Goof Gas Change

As published in The Business Enterprise

“We’re going to make this company great!”

As the villainous Boris Badenov spreads his goof gas, America’s most brilliant scientists are transformed into idiots. Even the smartest investigators are not immune. In desperation, the country turns to the one person, well, animal, who can save them: Bullwinkle J. Moose. Bullwinkle, it turns out, is immune to goof gas because he is, quite simply, simple. Bullwinkle cannot be affected by Boris’s goof gun because Bullwinkle has no intelligence to start with.

Moving from the world of cartoon satire to reality, we come to sunny California, and Clovis, the CEO of Clovis Systems. One fine day, Clovis announced a major restructuring.

“We are good,” he said, “but as a company, we need to be great.”

His particular choice of words was inspired by the title of the book that had inspired him to action: Jim Collin’s “Good to Great.”

The only problem with “Good to Great” is that you have to recognize the implicit assumption: that you’re starting from “good.” If you’re starting from “pathetic,” well, it doesn’t work quite so well. In fact, Clovis Systems was immune to “Good to Great,” for reasons eerily similar to why Bullwinkle Moose is immune to goof gas.

To make matters worse, Clovis’s approach to the whole concept of moving to greatness was lacking. “Great” is an impressive sounding word, but what does it mean? The answer depends on the person and the organization. By never defining what he meant, by never painting a picture of what “great” would mean, Clovis doomed his efforts from the start. But even if he had conveyed a clear destination, that wouldn’t have been enough.

Clovis made his announcement and then he didn’t follow through. If you want people to change, you need to do more than just tell them about the change.

To begin with, Clovis needed to help his employees recognize that some major changes were even necessary. From their perspective, things were pretty good. Having Clovis announce a major restructuring out of the blue looked to them like goof gas. All Clovis managed to do with his announcement was generate confusion, and confused people don’t move forward: they dig in their heels and try to stop moving until they can figure out what is going on. Therefore, Clovis should have started by talking with his employees about the disadvantages of the status quo. What were they unhappy about? What would they like to see done better? What was getting in the way of their doing their jobs?

Only by getting his employees thinking about what was wrong would they become open to the idea of change.

Once people start to think about change as desirable, the next step is to get them to think about it as possible and is something that they are capable of bringing about.

Trying to persuade them rarely works. The more you push, the more they resist. Instead, it’s time for a new set of questions. What would help you make the change? How have you made successful changes in the past? What resources do you have to help you make the change? What resources do you need? What strengths do you have that will make this work? What strengths does the company have?

Notice that every one of these questions focuses on the positive: on why the change is possible. If you focus on the negative, then all you’ll get is a litany of objections. While it’s important to identify and overcome obstacles, first you need to convince people that they are capable of overcoming those obstacles! Focus on success, not on failure.

Once Clovis had his team thinking of change as desirable and as something they could do, then it’s time to get concrete. If you wait too long, you’ll lose momentum, so it’s important to take advantage of the enthusiasm while it lasts. How will we make these changes? What do we need to do? How will we get started? How will we know we’ve started? How will we know we’re making progress?

Sometimes, if it’s hard to figure out how to start, it can help to forget about the how and focus purely on what you want to have happen. Get people talking and brainstorming and see how many different ideas you can generate. Do it right, and you’ll be amazed how many different approaches you’ll have.

Periodically, pause and summarize the progress you’re making. Echo it back to your employees. Let them see the small successes from the start. Each success builds momentum and keeps people believing that they can succeed. Recognize that people will make mistakes and that’s not a problem. Make it easy to recover and move on; you want employees to admit mistakes and correct them, not hide them out of fear of punishment.

Finally, keep everyone in the company moving forward together. When people move as a group, they support and encourage each other. When you leave people behind, the others stop to help their friends, or they insist on going back to get them. Either way, you lose forward momentum. If you already have strong teams, take advantage of their strength. If you don’t have strong teams, think of this as an opportunity to build team work. In either case, provide coaches, opportunities to practice the changes, room for experimentation, and vivid images of what the results will look like. Done right, not only will the mediocre teams become strong, but the strong teams will become excellent.

Clovis claimed he was serious about making his company great. However, he never did the work or committed the resources to make the change happen. In the end, he was breathing goof gas.

August 12th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , | Comments Off on Goof Gas Change

A Tale of Two Light Bulbs

As published in the CEO Refresher

A friend of mine was telling me over coffee about a problem he was having with a light fixture in his house. It seems that every light bulb he put in would burn out in short order. No matter what he checked, everything seemed to be working correctly, with the notable exception of the instantly expiring light bulbs. Eventually, he got a bright idea: he put in a compact fluorescent bulb. He assured me that this was not because he’d run out of incandescent bulbs, but because he really didn’t want to call in an electrician and be told the problem was something obvious. Oddly enough, though, the compact fluorescent bulb did the trick. It worked perfectly and hasn’t yet burned out. While my friend has no idea why the incandescent bulbs don’t work in that light socket, he did solve his major problem: lighting the room.

Now, the obvious point here is that it’s all about finding the right fit: just because someone looks like they fit into your team doesn’t mean that they actually fit in. Like many things that seem blindingly obvious, it’s not quite correct. There are three valuable lessons to be learned from this experience.

The first point is that feedback is only useful if you pay attention to it. After a few bulbs burned out, the solution was not to curse and keep screwing in more light bulbs unless, of course, your goal is to become a punch line in some sort of elaborate light bulb joke. Once it becomes obvious that what you’re doing isn’t working, there is no point in yelling or complaining about it. Light bulbs are notoriously unimpressed by how much or how loudly you curse at them. People are not much different. Yelling at someone produces grudging change at best; you’re more likely to just convince them to go elsewhere. Trying something different, however, can yield surprisingly good results. The best leaders pay attention to how people are responding to them, and adapt their leadership style as their employees become more skilled and capable. On the other hand, if you find that people on your team are getting burned out, it’s time to try something different. You need a different team or a different style of management, possibly both. To put things a different way, a consistent lack of fit can alert you that something is wrong with your team, no matter how good it all looks on the surface. The lack of fit might be you!

The next point is that it’s easy to become focused around solving the problem in a very specific way, as opposed to accomplishing the goal. My friend was burning out light bulbs and poking around with a volt meter, because he was busy trying to understand why the socket wasn’t working. It might have been the socket. It might have been a box of bad bulbs. It might have been something completely different. In a very real sense, none of those things mattered: what mattered was that he wanted to illuminate the room. Taking a different approach allowed him to do that. By keeping the perspective of the overall goal, it becomes easier to brainstorm multiple different solutions, to innovate instead of simply fix what’s broken.

Finally, rooms are rarely lit by just one bulb. Indeed, looking around different rooms I almost always see multiple light fixtures, lamps, sconces, etc. It’s easy to get caught in the mindset that each socket must hold the same kind of bulb. It is also a common misconception that the best way to build a team is to have a group of people with similar skills. Certainly, that makes it easier to divide up the work and to make compare one person’s contribution against another’s. However, it also makes for a team that is more limited, less able to solve a variety of problems. A the risk of stretching this analogy out of shape, if the reason the incandescent bulb was going out turns out to be something that eventually involves every socket in the house, my friend could easily find himself in the dark. Similarly, one software company hired only engineers who were expert algorithm developers. When customers complained that the product was unusable, they were in the dark about what to do. They simply didn’t understand how to address interface problems. While having both incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs won’t help in a power failure, in other situations you are far more likely to have at least something working. Similarly, a more varied team might not solve every problem they encounter, but they will solve a lot more problems.

While all these lessons are important, there is also a “zero-eth” lesson: had my friend called an electrician, he would have saved himself a great deal of time and aggravation and illuminated the room much more quickly. Instead, he was stuck until he accidently hit on a solution. How often do business problems get dealt with that way?

July 18th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Tale of Two Light Bulbs

What Big Picture?

As published in The CEO Refresher

Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting down in front of your brand new 72 inch flat screen TV. The picture is fantastic, and the room is huge, or at least good-sized. After all, if the room is too small, it’ll be hard to sit far enough from the screen to really appreciate the picture. But, assuming that you have a little distance, the quality and the detail is just amazing. You can relax and see everything. Of course, if the show you’re watching is really exciting, you may find that you’ve missed a few of those details while you focused on the main action. That’s hardly unusual, and is a reason why people will often watch a movie more than once. Successive viewings allow them to pick up the little details that they might have missed the first, or even the second, time through.

Now, should you be sitting a little too close to that screen, it can be difficult to pick up some of the details. You can focus really well on the spot in front of you, but other parts of the screen can be hard to see. You might need to shift position or turn your head to follow the action. Even then, if the action gets too exciting, you may find it confusing or hard to follow. You might even find yourself getting caught up in the details that are right in front of your nose and ending up with a very confused perspective on what the entire show was all about.

At one time, I worked with a company that kept exhorting people to focus on the big picture. At the same time, they kept setting extremely aggressive goals with very tight deadlines. Everyone was pushing themselves to the limit trying to meet the deadlines. It was more than a little difficult for people to focus on anything other than the immediate problems they were trying to solve. It was kind of like sitting a bit too close to that 72 inch flat screen television and getting caught up in the exciting details right in front you.

At various meetings, it swiftly didn’t become clear that no one really knew what the big picture was. The reason it didn’t become clear was that at the first couple of meetings those who raised questions or attempted to find out what the big picture was were castigated for not paying more attention to that big picture. They were also chewed out for not focusing more on their areas of individual responsibility. People learned very rapidly to focus on their own areas and nod sagely in response to questions about the big picture. At least that way you’d only get chewed on over one thing.

The resulting product could be described charitably as a little schizophrenic. It was the equivalent of the blind men describing the elephant, with the added benefit of having a fifth blind man sitting nearby talking about the elephant’s wings.

If you really want people to focus on the big picture, there are a few things that need to happen in order to make that possible.

First, silly though it may seem to mention this, you have to have a big picture. I can’t count the number of organizations, for-profit and non-profit alike, where I’ve asked about overall vision and gotten nothing but static. A 72 inch television shows snow really well, so well that you might not even realize that you’re looking at static. Take the time to delineate your vision.

Second, you need to make it easy for people to see the big picture. The company I mentioned earlier was trying to make it hard for people to ignore the big picture. Unfortunately, the harder they made it to ignore the big picture, the harder they made it to see the big picture. There’s a reason why people see movies more than once: when we’re excited or stressed we miss the details that are not in front of us. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t get instant replays. Therefore, we need to reduce the stress level if we want people to pay attention to things that are not of immediate concern.

Third, distance makes a big difference. When we’re too close to the problem, it’s hard to see anything beyond it. Just like sitting too close to that 72 inch TV, we forget about things not in our immediate field of vision. If you want people to focus on the big picture, you need to create some metaphorical space so that they can take it in. That requires taking the team away from the daily routine to periodically review the big picture. Help each person see why their piece is important and how it fits in. Connect the dots. Give people perspective.

Finally, encourage questions and give honest answers. That includes admitting when you don’t know. Don’t yell at people for not seeing the big picture; instead, view it as feedback that either the big picture isn’t being communicated well or isn’t clear. Invite feedback and encourage people to contribute to fleshing out the picture. It’s a lot easier to focus on the big picture when you feel involved.

It’s amazing how much better the picture is when you give yourself the space to enjoy it.

June 7th,2011 Published Articles, Thoughts on business | tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Big Picture?

Using the Force: What Every Exec Can Learn from Darth Vader

As published in the Worcester Business Journal

My 6-year-old son is seriously into Star Wars. As we were watching the movies recently, he turned to me and asked, “Why is Darth Vader such a mean leader?”

Coming from a kid who thinks the Sith are kind of cool, the question took me by surprise. On the other hand, it’s rather heartening to see that even a small child can recognize bad management. Of course, the real question is not what makes Darth Vader such a bad leader. After all, when you’re the Dark Lord of the Sith, you don’t really need a reason. More aptly, the question is: What does it take to be a good leader?

No Intimidation

First, we have to dispense with the primary weapon of the Sith: fear. Darth Vader rules through terror, but the fact is, you don’t need to have the power to choke people to death using the Force to create a climate of fear. Fear is very effective at getting people to move away from something. In the practice of Jujitsu, fear of injury is often quite sufficient to convince an attacker to dive headfirst into the ground or into the nearest wall. Some mistakes are a natural part of doing business. When people are shamed for making mistakes or threatened with loss of their jobs if they don’t measure up, they become less creative, less dedicated and errors are not corrected.

Team Spirit

To be a positive leader, the first step you need to take is to focus on affiliation. You might also think of it as team spirit. When people come together to form a team, the first thing they do is look for common ground. To really create affiliation, the leader needs to actively get to know his team members and encourage them to get to know one another.

Independence

Next is building autonomy. Perhaps counter-intuitively, autonomy is the result of having structure. Structure lets each team member know what the others are doing well enough to trust them when they aren’t visible. That trust is what permits autonomy.

Lack of structure is chaos. Too much structure is stifling. For example, when an employee comes up with a good idea and your response is to ignore them, that is too little structure. When you say, “Good idea! Here’s how we can make it better!” that’s too much structure. Appropriate structure is to say, “Great idea! How did you come up with it?”

Great Expectations

Competence is not just hiring competent people. It’s creating an atmosphere of competence. Nothing succeeds like the expectation of success.

Managers can motivate employees in one of two ways: you can focus on failures, and make dire predictions about what will happen if employees screw up; or you can focus on success, and remind the employee of the things they did well.

The keys to great leadership are: get away from fear, build affiliation, create structure to enable autonomy, and craft an atmosphere of competence.

The hard part is finding the right balance for your team and your company. Start slowly and let yourself accelerate as you learn to use these techniques effectively. You’ll soon be amazed at how fast you’re going.

May 31st,2011 Published Articles, Thoughts on business | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Using the Force: What Every Exec Can Learn from Darth Vader

Cut Big Problems Into Solvable Pieces and Get Moving

As published in Corp! Magazine

If a tree falls in the driveway and no one is awake to hear it, does it make a sound?

The answer is a definitive yes. A very loud, cracking noise to be precise.

Not only does a large tree do a very good job of blocking a driveway, it isn’t exactly the best thing for the car that happened to be in that driveway.

April Fool’s Day in Boston started out like a typical Boston spring day: temperatures plunged overnight and we had an ice storm. As the old saying goes, there’s nothing like a spring day, and the morning of April 1st was nothing like a spring day.

Walking out of the house, I was confronted with a very large, very heavy tree lying across the driveway and my car. Needless to say, moving that tree was not going to happen. Because the storm had brought down a good many trees, it was going to be quite some time before I could get anyone in to deal with the tree for me.

In an odd, but perhaps not surprising, way, I found myself thinking about some of the problems I frequently help businesses deal with. Like the tree, the problem looks huge, immovable, overwhelming. Depending on how you look at it, that may even be true. By the same token, when I was asked recently to help a company with a particularly large, vexing problem, my first observation was what they really had were two small problems. Interrelated, yes, but each one could be attacked separately and far more easily than trying to brute force through the apparent larger problem. A large tree, or a large problem, is immovable; individual branches and pieces, on the other hand, are another story.Thanks to the power of social media and email, it wasn’t long before a friend showed up to drop off a chainsaw. Now, I’ve never used a chainsaw in my life, but I figured that as long as I was careful and avoided contact with any body parts that I particularly wanted to keep, it couldn’t be all that difficult. So, while my wife was looking up instructions on how to use a chainsaw, I went to work.

Fifteen minutes later, I successfully had the chainsaw firmly wedged in a large branch.

“Why didn’t you cut notches?” asked my wife.

“Notches?”

While I spent the next two hours with a handsaw working to free the chainsaw, she patiently explained what she’d just read about cutting notches in a large branch to keep the chainsaw from binding.

It is not unusual to jump into solving a problem and then run into an unexpected obstacle. Sometimes the original solution doesn’t work. Often, the basic idea is correct, but the implementation is flawed or incomplete. Recognizing the difference is critical to effective problem solving. When you get stuck, it’s necessary to slow down and understand what isn’t working and why. Brute force only compounds the problem: Had I tried to wrench the chainsaw out of the branch, it would have broken and I would have been back to being stuck behind a large tree, unable to get out of the driveway. Similarly, reflexively throwing more people and more money at a business problem just wastes resources: Figuring out, or finding someone who can figure out, the right solution may seem like a waste of time in the short-term, much like reading the instructions on how to cut with a chainsaw, but saves a tremendous amount of time and effort in the long-run. Making mistakes along the way, while sometimes leading to sore muscles, are inevitable parts of the process and provide opportunities for learning and expanding our skills.Clearing away the individual branches was a necessary first step, but the trunk of the tree still remained. One end was still slightly attached at the point where the trunk broke, about 15 feet off the ground, the other end lying across my car. Cutting through a tree that’s over your head is not the best move unless you have a particularly thick skull. Although I’ve certainly been accused of having just that, putting it to the test seemed a tad unwise. Nonetheless, we still had to get rid of the tree.

We set up two aluminum stepladders widely spaced below the trunk, and then I cut through the tree as near as I could get to my car. This time, I remembered the notches. As the one end of the tree slid forward and settled on the ground, the rest settled on the ladders. We could safely drop that to the ground and cut it up. I was then able to finish cutting up the piece on the car and get that out of the way.

Now, the fact is, when you see a tree lying on your car, the natural response is to be just a little concerned. After all, cars are not built to handle trees falling on them. Indeed, one might be forgiven for believing that the car is pretty much wrecked.

Similarly, many times a business problem appears equally overwhelming. It’s big, it’s seems immovable, and even after a plan is developed, it may be difficult to assess just how serious it really is. All too often, our brains provide us with all sorts of worst-case scenarios that, unfortunately, seem all too reasonable and logical… and which cause us to not handle the problem as well as we could. It isn’t until you figure out an effective means of attacking the problem and dive in that you can take control of the situation and reasonably assess the damage.

It turns out that Subarus are very tough cars. No glass was broken, the doors and hatchback all worked fine, and the car ran smoothly. There’s a lot of damage, but it’s all covered by insurance. With the driveway cleared, I had no trouble driving the car to the body shop. In the end, by breaking down the problem and being willing to learn from the inevitable mistakes along the way, what appeared to be a major disaster turned out to be little more than a minor inconvenience.

What are you doing about the obstacles that are keeping you from moving forward?

May 18th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Cut Big Problems Into Solvable Pieces and Get Moving

The Efficient Light Bulb

As published in The Imaging Executive

Once upon a time, there was a light bulb. This light bulb was quite a remarkable light bulb: it was praised far and wide for its incredible efficiency. This light bulb gave off no waste heat. This light bulb did not contribute to global warming. It had no carbon footprint.  It did not rely on fossil fuels. Truly, it was an amazing light bulb and visitors came every day to see this remarkable light bulb.

One day, though, a traveler coming to see the light bulb in action was delayed by an unfortunate flood that closed several roads. He did not arrive until well after night had fallen. Much to his surprise, he found the light bulb sitting in a pitch dark room.

“Why aren’t you giving light?” asked the traveler.

“Give light!” replied the light bulb in shocked tones. “You must be joking. If I did that, I would use fossil fuels. I would have a carbon footprint. I would give off waste heat. I would no longer be efficient.”

“But isn’t the purpose of a light bulb to give light?” asked the traveler.

“I’ve always been told to be efficient,” replied the light bulb with a shrug. If you have never seen a light bulb shrug, it is truly a wonder to behold. The traveler would have been amazed, except, of course, that the room was too dark for him to see the miraculous event.

Once upon a time, there was a software company named “Soak, Inc.” Soak’s product relied upon a very complex database server. One day, the VP of Engineering stormed into the office and declared, “The server is too slow. We need to speed it up.”

From that day forth, every effort was focused on improving the speed of the server. Other issues were deemed insignificant beside the one, critical, goal of performance. Engineers who dared to raise other issues were publically humiliated for wasting the company’s time. Bugs that did not relate to performance issues were deemed “optional.” People who spent time reviewing the optional bugs and trying to fix them were warned that their insubordination would cost them their jobs if it did not cease immediately.

Eventually, Soak developed an amazingly efficient server. It was fast. It was robust. It was ready to demonstrate to potential clients.

The demo started out remarkably well. The server did not crash, causing some to believe that this couldn’t actually be a demonstration of a software product. Indeed, the server performed flawlessly. All would have gone well indeed for Soak had not someone noticed that the data being delivered by the server didn’t make sense. Yes, what the server had gained in performance it had lost in accuracy. In other words, it was incredibly good at very rapidly delivering useless or incorrect information.

When the engineers were questioned about this unfortunate oversight, they shrugged and replied, “We were told to be efficient.”

While it is not nearly as amazing to see an engineer shrug as it is to see a light bulb shrug, the effects are much the same.

Once upon a time, there was a large company called “Red.” Red Inc. had a team of salesmen who were, it seems, not producing the necessary volume of sales.  While this may have gone a long way toward explaining the name of the company, it was not exactly a viable long-term strategy.

One day, the VP of Sales decided that the problem was clearly that the salesmen were not calling enough potential clients. They were wasting their time. They needed to be more efficient with their calls.

Much effort was spent focusing on the calling habits of the salesmen. They were given scripts. They were forced to practice making calls with various managers listening in and rating them on their performance on these practice calls. Those salesmen who demonstrated too great, or at least too obvious, a reluctance to make calls were dismissed. Those who questioned whether this was the right way to approach the problem either learned quickly to shut up or were also dismissed.

The sales team became very efficient at making calls. Sales did not increase. The remaining salesmen shrugged.

It turns out that even the best salesmen are reluctant to make calls. The problem was not with making the calls. The problem was with projecting the necessary confidence and optimism to attract and hold the interest of the client. Clients, it seems, are not all that likely to buy from salesmen who do not appear enthusiastic and confident in what they are selling. It also helps to know how to close the deal.

In each of these situations, a goal was set, a metric for success was defined, and that metric became the sole determinant of progress. Goals are extremely powerful tools: the best thing about them is that you accomplish them. Unfortunately, sometimes the worst thing about goals is that you accomplish them. In each of these examples, they accomplished their goals. A dead light bulb is extremely efficient, but not useful. Similar observations can be made about the server and the sales team.

Before leaping into setting a goal, especially a goal to solve a problem, it helps to understand the actual problem and to understand what the actual symptoms are. At Red, they assumed that an unwillingness or inability to make calls was the cause of the low sales and set their goals accordingly. We’ll never know how many top salesmen they dismissed because they didn’t realize that even the best salesmen suffer from call reluctance. Rather than create useful goals, they fixated on a symptom. That did not, however, actually change anything.

At both Soak and Red, the respective VPs stated that they were trying to solve the problems their companies were facing as rapidly and effectively as possible. They were setting goals. They were Taking Action! Taking action is certainly helpful, but it is even more helpful to be taking the correct action. Since it’s not always possible to determine just what the correct action is, it becomes even more critical to listen to the feedback and questions from the people who are charged with actually executing the action. The engineers and the salesmen knew that something was wrong, but no one was willing to listen to them. Remember, a key aspect of successful goal setting is understanding the feedback you’re getting.

I realize that many of you reading this are probably chuckling to yourselves and thinking that this scenario could never happen at your companies. The folks at Soak and Red said the same before, during, and even after it happened to them. The light bulb had no comment.

Setting a goal, for example, to be more efficient , seems like it makes sense and certainly feels good. However, it pays to determine if that goal is actually going to get you what you want. Otherwise, you may just end up with a dead light bulb.

May 11th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Efficient Light Bulb

The Hydrangea Conundrum

As published in The CEO Refresher.

If you were following the news last summer, you’ve probably heard that, after the cancellation of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, Boris and Natasha retired to Montclair, NJ. More specifically, the FBI announced the arrest of ten Russian spies whose mission appears to have been to infiltrate the PTA. At a certain level, the whole affair seems like a rather bizarre choice between putting together a deep-cover infiltration or having the New York Times delivered to your doorstep. What is particularly interesting, though, is the reaction of a neighbor of one of the accused spies:

“She couldn’t be a spy. Look what she did with the hydrangeas!”

This one line has received a great deal of press, to say nothing of a featured spot on late night comedy. It is, on the surface, quite ludicrous. After all, what would hydrangeas have to do with whether or not someone is a spy? Of course, the traditional movie image of a spy generally involves someone in a trench coat and sunglasses, but so what? Even the most dedicated spy has to take that trench coat off sometimes!

Seriously, though, this is exactly the point: when we hear about spies, we have a certain mental image created from a mixture of James Bond, Jason Bourne, perhaps some John le Carré novels, and so forth. When we see something that is inconsistent with that image, we make certain assumptions and judgments, often without realizing it. It is, let’s face it, hard to imagine James Bond planting hydrangeas. A good spy, though, is going to be aware of exactly this tendency and will take advantage of it: exactly because it is so hard to imagine James Bond planting hydrangeas is why he would do it.

The fact is, planting hydrangeas is as much an indication of whether or not someone is a spy as being charming in an interview is an indication that a person is a good hire or working long hours is an indication that someone is dedicated to the company.

OK, I realize that I’m taking a sacred cow and starting to grind it up into hamburger, so let’s look at these different scenarios.

When I talk with different employers about what they’re hoping to accomplish through their interview process, I get some interesting answers. The people higher up the management ladder tell me they’re trying to find the best potential employees, while the people who are actually meeting with the candidates the most tell me they’re looking for someone who will be fun to work with. This is rather like getting married, or not, after a first date.

While charming might be very nice and feel good in an interview, the worst prima donnas are often extremely charming and engaging for short periods of time. It isn’t until you’ve worked with them for a while that it becomes obvious what you’re dealing with. They know how to plant those hydrangeas, though, and are fully prepared to take maximum advantage of the impression that gives. In fact, some of the most competent people come off the worst in interviews because they’re seen as too intense or too “threatening.” That last seems to mean, “more competent than I am!” If the interview isn’t structured and the interviewers trained appropriately, the hydrangea effect is going to produce a lot of false positives and false negatives!

The hydrangea effect is in also in full flower in employee evaluations. I can’t count how often managers tell me that their best people are the ones who are working the most hours. Yet, when we actually look at results, we find that the correlation isn’t quite there. Focusing on accomplishments without looking at time spent reveals that quite often working long hours is just another form of the hydrangea effect. However, the fact is that a lot of people are well aware of the fact that visibly working late is a good way of currying favor and generating an image of dedication. This image is so powerful that I’ve even see the person doing inferior work be rated more highly than the superior performer who didn’t work late. What is even more interesting is the implicit statement that someone who gets the job done slowly is more valuable than someone who gets it done quickly. Consider that the next time you’re sitting around waiting for the mechanic to finish working on your car!

While it’s clearly the case that the hydrangea effect makes it hard to catch spies, that’s not going to be an issue for most of us. When it causes us to hire or reward the wrong people then it can lead to some rather unpleasant corporate hay fever, and that is an issue for most businesses.

So how do you tell when the hydrangea effect is influencing your decisions?

Next time you find yourself saying, “He must be a good hire because he’s so well-dressed and charming,” or “She must be doing great work because she works such long hours,” try replacing everything after the word “because” with: “he/she did such amazing things with the hydrangeas.” Does it still sound equally valid? You should have a very different reaction in either of those examples than if the sentence was “She’s must be doing great work because she meets all her deadlines and the customers love her stuff.”

In other words, are you focusing on something real, such as results, or are you being distracted by the colorful flowers?

April 18th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Balance the Individual and the Team for Top Performance

As published in Corp! Magazine

In Monty Python’s classic comedy, “The Life of Brian,” there is a scene fairly early in the movie when the people of Jerusalem have decided that Brian is the Messiah and are standing waiting on the street outside his window. Brian’s mother screams out at the crowd, “You are all individuals.”

The crowd replies: “We are all individuals.”

A pause, and then a lone voice yells, “I’m not.”

This is typical Monty Python absurdist humor, but it makes a very serious point. What is standing outside Brian’s window is not a group of individuals, it’s a mob. A mob is a group in which individuality is lost in the urge to conform to the group. As the movie progresses, we see the mob do various ludicrous things as they follow their unwilling prophet. Brian’s followers are, of course, convinced that they are acting according to his instructions and executing his desires, no matter how much Brian screams to the contrary. This being a Python film, the sequence of events is absolutely hilarious.

In a business, not so much. Unfortunately, the tendency for a group to lose individuality in the service of a charismatic leader or a particularly enticing corporate vision is not restricted to comedy. At one large software company, the dynamic became quite extreme: employees were expected to arrive at a certain time, eat lunch at a certain time, visit a certain set of restaurants, leave at a certain time, and so forth. No deviation was tolerated. The mantra was, “We’re a team. We do everything alike!”

Sound fanciful? I wish it were.

The problem is that a team that loses its individuality is not a team, it’s a mob or a rabble. It can be a very disciplined mob or rabble, sort of like the Storm Troopers in “Star Wars,” but it’s still a mob. Like the Storm Troopers, it’s very good at dealing with routine situations, but isn’t very good at dealing with the unexpected: new tactics from the rebels or, if you prefer, new competitors or existing competitors adopting new strategies. The other problem is that when a group focuses on homogeneity, it loses its ability for the strengths of some to compensate for the weaknesses of others: the Storm Troopers, for example, cannot successfully shoot the broad side of a barn.

At a different high-tech company, the only engineers hired matched a very precise and very limited profile. Not only did you have to solve a certain set of puzzles, you had to solve them in just the right way. Alternate solutions were not tolerated. This created a team that was very good at creating intricate, convoluted algorithms, and a user interface that was equally intricate and convoluted.

None of these situations are as extreme as that portrayed in “The Life of Brian,” but then again, they aren’t as funny either.

Later in the movie, we see the opposite end of the spectrum: the members of the People’s Front of Judea are so busy drawing insignificant distinctions between each of their positions that they are not functioning as a team. Rather, they are a horde. Each person is operating according to their own individual needs and goals, with no actual concern about the goals or strategy of the group. In a horde, everyone is a hero, entitled to his or her share of the plunder and devil take the hindmost. Cooperation is almost accidental, and the group is likely to break apart at the slightest disagreement:  the People’s Front of Judea can’t even quite figure out why the Judean People’s Front broke off, but is quite happy to yell, “Splitters!”

At a certain manufacturing company, each department was totally focused on doing its own job. None of the departments considered how their actions or decisions affected the others. Within each department, much the same thing was happening at an individual level. Rather than figuring out how to work together, they spent their time blaming one another for the inevitable failures. Fixing this issue saved the company in question several hundred thousand dollars a year.

The challenge, of course, is to find the middle ground, where the individual and the team are in balance. While it’s extremely difficult to find the exact middle, anywhere in the general vicinity works pretty well. Peak performance occurs when people are committed to the goals of the company and the team, and are also free to pursue their personal goals and work the way they want to work. Is it easy? No: less than one team in five ever gets there. However, it sure beats a horde or a mob of people chanting, “We are all individuals.”

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, contact steve@7stepsahead.com.

April 14th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Balance the Individual and the Team for Top Performance

Make a New Plan, Stan

As published in Corp! Magazine

Jesse Livermore, the legendary stock trader of the early twentieth century, was famed for his ability to keep his cool no matter what the market was doing. He neither became discouraged when he lost money or exhilarated when he made money, and he made a lot of money. His greatest triumph was making $100 million (no, that’s not an error) on Oct. 29, 1929, the day of the market crash that preceded the Great Depression. He was one of only two people to make money that day. As people were panicking around him, he calmly covered his short positions into the chaos. What was his secret?

It was simple: Jesse Livermore had a plan. Over the course of his trading career, he developed a plan for when to buy and when to sell. When the plan didn’t work, he stepped back, analyzed the failure, and adjusted his plan. Jesse Livermore’s plan failed many times, especially during his early days as a trader. He went broke more than once and, in 1915, was a million dollars in debt. But Jesse Livermore never failed.

Now this may look like sophistry: he created the plan and the plan led him into bankruptcy. Isn’t that a failure? Sure: it was a failure of the plan. By creating an external construct, a plan, Livermore was able to prevent his emotions from dominating his trading. More broadly, he was able to place the failure outside himself. It’s much easier to change one’s plan than it is to change oneself. On the flip side, when things went well, he could enjoy the fruits of victory without allowing the excitement to color his perceptions and cost him his profits. Each day, he knew that he had followed his plan.

This lesson can be easily applied to the business world, especially today. The news is a steady drumbeat of economic disaster after economic disaster, bankruptcies, shrinking sales, and so forth. It’s extremely difficult to not become discouraged; I regularly hear from business owners that they are no longer listening to the news. It’s simply too depressing. Unfortunately, restricting information only reduces a business’s ability to act when the opportunity presents itself; you won’t even know that the opportunity is there! Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, was reputed to read the papers every day all through the Great Depression. He had a plan, and part of his plan involved staying aware of what was happening around him. He was waiting and watching for his moment of opportunity. That moment came, and the rest, as they say, is history.

So how do you go about making a plan?

  • Start by defining a broad vision of what your business wants to accomplish. What will the world look like if you’re successful?
  • Identify the steps needed to bring that vision into reality.
  • For each step, identify how you will recognize whether or not it is working. It pays to decide upon your metrics before the pressure is on, and to identify the signs of trouble as early as possible. Jesse Livermore never bought a stock without deciding in advance the conditions under which he’d sell it, whether for a profit or a loss. As a result, his losses were small and his profits large.
  • Break those steps down into activities that can be done on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
  • Define appropriate checkpoints where you can evaluate progress and determine whether or not your plan is working. Remember to allow sufficient time to collect enough data to make a good decision. Evaluating before you have enough information is an excellent way to abandon a successful plan before it has time to pay off.
  • Execute your plan, day in and day out. You measure your own success or failure by whether or not you stuck to the plan.
  • Constantly review and revise your plan as you learn more. Failures of the plan are simply an opportunity to evaluate and adjust.

When we fail, it can be difficult indeed to get up and try again. But when the plan fails, it’s relatively simple to modify it and keep going.

What’s your plan?

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” For more information, visit www.7stepsahead.com or contact steve@7stepsahead.com.

April 11th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Make a New Plan, Stan

The Peter Principle of the Thing

As published in Corp! Magazine

A good many years ago, I was working at a small software company. For various personal reasons, the VP of Engineering abruptly left the company and one of the senior engineers was promptly promoted to take this place. Now, this guy was an excellent engineer and I learned a great deal from him. He was a fun person to work with and someone who was always enthusiastic. He was picked for the job exactly because of those qualities and because of his engineering prowess. However, as a manager of engineering, he never appeared to have the same joy and excitement about his job. Indeed, he often gave the impression that he’d rather be writing code than managing other people who were writing the code. After the company folded, as far as I know, he went back to engineering.

At another company, Jim was a star researcher. He was brilliant. He was the person who came up with idea after idea. He did so well that eventually he was put in charge of the lab. At that point, things went downhill. Working through other people drove Jim up the wall. He wanted to be in the lab, not arguing about the best way to do things. He couldn’t go back, though, without being viewed as a failure. At the same time, he couldn’t get promoted until he “shaped up” and “made his lab more productive.” He was trapped doing a job he didn’t particularly enjoy and wasn’t particularly good at.

Both of these stories are examples of a hypothesis first proposed in the 1960s by psychologist Lawrence J. Peter. Today, the “Peter Principle” is spoken about with a certain amusement and a smug “yeah right” attitude. Unfortunately, “yeah right” is the only construction in the English language in which a double positive makes a negative. In other words, the Peter Principle is popularly seen as a joke. In fact, it’s not. Moreover, it turns out that when you have an environment in which someone can be promoted into a job that is significantly different from what they’ve been doing, the Peter Principle is virtually inevitable. The key point lies in recognizing what constitutes “significantly different.”

Well, as it happens, managing engineers is significantly different from being an excellent engineer. Managing researchers is significantly different from being a top researcher. Managing salesmen is significantly different from being a top salesman. However, being a top engineer, researcher, salesman, or whatever is exactly what brings that person to the attention of senior management. If this isn’t disturbing enough, in the study confirming this phenomenon, authors Pluchino, Rapisarda, and Garofalo also found that the best way to avoid it was to either promote people randomly or promote the best and the worst performers equally.

As Monty Python might say, “This is getting silly!” After all, how can it possibly be true that random promotion would work better than promoting the best performers into management?

Consider how much time, effort, and training is required to become a top engineer, researcher, salesman, doctor, or just about anything else. Nothing in the training these people receive prepares them to manage others. In fact, good management is, in many ways, the antithesis of being a successful solo performer: instead of doing the work yourself, you are now doing it through others. Motivating others is a different experience than motivating yourself. Helping others stay focused and on track is different from keeping yourself focused and on track.

So, without resorting to promoting people randomly, what could be done to prevent the Peter Principle from taking over in your company?

Well, if it were possible for someone to both be a manager and not be a manager at the same time, you would be able to see if they could do the job, and allow them to continue along the track they’re on if they don’t shape up. Unfortunately, literally attempting this is pretty hard on the person and the business; someone who tries to be both a manager and an individual contributor at the same time usually ends up doing one, or usually both, badly.

An alternative, though, is to take a page from sports and provide practice space for people. Just as a sports team might rotate players through different roles before figuring out what each one is best at, companies can use predictive scenario leadership games and exercises not just to train existing leaders, but to find leaders. Quite simply, when people don’t know what to do, they do what they are most comfortable doing. In predictive scenarios, people have the opportunity to demonstrate talents that might not be obvious or which may never come up in their regular jobs. For example, the best managers create order in chaotic or ambiguous situations and know how to build employees’ confidence. When you enable an entire department to participate in a predictive scenario, you can see who is actually doing those things. Rather than promote randomly, you can pick the people who most strongly demonstrate the desired skill set for the position you are looking to fill!

Is this easy? Not necessarily. It takes some serious effort to avoid the Peter Principle. I suspect that many of you reading this are thinking that you simply can’t afford do anything about it. The real question is, can you afford not to?

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead (www.7stepsahead.com), an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Contact him at steve@7stepsahead.com.

March 14th,2011 Published Articles | tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Peter Principle of the Thing