Monthly Archives: March 2012

I am a Leader and a Mean Girl Too

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I am not perfect. 

Yes, I believe in myself as a leader.  I am authentic in how I approach my day and act as a leader.  I strive to give my best and serve my team and workplace each day.

Yet, I have my moments at work when I am petty and just want to be mean.

It is true, at times I can be a mean girl too.

So what is a mean girl?  Mean girl behavior includes gossip, verbal put downs of others, bullying, backstabbing, and using others to get ahead.

Wow, I feel better now.  We all have bad moments when we can be petty at work and not live up to our standards as a leader.  As I read my previous posts I paint a picture of such a higher order of being, a higher order of person, a higher order of leader. Enough, we are human and have bad moments.  Recognize when you are thinking and behaving as a mean girl.

The important step here is … can you recognize when you are being mean, saying those mean things about people, and thinking of even acting on those mean thoughts.  Relax, we are human. We are not perfect. We make our mistakes.

You are a leader though. Learn from this mean behavior.  Reflect on what you are thinking, saying and even doing.  Focus on how to be better and come back tomorrow stronger as a leader.  This level of reflection, analysis, and assessment is so important for any leader.  Never think of your leadership journey as finally reaching the end - the reward is the journey and, at times, we detour and need to get back onto the path.  It is these detours that can teach us so much and allow us to recognize the right path.

I am there with you, a person on the journey and yes, a mean girl at times.

No worries though, we move together and will find our way.

Thursday Thought – On Blogging

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Note: Each Thursday I will post a little something to inspire us to finish the week strong.  These posts will be either a quote, a piece of art, or short video.  Congratulations, you made it over the hump and let’s finish the week together.

For my first Thursday Thought I am drawn to the decision to create and continue with a blog.  I invite you to watch this short video by Seth Godin and Tom Peters discussing the power of the blog.  Let your voice be heard!

Tempus Fugit

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A look at the calendar shows that I just made it past my first 30 days writing a blog.  I believe I will violate a law of the universe if I do not write the obligatory “my first 30 days blogging.”  Count me as one to not want the wrath of the universe to come down on me … so here I go.

To start, an interesting blog needs a catchy title, so I went with Tempus Fugit for this big moment.  This means “Time Flies” in English as translated from Latin.  While I thought I was being clever, once I looked the term up on Wikipedia, I thought otherwise.  Here is how this term is generally used today,  ”Time’s a-wasting”. As such, it expresses concern that one’s limited time is being consumed by nothing in particular or by something which may have little intrinsic substance, importance, or urgency.

Ah, writing a blog consumes one’s limited time and leads to little intrinsic substance …

Well.  Here I stand at a crossroad.  Did I make a mistake and take time from other far more important pursuits?  My answer, without hesitation, is no.  Writing this blog has been a wonder.  I first write for myself to gather my thoughts and focus my energy on my leadership journey.  Second, I write to connect with others and I have started to make those connections.  From there I have gained access to so many great blogs and daily writing.  Finding this community is a blessing and aids my journey.

Each of us has the ability to create.  As a leader I once read it is important to give those you lead “The Gift of Authorship”.   Each of us needs to find a voice that can sing forth and express our true self.  I am impressed by the voice coming from other blogs as I start my journey, learn from others, and listen to the singing.

Indeed, time flees or tempus fugit, yet my time is well spent with my thoughts, words and your company.

Indeed, We Move Together.

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs – by Walter Isaacson

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I recently finished the Book, “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson.   The book was very well written and told such a compelling story.  To his credit Steve asked the author to tell the full story of his life, the good and the bad.  I am conflicted on how to approach a blog story concerning any leadership lessons from Steve Jobs.

Alas, I do not need to, as the author himself today published a piece in the Harvard Business Review concerning just that topic - The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs.  The link to the full story is below.  I encourage each of you to read it.  As expected, the story is well written and does point to the positive aspects of Steve Jobs and his leadership.  There are lessons here for us.

Here is the link to the full article.  I repeat the link below after my summary.

Harvard Business Review Article

When asked what his most important creation was, Steve Jobs did not say the Mac or the iPod or later the iPad.  He stressed that his most important creation was making an enduring company.  For all of us to be part of and lead something that endures beyond our direct touch – that would be a powerful thing and should be part of the higher order of leadership.

While the article goes into more depth here is the list of Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs as describes by Walter Isaacson:

  • Focus: “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
  • Simplify: 1) Insert quarter. 2) Avoid Klingons (read the article)
  • Take Responsibility End to End: Get involved beginning to end to assure “the whole widget” comes together and works.
  • When Behind, Leapfrog: “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves. someone else will.”
  • Put Products Before People: From the lips of a CEO, “Don’t Compromise”.
  • Don’t Be a Slave to Focus Groups: Job’s version of empathy — “an intimate intuition about the desires of his customers”.
  • Bend Reality: Simply the “Reality Distortion Field“.
  • Impute: Add a Handle to the Desktop Computer.
  • Push For Perfection: Hit the Pause Button When Necessary.  We will get it right.
  • Tolerate Only “A” Players: “If something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest”.
  • Engage Face-to-Face: The Pixar Building was designed to promote unplanned encounters and collaboration. Also as I read the book I was taken by Steve’s practice to conduct so many discussions by walking around the block.
  • Know Both The Big Picture and the Details: The grand vision and the shape and size of the screws.
  • Combine the Humanities with the Sciences: Creativity to technology, arts to engineering.
  • Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes…”

Since the publication of this book Walter Isaacson has been asked nonstop about the “lessons of leadership” from Steve Jobs.  This article I believe serves to answer those questions.  The author says that business schools will be studying Steve Jobs and his leadership a century from now.  Well, the lessons are here, now, and fresh for us to review and reach our own understanding.

Harvard Business Review Article

The Wind and The Sun

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The wind attempts to strip the traveler of his...

As with many folks I am eagerly waiting for the return of Mad Men tonight.  It has been too long.  This weekend I am watching several episodes from last season to get caught up.  No, I am not writing a post on the leadership approach by Don Draper (main character), but hum … someday.

What caught my eye was a scene where Faye told Don a story to make a point about persuasion.  It was an old-fashioned fable as in an Aesop Fable from when we were kids.  When I looked up this fable online it is often labeled as a “Children’s Story”.  Alas, we know better that this is a fable for us adults too.

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin.”
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.

Don asks what this means and Faye says that “kindness, gentleness, and persuasion win where force fails.”

This reminds me of two things.  The first is a core influence for me concerning my education as an anthropologist.  While I moved into business vs. the jungle (wait, is there a difference) I held onto my learning in anthropology.  From this grounding I have a standing belief that we have forgotten more than we have learned.  We are searching today as leaders for the next thing or discovery.  Well maybe it has been with us all along as in how to interact with people and gain their support to influence their behavior (the sun in our fable) and be a leader.

The second thing I am reminded of is my attachment to “Push vs. Pull”.  I get this from my studies of Systems Thinking once I entered grad school and got serious about studying organizational development.  You see the connection too - the Wind Pushes, the Sun Pulls.  While leaders have to know when to push, our base approach needs to align with behaviors associated with pulling folks forward.

How will you get someone to take off their cloak today?

The sun strips the traveler of his cloak

Be A Simple Man

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Mamá

“Mama told me when I was young, come sit beside me, my only son and listen closely to what I say and if you do this it will help you some sunny day”.

This is the opening line for one of my favorite songs – Simple Man.  It may be a favorite for yours too from Lynyrd Skynyard.  I heard it driving to work recently while I was thinking about my day ahead.  As I thought through the message of the song, I moved past my general enjoyment of this great song and the life affirming message between a mother and son.  I thought about the lesson here for leadership.  As such let’s take a look at some of the lyrics and link to leadership principles.

“Oh, take your time, don’t live too fast,

Troubles will come and they will pass,

You’ll find a woman and you’ll find love,

And don’t forget, son, there is someone up above.”

Life unfolds itself to each of us.  One develops as a leader and we can not rush it.  We will experience troubles along the way and will learn from them as we continue our journey as a leader.  Leaders do not stand alone, they believe in strong relationships including an understanding that we are not alone.  I will let each of you follow your own belief about “someone up above”.  At the least we are surrounded right here on terra firma and we need to always remember our connection to others.

“Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold,

All that you need is in your soul,

And you can do this, oh baby, if you try,

All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied.”

For me these lines speak to first follow your heart and be genuine.  We can not fake it for long, but so many have tried.  The “gold” will follow when you listen to your heart.  As a leader we need to follow our heart, be true to ourselves, and remain genuine.  Only from this place can we be effective, not just for ourselves, but for those we lead.  We want them to understand that leadership ability resides in all of us – in our soul, if you will.  Also remember all gold can not be put in the bank.  As human beings, our search for gold includes our relationship with family, friends and those we lead.

“And be a simple kind of man,

Oh, be something you love and understand,

Baby be a simple kind of man,

Oh, won’t you do this for me, son, if you can

Oh yes, I will.”

More powerful lyrics finishing with, “yes, I will”.  For all of us as leaders and just plain folk, a commitment to saying “I will” is the first step on the road.  This road need not be lonely, as it can be so often for a leader – remember, We Move Together.

I invite you to take a break and watch the magic.

Fail Quickly

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She looks down at the maze in front of her not knowing how to proceed.  She says to her team, “I do not know where to step; what do you think?”  The team responds with several ideas, but there is no commitment.  After a minute or so, she steps forward and the tile in front of her rings out with an alarm.  The team reacts poorly and she is unhappy as well.  She thinks she has failed her team in their task.  Yet, her “failure” was actually a victory.  So goes this story …

This team is working through an experiential activity where, as a team, they need to walk across a grid of tiles – some tiles will set off an alarm if stepped on, others are clear.  There is a safe path across to the other side and the goal is for each team to get across as soon as possible.  Only the workshop facilitator (me) knows which tiles are safe and which are not.  The story above is true and I saw it repeated often.  These teams of experienced leaders have mental models that tell them failure is wrong under all circumstances and we need to be careful when stepping into the unknown.   Once again, these are very experienced leaders who are behaving poorly within the realm of the exercise. This is the power of experiential learning - your true self will play out within the exercise.  Alas, as  the facilitator, I have so much to work with and the debrief will be profound.

Specifically these leader demonstrate the following behavior during the exercise:

  • Openly show disdain when someone sets off an alarm vs. applauding when someone quickly steps forward;
  • All stand behind the person stepping into the unknown vs. circling the maze to show visible support;
  • Continue to discuss how best to figure out the problem (they do not know which tiles are safe so how can they solve the problem outside of actually stepping on tiles)

I came across the term “Fail Quickly” many years ago.  I believe it was from a high-tech company in reference to computer development.  The concept is simple, but does turn our standard mental model on its ear.  The point is, while using all our best judgment and knowledge, we need to step into the unknown and appreciate our failures.  Once those failures get out-of-the-way, we find our success.  We can get to that success so much quicker and without too many battle scars, if we as leaders build the environment that supports people stepping into the unknown with the intent to make your enterprise better.

So who “won” the experiential activity?  The team that had THE BREAK THROUGH and decided that they need to move quickly and communicate.  As such they circled the maze (no rule against it) and pointed to where the person should step next.  The excitement and applause happened both with success (no beep) and even when there was a beep.  With a beep, they discovered where not to step.  Yes, Beep, Beep, Beep, then safe passage.  With the support of the team, they can move quickly and get across the full maze.

Success and a lesson for all leaders – Fail Quickly and We Move Together.

Different Sides of the Same Coin

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Singidunum coin

Today I was thinking about management.  As in how well am I managing my group and related work processes.  As someone, through this blog, demonstrating a focus on leadership I find that I do not want to lose hold of my focus on management practices.

I have read many times about leadership and management as two different and almost competing approaches.  I too have taught others with a focus on the differences between the two and alas, showed a bias toward leadership as the winning approach.  Yet, I find this thinking to be wrong and I now see leadership and management as two sides of the same coin.

I looked up the definition of this well used term today and found, “different but closely related features of one idea”.  Very nice – this works for me and explains for me the connection between leadership and management.  Read it again:

Different but …

Closely Related features …

of one idea.

As a leader you follow a process of influence to gather folks together to focus on the right things and through your effective leadership you get the most and then some from your team.  Management skills allow that same leader to establish the goals with detailed milestones, measure progress, identifying issues timely, and also end up with the goal met.

While I may dream of leadership related topics (writing a blog plays with your mind), I wake up each day and my first act is that of a manager.  As I do each business morning, I log in from home to run several production reports concerning my work processes.  I previously set up the right measurements and helped design production reports that detail the current state of my business operation.  These reports point to my department’s successes and where I need to look closer to improve production. These management practices are part of my leadership practices.

A leader without a solid base of management skills is disconnected and will make poor decisions. The leader is simply lacking information needed to make decisions.  Yet a manager with poor to nonexistent leadership ability is well … someone with a title only.

I want to be and grow both as a leader and a manager.  Yes, I will admit the leadership side of the coin has the beautiful artwork and draws us in, but if the management side of the coin is rubbed down to nothing, the coin is worthless.

Shame By Own Words

Aside

An aside … I found this quote today that speaks to me as someone starting a blog.  Maybe it will speak to other bloggers as well.

“If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach … For perhaps, by being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.”

These words come from St. John of the Ladder who lived in the seventh century.  It is a reminder for me to remain authentic in my writing and follow my own words.  A reminder for us all.

Thank you for reading and let us all Move Forward Together.

For Frodo

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Not too deep today, just thinking…

A brief observation from a favorite movie, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

There is a scene near the end of the movie where Aragorn who made his journey as a leader through the story, leads his remaining army to the gates of the oh-so-evil enemy.

In the scene Aragorn and his army are greatly outnumbered, but when the moment is right, he charges alone toward the enemy with the simple words, “For Frodo”, a friend who he believes has sacrificed everything for their cause of peace.

My focus is on this act of the leader charging out in front and becoming exposed.

Our leader, Aragorn, runs out first without protection;

His people after the initial shock race after him fully committed to their joint cause – He is our leader and we must follow;

The people catch their leader and overtake him to move out to the front;

Together, Aragorn the leader and his people meet the enemy.

For our analysis, look to the behavior of the leader and those he leads. Aragorn had complete faith in himself and his people and knew they would follow. The men following Aragorn would follow him without question. This is the pull of extraordinary leadership. The act of the people to catch and then overtake their leader is a powerful image. I have thought of that image of leadership for nearly 10 years since the movie came out.

The film makers I suspect knew this was a powerful moment to highlight and complete Aragorn’s growth as a leader.

A question for each of us … when we are face to face with our own “For Frodo” moment will we be ready? Have we properly set the groundwork for our own people to charge forward? Honestly, I do not think I have had that moment yet. That is not the point – will my team and I be ready? Yes we will.

As always, We Move Forward Together.