How do leaders know if they have the “right people on the right seats of the bus”? - part #1

I met him at a leadership seminar put on by a large and growing for-profit company. My first impression was that he was going to be the class clown in combination with a touch of arrogance. He was sure that he had leadership all figured out. During the seminar, he was seated next to the CEO, who, after one of his answers, I thought was going to give him the proverbial dope slap based on how poor his answer was to the question.

Over the years, our paths crossed and this individual realized that he had lots to learn, and that I had lots to teach him. He listened more and spoke less. His answers improved. Meanwhile, the company grew rapidly and he entered into a more senior position 

About one year after he entered the next level where he had greater responsibility and impact, the CEO contacted me for lunch. We often talked strategy and capacity over lunch, but rarely about specific people. This was the CEO’s think-out-loud time and a safe place to explore and reflect about key ideas.

At the appointed hour, we meet at the restaurant for lunch. The CEO did not even look at the menu. We went deep and fast into a "very big problem.” This particular person had become a major source of many different problems. As the CEO stated, "he is not the right person for that seat on the bus.”

For the last nine months, CEOs, EDs, COOs, EVPs, and Regional VPs have all talked with me in private about the importance of having the right people in the right seats on the bus. For them, it has become mission critical to success. This is not a one time comment and is a serious statement reflecting hours of thought and reflection.

For us here today, this phrase about the “right people on the right seats on the bus” comes from the book Good to Great. Before then, there were no seats and no bus, just people issues. Still, it is a great metaphor .

Early on there was little clarification of the concept, then the book, How The Mighty Fall, was published and Jim Collins gave us more details to the concept. As he wrote: “What makes for the “Right People” in key seats?

- the right people fit with the company’s core values.

- the right people don’t need to be tightly managed.

- the right people understand that they do not have “jobs”; they have responsibilities.

- the right people fulfill their commitments.

- the right people are passionate about the company and its work.

- the right people display “window and mirror” maturity.

This week, reflect on the above list and ask yourself the question: Do I have the right people on the right seats on the bus?  It is worth the time and energy to think about the answer to this important question.

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

How do leaders transform day to day operations? - part #2

Given what I shared last week, today I want to dive deeply into how to successfully transform day to day operations.

First, leaders transform the internal architecture and culture of the company. As General Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell wrote in their book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World, Portfolio/Penguin, 2015: “To win we had to change. Surprisingly, that change was less about tactics or new technology than it was about internal architecture and culture of our force - in other words, our approach to management.” 

We need to recognize as leaders that if you want to transform day to day operations then you need to have developed a transformative strategy based on an understanding that status quo, i.e. the current business model, is dangerous. As part of this work, we need to examine whether the organizational chart is designed for growth and transformation. Many times the organizational chart is the source of the problem rather than the strategy.  I am seeing more and more companies organization around the following categories: mission fulfillment, mission support, mission innovation, and mission advancement & advocacy. 

As I write the above, I hear John Kotter’s voice from his book, Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility For A Faster-Moving World, Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. As he wrote, “Great urgency that drives people in a dozen different directions achieves nothing. The energy that is at the core of accelerated action and dual operating systems is an aligned energy.” I believe aligned energy begins with personal alignment, i.e. our thoughts, words and deeds all line up. Once this is happening, then we can focus on alignment at the  organizational level, i.e. systems and process that create personal clarity, cultural clarity, and community connections.

Second, develop a shared mindset on your team. The first prerequisite to doing this level of work is to put people in leadership positions who have the capacity, i.e. mindset and skill set, to transform the organization. Furthermore, we need to remember that management is not leadership. As Kotter continues in the aforementioned book, “Management is a set of well-known processes that help organizations produce reliable, efficient, and predictable results.

Leadership is about setting direction. It’s about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.”

The second prerequisite to building a shared mindset on a team is to put people in leadership positions with relational skill sets who can truly join a team. Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson explore this in their article called “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams” by Harvard Business Review, November 2007. As they explain, good team leaders and team players can invest time and energy into building and maintaining social relationships throughout the organization,  model collaborative behavior, and coach people about why establishing and maintaining healthy relationships is important.

Third, create and maintain a gardener’s approach. Back to General Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell. Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World, Portfolio/Penguin, 2015 where they wrote: “The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing…. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an “Eyes-On, Hands-Off” enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates.”

Since the early 90’s, I have taught and coached executives that the best leaders are “Gardeners Of Trust.” They recognize and understand that the followers place their trust in us when we seek to improve or transform an organization. Remember that there are three levels to trust as outlined by  Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau in their article called "The Enemies of Trust" by, Harvard Business Review, February 2003. Here is a quick review:

-  organizational trust where people trust not any individual but in the company itself.

- strategic trust where people trust the team that is running the show to make the right strategic decisions.

- personal trust where people trust their managers to make the right decisions.

This week review the internal architecture and culture of the company to see what may need to be realigned, and then begin the process of building a shared mindset on your team.

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

How do leaders transform day to day operations? - part #1

It started one day when I was coaching the CEO. This individual and their team had stepped back from day to day issues, and had looked at the bigger picture. From the various detailed pieces of information they had explored, the team decided that an organizational transformation was the necessary and right choice of action. Therefore, with great thought and reflection, they created a focused strategy, and a solid level of urgency throughout the middle management team.

However, over time while they could “execute” the plan well and roll out many initiatives, it was not resulting in a transformation of the day to day operations. Tactical issues at the local level kept trumping strategic changes and transformations. The senior team felt they were playing the whack a mole game. Overall, there was limited progress.

So, on the day I was coaching the CEO, this all came pouring out. After all the details had been shared, the CEO asked me the following question: How do leaders transform day to day operations?

While we all have worked hard in our thoughtful planning and careful roll-out of change initiatives, sometimes transformative strategic plans never really change  day to day observations. In specific, we forget something that Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky wrote in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009: “The reality is that any social system ... is the way it is because the people in that system (at least those individuals and factions with the most leverage) want it that way.”

First, the ground level truth is that most people do not want day to day operations to change. They like status quo just the way it is even if it is a dysfunctional status quo and not workable moving forward. As the old timers say, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know."

Second, we need to remember there is a difference between complicated changes, which requires a great effort and timely tracking and measuring but ultimately results in predictable outcomes, and complex change, which requires a great effort and timely tracking and measuring but ultimately results in unpredictable outcomes. The former is the typical approach by many leaders, but it often is the later that is actually happening.

Our goal as leaders during the next two to three years is to deal with complicated and complex change better, to develop personal and organizational resilience, to create the ability to continually and organically adapt, plus learn how to reconfigure our organizations in order to confront the unknown.

While transforming day to day operations is not easy, it still is important. The first step is to understand that most people do not want change or transformation to take place, and that some of the work is complicated and other elements are complex.

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

Creating Bench Strength for The Future

Right now, we live in a world which is complicated and complex. There are multiple variables to monitor and few point a clear pathway to the future. Furthermore, we as leaders are surrounded by strategic choices that potentially have dramatic short term and long term implications. 

The upshot of this kind of environment is that we need a high degree of collaboration and teamwork to be successful. However, some things are not working out like they used to. People and teams just don’t seem to be functioning very well. Struggle in the world of leadership and organizational change is the new normal.

Why?

First, “Today’s teams are different from the teams of the past”, notes Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen in their article “The Secrets of Great Teamwork”, Harvard Business Review, June 2016. As they explain, “They’re far more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic (with frequent changes in membership).” They call these kinds of teams, “4-D teams”.

Second, we have been so busy pushing performance on a day to day basis that we have created a generation of operational focused leaders. These individuals can make sure the trains run on time, but they can not successfully understand where the future is going and how to get there. They zoom in to focus on details when they should zoom out to see the bigger picture.

Third, many managers and leader do not understand the difference between change and transformation. The former is about doing things better while the later is about doing things differently. Each require a person in a leadership position to engage with people in a different manner.

Whether we are leading 4-D teams or seeking to lead organizational transformation, having the right people in the right positions is becoming more critical to our success. Furthermore, having them trained and ready to go before problems arise is clearly an advantage. In short, every successful organization right now knows it needs to have great bench strength in order to be successful over the next three to five years.

One solution to these current difficulties is to sign up your key leaders for the 2017 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. Through a challenging, interactive curriculum which blends lectures, selected readings, small and large group discussions, and how to skill-building exercises, participants in this four part leadership training gain critical knowledge and skills which improve their ability to lead people to generate short and long term success.

For more information on this in-depth training and how to register for the 2017 From Vision to Action Leadership Training, please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html 

Today’s problems are not going away. Future technical and adaptive problems will keep coming. However, having a strong bench of qualified and well-educated leaders will position the company for short and long term success. Sign up today and be prepared. The future is just around the corner.

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

Listen to the Heart

Courage is at the heart of leadership. We know that people are not resisting change as much as resisting the loss of connections, control, clarity and competence that often happens when stepping outside one’s comfort zone. Still, we as leaders push forward and aim for continued improvement. We seek a greater level of excellence and want to create this vision at the day to day level. 

Along with courage, we need something else. As Ron Heiftz, 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) write: “To lead your organization through adaptive change, you need the ability to inspire. Adaptive challenges involve values, not simply facts or logic. And resolving them engages people’s beliefs and loyalties, which lie in their hearts, not their heads.”

John Kotter in his book, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) writes: “The single most important message in this book is very simple. People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.”

Heiftz, Grashow and Linsky acknowledge this understanding when they write: “You need to strengthen two skills to master the ability to inspire: listening from the heart and speaking from the heart. After all, you cannot connect deeply with people unless you know what is in their hearts and what is in yours.”

This week and every week, pause on a regular basis and listen to your heart, and listen with your heart. This combination has the potential to be transformative for you and many other people.

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

It’s All About Purpose

At the start of a busy week, I am reminded of something that Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky wrote in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009): “Taking on adaptive challenges is difficult and dangerous work. The only reason we can imagine you would want to do this kind of work is to serve purposes that matter to you deeply.” 

However, busy days can be filled with endless hours of details and minutia that may or may not be very important. Between the e-mail and the voice mail plus the text messages, the thought of serving purposes that really matter may slip by and be forgotten. Therefore, I suggest we all stop in the midst of our busyness and refocus on purpose. 

- What are you doing with your time this week that connects you to what you value?  

- What are the top three issues which you feel are most important to you this week?

- How are you making sure these priorities are not lost in the day to day shuffle?

- What is one thing you can do on a daily basis to make sure you reconnect to purpose?

This week, do not let that which is most important to you get overwhelmed by that which is least important to you.

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

The Power of Role Clarity

Some days, we forget that when we practice leadership, “you need to accept that you are in the business of generating chaos, confusion, and conflict, for yourself and others around you,” notes Ron Heiftz, 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). As they continue, “building up your tolerance for disorder, ambiguity, and tension are particularly important in leading adaptive change.” From my experience, this may mean that a leader needs to move outside their comfort zone which few people really like to do.

As we lead during adaptive changes and move outside our comfort zone, there is one thing we can do which is important and can make a difference, namely clarify your role within the organization. Typically, this means that you sit down with your supervisor and clarify your role, responsibilities, their expectations and your goals. But there is another element to this process which is more challenging, namely separating your role from yourself.

As the above authors explain, “Whatever role you are playing at any one time, that role does not represent all of who you are, even if it feels that way.” We need to remember that our role at work is only a part of us. We as a person are greater than our role.

This simple task of separating role from self will help you handle the work of adaptive leadership. As the above authors continue, “When you make a distinction between the roles you play and yourself, you gain the emotional strength to ignore personal attacks your opponents hope will stymie your initiative…. though an attack may feel personal (and be intended as personal), it is not a statement about your character or your worth as a human being. It is a strategy and an attempt to manipulate you.”

This week, remember that when chaos and ambiguity appear in your world, define your role, but do not loose touch with your worth as a human being.

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