Archive for the ‘Current Affairs’ Category

How to Coach a Future CEO February 21 2012

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I’m a fan of Ford CEO Alan Mulally.  He started in the top job at Ford about five years ago and, he has led the company to quarter after quarter of profitable growth.  He’s accomplished that through any number of ways.  Probably one of the biggest is by changing the culture of the company’s leadership team.

Of course, you change a culture by inspiring people to think, feel and act differently.  It’s a process of winning hearts and minds.  As the New York Times reported this past weekend, Mulally just turned 66 and is expected to retire in the next couple of years.  The front runner to succeed him is an executive named Mark Fields who runs Ford’s business in the Americas.

In reading the story on Ford and Fields, I was struck by the evidence that Fields has changed his style as a leader over the past five years.  Of course, that’s concurrent with Mulally’s time at the company.  Prior to Mulally’s arrival, Fields was a high flier (literally and figuratively) who had gotten himself in trouble when it was revealed that he was using Ford’s corporate jets to fly back and forth to his Florida home at the same time that he was cutting thousands of jobs at the company and shutting down manufacturing plants.

As Fields himself said, “There was a ‘dead pool’ about me.  People were saying, ‘When is Fields going to get shown the door?’ ”  Five years later, however, he’s a poster dude for what great coaching and role modeling can do to turn an executive’s career and life around.

What a Top Chef Knows About Organizational Development – Lessons from Jose Andres February 16 2012

Foodies in Washington, D.C., know all about Jose Andres, the award-winning chef who popularized Spanish style tapas dining in America.  Andres arrived in the United States from Spain in 1993 and opened his first restaurant, Jaleo, that year.  Today, he is the CEO of Think Food Group and the mastermind behind eight restaurant concepts with locations in D.C., Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Earlier this week, I was in the audience for a lunch-time conversation with Andres at a conference called American Competitiveness: What Works organized by General Electric and co-sponsored by Washington Post Live.  I probably learned as much about leadership in an hour of listening to Jose as I have in the past year.  It turns out there’s a lot you can learn about leadership and organizational development from a chef who has gone from running a small business to a culinary empire in less than 20 years.

I’ll likely write a few more Jose Andres posts over the next several weeks, but, for now, here are three of his leadership lessons about building a successful organization along with some thought starter questions for you and your organization.

• Share Your Passionate Purpose.  It takes less than a minute with Andres to see how passionate he is about his work and the calling he feels around it.  When a fellow panelist asked him what his advice was for anyone starting out in business, the first thing he said was that the business of feeding people is the best business in the world.  “Food, he said, is the energy that moves everyone of us in this room.” That sort of purposeful passion about the bigger picture is what has inspired people to help Andres grow his organization. How do you share your passionate purpose about your business?

Wondering ‘Am I a Good Leader?’ Take the Sheryl Sandberg Test February 10 2012

Ever wonder if you’re a good leader?  If so, I have a simple three question test that will help you answer the question.  I call it the Sheryl Sandberg test.

OK, I know that some of you are thinking “Is it really fair to compare myself to the COO of Facebook  - the same woman who spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos the week her company did an IPO that took her net worth past $1.6 billion?”  I’ll be the first to acknowledge that there aren’t many of us who can compete with Sandberg’s calendar and bank account.  That said, there’s a lot that leaders of any station can learn from Sandberg.

When Sandberg left Google to join Facebook in 2008, the social networking site had 70 million users and no profit-making business model.  At the end of 2011, Facebook had over 850 million users, revenue of over $3 billion and profits of just over $1 billion.  It’s not too big a stretch to conclude that Sandberg has some leadership skills that might be worth emulating.

Over the past six months I’ve read a number of profiles on Sandberg and, based on what I’ve learned about her, have come up with three questions that can help determine if you’re a good leader:

• Do I have followers?
• Do I have a cause bigger than myself?
• Do I get stuff done?

Here’s a bit on how Sandberg has answered those questions and what you can learn from the answers.

Has Ego Trumped Your Mission? Lessons in Transparency from the Komen Foundation Fiasco February 6 2012

As you’ve no doubt read, the Komen Foundation – the people behind the pink ribbons to fight breast cancer – found themselves at the center of controversy last week after they decided to pull funding for breast cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. The basis for the decision, according to Komen officials: They no longer wanted to give money to  organizations that were “under investigation.”  The only Komen grantee that met that criterion was Planned Parenthood, which is the subject of a non-criminal investigation by a member of Congress.

When an outcry on social media ensued, the traditional media quickly picked up the story.  Many of the corporate partners of Komen started expressing their reservations.  Two days later, the leadership of Komen tried to clarify their position by saying it was not their intention to target Planned Parenthood and that the funding would be restored.  (The whole story is recapped in this article from The New York Times.)

Regardless of how you feel about Planned Parenthood,  it’s clear that the Komen Foundation hadn’t fully prepared for the era when transparency has moved from buzzword to reality. Social media has a way of  making quick work of leaders who put their ego games ahead of their organizations’ missions. Komen officials’ mistakes offer a warning to other leaders who think they are immune to  such lightning-fast takedowns.

You know you’re headed for trouble when:

3 Bad Habits of Fake Leaders — and How to Avoid Them January 26 2012

There was an interesting movie that came out last year called “The Adjustment Bureau” starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. In it, Damon plays a rising young congressman named David Norris. He’s headed for a big victory in a campaign for the U.S. Senate until a picture comes out of him mooning his fraternity brothers at a college reunion. He loses big and starts giving his supporters the big, inspirational, we’ll-be-back concession speech. He says things like, “Where I grew up, it wasn’t that you got knocked down, it was about what you did when you got back up.”

The crowd initially cheers loudly, but then settles down when Norris tells them what he just said was total BS. They didn’t say that in his neighborhood. His pollsters told him it would play well. Same thing with the striped tie he was wearing and even the amount of scuffing he had on his dress shoes. He pulled back the curtain on how the game was played. It was about learning how to fake being real.

As we enter the height of the political season in the U.S., that speech comes to mind. All of the candidate debates and speeches seem to offer a symposium in how to fake being real. Here are three common habits I’ve noticed so far:

• Put your game face mask on. When you enter the debate arena or step up to make that big speech, never let them see you sweat. Get that alpha dog body language going and smile so they see all your teeth. Above all else, don’t show any vulnerability.

• Stick to the poll research. Touch all the bases that appeal to the base. Cover so many things that nothing means anything.

• Follow the formula. There’s an accepted and expected formula for giving the big speech, so stick to it. At this point, you’ve done it so many times you could do it in your sleep. Of course, there’s a pretty good chance that your audience is asleep with their eyes open. If you’re lucky.

Needless to say, I’m not seriously advocating those techniques. I do, however, see a lot of them showing up in leadership settings outside of politics. Here are three ways to avoid showing up as a leader who’s only pretending to be real:

Gabrielle Giffords: The Courage and Wisdom to Step Back January 23 2012

This past weekend, I watched one of the more moving and inspirational videos I’ve seen in awhile. It’s this two minute announcement from Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords that she is resigning from Congress this week. It’s been just over a year since a gunman shot Giffords in the head and almost killed her at a constituent meet and greet outside an Arizona supermarket. Since then, her recovery has been beyond remarkable.

The video clearly shows how far she’s come.

As reported in the Washington Post, there was a lot of speculation and hope that Giffords would run for reelection or perhaps even run for the Senate. Her fundraising was strong and the polling suggested she could have easily kept her seat in Congress.

She sorted through all that and concluded that her ongoing recovery was her first and most important priority. She had the courage to say no and the wisdom to step back from short-term opportunities to devote her time and attention to the longer term. When you watch the video, it’s clear that she intends to return to public life at some point.  I hope she does. For now, though, I have enormous admiration and respect for a leader with remarkable courage and the wisdom to act on her priorities.

Early Contender for Worst Leader of 2012 January 20 2012

Based on the observable evidence, passenger accounts, his own statements and audio transcripts with an Italian coast guard officer, it sure looks like Capt. Francesco Schettino is a very strong early contender for worst leader of 2012. By now you’ve probably seen the pictures and read the stories of the tragedy with the Costa Concordia cruise ship just off the Italian coast. The Captain ordered the early evening maritime equivalent of a fly-by just a few hundred yards from the coast to impress the citizens of a local town.  The ship hit a rock which tore a gash in the hull and within an hour it was laying on its side.  It took him an hour to send a Mayday signal and when the authorities called him after hearing from panicked passengers, he denied anything was wrong. Dozens of passengers either died or are still missing.

Far from going down with his ship, let alone organizing an evacuation, Schettino was in a lifeboat while hundreds of passengers were still trying to get to safety.  The UK’s Daily Mail offers an extensive summary of all the events including a link to the audio recording of an outraged Italian coast guard official ordering Schettino to get back on board and take care of his passengers. He never did. In a basically unbelievable story, Schettino said a few days ago that he ended up in the lifeboat because he slipped and fell off the Concordia and into the lifeboat.

Like I said, unbelievable.

The whole story has had me thinking all week about the responsibilities of a leader. For some situationally specific guidance, I turned to a copy of the U.S. Navy’s Watch Officer’s Guide. (Yes, I acknowledge that I’m enough of a leadership nerd that I own one even though I haven’t served in the Navy.) Early in the book, the authors list seven essential characteristics of the Officer of the Deck.

It certainly would have been a good list for Captain Schettino to absorb. It’s actually a good list for any leader who bears responsibility for the safety and welfare of others.

Here it is:

6 Leadership Communication Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr. January 16 2012

On this Martin Luther King Day, I’m going into The Next Level Blog archives for this post on what we can learn from the speaking virtuosity of this great leader.

Several years ago I was given the gift of the recordings of the sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. The sermon set is called “A Knock at Midnight,” and the speeches set is titled “A Call to Conscience.” There are companion books of the same title for each set. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I listened to every sermon and speech in the recordings. I learned a lot about King from that experience and came to some conclusions about what made him an effective speaker.

As we take today to recognize King’s life and its impact on the world, I thought I’d share six qualities in his speaking that I think all leaders should emulate. If you’re pressed for time as you read this, you can skip ahead to the list. If you have a few minutes more, watch the You Tube clip of King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech. Most of the six qualities that I identified in listening to his recordings are illustrated in this clip.

Here’s a quick synopsis of some of the qualities that King had as a speaker along with some questions to get you thinking about your own opportunities to be a more effective communicator.

3 Things Injured Yogis and Injured Leaders Might Have in Common January 13 2012

For the last two weeks, an article called How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body has been one of the top 10 most e-mailed articles on the New York Times website. When I checked this morning there were 734 comments on the article on the Times’ website. With approximately 20 million yogis in the U.S., the article has definitely struck a nerve (pun somewhat intended).

As many of the commenters point out, there are flaws in the way the article was reported. At the same time, as the article illustrates, you can get injured doing yoga. (This just in, you can also get injured running, lifting weights, doing Jazzercise or just about any other form of exercise.)

As I’ve written here before, I’ve been a regular yoga student for a little over a year now. Happy to report that I haven’t injured myself. To the contrary, I feel a lot better than I did before I started. Still, I can see how you could injure yourself doing yoga. Interestingly enough, some of the root causes of yoga injuries are the same ways you can injure yourself “doing leadership.”

Here are three things that can get you into trouble both on the yoga mat and in your leadership role:

3 Ways to Avoid Taking the Wrong Job — and What to Do About It When You Do January 11 2012

You may have missed the story with all of the coverage on the New Hampshire primary, but White House chief of staff, Bill Daley, resigned this week after just about a year on the job.  Daley is a high profile example of the oft cited statistic that anywhere between 25% and 40% of newly hired or promoted executives don’t last in their jobs for more than 18 months.

As it happens, a senior executive friend of mine recently let me know that she had left a new job less than three weeks after accepting it. Now, that’s fast! Intrigued by her news, I asked her if I could interview her for the Next Level Blog to learn more about what she thinks she missed during the hiring process, how she figured out so quickly that she had taken the wrong job and how she gracefully extracted herself from it.

Obviously, to protect her confidentiality I’m not going to get into all of the details of her situation, but there are some good lessons here for any manager or executive who’s considering taking a new job: