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Shelf life of success
I love Dilbert cartoons. This one was sent to me after an event at which a CEO's participation in a panel discussion, triggered a heated debate about the shelf life of success. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-23/
In that debate examples were given of senior leaders who had stayed too long and in doing so created a serious problem for their successors and their organisation. Often signaled by a huge desire of the new leader to oppose the decisions and direction chosen by his/her predecessor.
We got to talk about how to recognize your own shelf life and we realized this is very difficult.
Shelf life of leadership success isn't about a change in the qualities of the leader him/her self. It's determined by the speed with which the match between leadership style and context changes. Another fascinating conclusion was that these same changes, that disturb the match between the leader and the context, are usually initiated by the same leader whose shelf life is now expired.
Knowing when your strengths and style suit the context and when that is no longer the case is one of the most valuable pieces of self-insight a leader can have.
Having people around you who have the guts to tell you this timely is a gift.
Last week I met an ex-executive who didn't have that self-insight and who hadn't been open to the signals he was given by people around him. People who truly cared about him. Meanwhile he had left the company “to pursue other personal interests”. He was still very bitter about what had happened to him. His successor is struggling with challenges he inherited. But the saddest is that most people forgot the excellent contributions this person made and only remember his last year when the shelf life of his success expired.
Marjon Oosterhout
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Facing the brutal facts to become the fittest
Good to Great (Jim Collins) is one of the best Leadership books I know. Even though written in 1996 and based on data from a period of 40 years before, most of Collins' conclusions seem totally relevant in today's world.
His “level 5 leadership” represents many of the characteristics nowadays described as “new leadership”. It's about the combination of personal humility, determination, courage and the ability to connect. So no big egos or stars.
“First who then what”, getting the right people on the bus, before you determine the direction of that bus. Instead of the old boys network and favoring those who are in the inner circle. The “right” people is about a combination of capability, mindset and adaptability. It's about true diversity,
But the concept most appealing to me is that of “facing the brutal facts”. Embracing the paradox of facts AND faith. Being brutally honest about the facts, but acting with unwavering faith that the right analysis and the right decisions will deliver a positive outcome. To me it's all about avoiding the creation of self fulfilling prophecies and not getting stuck in a victim role which never leads to anything. Yet still have the courage to be honest about the challenges and threats.
I believe as leaders we need to live these principles to make real change and to adapt to a new reality.
These are the leadership ingredients necessary to become the most adaptable and “fittest” for survival. Only instead of survival I would like to think of excelling. Not (just) in a financial way, but excelling in contributing to great world.
In case I made you curious, here is a link to a good G2G summary. http://www.mcacademy.com/goodtogreatsummary.pdf
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Change, from A to …....
This morning I feel like living in two worlds, or two realities that don't seem to connect. The first world is one of crisis and uncertainty. The second world is one of business as usual. The first is connected to (European) Leaders not being able to align and threats for our financial system. The second is connected to the positive stock exchange, an incredibly busy Schiphol and the supermarket with long lines for the checkout.
It reminds me of a leadership dinner I attended a few years ago. At the introduction the speaker said “we aren't living in times of change, we are living in a change of times”. A subtle difference in words, a huge difference in meaning. In times of change we tend to see change from A to B. We know what A is, we know what B looks like and we make a plan to bridge the gap. We are pretty much in control and there isn't a lot of ambiguity.
In a change of times most of our changes are from A to Somewhere. We know what A is, but we have (at best) an idea of what our end goal looks like. We aren't in control and there is a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Another metaphor is changing a tire while driving 100k. We cannot stop the world because a tire needs changing.
The two realities, the A to B and A to somewhere both exist and both need addressing. The challenge for leaders is to differentiate between the two. Make sure their people know the difference, apply different approaches and styles, yet somehow integrate them and help us see how they exist next to each other.
For me, writing this column has helped me make the connection .
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Uncertainty or bad news
Last week a client spoke of the uncertain times in her company. Her dilemma was not to create anxiety across the organization, whilst at the same time remaining truthful and realistic.
Her question made me think of two people in my direct environment. Both of them have cancer. One, after surgery and chemo, was told no cancer cells could be seen on his scan. However this didn't mean he was clean. The second person was told nothing can be done for her any more. If I look at quality of life, the woman who got the “bad news” is living life to the full together with the close family and friends. They make the best out of every moment . Despite the verdict they seem to enjoy life.
How different is the situation of the man who got the “uncertain” message. He and his family struggle to deal with the uncertainty. They find it difficult to enjoy things together and are constantly afraid of the meaning little signals could have.
Even though work situations cannot be compared with the impact of cancer and the difference between life and death. I still I feel we can draw lessons from the two families.
Going back to my client. I asked her, “could it be the case that by protecting your people from bad news, you are actually increasing uncertainty?”. I didn't expect an immediate answer and I didn't get one. Next week we meet again and I'm curious to hear what she has decided to do.
The real underlying question is “what is worse, uncertainty or bad news”. What are human beings better equipped to deal with. Personally I belief uncertainty is more difficult to handle that bad news.
Yet I have the impression that we underestimate the capacity of people to deal with bad news. In trying to protect people and avoid anxiety we often achieve the opposite.
I'm interested to hear your experiences with this dilemma.
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What really matters
Reagan and Gorbachev, once enemies, eventually became friends.
The story goes that during a tense summit Reagan almost walked out of the room in anger. At the last momenthe regained composure, turned around and suggested that the two of them would talk for 15 minutes privately.This ended up being a 5 hour talk and became the start of the end of the cold war. According to the story whatbonded them was the realization that they were both grandparents and they wanted the same for thegrandchildren.
As this was a private conversation we'll never know if this is the real story. What I like is the more general principle that people can overcome conflict by focusing on what really matters.
I was reminded of this story last week. I was asked to facilitate a meeting of a leadership team with, lets call it,challenging dynamics. Pete, the manager of the team told me that the relationship issues were widely known across the organization and were starting to have a negative impact on the business.
In preparation I met with each of the members of the team. Not surprisingly they all had their share of lifeexperience in their backpack. Just to mention a few, one had lost child at a young age, another had recently lostboth his parents and a third person was a engaged as a Samaritan in suicide prevention.
They agreed to say a few words at the start of the session about these life experiences.
The plan was to spend an hour on this and then move on to the "real" issues.
Three hours later, as we were ready for lunch, only three of the six members of the team had shared their story.People were so interested in each others experience , there was great listening and profound questioning.
To cut the story short, we spent the whole day talking about things that mattered.
As we evaluated one of them said he felt embarrassed how little he knew about his colleagues and embarrassed that he never bothered to find out. Unnecessary to say that the dynamics had completely changed.
When major events happen in our lives almost all of us realize that we can get upset about unimportant things and that we should focus more on what really matters. Yet as the craziness of everyday kicks in we jointly forget. Personally I'm grateful for interactions like the one with the MT that also remind me of what matter to me.
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Trust
"Washington and Brussels haven't been able to restore trust".
This is the headline of an editorial column in the online-FD today, referring to the collapse of the stockmarket.
My immediate reaction was what a surprise! How can you possible instill or restore trust when the players involved,, Democrats and Republicans in the US and national governments in the EU, don't trust each other?
It's a discussion I'm having almost every week. People complaining about the fact that others don't trust them, when I ask if they trust the other(s) the answer is usually "no". Sometimes followed by "of course not".
Just before the holidays I worked with a group of people who, as part of a leadership development program, had been given the task to come up with suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the relationship with the industry regulator. Initially their focus was on improving structures, rules, procedures and levels of authority. After a while they realized the real problem was a total lack of trust. They don't trust the regulator and the regulator doesn't trust the players in the industry.
It's pretty obvious, that structures, rules or procedures don't solve the trust problem. On the contrary, putting more rules in will actually deteriorate the situation. The only way to get trust is by demonstrating others you trust them. It doesn't matter if its between political parties, national governments, industries and their regulators or employees and their management.
It's been mentioned several times in the past months, the real crisis we are facing is one of trust. Gandhi’s saying: " you must be the change you want to see" is so applicable to this situation. Waiting until the other(s) will trust you is no option.
Connecting, having the courageous conversations and showing trust in others is, in my opinion, the only way out.
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Hercules meets Buddha
This is the title of an IMD webcast about global leadership. In my own words Hercules is the metaphor for clarity, control and consequence. Buddha for curiosity, the courage to be vulnerable and "letting flow" (not to be confused with letting go). IMD's research suggest that effective leaders combine both styles. Hercules is required for the non-negotiables of the business (including values).. Buddha is more effective to ensure creativity, collaboration and involvement.
As I was listening to the webcast I had to think of a leadership development event earlier this month. Part of the program was an outdoor day. A day with all kinds of exercises involving poles ropes, crates, etc. With the purpose to increase self- insight on preferences and patterns of leadership behavior.
This particular group of senior managers started the day displaying mainly the Hercules leadership style. Those assigned the leader role for a task (admittedly) acted based on the assumption that it was their responsible to complete the task, to have all the answers and solutions and they worked harder then any other team member. The response from the others was one of two: either it was "follow the leader, he knows what he is doing" or They switched off completely. Needless to say the team wasn't happy with the outcome of the task.
After the debrief the pendulum started to swing towards Buddha. After introducing the task the leader stepped back and democracy was taken one step too far.. It looked like all participants were involved in their own task instead of a a joined effort. You won't be surprised to hear that once both styles were combined the best result was achieved.
Initially participants claimed their initial behavior during the day was not representative of their "normal" way of acting. Though quickly some were honest enough to admit that, partly because of time pressure, there is more Hercules than Buddha in the way they lead. Others held the assumption that Hercules and Buddha are situational, based on context you show one or the other. Realizing this is a matter of and-and was an eye-opener. to them. It always amazes me how much can be learned from these simple exercises.
I believe more leaders and leaderships teams should take the time to ask themselves the question if Hercules meets Buddha in their busy life.
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"You can't leap across a canyon in two small jumps"
I love this expression, somehow it is so visual.
To me this is the metaphor for why so many change initiatives fail: organizations try to cross canyons in two (or more) small jumps.
I'm not talking about small, ongoing changes. It's about major strategic and/or culture change.
Sometimes I see this being caused by a lack of preparation or lack of awareness how wide the canyon the is. Only after making a jump people realize they won't make it to the other side.
More often however I have the impression that the width of the canyon is known. There is a kick-off, the run, but before taking off, suddenly fears kicks in and instead of making the long jump, the jumper lands in the middle of the canyon. It's often the moment when the full consequences and implications are being realized.
I thought of this metaphor when a colleague shared an experience he had making a presentation to the MT of an organization planning for major change. He had made recommendations for changing the HR processes in line with the aspired culture. One of the recommendations was to become more firm around performance management and consequences of non-performance.
Some of the MT members had reacted with "I agree we should change, but we can't do that!".
I have experienced similar situations, where organizations weren't prepared to deal with people blocking the change or those showing unacceptable behavior.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I'm not suggesting change is realized by making one jump. What I'm saying is that the first jump needs to be big and bold enough to land on solid ground which provides a strong enough foundation for the next steps of the change journey. This requires courage and change capacity.
Sometimes the organization isn't ready yet for the size of jump they intend to take. In that case spend more time to build the change capacity or reduce the width of the canyon to be crossed. Either way, as long as you make sure you don't hurt yourself landing in the canyon!
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Playing Checkers or Chess?
When collecting feedback, people sometimes describe their manager as "the best boss I ever had".
They often struggle to articulate why. But when I try to explore this a bit further it's often because these leaders look for the unique qualities in every person and allow them to make the most of these.
A few weeks ago a friend sent me a wonderful article about this type of leadership. The author compared these leaders with chess-players. Leaders who don't look for these unique qualities he compared with checkers- players.
The main difference between the two is that in checkers all pieces are equal and interchangeable. (Apart from the King which has more privileges). In chess all pieces move in different ways and the chess player needs to carefully think how to use each of these different pieces.
Yesterday I was reminded of this story. I found myself (again) in a discussion about leadership competency models. The company I was talking with wanted to assess a group of senior executives and potentials against a competency framework followed by a development program at a business school during which the identified "gaps" would be addressed.
The HR VP I was talking with looked surprised when I asked him if I he wanted to play chess or checkers.
I told him the story and explained that assessing and developing all senior leaders against the same competencies results in checkers.
This time, I'm glad to say, the company was open to "chess" approach and use the assessment to identify the unique qualities in each of the leaders involved.
To avoid a misunderstanding, I'm not suggesting competency models don't have a purpose. In my view competencies should describe the minimum , shared qualities you want all your leaders to possess. In order to achieve excellence, to be described as "the best boss" you need to allow people to discover, understand and develop their unique qualities, their unique way of being. After all we are human beings and not human doings.
What are you playing? Checkers or chess?
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Big boys do cry
The past few weeks it happened again. In one-on-one conversations several executives, “big boys”, became emotional to the point of tears.These weren't people I already had a close relationship with, actually some of them I met for the first time.
Nor were we talking about very personal subjects or traumatic experiences.It happened when we were talking about three pretty basic human needs that seemed unfulfilled:
The need for connection, to feel appreciated and to feel trust.
With connection I mean being connected as human beings. Appreciation not as in formal appraisals and bonuses, but appreciation for who we are and what we are good at. Feeling trust means feeling safe to let down your guard, have the conversations you want to have and share what really matters to you.
I belief that most people, irrelevant of hierarchical level, have these needs. Yet I get the impression that particularly at more senior levels these needs are being neglected.
Last week I had a first meeting with a CEO of a potential client. When I spoke to him about the principle of connection, appreciation and trust his response was: “My top guys don't need to be pampered, they need to be challenged, they aren't softies”. I can only say I felt sorry, for the CEO and for the executives reporting to him.
Interestingly enough, this company claims that people are their most important “asset”.
Fortunately, the day after I spoke with a leader who mentioned that when faced with a dilemma between the people and the task, the choice was easy: “go for the people”.
The first thing all of the “big boys” did, was apologize to me. In my view there was absolutely no need to. I was genuinely happy to get to know the human being behind the Executive VP and if anything it raised my respect for these guys. To be honest, I even felt proud that we had connected and they felt save enough to show their emotions.
www.marjonoosterhout.com
Passion for talent
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Winning and Losing, a perspective
"Are you playing to win or are you playing not to lose". A question I have asked many Executives. Reason for asking was to challenge them on their thinking about risk , courage and choice.The recent protests in Tunisia and Egypt made me aware, more than ever, that the answer depends on theperspective of what you have to win but more importantly what (believe) you have to lose.
Probably most of these protesters don't have a lot to lose. No freedom, no work, poor economic conditions, no democracy. They are playing to win and as we watch on TV that seems to lead to an enormous amount of determination and energy. On the other hand the leaders of these countries, but also the the governments in"Western" economies seem to have a lot to lose. Fear, concern and uncertainty seem to best describe theirreactions and responses.
I'm definitely not an expert on foreign politics. These events have just raised my awareness for the impact of the options of playing to win or playing not to lose. For the importance of our ability to understand and empathize with the perspective and mindset of people we are leading and other stakeholders. How do we move the people we are leading into the perspective that they can win? How do we help them see that the options of winning are greater than what they could lose? In summary how do we move them from (negative) fear to (positive) energy.
Personally I'm convinced this is one of the keys to to effective and positive change.
To avoid any misunderstandings, the events in the Middle East are of a different order than change initiatives in corporations, but that makes the learning even more valuable.
I'm anxious but also hopeful about these developments in the world.
www.marjonoosterhout.com
Passion for talent
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Yearend column "what if" posted. I wish you a healthy, happy and succesful 2011
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The English version of Marjon's book Vliegen op eigen kracht is now available.
It is titled "Caterpillars and Butterflies". Read the column about the inspiration for this title.
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Marjon Oosterhout sends a monthly colums about leadership topics to her network. You can read them here or get them directly in your inbox if you send an email to marjon@marjonoosterhout.com
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