LeadershipNow 140: December 2009 Compilation

Here are a selection of tweets from December 2009:

• Leading Blog selected as one of the top 10 leadership blogs of 2009 by @mikemyatt > http://bit.ly/6GWZwZ Thank you!
• Leadership Un-Conference: LeaderPalooza: Have you ever noticed how quickly a fire dies out when you separate http://bit.ly/8bRISj
• @tom_peters: NewTech=Mega-WOW. But: basics=basics. E.g., “Thank you.” PowerTool Then. Now. Tomorrow. >Timeless!
• Poem for the times. FT: The Bankers Who Wouldn’t Say Sorry: A Cautionary Tale http://bit.ly/50VLPW
• Scott Berkun on speaking: It’s the mistakes you make before you even say a word that matter most – preparation matters
• Until 2024, in America on average 100 boomers turn 60 every 13 min. That’s a lot of people asking “What am I doing with my life?” D Pink in Drive
• What your team members want from you: Are you a boss? Here are seven things your team members want from you http://bit.ly/6A77A3
• RT @hulmevision: Page through beautiful new issue of Vision, includes leadership article http://bit.ly/2qJTlU
• RT @Xlead: Great video – London Business School’s Don Sull discusses how to find the upside in volatile times http://icio.us/jooubo
• How to raise your game in 2010: Following a year of high anxiety, Stefan Stern offers three practical ideas to help http://bit.ly/7jpOsF
• Scott Elbin: The Diplomatic Approach to Senior Leadership http://bit.ly/80CoFP
• Professor Michael Roberto’s Blog: Are you a micromanager? http://bit.ly/8F9p5u
• LeaderTalk: Becoming is hard work. (Encouraging post.) http://ow.ly/Oka8
• @mjasmus: New post: Cultivating Talent http://bit.ly/4QHjyS >Always Good!
• Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man http://bit.ly/5N3SO9
• Business Pundit: The 75 Best Business Blogs of 2009 http://bit.ly/65WnKI
• RT @Xlead: Where do our leadership models and leadership lessons come from? Do We Celebrate the Wrong CEOs? http://bit.ly/7H9lnY
• People who find happiness & meaning at work, usually find it at home as well. (BusinessWeek) http://bit.ly/7jCH95
• Value added by best CEOs: Research shows that all the leading bosses proved their worth over an extended period http://bit.ly/83m3Vc
• Tom Peters: Appreciation! “Tool” No.1 http://bit.ly/6LwcS9
• The Teacher as Leader: Paul Samuelson and Phil Jackson http://bit.ly/5Ay6vB
• deGier: The Art of Communication http://bit.ly/8pAwFd
• CB Sully Sullenberger says, we need to try to do the right thing every time. We don’t know what moment in our lives we will be judged on.
• RT @wallybock: Leadership might be a bad choice for you if … http://ow.ly/K3LI
• RT @michaelaroberto Round 4 in this week’s look at classic reads for leaders: http://bit.ly/8S3otz
• Jim Rohn tribute – September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009 http://tribute.jimrohn.com/
• RT @tsattersten: Economist chooses Too Big To Fail, Lords of Finance, How Markets Fail … for its 2009 biz books – http://bit.ly/4wxmIr
• RT @Mark_Sanborn: What makes a company great? http://bit.ly/6bmUw8 >>Great interview with Joseph A. Michell
• FT: A question all leaders should ask themselves http://bit.ly/6q3lYp

See more on Twitter.

Taking Risks

I am in the Netherlands while writing this. We just had another airline scare which immediate created a Dutch ‘hero’, Jasper S., who together with other passengers avoided disaster by jumping on top of the terrorist. The same but more tragic happened during the PA flight September 11th flight. These are people who decided to [...]

Good Recoveries from Bad Communications

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and All the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

But maybe someone in human resources can!

I was reminded of this nursery rhyme when I received a query from an HR manager seeking advice on how to help one of her colleagues. An email announcing news of a reorganization had unsettled employees. It fell to the managers to calm everyone down and try to restore team effectiveness and performance.

This story is not unique; it happens in large and small organizations regularly. People in charge release information in ways that demonstrate a profound lack of sensitivity toward individuals and teams. The communicators, very often senior leaders, mean no harm; they are merely acting without thinking enough about what they are communicating. And so when things are communicated poorly, it falls to managers on the ground to “put Humpty together again.”

If you find yourself having to smooth over a bungled communication, here are some things you can to try to set things right.

Acknowledge the problem. People are upset and confused. You need to note their disgruntlement. To ignore it is to be as rude as the communications directive.

Apologize. Take the high road. Even if the mistake was not yours, as part of management, you should accept blame and apologize. You may express sympathy but do not throw senior management under the bus. Doing so will only make you seem like a finger-pointer.

Refocus on the reason for the communication. Explain the reason for the communication and why the initiative is necessary. This gets you past the poor delivery and focused on the business.

Allow people to express their points of view. Let them vent. Sometimes reorganizations will bring personal hardship, such as more responsibilities, lack of additional compensation, or worse — loss of a job. You are allowed to acknowledge the pain.

Refocus on the initiative. Put an end to the formal venting and refocus on the business case. Even though the communication was mishandled, the reasons for it may be sound. Stand up for the company.

Being honest, none of this is guaranteed to work. When management sends out emails announcing reorgs or initiatives without advance preparation, it sends a strong signal that people really do not matter. While such an attitude may be perceived as more acceptable in today’s tight job market, it erodes morale and confidence in senior leadership. Employees may not be able to leave immediately, but they will start to look elsewhere — at least that’s what good employees will do. In the meantime they will shift from “commitment” to “compliance,” that is, going through the motions.

Still, it falls to managers in the middle to do what they can to make things better. While you may not reverse attitudes toward the company, you can position yourself as concerned and trustworthy. This is critical when it comes to getting people focused on the task at hand as well as asking them to do more with less in these challenging times.

Doing so may allow you to achieve what all the King’s horses and men could not do — put the whole thing together again, and in doing so, earn the respect and trust of your followers.

Lean Scrum?

I’ve been doing some parallel reading: “Lean Manufacturing” and “Scrum.” On first glance, that may seem like an odd combo, that there might not be much in common between these two disciplines. Lean Manufacturing is largely about how to create flexible, cost-effective manufacturing ecosystems. Scrum is about how to develop software applications in an iterative, agile fashion. Pretty big differences. But there are at least four areas that jump out as being distinctly similar: 1. The Te

Is Business Just About Making Money?

We’ve all heard, “The business of business is making money. If you don’t make money, you won’t stay in business for long. If you don’t have it you can’t give it.”

The question for business is: “Can you ever care about anything other than profits?”

How to be profitable and socially responsible is not always self-evident. Daylian Cain, a professor at Yale School of Management who specializes in conflict of interest issues says that “acting on your values in the workplace can be more complex than it seems.”

Alina Dizik interviewed Cain for the WSJ article, Teaching the Golden Rules. Mr. Cain teaches a course called, “Business Ethics Meets Behavioral Economics” at Yale. He says, “Mixing behavioral economics with these kinds of corporate responsibility issues is an emerging trend. We don’t want to merely say lying is wrong; we are not trying to change people’s values from evil to good. Behavioral economics is such a great tool because it shows how people make bad decisions and separate their actions from their values. [Once they see this] we can show students all the ways they will fail even by their own standards.”

Realities of the marketplace often clash with social responsibility. It costs money to do more than look after the bottom line—to do the right thing for employees, the local community and society at large.

As consumers, we demand lower prices. We don’t want to pay any more than we have to. If we can buy a product for half the price of a similar product, we usually do. But what if that behavior drives the socially responsible business out of the marketplace?

Just because we can squeeze out another dollar, should we? By acting in our own “best interest” are we bankrupting socially responsible efforts? Are we willing to pay the price for social responsibility?

Social responsibility is a two way street. Quite often we look to business (and government) to solve our most pressing issues, but the issues we face are bigger than that. If we merely point a finger at business without taking a look at our own responsibilities as consumers, the social and environmental reform we seek will be impossible.

Professor Ray Fisman of Columbia Business School remarked, “There is no shortage of inspiring examples of companies who have made money and done good for the world, but I wouldn’t want to frame it as a generalized principle. There are also companies that have made enormous sums of money by not doing good. I think suggesting that good citizenship is always a win-win can be dangerously misleading.”

Most businesses and consumers want to do the right thing. But our commitment is really put to the test when it costs us something. Principles consistently applied over time are the ones we really care about. Cain said “A lot of students have mixed feelings about the purpose of business. [They wonder if it’s] really only to make a profit. One of my jobs is to provide a safe space for sharing those views. One of the challenges is not merely to educate about these problems but to try to change behavior.” Social responsibility, he says, “is about doing good because it’s the right thing.”

Social responsibility is more complex than just pointing a finger and saying, “Clean it up.” Although we don’t like it anymore, we have what we wanted. The question is: are we willing to pay the price—in terms of money, time, attitudes, habits and beliefs—to get the kind of world we now seek?

Sunset Isn’t The End

That’s it folks, this is the end.
Or at least it is the end of Leadership Turn, but not the end of Miki:)
Come fly with me over to MAPping Company Success or subscribe via RSS or EMAIL. And don’t miss important information on how to thrive this New Year’s Eve.
Your comments—priceless Image credit: Axel-D on flickr
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Avoiding the Unforced Error

We all make them. Ethics breaches, sex scandals and performance-related turnover are increasingly found in today’s headlines. As in tennis, the unforced error is made by someone with the ability to keep the ball in play but who makes a mistake, resulting in the loss of a point. To improve your game you need to develop the habits that will help you keep the ball in play. It is your performance over time—a steady game—that will get you where you want to go. That’s what The Unforced Error by Jeffrey Krames aims to help you do.

The most dangerous errors—and the one discussed in this book—are “the ones we don’t recognize, so we can’t fix them before the damage is done.” Krames divides unforced errors into two groups: the unforced operating error (the ones we all make in the course of doing our job; a bad call) and the unforced nonoperating error (errors not directly related to the conducting of business, but can shatter a career nonetheless; sexual affairs and errors of character). Krames writes, “There are seldom excuses for unforced nonoperating errors. You have to have the awareness, self-control, and maturity to avoid them.” The focus of this book is the former kind, the unforced operating error.

There is a key to avoiding unforced errors. Not surprisingly, the key is humility. “That’s because humility—one of the most underrated of all leadership qualities—is essential to developing the strength and consistency to avoid unforced errors.” It’s the kind of humility that comes from having the self-confidence to admit mistakes, blind spots and then move on to correct the mistake. Rarely would you be told that you were fired due to a lack of humility, but it is the trigger for so many unforced errors.
Krames successfully helps you to recognize an unforced error when you see it. In each chapter that covers a specific unforced error, he offers sensible and pragmatic advice on how to avoid these “career killers.” His advice includes:

• Never say the ball was out by a mile. Face reality at all times.
• Nothing is as important as people decisions. Get the right people.
• When you do make a people mistake, fix it as quickly as possible.
• Don’t overlook the wild card. Develop the next generation of leaders.
• Keep your game inbounds. Living and leading by the rules.
• Step up to the net. Take ownership of your part of the court.
• Watch the whole court. Find out who the real line judge is in your game and make sure they know how you’re doing.

Krames is very readable as always. The tennis metaphor works well to demonstrate the importance of these ideas. If you take the time to study the advice Kramer has gathered together, you could save yourself from committing these errors. In the words of Billie Jean King, “Self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.”

Of related Interest:

Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership

A New Decade

This is the very last week of 2009. Can you believe it? This year has gone by faster than any others. It was a year of extremes: extreme lows and extreme highs. Too many people lost their jobs, their houses, their loved ones or their spirit this year. Every great project manager knows the value [...]

Feel younger, Have More Time

Do you get a lot of spam? Mine is well filtered, but I still have to glance through the junk file to be sure that nothing important was inadvertently caught.
If spam is any guide it seems that Americans sex and meds dominate the American psyche.
Recently I noticed this subject line: Feel 10 years younger in bed today. I’m sure you can guess what product was being hyped.
However, that’s not what hit me and I’ll bet most of you will agree with my reaction—I’d much rather feel 10 years younger out of bed.
Around this time of year I hear from a [...]

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Quotable Quotes: Actions

I came across the following last week,
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
and it got me thinking about cause and effect; where things start and where they go from there.
Leonardo da Vinci said, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do,” while Hemingway warns us, “Never mistake motion for action.” Very true, ideas are all well and good, but [...]

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