Leadership is not rocket science

Commitment

Some people think it's OK not to do everything you said you would if it's a volunteer commitment. I have a real problem with that. I don't give a rat's patootie if you're getting paid or not. A commitment is a commitment. Period.

A failing of visionary leadership

I recently had a conversation that reminded me of a challenging time in running my business a little over a decade ago when things went ka-ka.  I made a mistake, and we moved into major crisis as a result, which took time to pull out of.

Looking back, I had a strong vision, which drove the company and into which everyone bought in.  At that time I had about a half-dozen people working for me, most of whom had been students of mine (I taught at a couple of universities then), and they were really excited about my vision and our work.

When things hit the fan, they were really shaken up - some were almost paralyzed.  All of them are amazing, bright, people, but they were really challenged, and now I understand why.

The vision was mine, not theirs.  Visionary or transformational leaders hold the vision - they're the ones who have 'seen the promised land and will lead you there' as a friend of mine says.  Others 'buy in' to the leader's vision, but it's still the leader's vision.  Unlike co-creative leadership, where everyone co-creates and owns the vision, only the leader owns the vision.

And that's why it was so hard for the people in my company. They believed in me.  They believed in my vision.  But it wasn't their vision.  They didn't own it in their hearts.  So when we hit ka-ka, they were challenged.  I was challenged (trust me!), but because I held my vision in my heart, I was able to keep going. The people who worked for me didn't have that anchor.

Now I realize, in a much deeper way why co-creative leadership is so critical.  Visionary leadership is great when things are growing and thriving and creative, but when it hits the fan, everyone needs to own the vision, not just belief in the leader and his/her vision.

How do you engage people in change?

In this edition of the Leadership Edge Digest, Ravi Tangri outlines one of his key approaches to engaging people in co-creating change.

blackout

isnt it cool I can make this entry in a blackout?

The U Process

Over the last 20-30 years, we’ve built a culture of action – if there’s a problem, solve it and do it quickly.  Unfortunately, that culture of reacting is now causing many of today’s insurmountable problems.

Our problems today are so complex that no one party understands all the sides of an issue, and because we don’t take time to learn about the sides we don’t understand, we act on inadequate information and often cause more problems than we solve.

Recently, Otto Scharmer and Joseph Jaworski studied individuals who were phenomenally good at leadership and creative problem-solving, and they discovered a pattern called the ‘U’.  Instead of just jumping to action (re-acting), effective leaders went through three distinct stages in the ‘U’ process: Sensing, Presencing and Realizing.  This corresponds to the emerging new leadership we call co-creative leadership.

Sensing is where you go out and gather more data – find out what’s happening ‘all around the situation’.  This is where you can start to become aware of your own filters and blinders and step out of them to start to see what’s really happening.

Once you have gathered all this information, it can be a bit overwhelming.  Then you have to step back and allow yourself to see the underlying systemic issues that are driving the more visible symptoms.  You don’t need complete information (nor could you get it) to see the systemic issues, but you do need to gather more information than we commonly allow ourselves time to do, and then step back to see what underlies it all.  The data is a step, not an end in itself.

Many people do take time to do sensing in their work and projects, but few invest the time to step back, and even fewer leaders move into presencing.  This is where you really need to step away from the situation and start looking inside yourself.  What is your inner sense of purpose and meaning, what is your inner gift, and how can you bring these to the issue you are working with?

In many of today’s workplaces, this type of personal exploration and engagement is starkly absent.  Business is supposed to be business – a matter of dispassionate facts and anal-ysis.  We are only supposed to bring half of who we are to work – our logical left brain – and leave our emotions and passions behind.

It’s interesting that organizations that are down to ‘nuts and bolts business’, while they can be profitable, have less than half the profitability, profit growth, sales growth and return on investment compared to organizations that also focus on their people, as detailed in my book, StressCosts Stress-Cures.

Presencing is a deeply personal and very powerful process of connecting with the core of your own motivation and passion, and linking it to what is happening outside.  It transforms the ‘job’ into a ‘vocation’, and allows the leader to engage him- or her-self more fully.  And only when the leader is so engaged can anyone else in the organization become truly engaged – and that is when you tap the reservoirs of productivity and passion that somehow don’t ever show up on the balance sheet.

By bringing your internal flame to the issue at hand, you transform the ‘problem’ you are dealing with and you bring new energy, new focus and new insights to the issue.  This is when you can start moving up the ‘U’ and, in concert with the other stakeholders, start realizing new action.

The difference between ‘reacting’ and going through the ‘U’ process is the difference between action and wise action.  It takes time – something we say we don’t have in our busy workplaces.  Yet we always have time to deal with all the problems that arise from all of the previous things we did quickly because we didn’t have the time to do it right.

It’s time we admitted that we have no clothes on and our ‘old way’ of dealing with things doesn’t work.  We need to find a new way of dealing with our complex challenges – and if it’s not the total answer, the U is certainly a big part of that new way.  It’s what the most effective leaders do.

What really separates management from leadership

We now have rapidly growing masses of data that show that the traditional theories of management simply don’t work.  85% or more of reengineering initiatives fail.  75% or more of quality initiatives fail.  72% or more of mergers fail to realize their expected financial gains.  Stress leave and disability are going through the roof.   The new generation is simply not ‘playing by the rules’.  And far more.

This pattern echoes what happened one hundred years ago, when the leading scientists in the world gathered in Copenhagen because, for many years, there had been growing evidence showing that the way the universe was supposed to work, according to traditional, Newtonian physics (the stuff you learned in high school).  Together, these scientists took the new data and created a new understand of how the universe works that transformed our thinking, and gave birth to quantum physics.

Here are the five most powerful parallels I see between our understanding of how the universe works and our understanding of how people work in organizations:

1)    Knowable versus Uncertainty

In traditional, Newtonian physics, everything could be measured and knowable.  If it couldn’t be measured, it didn’t really exist.  Core to quantum physics is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that you can’t know everything.  The more you know about one thing, such as the location of a particle, the less you know about that particle’s velocity, for example.

In traditional management and MBA thinking, you can measure and know everything.  In fact, we’ve actually made great strides in measuring even ‘warm and fuzzy’ things like leadership and corporate culture with 360° and climate surveys, respectively.  However, it is not possible to measure and predict everything that will happen.  The markets over the past few months prove that.  Any good strategic plan outlines the vision and 3 or 5 year goals, milestones for each year, milestones for each quarter of the first year, and then may flesh out the first quarter or two.  Beyond that, you can’t predict what you’ll do because too much can change.  You adapt as needed as you go, with your milestones to guide you. 

2)    Mechanistic versus Vitalism

Old world physics said that everything is mechanistic, can be explained by physical causes and understood as mechanical systems.  Traditional management, coming out of the industrial age, is like this – it sees organizations as machines and people as cogs in that machine, and their behaviour can be predicted based on specific actions.

In contrast, the new sciences incorporate vitalism, which says that the functions of a living organism go beyond its physical and chemical interactions, and it says that life has a “vital spar” or “soul” that cannot be quantified, and is to at least some extent self-determining.  Similarly, effective leadership acknowledges that people are self-determining and have that “vital spark” that must be engaged to effectively co-create the way forward.  They are not simply cogs in a machine and as a result, behaviour cannot be predicted in a deterministic way.

3)    Reductionist versus Holistic

The reductionistic approach in the old scientific model says that anything is simply the sum of its parts, that any complex system can be broken down into the interactions of its parts.  In contrast, holism says that you have to look at the whole entity as a system, and that the system as a whole defines how its components behave.  It’s from a holistic view that systems thinking, chaos theory and complexity theory have arisen.

In simple terms, a reductionist approach would say that you can digitize an image of the Taj Mahal and capture all that you see there in the constituent pixels. Anyone who has been there knows that there is a powerful aura that extends from the building that you feel that cannot be captured in any picture or video.

In traditional management, any organization can be dissected into its org charts, made more effective and more efficient and re-assembled to maintain those efficiencies.  Leaders realize that this simply doesn’t happen in practice the complex human interactions – the ‘system’ – impacts the results more than any theoretical reorganization.  That’s why most change initiatives fail – they don’t take into account the human element.

Accountants, for example, make the reductionistic argument of economies of scale – greater efficiencies as you increase your scale of operations.  However, powerful leaders such as Bill Gore of William Gore and Associates knew that if you get more than 100 people in a plant, efficiency drops, because everybody doesn’t know everybody else.  So he made sure he built plants with fewer than 100 people each, and grew by leaps and bounds because of it.

4)    Controllable versus Flow

The old model of understanding the universe said that you could control everything.  If you could reduce any system to the sum of its parts, you could make any adjustment to any part and the whole would gain those efficiencies.  However, in a holistic, uncertain, vitalistic world, you have to realize that you can’t control everything.  You can only control certain aspects of the system and change the probability of a result happening.

In traditional management, the more you controlled, the more power you had.  Leaders realize that this control was always an illusion.  Managers never had the control they thought they had because you can’t control people like machines.  Leaders realize that organizations as living systems need a living core – a clear purpose and principles – and then you let it self regulate and create itself.  You can co-create the vision with the people in the organization, but then you have to let go and let every person own their piece of it to make it happen – and be prepared to be surprised.

5)    Objective versus Subjective

In the old world, all observations were objective and unchangeable.  In the quantum world, the very act of observing an event changed the event (and this applies to and entire living organism – a person – as well as to organizations, not just to quantum particles).  It’s been proven that the belief of the experimenter can change the results, even in real-world experiments, not just in the sub-atomic world.  What you believe changes the results.

Traditional managers set plans and put them in motion and people were chess pieces on the board.  Leaders understand that their people, their mind-state, and their beliefs affect the results, and so understand that whatever they do can only be co-created with the people on their team.

As I go through this list, I realize that the difference between leadership and management isn’t just something that you do differently. To go from management to leadership is a quantum leap in consciousness, a key stage of human evolution that we are on the edge of today.  You cannot think your way through this and you cannot control your way through this.  Only by taking a good, long look in the mirror can managers start to do the work and begin the journey to grow their personal leadership so that they can make the shift from management to leadership.  This can be terrifying and requires great courage.  And it’s time.

What an exciting time to live in.

Leading Edge Digest - November 12, 2008

Leading Edge Vlog - 081112

What works, works

Jim Clemmer, in his most recent posting, suggests a systems framework for setting and cascading goals. I was blown away when I read this because it so well overlaps another systems framework I use (explained here), developed by a dear friend and mentor, Michael Basch, one of the founders of FedEx, and the creator for most of the systems that gave it its legendary service in its early years.

But then again, why should I be suprised?  What works, works.

Why the bell tolls for workaholic managers and micro-managers

During the Infusion event I've been blogging about, one consultant spoke up about how (s)he works in a world where things have to move fast and you have to make decisions quickly and act and react quickly - they have no time for reflection or using the U-process, or for slowing things down to actually be present and connect with people.  This person asked how we make that work in that world.

Well, my simple answer is that we don't.

Many effective leaders and mentors have shared with me one common thread.  Whenever there is a change, there will be some small percentage (say 10% for sake of discussion) who are fully on-board, a small percentage (say 10%) who will not go no matter what, and the remaining silent majority waits to see which of these vocal minorities wins.  What these leaders have learned is that to focus on the resistors is a like pounding your head against a brick wall.  You focus on the people who are on-board and the people who are ready to come on-board.  The reality is, not everyone will necessarily come along, and some people will leave.

The same applies to the workaholic-pace managers, micro-managers and the like.  If they're bound and determined to stay that way, they have the right to free choice and I honour their choice to walk that way.  The perfect storm is about to hit them, and it will take care of them.

Across the western world, the baby boomers have now started retiring en masse.   Because this same western world stopped procreating enough to maintain our population decades ago, there is only one person joining the workforce for every two people leaving.  Add to that the fact that baby boomers are workaholics, and the  young generation (nexus/generation y) are not - their priorities are life-work balance and fun - then, effectively for every three workers leaving you only have one coming in.

Now, the boomers aren't going to go away (in fact most haven't saved adequately for retirement), but they're not going to be working full time, so instead of one-third the workforce, you may have half.  And it gets worse.

The younger generation has no tolerance for autocrats or bureaucrats, as opposed to the boomers and gen Xers who put up with it.  If they even get a sniff of that, they're gone, and you won't have even one-third the work force.  And it gets worse (for the workaholic/micromanagers).

The younger generation wants meaningful work and they want to be engaged in decisions and what's happening.  Baby boomers took the work on, even if they knew it was pointless because they were afraid they might get laid off in the next wave.  This generation won't do that.  They won't necessarily do it the way you want it, and they want to have a say.  They want the space that the workaholic managers don't have time for.

We don't have to worry about the workaholic managers or the micro-managers.  In fact, I won't even do business with people who are not willing to at least explore co-creative leadership.  There's a huge number of people who are ready, and that's who I choose to work with. 

The next decade will see turbulence in the workplace that we've never seen.  It's time for the workaholic managers and the micro-managers to go the way of the dodo bird and the dinosaur.  The asteroid has landed - in fact, it landed decades ago when the industrialized world stopped procreating.  Nature has a way of self-correcting itself, and this younger generation will lead the way.

Infusion of Leadership

Over the past couple of postings I've been sharing my thoughts about the Infusion event hosted by Capital Health.  Here I'd like to share some insights about the last half-day, where we were supposed to be going up the second side of the U to realize a new model/prototype for leadership.  I say supposed to, because I think, in some ways, that we were just getting to presencing as we left.

Late in the morning of the last day, we were asked to surface themes that had emerged and were called to crystallize a prototype of what it would look like if those themes came into fruition.  There were some good ideas there.  Some pushed the boundaries, some didn't, but as we discussed them, I felt an increasing discomfort arising among the participants.  Some people spoke of not pushing the boundaries enough.  Some said we'd done enough reflecting and it was time to act and do something.  it was really quite interesting.

What it felt like to me was that we had been in a fairly polite area, and as this conversation evolved, we started dancing to the edge, towards where it was really uncomfortable.  We didn't cross over into it - nobody seemed to want to really push us over, but we danced on the edge.

A few of the comments as we went around connected some dots for me.  One person at the program had floated between groups, gathering ideas and coalesced them into her own concept.  We had craft supplies there to model our prototypes, and she took a blob of play-doh clay and started sticking straws into it with notes on them about what would be required of a prototype.  The clay was the foundation - the beliefs, the values that we came from, and the 'pieces' of the initiative on the straws emerged from and were supported by that foundation.

Interestingly, she found that her foundation didn't hold up the straws, so she had to add more clay and build up the foundation, a beautiful metaphor, I think for what happens in so many organizations. We get so busy doing things and initiatives, and we don't have the time to go into the foundation - the 'messy' stuff: feelings, beliefs and values.  Then we wonder why doing the 'things' doesn't work.

In fact, one person spoke up and said that the organization had the systems and processes the sculptor spoke of, and they weren't doing the job.  And that to me, said it all.  People were too involved in the doing the things and systems, and not enough time had been invested into building the foundation.

So what is this foundation?  It's a number of things.  It's honoring who people are and where they're at.  It's understanding and working to live within the values.  It's understanding what beliefs get in the way and what beliefs make it happen.  It's understanding and knowing your own beliefs, values and sense of purpose, which I'm exploring further in this post in my blog on personal leadership.  It's the 'messy' stuff of human beings which takes time to do and which requires us to show up as human beings, not just as our roles, and this is something that is not in many models of leadership, and is very challenging for people to do period.

One of the participants at the Infusion event spoke of how we need to honour where people are at - their pain, their anxiety, their perspective.  This, to me, is the start of that foundation.  Then we have to support people in connecting to their own personal leadership, because most people don't really know what's important to them and what motivates them - in our society we don't usually make time to do that.  We're too busy being human doings to be human beings.

Once individuals (especially leaders) have greater clarity on their personal leadership, then you can really discuss what are the organizational beliefs and values that you want to live.  What does it look like?  What does it mean?  Who's living them?  Who's not?

That's the foundation.  That's the 'messy' stuff.  That's what we don't invest the time to do.

The challenge is that we still have to do our day-to-day doing as we're remembering how to be human beings.  But I think that challenge is far less than our fear of going into the 'messy' stuff.  That's just a cop-out.

I really have to give kudos to the design/hosting team for the Infusion event.  That was a challenging job, holding that space with all those powerful minds, hearts and opinions, and you did it wonderfully.  From the logistics to the connection between the hosing team to the crafting of the questions and process, and the actual hosting of the event, my hats off to you.

My greatest kudos go to you for not trying to wrap things up in a neat package at the end.  It wasn't neat - it was still messy, and that's a good thing.  I disagree with the people (interestingly all male) who spoke up and said we'd had too much female energy and it was time to have some balls and act.  That's jumpint the U.  That's the fear of going into the messy stuff.  I think this process is just getting into presencing, to the heart of the issue - we've barely started - and to allow it to realize its true potential, you have to give it its time.  Congratulations on letting it be messy.  That takes courage.