Quickthink

This is a section of the leadership materials under development here at QT. You can see the whole package at this link. Please feel free to read, think, enjoy or ignore. I also welcome your comments.

This section of the leadership package is the last part of the “how to do it” part of the course. We have our model in place, and we have discussed how to build motivation and level groups up. There is really only one more topic I can think of that is worth talking about. And that is how to define success for the group.

The idea is a simple one. No deep thinking is required here. Yet I very rarely hear people talk about it. That, I find, is very strange. Here it is.

Leaders of successful institutions build capacity. Period.  Very simple.

The best example of this type of leadership style was that of John Wooden, the former UCLA basketball team coach. Wooden thought of himself primarily as a life teacher and secondarily as a basketball coach. No one has matched his record for success either as a life teacher or basketball coach, and I think the reason is that he valued life teaching over basketball.

Here is a great example of what I mean. A former player told Wooden that he was about to become a father. Wooden said (paraphrasing)

Remember that the most valuable thing that you can give your son is to show him that you love his mother.

Think about it. How is that for a capacity building metric! And Wooden was like that all the time. We will go into ways to look at capacity building in some of the subsections here. But the main point is the most important. Capacity building is the main success metric for leadership.  End of story.

This is a next installment of the leadership materials that are under development on this blog. You can access the page where they are all collected at this link. It is free, and I welcome your comments.

This is the second “how to do it” section of the leadership materials. In the first section, we talked about building motivation. It is a hugely important topic, because as Bill Warner noted, it requires a lot of energy transfer to get institutions moving. Leadership isn’t just about reflection, discussion and repose.

Building motivation, addresses people as individuals. But regardless of how motivated they may be as individuals, people also are affected by their relationship to the groups they identify with. Because this identification affects both the individual and the group, leaders need to understand and use some basic ideas about group dynamics.

The best simple model that I have seen that allows us to fashion some group dynamics tools comes from Dave Logan. Here is a link to Dave’s TED presentation where he lays out a simple model for group dynamics, or tribes. You need to watch the video before reading more here.

Now that you have watched Dave present his model, consider several aspects in light of our quest to build leadership capacity. First, as Dave points out, people need to be connected in tribes. We are all social creatures. To be effective, a leader has to be able to speak in terms of tribes — not just ideas or projects. I would argue that this is Barrack Obama’s great leadership weakness. It is not that he is cerebral or cool. The problem is that he seems indifferent to tribes. It is a language problem.

Second, because people are limited in how they can connect in groups, leadership must have both visionary and incremental aspects. The vision (the big why) is critical to give motivation. But people cannot suddenly level up in groups. They do this incrementally. So effective leadership facilitates incremental leveling up and guards against incremental leveling down. A sure way to fail as a leader is to demand too much at one time.

Third, leaders need to value leveling as an ongoing task on their “to do” list. This was one of the great things Steve Jobs understood when he returned to Apple. When Jobs took over, the Apple tribe was broken. But step by step Jobs helped them level up to the point where they are now world beaters. As Dave Logan points out, this meant facilitating incremental building of capacity.

Last but not least, as Bill Strickland argues, this type of incremental building can only be done by placing a high value on transferring dignity and respect. Groups form around inspiring people when dignity and respect is transferred between people in the group. Without dignity and respect no group will level up. With dignity and respect any group will level up over time.

In the end, using Dave Logan’s model requires re-thinking how you talk the leadership talk. It is a new vocabulary. Think about it.

Gasp! This is a long post! Please skip it if you are not in the mood.

This is yet another section of the materials under development in the leadership programme. Here is a link to the page where I am collecting them. Enjoy!

I didn’t have much to say about motivation until I listened to Dan Pink. I thought of motivation in terms of identity. If I truly wanted to be a great athlete, for example, I should automatically feel motivated to practice and train. I didn’t think very much about motivation dissipation. About exhaustion. I just thought that if I had felt those things, it was a reflection of my own weakness. Bad boy!

But Dan got me thinking about motivation as something we generate for reasons. It is the result we get out of good living. I do not mean good living in a moral sense. I mean it in a functional sense. When we structure our activities around the right sorts of ideas, we will find ourselves brimming over with motivation. If this is true, it adds to the value of understanding leadership techniques. Effective leadership motivates.

So what are those “right sorts of ideas”? Economists who bow down to the god of rationality say it is all about incentives. Translation — money. Pay people more and you will get more out of them. Sounds logical, if you accept the premise. But psychologists long ago started finding flaws with the premise. In fact, the brain does not function as a factory of reason. Reason is our description of things we conclude without noticing how we got there. That is why it should have come as no surprise (as Dan reports) that giving money to people to get them to find creative solutions to problems doesn’t add anything. In fact, it tends to make them less creative. Shock! Horror! Before we leave the topic of money, I would make two small but important exceptions to the above. Money is critical for giving security to people so that they can focus (Meslow nailed this idea with his pyramid).  It is also good for getting people to do more mechanical tasks, like picking up trash. People will pick up more if they get paid more. But once again, according to experimental data, it has no positive correlation to creative problem solving.

Dan calls this a problem of motivation. Money does not motivate us to get creative. So what does? Experiments show that three other rewards tend to motivate people to get more creative. They are (1) being part of a great purpose, (2) feeling that one is achieving mastery, and (3) feeling that one is becoming more autonomous.

If you want to get more deeply into this, read Dan’s book , Drive.

For our purposes, this gives us a jumping point to work on how leaders and followers interact. The interaction should motivate the group to a common goal and promote complex inter-relationships of learning to get there faster. That requires creativity, so we can plug in Dan’s metrics. Effective leaders should always thinking about and trying to build purpose, mastery and autonomy for people in the group.  End of story, in a sense.

There are a few more elements to this motivation story worth taking over. First, is about the way we transmit ideas. The brain blocks out most of the input it receives. It has to in order to function. In other words, we already live according to stories that we created a long time ago. We have very limited capacity to deviate from those stories. That is what makes stories like “The King and I” so entertaining — the characters have to cope with the outer boundaries of their preconceived story lines. Think of your favorite story in terms of the characters finding the outer boundaries of their story lines. It is always the case — something powerful jolts them to that point, yes? This gives us a clue to how bound up we are by our identities (preconceived life stories).

Applying this — as leaders, we should not expect that our abstract assertions of purpose, mastery and autonomy will motivate people. We need to transmission tool that allows the listeners to turn off their blocking mechanisms (to “unblock”). There are at least four ideas that leaders need to work on to become more effective.

The first is to understand the power of story telling. We use stories all the time to allow people to unblock. We do it for fun over a beer. We do it with families over a meal. We do it when we read a story. Great leaders have to learn how to rely on stories rather than assertions. The best leaders tend to be great story tellers.

The second is to understand the emotional gift of feeling grateful. To put it bluntly, transmitting anger makes everyone stupid. Both the person who is angry and the people who perceive the anger (experiments bear this out). Transmitting thankfulness or gratefulness has the opposite effect. When we fell thankful, we become smarter. And interestingly, we feel thankful when we say thank you and when we hear thank you. Very powerful to help unblock.

The third is to understand which types of stories are most important Simon Sinek offers the right way to think about this. The key to getting to the right story is getting the “why” part right. The how and then the what follow. But if you start from what and then go to how and why, you are telling a story of failure. That could be excellent as a precautionary or self-depreciating tale. But stories that start from “the right why” bind us to great purposes and motivate the most. The how stories are more about mastery (also motivating). But we are comfortable about focusing on mastery only if we are comfortable about why we are doing it. The what component of the story is about seeing things as resources rather than separated from the story line. BTW, the more we can use resources the more autonomous we are, right? (also motivating). This presents a rather complex hierarchy of story lines. One that we need to think about and get right before we believe that we have mastered story telling as part of leadership.

Finally, not all types of communication have equal value in starting off a story. Assertions of fact tend to be the least useful. Questions about facts are much more engaging. It is, therefore, much easier to get story telling going with sincere questions than with assertions of sincerely held beliefs. Think about it.

Moving on with Leadership Course Materials - Here is the link to the collection point. Feel free to comment and enjoy!

This is the first section of the second part of this course. In the first part, I blabbed on about what leadership is. I tried to give it some characteristics so that we could recognize it when we see it. So that we could measure it as a capacity. In the second part, I am more interested in how we do it. We are on the hunt, not just talking.

By the way, if I am going to give out some advice on how to do something here, I need to keep it very simple so that you can actually try it. So don’t expect complex lists or convoluted ideas. Instead, I will give you the minimum so that you can start on your path and check your progress as you go. The rest is up to you.

How do we do it? Put most simply, leadership happens when we create history. It is doing history. Hmmm … sounds weird. How does one “do history”? We do history by taking charge of our story lines. By daring to share what we think is important in life so that people will remember it. By “it” I mean the stories we jointly create. So that these stories become “sticky”. So that they stick to you and to your group. And if the stories are good, your group will smile about their role in building the story. And they will smile about the relationships that they built as part of the story.

A lot of this has to do with using two tools. The first is focus and the second is tracking. You need to ask yourself two questions on a regular basis. What am I focusing on? And how do I track what is happening with that focus?

First the easy part. The important things in life are bigger than us. They are things that make life worth while. Being big things, they should be easy to see. They are not obscure. They stare us in the face. They make us smile because they are so obvious. For example, obviously we want to be remembered as part of a great family, living in a great community. Obviously, we want to be remembered as good people and successful people. The first step in building our capacity to do leadership is to have the courage to stand up and say that we are for these obvious and simple things. To embed these values into our left side of the brain (conclusive) thinking. To say to ourselves “of course …”. Easy, yes? It is easy as long as we stop thinking about whether we are living a good life (for example) and just demand it as the starting point of our story.

Well, there is a harder part and that is keeping track of what is going on. It is not enough to just say I am something or that I want something. I need to track how I am getting there. We cannot just push the “good life” button and go for the ride. We need to tuck away our desire for a good life, and live. This means keeping track of small things that add up to a good life (metrics). It is these little things that matter. And the more of these little things we can track over time, the more we will approach our big goals. Well, that is an ongoing task.

Well, if this is true of us, it is also true of the people in our tribe (or group).  It important to aspire something great for the group. It is a first step. But equally important is to start tracking what holds us back (little things) from getting what we want and to be accountable for the tracking that you talk about.

You might notice that I have blurred the distinction between self-leadership and leadership of a group. That is right. I don’t see such a great distinction. We should treat ourselves as we would treat others and others as we would treat ourselves.

So we build a history of metrics about the little things that add up over time. And that is in fact our story line. Our history is us.

A gem from Dan Coyle’s blog Talent Code.

I really enjoyed this short video by Ira Glass that Dan highlighted about how to develop great story lines. Here is the link. Ira is talking about how to develop radio programming, but his comments apply to story telling skills in general. Here are a couple of key points to remember (1) Story tellers spend a significant amount of time looking for stories, knowing that most of what they will find is “crap”. (2) Story tellers have to be “ruthless” in abandoning a story line that is in production but is not developing as it should.

I have argued that story telling is a key leadership skill. Do Ira’s comments apply? No question. First, leaders must become fluent in developing stories around key issues. That means that they must spend time looking for those stories — they don’t just show up at the doorstep. Second, leaders need to put stories into production. This means finding ways to share stories as often as possible with their followers to test which stories resonate. And if they don’t — move on! BTW —  that “moving on” is not abandoning the focus on key issues. It is moving on to find better ways to engage people about those key issues.

FOLLOW -  Searching for stories is a key skill for writers as well. It was said (by Joan Didion?) that the difference between a writer and everyone else is that the writer carries around a notebook and pen.

This is yet another part of the online leadership course materials that is under development. If you want a peek at the package, here is the link.

So, we have our leadership metric. Here is the big question. How do we use it?

The easy answer would be that we should use the metric whenever we need to think about leadership. In other words, we wait for the “leadership moment”, as in France when they waited for “the man on a white horse” (Napoleon and then Boulanger). The problem is that by the time we recognize a leadership vacuum, it is usually too late to deal with it except as a crisis. Then even if we can deal with the crisis, we usually are set back in leadership capacity building.

So it would be preferable if we had a tool to keep leadership on the agenda so that we don’t miss the signals that enable us to use the model as needed. What signals are we looking for? I offer a few in this section of the course. They are (1) missing kluge, (2) listening to outsiders, and (3) the herding cats problem. There are no doubt many more signals that we could find, but I think these three provide a convenient starting point to sensitize us to the problem.

Let’s look at each one. By the way, one might read this with the Jimi Hendrix song in mind — All Along the Watchtower. Why? The song is about a signal.

 The Missing Kluge -  In paradise, one need worry about what time it is. There are no deadlines. There is no reason to get upset. All things are in harmony. Back on the planet earth, we always have to keep in mind what time it is, there are many deadlines, and many reasons to get upset. In other words, using a word that we discussed before, we are loaded and depending on our sensitivity, perhaps overloaded with kluge.

I think this is a good thing. Why? Because seeing kluge provides us with a great signal. When kluge raises its head, we have to recognize that there is a problem. Good. And if there is no kluge, that I would argue that the communication dynamic in the group is not functioning well. We are in stasis or denial. We are not moving in a functional direction. So, repeat after me “kluge is good!” We need kluge. It is our friend. If we cannot identify kluge, we are missing a key signal for discussing leadership.

So - we might ask ourselves, what kluge do we see? How is it connected to a group? Or is the kluge we think about pulling us away from groups? And if we see no kluge? Odds are that if we have no kluge on our minds, we are not engaged in a process. We are trying to stop processes.

Listening to the Outsider - Usually, we form tribes with people who are like us. This “likeness” is based n whatever characteristic we think is important. More interesting still, we tend to imitate the people who we think we are like. So, one interesting question is who do we think we are like? Once we identify that person or persons, the next (and much tougher) question is why? What is it about that person that makes us feel bonded? Now for a third, and even tougher question. Who are we not like? Who do we reject? That person is the “outsider”. The person that does not merit attention. What is it about the outsider that we reject?

So, two signals. Are you aware of who you aspire to be like and why? And are we aware of who are the outsiders and why? If we cannot answer these questions, we are likely to miss signals that are relevant to leadership

The Problem with Herding Cats - Leadership is about bringing people together around a core principle. But often leadership starts when there is no unifying theme. People bring different and sometimes conflicting values to the table. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. But the differences often become an excuse for not coming together when needed.

So here are the signals (1) are we demanding uniformity just for the sake of uniformity? Or can we identify why we need it? (2) are we demanding liberty just for the sake of liberty (I would call this a liberty fetish)? Or are we telling stories about our liberty that help us identify where we need to come together as a group?

Readers may be a bit frustrated here because the above discussion does not purport to solve problems. It merely offers some clues about when we have a leadership problem. If offers metrics to build signals about our capacity for leadership. Hang in there. We will get more intro problem solving a bit later.

This is a short note that connects to the online leadership course that is under development.

The basic point —- If you empower people, they develop. They change. And as they change, their attitude about the group changes as well. That is a good thing, but it means that — as Ed Benis pointed out — great teams are temporary things. Part of leadership is bringing people together at the right moment so that the paths people take allow them to help each other. Another part is letting go of the group at the right time.

As Pat Riley put it

“To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessive in some ways.”

The link to Pat Riley’s story

This is section 1.3 of the materials for the online leadership programme that is under development. Be a part of the course! It is free! How? Just read and learn. 

So, at last! We have made it to the “substance”. We are ready to discuss the leadership model.

But one last introductory point. The model itself is interesting. But it is far less interesting than the reasons why we need a model. Why we need metrics to assess leadership guides us to select the  metrics that we develop and test over time.

So how should a leadership model look? I would answer this question in light of what leadership should produce. In other words, I see leadership in a “functional” way. It has value when it works. On the other hand, things that look nice but that have marginal or negative effects have no value. BTW, people might disagree on this point. Some might argue that leadership has innate value, beyond its effects. Well, if you want to develop that line of thought, search out those folks. I don’t buy it.

So what effects are we looking for?  In my mind, leadership should produce the following (1) group focus, (2) engagement, (3) empowerment, and (4) results over time. If we get all four, we have really got an engine that works! So how do we get there? Let’s take these one at a time.

Focus - I used to hear quite often from my clients that “I am getting stung to death by a thousand bees”. It is a typical business leadership problem. Too much crisis. Too little time left to look to the future. Indeed, I have noticed over the years that some people get addicted to crisis. Apparently they need the adrenaline rush in order to act at all. From an institutional perspective, this is disaster. Institutions in crisis usually fail. Let me say that again. Institutions in crisis usually fail. So, at least with respect to leadership in the institutional setting, the trick is to avoid crisis.  How?

It is all about getting the right focus. Selecting what needs to be accomplished now so that the institution can move on to the next step. A classic example is how Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer when he returned. He did not and could not immediately produce something like the IPad. He started with the IMax - which was an audacious step, but not one that changed Apple in itself. He changed the focus within Apple to take that step, which in turn allowed people to move from there. Great!

We can state this more generally as a normative guideline. Leadership focuses attention on the key issue, and presents the group with a path to raise standards as needed to deal with that issue. Notice how this adjusts the comfort zone (we talked about that before).

Engagement -  The point has been made again and again that leadership is part of a group dynamic. It is not something that we do alone (except perhaps as we lead ourselves). So what can we say about the relationship of the leader to the group? Certainly the leader should produce more engagement by the group to act. Put another way, the leader is looking to build linkages between the group and the activity that they are doing.

How does this work? It does not work by paying them more. Getting more money is nice, but as Dan Pink notes, psychologists know that this does not enhance engagement significantly. We build engagement instead by helping the group see themselves in a new and inspiring light. By building a more nuanced sense of why the struggle is important. By giving a purpose to the group. This must come first before any plan or skills building. As Simon Sinek says, we must start our thinking from why. Then we can move to how, and then to what. We must not start from what and then move to how and then why. As Simon points out, Martin Luther King shouted out that he had a dream — not that he had a plan.

Empwerment -  Can anyone doubt that leaders empower their followers? They inspire them to perform better. This is what Coach Wooden did at UCLA with his basketball team. So how do we accomplish this? It is simple. We are inspired when we feel part of a story. When we feel that what we do fits into a larger thread of events that are much more important than our individual identity. Then we will get out of ourselves and into the action. Great leaders are great story tellers.

Results -  The above standards are great, but engaging and empowering a group to focus on the wrong issue leads to disaster. This is called demagoguery and it is the opposite of what we want over time. So the leader also has to propose measurable benchmarks to test whether the thread of activity is moving in the right direction. Failure to reach a benchmark is ok. But failure to set benchmarks is not. and failure to link the benchmarks to the metrics of the storyline and the focus point amounts to fraud.

There you have it. A normative model. Like a big old dead fish on the table, it sits there. A lot of information. It will start to stink unless we put it to use. but how? Well, that is the focus on the next section.

We left off on our journey to better understand leadership as a process with a question.

BTW, it is always good to leave off the learning cycle with a question (rather than an answer).

The question is how do we better learn how to talk about “comfort from certainty” issues in order to build consensus?  We know already that this is critical as a confidence building tool. A tool that can energize groups.

BTW, Sir Kenneth Clark discussed the results of confidence building throughout his 13 part series on civilisation. He makes the point that confidence is a critical component of civilized societies. Loss of confidence, for whatever reason, paralyzes us.

So, how to build confidence? The first step is to begin to think more precisely about the ideas of “success” and “failure”. What’s the difference? Most people think that success is good and failure is bad. Thus, the most paralyzing message from the left side of the brain is “You are a failure!” or “There is no way you can do that.” But for purposes of building or even assessing leadership capacity, this is wrong, wrong, and wrong. Did I say it was wrong?

Here is the rule — The only difference between success and failure is the standard chosen for measurement. It is all a matter of metrics. Thus, a batting average of 400 in US baseball sounds great (success). Yet it means that the batter fails to get a hit more than half the time.  This can be considered success or failure depending on the standard we choose. That goes for every success/failure conclusion we can make.

Applying this rule, we need to think carefully about the metrics we choose before we draw conclusions about failure. Moreover, we need to get over the paralyzing fear of failure that drives most people to passivity.

This sounds simple, but keep track of your thoughts. How often do you deny yourself permission? How often do you give yourself permission? Good questions. BTW, how often do you give or deny others around you permission? Do you give yourself permission to say that you are lost? That you are not sure? That failing is ok?

Consider Ben Zander. Here is a link to a video where he talks about giving yourself the permission to fail. It is worth watching.   BTW, Ben also has a book. Here is a link to a discussion of the book.

If you are with me so far, we have taken the following steps. In the first part

(1) we started thinking about the difference between shaping and accepting the environment around us. (2) We considered that we shape only when we see a need to do so. In fact, we are more comfortable accepting (3) We noted that we cannot see a need without applying our standards of what is appropriate, (4) and so leadership as a shaping process depends heavily on how we manage our comfort zones — what we believe in leads us automatically to see what needs to be done.

In this part

(1) we noticed the staying power of questions, (2) we noted the importance of building confidence as a prerequisite to action, (3) we challenged the traditional ideas that success is always good and failure bad, (3) we noted that the only difference is the choice of the standard to measure (the metric) (4) This raised the question about the relationship between leadership and discussing metrics.

I think this is enough for one “bite of the apple”. It leads me to think of a second question. If leadership involves building and using metrics, why can’t we build a metric to test leadership itself? Good question

This post is best consumed during a sunny afternoon in early July, while sipping a cappuccino on the terrace at a cafe in Tartu. Wilde will do. 

Jacob Bronowski said that

Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals. So that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape. He is the shaper of the landscape. (emphasis added)

Jacob’s rather optimistic assertion got me thinking. How much do we really live up to this “singularity”? How do we really shape our landscape, or as loyal citizens in a set of given locales, do we and should we just accept what we have been given? This is a critical question for people who aspire to leadership/followership roles. For whatever leadership is, it is at least part of the process of “shaping our landscape”. So what is the answer? Here we have a problem. Not only is the answer unclear in different settings, it is not even obvious how to generate credible answers on a regular basis.

If you doubt this, consider these questions. Do we shape or accept our religious landscape? Do we shape or accept our understanding of the universe? Do we shape or accept our family relationships? Do we shape or accept our work environment? Do we shape or accept our communities? Do we shape or accept our menus? Our home? Our wardrobe? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes, we shape them”, how do we do it well?

One way to cope with the question is to think more about the concept of “landscape” or  “environment”. For sure, our environments include what we perceive around us. But psychologists tell us that we tend to see what we want to see. Put another way, it is human nature to look for comfort in strong conclusions that are generated from the left side of the brain about what is going on around us. We want to understand the story in light of what we are confident to be true. That thing — “what we are confident is true” — becomes the landscape for our decisions and actions. This means that while we are able to shape our landscape (as Jacob argues, we have the capacity), we generally prefer to accept stories that are given to us about it. We change the landscape only incrementally and according to truths that are generally accepted. Put yet another way, “anchoring works”. We anchor ourselves and we are anchored by others to powerful and comforting ideas. Without these, we would be lost.

So, we might start our journey to become better “shapers” of our landscape by understanding a limitation on that ability. Man only shapes his landscape when he sees a need to shape it, has the confidence that he meet the need, and persuades others to accept a new standard in light of what he believes to be true. Jeff Bezos talks about this in terms of seeing “kluge” — (mess).  This is a nice word, but it is shorthand for a complex process.

To get a still better sense of this, think for a second about some of the great mistakes of the past (past kluges). Couldn’t men see that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around? Why couldn’t people tell that the earth was curved simply by watching how the mast of a sail boat rises as it approaches the shore? Why did it take 30 plus years to figure out that cholera was spread by mixing human waste with drinking water? How could it be normal to “own” another man or to say that women were not really people in the eyes of the law? To us the answers to these questions may seem obvious. But this is only because we have taken over strong conclusions that support our perspective, not because we derived or could derive the solutions to the problems that were at hand at the time the discussions were “hot”. We are now comfortable with ideas that generated great discomfort in the past.

The bottom line -  we start our discussion of leadership with a cautionary tale. If man finds comfort in certainty, man is also easily seduced by providers of that comfort. And the more we put ourselves in the passive role of consumers of comforting, strong conclusions, the more difficult it is to break away. Yet, we cannot live without them. So, our first leadership challenge will be to develop skills in seeing and talking about certainty and kluge as a normal part of our work. This does not mean casting certainty as the enemy. That ignores the way the brain works. It does mean learning how to discuss comfort and certainty. How to ask, “what does and should give us comfort?” By the way, this is an ongoing theme of great story tellers and dramatists. With this in hand, we become automatically more sensitive to kluge — those things that put our fantastic comforts at risk. Out of this, we can find a leadership agenda.

So, how do we learn how to talk that way? I will post more on this over the summer. Stay tuned!