You’re sitting around the conference room table with your fellow executive team members staring at a list of symptoms. Sales are flat or even falling. When you start to dig into root causes, you immediately notice that your company has promoted star salespeople to new areas of responsibility. Now those stars’ shoes seem impossible to fill.

The company has brought in person after person but all of them crash and burn. The pattern is the same no matter what you try:

• 

  Trust me, this stage won’t last…

  New people come into your company full of energy and optimism. You tell them they’re going to be rock stars. They believe you. After all, they were high performers elsewhere.

• For the first six months, the new folks drink from the fire hose. They learn your products and services. They get to know people. They settle into their territory or account base. Everyone is still in an optimistic version of “wait and see.”
• For the second six months, you get the distinct impression that these previously successful people had been donors in a confidence transplant surgery. While they try to disguise it, you can tell that they’re now quietly questioning whether they were ever that good after all. Their activity levels drop as their fear and uncertainty rises.
• 

  This stage, however, may stick.

  For the third six months, they’ve moved to a new mental place. They blame the company. It’s not their fault that they’re struggling. The training isn’t that good. Their manager stinks. The compensation rewards the wrong things. The product is weak.

• The new salespeople quit or get fired. After a long enough period, the leader gets fired too. And so the wheel turns. You’ve just wasted a couple of years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Any time a job defeats a succession of otherwise qualified people, not only is something busted with the job, something is probably wrong with the company’s business model. If you look at why you keep failing to fill your star spots, you’ll see the following:

• The business model is built around the heroic efforts of a certain group of people, who have to figure out how to attract, win, and retain customers in spite of the company. Because the company hasn’t made it easy.
• A few stars – maybe up to 15% of the people in those roles – have actually figured out how to be those heroes. This gives the role and the model some face validity since someone’s figured it out. After all, if no one could figure it out, the company would be forced to change or go bust immediately.
• You’ve made those Freaky Few the template for success. “Hey, Brandon can do it. Let’s just look for more Brandons!!”

But it doesn’t work. If you want to grow and if growth requires more people playing this critical role, you simply won’t find enough of the Freaky Few who will want to come work for you. Even if you do, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll find yourself hostage to them. They’ll know they’re the Freaky Few and whether they’re senior executives, hot shot programmers, or front-line salespeople, they’ll know that they have you. Get ready for a regular series of offers and counter-offers from other companies as the geniuses exercise the power of being in demand.

So if you find yourself stumped by the question, “How come our salespeople (or developers, or whatever) keep failing?” stop playing around with the stuff on the edges. Ask the more fundamental questions:

• What is it about how we do business – how we attract, win, retain, and grow customers – that makes it so hard for normal people to do this job?
• What changes would we need to make to our overall model to make this job – and all of our jobs – fit for consumption by normal human beings?

Addressing those questions isn’t the sales leader’s job or heaven help me, the recruiting team’s job: it’s the job of the whole leadership team. Holistic problems require holistic solutions. And that’s the job of the leadership team – to see the whole, own the whole, and manage the whole. When you do that, scale can happen. Until then, you’re at the mercy of the geniuses.

Be bright. 

I recently wrote a eulogy to a remarkable black bear named Yellow Yellow. She was the unusually resourceful bear who beat virtually every bear canister in her efforts to mooch food from campers in the Adirondack mountains. She was so ingenious that bear canister companies used her as a four-legged test lab for their designs.

Was she a teaching genius?

We know Yellow Yellow was a genius. What will only become clear with time is whether she was more than a genius. Was she also a teacher?  Every couple of years, Yellow Yellow had cubs. Now that she has gone the way of all flesh, we’ll find out just how much she passed on to her cubs.

If Yellow Yellow was just a genius, it’s only a matter of time before Adirondack hikers will be dealing with average bears using average tactics to steal food. But if Yellow Yellow was a teacher as well as a genius… well, watch out. She may just have permanently raised the level of play for bears in the area. This would be very bad news for hikers and very good news for anyone who can invent and patent an effective next-generation bear canister.

If Yellow Yellow is like most geniuses, I’m putting my money on the return of the average bear: persistent, sometimes aggressive, but not particularly clever. Most geniuses are lousy teachers precisely because they’re geniuses. They’re naturals. They see things the rest of us can’t. They do things the rest of us can only dream of doing. And they’re often impatient with normal people. For that reason, their organizational impact tends to die out not long after they leave the scene. We wistfully look back and say, “Remember the good old days when Joe was here? He was so brilliant!”

I worked in a company once that was started by a genius. He was a creative whirlwind. He mesmerized groups with his storytelling and insights. He attracted other remarkable people. The company never felt the same after his departure. Whereas it used to churn out ideas that clients enthusiastically embraced during the founder’s days, very few of the company’s own concepts flew very far once he had gone. Most commercially successful projects in the post-founder days came from partnering with outside geniuses. Whether it was intentional or not, the company essentially became a sales force for other people’s ideas. That was quite a come-down for those who had enjoyed the genius years.

What would it take for Yellow Yellow to be not just a genius but a teaching genius?

• She would have to create enough space in her territory for other brilliant bears to hang around. That means she would have to sacrifice a little bit of spotlight and food today for the sake of the longer-term goal of permanently changing the way bears and hikers interact.

• She would have to attract those bears.

• She would have to slow down and think about things that seemed natural to her – and then figure out ways to share those things with others. Even harder, she’d have to figure out what unconscious habits make it possible for her to find those insights.

• She would have to figure out which of those habits normal or merely brilliant bears could successfully incorporate into daily life.

All of that requires patience and humility – two traits rarely found in geniuses – and an organization that is smart enough to extract the lessons from their genius’s behavior.

Maybe we should ask ourselves a few questions about how we handle the extraordinary people in our lives:

• Are you a genius? Really? I know everyone thinks they’re well above average, but are you in the Yellow Yellow category? If so, what’s your unique gift? And when’s the last time you felt and expressed gratitude for this undeserved gift you received?

• If you’re a genius, what kind of genius are you? Are you a run-of-the-mill genius who does remarkable work or are you also able to transfer that genius to others in your organization? If you’re not sure, look at the faces of those around you. If they look awestruck and intimidated by your brilliance, you’re a normal genius. If they look intrigued and engaged and like they believe that they just might be able to do some of what you do, you’re a more extraordinary genius. Find teachable people around you and ask them to help you find the transferable skills and pull them out of you.

• Are you in a company that has a genius? What are you doing to go beyond stroking that person’s ego – to actually take the transferable parts of that person’s thought process and embed them in how the company thinks and acts?

• Does your organization seem to lack that genius? Well, I suppose you could hunt for one outside the company and try to get them to join you.  But I’d bet there’s a certain kind of genius hiding somewhere in your organization. Somewhere there’s someone doing something extraordinary waiting to be found out. Just look for the place where things are going better than expected and see how those people are beating the odds. There might be a Yellow Yellow in the brush if you look carefully.

Be bright.

You know this person: He’s the celebrated leader in his company and a darling of his industry.  His organization is profiled as the next big thing. He’s written up as a leader bursting with innovation and purpose and dreams. Money and talent flow to this guy as investors and resume-builders jockey to jump on the rocket before it cruises out of the stratosphere.

It looks too good to be true because it is.

Just beneath the surface of all the fawning is a darker reality. Yes, this guy is intellectually brilliant. but his leadership approach is an explosive cocktail of intimidation, perfectionism, and cultivation of cut throat competition.  He dresses people down publicly for real and perceived missteps. He discards those who don’t wear his brand of career cologne – degrees from his favored schools, time with his preferred firms – with a dismissive wave of the hand. If you look closely, you’ll probably see a string of broken professional and personal relationships. He sees them as collateral damage, as examples of people who couldn’t hack living in the big time.

It’s easy to think that people are successful because of their character flaws rather than in spite of them. So we begin to celebrate those flaws and more sadly, emulate them. We hope that by acting like this guy, we can get rich, powerful, and famous like him.

Here are six character flaws that we have somehow turned into virtues, because so many people in power display them.

1. Arrogance –  He just thinks he’s confident. Actually, he’s arrogant. He’s set the dial to transmit and turned off the receiver.  People around him stop telling him the truth because they don’t want to get shut down. He’d better hope he’s as good as he thinks he is because he really is on his own.

2. Ladder-climbing – He lives by a simple maxim: Never be satisfied. And while it’s healthy to want to do your best, his restless ladder climbing makes him tired and joyless as he compares himself to everyone else. He’ll have a tough time getting others to join his grand crusade once he hits the top job. They will know whose back he has: his own.

3. Perfectionism – Excellence rocks. But when faced with his perfectionism, even the most basic task becomes a major stressor. People avoid taking risks because they’re afraid of his persistent criticism. Creativity dies and the organization slows down as team members second guess their work.

4. Calculation – You get the feeling that you’re in a game of shadows, a corporate episode of Survivor. You feel like you’re always trying to guess what angle he’s playing. You hold your cards close to your chest lest he take your idea and then then throw you under the bus.

5. Entitlement – While others are making sacrifices for the greater good, he says, “I’ve worked too hard and come too far to take any role that pays less than what I have now.” With a straight face! I guess he believed all of those people who told him he was special his whole life.

6. Ruthlessness – It’s one thing to be clear-headed, decisive, and firm. It’s another to be a jerk. He disposes of people like they’re Kleenex, firing and hiring at will. You get the feeling that he’s a tough SOB for no other reason than he gets off on intimidating others.

All of these character flaws are really good things gone bad. Imagine an organization that valued the virtues obscured by these vices:

• Courage (vs. Arrogance) – It takes a strong person to invite contrary opinions and tough feedback. In fact, that kind of courage is much stronger than the bravado of arrogance. It says, “I have strong opinions but I could be wrong. And I’m open to what you have to say.”

• Initiative (vs. Ladder-climbing) – Every organization needs the energy of self-starters. The difference between that initiative and ladder-climbing is where the energy is focused – on serving the good of the organization vs. serving personal ambitions.

• Joyful Achievement (vs. Perfectionism) – Achievement addicts love the stimulation of a challenge and the knowledge that they gave it their best. They instinctively look for the good while never shirking the fact that next time it could be even better.

• Authenticity (vs. Calculation) – Authentic people know that everyone joins a group for a mixture of personal and shared reasons. They act on the belief that there’s a win-win deal hiding in the weeds if we just look for it.

• Contribution (vs. Entitlement) – Rather than saying, “I deserve it!” this person asks, “How can I contribute here?” They’re on a hunt for the place where their talents will make a huge difference knowing that all sorts of rewards – position, esteem, accomplishments, compensation, satisfaction – follow great contributions.

• Compassionate Clear-headedness (vs. Ruthlessness) – Leaders have to make tough calls. But you can make those calls and deliver difficult messages with respect that communicates dignity and the best values of the team. That’s a sort strength that trumps brute force every time.

I’d want to work in a place led by that sort of leader. So would you. We would come to work juiced by the prospect of working on important things with people we really respect instead of showing up in constant attack or defend mode. We’d do great things together.

Be bright.

I heard with some sadness about the death of a legend the other day. One of my hobbies is wilderness camping and this grand old lady was a fixture in the Adirondack mountains near where I grew up. She had rich brown hair, perfect teeth, and piercing dark eyes.

And large claws.

The mountain legend’s nickname was Yellow Yellow and she was a black bear. While her obituary said she was of modest stature, I can tell you from personal experience that she was plenty big when she was 20 feet from me a couple of summers ago. We were squaring off over who was going to eat my dinner. She won the argument, though I later realized with smug satisfaction that the packet of freshly mixed freeze-dried spaghetti was so hot that she discarded it with only two tooth holes punched through the foil wrapper. She had stolen the meal but couldn’t use my spork, leaving her the tortured choice between a singed tongue or raiding a different campsite for dinner. Score one more point for opposable thumbs.

Yellow Yellow, Genius

The next day, I sheepishly admitted to a ranger that I had lost a meal to a bear. After I described her to the ranger, he laughed and said, “Hey, don’t feel bad. We’ve all lost food to that bear. That’s Yellow Yellow. She’s a genius.”

He went on to tell tales of how Yellow Yellow had stolen food being used to bait a different problem bear right from under the rangers’ noses. Of how she had found ways to beat every single “bear-proof” canister invented by man by jumping on them, rolling them down hills, even sending them down rapids. Only one brand had a decent record against her, and even that brand wasn’t foolproof.

Yellow Yellow was a master of learning. Other bears were bigger. Other bears were more aggressive. But she learned and adapted and figured out ways to get free dinners over and over for 20 years. That’s an impressive record of mooching.

Most companies have at least one Yellow Yellow hanging around. They’re often out in the field, coping with problems posed by customer or technical problems that people at headquarters haven’t even considered.

I met a salesperson last year who is a total Yellow Yellow. No matter how challenging the sales environment he was thrown into by his company, no matter how little training he received – and sometimes in spite of the training he received – he figured out a way to be successful. He studied his colleagues and customers. He experimented with things as mundane as what clothes he wore when he went on sales calls. He refined. He puzzled. He mastered. And properly leveraged, he’s worth ten normal high performers because he helps his employers chart new territory.

So here’s a thought. Rather than sitting in rooms hoping you’ll come up with brilliant solutions to persistent problems, why not get out to visit your Yellow Yellows? Study them. Watch them searching for the keys to cracking open that pesky challenge. Try to understand how they think and work. Figure out what they’re doing that others could easily adopt. Enlist their support.

How do you find a Yellow Yellow? It’s deceptively simple:

• Look for the high performers in your organization. Yellow Yellows may not be at the absolute top of the list every year, but they consistently rank in the top 10%. That’s a good starting pool.
• Set to the side those who have been successful but have essentially had a stable environment or have been plowing the same furrow for ages. Look for the people who have been thrown into all sorts of situations and still succeed. Now we’re getting closer to the Yellow Yellows.
• Talk to the people on this short list. Listen carefully to how they think about their work. Are they students of the work or are they purely instinctive? If they can put their finger on what makes them successful in a given assignment – and better yet, you can tell they get completely jacked by cracking the code, you probably have yourself a Yellow Yellow.
• Throw a new way of thinking at these people. Ask them to experiment and give it a shot. If they’re open and curious and courageous enough to put themselves out there – to risk their precious reputations for the sake of the thrill of discovery and learning… well, you have yourself a Yellow Yellow.

Who’s your Yellow Yellow?

I was trying to pray this morning and all I could get in my mind was what happened last night. My wife and I were doing a 30-minute talk for a group of about 150 people. Being the super-organized person she is, my wife had outlined the talk for us noting where she would speak and what points I would cover. Most sections of the outline had clear talking points and examples.

One section earmarked for me basically said, “Do that thing you do here.” I had received the outline a week ago. She had dutifully shown me that section so that I could prepare.

I mulled that section over during the week. I sat at my desk. I took it with me in the backpack of my mind on a run. I drove around with it.

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Then it happened. The host of the evening had already introduced us and the participants were doing a 10-minute group exercise. Suddenly, the ideas flowed. I scribbled furiously on the back of the carefully-printed-by-my-wife notes. Then we walked up and did the talk. My sections went OK, but the part of the talk I scribbled out just before game time was clearly my best.

I wish I could say that this was unusual. But here’s the truth. I need work and the pressure it creates. Desperately. Maybe you do too. Here’s why for me:

• I need to eat. Duh. Work that adds value gets paid for. Then you eat. But that’s not all…
• There’s actually some decent stuff inside of me. And I’ll bet there’s cool stuff inside of you too. But it’s buried inside me like a deep oil field that doesn’t do anyone any good until it sees the light of day. Work fracks the good stuff free. Work shapes it. Occasionally, work makes it beautiful or brilliant or useful.

I wish my work process was neater and less nerve-wracking. Waiting for inspiration to hit me frustrates me, similar to the feeling I get watching my teenage son who apparently isn’t happy unless he has his daily panic caused by staying in bed until the last possible minute and almost missing his school bus. I wish I could spell out a predictable and pedestrian pattern that has produced my best ideas. I’d probably become a millionaire and sell a gajillion books and be featured on TED which is my personal fantasy since that’s my name after all.

Prepare to be disappointed.

Here’s how it actually works:

• Someone knows me and asks me to help solve a problem. This problem usually involves wrangling a group of skeptical Type A executives through a creative planning practice to help them decide a little thing called their future. Cue the screeching monkeys.
• I say yes. It’s not like I don’t know how to do it – that would be malpractice – but I’m honestly going to have to figure out how to do it this time.  Because every case, while having similarities to past situations, is a bit different. It’s a bit of live at the improv. Don’t tell me you don’t do this. You do. And I’m glad you do. If we all only did the things we’ve done 1000 times before – and in the same way we did in the past –  we’d never do anything new. For that matter, we wouldn’t do anything. Except maybe eat and sleep. Which, if you can get paid to do, I say go for it.
• 

  Get yourselves organized!!

  I sit with the problem. I schedule time and work on it. I puzzle. I write notes on post-it notes and slap them on my office window secretly hoping they’ll arrange themselves in proper order like a flock of migrating geese mysteriously drawn home.

• I struggle. I mull. I take a run. Time ticks by. I scribble in my iPad.
• Just in time (usually), the inspiration comes. I get an idea that will crack the case this time.
• I show up and do the work. It (usually) goes well.

I often have my most useful ideas when I’m pressing into a new arena. Those ideas have “happened” on airplanes, in the shower (too often), on runs (which is why I now carry a digital voice recorder when I run), and probably many places I now forget because I had no way to record the ideas. But one thing is certain: I only get these ideas if my mind is tuned to the How Can I Best Serve These Folks channel. If I’m on the I Don’t Want Have an Epic Fail and Look Stupid channel, I might as well fold up shop and go home. Nothing good is coming out of that.

When I told her I might blog this, my wife said, “You’re going to admit that?!?” Bless her. I think she gets ideas and inspirations through a neater, more predictable process like someone putting a quarter in a gumball machine. A coin goes in and out comes a ball of sugary goodness. The only question is what color it will be.

My process is more like plastic extrusion – pressure, heat, and smoke. And I’m not ashamed of it for a simple reason: I’m not being lazy. I’m not even procrastinating. I show up for all of those frustrating meetings with myself days and weeks before the lights go on. If I didn’t, I’d accuse myself of being slipshod and I’d fire myself.

But I can’t afford to do that because I need the work.

As far as we know, this dude isn’t juiced…

Now that the hubbub has died down a little from Lance Armstrong’s tightly scripted puke-fest on Oprah’s couch, I thought it might be interesting to step back and see how we got here. Yes, I watched the whole interview. And if I’m totally honest, I found myself saying both “Oooh” and “Ewww!”

On the one hand, aren’t you awed by anyone who is as focused and driven as Lance? I get the same reaction when I listen to people who are masters of their crafts and super-high achievers – astronauts who break barriers, musicians who become virtuosos. Isn’t it inspiring to see anyone take the talents they’ve been given and hone and focus and practice them until they are pure and powerful, like a beam of light focused into a laser that cuts diamonds?  Lance is one of those people. Doped or not, the dude is the poster child for focus.

On the other hand, aren’t you a little unsettled by anyone who is as ruthless as Lance? For those of you who are rusty on your ancient Hebrew scriptures, Ruth was a woman known in the Hebrew tradition for her selfless devotion to those around her. In Ruth’s case, she showed that devotion to her mother-in-law which ups the ante about 10 notches in my book. Lance hasn’t displayed a lot of Ruth-iness in his story. Quite the opposite: he admits that he would step on anyone and everyone required – mother-in-laws included I imagine – to achieve his goals during his now-notorious run to the top of cycling.

But let’s not be too surprised by Lance. In many ways, he personifies the world of pure, clinical strategy as commonly practiced in our world. Here’s the mantra:

• Win at all cost. Winning is above all else – no matter who or what you need to step on to get there. It’s a dog eat dog world after all, and we’d rather do the eating.
• Calculate everything. You could almost see Lance plugging his possible answers into a spreadsheet and glancing at resulting scenarios as Oprah did her interview. For that matter, even doing the interview was a calculated move. Didn’t you find yourself saying, “There’s got to be an angle here – it’s Lance Freaking Armstrong. There’s always an angle!!!” That’s what calculation does – it makes people look around corners and over their shoulders while the calculating strategist is talking.
• Control everything. Lance talked repeatedly about controlling the story, controlling outcomes, and his actions show how aggressively he tries to control those around him. That sort of hubris – thinking that he could actually control his world – ironically led him to eventually lose control.

Lance isn’t alone. Think about organizations whose leaders have led like Lance. It’s a group with great results followed by spectacular falls.

• Enron
• MCI Worldcom
• Certain Wall Street firms after the crash (you know who you are)
• AIG
• Who would you add?

They all thought they were the smartest people in the room, and they were. And they all thought about winning above all else, and they did win – in the short term. In business, we overvalue cunning and undervalue character.

Being a strategist is good. It’s good to have goals. It’s good to understand the reality you live in and chart a course toward those goals. But being a strategist without an inner compass leads too often to ruin. It’s sad enough if the ruin is only your own. Unfortunately, those who get caught up in your wake often get wrecked too.

Have strategy. But have heart, a soul and a compass, too.

Time for a good fight?

“I don’t like my new boss,” my friend said a while back over lunch. “We don’t fight enough.”

You what?!?!

I was taken a little off-guard by my friend’s comment. He’s a senior executive who had just started reporting to a new CEO.  Hey,  complaints about new bosses aren’t unusual. But my friend doesn’t seem to be one who picks fights for fun. I was intrigued.

“Listen,” he said, “with our old CEO, we worked through big decisions and had fierce debates. I don’t feel like we’re doing real work if we don’t fight every now and then.”

I think my friend is onto something. Leadership teams ought to be grappling with big issues and tough decisions like where to spend resources, what hill to climb next, and how to get there.  If you’re not fighting every now and then, you’re probably lying to each other too much.

So why do some leadership teams either avoid conflict altogether or do themselves huge damage by doing conflict poorly? And what can leaders do to navigate teams through conflict safely and productively?

Lord knows it’s scary to tell the truth, but you’ve got to. I could tell you more, but I thought I’d show you instead… so click here to check out a brief self-guided tour through the Forest of Conflict.

Then think: is it time to pick a good fight?

Fear works. There. I said it. I got all huffy in a recent post about not creating a fear-inducing environment. But the truth is that fear kicks ass. It gets people scurrying around. If you hate complacency, there’s nothing like a little panic to relax you. And yes, I intend that to be ironic.

But…

There’s good fear and bad fear. Let’s imagine you’re an actor. For fun, let’s put you on Broadway or in London’s West End. You have a lead part in a show. I say that you ought to be afraid. But there are at least two kinds of fear you could be feeling. One is useful. The other? Not so much…

Which fear?

1. Fear 1: The director has taken you aside before tonight’s show to tell you that the producer is taking a long look at the show. Audience sizes aren’t what she had expected. The buzz isn’t buzzy enough. “You’d better do your best tonight. If you don’t kill it, believe me there are hundreds of hungry young actors outside my door waiting for a big break.”
   • How do you feel?
   • How will you perform?
   • Most important, where will your eyes and your mind be focused?
2. Fear 2: You and the director have talked for weeks about the importance of this show’s message. You deeply believe in this show’s power to open people up to new ways of viewing the world – to do the sneaky work of art and drama, bypassing rational defenses to plant positively subversive ideas in the minds and hearts of viewers. You know that your fellow cast members feel the same way. You’re afraid of letting them down. You deeply want to create something with your colleagues that will be a moment for the audience. You know this is your chance.
   • How do you feel?
   • How will you perform?
   • Most important, where will your eyes and your mind be focused?

Here’s my guess: In scenario one, you’ll be freaked out. Your eyes will be on the director and the producer. You’ll know that they aren’t for you. You’ll know that because it’s true. They’re for themselves and if you don’t work out, they’ll toss you to the side and find someone who will serve their purposes. So your eyes will really be on yourself and on your own survival. You may perform, but you’ll be tight. You’ll gut it out.

In scenario two, you’ll be scared but it will be a focused fear. Your eyes will be on the audience and your colleagues, drawing them into the story. It won’t take long for you to see that both are for you.  Your colleagues want to create a moment too. And the audience has come to the theater to experience such a moment. You’re all working together now, digging for something important and fresh – or deeply familiar but partially forgotten. You’ll know that they are for you. You’ll know because it’s true. You’ll perform because you have an edge.

Fear itself isn’t bad. It’s good to create an atmosphere in your organization where people have that edge. How do you do it?

• Create Shared, BIG Purpose – Be really clear about why what you’re doing matters to the world. Don’t bore us with, “We deliver really great solutions to our customers, predictable returns to shareholders, and attractive careers to our employees.” Please. Revolutionize health care. Help people use technology to shower love on loved ones. Make me want to join your crusade.
• Make Purpose Real – Talking about purpose is one thing. Doing it is something else. When you say you do big things, you’re making a promise. Show your team by the way you lead each day, week, and month that you’re not kidding. Make the choices that get people’s attention. Which choices? Hint: start with hirings, budgets, recognition, and promotions.
• Build a Talented, Cohesive Team-  Some things do carry over from high school. Peer pressure works. When you work with a group of high achievers you admire and who are counting on you, you fear letting them down.  That camaraderie doesn’t come accidentally. Leaders foster it by the people they select, the dreams they cast, and the rituals they build into their culture.

So ask yourself a few questions as we kick off 2013:

• What kind of fear do we have around our organization?
• How big is our purpose?
• How much does our team believe that we’re sold out to that purpose?
• Is positive peer pressure encouraging our people to do their best work?

Make 2013 the year of fear. I dare you.

I know a consultant who made a huge mistake by being normal. He was working with a rapidly growing client.  This organization was still in the early stages of penetrating its target market and was eager to go from an unknown to a household name as quickly as possible.

The consultant was well networked in the client’s market and happened to know senior people at a prominent trade group.  Knowing that getting exposure to the industry through this trade group could be a huge boon to the client, the consultant offered to make an introduction.

Everything looked rosy… until the consultant threw in one little detail.  In return for making the introduction, he wanted to receive some sort of compensation. “I’m not sure what compensation is right, but I think I should get something,” he said. Suddenly, the not-so-pleasant aroma of stinginess filled the room.

This guy is normal! Scary…

Pure generosity is rare – and I wish I gave it more often myself.  It’s easy to spend your life with a mindset of “I have to take care of myself.” This is, after all, the unwritten rule of our world.

What if we made 2013 the year of rebelling against lousy unwritten rules? Try these on for size:

• It’s a rule to give favors only to those who can quickly repay them. Break it. Give favors to people who cannot repay or who may not repay.
• It’s a rule to help someone with their project once they show you how it will support your agenda. Bust it. Get behind another person’s project just because it’s good.
• It’s a rule that you have to look out for yourself because no one else will. I know it because Mr. Angell, my high school physics teacher, told me so. Flaunt that rule. Relish looking out for others and see what happens.
• It’s a rule to return calls to the rich, powerful, and famous – and to ignore (or at best delay) doing so for the poor, average, and anonymous. Thumb your nose at that rule. Extend kindness to people without regard for their status.
• It’s a rule to avoid the colleague or client who just lost their job, that person who “has decided to pursue other opportunities outside the company,” as the bland euphemism goes.  It’s a rule to treat them like they have a deadly, communicable disease. Stomp on that rule. Be human. Call them back. Offer them a side order of encouragement to go along with the healthy serving of reality they were dished up.

Here are three joys Grinchy people and stingy companies miss out on every day by being self-serving:

• The Freebies – It would have cost that consultant I mentioned earlier virtually nothing to connect the industry association with his client.  One phone call may have opened up opportunities for both parties – opportunities that he may have gained great credit for down the road. Asking for something in return for a Freebie doesn’t just cheapen the gift, it cheapens the giver.
• The Afterglow – The old proverb says, “It’s better to give than to receive.” There is growing evidence that this is empirically true.  Don’t you love giving  someone a particularly thoughtful gift? Wouldn’t it ennoble your company when the organization is known for giving really useful and important gifts to those in its sphere of influence?
• The Stretch – Giving Freebies is important but relatively easy.  What happens to a person or group when they give something costly to someone or some cause that matters. I saw that look in the eyes of husbands, sisters, and friends when I did a 3-day Breast Cancer walk a few years back.  Precisely because it cost something big – three days of their life and some pretty impressive blisters –  they have a bond and a willingness to pitch in well beyond what they would have felt if they had just thrown money in a bucket.

So here’s something to think about. What opportunity do you have to practice Generosity this season and in the coming year?

• I have colleagues and former clients who are out of work right now.  You probably do too.  It’s likely they feel more vulnerable, confused, and unable to “pay” for your favors than ever.  Now is the time to practice Generosity.
• Do you have a colleague who is new to your company or industry? No, they can’t help you much yet. They’re green. It’s a perfect time for Generosity.
• Do you have a colleague who is trying to do something important for your organization – maybe a game-changing effort that requires her to stretch beyond her job description? It’s a perfect time for Generosity.
• Is there a young leader who is moving into a big new job in your organization and who could use your experience shared over a lunch? It’s a perfect time for Generosity.
• Is there someone in a different team who has excelled at something or even failed gloriously while taking a smart, calculated risk? What might a handwritten note mean to them? It’s a perfect time for Generosity.

The Christmas story is not only about Santa and elves or even my childhood favorite Grinch, though the original St. Nick was a pretty radical guy. At its core, it’s a story of an invasion and an overturning of the way things are so that a better way can rule. It’s a story of insane generosity. Let’s cooperate with that and see where it takes us.

Who’s in the car?!?

The funny thing about the whole fiscal cliff scenario is that we’re surprised about how paralyzed our system is.  It’s like our whole country is shaking its head as we watch a car driven by Barack Obama and John Boehner careen toward the cliff with Harry Reid and Ben Bernanke riding shotgun. Only it’s an SUV. With dark windows. And we’re all in a giant circus trailer attached to the back. Which on second thought makes it just slightly less amusing.

But why are we surprised? What would be going on in your head if you were in a car streaking toward a precipice at 80 mph? Would you be thinking clearly and making wise long-term decisions? No, you’d be messing your pants and gripped by panic.

Words matter. More precisely, metaphors matter. Metaphors are word pictures and pictures always carry more freight than mere words.

While leaders have many sources of power and influence, few compare to the power of the metaphors they use.  Why? Like it or not, and whether you’re aware of it or not, metaphors shape the thinking and feelings of everyone they touch.  Take two families of metaphor you’ve no doubt heard:

• War metaphors – We’ve had wars on drugs, terror, and most recently a purported war on unions in Michigan. War metaphors work great when there’s a clear good guy and a clear bad guy – and when you can actually envision the day when your enemy is crushed and peace breaks out. If you’re not in that situation, well… wars just go on and on until people get disillusioned and give up.
• Fear metaphors – Images like a fiscal cliff are clearly designed to do one thing: freak people out. Fear is a fabulous way to get people moving. Unfortunately, moving can look like a stampede of panicked cattle. That’s better than letting the herd stand still and get slaughtered, but it’s hard to create order from fear. Plus, when’s the last time you made an intelligent, long-term decision when gripped by panic? I’m guessing your intelligible thoughts could best be summed up by “HOLY @%!^#$!!!!!!” Worse yet,  those who get used to living in cultures driven by fear often have a hard time functioning when the impending disaster passes. They stand around wondering what to do and sometimes look for ways to start the next fire to fight.

Lest we cynically laugh at politicians and just wish they would get their act together (which I, for one, totally wish they would), we need to look in the mirror. Leaders at all organizational levels shape the thinking, feeling, and discussion about issues every day by the metaphors they choose.

• When we say, “The East Region smoked the West Region. That was a blow-out – it wasn’t even close!” we’re setting up an internally competitive metaphor. That may spur both regions to greater performance, but don’t be shocked when their leaders don’t share best practices and the company suffers as a whole.
• When a senior leader says, “I think we should cut that guy loose. He dropped the ball,” after a normally dependable employee delivers a poor performance, she’s setting up a perfectionist metaphor. Of course she needs to deliver corrective feedback, especially when there’s a pattern of missteps. But the perfectionist leader shouldn’t be surprised when her people spend as much time covering their rears as doing great work. Oh, and please don’t expect innovation in this organization. Who would take the risk of a failure when one mistake gets you shown the door?
• When we say, “We’re a family around here,” we’re trying to set up a friendly, supportive environment. While some of you may find this ironic given what the holiday season brings out in your family, we shouldn’t be surprised when people react with shock and horror at the decision to let someone go for performance or cost cutting reasons. While we might want to fire Uncle Ralph from the family, it’s taboo in our culture. You put up with Uncle Ralph unless he does something unspeakable.

I can hear some of you thinking, “Hey, it’s only words.” Don’t be deceived. Words matter because they reveal something deeper and predict something broader. In the words of The Iron Lady:

• 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 your character.
• Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
• What we think, we become.

So take a look at the metaphors you and other leaders use in your organization:

• What pervasive word pictures do you use regularly? Pay special attention to the ones that have caught on and gone viral in your organization.
• What actions and habits are those pictures reinforcing? Is that what you really want?
• What idea lurks behind your word pictures? If you want different actions and habits, do the ideas need to be tweaked or radically re-thought? Are the ideas both true and useful?

Words matter. They reveal the ideas behind them and they shape the environment for wide-ranging behaviors.

I’d say more, but I’m too freaked out about plunging off the cliff.