Leading Through Bad News
March 22, 2010
It’s almost the end of a quarter. For many organizations, this quarter continues a string of difficult ones – and our typical focus on reporting quarterly results just reinforces that.
Of course, some bad news doesn’t follow a nice quarterly calendar. One client organization I know has recently received some really bad news that has essentially shut down a significant portion of their business until they can resolve some key issues. That’s a bad day at the office.
One of my contacts there sent this question:
How do you keep your head up and your leadership intact when things look bleak?
My friend suggested learning lessons from the legendary Ernest Shackleton, who led an ill-fated attempt to reach the South Pole. A few lessons this client drew from Shackleton’s story:
- Never lose sight of the ultimate goal, and focus energy on short-term objectives.
- Find something to celebrate and laugh about. (I must admit, gallows humor has seen me through many a tough scrape. My dad always said, “Hey, where’s your sense of humor?”)
- Never give up – there’s always another move.
A recent Harvard Business Review article by Joshua Margolis and Paul Stoltz offers a couple of other practices that resilient leadership teams do when facing tough odds or sobering facts.
- Ask, “What features of the situation can I (even potentially) improve?
- Ask, “What sort of positive impact can I personally have on what happens next?”
- Ask, “How can I contain the negatives of the situation and generate currently unseen positives?”
- Ask, “What can I do to begin addressing the problem now?”
Here’s what I like about these questions: they look forward and encourage us to take positive action. They hijack that panicky, discouraged part of the brain and get it focused on something useful again. They may even lead us to taking advantage of some aspect of this crisis. After all, we all need a kick sometimes to get moving – and bad news can lead us to do that.
What other ways have you seen a tough situation turned to the good?
A Critical Distinction
March 11, 2010
Sometimes we confuse critical thinking with just being critical. There’s nothing about critical thinking that says you have to be a jerk. In fact, really useful critical thinking inspires the hearer to raise the bar (vs. defend himself). But many hours are wasted because we get confused about how best to apply critical thinking.
Here are a few examples I see often when doing planning work with smart people (especially smart people):
- The Leadership Team Jousting Match – A leadership team is deliberating a course of action. One team member offers an idea. Someone else (often a perceived rival) decides to take the opposing view, not because there are substantive differences but simply to try to prove that his ideas are superior to his peer’s. The meeting becomes a side-show in the two colleagues’ competition for visibility and influence. Wasted energy seeps from the team – as demonstrated by the rolling eyes of perceptive members in the team.
- The “Needs-to-be-Superior” Leader – A leader is reviewing the draft work product from one of her team members. She has a reputation for being difficult to please and being crazy smart – a reputation she quietly nurtures because it keeps everyone off balance. Though she gave little guidance to her team member, she now works hard to mark up the draft, looking for any possible imperfection to amplify. What she doesn’t know is that her team members now intentionally leave mistakes in their work to indulge her little critical pleasure. It’s wasted effort.
- The “Stuff-it” Executive – A leader is working with his team to refine the organization’s long-range plan. He’s quite concerned about the direction they are going, but he’s concerned about the backlash he might get if he asks tough questions. So he jams his concerns and frustration down deeper into his gut. He fails to consider that it will come out – just in a less controlled and less constructive way. (And you tell me – do you think his people don’t notice his unease?)
I wrote several posts ago about asking yourself, “Is it worth it?” when you feel irritation in a meeting. There are times when it is worth it – when asking certain questions will make a big difference. Here are few effective questions I’ve picked up from clients and colleagues over the years:
- What assumptions underlie your position?
- Which of those assumptions are most important to the position? How would your position change if they proved false (or not fully true)?
- What have you done to test your assumptions? What else could we do?
Now, the trick, of course, is to ask questions like these in ways that don’t seem attacking to others – to have them believe that you are truly trying to stretch the idea (and maybe even stretch them) instead of trying to tear them down. It’s this unique mix of toughness on the problem and softness on the person that sets apart effective critical thinkers and jerks.
And that is a critical distinction.
Who has an example of someone who has mastered the art of constructive critical thinking?
What we can learn from curling
March 3, 2010
Before you make snarky comments about the title of this post (and yes, I’ve thought of a half dozen myself), think about this quote from a recent Wall Street Journal article about why the US curling team failed to medal in the Olympics:
“We never really got on one path,” says Rick Patzke, the chief operating officer for USA Curling, who said there was never any cohesive plan in place to win and that the training ahead of these Games was essentially a write-off. “There wasn’t total buy-in,” he says. By the time the Olympics came around, Mr. Patzke adds, USA Curling was resigned to the fact that it was really preparing for 2014. “We started with Sochi and we worked backward,” he says.
If you read the rest of the article, you’ll see several patterns that are far from unique to the odd-ball world of curling:
- Increased Competition: Curling has enjoyed a worldwide increase in popularity. Countries who used to be non-factors have begun to invest in developing teams who can challenge the traditional powers for honors.
- Stagnation: The US used the same method to select and develop its team as it had in the past. It had paid results in the past, so leaders initially assumed the same old way would deliver similar or better results. Other countries used different methods and benefited.
- Desperation Plays: After realizing that they were behind, the US team invested heavily in trying to make the existing model successful. Ironically, they plowed more money and effort in than ever before, but the investment was too late. This team under this model couldn’t compete with the rising competition.
- Resignation: As the COO says above, the team realized it had little chance in Vancouver and had to cede their position as a leader to others.
Now, remove this storyline from curling and it almost perfectly describes the cycle that so many organizations – especially successful ones – endure. Unless an organization regularly steps back, examines what others – especially the upstarts – are doing differently, discerns the trends, and acts in time, they can miss an opportunity to achieve their vision. As master planner Tom Paterson says,
Discover the truth or it will bite you in the behind.
The silver lining for US Curling? They’re now focused on 2014 and have a renewed motivation to achieve their potential at that time. Falling short can do that to you – but even better if we can avoid those painful lessons with a little foresight.