The Business Sensei

High Performance in a Day?

I was recently asked if it’s possible to get a team from just beginning to work together to high performance in a single afternoon.

There is a way to do it. The technique is very similar to how you train for a marathon in a single day.

The trick is in what you do to prepare for that one day.

If, for example, you’ve spent about six months running 3-4 times a week and doing other physical conditioning, then you’ll be ready for your one day. If, on the other hand, you haven’t been running or doing other physical exercise, that one day of marathon training might not work so well and you might not feel like moving for several days afterward.

Team building in a single day is much the same. It’s all a question of how you’ve prepared.

Most training exercises tell you where your team is at and show you how to move forward. Without the proper Read the rest of this entry »

Killing the Leader

Heading into Memorial Day,  the news about the problems at the VA was hard to miss. All I had to do was turn on the radio or click on any news site and there was some article about the backlog, the fake waiting lists, and whether or not General Eric Shinseki should resign.

The waiting list problem wasn’t all that surprising: when you tell people they are going to be evaluated according to the success of a certain goal, and then don’t give them any obvious means to accomplish that goal, then they get creative. Unfortunately, they don’t necessarily get creative in a good way, particularly when all that matters is a particular outcome. When people don’t know what to do, they do whatever they can.

The solution to this scandal? Metaphorically killing the leader. Does that make the problem go away? From the sudden drying up of news coverage since Shinseki resigned, one might be forgiven for thinking so. The truth is, though, that the problems haven’t changed. All that’s happened is that an experienced leader will be replaced by a potentially less experienced one. Until that happens, it’s hard to imagine anything significant getting done. This hardly seems like a good recipe for success!

Does killing the leader really work? More on that in a few days…

Robert Sternberg And The Cultural Immune Response in Action

Dr. Robert Sternberg, a well-known psychologist and, quite frankly, an absolutely brilliant scientist, just managed to get tangled up in the University of Wyoming’s cultural immune response. He’s hardly the first person who has been caught up in such a reaction, although his case is certainly dramatic: he ended up resigning after barely four months as the president of the university.

The cultural immune response is a phenomenon I discuss in my books, The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development and Organizational Psychology for Managers.

At root, it’s pretty straight-forward: when the human immune system sees something that doesn’t fit, that triggers an immune response and the body attempts to repel the invader. At an organizational level, when someone enters the organization and does not fit with the culture, that person is seen as an invader. The organizational system mobilizes to fight off the invader. If the person entering the organization is a relatively low-level employee, it’s no big deal. The person either changes to match the culture, they leave, or they are fired. The overall culture barely, as it were, sneezes.

The situation is considerably more complex when the person triggering the response is the new president of, say, a university. As I wrote in Organizational Development:

Remember that culture is a roadmap of how the world works. The longer that culture has been in place, the more successful the organization has been, and the more people like the way things are working and are happy with the current situation, the stronger the culture will be. The stronger the culture, the more the roadmap is trusted. The more the roadmap is trusted, the harder it is to change.

When a new leader comes in who does not match with the culture, problems will immediately arise. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking a group leader or a CEO, although in general the smaller the group, the weaker the culture simply because it is not distributed over as many people. What the new leader is effectively doing is saying, “Everything you know, everything you believe in, is wrong. Trust me. Follow me. I have the truth.”

Now, I suspect that many of you reading that last paragraph are rolling your eyes and thinking, “Yeah, right. It can’t be that big a deal!”

Let’s consider the situation. For the members of the culture, this roadmap, this view of the world, is their common bond. It’s the thing that holds the organization together. By providing structure and predictability, culture reduces anxiety and promotes a feeling of security. Remember also that culture quickly becomes largely unconscious. Behaviors are chunked, no longer thought about on a conscious level.

Then someone comes along and says, “No, no, that’s all wrong.” Imagine being in that position. How would you feel? How did you feel the last time your company announced major changes or restructuring?

In Sternberg’s case, it looks like he tried to do too much too fast without taking the time to build relationships and become part of the specific university culture. By way of contrast, when IBM brought in Lou Gerstner in the early 1990s, Gerstner rapidly made himself part of the IBM culture while still standing partially outside it. While part of this may have been luck in that his background was very similar to that of IBM founder Tom Watson, Gerstner’s taking the time to build connections and visibly recognize and respect the existing culture before he changed it was also a key factor.

I’m not going to attempt a detailed analysis of Sternberg’s actions at the University of Wyoming, particularly since all that I have to go on at this point is the relatively superficial reporting of the events. Organizational change, particularly when it involves a cultural change, is a tricky business; the fact that someone as psychologically savvy as Robert Sternberg got tripped up by it only serves to underscore that point.

Ultimately, change is hard. For the University of Wyoming, having just successfully exiled one leader who attempted to make changes, it just got that much harder. The immune system is now on heightened alert. So, if you’re trying to make a major change in your organization, think carefully about how you can avoid triggering that cultural immune response.

Smoke and Mirrors

It’s getting toward fall. Out here in Stow, that means one thing: Apples. Every weekend from now until late October, the world descends on the local apple orchards. At some apple places, the lines can stretch a mile down the road.

That, of course, got me thinking about another kind of Apple. I didn’t really pay attention when they announced that the 5C would be available for pre-order starting today, but the 5S would not be. Both phones will be released on 20 September.

In the past, Apple always made the new phone available for pre-order and guaranteed (assuming you ordered quickly enough) that it would arrive at your door on Release Day. Now, if you want a 5S on Release Day, you have to get on line.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen long lines for Apple products. I’m sure it’ll make a nice visual and generate some serious media coverage.

But it makes me wonder why they need to create such an illusion of popularity. Smoke and mirrors anyone?

Organizational Psychology for Managers is now available at Amazon.com. Order your copy today!

International Apple Day +2

Here we are, two days after that moment when Cupertino becomes the center of the universe: International Apple Day. The day when Apple announces its new devices. The day when everyone yawned.

Last year, when Apple announced the iPhone 5, I commented that:

Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful piece of technology. I’ll probably upgrade to one eventually (unless I decide to stick it out and see what the iPhone 6 looks like ). But it’s a lot closer to the iPhone 4s than the iPhone 3g was to the original iPhone. Apple may be growing the box, but it sure isn’t outside it, and they have lots of company in there.

So here’s the thing: Apple’s competitors are looking to find a way out of the box that Steve Jobs created. Is Apple?

Well, as it happened, I didn’t upgrade. I probably will get a 5S though. It’s not the best phone out there, but it’s good enough to make it not worth the effort to switch to another platform. I suppose I might feel differently if I were still doing engineering instead of management consulting. Hacking the phone just isn’t that interesting to me any more.

More to the point, though, is that Apple seems to be stuck in its box, or perhaps Apple Crate would be a better term. Either way, the world is moving past them. Yes, the iPhone 5S is a beautiful piece of technology. Apple put something together that very neatly builds on the previous generations of phones, with nothing out of place. It’s beautiful, it’s powerful, you know exactly what you’ll get. It’s safe.

Two years ago, when the iPhone 4S was announced instead of the i5, I commented that:

Even a bigger question than the i5 was whether or not Tim Cook could fill Steve Jobs’ turtleneck. I, for one, still don’t know.

As a good friend of  mine observed, Apple is turning inward, much as it did the last time Steve Jobs left the company. This time, though, the only way he’s coming back is if they have the services of a really good medium or they manage to build an iSteve gadget, sort of the equivalent of IBM’s Watson but with the personality of Steve Jobs.

Somehow, I suspect that neither of those options are terribly likely to occur. That means it’s up to Tim Cook. He’s got the turtleneck now. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, things looked pretty bleak for the company. Jobs took some real risks, and enjoyed some phenomenal successes as a result. So, Mr. Cook, perhaps it’s time to stop playing it safe. Toss the turtleneck, literally and metaphorically, and take a chance. Maybe next time you’ll surprise us.

Microsoft Yawn

Microsoft president Steve Ballmer put out a long letter detailing changes taking place at Microsoft.

After wading through the announcement, I was reminded of some of the restructuring announcements that IBM used to send out back in the late 1980s: long, boring, and ultimately pointless. It’s impressive to see how much Microsoft has really taken on IBM’s mantle… although perhaps they’d have been better off if they’d done something new instead of picking up what IBM got rid of!

Unless he’s trying to produce a sleep aide, Ballmer’s memo leaves a great deal to be desired. Effective organizational change requires clearly defining the outcome, painting a bold, exciting, and engaging picture of the destination. In other words, it requires a vision. Without vision, we don’t know where we’re going.

Vision, however, requires far more than vague statements like, “Helping people achieve their full potential.” What does that mean? If the Microsoft Surface is any indication, it might well mean “buy an iPad!”

Microsoft’s original vision, “A PC on every desktop,” had power. It was bold, it was exciting, and it was measurable. Yes, measurable. They could see their vision coming true and see how their actions mattered.

Now, though, Microsoft is wandering around lost in the wilderness of defining full potential. Ballmer’s memo fails to excite, fails even to provide context or any real vision. Instead, it reads like the rearranging of the proverbial deck chairs, done more out of a belief that if enough things get changed something will happen; for example, the deck chairs will look better… Hardly the stuff of inspiration!

Organizational Psychology for Managers is phenomenal. Just as his talks at conferences are captivating to his audience, Steve’s book will captivate his readers. In my opinion, this book should be required reading in MBA programs, military leadership courses, and needs to be on the bookshelf of every Fortune 1000 VP of Human Resources. Steve Balzac is the 21st century’s Tom Peters.

CMG Director of Publications

Princess Bride Problem Solving

Once upon there was an organization. It was a fairly good sized business, not too big and not too small. It was a business, in fact, much like your business. And it came up with a way to apply the battle of wits from the Princess Bride in dealing with some long-lasting and thorny problems.

None of these problems were new problems… they were problems that the organization had had for many years: difficulties in setting priorities and making decisions; allocating resources and providing clear direction to employees.

These problems were the topic of much discussion, but despite all that discussion nothing ever changed.

Eventually, someone suggested bringing in a consultant to help with the problems. This is where things got creative. It turns out that there are two types of consultants, at least for this particular business: those who were closely connected to the business and known to people there, and those who had no connection at all.

We now come to the Princess Bride.

Consultants in the second group could clearly not be hired because they knew nothing about the company. How could they possibly be of assistance? Therefore we must look at consultants in the first group.

Consultants in the first group were too close to the organization. Clearly they too could not be hired. Therefore, we must go back to consultants in the second group.

But consultants in the second group would clearly not care about the results. So they could not be hired. Back to the first group.

But consultants in the first group could not be hired because they might care too much. So they too could not be hired.

And so it went, on and on, until eventually nothing was done. People continued to complain about the problems, but no one wanted to act.

In the movie, of course, Vizzini finally chooses a goblet and drinks the deadly iocaine powder. In reality, it didn’t matter which goblet he chose as the Man in Black had developed an immunity to iocaine powder and poisoned both goblets.

Similarly, in this case it wouldn’t have mattered which choice the business actually made: bring in someone totally unconnected or someone close and known to the people there. The important thing was to make a choice and actually take action to deal with the long-term problems that were interfering with their productivity. Whichever choice they made would have different benefits and different drawbacks, but either could have helped them. It’s only the choice to do nothing that has no hope of success. Let’s face it, if the problems haven’t gone away on their own after months or years, odds are pretty darn good that they won’t be going away on their own tomorrow or even next year.

Choose a goblet. Take action. Nothing will change until you do.

Riveting! Yes, I called a leadership book riveting. I couldn’t wait to finish one chapter so I could begin reading the next. Organizational Psychology for Managers’ combination of pop culture references, personal stories, and thought providing insights to illustrate world class leadership principles makes it a must read for business professionals at all management levels.

Nationally Syndicated Columnist and Author

If You Want Competence, Ignite Passion

I recently read Lou Adler’s interesting article on why not to hire competent people.

He has some good points, but he also misses a few key points as well.

He talks about finding out if the candidate has been excited in the past by work similar to what you’re hiring them for. While that’s one thing to look at, it’s really fairly limited. Gauging similarities between jobs is actually surprisingly difficult: apparent similarity, like beauty, is often skin deep, while apparently different jobs often turn out to be surprisingly similar.

It’s a far better approach to identify someone’s passions. What gets them excited? Don’t stop there, however! Now you need to find out why that gets them excited. Does your job offer similar opportunities?

For example, someone passionate about chess might be passionate because they love logical thought, challenge, strategic thinking, and the opportunity to outwit an opponent. Does your company provide some or all of those opportunities? If so, you’re already on the right track to engaging their passions.

Another way to gauge someone’s excitement is through your own excitement: are you excited by the work your company is doing and are you willing to show that excitement? How do they respond? Is there a spark?

If you are doing your best imitation of the PC from those old Mac vs. PC commercials, don’t be too terribly surprised if the person across the table from you responds accordingly. Far too often, we ignore highly competent people who are great potential hires because we are doing the equivalent of calling sushi “cold, dead fish” and then wondering why they aren’t excited.

Leaving motivation aside for a moment, how are we even judging competence? How do you know that works? Have you really identified what skills are needed on the job? Technical skills are all well and good, but if you don’t focus on the much larger constellation of “soft” skills, you’re going to have problems: is this person skilled at communicating? How about team work? Are you asking them to describe how they’ve helped their teams work together in the past?

We like to focus on technical skills because we think they’re easier to assess than the softer skills. Unfortunately, even that depends on how you go about doing the assessment. Most assessments seem to be as much about making the interviewer feel good as actually measuring competence or end up defining competence much too narrowly.

A real challenge here is that most interviewers are convinced that they can tell a great deal about a candidate from a very short interview. Why is this a challenge? Because most interviewers are wrong. That’s not what they’ve trained to do; indeed, the candidate probably has far more experience being interviewed than the average interviewer has in conducting the interview.

Perhaps the real answer here is to focus on getting reasonably competent people in the door and building an environment that makes them more competent and ignites their passions, instead of believing we can predict it all at the start.

Organizational Psychology for Managers is phenomenal. Just as his talks at conferences are captivating to his audience, Steve’s book will captivate his readers. In my opinion, this book should be required reading in MBA programs, military leadership courses, and needs to be on the bookshelf of every Fortune 1000 VP of Human Resources. Steve Balzac is the 21st century’s Tom Peters.

CMG Director of Publications

Monsters University Goal Setting

Organizational Psychology for Managers is phenomenal.  Just as his talks at conferences are captivating to his audience, Steve’s book will captivate his readers.  In my opinion, this book should be required reading in MBA programs, military leadership courses, and needs to be on the bookshelf of every Fortune 1000 VP of Human Resources.  Steve Balzac is the 21^st century’s Tom Peters. 

Stephen R Guendert, PhD

CMG Director of Publications

The other day I took my kids to see Monsters University. For those unfamiliar with the movie, it’s the prequel to Pixar’s extremely funny Monster’s Inc, of a decade or so ago, and tells the story of how the main characters of that movie met.

That would be James P. Sullivan and Michael Wazowski, just in case you haven’t been paying attention.

Early in Monsters University, Michael Wazowski arrives on the titular college campus with a list of goals: register for classes, unpack, ace all his classes, graduate, get a job as a scarer. Mike Wazowski is nothing if not ambitious.

And he does accomplish the first two goals on his list.

After that, well, it got tricky.

Creating goals is more than just writing down what you hope will happen: that’s the easy part. The hard part is breaking those goals into manageable chunks. While big goals might inspire us, left only as big goals they don’t give us good directions. It’s on a par with driving from San Francisco to Boston by “going east.”

It helps to be a bit more precise if you want to end up in the right city. If you don’t know at the start how to be that precise, then you have to create goals to find out before you overshoot your destination. That can leave you embarrassed, not to mention all wet.

At their best, goals force us to anticipate potential problems and plan to avoid them; goals enable us to identify our strengths and figure out how best to use them to our advantage. Done well, goals turn into strategy, and when they fail that’s warning us that something isn’t going according to plan. While no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, the very fact that our battle plan is failing is telling us that we have made contact.

I run into businesses all the time whose goals are like Mike Wazowski’s: they start easy and then jump to the big, bold, and vague. There are two major differences, however, between them and Mike: their failures to set clear goals don’t make a good movie and it doesn’t always work out well in the end. In other words, it pays to understand how to really set goals.

Preorder Organizational Psychology for Managers.

Curse of the Half-Empty Glass

“What was the primary means of motivation in those days?”

“Fear.”

— Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, The Two Thousand Year Old Man

For the 2000 year old man, fear may have been a very effective motivator: when he saw a lion, he was motivated to run the other way. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with fear. Fear doesn’t make someone move toward safety; it makes them move away from danger. Same thing? Not really. In jujitsu, pain can be used to invoke a fear of injury. Someone experiencing that pain, and that fear, will move away from it, even if moving away means running full tilt into the nearest tree.

In business, the same phenomenon occurs. Faced with an unexpected problem or setback, the most common response is to highlight the threat to the organization and all the terrible things that will happen if the threat is not immediately countered. This practice of attempting to motivate people to work harder through fear – fear of competition, loss of market share, job loss, company going out of business, and so forth – may encourage harder work, but not necessarily more effective work. In the business environment, there are a lot of trees.

While fear gets the adrenaline flowing, it also narrows focus, reduces creativity, and makes it harder for people to recognize and change a losing strategy. This would be fine, except that what is actually needed in most situations is a creative solution, the ability to accurately assess whether or not a strategy is working, and the ability to quickly discard failing strategies. Avoiding premature decision making, no easy task at the best of times, only becomes more difficult. As we all learned in grade school, in the event of a fire, don’t rush for the door: proceed slowly and avoid panic. The same is true in business: rushing to a decision is almost guaranteed to lead to a bad decision.

So given that the business needs to get employees focused and energized to meet a potential challenge, how should it go about doing that?

The key is to recognize that the glass in not half empty. It’s half full. That makes a difference: instead of focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have going for you. Instead of fear, instill an atmosphere of optimism. There are several steps to accomplishing this:

• Start by defining success. What does it look like? What will your business have accomplished in order to have been successful? Communicate that in a few brief, vibrant, sentences. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can waste a lot of time not getting there.
• Lay out a set of goals that will make the business successful. Include what you’ll be doing as well as what you expect others to do.
• Remind employees of previous challenges that they’ve successfully overcome. Emphasize the positive: how teams pulled together, how individuals stepped up to the plate, and so forth.
• Recognize that roadblocks will appear: don’t assume everything will go perfectly. The competition may do something unexpected. A critical employee may get the flu. A storm may disrupt travel or power. Make sure you’ve allowed time to deal with the unexpected so that it doesn’t derail you.
• Present energizing images to use when bad news strikes or setbacks occur: a cyclist passed by an opponent can imagine a rubber band attached to his opponent’s back. The rubber band pulls him faster and faster until he passes said opponent. Come up with the equivalent for your business. Repeat it frequently. If you can’t keep a straight face, find a different image.
• Take the time to brainstorm different solutions to the problems you are facing. Evaluate what you come up with and make sure it will get you to that success state. Rushing off down the wrong path wastes valuable time and, even more important, drains enthusiasm.
• Periodically review progress and show people how far they’ve come. Pilots may care more about the runway ahead than the runway behind them, but everyone else is motivated more by how much they’ve accomplished rather than being constantly reminded of how much more there is to do.
• Celebrate successes. Short-term reminders increase the sense of progress and make people feel appreciated.

Half empty or half full. A fearful team or an enthusiastic, creative team. It’s your choice.

Happy New Year!