Do You Know When to Disobey?

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What if your boss asks you to do something you think is wrong? What if there are practices your company engages in that are just ridiculous, or redundant? Or worse, what if there is an institutionalized process in your company that you think is flat-out unethical?

Maybe you work in a look-the-other-way culture, or a get-it-done-at-all-costs culture. What do you do?

According to a survey of 1600 managers in the UK, unethical behavior at work is common and widespread. In the survey, these managers reported the top ten questionable behaviors include:

  1. Taking shortcuts / accepting or encouraging shoddy work: 72%
  2. Lying to hide mistakes: 72%
  3. Badmouthing colleagues: 68%
  4. Blaming colleagues (when you don’t get your work done): 67%
  5. Slacking off when no one is watching: 64%
  6. Lying to hide colleagues’ mistakes: 63%
  7. Taking credit for colleagues’ work: 57%
  8. Calling in sick (when you’re not): 56%
  9. Lying about skills and experience: 54%
  10. Stealing low value items from the company: 52%

So, what do you do when your boss asks, or simply suggests, you do something inappropriate? Here’s is what people at some of the highest performing companies do: they disobey – intelligently, politely, and firmly.

Intelligent disobedience is a term that originated in the dog training world, and has migrated over to business culture. In Ira Chaloff’s new book Intelligent Disobedience, he describes what can go horribly wrong when people blindly follow orders, and inversely, how high-performing organizations create cultures in which individuals think for themselves.

Training guide dogs can take up to three years, and the really hard stuff comes at about 18 months when trainers introduce concept of intelligent disobedience. To teach a guide dog to cross the street safely with a handler is pretty straightforward.

First you teach the dog to stop at the down curb, which indicates to the handler that you are at the edge of the street. Then you teach the dog to respond to a “forward” command to lead the handler to the other side of the street. No problem.

But training guide dogs to “intelligently disobey” is tricky work. What if you want to teach the dog to willfully contradict the command, and not lead when a car is approaching? Trainers will ride in an approaching vehicle and use nerf bats or squirt guns to gently correct them. It takes time and patience, but eventually guide dogs learn to assess the situation, and decide for themselves if the path is clear and safe to cross the street.

Many guide dogs start the training process, and most don’t make it through to final graduation. One of the biggest reasons guide dogs washout during the training process is they follow every single command without question.

The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
– Jim Hightower

In business settings, it can be tough to contradict your boss. Often, managers reflexively don’t like dissent. They may view it as insubordination. As Chaloff points out in his book, “…if obeying is likely to produce more harm than good, disobeying is the right move, at least until we have further clarified the situation and the order.”

Kirk O. Hansen, professor of social ethics at Santa Clara University suggests starting with a non-confrontational approach that might point out the questionable ethics of the order, such as “Do we have a policy on that?” or “Under what circumstances would we normally destroy documents?”

According to Chaloff, if ultimately you can’t stop your boss from his intentions and actions, at least you can choose not to participate yourself. Chaloff suggests you don’t step off that curb with him into oncoming danger, accept any short-term consequences, and focus on long-term integrity and character.

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Screen Shot 2016-01-24 at 2.45.37 PMShawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, a company building beautiful elearning courses based on the work of best-selling authors. He is also the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes and his new book Small Acts of Leadership, (Bibliomotion, October 4, 2016).

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Only You Can Own Your Own Engagement

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“Seek small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens. And when it happens, it lasts.”
– John Wooden

I recently spent a half-day working with executives from a global technology company. Our goal was to develop ways to heighten the engagement and drive of their team members. The executives in the room were responsible for immense teams. The twenty or so executives assembled that day were responsible for the work and livelihood of thousands of people around the world.

To kick things off, we reviewed results from a recent company-wide engagement survey. The results were so-so. While the ratings were fairly high in response to the question about being proud to work for a famous and well-known brand, the results were poor regarding levels of personal engagement, and also low regarding a sense that the company leadership was open, accessible and communicative.

Many respondents claimed there was a lack of communication between the higher levels and the lower levels in the company. The survey revealed that many people in the company felt like they were left in the dark, out of the loop.

One of the participants in the survey commented anonymously, “Now what are the executives going to do about the lack of engagement around here?”

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

It Starts with Choice
There is a simple truth about people who become great leaders. They step up. It doesn’t start at the top. You can’t sit around and wait for the culture to change, or the engagement to start magically happening. You have to make it happen. It starts with you and your own personal attitudes and behaviors.

Yes, it is true that your manager often defines the personality of the company for you. You experience the company through the quality of your relationship with your boss. And it’s also true that the greatest attractor of outside talent is great managers.

But this doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to be accountable, and to be as present as you can in your work. Each of us must accept responsibility for our own “engagement.” A manager only creates the circumstances and the opportunity for you to do your best work.

Make it Easy on Yourself
The expression “activation energy” was coined 150 years ago by a chemist. The terms refers to the minimal amount of energy required to stimulate an interaction between available reactants. Make things easy on yourself. If you want to start jogging more, lay our your gear and your shoes by the bedside before you go to sleep. That way, it will be right there staring at your in the morning. And if you’ve been wanting to become a better public speaker, block off time on your calendar that will alert you to focus on that activity for just thirty minutes.

When you make things easier to begin, you lower the amount of energy it takes to get started. And if it takes less energy to get started, you are more likely to do it.

“Turns out it’s not where, but what you think, that really matters.”
– Dave Matthews

Not Where, But What You Think
Hip workplaces and free cafeterias are cool, but ultimately it’s not where – but what – we think, and how we behave, that matters. I recently had an interview with Paul Hiltz, CEO of Springfield Medical Center. The staff of two different hospital systems came together and moved into a brand new five hundred million dollar state-of-the-art facility in Springfield, Ohio.

Thinking perhaps the new building was somehow inspirational to the staff, I asked him what role the new facility played in helping to bring about high levels of engagement and patient focus. He explained that the new hospital, equipment, and facilities were all very nice, and definitely increased their ability to effectively treat patients, but it was not a big player in the developing the collaboration and camaraderie of the staff.

In his opinion, the facilities are a nice-to-have advantage in their work, but the deep and meaningful team collaboration and heightened patient care came from conscientious work of the staff and leadership, it didn’t come from simply working in a fancy building.

When we point fingers at the management, or the CEO, or this crappy workplace, we are placing blame on people and circumstances. To begin a path to engagement, fulfillment and effectiveness, we have to own our own engagement.

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Shawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, and the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

The Small Rituals of Great Teams

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In our house if the coffee isn’t ready by the time my wife leaves to teach, her mojo is off for the whole morning.

I’m sure lack of caffeine is part of the problem, but it’s only half of the story. Another meaningful part of the process is the brewing of the coffee, the pouring of the coffee, stirring the half and half in her favorite mug, in just the right quantity, and sipping the coffee on the drive to school. It’s the ritual of the coffee that is equally as valuable as the taste and the caffeine.

Rituals performed in groups can be even more powerful. When we take time as a team, to savor moments or engage in rituals before events we can greatly affect the outcomes. For example, simply taking time to share a toast before a sip of wine, will make make the wine taste better to everyone.

According to researcher Kathleen Vohs, the principal reason is because the ritual forces everyone to be very present in the moment. Another form of savoring is when we close our eyes while listening to music we enjoy. By intentionally closing one type of sense, we are opening and accentuating another.

These are small examples of savoring experiences, which involve taking time to appreciate and amplify the small moments of life such that they become more powerful and meaningful. Families are the most basic and essential teams in our lives. And building positive rituals in our families can have immense impact. According to author Bruce Feiler:

“A recent wave of research shows that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, and develop eating disorders. Additional research found that children who enjoy family meals have larger vocabularies, better manners, healthier diets, and higher self-esteem.”
– Bruce Feiler

Sports teams innately understand the power of rituals. Consider the awesome and fear-inducing Haka performed by the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Team before every game. This powerful expression of native dance not only reinforces their heritage and cohesiveness as a team, but also channels any pre-game anxiety into unified energy and focus. In this instance, the Haka ritual also acts as a social glue to bind the team together.

You can easily build rituals into your professional team culture as well. Here’s an simple example for your weekly or monthly team meetings. Often these meetings involve the same people. And often the more junior participants speak less while the boss speaks more, which is exactly opposite to what a healthy culture looks like. Healthy, participative teams want ideas and insight from everyone at the table.

Here’s the idea from Paulo Guenzi’s book Leading Teams. Tell everyone in advance of the meeting that if they don’t participate and share their best ideas, they could get a yellow card as a warning. If they get a red card after two warnings, they aren’t permitted to attend the meeting next week. Don’t be too worried that people will intentionally get a red card to leave the meeting. It’s not likely people will actively seek negative reinforcement to get themselves kicked out.

What’s more likely to happen is that you will begin to develop a team meeting culture in which everyone is encouraged to bring forth their best ideas. Good luck!

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Shawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, and the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Nobody Else Knows What They Are Doing Either

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“I don’t belong here. I have no idea what I’m doing. They’re going to figure out I’m a fraud.”

Have you ever believed you are not deserving or worried people will reveal you as a fraud? Have you ever thought someone else could do your job better, or thought you got that bonus or promotion by luck?

Have you ever been in a hurry to leave before someone finds out you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?

Olivia Fox Cabane teaches at Stanford. Each year, she asks her incoming group of freshman this question: “How many of you in here feel that you are the one mistake that the admissions committee made?” Each year, over two-thirds of the students raise their hands.

It’s human nature to compare. In any given situation we often look around and make comparisons. And these comparisons make us feel inadequate. We know that the less we focus on comparisons, the happier we will feel about ourselves, but we can’t help ourselves anyway. Someone else is smarter, prettier, funnier.

impostor-graph

Dr. Margaret Chan, Chief of the World Health Organization, once said, “There are an awful lot of people out there who think I’m an expert. How do these people believe all this about me? I’m so much aware of all the things I don’t know.”

The immensely talented and brilliant Maya Angelou authored 11 books in her lifetime. She once said, “but each time, I think ‘Uh-oh. They’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.”

Kate Winslet won an Academy Award for her role in Titanic. After receiving the award, she said, “I’d wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and think, ‘I can’t do this. I’m a fraud.’”

“Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.”

The interesting thing about Imposter Syndrome is that the more successful you become, the greater the likelihood of encountering more bouts of self-doubt. The reason is because as you enjoy greater and greater success, you encounter increasingly successful people for you to compare yourself against. Here’s the secret: They don’t know what the hell they are doing either. They’re just winging it too.

Social media doesn’t help. We all get to see the happier, more beautiful side of everyone else online, instead of the moments of doubt, sleeplessness, and insecurity. Sure, they know something about something, which is what got them there in the first place. But when under the influence of a self-doubt attack, you begin to believe those around you must be brilliant.

Try to remember these truths: You do deserve to be here. It wasn’t luck. It was your tenacity and hard work. Ambition is a good thing. Strive for more. It’s OK to ask. And stop comparing, it’s self-defeating.

You are a better version of you than anyone else.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

Your “Smartphone” May Be Dumbing Down Your Conversations

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“People who had conversations in the absence of mobile devices reported higher levels of empathetic concern.”
– Shalini Misra

American adults are consuming over 11 hours of digital media daily. Keep in mind we are only awake 16 to 17 hours a day.

It’s been steadily increasing over the years for American kids too. Today, on average, kids are spending over 7 hours immersed in “entertainment” screen time. And that’s outside of the screen time they may have at school working on computers doing homework or school-related activities.

It’s true that sometimes it’s nice to sit together at a coffee shop and absently chitchat about nothing while we scroll through our devices. Together, yet apart. But more often, we all want our conversations to be meaningful, connected, deep, expressive, honest, intentional, substantial, and empathetic. New research demonstrates that even the mere presence of a smartphone, in our hands or just sitting on the table between us, detracts from the quality of the conversation.

That’s right, even if we don’t actively look at it, the simple presence of a smartphone detracts from the quality of the conversation. Simply the anticipation of a text or alert distracts us from meaningful interaction.

In a recent study, researchers Shalini Misra and her colleagues asked 100 pairs of students to spend just 10 minutes talking about either a casual, light topic or alternately a deeper, more meaningful topic.

Meanwhile an observing researcher nearby noted the amount of non-verbal behavior and the amount of eye contact. After the conversation took place, the observer asked questions related to the quality of the conversation itself. Participants were asked to qualify their “feelings of interpersonal connectedness” and “empathic concern” they experienced during the conversation. Questions included “I felt I could really trust my conversation partner” and “To what extent did your conversation partner make an effort to understand your thoughts and feelings?”

The results were clear: “If either participant placed a mobile communication device on the table, or held it in their hand, during the course of the 10-minute conversation, the quality of the conversation was rated to be less fulfilling.”

“Mobile phones hold symbolic meaning in advanced technological societies. In their presence, people have the constant urge to seek out information, check for communication, and direct their thoughts to other people and worlds.”

While the use of devices and technology to allow people to communicate digitally increase, face-to-face interaction decreases.

Meet William Powers. A digital lifetime ago back in 2008, Bill Powers and his family decided to reclaim their lives from their devices. He, his wife and now 17-year-old son were increasingly spending their evenings and weekends facing away from each other and spending hours deeply entranced by their screens, instead of each other.

They are certainly no Luddites. Bill is a researcher and journalist, and his wife is a novelist, so they both spend long hours at their computers, researching and writing. They are also both keenly aware that the internet and their ability to connect digitally grants them the freedom to work at home, and make a living because of the information and connectedness they enjoy from the internet.

But they were also spending less and less time simply talking with one another, and instead texting and emailing each other from across the house. They were spending less and less time taking walks, enjoying the outdoors, and spending meaningful time with one another.

For the past 7 years, their family practices something they call “selected disconnection.” Each weekend they have an Internet Sabbath. Starting late Friday evening until Sunday evening, they turn off the WiFi in their house, and their smartphones, and their computers, and they disconnect digitally.

When they first started the experiment, Bill said, “It almost had an existential feeling of, ‘I don’t know who I am with the Internet gone.’ But after a few months it hardened into a habit and we all began to realize we were gaining a lot from it.”

Ok, so maybe the thought of totally disconnecting for two days is terrifying or unrealistic. Start with just an hour, or two. Then if you think it’s a meaningful exercise for you or your family, turn it into a whole evening. Worst case scenario is you all learn something. And that’s a good thing.

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Shawn Hunter is the author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Four Actions That Will Truly Motivate You

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What drives you at work? Is it the quarterly bonus? Is it simple praise and recognition from your colleagues and boss?

Maybe it’s a sense that your colleagues have your back, that you’ll get the support and resources you need in your work. Wait, maybe it’s a clear sense of direction and goals, that your team knows where the heck it’s going. Or maybe it’s a sense that day by day, you are making measurable progress in work that is meaningful to you.

I asked that multiple choice question last week to a room full of executives at a leadership retreat. No one budged. They knew it was a trick question. It’s a trick question because organizations have to get all of these factors right. Without fair pay, there is a deep sense of inequity and loyalty erosion. Without clear goals, people feel adrift and without purposeful direction. Without praise, people feel neglected.

But one factor outweighs the rest. Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile and her colleague Steven Kramer analyzed 12,000 diary entries from 238 employees in 7 companies to come to the qualified conclusion that the most valuable work motivator is a sense that we are making progress in work that is meaningful to us. When you signed up to run that marathon, you definitely had a clear goal in mind, but it was the daily grind of making incremental progress that kept you going. That quarterly bonus is nice, but it’s not going to make you stay.

When Amabile and her colleagues conducted that research about five years ago, only 5% of leaders surveyed understood that meaningful progress is our most powerful motivator. I interviewed Ms. Amabile when her book came out, and she said her goal is to tip that figure over 50%.

It’s important to point out that while praise, incentives, equitable pay, interpersonal support, and clear goals are all important, they are also all extrinsic motivators. These motivators come from the outside, from someone else. A sense of satisfaction in making progress in meaningful work is an intrinsic motivator, it’s a sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from within.

“Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”
– Jim Collins

Creating a sense of meaningful progress is something that’s within our control. It doesn’t require external validation or reward. Here are a few ways to stoke your sense of meaningful progress:

Express creativity: Go ahead, add a flourish. Put your signature on it. Make it your own. When you dig a little deeper and put your own creative accent on a project or situation, you will take personal pride and ownership of it. It becomes meaningful to you personally.

Revitalize dormant relationships: Nothing is so marvelous as gaining new insights from old friends to fuel your efforts. When you take time to proactively reach out to those people in your work and life whom you haven’t connected with in a while, it revitalizes both of you. Because while you probably have a rich history you can catch up on, you can also share your ideas and projects over the past year and accelerate each other’s work.

Assume leadership: Take responsibility. Step up. Assuming leadership can be terrifying. You may feel scrutinized, uncertain, and out of your element. And that’s a good thing. Pushing yourself to the edges of your capacity in leading meetings, projects, and interactions will help you grow as a leader. Just remember that people are cheering for you. It may feel like you are being evaluated and dissected, but the truth is most people in the world assume best intentions, are grateful you stepped in to lead, and are cheering for the success of you and the whole project.

Be of service: Remember, the other motivators must come from the outside, from someone else. Your most powerful motivator comes from within, so the real question to constantly be asking is not what can I gain, but what can I contribute. Not what can I get, but what can I give. Not how is this person hurting or even helping my goals, but rather how can I help this person achieve their goals.

Above all, avoid comparisons. If you wish to be smarter than anyone else, then you never will be, because someone will always have more degrees, accolades and a higher Mensa score than you. And if the goal is to be rich, you will forever feel poor. And if the goal is fame you need only look to the Kardashians to agree there is no amount of personal disclosure to keep up with them.

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Shawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

We See the Company Through the Lens of Who We Work For

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Whatever industry you are in, you have competition. The only thing that differentiates you from anyone else in the long term is the people inside the company.

I recently started a new business building beautiful eLearning courses specifically so thought-leaders, authors and speakers could scale their minds. I thought it was unique, one-of-a-kind. I thought no one had ever thought of this idea. Of course I was wrong.

I only had to start talking about our new company and service to someone in the industry, and sure enough they would say to me, “Oh, that sounds a little like so and so. Have you heard of them?” And it’s true, we do have competition, but our secret sauce is our people.

And the bigger and more successful your business is, the more likely you are to have competition. You probably have a slightly different product, slightly different pricing, and maybe slightly different service. But ultimately what makes your brand X different from brand Y is the people in the company.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Generation Y is expected to keep their jobs for just two years, only about half the amount of time spent in professional jobs by the current American worker. According to Experience.com, seventy per cent of recent college graduates reported leaving their first job within two years. “For millennials, it is more a matter of career exploration than climbing the traditional ladder,” said Emily He, CMO of the talent management company SABA.

But why do they quit? According to a new survey by Ernst & Young of 9,700 full-time employees in the world’s big eight economies – the United States, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, China and Japan – the top three reasons are:

  1. Stagnant wage growth
  2. Lack of career development opportunities
  3. Excessive overtime and inability to escape work

But the data suggests that retaining top talent is more complicated than simply giving aggressive pay raises, installing ping pong tables, or offering to pay for night classes. The entire system is creating stressful environments around the clock. From the time we wake up to check email at our bedside smartphone, to marathon meetings, lack of sleep, and “finding time for me,” professionals today are under more duress than ever before.

Consider, almost half (46%) of managers globally are working more than 40 hours a week. Millennials (64%) and Gen X (68%) have the highest levels of spouses working full time as well – doubling the stress of balancing home and child obligations.

Almost 70% of Millennials and Gen X claimed that “getting enough sleep,” “finding time for me.” and “balancing work and home life” were becoming problematic. And it’s not just the American white collar worker. According to the study, things are even worse in Brazil, India, UK, Japan, and Germany.

I had an interview with Tom DiDonato, Chief Human Resources Officer at Lear Corporation. He says it takes constant tweaking, and adjusting. He says there is no magic formula for balancing pay, flexibility, special benefits, supporting educational opportunities, or early-release Fridays.

He says there is only one secret weapon to attracting and retaining top talent.

“Ultimately people view the company through the lens of the person they work for. They don’t say ‘I work for Company XYZ, and even though my boss, and their boss aren’t role models for me, I really love the company.’ I doubt you will ever hear that…

If you view your boss as a role model, you probably think really well of the company. I believe that to my core. That’s the one thing you don’t have to tweak… keep getting great leaders. Keep developing great leaders. Keep having those people in your company that others view as role models, and you’ll have that sustainable culture that attracts the kind of talent that everybody is vying for.”

Grow the greatest leaders from the inside, and the strongest talent will come knocking to work for them.

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Shawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Who is Doing What? The Secret of Great Teams.

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skydivers

The crew of the USS Vincennes was particularly edgy that morning. Early in the morning hours, one of the Vincennes helicopters had been deployed to investigate some boats trafficking in their area of the Persian Gulf. The helicopter pilot reported receiving small arms fire from the boats. Captain Rogers retaliated by firing upon the small vessels, which heightened the tension in the darkened “Combat Information Center,” a small war room inside the USS Vincennes lit up with control panels and computer screens. Much of war these days is done staring at computer screens.

On the morning of July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes was stationed in Iranian waters and captained by William Rogers. The Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser had been hastily deployed from San Diego, CA only a month earlier and rushed to the Persian Gulf to increase security. It had also been outfitted with the new state-of-the art Aegis surveillance system. More on that later.

Meanwhile, at 10:17am Iran Flight 655, a civilian Airbus carrying 290 passengers and crew, took off from Bandar Abbas Airport to fly a short 25 minute flight across the Strait of Hormuz and land in Dubai. Many of the civilians on board were making a sacred journey to Mecca.

Shortly thereafter, tacticians on board the Vincennes started tracking flight 655 as it approached their location. At that moment, the sophisticated Aegis surveillance system provided a critical piece of misinformation. Even though the airliner was accurately broadcasting an identifier as Mode III, or civilian, the system falsely identified the Airbus as instead Mode II, a military combat F-14, a plane more than two-thirds smaller.

The second error was human. A tactician monitoring the plane’s approach toward them incorrectly stated that the plane was descending toward the Vincennes, possibly as an act of aggression, when in fact the plane was ascending to a cruising altitude of 14,000 feet. Strangely, the fancy system was not designed to provide information on changes in altitude, so to compute altitude changes of aircraft being monitored operators had to “compare data taken at different times and make the calculation in their heads, on scratch pads, or on a calculator — and all this during combat.”

Captain Rogers radioed the nearby friendly frigate USS Sides Captain Robert Hattan, and asked him to confirm what they identified as an approaching F-14. Captain Hattan disagreed. All operators and monitoring systems on board the USS Sides correctly identified the airplane as a commercial jet ascending, not descending, in a standard commercial flightpath.

Captain Rogers listened to the conflicting identification coming from the USS Sides, and decided that the superior technology and monitoring system of the Aegis outclassed the information from the USS Sides. The fancy Aegis technology gave Rogers a superior sense of confidence, and the willingness to disregard Captain’s Hattan’s warning.

At 10:24am that morning Captain William Rogers ordered two missiles to be deployed. One hit the airliner which killed all 290 passengers on board. The USS Sides and crew were later awarded a Meritorious Commendation for “outstanding service, heroic deeds, or valorous actions,” in part, for their efforts to dissuade the attack.

“Cooperation increases when the roles of individual team members are sharply defined yet the team is given latitude on how to achieve the task.”
– Tammy Erickson, Harvard Business School

There are many mitigating human factors, technology factors, and situational factors. There were lengthy congressional hearings and investigations. But let me point out just one decision-making factor that contributed to this disaster. Team performance and team decision-making can often be flawed, particularly under pressure situations, when there is lack of role clarity. Had the two crews built redundancies or decision-making processes to question or confirm the information from different angles, the disaster might have been avoided.

It’s hip to talk about flattening companies, destroying hierarchies, and that large-scale holacracy experiment going on over at Zappos. But here’s the thing: whatever the team situation, or project you’re trying to solve, role clarity is critical. You don’t necessarily need a “boss” but you do need a decision-making process, and you need understood roles of expertise on each team.

It’s true on soccer teams, and it’s true on high-performing expert teams like media crews or Emergency Response Teams. And certainly true of those ad-hoc innovation teams that come together in your company to be the “Voice of the Customer” or whatever you may call it.

I had an interview with Tammy Erickson of Harvard, and regarding teams she said role clarity was often the most overlooked characteristic in building high-performing teams. Often the team, or the boss, makes the assumption that if they put super talented people together, they will change the world.

They will, but only if they know who is doing what.

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outthink_book_coverShawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Does Your Company Have a Mental Dress Code?

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conformity

Bafflegab
noun, North American, informal
Meaning: incomprehensible or pretentious language, especially bureaucratic jargon.
“the smooth chairman had elevated bafflegab to an art form”

If we took a time machine back to the 1990s and visited American corporate culture, in addition to wide ties and blocky cell phones, we would also see the Apple Newton in action, and fax machines widely in use. There was the Netscape IPO of 1995, Japan was the king of semiconductors, and the NASDAQ tipped over 1000.

We would also find people talking differently. They didn’t use the word “business model” widely. That term wouldn’t make it’s way out of MBA classes for a few more years, and people were still largely thought of as resources to be applied against goals, objectives and strategies. According to Harvard business historian Nancy Koehn, people weren’t talking about “energy” or “passion” or “purpose” in the way we do today.

Language certainly matters a great deal. The words we use when interacting with one another say a great deal about what we believe and value. But I’ll argue that repetition and overuse of insider language can balloon into an enormous crutch. It’s the reason business bingo exists.

In the 1980s, Pacific Bell publicly abandoned a failed $40 million “leadership development” effort based on the work of former aspiring-mystic-turned-management-consultant Charles Krone. The training program attempted to get everyone in the organization to adopt new, and often fantastical, language to gain efficiency and speed.

During this expensive and failed experiment of confusion and lost productivity, “task cycle” was an invented term to describe a system of managing a problem. Even the word “interaction” had it’s own impenetrable 39-word definition that employees had to understand.

Pushing people to speak and interact all the same way is the equivalent of enforcing a mental dress code.

There are plenty of annoying popular business phrases out there. “Let’s not try to boil the ocean” means let’s not waste time on something that will take forever. Rowing to Australia would take a long time too, but we don’t say that. Incidentally, the expression “boil the ocean” supposedly came from the humorist Will Rogers when asked how we should deal with German U-Boats during WWI. His answer was to simply boil the ocean, and added that the details of how to do that are up to someone else.

“Out of pocket” sounds silly. It means unavailable. The original intent was to explain a reimbursable expense, as in the cost came out of my pocket. Lord knows how this became reinterpreted to mean I will be unavailable. I searched and searched and found no satisfactory answer.

“Over the wall” needs to be canned too. It means to send something, like a document or a proposal, to a client or a vendor. But metaphorically it’s alienating. The expression suggests we’re dealing with someone foreign, even hostile. Why does it need to be a wall?

“Low-hanging fruit” came out of 1980s restructuring at General Electric. Peter Drucker had been hired by Jack Welch in the early 1980s to help get GE out of a down-cycle (damn, I did it myself!), and they worked together to try to remove corporate jargon from the conversation. Ironically, along the way they created more new terms in an attempt to destroy the old language. In addition to “low-hanging fruit,” that exercise also brought us the terms “rattlers” (meaning obvious problems) and pythons (meaning bloated bureaucracy).

“Burning platform” conjures images of Gandalf and the dragon Bairog fighting over a crumbling bridge above a cauldron of fire. Stop it. Try using the word “urgent” instead.

It goes on and on. Let’s keep this one: “ducks in a row.” I like that one. It’s cute. It comes from the days of pre-automated bowling alleys when humans had to place the bowling pins upright.

Whatever the common bafflegap in your organization, I encourage you to simply your language. If the expression needs explanation to anyone outside your company, you should probably slow down on use of it.

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outthink_book_coverShawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Your Sleep is Your Secret Weapon. All-Nighters Don’t Scale.

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Captain Joseph Hazelwood was the centerpiece of the Exxon Valdez spill. He was allegedly drunk and incapable of operating the oil tanker competently. But evidence later revealed Hazelwood wasn’t even at the helm at the time the ship struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. In fact, he was asleep in his bunk and had left third mate Gregory Cousins at the helm. Cousins, along with most of the crew, was deeply sleep deprived. Recent layoffs and overtime scheduling had left the crew exhausted.

Testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board revealed First Mate Cousins had been awake for “at least 18 hours” prior to the impact on Bligh Reef.

chernobyl-nuclear-radiation-110420-02Many experts believe Chernobyl to be the worst nuclear accident in history. 81 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine, Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986 after workers spent the day attempting routine maintenance procedures to adhere to safety guidelines. Two explosions in quick succession blew the nuclear plant apart killing two workers instantly. Over the following hours more died due to acute radiation sickness. While the official count is 28 deaths due to the incident, experts believe thousands were impacted. The site and surrounding area will uninhabitable by humans for 20,000 years. Reports show workers had been at their stations for 13 hours or more prior to the explosion.

Forty-six year old William Rockefeller says he “nodded off” as the train he was piloting entered a 30mph turn at over 80mph, promptly derailed and nearly shot into the Hudson River.

The latest sought-after company perk turns out to be the forty-hour work week.

Having been lost for the last few years in the always-on digital leash economy, many companies are bringing back the old-fashioned forty-hour work week. The latest of company culture changes is a focus on limiting the amount of hours people are expected to work. The Center for Creative Leadership recently did a study recently showing that professionals with Smartphones (like, everyone) are connected to their work up to 18 hours a day, often checking their email during the night.

Ryan Sanders co-founded a staffing company called BambooHR about five years ago. Tired (literally) of the go-go workaholic mentality he saw in the 1990s, his company now enforces a 40-hour work week. That’s right, they have specific policies to enforce 40-hour weeks. If you are still at your desk at 5:30pm Ryan will probably visit you and ask what’s up. But if your work problem persists, you could be fired. One of his software developers nearly lost her job after putting in a few 60 to 70 hour weeks.

And it’s not just small start-ups. Big organizations are following suit, recognizing that sleep and health precedes quality work. Volkswagen has turned off employee email when their work hours end. The gesture was blunt and direct. To avoid employees constantly checking their smartphones, Volkswagen simply turned them off. Goldman Sachs has turned to hiring junior analysts not as temporary contractors any longer, but as full time employees to indicate their faith in a long-term relationship.

The reason is clear: when you are exhausted your work quality detoriorates and your decision-making ability falls off a cliff. There’s a reason why sleep-deprivation is a form of torture. Psychological effects include hallucination, disorientation, recklessness, over-optimism, apathy, lethargy, and even social withdrawal. There is clear empirical data showing that health-care professionals make a higher number of errors when sleep-deprived.

NTSA estimates up to 100,000 traffic accidents occur annually due to fatigue. Turn it off. Shut it down. It’s not as urgent as you might think. And your sleep will be a better performance-booster than poring through spreadsheets until 11pm again. Or as Russ Cohn, CEO and serial entrepreneur likes to say, “All-nighters don’t scale. Just because you’ve done two or ten all-nighters, it doesn’t make it a sustainable strategy for growth.”

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outthink_book_coverShawn Hunter is the Founder of Mindscaling and author of Out•Think: How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes. It’s about how to lead joyfully in life, and also to lead cultures in your company to drive great results.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com