his ship and spent a good bit of time showing me what goes on below decks.
When you hang out with Jim O’Brien, you see a guy who loves and takes a great deal of pride in what he does. As you watch the short video that comes with this post, you’ll see Jim searching every nook and cranny of the ship with his flashlight looking for water or other fluids that might be early indicators of trouble. You’ll see how easily he can explain every system and function on the ship. You’ll see how he teaches his crew to pay attention to the details in the way that he does. (By the way, you might want to wear some hearing protection for the first minute or so of the video. It’s pretty loud in the cutter’s engine room.)
It’s people with the experience, passion and dedication of Jim O’Brien who get our first responders ready to protect and help the rest of us. He’s a leader in every sense of the word. He knows his stuff. He shares what he knows. He’s dedicated. He cares about his people. He teaches his people. He gives a damn in every respect. Thank goodness we have leaders like Jim.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
Recent Comments