Operating In The Midst of A Global Pandemic & Economic Uncertainty

“Operations is the heart of any company”, writes Ram Charan in his book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times (McGraw Hill, 2009). “This is where the work gets done, and it is where the most fundamental changes will occur as your company adapts to the new circumstances and re-creates itself to become stronger in the future.” Charan points out that during times of economic uncertainty “the goals are common: lower operating costs, efficient use of resources, low working capital, and conservation of cash, along with the usual demands to meet customers’ need for quality and on-time delivery.”

As we plan for the future, leaders of service companies face some unique challenges. For them, their employees are “their engine of production and often deliver that production on a just-in-time basis.” While managing cash and cash flow are mission critical to their short and long term success, there are two other critical challenges for service organizations, namely “organizational capacity utilization and motivation.” As Charan explains, “Your people are your machinery and the term capacity utilization refers to how busy those people are.” Charan recommends we staff operations “commensurate with the need for customer service.”

I think one challenge is that as we staff for customer service we have to recognize that in the middle of a global pandemic and a time period of economic uncertainty, the capacity of staff to just keeping pushing forward through shift after shift, and day after day is limited. Burn-out is real, and there is little time for recharge, because all our normal coping systems have been disrupted. Furthermore, employees’ worries about health and family are mentally time consuming and always present. Therefore, we as leaders need to be mindful of the capacity of our staff to sustain excellent customer service. We are in a marathon more than a sprint.

Charan points out that motivation is the second challenge that demands the attention of leaders within service companies during times of economic uncertainty. He notes that it is very easy for staff to become “utterly demoralized” by the on-going challenges around uncertainty. As he continues, “… people need to feel that they are being treated equitably.” He encourages leaders of service organizations to communicate constantly with their staff and to focus on ways to keep morale high.

I agree 100% with his recommendations about communication and morale. As we continue to move through these most unusual times, I believe leaders need to update staff frequently, listen thoughtfully to their concerns and fears, and carefully explain what are the short and long term plans that the company is making and executing given the challenges before us all. When leaders are managing the intensity of the service work in a respectful and attentive manner, all involved can make realistic choices within a volatile environment

As Charan writes, “… your people need you to be present with them in the foxhole. Your grasp of reality is useless if you can’t bring the rest of your organization to understand it and act on it, and you cannot do this with memos and proclamations alone. You have to be interactive - listening as well as explaining, answering questions, taking the conversation to the next level, and then doing it again and again. Your people will be inspired not by stirring words as much as by seeing firsthand that you have put reality on the table and have a plan for addressing it decisively, as a team.”

These are challenging times and adaptation is required of all of us. When we start from a foundation of respect, integrity and teamwork, we will have the capacity to survive, thrive and ultimately learn from the experience. “You may encounter many defeats,” writes the late Maya Angelou, “but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” 

Now is our time to rise and stand together. One day, we will get through this. Meanwhile, we must be mindful of what is most important in the process.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

The World Has Changed

Like so many other people, I want life to get back to normal. 

I am tired of social distancing and I am tired of sheltering in place. I am tired of being afraid to touch something and maybe get ill from it. I am tired of the gloves and the face masks. I am tired of washing my hands all the time and singing a little song to make sure I have done it long enough to actually kill a virus. 

I want to see my friends, and hug my family. I want to worship together on Sunday morning. I want to eat out, and laugh with friends over a good meal. I want to go to a movie or walk in the park and not worry about how close people are to me. I want to go the library, and check out a new book. There are so many big and little things that I want to do now that I can not do them. In short, I am suffering from quarantine fatigue.

Yet, I have come to the realization that the world has changed, and I have been changed by this experience. I recognize now how vulnerable we all are on so many levels. I understand better now about systemic weak points, supply chain inefficiencies, and structural inequities. I comprehend that denial is not an effective coping strategy and resilience in the face of adversity does not happen overnight. 

Upon great reflection and deeply personal experiences, I know now that all of us will know someone who has lost a loved one or we, ourselves, will have lost someone we love to COVID-19. The grief of these losses is personal and collective. And like those who came before us and survived WWII or the Depression, no one is immune to the suffering.  

I also know that the statistics posted each new day are not numbers. They are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, husband and wives, grandparents and cousins. What binds us together now in the midst of COVID-19 is our shared grief and shared losses. 

Still, in the midst of this pain and suffering, I have learned that compassion is a healthy choice. Small acts of kindness can transform my day such as when a friend leaves us flowers at our door, or when a child who rings our door bell and leaves behind a bag of cookies with the card that reads “Things may be crummy but you‘re one tough cookie.” On another day, the card from a long distant friend and the phone call from a loved one can make me pause and remember that our strength comes from our interdependence more than our rugged individualism.

I also have learned that the only way through this is together. I realize now that my personal journey of acceptance, hope and resilience is intimately connected to our collective journey of acceptance, hope and resilience. I can not fully move forward into a changed world if we do not collectively move forward together. 

The world has changed. I understand this better now. My life and your life are intertwined. And no matter what happens next, we must support each other more, trust each other more, and love each other more. For this is the pathway to acceptance and greater understanding.

Finally, I understand better now that we are kind and loving people at our core. We are willing to rise to our challenges when we are supported and respected. We are capable of exquisite planning and execution. We are creative and collaborative. We are stronger than we thought we were, and we will make it through this time together.

So, be well, be hopeful and find the light in and around the challenges, the grief and the suffering. This is our time to be beacons of hope for each other.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How do effective leaders plan when the future is so wildly unpredictable? - part #3

Given all the strategic meetings I have been involved with during the last six months before COVID-19 hit us like a tsunami, I want to share two more insights I have gleaned from the experience. First, I have come to the same conclusion as John Paul Lederach in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005) that “The past lies before us.” Since we can not see or know to any degree of certainty the future what we know the most about is the past. In essence, as Lederach explains “we walk backwards into the future.”

From my vantage point, as a leader or an executive team initiates change, we begin walking on a sigmoid curve, a normal pattern of organizational change. This curve is driven by four things:

- Remembered history, i.e. the stories we learned from others, and the selective way we remember history.

- Lived history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through.

- Shared history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through with others.

- Current and/or recent events, i.e. the experiences that are happening now.

All four of the above can create the narrative we tell ourselves and others about what is happening now and the why is it happening in a particular manner.  

In particular, I think the challenge is that most leaders want to answer the WHY question and talk about mission and/or purpose. However, many are not very good at it. Sometimes, their answers are simplistic at best. This happens because they do not understand the history of the organization. To be very specific, they have not created the space to develop a shared history, a shared sense of clarity and a shared understanding. As a result, the narrative is incomplete or not helpful to those who are trying to make change happen. 

As John Paul Lederach points out, “We have the capacity to remember the past, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Not even God can change the past…. We have the capacity to imagine a different future, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Try as we might nobody controls the future…. The web of life is juxtaposed between these realities of time, between memory and potentiality. This is the place of narrative, the art of re-storying.”

This reminds me of something Jim Mattis wrote in his book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019): “I was out to win their coequal “ownership” of the mission…”. For me this happens, when we develop a shared understanding and collective set of experiences which strengthen who we are, what we believe in and how we work together.

My second recent insight related to strategic planning is that relationship building is a big part of strategic planning. While most people focus on goal setting and document creation, I think we undervalue the relationship building part of the process. The keys to planning in widely unpredictable times, notes Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in their book Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), is to “commit to the importance of relationship building and community building.” When we find new partners and maintain old partnerships, we understand that these “partners provide protection, and create alliances with factions other than your own”.

Furthermore, I believe we need to respect complexity, rediscover emergence, and understand that there are times when a bridge plan is the best plan to purse. At the same time, we need to provide safe space for the creative thinking and action to occur, have the willingness to talk about risks and risk management, and be willing to accept pain (physical, spiritual, financial, mental) so others with less can do better.

Nevertheless, the challenge right now for so many leaders is organizational “amnesia”. We have forgotten our history. We have forgotten our roots. We have forgotten our story up until this moment and we have forgotten our past strategic choices. All of this results in weak, non authentic relationships and ultimately weak communities. This “land of forgetfulness” creates relationships which do not have the capacity to trust, deal with risks, or generate creative responses to extraordinary and complex challenges, notes John Paul Lederach.

Given the above in mind, adaptive leadership and adaptive planning involves four key activities say Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky. They are as follows:

- observing events and patterns around you which involves collecting data and translating it into useful information.

- interpreting what you are observing with the assistance of others so your interpretation is not a guess.

- designing interventions based on observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenges you have identified.

- implementing what you have designed.

Just remember that in the realm of adaptive leadership, such as what we are experiencing right now with COVID-19, you have to believe that your intervention is absolutely the right things to do at the moment you commit to it. But at the same time, you need to remain open to the possibility that you are dead wrong.

In short, we need to engage above and below the neck, i.e. head and heart, and  remember that people prefer status quo to doing things differently. We also need to remember that the lone warrior myth of leadership is a sure route to heroic suicide. We need partners.

For those of you who like to read, I suggest you explore the following two books on this subject:

- Heifetz, Ronald, A., and Marty Linsky. Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

- Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009.

Both of them are full of good food for thought and reflection.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Lessons From the Garden

For over 30 years, I have been building and maintaining numerous large flower beds around our home. Something is always blooming on our land from early March straight through to November. As a result, I have participated in numerous local garden tours and thoroughly enjoyed sharing about the plants that grow on our land.

During this time of year, hundreds of daffodils and tulips bloom. It is normal when I am out weeding for some one to stop and visit with me.

“This is beautiful,” they will say. “I want to create this kind of garden at my place. How do I do it?”

“Well,” I reply. “First, purchase good plants. Second, make sure they are planted well, and finally, take care of them.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“Your welcome. Happy gardening.”

Occasionally, some one will ask me a couple of follow-up questions.

“How do you know if a plant is a good plant?”

“If possible, pop the plant out of the pot and look at the roots. In the beginning, good roots are more important than a fancy flourish of leaves and flowers.”

“How do you make sure this good plant is planted well?”

“If you put a good plant in an unhealthy place, it will not grow. If you put it in good soil, then it will grow. While it would be great if every gardener could get a soil test to determine if their soil is healthy, this may not be possible. Instead, if you are uncertain about the health of your soil, just add some healthy soil to your soil and this will help. Your local garden center can share some different options with you about how to do this. Just remember adding good soil will always make poor soil better.”

“How do you take care of them once they are planted?”

“We can not control the weather, but we can make sure they are watered regularly. Maintaining a good plant is critical to long term success.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. As Stephen Covey said years ago: “No gardener, no garden.” Being disciplined is a major part of creating a beautiful garden.”

“Thanks. I understand now.”

“My pleasure. Happy gardening.”

I have been thinking about these interactions this week because of an experience I had a couple of years ago after the first session of the From Vision to Action Leadership Training. On that day, a young executive came up to me at the end of class and said, “I want to create what those people from that bank created at their organization. They are fully engaged employees with such a high degree of clarity and focus. I want my organization and my team to be just like them.”

“Wonderful,” I replied. “I think that is a good strategic goal to pursue.”

“So, how do I do this?”

“Well, that’s what this class is all about. But for starts, let’s break it down into three steps. Hire good people. Put them on a healthy team and in a healthy work environment. And then take good care of them on a regular basis.”

“How will I know if they are good people?”

“Check their roots. Their life journey impacts their mindset and skill set. Understand how they got from there to here. Good roots make good people.”

“How will I know if I am putting them in a healthy team and work environment?”

“If the people who are currently working there are treating each other with respect and trust, then I suspect your new employee will do just fine.”

“And finally, how do I take care of them?”

“Have the discipline to check in with them on a regular basis. Praise their progress and listen carefully to their concerns. But most of all, just show them that you care and that you want them to be successful. People appreciate this and then they will grow and flourish.”

“This makes sense. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

The key right now is to take care of our people and to show them that we care about them. As we move through another week of social distancing and the on-going journey of COVID-19, we as leaders need to take the time to make sure that every one knows that their efforts to do their best are appreciated and valued. This is not a small act of leadership. This is fundamental to good leadership.

I learned this from decades of gardening and decades of working with people. Good roots make good plants and they make good people. A healthy environment works for plants and people, too. And taking care of your plants and your people over time makes great gardens and great organizations.

So, this week, practice the above fundamentals at work, and happy gardening at home.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Preparing For The Future In The Middle Of A Pandemic - #3

During the last 60 days, many leaders have been talking with me about strategic planning. They are recognizing that their current plans need to be significantly overhauled given recent events and future possibilities. Having worked so hard to create their current plans, they are now feeling overwhelmed about how to recreate them. To assist them in this process, I have had to review some key concepts.

First, to plan for the future in the middle of a complex environment like COVID-19 and a total economic free fall, one needs to go back to the beginning and understand what is strategy. In its most simplest form, strategy is three things. For starts, strategy is an extensively premeditated, carefully built, long term plan designed to achieve a particular goal. However, at the exact same time, this long term plan needs to be adaptable by nature due to unforeseen variables rather than presenting a rigid set of instructions or tactics which has the potential to create organizational vulnerability. Finally, strategy needs to serve as an important function in promoting ongoing evolutionary success.

What most leaders forget in the middle of complexity is that strategy needs to be planned, adaptable and evolutionary. And that is hard combination to create within a plan.

Therefore, I have been encouraging more and more leaders right now to not create a new 2-3 year strategic plan because there are just too many unforeseen variables and unpredictable outcomes that are surfacing and will surface over the coming 9-12 months. Instead, I have strongly encouraged them to build a shorter, bridge plan which focuses on the next 6-9 months. 

The goal of a bridge plan is to create maximum adaptability and to continue moving forward strategically where possible. In times like these, the organization needs to survive, and on the other side of this global pandemic, the organization needs to be well positioned to thrive in the aftermath. Thus, a leader needs to focus on the core business, protect cash flow, and understand what your employees and your customers are going through at this time period, because on the other side of this global pandemic you want to have the capacity to execute efficiently and effectively in the new environment.

For many people in leadership positions, the hard part about building and executing a bridge plan is that it seems simplistic. There will be goals and objectives, metrics and dates with names for who is responsible for what but the overall bridge plan might not have too many goals or too many objectives. 

At times like this, I have to point out that the simplicity of a bridge plan is the source of its strength. Recognizing that during times of high complexity, we need to remember that most people are just trying to figure out how to survive and get a couple of things done on a day to day basis. Their bandwidth is low and their stress is high. Therefore, a highly adaptable bridge plan gives them focus without overwhelming intensity and employee burnout. In short, it helps them feel like they are making progress and gives them the capacity to prioritize when all things before them are feeling like they are both urgent and important.

The other thing a bridge plan does is that it gives people in senior leadership positions the opportunity to zoom out and understand how the big picture is changing. And once they have zoomed out, then they can better assess the risk profile before the company, and determine if new conditions or unforeseen variables have surfaced which would call into question the current bridge plan. 

With such a high degree of complexity and numerous adaptive challenges continuing to surface on a regular basis, maximum flexibility, which is what a bridge plan gives senior leaders, allows them the ability to adapt the plan, better mobilize key people and resources, and then focus on the execution of the plan so that it delivers results at the operational and, when possible, strategic levels. 

With the above mind, I encourage you start thinking about how to build a bridge plan and who needs to be involved in the process. I also encourage you to build a bridge plan that is short, adaptable and gives you and the company maximum flexibility. Then, as the next 90-120 days unfold before us all, you will be able to make sure your team is getting the right things done at the right time in midst of these difficult times.

For those of you who want to be better prepared for the future, I encourage you to read the following two books:

- Charan, Ram. Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times, McGraw Hill, 2009.

- Weick, Karl E., and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. Managing The Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007.

They will give you the language, perspective and frame work for doing this level of work.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Preparing For The Future In The Middle Of A Pandemic - #2

Back in 2011, which seems like so long ago given current events, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen in their book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperCollins, 2011), wrote: 

“Given this rise of complexity, globalization, and technology, all of which are accelerating change and increasing volatility, we must come to accept that there is no “new normal.” There will only be a continuous series of “not normal” times.”

Surely now, having lived through the last two months, we have come to realize that we are living in a “continuous series of not normal times.” We have no default experiences or memories to help us through this. We are stretched every day by COVID-19. And we are all looking forward to being on the other side of this all.

However, we must recognize that once we are on the other side of this global pandemic, things are not going to return to normal. There will not be a new normal. All of the other factors such as the impact of complexity within supply chains, market globalization, increased use of technology and in particular digital office platforms will increase volatility at the local, national and global levels.

Furthermore, as people migrate back to corporate offices from their current home offices, we should not expect everything to run smoothly and to be efficient. All of our fears and worries will not vanish when social distancing and sheltering in place ends. 

In particular, let’s remember that within the analog world of team development there are four stages, namely forming, storming, norming and performing. We as leaders have to realize that with an adaptive challenge such as a global pandemic, people are not just going to return to the office and move forward at the performing level. Instead, it is highly likely that we will see a regression within teams and witness the rise of the storming and norming stages again before we see the performing stage that were taking place before COVID-19. 

Therefore, my recommendation at this time period is that leaders at all levels need to sit down and think carefully about how they are going to bring their team back together once they are all back in the office. We need to develop proactive regrouping or re-teaming plans.

For example, just recently, I met someone I knew at the grocery store. After greeting them but not shaking their hand or bumping elbows, I kept thinking to myself “you are too close to me. Six feet is six feet.” As I witnessed my own anxiety around this interaction, I kept thinking that social distancing may one day become optional but that does not mean that I will become comfortable with closer contact any time soon.  

When I take this experience and multiple it by all the people returning to the office, I know that this is going to impact teamwork and customer service. I also know that everyone is going to keep washing their hands and wiping down everything with bleach wipes for quite some time. Therefore, my earlier recommendation about building a plan to help a team become a post COVID-19 team becomes more and more important.  

When I think specifically about building these re-teaming plans, I am reminded of the work that Marcus Buckingham and the late Curt Coffman wrote about in their book, First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. (Simon & Schuster, 1999). As they explained, “Talented employees need great managers. How long he stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.” 

First, from my perspective, any effective re-teaming plan, needs to include in-depth and effective one to one level work, especially thoughtful and supportive coaching. This level of coaching is transformational coaching, i.e. the generation of a new mindset, rather than transacitive coaching, i.e. the development of a new skill set. This work needs to happen this spring before we all enter into the corporate office one more time. I, as an employee, need to know that you, my supervisor and coach, hear me and understand my fears and my concerns about being back in an office setting.

Another element is to go back to the four stages of team development, namely, forming, storming, norming and performing. In the area of norming, an effective manager needs to clarify what is expected of someone at the individual and at the group level. In their book, First, Break All The Rules, Buckingham and Coffman ask the following question: “Do I know what is expected of me?” If I, as an employee, are going to answer this question, then you, as my supervisor and coach, need to have come up with the answer before hand. And you need to have communicated it to me, as the employee, in a manner that I heard and understood it. 

The challenge of this level of communication is that many supervisors and managers believe that when they have shared it, often for the first time, that the receiver, i.e. the employee, has heard it and understood it. With the mouth only being about 7% efficient as a communication device, this level of communication yields at best awareness but not understanding. And what the best leaders know is that awareness is not understanding.

At the same time, the best leaders know that anything you do at the one to one level within a team, you must also do at the team level. Therefore, we as team leaders need to sit down and think through what are our expectations for the team during the post social distancing time period as people migrate back to the corporate office. This level of thinking and later communication will jump start the re-teaming process because we will be re-norming the team so we can more quickly get into the new performing level of teamwork.

As Buckingham and Coffman note, the master keys to being a great manager begin with keeping the focus on the outcomes, valuing world-class performance in every role, and studying your best people and understanding how they perform at their best. Now is the time to start doing this so we are well prepared for when we all move back into the corporate office.

This week I hope you can continue to stay healthy, stay strong and stay safe. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How do effective leaders plan when the future is so wildly unpredictable? - part #2

After many months of being actively involved in facilitating strategic level dialogues and strategic planning, I have learned the following:

First, that I agree with John Paul Lederach in his extremely, thought-provoking book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005) when he wrote: “Structural history and personal biography are connected.”

What many people do not know is that I collect org charts when working with a client. I have some that are over ten years old when I sit down with a client for a visit. These charts tell me a story of past strategic choices and operational decisions. They also give me insights into what is going on.

For example, let us all remember that people bond with people before they bond with the plan. The history of who has reported to whom over time impacts their level of trust in the planning and execution of any plan, be it strategic or an operational plan to deal with COVID-19. Therefore, we must understand structural history because it is impacting people’s perspective and the stories they are telling themselves and others about what is happening now and what will happen in the future.

Second, when it comes to planning in wildly unpredictable times, we, as leaders suffer from “the fallacy of centrality.” As Robert Sutton pointed out in his article, “How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” (Harvard Business Review, June 2009), the fallacy of centrality is based on “the assumption that because one holds a central position, one automatically knows everything necessary to exercise effective leadership.”

As he goes on to explain, the result of this fallacy is the generation of a “toxic tandem”. “People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of what others need, do, and say.” This problem “is compounded because a boss’s self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinized so closely by his or her followers.”

From my perspective the other outcome of this fallacy is a complete lack of “contextual intelligence”. As Tarun Khanna explained in an article called “Contextual Intelligence” in the September 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review, contextual intelligence is “the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge and to adapt that knowledge to a context different from the one in which it was acquired.”

Given the above, leaders need to address deficits in four areas as outlined by Robert Sutton in his article called “How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” (Harvard Business Review, June 2009). They are:

Predictability: Give people as much information as you can about what will happen and when. If shocks are preceded by fair warnings, people not only have time to brace themselves but also get chances to breathe easy.

Understanding: Explain why the changes you’re implementing are necessary. Don’t assume you need to do so only once.

Control: Take a bewildering challenge and break it down into “small win” opportunities. In situations where you can’t give people much influence over what happens, at least give them a say in how it happens.

Compassion: Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Express empathy and - when appropriate - sorrow for any painful actions that have to be taken.

As Sutton points out so clearly, “People don’t embark on careers to feel powerlessness. The whole point of work is to achieve outcomes and have impact.”

Jim Mattis in his book that he co-wrote with Bing West called Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019) explains: “When you are engaged at the tactical level, you grasp your own reality so clearly it’s tempting to assume that everyone above you see it in the same light.” As he continues, “If you as the commander define the mission as your responsibility, you have already failed. It was our mission, never my mission.” As he concludes, “I was taught to use the concept of “command and feedback.” You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative.”

This week, figure out how you are going to overcome the four deficits of predictability, understanding, control and compassion so that you can unleash the creative initiative within all of your teams.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Decision-making In The Middle of A Pandemic

All over this world, people are overwhelmed and doing their best. At work and at home, people are making small and large decisions. It is exhausting and it is very challenging. Sometimes we forget that “Life seeks organization,” says Margaret Wheatley in her book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), “but it uses messes to get there. Organization is a process, not a structure.” Many days we struggle with the messy nature of this time period and we desperately want organization and structure.

One the reasons we are struggling, especially in the area of decision-making, is that we have encountered an unknown unknown, a phrase former U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld made famous in 2002. As he explained” “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. There are also known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And … it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

In recent executive coaching sessions over the phone, I have spent a great deal of time talking about making decisions and decision architecture. In the beginning we need to think of decision-making as a four step process, namely preparing to make a decisions, making a decision, executing a decision and evaluating a decision. This framework can be used at work and at home. And since most of of are working from home, it would be good if everyone at home is aware of this framework.

In the Preparation Phase of decision-making, leaders sense what is happening in their environment and identify the problems that are taking place. From my perspective, this is the stage where I have to sort the noise from the signal. What information is actually useful, important and something I need to pay attention to vs. what information is just noise, i.e. non-salient factors or interference? As I answer this question, it is good to do an analysis of causality, i.e. what is causing what to take place. Furthermore, I need to think about what is the best way to make and execute my decision, i.e. the decision architecture. 

One interesting thing for me as an executive coach is that when I see good decision-making taking place in the midst of COVID-19, I see that all people involved know two very specific things. First, they understand the difference between what is a priority and what is a goal. Second, they know whether or not they should bump an issue up to a higher level in the company. Clarity about these two things are making a major difference between functional teams, all working digitally from home offices, and dysfunctional teams who are struggling in the exact same working environment.

In the Call Phase of decision-making, leaders actually make a decision. Most people think of this as the single moment of rational analysis based on knowable and quantifiable variables. In reality, it is a dynamic process influenced by multiple variables which are often outside of a leader’s direct circle of control or influence. The best leaders make decisions that influence now but they also set up a framework for others to make successful decisions.

From my perspective, the people who are making the best decisions right now are the ones who stop and think carefully about the impact and precedent that they are setting when the decision moves to the execution phase of the process. This depth of clarity does not happen instantaneously but with time and good coaching, it can become a learned and executable skills set.

In the Execution Phase of decision-making, a leader needs to mobilize resources, e.g. people, information, and technology, to support it. One of the most powerful resources is to make sure people have the time to work that is not interrupted by other people’s agenda’s or goals. Given current events and how many people are feeling overwhelmed and are overwhelmed, we have to recognize that everyone in the workforce has a reduced bandwidth for execution. Their minds are just full of trying to figure out the known unknowns and still being blown away by more and more unknown unknowns.

Finally, in the Evaluation Phase of decision-making, we engage in an evaluation process to determine whether or not our decision was effective. One thing I think we need to remember in the midst of this global pandemic is that the outcome of good decisions should be a shared commitment to continual improvement and a shared level of clarity about how all our decisions connect to the mission of the organization and our own personal sense of purpose in our lives.

For those of you who want more information about decision-making, I encourage you to read the following article: “Making Judgment Calls: The Ultimate Act of Leadership” by Noel M. Tichy and Warren Bennis in the October 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

As always, stay strong, stay healthy, stay safe, and keep in touch. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Watch Out For The Red Queen Principle

Right now, things are changing so fast and people all over the world are struggling. And as more and more people struggle, things change faster and faster.

As an executive coach and as a member of the global community, it hurts when I see and hear of people struggling. Given current events, we can control so few things in our lives. It is as if the world is caught between what was and what will be. But we are not completely sure what the new beginning will look or feel like on the other side.

And in this massive global level transition, I know that I am suppose to accept this struggling. I know that the only way to deal with this is by changing myself and my mindset. Still, even with this realization, I struggle with all of the struggling. 

I think that one of the things I struggle with the most is coronavirus-inspired productivity pressure. I feel like I am suppose to handle all of this, get lots of things done on time, and be creative. Instead, I, like many of you, have moments when I barely have the bandwidth for more. Often, I am just working on keeping up with today.

It was during one of those very busy days of coping that I realized I was living the Red Queen Principle, namely attempting to run faster and faster to just keep up with where I currently was. And in all my running, I kept pushing myself to operate at the normal level of productivity before COVID-19. But these days are not normal, and with all my adapting, adjusting and attempting to be productive, I have moments when I just feel exhausted. I feel worn by the endless unknowns, and the multiple unpredictable outcomes. 

Borrowing a term from the US military, we all are living in a VUCA environment, namely one that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Instability is chronic, and uncertainty feels like it is permanent. Change is accelerating at different paces all over the country and disruption is the constant. We can not predict nor govern most events. Some days, things just don’t make sense.

Yet, on one level, we know there will be a day in the future when the global pandemic will be over. Then, we will all leave our homes, hug our friends and families, and celebrate. There will be concerts and conferences. There will be gatherings to worship together and funerals to grieve all of the people we have lost. We will hold hands again with our neighbors and our community, and be grateful that we survived.

But that day is in the future. Right now, I need to get through this day, this week, and this month. Here is a quote by Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW, from her book, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), to help us all remember how to do that: 

“We can’t be brave in the big world without at least one small safe space to work through our fears and falls.” 

Our work today is to create that small safe space for ourselves, and to be supportive of others who are doing likewise. When we can be that small safe place for each other, we will transform our capacity to handle all that is happening now and in the future.

So, this week make one small step in the direction of starting that level of work. Your are worth it. And, along the way, stay healthy, stay safe and be strong. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Preparing For The Future In The Middle Of A Pandemic - #1

When working through a crisis of this magnitude, we as leaders need to remember as I pointed out yesterday in this blog that there are two phases. The first is the emergency phase when your job is to stabilize the situation as best you can and buy time. The second is the adaptive phase when you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build capacity to thrive in the new, post crisis reality. The second phase is tricky in this time of COVID-19 because many of the underlying causes do not fall within our circle of influence, but they clearly fall within our circle of concern. Nevertheless, there is one thing we can do to prepare for the second phase.

When we get to the other side of this global challenge, many organization are going to do an in-depth After Action Review (AAR) to capture all the lessons learned. Given medical professionals are currently saying that COVID-19 could resurface next winter, this will be an important exercise in building capacity for this highly likely future event.

Margaret Wheatley in her book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (Berrett-Koehler, 2017) writes that the core elements of an AAR are the following:

- “Priority is given to the process. No matter what, time is made available to learn from the crisis or situation.

- Everyone who was part of the action or crisis is present and expected to contribute.

- Rank and hierarchy don’t matter; it is acknowledged that everyone has something of potential value to contribute.

- The process is disciplined. Specific questions are asked in order. Facilitation is needed to ensure that only one question is answered at a time and that each person speaks without being contradicted or challenged.

- Learnings are recorded in some form. They are available as lessons learned for the benefit of others.

- The value of learning is visible in consequent actions. People feel smarter and gain confidence that they can deal with the next crisis.”

When I review the above list of core elements, I am reminded that the development of an effective AAR is not a singular meeting as much as a sequence of meetings where in-depth sharing and thoughtful consideration takes place. We as leaders need to prepare for this level of work personally and then figure out how to do it at the team, department, division and company levels. 

For example, in large organizations, there will need to be multiple AARs. Some of the them will take place at the team or department level and others will need to happen at the division level. Then, all of these lessons learned will need to roll up to the senior level if we are going to create a company wide AAR which not only captures the lessons learned but also helps us be better prepared for the future.

Margaret Wheatley writes that there are four core questions to an effective After Action Report. They are as follows:

1. What just happened?

2. Why do you think it happened?

3. What can we learn from this?

4. How will we apply these learnings?

One critical element is to make sure the questions are asked in the above order.

Still as leaders we need to remember one thing. “The problem with the future,” notes Arnold H. Glasow, “is that it usually arrives before we’re ready for it.” In order to be well prepared for the adaptive phase after the emergency phase, we need to map out how to do a company wide AAR process and then figure who needs to be involved in all the different steps and who will facilitate all of the different meetings. This level of work needs to be thoughtfully designed rather than reactively planned,

While I know we are still in the emergency phase of COVID-19, we must start preparing for the adaptive phase. We will make it through this current stage and we must understand that not everything is going to go back to being normal. By being prepared now, we can implement an effective After Action Report when the right time emerges. Then, we will capture the lessons learned and be well positioned for next winter. Now is the time to start this level of planning.

Meanwhile, remember that the only way through this is together.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

How do effective leaders plan when the future is so wildly unpredictable? - part #1

Not too long ago, before COVID-19 took off, we met for lunch. When he sat down, he just looked exhausted. He was a good and experienced leader, but he was way past his edges. 

He started our visit by saying, “I don’t even know where to begin. I can barely keep up with the pace and all the messiness around this change we are going through.”

The company was going through a major restructuring to meet new market expectations. This included many old and new people moving into new jobs plus lots of systems being changed. Along with all of the positional changes, this particular leader was working with new teams and new expectations, more complicated metrics, more diverse primary and secondary customers, plus more unknowns than knowns overall.

As we visited, he realized that he and his teams were going to have to expect more “surprises” and uncertainty. They were at the beginning of the change cycle rather than at the end.

After listening and getting a sense of the big picture, my two initial thoughts were the following. First, as the Irish poet David White has pointed out, “Our language is not large enough for the territory in we have entered.” We are struggling to find the words to describe what is happening within and outside ourselves, our organizations and our teams. Some of the old words just don’t capture what is happening without significant “unpacking” or sharing.

Second, John Paul Lederach wrote in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005): “Centuries ago the apostle Paul described our world as a community wracked with unrelenting pain. “The whole creation grows,” he wrote, “with labor pains until now.” (Romans 8:22) The metaphor suggests that humanity lives in a time of great pain and great potential. Birth is simultaneously pain and potential, the arriving of that which could be but is not yet. I believe the human community still groans with pain today. We seek a birth of something new, a creation that can break us out of the expected. We seek the creative act of the unexpected.” The challenge of this “creative act of the unexpected” is that it can be overwhelming, draining and lonely when one is the leader.

When I step back and look at the big picture across multiple companies and multiple industries, I notice the rise of some interesting trends. First, a lot of re-planning is happening right now. Many leaders feel that their organizations are in a period of crisis and they desperately do not want this to damage them permanently.

Furthermore, many leaders are struggling with disjointed incrementalism, i.e. they know where they want to go, but are not sure exactly how to get there. The result is that they are perplexed but not confused. They worry about the uncertainties and difficulties of this time period, but they are not confused about what is most important. 

Next, many leaders are worried about a long term growth stall-out, i.e. a continued drop in revenue, growth or both that could happen over an extended period of time. They understand that the growth engine that powered the company to success has stopped working right now, but are unsure if it is no longer viable in the long term. They are also recognize that the real problem could be that the business environment is too complex and that bureaucracy is slowing everything down.

The outcome of the above is that many leaders are guiding their companies through a planning and action process which results in preventing problems before they become bigger problems, especially the problems that could define the future in a permanent manner. To a degree, everyone and everything feels like we are in state of permanent crisis.

With this in mind, we need to remember that leaders working through a crisis understand that a crisis has two distinct phases. The first is that emergency phase, where your task as a leader is to stabilize the situation and buy time for the team and the company. The second phase is the adaptive phase. Here, you tackle the underlying causes of the crisis and build capacity to thrive in a new reality. The adaptive phases is especially tricky, notes Ron Heifetz, Alexander Glasgow, and Marty Linsky in their article called “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009), because “people put enormous pressure on you as the leader to respond to their anxieties with authoritative certainty, even if doing so means overselling what you know and discounting what you don’t.”

The above authors remind us that leaders “face two competing demands. They must execute in order to meet today’s challenges. And they must adapt what and how things get done in order to thrive in tomorrow’s world.” As they continue, “You need to confront loyalty to legacy practices and understand that your desire to change them makes you a target of attack…. As you consider eliminating practices that seem ill suited to a changing environment, you must distinguish the essential from the expendable…. What is so precious and central to an organization’s identity and capacity that it must be preserved?” In short, the authors explain that “… the dual goal of adaptive leadership: tackling the current challenge and building adaptability.”

Our challenge as leaders is that when we grasp this perspective, we have a problem which few talk about but many know. As Jim Mattis and Bing West write in their excellent book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019): “Business management books often stress centralized planning and decentralized execution. That is too top-down for my taste. I believe in a centralized vision, coupled with decentralized planning and execution.” To have the capacity to create a centralized vision and then live with decentralized planning and execution is not easy for most leaders. It goes against so much of what they have learned and experienced.

So, given all of the above, I have a question for all of you this week: Where do you get your good and/or new ideas from as you plan for the future? From my experience, I see the best leaders generate them after visiting with a wide network of diverse people and diverse resources. This week I encourage you to seek out a broader network of people and to engage in good in-depth exploration and sharing. It will help you see the bigger picture, generate a centralized vision and over time give you the capacity to work with decentralized planning and execution.

P.S. If you are hungry for some fresh perspective and interesting new ways of thinking, I encourage you to consider reading the following short, but good book: Kleon, Austin. Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Workman Publishing, 2012. It will get you thinking. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257