If I could do it over…
November 7, 2008
Our team often works with leaders who have recently taken on critical leadership roles. I try to keep up with them after they have gotten firmly established and often ask them a simple question after they have been in their role for about a year:
If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Their responses are amazing in their consistency: all too often, they say,”I’d make sure I had the right team in place before I leaped into action.”
This never surprises me. It’s not even that surprising to these leaders – they know the now-conventional advice about getting the right people on the bus (thanks, Jim Collins!).
So why do so many smart, experienced leaders still end up learning this one the hard way? I wish I had the scientifically researched answer. But here are my experience-based hunches:
- People decisions are complicated
- People decisions are nuanced
- People decisions can be slow
- People decisions usually involve conflict and disappointment
For these (and probably other) reasons, most people just put up with what they have. But from the perspective of someone who often facilitates strategy development and implementation, I can tell you that getting the team right is job one for a leader. Otherwise, everything – the quality of the plan, your confidence in its implementation, your willingness to give responsibility to your team, and ultimately your own reputation in the organization – is at risk.
What’s your hunch about why so many leaders move slowly on the people front?
An alum’s leadership lessons from the first 90 days
December 6, 2007
I have the good fortune of having a growing group of past clients who have agreed to be Noonday alumni. One of the gifts they regularly give me is the gift of their experience. I got such a gift over lunch a couple of weeks ago. I met with an alumnus who is just completing his first 90 days in a critical leadership role in his company.
In the spirit of a true Noonday alum, he encouraged me to share these lessons with the rest of you. (By the way, he’s been tremendously successful this year, pulling off an unprecedented set of initiatives.)
So from one talented, successful leader to all of you, here goes:
- Resist the urge to clean house immediately. “People in my group walked on eggshells, waiting for the ‘other shoe to drop.’ I decided to prove them wrong about that belief and hold fire.”
- Don’t wait too long to make changes. “My strength – wanting to prove my team wrong – became my weakness. I see people changes I need to make, but now my managers resist my attempts to make moves. ‘You can’t fire them now – they’re finally trying!’”
- Enroll your managers in the changes you make. “I saw that a core flaw of our department was the inability to continuously develop people. But instead of teaching my leaders to pull this off themselves, I jumped into the gap and did it myself. Now at the end of my first year in this role, I realize I should have gotten my managers to rigorously evaluate, engage, and develop the people in our group. It’s a core value for me and it needs to become a core value for them.”
Hindsight is always 20/20. Any of you who are recently through the first 6-12 months of a new role have something to add?
Plane reading – New Episode of “Minefields, Allies, and Hidden Agendas”
November 5, 2007
Do you know someone who is stepping into a significant leadership role? Ever wonder what makes some people fly faster in those roles while others fail to launch? Our team did some research on that some months back (click here to view the results) and found that – in the opinion of other leaders across many industries – building constructive relationships with colleagues and team members ranked highest.
I’ve just posted Minefields, Allies, and Hidden Agendas: Episode II, the second in a series of articles that deal with this very topic. They track the progress of Ben Scott, a (fictitious) up and coming executive who just started as Chief Marketing Officer at a professional services firm. He’s trying to figure out how to build relationships, navigate politics, and make his mark in this role.
To read the first episode, click here. Each episode should take about 10 minutes to read – precisely the amount of time most planes take taxiing and taking off before you can crank up the laptop again. And each one gives you practical approaches to apply, share, and practice.
And yes, I have a nice gift waiting for the first person to read, apply/share, and offer feedback on the article.
Why are colleagues exasperating?
October 22, 2007
For all of the challenges clients create, most of what I hear from leaders tells me that relationships with colleagues cause even more persistent problems. That’s often puzzled me. After all, we’re on the same team with our colleagues. We have a lot in common simply by virtue of the fact that our destinies are tied together in the same organization trying to serve the same (or similar) customers better than the competition. But we get cranky plenty with our team-mates.
So why is that? One hunch came to me while in a planning session some time ago. We were planning a company-wide meeting for a particular group of leaders. Someone asked the question, “Do you think the participants understand the purpose of this meeting?”
One member of our planning team piped up: “Nope, I don’t think they have any idea why we’re pulling them out of the field for two days.”
Others in our team nearly jumped out of our chairs. “What? How could they not get it? We sent them the email!”
Can’t they read my email??
Then it hit me. If these colleagues were clients, we wouldn’t expect them to understand the purpose of a planned 2-day meeting with a simple email. Heck, we probably wouldn’t even really expect them to read an email. We would treat them with understanding, deference, and (at least feigned) patience. Because they’re clients.
No such luck if you’re a colleague. No, we expect 100% readership and acceptance of our emails and a rapid “getting on board with the program.” Why think colleagues are any different than clients? They’re busy, skeptical, stretched, and like a personal touch too.
Maybe we’d get better results from colleagues if we treated them just as well (if not better?) as clients.
What’s your experience? Why do we get exasperated with colleagues and what can we do about it?
Dirty Word #8 – Politics
July 9, 2007
Most of us say we hate politics, especially when we currently have a presidential election cycle that will stretch nearly two years before it comes to its mind-numbing conclusion. How much dark comedy can one nation stand?
But why do we hate politics? After all, politics is just the formal and informal way things get done in any group of people. And like them or loathe them, we ignore them at our peril.
I think we tend to be uncomfortable with politics because they involve relationships with people. Humans can be tricky creatures. And no matter how much we say “it’s not personal” (usually to make ourselves feel better about stepping on someone else), most of us take politics and their implications very personally. After all, my job, my pet project, my budget, my promotion – these all have a very personal possessive pronoun sitting in front of them.
Maybe that’s part of the solution. Maybe we can step back from the project, the budget, even the promotion and say, “OK, it’s not mine. It belongs to all of us and I need to find a way, with these other quirky humans, to come to an agreement about what to do with it.” This takes some even deeper soul work of saying to ourselves, “I’ll be OK even if this doesn’t go my way. My life doesn’t hinge on this decision.”
Not to be Pollyanna here, because when it comes to your job or your compensation, it’s going to feel personal no matter what you tell yourself.
Regardless, as I watch senior leaders grapple with this issue, I almost always see them break through the frustration with politics when they realize that the other(s) involved in the situation have hopes, dreams, and goals – just like themselves – and when they get on with understanding those agendas instead of railing about them. When they look at how they can get the other parties what they want too instead of focusing on themselves, politics goes from an irritant to just what it is – fallible people trying to get stuff done.
What do you do to make politics a positive?
First 90 Best Practice – Personal Board of Directors
June 27, 2007
Think back to your early days in a big new role. How did you feel? What were you thinking as you wandered the halls, trying to find the bathroom?
One of the most precious commodities for any of us – especially when we’re starting up in a new leadership role – is perspective. It’s easy to feel totally lost and to get isolated. That’s why some astute leaders set up a simple group of advisors to act as a sounding board.
Imagine you’re in the middle of a challenging political scenario in your new role. You don’t have years of history in the organization to depend on. You may not have cultivated trusted internal sponsors yet. But you still have to decide how to play the situation. Do you make that high-risk move? Do you play it safe for a while?
It’s right then that you might wish you had a small group of trusted outsiders available to you to test ideas and push your gut feelings. Here’s the good news – you can have one, a Personal Board of Directors.
If you’re like most executives, you’ll immediately begin to think about who would be on your board. But stop. First ask yourself, What do I want this group to do for me? What skills and backgrounds do I really need on my board? Take out a piece of paper and write those things down. You’re going to have to articulate the purpose and skills required anyway when you invite people onto the board. You may as well get them clear beforehand.
I’m curious – what purpose would you want to accomplish with your own board? And what qualities, skills, and background would matter to you?
Start-up Insurance – Pre-emptive Goodwill
April 10, 2007
A recent Harvard Business Review article, Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters, points out the initially obvious point that a deep network is vital to getting back into a senior executive role after a career speed-bump. But dig deeper into the text and you’ll find a gem that every leader – especially those in the first few months of a new assignment – should grab.
Telling the story of Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot who rebounded from a previous firing to start the omnipresent DIY store, the authors throw in this detail.
Whether they were close friends and colleagues with whom he worked or acquaintances he dealt with on a casual basis, Marcus treated others with uncommon honesty, respect, and trust. (Emphasis added)
Notably, Marcus didn’t start treating colleagues that wat when he needed them (i.e. when he was trying to start Home Depot). He just did it as a normal course of business.
I almost wrote “he just did it naturally.” But who knows if that’s the case? For most of us, it takes effort to look at our colleagues and pre-emptively give them uncommon honesty, respect, and trust. (Otherwise, it woudn’t be uncommon!) But one thing is certain – it is much easier to handle the ups and downs of your first 3-6 months in a leadership role with a store of goodwill in the bank than to repair strained relationships that never had a fighting chance.
Dirty Word #6 – Followership
April 2, 2007
OK, do a quick scan of your bookshelf, podcasts, and mental catalog of leadership talks. How many have you heard on the art of following well.
After looking through literally hundreds of those artifacts collected over twenty years, I found exactly…. ONE! (Incidentally, it was a very useful talk given by a leader at a high-growth church known for its strong leadership.)
Why is that? Why is it that when someone quotes the tired saying, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” we really see only one good option – to lead! I’d guess there are a lot of reasons, but our world certainly glorifies heroic leaders whose brilliance single-handedly tilts the earth to the benefit of their grateful followers.
Here’s the irony: nearly every great leader needs to also be a great follower. We are all accountable to someone – a boss, a board, shareholders, partners, an electorate – and we owe those people our best service. And yes, that service sometimes involves doing things their way instead of our own. It may be a blow to our egos, but that’s what it takes to follow well sometimes. (It also involves giving straight information, pushing back when we think leaders are missing something, and keeping our promises to our leaders – but those are topics for a future post.)
This ability to be influenced is a pretty good indicator of the quality of relationships we are bound to have as leaders or followers. John Gottman, a leading relationship researcher, says that a good predictor for marital health or breakdown is how open the partners are to influence. Those who allow their partners to influence their decisions and way of working typically have longer and happier marriages than those who resist influence. (Incidentally, he also finds that women tend to accept influence more than men. Sorry guys…)
So if we want to improve our relationships (and increase our influence), we can ask ourselves the question, “How good am I at following?” Counter-intuitive as it seems, it might just give us clues for growth.
Horizontal Best Practice – The Supportive Peer Group
March 29, 2007
In a recent post, I wrote about The Horizontal Organizational Chart and how leaders who find themselves in new roles should pay special attention to their peers – their horizontal org chart. A few days later, I heard a story from a client that brought this to life.
This talented leader has recently left one company to take a significant leadership role at another. His new company is in a different industry and has a headquarters in a different city. Most people would quickly lose touch with their peer groups in that sort of circumstance.
But this guy isn‘t like most leaders. More importantly, his peer group at his former company isn’t like most peer groups. It seems that a few years back, they started a group habit of holding an informal Friday afternoon conference call. Its purpose was as simple as it was unstructured – to stay connected and to help each other with any challenges facing them in their roles as leaders. Importantly, this standing call was created by and hosted by the peer group, not a boss (though, perhaps not coincidentally, their boss is one of the most progressive and developmentally minded leaders I know). It was their own initiative, not a corporate program.
That’s cool enough, but get this. After my client switched companies (complete with the farewell parties and so on), he got a phone call from one of his former peers. “It’s just not the same without you. I wish you were still on our Friday calls,” he said.
Then the bright idea struck them – why not have this valued member of the peer group continue to attend even if he’s no longer in the company? And that’s just what he does now.
The point isn‘t that everyone should start peer group calls (it’s not always practical and wouldn’t be natural for all). Nor am I arguing that you should keep this level of open communication with every person who leaves your organization (sometimes people have the gall to go to competitors, and we rightly have to be careful with our own organization’s information).
The point IS that, when done thoughtfully, peers can create relationships that add real business and personal value both now and into the future.
What horizontal best practices do you see in your world?
Talent: Build or buy?
March 26, 2007
Build or buy? It’s one of the big philosophical decisions organizational leaders face whenever they realize that their strategy requires bringing in new leadership talent. Do we promote hunger and loyalty by promoting our own people into key leadership roles, or do we send the message that the best talent wins regardless of tenure?
It’s a tricky one. And of course it’s not an either-or decision. An organization can take it one opportunity at a time and say to its staff, “We make the best decision for the organization depending on the situation.”
But don’t kid yourself. People do look at trends and draw conclusions. And your brightest talent will make their career decisions accordingly.
David Maister recently argued that going outside to bring in lateral hires for senior roles in professional services firms can dilute a firm’s culture. I think he leans toward promoting from within in those situations.
Regardless of your organization’s philosophical stance, most end up doing a combination of both. The next question to answer is, How does the person’s prior employment affect where we invest time and energy during a new leader’s first 90 days?
In our experience, it’s simply a matter of emphasis. Leaders joining an organization from the outside need to spend a lot more time learning what makes that particular organization run. Even more, they have to spend a lot of energy cracking the code of the organization’s culture – the unwritten rules that govern behavior. Perhaps most difficult, they have to figure out how to work productively in that culture while still staying true to their own core beliefs.
Internal promotions have different challenges. They know the overall organization’s business and unwritten rules, but they have to see it now from a new perspective. They sometimes have to overcome perceptions about them based on their past roles and behavior – and that can be daunting. Because either way – internal or external – our research and experience says that the early days are all about building productive work relationships.
How about you? What are the challenges and benefits to starting as an outsider or an insider in a new leadership role?