Dispatches from the New World of Work

The ONE Thing ...

In New Delhi a couple of weeks ago, I had a general in the Indian Army in the front row. I don't recall the details, but evaluating senior officers for promotion came up. I ventured, boldly, that there "was one issue that stood head and shoulders above the rest."

Namely: What is this candidate's track record—in exacting detail—in developing people. Though hardly locked in concrete, I posited that "the ONE question" might go something like this:

"In the last year [3 years, current job], name the three people whose growth you've most contributed to. Please explain in some significant detail where each was at the beginning of the year, where he or she is today, and where each is heading in the next 12 and 24 and 60 months. Please explain your development strategy in each case. Please tell me your biggest development disappointment this past year—looking back, could you or would you have done anything differently? Please tell me about your greatest development triumph—and disaster—in the last ten years. What are the 'three big things' you've learned about 'people development' along the way."

As I see it, it's not the boss' role, for instance, to make strategy. It's the boss's role to develop the best strategist—and the boss's role to ensure that the process thereof is moving along rapidly and imaginatively. And so on.

Finally, as I see it, this in some form applies to pretty much every promotion. And it even has a bearing on evaluating a non-manager on a 3-month project. That rather junior person will, for example, in several instances be responsible for accomplishing a milestone—and to do so, she must engage her team members, and engage them in a way that they go away with some learnings—that contribute a bit to their development.

What do you think about this riff?

A New Generation Gap

The leadership of today's organization is largely in the hands of baby boomers, my generation. It is a small leap of reason to say that we shaped, if not created, today's turbulent economy. The greatest generation gave us an economy that provided a solid foundation to build on. They moved beyond the war, overcame the great depression, and left us an opportunity—with the promise that "You can be anything you want to be." Being kind, I would say we haven't seized that opportunity. Being honest, I would say we flat-out failed to build a similar solid foundation for those who will follow us. We have made a mess. We are not the victims of changing economic conditions, we created them. We have maybe ten years to do something about it.

I have been researching the gap between the generations' impact on the economy of the United States and have not found an acceptable metric to quantify my conclusions. There are just too many variables. One thought hits me hard, though; the next generation may be the first in a long time (ever?) that are not be better off than their parents. I think we baby boomers own that.

Because this is a blog entry, not a white paper, let me offer a few bullet points that should start a little discussion:

• We didn't invent greed, but we took it to a new level. The pursuit of individual wealth has too often trumped the collective national good. And not just at the executive level; some labor rates grew beyond the ability of companies to pay them and remain competitive. The gap between haves and have nots has grown. We are beginning to pay a price for that greed, and many are finding their golden goose has cancer.

• We confused profit with value. Maximizing profit led us to cut costs so dramatically that we may have sacrificed the very survival of our enterprises. Our miserly investment in talent development, research and development, and our relentless push to lower supplier costs have weakened historically strong brands.

• Too many MBAs were in charge. Sorry about the toes I just stepped on. But running a business is a lot different from building a company. We became managers; we have to become leaders. Of course we must be fiscally disciplined and focused on metrics. A quick (albeit unscientific) look at some of our more troubled companies shows a career path to the executive suite that runs through finance. It is not working.

• We have been reluctant to accept responsibility. I hear often that we are just unlucky to be leading in a very tough economic time and are doing as well as can be expected. Baloney. We made this economy. I hear (and observe) a lot about operational excellence. Look back at your metrics; if they have improved continuously, it isn't a failure in operations ... I suggest it is a strategic failure. We own that.

• And one more that will probably incite the masses! I believe that our parents unwittingly made us soft. We had our needs and wants indulged by parents driven to make sure we had more than they had had as children. We can't leave a great legacy without honest-to-goodness hard work.

I'll let the blog discussion take this further. I have many more observations, but how about yours? I have high hopes for my generation, but there's not much time to get about it.

Alas, Yes.
But a Definite "Yes."

(1) I support the Obama pay cap for CEOs of companies on the dole.
(2) My choice would be to cap them at the rate of a 4-star general or admiral, with max seniority.
(3) If you sent all F500 CEOs and their #2s to St Elba, performance of their companies would not on average deteriorate. The "myth of the irreplaceable CEO" is just that—myth.

A Leader's Values

In working with leaders, we help them to be clear about who they are and what they stand for. The values of leaders should be easily recognized in what they do and in what they say. Yesterday, President Barack Obama was clear about what he values. I gathered that courage, hope, honesty, faith, collaboration, and unity were a few of those qualities. President Obama's actions in the past seem to reflect the values that he articulated yesterday and the expectation is that he will continue to live them out. The questions to think about today are, as a leader, what are your values? Are you living them out so that others can see them in you? As an individual, are you clear about your values and, more importantly, are you standing behind them and making decisions based on them? If you haven't thought about what you value, now would be good time to reflect on it.

Repeat Two

While I'm at it, this one deserves a repeat, too; it's constantly on my mind:

Managers have lost dignity over the past decade in the face of widespread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society's trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role that goes beyond their responsibility to the shareholders to include a civic and personal commitment to their duty as institutional custodians. In other words, it is time that management became a profession.

—Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria, "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession," Harvard Business Review/10.08

Symbols, Smiles, and Walking the Talk

A debate raged (more or less) in a couple of sets of Comments on "style" versus "substance." In my opinion, it's a no-brainer, style is substance for leaders. I've always taken a shine to the oft-repeated Gandhi-ism, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I ran across a companion expression recently, from St. Francis of Assisi: "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

In honor of these ideas, I have created a PowerPoint/Special Presentation, lightly annotated, which is my best effort to make these points. It comes under the generic heading of my favorite me-ism, God forbid: Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.

I'd be honored if you'd look at the Special Presentation, titled "Symbolic Behavior/Smile/Respect," and continue the earlier dialogue.

(Incidentally, our collection of probably 25+ Special Presentations is not for my seminar Clients—the special PPTs exclusively appear at tompeters.com.)

And Now for Something Completely the Same

"And now for something completely different," the Monty Python gang used to promise. (I went to Spamalot this past weekend.) Forget that, I want to honor this Thanksgiving with something "completely the same."

Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike, is certainly one of the ten greatest Americans of the 20th century—and surely ranks in the top 50 for the world as a whole. As president from 1953–1960, he got us out of Korea more or less with honor, kept the Cold War from getting entirely out of hand, had the perfect demeanor for overseeing our post-war wound-licking and rejuvenation, was an unsung civil rights hero, and this great general ended his second term by warning us of the financial and political costs of a "military-industrial complex" with too much power—talk about prescience. And all this, of course, was preceded by D-Day and the campaign that ended World War II in Europe, in which Ike, make no mistake, was the prime mover.

I'm fascinated anew by DDE, and it all stemmed from a single and simple quote from General Eisenhower, which appeared in the May 2008 issue of Armchair General, a magazine I almost inadvertently grabbed at Logan Airport: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence [and this confidence] is gained, above all through the development of friendships." The magazine's writer reinforced Ike's self-assertion by adding, "Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command."

The quotes above are borne out in Michael Korda's extraordinary, new-ish 800-page prize-winning biography in which I am currently immersed, Ike: An American Hero. I selected a more or less random couple of chapters, covering DDE's arrival in England in 1942 and his subsequent and surprising assignment to command of Torch, the Allies first offensive action of the war and the biggest and most ungainly offensive of its kind in history to that point. (The North African landing took place on my day of birth—07 November 1942.) In the space of just 43 pages (pp. 268–311) we find these phrases describing Eisenhower:

"infectious grin and great charm" ... "nice face" ... "grin that was to become so famous" ... "got along famously" ... "goodwill was spontaneous and easily recognizable" ... "good impression that Ike had made in six weeks" [newcomer junior general to Supreme Commander, Torch, agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill—in, yes, just six weeks] ... "least rank-conscious of generals" ... "Men were happy to serve under Ike, even British admirals and generals who might easily have raised objections; his sincerity and lack of ceremony made it difficult, even impossible, to refuse him, and enabled him very rapidly to pull a team together." ... "Ike was gregarious, rarely had anything bad to say about anyone, and, on the surface at least, was relaxed and good natured." ... "Whereas Ike's good humor was genuine, unaffected, and affectionate, Monty's [Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery] was cruel and mocking and always carried a sting."

Following successes in North Africa and Italy, Eisenhower, still a rather "fresh face" and less than two years past arriving in London as a Lieutenant Colonel, was selected as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force Europe, tasked to invade the European continent and procure Germany's unconditional surrender. Korda explains the somewhat surprising decision:

"The Allies had generals with, perhaps, a sharper strategic vision than Ike. ... There were also generals who were more experienced at 'fighting a battle' ... But there was nobody who had anything like Ike's record of leading an alliance—always the most difficult feat in warfare. ... What is more, Ike somehow inspired people: civilians and ordinary soldiers of both nations, even cynical political figures and the always troublesome French. Something about his big grin; his long-limbed, loose American way of walking (the Kansas farm boy grown to a man); his easy, familiar way of speaking to everybody from King George VI down to privates in both armies; his lack of pretension; his evident sincerity ... They were willing to be led by him. They were willing to have him command their sons and husbands in battle. They trusted him. They were willing to die for him. ..."

(NB: Precisely these same things could be said about the two military figures I have studied most assiduously, Lord Horatio Nelson and General Ulysses S. Grant.)

(NB: When DDE subsequently ran for President of the United States in 1952, his campaign slogan was the simple "I like Ike.")

So?

So: Why must we constantly pursue "breakthrough thinking," why must we leap "out of the box," when the secrets to success and, conversely, the causes of failure—in the sense of persuading or failing to persuade groups of all sizes to pursue and achieve excellence in any and all endeavors—are almost wholly dependent upon character traits and personal characteristics that are, in fact, more or less eternal and which unequivocally transcend cultures of every flavor?

Benjamin Franklin's Parisian charm offensive of 1776–77 gained France as an American ally and changed the course of history in our Revolutionary War against England.

Nelson Mandela's extraordinary smile disarmed one and all. ("One of the greatest charm offensives in history" was one biographer's description of Mandela's amazing feat of disarming enemies and allies alike and transforming South Africa without civil war.)

Eisenhower's grin ("something about his big grin," "grin that was to become so famous") united fractious Allies and insured the effective conclusion of World War II in the European theater.

We are confronted at the moment with an economic crisis of epic proportion. There is no better time to heed the eternal lessons of Eisenhower (Franklin, Mandela, etc). Make no mistake, the keys to surviving and thriving, as individuals and organizations, will not primarily be the "out of the box" cleverness of our "strategic response," but instead individual and organizational character as expressed by the depth and breadth of relationships throughout our individual or organizational networks. Current case in point, Mr Pandit of Citigroup is as smart as they come and then some, but, unlike Ike, when he said, "Follow me"—nobody moved, except to cut and run.

American Thanksgiving is our quintessential "family holiday." Giftgiving—for once!—is not the norm, except as it is reflected in exchanges of pumpkin pies and 7-generation-old recipes for turkey stuffing. It is a day in which we even put the likes of sibling sniping on hold and simply rejoice in each other's presence. It is a day, one hopes, when we also reflect on those, numbering in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, who go to bed on less than a full stomach.

The economic crisis? Not much fun. And less fun to come. But this, too, will pass, especially if we can assiduously translate the good will around the Thanksgiving Table and the character lessons of Eisenhower and Franklin and Mandela into our minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day affairs.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Service?
Sacrifice?
Equity?
Honor?

The Washington Post reports that Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL), during last week's hearings, asked automaker CEOs if they'd work for a dollar a year. Chrysler's Nardelli said yes, GM's Wagoner said "I don't have a position on that today," and Ford's Alan Mulally, who made $21,700,000 last year, said, "I think I'm okay where I am."

In the immortal words of Dave Barry, "I'm not making this up."

Meanwhile CNN's Kyung Lah reported that the CEO of JAL rides public transit to work, eats in the company cafeteria, and cut his salary below that of his pilots as a personal response to layoffs and forced early retirements that JAL felt necessary to make.

A Financial Times headline on Citicorp reads: "Bank loses over half its value in past three days" "[CEO] Pandit moves to shore up his position as chief."

As disgusting [DIS-GUST-ING] as Mulally's "I'm okay" comment was-is, the Pandit headline in its own fashion affected me even more. Citi's performance is awful—and there's little or no doubt that Pandit is a major part of the problem. And hence his primary response, following an announced 50,000 plus layoff, is to try and save his own skin? (TP's considered response: "You miserable, ego-maniacal S.O.B.")

Have these guys (and they're almost all guys) no sense of shame? No sense of service? No sense of honor? No sense of sacrifice? No sense of equity?

A little online research Cathy and I did shows that none of the Big Three CEOs had any military service. I do not believe that such service is a generic answer to any particular problem. But I do believe that the uniform absence thereof is perhaps indicative of a lack of a life-as-service, servant leader ethos in general among these three? (The "no military service" piece is almost amusing, in a perverse way, in the case of Nardelli, who is a fanatic believer in some twisted notion of the "military model" of doing business—his willy nilly application of his abominable interpretation of military leadership was one of his many screwups at Home Depot. Part of Nardelli's, yes, admirable willingness to work for a buck at Chrysler may be the $200 million he took home as a prize for being fired from Home Depot.)

In summary:

Have they no shame?
Have they no sense of service?
Have they no conception of servant leadership?
Have they no soul?
Have they no honor?
Have they no ethos of sacrifice?
Have they no conception of-perception of equity?
(Did any of them go to Sunday School?)

Does it sound like I'm in a pissy mood, maybe still suffering from jetlag following my Middle East trip? Well, I am in a pissy mood, and part of it may indeed be 66-year-old-body-meets-jetlag. But part of it derives directly from Pandit and Mulally and the association of their flavor attitudes to our unfolding economic catastrophe. I've spent 40 plus years directly or indirectly on, effectively, one topic: profit through people-centered, people-obsessed leadership. Mulally and Pandit and their not insignificant ilk make me wonder if I pissed away my life in pursuit of an improbable, or even impossible, ideal?

Gestures Matter!

Gestures do count. Lee Iacocca worked for a-dollar-a-year when the government gave Chrysler a life-saving loan. Wouldn't it have been great if Ford CEO Alan Mulally had driven a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid the 520 miles from Detroit to D.C.? Hokey as hell—but he just might have gone home with a several-billion-dollar check in his pocket.

Fix Detroit Now!

Southwest founder Herb Kelleher comes out of retirement to take the reins at GM. Lee Scott leaves Wal*Mart soon to run Ford for five years. (If Lee won't do it, we'll bring his predecessor, David Glass, out of retirement.) Mickey Drexler makes the switch from J.Crew to Chrysler. All of them know retail! All of them know the mid- to low-end mass market! All of them know that pennies matter! All three are the salt of the earth!

I Repeat Myself ...

Leading yourself in really weird times:

1. Be conscious in the Zen sense. Think about what you are doing more than usual. Think about how you project.


2. Meet daily, first thing, with your leadership team—to discuss whatever, check assumptions. Perhaps meet again late afternoon. Meetings max 30 minutes.


3. If you are a "big boss," use a private sounding board—check in daily.


4. Concoct scenarios by the bushel, test 'em, play with 'em, short-term, long-term, sane, insane.


5. MBWA. Wander. Sample attitudes. Visible but not frenzied.


6. Work the phones, chat up experts, customers, vendors. Seek enormous diversity of opinion.


7. "Over"communicate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


8. Exercise—encourage your leadership team to double up on their exercise.


9. Underscore "excellence in every transaction."

Thriving on Chaos

In 1987, I wrote a book titled Thriving on Chaos. Miraculously (for sales, at any rate), it was officially published on the day of the stock market crash of '87, at the time the most severe in decades.

Once again, we are apparently confronted with a hefty dose of "chaos"—or, at least, the prospect of a substantial period of sub-standard growth. (NB: Managers under the ripe old age of 50, more or less, have never experienced, in the role of managers, significant and sustained economic disarray; the brutal recession of the early '80s—marked by unemployment in excess of 10 percent, interest rates in excess of 20 percent, and inflation stuck in the mid-teens—was the last of this sort.)

My speakers bureau sent me an urgent request for a description of remarks I might make on the issue of thriving on, or at least surviving amidst, the current chaos—seems as though that's what their clients are suddenly, and understandably, asking prospective speakers to tackle.

I was limited to a couple of hundred words, which I enjoyed writing (in the best sense of the word "enjoy") and thought I'd share them with you. There is hardly profundity here, but I'll pass it on anyway. In fact, there are two short pieces, as follows:

[The next two blog posts are the 'two short pieces' Tom is referring to. -Ed.]

1) Surviving and Even Thriving Amidst the "Perfect Storm"

While many businesses will fail amidst the current economic crisis through no fault of their own, some will survive in spite of the odds—and a few will surprise by turning a messy situation into economic-competitive advantage. The requisite winner's attitude is expressed by former Ritz-Carlton chief Horst Schulze, commenting on his decision to launch his new high-end hotel business, Capella, despite the market madness: "I do not accept the explanation of a recession negatively affecting the [new] business. There are still people traveling. We just have to get them to stay in our hotel." And, indeed, getting an "unfair share" of "what's left" is near the heart of the matter. Schulze's remarks also remind us that instant, mindless cutting of R&D or training or salesforce travel in the face of a downturn is often counterproductive—or, rather, downright stupid. Tough times are in fact golden opportunities to get the drop, and the longterm drop at that, on those who respond to bad news by panicky across-the-board slash and burn tactics and moves that de-motivate and alienate the workforce at exactly the wrong moment.

Tough times indeed require tough and unpleasant decisions—but thriving, not just surviving, is an option for those who mix wisdom and boldness of leadership with transparency and maximized employee involvement and engagement. Without suggesting that there is anything humorous about the pain that bad times cause, one can say that "this is when it gets fun" for truly talented and imaginative leaders at all levels and in businesses of every sort and size!

Ike Got It!

General Dwight David Eisenhower did the impossible. No, not the successful D-Day landing. Or the subsequent march to Germany. His "impossible dream"—come true—was to keep the Allies(?) from killing each other long enough to kill the bad guys!

And General Eisenhower had a secret: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence; [this confidence] is gained, above all, through the development of friendships."

Armchair General (May 2008) traces the origins of this mystical Eisenhower trait: "Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command."

Definition of Leadership

Another video from Skillsoft makes its appearance on our site today. We frequently get asked for Tom's definition of leadership, and, in this video, he addresses the topic for nearly four minutes. The essence can be found in this quote from Robert Altman's lifetime achievement Oscar acceptance speech: "The director allows an actor to become more than they've ever dreamed of being."

Tom Peters on the Definition of Leadership from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

[If you'd like a PDF transcript of Tom's message, you can download it here: Definition of Leadership]

The 500 True Believers,
Dodger the Dog,
And the Beantown Cabbie

The deal is, we've been told, that CEO pay is so high because demand for the 9-sigma talent of these Water Walking Wonders, so very beyond your and my shriveled imaginations, wildly exceeds supply when it comes to the 500 jobs as Fortune 500 CEOs. I contend that there are exactly 500 Guys (almost all guys, hence I can safely use the term) who believe that line of reasoning—namely the 500 CEOs of the F500 companies. (I guess I could also throw in the heads of the biggest search firms, who unearthed many of these so-far-beyond-the-pale dudes, which perhaps puts the total at 505 True Believers.)

The Inspiring Invincibles! Chuck Prince (Citigroup, formerly head of)! Stan O'Neal (Merrill Lynch, formerly head of)! Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide, formerly head of)! Tough cookies, each one. And yet, somehow, on their watches, The Three Geniuses allowed their firms, through grotesque negligence—maybe silliness or Theaters of the Absurd would be better words if the stakes weren't so high—to get into positions in which tens upon tens of BILLIONS of greenbacks had to be written off from their books of account. Dodger, my 5-year-old Aussie, could have done a better job. (He could have bitten anybody who tried to make a $500K loan to someone who had never had a job or paid a bill and signed his name with an "X"; and peed on the pants of any 22-year-old University of Chicago PhD who said, "With my clever algorithm I've designed what's called a 'derivative'—it'll make risk a thing of the past." Yes, had Dodger bitten and peed on schedule, the likes of Citigroup would be ten or twenty billion ahead of their current position.) But, since the demand is so strong for the 500 different-from-mere-vice-presidents- Monumental-Management-Marvels, and the supply is so short, The Three Geniuses, on the basis of "Upside Potential," were able to chalk up about a half BILLION buckaroos on their pay stubs over the last five years, while busily installing the tools necessary for Global Economic Meltdown. Well, I guess that means they're "excellent" at something. Isn't there some line about wool & eyes & pulling? (In most cases, their pay deals, especially the parts about "if you turn out to be an idiot, we'll pay you a king's ransom to clean out your desk," were effectively set before they set foot in the executive suite. Wow, I wanna piece of that action!)

Then, across the sea from our Miracle 'Merican Marvelous 500 uber-Managers (demand waaaay exceeds supply, remember), sits the chief of France's Société Générale, or SocGen. (How about "sock shareholders"?) Somehow or other, yup, "somehow or other," on his continuing watch, a 31-year-old trader with a penchant for math and a knack for writing code managed to evade "controls" and "sneak" $74 BILLION worth of exposure onto SocGen's balance sheet; it has taken an almost $10 BILLION loss to clean up the mess—for now. But in the future, the Big Boss, a/k/a "the genius," promises "tighter controls." (The saving grace here is that the laddie who scored the seventy-four bil is named Kerviel. I keep thinking "Evil Kerviel," after the late lamented Evil Knievel. Unfair! Evil Knievel had a far, far better sense of "risk assessment" than our superduperstar Banker Bigwigs—may I not be damned for in any way besmirching Mr Knievel's name and spirit.)

More on the topic of "genius," the short supply thereof: Big mergers and acquisitions, negotiated by Big People, have a pretty much guaranteed habit of Going South, destroying value, statistically, perhaps 80% of the time—give or take a bit, depends on whose research you read. But in that Rarified Air of the 500 Top Talents, ever-short-in-supply-because- they're-so-so-much-better-than-you-or-me-or-even-their- #2-in-command, it is clear (to the 500, that is) that through their Unique Genius (they can see Farther Ahead than you or me), they can move beyond others' mistakes and consummate marriages that make money. No worries. But then there was the headline, the most recent of the many of its kind, on 29 February as I recall, that reported Sprint's taking a $29.5 BILLION write-down following its Ingenious Acquisition (had to be, made by one of the 500 Horsemen—of the apocalypse?) of Nextel. Thirty BILLION later, we learn from the CEO that there will be "significant change" and that he intends to "improve execution." Dodger-the-dog could have told him that—smart dogs can attain a vocabulary of 200 or so understood words, and that's about 190 more than the "genius" who made the Sprint-Nextel deal. In fact Mr Big's vocabulary was but a single word, as far as I can make out, uttered over and over (and over) again: "Synergies, synergies, synergies, I smell synergies. My synergies in and of themselves are majestically synergistic." I suspect he said that when announcing the deal—c'mon, Tom, you know he said that without reading the transcript. Well, I smell something, but I will spare you because this is a family-friendly Blog. And while on the subject of odor, there's absolutely no need to go back in history two years (but I will, as I'm in that sort of mood at the moment) and remind one and all that, in pursuit of "synergy, synergy, synergistic synergy," the Fabled Bosses of DaimlerChrysler (one, Jürgen Schrempp, was considered Europe's Jack Welch!) managed, after their "merger of equals," to lose market cap at the rate of $10,000,000 per ... DAY ... for nine years.

Speaking of Mr Welch, his boy Bob Nardelli, given his GE birthright and thence Automatic Excellence, decided he belonged in the "Top One" in pay package ranks—his board demurred, demand didn't exceed supply quite that much. So Bob took his couple hundred mil "getoutttahere" "separation pay" packet from Home Depot right before the home improvement market tanked, and ran off to save Chrysler, post-demerger. (Wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn ...) And while on the topic of high-profile, always Excellent GE alums: Airbus was a bunch of "big dream" idiots—delay after delay after delay in getting the A380 launched. (Launched it now is, and a helluva sight to see, as I did in Sydney about 10 days ago.) But with a former GE superduperstar in control, James McNerney, fresh from messing up 3M's innovation machine with an imagination-free six-sigma diet, Airbus rival Boeing's systems would be go. No worries. Genius in charge. Whoops. Boeing's Dreamliner, the 787, has, like a flash, or sinking rock is more like it, gone from almost fit-to-fly, not like the damn French-German machines that are now flying, to Nightmareliner, suffering delay after delay after delay after delay. (With further delays promised.) And then there was the one last week about Boeing losing the hundred bil or so Air Force tanker order—that one might be reversed, not by that old "GE [free market] magic," but by a bunch of irate Dobbsean (as in Lou) Congresspersons determined to put brakes on this "free trade crap."

Well, perhaps I should cry "uncle." Maybe those headhunters have got it right. I suspect the supply of guys capable of the likes of losing $10,000,000 per day, nine years running, while simultaneously giving sold-out lectures on "the DaimlerChrysler Way," is indeed pretty short.

Give me a break. These 500 "perfect fits," "unique beings" are doubtless pretty swell fellas, but they are also as mortal as you and me, and clearly less savvy about the Real World than the taxi driver who took me across Boston yesterday. "Stupid loans," he declared, unbidden, summing up the Trillion Dollar (or so) sub-prime mess in two words. Chuckie (Prince, recall), Angie (Mozilo) ... hear that? (And the cabbie didn't charge me the $100 million plus that Countrywide's Angie is scheduled to nick if and when Bank of America closes the deal to buy his company—the B of A, fresh from its own write-down, is, of course, pursuing "synergies, synergies, synergistic synergies.")

I shall say no more. For example, I shall not mention the billionaire next door, here at the bottom of Beacon Hill in Boston. Come on, Peter! (Lynch, Fidelity.) The gazillionnaire really needed free event tickets from the people whose portfolios he evaluated? (He and Fidelity were just fined for so doing.) I coulda directed him to a legit ticket broker, from SF, who's been taking good care of me for decades.

I am ... still ... a dyed-in-the-wool-capitalist-pig-free-trader. I don't want The Law to muzzle exec pay. But I would like common sense to prevail, or at least make the occasional appearance. The 500 Fortune 500 CEOs are no more flawless, genius, etc., than my dog Dodger, who, trust me, via his own sort of Excellence, can reverse the tide and part the waters by producing a fart that carries on the wind from Tinmouth VT all the way to Wall Street.

Dodger is my inspiration!
It's good to be back on the farm!
(Whoops, off to Johannesburg in a few hours!)

Good Boss, Bad Boss

Someone at the New York Times noticed that our friend and constant commenter Trevor Gay has something to say about good bosses and bad bosses. The article is here and Trevor's list of the good and the bad (what, no ugly?) is over here. Congrats, Trevor, from all of us at tompeters.com.

"DNK"!

Add to your vocabulary: "DNK."
And thank the American intelligence services.

"DNK" is a new addition to the intelligence family, apparently following the Iraq WMD "intelligence" fiasco.

DNK?
Do Not Know.

In the past, the intelligence services were loath to admit that they didn't know something; their remit is to know things, not to not know things.

But now, if you DNK and say you DK, well, you end up in DDD (deep doo-doo).
(FYI, "all this" and more led to the recent re-assessment of Iran's nuclear program—but the DNK bit was apparently a big part of the new approach.)

My post, however, is not about national intelligence collection. Instead it is about you and me and our frequent "intelligence failures." And a plea that we enter "DNK" into our language. Bosses and "brilliant" staffers are very prone to falling into this trap. The boss thinks "I'm supposed to know that"—and is loath to admit that he doesn't. He seldom lies outright, but he is very inclined to obfuscate his ignorance. So, too, those "brilliant" staffers who are paid large sums to be brilliant, not to not know.

Tip of the day: When you "don't know," add this to your vocabulary: "I don't know." Maybe as enlightened bosses we can add, "What are our DNKs here?" We can, and should, make it a positive, worthy of praise, to say "DNK" when we DNK.

Apologies!

I'm almost apologetic for posting—I'd love to leave Mike Neiss' "Embrace the Mess?" at the top for a long run. Still, here are a few tidbits ...

Embrace the Mess?

The New York Times Sunday editorial [11.25.07] on what's wrong with the health care system in the U.S. and how to fix it was thought provoking. The system is a mess—a rather complex mess at that. Contrary to what we'd believe from the simple sound-bite solutions the politicians are offering us, it is a problem that has to be addressed at many different levels of a mind-boggling maze. There seems to be a real reluctance to acknowledge this complexity.

It made me think of how many of my clients want to attack their business problems as if they were playing checkers, when in reality, their business is more like a three-dimensional chess game. Every move at the executive level has implications throughout the organization and, eventually, the marketplace. The impact of these moves can be subtle and often take a significant period of time before they surface. By then, the cause and effect relationship is often not recognized.

Many of the executives I deal with are linear thinkers.

As I said, many of the executives I deal with are linear thinkers. They often look at an emerging issue as an engineering problem controlled by predictable laws of physics, rather than a messy puzzle ruled by random variables in the behavior of employees, board members, investors, competitors, and customers. They think, "If margins are poor, cut costs." Rarely are all the possible impacts on future revenue generation or current productivity considered.

I have come to the opinion that there are at least two forces leading them down the linear path. First, many of them have come up through the ranks of finance and love the predictable beauty of mathematics. Second, I think they are uncomfortable with ambiguity. The future can't be predicted in today's business climate with any degree of certainty. The ramifications of an executive's judgment call are significant. It is scary to get it wrong. The simple fact of the matter is that the solution often lies around a corner, not straight down a linear road.

Tom has been talking about, or, should I say, screaming about, living in a world of disruptions. A recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that 92% of senior executives surveyed believe that the challenges they face are far more complex than those they faced five years ago. Most believe that innovation will be the answer, although most also acknowledge their organizations are not very good at it.

So what has to happen? I have some ideas, but I want to hear yours. How do we encourage leadership to be more holistic and multi-dimensional in their thinking? How do we excel in a complex world?

The Basics IIA:
All You Need Is Love,
Not Tom Peters or Gary Hamel

I ran on so long in that last post that I obscured the basic point. Clever "human resources" programs that take into account the "new realities" concerning Gen X or Chinese competition or Web 2.0 are not the basis for creating "competitive advantage through an excellent workforce." The "great secret" to "people excellence" is "treat people with manifest respect and appreciation and trust, and give them a chance to express the best in themselves and dramatically broaden their horizons"—and "the rest" will take care of itself for Gen A or Gen B or Gen X or Gen Boomer.

Classics

Few people read more business books than our friend Todd Sattersten over at 800-CEO-READ. So when he takes the time to pick THE five that every executive should read, well, we listen. And not just because we wholeheartedly agree with including the third book on his list (an, ahem, excellent choice).

Headline of the Month

"High Intelligence Can Hurt A Person's Ability To Lead"—Wall Street Journal (0619.07)

The underlying discussion comes from the wonderful (I'm a regular reader) Blog of U.S. judge Richard Posner and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker. Among other things, Posner writes, the super-smart don't know "when to defer to the superior knowledge of more experienced but less mentally agile subordinates." I'm well disposed to this as I have observed it time and again—especially in my McKinsey days.

Here are a couple of related quotes from my Master slide deck:

"Intelligent people can always come up with intelligent reasons to do nothing."—Scott Simon

"Andrew Higgins, who built landing craft in WWII, refused to hire graduates of engineering schools. He believed that they only teach you what you can't do in engineering school. He started off with 20 employees, and by the middle of the war had 30,000 working for him. He turned out 20,000 landing craft. D.D. Eisenhower told me, 'Andrew Higgins won the war for us. He did it without engineers.'"—Historian Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company

Enough, for God's Sake, of the Hurd Mentality

Anniversary #25 of In Search of Excellence. Our favorite company on our list of 43? In a cakewalk, Hewlett-Packard, our hometown pals. Since 1982, when HP was an instrument company with about $1 billion in revenue (real $$ in '82, IBM was about $10 billion), the firm has gone through numerous transformations, including hiring Stanford MBAs to add strategy and marketing to its engineering prowess, and then, courtesy David Packard's astounding foresight, becoming a computer company by, initially, stealing some of IBM's best research talent.

More followed, and the New York Times yesterday proclaimed that HP had hit the $100 billion mark, and the final nudge had been great design! ("Design Helps H.P. Profit More on PCs.") The genius who replaced "ditzy" Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, brought home the bacon, and on the design side it had happened when he poached some dude from Palm. A few weeks before, the Wall Street Journal had been equally breathless in praise of Hurd as the guy who scaled (scale, that is size) computerworld's Mt Everest.

I have no doubt Hurd is a fine operating exec. Moreover he did reestablish much of the decentralization that had slipped under Ms Fiorina. (She had good reason to centralize, but I am a congenital decentralizer who can never excuse moves, no matter how apparently legit, toward central control.)

But, as I said in my title to this Post, "Enough, for God's Sake."

Consider two questions:

Q: Why is HP "enormous"?
A: Carly's much contested Compaq acquisition. I supported it then, as I couldn't see HP prospering as essentially Xerox Lite, and I support it now. Carly poured heart and soul and guts and reputation into pushing the merger, including overcoming the shameful tactics of Hewlett Jr and Packard Jr. If HP is the "biggest guy on the block" in 2007, benefiting from PC sales, the "first 98%" of the credit goes to Fiorina, not Hurd. PERIOD.

Q: Why is HP a nouveau design star?
A: Good God, it ain't the Palm guy, who may be very good, and it sure as hell ain't dreary Mr Hurd. Carly brought, again with deafening criticism by the engineers, style to a previously 100% style-free HP. PERIOD.

I am not taking away from Mr Hurd's operating performance, which probably exceeds Fiorina's. But if we are primarily celebrating HP's megabulk, as the heavy in computerworld, and its fashion consciousness as engine of soaring PC margins and profits, then we are celebrating Carly Fiorina. As I said ... PERIOD.

Enough!

Atatürk

Turkey had another legislative brouhaha yesterday in its presidential election process. I picked up an extraordinary book on Atatürk, who is as much alive today as in the 20s. Good reading, and it kept me up most of the night, to be honest—along with a couple of Turkish political journals! Amazing human being.

"It's the team, folks." That's the conventional wisdom, and usually true. Probably in Turkey, too, way back when. But make no mistake, one determined person can move a nation—dramatically and in a short period of time. There's no "I" in "team," but there's an "A," as in Atatürk, in both "dramatic" and "change."

(I'll offer you a couple of quotes when I get a free minute or two.)

Credit Where Credit Is Due

ERII has just arrived to celebrate Jamestown's 400th. As a guy born south of the Mason-Dixon line, with a Virginia born (and proud) Mom, I could never understand what all the fuss was over Plymouth, the iconic rock, and the Pilgos. Clearly, J'town got there first! And now it's getting some belated recognition. Good on 'em.

NB: You know me on the topic of effective leadership—I have a longstanding split with Jim Collins over the attributes of the best leaders:

JC: "Quiet, workmanlike, stoic leaders bring about the big transformations."

Here's Time (0507.07) on Captain John Smith & Jamestown: "He was a bully, a braggart, and a rebel with a big chip on his shoulder. They would never have made it without him."

How Much Is Too Much?

Billy Bragg was coming through my car speakers singing, "A virtue never tested is no virtue at all." That pretty much summed up the two coaching sessions I had just completed. Both of the leaders I have been coaching have been identified as high potential candidates for the executive team. They are highly principled men with a track record of superior results, including building a wonderful high-performance, high-satisfaction team. But, both are now receiving feedback that they have micromanaged, and that they've become very controlling with their team. The only significant change they could identify was the ever-increasing workloads and the reduction of their workforce in the name of efficiency and cost control. At the same time, there has been pressure on them for ever better performance from their team. In their minds, they have not enough people and no room for error. Their virtue as leaders had been tested, and they both felt they had failed the test.

I don't consider myself to be soft on performance demands. It is a highly competitive world, which does demand that performance, and the accompanying workloads, be increased. But I wonder how organizations are determining when enough is enough? In my more cynical moments, I have come to believe they push it until it breaks. In my days of manufacturing management, we could study a machine and produce a pretty reasonable and predictable capacity factor. My question for this group of bloggers is simple. How does your organization determine a human being's "capacity"? Do you also see the effectiveness of leaders changing under high workload pressures? I would love to hear from any of you that have responsibility for determining optimal employment numbers. How do you do it? Are we at a place where too much on the plate is leading to leadership's virtues being tested?

The Non-indifferent War of Words

From a Comment to the Indifference debate:

LaVonn Schlegel: "Indifference is a horrible, insidious disease that can destroy."

Wow!

More on Indifference from Tom

Darci, from her Comment: "... and pursue my passion. It was a leap of faith and there was no safety net to catch me if I failed."

Darci, here's the way I look at it. We all "fail" in the end. "Fail" as in finish, finito, die. (I am not talking religion here—we may indeed go to a better world, or a worse one, but we will not be amidst this one.) So if, to quote an old joke, "We might as well go for it, boys, none of us is going to get out alive": Well, then, to me, the only ... TRUE FAILURE ... is a failure to ... Engage Fully, 100% of the time.

(My casual reading of Aristotle, and I'm no student of philosophy, is that, for instance, "happiness" is complete engagement, not some bemused state; "leisure" is an opportunity to grow in new ways, not a chance to veg out; etc.)

And another thing: Indifference makes you sloppy, sloppy in general. You can call it "studied indifference," or "purposeful indifference," or whatever you want, but if your goal is stupefaction on the job, it'll spread like a virus—even to home life.

And another thing: Jerks.* Jerks, as we see it, are all around us! Always have been, always will be. Get over it! I think it was Tip O'Neill who said, "Politics is the art of the possible." (Hint: Politics = Getting things done. Period!!!) When I talked to my wonderful new friends at Johns Hopkins last week, I applauded their idealism, and I told them that I prayed they'd never lose it. On the other hand, to bring about social change, I reminded them, meant politics in the morning, politics at lunchtime, and dreaming about politics at night. Getting things done means engaging in the fray, and every serious change is despised by the regnant majority—both sides often see the other as jerks. (Of course, there are simply awful human beings at work—so deal with it positively/make it or them your ally in change ... or quit. One mark of a "jerk" is self-interest taken to an extreme. Whoops, that's true of everyone who succeeds; I don't mean they are unable to build a team, but think of the Presidential race: To enter it is all about self interest in equal measure with a desire to change the world.) (*Re "jerks," consider, perhaps, the words of Philo of Alexandria, quoted in this space before: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." TP: "Everyone, as in everyone, deserves an equal measure of respect." Credo, anon. organization change consultant: "Don't belittle.")

NB: A.C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life

ARISTOTLE ON HAPPINESS: Eudaimonia ... well-doing, living flourishingly. Megalopsychos ... "great-souled," "magnanimous." More: respect and concern for others; duty to improve oneself; using one's gifts to the fullest extent possible; fully aware; making one's own choices.

ARISTOTLE ON LEISURE: pursue excellence; reflect; deepen understanding; opportunity to work for higher ends. ["Rest" vs. "leisure."]

Engage.
Fully.
Energize others.
Respect others.
(Decency rules.)

Live in the moment.
This moment.
(There is no other.)
Excellence.
Always.

Exception Noted

As you'll see, Tom takes exception to the practice of indifference. We decided to pull his comment to Darci's earlier post titled "Passion or Indifference ... You Choose" and put it on the front page. The following is Tom's comment:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: The Revolutionists' Handbook

I never did buy Bob Sutton's "be realistic" act. Now I see exactly why.

Of course "Life's a bitch and then you die." But last week I reported on two experiences that make a mockery of Sutton's "Great God of Endured Indifference" routine. AGAINST ALLLLL ODDDDs, and after 72 years (1848-1920) of brutal & demeaning struggle, women won the right to vote. And at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health I bathed in the stories of alum who ... AGAINST ALL ODDS ... AND MOCKING "REASONABLE" EXPECTATIONS ... AND BELITTLED BY PYGMYS ... had saved millions of theretofore un-cared-about lives. Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for his microlending miracles—powered by women in a strict Muslim (Bangladesh) society.

Get the hell out of an "impossible" situation? Sometimes it's the only answer. (Been there, done that—McKinsey, circa 1981.) "Practice indifference"? Bullshit. Bullshit. And ... BULLSHIT. Speaking as an about-to-be-65-year-old: LIFE IS TOO BLOODY SHORT TO SPEND ONE DAMN MOMENT OF INDIFFERENCE!!!! (And you'd better believe I've worked for my full share of certified nincompoops.)

Passion or Indifference ... You Choose

Below is an excerpt from Bob Sutton's article "Nasty People" on the CIO Insight website. I'd suggest you read the whole column and also watch the video of Sutton's P.O.V.:

A woman from England, for example, lamented, "I endeavor to lead by positive example, raise issues to the powers that be and provide constructive help to the people who work under me on how to deal with the jerks in our midst. The problem in my organization, however, is that jerkdom is so institutionalized and rewarded I can't see any way out." My answer was that if senior management is unwilling to change, and some kind of internal political action is impossible, her options were to keep treating the symptoms in herself and others—or perhaps best of all, to look for another job.

As I think about it now, I would also add that, although thousands of books offer breathless prose about the virtues of having deep commitment to, and passion about, your workplace, there are times when self-preservation requires the opposite response. There are times when the answer is indifference, when the wisest course is to go through the motions, learn not to care, and just get through the day until something changes on your job, or something better comes along. Yes, it is better if you have the power to change a bad situation, or leave it. But we all face bad situations we must endure; none of us have complete power. Indeed, I am starting to believe that, as a management professor, part of my job is to teach people when indifference is more useful than passion.

My colleague Chris Nel recently posted a blog "Purpose beyond Profit," which addresses the idea that people in large corporations too often aren't inspired and have no sense of purpose.

Unfortunately, to compound this problem, there are also complete jerks for managers who suck the absolute life out of their workforce to the point where they've created a bunch of worker drones just trying to survive their day. Forget sense of purpose ... what about sense of self?

I'm amazed at the number of incredibly well-intentioned people I talk to (some friends, some strangers) who "like what they do" but are disheartened by the lack of inspiration they feel at work. There are others who have simply given up. It's sad, really. A close friend of mine was completely frustrated in her job and all the changes that had recently occurred there. When she went to her boss to discuss her frustration, her boss' response was simply, "If you can't handle your job, I'll find someone who can." Needless to say, after several pounds of weight gain, fights with her husband, and days spent at home lying on her couch crying, she requested to move into a different role. Fortunately, she was given that opportunity, and now she's just biting the bit until her husband's business grows to the point where she can "retire."

My opinion has always been that we promote people into "leadership" positions who aren't prepared to take on the role of directing the lives and livelihood of others. Promoting the best engineer, the best salesperson, or the best programmer doesn't make for the best manager/leader. Newly appointed leaders are still so stuck in the ways of the individual contributer, that they don't have the time or wherewithal to lead. When are we going to stop using selection processes that were designed during the industrial era? Why does one have to excel in his/her job before he can become a leader? It's not the same job!

A Different Sort of Leadership. A Different Sort of Company.

In recent Posts I have referred very positively to Servant Leadership (Servant Leadership—Robert Greenleaf) and the idea of "decency" as a deep cultural trait (The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies—Steve Harrison, Adecco).

Key words (very powerful per se, per me):

Servant.
Decency.

Now, in Utrecht, I have bumped into another pea from the pod: "hostmanship." I shared the stage with Swedish management guru Jan Gunnarsson. And he gave me his two most recent books (co-written with Olle Blohm):

Hostmanship: The Art of Making People Feel Welcome.
The Welcoming Leader: The Art of Creating Hostmanship.

Once again, I am enamored, even mesmerized, by this "simple" idea. Here are the authors speaking from the dust jacket of The Welcoming Leader: "Welcoming leadership is about inspiring people to want to achieve common goals. For a welcoming leader, the emphasis is on the person. ... It requires an honesty and authenticity from you as a leader that has been lacking in many of our bosses in the past. In a world where everything looks similar—products and places, companies and countries—a guest or employee makes his decision to participate and commit based on how welcome he feels. To provide hostmanship ... we have to rejoice in serving others and provide leadership that reflects this."

Add to the Key Words list:

Host.
Hostmanship.
Welcoming leader.

Jan performed a wonderful little riff on stage about the person in charge walking into a meeting:

The "boss" brings a PowerPoint presentation.
The "leader" brings a polished Vision Statement.
The "host" brings a box of chocolates. (Hey, we were in Holland.)

If the point is to engage and seek the voluntary commitment of others in pursuit of a worthy goal, this strikes me as spot on.

We have, then, added to our for-profit, experience-obsessed enterprise:

Leader as Servant.
Decency as the bedrock of effective corporate culture.
Host, hostmanship, and Welcoming leader as metaphor for those who would seek the wholehearted engagement of others.

I like all that a lot. I suppose I naturally would, as the inventor, with Bob Waterman, of: "Hard is soft. Soft is hard."

The numbers turn out to be the "soft" stuff, abstract and subject to fudging. The "tangible," "hard stuff" of infinite importance for performance is the depth and breadth of our relationships with others within or outside the firm.

I rest my case.

Doomed Projects

How many of us are working on projects that we know are headed for trouble? According to a recent survey (see complete results at www.silencefails.com), 90% say they know when a project will fail and 78% say that they are working on projects that are doomed. We spend billions of dollars on projects, most of us are working on projects, so why are they doomed? A lot of projects aren't set up correctly, aren't addressing the right business issues, and ignore the human factors involved. The sad part is that often the people working on these projects know that they will fail, and yet, they are afraid to voice their opinion to the people in charge. That speaks volumes about the culture of an organization. Open cultures where there are high levels of trust encourage the expression of people's ideas and thoughts, even contrary ones. The senior leaders must be visible and approachable so that they can be confronted with the truth. I wish I could say that I mistrust the research, but I have been in enough companies to know that its conclusions are true.

Are you working on a doomed project? Can you tell your boss? What are your thoughts on how to save a doomed project?

Notes from the Road: Charles Handy & I

Courtesy our mutual friend, Warren Bennis, I've known Charles Handy for years. But yesterday in Manchester, England, I had the privilege (& delight) of co-presenting with him, for the first time, at an all-day seminar. Put simply, he is one of the most decent & thoughtful & profound people-professionals I have ever known. We agree on many-most-almost all-virtually everything when it comes to the "important stuff." (Unlike me & Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, Michael Porter.) But our presentation styles are polar opposites—he's quiet and penetrating. I'm noisy.

One area where Charles & Warren have got me dead to rights is the critical axiom that in order to lead effectively one must know oneself—not navel gazing, but the idea that your core values must not be left unexamined and that you simply must understand how you are understood by others. This is fully half of Charles's presentation. (And will become a larger part of mine.)

(I flatter myself, or resort to wishful thinking, when I say that Bennis & Handy & I might be called "three peas from the same pod.") (The only hole in their humanistic thinking, to my mind, is their failure to vocally focus on the women's issues—both are true believers as I am—but neither choose to make their beliefs on this subject a centerpiece of their writing or presenting.)

At any rate it was a lovely day, and feedback suggests that it worked for our "customers." It sure as hell worked for me.

Push or Pull

I have been thinking about the various blogs on leadership lately, and it strikes me that there is a difference of opinion amongst our community on whether employee performance is best improved by pushing or pulling. I believe the best leaders incorporate both into their style. Two sources of data influenced my recent thinking: an oldie but goodie, Daniel Yankelovich and John Immerwahr's 1983 research report, "Putting the Work Ethic to Work," and SuperBowl XLI! Yankelovich and Immerwahr discovered that there was approximately 70% discretionary effort available in most employees. The discretionary effort being the difference between what they have to do to keep their jobs and what they could do if they brought forth all their talent and effort. Then, I was thinking about the difference between the Colts and my team, the Detroit Lions. The Lions have been in the enviable position of having first shot in the draft since I can remember. But largely, the talent they have recruited has been less than stellar. The results stand as a testament to that. [The Lions have never played a Super Bowl.—CM]

It seems to me then, that a leader or manager's first job is to pull out that discretionary effort. This starts with clearly identifying the ambition of the organization and helping each and every employee see their part in realizing that ambition. I still believe that one thing we want from our talent is the sense that they make a difference. In my years as a first-line supervisor, I was always amazed at my weakest performers on the job who did amazing volunteer work after hours. Clearly they had the work ethic; we just didn't define an ambition for them worthy of their best efforts.

Then, there's the Lions. In recent years we have witnessed round one draft picks missing practices, reporting overweight, battling off-field demons, engaging in various criminal behaviors, etc. It seems a little push is in order here. Creating a culture of engagement does not mean letting everyone do their own thing. There is a need for discipline and standards, and for strong management efforts to insure everybody lives up to them. For many of us, our best performance has benefited by a friendly push now and then. Tony Dungy doesn't yell at his players, but he does instill a performance culture. Play your best, or you won't play at all.

So, I would argue for balance. Our talent has to be engaged in a cause, and we must manage performance closely to move in the quickest and straightest line towards our ultimate ambition.

What do you think? Push, pull, or both? Examples? Advice for the Lions?

Are You a Master of Paradox?

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Tom talks about the paradox of leadership. (And he talks about sand flies, too.) 6 minutes, 58 seconds.

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The Question Is ... HOW Do You Break The Habit?

Everything we are discussing here is true!! I admit it, I know it.

I am on board with "the new world of work," with vision, with engaging talent, with the need to obliterate past ways of working, with a customer experience beyond compare. I think everyone contributing to this blog site is, too. So ... why isn't it a done deal yet??? Not the believing it to be true—but the DOING it??

Here are some reflections from my perspective (ex-corporate, team worker, mum, wife, woman in the workplace, forty-something ...)

What we are trying to do in our world of work is to change human habit. How hard is that?? (An ideal thing to reflect on at the end of January, the month of resolutions, et al. Have you kept yours? If so, why, how? If not, why not?)

As I reflect on this, and I apply it to the work aspects of my life, all becomes clear. The way we work, the way business is run, all is based in habits from a bygone (Industrial/Command and Control) era. Globalisation, Technology, etc., removed the need for all those operating systems. Yet as humans in the workplace, we haven't managed to break our long-learned habits yet. And the pace of business means we are always more likely to respond as we always have, rather than in a new and (to us) unfamiliar way.

Old habits die hard: I once moved my waste bin from one place in my office to another, yet it took me a full month to stop habitually walking to the old position with my rubbish ... and how simple is that? Our workplaces are far more complex. We can't often allow ourselves 30 days of getting it wrong in action—though the brain has the desire—before our action finally matches the intent!

So in addition to "getting" the new world of work with its terminology, technology, and new fundamental operating system, we must "get" the core drivers of human behaviour—our own first, and then, those of everyone around us.

Do the leaders in your organisation "get" human behaviour?

Command & Control

"It is Command & Control, Jim—but not as we know it!"

Earlier this month I had a bit of a rant about "Servant Leadership" (follow this link if you're interested). The gist of it was: Military Officers and Business Leaders have the same role ... to ensure that all members of the value-creating community are the best they can be. That's an enabling service worth paying for. Today, as a leader, you serve those who choose to bring their talent to you/your organisation. They decide if you are doing a good job or not. They decide if you are worth your management package. They choose to stay or go. They determine if you/the company will succeed or not. Control ... forget it!

Some of my clients/colleagues over here think I've gone soft. Quite the contrary, actually. I think servant leadership is much harder than command & control/micromanagement/authoritarianism. Why bother taking the harder route? Here's the disquieting logic—if you think I'm wrong, please tell me:

Traditional Command & Control logic is based on the world as it used to be, rational, predictable, and stable. A world where well-defined processes produced predictably good results, and refining processes produced better results. It was a world where there was little scope for discretionary human value added to the execution of process. As a consequence, engaging people was unnecessary in a management culture conceived in the blast furnaces and assembly lines of the 19th Century. Unfortunately, relative to the social and technological changes in the last century, little has changed in management culture.

Future winners are turning the old logic on its head by making the value creators the heroes. (Think sports teams!) The future losers are those companies where doing well is about getting out of a customer value creation role and into management (Think Fortune/FTSE500). How many talented value creators will stay in a company where management fat cats out-earn people like themselves by ratios of 4/5/6/7:1? No—they'll leave and go somewhere more rewarding to work their magic and make their money.

I'd propose that our role as managers is to ensure that each member of our value creating (read org successes ensuring) community is contributing to the maximum of their potential. If we are doing anything other than that, we should STOP IT NOW or fire ourselves for dereliction of duty. We are no longer process policemen but talent coaches. It's 100% a trust thing. We're in BIG trouble.

As the personal implications of this scare me half to death, I'd love to be convinced by you that I'm wrong on this. Please try (hard)!

Leadership/Errata #2 (Sorta)

As to my "nothing new under the sun" in the "leadership thing," I want to add (then, mostly, delete) one thing. Thanks to the new technologies, in particular, tomorrow's leaders and "followers"* must be comfortable dealing with the whole, wide, weird, opinionated, fickle world at the speed of light. (*Actually, there will be damn few workforce survivors with a "follower's mentality"—hence my decade-long Brand You obsession.) It's about not "greater international awareness," or some such—though that is part of it. It's instead "the Way of the Web," Wikinomics, Crowdsourcing, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, and the like—that is, the whole damn planet is in play concerning most anything; and you are trying to more or less wring value-profit somehow or other and God alone knows either the "somehow" or the "other."

On the other hand, there is an other hand. That is, oddly, a bizarre technology-driven revolution calls for far, far better "people skills," cultural awareness, and a certain looseness that allows you to go with-adapt to-get off on the weird flow. That is, the Age of the Web is for leaders the Age of EQ.* (*Emotional intelligence.) Quite simply, the old command and control styles and idea of dispassionate, order-barking "architect" or "conductor" of an orderly, hierarchical enterprise is dead, kaput—outta here.

Addenda on this topic/Leadership's eternal verities: Want to read perhaps the Best Management Book Ever? Try the Federalist Papers—recall my wife gave me an exquisite first edition for Christmas. The fellas—Hamilton, Madison, et a few alia —are trying to define a wholly new organizational approach based on a brand new conception of citizenry which will be slightly manageable and perpetually innovative and conducive to the pursuit of happiness. They are primarily wrestling with the eternal "centralization [Hamilton] versus decentralization [Jefferson]" conundrum—and, equally important, the inherently unsolvable tension between the two. (Extreme centralization = King or Dictator—and a dim view of citizens' self-management skills. Extreme decentralization = Anarchy—Brand You run amok.) This "battle"—centralization v. decentralization—is the leader's primary strategic task—and it will be ever thus.

Errata

I said that there was no need for a "modern" "theory of leadership." Well, I do believe that. But I did miss a big point. "Old" "command & control leadership" was not the best way to get things done—even in the "old" days. But now it's more: "Command & control leadership," circa 1980, circa (alas) 2007, simply will not work in an age of widespread, global collaboration (wikinomics, crowdsourcing, etc.). So the "people-centric," "engagement-centric," "personal growth-centric," "service-servant based" "models" of leadership are ... not optional!

Mother of All "Externalities"!

In this Blog we've talked about the incredibly high pay packets & bonus packets that have become the norm at Giant Co.—even in cases of outrageously bad performance. And though many of us have expressed "distress" (me among "us"), we have voted in the long run to more-or-less let the market do its generally useful thing. "Markets ... first, last, eternal"—or some such.

Well, I am a hardcore "markets guy," but I was also taught on Day 1 of Econ 1 that there are occasionally "externalities," which subvert the market-determined process to the point that, among other things, regulatory redress becomes necessary. Well, the "exec pay thing" may be "one of those cases"—indeed, the "mother of all cases."

The issue is backlash, perception—and a sometimes forgotten-at-one's peril principle of economic development & power. The Chairman of the New York Fed suggested in a recent speech that the real-perceived "wage gap" may be "the most important economic challenge of our time." ("Wages gap 'undermines support for free trade,'"—headline, Financial Times, 12 January, p. 3.)

The issue at hand is not primarily the "rich-poor" gap. It is lengthy (very!) stagnation of middle class-working class pay packets. The emergence of a powerful middle class, merchant class in England triggered and buttressed and sustained the Industrial Revolution and indeed the Empire itself—among other things. And the same is true today! The middle class, working class, shopkeeping class matters—and a middle class, working class, shopkeeping class revolt is underpinning Hugo Chavez—and is probably upon us in the U.S. (thanks, among other things, to the insipid Boards at the likes of Pfizer and Home Depot).

In short, "markets-for-talent" may be "working" in the executive suite and at the trading desks of Wall Street and in the City—per that bedrock supply-and-demand Econ 1 model. But if the net result is trade barriers, a screeching brake on globalization, global recession, a perpetually pissed-off middle class—and dry kindling for extremist "movements"—well, that should give us cause for reflection. Right?

("Cause for reflection?" C'mon ... we are waaaaay past "pause for reflection" ... in my view. How about ... the shit is hitting the fan.)

(This Post comes as I leave Athens. Athens, home to the first, by most measures, working democracy. Democracy does not demand economic equality—but it does demand, front and center, a widespread perception of fairness!) (A few more pics at Flickr—above is the inspiring sight around here that reveals itself at the end of any given street or alleyway.) (By the time you read this I'll be, higher forces and the airlines willing, in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.)

Just Say "No" to Copernicus!

Many—including some of you, me, and the late Peter Drucker—have said that management needs its new Copernicus. In a recent dust-jacket blurb, I even had the gall to suggest that the new Tapscott-Williams book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, might be a rough draft of a new theory-of-everything—when it comes to organizational behavior. (I also said—and meant—something similar, in 1987, about Stan Davis' Future Perfect.)

On the other hand ...

When it comes to leadership in "this modern age" ... I think the Old Greeks (I'm safe & sound in Athens—fresh from an inspiring visit to the Acropolis) will do just fine. I don't wish to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but when it comes to Leadership, there is nothing new under the sun—though there are surely timely manifestations.

Frankly, I got thinking about this courtesy a Comment on my "servant leadership" Post—which said we need new models of leadership. Also, I am bombarded with requests to speak on "21st Century leadership"—I agree, but then I turn the tables upon arrival.

I had a truly great year on the topic of leadership! In particular, as I've told you before ad nauseam, there was my glorious summer spent with U.S. Grant. There is, to leap ahead, literally nothing I learned (or had re-enforced), from Grant that does not apply, semi-colon for semi-colon, to "Leadership2007."

This post could run hundreds of pages—but I'll restrict myself to just a couple more paragraphs. At root, leading human enterprise is, in the immortal words of David Byrne ... same as it ever was. I.e.: "It's the people, stupid." In the less immortal words of yours truly: "Leaders 'do' people." Thence the stuff we're talking about in these current Posts—servant leadership, leadership as providing customer service and "scintillating experiences" to those for whom you are responsible, "only connect," "emotion matters" (as in, What else is there?). One (me!) suspects these very issues were as important among our aboriginal ancestors thousands of years ago as today. As to the likes of the "new technologies"—the human issues surrounding change (Who moved your cheese?) are also invariant.

(Even—especially?—the "unprecedented" "change" /"speed of change" argument is suspect. In General Grant's day the arrival of the telegraph was as radical, I think you could argue, as the arrival of the Web. "Unprecedented change"? My Mom, who died in 2005 experienced, among other things: the arrival of radio, long-distance phones, TV, computers, the Web, cars, flight (Wright brothers to 747s to Neil Armstrong), WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the Korean "police action," Vietnam, Gulf Wars I & II, the scourge of HIV, etc, etc. By her standards, I've (we've) experienced a cakewalk!

I've got a new slide I use early in my current presentations: "The older I get, the less boring the 'basics' get." We indeed need new & radical models of organizations/organizational effectiveness. Hey, that's what I do for a living. But I also—and mostly—try to make "appropriately fresh" the idea that if you give people unstinting respect and an opportunity to learn and grow and be of service and be proud of what they do and who they do it with ... well "good stuff will happen."

Okay?
Or not?

More on Servant Leadership

[Note: This was in the comments as a reply to Tom's blog entry of 11 January, and Tom asked Chris to make it into a front page post.—CM]

Continuing with the military/civilian leadership as service thought ...

"Serve to Lead" is the first lecture at Sandhurst [Royal Military Academy]. It comes as something of a shock to most officer cadets who are expecting to be put into a position of authority. They will be, but it's not quite the deal most expect. The right to lead in a military or civilian environment has to be earned. Officers and Business leaders have the same role. To ensure each member of the value creating community are the best they can be. That's a service.

Soldiers make a covenant with the country they serve. In exchange for their preparedness to sacrifice their lives to safeguard the nation's best interests, soldiers (and their families) are honoured and cared for. Primarily by their Officers and secondly by the nation in providing materially for them.

Two thoughts:
1. I believe that whilst the sacrifice employees make is not potentially as high as that of soldiers, they are giving a huge chunk of their lives to a business and giving up many other avenues of opportunity. Therefore they deserve no less leadership than our Military Officers provide for our soldiers.

More at http://www.army.mod.uk/

2. There is a huge amount of disquiet in the UK amongst soldiers and their families about standards of service accommodation at the moment. Service accommodation has always been at best "average." The reason it's an issue now is that our soldiers are being regularly killed and the duty of care feels like it is being neglected. Result—anger.

Only egotists see leadership as a hierarchical/command thing and they neglect their duty of care at their (organisation's) peril. ("Fragging" of civilian business managers is thankfully rare.)

Providing hope, direction, resources, training, a role model, and encouragement is, I believe, what all leadership, military and civilian, is about.

Emotive Leadership: Are You of Service to Your Teammates?

(1) Emotion. Leadership is about emotion. Period. I'm presuming it's okay to have a "great book pick" in 2007 be a book from 2002 (hey, I just read it—on my Boston-Athens flight). Hence, I very heartily recommend Daniel Goleman's (et al.) The New Leaders. It starts this way ...

"Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions."—Daniel Goleman, The New Leaders

(2) Connection. Only connect ...

Only connect!
That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted.
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in the fragments no longer.
Only connect ...

—E.M. Forster, Howards End

Life!
Lived well!
(And effectively!)

Only connect!

(3) I started my speech today (to salesfolk from Roche UK) with a slide that simply read "Flower Power." I reflected on the power of small (heartfelt—key!) touches, from spousal relationships to sales of jet aircraft engines ... and pharmaceuticals. I appreciatively referred to the great statesman Henry Clay:

"Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart."—Henry Clay

I appended another slide, created for today (and stealing from all the above):

Axiom #65*: (1) It's always about relationships. (2) Sweat the small stuff—and the big stuff will take care of itself.

(I mean it.)

(*"Axiom65" refers to the fact that I am 65 this year ... and this is, as I put it, "all that I've learned for sure" in 6.42 decades. NB: Maybe Bob Nardelli should have been a student of Henry Clay!? Or Robert Greenleaf—see immediately below.)

(4) After a long dinner conversation with my colleague Chris Nel, I googled Robert Greenleaf. He is the author of the marvelous book Servant Leadership. The leader-as-servant. What a potent idea! (I knew of Greenleaf's work—but you know how it is, stuff strikes you like a ton of bricks that you've comprehended at another level for years.) To summarize the main argument (in part!):

1. Do those served grow as persons?
2. Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

Wow!
What a standard!
(But is there truly any other?)

Please re-read the quote.
Do you measure up?
What can you do if you buy Greenleaf's act?
Now?

(For starters, perhaps, literally ask yourself, at the end of the day, "What did I specifically do to be of service to my group? Was I fair & truly a 'servant'?" You might work with a friend-coach on this topic per se.)

(Incidentally, Chris was in the British armed services, and he reports that the idea of a leader as servant—using the term—was drummed into him. Makes sense.)

(Incidentally, this applies as much to the "junior" "individual contributor" trying to "make stuff happen" as to the chief of thousands.)

(Hmmmm ... in our "360" evaluations, what if we called the form a "Customer service survey"?)

(Incidentally, the full title of Greenleaf's book is ... Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Nice, eh?)

(Incidentally, in my writing—e.g., above—I will hereinafter use "googled" with a lower case "g." It is a "robust part of life as we know it here on earth." Equal in importance to, say, oxygen.)

So:

Primal leadership.
Only connect.
Courtesies of a small and trivial character.
Leader as servant.

(When I look at the 4 interconnected ideas, I am blown away by their power. Especially ... taken at face value.)

You could do worse!

RSVP

I won't make the "Arbuckle Award Dinner 2007" at my alma mater—the Stanford Business School. But I'm delighted to see that the award goes to one of our grads who got an MBA and a PhD from the biz school—just like me. It's Henry McKinnell, who just retired as Pfizer chairman. He lost $125 billion in market cap—and, like Mr Nardelli, got a "takeaway" reward of $200 million or so for that accomplishment. Now that is a record worthy of an award, I'd say.

Department of Amplifications

#1. Re Generals. Many interpretations of my recent Post about the talent and pay of Generals have appeared in Comments. Hooray! Let me speak a bit more clearly about my implicit message that was perhaps too implicit:

I think 4-star generals have a much tougher job than the average CEO, in fact harder than most any CEO's job. They deal daily with the politics of the White House and 535 Members of Congress; and other services and defense contractors; and the other headstrong generals in their command—etc, etc, etc. (None of these people—from Private to President do what she or he is told upon being ordered to do so. CEOs' ability to give orders and expect them to be obeyed is, in my experience, higher than that of the average general.) (And Congress treats generals like fans do football coaches—every Congressperson is a military expert, in his or her own mind, who knows the 4-star general's business better than the general.)

On a daily basis, 4-star generals must oversee issues of readiness that affect the lives or deaths of thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers—not to mention the safety and very future of the United States of America. (Sorry, it ain't the same when P&G boss A.G. Lafley is considering whether or not to approve a color change—heaven forbid—in the Tide box.) Four-star generals also may have to make quick decisions that could lead to the life or death of thousands of soldiers; and in response to an act of WMD terrorism, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Despite these incredible challenges, we get, in my experience, with amazing consistency, enormously talented and thoughtful people holding these top military jobs. That is to say that the "supply" of exceptionally talented people in these positions of incredible power and significance is not dependent on the amount they are paid. In private CEO land, we are led to believe that only bozos would be leading companies if we were unwilling to fork over immense sums of money; I think that's mostly ego as one boss compares his pay packet to his 499 Fortune 500 peers'. I likewise take delight in the relatively low ratio of top boss to corporal pay in the military—seems to work for them.

I am a vociferous champion of the Laws of Market Forces. And no particular enemy of high CEO pay. On the other hand, I think it is a lot less related to "supply and demand for extraordinary talent" than these corporate chieftains would admit. (Please feel free to discount all this—remember I am Commander in Chief of the cadre of thinkers who believe that "luck is the last 99%" in the making of great leaders—or management gurus; and ego and luck are the "99.9% factor" in the eclipse of said "great men"—usually men, of course.)

#2. Turkeys. My emphasis was on the word per se—and the implied valuation of one's fellows. Of course there are people who are misfits from the start who evaded the selection process. And of course there are those who cannot grow with the job. Etc. Etc. And etc. But I object—passionately—to the labeling of any one other than the likes of terrorists or serial murderers as "turkeys." I don't mean to play the "religion card"—I'm not very formally religious—but I am Jeffersonian in my belief that "all men are created equal" (while fully acknowledging the "slave oversight" and the "women oversight"). Thence, calling a total misfit of an employee a "turkey" is offensive and inexcusable to me—and revelatory of the speaker.

Relative Worth

Are 4-star generals lousier & less talented leaders than corporate CEOs? Are qualified 4-star generals "less scarce" than qualified CEOs (the economists' way of looking at the pay-for-talent issue)?

The ratio of average CEO pay to average worker pay in BigCos in the U.S.A. is about 250:1. The ratio of 4-star generals' pay to the average soldier's pay in the U.S. military is about 6:1. For a 1-star general that drops to about 4:1.

Your S.A.T. task today is to explain the above in 25 words or less ...

A [More or Less] Christmas [and Management] Thought

Came across this quote from one of those wise old Greeks, Philo of Alexandria: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." It reminds—none too gently—that we seldom know as much as we might imagine about the person across the table—or a spouse or child, for that matter.

In my experience, Philo, our Greek guide, got it exactly and frighteningly right. Hidden from sight is an ailing parent, a life-long battle with excess weight, abiding shyness, or whatever/s. This "great battle" colors our mate's or employee's every action.

I am not counseling "going easy" as a boss, or some such. I am counseling understanding (compassion) and listening. 100% of the time. As leaders in particular, we have a sacred trust—as well as a job to get done. The great coaches, such as Duke's Coach K, understand that. And any Army leader, sergeant or general officer, understands. So, too, must you and I. Compassion and thoughtfulness are always merited—and Christmas is a particularly good time to think on this subject near the center of humanness at work or at home.

[Picture by Tom above: The many colors of flowers in an Amsterdam flower market.]

The Ultimate Daily Crossword Puzzle

I love "obvious & important stuff"—that catches you flat-footed. Twenty+ years ago the matchless car dealer Carl Sewell introduced me to the "simple" idea of Lifetime Customer Value. There were none of today's lengthy research studies or least-squares data fitting on Customer Loyalty or any other unnecessary complications. Carl matter of factly said in conversation: "If we treat a guy well, he'll buy a half dozen or so cars from us over time and tell at least one friend. At $35,000 a pop that could easily add up to a half million bucks. I tell everyone from the reception desk to the service bay, that guy is a $500,000 bill walking in the store, ready to be won over, if we all work together to make him our best friend." No "Loyalty-based selling." No "experience marketing." No regression analyses. Just one guy and a friend nets a dozen sales, not one transaction, if we treat the fellow like next of kin. Love it!

Well, I'll offer another piece of "obvious" stolen advice. This one from Duke's Coach K [Krzyzewski], courtesy a recent interview for IBD/Investor's Business Daily. Here's his "obvious" remark: "Things don't stay the same. You have to understand that not only your business situation changes, but the people you're working with aren't the same day to day. Someone is sick. Someone is having a wedding. [You must] gauge the mood, the thinking level of the team that day."

That is, your 6-person project team or 7-person training department or 18-person housekeeping unit is a new puzzle every day. It's far beyond "treat everybody differently according to their skills," etc. It's that in a 220-day work year, we the leader-manager face 220 different teams! Every day is a new crossword puzzle! If you get off on doing the morning crossword every morning (metaphorically), you'll get off on confronting the day's Unique People Puzzle. I'd add that if such constant puzzle solving isn't your cup of tea, then leave the leading-managing to someone else! (Any of us with kids, or any primary-school classroom teacher, knows the full truth of this; the kid/s has/have 365 different personalities a year, calling for 365 different-distinct approaches. Mom seems to handle this a lot better than Dad—maybe that goes a long way toward explaining the accumulating evidence on women's often superior leadership skills.)

Thanks, Coach K!

(Incidentally, after reading this I called an acquaintance who was a well-known former pro football coach just for the hell of it; no surprise, he echoes coach K. "Right on, Tom. Every practice session, from the two-a-days at the beginning of summer camp until the Super Bowl, if you're lucky, has a more or less completely different character. You haven't got much time during a game week—you damn well better prepare for what you're going to face; each player, to use your words, is a different puzzle unto himself each day. Coach K is right—the on-the-road problem, the girlfriend problem, the free-tickets problem, the agent problem.")

(Related quote, courtesy Mary Pipher: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."—Philo of Alexandria. I like this a lot; I've pinned it to my home-office corkboard. Soooooooo true!)

Leadership for the "I-Cubed Economy"

According to my recent research, we have entered what experts call the "I-Cubed Economy" ... which stands for INTANGIBLES, INNOVATION, and INFORMATION. Knowledge assets (what people know and put into use), collaboration assets (who people interact with to create value), engagement assets (the level of commitment and energy of people) and time quality (how quickly value is created) are the four factors of production in this "Intangible Economy" according to Wikipedia. "They" also say this new era calls for new leadership ... "post heroic" leadership which is based on "bottom-up transformation fueled by shared power and community building." Organizations that apply this leadership approach are referred to as "leaderful" and assume that all of us have leadership qualities that can be pooled and drawn upon as needed.

Here's where this conversation gets juicy ... in a world that changes so rapidly, the gap between what we know and what we do has to close ... leaders can't just know that command and control leadership doesn't work ... they actually have to DO a different kind of leadership ... NOW! The problem, as I see it, is that we lead from our rearview mirrors. We learn to lead from those who lead us, in an environment that supports old business practices and in cultures that reinforce old values and belief systems. If we learn from those before us ... are we not, in fact, followers? And, if we want to be great leaders, doesn't it make sense that we look to our "followers" to learn how to lead? Imagine a future and live into it, rather than trying to just improve upon or change the past? We spend a lot of energy trying to capture and apply best practices ... but, in a world with so much change ... what is the shelf life of a best practice anyway?