Secrets of the C-Suite – Talk Innovation & Breakthrough, But Plan for Improvement

Really, the truth is it’s all about the status quo improved a bit. Whatever is said about innovation and breakthrough performance, for most C-Suite executives it is just business-speak – and that is code for baloney. Most C-Suite executives suffer from what is known as status quo bias and don’t admit that, or worse don’t recognize their condition. Further, they are victims of the sunk cost fallacy – after all the time, effort and investment in creating the way we do things around here, we are reluctant to write any part of it off and do things differently.

Over the years I have had the privilege (and fun) of working with executives who fit all the clichéd descriptors of great leaders – bold, visionary, charismatic, audacious, enrolling, courageous… and there are many executives who justly earn all the accolades they enjoy.

However, the truth is most C-Suite executives are neither bold nor audacious. Nor are they visionary and enrolling. They have too much invested in the way they do things now to even think about making radical changes, besides they like agreement, certainty and predictability too much.

In the Discovery Audits we (LPR) do some executives are up front enough to admit that a lot of their talk of innovation, breakthrough and transformation is just that, talk. They say things like:

• Why else do you think we spend so much money on market research – so we are not caught off-guard by change we didn’t predict
• Why do we spend so much money on pols and lobbyists – to increase the chances that nobody rocks the boat on us
• We talk about innovation and change a lot but we are organized and compensated to avoid risk and simply grow and improve – we just want to pass the good enough test.

Sure we all know that most change efforts fail. And, it doesn’t have to be that way. Run some simple experiments each day to discover how you unconsciously maintain the status quo, and then make a few simple changes. For example:

• Does every meeting have to be an hour – really? Make just a few 42 minutes and see what you can accomplish in what used to take an hour
• Does every simple suggestion or proposal your people make have to be met with your questioning and a debate? Practice letting people use their own initiative and do what they think will work
• Find a policy, procedure or habit that your people complain gets in the way of their productivity, or reduces their ability to make autonomous decisions and change it
• Go looking for the useless and demotivating work that your people are doing and stop it – even set up an incentive scheme so people go looking for you
• Go find someone to acknowledge for their contribution, for the pride they show in their work, for their enthusiasm…

What if you could just identify a few status quo things to change each day and then made it a practice to make the changes – things that made a difference, that forwarded your vision and values – would that increase the likelihood that your change efforts might just succeed?

Now if you don’t have a clearly articulated and widely shared vision and a set of values to help shape day-to-day actions and outcomes – that’s because the status quo bias is getting its job done.

When is Failure Acceptable?

I am frequently struck by the paradox of executives who say they want breakthrough performance, and yet suppress the very people they are relying on to produce it. How come?

I am pretty confident we can all come up with a mental picture of a boss we know, or have known, who is constantly chanting from the breakthrough performance hymnal: we want best in class performance; we need to outperform our competitors; delighting our customers is job #1 – and so on, yet does loads of things that thwart breakthroughs.

Among other things, they punish failure, create a risk-averse culture, impose constraining rules and regulations, micro-manage with, “I don’t trust you” as the sub-text, seldom acknowledge and appreciate employees outstanding tries and results, allow gossiping and undermining, and even worse design compensation systems that by capping payout seem to be designed to maintain business-as-usual-improved-a-bit, not breakthroughs.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the intentions such executives espouse – to be an organization that reliably produces breakthroughs and exceeds customers’ expectation all the time – just puzzled that they don’t see the extent to which they undermine themselves.

Here are some of my perspectives about how come this paradoxical condition exists:

1. We confuse failure with carelessness. Failing, after attempting to do something that has never been done before, is treated the same way as screwing up, or carelessness by not doing properly things that we know how to do. Both are considered to be equally unacceptable, and depending on the severity of the consequences, earn a ding or can be severely career limiting. To nurture a breakthrough culture the former should be rewarded and only carelessness should have disciplinary consequences.
2. We confuse risk and uncertainty and, as a consequence think of both of them as risk. We should reserve the label risk for those things that could, if they do not work out as we anticipate/want, kill or cause serious damage from which it will be hard/impossible to recover. And we should create a new and empowering relationship with uncertainty – as no more than new and unknown territory; the very territory, when explored, will likely reveal breakthroughs.
3. We relate to trust as something to be earned, so we put in checks and balances to find out if people are trustworthy – from the start signaling we don’t trust them. We then gather evidence to prove we are right. Much smarter to declare everyone trustworthy from the get go, and then hold them to account when they do things that are inconsistent with being trustworthy.

If executives just realized they are creating the conditions they complain about instead of being victims of those conditions they would make much faster progress towards the organizations they say they want.

Failures of Leadership - Lessons Learned

In 25 years working with executives and executive teams I have rarely heard an executive or executive team raise the question, "Where are we failing as leaders?" of "How come we can't get the results we need from ...?"

So I ask that leaders stop externalizing the source of ineffectiveness – wherever and around whom it is showing up. Have the point-of-view that your leadership is where the problem is and where your focus should be.

Wouldn't it be great if leaders were willing to stop at regular intervals and review their own leadership performance. Which would mean we would have to give up the prevailing implicit assumption that leadership is not the problem, it is the people who report to us, and the folks that report to them, and ... that is where the problem is. Every explanation but confront the fact that we may be a major contributor to our organization's ineffectiveness and lack of progress as much as we are the source of all the brilliant things the organization does.

From our experience here are some of the key failures of leadership that get uncovered when the inquiry is conducted – failures that thwart the espoused intentions and commitments to the future we say we want.

I Can't Get My Reports to Behave the Way I Want!

If I have heard executives complain about their reports once, I have heard it thousands of times. For me, these complaints are another example of executives externalizing the source of the difficulty – and, by-the-way, making themselves powerless in the process.

In these situations I ask, "Have you given your reports some guidelines about how to work with you so they are successful around you?" You may be surprised to know the answer is usually no.

We expect a users manual when we buy a car or any other potentially complicated purchase. So why not something similar for our reports, for a potentially much more complicated relationship that with an inanimate machine.

So here's what I recommend, lay out some simple guidelines. For example:

1. Be focused on specific measurable desired outcomes – not activities or process
2. Relate to each months budget or reforecast, whichever is the higher, as a promise – as in. “I promise to deliver X result in Y time and less than my promise will not do”
3. Reasons, explanations and excuses are not acceptable as a substitute for less than required results (budget or reforecast budget whichever is greater)
4. Which does not mean don’t present the facts. Know what happened in your area of accountability, as facts, not as justifications of anything
5. Flag risks as soon as they become apparent. Surprises may be career limiting
6. Know your business – have your KPI’s at your fingertips
7. And, don’t substitute knowing with invention.

There is clearly more ... but you get the idea. So the first step is to be clear what agreements do you want your reports to make with you, and what agreements will you make with them?

All upsets are a function of unmet expectations. We relate to our expectations as if we have had an implicit promise made to us. And, nothing is further from the truth. So make expectations explicit, and be clear whether or not you have someone on the other end promising to give you what you want. Failing to complete this basic step is at the source of frustration, disappointment, the negative assessments we make about others – and a whole host of unproductive and unhealthy behavior.