Articles by Steve

Lots has been written about motivation.  And yet, as I think about all that I have read and seen, it boils down to a simple idea: give people a sense of control.  Allow people to not only use their skills and abilities but also to express their ideas.

Intrinsic motivation leads to the best results. It’s based on allowing people autonomy, supporting mastery, giving people a sense of purpose, and encouraging connection with other people.

There is much research showing that how you describe the job leads to greatly differing results.  A job defined with meaning and purpose leads to not only better results but also improved health of the worker.  Encouraging people to think about the good that comes to other from what they do increases employees subjective well being.  Giving them the autonomy to figure out goals, tasks, and methods leads to increased performance.

People want to have control over what they do and how they do it.  They want the opportunity to make decisions and understand how they improve the general welfare.  They want support in all this and in return will do their best and perform at a higher level.

Most importantly is that they have a supportive boss, a boss who is open and honest and encourages them to be open and honest in return.  Encouraging employees to speak up gives them a sense of control whether their ideas wind up being implemented or not.  The mere fact of working in an environment that values their input leads to an increased sense of involvement.  And an increased sense of involvement leads to better results. 

Make your life easier, loosen up and let people lead themselves.

Last week we talked about leadership as practiced by George Washington, a model of thoughtfulness, self restraint, and forceful action.  Today let’s talk about the other side of leadership as practiced by Holly Chen who with her husband has grown her Amway business to include 300,000 salespeople.  You read that correctly, 300,000.

She’s the opposite of Washington, she’s a five foot tall emotional powerhouse.  Her idea of leadership is that “ the most powerful weapon is to move someone emotionally.”

In an intriguing article in the Wall Street Journal, Inside the Amway Sales Machine, Daniel K. Berman describes the incredible success story of Chen.  Her philosophy for success is simple, make friends everywhere and believe absolutely in what you’re doing.  “Change your mindset, change your attitude, and your outcome will definitely change with it.”

She leads her team with simple stories that wander from tales of the pyramids and other times past right up to ideas from today’s news.  It’s all interspersed with personal anecdotes and such ideas as how when in a line for the bathroom “talk to the people behind you, not in front.”

Most importantly, “you have to know the inside of people, rather than the outside of people.  You’ve got to know their hearts.”

So here we have the two sides of leadership, George Washington in all his silence and thoughtfulness and Holly Chen enthusiastically connecting with everyone she encounters.  Each wound up in a place where their style worked well and led to much success.  Each would probably have been unknown to us if they tried to use the other’s style, unnatural that it would be.

And the message? Great leaders can come from different directions but they share some basic traits.  They are focused, they are consistent, they are great observers of people and so know them well, they absolutely believe in what they say, and they know how to be themselves with confidence and strength.

We all know many things about George Washington.  Most of us see him as a heroic figure who guided us through the beginnings of the United States and helped set the stage for where we are today.  My guess is that most of you are also like me and never thought very much about his leadership style and how it can guide you to becoming a better leader today.

After reading an interview with Ron Chernow about his new biography on Washington I’ve realized how sad this is.  In Brian Bolduc’s interview in the Wall Street Journal, The Leadership Secrets of George Washington, I found a plethora of ideas that today’s leaders would be wise to emulate.  And most of the ideas are at great odds with the dysfunctional leadership styles we see all around us today.

His style sprung from the idea that “silence was strength and that you only very gradually let people enter your private thoughts and emotions.”  Compare this to unending and instant sharing of everything about everything that we have today.  There is no mystery. There is no opportunity to ruminate and muse on things before sharing them.  There is no opportunity to develop an immature idea into something of power. 

A true leader needs the strength of silence for all these things.

Washington was a model of self restraint.  He was polite and cordial, always meticulous, never slovenly, and with a “magnificent sense of stagecraft.”  His ability to restrain and constrain himself and his thoughts led people to “feel that he was not going to be intoxicated with power.”  Compare this to leaders today.  Does anyone believe they are not intoxicated with the idea of power? 

He rarely acted immediately but took the time to weigh his options.  When comfortable that he had gathered all the information and ideas and thought it through, he acted decisively.  And then defended his decision and did not back down.  Yet he understood that this led to some who had other opinions and felt defeated.  Thus, he would offer a concession or two to help them save face and bring them in.

This way of forceful acting tempered by ensuring the defeated would be able to save face led to a certain civility. Something surely needed in these days where everything is defined by winning and losing and the other is vilified.

Washington’s leadership shows that “you don’t have to be the brighest of the most original mind on the block to be a good president.”  Rather what Washington’s life shows “is the importance of clarity of vision, of tenacity of purpose and character, and how much can be accomplished in life if you keep your sights on your ultimate goals.”

Washington, management guru for today’s world

Everyone is talking about the way smartphones have changed business.  And everyone includes all executives. Some of the talk is about the ways the new technology has led to wonderful things such as the ability to work anywhere and how you never have to get lost again.

Unfortunately the negative talk seems to overwhelm the positive.  “No one can pay attention any more”, ”in meetings people just check their email”, “you can’t have a conversation with someone without being interrupted by the phone”.

Now there is research showing a more serious problem: reduction in ability to function…and loss of IQ. Really.  What is this doing to the results of your company?  Even if you’re doing well, think how much better you might be doing with your people working at their optimal ability…and with full IQ.

Are you the problem?

Do you enable this behavior?  Do you set an example of self control or are you one of the worst offenders?  Do you leap to answer the phone or check your email constantly no matter what is going on around you?  Do you set aside blocks of “no phone time” to concentrate on important issues or are you setting the tone of responding to the instant trivial rather than the truly important?

In most businesses there is an avalanche of immediate but relatively unimportant things calling for you attention…and these days I really mean calling.  Most of these things are symptoms of some deeper issue.  But the important issues get pushed aside for these immediate interruptions and so tend to fester and lead to more and more symptoms dropping in on you.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Discipline yourself and set an example.  Exert self control and refuse to allow the phone to control you.  Refuse to be constantly available and drawn into everything.  It only leads to micromanagement and an unwillingness of others to make a decision and be accountable.

Constant interruptions disrupt your ability to think, to ponder, to strategize, to plan…to be a leader.  It leads to rudeness, lack of connection, and the destruction of casual conversation and quiet time.  It destroys community and team connection.

Much that executives, and others, do requires concentrated thinking and effort devoid of interruptions.  Set an example. 

You well know that the leader sets the tone, the culture, the way of acting of the entire organization.  Show people that the immediate is not the highest priority, the important is.  Show people you value them and trust them to act correctly so are not available all the time to make decisions.  Let your people know that you value, and hope they do, quiet time to think and delve deeply into issues.

Return to the days when your phone was a tool and not your boss.

Just about everyone says “people are my most important resource.”  Yet few actually think about what this means.  And fewer actually do the things that show this is true.

A global Gallup survey recently found that at large firms only 33% of employees describe themselves as fully engaged in their work, 49% say they are not engaged, and 18% say they are “actively disengaged.”  Think about this.  Only a third of employees are feeling like they really are your most important resource.

In what Gallup calls “world-class” companies the percentages are 67% fully engaged, 26% not engage, and 7% actively disengaged.  It seems that “world-class” has something to do with believing that people really are their most important resource…and then acting to do things to prove it.

In spite of high unemployment, Manpower recently found that 34% of employers say they are having trouble filling jobs.  There is a shortage of talented technicians, salespeople, engineers, skilled-trade workers, and, yes, even managers and executives.  I can attest to this personally.  Part of our business is retained executive search.  Currently we are working on three excellent, well paying, high level positions for two well known companies.  The final candidates are almost all coming from those currently employed.  The applicants coming from the pool of unemployed are much less qualified and continue to fail to reach the final round.

It is a sad situation.  Two fine companies willing to hire the unemployed but unable to find qualified candidates.

The competition for the best is intense. The need for companies to compete in a global market morphing at the speed of light requires people with the best skills no matter what their position.  And it is only going to get worse.

So much for the problem.  Many of you know it well and have experienced it first hand.  What can we do to solve this problem?

The societal solution is probably improving our education system although in these times of limited resources that seems a faint hope.  Unfortunately we are going in the opposite direction while our international competitors are devoting increasing resources to education. Thus, for most of you the solution is going to be ensuring you become an employer of choice.

Employer of choice means not only mouthing the words “people are our most important resource” but also living these words in all you and your company do.  It means taking care of the physical and mental health of your employess.  It means providing ongoing training and education.  Perhaps it means providing on site child care, allowing pets at work, stopping email in the evenings and weekends, listening to the ideas of employees…and then acting on them.

Mostly it means treating your employees like the valued people they are.

If you don’t show your employees you fully value their skills, their knowledge, and them as people, someone will come along and grab them.  It seems like the cost of providing the things I mention above will be high, and it might be, but what is the cost of replacing hard to find skills?  What is the cost of decreased productivity due to dis-engagement? What is the cost of postions unfilled?

Take a look at your company and how it treats its most important resource.  Do the right things and you too can become a world  class company able to not only survive but to thrive in the brave new world rushing towards us.

People…Truly Your Most Important Resourse!

Kodak died recently after a long illness.  Meanwhile Fujifilm is doing quite well with a nice profit and a market capitalization of about 12.6 billion dollars. And yet, they started from the same place: an almost total dependence on film.  They faced exactly the same situation: the end of the film based camera and thus, the need for film. They both saw this coming. 

How is it that one failed to adapt in any meaningful way while the other transformed itself into a company able to succeed in the new world?

As early as 1979 Larry Matteson, a former Kodak executive, wrote a report detailing the shift from film to digital.  He fairly accurately predicted the shift would be complete by 2010.  In the early 1980s Fujifilm also realized that digital was going to replace film.  Both began to think about what to do and how to change.

So how is it that their current situations are so different?

Unfortunately for Kodak, it had become a complacent monopolist that lost its ability to take big risks and move fast.  It was caught in the mentality of creating perfect products before release rather than rapid development and release of products with ongoing improvement.  Then there is the company town syndrome.  Kodak never heard any criticism in Rochester and developed an insular management unused to divergent thinking, strenuous disagreement, and creative destruction.

Fujifilm meanwhile installed a CEO who took pre-emptive action.  He rapidly attacked the situation and completely overhauled the company.  He went out and purchased a collection of companies which seemed compatible with Fujifilm and were large enough to mean something to a multibillion dollar enterprise.  He went on a high risk path and broke all kinds of rules of Japanese business in his quest to succeed.

If you think about this it’s kind of odd.  If the names weren’t attached you might think that the Kodak story was that of a stereotypical conservative, slow to act Japanese company while the Fujifilm story was right out of Silcon Valley.  In each case the current state of the company is not due to the country of origin but to the style and ability of the leader irrespective of nationality.

Which will you be?     

I’m in Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates, as I write this. During the three days I’ve been here I’ve also been in Dubai, another Emirate, passed through the Emirates of Ajman and Fujairah, and left the Emirates for Oman. The experience has jogged my mind for each is different and all hugely different from my previous experience. I find myself thinking new thoughts and considering options that never occurred to me before.

On the interminable 14 hour flight here, lengthened by a 3 hour delay after we boarded, another experience leading to unusual thinking, I read some recent information about the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. It’s now clear that it is much worse than originally disclosed, will linger for decades, and has affected radiation levels around the world.

I juxtapose these two disparate issues because it occurred to me that part of the reason for the terrible response at Fukushima was caused by a lack of significant travel to completely different parts of the world, by those in charge. They lacked the ability to expand their thinking from the concrete and predicable and think the unthinkable…so never even thought about the possibility of such a disaster.

An example of this is that they placed the off site emergency headquarters in case of nuclear disaster 5 kilometers from the plant, and it was not radiation proof. What were they thinking?

As we all have heard, travel broadens the mind. What most have not done is really think about what this means. It’s really not the broadening of the mind that’s important for executives but the broadening of the thinking that this leads to. Travel challenges our pre-conceived ideas and attacks our comfort zone. Travel to places most divergent from our normal reality challenges us the most.

It expands our world and opens up our thinking.

Actually, the last two paragraphs are not always, or perhaps even often, true. While traveling too many rather than allowing new ideas in, work hard to stay within their bubble and float along without being touched and changed. They view but do not see, they are there but do not experience.

If you pop your bubble and allow yourself to be immersed in the experience of the Emirates, or wherever you happen to travel, you will return with new ideas and new ways of attacking old problems. Your thinking will expand and find previous ideas faulty and needing adjustment.

You gain a better ability to think about the unthinkable.

Last week I started off the new year by sharing my thoughts as expressed in the South African proverb “Good Behavior Must Come From The Top.”  I must have struck a chord since I received a number of quite nice responses.  As I read the notes and thought about what I had written it occurred to me that it was a bit too dismissive about the power of words compared to the impact of action.

Not that I don’t think ultimately it’s the behavior that people believe rather than the words but rather that the words so set the tone that surrounds the behavior.  Too often the tone is obfuscation rather than clarity. 

Obfuscation to hide failure, incompetence, lack of vision, fear, hatred, and the panoply of other less than stellar behaviors.  Clarity on the other hand, leaves you no place to hide.

My thinking about this crystallized when I noticed that airline industry speak for a crash is “hull loss”, clearly an attempt to sanitize and downplay a horrible event.  Wouldn’t you trust someone much more who was willing to just state that “our airplance crashed”?

After all, everyone who hears “hull loss” immediately pictures a fiery crash.  And then immediately thinks how insulting the executive was to treat the public like children lacking comprehension and the strength to hear the truth.

Such speaking allows us to commit horrendous acts and feel no remorse.  Think “collateral damage” for “we killed a bunch of civilians by accident” or “therapeutic misadventure” for when a doctor kills a patient through poor treatment. 

What does this say about you…and your listeners…when you are unable or unwilling to clearly tell the truth about what’s going on or what happened?  No wonder we have such disrespect and disgust at so many in positions of authority or power.

I think there is an even more insidious affect of euphemisms.  It weakens our minds and leads us to become unwilling to hear the truth and so leads to poor thinking and less than the best results.  We become fearful of speaking the truth about uncomfortable things and so are unable to address and thus solve these issues.

All suffer for our fear. We become lessor people than we could be.

Shine the light of facts and truth, address issues squarely.  Bring transparency and clarity to all you do and expect the same from others.  Be the person others look up to and respect for your strength of character and willingness to be open and honest…and for your willingness to accept the consequences.

Be a true leader.

“The first thing is to be honest with yourself.” 

Nelson Mandela

The heading of my musings on leadership this post is a South African proverb.  It’s a good thing to think about on this first business day of the year.

The start of a new year gives you a chance to throw out the old and begin fresh.  All too often we ignore, avoid, or just forget to take advantage of this opportunity.  When this proverb popped into my head as I sat down to write, I immediately started thinking about what I had done last year that showed less than stellar behavior…behavior I hope never to exhibit again.

Unfortunately I thought of a number of such things.

We all have done things like this.  We all remember when we showed in our behavior something at variance with our words.  As near as I can tell, when this variance occurs, the behavior is always worse than what the words express.

Unfortunately what resonates with those who see and hear us is the behavior and not the words.  The words disappear while the behavior sinks deeply into our core.  One instance of poor behavior lingers.  It takes many counter examples of good behavior to change how you are perceived.

On the other hand, one example of poor behavior can wipe out a history of good.  We immediately perceive the bad as the true while the good was merely a coating we used to cover up our true nature.  It is a sad commentary on the way we think, but we do tend to remember the bad and share it with others much more than we remember and share the good.

This has a debilitating effect on your ability to lead for that incident of poor behavior all remember and re-tell lingers, and colors what follows for quite some time.  We have long memories for slights and disconnects between words and actions.

And so, as the new year begins take a few minutes and think about how you’d like to be perceived and what you need to do…and not do…for this to come about.  Notice that I say do and not do rather than say and not say. 

Lead by example. Those who see will understand what you mean whether the words are spoken or not.

But beware, eyes are always watching.  These days all your actions are captured and with the speed of writhing fingers spread across the world.

Leadership has become more complicated, but also more powerful as your actions can be viewed by millions.  This is the good new…but also the bad. As always, culture comes from the top.  Make sure you’re acting to engage and build passion rather than drive away and create distrust.

It’s all in how you act.

It never ceases to amaze me how if you aim your attention at something you suddenly discover that thing in many places.  For example, last post, The Power of Why, I talked about emotion and gut feel as the underlying driver of decisions.  Next thing I know, I’m seeing things about trusting your gut everywhere.

It even turns out the Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, claims that intuition…gut feel…makes our decisions not just quicker but better.

Gigerenzer says complex problems often do not need complex solutions.  More analysis leads to paralysis, not solution.  Even worse, more analysis often makes the decision worse rather than better.

All good executives know this.  Over a glass of wine they’ll admit that many of their decisions are based on gut feel and intuition.  Since it’s a bit hard to defend this in public, after the decision is made they often go to great efforts to produce lengthy reports disguising the fact that they’ve already made the decision. 

It’s all about focus.  Extra information just distracts you from paying attention to the few important aspects of the issue that really matter. You get overwhelmed with extraneous facts that have nothing to do with the real problem and so go off on tangents or wind up paralysed by the fear that you missed something.

In her book on strategic thinking…that’s strategic thinking, not strategic planning…Julia Sloan interviewed CEOs from the world’s leading companies and found that they all depend on private time with their own thoughts to free their gut to guide their most important decisions.  In Learning To Think Strategically she describes this much more eloquently. 

Her book is actually an interesting example of needing to take hundreds of pages to explain and verify that the best decisions generally aren’t really based on huge amounts of research but come from allowing all you know to jumble about freely inside you head until your gut is happy with the result.

Good decisions come from having plenty of diverse experiences that expand your view, keeping clear of assumptions that constrict your options, being careful not to clutter up your brain with too many facts, and then letting your thoughts run free.

Try it next time there’s a fork in the path ahead of you.  Trust your gut.