Reinventing Life At the Threshold of a New Year

Each of us, from time to time, have private conversations with ourselves. Some of these conversations touch us to our core, as if we had connected with some fundamental, even sacred truth about ourselves – about the meaning and direction of our lives. Mostly these insights are fleeting and are too easily displaced by day-to-day routines and concerns.

Periodically, usually because of some life changing circumstance, the conversations are nagging, urgent, and disturbing. Disturbing, mostly because the questions that are surfaced at these times seem to be unanswerable: where is my life going? What do I do next that will give me a sense of meaning and some joy? What's the point of my life? What do I want? What will make me happy and give me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment? How am I supposed to express my leadership and have people follow me when I am unclear where I am going and what I am up to?

These are not easy questions with ready answers. Google, Wikipedia and all our usual sources of ready responses to questions are not going to help with these questions. Because the answers to these fundamental meaning and purpose questions are so illusive we often abandon them – leave them unaddressed – and just get on with what's in front of us each day. But the questions inevitably return – and the start of a new year is just one of those times when we re-look at meaning, mission and direction – as we wrestle with answering the perennial year end question, "what am I committed to for 2012, what am I going to accomplish?".

Brain science tells us that we know things – unconsciously know, intuitively know, see sense and feel know – before our rational minds knows that we know. We have all had experiences that validate what science is now beginning to explain for us. So, informed by no more than that, how do we access our unconscious knowing about these important questions?

For a start run some experiments. But first, put the rational mind, that internal editor, that judger and evaluator that always want to chip in with a critique – put it on hold. We don't want to get any input or feedback from that source for some time!

First experiment: get yourself a God Jar a really beautiful and inspiring one like this one. Take a leaf out out Julia Cameron's book, The Vein of Gold and write brief notes – one note for each thought – about: what you want, what you love, what you want to do with your life, the difference you want to make, what you are passionate about, who you want in your life ... Cover every aspect of your life – and no editing.

Write the notes as if you were sending prayers aloft. And notice the themes that particularly excite you or capture your imagination.

Don't worry yet about action plans, or goals and objectives – they will be cold water for the spirit of imagination and creativity.

In parallel, the second experiment is also designed to capture the subconscious sacred yearnings and bring them to consciousness. This one, in parallel with the God Jar, uses a Moleskine notebook like this one.

In this iteration of surfacing the subconscious yearnings we write them in the notebook – writing from front to back – just short phrases or a word to two to capture what it is. Again, no editing. Just to be sure the internal editor is off duty add something you know is a bit – out there.

To keep the part of our mind that wants to look at issues and obstacles occupied and satisfied, capture these thoughts too – this time writing in the book from back to front. 

Again, just short phrases or a word or two to capture what it is. Again, no editing.

From time to time look at what you have put in the God Jar and what you have written in the Moleskine notebook and discard those items that you clearly do not intend to do anything about, or are clearly pipe-dreams. For me, replace my car with a Bentley Flying Spur Speed is one in my pipe-dream category – not the wildest one, but one.  

Paradoxically, without doing any action planning or goal setting, you will begin to notice that actions are being changed, new interests are being engaged with, historical complaints do get resolved or just disappear. 

Just the regular practice of connecting with our sacred yearnings and putting notes about them in the God Jar and writing notes in the Moleskine notebook, makes it possible for us to access our subconscious knowing about what we are passionate about and the mission of our lives.

Another Year Winds Down. We're Older! And Wiser?

Wouldn’t it be great if we actually did get wiser as we got older? However, I don’t experience that learning, or new insights or wisdom even, is an automatic function of life being lived and time passing. As far as I can tell from my own experience, learning and new insights need to be sifted out of day-to-day experiences much as early gold prospectors sifted grit and dirt for the bits of gold they craved.

I have often reflected about how extraordinary our lives, our organizations and our society would be if we had, as a natural human way of being, a craving to learn, to grow, to be a better version of ourselves, our organizations and our society as each year passes.

Yet some people seem to do just that – they grow in stature, in competencies and in wisdom as each year passes. I know people, not headliners mostly, just ordinary people who are clearly sifting life for its gold.  I meet them mostly through my work as an executive coach and consultant. I get to see them first as business people, people focused on making the part of the organization they are accountable for be more closely aligned with their vision and intentions.  But I also get to know them through the larger dimensions of their lives – as musicians, athletes, parents, hobbyists of all stripes, and members of their communities. In each aspect of their lives what I see are committed people striving – striving to make today a better version of all their yesterdays.

What do we know from observing these lifelong learners? What are they doing that works? Who are the being that works? Here are a few places to start the inquiry:

1. Reflection works – stopping every now and then to pause and take stock – where we are going, what are we up to, what are we striving for, what are we trying to make happen, who are we striving to be... That works! Lifelong learners are up to something much bigger than themselves and the pursuit of that something gives them who they need to be, and what they need to be acting on, and what they need to be producing
2. Observation works – being conscious about what is happening. It is so easy to operate out of habit, to be on automatic pilot. In that mode a lot goes by and we don't see it, for example.  
3. Lifelong learners are awake, aware, conscious and observant. That does that mean they don't have blind spots and miss things like the rest of us. The difference is they know they do and are constantly on the look out to discover what their blind spots are, and what they are not seeing. They use buddies, trusted friends, coaches, mentors, anyone who can help them be more awake and aware
4. Being non-judgmental works – stuff happens! However, labeling it good/bad, right/wrong, should be/shouldn't be and so on, or being upset with what happens doesn't work as a learning step. Invalidating ourselves does not work either. Further, it shifts our whole being from the excitement of creativity and self expression in the pursuit of the gold, even when stuff happens 
5. Discernment works – being able to sort out the gold from the grit really works. Scientist run experiments. In the process they have lots of failed experiments. The point of experimenting in the first place is to discover what works. By discerning what works we can now consciously and deliberately replicate it, we can show others what works – we have expanded our conscious competence [a nod to Maslow's stages of learning]. With hindsight we will also discover what did not work, what was missing that had it been in place we would have has a different outcome, or what was present and in the way we need to remove so as to have the outcomes we want 
6. Practices work – establishing practices makes becoming wiser as time passes much easier – for example, doing a regular after action review as part of a discipline to learn from experience.

It often puzzles me when I see great ideas, practices, and behaviors, working beautifully in one part of an organization and they are being ignored by another part of an organization. How come? Or when I see people afraid to try anything new in one part of an organization and in another part people are experimenting and innovating like crazy. How come?

The principle reason I speculate is that life long learners have developed a very empowering relationship with questioning, with not-knowing, with ignorance, with experimenting and failing – they are excited by exploring, experimenting and the discoveries they stumble on along the way. 

RFK distinguished those who settle for the status quo from those who are constantly in pursuit of new insights and wisdom this way, "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

I Am Not a Fan of the Language of Goals and Goal Setting

I am not a fan of using the language of "goals" and "goal Setting", mostly because of the experience most people have of the baggage that comes with them – success/failure, good/bad, reward/punishment (even if neither are explicitly in the mix, implicitly they are for most people). If people have, even the slightest fear of the negative consequences that come from failing to meet their goals, they will under-promise, or worse, not promise outcomes at all – not what is wanted and needed in most organization in our fragile economy.

So I have a different approach: 

• Get people in action first – get them to make dents, make an impact –  have them use their best intelligence to make something useful happen
• If they are in action already, then up the anti, do more stuff, more quickly - more dents, make a bigger impact, make more useful stuff happen
• Eliminate good bad or right/wrong or should/shouldn't, good/bad, ... from your lexicon – they kill spontaneity, creativity and initiative 
• If people have the concern they will be judged and evaluated based on whether they meet goals or not, are doing the right thing or not, they will subconsciously operate out of CYA and underperform.

And don't worry that the seemingly unfocused – just be in action and make something happen – instruction will lead to chaos, it won't. There is enough intelligence in the organization and in individual contributors for them to know what will and won't work, what will contribute and what won't – if we trust people to unleash their genius at work, they will.

To raise everyone's game and start focusing activities so that they have an intention to produce specific outcomes in time – outcomes someone wants, here are some recommendations:

1. Start with getting people to list the activities/actions they intend to engage in for the week, or even for a day – just what are you going to be doing - a big to do list. Best done before the week starts, say Sunday evening, or the evening before if it is being done daily [Column 1 of document attached]
2. Then the next step is to have people say what result/outcome they are intent on producing as a result of their doing/activities, item by item – each outcome to be specific and measurable [Column 2]
3. Then say by when they want to have that outcome produced – a specific date/time [Column 3]
4. Finally, say who the outcome is for, who is expecting it, waiting for it, and do they expect it by a particular time/date? – name a specific person and specific time if there is one [Column 4].

Then follow up: this part is designed to support people discover what has them deliver on their intended outcomes, and how come them fail to deliver. The context for the follow up is curiosity and learning – the intent is to discover, with the benefit of hindsight, what worked, what did not work and what was missing from most recent actions, to make subsequent actions more effective in producing desired outcomes. The follow up steps are:

1. When the activity is complete, check – did it produce the desired outcome: Yes or No? Encourage people to answer that for themselves – with no reasons, explanations, justifications, ... The coaching is, it is not good if the answer is Yes and bad if it is No – it is just what's so
2. If Yes, did the outcome get produced in the timeframe you said… Yes or No? Again, encourage people to answer that for themselves. Again with the coaching it is not good if the answer is Yes and bad if it is No – it is just what's so
3. Was the person who was expecting the outcome (#4) satisfied – did you meet expectations (M), exceed expectations (E) or fail (F) to meet expectations?
4. When the activity is complete, or time has run out, do an after action review so they can learn how to improve performance for subsequent iterations
5. I recommend that after action reviews be conducted often; after a meeting, a day of work, at the end of a project... this is a very effective practice to continually improve performance.

I find it useful too to encourage people to start noticing – again without judgement of evaluation – where they notice they are acting inconsistently with their intentions or commitments. In the beginning just notice, without trying to fix or correct anything, and notice too the reasons and explanations they give themselves. I wont say more about this for now.

In a collaborative and supporting relationship a manager, or colleague, can encourage people in their network of dependencies to experiment with taking on more audacious outcomes, or outcomes with shorter execution times. In a context where failure is not something to be avoided, but rather a learning opportunity, it is a low risk game and one with very high rewards in enhanced capability to reliably deliver on ones intentions.

Tom Watson Sr of IBM, used to say, "if you want to double your results, double your failure rate". I concur, what's more, I agree with him.

Some Elements of The Culture of A Learning Organization

Curiosity and inquiry are part of  the way of Being in the organization – more than espoused values but the way people actually related to each other and the world.

What works  is communicated widely and particularly to those who can use those insights in forwarding their accountabilities.

People listen from what can I discover? What is there for me to learn here? 

Failure is an occasion to discover and learn. Watson Sr. of IBM is reported to had said, "If you want to double your success rate, double your failure rate", so failure is not an opportunity for recrimination, blame, make wrong, What it is though is an opportunity to discover what worked – even in failure there are many elements that worked – so that it can be replicated as part of a robust process. With hindsight, to discover what did not work so it can be removed from subsequent actions, and to discover, again with hindsight, what was missing, so that can be put in place.

Knowledge is to share which means we are looking to give away what we know, and we are encouraging colleagues to give us what they know that they suspect we don't know

Ignorance management is nurtured as a learning support structure. Everyone has their own set of problems to solve and everyone has a clear appreciation of the areas where they don't know, the conscious areas of incompetence. And, they are on the look out for the areas where they don't know they don't know the unconscious areas of incompetence. Having problems to solve and not knowing is not considered an inadequacy, it is not something to hide, instead it is evidence of being on the edge of insights and discoveries.

Part of everyone's accountabilities are projects and outcomes that cannot be accomplished with current levels of knowledge and experience and each person will have a learning and development plan and will have access to mentors, coaches and buddies as part of the support structure to produce breakthrough outcomes and new learnings.

Everyone is opening to coach and to being coached.

There are lots of experiments going on virtually everyone has got an experiment of some sort going on to improve performance of just to make things work better and more elegantly.

Experts and expertise are valued and respected and they are clear expertise is a fleeting phenomenon so they are constantly working to maintain their status.

Acknowledgement, appreciation, celebration, fun, passion and self expression are words people use to describe the culture.

Some Perspectives About Empowerment

Any conversation about empowerment in an organization that is not yet operating inside a stand, a committed future,  a mission, or a strategic intent, is a conversation that can only produce mischief:

1. To empower people when there is no clear and aligned on mission and strategic intent is to give people freedom to do stupid things faster, and with more freedom and permission
2. Or, it is to give people permission to advance their own agendas, recruit followers, resist opposing points of view, create factions, create winners and losers, and to dominate others and use whatever force they can get away with, to avoid the domination of others ideas and ways of doing things
3. It is also the quickest route to breakdowns, upsets, frictions, sub-optimization of the resources and possibilities of the organization - and in its worst case, it is a recipe for chaos and the eventual collapse of the organization.

Leaders and managers, by attempting to empower people before there is a context, a shared mission and strategic intent, have in effect, unintentionally created a condition in which they have little or no room to intervene when things happen they don't want, or when things are not happening that they do want, without being accused of not trusting people and of being disempowering.

So, most often, to avoid accusations of being disempowering leaders and managers most often abdicate. They don't intervene. Which implicitly means they choose to vacillate between complaining about no or insufficient results, at the same time they provide little to no leadership or direction. Worse, out of frustration with the way things are going, they intervene with their solutions which people have to accept - a reversion to what most leaders know best – command and control – or as I prefer to call it, organizational bullying.

Because these imposed solutions most often do not include the input or engagement of the people who have to implement them, leaders end up creating the opposite of what they want – a low morale,  disengaged, disempowered, high turnover and underproducing workforce.

Paradoxically, the very best way to unleash the genius, creativity and passion of people at work is to let them into the process of articulating the organization's mission. If the mission is long standing and well established – then give them the opportunity to understand it, digest it, assimilate it and make it their own.

Then let people in on the process of creating the strategic intent, and their own function or team's strategy. And when that is done, then, and only them, empower them to use their best intelligence to make the strategies work and to move the organization closer to realizing its mission.

The bottom line a very tight control of the mission and values of the organization and a loose control over the strategy, practices and behaviors to realize the organization's mission and live the values.

If we have the view that an organization is a complex, adaptive, intelligent, human social system then all we need to unleash its full potential is a compelling mission and freedom of self expression – and a few simple rules and tools. 

Steve Jobs 1995 - 2011

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.


Your family and close friends, to say nothing of your Apple family, and the family of Apple supporters around the world were not ready for you to be "cleared out" - so way before your time.


Steve made a difference - one that impacted the world we live in far beyond products, or apps or animated movies. He put in people's hands the means to communicate and make a difference which multiplied exponentially the difference he himself made. 


The outpouring of love and appreciation for Steve will, I hope, be some small comfort to his family. It is evidence he lived his advice to the Stanford class of 2005, " Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

President Obama got it right when he said, "The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."

Most Executives Want Innovation, Yet Don't Give Themselves or Their People, Permission to Fail - How Nuts is That?

We hear a lot of talk from most C-Suite executives about the importance of innovation to stay competitive. Such talk is part of most of their public pronouncements from press releases, to shareholder meetings, annual reports and even the executive summaries of their business plans. It is hard to imagine an all company meeting in which executives did not say something about the need for creativity and thinking outside the box as the best way to keep a competitive edge.

Even goals and objectives in most organizations have BHAG’s built in with the expectation that setting stretch goals will drive creativity and innovation – and mostly, they don’t.

How come? because most organizational culture and day-to-day practices contradict the rhetoric about the importance of creativity and innovation – and worse, it undermines the executives’ authority and the credibility and the authenticity of their organization.

Think about it – being innovative and creative implies doing things and producing outcomes that have not been produced before. It requires a discontinuity from the way we have done things in the past – a break with “the way we do things around here” – and in most organizations there is a low tolerance for that, or, more accurately, a low tolerance for the consequences of allowing widespread tinkering with established norms.

Why? because most companies and most executives are organized to get things right, to succeed in the existing context, they are not organized to fail. They don’t give themselves permission to fail.

In our day-to-day speaking we confuse failure with carelessness or incompetence. For example in the recent firing of HP’s CEO the dominant conversation is the failure of Leo Apotheker, when the real issue was, more likely, the carelessness or incompetence of the board in appointing him in the first place.

We treat failing as something bad or wrong that needs to be avoided in the future, even worse, we treat people who fail as problems – and the remedy, a negative performance review, remedial training or, as in Apotheker’s case, removal from the organization.

A necessary part of being innovative, of being creative, is that not everything we attempt will succeed as we intended – we don’t expect every experiment to work, or the result of thoughtful tinkering to be, “the next big thing”. We expect failures – or, that would be the appropriate response were it not for the way we have been trained to frame failures.

So what to do:

1. Make a clear distinction between carelessness and failure – the former the result of overlooking or neglecting to follow proven processes, protocols or procedures, a lack of due diligence; the later an attempt to do something never done before. That's why it's an experiment, trial and error, thoughtful tinkering - we want to discover what works and what doesn't
2. Acknowledge and reward those willing to experiment and tinker and fail - fear of change will reduce with each acknowledgement
3. Use each failure as a learning experience - do after action reviews regularly, institutionalize what works, eliminate what doesn't and put in place what was missing
4. Design failures in to everyone's goals and objectives – create areas/projects where you expect/want there to be failures 
5. Report on failed experiments as well as successes
6. Attract different people and care for the people you attract. "We attract a different type of person—a person who doesn’t want to wait five or ten years to have someone take a giant risk on him or her. Someone who really wants to get in a little over his head and make a little dent in the universe. From Steve Job's quotes
7. Eliminate anything that is abusive to the human spirit – gossiping, undermining, sarcasm, agreeing/counter-arguing, intimidation...
8. Finally, be really, really, really clear what the organization's purpose and values are and live them - live them boldly, and with passion.

Leadership: The Source of an Organization's Future

What distinguishes great leadership from those who are leaders by title is the way great leaders speak to their various constituencies – a way of speaking that generates possibilities, an enthusiastic following and a mood of excitement, an itchiness to get into collaborative action and make things happen – yes, even a cult like following making great things happen. (Think Apple)

It is a speaking that sources, or generates, or brings into existence a new bold future for his or her organization, and everyone the organization touches – and, it is a future the leader really, really, really wants.

It is a speaking that engages and compels - one that redirects the trajectory of the organization’s impact in the market.  It is a speaking we all have access to in those moments when we are in touch with our passions, vision and commitments – in those moments when our connection to our passion, vision and commitments is so visceral it has pushed aside conversations about feasibility, practicality, pathways… blah, blah, blah, that, so often derail even our most passionate intentions.

Great leaders recognize the default mode of most speaking is descriptive. They know the discussion in most meetings, or the exchanges of most commentators is simply the point-of-view, or opinion of the speaker, being spoken as if describing facts.

Leader’s speaking is sourced from the stand they are, independently from how they think/know people will react. Great leaders have mastered how to respond to peoples’ reactions to the future they want after they speak vs. conditioning their speaking before the fact so as to avoid push back or the clamor for certainty and agreement that follows the, “Yea but…” – they know how to reframe concerns and connect people to shared passions and commitments.

Reflect briefly about the leaders you admire and respect most – your Great Leaders Through History – and check for yourself:

1. Were they shaped by circumstances or their commitments?
2. Were they resolute in pursuing their vision or reasonable in the face of resistance?
3. Were they shaped by organizing principles or were they practical (political), going along to get along?
4. Were setbacks and excuse to change course, even give up, or were setbacks fuel for more imagination and creativity?
5. ...

Leaders Operate With Myths and Illusions Rather Than Reality

A disturbing fact worth remembering – leaders operate with myth and illusion more that with the realities of the world.

The financial meltdown is more evidence than we need for the validity of that assertion.

So an ongoing practice to surface the beliefs, and theories we have that are not valid is a must, especially given we have a bias to look for evidence to confirm that we are right, even when we are not.

It is worth asking, "What happens if some of our beliefs and theories about leadership, organization, management and work are just plain wrong – and how would we know?" Compare these assertions with your own beliefs:

1. Forecasting and planning are not reliable strategy development tools – especially if the intention is to be a market leader innovating market altering products and services
2. Command and control is out of date – if you are still getting away with it, it's because you have succeeded in suppressing the initiative and creativity of your people
3. You are not the smartest person in the organization, really – get over it
4. Change is part of the world you now live in, it is unlikely to be a predictable world ever again (if it ever really was)
5. You are dealing with autonomous intelligent people, not machine parts or boxes on an org chart – forget it and the price is paid in lost creativity, lost talent, and ultimately descent into irrelevance
6. Uncertainty and confusion is not evidence of something wrong – just an appropriate and natural response to an unfamiliar and complex, ever changing, world
7. Complex problems/dilemmas have single solutions
8. 360s and annual performance review processes are out of date and don't acknowledge the realities of real time, all the time, interconnectedness
9. Knowing is over-rated and not-knowing is hugely underexploited
10. Failure is an underexploited opportunity for new learning and for breakthroughs.

So the question becomes, "What practice will you initiate that will help you surface unexamined assumptions, out-of-date theories, limiting beliefs and constraining perspectives?"  

Seek Out and Promote the Disruptors & Out-of-the-Box Thinkers

Most of us have grown up in life, and especially in life-at-work, in which the unspoken, and often spoken, mantra is conform – don't rock the boat, be a team player, our way or the highway...

Starting from kindergarten or earlier, with advice like "don't paint outside the lines!", to work, with onboarding advice like "this is the way we do it around here", and instructions like, "follow the rules", it is a wonder to me that we have as many disruptors as we do. And yet, in organization after organization we see evidence that we don't have enough disruptors. We see too many instances where being called a disruptor is not a validation of what is wanted and needed but a criticism of behavior that needs to be corrected.

In spite of the rhetoric, we see too many managers and leaders who discourage thinking and acting outside-the-box. They discourage it by the way people are incentivized; by the way new ideas are dealt with; by the way the organization responds to failed experiments, and in so many other implicit and explicit ways.

Isn't it interesting that so many significant market disruptions do not come from the market leaders, for example:

1. Zipcar with car sharing. The obvious contenders for new ways to serve car rental customers were Hertz, Avis and Enterprise. However, when you have an unquestioned paradigm that includes things like rentals by the day, from a company authorized locations, with document signing before taking the car, and so on, it is not surprising that Hertz Connect and Enterprise WeCar were late to the Zipcar model and are now followers.
2. Apple has caused so many disruptions that they are now without equal: We would have expected the music industry to have created iTunes; or Sony to have invented the iPod; or Motorola or Nokia to have invented the iPhone; or HP or Dell to have invented the iPad...

So if there is a commitment to nurture and develop disruptors are there any useful things to do to increase the odds that your organization will be the one that creates the next breakthrough in your market? We think so, here are a few:

1. Make sure everyone in your organization understands the paradigm you operate in –  yes you operate in a paradigm not what most people call reality. Make sure people know that paradigms include a host of elements that, left unexamined, will limit and constrain what people can see and what people can do
2. Have regular and rich conversations for possibility and make sure people understand the difference between possibility and pipe-dream
3. Design the mission and strategy in such a way that it calls for breakthroughs – and together, they are an unequivocal invitation to people to invent, generate and discover how to realize the strategy as a means to make the vision a reality
4. Connect people with their passions, their vitality, their enthusiasm, their hunger to make a difference, to contribute, to be acknowledge as players in a game really worth playing – unleashed you'll have genius
5. And remember, organizations are not mechanisms – you are not dealing with head-counts, with bodies, or any of the other dehumanizing HR speak – organizations are complex, adaptive, intelligent, human, social systems. So practice being less or a controller and more of an attractor for out-of-the-box ideas that translate into a market altering impact that brings your collective vision closer to realization.
6. Oh, and make it a fun experience!

Free People to Express Their Full Contribution - The Organizations Vitality Depends On It

If we keep in mind that organizations are complex, adaptive, intelligent, human, social systems and not mechanism we are on the right track.

Karl Popper the philosopher had a wonderful admonition that leaders would be wise to take to heart. He said, don't confuse clock with clouds. To paraphrase him, he said clocks you can take apart, examine, rebuild, make bigger, more complicated with more features... Clouds on the other hand don't work that way, they need be dealt with as a whole, they are complex, self-organizing, adaptive systems not mechanisms. You can't deal with clouds with the same thinking and methods as you deal with clocks.

Any system that includes people needs to be thought of more as clouds than clocks. This is how we will unleash/harness the complex, adaptive, intelligent, human social system to self-organize around the organization's mission, strategic intent and values. Do this well and the system is ever expanding to take advantage of opportunities in the market and will be self-repairing in the event of loss of key parts (people) of the system – knowing that a clockwork/mechanistic approach wont do it.

In the last few months I have been in conversations with clients about succession planning. My counsel:
don't waste time on these kinds of planning exercises. Instead create a culture and a set of practices for ongoing talent development so that you are home growing people to step into new accountabilities as the business needs them to.


Here are sone perspectives I work with that will take the conversation about talent development and succession development from the theoretical to the day-to-day very practical.

LPR's perspective is we need to think from a different place about talent development and about succession, even about how we organize to get things done – here are some examples:

1. Have the dominant organizing model be a network of accountabilities not roles and responsibilities inside a hierarchy of people in boxes.
2. In an accountability organizing model each person is accountable to a specific person to produce specific measurable desired results in time – all cascaded from the CEO – and all in service of the mission, strategic intent and values 
3. Functions (the roles in boxes) stay in place but as a subordinate operating model - principally as centers of excellence, example, finance, HR, manufacturing. Authorities and responsibilities that usually go with a role in a function are now part of specific accountabilities 
4. Individuals ability to contribute to an organization (and advance in importance and stature) and in turn have more of a share of voice and a larger share of rewards becomes tied to the range of their accountabilities and the importance of those accountabilities. Promotion opportunities are no tied to the possibility that a box in the org chart will become vacant 
5. People are supported and encouraged to expand their accountabilities – each person will have a personal development plan – they will also have a coaching plan, a coach, mentor and a number of supporting buddies 
6. The personal performance and development plan is one vehicle to identify areas for personal expansion alongside a practice of regular after action reviews and performance reviews some, like this example, initiated by the accountability holder and some by the person to whom they are accountable – in most settings still called manager. 
7. This means, in an accountability framework, everyone at some point is a manager – they are managing their accountabilities and the people they are counting on so as to be able to fulfill on their accountabilities. So the CEO and the President will be being held to account by people who in a hierarchical organization would only engage with the CEO and President in a one way authority/command and control, top down mode. 

Talent development is a part of everyones accountabilities – everyone is accountable to see that every outcome they are accountable to produce - both the qualitative and quantitative ones - can be effectively carried out by one or more people they have trained. Everyone has, as part of their accountabilities, to be a coach, mentor, and buddy to people they are developing to assume their accountabilities when called on to do so.

The traditional regular (annual of bi-annual) performance review and succession planning events, become more a review that talent development and succession development is on track - even a certification point if that is a practice that is empowering.

There are a series of other cultural perspectives that either forward or constrain an accountability based talent development model I will develop later. For example:

1. Augmenting knowledge sharing/knowledge management with ignorance management – the practices for surfacing areas of ignorance to be the trigger event for ideation 
2. Distinguishing carelessness events from failure – the former to be minimized to 7 sigma or better the latter to be encouraged - the access to learning, growth and development 
3. Existence systems – to manage requests, promises, and offers as part of supporting individuals become more reliable in taking on and delivering every larger accountabilities 
4. Practices to improve the performance of teamwork and collaboration – managing dependencies become even more important
5. How to effectively surface and deal with conflict – both the conflict built in to strategy and the conflict generated as a function of differing perspectives and personalities
6. How the organization goes about declaring breakdowns and moving the breakdown to breakthrough 
7. How to have difficult conversations with colleagues 
8. How to managing multiple commitments (accountabilities) in time to an array of stakeholders 
9. The need to surface and eliminate structural (mostly historical) constraints - policies, rules, and procedures that no longer serve their design purpose, or the design purpose is no longer relevant or useful 

Change the Conversation and You Change Behaviors and Outcomes

What do executive do, really?

What is the nature of executive work? When all is said and done what do executives get paid for? Well, as you know already there is a huge literature dedicated to answering that questions--yet for many, while the prevailing perspectives are interesting they don't alter actions or outcomes.

Just as there is a huge literature on personal fitness and weight loss while we are probably the least fit and most overweight in our history, so it is with perspectives about being an effective executive--lots of insights, and little correlation to altered behavior and outcomes.

I have a particular bias in thinking about this question given my own work for the last 25 years has been working with executives with two specific intentions in mind: the first, to help executives be clear about what they really, really, really want beyond predictions from the past; and second, to help them realize what they want so that they get results consistent with their intentions and not, what they so often have to contend with--resignation from thwarted ambitions.

I every case, going from what is predictable or able to be extrapolated from the past, and what executives really, really, really want calls for a transformation. A transformation in:

• Their operating context: about what is possible and impossible, reasonable and unreasonable, feasible and infeasible; about how strategy gets formulated and goals get established; about how agreements are made and disagreements are handled; how failures are dealt with and successes...
• Their ways of being: how values are established and lived; how trust is established and maintained; how moods and emotions are expressed; how competition and rivalries are handled; how disappointment, upsets and complaints are dealt with...
• Their operating practices: for dealing with accountabilities, roles, responsibilities and authorities; for dealing with the unexpected; for sustaining the engine of growth and profitability; for inventing and discovering new business models and opportunities...

What executives are doing as they are speaking and listening all day, whether in person, in emails, and the myriad other ways they communicate is, they are--generating and managing a network of conversations. Conversations that:

• Create new possibilities--possibilities that will, in all likelihood, threaten some as they excite others--especially if they are conversations that are designed to create a new future, not just extend and expand the ways of the past
• Conversations that cause action and desired outcomes--specific demands, requests and promises rather than equivocal conversations that include things like, try, do my best, with a bit of luck, if all goes well...
• Conversation that surface and deal with difficult issues--the elephant in the room, the sacred cows, the uncomfortable topics...
• Conversations that...

Executives who are really effective use language with the same precision that a surgeon uses when using his surgical instruments. They understand the design purpose of their conversations--and they observe the correlation between what they intended to produce and what actually got produced--and they know how to correct in the instances when they miss the mark.

A useful question to keep in mind is, what's the design purpose of the conversation I am generating or managing? And the follow on question, is that purpose being forwarded or not?

What Do You Say Is The Reason That Consistently You Are a Far Exceeds Performer?

It is hard to imagine someone coming to work intending to get a does not meet expectations rating. For too many though there comes a point when they realize, "I'm never going to make it...around here...with my boss...in this job...with these goals and objectives..." and resignation begins to set in. When that happens everything they need to do becomes an effort and a struggle – enthusiasm wanes to non-existence. Boredom and a loss or interest and enthusiasm kick in. Complaints and friction rise, and with it a general level of stress and tension. The joy quickly gets sucked out of work.

So it is especially heartwarming to come across people who love what they do and are great at it. Given my own interest in exceptional performance and nurturing places to work I am drawn to interview (some would say cross examine) these people.

Here is a snippet from a recent interviewees response – this was from an exceptional performer, and I've been on the receiving end of his work:

1. You've got to be interested – if you are not interested in being great and doing a great job, it's just not going to happen is it
2. You have got to be curious – how does it work, how can I make it better, how can I improve, how can I... about everything, you have got to be curious about how you can do a really great job. Isn't that what we all want – to be a hero to someone, to be really great at something...
3. Got to be willing to explore – who's got a better answer, who knows more than I do, who can help me, where can I find solutions, mentors, expert sources... Where can I find new opportunities...you've always got to be looking and exploring
4. You've got to be willing to make mistakes, and know its safe to try new things and fail. It's hard to go for far exceeds performance if stretching and failing gets you into trouble. And if you are not learning from your mistakes, that's dumb
5. You got to be a continuous learner because things are changing so fast that if you are not continuously learning you'll soon be toast
6. And you have got to take charge of your own performance by seeking out feedback from colleagues, bosses... anyone who sees your work and results. And it's up to me to make sure I get acknowledgement and appreciation when I deserve it – and I mostly deserve it.

So I recommend you make it a practice to spend time with the exceptional performers – the members of the far exceeds club. Get their secret sauce. Encourage them to share what they have discovered about exceptional performance with the people they work with. And make the process of being acknowledged and appreciated easier for them by laying it on.

How Do You Instill A Higher Purpose In A Modern Corporation, And Should You?

Is the dichotomy real? You know the one:

• The design purpose of the modern corporation is to maximize the returns they produce for shareholders however they can, period – the common good, not our concern; the environment, not if it adds to our costs; sustainability, look Wall Street's focus is this quarter, this year maybe, and that's about how sustainable we need to be to attract and/or maintain investors
• Corporations need to pursue a social mission, a higher purpose, as their primary focus, with the best return they can for shareholders a close second if they are to build a vibrant and viable business and survive over the long haul? And, they need to be socially responsible, take care of their environment – you know, the triple bottom line.

With corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook and many many others, the question is almost a non sequitur because they each have a very clearly articulated higher purpose that is part of what draws the almost fervent following these companies enjoy. Those who are exposed to these companies services either love them or hate them – code in my book for, they support the higher purpose or they don't.

I am clear that the corporations with the strongest cultures, and the most dedicated followers and employees, are also the corporations with a clear mission and a clearly articulated higher purpose – a purpose that is beyond meeting the numbers and making good returns on investments – essential as growing the business and providing a good return to investors is for the long term ability to keep operating from and for a higher purpose.
In companies operating from a higher purpose, economic returns are measures of the company's health as it pursues its purpose, not the end game. Howard Schultz of Starbucks spells this out clearly in his new book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Loosing Its Soul. He also outlined his perspectives in an interview he conducted with McKinsey Quarterly. In it he describes how just going for same store sales and profits nearly killed Starbucks.

We know from our personal experience, from anecdotes and from scholarly research that people work for more that a pay check – people need to find meaning, a higher purpose, in what they do for a living – they need intrinsic rewards even more than extrinsic rewards – if they are to love their work, be healthy, innovative, creative and productive. Sadly, far too many people look outside their corporations to family and personal life goals for meaning and a sense of purpose. What they do for a paycheck just has to be endured – it doesn't have to be that way.

But the big question is how do we find meaning and higher purpose in our work? Especially if we are working for an organization that is contributing to:

• The production of junk food that contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and any number of other unhealthy side effects
• Polluting the environment by putting noxious, carcinogenic chemicals into our air and water
• Causing economic hardship by predatory lending practices that we have seen in the mortgage and finance industry – practices that most agree were the major contributors to our economic crisis of the last few years
• Externalizing a large part of their real cost of doing business on the local community, the environment and larger society – which a vast number of companies do.

In my advice to corporate leaders I am agnostic about what their higher purpose should be, just clear they should have one, and have one that each of their employees own and can wholeheartedly support. I am also clear that it is important to be open, honest and transparent with employees about what the real purpose of the organization is – it's the what you actually do vs. what you say you value.

Some years ago a consultant friend had a major tobacco company as a client. They were clear what their higher purpose was, and most of their employees were enrolled in it, to the point they had, "thank you for smoking" signs on their desks and would stop smokers in the street with a warm, "thank you for smoking" acknowledgement. Much as some of us do with our military personnel when we say, "thank you for your service".

Now, some years later, much of society has decided whether the purpose of having everyone be smokers is one we want to support, given the extent of the costs which we now know we have been, and are bearing – economists call this frequently used practice of corporations putting large parts of their costs on to the larger society, externalities.

It is not my role to be judgmental about one higher purpose over another. What I do advocate, as I've said, that we need to be open and up front about what the higher purpose is, so employees, customers, investors – all stakeholders make fully informed choices about participating with that organization and buying their products and services.

Ask yourself, what is the higher purpose of the company you work for?

• If it weren't for the paycheck would you want to be part of what they are doing?
• What would be missing from society if the company you worked for disappeared, and would it matter?
• In what way does your company make a difference in society – it would matter if your company disappeared – and does everyone who works at you company know that and does it shape their actions and decisions?
• Did you know the higher purpose of your company when you joined it, and was that a major part of decided to join?
• What costs does your company pass on to the local community and larger society in pursuing the higher purpose? And, is there a conversation within the company to eliminate or mitigate these costs?

Organizations are an essential part of human society. We could not accomplish much that we take for granted without them. And, they also have the potential to be harmful to the common good as they benefit the few.

How organizations function, especially in our socially connected world of blogs and tweets is up to each of us - not just the C-Suite executives, and shareholders. What we have seen in the larger world of social activism will eventually be what members of organizations will confront if they forget the interests of all in the service of the interests of the few.

Would I Be Accurate If I Said You See Examples Of Your Failure To Act Consistently With Your Commitments?

Would I also be accurate if I said it is much easier for you to see this failure to act consistently with your commitments in your colleagues actions and behaviors than in your own?

High performing individuals and organizations have a super sensitivity to the things they do that are inconsistent with their commitments, and they have a set of practices and disciplines to correct quickly.

So what do the rest of us do that keeps us from being high performers? Well the first part has many variants:

1. Firstly, we don't make many commitments – we are reluctant to put ourselves at the risk of failing (more about that another time), or looking bad
2. We are mostly process or activity oriented, not outcome oriented, so the attention is on the to do list, or action items, or the process, not the outcome or result that is wanted and needed
3. Even when we are clear about the result we settle for reasons, explanations and excuses as a substitute for results. So the formula looks like, no intended result + good reason or excuse = the result we'll settle for. Look at something as simple as being on time for meetings. The formula looks like this: late + an excuse = as acceptable as being on time. And we settle for that. The advanced state of this bad habit goes straight to putting up with. We don't even bother with the excuses part and go straight to putting up with and settling for the condition. So, in the late to meeting example, we just accept lateness as part of the way we do things around here. You can be sure that same lack of discipline shows up equally unnoticed and unchallenged in many other parts of the business
4. We allow ourselves, and others, to pass off unspecific vague statements of activity or aspiration as commitments we are skilled at making these statements vague, but sound good – many of your KPI statements will likely fit this description. By being vague about exactly what is to be produced by whom, by when, means we deny ourselves the opportunity of seeing things as consistent/inconsistent with our intentions
5. We speak equivocally: I'll do my best, I'll try, subject to... In other words we don't make promises.

The Second part has to do with missing practices, or bad habits.

1. We don't make sufficient (if any) promises
2. A bad habit in many organizations is to default to reasons and explanations rather than promises – yes, we need the facts, we need to know what did or didn't happen, but not as a substitute for results. The best generator of actions that will produce desired outcomes/results is to promise – what, by when to whom
3. Another bad habit is overt or covert wrong making. The background conversation and often the foreground conversation too is, "there's something wrong we me, him/her, them it" when something unwanted happens. This keeps us on the defensive, justifying and excuse making rather than in action committed to produce the desired outcome
4. A missing practice is regular after action reviews.

My header question is a very difficult one for most of us to ask of ourselves (never mind ask of others), because we have been trained to related to our failure to deliver, to live up to our commitments as evidence that we are somehow bad or wrong, somehow flawed, somehow insufficient. We fear being exposed as not up to the job – exposed as incompetent in important areas, masquarading as overall effective executives.

After all good people keep their commitments – right? Effective executives deliver – right? Well maybe... A longer conversation for another day.

So the first step in examining the question is just to notice where you see that your actions are inconsistent with your commitments and values – just notice:

• Resist the temptation to judge and evaluate
• Resist the automatic tendency to make an assessment about what it means that you acted inconsistently with a commitment or value – just notice
• Counter-intuitively don't try to fix anything – just notice
• If you MUST do something then keep a count, that's all, – just count
  
• Well, maybe one thing more – keep a log, keep a record of what happened that was inconsistent - just keep noticing.

HEALTH WARNING: DON'T GO DOWN THE "MAKE WRONG" TUNNEL – THERE IS NOTHING USEFUL THERE.

When Did You Have Your Last New Idea – And What Impact Has It Made on Your Business?

I am reading Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation and at the same time reflecting on the extent to which I see, or more accurately don’t see, idea generation as a natural part of most organizations culture. Sadly, it is far from the norm.

Sure ideas get generated, but mostly they are met with a litany of reasons and explanations that pretty much guarantee that ideas will go nowhere. We’ve all heard the idea killers:

• We’ve tried that, it doesn’t work
• That’s a good idea but it won’t work here
• We don’t have the budget, the time… to be distracted with that
• We have enough on our plate at the moment, can we table that for the moment
• Good idea, make sure it gets in the minutes – code for that going nowhere, but thanks for sharing
• I’ll run it by… and see what the reaction is
• You add your favorite idea killers…

Most executives spend too large a portion of their time managing their core business – their production engine – the source of their place in the market and their profitability – not to mention their bonuses and their pathway to promotion, or even their job security.

In most organizations too much time is spent maintaining the status quo and not enough time is spent generating new ideas that will transform the business and industry. We all know the examples of business after business that lost out defending their traditional paradigm only to see an Apple or an Amazon or a Google completely change the game.

Part of the reason that companies like Apple, Google, for example, get so much press is that that are superb at idea generation and turning those ideas into new business and they are several standard deviations from the norm. Johnson tells of the launch of Google News, which went from an idea that was generated by Krishna Bharat in his 20% time to shipped product in one year.

Ideas are not scarce that is the irony – what is scarce in far too many companies is a culture in which ideas can thrive:

• Where being a maverick and thinking differently is valued
• Where experiments are encouraged
• Where failed experiments are valued for the insights they produce
• Where there are open doors, open networks and open minds
• Where collaboration and exploration is an all the time way of interaction
• Where boundaries are porous – inside the organization and outside.

It is disquieting to see in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s 2010 listing of the 50 Most Innovative Companies that the majority of the top 25 companies come from outside the United States.

My bottom line, from years of working with organizations: to get a transformation so that idea generation is the norm, the culture of the organization has to be reinvented.

The culture of most organizations is not designed for new ideas, especially ones that could create a new future for the organizations. And most executives have been trained, I’d even say indoctrinated, to reject ideas that do not fit with their existing paradigm:

• Do I agree with this idea – code does it fit my existing paradigm?
• Do I like it – code will it impact my bonus, career, job even?
• Am I certain it will work – code does it fit my existing paradigm?
• Will others buy in – code does it fit their paradigm?

The paradox, innovative ideas by definition do not fit the prevailing paradigm – if they do fit they are just more, maybe better, and maybe different than the past – but still the status quo.