In the Name of Love

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martin-luther-king-jrMichael Stallard told me this story of the band U2. From the beginning U2 has maintained a mantra of “music can change the world because it can change people.” The strength of the band’s identity and commitment to each other has driven its success. When the band’s members suffered one personal challenge after another, the band slowed down its touring and took a break to support one another.

In 1987 the leader of the band, Bono, was threatened with death if U2 played their song “Pride,” a tribute to Reverend Martin Luther King, at a concert in Arizona. Bono recalled that, as he entered the third verse—“Early morning, April 4; a shot rings out in the Memphis sky”—he closed his eyes, not knowing what would happen. He described what followed:

Some people want to kill us. Some people are taken very seriously by the FBI. They tell the singer that he shouldn’t play the gig because tonight his life is at risk, and he must not go on stage. And the singer laughs. Of course we’re playing the gig. Of course we go onstage, and I’m singing “Pride (In the Name of Love)”—the third verse—and I close my eyes. And you know, I’m excited about meeting my maker, but maybe not tonight. I don’t really want to meet my maker tonight. I close my eyes and when I look up I see Adam Clayton standing in front of me, holding his bass as only Adam Clayton can hold his bass. There are people in this room who’d tell you they’d take a bullet for you, but Adam Clayton would have taken a bullet for me. I guess that’s what it’s like to be in a truly great rock and roll band.

Labels, mazes and stupefying change

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think_differentFrancis Hesselbein was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America’s highest civilian honor by President Clinton, in 1998. She is founder of the Hesselbein Leadership Institute. Her books have been translated into 29 languages, and she is the recipient of 22 honorary doctorate degrees. She has been awarded nearly every prestigous award of leadership excellence you can imagine, inducted into Halls of Fame, sits on numerous boards, was appointed to two commissions on community leadership by George Bush… You get the idea.

Last week I sat in and listened to an interview as she spoke with my collague Taavo about what it means to be a leader. She kept returning to a few key phrases throughout the conversation. One expression she repeated consistently was “Ban the heirarchy.”

That expression kept jumping into my mind as I read through a study on the relationship between giving heirarchical labels to individuals and its negative impact on their ability to solve complex puzzles. No one I talk to seems to disagree with the fact that as we live in a world of stupefying change, the ability to digest complicated information and then transform it into meaningful ideas or innovation is critically valuable. And yet, we often persist in such debilitating labels.

In the study called Names Can Hurt You, a group of researchers from the World Bank went to rural India and conducted a series of problem-solving tests with 6th and 7th grade students from both the highest and lowest castes. Before the test began, each student was privately interviewed and asked their name, caste, father’s name, grandfather’s name and village. Then they were divided into three groups. Each group was first asked to solve mazes on their own. And then the researchers created a competitive tournament game in which the students were incentivized to perform better. The best performers gained peer recognition and cash.

The first group, known as Caste Concealed, consisted of 3 high caste students (H) and 3 low caste students (L). Because the students were selected from multiple villages, and because none of their personal information was shared with other students, a child might reasonably assume the others are unaware of their caste. As expected, in this group all 6 students performed comparably well on the puzzles, and responded positively to the social and monetary incentives introduced in the competitive tournament game.

The second group, know as Caste Revealed, again consisted of 3H and 3L students. However, at the beginning of the session the researchers read aloud each child’s background information, revealing their identity and caste. In this group all students did not improve or respond to incentives in the tournament portion of the test.

The third group, Caste Segregated, consisted of 6H and 6L students, and again all identities were revealed prior to starting the session. In this group, not only did the students remain unresponsive to competitive incentives, it had a negative impact on the lower caste students. Once their identity was revealed in a larger group they performed even worse when incentivized to do better.

Huh! Imagine that: in team-based problem-solving environments, when certain members of the group are labeled as inferior, they perform worse on complex problems.

Avoid labels, speak in terms of “we.” And in the language of world-class innovative – and non-heirarchical – company W.L. Gore, “No one may commit another.” That is to say, you may invite or challenge people to take on tasks and accountability but you may not commit another person to doing something. In their culture, people have influence based on the compelling power of their ideas and leadership ability to get things done, not based on their title.

The Flying Handshake

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face-to-face-600I met a guy named Marcus who was based in Germany and ran an IT services group, which was based in Silicon Valley. Several times a year Marcus would fly to California to spend time with his team, chatting, having meals, talking about work, but also interacting on a human and personal level. He calls these trips “The Flying Handshake.”

We know from research that it’s critically important to meet in person. So much nuance can get lost in translation over the phone, and certainly over email or in social media environments. Meeting face to face is important in early stages of assembling teams to embark on projects, and particularly important when introducing new people to projects whom others have never interacted with before.

In an interview with team expert Mary Waller, Professor of Organizational Studies at York University’s Schulich School of Business, she described an important accelerator to collaboration known as Transactive Memory Systems (TMS in pro lingo). Which basically means an understanding of who knows what information, and who possesses what skills on the team. This understanding of whom to go to for particular types of skill and knowledge to get things done is critically important in accelerating the performance of teams. And when the team is virtual, face to face interaction becomes increasingly important over the life-cycle of projects.

As this study, published in Management Science found:

“Frequent face-to-face communication also led to TMS (Transactive Memory Systems) emergence, but communication via other means had no effect.”

In other words, while digital or phone interaction at a distance is certainly valuable in the exchange of information and collaboration of ideas, such interaction doesn’t improve the quality of team transactions, thus performance.

So next time you have a digital interaction on a project, break the thread of email by picking up the phone. Then break the thread of constant conference calls by actually meeting in person.

The alternative can be pretty amusing:

The Gap Between Knowing and Doing

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leadership-cartoon

Yes, but what’s remarkable is that he is doing it. He is actually practicing these behaviors, while many leaders are simply talking about them.”
– Jill Klein, Melbourne Business School

I had a conversation recently with Campbell Jones, COO of a large Australian company. He had risen steadily in the organization after years of dedicated work, and was widely regarded as an excellent leader and savvy entrepreneur. So I asked him what things he did on a daily basis that contributed to the high level of engagement clearly found throughout the vibrant company.

He explained a series of consistent behaviors he was committed to. He regularly travels throughout the different operating offices in Australia and New Zealand to meet directly with the people in the company and to spend time listening to their ideas and challenges. He gives local control to people in different divisions of the organization to change or refine how they do their work and supports them with people, funding, and other resources as necessary.

Jones also explained that he intentionally has worked in many different divisions of the company, from marketing to sales to logistics and operations. This diversity of experience and the first-hand knowledge and understanding of the work enables him to relate to, and collaborate with, people in those divisions more easily. He spends as little time as possible in closed-door executive meetings, and as much time as he can working directly with employees and customers in the field.

People clearly trust him because he has demonstrated consistency of action to back up his promises, he has developed deep expertise in widely different capacities in the organization.

A few days later I met with Jill Klein, professor of marketing at Melbourne Business School, to discuss her work. Before our interview, I described Campbell Jones’ successful story to her. In my opinion his success was to be expected. After all, it was common sense that, if a leader behaves with integrity, supports and listens to the people in the organization, and supports and trusts their ingenuity of those performing the work, well… certainly excellence will emerge. In my telling of the story, I recall thinking, “But of course it works! There’s nothing remarkable about this story. Obviously a leader with these traits would drive excellence and innovation for the company.”

After listening to the story, Klein remarked, “Yes, but what’s remarkable is that he is doing it. He is actually practicing these behaviors, while many leaders are simply talking about them.”

Or as Tim Sanders likes to say, “Stay away from the ‘ings’ and spend more time with the ‘eds.’ The ‘eds’ say ‘We tried that. We tested that. We modeled that.’ The ‘ings’ say things like ‘We’re thinking about that,’ or ‘We’re discussing that.’”

Taking the long view

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fixitfredIn October of 2003 in Atlanta at a global company meeting, as the new CEO of Schering-Plough, Fred Hassan stood on stage before thousands of sales professionals from around the world and said:

If you are in a position of making a sale and doing something you are not comfortable with – something you won’t feel proud of later, or walking away, I want you to walk away. As your CEO I’m telling you to choose long-term trust and integrity over short-term gain.

He had only been named CEO in April of that same year. His philosophies and opinions were not yet well known throughout the organization. He also knew he was taking a risk in alienating some of the successful sales professionals who were making a killing on short-term transactional quarterly commissions checks. In addition to providing this message of integrity focus, he led the change of the commissions structure to incentivize longer term relationships with customers. He knew some salespeople would leave, and they did.

But something else happened. Starting in that spring of 2004, Schering Plough enjoyed over four years of double-digit growth. Then came 2008, and the growth ran dry for most everyone. Yet even during this period Schering-Plough continued to innovate and introduce new pharmaceuticals to the market, as well as continue to return consistent earnings for shareholders and community. Schering-Plough hired and retained those sales types who took the long view.

In our conversation, Fred put it this way, “People want to do something right and be a part of something bigger than themselves… I didn’t expect it, but I got a long standing ovation that day.”

You don’t have to buy them: The Collaborative Investment

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I had a conversation today with a VP of Human Resources at one of the largest, and still fastest growing consultancies in India. He described a practice of accelerating innovation you can borrow today, which they have already shown to work in their business.

In the new frictionless economy, in which innovation in product and service can emerge from everyone, everywhere and for everything, not only do we need to bet on the creative innovative collaborations of the people within our own organizations, but we can also tap into the creative surge of small, nimble, companies without the deep formality and commitment of either acquisition or equity capital investment. Right now, there is a flood of new startups entering the world market. You don’t need to risk a stack of money to buy and leverage their expertise. Instead, build the “collaborative investment.”

Stay curious and open to those emerging small (even really small) businesses which show promise in delivering new market value, and cultivate those relationships, as both direct customers, and on a quid pro quo basis to stay ahead of the innovation curve. You might currently hold a leading market position, yet innovative ideas and solutions can come from all quarters of the market. And since the next killer app might notcome from inside your company, all the better reason to stay closely connected to emerging opportunities.

Here are a few ways you can collaborate with emerging businesses without formal monetary commitment:

Make visibility and marketing exchange commitments to the new partner
In this capacity, you have the power to recommend and refer existing customers to small companies showing promise, representing immense new opportunity for the small company, yet maintain a “watch and see” position to learn how the market responds. The startup gains the visibility the much larger company can offer while you remains a tacit partner in the promotional effort. This collaboration can then be formalized over time as the startup gains traction. For favored customer status, or even for an inside look under the hood of the killer app you are using, you can offer market visibility that would be otherwise unavailable because of their size.

Make internal referrals
Whatever cool, efficient, valuable product or service the startup is offering, you can bet another group or another division in the company can equally benefit from their service. If you are responsible for a particular product development initiative, you are certainly aware of similar efforts, funded from separate budgets in your own company that might benefit from the external partnership. Bonus: your internal referral will not increase your customer favorability, but also fuel the innovation of the service itself because the new division working with the startup is likely to push them in different ways.

Find small, promising companies and get close to them. Figure out what you can offer that would be of great value to your smaller collaborator to help their innovation grow.

Finding the Guru Within

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“While we teach, we learn”
– Seneca

One of the greatest gifts you can offer another is unconditional, open sharing of ideas and wisdom to grow their ideas and talents. Everyone benefits, not only obviously the person receiving advice and direction from a trusted mentor, but also the coach himself benefits greatly from the experience.

When you take the time to seek out a talented coach, ask for advice, and aspire to a particular habit, behavior, or way of life, you can better:

  • Figure out what matters to you and your growth to make an impact
  • Amplify your focus by removing lesser priorities
  • Connect with people and ideas more closely aligned
  • Identify and remove blind spots

Yet even more powerfully, when you take the time to show up and offer your own thoughtful advice, energy and direction, the impact can be surprisingly valuable for you, the advisor. Consider, if you can teach something you first have to learn it deeply enough to share it in a meaningful and clearly articulate way. In order to teach something as an effective and credible advisor, you also need to deepen your knowledge and understanding such that you can handle penetrating questions, and know where to find answers. If someone you are working with develops a greater curiosity, you should know where to direct their next inquiry.

The best coaches develop a deep emotional fluency such that they have strong understanding of their player’s strengths. John Wooden, one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time, coached so personally and directly that he spoke, on average, for only four seconds at a time, and most often only to individual players.  In the movie “The Blind Side,” Sandra Bullock’s character draws out the best football player in Big Mike by reinforcing the fact that he scored 98% on “protective instincts.”

The etymology of guru is “teacher” or “master.”  Guru has also come to mean “one who dispels the darkness of ignorance.”  I had a wonderful interview Monday with Dr. Sujaya Banerjee, Chief Learning Officer for Essar Group, one of the fastest growing companies in India.

Essar has developed a remarkably successful coaching and mentoring program by appealing to cultural influences. Indians believe in rebirth and the cyclical nature of life.  Which means aspiring toward being immortal, becoming “amar” in Hindi.  The philosophy of mentoring at Essar teaches that a way to become immortal is to coach and mentor.  Senior executives and managers are encouraged to develop their immortal self through developing the wise guru within another, younger associate. By tapping into this intrinsic motivation to build an eternal legacy of wisdom, executives see clearly they have a path to create a legacy, and preserve their own immortal wisdom through others.

Share your gifts without pause or regret.  I once wrote a rap to introduce Keith Ferrazzi, based on his book Never Eat Alone.  You can read the bit in the rap about mentoring below or see the video here.

But before you focus on improving your standard of living
Remember you earn trust and proximity first by giving
With a big head you’ll think you turn everything to gold
Be careful in your success, don’t let hubris take hold
Your final task should you choose to accept
Is share this wonderful gift, without pause or regret
For if its true legacy you want to approach
Teach and share, become a mentor, a coach
People in the house
Open up your hearts and minds, there is nothing to fear
To deliver this message Keith Ferrazzi is here

Make it Human, Connect with the Impact

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There’s a small trick, a small shift in thinking, in mindset, that can translate to immense performance gains. It’s this: connect personally with the impact, the change or result of what you do. Let me give you an example. Adam Grant is a talented young professor at the Wharton School and he conducted a study a couple years ago in which he worked with a group of students at the University of Michigan. These students were earning a little extra cash by making cold calls to alumni to raise money which would go to scholarship fund. The fund was used to help finance the tuition for students accepted at the university but unable to afford the tuition.

So Grant and his colleagues divided the students into three separate groups and had them perform activities for just 10 minutes before their call shift. With one group, the students could do whatever they wanted for 10 minutes before their calls. Check out facebook, text their friends, whatever. The second group was asked to read letters for a few minutes from people who had benefitted from the scholarship fund that they were working on, and then talk about the contents of the letter with their peers for a couple minutes.

The third group was also given a handful of letters to read together, but after a few minutes in the break room, they got a surprise. The call organizer would say, “We have a special guest on the phone.” And on the phone was a real recipient of the scholarship fund the students were working on. And for just 5 minutes, the students talked on a speaker phone in the break room with the beneficiary. They could ask questions about where they were from, what classes they were taking, what they intended do after they graduated, etc. Just for five minutes.
At the conclusion of the five minute phone call with the beneficiary, the organizer would say “Remember this when you’re on the phone—this is someone you’re supporting.”

That’s it. A ten minute intervention to connect the callers with the impact, the difference, the real goal of their work. The result? 250% increase in revenue performance sustained over a month after that one single intervention. 250% better than their peers that had no direct contact with the beneficiaries.

Take an opportunity to find and talk to the people who actually consume, touch, experience, contact what you offer or what you create. It will remind you of why you do what you do. It will lead to higher quality, integrity and excellence in craftsmanship and relationship with your customer. And higher performance too. How does 250% sound?

You’re more likely to be fired by your team than your boss

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“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Ken Hicks, CEO of Foot Locker had just said, “You are more likely to be fired up than fired down.” I was interviewing him yesterday and had asked how new managers and leaders could best make a difference in their first 60-90 days. He provided some intuitive advice about how if you go in with a grand plan to make a difference and expect people to execute on your great idea, you’ve lost the buy-in of the people around you. That is, you’ve lost the opportunity to listen deeply, understand and solicit the input of everyone on the team and gather the best ideas while simultaneously co-opting the engagement of the people ready to execute.

He went on to say – while defining the expression “You are more likely to be fired up than fired down” – that too often new (or existing) managers – get caught up in pandering to the imagined interests of superiors, and as a result lose the support of those around them. Building that support has to be more about listening to their ideas and contributions, than getting people to say what you want hear.

The result of lost support, while catering to the top, is that your team feels their voice isn’t heard, their ideas aren’t recognized, and so they disengage. When that happens, a manager cannot possibly execute on any grand vision and get anything done. Your team isn’t following any more. You’ve just been fired up. Sure, your leadership has the capacity to get rid of you top-down fashion, but long before that happens, long before the complete paralysis or catastrophe, or missed milestones, you’ve been fired up from the people you are supposed to be leading to a clear deliverable. Maybe you have that that grand vision in mind, but if you neglect the team, you’ve lost your ability to be effective.

Exploring New Terrain – Giving Greatness

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There’s a sublimely beautiful spot in the north woods of Maine off the beaten path called Southbranch campground on the north end of Baxter State Park. It takes thoughtful planning to get there. To begin with, you have to mail in – yes, USPS mail in – your registration to Baxter State Authority. Although recently they do have an online calendar showing availability, you still have to fill out a piece of paper and select your top choices for camping spots, label an envelope, and mail it in. Baxter State Park Authority will mail you back a paper confirmation which you have to have in hand when you arrive at the checkpoint gate – more than ten miles out from the campground. Nothing motorized invited, on the lakes or trails, other than the car or van that got you there. We’ve visited the last three years and spend off-the-grid days paddling, telling stories by campfires, hiking, and sharing good company.

A highlight of this annual pilgrimage are gloriously high granite cliffs, about a morning-paddle away on an adjacent lake. After we awake, pack lunches, and paddle the length of Southbranch north lake, then portage to south lake along a stream, and tie up the canoes, we scramble up the faces of this granite rock to witness the beauty and quiet solitude of a wonderfully isolated deep lake in the north woods.

Then we jump! From various points that meet our own idea of courage, we jump. Here’s the thing – as the visit grows, as well as subsequent visits over a couple days, we find our collective rhythm in the adventure. We both encourage eachother, and ourselves, in more audacious jumps – or more interesting and unique jumps. Understand, at this site the sky is almost the limit – you could etch ever higher upon that rock and jump from a higher and higher point – there is almost no feasible summit since the true top is over 100 feet – a jump I have yet to see anyone take…yet.

Here’s the interesting part – after our group arrives and we spend time there, we first lead eachother to what is obvious, what is most accessible. As time passes, the sun rises and people start to find their own routes up the rock to higher jumping points, the group teaches what is possible, what can be achieved.

In the context of leadership, once everyone feels supported and in a safe environment, we begin to not only explore the possible but also teach those around us what is possible. Leading the way up the rock, demonstrating unique leaps of faith – older kids taking the hands of the younger to safely navigate the rock face. We have to examine both the novel and mundane with fresh eyes, and excitedly share those experiences – it’s only then we can both lead and encourage new climbs and new leaps from high above. Believe me, our work is no different. No group ever got dumber by hiding trails, or hoarding glory. Teach everyone on the path. That’s giving greatness.