Articles by Steve

Several posts ago in Douglas Conant – Fixing Campbell Soup, I discussed Conant and some of his thoughts on fixing a company that has lost it’s way. In his case…Campbell Soup. A big piece of his thinking focused on that issue we know so well and so often avoid: the problem is the wrong people at the top. But Conant, did he avoid this issue? Not a chance.

I bring this up again because I just heard an interview with Sergio Marchionne who arrived to fix Chrysler a few years ago. He talked about all the things you might expect as he described arriving at a floundering company. Then he said the sentence that led to his mention here, “company problems are always due to the top.” So within a very short time he changed the entire leadership to get people with a different mindset.

And it worked. As it worked at Campbell Soup.

I spend quite a bit of time discussing the need to ensure the top team are the right people in the right seats since I too believe that company problems start at the top. What continually amazes me is how often everyone knows who the problem people at the top are but still the CEO is unwilling to make a change. I have heard every excuse there is why fixing the company and improving the way it runs is secondary to keeping this or that person.

Of course, no one ever says it exactly that way. They hem and haw and plead for more time to fix things. But there is no fixing things if the people leading are not capable of doing what is required.

I understand how difficult it is to fire people. Most good executives hate doing this but great executives realize it comes with the job. And the job is running the best company possible.

The odd thing is, the best thing for the company as well as for the largest number of people…the rest of the employees…is removing the one or ones hindering success and thus greater opportunity for all.

To be clear, I am not one for popping into someone’s office unannounced and casually mentioning it’s time for them to clean out their desk and depart…instantly. Dismissal needs to be done with proper consideration, discussion, timing, and so forth. But it must be done.

Despite those who say differently, there is almost no one who is truly irreplaceable. As a matter of fact, I have noticed that when an irreplaceable person who is the rot in the organization finally gets moved along, things always get better. Often things get better the minute the person exits the building. Sometimes it takes a day.

According to an article in the Economist, “From guard shack to global giant“, when Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC business Lenovo executives marvelled that “Americans like to talk; Chinese people like to listen. At first we wondered why they kept talking when they had nothing to say.” IBMers meanwhile couldn’t understand the Lenovo practice of publicly shaming those who came late to meetings.

At first reading this looks like a great example of culture clash, an ongoing issue for global business. And it is.

In spite of the rapid expansion of globalization over the last years and the increasing interaction of people around the world, so many are still caught unable to break out of their cultural box. Cultural box, the box that shields you from having to think about the fact that there are other ways of doing things and other beliefs that are just as valid as yours are.  And in some or many cases, are even more successful than yours are.

I travel to Africa quite a bit from my base in Birchrunville Pennsylvania USA. Over the years I have also spent large amounts of time in Latin America, Asia, and Europe. I continually get asked how I can go to some of the places I visit. This is almost always followed by a story about some personal disaster on their lone international trip or even when they happened to run into someone from a foreign country right in their home town. The bad thing about this is it reminds me how insular people are. The good thing about this is that it gives me a chance to discuss cultural awareness.

Cultural awareness: the ability to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open and notice what other people do and how they act. And then work to act and talk appropriately with respect for the culture you find yourself in. The hardest part is suspending your habits and being comfortable with difference. It’s really all I do and why I am accepted so well in so many diverse places and cultures.

Now back to “at first reading”. After noticing the cultural clash issue in the comments above, I thought about what the comments actually say. “Americans like to talk even when they have nothing to say while Chinese like to listen” and “we call out those who come late and keep others waiting.”

On further reflection I realized that captured in these two ideas are two keys to success. Listen when you have nothing to say and respect others. The clearest example of the bad things that happen when you violate these two keys to success comes in Washington these days. Continual talking with nothing to say and not even an attempt at respect for others. No wonder we’re falling off yet another cliff and dragging the world behind us.

Who among you wants to emulate those in Washington as the way you approach building something great?

Recently I had the great pleasure of attending the dinner honoring a collection of National University of Singapore (NUS) interns who were leaving after spending a year in various Philadelphia area early stage companies. NUS Overseas College sends students to spend a year learning about entrepreneurship by being immersed inside a small company while taking several courses in entrepreneurial related areas at a local partner university, in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania.

It is a wonderful learning experience for the students while the companies have an enthusiastic, smart, and well educated employee for a year. A win for both.

Each year there is a student speech at the dinner. At the last dinner it was given by Weida Tan and was exceptional. A bit of humor, some observations, and the reason I mention it here, a wonderful analysis of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and leader. As I listened I was impressed with how Tan had managed to distill a year of watching an exceptional leader into four guiding principles for entrepreneurial…and leadership…success.

1. Communication: First and foremost success comes from continuous communication with everyone.  This communication is not one directional but involves listening and questioning and engaging in discussion as much as it involves sharing your own ideas. It’s all about creating an organization that has total clarity about what is going on and communicates continuously.

2. Focus: Next is a laser focus that enables the leader to keep their attention on the business in spite of anything that happens around them. This focus enables them to keep their eyes on the target and not wander off down random paths following whatever happens to appear in front of them. It guides the leader in knowing what to do and what not to do.

3. Culture: The leader sets the culture and the culture guides everything that happens in the company. A good leader sets a culture of openness, experimentation, energy, enthusiasm, and inclusiveness. The culture brings people in and encourages them to become their best and aim for new heights of achievement.

4. Knowledge: The leader knows what he or she is doing and how to guide the company forward. Employees are encouraged to use their existing skills and expertise and continuously educate themselves further. Actions are based on facts and ideas generated based on deep understanding.

As I listened I was intrigued at how Tan had managed to distill a year’s worth of observations into these four simple ideas for success. Simple and yet so hard for so many to understand and follow. The odd thing is, following them leads to greater success with less effort, surely a goal of most leaders and executives.

Campbell Soup Company was having its troubles when Douglas Conant was hired as CEO in 2001. I know several people who were and are Campbell Soup senior executives although I have never had the pleasure of meeting Conant himself. But I have watched and heard the story of how he led the company forward. He left in 2011 and has now written a book about his thoughts on leadership, a book on the skills he used to fix the problems and recreate the company for success going forward.

Many things about his leadership style have jumped out at me over the years but two things in particular interest me greatly.  First, when he arrived he spent the first year evaluating everything, but most importantly the top people. He truly understands that culture and everyting else flow from the top.  In a global company with a huge workforce the top, as in every company, is the CEO but in a large company the top also includes quite a few other senior people.

In the case of Campbell Soup, the top included around 350 senior people. Conant rapidly figured out they, as in so many companies, were the problem. What to do?

Be tough and fix the problem was Conant’s choice. To this end he turned over approximately 300 of the top 350 people in his first three years. About half came from inside as he does believe in promoting from within…if possible. The other half were brought in. Conant understood that you can’t build a top quality, successful global company without having the best people at the top.

In my consulting I notice how few are willing to take this tough step and so are destined to be less than they could be due to fear of removing the weak and finding the strong. And everyone working for, funding, and connected in any way to the company suffers for it.

The other thing he understands is touchpoints…which just happens to be the title of his book. Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. Touchpoints is all about using every single opportunity to have a small touch with someone. Touchpoints is all about building strong and continuous connections to the people that work for and with you. Touchpoints in many ways is the opposite of our internet world where people think a connection to someone you don’t know on Linked In is a real connection.

My favorite touchpoint? The handwritten note. For years I’ve talked about this as a great way to connect with people, even writing a book with Kay Keenan, Conversation on Networking, that included this idea. And we gave a zillion talks where we mentioned this idea. You can imagine how much fun I found it when I learned that Conant sent out 10 to 20 handwritten notes each and every day to people within Campbell Soup.

These are not random notes filled with gratuitous compliments but serious notes related to success with business issues. Conant estimates he wrote over 30,000 notes during his time at Campbell. 30,000! He feels so strongly about the value of the touchpoint of handwritten notes that he devoted who knows how much of his valuable CEO time to writing notes to his people. Imagine what it must have been like to be in some far flung outpost of Campbell Soup and receive a handwritten note from the CEO discussing and thanking you for something you did.

And imagine how many people you would share this with. And their reaction.

Two simple to think about and difficult to do ways to build a stronger organization: get the right people and touch them constantly.

When faced with obstacles the brain becomes more creative. We all know this. One manifestation is how much more difficult it is to write an excellent brief essay than it is to ramble on page after page. It takes significantly more intense thought and creativity to tease out the most important points and express them simply and concisely than to hide them inside an overlong, wordy, and rambling essay. This is why so often a short and interesting report on something written for a magazine becomes a ridiculously boring book without any new ideas but with lots of repetitive verbiage.

The computer age has brought us many wondrous things but one thing that’s not so good is how easy it has made just about everything. This ease has brought a noticeable degradation in the quality of much thinking and how it is expressed. Professor Virginia Berninger of the University of Washington has even found that handwriting activates more of the brain than writing on a keyboard.  Among the parts of the brain more engaged when you write by hand are the areas responsible for thinking and memory.

It also seems that having something distracting going on in the background increases your cognitive ability. You are more likely to make unusual connections, see a bigger picture, and come up with new and different ideas. That grating song playing softly behind you actually is improving your ability to think while annoying your conscious mind tremendously.

Memory is enhanced when your brain is stressed a bit. Type that is difficult to read leads to better retention. It seems that making it too easy leads to having a lazy brain that barely bothers to think at all much less remember what happened around it.

In my work at the Wharton School we use this idea to get the best work from the MBA students in the Wharton Global Consulting Practicum and encourage them to greater heights of creativity as they work on international marketing consulting projects. For a six month project for a real and paying client they are given a brief project overview at the beginning and then turned loose to figure out how to proceed.  By brief I mean as short as a few paragraphs.

The Project Faculty give guidance but work hard to leave the path of the project as unstructured as possible. It is exhilirating to watch the MBA student team as they explore options, figure out what the project really is, and how to develop the ideas and concepts that lead to exceptional recommendations.  Recommendations that are often unusual and unexpected since given an openended opportunity where they are forced to think through difficulty and unknown territory their ideas soar.

At the opposite extreme is Twitter. 140 characters and no more. You are boxed in by the difficult task of expressing a complete idea in this small space. Within this restriction I force myself to write a clear thought in good English each and every time I Tweet something. It stretches my brain.

In your work…do the same. Make things difficult. Leave some things open. Remove the straight paths and guide people in circuitous routes. Play a bit of off kilter music in the background rather than those soothing instrumentals. Print things in odd typefaces that are a bit harder to read. Encourage simplicity and brevity…without losing any of the depth and insight.

Force yourself and your people to think. Make things a bit more difficult.

When Jim Yong Kim was appointed President World Bank some months ago quite a few people where aghast. After all, Kim is a doctor, not a banker. Previously Kim led the World Health Organization and was President of Dartmouth College, hardly the background many expected for the leader of a global financial institution.

So far he seems to be doing a good job. Among other things, the bank staff who have been battered over the last few years express how much better the bank is running and they feel about the future of the bank and it’s ability to help the world economy.

One thing that struck me as one of the reasons for this improved culture and Bank functioning was in an interview Kim gave at the recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Tokyo. I gather these comments electrified the audience.

Kim started by sharing a story from the medical world. “When a doctor kills a patient, at some point he has to stand up in front of a board and explain what happened, not to be blamed, but so that future generations of students and doctors can learn what went wrong.” And what do you do with this learning? Improve.

When failure happens, take responsibility, investigate, and solve the problem before it happens again. No blame, just an issue you caused needing to be fixed for the future.

At the Bank Kim is going to set up a panel to do a similar thing. This panel will investigate World Bank failures to find the reasons behind the failures and develop ways to improve Bank activities in the future.

As for accountability, it starts at the top. Kim has announced he will personally chair the the panel. Not only does this show the importance he places on the panel but it also shows that he is taking personal accountability for the solutions that emerge…and against which he will be measured in the future.

It sends the message that he is serious. He expects failures to be investigated, reasons found, solutions developed, and results to improve. And he is taking accountability for all of it. He truly believes what we all know but many seem to forget to exemplify: accountability starts at the top.

If you walk the talk and expect others to follow, they will. You will build a culture where failure is not for blame but for learning and accountability leads to a stronger organization with more effective implementation.

It looks like in spite of a collection of initial naysayers Dr Kim is turning out to be…just the physician to heal the Bank.

Jim Yong Kim and wife Younsook Lim

See him outline his vision for the World Bank

A number of people commented (not as comments on the blog although you are welcome to actually post those emails) that my last post was Speak Memorably while the one before that was Management Success: Ask…and Listen. I must admit that this was just a random event unless it was some message from the recesses of my unconscious. These notes come from whatever I’ve been thinking about based on recent occurrances around me. Lately I have been caught up in quite a few things involving speaking and listening.

But the comments did get me intrigued that readers found it strange that I suggested both speaking and listening. It seems that some people find them at odds with each other. I find them to be the major components of conversation, of dialogue, of intelligent discourse. What those commenting noticed was that all too many do one or the other without connecting the two. All spewing it out or all gathering it in but not connecting the dots that lead to engagement, connection, and all the improvement that comes from building ideas together.

Success comes not just from being a good speaker or listener but from the ability to connect these two things. Poor speakers have a hard time getting their ideas across while poor  listeners miss all kinds of useful information. Success comes from being good at both and even more importantly knowing that each has its place of great importance in successful communication…and management.

For what is exceptional management but the ability to communicate well. The ability to clearly share the story in ways that engage and excite mixed with the ability to gather input and ideas to incorporate into and improve your message. It’s a dialogue, not a monologue. Forget this at your peril.

Most of the information you need resides in the heads of those in the organization…but they often don’t know it and don’t get asked.  Worse yet, they get the message that their ideas are not wanted, that they are to hear and do rather than think and improve. Your most precious resource, the knowledge of your people, is wasted.

Become good at conversation. Become expert at both sharing your story and listening to those around you. Take the best parts of what you say and add in the best parts of what you hear, that which leads you onward, improves what you do, builds quality and excellence.

Build a message that shows you value input from others and truly believe that the whole is greater than the parts…and that all will benefit when all are included.

Speak Memorably…but also Ask…and Listen. Together they build the conversation that leads to even greater success.

I seem to wind up with quite a few people people talking to me. Politicians seeking my vote, executives sharing their thoughts, con men trying to sell me something, famous people discussing their success, and regular people doing presentations on no end of topics for often obscure reasons. And then there is the normal conversation of people just sharing ideas and experiences as they go about their daily lives.

Often I think back on my day or week and what stuck out as the most interesting and important things I heard as well as those talks or conversations that were the most fun. Take a minute and think back on your week just past before reading further.

What do you notice? Probably the same thing as I, what you remember is mostly stories.

There is a lot going on in all our lives. We are bombarded by information and surrounded by the noise of people talking and attempting to catch our attention to share their important ideas. Mostly it passes through our minds and rapidly dissipates. A week, a day, an hour, or even a few minutes later and it’s gone, never to be retrieved.

But some things linger. Some speakers you heard years ago are still right there easy to recall. More importantly, their message is still there, captured in your memory. Which things do we remember? The stories. Charts and graphs and long monotonic recitations flee our thoughts almost before the speaker is done talking.

The same with powerpoint or other presentations. Most flee our thoughts as rapidly as they enter. They have no stickiness, nothing to grab our memory and attach themselves firmly.

But stories, stories are sticky. Pictures either painted in words through story or visually in presentations are sticky. They last and last and each time remembered reinforce the idea they express. They overwhelm dry facts and enthusiasm without substance.

Even a less than spectacular speaker becomes more memorable if telling stories to express their ideas rather than reciting a collection of facts. Notice how different you feel and how you act when told of suffering of poor children in Africa by someone sharing reams of statistics than when you see that picture of one malnurished child. Which has the most impact? And which lasts longer in your memory?

Be memorable. Speak stories.

Take your ideas and turn them into an engaging narrative that captures the essence of what you want to express and builds a picture in their mind of how it looks. Stories take things from abstract to concrete, from ignorable to unforgettable, from fleeting to embedded.

Great leaders are great storytellers. They know how to capture the imagination and engage the emotions by sharing stories that build from simple beginnings and end with engaging pictures of the ideas they want you to hear. They embed emotion, imagery, movement, and ideas in one intermixed whole that stays with you and guides your thinking along lines they have laid down.

Story stays with you.

Be memorable. Speak stories.

Management books are filled with information about managing people. Experts of all types are available to help you learn how to improve your management skills. Seminars abound on the techniques for becoming a better boss. You can spend a lot of time and a small fortune on such things.

And yet, there is a simple thing you can do that will get the best performance from each person that costs nothing and takes only a few minutes. Ask each person how they want to be managed and listen to what they say. Then do your best to give them what they want.

Each person is unique and does best when that is taken into account. Most importantly, each person is not a clone of you and in all likelihood would like to be managed in ways that differ from how you like to be managed. There are people who share some traits and in all probability some of your reports share some of your traits…but rarely will someone share all your traits and most will be quite divergent in the best way to manage them.

Some will love to get lots of advice and work best with well defined rules and procedures while others like more freedom to act without tight strictures. Acting like both these types will perform best with the same management is fooling yourself and leads to less effective performance. 

Think how much better your organization will perform if each and every manager asks their reports how they like to be managed, what irritates them in managers, what inspires them…and then is managed with this in mind. Throughout the organization everyone is treated in ways that lead them to their best performance.

Before you get worried, I am not talking about throwing out all the rules and procedures. I definitely want my nuclear plant operators and airline pilots to go through their safety checklists and follow operating rules and emergency procedures. Managing effectively sits above following these rules and procedures.

Being a superior manager means being able to encourage each person to rise above the rote procedures and excel at following them while keeping their brain turned on to notice those things that enable them to perform even better than the procedures predict.  Superior managers are able to reach each person in ways that lead them to perform at heights even they did not know they could achieve. Superior managers are able to build organizations where the exceptional becomes normal.

Exceptional managers know how to speak in ways that lead each person to feel the message is focused on them…because it is. In response, they are motivated to not just try their best but to do their best…always.

Become exceptional. Ask…and listen.

If you are anyone who manages others, works with others, talks to others, or just happens to run into other people, you’ve noticed that they have different beliefs that guide them. The great difficulty most people have is understanding what this means and how it guides their thoughts and actions. Even more importantly, it leads to many having a complete inability to understand these others and figure out how to effectively communicate with them and work together for mutual benefit. Witness our recent American election.

I, like many of you, have often wondered about the seeming intransigence of those others when faced with, what seemed to me, to be rational arguments based on factual information. Then I started reading articles by Jonathan Haidt and eventually his great book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” I highly recommend you read this book for the insight it gives and the ways it offers to cross the divide of differing core beliefs.

To be successful an organization must bring all its people together into an aligned, unified, and accountable whole with each and every person going in the same direction towards the same goal…and working together in spite of differing core beliefs. Each needs to be reached and spoken to in the language and way that connects with them and enables all to see how this future benefits each and every one.

It is not easy.

Speaking to all means being willing to accept that differing beliefs have value and being willing to modify how you communicate to engage with them in mutually understandable language aimed at overcoming common problems in ways that all can accept.

It is not easy.

Recently Haidt wrote an article for The New York Times called “We Need a Little Fear.” As I read it I realized that while he is talking about issues requiring united political solutions…and offers a way for liberals and conservatives to unite on the issue of births to unmarried mothers…what he describes can be generalized to many organizational issues.

As the Bedouin proverb he quotes says, “me against my brother, my brother and me against my cousins, my cousins and me against strangers.”  To paraphrase a bit, when the fleet of asteroids is heading for us, we are all cousins.

It still is not easy, but now it is possible.

This arrives the morning of Election Day in the USA. It has been a depressing experience watching an unending stream of misstatements, pandering, factual inaccuracies, billionaires hoping to buy the election, officials working to disenfranchise voters, hate filled verbiage, and outright lies…often continuing to be repeated even after the perpetrator is presented with the true facts. Ideology and dogma trumping reality again and again.

And a noticeable lack of actual ideas coupled with an inability to do basic budget math. But lots and lots and lots of negativity and attacks rather than positivity and uplifting messages.

All in all, it shows us at our worst and is hardly an example of the American Exceptionalism I keep hearing repeated all over the place. No wonder we are losing our standing in the world.

In some places the voting process itself has already shown itself to be horribly flawed and will certainly lead to fights making that recent Florida debacle seem like a minor event.

It’s quite a learning experience for those looking for insights in how to be an effective leader. Mostly do the opposite of what you saw.

In the middle of this I happened upon this astute observation which unfortunately is unattributed. I wish I could claim it for my own but after that opening diatribe against the moral and ethical lapses of of the two trying to become our leader and their associated supporters, the least I can do is show some absolute honesty about this.

“You can do the best analyzing, have the best insights and the greatest ideas, but all is for naught if you can’t communicate well and inspire actions towards tangible results.”

What is missing in the various campaigns going on is the last half of the thought. And the first half.

No insights or great ideas and certainly no best analyzing. A terrifying lack of ability to communicate and inspire so probably no tangible results will ensue.

Unfortunately someone will win each race and we will be led by those lacking in all the statesman abilities except for having the title. The title gives position but not skill and ability. Just like business.

Leadership comes from inside the person. From a willingness to listen, to think, to watch and consider. And leadership only flowers with openness and honesty and an ability to communicate so effectively that you inspire those who hear to see the picture and and understand the opportunity. And, of course, to follow and act to reach the goals and bring the vision about.

Most of all, leadership is never negative, and divisive but is positive, uplifting, and unifying…leading to greater good for all rather than good for some at the expense of the rest.

This blog comes to you from Birchrunville, a place in the direct line of Hurricane Sandy. As I write this, it’s been raining for hours and the winds are picking up. They say twelve hours from now it will hit with torrential downpour, wind of 30 or 40 miles per hour, and wind gusts up to 80 mph.  In addition to the horrendous flooding this will bring, the expectation in Birchrunville is that we will lose power for 4 or 5 days since living in a rural place at the end of the power lines means we lose power often and are the last to be reconnected. By the time you get this, I figure all of this will have happened.

I’ve been closely watching the way various government officials from the President on down, as well as the media have been addressing this ongoing disaster. Heightening the intensity of the actions and reporting is the fact that we are exactly one week away from election day.

It’s been fascinating to watch as everyone calculates the best political reaction to an ongoing and escalating disaster. Luckily we have many commentators and spin doctors vying to come up with the most esoteric ideas for how this impacts the election…as if any of them really have any idea. Their general theory seems to be to not let a disaster affecting 60 million people get in the way of political opportunism.

The nice thing to see is how, for a change, the politicians themselves seem to have realized the gravity of the situation and how this cuts across political differences. Obama is doing what we all expect from the president in times of crisis: overseeing getting our resources mobilized and offering calming words to the country. Romney doesn’t have the ability to do much but is still offering words of encouragement and comfort rather than attacking the ongoing response.

The various governors, mayors, and myriad other officials are working together to ensure all that can be done to prepare…is done. They are actually working together smoothly and speaking with one voice on the need for everyone to stay calm, offering safety advice, and warning against doing anything stupid like picking up electric wires that fall. I find the last a bit mystifying since I figure everyone knows not to pick up main power lines but I suppose it never hurts to remind people of the simple things.

All are working together without any animosity and understand that their differences in viewpoints about things really don’t matter much placed against the need to help protect a large part of the population.

Then there are the commentators. They caught my attention due to their bizarre stupidity and tone deafness. The country is uniting to survive the ongoing storm with just about everyone focused on preparedness or relief efforts…and they are interjecting politics.

What are they thinking? Or are they so wrapped up in their own minds that they have lost the ability to notice what’s going on around him…and what’s most important right now.

Which finally leads me to this disaster and the ongoing response as a wonderful metaphor for building a strong country…or company. With united leadership and a clear vision for what needs to be done, it’s possible to pull together and beat anything. It’s possible to surmount huge obstacles and emerge stronger. Why, it might just be possible to reach new heights you never imagined when you get everyone accountable, aligned, and focused on reaching that big goal.

And the naysayers…they don’t get it. A clear vision powered by a focused leader with a clear and consistent positive and uplifting message that grabs the emotions always has the advantage. And all are better off for it.

Now if only the politicians remember this lesson when Hurricane Sandy has passed.

I seem to have had a brain seizure a few days ago. In addition to this blog on various issues about management I write a personal blog that more or less is a travelogue of both my actual travels and the odd things that wander through my brain. Imagine my amazement when I arrived here to write today’s posting and found that Fantasy Land Revisted which was a Steve’s World blog somehow was here.

Steve’s World is quite a bit more personal, humorous, random, and even profane than this more businesslike missive. The post is no longer here but is now over where it belongs.

I was going to write something about success through pursuing less but this brain seizure got me thinking about mistakes. This particular mistake came about for reasons completely beyond my understanding. Steve’s blog looks nothing like Benari blog. And yet, apparently even when I previewed it I managed to somehow miss the fact that the entire look was wrong.

My brain saw what it expected to see even though my eyes were clearly viewing something completely different.

I’ve written a few recent posts about Behaving Badly, Felonious Actions, and Truthiness among other activities that drag down both you and your organization. As I thought about my odd mistake and the way my brain was completely oblivious it occurred to me that some of this bad behavior might be the same problem with different symptoms

In my case, ultimately it was a humorous mistake causing no particular harm to anyone other than the politicians I found lacking. It also has a good result…I will be much more rigorous at checking everything more carefully before hitting that publish button. I expect that problem will not return since my brain has now been chastised and my unconscious is now on guard.

In other circumstances such mistakes have devastating consequences. As our attention span shortens and our brains are overwhelmed by more and more things streaming in continuously, I fear the problem I experienced will increase.

Our brains will experience what they expect in spite of the facts and evidence right in front of us.

Trying to observe everything and be aware of all will undoubtedly lead to increasing mistakes of increasing severity as we lose the time for our brains to notice the reality versus the expected. A scary thought for one who flies enough to be a bazillion miler.

Oddly, this takes me right to what I was going to write about before my mistake caught my attention: success through pursuing less.

Pursuing less…being focused on the essential and critical to the exclusion of the rest. Really paying attention and noticing rather than perusing and bouncing to the next glittery thing. Noticing clearly and fully. Blocking out distractions so you can really see…and notice.

I’ve noticed that I’ve become quite a bit more successful as I figured out the basic elements of the skill I bring to my clients. My writing became stronger as I focused on the need for each word and that only the words needed appeared. My speaking became clearer as my focus increased and the nice comments about it grew significantly. And yet, I still found myself seeing what I expected and so posting a wildly incompatible missive.

My learning: no matter how much you try to focus on the essential and critical to the exclusion of the rest…it isn’t enough. We all need to ensure extra eyes, additional review, thoughtful oversight, and minds accepting ongoing open and honest commentary.

Most of all, we need to guard against the risk of forgetting that we can be just as mistaken as anyone else. To the extent we block out the voices at variance with our thinking we diminish our chances for the best result…and increase our chance of seeing what we expect rather than what is.

And thus we make the biggest mistake of all: believing our hallucination is the vision seen, and desired, by all.

You might have been following the insider trading scandal involving Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the hedge fund Galleon Group, and Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, former McKinsey head, former friend of many powerful people. Ooops, that last seems to still be true.

Mr Rajaratnam is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence for illicit trading on tips from Mr Gupta, among other nefarious deeds. Mr Gupta is currently waiting to hear what his sentence will be after being convicted of sharing the secrets in spite of the strong legal prohibition against such sharing, and of personally gaining through joint business activities with Mr Rajaratnam. Sentencing guidlines suggest a sentence in excess of ten years.

The ooops comes about because the judge in the case is currently receiving hundreds of letters explaining how Mr Gupta is really a wonderful person who could in no way have done such dastardly things. After all, he has given lots of money to various good causes. For some reason many of the world’s rich and powerful seem to think this means he should not suffer the consequences the rest of us do when found to be in major violation of the law.

I am fascinated by this outpouring of sympathy by such well known people as Bill Gates and Kofi Annan. While they are so worried about poor Mr Gupta there does not seem to be any particular sympathy for the thousands of investors who were on the wrong side of the transactions that made millions for the convicted due to this insider trading. I also wonder at their thinking in being willing to publicly lobby for a lessor sentence for their friend in spite of his being convicted after an extensive trial.

I wonder because it causes me to ponder how they actually conduct their business. Do they consider this normal behavior for the elite? “We do our deals in the stratosphere without regard of the law because we deserve even more wealth.” It seems such odd behavior for people such as Gates and Annan who have dedicated so much of their lives to ensuring the least among us are given equal advantage.

Most curious is the message they are sending. The message that if you are rich enough and know enough powerful people perhaps you aren’t going to be held to the same legal requirements as everyone else. They message that things are different for them.

For those in public view are always sending a message by their behavior. And the message here is not good.

It reminds me of what I sometimes see with new clients. The words are wonderful. The values excellent. The vision spectacular. The actions at variance with words, values, and vision.

They never seem to understand that their problems are caused by the message that comes from their actions. At the risk of sounding trite, it really is true that actions speak louder than words. Actually it’s even worse than that. Actions shout so loudly they drown out the words.

You are the message.

Much of modern business is structured with incentives to behave badly. Perhaps financial institutions have the largest incentives to push the envelope of good behavior if not actually break the law, but they are not alone in finding the incentives to cross the line difficult to resist.

On the public company side, it’s easy to see where one of the incentives comes from: quarterly results closely watched that lead to rapid big share gains…or losses. And personal gain tied closely to these results.

The personal gain part is what gets so many in trouble both at these public companies as well as at privately held businesses. The measures used for bonuses, raises, and even public acclaim are all too often based on sales or financial results with much too little worry about whether they were achieved in appropriate ways.

In too many companies there is a win at all costs mentality. When I hear a senior executive…up to and including the top person…talk about winning at all costs I wonder if they understand the message they are delivering. Win at all costs. Even in war the concept of winning at all costs is tempered by acts we ban and actions we find immoral and abhor.

Yet many leaders in business set a culture and send a message that results are so important that fudging a bit, pushing the edge of legality, finding ways to manipulate things that get around the rules in ways that clearly violate the spirit of what was expected, and even stepping over the line if you can do it without anyone knowing…are acceptable if they lead to a good financial result.

When coupled with a general culture that worships wealth and turns billionaires into celebrities while being less concerned about how they achieved such wealth, it puts money, and that which it buys, at the forefront of success. Having lots of stuff is the sign of doing well.

I overstate a bit. Clearly there are many guided by a deep seated desire to do what is right. Those who find doing right the sign of success and lots of stuff ostentatious and obscene. Those who find increasing the welfare of all to be more important than building their own wealth.

The question for the future of your organization is which story you deliver: win at all costs or increase the common good through building a successful enterprise guided by inviolate principles. And then of greatest importance is which story you exemplify in all you do.

Before you get annoyed with me, I am not in the least against success in business as measured by running a growing and profitable business. I spend my days working with business owners and leaders to ensure they grow more rapidly and achieve high profit. I am against the idea of anything goes as long as it makes money for the company…and the person. I am particularly aghast at those who express high ideals for business and personal behavior and exemplify gutter morals in both, never realizing that everyone notices the actions and sees them as the real message of what is expected…and rewarded.

There is no need for behaving badly. An organization built with full accountability, focus, and alignment around a strong set of guiding principles exemplified by a leader who lives them is aimed towards success.

Build a strong and healthy organization. Banish bad behavior.