April Fools Edition




Are you up to your you know what in alligators, and tired of hearing about how the swamp needs draining?

For reason’s I won’t disclose, my cousin Tim is doing this week’s podcast and he is a master at animal metaphors. Just as the lead goose breaks wind for the rest of the flock, leaders will agree that this episode breaks wind.

Lead boldly, stand out, and make it a team effort - and remember that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas, an elephant always remembers you called him fat, and there's a fine line between being the cat’s meow and a nasty hairball.

PDF of quotations from this podcast

A study at Bell Labs found all their engineers performed their engineering functions the same way. What differentiated top engineers from the average? Top performers created relationships that measurably contributed to effectiveness, e.g. top performers had telephone calls returned in an average of 20 minutes, compared to 4 hours for less stellar peers.

I continue to hear a theme from clients, business leaders, and other colleagues, that as the world becomes more high tech, there will be a corresponding need for high touch. Many executives fear that high touch environments get in the way of goals, or else they simply waste resources and time. The evidence is compelling, however, that high touch environments accelerate success and add value. However high touch environments require more advanced and developed leadership talent to bring out that value.

Seven Ideas for Leaders - Play Well to Excel

• Ensure development opportunities for people competencies are readily available.
• Build in playing well into performance management system.
• Leadership sets the example.
• Celebrate milestones, create rituals for transitions, and debrief significant events.
• Help people use inherent talents and interests.
• Don’t let people get away with toxic behavior.
• Help people to find fun and humor in their work.

Play Well to Excel resource links:
Read the full leadership article
Power of Nice book review
No Asshole Rule book review

THINK! and 7 Ideas Coach subscribers receive free pdf versions of our leadership articles - subscribe today - it’s free, and we never give your email to anyone else

Yesterday I heard a story that is repeated endlessly in organizations, although there’s a genuine effort from leadership to implement needed changes, nothing happens.

Change efforts often suffer from what preeminent executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls the 1, 2, 3, 7 problem - implementing change is a 7 step process, but leaders often leave out steps 4, 5, and 6.

Seven Steps for Change

• Assess Situation
• Identify Solutions
• Plan Action
• Seek Buy-in Up
• Seek Buy-in Across
• Seek Buy-in Down
• Implement Changes

The notion of wooing up, across, and down makes sense from within hierarchical organizations. However many leaders seek changes in organizations that aren’t so clearly stratified. Think bout any kind of community change, consider how our President, or any leader, seeks to implement a change in our nation or the world for that matter. Steps 4, 5, and 6 could easily read:

• Seek Buy-in from Key Opinion Leaders
• Seek Buy-in from Constituent Groups
• Seek Buy-in from People Most Impacted

Remember these steps apply to personal change as well as organizational change. Whenever you are trying to change any habit - e.g. stop smoking, increase patience, speak confidently - the people around you can easily impede the change unless you include them in the process.

Resist the prevailing mood of doom and gloom, and the same time guard against denial. Here are seven ways how, from Mayor Tom’s recent State of the Town address.

• Master your attitude
• Face reality while keeping faith
• Stick to your knitting
• Diligently seek and seize opportunities
• Focus on action within our control
• Foster partnerships and collaborations
• Live with renewed intention

resources
About Stone Soup
Collaboration Across Boundaries

Critical Questions About Increasing Your Top Line


Understand Customers
What extra steps are you taking to understand what your customer needs in today’s environment?

Seize Opportunities
Are you prepared to take advantage of opportunities this tough market offers? (e.g. to gain market share?)

Know Your Biz
Do you know your profit zone? (i.e. do you know which products and services actually add to your bottom line?)

Focus, Focus, Focus
Are you focusing efforts externally on your market or internally on your organization?

Align Everything
How aligned is your sales compensation plan with current realities, profitability, and positive cash generation?

Make Everything Count
How are you assessing what marketing efforts, people, processes, profit centers, even customers, are marginal? What are you going to do about it?

Excel at Leadership
How are you engaging employees so everyone in the company is a salesperson?


See panel presentation The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Doing Business In Today’s Economy: Increasing Your Top Line

Increasing Your Top LIne was a panel I moderated this week, with distinguished panelists Marco Fregenal and Armistead “Buck” Burwell. The panel was part of a seminar sponsored by our local chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (www.acgraleighdurham.org) and the Turnaround Management Association (TMA Carolinas). Buck and Marco are experienced, knowledgeable, and articulate CEOs, and provided a wealth of information. more about the panelists

What if meetings were something we bragged about? "Hey honey, we had the most awesome meeting at work today!"
All too often we brag about how bad they are. Stop complaining and start adding value. If you're in a leadership role teach others how to do the same. Here are seven ways how...

• Speak up but say something new.
• Learn to Summarize.
• Acknowledge Other People’s Contributions.
• Ask Good Questions.
• Check-in With the Group.
• Frame Issues for Results.
• Foster Accountability.
  

Article on Summarizing for Sharper Thinking

Click here to see companion article on THINK Leadership Ideas blog

Seventy years ago MGM produced one of the best and most beloved movies of all time, based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Published in 1900, it was the first of 14 Oz books written by Baum, followed by dozens more from other authors. It is the 1939 film, starring Judy Garland, that is so well crafted it continues to enchant.

It also offers some important leadership lessons.

There’s no place like home.
You have to hand it to Dorothy. She engages the wonders, the adventures, the friendships, the dangers of Oz, but she is never distracted from her purpose of finding her way home.
There’s no motivator like clarity of purpose. Chances are it’s in your own back yard.

Align WIIFM.
The reasons for the band of protagonists traveling are different, but the destination is the same. Everyone needs to get to the Emerald City to see the Wizard. The journey is safer and more productive traveling together. The Scarecrow, Tin-Man, and Lion throw in their lots with Dorothy.
Great causes must accommodate individual purposes. Effective leaders help align individual purposes with a higher purpose held in common.

Combine wisdom, humanity, courage, and resilience for incredible success.
The Scarecrow needs a brain. The Tin Man a heart. The Lion, courage. Dorothy, her home. One reason the Wizard of Oz endures is because it deeply resonates with our experience of the human condition. We recognize that a fully complete human, or team, or leader, must draw from head, heart, courage, and spirit.
The leaders we need for today’s world, not to mention tomorrow’s, are those who have significant mastery of these four aspects of character; wisdom, humanity, courage, and resilience. The best leadership tool I have seen in some time is an instrument called the Tilt360. The Tilt goes beyond most 360 instruments that focus on skills and competencies, assessing these four “meta-factors” of leadership character.

Deal with it, and have faith.
Just when you think it can’t get worse, here come the flying monkeys. So deal with it. For those who are fans of Good to Great, one of the books key messages is great organizations face brutal reality head on, while at the same time never lose faith in their purpose and capability.
The world is full of lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. Wise leaders keep their people moving down the yellow brick road, and always expect and give help along the way.

Understand the difference between a role and who you really are.
Some of the best advice I ever received was to be careful not to believe my own press clippings. We need to present a professional facade to the world, and we need to guard and cultivate authenticity. It is in authentically connecting to other people - as in the movie when the wizard is finally engaged as a real person - that the real magic begins.

Framing can be magical.
The gift leaders bring their followers is a way of looking at the world that opens the way forward. Doors that seemed closed are open, and paths appear in the wilderness, and people suddenly possess what seemed out of reach.
Framing based on smoke and mirrors ultimately is exposed as a sham. Framing based on substance - true wisdom, humanity, and courage - provides deep value.

No one else can do it for you.
At the end of the movie Glinda the Good Witch informs Dorothy she has always had the power to go home. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dorothy rightly inquires. “Because you have to find out for yourself.” Some things you simply have to experience for yourself. You can’t read a book and know how to ride a bike, drive a car, fly a plane, or be a leader. All these things require experience. Leadership is a developmental process. No one else develop for you.

Leadership is so much more than telling people to go down the yellow brick road.

Want an edge?
Just one of these simple tools helped Michigan Hospitals avoid $175 million in extra medical costs while saving hundreds of lives.
Use these simple, common, and under-appreciated tools to be more organized, think smarter, foster team alignment, and become a more influential leader.


links mentioned in podcast:
Fast Company article on checklists
www.43folders.com - productivity tools
mind mapping on wikipedia

Trust is not neutral - trust will either accelerate or erode leadership capacity. This podcast outlines seven strategies effective leaders can use to constantly cultivate high levels of trust.

1. Make it personal - remember trust with one establishes trust with many.
2. Stand for something - consistency shows reliability, congruence demonstrates authenticity, and coherence (your story over time) imparts meaning.
3. Declare intent - make explicit statements goals that everyone shares.
4. Market transparency - you might of told ‘em, but did they notice? Be proactive in pointing out how people can see what is going on.
5. Seed accountability, weed blame - encourage blame free problem-solving
6. Speak of others as though they were present - what else is there to say.
7. Learn to apologize - don’t explain, don’t excuse, and follow-up with corrective action.

article on the “three C’s” ...consistency, congruence, coherence

If you truly are driven by escaping mediocrity and accelerating achievement, you have to resist what most people do, which is focus on weaknesses. Here’s seven ideas to stimulate your thinking on strengths.

• Focus on Strengths. Stop focusing on weaknesses. What happens when you put 80% of your effort toward developing strengths, and 20% on overcoming weakness? You accelerate, you gain momentum, you achieve.
• Develop your strengths. Start by identifying things you do well, are passionate about, and have value. Then practice them in ways you obtain feedback. (see article on high performance)
• Embed strengths in your life. Seek a place where you can use your strengths every day.
• Leverage your strengths. Use consistency, congruence, and coherence to make your strengths part of your story. (see article)
• Know your shadow. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow. Especially for mature leaders, it’s not weaknesses that cause problems, but overused strengths.
• Transcend your strengths. Lead from your position of strengths, but learn to do what needs to be done. Your strength may be patience, but sometimes you need to act boldly. Your strength may be quick analysis, but sometimes you need to facilitate a process that brings others along.
• Help others develop their strengths. Exceptional leaders empower others to focus, develop, embed, leverage, and transcend strengths. Help others find places to use their strengths - everyday. Is there anything that would make more of a difference? (see article on empowerment readiness)

This excerpt from the Tao Te Ching is the best advice for living life I have ever read, as valid today as some 2500 years ago when it was written.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tsu (Author)
translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (1972)

link to translation on the web:
http://www.dailyi.org/archive_tao.html
(this quote is from chapter 8)