For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
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#wayfinding
I read with interest an article in the Huffington Post that recounted the 1500 meter race at the Rio Paraolympic games. The top four finishers in the visually impaired category would have beat the Olympic Gold metalist, a very talented Matthew Centrowitz Jr. Abdellatif Baka, Tamiru Demisse, Henry Kirwa, and Fouad Baka all ran faster than Centrowitz.
The 1500 meter race at the Olympics was very strategic and not necessarily fast. In fact, Centrowitz was way off his best time and in fact, there are over a dozen high school kids in the US that have ran faster than the time he posted at the Rio Games, but still the achievements of these blind or nearly-blind running is remarkable.
It leaves me with some “what if” questions.
What if these runners had been on the field at the regular Olympic games? How would they have done? They certainly were capable of finishing the distance in time. But without their sight, could they have known their position in the strategic race that left people guessing until the end who would emerge victorious.
How does a blind or visually-impaired runner judge his position on the track? How does he know if he is in the leading pack or one further back? How does he pace himself (or herself) in the field that is running that day?
And what does this have to teach us about the vision and insight we have today about our businesses, products, and projects? Does having more information make us a better finisher? Not in all cases.
I am inclined to agree with Tim Washer speaking at ContentMarketing World who recently concluded “analysis is good, but don’t let it kill a good idea.” At least not all the time.
Don't fear the unsustainable. If it is unsustainable, it won't sustain.
Before proceeding with a solution, ask yourself the following:
“Do we have enough data to know if customers have a problem that we have a unique right to solve?”
You will save yourself a lot of money and time if you ask this ahead of time and use it as a strategic filter for investment. If you don’t know why you will win, then you won’t likely win.
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because it is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges the motivate you. Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
- Martha Graham, to Agnes de Mille,
as quoted by Sara Bareilles in her book “Sounds Like Me”
I saw one of those motivational parody posters once that said, “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
I feel that the same can be said of the nightmare managers and bad bosses we have all had in our careers.
One thing that leaders can do to avoid running a company into the ground is let people tell them the truth.
Here are 5 things you can learn from bad leaders.
1. Bad leaders don’t listen
No one sets out to be a bad leader. Even incompetent or emotionally-injured people generally want to do a good job.
And perhaps more often than not, people don’t realize that they aren’t good leaders. Speaking truth to power is difficult and uncomfortable and possibly risky, so people don’t generally tell their managers how they really feel.
If the manager has created an environment where bad news doesn’t get shared, then no one is going to share the news that the leader is bad.
I once asked a CEO boss of mine what was the one thing that leaders could do to avoid running a company into the ground (a time-worn description we have all heard to describe the work of a value-destroying CEO), and he said, “Let people tell you the truth.”
This means creating the right environment of humility and openness, and getting the right people.
2. Bad leaders make bad hires
Bad leaders often hire people who are like them — people who think like them, have similar temperaments, experiences, or even the same alma mater.
Sometimes that works out great because of the comradery and teamwork that develops. But more often, the corner office becomes an echo chamber where new ideas, fresh approaches and alternative views can’t be voiced.
3. Bad leaders don’t fire fast enough
Driven by ego (or naïve optimism that things will miraculously get better for no rational reason), bad leaders don’t like to admit they have made bad hires, and they are more likely to hold onto a poor performer until a lot of damage has been done — not only the opportunity cost to the business or the direct impact of mistakes, but also damage to the credibility of the leader.
4. Bad leaders do the wrong things well
Sometimes leaders can get so fixated on the process, continuous improvement and infrastructure required to scale the business that they forget the value of the business as perceived by their customers. This can lead to the automation of processes that make the company worse.
I have been part of improvement initiatives that assumed the way we were doing something was right and we just had to speed it up or make it less labor intensive, only to find out that it was a waste of time and resources. So we just found a better and faster way of wasting money.
Leaders should know which products make them money, which customers have the best overall lifetime value, and what campaigns or initiatives have delivered the most tangible results in recent times.
5. Bad leaders do the right things poorly
Finally, leaders who rose through the ranks on their technical merits or intellectual prowess might find themselves ill-equipped for the soft-skills part of their job. In his book Emotional Intelligence, author Daniel Goleman outlines why being able to identify and empathize with others is a better predictor of success than IQ.
Bad leaders don’t have the necessary skills to deal positively with conflict, defuse tense situations, provide clear direction in the face of uncertainty, and truly lead.
The good news about these characteristics is that they aren’t set in stone. Being a bad leader isn’t fixed in the stars or determined like a person’s height or eye color. These are things that can be developed and with mentoring, thoughtful consideration and work. If you want to be a good leader, strive for it.
This article was originally posted on The Business Journals.
“A fatherless girl thinks nothing is impossible and nothing is safe.”
– May Sarton as quoted by Gloria Vanderbilt on the documentary she did together with her son Anderson Cooper
If this is true (and thankfully, I don’t have personal experience), what will this mean to our world as so many girls are growing up without fathers in their lives. More invention. More innovation. More paranoia. More pessimism or more optimism?
“I think we are an outfit headed for extinction,” commented Ernest Hemingway upon seeing fake books in his fancy hotel room. Later, it is said that Hemingway went back to the bookcase and stood there stiffly and as he looked at the pasteboard backs again he said, “Phony, just like the town.” A town who had criticized his writing and was constantly jockeying for their best position at the expense of those who created art.
I think there are a lot of pasteboard book backs in our world as well. Things that are staged for the sale, but not lived in. Furniture that distressed with sandpaper, not with life. People who are photoshopped (as a verb) and filtered until unrecognizable. So much so that photos posted unaltered and raw on social media are often tagged #nofilter, as the opposite is too common.
This makes the authentic so attractive.
High self-awareness is a key element in business success. It can be easily overshadowed by the sexier traits of charisma or sheer intellectual genius. A study a few years back by Green Peak Partners and Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, quantified what employees have known for a while: "Companies and their investors need to put more effort into evaluating the interpersonal strengths of potential leaders. They should focus more on how a leadership candidate does the work, and not focus exclusively on what he or she has done.”
How one gets things done and the improvements one might make over time are rooted directly in a leader’s ability to face truth about themselves. According to the authors of Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, leaders can improve themselves. According to their Harvard Business Review article, leaders must become “more aware of what motivates them and their decision making.”
In the end, there are three characteristics of feedback that I believe capture why it is critical to our success; Feedback is a mirror, a gift, and a miracle.
Self-Awareness Requires a Mirror
I don’t mean the kind of mirror by which you check your teeth for spinach or fix your hair. I don’t mean the kind of mirror that customer service agents to make sure they are smiling when taking phone calls (however effective that might be). I am referring to a different type of mirror. The kind that tell you how you are showing up in your professional life that leads to self-awareness and reflection. That mirror is feedback.
"Although the quietest of the emotions self-awareness is an incredible predictor of emotional intelligence," writes Daniel Goleman in a study with Korn Ferry Institute. Turns out, the ability to respond to crisis, develop teams, and manage your own emotions are all skills that can be improved with better self awareness.
Every journey begins with a first step and there are a variety of assessments that you can take to improve your self-awareness. Some of my favorite are profiled here for your reference. I have used Kolbe and StrengthsFinders as team building tools, as well, to help us better understand our team mates and how to work together.
Feedback is a Gift that Isn’t Easily Given (or Received)
“Not all gifts arrive in neat packages,” said Carole Robin, director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program at Standard Graduate School of Business. “This is definitely true for feedback.” Leaders must be exceptional at giving feedback in order to develop their teams and achieve their goals. Feedback delivered with candid compassion can transform businesses and relationships and most of us could improve our performance.
Leaders have a double responsibility however. They also need to make sure they are not missing out on the opportunity to receive the gift of feedback themselves. Ken Blanchard called feedback “the breakfast of champions.” And sometimes that breakfast is served is too cold, too warm, or too late, but it can be nourishing in any case.
We need to persevere and to find people who can tell us the truth. “We all need people who can give us feedback,” said Bill Gates. “That’s how we improve.”
People are often hesitant to give pointed feedback to their boss or colleagues. The conversations are awkward and best and can be career limiting, if the leader values comfort and coddling over results and responsibility (and we have all known a few of those).
The gift of feedback must be received and given with open hands, open hearts, and open minds. Create forums for feedback like 1:1 meetings, office hours, or surveys. In listening sessions, sit with your arms in a neutral position and try to constrain your reactions or defensive tendencies.
And just like your grandmother taught you: not all gifts are what you want, but because it is the “thought that counts” you have to treat the gift, and the giver, with graciousness. You must look for how you can best apply what you are learning. You may end up disregarding portions of what was shared, but it is in the consideration and reflection that changes occur.
Truth Telling is a Miracle (considering the obstacles)
In their book Execution, authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, talk about the seven key traits of a leader and among them are “know yourself” and “insist on realism.” That last topic was so impactful to their thinking and their business success that they went on to write Confronting Reality. Yet in order for leaders to face reality, they need to be told the truth and they need to hear it clearly.
Failure to listen is more common than head cold among senior leaders. Combine this with the difficulty of speaking truth to power and it is no wonder that leaders can live in an echo chamber of glossed-over good news and ungrounded positivity. We criticize our culture for believing fake news, but often live in a world of fake news about ourselves and our businesses. It is a wonder hard truth is ever spoken, in fact. We are all guilty of not speaking up boldly enough or not being as open to feedback as we should have. It really is a miracle when it happens. Yet, it is a miracle that we can encourage and even facilitate with the right behaviors and attitudes.
In addition to being open to constructive criticisms, it is critical that you understand the data that indicates business success. In most environments, these include revenue and margin or market share data as backward looking indicators. It is also important to look at early or forward-looking indicators such as sales funnel analysis or engagement metrics on key tools or campaigns known to convert to sales. These business dashboards serve the same purpose as the dashboard of your car: providing you a feedback loop that indicates if you are running at speed, violating conditions of success, or if you have a crisis pending. Data reporting and analysis can be an important part of your truth telling toolkit.
With a combination of mirrors, gifts, and miracles, we can lead better businesses and lead them better.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
I recently heard the serial entrepreneur, Bret Taylor, speak with Kara Swisher from Recode: Decode about the redesign they did of FriendFeed before selling it to Facebook. He called the redesign a “dead cat bounce,” implying that the product had already lost to a competitor and it was a last-ditch effort to bring it to life, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
It got me thinking. Does bouncing a dead cat back to life ever work? At what point did he know it was dead? What would have been saved (in money, time, or “life force”), if he hadn’t bounced the cat one last time?
I don’t know much about FriendFeed, and I am in no place to judge, as I know that I have bounced a dead cat in my own career. Vigorously. With passion and authority. And seen it skid out. To see the effort amount to nothing other than lost time, money, and credibility.
It requires a lot of self-reflection and brutal honesty to avoid the temptation of playing “Weekend at Bernie’s” with your business, ideas, products, or initiatives. May we all have the courage to face the truth and focus our attention on the things that matter most.
Anyone who has lived knows that nothing good comes without some heartache, struggle, and failure along the wall. Any truthful trajectory showing a result doesn’t look like a rocket. It looks like a squiggly diagonal line to the right. Success is an upwards sloping line, but at any point of the line, the slope wasn’t upwards.
Call it an “artist’s temperament” or perhaps the high propensity of ADHD among artists, chaos often follows artistry. Whether you are talking about a visual artist, painter, musician, or even a creative software developer, things like time management, detail-orientation, and the need for clarity is often low. They are more comfortable with uncertainty, with ambiguity, and take a more flexible approach to things (often everything except their art).
Some of us straddle the worlds of art and science. We have responsibilities to design the systems and then keep the trains running on time. And when we feel like the chaos factor swings a little high, it might be time for us to channel our inner artist. And realize the only thing we control is our art.
"We are often told we need to know how to learn. But how do we learn to unlearn." - Chris Dede, Harvard
To build new habits. To change our approach, to find a new path.
Some people speak of breaking through barriers and others talk about building something of themselves. Both are true, but the word choice is telling.
In an interview with artist and activist, Molly Crabapple in the Smithsonian magazine (April 2016), she talked about the “jaggedness goading you on.” The success that she found in her life and career wasn’t easy to come by. There was a lot of rejection and barrier busting. She talked about finding cracks in the wall and the power of persistence. “But I think that sort of pain,” she said, “are the parts of you that are most interesting in a lot of ways. They’re the parts of you that give you motivation to keep creating art and keep fighting.” An analogy of destruction is reflective of a world view that says it is “me versus the universe.”
In contrast, others talk about building something, brick on brick. Using construction terms, they think of creating an edifice. Something beautiful and interesting and lasting. It is a different kind of pain. A pain focused on legacy. Building something comes from a world view that says that anything is possible. And that the world is ready to accept what you have to build.
How do you describe your own accomplishments? What does that say about your world view?
It was a pleasure to talk with Angela Mezzetti from Women in Leadership about owning your career. Check out the recording of our fun conversation: Own Your Career and Find Balance.
Garr Reynolds, the presentation coach and author of PresentationZen wrote recently on Twitter:
“What I learned from watching US election coverage on cable news today: feelings beat evidence and fact, data are no match for narrative.”
I think this is truer than we’d all like to admit. Not only in the US election coverage, but in our lives and business. The story is what anchors and provides meaning to the facts, not the other way around.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” - Hunter S. Thompson
I heard Joey Harrington, the famed college quarterback who floundered in the NFL, talk recently about failure and not living up to expectations. He mentioned the challenges of having “Instagram life” and trying to keep up with the virtual Joneses. To illustrate his point, he showed the mocking social handle @SocialityBarbie, where the Mattel doll was placed in “typical”, white-washed posts online to mock how people aren’t authentic online. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a look and a laugh.
But a more serious thought occurred to me. I was struck by the interesting phrase, “Instagram life.” Instagram is a platform, sure. It’s a social technology, sure. But it’s also a brand. What other technology brand gives you “life”? I’ve never heard someone refer to their “Whirlpool life,” or their “Arco life” or their “TiVO life.” No, it’s an Instagram life. Or a Facebook life. Or perhaps even a LinkedIn life. The platform where a corporate brand and a person’s identity combine into something resembling…well, neither.
As I reflect on this, I think any “life” that is so one-sided as to only show the good, is no life at all. We all know heartache and the lessons that disappointment have taught. Any “life” that can be seemingly controlled, curated, and “hashtagged” (is that a verb yet?), isn’t a life. Real life is famously (and infuriatingly) uncontrolled, filled with surprises (both good and bad), and defies simple labels. Unlike an “Instagram life,” real life is neither “instant” nor just a “gram” (ie, a communication). It is an experience of sorrow and triumph and better lived together. Not socially (as in social media), but socially (as in human connection).
Ecommerce, mobile payments, and related technologies have taken friction out of the purchase process. And successfully completing tasks and “retail therapy” have proven psychological effects. I am sure this has implications for the future of our spending habit and our relationship with stuff and money in the future. It is important for us to recognize when impulsivity is being rewarded. And make sure we are aware of the personal impact and implications and make good choices, even when bad choices are being rewarded.