The Business Sensei

Stalking the Elusive Leader

We like to think of ourselves as highly rational beings, but the fact is we’re just not that good at being rational.The recent Star Trek movie demonstrated the normally imperturbable Mr. Spock making foolish decisions based on emotional reactions. Later in the movie, Spock’s reasoned, logical approach is less than sufficient to rally the crew. Certainly they follow him, because he is the legitimate commander at that moment — but they are not excited. When Kirk takes command, however, it is another story. Kirk engages them on an emotional level, a level deeper and considerably more powerful than logic.

I hear all the time about how there is no room for emotions in the workplace.Yet, the companies where I’ve seen this implemented are about as unemotional as Mr. Spock: in other words, they put on a good front. Under pressure, though, they are as emotional as anyone else. I still remember, from early in my consulting career, the manager of a team screaming at me that he did not allow emotions to influence his behavior. For some odd reason, the irony of the moment was lost on him.

Read the rest in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership

Boiling the Frog

There is an old and hoary claim that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will sit there until it cooks. In fact, this happens only if the frog is equipped with little frog cement galoshes rendering it unable to jump: frogs are too smart to be boiled alive. They leave long before the water gets hot enough to cook them. Why, then, does this story have such longevity?

Read the rest at the CEO Refresher.

Light’s Better Here

There’s an old joke about a man searching in the gutter under a streetlight. A passerby asks him what he’s doing.

“Looking for my car keys,” replies the man.

“Where did you drop them?” asks the passerby.

“Over there,” says the man, pointing into the inky darkness down the street.

“Then why aren’t you looking there?” responds the passerby in amazement.

“The light’s better here.”

Although ludicrous, like many jokes its humor comes, as it were, from the light it sheds on an important aspect of human behavior. Given the choice between poking around blindly in the dark or looking in the light, most people will choose the latter.

I can already hear the cries of, “But wait a second! That’s nonsense. Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately look where they know the keys are not?”

Why indeed? The fact is, we already have our answer: “the light’s better.” The real question is what does that actually mean?

Read the rest in the Messenger.

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

I recently had the CEO of a certain business very proudly tell me that she was so busy looking for clients and helping her staff deal with the economic crisis that she didn’t even have time to sleep. Was she serious? Yes, she was. Were things actually working out for the business? That was less clear, however it didn’t matter. They were Taking Action, and that’s what really counted.

When we’re feeling stressed, the instinctive response is to take action. Taking action feels good; it provides an outlet for our energy and a feeling of accomplishment. It just may not actually be useful. Sometimes it really is better to follow the advice of the old joke, “don’t just do something, stand there!” After all, if you take the wrong action too frequently, you may well find yourself without the time, money, or energy to take the right actions.

Now, it’s certainly true that sometimes the toughest problem is just to get started. It’s sometimes the case that taking some action is better than taking no action at all. However, it does help if the actions being taken are those that have at least some chance of moving the business forward. It helps even more if the CEO can clearly evaluate the success or failure of each action and adjust course as necessary. That’s hard to do when you aren’t sleeping.

A lack of sleep leads to more than just a desire for an extra cup, or ten, of coffee. There is a reason why athletes want a good night’s sleep before a big game and why legendary investor Jesse Livermore stated that one his secrets of success on the stock market was being well rested. Lack of sleep interferes with motivation, judgment, and planning. It makes one more reactive, less able to stop and look before leaping. Worst of all, lack of sleep very quickly degrades a CEO’s ability to recognize a losing strategy and replace it with one that might work.

As anyone who has taken a first aid class recently will recall, the first thing you need to do in an emergency is evaluate the situation. That’s difficult to do when sleepy. Part of that evaluation involves determining how quickly you need to act. Even if there’s a wall of flame rushing toward you, a few seconds of thought can still make the difference between life and death: caught in a massive forest fire, firefighter Wagner Dodge stopped and thought. He survived the fire while those around him were engulfed. Wagner Dodge had only seconds to come up with an innovative solution to his problem. The good news: he did. The bad news: he had never developed strong bonds of trust and loyalty with his team. Under pressure, they ignored him and perished in the flames.

Today, many businesses are still facing the financial equivalent of that wall of flames. Instead of stopping and thinking, they are leaping into action. In many cases, those actions are not working out so well. The CEO who isn’t sleeping isn’t helping her company or herself. She is, however, giving herself the opportunity to undermine her own credibility with her staff. The longer that goes on, the more likely they’ll give up on her at just the wrong moment.

So what should a CEO do?

• Build up a reservoir of trust and reinforce it daily. Help employees understand your decisions. Invite employee feedback, ideas, and suggestions.
• Build and maintain loyalty: this is the worst time to cut employee benefits or have an opaque layoff policy. As demonstrated by IBM’s Tom Watson or HP’s Hewlett and Packard, building employee loyalty makes a tremendous difference in tough times. Without it, they won’t follow you when you most need them.
• Don’t just react to the crisis. Stop and think. Brainstorm solutions with others. Find someone who will give you unbiased feedback. Take full advantage of the eyes, ears, and brains around you.
• Take care of yourself. Exercise and sleep are critical to maintaining perspective and functioning effectively under pressure. Despite the failing equipment around them, even the Apollo 13 astronauts took the time to sleep before attempting their return to Earth.
• Anticipate success. Never pass uncertainty down to your team members.

Many companies will survive the current economic tsunami. Fewer will prosper as the economy turns around. It will be those who know when to stand there before they act who will be in the second group.

Click here for a printable version.

Ethics? Not pragmatic.

Yesterday, I wrote a post and also posted on Facebook a link to the NYT article about a six year old cub scout being suspended for 45 days because he brought a “weapon” to school: a combination spoon, fork, and knife. The presence of this obviously deadly weapon triggered the school’s Zero Tolerance policy. One of the responses to my post was rather interesting:

“Steve, this issue isn’t really about what’s ethically/morally correct when you’re in the school “trenches”.”

The poster explained that these policies exist to protect the school against lawsuits for discrimination, and added, “sometimes pragmatism gets the nod over the idealism we’d prefer.”

First of all, this is a textbook example of the process of moral disengagement: in other words, people justify unreasonable or unethical behavior by saying that it’s necessary to protect themselves or others. In this case, the argument is that, “We have to do this to protect ourselves from lawsuits.”

But I also have to wonder just how seriously a district takes ethical and moral behavior when the attitude is that ethics can be disposed of if they’re not convenient. In what other areas will they cut corners?

On a deeper level, what I see here is an organization that has forgotten what its mission is. Schools need to educate in a safe, supportive environment. Zero Tolerance doesn’t do that on several levels.

The American Psychological Association, the Department of Education, and the US Secret Service (!) have all found that ZT policies do not improve student safety. ZT is nothing more than a CYA for administrators who want to look like they’re doing something. While they are focusing on imaginary threats, they are not dealing with the real threats, the ones that the Secret Service (for example) found actually do turn into real violence. They are also creating an atmosphere of distrust and fear.

Indeed, the very idea that a well-behaved six year old can be sent to reform school for 45 days for an innocent, childish mistake is profoundly unsettling. How can one possibly feel safe in an environment when having a pocket knife dropped in your lap is grounds for expulsion? No, I’m not exaggerating. That’s happened too: ZT says that if it’s in your lap, it’s yours. How can parents trust a school district when they know that the school is perfectly willing to do serious psychological damage to their children in the name of Zero Tolerance? Let’s face it, sending a well-behaved child to reform school for a quarter of the school year is going to be psychologically and probably physically traumatic.

For a business to work well, it needs to build a sense of autonomy and competence amongst its employees. ZT destroys that. It turns administrators and teachers into robots and creates an atmosphere of fear. When you create an atmosphere of fear, people look for threats and they look for people to strike out against in order to reduce their fear. The schools are striking out against the students, and the parents naturally look for ways to strike back against the schools.

In a for-profit business, you’d see increasing amounts of fighting between teams and within teams. A for-profit business would be in serious danger of going under just from the deterioration of its products and services. Something to think about.

And, by the way, the last thing we need children learning is that ethics should be disposed of whenever they are “not pragmatic.”

The Seven Habits of Pointy-Haired Bosses

Here’s one that was just published by the CEO Refresher.

Quoted on “Embracing The Competition”

I was just quoted on how to embrace your competition. No, it doesn’t involve a knife in the other hand 🙂

http://bit.ly/EmbraceCompetition

In the end, if you can make the pie bigger, you both win.

Quoted in PM Planet

I was just quoted in an article titled, “5 signs you’re not cut out to be a project manager”

If you’d rather not read the whole article, here’s what I said:

”

In my experience, there are "natural" project managers in much the same 
way that there are natural athletes, musicians, writers, etc. In other 
words, some people might start with more natural talent than others, but 
if you want to be really good, you have to practice and develop your talent.

Unfortunately, there are so many poor managers out there that someone 
who is even marginally skilled looks fantastic.

That said, I've observed that the best project managers have as a common 
trait the ability to yield power. It's the ability to give people as 
much autonomy as possible while still maintaining a sense of team 
cohesion that makes the best project managers. While some people might 
do that naturally, almost anyone can learn to do it."

The reporter didn't use the whole quote, but I think he got the point across.

Leadership and team formation

Ever wondered why some teams are a pleasure to work for and others are a royal pain? You can find out on my live radio interview on Leadership and Team Formation.

You can also read a discussion of the show here.

The value of screwing up

I was interviewed recently on Motivational Minds radio on the value of making mistakes in creating an innovative organization. Check it out!