The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

“The last few months have seen a spate of end of year surveys and forward-looking prediction reports that examine the workplace ‘digital transformation’ to a more collaborative work environment with greater worker mobility.”

David Lavenda, Fast Company, January 2012

As I was reading David Lavenda’s post ‘Surprising Findings About Mobile Worker Collaboration’ this past Thursday in Fast Company I found myself reflecting back to a small conference hosted by the Bionomics Institute that I attended south of San Francisco back in the mid 1990’s.

Among the sessions I attended at that conference was one featuring a panel of then experts on search engine design musing on the true power potential of the technology they were all helping to move forward. It seemed to be the consensus of the panel that day that the major limitation to realizing the full potential of digital technology was more a function of users than developers. In their minds, these experts of the time agreed that people’s communication skills were lagging behind the advancements in technology and that gap was not likely to close anytime soon.

Fast forward to 2012. Honestly, I believe it would have been hard even for those leading experts at the conference that day to have imagined where we would be with technology today. Wow! This is the only term I find that suits what is being daily revealed to us in the technology realm. And it just keeps coming.

But has the workplace ‘digital transformation’ translated to a more collaborative work environment with greater worker mobility; have we advanced our abilities as collaborators and communicators as those experts in the 1990’s said that we must?

David Lavenda offers us excerpts from four different recently conducted surveys on the workplace digital transformation. Among the findings in these surveys you may or may not be surprised to read that,

“The three top reasons why companies are finding it hard to implement tools like analystics, mobile technology, and social media for business are: missing skills (77%), cultural issues (55%), and ineffective IT (50%). It is clear that changing people’s work habits represent the biggest impediment to technology change.”

                                                                                          CapGemini/MIT Survey

Sounds like déjà vu all over again against the backdrop of that conference I mentioned! And yes, I am assuming that among the missing skills cited those involving interpersonal communication are included.

Lavenda offers other studies and factors of course, all of which are worthy of consideration but given my interests I am drawn to consider that “missing skills” continues to play such a prominent role in the digital transformation lag.

In leading up to his conclusion, Lavenda offers these words…

“But, as always, worker reticence to changing work habits is the biggest impediment to adopting new technologies.”

I loved this posting and welcomed the information on research that Lavenda provides; however, I am inclined to go in a different direction when it comes to assigning cause for the findings of these surveys. "Worker reticence" may be more a symptom than a cause in this instance. If we look more closely, we may see that the lag is reflective of factors both inside organizations as well as within the larger society. Here are several questions that immediately came to my mind:

• As we educate future generations of workers, will we continue to emphasize individualistic behavior patterns and measurement and dis-incent collaboration?
• How much does a continued reliance on the sovereignty of hierarchy within organizations retard the development of collaborative practices?
• Why do we continue to use compensation practices that incent the attainment of functional objectives as much or more than organizational objectives certainly de-motivate cross functional initiative?
• What is the source of continued reluctance in many places of work to support worker requests for remote (at home) work settings?

And of course there are more.

There is no doubt some merit to David Lavenda’s claim of worker reticence but it may originate in sources more accessible than only the workers themselves

You might want to pilot some trials in your own organization to see what you can do to promote collaboration. Take sort of a “what have we got to lose” point of view and focus on what you may have to gain.

I suggest starting by addressing some of the questions mentioned just above…but do not undertake educational reform as a first step!

• Ease constraints on work at home arrangements, including what approvals are necessary 
• Establish cross functional operational opportunities where hierarchical input is limited to setting direction and specifying specific deliverables, removing barriers and providing missing resources.
• Design developmental offerings to leverage day to day working community relationships.
• Examine compensation practices for evidence that they may constrain collaboration

Finally, as a manager you can refrain from resolving interpersonal/interdepartmental issues for those reporting to you.

And I am sure you have a couple of your own to contribute as well. 

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 “The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.”

                                                                                              William Deresiewicz
                                                                                                                                     

I got around to reading an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times by William Deresiewicz titled ‘Generation Sell’ on Sunday morning from which I took the quote I opened with here. In a piece I found very enjoyable to read, Deresiewicz takes us through his analysis of the millennial generation that seems to be so troubling to work with or even understand for many managers today. His central insight is that this is a generation of entrepreneurs…

“Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.”

  In Deresiewicz’ view, the Millennials operate with…

“…a distrust of large organizations, including government, as well as the sense, a legacy of the last decade, that it’s every man for himself.”

 …so their entrepreneurial inclinations are driven as much from a self-preservation strategy as previous generations were driven by the desire for security.

While Millennials view the small business as the idealized social form of the current times. many of them continue to work in our mainstream organizations. They literally walk among us, having learned how to play the game by developing an ability to fit in rather than drop out and assume the risks of business ownership.

Given the continued premium we place on compliance it is likely that we have not tapped the entrepreneurial instincts of this generation and likely as not this is why they will eventually leave us. As managers we might do ourselves an enormous favor by asking not how we can get them to be like us but rather how can we give them reason to stay and invest themselves in our future.

The November 14^th issue of the New Yorker magazine features a Malcolm Gladwell piece on Steve Jobs titled ‘The Tweaker’. In the article Gladwell identifies Jobs’ genius not so much as that of an inventor but truly more of a “tweaker.” By definition…

“The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.”

As managers, we might prefer a team of “tweakers” to a team of inventors since inventors are notorious for lacking commercial instincts and often times are satisfied with proving out rather than perfecting their ideas. Cases in point abound but suffice for now for me to remind us all of the boon Xerox research has been to the technology industry, if not necessarily to itself.

So if Deresiewicz is on to something, and from my knowledge of my own twenty- four year son I’d say he is, it is incumbent on us to find ways for our Millennial employees to contribute by “being in charge” of something they view as important. This will have less to do with salary category or titles than it will be the idea of having a lot of say in something important to our business … maybe not the final say but certainly a lot leading up to it.

Turning our Millennial employees loose to “tweak” may seem like an invitation to chaos, but it may just be a formula for the engagement and retention of our best and brightest.

• What can you do to give your Millennials more of a say in the business and an invitation to make what is already working even better? 

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Around 17 years ago my firm was employed by a large manufacturer in our area to assist with a new product development initiative that had fallen waaaay behind schedule…again. In our analysis of the situation, we quickly found among other things a project that was being managed to death, or at least to a stop, frequently!

The folks responsible for the technical (real) development had been given lots of responsibility and virtually no autonomy. The functional management, spread over several areas, was so busy trying to “contribute” and stay informed that they had succeeded in squashing both the enthusiasm and initiative of the technical development team.

We proposed a new project oversight structure that reflected very distinct “contributions” expected from both the functional managers and the technical teams. The technical team would focus strictly on getting the product developed; the functional managers would focus on providing resources and removing barriers…when called upon.

Seven months later, slightly ahead of the revised schedule promised and under the budget allocated, the new product was delivered. Our role along the way, consisted of maintaining the new structure, reminding the functional managers of their new role and keeping them out of the technical team’s hair.

Seventeen years ago we were operating mostly from commitment, intuition and some experience; we didn’t have a good vocabulary to go along with the structures we created and held in place, or a well defined set of distinctions for change management. Based on my recent reading of Chip and Dan Heath’s book ‘Switch…’ I would now say that what we had intuitively done was “shape the Path”, actually we served as a surrogate for the shaping.

More important to us than knowing what we had done to produce this outcome was understanding what we had tapped into that allowed an otherwise completely bogged down initiative to suddenly rise from its own ashes and race forward to successful completion. Since that time I have devoted myself to developing the means to transfer what we had accomplished to a teachable format with what I will call mixed results at best. Using the Heath’s model, I’ve been successful at addressing the rider (rational) and the elephant (emotional) elements of change but never achieved the breakthroughs I was looking for in tweaking the environmental factors (the path).

I wasn’t going to be satisfied until we could develop a systemic approach that rendered our services as change agents unnecessary in the long term. I think you see where this goes…teach the man to fish…it’s a greater contribution.

This past week I began reading ‘The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World.’ As I rolled along through the first chapter I realized that the author, Jeremy Rifkin, has unwittingly provided me a distinction that has been missing for me for 17 years, “lateral power.” His book is written to bring us to the larger realization of an innovative economic development model that ensures the sustainability of our natural resources and ecosystems. In other words he is working on “big ass ideas.”

I am somewhat uncomfortable about whether I’ll be accused of “dumbing down” concepts like those presented in ‘TIR’ but I had a moment if insight as I read. Lateral power, the concept must apply in many contexts. Somehow I believe that every fundamental concept is scalable. After all, it is “turtles all the way down” right?

 "Lateral power is a naturally occurring resource in every organization that is unintentionally constrained and minimized by unfocused, unconscious hierarchy."

We are encouraged by Peter Block in ‘Community: The Structure of Belonging’ to accept that the traditional hierarchies that we live with in organizations will never go away, so we should probably stop trying to change or eliminate them. I tend to agree with Block and I do not necessarily think the hierarchies should go away, if intentionally focused. However, our hierarchies do often serve to obscure and inhibit the lateral networks that would naturally form in their absence. Lateral power is a naturally occurring resource in every organization that is unintentionally constrained and minimized by unfocused, unconscious hierarchy. I am sure this is a controversial statement. But hear me out.

• You go to work each day planning to make the highest contribution possible. Why would you suspect that your co-workers would be any different from you?
• Answer me this, while the hierarchical priorities of your organization provide for an important flow of information and resources, are they always attuned to the creation and retention of customers as an ultimate primary priority?
• In your experience, are your cross functional peers inclined to look for ways to be supportive of each other’s objectives unless otherwise directed?
• Do you believe that continuing to work on employee engagement will be enough to sustain your organization’s performance or get it where it needs to be, or is something more basic needed, like to freedom to convene parties with mutual interests to collaborate feely outside the constraints of hierarchy?
• Would you welcome regularly participation with working peers in a structured format where the point was the progress of your work and the mutual success of everyone attending? 

Lateral power…it is time to go looking for ways to tap into it. When you reach the end of the road… it’s time to learn to fly. 

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I haven’t written a piece this long in a while but I am fired up about something…You and I both know that your company’s workforce is not in shape. It may not be top of mind in the leadership meetings or among the board of directors but you know, and you know it is affecting everything that goes on in your business, and you are not doing much if anything about it... maybe because your HR department tells you that you can’t.

If you don’t believe me then check in with your risk management group, ask them about the leading causes of absenteeism and on the job injury in your company. I’d be very surprised if you didn’t find that you have an ergonomic plague in your workplace, an inordinate number of injuries and absences related to back and other structural problems. These problems are there because your workforce is overweight and out of shape and aside from the burden this condition is putting on your healthcare costs it also affects the quality of work being done and the energy and creativity available from your workforce at any given time. This is a big deal and it is time we all fessed up and started dealing with it. It is people’s lives and livelihood that are at stake here.

I got rolling on this theme this past week as I finished reading ‘The Coming Jobs War’ by Gallup CEO Jim Clifton.

Clifton has a central thesis and he makes a strong and seriously analytical case for his argument. He makes the bold assertion that job creation and successful entrepreneurship are the world’s most pressing issues right now, outpacing runaway government spending, environmental degradation, and even the threat of global terrorism. “If countries fail at creating jobs,” says Clifton, “their societies will fall apart. Countries, and more specifically cities, will experience suffering, instability, chaos, and eventually revolution.”

Among other things Clifton states very bluntly in his book:

“A nation in which two-thirds of its constituents are obese or in poor health—or soon will be because of their weight, lack of exercise, addiction to cigarettes, bad diets and general low wellbeing –will never win the upcoming fight against global economic competitors. Workers will not be fit enough to win.”

I have a confession to make, although if you’ve ever looked at the picture associated with my blog this may not seem like much of an admission, I have been overweight bordering on obese for the past 30 years of my life. Three years ago with the continual and compassionate support of my wife Pat ("I didn’t marry you so you’d die on me!”) I finally stopped smoking, a habit that I had wrestled with on and off, mostly on, for over forty years. Within the past six months I have begun to successfully deal with my general physical condition. I have lost 50+ pounds and still have a ways to go to get to my goal. Believe it or not I got started with Zumba classes. Turns out it wasn’t so much the Zumba as the classes, I like exercising with other people. For years I have been one of those who made the New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get fit several times each year only to find myself quickly falling back into old counterproductive patterns because they were simply more comfortable. In my early life, up to and into my thirties I was very athletic; I participated in a variety of sports and even ran marathons for a while. Then around the time I was 35 all that abruptly stopped and for nearly 30 years I simply indulged my appetites in the worst possible ways. It is really a boring story, yes I am a smart guy, I could see what was happening yet I did nothing to honestly step up and take care of myself. My attitude was that as long as I took care of my obligations to family and business I should be free to address my cravings. Like I said…boring.

And now for the first time on 30 years I am effectively, not easily, addressing my well being on a number of fronts. I am grateful to my wife Pat, once again the catalyst for me doing something about my health. Honestly she has had to be courageous, I have not been open to her coaching and she has had to put up with plenty of sharp rebukes from me for coaching when I wasn’t asking for it. I am pretty sure that without her support I would not be as far along as I am, and there is still a ways to go and many new habits to anchor in.

Now, what about your work environment? Jim Clifton states some very stark statistics in his book, among them the fact that currently only one-third of adult Americans are in shape. Another third are overweight and another third obese. Many of these people work for us and we care about them, not just as productive resources but as people and we are allowing them to do what I did to myself for many years, slowly kill myself. I hate to be that blunt but if you are not one of the overweight/unfit you cannot imagine how unhappy a place it is. I can honestly tell you that in all those 30 years there were only fleeting moments of happiness and a lot of self criticism for allowing myself to get in such bad shape. I am betting the people you work with and around who are well out of shape would tell you much the same if they felt safe enough. If you are one of the overweight you know exactly what I am talking about.

So I know this is a big request I am making. If you are currently working with someone who is overweight, obese or in some other way not taking care of their health ask them if you can talk about it. I know all the prohibitions against doing what I am asking but those have nothing to do with caring for your co-workers, they are designed to protect your employer from legal measures. If you are one of the overweight or obese or otherwise self harming folks ask for some help. These issues are almost always more than we can deal with by ourselves. My wife asks me every morning about my weight and if I don’t like what the scale says I am still liable to lie at first before going back and telling her the truth, but I want her to keep asking, I need her to keep asking.  

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“I am feeling constrained by my current mindset!” Who says that to themselves? Probably nobody, but who says “I am not happy with my results?” or “I have a problem and nothing I know is working to solve it!” Statements like these may seem more familiar.

If you are anything like me, and I am betting you are, when you are facing the frustration of not producing a result or are producing one that you wish you were not, it usually takes a while to get to a point where you will consider that the unresolved issue has something to do with you. For me, I am aware that the result is eluding me but if he, she or it would shape up, the issue would rapidly disappear, I just know it!

When I do get around to considering myself as part of the unresolved problem, I can be fairly self-reflective. However, at this point, often the best I am able to do is blame myself and wrestle forward with the now further frustration of knowing the solution lies outside my current field of vision. So maybe I ask for help and maybe it arrives in the form of a trusted friend who can see what I cannot. With the aid of their perspective, I can craft a one-off solution to my problem. I move on from this point with the dread of knowing that, unless I can take my friend with me everywhere, I will likely find myself returning to the cul-de-sac of my own mindset at some future point.

Until now that is!

This past week I participated in a remarkable program developed by a pair of researchers in adult learning, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. Over the past twenty years, this creative pair has developed a process for self reflection and action that is based on the notion that the real reason people don’t change has more to do with what isn’t visible than with what is.

• No doubt, as managers, or maybe even as friends, we have had occasion to witness people struggle with change to a degree that tests reasonableness. As with any situation which defies our imagination or ability to understand, we may have defaulted to telling ourselves unflattering stories about the motives or character of the other party. This would come along of course once we have stopped assuming that it might be we ourselves who are ineffective providers of advice or coaching. But we know better than that!

When you show up for the class to learn to facilitate the (ITC), Immunity to Change Process, you might go in as an experienced coach thinking, “This will be such a benefit to my clients!” Kegan and Lahey have of course seen you coming. Remember, they have been at this for twenty years. While they are no doubt amused by your naïveté, they are gently compassionate (they don’t actually laugh at you … with you, maybe) and allow you to experience for yourself that reading their book and understanding the process they have designed is not the same as participating in this process yourself. OK, so I should have seen this coming but….never mind!

Once through the process with your own revelation in hand, it becomes obvious why Oprah Winfrey picked up on this process and has shared it with her larger audience through her magazine as Step One in her 2011 Feel Good Challenge. (Trust me, the women in your organization or wives of the men you employ read Oprah and share it with their husbands.)

Let me end this little missive by saying that my forty year professional career as both an HR professional and later as a coach-consultant has been a continuous pursuit of methods and practices for taking suffering out of the everyday working experience. I have learned tools, encountered training, acquired skills, developed my own and the like. I believe that the knowledge and insight acquired in working this past week with Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey will become the cornerstone of my practice moving forward and serve as the frame within which all my other learning can now find a home. Like true masters of their craft they made it look easy. As someone who knows better, I thank them for their contribution to working people everywhere.

• What change have you struggled with repeatedly? Maybe it is time to do yourself a favor and take a ride on the ITC.
  

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 “All are needed by each one; nothing is fair or good alone."

                                                     “Make yourself necessary to somebody.”

                       Ralph Waldo Emerson: American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882

There is probably no aspect of the American mythology that has caused more mischief or been a greater source of misinformation than that of the self made man/woman. Between the fiction of Horatio Alger in his popular Ragged Dick: Or Street Life in New York to the fact (mostly) of Jack Welch Americans can easily recite a list of high profile names that have become part of our “household” vocabulary.

From Andrew Carnegie to Mark Zuckerberg Americans seemingly have an unlimited appetite for consuming tons of media related to the cult of the individual or great man/great woman theory. Yes, all of these people made an undeniable contribution to the economy and/or our society…and none of them truly did or do it alone.

Some prominent American thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson among them, as seen above, did not necessarily concur with the self made mindset. However, on balance I think the mythology of rugged individualism is somehow sexier, more glamorous than Emerson’s suggestions and so it holds sway and is the dominant cultural conversation. For the most part the mythology persists and presents a barrier to collaboration that is holding many companies back and definitely undermining the working satisfaction of many managers

Today in a world as highly connected as it is we do not seem to see that the pathway being built by technology is one that will best lead to a future where a talent for self generated collaboration, interdependence and community accomplishment will be the skills for success rather than the standard set of leadership competencies that are derivatives of the prevalent mythology.

As a manager what can you point to in your immediate working environment that encourages or pulls for collaboration?

• Performance appraisals…not so much.
• Compensation structures…rarely.
• Mentoring...most often focused around managing your own career.
• Identification of high potential candidates for future assignments...look who is doing the evaluations, the kings or queens of the mythology of individualism.  

Is peer coaching, especially in a community context, a legitimate developmental and managerial alternative to historical practices?

The concept of peer coaching is of course not an unknown so there is some precedent but mainly it has been a one to one activity not one intended to represent an entirely new form of organic infrastructure.  

If you are a mid-level manager and not ruggedly individualistic by nature (Less than 20% of the managers in any workplace are highly competitive, many more enjoy the idea of being part of a winning team) and somewhat thwarted by the “go it alone” perspective fostered by many workforce practices you may be in a place where you are faced with doing something unnatural for you…getting radical!

By radical I mean initiating change from where you are in the organization, being the source of a change in approach; moving away from a focus solely on individual development to another form. How about moving coaching from the prevailing individual improvement context to a peer community context?

Honestly now…

Do you accomplish your results alone? No.

Do you deliver to the client or customer without support from other groups and their managers? Probably not!

Are you so focused on your own advancement that you don’t have time to devote to seeing what you can do to help a fellow manager resolve an issue? You are not that selfish!

Would you benefit by having several peers work with you on a regular schedule to share best practices, provide both advice and coaching, hold you to account for your own sake and be committed to your success? Please!

Oh you'd still be self reliant, for everything you have promised to deliver but, in a context where you are held accountable by people whose word, not just their bonus depends on your performance.

• Would you be willing to approach two other peer managers and engage them in this conversation about developing a peer community? If they say yes you've got a team. What game will you have in mind?

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."

                                            John Donne 1572-1631

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This past weekend my wife and I set out on what for us was intended to be an adventure. It was indeed an adventure and it turned out to be a humbling learning experience as well. The narrative that follows is a bit long but not nearly so long as my memory of the events of the weekend will be.

For some years now I have held to the belief that when it comes to teamwork and collaborative initiative the person you need to know best and first is yourself. Knowing what you want is only part of the equation for success. You also need to know what you are capable of and what you are not in order to know who to ask for help and for what to ask them. In 2008 in a slim volume titled ‘Managing Oneself’ managers are urged by the master of modern management theory, Peter Drucker**, to study themselves. He said in effect

  “Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself by identifying your most valuable strengths and most dangerous weaknesses. Articulate how you learn and work with others and what your most deeply held values are. Describe the type of work environment where you can make the greatest contribution.”

**The link here is to a remarkable piece by Business Week’s John Byrne shortly after Drucker’s death.

 Knowing your strengths is certainly a high priority but this weekend I learned first hand that not knowing your limitations can make you a liability that is invisible until the most inopportune moment.

Here on Fidalgo Bay in our home town of Anacortes, WA being on the water in one form or another is a natural part of living in the area. In fact not being on the water seems downright unnatural. We’ve been here for almost five years and with the exception of one tour on the whale watching boat we have not ventured closer to the water than to toss rocks from the shore of the many beaches we hiked to and from. Kayaking has always intrigued both of us and is in our future plans. Sailing, however, is a bit more familiar, at least to my wife who some years back spent many hours as a member of sailboat crews. So last week when she saw an announcement that adult sailing classes were going to be offered again by the local parks and recreation department she suggested we sign up immediately and just jump at the chance. So we did.

I have spent little time myself on the water over my lifetime. Water sports always seemed interesting but I just never made the time. I am not a particularly good swimmer, in fact I am poor but I have a lot of confidence in flotation devices and am always willing to put myself in the hands of instructors I feel are competent. Saturday was the perfect setting for a day on the water, bright sunshine, mild breezes and a cloudless sky. So we packed our lunches and by noon were already rigging our boat for our first turn on the water. My wife had mentioned that she always wanted to be the captain so I offered her first go at handling the tiller. Things went very well, I was her crew and with some trial and error she managed to get a basic handle on the notions of jibing and tacking, the fundamental turning moves in a sailboat.

When it was my turn to take the tiller the entire experience changed in the matter of a few moments. I found that I was confused by the necessary coordination that needs to go on between the mainsail and the tiller. Added to that the boat was small and the cockpit required an agility that I currently do not have, I kept losing my hold on the tiller as I made the exchanges from one side of the boat to the other. Finally, I found myself and the mainsail on the same side of the boat. According to my instructor this was a certain pathway to capsizing. He was correct.

In less time than it takes to describe my wife and I were both in the water and the boat was on its side. At first this may sound like just plain summer fun but we live in the northwest where the water stays at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the year. Research has shown that in water that temperature your chances of surviving a fifty yard swim wearing a life jacket are about 50/50. Not great odds as you can see so “in the water” is considered bad.

When I hit the water I was not prepared for the immediate cold I experienced. My breath was literally taken away. Fortunately our instructors were nearby in inflatable motor launches and within seconds they were alongside providing comforting words and encouragement. Within a couple of minutes I was able to catch my breath and comfortably hold on to the side of the motor launch. It was only then that I had my first thoughts of how my wife was faring! For a full three or four minute period after we hit the water she was out of my mind completely as I gasped to recover my normal breathing. Did I assume she would be OK because she is a strong swimmer? I’d like to be able to say I was that conscious. In truth I was so consumed with getting myself back under some sort of control that she was out of mind altogether.

The next awakening came once the boat was righted. We needed to get back in the boat. My wife scrambled in quickly and I grabbed the side attempting to pull myself up. It was then that I realized I was not strong enough to pull myself back in the boat! I turned to the young instructor and let him know that I’d need his help. Thankfully his experience, youth and strength were enough to compensate for my insufficient physical condition.

Back at home that night as I replayed the entire event in my head I suddenly realized that I had unknowingly put both myself and my wife in jeopardy. In my superficial approach to being out in the small sailboat it had not occurred to me that at some point I might be in the water, and what that would mean. It was clear to me then that if it had not been for the expertise of the instructors Saturday was not destined to end well. What’s more, rather than being a partner for my wife in an adventure I was an unintended consequence waiting to happen.

Sunday I returned to class and the first thing we needed to do was a capsize drill. I volunteered first but insisted that I partner with another man closer to my size. I knew my wife could not possibly right a boat if she needed to pull my weight as well and I also knew now that if I pulled the boat upright I still wouldn’t be able to get in on my own. So in choosing my partner I made my limitations clear at the outset. He agreed to assume responsibility for my limitations and within a couple of minutes we were able to intentionally capsize, pitching ourselves into the chilly water, and then successfully right our craft using a method that allowed me to be pulled back in the boat as it went upright.

I have been working out for a few months now but I now see that if I plan to pursue sailing or kayaking for that matter I need to resolve my physical limitations or the next water adventure may not end as well. And my wife has made it clear that there will be no two-person kayaking…ever!

• Are you sufficiently cognizant of your own limitations to know when you might be a liability for your direct reports or peers?
• Are you prepared to or have you owned up to your limitations in such a way as to empower and not deflate your reports and peers.

If you are really up for a challenge read “Stop Overdoing Your Strengths” by Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser. As you read the article you may be stimulated to ask yourself, “If I am overdoing my strengths what limitations am I masking?”

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Many thanks to Harold Jarche for his July 5^th posting, The Adaptive Organisation. As a result of his encouragement I just finished reading and enjoying Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford.

The topic under examination in ‘Adapt…’ is the author’s contention that as much as necessity, failure may be the mother of invention. Not only does Harford argue for the acceptance of failure as a part of life he celebrates it as essential to progress, something no doubt that makes intuitive sense to many of us but seems avoided like a plague in most business environments.                                                

As I am reading I find myself reflecting on a career rife with a rich tapestry of failures. Certainly some of these I learned from but the most compelling part of Harford’s argument is the strong tendency we often have to promote failures by getting “stuck” in our successes. This point I could definitely relate with. I was reminded of my high school experience playing basketball, something to this day that when thought of still carries the sting of unfulfilled expectations.

I was at best an average high school athlete. Fortunately for me I chose to attend a high school and where the talent pool was somewhat lean and I was good enough to make the teams in baseball and basketball. Our newly appointed basketball coach had himself been a high school All American. At the time I was playing he was in his late thirties I imagine and still a better player than anyone on our team! He had come to our school from a much smaller town where under his guidance his team had won a state championship so his arrival was accompanied by high hopes that our lowly program would finally show some life and bring glory to our fans. In the two years I played for him there was no such luck!

In retrospect I am of the opinion that our coach experienced being stuck with his past success, at least in the years I was there. He insisted on a methodical style of play that placed a premium on ball handling skills and rebounding ability, areas where he excelled. As a group we were not great ball handlers and we were short, not ideal for the style of play he was comfortable with. As a group of players were better suited to a "run and gun" style of play. Our record reflected our inability to execute his system as much as it did our suitability for his system. So we lost a lot and we also didn’t have much fun while we were doing it which is a shame. Midway through my senior year I was replaced by someone, a better ball handler, who was two years my junior. We didn’t win any more, I sat the bench but coach had it the way he wanted it.  And he had bigger things in mind for himself. He was ambitious; our school was just a stepping stone to greater opportunities so our experience didn’t seem to be his top priority. 

In later years I played some city league ball and a couple of those teams won championships in their classes. The style was mostly what you would call “run and gun” making the best use of the speed and shooting ability of the players involved. We let the talent of the players on the floor dictate the style of play and in doing so not only had more success we also had more fun.

In the later chapters of ‘Adapt…’ Harford talks about organizations with successful pasts failing to adjust to current circumstances rather attempting to force their apparent formula for success. He says that the lessons learned are in many ways flawed because they do not take into account the circumstances in which success was achieved. Kind of like my high school coach they assume that all things stay equal so what they know from the past should work in the present. Not likely!

As a manager can you put the development of your people at least on par with your own success? Assuming that you’ll answer yes then the Palchinsky* principles of adaptability will probably work for you:

• Be willing to try new things.
• Make failures survivable.
• Know when you have failed.

                           *Harford loves Palchinsky and cites his principles more than once in “Adapt…’

I am betting that if you can adopt this approach and you know the talents of those  reporting to you then you also know if it is time for a methodical style calling for good ball handling skills or whether you should “run and gun.”

‘Adapt…’ concludes with a wonderful assertion;

“The ability to adapt requires a sense of security, an inner confidence that the coast of failure is a cost we will be able to bear…Without it, we will never truly succeed.”  

• Are you prepared to catch your people when they fall?
• Do they know that?
• Is there someone there for you in the very same way? 

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As the year draws to a close I find myself harboring deep concerns for the future of the employee engagement dialogue. Rather than continue to stew silently I've decided to come clean and reveal what I have been thinking about and my hopes for the future.

 In many cases I view the path being pursued by employee engagement professionals as the perpetuation of bankrupt paradigms of management by simply painting them with a new vocabulary.

• It is high time that professionals in the field of employee engagement accept that "engagement" ,like love and life, is an inside job and will only respond in a limited fashion to external manipulation.

If "engagement" is ever to have any power it needs to be understood as an ontological tool (Engagement = Association by Choice), a matter of declaration,  and not an emotional/psychological response to external factors that can be measured uniformly by some sort of survey instrument. I firmly believe that much of what has passed for the measurements of engagement in recent years are in part measures of interest (Q12etc.) and a perception of mutual benefit and as such perpetuate the carrot/stick management models of the past 100+ years. “Interest” is like sexual attraction, it waxes and wanes and is fundamentally a response to external stimuli. Employees are likely better served by being brought to consciousness about their talents and strengths (their gifts)  and provided information about where in the workplace those are likely to be welcomed and invited to be offered. They could then be encouraged to plan careers in those directions rather than being surveyed and scored according to some normative instrument.

• One of the fastest ways to poison any employee engagement initiatives is to tie managers’ compensation to survey scores. 

What could be more "stick-like" in terms of classic management science than to put someone's survey scores on anything squarely at the center of your own person's financial well being? I’ve seen customer service reps. “ask for the A” on client surveys; what do we think managers will do when placed under similar pressure? Stop it, just stop it!

• Can we all consider that the Work/Life Balance concern is and always has been a bogus issue and another indication of our archetypal fear that management is BAD and employees are GOOD.

Work/Life balance from the perspective of management = respect people's private lives and honor the commitments they make there as equal to any fear you have about not meeting your objectives. Dear Manager: Don’t justify your need by suggesting that anyone’s employment is in jeopardy.

Work/Life balance from the employee perspective = I don't care of you want to work 80 hours a week, don't expect me to do the same and just make sure you are keeping the other commitments in your life. Who am I to say that you should have a hobby or spend more time with your family? Oh yes, and if you have a commitment to your family and get asked to work on the weekend get a spine and tell your manager "No" or negotiate responsibly with your family and don't blame your boss.

It turns out that some recent research indicates that, as I have suspected, the issue may just be a bogey person anyway.  A Management Craft post on December 11, 2010 by Lisa Haneberg cites a new study published in the Journal of Management and Organization, "Work–life balance or work–life alignment? A test of the important of work-life balance for employee engagement and intention to stay in organizations."

• Finally, for now, and probably most importantly make peace with your fondest desire; that someday organizations may really be operated from an authentic concern for employee engagement.

While I wish he had written about it much earlier Peter Block did recently get around to addressing the flawed thinking that suggests that employers should be held to account in any way for employee engagement. In ‘The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods ’ published in 2010 and co-authored with John McKnight we find these words addressing the notion that the systematic development of for-profit organizations can in any way be expected to deliver anything other than an economic outcome;

• “Here is the rub: Systems that are constructed for order and predictability cannot provide satisfaction in domains that require a unique and personal human solution.”

 The simple fact of the diversity of humanity in terms of intelligences, talents, visions, desires and on and on would indicate, at least to me, that our measures of  engagement are here further suspect as reveled by this perspective. As with interest and perceived mutual benefit we may also have been measuring the level of tolerance employees have developed for the degree of “institutionalization” they are subjected to each day. The less “institutionalization” the higher the survey score.

'Just for fun, imagine operating from the premise that no one has ever made you angry, or afraid, or happy, or joyful--that you've done it all yourself by what you've decided is "real". What if life were entirely an inside job?'

~ SXR      Check out Steve Roberts and his full collections of pen and ink sketches at CoolMindWarmHeart.com 

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Small Business Forum: Your Beliefs May Be as Big a Problem as Business Conditions!                                                                                                                                                                          

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone in our small business mutter, "The next six months are everything!" over the past twenty three years I'd have a modest pile of nickels and a twitch whenever I heard something about cash flow projections. Oh, I do have a twitch!

C'mon people, it is really a whole new world out there, stop acting like you didn't see thing coming. I was traipsing around Fort Worth, TX back in early 2008 when I started noticing the "$5 Foot long" signs in the windows at Subway followed shortly by the same offers at Quizno's, a sure indication that the amount of lunchtime traffic in that area had slowed and the companies were trying to draw people out again. To be sure this was also one of those times that gas prices were flirting with all time highs but I had the feeling this was more than just that. Our business, management education and development, had started to slow in the fourth quarter of 2007 so my economic antenna were already on red alert and had been for several months.

If you operate or have operated a business to business services company (well actually any smaller business!) you know that often your fate is tied to your larger clients. If you have a business like mine you have always known you were considered discretionary, even in the best of times.

We’ve seen things fall apart before, the dot com bust, post 9/11 and so on, so in early 2008 we just figured “Hang in there and this will pass, it always has!” Well it’s been almost 30 months since then and it hasn’t past and it isn’t going to. This time is truly different.

I was inspired a couple of weeks back to read a piece in Seattle 2.0 by Richard Luck, CEO of Loudlever, a software company. Richard is a software guy and fortunately for us he occasionally posts to his own blog, aguywithanidea.com. He doesn’t write often but when he does  it is worth waiting for. He is in the trenches everyday building a company but has that rare ability to step back and comment on the larger context.

Take a look at Richard’s piece, especially his thoughts on financial planning in the current circumstances. In his words, “Financial forecasting in this environment, in this marketplace, is like trying to build a house on a foundation of quicksand.”

Richard is being realistic; he is not operating from his past waiting for things to get back to what is familiar and manageable. If you haven’t adopted his perspective it is time you did. Oh yes, and get around to reading ‘The World is Flat 3.0’, I know it is a bit old now but it will seem like news if you haven’t seen it yet. Very grounding!

• Are you still operating your business like "things will get back to normal?"
• Can you see that it may be time to create a new set of operating assumptions? What might they be?

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For most of his 50+ year film making career, Sean Connery has entertained audiences by repeatedly playing one type of character. Dashing, unpredictable, unmanageable to be sure, we are not quite sure he is a hero, but we are glad he works for our side. Great stuff for the silver screen but not much of a leadership model. Ironically, his greatest professional honor, an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, came while playing the consummate team player, Officer Jimmy Malone in the 1987 movie version of “The Untouchables.”

In this film Connery’s character assumed the role of “leadership coach” for the young, passionate but naïve Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner. In what may be Malone’s most memorable scene, he delivers a brief soliloquy on how Ness can best deal with his arch enemy, Al Capone…

“You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital; you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?”

                             Officer Jimmy Malone, The Untouchables, 1987

Throughout the film, Officer Malone offers the younger Ness an ongoing stream of this plain speak on how to deal effectively with his foes. In one instances he delivers his message with the aid of a classic rhetorical question when a gangster draws a knife and attempts to stab Ness and winds up shot dead in the process. “Isn’t that just like a #@&**#?,” he asks, “Brings a knife to a gun fight!”

Could any message be clearer? If indeed we do need a translation, the Urban Dictionary offers this… ‘Bringing a knife to a gun fight- The act of taking an amount of any substance to a gathering which is obviously insufficient.’ (This site also offers to sell you T-Shirts, coffee cups and fridge magnets emblazoned with this saying. I’ll leave decisions on such offers to your judgment!)

Last week I was reminded of this later bit of leadership counsel from Officer Malone in an exchange I was having with officials at my son’s college. It seems that a piece of equipment my son borrowed from the school last spring was noted as damaged upon its return. I was made aware of this situation when I went to pay his fall tuition and was barred from doing so by a flag in his record indicating that the damage needed to be paid for before he would be allowed to register.

I contacted my son who said he was aware of the damage and noticed it when he originally picked up the piece of equipment. Since it did not affect the functionality of the equipment, he didn’t pay any further attention. Unfortunately he should have brought the damage to the attention of the department personnel when he borrowed the equipment. They didn’t see the issue until the equipment was returned and the cost of repair was $120.

Based on my son’s explanation, I did not see that we should bear the full cost but also recognized that the department had nothing to go on either except the testimony of one of their employee’s. I proposed to the supervisor that we split the difference equally since we had on our hands what amounted to a “he said, he said” situation. The supervisor replied by saying he was not authorized to make such an arrangement. This is where Officer Jimmy Malone’s words came back to me in a flash of recognition, “Isn’t that just like a #@&**#? He brings a knife to a gun fight!”

At that moment the supervisor probably felt as though he was standing there naked as I blurted out, “You are kidding right, you cannot make a decision on what amounts to a $60 transaction?” Two levels of management later I was able to conclude the conversation with the department director agreeing to my proposal!

It really doesn’t matter the name of my son’s school and it doesn’t even matter that it was a school, it could just as easily have been a manufacturing company’s service department, and the lesson would have been the same.

We ask our managers to lead, to inspire, to direct others in producing results of all kinds and yet we limit their authority in ways that leave them humiliated in front of their charges or the customer. These very same people, who, in their private lives, can purchase automobiles worth thousands of dollars, enter into mortgage arrangements for hundreds of thousands of dollars; bring children into the world without asking our permission…need our approval for trivial transactions. Why?

Before you get all “Sarbanes Oxley” with me or “but, but, but you don’t understand,” just stop! Whatever you are going to say next…that…that right there that you were going to say…is craaaaaap!

Engagement and power are inseparable. If our managers are dis-empowered how can we expect their engagement at anything other than a compliance level? Why would we ever expect them to inspire or be inspired themselves?

• Where have we 'hog-tied' our managers and are wondering why they under perform?
• If you are a manager; where are you constrained by practices that do not seem to respect your abilities to make sound choices, and you are putting up with it?

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Pretty basic stuff this week but it never hurts to go back to basics.

Assuming that we are all in agreement that engaged employees are preferable to ones who are not, let’s take a brief look at actions we take as managers that actually dis-incent the engagement we say we want.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

                                                                      Upton Sinclair

If I have heard it once I have heard it a hundred times from a potential client in an initial meeting, “Mike, what I am looking for is more leadership from my people!” Notwithstanding that this statement is often made thoughtlessly the first time around, my standard response when I hear it is “Then what we need to do is determine what you and your managers are doing to discourage leadership!” Silence follows.

Once everyone starts breathing again we can begin a fruitful dialogue.

The truth of my experience is that when senior managers strongly suggest they are interested in more leadership, they are muddling leadership with engagement and their real interest is more engaged employees. If it is really more leadership they want, we’ll have a further conversation about how much control they are willing to give up. That is always interesting!

In either case the task becomes one of working with both senior and mid-level managers to distinguish how they may be unwittingly discouraging the very engagement they profess to be seeking.

Much of what managers do to discourage or dis-incent engagement will have a reasonable explanation in the minds of the managers and will look like blatant chicanery in the eyes of employees. Some cases in point:

• “Our manager says she wants us to speak our minds and offer ideas and suggestions. When she holds a meeting she tells us to hold our questions and comments to the end of her presentation. Then as she gathers her things to leave she asks if we have any questions!”
• “Senior managers tell us we can contact them directly; when we do they ask our managers why we are bringing this matter to senior management attention rather than handling it more locally.”
• “The only way for me to make more money in my current position is to create opportunities for overtime. The easiest way to do that is to slow down so my work takes extra time and then I get labeled as a mediocre to poor performer.”
• “I can easily complete my assignments most weeks in 30-35 hours; I am good at what I do. There’s no real incentive to perform at a higher rate cuz every time I finish early my manager adds work from some of the poorer performers.”
• “I’ve offered five suggestions for improvement in the past year and not received a positive response on any of them. Managers promised they would get back in writing on all suggestions within 72 hours of receipt. I’d just be happy with that”

When confronted on this behavior, managers will often respond that it was a one time occurrence, they were pushed for time, it made sense when they took the action, etc. etc.

NOW HEAR THIS…all ye who would manage. The basic employment relationship is predicated on a mutually understood imbalance of power. You have more than the people reporting to you, at least in theory!.

Without question, at this point in time the majority of employees, no matter what the organization, are keenly attuned to this imbalance and on constant alert for any sign that their status in the “royal household” may be in jeopardy. This is to say that if you make a sudden move to scratch your head don’t be surprised when they duck. This underlying and unspoken unholy understanding is only made worse by our failure as managers to acknowledge the truth of it.

In my experience as a manager I have directly said to employees, “I seek your partnership. You are not worth much to me if our relationship is based in fear. Unless I can trust you to speak up when there is something to be said I will be essentially working alone. Whatever we need to do to work through whatever fear you have of me or managers in general, I am prepared to work through with you. I am not prepared to hear after the fact that you knew something and didn’t express it.” Not everyone who received this offer accepted but everyone who accepted has not been disappointed, nor have I.

• Take a look at the bulleted items above and examine yourself not just by reading the examples but by checking yourself against the spirit of the message.
• Can you come up with your own list of unconscious behaviors on your part that may be a dis-incentive to engagement?

In case you are wondering, I am not a "management hater." I do hold managers to a certain standard because of the power balance I speak to here. My highest loyalty is always to what at any point in time I see as the "best interest of the organization."

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