The Importance Of Understanding Our History - part #2

The Importance of Relationship Building

As we generate this coequal ownership of the mission and of the path forward, we must remember that relationship building is a big part of strategic planning and successful execution. One key to planning in widely unpredictable times is to commit to the importance of relationship building and community building. We need to find new partners, and maintain old partnerships. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in their book, Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), remind us that “partners provide protection, and create alliances with factions other than your own.” From my perspective, these partners also help us understand and respect complexity. 

Yet, when we grasp the importance of building relationships and finding partners, we must recognize that there are currently three problems that are tripping us up as we build our plans to cope with complexity. First, many leaders believe that all the intelligence is centralized near the top of the organization, and not equally distributed throughout the organization. Second, many leaders start with the premise that change is predictable, and implementation of these plans are scripted on the assumption of a reasonable degree of predictability and control during the time span of the change effort. Right now, this is so far from the truth of the current reality. Third, many leaders assume that all their communication is resulting in clarity being cascaded deep into the organization, and that all who hear it are clear about the company’s strategic intention. The problem here is that many leaders assume that the message sent means the message is understood. This myth results in many leaders believing that buy-in has been achieved.  

But, when we step back from these current problems, we realize that the overall challenge before us  is a high degree of organizational amnesia. We have forgotten our history, our roots and our our story up until this moment. We also have forgotten our past strategic choices, which results in weak, non-authentic relationships and ultimately weak communities within the company. Furthermore, 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. 

Moving Forward Together

So, how do we proceed once we grasp the importance of understanding our history?

Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009), encourage us to engage people “above and below the neck,” namely head and heart, plus “remember that people prefer status quo to doing things differently.  In an earlier book called Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), Heifetz and Linksy remind us that “the lone warrior myth of leadership is a sure route to heroic suicide .... you need partners [and] relating to people is central to leading and staying alive.”

Building on this framework, I would add four things based on my experience and observations. First, we must create time and space for dialogue and sharing. This choice to slow down before speeding up develops a deeper level of clarity. It is not just clarity at the abstract and conceptual level. instead it is clarity at the relational levels which transforms the depth of commitment from I need to do this into I want to do this. And that is a powerful distinction. 

Second, we must engage in proactive coaching and mentoring rather than reactive problem solving. Coaching and mentoring take time. It can not be rushed if we want it to be successful. And at times, the practice of coaching involves a degree of wandering around and among a diversity of issues and problems. Yet, for the person being coached, the choice by the coach to respect a person’s internal process make them continue to move forward rather than simply to choose to maintain status quo no matter what are the external signs and symbols that it is not longer viable, but actually dangerous. 

Third, we must focus on creating experiences that build confidence. Years ago, John Kotter wrote about the importance of short terms. They empower people to keep moving through the difficult stage of implementing change. And, at the same time, they energize the change helpers, enlighten the pessimists, defuse the cynics, and build momentum for the effort. This is huge when we want to be successful

Finally, we must praise in public and give feedback in private. This is an old, slightly modified Vince Lombardi statement that has it’s roots all the way back to Roman times. This is not a statement that encourages leaders to yell at people behind closed doors. Instead, it is a reminder that motivating and empowering people begins on many different levels. And the respectful actions of a leader reverberate through the halls of the organization for a very long time. 

Stories Are The Bridges

“Stories are bridges from past to present,” writes Greg McKeown. “They make history come alive. They expand our sense of self.” Every day, we are creating experiences that become history. Every day, we are telling stories about the past and what happened that created the reality we are experiencing. Every day, these stories about our shared history are bridges that have the potential to expand our understanding of the world in which we live and work. 

Yet, in midst of this story telling, and in this bridge building from past to present, we must understand that what we share and how we share it has tremendous short and long term impact. As Meggan Watterson reminds us, “How we see anything, changes everything.” So, our work as leaders is to make sure we share the full story of our history, not just the part that tells a skewed or incomplete story. This is why we need to create and maintain time and space for the collective sharing of history, namely  remembered history, lived history, and shared history. And we need to have a wide variety of people in the circle so that the sum of our sharing generates the full story of what happened and what is happening now. 

C.S. Lewis grasped this perspective when he wrote: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” When we recognize the importance of understanding our history, we are empowering people to start where they are and to change the ending. For, as we all know, people want to make a positive difference in the world, and people what to know that their work matters. In essence, they want to know that they matter. For when we grasp this deep insight, we then remember that history and personal biography are connected. They always have been and always will be. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

The Importance Of Understanding Our History - part #1

Understand Structural History

Recently, I have been reflecting on something written by John Paul Lederach  in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005). As he notes: “Structural history and personal biography are connected.” It is a brilliant and helpful insight given the current turbulence in the market place.  

Here is one thing very few people realize about my work. I collect org charts. I have some that are over ten years old, and I use them when I sit down with a client for a visit. The reason why I do this is because these charts tell a story of past strategic choices and operational decisions. 

On a parallel track, let us all remember two things. First, people bond with people before they bond with the plan. Second, the history of who has reported to whom over time impacts their level of trust in the planning and execution of change. Combing these two insights with Lederach’s insight, we must understand that structural history, i.e. the changes in the org chart over time, are impacting people’s perspective about change, and is generating the stories people are telling themselves and others about change. 

The Fallacy of Centrality

Next, I have been reflecting on something Robert Sutton wrote in his article called “How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” in the June 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review. As he explains, when it comes to planning in wildly unpredictable times, we, as leaders suffer from “the fallacy of centrality,” namely the assumption that because one holds a central position, one automatically knows everything necessary to exercise effective leadership. 

The outcome of this perspective creates the “Toxic Tandem.” First, “People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of what others need, do, and say.” Second, “… the problem is compounded because a boss’s self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinized so closely by his or her followers.”

There is another problem that comes with “the fallacy of centrality,” namely a lack of contextual intelligence. Tarun Khanna in his article, “Contextual Intelligence” in the September 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review, writes that not many leaders grasp the importance of contextual intelligence which 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.”

Right now, so many leaders and companies are making the best of some very complex situations. These same people need to address issues in four specific areas, according to Robert Sutton in in the aforementioned article. The first area is predictability. Leaders need to give people as much information as they 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. The second area is understanding. Leaders need to explain why the changes they are implementing are necessary and not to assume that they only need to do this once. The third area is control. Leaders need to take a “bewildering challenge” and break it down into “small win” opportunities. In situations where they can not give people much influence over what happens, they can at least give them a say in how it happens. Remember: “People don’t embark on careers to feel powerlessness. The whole point of work is to achieve outcomes and have impact.” The fourth area is compassion. Leaders need to put themselves in another person’s shoes. They need to express empathy, and, when appropriate, sorrow for any painful actions that have to be taken.

Retired Marine Corps, four star general and former secretary of defense, Jim Mattis and Bing West in their book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019), write: “When you are engaged at the tactical level, you grasp your own reality so clearly it’s tempting to assume that everyone above you sees it in the same light.” They continue, “If you as the commander define the mission as your responsibility, you have already failed. It was our mission, never my mission.” They also note, “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.” The fallacy of centrality and the Toxic Tandem are real and dangerous. Reflecting on the advice of experienced leaders like Mattis can always be helpful in gaining perspective on how to move forward through challenging times. 

The Past Lies Before Us

Returning to the work of Lederach in the aforementioned book, I am very intrigued by his comment that “the past lies before us.” As he explains, “… I understand that what we know, what we have seen, is the past. So it lies before us. What we cannot see, what we cannot know is the future.” He continues, “So the past we see before us. But we walk backwards into the future, “this is in part because all we can see and truly know is the past.” 

This is an important insight because of remembered history, i.e. the stories we learned from others and the selective way we remember history, is passed down from one group to another group, one person to another person. Along this same line of thought, we must recognize the power of lived history, i.e. the experiences we lived through on a personal level, and the power of shared history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through with others. All of this history is and will continue to impact current events and the experiences that are happening right now. In short, our history significantly impacts our perception and understanding on so many levels, and creates the narrative we tell ourselves about what is happening right now, and and why is it happening right now. 

I think the challenge is that we want to answer the why questions that are being asked of us on a routine basis, and we want to talk about mission and purpose. However, many leaders are not very good at this, and their answers are simplistic at best. This is happening because they do not understand the history of the organization and they have not created the space to share about the history. Without this level of shared clarity and understanding, the answer to the why question is incomplete, or not helpful to those who are trying to make change happen. 

Recognizing this challenge, we need to return to the work of Lederach. As he notes, “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 potentially. This is the place of narrative, the art of re-storying.” 

In these six sentences, there is a lot to unpack and explore. For me here today, the key is to focus on the role and importance of narrative and story telling. With this in mind, I turn back to an insight from Jim Mattis and Bing West. As they write, “I was out to win their coequal ‘ownership’ of the mission.” The depth of this comment in combination with the above insight by Lederach makes me realize that we need to know our history and understand our history so we can create the balance of memory and potentiality. The outcome of this union will be the coequal ownership of the path forward and the creation of perspective and resilience when movement forward becomes complex and complicated. 

To be continued on Tuesday. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Leading With Executive Presence

I’ve only had to give robust feedback a couple of times in my career as an executive coach, and the first time was a huge challenge for me and the client. When the morning meeting of the senior management team was over, and the President and I had returned to his office, I said to him, “Stop all the jokes, goofiness and slap stick during the meeting. Quit being ‘buddy buddy’ with your direct reports. You are the President of this company. It’s time you start acting like the President of this company, and be more Presidential.”

There was a long pause after I said this. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. He got really quiet and reflective. He heard me, and he knew I was right. He had chosen being popular over leadership and accountability. 

I continued, “Listen, you need to lead with executive presence.” What followed was a long and in-depth discussion about what this means and what it would look like at a behavioral level. 

When it comes to the reality of leadership, there is “a dark side of the force,” referencing a popular Star Wars metaphor. As CEO or President, you have “the power of the chair.” People have to do what you say because of your position. They may not like it, agree with it, or understand it. Still, they will do it because you are the boss, and because they want to keep their job. Furthermore, you have impact, and you can set precedence. This power also comes with great responsibility, which many leaders do not think about. 

Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable, (Jossey-Bass, 1998), writes about the dangers of “choosing popularity over accountability.” His advice is the following: “work for the long term respect of your direct reports, not their affection. Don't view them as a support group, but as key employees who must deliver on their commitments if the company is to produce predictable results. And remember, your people aren't going to like you anyway if they ultimately fail.”

So, if we want to lead with more “ executive presence”, what do we need to do and understand?

First, recognize that you are more visible with every level you move up in the organization. All of your actions are constantly sending a message about what is important and how to treat other people. Therefore, be more present when you are with people. Quit multi-tasking. Quit thinking e-mail is a solution. Spend more time shaping the values and standards of your organization and spend more time defining what is, and what is not meaningful outside the organization. Finally, spend more time helping people focus on the right things, rather than just doing things right.

Second, recognize that there is a difference between creating connections and and connectivity. Effective leaders know how to make connections, and understand that the success of every company is based on the health of it’s internal relationship. Therefore, these leaders are very conscious of the social geography of the company. 

Third, recognize that as a leader, you need to be doing more of the thinking, not always more of the doing. And when you focus during your thinking time, check to make sure your actions are based on living the mission, vision and core values of the company. Then, make sure your direct reports are role modeling this as well. 

Fourth, recognize that you will routinely have to deal with disjointed incrementalism, i.e. this is when you know where you want to go, but not always know how to get there. In these kinds of situations, the key is to convey strategic intent, and to make sure the goals and the desired outcomes are well defined. Then, have the courage to support your people as they figure out the right pathway to the desire outcomes. 

After confronting the President about his behavior during the meeting with senior management, he kept me on as his executive coach. Years later, he told me my comments to him were one of the few moments when he truly grasped what it meant to be a leader. This week, I challenge you to move to the next level of your leadership journey and to lead with more executive presence. Over time, it will make a difference for involved. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Focus on Constant Progress

After a morning meeting with the senior management team, the CEO and I were sitting together in his office when he asked me an important question: “Given what you saw this morning during the meeting, what do you recommend?”

I paused to pull my thoughts together, and then said: “You need to define your message for the coming six months given what we have discussed during the meeting about the emerging and current strategic trends in your industry.”

He looked at me, nodded, and then responded: “I agree. What should it be?”

I smiled and thought to myself, “Well played. Make the consultant answer the question.” So, I gathered my thoughts and shared. Once I was done speaking, I realized that my answer was not very good, and that I had wandered into consultant-speech rather than down-to-earth practical application. 

He smiled and said: “I think it all comes down to two words: constant progress. If we are better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we were today, then we will do more than reach our goals. We will create a flywheel and a culture that is unstoppable. We just need to be making progress each and every day.”

George Leonard in his book, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment (Plume, 1992), writes that achieving a level of mastery reflects a commitment to the fundamentals and the willingness to take risks to achieve a higher performance. i.e. the willingness to be a beginner and to keep learning. 

From my experience and observations, the best leaders and the best performers  in their work are always eager to learn, unlearn, and relearn how to do what they do. With a beginner’s mindset to their practice, constant progress is a commitment and a discipline that transcends time and place. They are hardwired to improve and to learn from any one at any time and in any situation. They are willing to be the student no matter who is the teacher. 

As the CEO and I wrapped our meeting, we agreed that “constant progress” was the theme for the coming six months. Years later, I realized that his comments about the importance of constant progress had become a keystone to the cultural foundation of the organization. And that their long term success could be traced back to this single insight. 

This week, I encourage you to choose constant progress as a commitment and a discipline for the coming six months. Make it the keystone to your long term success. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Small Acts of Loving Kindness

Many years ago, my father had open heart surgery in his early 90s. The procedure was successful, but the surgery took longer than expected. My older brother was there for the first part of his recovery, and my wife and I were there for the transition from the hospital back to the assisted living/nursing home where he was living. 

On the day we arrived at the hospital, he was still in the cardiac intensive care unit, recovering from his long surgery. He was asleep when we walked in the room. I sat down in the chair beside the bed, and just looked at him. Always well dressed and often wearing his signature bow tie, he was in a hospital gown with a blanket over him. His always neatly combed hair was very messy. So, I tucked the blanket under his chin and realized that all I wanted to do was comb his hair. However, given I am I bald now, I don’t carry a comb anymore. It was then that I again realized that life is fragile and resilient, all at the same moment. 

Later that week, he was discharged back to his apartment in the assisted living/nursing home where he lived. During the first couple of days, he would need to be in the skilled care unit before returning to his apartment. Once he was loaded into the ambulance to return home, we went on ahead in our car to meet him there. 

When we pulled up to the assisted living/nursing home, minutes before the ambulance arrived, I noticed an older man sitting in a wheel chair by the front door. As the ambulance drivers unloaded my dad, all wrapped in a warm blanket and sitting in a wheel chair, the other man called out, “Where have you been? I have been waiting here for over an hour. You missed lunch and at this rate, you might miss dinner. Hurry up!”

I was shocked by this man’s comments, and the continuous teasing and commentary that followed us into the nursing home, and down to the room that my dad was going to stay in for a couple of days. Once settled in his bed, and after this person left the room, my dad began to laugh. He then said, “That’s my best friend, Bill. Every day we visit, and often he is late for the meal. I am always getting on his case to hurry up. He is a kind and thoughtful man. He’s just giving me what I often gave him.” 

Minutes later, Bill returned with an entire group of people who lived on my father’s hall. Everyone in his assisted living unit showed up to offer support, and encouragement. I just sat in the chair beside the bed, and realized that we are way more connected to each other than we realize, and that dear friends make a big difference in life’s journey. I also realized that small acts of loving kindness have a dramatic impact and can make a major difference as people move through difficult times. 

Our challenge in life is to build and maintain these shared connections. They make life meaningful and special. We also need to regularly seek out, discover and hold on to wholeness. For when we find this wholeness in our current fragmented world, we can respond rather than react to all that is happening around and within us. Then, we can choose small acts of loving kindness and recognize that life is fragile and resilient, all at the same moment. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

The Culture Is The Strategy

Over the course of my career, many people have quoted to me the following phrase by Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” On one level, it is true. The culture of a company can shut down the execution of strategy. However, when great leaders hear this phrase, they know that it is only happens in dysfunctional teams, departments, and companies. 

Years ago, Jason Jennings in his book, Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity as a Competitive Tool in Business (Penguin Putnam, 2002), wrote: “In productive companies, the culture is the strategy…. Unlike other companies, productive companies know the difference between tactics and strategy. The difference is the foundation that allows them to stay focused and build remarkable companies. They have institutionalized their strategy.”

This is a mind-blowing insight. In productive companies, they understand the phrase: “They have institutionalized their strategy.” They recognize that it is directly connected to the company’s ability to institutionalize it’s a specific culture, resulting in a high degree of clarity and alignment over time. 

The classic definition of culture is an integrated pattern of shared knowledge, beliefs and behaviors translated into a collective commitment toward shared values, goals, and practices/systems. The late, professor of management at MIT Sloan, Edgar Schein wrote the following definition of organizational culture: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.” 

Now, within both definitions are some important and key points about culture. The first one is shared knowledge, beliefs and behaviors. The key is in the sharing and building of a collective understanding and commitment. 

The second one is that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems. The key is that teaching this culture to new members, namely new employees, is the right way to make sure they perceive, think and feel the correct way when dealing with external adaptation and internal integration. 

This week, remember that the culture is the strategy in highly successful companies. And that this culture needs to be taught in order to be successful over time. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

The Three Boxes On Our Desk

“Every day as leaders, we have three boxes on our desk,” write editors Howard Morgan, Phil Harkins, and Marshall Goldsmith in their book, The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching: 50 Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). Box 1 is for managing the present. Box 2 is for selectively abandoning the past. Box 3 is for creating the future. As they explain, many  organizations spend most of their time in Box 1 and call it strategy. However, in reality, strategy is really about Box 2 and Box 3. Still, Box 1 overwhelms most leaders and they never have time or space for the work of Box 2 or Box 3.

The first important thing to realize about strategy is that the day strategy is introduced into the organization is the day it starts to die The only question is how fast. 

Time marches on in the world of strategic planning and execution, and markets evolve and change quickly as we have witnessed over the last couple of years. Recognizing the decay rate of strategy means we need to keep our eye on all three boxes, and, at the same time, realize that Box 2 and Box 3 have a significant impact on what is taking place in Box 1. 

The second thing to realize about strategy is that a company’s strategies are almost entirely transparent today to competitors and potential customers. The  ease with which strategy can be imitated and commoditized makes it nearly impossible to stay ahead of the competition. As Edson De Castro, CEO of Data General, wrote in 1978: “Few corporations are able to participate in the next wave of change, because they are blinded by the business at hand.” For us here today, it is only by staying innovative at the strategic and the operational levels that we can be successful over time. 

The third thing to realize about strategy is that strategy impacts communication. It can confuse people and/or overwhelm people. Or it can give people at all levels the tools and perspective to redefine the ideas that shape their choices and actions on a daily basis. Furthermore, strategy can create language for people to solve problems and improve decision making up and down the organization. Finally, strategy can provide meaning as well as guidance to the work of the organization. All of this happens when strategy is explained and understood. 

The three boxes on our desks are not going away any time soon. Now is the month when we must not let everything happening in Box 1 overwhelm us and define what we think is strategy. Now is the time to work on Box 2 and Box 3 if we want to be well positioned for the coming 1 - 3 years. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change