Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars

Teams Need Common Purpose

2011-09-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

The Importance of a Compelling Central Idea

In the early stages of the Vietnam War, U.S. Navy pilot James Bond Stockdale was shot down over enemy territory and captured. For more than seven years, from 1965 to 1973, Commander (later Admiral) Stockdale was the highest-ranking prisoner- of- war (POW) at the Hoa Lo Camp, otherwise known as the Hanoi Hilton, in the capital city of North Vietnam. He endured torture and deprivation beyond imagination. But James Stockdale also valiantly led his fellow POWs throughout their shared ordeal with great imagination and courage, helping the vast majority of them to survive their time in captivity physically and psychologically intact.

Stockdale used a variety of leadership techniques but, above all else, his team prevailed because he provided them with a common purpose.

Stockdale summarized the essence of his leadership during the time at Hoa Lo: "I distilled one all-purpose idea.… it is a simple idea.… an idea that naturally and spontaneously comes to men under pressure…. You are your brother's keeper."

Unity Over Self

This powerful concept that the well-being of the whole team was more important than the plight of any one individual- described by Stockdale as "Unity over Self"- was the compelling common purpose that allowed a disparate group of individuals to remain a cohesive team in an incredibly challenging environment.

Stockdale confronted mighty obstacles in leading his fellow prisoners. First, the men were physically separated, with no ability to communicate directly. Stockdale developed a communication strategy involving a wall tap code and other means of secret messaging which allowed him to continually lead and encourage his team despite their isolation.

Next, the team consisted of hundreds of individuals from very diverse backgrounds and experiences. Stockdale recognized and harnessed their diversity by giving them latitude.

Finally, Stockdale's men faced loneliness, deprivation and torture on a daily basis. Stockdale wrote later, "We organized a clandestine society…. with our own laws, traditions, customs, even heroes. [This explains how we could].… order each other into more torture…. refuse to comply with specific demands, [and] intentionally call the bluff of our jailers.…"

Stockdale succeeded in creating a cohesive culture with ironclad and widely-known rules which perpetuated itself and provided motivation and discipline to its members even under the most difficult of circumstances.

Of the 591 Hanoi Hilton POWs who returned safely, almost 80 percent remained in the military, with 24 of them advancing to the rank of general or admiral. A significant number of the returnees became leaders in business, law, government or politics. Fully 96 percent of the former prisoners were free of any symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. James Stockdale's brilliant and inspirational leadership went a long way toward ensuring that the men in his charge would return home to pursue healthy, productive lives.

Relevance to Today's Business Leaders

Why is this amazing story relevant to today's business leaders? Wilson Learning conducted a survey in 2006 of 25,000 workers in finance and high tech who asserted overwhelmingly that they needed a leader who could "convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do." This is an incredibly simple proposition, but many leaders fail the test.

Have you as a leader provided your team with a common purpose? Do team members understand and can they articulate that purpose? What is the central idea that drives your organization forward, through good times and bad? If you are fuzzy on these answers, you can bet your team is confused as well. Now is the time to step up and, with confidence and conviction, "convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do."

Collaborate Effectively In Decision Making

2010-07-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought in the western hemisphere and a critical turning point in the American Civil War. The second day of the battle, July 2, 1863, was one of the bloodiest in American history, with approximately 20,000 combined casualties (killed, wounded, missing, or captured). As evening slowly gave way to night at the end of that terrible day, General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, called his entire leadership team together at his headquarters for a council of war. Meade knew in his own mind the outcome he desired on the battle's third day, but he also wanted to hear from his commanders and to achieve consensus regarding the Union strategy for the endgame. Meade instinctively understood the critical need, at this dramatic moment in time, to collaborate effectively in decision making.

Meade and his counterpart, the extremely capable Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, were locked in mortal combat. Several weeks earlier Lee had begun an invasion of Northern territory and the two mighty armies had met accidentally, but with unspeakable fury, at the little crossroads borough of Gettysburg in south central Pennsylvania. By the end of the second day, after much desperate fighting, the armies lay in stalemate, watching each other warily across contested ground like two wounded but still very dangerous animals.

General Meade had established his headquarters in a tiny white farmhouse owned by the widow Lydia Leister. Earlier on July 2 he had wired his superiors in Washington D.C. to let them know it was his intention to "remain in my present position tomorrow…" Nevertheless, that night he gathered his top generals (eleven in all) to listen to their assessment of the situation. They assembled in a room no larger than twelve by twelve feet, illuminated by a single candle, and which was soon filled with a thick cloud of cigar smoke.

The discussion began informally, and turned to the issues of the dire condition of the army and the lack of supplies. Meade was quiet, offering only an occasional comment, and intent on hearing what his team had to say before offering his own judgment. Finally, with Meade's concurrence, his chief of staff proposed that the group vote on three critical questions: 1. Should the army remain in its present position? 2. If the army remains, should it attack or await the enemy's attack? 3. If the decision is to await attack, how long should it wait? After much give and take, the generals voted unanimously to stay in their present position, await attack, and to wait for not much longer than a day.

One of the participants, General John Gibbon, wrote afterward, "I recollect there was great good feeling amongst the Corp Commanders at their agreeing so unanimously, and Gen. Meade announced, in a decided manner, 'Such then is the decision.'" The generals left the meeting clear in the understanding of their mission and united in their common purpose to defeat the enemy the next day, which they succeeded in doing. This stroke of genius-- attaining clarity and consensus during a critical phase of the fight-- on the part of George Meade may have (more than anything else he did over the three days) won the Battle of Gettysburg for the North.

What can modern-day business leaders learn from the historical example of Meade's collaborative decision making? First, Meade recognized the criticality of pulling his team together for a face-to-face consultation. Sometimes, there is simply no substitute for a meeting in person, and skilled leaders understand precisely when there is a need to bring everyone into the same room. Ironically, Meade's adversary General Lee did not gather his commanding generals together for a war council at any point during the battle, and a serious lack of coordination resulted.

Next, Meade initiated a process that was perceived by all of the participants as fair. While it is true that Meade had already indicated to higher command his preference for remaining in place, he did not disclose his point of view to those reporting to him. Instead, he remained quiet and listened respectfully with genuine interest to what the others had to say. Each person had a chance to weigh in to the discussion and to vote on a particular outcome. When the members of a team feel that they have been given ample opportunity to express their points of view and to influence their leader, even if they disagree with the final decision, they are much more inclined to buy into the ultimate direction.

Finally, Meade's council of war provided absolute clarity to every individual involved as to what was expected of him for the next day. The fact that the decisions made were unanimous helped in achieving this effect but, even if there had been disagreement, the rationale for the chosen decision was clear and unambiguous.

On the morning of July 3, after the famous meeting but before the decisive combat that would bring victory to his forces, Meade penned a hurried letter to his wife: "Dearest love, All well and going on well with the Army. We had a great fight yesterday, the enemy attacking and we completely repulsing them-- both armies shattered…. Army in fine spirits and every one determined to do or die." This determination to defeat the Confederate enemy at all costs was in large part achieved as a result of George Meade's intuitive comprehension of the importance of effective collaboration when making a critical decision.

Take Time To Concentrate

2010-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Way back in the old days (early 1990s), when I worked for Target, I used to exercise over the noon hour at the Northwest Arena Club in downtown Minneapolis. I remember watching with great comic amusement as a stressed out attorney that I knew would run countless laps around the indoor track while dictating into a hand-held recording device. I imagined his executive assistant struggling to transcribe his breathless memos. He was truly the Neanderthal version of today's "multitasker."

A recent New York Times front page story is entitled, "Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price: Constant Use Takes a Toll on Concentration and Family Life." The article highlights the challenges faced by Kord Campbell, founder of an Internet start-up company. Campbell is so addicted to e-mail and the Internet that, "Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family. His wife, Brenda, complains, 'It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.'"

Kord Campbell's saga- cautionary tale though it is- sounds familiar to most of us. Perhaps uncomfortably familiar. How much time do you spend sifting through and responding to e-mail on a daily basis? How much time surfing the web? How much do you love video games? Are you at a loss without your laptop, iPhone, or Blackberry? When was the last time you spent several hours, uninterrupted, working on a critical issue or problem?

In this age of astounding technical wizardry, smart business people still recognize that excessive devotion to our electronic lifelines can be a distraction and siphon time from more important matters. Though our ability to communicate has been vastly enhanced in recent times, our ability to focus has not. Awareness of this conundrum is key to enabling us to step back and carry out a very important leadership responsibility: taking time to concentrate.

Entrepreneur magazine published a piece in March 2010 called, "E-mail Is Making You Stupid." Business reporter Joe Robinson tells us that the average office worker checks e-mail 50 times and sends 77 instant messages daily. The typical employee loses more than two hours per day in productivity as a result of electronic interruptions. Computer chip maker Intel generated an estimate of how much money large companies lose annually from distractions caused by excessive e-mails: $2 billion. And the situation is not getting better. The E-Policy Institute warns that e-mail volume is growing by a rate of 66% per year. This electronic deluge not only costs companies dearly in productivity, it creates incredible stress, decreases job satisfaction, and diminishes creativity.

In his book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, technology author Nicholas Carr argues that the very way we think and experience the world has been dramatically altered by the Internet. Studies demonstrate that extended use of the Internet quickly and significantly alters the brain's neural pathways, creating a tendency to skim rather than read closely, become easily distracted, and learn only superficially. Research also demonstrates that people who read linear text- as in a book- comprehend and remember more than those who read text with numerous links- as on the Internet. Carr says, "Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

Some people claim to be able to manage myriad electronic inputs and remain highly productive because they are "multitaskers." Unfortunately, their imagined ability is a myth. Joe Robinson says, "The cult of multitasking would have us believe that compulsive message checking is the behavior of an always-on, hyper-productive worker. But it's not. It's the sign of a distracted employee who misguidedly believes he can do multiple tasks at one time. Science disagrees. People may be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but they can't do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously."

Critics point to studies that suggest that some cognitive tasks, like visual perception and sustained attention, actually improve as a result of using screen-based technologies. Many scientists, however, suggest that more brain activity is not necessarily better brain activity. Developmental psychologist Patricia Greenfield asserts, "every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others." She acknowledges that use of the Web has led to the "widespread development of visual-spatial skills," but simultaneously we have lost "deep processing" capabilities that are foundational to "mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection."

Some companies understand the new reality and are fighting back. Intel has implemented "Quiet Time" at two of its locations. During designated Quiet Time, no one is allowed to engage in messaging or phone contact. Employees are expected to concentrate and work quietly on their own. Companies such as Deloitte & Touche and U.S. Cellular have mandated restricted e-mail use and encouraged face-to-face meetings. They have also tried such ideas as "no e-mail Friday."

What can individuals do to carve out time to concentrate and get work done?

• Check e-mail only a few times daily, rather than continuously; let people know that you will check messages at 8 a.m., noon, and 4 p.m.
• Whenever possible, meet face-to-face or talk by phone as the preferred mode of communication.
• Prioritize your tasks for the day, and set aside time to focus quietly on those issues; don't simply respond to whatever is in front of you.
• Don't send an e-mail unless absolutely necessary, and resist the temptation to copy people that have no "need to know."
• Work offsite from time to time if your employer and work situation allows it.

Recognition of the potential adverse effects of the electronic bombardment that we all weather on a daily basis is the first step in dealing with the problem. Consciously and consistently creating time to focus and concentrate is the solution.

Use the Right Data

2010-06-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Some of the most serious and prevalent problems that plague modern business result from using the wrong data to make decisions, measure outcomes, and incent performance. Recently, business journalist Geoff Colvin wrote, "In business as in life, be careful what you wish for. I know a company that wished for a better return on equity. What could be wrong with that? It paid its executives according to that measure, and man, did they deliver. In some years the firm had the best ROE in the industry. It was winning big time. The firm was Lehman Brothers, now dead because managing for ROE caused executives to overborrow…. Wishing for the wrong thing- managing for the wrong ratio- killed the company."

The cautionary tale of Lehman Brothers is just one among many to come out of the Great Recession. These days, smart business leaders are meticulously careful to use the right data.

We are obsessed by numbers and have become increasingly good at measuring all manner of things. The July-August 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review states, "Data, computing power, and mathematical models have been transforming many realms of management from art to science. But the crisis exposed the limitations of certain tools. In particular, the world saw the folly of reliance by banks, insurance companies, and others on financial models that assumed economic rationality, linearity, equilibrium, and bell-curve distribution. As the recession unfolded, it became clear that the models had failed badly."

The measurement tools and models are not themselves necessarily flawed. Business leaders simply need to become more adept at comprehending and using the data they generate. HBR argues, "…. decision makers in every industry must take responsibility for looking inside the black boxes that advanced quantitative tools often represent and understanding their functioning, assumptions, and limitations."

Consider the incredibly controversial issue of executive and, specifically, CEO compensation. Duke University business professor Dan Ariely points out that numerous studies demonstrate that people will behave based upon whatever measures we use to evaluate them. It seems too simple to contemplate but, says Ariely, "Human beings adjust behavior based on the metrics they're held up against. Anything you measure will impel a person to optimize his score on that metric. What you measure is what you get. Period."

Chief executives are overwhelmingly evaluated based on a single data point: the value of their company's stock. Even measuring CEOs against several years worth of stock returns does not necessarily incent them to consider the long-term health of the enterprise they lead: they are still obsessed by stock price. It is not surprising, therefore, that because they are compensated based on that one measure, most CEOs spend an inordinate amount of time considering and working towards an improved stock price.

Professor Ariely says, "To change CEOs' behavior, we need to change the numbers we measure. Stock value metrics that focus on the long term are a start, but even more important are new numbers that direct leaders' attention to the real drivers of sustainable success. What are those numbers? …. How many new jobs have been created at your firm? How strong is your pipeline of new patents? How satisfied are your customers? Your employees? What's the level of trust in your company and brand? How much carbon dioxide do you emit?"

Geoff Colvin asserts that businesses should evaluate performance using a new metric, called "EVA momentum." Economic value added, or EVA (a measure used by some companies) is essentially profit after charges for all the factors of production, and an improvement in EVA presumably results in increased value. Yet some business thinkers believe EVA can still be manipulated. EVA momentum is defined as the change in EVA divided by the prior period's sales and, the argument goes, simply cannot be tinkered with. Consultant Bennett Stewart says, "It's the only performance metric where more is always better than less. It always increases when managers do things that make economic sense."

Even at the level of macroeconomics and public policy we see much current discussion about the data that informs decision making. Nobel prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen produced a recent study that blames disproportionate focus on growth in the form of gross domestic product- the quantity of goods and services produced in the economy- for contributing to the world-wide recession. An unhealthy fixation on G.D.P. causes governments to overlook such problems as joblessness and environmental degradation, which are also important quantifiers of the overall health of the economy. Stiglitz says, "If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing," and he advocates for more attention on such benchmarks as income and consumption, availability of health care, and quality of education.

Temple University mathematics professor John Allen Paulos wrote an article recently in the New York Times Magazine called: "Metric Mania: Do we expect too much from our data?" Dr. Paulos says, "In the realm of public policy, we live in an age of numbers…. The problem isn't with statistical tests themselves but with what we do before and after we run them." He argues that measures in such areas as school performance and health care can be second-guessed, but that, "This doesn't mean we shouldn't be counting…. it does mean we should do so with as much care and wisdom as we can muster."

Albert Einstein supposedly said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." What measures do you use in your business to make decisions, assess performance, and reward behaviors? Are you careful and wise in your use of data, or do you rely on certain metrics just because you've "always done it that way"? The answers to these critical questions are essential to the future success of your business.

Celebrate Entrepreneurship

2010-05-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to work at the Best Buy Company from 2001 to 2009. Although the company was formed in 1966- almost 45 years ago- I was always surprised and impressed to see the founder, Richard Schulze, as a frequent presence at corporate headquarters. While Dick Schulze long ago turned over day-to-day operational responsibility and decision making to others, his innovative spirit, willingness to take risks, and drive for results are still very much a part of the corporate culture. Even though Best Buy is now one of the largest business enterprises in America with almost $50 billion in revenues and 150,000 employees, it is still a company that celebrates entrepreneurship.

It is absolutely fascinating to contemplate that every business in the world, including behemoths like General Electric (Thomas Edison), Wal-Mart (Sam Walton), Toyota Motor (Kiichiro Toyoda), and Mary Kay Inc. (Mary Kay Ash) started as nothing more than an idea in someone's head. That person either had a new and better idea, or got sick of working for someone else, or both. And he or she also invariably had a high tolerance for uncertainty and an intense determination to succeed.

It is this powerful spirit of entrepreneurship without which we could not survive and the world economy would crumble. While clearly not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, we all desperately need and depend on these founding visionaries- whatever the size of the enterprise they invent- to continue to innovate, to strive, and to build.

There is a strong difference of opinion as to whether entrepreneurship can be taught. Are entrepreneurs born, or can they be made? If the increase in formal entrepreneurial education over the last thirty-plus years is any indication, many business schools believe the skills can be learned. Today, better than 2000 American colleges and universities offer classes in entrepreneurship, compared to a paltry 200 back in the 1970s.

Gregg Fairbrothers is the founding director of the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, and he teaches a hugely successful course in entrepreneurship at the Tuck School of Business. In Fairbrother's class the students learn through experience; the vast majority of the work takes place outside the classroom. Students develop and present their own ideas for a startup, and then are tasked with refining their approach, testing in the marketplace, and pitching to potential investors to secure financing. Clearly, Fairbrothers believes that learning by doing in the hard school of the marketplace is the only way to teach entrepreneurship.

Fairbrothers also acknowledges that entrepreneurship is a difficult concept to define and measure with any precision. He suggests that entrepreneurs are characterized more by a set of identifiable traits than by what they do, and that the range of entrepreneurial behaviors can be plotted along a classic bell curve. In a recent Fortune Magazine article Fairbrothers says, "So the question is, can you take a point on that curve and move it? If 'entrepreneurial' is to the right, can you move it that way? I know I can move it that way. I've done it."

Entrepreneurship, therefore, is not a single trait that some individuals and organizations possess and others do not. It is not an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a spectrum of behaviors that includes innovative approaches, calculated risks, and willingness to fail and try again.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz recently held a series of brainstorming meetings with a group of his employees. Schultz was the entrepreneurial visionary behind the massive growth of the Starbucks brand. He left the company for a time only to return in 2008 as Starbucks struggled to maintain its impressive growth. The employee focus group helped in the effort to return to entrepreneurial roots. Schultz says in a recent New York Times interview, "We lost our way… [so] we went back to start-up mode, hand-to-hand combat every day. And with the kind of discussion and focus that probably we had not had as a company since the early days- the fear of failure, the hunger to win."

Among other things, Starbucks now works to give its stores a local feel that reflects neighborhood history and architecture, and even displays the work of local artists. The company places greater emphasis on satisfying regional differences among coffee drinkers; Sun Belt customers prefer cold drinks and those in the Pacific Northwest drink more espresso, for example. Starbucks coffee buyers no longer focus exclusively on purchasing only beans produced in sufficient quantity to supply all stores; they now also buy local blends made in small batches.

While the jury is still out, as of early 2010, Starbucks had seen healthy increases in revenues, same-store sales, and its stock price. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says of entrepreneurs like Schulz that they, "keep shaking things up and pulling the stakes out of the tent because they like the mud and the chaos of reinventing, and Howard has a bit of that in him."

Do you as a leader display entrepreneurial behaviors? Do you like to shake things up, try new ideas, and take the occasional calculated risk? How about the organization you work for? Where does it sit on the "Entrepreneurial Bell Curve?" Do you celebrate entrepreneurship or have you become bureaucratic and stagnant? No matter the age or size of your enterprise (think Best Buy Corporation), a conscious effort to cultivate and maintain entrepreneurial roots can provide a healthy boost in performance.

Simplify and Prioritize

2010-05-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

I know an executive who has a forty-page list of personal action items. Not forty items, total, on his to-do list. Forty pages, single-spaced, in a bound notebook. I have had professional dealings with this leader and I can tell you from personal experience that while he is a terribly busy man with a lot to do, he gets absolutely nothing done. He does not follow up on the most basic tasks, like returning phone calls or responding to e-mails. He cannot be counted on to deliver an outcome on anything. He tries to do everything, yet he accomplishes nothing. He is in a position of real power and his organization suffers greatly for his complete lack of focus. He has failed to adhere to that most fundamental yet important leadership principle: simplify and prioritize.

Simplifying and prioritizing starts with each of us as individual leaders. If we don't know what we are trying to accomplish in our own jobs, then there is no chance that the teams we lead will be any better focused.

In a recent interview the CEO of Continental Airlines, Lawrence Kellner, was asked how he manages his time. He replied, "I used to have a long, long to-do list. At the end of the day, I'd see which ones got done. Then five more notes might be on my desk, and I'd throw them on the list. I realized I was often doing what came to me as opposed to what was really important. So I started saying, 'O.K., what are the three most important things I need to do today?' And if No. 1 is a 12-hour task, then I'll spend the day working on it. I need to decide what's the most value-added thing I can do." In short, Kellner succeeded in taking charge of his professional life by proactively prioritizing his efforts, rather than simply reacting to whatever was in front of him. How well do you practice this skill as a leader?

Once we have our own priorities in order, the next task involves making sure our organizations and teams know what their priorities need to be. Again, Kellner is a model of good leadership in this regard. He says, "When I became CEO, I started ending each of my three most important meetings each month by saying, 'O.K., here are the three most important things we're doing. Here are the three priorities." His followers at Continental were no doubt grateful to him for explaining in clear and concrete terms exactly what he expected of them.

Great leaders instinctively understand that their teams are looking to them to identify just a small handful of key objectives, three or four at the most, and to communicate those objectives effectively. William Green is the chairman and chief executive of Accenture, the global consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Green relates a story about how he was able to simplify things for a group of brand new employees: "I once sat through a three-day training session for new managers. I counted 68 things we told them they needed to do to be successful. And I got up to close the session, and I said there are three things that matter. The first is competence… The second one is confidence… The third thing is caring…" From 68 things to three. Again, this group of Accenture managers surely appreciated their chief's willingness to help them prioritize in their jobs, and in their leadership journey.

Cristobal Conde is the president and CEO of SunGuard, a software and IT services company, and he was notorious early in his career for micromanaging and making every decision himself. He soon realized the futility of this approach. He recalls, "That was in the early 90s, and that experience convinced me that the right way to do it is the opposite, which is to hold people accountable, to really restrict the number of things you say to them, and to decide the one or two things that are most important. You have to do that consistently over a year before you start having an impact." Indeed, it takes time to hammer a message home, but if it is simple and consistent, people will eventually respond and deliver.

Alan Mulally has been the president and chief executive of Ford Motor since 2006, and has led that company to extraordinary levels of achievement and value creation in an incredibly challenging time for the auto industry. Mulally is another leader who stays focused on a few key objectives. He says, "I've moved to a place where I'm really focused on four things. I pay attention to everything, but there are some things that are very unique to what I need to do as a leader. One of them is this process of connecting what we're doing to the outside world… A second focus for me is: What business are we in? What are we going to focus on? The third one is balancing the near term with the longer term… And then I really focus on values and standards… I'm the one who needs to focus on those four things, because if I do that, the entire team will have an understanding of them."

Albert Einstein once said, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius- and a lot of courage- to move in the opposite direction." The best leaders have an uncanny ability to simplify what is complex. They know what is truly important and what is not. They can identify the most critical challenges before them and prioritize those challenges so as to maximize their precious time. And they communicate these simple priorities to their team, again and again, in a way that helps people know how to direct their own efforts and to achieve results. Great leaders are incredibly adept at simplifying and prioritizing.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

2010-04-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

Drew Gilpin Faust is a noted American historian who specializes in the history of the South and, in particular, the changing roles of women during the period before and during the Civil War. She taught for many years at the University of Pennsylvania and is the award-winning author of several books. In 2001 she became the head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and, in 2007, she was named the first female president of Harvard University.

In a recent interview in the New York Times, Gilpin Faust describes the leadership lessons she learned in transitioning from her role as a scholar to that of an administrator with responsibility for a team of people and a large, complex organization. She says, "They have to do with understanding the context in which you are leading. Universities have enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution… I spend a huge amount of time reaching out to people, either literally or digitally, and with alumni networks all over the world, so that I can connect. Leadership by walking around- that's a digital space now, it's virtual space."

Good communication is the key to effective performance, innovation, and change in any organization. And the message must be hammered home repeatedly. Gilpin Faust says, "When I came to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, many people wanted to help. An alum who was an expert in turnarounds said, 'One lesson about change in any organization- communicate, communicate, communicate.'"

Susan Docherty, who heads up the United States sales, service, and marketing team at General Motors, echoes Gilpin Faust's point of view concerning uniformity and persistence in communication. Docherty says in a recent interview, "Whether you have a really small team or a really big team, communication needs to be at the forefront. It needs to be simple. It needs to be consistent. And even when you're tired of what the message is, you need to do it again and again and again, because everybody comes to the table with a different perspective and a different experience. The same words mean different things to different people."

The global consulting firm Watson Wyatt reports in a survey just released for 2009-10 that companies that communicate effectively provided a 47% higher return to their shareholders over the five-year period from 2004 to 2009. The report states, "In challenging times, companies are forced to make tough decisions and deliver difficult messages. But our study found that high-performing companies don't shy away from tough messages. They make communication a priority and use every tool available to reach out to a workforce in desperate need of information and direction."

Specifically, the Watson Wyatt study reveals that the companies that communicate best are very courageous in their employee communication. Watson Wyatt refers to this skill as "telling it like it is." Instead of shying away from difficult messages in an attempt to protect their people, these companies train and encourage their managers to focus on constant, effective communication, especially during times of uncertainty. "Highly effective communicators," says Watson Wyatt, "say more, not less." The study shows that when people are told what they need to know, even if the news is bad, their performance actually improves.

The best companies also promote innovation through their communication plans by encouraging employees to think creatively about work processes, job tasks, and productivity measures. Even the communication plans themselves reflect an innovative spirit. They use multiple channels such as intranet updates, wiki, blogs, and e-mail, as well as face-to-face dialogue where possible. The report asserts, "… taking the initiative to try new tools to reach a culturally diverse and geographically dispersed audience is the hallmark of effective communication." This is the essence of "leadership by walking around in a virtual space" that Drew Gilpin Faust describes.

The highest performing companies are disciplined in their approach to communication. They set direction and measure results to ensure that employees not only know what they are supposed to be doing, but why. They make sure that employees are given good direction, but also helpful context. The result is a more engaged team. Outcomes, both good and bad, are measured closely and shared with the team.

Finally, the Watson Wyatt report emphasizes that a critical component of any solid communication plan involves listening to employees. Good communication ensures alignment, but if companies are not confirming understanding and listening to feedback, then alignment can be compromised.

Clearly, those organizations- whether they are a major university or a small business- that develop simple, consistent messages and repeat them constantly through multiple channels perform best over time. Gilpin Faust sums up the point well when she talks about her most critical lesson in communication: "Someone would say, 'Well, you've never talked about X,' and I'd say, 'I've talked about it here, here, and here. I talk about that all the time. Then I realize that all the time isn't enough. You have to do 'all the time and more.'"

In other words, communicate, communicate, communicate.

Succeed In Learning From Failure

2010-03-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

In the early 1920s a young artist and animator who lived in Kansas City set out to form his own company, which would specialize in producing cartoons. He hired his first employee and secured a deal with a local theater owner to air the cartoons, which were called "Newman Laugh-O-Grams." The cartoons became popular in the local area, and soon the budding entrepreneur signed a stable of animators to help his studio, also called Laugh-O-Gram, to increase production. Unfortunately, the tiny enterprise became top-heavy with salaries and began to lose money. The fledgling tycoon had to shut down the business and declare bankruptcy. This man went on to become one of the most successful and revered business leaders in American history, but he never forgot the pain of his initial setback, or what he learned. In later years, as he looked back on the experience, he said, "It is important to have one good hard failure when you are young." His name was Walt Disney.

When I was a young man in my early thirties, I quit the practice of law to go into business for myself. I formed an S Corporation, opened a fast-food franchise, and had to rapidly educate myself as to the ins-and-outs of Small Business 101. It was an incredible learning experience for me and, long hours aside, I loved the freedom of being my own boss. But despite my best efforts, I could not generate sufficient revenue to cover my costs. I stayed in business for about six months and then, reluctantly, was forced to close up shop. I had a wife and small child who were dependent on me. I had lost all our savings and was bankrupt. I was unemployed for seven months. There was no sugarcoating it: I had failed miserably, in a way that had never happened to me before. Nevertheless, this incredibly difficult passage from almost twenty years ago shaped who I am in ways that still resonate to this day. In its way, it was a much more significant and life-changing event for me than any of my triumphs have ever been. Painful though it was, like Walt Disney, I succeeded in learning from failure.

University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt writes in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, "People need adversity, setbacks and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength and fulfillment. Suffering is not always all bad for all people. There is usually some good mixed in with the bad, and those who find it have found something precious: a key to moral and spiritual development." In his book The Pursuit of Perfect, Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar argues that individuals who risk failure actually tend to be happier than those who are averse to challenge and change. Ben-Shahar says, "Successful people are necessarily people who have failed many times, and therefore are 'better' at failing than others. When we practice failure, we realize the pain associated with fear of failure is often greater than the pain associated with actual failures."

The roster of well-known people who have achieved at a high level in their lives but who have also learned from failure along the way is endless. Former President Bill Clinton says, "When I was defeated for reelection as governor in 1980, there didn't seem to be much future for me in politics. I was probably the youngest ex-governor in American history. But if I hadn't been defeated, I probably never would have become president. It was a near-death experience, but it forced me to be more sensitive and to understand that if people think you've stopped listening, you're sunk." Author J.K. Rowling, who penned the mega-best-selling Harry Potter series of books, was at one time alone, unemployed, and "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless." But for Rowling, "Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began directing all of my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me."

Indeed, these days, many companies actually look to actively recruit workers who have experienced and overcome adversity in their personal or professional life. Meridee Moore is the founder of Watershed Asset Management, a $2 billion hedge fund in San Francisco. When asked in a recent interview about how she hires, Moore responded, "… if the person has had a rough patch in the past, that's usually good… if you've ever had a setback and come back from it, I think it helps you make better decisions. There's nothing better for sharpening your ability to predict outcomes than living through some period where things went wrong. You've learned that no matter how smart you are and how hard you work, you have to anticipate things that can go against you."

The Great Recession has been a huge challenge for all of us. Many of us have experienced defeats and even real suffering, both in our jobs and on the home front. But there can be redemption. The phoenix can rise again from the ashes. For me, out of my spectacular failure, I learned many things. I learned to take new challenges seriously, and never to assume that skills and abilities that have pulled me through in the past will necessarily pull me through the next time. I learned to worry only about those things that I can control, and the main thing I control on a daily basis is my attitude. I get to choose how I want to be. I learned to appreciate my many blessings, especially family and friends. And I learned a whole lot about humility.

Professor Ben-Shahar of Harvard summarizes the idea well, "The ones who will emerge stronger from [adversity]- the resilient ones- are those who learn to find the opportunity in every setback." In short, they are the people who succeed in learning from failure.

Empower and Engage Women

2010-02-12T07:29:00.000-08:00

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "Women hold up half the sky." The great American novelist and humorist Mark Twain once asked rhetorically, "What would men be without women?" His answer: "Scarce, sir, mighty scarce."

Women have made huge strides in recent decades in the long and challenging quest for equality. In the United States, we see many more women in positions of power in government and business. Hillary Rodham Clinton narrowly missed in her recent bid for the presidency. Yet we still fall woefully short of the mark.

Today, smart businesses work incredibly hard to develop and retain their female employees and to listen and market to their female customers. The leaders who run these businesses know that the best and highest functioning of both our national and world economies will never come to pass until the day when women become fully empowered and engaged.

It is difficult to imagine that less than one hundred years ago women were not even allowed to vote in the United States. Since then, we have undeniably made enormous progress. Yet while women make up more than half of our labor force, as of mid-2009 only fifteen Fortune 500 companies (3 percent) had female CEOs. In Minnesota, only six of the state's top 100 public companies have female CEOs, and women hold only 15 percent of the executive officer positions in those 100 leading companies. The situation is far worse in other parts of the world.

In their powerful and heart-rending book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity For Women Worldwide, the Pulitzer Prize winning husband and wife team of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn describe what they characterize as the greatest human rights violation of our time: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. The authors tell stories about three particularly horrific abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence, such as honor killings and mass rape; and maternal mortality, which claims one woman per minute in the developing world.

Their message, however, is not one of despair but of hope. They write, "Many of the stories in this book are wrenching, but keep in mind this central truth: Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more tragedy than an opportunity."

Kristof and WuDunn suggest that the answer to the problem lies in educating women and fully incorporating them into the economic life of their communities and countries. They describe the dramatic results in East Asia of what they call the "girl effect," saying, "Women are indeed a linchpin of the region's development strategy… These countries took young women who previously had contributed negligibly to gross national product and injected them into the economy, hugely increasing the labor force. The basic formula was to ease repression, educate girls as well as boys, give the girls the freedom to move to cities and take factory jobs, and then benefit from a demographic dividend as they delayed marriage and reduced childbearing. The women meanwhile… saved enough of their pay to boost national savings rates… Evidence has mounted that helping women can be a successful poverty-fighting strategy anywhere in the world, not just in the booming economies of East Asia."

Indeed, the data is insurmountable that fully including women in the workplace- especially in positions of leadership- results in superior economic outcomes. One study found that the one quarter of American Fortune 500 companies with the most female executives had a 35 percent better return on equity than the one quarter of companies with the fewest. Studies show that female executives generally tend to avoid unnecessary risk and focus patiently on the long term, while also bringing a more collaborative, conciliatory, and motivational leadership style, which is well-suited to today's less hierarchical workplace. Women will play an increasingly important future role, because in an era when new jobs will demand better educated workers, women now receive the majority of college and advanced degrees.

Women are a force to be reckoned with as customers as well. Companies that sell products as varied as consumer electronics, health care, and cars overlook women at their peril, because the woman of the house controls an astounding 83 percent of all consumer purchases.

Insightful and forward-looking companies focus on their female customers and also create positive work environments for their female workers, many of whom are striving mightily to balance professional and family obligations. These companies emphasize business outcomes rather than long hours in the office. At the Best Buy Company, a program called ROWE (results-only work environment) improved productivity in some departments by as much as 40 percent. In 2009, NetApp improved market share, avoided layoffs, and accumulated $2 billion in cash reserves, while still offering employees paid time off for volunteer work, adoption aid, and autism coverage. Biotech company Genentech saw revenues jump by 25 percent early last year, while featuring on-site daycare, a fitness center, and paid sabbaticals. Examples such as these are legion, and the economic case is undeniable.

Where does your organization, company, or team sit with respect to women? Do women possess a truly participatory voice, or are they underrepresented and marginalized? Are there women in leadership roles in your organization? Do you recognize the power of women as consumers of your products or services? Do you thoughtfully cultivate them as customers? If you answer no to these questions, then perhaps now is the time to do your part to make changes in your organization that will help bring us to the day when the feminine half of all who must together hold up the sky will be fully empowered and engaged.

Go With Your Gut- But Not Always

2010-01-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

At first they believed the fire would be easy to control. In August 1949, fifteen smokejumpers parachuted into a forest fire in a remote place called Mann Gulch, Montana. The situation appeared routine enough that the team's leader, Wagner (Wag) Dodge, paused to eat his dinner before mobilizing to fight the blaze. But circumstances quickly took a perilous turn. The fire gained in size and fury, and Wag Dodge suddenly realized that he and his men were in grave danger. He instructed the men to drop their tools in an attempt to outrun the fire. But it spread too rapidly, and in a brilliant flash of intuition, Dodge set a small fire in front of the raging inferno and called to his team to lay down with him in the ashes. The confused and terrified men failed to follow Dodge's lead and instead sprinted frantically to try to stay ahead of the conflagration. Thirteen of them died. Dodge's escape fire, however, deprived the main blaze of fuel, and it leapt over him. He survived unhurt.

In one dramatic instant at Mann Gulch, Wag Dodge demonstrated both the extreme potential benefit and the occasional adverse downside of using intuition in decision making. Dodge proved that as a leader, sometimes it is important to go with your gut- but not always.

In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell analyzes this powerful phenomenon of intuitive decision making, of gut-level choices made in a "blink." Gladwell explains that it is the part of our brain known as the adaptive unconscious that enables us to leap to frequently correct conclusions by quickly and efficiently processing huge amounts of data. Indeed, our very survival as human beings depends on our ability to engage in this process of rapid cognition.

Despite our general bias towards thoroughness in decision making- we usually assume that the quality of a decision is in direct proportion to the time and effort that went into making it- Gladwell says, "… decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately."

The key to making consistently good intuitive decisions is training and experience. In the case of Wag Dodge, he had spent many more years as a smokejumper than most of the men he led at Mann Gulch. He soon understood the fire was not routine based on pattern recognition from previous fires. His expertise told him that the team could not outrun the fire while carrying their tools and, soon, that they could not outrun the fire at all. While he had never seen an escape fire used before, again, something in his long experience told him that such a technique just might work. He was right. Gladwell says, "This is the gift of training and expertise- the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience."

But it would be foolish for a leader to rely on intuition under every circumstance, for two reasons. First, our instincts can sometimes be disrupted and lead us astray. In other words, sometimes we are wrong. Second, if we rely on gut decisions but fail to communicate our reasoning to our teams and to bring them along- as the Mann Gulch scenario so tragically demonstrates- we will fail in our objectives.

Gladwell writes, "Taking our powers of rapid cognition seriously means we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious." For example, how often do you make a really good decision when you are in an emotional state of mind, frightened, angry or upset? What about decisions made when you are incredibly rushed for time? Self-awareness and open acknowledgement that conditions may not be ideal for a gut-level decision can go a long way toward guiding us to a more deliberative process and a potentially better outcome.

And if our team does not understand what we are doing or why, then we have failed a critical test of leadership as well. For Wag Dodge, a number of important factors worked against him in his effort to make an intuitive decision to save his team. Dodge was generally described as an extremely poor communicator, a "man of few words." The team therefore did not know him well to begin with. His team read his actions in taking time to eat his dinner as an indication that all was well. When Dodge quickly discerned that he was wrong in his initial assessment of the fire, he then became pressed for time to convey his urgency to the team. When he called to the men to join him in the escape fire, because they did not know or fully trust him, they could not make sense of his behavior. Disaster resulted.

In the end, we as leaders need to determine when to rely on our intuitive instincts and when to be more thorough in our approach. No two situations are exactly alike and there is no magic formula. Malcolm Gladwell argues that judgment and understanding are critical. He writes, "Judgment matters; it is what separates winners from losers," and, "The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter." In using our judgment and understanding, regardless of our decision making process, we need to communicate effectively to bring our teams with us. So the next time you face a critical decision, just remember: sometimes it is important to go with your gut- but not always.

Show Humility

2010-01-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

George Catlett Marshall was the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during the Second World War. In that capacity, he managed the astronomical growth of America's armed forces from a tiny pre-war entity to the thirteen-million-person juggernaut that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After the war, Marshall became secretary of state and oversaw implementation of his namesake Marshall Plan, which succeeded in rebuilding war-ravaged Europe. He went on to serve as secretary of defense and, later, as head of the American Red Cross. Despite these profound achievements during a lifetime of service, Marshall is perhaps one of the least-well-known leaders in our history.

Marshall's relative lack of name recognition today represents the natural outcome of his supreme selflessness coupled with his fierce and unwavering commitment to always putting the needs of the country first. George Marshall embodied a critical leadership trait that, unfortunately, we seldom see in sufficient measure: he showed humility.

When the Allied high command decided in 1944 to invade Europe via the Normandy beaches of France, President Franklin Roosevelt confronted a difficult choice as to who should lead such an important and complex operation. By all accounts, Marshall had earned the right to head up the effort, and very much desired the appointment. His superior leadership skills and strategic acumen were unmatched. Yet when Roosevelt asked Marshall whether he would prefer to lead the D-Day invasion or remain on duty in Washington as chief of staff, Marshall demurred. He told the president that whatever his decision, Marshall would "go along with it wholeheartedly. The issue was simply too great for any personal feeling to be involved."

In the end, Roosevelt told Marshall that he "could not sleep at night with you out of the country," and the assignment went to Dwight D. Eisenhower instead. Ike succeeded dramatically, became a national hero, and rode his fame all the way to the White House. Some people might interpret Marshall's actions as a sign of weakness, but nothing was further from the truth.

Indeed, in Marshall's case, his quiet and modest demeanor masked tremendous drive and a will of iron. Thankfully for the free world, his ambition and willpower were not personal or selfish in nature, but directed solely toward the purpose of serving his country by defeating our enemies. He was ruthless in his decision making when the issue of winning the war was at stake.

In his book Good to Great, noted business author Jim Collins describes corporate CEO's who embody this combination of extreme personal humility with great professional determination as Level 5 Leaders. Collins and his team studied companies that made a leap from good results to great results and sustained those levels of performance for at least fifteen years. These companies produced stock returns during those fifteen years that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times.

While Collins expressly sought to avoid a conclusion that these stellar results were due primarily to great leadership ("Ignore the executives," he told his research team), he could not overlook the overwhelming data that proved that in fact Level 5 leadership was key. Every single company on the roster had Level 5 leadership at the time they made the transition from good-to-great.

Collins observes, "Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln's personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken…"

Collins identifies such CEO's as Darwin Smith, who led Kimberly-Clark from 1971-1991, and Colman Mockler, CEO of Gillette from 1975 to 1991, as classic examples of Level 5 leaders who achieved extraordinary results during their tenures, but who were also always quick to give credit to others (not surprisingly, neither man is a household name today). Collins was "struck by how the good-to-great leaders didn't talk about themselves… It wasn't just false modesty. Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious… and so forth."

Finally, in contrast, Collins also found that in two-thirds of the companies against which he compared the good-to-great companies, leaders with enormous egos not only did not perform as well, but frequently "contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company."

Where do you, your boss, and the rest of the leaders in your organization fall on the humility spectrum? Today, the simple truth is that we need more leaders like George Marshall, Darwin Smith, and Colman Mockler-- people who show humility while striving to accomplish great things for the institutions they serve.

Bring Out the Best in the People Around You

2010-01-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

The two men could not have been less alike. One was a short, boisterous, cigar-chomping Jew from Brooklyn. The other was a tall, moody, intensely private African-American from Louisiana and Oakland. Yet over time, these two men found their common ground and formed a bond of friendship that became legendary.

Red Auerbach was one of the greatest coaches in the history of the National Basketball Association, and Bill Russell one of the game's all-time best players. Together, they led the Boston Celtics to 11 N.B.A. championships in 13 seasons. As chronicled in Russell's wonderful new book, Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend, they became devoted to each other until Auerbach's death in 2006. Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of these two leaders was their uncanny ability to bring out the best in the people around them.

Bill Russell said of his relationship with Auerbach, "Although we came from different tribes as men, we recognized early on that as professionals we had a common agenda: to win basketball games… Our core philosophies- of how to be men, how to be professionals, how to be friends- were in tune, so we never had to talk about who we were or how to conduct ourselves. We just lived it. Over the next thirteen years, basketball set the stage for our relationship to evolve from caution, to admiration, to trust and respect, to a friendship that lasted a lifetime."

Russell joined the Celtics in 1956 and ultimately became team captain. He was especially noted for his unique ability to bring out the best in his teammates. In a review of Russell's book for the New York Times, former basketball star and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley wrote, "[Russell] had thought about the game and his role in it so much that it was only a matter of learning his teammates' strengths and weaknesses before he was capable of elevating their games. It is a rare player who thinks, 'How can I help my teammate help the team?' Russell and Auerbach understood that in a winning culture, selflessness is just common sense."

Russell's ability to influence the play of his teammates started, very importantly, from the rock solid foundation of his own formidable skills as a player. He was a five-time league M.V.P. and physically gifted with great height and leaping ability. Beyond his obvious athletic skills, he was a true innovator on the basketball court. He focused on defense as the key to a team's morale, in a way that had never been tried before. In an era when players were coached never to leave their feet while playing defense, he became the game's preeminent shot blocker, dominating opposing offenses and forcing them to adjust to his intimidating new tactics.

Russell's sheer competitiveness also intimidated opponents, and won the respect of his teammates. Bradley said, "He wanted to win every matchup, every game, every title. He waged psychological warfare, on and off the court." Because of their high regard for Russell's outstanding ability and fierce desire to win, his teammates were very open to his energetic attempts to push them to improve their own games. He consciously studied the play of every Celtic and willed his teammates to perform to their highest potential. The result was an unprecedented string of championships.

Auerbach, too, appreciated the importance of each individual in the whole grand scheme. Bradley observed, "[Auerbach's] genius was to relate to each player individually. What worked for one player didn't work for all players." Auerbach even handled Russell differently, allowing him to rest during practice once the regular season began for purposes of keeping him fresh for an entire grueling N.B.A. campaign. Russell's teammates did not resent this preferential treatment because they knew, once the game began, no one was more committed to winning than their captain.

As a peer colleague, do you ask yourself Bill Russell's very important question, "How can I help my teammate help the team?" It is the rare person who does this. It starts with one's own skills and performance. Outstanding results engender credibility and respect. From this foundation, it becomes possible to help even the worst performer on the team get better. But the selflessness, motivation, and energy must be there.

As a leader, like Red Auerbach, do you understand that each member of the team needs to be led differently? Do you take time to get to know your people as individuals and to adjust your approach accordingly? Do you work to get the best out of each person on the team, taking into account their unique skills and abilities? Such a model makes life more complicated and requires time and hard work, but outstanding results will follow.

Bill Bradley won championships with the New York Knicks and he recalled the joys of being part of a team, like the Boston Celtics, where people made a concerted effort to bring out the best in each other: "… the bond among players lasts a lifetime… You never forget your teammates' loyalty and how you returned it in full measure, and how that trust and mutual respect allowed you to be a champion."

Corporate Social Responsibility Is Good Business Strategy

2009-12-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

Lou Miller has owned and operated Big Apple Bagels in Apple Valley, Minnesota for the past eleven years. At the end of each day, she donates whatever bagels she has left over to a variety of non-profits, such as food shelves, veterans groups, and schools. While Lou can't say for sure whether the donations have significantly improved her bottom line, she does know that this small gesture of giving away excess food on a daily basis has generated good will for her business. Most importantly, to Lou, it just feels like the right thing to do.

Some business leaders believe that their only obligation is to their shareholders. The sole objective in business, these managers assert, is to improve profitability for the benefit of the owners of the firm. Increasingly, however, American consumers are rewarding businesses that see their mission more broadly. Many companies, big and small, are becoming aware of and acting upon an important economic reality: corporate social responsibility is good business strategy.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) involves the array of steps that a company can take to contribute back to the community: philanthropy, product donations, volunteerism, cause-marketing (for example, providing business expertise to non-profit groups), and citizenship, especially around environmental sustainability. While it is no doubt more difficult to precisely measure return on investment for these types of activities, abundant data demonstrates the economic benefits of CSR. DePaul University conducted a study in 2002 that compared the performance of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens from Business Ethics magazine against the remainder of the S & P 500. In measurements such as sales growth, profit, and return on equity, the socially responsible companies exceeded the competition by ten percent.

A Time magazine article from September 2009, entitled "The Responsibility Revolution," cites a 2007 Goldman Sachs report that concluded that companies with a focus on sustainability outperformed the overall market, frequently by a significant margin. PricewaterhouseCoopers recently completed a study that showed a better return on assets for companies that reported sustainability information over those firms that did not share such data.

Time conducted a poll which showed that more than 60 percent of Americans have purchased organic products since January 2009. Almost 40 percent say that they bought products this year because of the social or political values of the company that sold the merchandise. Time says, "What we are discovering now, in the most uncertain economy since [the Great Depression], is that enlightened self-interest- call it a shared sense of responsibility- is good economics… We are starting to put our money where our ideals are."

Many organizations have long understood the importance of CSR. More than 30 years ago, 23 Minnesota companies formed the Keystone Program. Participating firms each contribute at least 2 percent of annual pre-tax earnings back into their communities. Today, there are more than 200 members of Keystone.

Target Corporation- a charter Keystone member as Dayton Hudson- contributes 5 percent of pre-tax earnings, in good times and in bad. I recently spoke with my friend and former colleague Gail Dorn, who was for many years the Vice President of Communications and Community Relations at Target.

Gail talked about the enduring culture and tradition of giving back at Target, and indicated there were many times when it would have been easy to cut the program. She recalled, "Analysts would challenge us, asking Why are you giving away 5 percent? [Target leadership] ignored their pleas. Even though a return on investment was difficult to measure, Target's community programs generated incredible good will. Our customers loved that we always took the extra step to become integrated in the community. This was particularly helpful in 1987 when Dayton Hudson sought public support to fend off a hostile takeover attempt."

Another mighty Minnesota corporation that appreciates the importance of CSR is the Best Buy Company. An article in the December 7, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine describes Best Buy's free recycling program. Since March, when Best Buy began offering free recycling of TVs, computers, and any other electronic gadgets, more than 25 million pounds of old devices have been turned in at Best Buy's 1004 U.S. store locations. Fortune says, "The company's massive recycling program seems expensive to run, until you look at all the benefits: a green reputation, a focus on service, and a fresh way to get customers into the stores. No wonder Best Buy has learned to love old TVs and eight-track tape players."

Best Buy's leadership understands that the take-back program will probably be, at best, a break-even proposition. Nevertheless, P & L consequences aside, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn described how he feels when a customer drops off an old TV set: "I'm happy because it helps make the connection between Best Buy and the customer and the community."

Sometimes, financial outcomes are not the most important consideration in business.

Small and medium-sized companies should take heed of the responsibility revolution as well. Time points out that shoppers consider not only the nature of the product they buy, but where it came from. More than 80 percent of consumers say they have deliberately supported local and neighborhood businesses (like Big Apple Bagels) that demonstrate a corporate conscience and concern for the environment. Also, there are more than 250 socially responsible investment mutual funds (consisting generally of companies that do not profit from tobacco, oil, or child labor), that today manage approximately $2.7 trillion in wealth.

Time concludes, "… Americans are recalibrating our sense of what it means to be a citizen, not just through voting or volunteering, but also through commerce: by what we buy… That's evidence of a changing mind-set, a new kind of social contract among consumers, business, and government. We are seeing the rise of the citizen consumer- and the beginning of a responsibility revolution." Indeed, smart companies today have seen the future and are taking action. These companies know that corporate social responsibility is good business strategy.

Be Aware of Cognitive Roadblocks to Good Decision Making

2009-12-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most important skill of an effective business leader is the ability to make good decisions. Yet as leaders we are susceptible to cognitive biases that can hinder the decision making process. Cognitive biases are simply distortions in our perception of reality that can occur when we use traditional shortcuts to help us make choices. Most of the time, shortcuts allow us to arrive efficiently at a good decision. Sometimes, however, making choices in the most economical manner based on familiar rules of thumb is not the right thing to do. Even competent, knowledgeable, and experienced business leaders can get caught up in this trap. Because we are human, we will never completely overcome our natural biases, but we can learn to make better choices by simply being aware of cognitive roadblocks to good decision making.

Cognitive biases can take many forms, but in the case of the Mount Everest tragedy of 1996, three types of bias contributed significantly to a disaster in which two expeditions were trapped in a storm near the top of the mountain and five people died. Those cognitive biases are:
• The overconfidence bias
• The sunk-cost or escalation of commitment bias
• The recency effect

In May 1996, two commercial expeditions consisting of customers who paid up to $65,000 each to be professionally guided to the summit of Everest (the world's tallest peak) became trapped in a blizzard high on the mountain. This tragic event was immortalized in Jon Krakauer's famous best-seller, Into Thin Air (Krakauer, a journalist, accompanied one of the expeditions). Two of the world's best-known and most experienced mountaineers, Scott Fischer and Rob Hall, served as expedition leaders. In addition to the financial outlay, the effort to reach the summit of Everest requires a huge time commitment; climbers must spend six weeks acclimatizing their bodies to the high altitude. The two teams established a series of base camps at ever-increasing heights, and then embarked on an arduous 18-hour round-trip to reach the summit. An unexpected and violent storm moved in, killing both Fischer and Hall, and three other climbers.

In a pamphlet entitled, The Art of Critical Decision Making, Professor Michael Roberto of Bryant University identifies the three primary cognitive biases that reared their ugly heads to contribute to the Everest disaster.

First, both Fischer and Hall demonstrated the overconfidence bias. Research shows that human beings have a consistent tendency to be overly optimistic. For example, even experienced physicians tend to be unrealistically positive in their diagnoses. In talking about Everest, Scott Fischer said, "We've got the Big E completely figured out, we've got it totally wired. These days, I'm telling you, we've built a yellow brick road to the summit." Other members of the team became cocky as well. Jon Krakauer described several of the highly inexperienced amateur climbers as so overconfident in their own abilities as to be "clinically delusional."

The second cognitive bias is the sunk-cost effect. A rational actor makes choices based on the marginal cost of pursuing one choice over another. In contrast, the sunk-cost effect causes people to continue in a sometimes disastrous course of action in which they have invested significant time, money, and/or effort. On Everest, expedition members refused to allow their huge financial expenditure and many weeks of herculean effort to be for nothing. With the blessing of their leaders, they pushed ahead to the summit, even in violation of well-established turnaround times. A number of climbers reached the top too late in the afternoon, and were forced to descend the mountain while negotiating a furious storm in the dark.

Another common term for this same basic phenomenon is the escalation of commitment bias. Consider America's experience in Vietnam, or the current debate about Afghanistan. We have spent eight hard years fighting in that troubled country at great cost in blood and treasure. To be sure, all of our choices there are tough ones. Yet the argument still centers not on whether we should withdraw, pursue a different strategy, or otherwise cut our losses, but rather at what level we will continue the effort.

The final cognitive bias is the recency effect, which simply refers to the tendency to place a disproportionate value on information obtained recently. This data is most salient to us, but can cause us to overlook other relevant information. On Everest, team leaders were fooled by a string of years in which good weather had prevailed on the mountain. One commentator said, "Season after season, Rob [Hall] had brilliant weather on summit day. He'd never been caught in a storm high on the mountain." No one prepared for the worst case scenario. Disaster resulted because of this failure on the part of leadership to consider ample data that demonstrated that in past years, deadly storms had been a common occurrence on Everest.

Think about your own decision making as a business leader. Have you ever allowed overconfidence, sunk-costs, or recency to sway your mind one way or the other? Don't be too hard on yourself if the answer is yes. Despite what economists would have us believe, none of us are perfectly rational actors. We all occasionally yield to a lifetime of biases. Nevertheless, we can improve our decision making if we develop the self-knowledge to be aware of these tendencies and, wherever possible, to overcome them.

Diversity Is Strength

2009-11-21T08:03:00.000-08:00

From 1804 to 1806, Army officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led an amazing team known as the "Corps of Discovery" on an 8000-mile journey over 863 days into the unknown reaches of the western United States and safely home again. They were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to find an all-water thoroughfare- the fabled "Northwest Passage"- to the Pacific Ocean. Though they failed in that mission (no such waterway existed), they succeeded in exploring and documenting virtually everything they saw along the way, establishing the boundaries of the young nation, and opening the great American West to future expansion.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Lewis and Clark and their incredible journey of discovery is that they achieved this feat- in a day and age when people gave no thought to the importance of celebrating and incorporating differences- with a team of talented individuals who were truly diverse in the broadest sense of the term. Lewis and Clark dramatically demonstrated a fundamental principle that all modern-day business leaders should know and understand: diversity is strength.

We all remember the story from our school days of Sacagawea, the sixteen-year-old Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied the expedition. She was the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, who had been added to the team en route as an interpreter. Sacagawea was a nursing mother who traversed 5000 miles with her infant son Jean Baptiste (known as "Pomp") on her back. There is a common misconception that she guided the expedition throughout the journey, which she did not, but her value to the Corps of Discovery was nevertheless profound. She was skilled and knowledgeable in field craft: building shelters, making and repairing clothing, and finding food. Through her quick thinking, she once saved valuable equipment and supplies when a canoe nearly capsized.

Most important, Sacagawea served as the physical embodiment of the Corps of Discovery's peaceful intentions. She was instrumental in securing necessary cooperation from Native American tribes along the way. Meriwether Lewis described Sacagawea as "our only dependence for a friendly negotiation with the Snake [Shoshone] Indians on whom we depend for horses to assist us in our portage from the Missouri to the Columbia River."

Another important member of the team was York, who was William Clark's black slave. In a time when it was a criminal offense for a slave to be taught how to operate a gun, York carried a musket throughout the expedition and used it with great skill to hunt. York was valuable during the many months spent rafting on a river because, unlike other members of the expedition, he could swim. York physically accompanied Clark on all of the most dangerous phases of the mission, suggesting that Clark fully trusted York's ability to handle any perilous situation. Finally, by virtue of his skin color, York fascinated the Indian tribes encountered on the journey. They referred to him as "Big Medicine." He was perceived as having greater value because of his uniqueness, and made negotiations with the Indians easier than they would otherwise have been. In the end, because of the special gifts they each brought, Sacagawea and York became regarded, in effect, as fully equal members of the team.

The Corps of Discovery was also diverse in less obvious ways. In an era when social status mattered a great deal, Lewis and Clark did not select a single member of the expedition based on any criteria other than merit. They cast their net far and wide in search of people who were not just physically strong, but who also possessed intelligence, discipline, and distinctive skills. One of the men they hired was a master carpenter; another was a veteran blacksmith. They recruited a tailor, a fisherman, a boatman, and several excellent hunters. They hired interpreters who would help them in their discussions with Native American tribes. The team members came from a variety of cultures: Irish, German, French and English. There were several men who were mixed-race, half-white and half-Native American.

In his wonderful book, Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons From Lewis and Clark's Daring Westward Expedition, author Jack Uldrich says, "It would be unrealistic to say that Lewis and Clark started their selection process with diversity as an end goal or even a deciding factor. As products of the late-eighteenth century, this was not how they thought. The lesson, however, is that by focusing on their end goal- reaching the Pacific- they were led, by necessity, to assemble a diverse team. As the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, 'Form follows function.' And to conquer the unknown, that 'form' manifested itself as a diverse team."

Even Lewis and Clark themselves possessed complementary skills as co-commanders of the expedition. They were both seasoned soldiers, strong, and experienced in the ways of the wilderness. They were also both curious, ambitious, and excellent leaders. But Lewis was better educated, and a superb hunter and botanist. Clark was a talented boatman and cartographer. Lewis tended to be reserved, humorless, and even prone to bouts of depression, while Clark was warm and engaging, with an easy manner that made him popular with the men. Together they formed a formidable duo, arguably the most successful leadership team in American history.

Do you belong to a diverse business team? A team that is diverse not just in the obvious, visible sense, but that possesses diversity of skills, backgrounds, and experiences? Or does everyone on your team more or less think and act alike? With the increasing complexity of business missions in today's global economy, leaders who ignore the imperative to seek diversity in their approach will lose. As Lewis and Clark taught us so ably more than 200 years ago, diversity is an absolute necessity, because diversity is strength.

Lead Courageously in a Challenging New World

2009-11-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

There are some positive indicators that we are currently rebounding from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The stock market is thriving. Manufacturing activity is increasing. Retail sales are up. With that said, unemployment now exceeds ten percent. Many experts predict the recovery will be slow and arduous at best. We all hope for a better future. But I think we also know- regardless of how the future takes shape- things will never be the same again. To quote the great philosopher Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, "We are not in Kansas anymore." For business leaders, the critical new skill set will be the ability to lead courageously in a challenging new world.

Survival in a deeply recessionary economy and building for a healthy future requires leaders to take on two important tasks. The first involves stabilizing the current situation. The second involves adapting to a new and uncertain future and seizing opportunity wherever it presents itself.

The old adage "when you are up to your [posterior] in alligators, it's difficult to remember the original objective was to drain the pond," has come to my mind often during these trying times. The down economy has very understandably caused businesses to focus attention on the immediate task of survival. Research shows that both people and organizations are far more highly motivated to take action by the possibility of loss than by the prospect of gain.

Indeed, it makes sense during tough times to take every reasonable step to protect the existing business. Is your financial house in order? Are there opportunities to trim costs or otherwise gain efficiencies? Are you staffed and organized correctly? Does your product mix make sense? Is your product or service priced right? Are there opportunities to divest? These are all important questions that should already have been part of a rigorous review of your current business model.

The risk in undergoing this kind of crisis-mode analysis involves the inclination to hunker down and wait out the storm once near-term steps are in place. All of us as leaders have a tendency to rely on skills and abilities that have worked for us in the past. We look for recognizable patterns so we can respond to them just as we have successfully done before. We want to be able to reassure our teams that things will return to normal soon. But there is great danger in this mindset because the future that we face will be unlike anything any of us have ever previously experienced.

The businesses that will go beyond mere survival and thrive into the future are those that aggressively seize opportunity. They see lean times not as a disaster to endure, but as a challenge to overcome. During the last recession, approximately one in three industry leaders lost their perch at the top of their fields as savvy competitors maneuvered skillfully during the downturn. Those who follow bicycle racing know that in an event such as the Tour de France, the ultimate winner frequently overtakes the leaders during the mountain phase- the toughest part of the contest.

Do you have an opportunity to rethink your business model? In the recession of the early 1990's, IBM experienced its first revenue decline in over fifty years. Losses mounted year over year. CEO Louis Gerstner took time during the downturn to seriously reconsider a business model based on sales of mainframe computers. IBM shifted its focus from hardware into computer services and solutions, and it flourished.

Are you continuing to think about the future by investing in research and development? In 2001, the beginning of a two-year recessionary period, Apple Computer experienced a revenue decline of 33 percent. Yet Apple bravely chose to increase R&D expenditures by 13 percent, and continued to maintain that level of investment throughout the downward cycle. Such innovative technologies as the iTunes music store and software, the iPod Mini, and the iPod Photo were developed during this period. Rapid and healthy growth resulted for Apple.

Are you continuing to invest in your people? Remember, even during bad times, your top performers have other options. Do you have the right players in place? Are you encouraging them in their development? Do they see a future with your organization? I believe that one of the most short-sighted moves that many companies make when the going gets tough is to immediately cut training and development dollars.

Finally, these pragmatic steps of rethinking your business model, investing in R&D, and taking care of your people should not just be one-time responses to a crisis, but rather an ongoing part of how you do business. In a Harvard Business Review article from 2003, business authors Gary Hamel and Liisa Valikangas state that the strongest businesses are those that continuously "reinvent business models and strategies as circumstances change," rather than just making singular adjustments in reaction to an emergency. The authors argue that those companies that work incrementally to try numerous different ideas on a micro scale- while involving many people in the discovery process- succeed over time. Businesses "should steer clear of grand, imperial strategies and devote themselves instead to launching a swarm of low-risk experiments."

No matter how we cut it, the future is daunting and unknowable. But it is also richly abundant with opportunity. Those leaders who work hard to strengthen their organizations in the short run and then courageously look to the future will end up on top of the mountain when the economy improves. A continuous cycle of scrutinizing the business model, investing in lots of new ideas, and developing people will bring success in a challenging new world.

Actively Manage Your Career

2009-10-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview in the New York Times, Ford Motor Company President and CEO Alan Mulally was asked to provide his best career advice. He responded, "Don't manage your career. Think about just exceeding expectations in every job you do, continually ask for feedback on how you can do a better job, and the world will beat down your door to ask you to do more…"

I respectfully disagree. Exceeding expectations and seeking feedback are important but, in my experience, success and advancement come most often to those individuals who actively manage their careers.

I spent more than a decade in human resources at Target and Best Buy. I can't count the number of times that people came to me frustrated over their perceived lack of career progress. The common theme sounded like this: "I work really hard. Feedback is positive. Performance reviews are good. Yet no one seems to notice. The best opportunities go to others."

What I frequently found was that many of these individuals simply assumed that if they "exceeded expectations," someone would notice and ensure that their career moved forward. Also, some of these folks could not answer the most fundamental question, What do I want to do with my career?

There may be lots of people- your supervisor, colleagues, human resource professionals, mentors- who think highly of you and will work to help you advance in your career. But, trust me, no one is going to do it for you. You must take personal responsibility for actively managing your own career.

And if you are going to manage your career, you need to know to what end. Ask yourself some tough questions, and be honest about the answers: Am I happy in my current job? Is it challenging and rewarding? Do I have room to grow, or have I hit a plateau? Where would I like to be one year, two years, or five years from now? Backing up from those goals, what affirmative steps must I take now to get there? In short, you need to be able to clearly answer the question, What do I want to do with my career?

Don't measure your progress or self-worth solely by money, title, power or prestige. It is great to be ambitious. We need people in corporate America like Alan Mulally, who want to rise to the top of their organizations. But remember, just one person gets to be CEO. For the rest of us, at some point, we top out. If you are only seeking more money or the next title, you will be forever unhappy, because someone else will always be richer or outrank you.

Consider other measures of success. Is your work interesting? Are your skills put to the test? Are you learning new things? Do you receive recognition for your efforts? Do you believe in the mission of your company? Are you adding not just to the bottom line for your organization, but creating value for society as a whole? Does your work match with your personal values? Consider the definition of career success as broadly as you can, with a focus on those internal measures of satisfaction that are personally important to you.

I do agree with Alan Mulally on the criticality of feedback. In order to successfully manage your career, you need to be in a continuous cycle of seeking, receiving, absorbing, and adjusting to constant feedback. Seek feedback from as many different sources as possible, not just from your boss. Find those one or two really valuable people who will unfailingly give you honest feedback on how you are doing. Listen carefully to what they say. Insist on specifics.

If you are told you lack good communication skills, ask for details. Do you need to work on written skills? Spoken skills? Ask for examples of when you have fallen short and suggestions on how to improve.

Make changes based on the feedback you receive. Demonstrate flexibility and a willingness to learn and grow. Put together a personal development plan with clear milestones and share it with your boss and other trusted advisors. Work that plan with seriousness of purpose. Adjust the plan when appropriate as your career moves forward.

Finally, don't think of leadership or advancement in your career as simply a matter of managing a checklist, like a boy or girl scout completing activities to earn a merit badge. Sometimes people would say to me, "I've done the three things you told me to do… now I'm ready to be promoted, right?" The very fact that they asked that question told me they weren't ready. Think of leadership and your career not in terms of finishing a to-do list, but as an ongoing journey. A sometimes complex and difficult journey.

Managing one's career is challenging, even in the best of times. These days, when so many of us are in crisis-mode, reacting to rather than shaping the reality around us, career management frequently goes to the back burner. Don't let it.
Remember these suggestions:

• Take responsibility for actively managing your own career.
• Develop a clear picture of what you want to do with your career.
• Measure success broadly, with a focus on intrinsic factors that are important to you.
• Seek specific, actionable feedback and respond appropriately.
• Put together a personal development plan and work it with energy.
• Consider leadership and career progress as a journey.

With these tips in mind, go forth and have a great career. Enjoy the adventure.

Avoid the Tyranny of Meetings

2009-10-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

In a classic Dilbert cartoon, a group of co-workers sits down around a conference table and the team leader says, "There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we'll just make unrelated emotional statements about things that bother us." In that spirit, I'm about to make an emotional statement about something that bothered me throughout my corporate career, which was an excessive number of interminable, meandering, useless meetings. I counsel any of my friends in business who are willing to listen: Avoid the tyranny of meetings.

I once worked in a retail store where, at the beginning of each day, the general manager would pull his leadership team together for a meeting which lasted, literally, all morning. It was not a discussion with give and take, but rather a chance for him to go on about any subject that popped into his head. Then, meeting complete, he would walk the floor with those same leaders and get genuinely angry when he saw problems in their respective areas. Evidently, he thought we each had a clone that was getting the work done while he blathered on. It was surreal, and the very definition of the tyranny of meetings.

Later in my career, I also spent many hours in meetings where the primary objective was to discuss the fact that we spent too many hours in meetings. It was sort of like being in the U.S. Congress and serving as a member of the Committee on Committees.

In the June 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine, entrepreneur Joel Spolsky discussed how the culture of Microsoft-- where he worked in the early 1990's-- has changed in the years since he left. Then, Microsoft employed about 10,000 people worldwide, and was headquartered in Redmond, Washington, on a campus of a dozen buildings within easy walking distance of one another. Now, there are 90,000 employees globally, and 94 buildings comprise the corporate headquarters. A fleet of company-owned vehicles transports people from place to place on campus.

Most notably, at the new Microsoft, meetings have proliferated. Spolsky says, "Back in my day, meetings were avoided like the plague, and it was considered a burden if you had to go to three or four a week. But today, the average Microsoft manager is scheduled to within an inch of his or her life. The new virtue is keeping a schedule of brisk half-hour meetings, and most of the mid-level managers… [have] consecutive half-hour meetings scheduled for stretches of days at a time."

Though Microsoft's business has understandably suffered like most others in today's recessionary economy, one wonders whether bloated bureaucracy (Spolsky describes the comical series of registration steps he was required to go through just to access the free Wi-Fi network as a guest on Microsoft's campus) and the new "meeting culture" have contributed to relatively poor recent performance by Microsoft, in comparison to the leaner, more carefree days gone by.

With that said, there are clearly times when meetings are appropriate and very necessary. Often, the results that can be achieved in a face-to-face sit-down vastly exceed what can be accomplished through a phone conversation, conference call, or e-mail. Every culture is different, and no set of guidelines applies in every circumstance, but here are some basic tips for meeting organizers that might help improve the quality of your meetings and thereby increase productivity:

• Invite the right people. If the invitees to your meeting do not have the requisite experience, technical knowledge, or decision-making authority, you have wasted everyone's time.
• Start and stop the meeting on time. This will force discipline and eliminate meandering. Assign a timekeeper who has the courage to speak up when things get off track.
• Develop a detailed agenda beforehand and share it at the beginning of the meeting. It should contain specific, actionable outcomes. It should answer the questions: Why are we here and what do we intend to accomplish?
• Assign a note taker. The note taker should review key points before the end of the meeting to ensure consensus on what was discussed, and then distribute notes to all stakeholders after the meeting, including those who may have missed the meeting.
• Stick to the agenda. Don't be inflexible, but try to limit unnecessary digressions and stay on task.
• Use real data, not anecdote or emotion. Remain factual in your approach.
• Allow and encourage everyone to contribute. Listen carefully to what each team member says, even if you disagree.
• Create an environment in which people are comfortable speaking up if they do disagree. Encourage open and honest debate. Thoroughly discuss key points of difference.
• At the end, summarize meeting outcomes and assign next steps. Be specific and make sure each person knows what is expected of him/her going forward.

What is the culture of your company, organization, or team concerning meetings? Do you have too many, not enough, or just the right number of meetings? Are your meetings well-organized and efficient? Do you lose productivity with too much time wasted talking about getting work done, instead of actually doing the work? Do you have time to think and reflect in your job? If you are less than perfect in your meeting disciplines, please consider trying some of the above-described techniques. If you do, you will go a long way towards avoiding that dread corporate disease that saps energy and hinders results: the tyranny of meetings.

Think Like a Chess Player

2009-09-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

The game of chess is a metaphor for business, and for life. Seemingly simple at the most basic level, chess is in reality mind-boggling in its complexity. The focus, discipline, and skill required to play chess well are reminiscent of the same attributes that are required to succeed in business. While not every business leader plays chess, every business leader can benefit from thinking like a chess player.

I first became fascinated by chess as a youngster in the early 1970's when the quirky American prodigy Bobby Fisher defeated the reigning world champion, the Russian Boris Spassky, in their famous title match in Reykjavik, Iceland. My sister and I played for hours on end. While there have been periods when I studied and played intensively, I have never been better than an average player. But I still love the game.

In his wonderful book on the history of chess, The Immortal Game, author David Shenk says, "The exquisite interplay of the simple and the complex is hypnotic: the pieces and moves are elementary enough for any five-year-old to quickly soak up, but the board combinations are so vast that all the possible chess games could never be played-- or even known-- by a single person."

Indeed, in a chess game, after just four moves by each player, the number of possible board positions is 315 billion. Shenk says, "The total number of unique chess games is not literally an infinite number, but in practical terms, the difference is indistinguishable. It is truly beyond comprehension-- 'barely thinkable,' as one expert puts it-- and beyond human or machine capacity to play through them all."

Business, like chess, can be seemingly elementary on its surface. The Oxford English Dictionary defines business simply as "commercial activity." Those of us who are in business know that our most fundamental objective is to sell our product or service to customers at a profit. Easy, right? No, because when we delve deeper into the world of business, things quickly become more complicated.

Therefore, preparation and experience are keys to success in both business and chess. Shenk points out that Bobby Fisher supplemented his obvious aptitude for the game with thousands of hours of study. Well-known author Malcolm Gladwell talks about this essential combination of talent and preparation in his book Outliers. Ten thousand hours of practice, according to Gladwell, is what separates the Bobby Fishers of the world from other talented people.

Similarly, in business, it is those leaders who know their discipline inside and out, and who spend years gaining knowledge and hard-won experience, who will best navigate the intricacies of their competitive environment. Those leaders will win over the long haul.

One of history's famous chess players was Benjamin Franklin. He was an American founding father, as well as a diplomat, scientist, publisher, and inventor. He was also a savvy businessman. Franklin said, "The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it… For life is a kind of Chess, in which we often have points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to deal with."

Franklin believed that chess sharpened his thinking, and that it taught several useful lessons. As quoted by Shenk, Franklin "asserted that the game improved a person's:
1) Foresight-- looking ahead to the long-term consequences of any action.
2) Circumspection-- surveying the entire scene, observing hidden dynamics and unseen possibilities.
3) Caution-- avoiding haste and unnecessary blunders.
4) Perseverance-- refusing to give up in dim circumstances, continually pushing to improve one's position."

There is one final way that business leaders can benefit from thinking like a chess player. Professor Dianne Horgan of Memphis State University has investigated how chess might improve various cognitive abilities. She found that, among other things, chess improves a person's self-perception.

Self-perception involves "calibration," which is the correlation between a person's perception of their own ability, and the actual level of their ability. In the population at large people generally have an overinflated view of their own abilities. Improving calibration skills-- by playing chess, for example-- significantly enhances the value of feedback. If people have an accurate idea of their own level of competence, they are more open to input from others.

I would never advocate that every business leader needs to learn how to play chess in order to succeed in the world of "commercial activity." I would argue, however, that the thinking skills utilized by chess players are the same kinds of skills that business leaders need to develop.

Business leaders need to work hard at learning their craft. They need knowledge, experience, and an in-depth technical understanding of their profession.

Business leaders need to be strategic, which involves skills like considering long-term consequences, surveying the entire scene for all possible outcomes, proceeding with caution, and sticking to goals even when the going gets tough.

Finally, business leaders need to be receptive to feedback, and to make adjustments as necessary to improve performance.

The leaders who display these qualities, whether they are actually chess players or not, stand the best chance of putting their competition into checkmate and winning the game.

Recharge Your Batteries

2009-09-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

Summer is almost over. I just returned from a wonderful long weekend with family and friends on a placid little lake in western Connecticut. I came home happy, rested, and ready to go back to work. I am reminded once again of the importance of taking time to recharge one's batteries.

Recently, President Obama and his family spent time at Martha's Vineyard, that scenic and idyllic spot off the southern coast of Cape Cod. When word of the First Family's vacation plans first came out, controversy erupted. How could the chief executive be taking time off when there are so many pressing issues at hand? We need him on duty. America is fighting two wars. The economy is in recession. Workers are unemployed. We are facing crises with the environment and health care. There is so much to do.

I understand how people feel but, politics aside, can't we all agree that our commander-in-chief needs to be healthy, energized, and clear thinking in everything that he does?

Certainly, there is a lot on all of our plates. For many families facing tough economic times, a vacation is not possible right now based on personal finances. But recharging one's batteries is not achieved solely by taking time off in some remote, exotic location. We can refuel the tank every day, in simple ways, by just learning to relax and divert our attention from time to time.

In a recent interview in Harvard Business Review, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin-- who has written several presidential biographies-- was asked about the essential qualities of a great leader. She listed a few, then said, "I would add here that one more success factor is key for great leadership, be it in business or politics, and it's one that's usually overlooked. As a leader you need to know how to relax so that you can replenish your energies for the struggles facing you tomorrow."

Dr. Goodwin went on to say, "Lincoln went to the theater about a hundred times while he was in Washington. And although he suffered from a certain melancholy, he had a tremendous sense of humor and would entertain people long into the night with his stories. Franklin Roosevelt was the same way. He had this cocktail hour every evening during World War Two when you just couldn't talk about the war. He needed to remain free from thinking about the bad things for a few hours. Or he would play with his stamps. This ability to recharge your batteries in the midst of great stress and crisis is crucial for successful leadership."

There are many other historical examples. John Kennedy loved to paint, sail, and play golf. Winston Churchill loved to paint, write books, smoke cigars, and drink scotch whisky. Harry Truman loved to take a brisk walk every day, play poker and drink bourbon whisky (anecdotal evidence aside, there is no solid data that proves that drinking whisky results in success as a leader). The current occupant of the White House is also a poker player, and enjoys golf and basketball.

There is an additional challenge these days in that we are all so intensely, immediately connected and networked that many of us feel we simply can't take time off or the earth will stop spinning without us. Or perhaps we are secretly worried that if we take time to relax we will realize the harsh reality that business, and life, will indeed go on without us. We don't want to find out the awful truth that we are not individually essential to world progress.

Doris Goodwin offers a fascinating perspective on this phenomena. She comments on how in the nineteenth century, busy as leaders were, they took time to pen lengthy letters. She says, "Looking back, the thing that's really impressive is that here were these leaders running the Civil War, and people like [Secretary of State William] Seward still had time to meditate on the day's events and to write these long letters to his wife at night. These were the days of no television. Leaders weren't worried about cable news or their BlackBerrys. They weren't multitasking; they had time to reflect. It's a luxury many leaders just don't have today, and that's a real loss."

When was the last time you truly paused to take a breath and contemplate life? That you read a fun book just to escape? That you exercised or got outside for some fresh air and sunshine? That you noticed nature's awesome beauty? That you enjoyed quality time with your family or friends? That you actually wrote a letter out in longhand and sent it to someone via snail mail? That you pursued a hobby that enables you to become so focused on what you are doing that you are just in the moment for a little while, unaware of the trials and tribulations of the world around you?

If the answer is "not recently," then please take a serious look at what you need to do to arrange your life so that these things can happen for you from time to time. You will be a better person for it and, as a result of that, also a better leader.

In the end, we all occasionally need to take the advice of that famous and wise philosopher, Tommy Bahama, who reminds us, "Relax…"

Know Your Business, Employees, and Customers

2009-08-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

In 1994 the husband and wife team of Dewey Johnson and Wanda Oland purchased a rough and tumble saloon in Apple Valley, Minnesota, that had metal doors so that glass wouldn't break if anyone got forcefully tossed out into the parking lot. Over the past fifteen years-- through hard work, determination, and a passion for the business-- Wanda and Dewey have transformed that former rowdy watering hole into Rascal's, one of Apple Valley's most popular family restaurants.

Not only have Wanda and Dewey adapted and demonstrated flexibility in building their business over the last-decade-and-a-half, they have shown particular savvy in navigating through the current recession. Wanda and Dewey have a strategy for success that can be summed up as follows: know your business, know your employees, know your customers.

Wanda and Dewey know their business. Wanda has spent her entire professional career in restaurants. Dewey's background is as a general contractor, but much of what he learned in that discipline translates to the restaurant industry.

When business started to slide with the economy, Wanda and Dewey applied the principle, "If you want to find out what's happening with your business, work the back room." Dewey spent months in the kitchen working hard, talking with employees, and discovering potential efficiencies.

For example, Dewey built a laundry room and Rascal's now washes its own linens at significant savings. The couple decided to shop different vendors for such things as paper, chemicals, groceries and credit card processing, and realized additional savings. Wanda says, "We took a good hard look at everything."

Wanda and Dewey have gone through three significant remodels, and Dewey has in effect acted as the general contractor. Dewey hand-built every table in Rascal's. He custom built the bar with thick maple planks formerly used as bowling lanes. Yes, bowling lanes. He has raised and lowered flooring and installed windows. He put in auto-paper towel dispensers because they are more efficient. He has done it all with the physical facility.

The couple went to a part-time bookkeeper and because margins are small, Wanda pays extremely close attention to every penny that comes in and goes out. She says, "Everything we touch matters." All a part of knowing your business.

Wanda and Dewey know their employees too. A number of their people, including kitchen help, servers, and at least one bartender, have been with them from the beginning. How do they achieve such loyalty? They talk with and listen to their folks, and they treat them right.

With the recession, like countless other businesses, Rascal's watches labor hours closely. But instead of releasing people or reducing hourly pay, Wanda and Dewey developed a flexible schedule that allows employees to swap hours and take time off when they need it. They have not backfilled some positions. Wanda does her best to manage labor efficiently based on the flow of customer traffic and to spread out available hours fairly among the staff.

From a morale standpoint, Rascals' employees see the owners there virtually every day, dressed in blue jeans and ready to work. Wanda says, "Don't ever ask an employee to do something that you're not willing to do yourself."

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Wanda and Dewey know their customers (Wanda calls them their "guests"). They understand their guests expect high quality food and excellent service, and in these two areas nothing has changed. Many menu items are home-made. They make their own dressings and sauces. They fillet their own walleye, always fresh, never frozen. They whip up their own batter. They boil and mash their own potatoes. Portion sizes have not changed.

During the down economy, Wanda and Dewey figured their guests would appreciate an opportunity to still go out to eat, but save money. They devised a daily calendar-- featuring enticements like inexpensive burgers, free video games and musical entertainment, or a kids-eat-free from 10 to 2 deal on Sundays-- that encourages people to come out and enjoy themselves any day of the week without spending too much.

They have also tinkered with the menu, focusing on foods that remind people of good old-fashioned home cooking. Guests can now eat meatloaf, turkey, or pot roast at Rascal's.

Rascal's offers catering, serving corporate groups, weddings, local schools, and others. Rascal's hosts fundraisers, most recently an event in support of the Courage Center. In short, Rascal's does whatever is necessary to market their product and reward-- and hopefully build upon-- a loyal guest base.

Survival in the current economy is a struggle even for the healthiest of businesses. But those organizations that understand the business they are in, treat their employees with respect, and focus continually on the needs of their customers will do best. Wanda Oland says it well: "We touch a lot of lives. We'll make it through and we'll be stronger for it."

Two final but important notes: The metal doors are gone, thanks to Dewey Johnson. And I can personally testify that Rascal's homemade meatloaf is to die for. What could be better during a recession than comfort food?

Share Knowledge and Information in All Directions

2009-08-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

I spoke with an executive recently who told me about the corporate culture in his company. Secrecy, withholding critical information, and inconsistent communication were common practice. My friend was frustrated to no end. Organizations that fail to share important knowledge and information up, down and across struggle in the long run.

No organization achieves perfection with regard to information sharing, because human judgment is involved. Obviously, some data is not appropriate for wide distribution. Sometimes, confidentiality is a necessity. To communicate well requires time, focus and effort, which are often in short supply.

Nevertheless some companies, such as Pixar Animation Studios, excel as learning organizations that openly and honestly share knowledge. Pixar is one of the most successful film production companies of all time. The "fraternity of geeks" who work at Pixar succeeded in transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. The string of movies thus created, starting with Toy Story in 1995, have been hugely popular and critically acclaimed.

Through it all, a corporate culture that highly values information-sharing at every level within the organization has enabled Pixar to continue to produce one hit after another.

The September 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review cited several reasons for Pixar's sustained creative success. Among other things, the company espouses a philosophy that "we are smarter than me." The company believes that everyone needs to be involved in the creative process and, to that end, communication throughout all levels is imperative.

Next, Pixar works to hire good people, to support them, and to foster an environment where trust and respect are a given. More specifically, those good people are encouraged to take risks, knowing that they will inevitably make mistakes. Talented people will learn from failures and use their hard-earned discoveries to move forward more effectively on subsequent projects.

Finally, Pixar's culture is flat, collegial and extremely peer-oriented. Hierarchies are out, everyone is treated with respect, and both honest feedback and careful listening are encouraged and rewarded.

One very specific and practical example of the way information-sharing plays itself out is Pixar University. Every employee is encouraged to spend as many as four hours a week furthering his/her education. Pixar University offers more than a hundred courses, from filmmaking and writing to sculpture, painting and drawing.

Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University, says, "We offer the equivalent of an undergraduate education in fine arts and the art of filmmaking." And this is not just fun time or a way to avoid work, but rather a critical job expectation. Nelson says, "This is part of everyone's work. We're all filmmakers here. We all have access to the same curriculum. In class, people from every level sit right next to our directors and the president of the company."

Pixar University epitomizes the concept of broad knowledge-sharing. Nelson asserts, "The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization. Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."

At Pixar University, employees are also encouraged to try new things, take risks, and learn from mistakes. The University crest says in Latin: "Alienus Non Diutius," which translates to "alone no longer." Says Nelson, "It's the heart of our model, giving people opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes together."

In addition to excellent financial results, Pixar has earned countless industry accolades for its work, including 22 Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and three Grammys. Every Pixar film produced since 2001 was nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar and four of those movies, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E, came home with the little golden statuette.

Pixar Animation Studios provides an incredibly compelling example of an organization that sees the critical value in gathering information from a diverse variety of sources and then sharing it openly up, down and across the company. Those individuals who hold information closely would not survive in such a culture. Pixar's reputation as a place where creative genius thrives is indeed well-earned.

Companies like Pixar that set themselves up as learning organizations and follow through on that commitment tend to be successful. Other organizations-- where secrecy, lack of clarity, and generally poor communication all around are the rule-- suffer in the end.

Where does your organization or team sit on the communication spectrum? Do you openly share important knowledge and information in all directions? Does your culture foster honest feedback and careful listening? What do you personally contribute from a communication standpoint?

A human or animal organism needs circulation of blood and nutrients to all parts of the body in order to have full physical health. Similarly, freely flowing knowledge and information are the "lifeblood" of any organization that hopes to achieve robust business outcomes.

Great Teams Never Give Up

2009-08-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

Great teams never give up. In business, as in sports or any other human endeavor, the very best teams simply refuse to be defeated.

I was reminded of this fact several years ago when I had the honor to coach my daughter Lucia and her 3rd and 4th grade peers in basketball. Basketball, like business, is a fast-paced, rough and tumble game that involves lots of strategy and, in order to win, requires great skill and determination from its participants. At least at the highest levels of the sport, this is true.

But for Luci and her pals practices consisted mostly of social time, laughing, doing each other's hair, taking bathroom breaks together en masse, and some basketball. I tried to teach basic fundamentals, with a focus on teamwork. They took a vote and decided to call themselves the "Hot Peppers." I was not crazy about this team name, but went along. Did I mention the laughter?

This was a middling team, at best. During the regular season we might have won a couple more games than we lost. No one predicted greatness for this team.

But in the annual year-end tournament that determines the overall league champion, something came over the Peppers. They pulled together as a unit and demonstrated, almost heroically, that great teams never give up.

There was a team that had dominated the schedule all year long. This team had several girls who were big, strong and skilled. This team had gone undefeated in the regular season. Somehow the Peppers got through the preliminary rounds to face this team in the championship game.

I knew we were up against it, but wasn't sure if the girls knew. I did not want to invoke the Holy Bible and cite David and Goliath but, trust me, my thoughts went there. Instead, I recalled the recent Super Bowl, where a lowly underdog had defeated the mighty favorite.

"Did you girls see the Super Bowl?" "Yes." "Who won?" "The team that wasn't supposed to." "Right."

The Peppers went out and fought hard. They were behind most of the game. But suddenly, the other team started to play not to lose. They sat back on their heels. They made mistakes. They even panicked a bit near the end. The Peppers came back.

Pretty soon, with no time left, one of our little gals stepped up to the free throw line, score tied 15-15, with a chance to win the game. First shot missed. Second shot hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the hoop. Pandemonium erupted. The Peppers had triumphed. Dairy Queen beckoned.

What are the ingredients that go into creating a team with this kind of capability? First, leadership. And not just leadership of the obvious kind, as important as that is, from the head coach or the team leader in business. Leadership can come from any person, at any time. Our final couple of baskets came from one of our best athletes, who had played a quiet game up to that point. Isn't it amazing how your top performers always seem to come through, demonstrating leadership in the clutch?

The second ingredient is skill. Several girls on the Peppers, silliness aside, could put the rock in the hole when they felt like it. This is where hard work, repetition, and practice together as a unit come in. These are essential fundamentals in business, just as they are in sports.

Finally, there is the most important ingredient. This one is the most difficult to describe. Call it team chemistry, call it trust and confidence, call it swagger, call it what you will. A truly great team believes in itself in a way that is palpable. You can see it in the way such a team carries itself, interacts together and ultimately performs.

We are in difficult times right now, but teams that possess that magical something will survive the trial. They will emerge stronger than they were before.

What will your team do in this economy? Will you play not to lose? Will you let events dictate what happens to you? Will you sit back? Will panic set in? Or will you look each other confidently in the eye, take control, count on your leaders, work hard together, trust each other, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? This decision cannot be postponed.

In 1941 during the throes of World War Two, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the students at Harrow School, his alma mater, outside London. He said, "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never- in nothing great or small, large or petty- never give in…" That was good advice for young people during dark days, but isn't it interesting how young people can sometimes teach us too?

Occasionally, when I face a moment of truth in today's tumultuous world I think back, smile, and whisper to myself, "Remember the Peppers. Never give up."

Appreciate the Power of Words

2009-07-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

As business leaders we often fail to fully appreciate the ability we possess, for both good and ill, to influence people and situations through the simple choice of the words we use. Our teams are listening closely to what we say. The very best communicators select their words carefully and work hard to ensure that followers understand their meaning. This necessity to speak and write clearly is a truly basic leadership objective, but ever so difficult to consistently execute.

Last week I was honored to take a group of executives through a leadership seminar at the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania. At the end of our day-long tour of that sacred place, one of the participants read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address near the spot where Lincoln delivered it at the National Cemetery in November 1863. As she read that beautiful little speech- only 272 words long- I was reminded of the power of an idea well expressed to move people to think differently and, sometimes, change the world.

Lincoln had less than a year of formal schooling but he read constantly from an early age in an effort to educate himself. He became a master communicator whose innate yet carefully honed abilities as a story-teller and humorist enabled him to reach and teach ordinary people in unforgettable fashion. His deep study of the Holy Bible and Shakespeare influenced the lovely cadences of his speeches.

Lincoln's masterpiece, the Gettysburg Address, forever changed the way Americans think of themselves. He explained the meaning of the sacrifice of so many lives on the battlefield just a few months prior. He asserted the Declaration of Independence and its central idea- equality- as a matter of founding law. The Civil War, Lincoln told us, was the great struggle around and testing of this new principle. As historian Gary Wills said, "By accepting the Gettysburg Address, its concept of a single people dedicated to a proposition, we have been changed. Because of it, we live in a different America."

Few people, even among great historical figures, possess Abraham Lincoln's gift for language. Of speeches that compare with the Gettysburg Address, for me, only the inspirational words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, telling his countrymen: "I have a dream today…"

So what does that leave for those of us who are mere mortals? For those of us who often get tangled in our own syntax? For those of us who dread having to put our thoughts down on paper?

There is a popular historical myth that Lincoln penned the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope as he rode the train from Washington D.C. to Pennsylvania. To the contrary, the speech was carefully composed beforehand at the White House. He wrote and rewrote, revising the speech even as late as the morning of the day it was to be delivered. Lincoln was incredibly particular in his choice of words, and he worked hard to get the message just right. He knew that his followers, and even future generations, would be paying close attention. In that way, he was a teacher to all of us who would aspire to be leaders who communicate well.

With written communication, take the time to be thoughtful. Who is your intended audience? What message do you want to convey? How can you write that piece- whether a short e-mail or a full-blown speech- in the simplest, most concise way, yet still get your point across (remember Lincoln's 272 words)?

Nothing is more frustrating for a team of people than to read something their boss or colleague has produced that causes confusion. Credibility is lost and time is wasted. Proofread what you write. Better yet, have someone that you trust check your work. Be open to suggestions and make changes accordingly. Like Lincoln did, practice your writing. As with any other skill, writing ability can be developed over time with effort, repetition and feedback.

The spoken word can prove more difficult because we frequently don't have time to be as reflective as we might with a writing assignment. We are often called upon to give an opinion quickly without the benefit of all the information we need to make a judgment. Still, the best communicators are thoughtful in speech as well.

Take a pause before you speak. Collect your thoughts. Consider the audience. It's okay to acknowledge what you don't know and take time to do some research. Gather data. Ask good questions. Select your words. Deliver them well. Confirm understanding.

As always, the old saying holds true: "Talk is cheap, but whisky costs money." Words without appropriate and consistent actions to back them up are mere words. With that said, leadership begins with words. Especially in the difficult economic environment in which we all live and work, anxious business teams are keenly in tune with what leadership is saying. So take the opportunity to be thoughtful with your words. The future of your organization may depend on it.

Seek Honest Feedback

2009-07-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

Most of us intellectually grasp the importance for success in business of giving and receiving honest feedback. Why do so few of us do it well? Because it is difficult.

Many of us are averse to hurting someone's feelings and so are reluctant to deliver the full truth as we see it. We are also generally loath to receive feedback ourselves. It can be embarrassing and unpleasant. How many people (both supervisors and employees) actually enjoy the annual review process, which is all about feedback? Not many that I have met.

With all that said, I am still struck at how often in my ten-year career in human resources I came across even very senior leaders who would not give straightforward feedback when they should have, nor were they at all interested in what anyone had to say about them either. This fundamental unwillingness to tell and/or hear the truth costs organizations dearly over time.

Meg Whitman, during her decade-long run as CEO of online trading behemoth eBay, provided a dramatic example of a leader who not only sought honest feedback, but could not function without it. She listened carefully, mostly to her customers but also to anyone else who offered a useful point of view, and used what she learned to create a unique and powerful success story.

Whitman came aboard as CEO in March of 1998. Any number of skeptics felt that she was not qualified to run eBay for lack of technical expertise. She quickly demonstrated her willingness to roll up her sleeves and learn. In mid-1999, the eBay site crashed for 22 hours, and weeks of uncertainty and instability followed. Whitman sat through endless technical discussions to get at root causes, pulled all-nighters with the team and, when she did sleep, did so on a cot in the office. The problems were fixed and Meg Whitman impressed everyone, including her detractors, by acknowledging what she did not know and working to educate herself.

Whitman was also quick to credit eBay's success to its enormous community of buyers and sellers, who in essence run the business by determining which transactions will take place, and by managing inventory and shipping. The power of the business model, said Whitman, "is in the community of users who have built eBay."

Whitman spent considerable time monitoring feedback from buyers and sellers by perusing discussion boards. She said, "The great thing about running this company is that you know immediately what your customers think." She organized annual member conferences that brought thousands of eBay customers together to swap ideas and learn how to more effectively use the site. She spent time during these events on the floor interacting with as many customers as possible.

Numerous sellers have been able to make a handsome living trading on eBay full-time, and Whitman enjoyed interacting with them. Whitman declared, "Actually, most of these sellers know more about eBay than [eBay] employees. They use it every single day. They're the experts... The businesses that have been built on this platform are remarkable."

Whitman oversaw explosive expansion at eBay. In 2002, for example, revenues rose 62% to $1.1 billion, with an earnings jump of 172% to $249 million. By the time Whitman resigned her position in 2008, eBay had 15,000 employees, just under $8 billion in revenue, and 300 million registered users.

Meg Whitman was honored as Fortune magazine's most powerful woman in business in both 2004 and 2005. Much of what she accomplished can be attributed to her desire to hear what people were telling her, learn from it, and take appropriate action based on that new knowledge.

As a leader, if you arrive at a point where you lose interest in receiving feedback- assuming you had interest in the first place- or you say you want feedback but create an environment that is clearly not safe for providing it, you cannot succeed over the long haul.

Good leaders foster a culture in which it is okay to speak up, even if the message might be painful. The very best leaders not only accept feedback but actively, even manically, seek it out. They could not function without the information they receive, virtually always from multiple sources. It is like the air they breathe. They use that data to drive change in themselves and their organizations.

Meg Whitman is a shining example of just such a leader. She constantly sifted through countless bits of information, especially from her customers, the buyers and sellers who were foundational to eBay's success. She used what she learned to create one of corporate America's all-time growth stories.

Two final questions are critical: 1) Do you have someone in your professional life- at least one person- that pushes you and provides you with genuinely honest feedback? If yes, good for you; 2) If the answer is no, why not and what will you do about it?

Teams Need Common Purpose

2009-06-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Teams without common purpose are rudderless and have no hope of achieving at a high level over time. If you are a leader of people ask yourself, does my team have a common purpose? If you are unsure or the answer is no, find a common purpose and communicate it soon.

What is common purpose? Regardless of the verbiage used- vision, mission, strategy, identity, purpose- no team sustains effective performance without the benefit of a single compelling idea that drives it forward.

During his 20-year tenure as CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch- like him or not- dramatically demonstrated the importance of common purpose. When Welch took over in 1981 GE contained 42 strategic business units: appliances, lighting, transportation, motors, medical materials, industrial electronics, aerospace, financial services, etc.

The profound challenge for Welch became how to develop a common vision for such seemingly disparate disciplines. He said, "We were in so many different businesses. In those days, if you were in a business that was profitable, that was good enough reason to stay in it."

Welch believed that strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances. He said: "The winners in this… environment will be those who… insist upon being number one or number two in every business they are in- the number one or number two leanest, lowest-cost, worldwide producers of quality goods and services..."

Welch also said, "... where we are not number one or number two… we have got to ask ourselves [management guru] Peter Drucker's very tough question: 'If you weren't already in the business, would you enter it today?' And if the answer is no, face into that second difficult question: 'What are you going to do about it?'" Welch's simple ultimatum was that those businesses would be fixed, sold, or closed.

Welch did his best to convey the idea: "... I repeated the No. 1 or No. 2 message over and over again until I nearly gagged on the words... The organization had to see every management action aligned with the vision."

But while "One or two, fix, sell, or close" passed the simplicity test, and most employees understood and agreed to it intellectually, the emotional leap was a more difficult process. Welch spent a good deal of time in his first five years earning the nickname "Neutron Jack" (he left buildings intact but the people were gone). One quarter of GE's employees left the company during this period, 118,000 total. As Welch himself admitted, "The turmoil, angst, and confusion were everywhere."

On the other hand, under Welch's leadership GE's revenues improved from $27 billion to $130 billion. Market value jumped from $12 billion to $410 billion. Welch presided over more than 600 acquisitions and aggressively pushed GE to enter newly emerging markets. By the end of Welch's reign GE was the largest and most valuable company in the world. In 1999 Welch was named "Manager of the 20th Century" by Fortune magazine. Many of the business methodologies and leadership concepts he espoused continue to be emulated by corporate executives the world over.

I can speak to the importance of this fundamental lesson from personal experience. In a 25-year career that has spanned military service, legal practice, and business, I have observed teams without a common purpose. I have been a member of teams without a common purpose. I have been the leader- shame on me- of teams without a common purpose. Those teams do not work.

In contrast, teams that know with confidence what they are about can become juggernauts. They are led by men and women who make a point of finding a common purpose and sticking with it.

Perhaps my favorite and most memorable personal example of a common purpose was the creed that bound me and my fellow infantry Marines: "To seek out, close with, and destroy our enemy, through fire and maneuver." No ambiguity there. Not coincidentally, the U. S. Marine Corps is by far and away the best team with which I have ever been associated.

Common purpose doesn't have to be complex or blindingly original. To the contrary, it should be simple and reflect common sense. It doesn't have to come from on high, although it might. It can come from you. Not everyone has to agree, and there may be pain in the implementation, but everyone must understand the common purpose.

Use your own business savvy in the discovery process. Read and study. Consult with your team and other valued advisors. Take advantage of both internal and external resources.

The goal is to find a common purpose that is compelling and makes sense. Then you must communicate until you nearly "gag on the words." Finally, follow through to make sure that your team acts to carry out that purpose. You may not become "Manager of the Century," but you will see improved business results.

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Wisdom is Not Enough

2009-05-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

I love history. I am also an entrepreneur at heart. Recently, I combined my passions by developing a business that uses battlefields as classrooms for corporate leaders. Since the fall of 2007 I have taken twelve groups of approximately 180 managers to the Gettysburg and Little Bighorn national parks. We have had incredible experiences together while studying these momentous events through the lens of individual leadership and team dynamics. I am continually struck by the power of history to teach. The learning from these battles is amazingly timely and highly relevant for leaders right now, especially in the deeply troubled times in which we live.

The challenges in history were the same as business leaders face today: How do we manage through profound change? How can we motivate our people in chaotic circumstances? How do we make good decisions despite imperfect information? How can we communicate more effectively? How do we see things from another person's point of view? How can we understand another culture in a global economy? How will we win or even just survive in a highly competitive and uncertain world?

One of the most dramatic leadership lessons that repeatedly presents itself is the idea that "wisdom is not enough."

Author and humorist Douglas Adams said: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." How true. When faced with problems and challenges, no matter how complicated and unfamiliar, we all have a strong tendency to rely on skills, abilities and methodologies that have proven successful for us in the past. But sole reliance on personal experience can be a severely limiting factor and can hinder the new insights that are frequently necessary to achieve complex problem solving.

George Armstrong Custer had seen intense combat in the Civil War and was a veteran Indian fighter after the war. Everything in Custer's experience taught him that swift offensive action resulted in victory. He had led charge after charge at the head of his troops. He survived all of this violent action over many years virtually untouched, despite having eleven horses shot out from underneath him.

Further, Custer had never seen his Plains Indians opponents do anything other than scatter when attacked directly by a body of U.S. soldiers. Time and again he had known smaller numbers of white cavalry and infantry, and even scouts and civilians, to defeat larger Native American forces. Finally, Custer was a well-trained soldier and practitioner of the military arts. The conventional tactical wisdom of the day was that to split a combat unit, allowing one contingent to hold the enemy while the other moved around his flank, might be risky but could potentially provide a big payoff.

Given all this, Custer's decision-making at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana on June 25, 1876, was not surprising. He had received warnings from his frightened scouts about the immense size of the Native American village they confronted. Nevertheless, he moved quickly into action, confident in his own charmed existence, leading in the saddle and from the front. Despite his numerically superior enemy, he divided his forces into multiple wings in hopes of moving around and entrapping the village. To what was undoubtedly his shock and dismay, the angry young manhood of the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne nations turned and fought. Every man in Custer's immediate command perished.

For Custer, what might have been we will never know. Could he have risen above conventional wisdom- indeed his own wisdom based on hard-won personal experience- to think differently about the extraordinary situation he faced? Could he have decided differently based on his own studies of military history (he was a great reader and student of his profession)? Could he have behaved differently out of sage advice from people who knew what they were talking about- his scouts- but whose counsel he disregarded? In all probability, old mental models blocked the possibility of new insights. For his poor choices, disaster befell the team Custer was entrusted to lead.

Simply put, wisdom is not enough. Most of the time our lifelong learning serves us well (don't put your hand on that hot stovetop or you will feel pain). The challenge for today's leaders is, first, to recognize and acknowledge situations that may on their surface appear familiar, but are in reality new and more complicated than what has come before. Next, the trick is to marshal resources and elevate understanding. This can come through reading and study, discussion with knowledgeable people, feedback from diverse and unbiased sources, or development of rigorous processes. The goal, in the end, is to achieve better awareness and the higher level of decision-making capability necessary to make good choices in tough and unique scenarios.

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