Playground Lessons
March 26, 2008
I was traveling last week. Before crashing in my hotel one night, I called home to check in with my family. My 10-year-old son got on the line and we had what began as a typical conversation.
“What happened at school today?” (I’ve learned not to ask “How was school?” since it always gets the same answer – fine!)
“Well, I got in trouble with a teacher today.” (This is pretty unusual for my son, so I was curious.)
He went on to tell me that, while at lunch recess, he had been broken some obscure rule and had been made to stand against the wall for most of the recess rather than play with his friends. For my son, this is worse than having a limb amputated. In his own words, he was very upset.
As I talked with him about the situation, it became clear to me that he didn’t really understand the rule or what he had done to deserve his punishment. But I was still curious what he had gleaned from the experience.
“So what did you learn?” I expected him to say that he learned not to break that rule. I was in for a surprise.
He paused a moment and said, “To stay away from that teacher.”
I had to think about that for a few minutes after hanging up the phone. I realized the simple, profound truth my son had taught me. When we have negative interactions with people and don’t come to a common understanding about why the interaction went south, they learn something about us: that we’re unreasonable, dangerous people to be avoided or defeated. This may work occasionally when you only have to deal with someone a few times or you have the brute force to keep the balance of power in your favor. But if you need that person’s engagement, cooperation, or support at some point, good luck.
So think about your key business relationships: what have your employees, colleagues, customers, and suppliers/partners learned about you recently? Is that what you want them to believe about you? Will those beliefs support your own interests in the long term?
The (Internal) Practice
March 18, 2008
I received an article in the mail from one of my clients last week. It’s written by a Brian Martin, general counsel at a technology firm and poses a question that I’ve heard repeatedly from leaders of in-house professionals (legal, HR, IT, accounting) over the past several years.
- What are the competitive advantages of internal professionals?
- How can in-house professionals cultivate the value they provide to the business?
Too often when I work with internal professionals, they try to make cost their competitive advantage. “We cost less than those incredibly expensive outside resources.” This is often a dangerous line of argument to take with internal clients. Internal resources are rarely seen as inexpensive by their internal “clients” and cost leadership is a difficult advantage to maintain anyway.
The author’s conclusion is that in-house professionals have the unique ability to focus on one client and to become “students of their firms and their people.” Learn the company’s products, services, strategies, and challenges. Learn the people who make the organization run. (You can click here to read the entire article.)
This is easy to say and difficult to do in real life. Here are just a few of the barriers that I’ve heard in-house professionals share, any one of which makes “learning the business” a real challenge:
- We don’t get invited to the table. Line business executives simply don’t include us until they simply need approval.
- We’re busy. We’re under extremely tight timelines and simply don’t have the time to invest in learning the business.
- I’m a technical expert. My internal clients know they can call me and I’ll give them expert advice. They’re happy with that and I’m comfortable with it.
- I don’t know how to learn more about the business and the key people. Where do we start?
Many professionals encounter these barriers and wind up back in their offices, just cranking out the work requested of them by their business partners. But I’ve seen some take on the challenge with gusto. These unusual professionals are the ones who end up over time being invited to the strategy table and how contribute in a way that an outside professional simply can’t.
Here are the practices that seem to set these people apart:
- They orchestrate opportunities to interact with key business leaders (vs. just responding) so that they can learn more about the business.
- They plan and sequence these opportunities so that they have broad, deep exposure to the different people who shape the business.
- They have a ready-made set of questions that can quickly help them learn about the business: its priorities, its key processes, and how it measures performance.
- They ask, “What are you trying to achieve in the business this year?” more than “What do you expect of our department?” This allows them to see opportunities for creating value beyond just responding to the typical requests that people make of them.
What else do you see internal practitioners do that makes them uniquely valuable?
Dirty Word #14 – Listening (It’s about more than just shutting up)
March 3, 2008
I ran into an internationally known speaker and author over the weekend at a dinner party. We had just a few minutes to talk shop and he asked me what I saw as the most common need among leaders when I work with companies.
My answer was simple (and far from unique): Listen more.
In several of my team’s recent assignments, we have been asked to gather feedback on senior leaders and this is the common theme. People around these leaders (above, below, and to the sides) often don’t feel like they’re really being listened to.
Dig beneath the surface and there’s something more profound than the usual advice we get about listening.
- It’s not just avoiding the tendency to interrupt or finish someone’s sentences.
- It’s not just getting rid of distractions like email, cell phones, or papers on the desk.
- It’s not just asking questions.
All of these tactics are good and should be standard for any of us when we are in listening mode. People around us want to feel like they have our undivided attention and these tactics can help with that.
But go even deeper into the feedback and there’s an even more profound (and challenging) truth. The people we interviewed regularly talk about wanting to know that the leader in question is actually open to influence.
Here are the types of things we hear:
- My colleague asks good questions and paraphrases what I said. But she’s already made up her mind and nothing I say will change that.
- My boss does great at listening as long as he agrees with me. Otherwise, he’s just waiting for me to finish so that he can tell me the right answer.
These folks want to be able to say to themselves, “If I tell this person what I really think, he will actually entertain my ideas and may even change his own opinions as a result of the conversation.”
That seems to be more unusual the higher you go in an organization. What’s your experience? And if you see the same trend, what do you think is behind it?