The Business Sensei

When the CEO Meets Frankenstein

As published in Corp! Magazine

Horror movies follow some fairly predictable tropes: the monster slowly awakens; someone sees it happening, but no one really believes him. As the story unfolds, people go to investigate and are captured, killed, driven mad and so forth. There’s always something terrible going on, and there’s always some helpless innocent caught up in it, acting the way helpless innocents generally act.

Of course, when the helpless innocent doesn’t act as expected, well, that can cause the whole story to change. The classic comedy, “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” is a traditional period horror film, complete with the legendary Bela Lugosi, in which the helpless innocents are Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, acting like, well, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. This, of course, causes the plot to go flying off the rails, at least as far as Count Dracula’s dastardly plot to reawaken Frankenstein’s monster is concerned.

The key element of a horror film is that our helpless innocents are put into a situation in which they have no idea what to do. As in most situations, when we don’t know what to do, we do what we know how to do. Indeed, successful horror relies on that phenomenon: the terror comes from seeing how our ordinary actions lead deeper and deeper into trouble. Alternately, if those ordinary actions are slightly askew, the horror becomes comedy. In that case, the humor comes from seeing Abbott and Costello responding to a deepening horror by doing what they normally do.

The movie works because the tendency to do what we know how to do is both powerful and universal. Most people, confronted by novel situations, react that way. When there is truly nothing they can do, they attempt to exert control anyway by doing something that they can do. The results are often comedy or horror, depending on perspective and circumstance.

At one nonprofit, the founder of the organization was a man who had started out working in a stockroom. When the organization hit a financial crisis, he fixated on doing inventory. There was simply nothing useful he could do. Rather than feel helpless, he did the thing he could do. This made his board very happy as it kept him busy while they raised money for the organization.

At a high-tech company, a product deadline was threatened by a vendor not delivering a critical software component on schedule. There was nothing that could be done: the entire product was designed around that deliverable. The department head responded to the situation by demanding his employees work long hours, before the vendor delivered. After it was delivered might have made some sense, as the company would need to make up the lost time, but before? The department head had no control over the vendor, so he dealt with the situation by controlling the people around him.

Comedy and horror might be quite enjoyable when viewed from a safe distance, like a movie screen, but are much less fun to be in the middle of. How, though, does a leader avoid having her actions turn the situation into a comedy of errors or frustrating, painful experience for her employees?

The key is to practice dealing with chaos. Consider successful athletes: they learn all the moves and drills of their particular sport. Then they practice by competing against other athletes in order to become comfortable with the unexpected actions of their opponents. Indeed, Judo competition is referred to as “randori,” or “seizing chaos.” Because it’s not possible to predict what strategies people will employ or control what an opponent does, the successful athlete learns to adapt to the situation. Rather than becoming stuck on one response, they become adept at switching strategies to counter their opponents.

Successful leaders need to develop the same skill. It’s not enough to just know the theory of leadership; you also must practice in a chaotic or ambiguous scenario. Sadly, for many leaders, that means practicing on the job. As most athletes learn the hard way if they move straight from drilling to competition, getting used to chaos takes its own practice.

Fortunately, just as athletes have multiple training tools at their disposal to learn to deal with chaos before they enter competition; tools are available for business leaders as well. Predictive scenarios, a type of live action serious game, provide the sort of detailed, ambiguous situations that enable a leader to become comfortable with chaos. Unlike traditional leadership training exercises, there is no one, right answer. Participants need to motivate others, win deals, provide feedback, and execute strategies in a constantly shifting environment. Rather than just talking about leadership, participants need to display leadership and do it well enough to convince others to follow them.

Like the athlete, the leader becomes adept at switching strategies and at managing unpredictable situations. Rather than being trapped by doing what they can, they become able to apply what they know. Instead of comedy or horror, they achieve success. Now, that is something you do want to be in the middle of!

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 to increase revenue and build their client base. 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.

Read the first chapter of my book (via Amazon Kindle for the Web)

Between Two Points

My first jujitsu sensei liked to frequently remind us that if you wanted to go from San Francisco to LA, you didn’t go by way of Portland, Oregon. Naturally, the wise-guys in the class, which included me, would make cracks about the airline schedules. I don’t know if there actually were flights that went from San Francisco to LA via Portland, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest!

Of course, the point my sensei was trying to make was that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. While this is certainly true in normal mathematics, fans of “A Wrinkle in Time,” might recall that a tesseract is the shortest distance between two points. While traveling via tesseract is purely science fiction, the fact remains that sometimes the direct route, that is, the straight line, is not the most rapid means of getting to your destination. Sometimes, you’re better off with a metaphorical tesseract. This is true in business and, as it happens, also in jujitsu (although that’s a separate topic). As a case in point, let’s look at the increasingly popular Results Oriented Work Environments (ROWE).

Read the rest at Corp! Magazine

Being Fred Flintstone

Remember the classic kid’s TV show, the Flintstones? Fred and Wilma Flintstone are a stone age couple who live in something that looks oddly like the 1950s with rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Despite this, the show had nothing to do with either rock music or getting stoned. It did, however, have an episode which predicted that the Beatles were a passing fad. So much for prognostication! Fortunately, that episode is not the point of this article.

In one episode, Fred complains to Wilma that he can’t understand what she does all day. How hard can it be to take care of a house? Of course, as Fred swiftly learns, after he and Wilma make a bet, the answer is very hard. Fred, of course, makes a total mess of the whole thing. Now, obviously, the cartoon was playing off of social issues of the time and was intended to make people laugh. The obvious lesson, that a “non-working mother” is a contradiction in terms, is hopefully one that most people have figured out by now. The less obvious lesson is the much more interesting one: it is often impossible to gauge from the results, or from watching someone work, just how difficult a job actually is or even how hard they are working! Conversely, how people feel about the results has little bearing on how hard you worked to get them.

Read the rest at the CEO Refresher

Business Lessons From the Avengers (pt 1)

I have a fondness for old time radio podcasts. Indeed, one of the big advantages of the iPod is that it created a whole slew of opportunities for those of us who want to listen to such things. One of my discoveries was a podcast of the Avengers radio show. Yes, there was one, although it didn’t really come from the Golden Age of radio, rather being adapted from the TV show. Nonetheless, listening to episodes of the Avengers pointed up four very important points:

1. Russian accents are only the second most villainous sounding accents. British accents are the most villainous, probably because they always sound like they have anti-social personality disorder.

2. British accents also sound heroic, at least when they aren’t the villains.

3. Old time commercials in a British accent sound like something out of Monty Python.

4. When word “helpless” is said immediately before “Emma Peel” you know someone is in for a very nasty surprise.

I’m not entirely sure what this means, although the first might reflect my image of Boris Badenov as the quintessential Russian villain. Since this year is the 50^th anniversary of Rocky and Bullwinkle, perhaps Russian accented villains will make a comeback. I’ll leave that to James Bond (or Moose and Squirrel). What is more interesting is how well a 1960s cold-war espionage show holds up half a century later. Despite all our changes in technology and politics, and the much touted generational shift in the workplace, it should come as no big surprise that human nature hasn’t changed at all: people are still, basically, people, and John Steed and Emma Peel are just as suave and sophisticated today as they were fifty years ago. Despite all the noise about Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y, there are also some things about the workplace that simply haven’t changed, although our perception and understanding of them might have.

In my book, “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” I discuss the twelve key elements of building a successful business. These elements are, in many ways, as timeless as John Steed and Mrs. Peel, if not always quite so sexy. They are, however, the key points that any entrepreneur needs to work with if you want to maximize your chances of creating a successful business.

Read the rest at Under30CEO

The Challenges of Hiring Slow

In an upcoming Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership I talk about the perils of “hiring slow” and “firing fast.” As I’ve been doing, I wanted to give you just a taste of the “hiring slow” part here.

A company can hire slow for two major reasons: because they know exactly who they’re looking for and are willing to wait for the right people to apply, or because they don’t know who they’re looking for and believe they’ll know when the right person applies.

The first is more useful. If you’ve done your homework and figured out the characteristics of the employees you’re looking for, and if you’ve trained your interviewers to recognize those people, then by all means hire slow. Take your time and wait for the right people or, better yet, go out and attract them to the company.

Read the rest at ERE.Net

The Taboo of the Bananas: Organizational Culture and Recruiting

Once upon a time there was a company known as Robotic Chromosomes. Don’t bother Googling it; it’s no longer in business, and besides, that’s not the real name. Robotic Chromosomes had a way of hiring programmers that isn’t all that unfamiliar to folks in the software industry: logic puzzles. Like Microsoft, and various other companies, Robotic Chromosomes put every potential engineer
through a series of logic puzzles in order to determine if those engineers were qualified.

There is, in fact, no actual correlation between programming ability and the ability to solve logic puzzles.This did not stop the folks at Robotic Chromosomes, who were convinced of the validity of their methods and were not interested in allowing facts to get in the way.

Even within the logic puzzle method, though, there were some definite oddities and idiosyncrasies that distinguished Robotic
Chromosomes from other companies.

For several years, no one skilled in visual presentation or user interface development was ever good enough to solve
the logic puzzles, or at least they could never satisfy the solutions that the existing engineers believed were correct.

Read the rest at the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership

What Makes Leaders Successful

If you missed my appearance on MYOB Radio on Sunday (or if you heard it and can’t wait to hear it again 🙂 ), you can listen to my interview on what makes successful leadership here.

On MYOB Radio this Sunday!

I will be appearing on the “Mind your Own Business” Radio Show this week. The show provides advice, information and connections for entrepreneurs, service providers and established companies. Tune into MYOB this Sunday between 9-11 AM to hear my segment!

Local Stations:

WBNW 1120 AM – Needham, MA
WPLM 1390 AM – Plymouth, MA
WESO 970 AM – Southbridge, MA
WSMN 1590 AM – Nashua, NH

or stream online @ MYOBTheRadioShow.com

No Escaping That For Me

“Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me!”
– Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein”

As fans of Mel Brook’s classic comedy Young Frankenstein know, Gene Wilder’s destiny as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein is to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and create the monster. This being a comedy, things do work out somewhat better than they did in the original story. Destiny, it appears, can be changed with sufficient effort. Indeed, precisely because Frederick Frankenstein realizes that he’s following in Victor Frankenstein’s footsteps, he is able to turn things around at the last minute and bring about a happy ending.

In my consulting projects and in conducting leadership training with various groups, from college students through executives, I’ve frequently observed destiny in action. People play out the roles that they believe they are supposed to play out. Organizationally, we act as we’ve been taught to act in our various roles: CEOs are expected to behave in one way, managers another, engineers yet another. For example, in some companies it’s perfectly normal for engineers to show up to work in jeans and T-shirts, but totally inappropriate for a manager to do the same.

Read the rest at Corp! Magazine