The Business Sensei

The importance of a vacation

I was recently interviewed for an article in AOL Jobs on taking breaks. You can read the full article here, or a related article (which I had nothing to do with), here.

The first article didn’t use everything I wrote, so here’s the full text, including the questions I was asked.

• Why is it so important from a performance perspective to log off and then return to work completely refreshed?

Let’s start by understanding how our brains work. We are built to tune out repetitive stimuli and focus on the novel. This isn’t all that surprising: most animals are built that way. It’s not the unchanging thing that is most likely to be a threat, it’s the thing that’s changed. Taking breaks allows us to view our work with new eyes instead of becoming bored and burned out.

Another piece of the puzzle is the way we make intuitive leaps. Archimedes didn’t have his “Eureka!” moment while he was staring at the problem. He had it when he took a break and went to the baths. Taking breaks enables the mental static to fade out and the creative and unexpected connections to pop up. Some of the recent work in neuroscience suggests that, although they’ve become encrusted with mystic gibberish, Zen Koans are designed to force the brain to essentially “take a break” from a problem it is stuck on.

• Is it helpful to perhaps check e-mails periodically on vacay for urgent matters to diminish anxiety and the workload upon return or is it better to be completely shut off?

I’m not sure that there’s a one-size-fits-all answer to this. There are some things to recognize though: our brains are built to remember uncompleted tasks better than completed tasks. You might ask, “If that’s so, why do we forget so many tasks?” The answer is that we are usually trying to remember too many different tasks!

When we check our email during vacation, we run the risk of seeing a problem that we feel we have to address and can’t from where we are. At worst, that can blow the vacation out of the water. If nothing else, it can ruin the rest of the day, or several days, because we can’t get the problem out of our heads. If you are going to check email during a vacation, make sure you have an easy way of queuing anything important so that you’ll be reminded of it when you get back. That makes it much easier to forget about it during vacation without worrying that you won’t remember to deal with it.

I will observe that the people who have the most trouble unplugging during vacation are also the people who work for or lead teams that have significant other performance issues. If you feel that you must check email during vacation or your team won’t be able to get anything done, that’s not an email problem, that’s a team development problem. You need to fix it. Similarly, if you’re telling me that people on your team can’t take a vacation without so much work piling up that they either have to work from the beach or are overwhelmed the moment they return, that’s also not a vacation problem. That’s either a team development problem, a leadership problem, or a scheduling/time management problem, possibly all three. Address those issues and you’ll be amazed how many of the other problems go away.

• What are two or three ways people can do this? For instance, one source told me to simply not bring the BlackBerry to the beach so you’re not tempted and in turn, you avoid losing the BlackBerry to sand damage.

Turning off the computer, putting the iPhone on airplane mode (so you can still listen to music), etc, are common techniques. I usually leave the computer off at least one day of every weekend. The real answer, though, is not technological, it’s personal: develop the habit of turning off. By turning off the computer one day of the weekend, I am practicing turning off under “controlled conditions.” When I went camping with my family earlier in the summer, I did bring the computer in case I wanted to write (I didn’t — never turned it on), and I put my iPhone in airplane mode. I took it out of airplane mode once to delete emails. Didn’t read anything, just deleted anything that was obviously unimportant.

It feels difficult at first to turn off. That’s why practicing is important.

• What are some benefits to logging off?
  

See above. Logging off helps increase motivation, productivity, and creativity. Let me add that the brain is a muscle. Like any exercise, it pays to change it up so we don’t get stuck in ineffective habits.

• In this digital age it makes it so tempting to remain connected but is it better or does it no matter if a vacation is a vacation is a vacation whether or not you take a long weekend that’s 100% work-free or a two week vacation whereby you periodically check in for messages?

It takes 7-10 days to really destress and start to relax. Staying connected can only slow that down. That said, if you can be disciplined about not getting sucked into your Blackberry and can control your time, checking for messages probably won’t do too much harm. Keep in mind, though, that once you show your co-workers that you’re available to help them during your vacation, you can count on them continuing to bug you. After all, by responding while on vacation, you’ve effectively given them permission.

• If there’s anything else you’d like to add as it relates to how to log off and why we need to, please feel free to add.

If you do check for messages, make sure you have a good calendaring service (e.g. iCal, GCal, followup.cc, etc) where you can quickly and easily schedule reminders for when you get back.

If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night worrying about work or can’t get work problems out of your head, block out some “worry time” on  your calendar. Give yourself 15 minutes, and move on. Once we’ve addressed an uncompleted task, even if merely by scheduling time to think about it, we can let it go.

Sir CEO and the Green Knight

As published in the CEO Refresher

One fine day, Arthur, the CEO rode forth upon his trusty steed. At his side hung his magic sword, Expostfacto. Expostfacto was widely considered to be a sword with a sharp legal mind. Arthur had made his fortune renting camels, which he parked every day in a large camel lot.

The sun was shining. The birds were singing. Suddenly, a dragon came roaring out of the sky, heading straight for Arthur. Flame billowed from the dragon’s mouth. Arthur drew his sword and with one swift blow, buried the dragon in a shower of subpoenas.

So it went, as Arthur spent many days enjoying the freedom of facing foes instead of sitting in stultifying board meetings, where, regretfully, it was seen as déclassé to employ the full might of Expostfacto upon annoying board members or customers. Against the power of Expostfacto, each foe swiftly fell under a massive pile of paperwork.

So it went until the day that Arthur encountered Maldive, the Green Knight.

“None shall pass!” quoth Maldive.

Many blows were exchanged, with Expostfacto screaming its legendary battle cry, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,” a phrase which has become familiar to all internet users. Eventually, though, with a mighty blow, Arthur struck Maldive’s head from his shoulders. That should have ended the fight right then and there, but Maldive was an internet marketing scheme. He simply put his head back on and continued the fight. Eventually, Maldive knocked Expostfacto to one side, and placed the point of his sword at Arthur’s throat.

“I could slay you now,” said he. “But on your honor, I will spare you if you can answer this question: What does every engineer desire? Swear on Expostfacto that you will return in a month. If you have the answer, you will live. If not, you die.”

Ignoring Expostfacto’s muttered comments on possible loopholes and the inadvisability of signing anything, Arthur took the oath to return in a month with the answer or without it.

Arthur rode across the land searching for an answer to the question. He called together all his senior managers and asked them, to no avail. He even posted the question on Twitter and Facebook, leading to some very interesting answers and suggestions, particularly from certain ex-politicians in New York and California. However, since Maldive had asked about engineers, Arthur knew those answers couldn’t be true because an engineer wouldn’t know what to do with one even if he found someone willing to go on a date.

By day 29, things were looking quite bleak for Arthur. As he rode through the frozen lands of Nadir, he encountered a strange looking man. The strange thing was that the man did not appear to be in a rush. As a CEO, Arthur was quite used to people rushing around following his orders. He could always tell when things were getting done by how much people were rushing.

“Who are you?” asked Arthur, puzzled at the sight of someone so calm and relaxed.

“Merlin,” was the reply.

“Merlin the Magician?” asked Arthur.

“No, Merlin the consultant. What seems to be a problem?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” said Arthur who, like most CEOs, became very cautious at the sight of a consultant.

“Good,” said Merlin, who turned back to whatever he was doing, completely ignoring Arthur. This was a very unusual experience for Arthur, who was not used to being ignored by anyone.

After several minutes, Arthur said, “Well, I guess I’ll be on my way.”

There was no response.

“I’m going now,” said Arthur.

There was no response.

Arthur started to ride away. There was still no response from Merlin, who seemed quite happy to let Arthur leave. Arthur had not ridden very far before he stopped and turned back.

“Do you know what every engineer wants?” asked Arthur.

“Why do you ask?” replied Merlin.

Before long, Arthur was telling Merlin exactly why he wanted to know and what would happen if he didn’t find out. I wasn’t long before a price was agreed upon and Arthur had his answer.

“That’s it?” exclaimed Arthur. Reflecting on it further, he said to himself thoughtfully, “But that’s what everyone wants!”

The next day Arthur showed up at the appointed time for his meeting with Maldive.

“Well?” said Maldive.

“Is it money?” said Arthur.

“No.”

“Is it a fast car?”

“No.”

“Sex?”

“We’re talking about engineers,” responded Maldive. “If that’s the best you can do, then prepare to die.”

“Wait,” said Arthur. “What engineers want is the freedom to make their own decisions.”

There was a long silence.

“I see you encountered Merlin,” growled Maldive. “Very well. But I doubt you will learn from this experience!”

And so Maldive turned and rode away.

Arthur, meanwhile, departed for home in a very thoughtful mood. What, indeed, did it really mean that people want to make their own decisions? Obviously, if he allowed all his employees to make their own decisions, surely chaos would result. No one would know what anyone else was doing! There would be no coordination between departments.

The moment Arthur returned to his office, he discovered the true meaning of chaos. Thousands of emails needing his attention; projects stalled because he hadn’t been around to tell people what to do; irate customers complaining about badly maintained camels (even camel renters have some expectations!); employees angry and frustrated because they couldn’t get anything done in his absence.

“I knew I should never have taken a vacation,” Arthur thought ruefully to himself. “This happens every time! It’s even worse than when I’m in a meeting or on a call.”

As Arthur dove into sorting out the confusion that came about from his taking his guiding hands off the corporate reins, he kept wondering how much worse it could really be if he allowed his employees to make their own decisions. Would it really be worse than what he dealt with every day? Arthur decided to experiment: instead of solving the problems in one department, he gave them limited decision making power. They could approve all expenditures, including customer returns or gifts, up to a fixed amount. After a couple of false starts as everyone got used to the new arrangements, Arthur found that that department was suddenly taking up much less of his time and energy. Moreover, the increased productivity of his employees more than made up for the occasional decisions that Arthur might have made differently. Indeed, simply by building some structure, Arthur found he could permit much more freedom and limit the downside of the occasional mistake, and create almost unlimited upside. At the same time, he also found that he could now focus much more on the strategic direction of his company instead of spending all his time putting out fires.

Best of all, as Arthur spread these changes throughout his company, he found that work didn’t come to a halt whenever he wasn’t available. Productivity increased because employees no longer needed to look busy in order to appear to have a purpose; instead, they could actually engage in purposeful activity. Sure, there were still moments of frustration, but on the whole, employees were happier and more motivated than he had ever seen them. Motion does not equal progress, Arthur realized. Progress equals progress.

In the end, the ability to give people the freedom to work as they would like to work comes from building the structure to enable them to know what to do. Without structure, there may a lot of motion, but very little progress. What will you do to change that?

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, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

Who Betrays One Master

A nervous looking man in a suit slips furtively through the streets of an unnamed city. He comes to an office building and, checking to make sure that he isn’t being watched, slips inside. There, another man greets him.

“Do you have the plans?” the second man asks.

“Do you have the money?” replies the first.

Perhaps they haggle for a moment, but then the second man hands over the money and the first man hands over an envelope. The second man glances into the envelope.

“I see you kept your word.”

“You earned it,” replies the first man as he turns to leave.

“No,” says the second, as he pulls a gun and shoots the first man, “I bought it.”

“I betrayed my company for you! I proved my loyalty.” gasps the first man, as he falls to the floor.

The second man looks down at the body on the floor and says, “The man who betrays one master will assuredly betray another.”

If this scene sounds familiar, it probably is. Some variation of it appears in hundreds of movies, from James Bond to WWII action films to fantasy adventure. The trope is a simple one: a man betrays his country, company, organization, or teacher. The person to whom he sells out reaps the rewards, but never believes the traitor’s protestations of loyalty to his new masters. Eventually, it ends badly for the traitor.

Now, if this scenario were only a work of fiction, there would be little more to say. Unfortunately, the fictional part is the end: in real life the disloyal person is rewarded and given every opportunity to betray his new masters.

Read the rest in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership

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.

The Corporate Culture Conundrum

I get asked a lot about corporate culture. In this case, I ended up responding to a very detailed query at such length that I decided to include it here since I doubt the person interviewing me will be able to use all of what I wrote (I’m also posting this after the article comes out, so I don’t upstage anyone).

Let’s start by defining culture. At root, culture is nothing more than the residue of perceived success. In other words, it is the accumulated knowledge of how to be successful at a particular company and how the company is successful in the marketplace.

Why success and not failure? Simple. We tend to repeat the behaviors that appear to bring us success, and discontinue those that do not. Moreover, cultures based on failure simply do not survive. At some point, there have to be successes in order for the culture to remain viable.

I focus on perceived success because what really matters is not whether a behavior is really successful so much as our belief that it is successful. For example, in the 1990s, Nokia firmly believed that its success was due to its innovative management style. The reality was that they had a hot product, cell phones, in an exploding market. When the market saturated, their revenues dropped off along with every other cell phone provider in 2000. Today, Nokia is increasingly irrelevant. If everyone at the company had come to work wearing Groucho Glasses every day, their product would still have sold and they might very well have ascribed their success to their innovative dress code. The results would have been pretty much the same, although people might have been inspired to tell better jokes.

Because culture contains within it the memory of success, it is very hard to change. No one likes to change what’s working! What’s worse is that a behavior rarely succeeds all the time: when something doesn’t work, we ascribe the failure to “not trying hard enough” and resolve to do better. The resulting semi-randomness to the success produces a response similar to playing a slot machine: random success is highly addicting.

This phenomenon becomes particularly important when we realize that the business environment changes more rapidly than the culture. A once successful behavior gradually stops working. However, because it fades out slowly, intermittent successes along the way serve to make the behavior stronger and stronger even as its usefulness is decreasing. When it comes to not changing a behavior, it takes only the occasional success to make up for an awful lot of getting kicked upside the head.

This also means that there are two key aspects to culture: what we do and why we do it. Most organizations focus purely on the “what” and ignore the “why.” Even when an organization attempts to change culture, they almost always focus on what they are doing. Unfortunately, when you only change the what, you are changing the superficial. The underlying why will rapidly pull the new behavior back into alignment with the original behavior; although cosmetic changes may persist, the new “what” will be fundamentally identical to the old.

The “whys” of culture also interlock: there is rarely one reason for a particular behavior. As a result, attempting to change one “why” can also be quite difficult because a) it’s hard to identify it precisely, and b) the rest of the interlocking structure of beliefs pulls it back. It is quite possible for a CEO or senior management team to simply chop off a piece of a corporate culture, but it can be quite unpredictable what else they’ll lose: for example, when IBM dropped its traditional full-employment policy, they also lost a great deal of employee loyalty and their historic “IBM takes care of me and my family, I take care of IBM” employee mindset.

With that said, let me jump over to your questions:

1. How do you know when there's something wrong with your corporate culture (what are 2-3 signs), or how do you know if things need improving just a bit?

Something is “wrong” with a corporate culture when the culture can no longer obtain resources, that is to say clients and revenue, from its environment. The early symptoms can manifest in several ways before the revenue drop really hits. The most common is a persistent feeling of being stuck: more and more effort is expended for less and less success. Previously successful revenue generating behaviors are losing their effectiveness, but doing so in fits and starts.

Another common symptom is increasing defensiveness on the part of management: executives don’t want to hear why something isn’t working, and attempts to address problems are met with denial. At exactly the point where the executive team should be bringing in outside help, they become increasingly unwilling to do so. An outsider is far too likely to grind the sacred cows into hamburger. IBM’s decision to bring in Lou Gerstner in 1992 is an example of a company overcoming that fear of outsiders and actually addressing their problems.

A third symptom of culture problems is a persistent inability to make and keep decisions. When teams within the company, or the company as whole, continually revisits discussions and can’t seem to follow-through on goals, that’s a major warning sign that you need to take action.

2. Where do generational differences among staff and colleagues come into play?

Let’s start with the elephant in the living room: the Gen Y myth. This whole concept that Gen Y’ers are somehow less dedicated, less motivated, or less <insert here> than Gen X or Boomers is, quite simply, a myth. Indeed, the whole idea that the younger generation is less respectful, dedicated, hard-working, and so forth, than their elders is itself a cultural belief that goes back at least to Socrates.

What is different, however, is that Gen Y’s do not share the cultural belief that you graduate from college, work at one job for 40 years, and retire to enjoy your “golden years.” While this was, or at least appeared to be, a valid cultural belief at one time, it is no longer valid in the current environment and shows no signs of regaining validity. However, for those who grew up with it, it is very difficult to put it aside.

Within an organization, what matters first is not the generational differences but the degree of immersion in the culture of the organization. Younger employees are less deeply immersed in the culture; they’ve had less time to absorb it and to assume its values. Thus, they are more likely to propose ideas and approaches that older employees view as violating cultural values and hence are more likely to reject. Note, by the way, that I’m referring less to chronological age than to amount of time with the company. Since the older employees typically have more authority, younger employees are more likely to be frustrated. How they cope with that will, however, be strongly influenced by their generational cultural values: a Boomer or X’er might decide that if they stick around and pay their dues, they’ll get a voice in due time; a Gen Y’er is probably more likely to go somewhere else. One solution is not inherently better than another.

3. How do you cultivate a creative and collaborative team (what 2-3 three things can really build that team culture)?

Culture is whatever is seen as successful. If you want people to collaborate, reward collaboration. Sounds simple, but it just doesn’t happen. Companies focus on individual performance and individual reward. As a result, they get a bunch of individuals often competing for a limited pie. While it is important to acknowledge and reward individual contributions, that cannot be all that you reward and it should never be set up in a way that creates competition between team members.

4. It's all about innovation, how best to encourage creative brainstorming for service/product innovation (what works and what doesn't and why)?

There are four culture traps to avoid and four cultural beliefs to build. The four traps are:

Perfection — We must make the perfect mousetrap… which works until someone comes along with a cat.

Protection — We must not hurt our existing products. Pity our competitors don’t feel that way…

Identity — We’re an X not a Y. IBM was a serious business company in the 1980s. They didn’t “do games.” Now they’re heavily involved in serious gaming.

Creeping Box — We’re so far outside the box no one can catch us. Just ask Yahoo… Once you move outside the box, the box grows and suddenly you’re just one of the pack.

The cultural values to foster

Continuous education — Keep people learning. Don’t limit people to taking classes in their areas of expertise; rather encourage employees to study whatever interests them. Innovation comes from putting together apparently disparate pieces of information.

Making mistakes — How do you respond to mistakes? Innovation is a messy business. If mistakes are punished, no one will risk making them and innovation will falter. Thomas Edison famously said that he’d learned a thousand ways to not make a light bulb. Easy to say, hard to live.

Strategic breaks — Allow the breakthrough to happen. The “eureka” moment doesn’t happen when we’re exhausted from banging our head against the wall. It comes when we take a break and do something different. Learn how to take breaks strategically.

Patience — Don’t wait for a crisis to force your hand. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but waiting for the last minute to start innovating is the number one cause of premature death amongst new ideas.

5. How do intangibles like volunteerism, office greening, impact corporate culture?

Intangibles matter to the extent that they reflect the corporation’s values, beliefs, and aspirations. Volunteerism can be very important in a company that views itself as a good citizen of the community. However, to be effective, intangibles have to be worth the time and energy expended on them. If employees who volunteer their time end up being paid less or promoted less frequently than those who don’t volunteer their time, volunteerism will fade out. The behavior that is rewarded will become part of the culture, and the culture will attract those who believe in the values manifested through the behavior.

6. What are other intangibles that are important but corporations may not be keen about their importance?

How meetings are conducted, whether employees are permitted to work from home, how much freedom and autonomy versus direction employees are given, how mistakes are handled, how disagreements are managed, how permissible it is to question authority, are just a few of the intangibles that shape cultures.

7. How important is culture today and why?

Organizational culture is probably the most important most powerful force in any corporation. Because culture is the lessons of the past, it provides the template for how to behave in the future. Once a corporation loses sight of its culture, it’s only a matter of time before it slams into a brick wall.

8. Is your sense that most firms are focused on their culture, why or why not?

While many firms focus on their culture, they focus on the wrong aspects of it. Most companies focus purely on the “what,” those superficial artifacts that are easy to see but which have the least significance. It’s hard to focus on the “why.” Indeed, really delving into the “why” of your culture is rather like performing open heart surgery on yourself. In other words, you need the assistance of a trained outsider who is not immersed in your culture to see the elements you take for granted.

9. Any interesting, stats, surveys or other data about corporate culture?

Let me point you my book, “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development.” Chapter one is about culture and the entire book discusses how organizational development shapes and is shaped by culture.

10. If a company can make only one change in it's culture, how to determine what should be that priority?

The biggest priority is changing the belief that you can change only one thing… Seriously, culture change is not a precise, surgical operation. Sure, if you’re only after changing the “what,” you can pick one thing, but for anything non-trivial you have to go after the “why.” That requires taking the time to really understand what values and assumptions that are taken for granted are no longer valid, and then building up a new set of values and assumptions. Most culture change fails because it tries to focus too narrowly on one thing. Corporations go through a lot of pain and spend a lot of money only to experience a fleeting success before the culture reverts back to the way it was: when you seek to change only one thing, everything connected to that one thing acts to pull it back to its original form.

A Tale of Two Light Bulbs

As published in the CEO Refresher

Psychology of branding

I was interviewed recently on the psychology of branding and creating personal brands. Since this question comes up a lot, I’m posting my thoughts here.

Let’s start by looking at what a brand is. At the most basic level, your brand is what people think of when you’re not there. IBM, for example, built a brand of service and dependability in the 1940s-1970s. Then their brand became overpriced and stodgy before they took control back in the 1990s and rebranded themselves.

Broadly speaking, a company’s brand is the shorthand for what they do and what’s exciting about them. A given brand won’t interest everyone; the goal is to create a brand that appeals to the people to whom you want to appeal: your target market if you’re selling products/services, your potential employees if you’re hiring, and so on.

Creating brand loyalty as early as possible and reinforcing whenever possible thus does two things: it builds your potential customer base and it builds a pool of people who start to connect themselves to the brand, who start to think of themselves as representing the brand. This is one of the easiest ways to attract potential  employees because they self-select: they’re already interested and at least passively loyal to the ideal of the company. Hiring people who are already bought into the ideal of the company saves a lot of effort convincing them to buy in later, and those employees are also the easiest to motivate.

Individuals, however, do not have the reach of a corporation. Corporations are also abstract entities, whereas individuals are, well, individual. Thus, individual brands need to focus more around personal attributes and what the brand means to others. For an employee, this usually means branding yourself as someone who produces results for the company. Specific details will vary according to the industry: a software engineer might build a brand as someone who writes bug-free code or who always delivers ahead of deadlines, etc. A salesman might build a brand around closing the most difficult clients, around rapid closure, around rescuing faltering deals, etc.

One of the reasons why candidates may stand out in an interview but fail to make a mark on the job is that they saw the interview and landing the job as the goal, instead of as a stepping stone. Another problem is that after a candidate lands the job, they often aren’t quite sure what to do next to stand out. If a candidate wants to establish their brand during the interview and then hit the ground running, I advise asking the interviewer(s) the following question: “If you hired me and in six months thought I’d done an excellent job, what would I have done to make you feel that way?”

Take notes when the interviewer answers! Not only does this question help the interviewer convince himself to hire you, you are also identifying your initial most critical goals. Hitting those goals establishes you as someone who produces results. Once you’ve established that brand, not only do better assignments come your way, you are also more likely to be forgiven if something does go wrong (and the fact is, sooner or later something always goes wrong).

What Big Picture?

As published in The CEO Refresher

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.

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?