Do it Like Zorro – Control Your Circle

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Wall Street today was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis yesterday. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones.
– New York Times, Oct 30, 1929

You might expect that at that moment in 1929, and again in 2008, sleep-deprived, anxious bankers worked tirelessly to arrest the stock market free-fall. And yet, more often, sleep-deprived anxious bankers sat in paralyzed hypnosis as the crisis unfolded before them. Not because they were unable to do anything about it, but instead were drawn into a state of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is that point at which we feel we are utterly unable to make a difference no matter what we do. We have to start by controlling/influencing what we know we can – which often means the lowest denominator.

Here is a lesson from Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. Consider the story of Zorro in which early on we find our hapless hero, Alejandro Murrieta who is drinking and raging quietly against Captain Harrison Love who has killed his brother, and feeling totally helpless to take his vengeance. Zorro introduces him to the Master’s Wheel and advises, “This is called a training circle, a master’s wheel. This circle will be your world, your whole life. Until I tell you otherwise, there is nothing outside of it.” He teaches Alejandro to first control only what comes within his circle and by the end of the story the new Zorro is swinging from chandeliers and handling twenty men in battle.

In 2011, remember to focus first on what you can control. Your circle will widen.

Learn from Positive Deviants

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On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, at age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. In her own words, she was “tired of giving in.”

As a popular Zen Buddhist story goes:
Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk accross because of a puddle of water. The elder of the two monks went up to a her lifted her in his alms and left her on the other side of the road, and continued his way to the monastery.

In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said, “Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman.”
The elder monk answered “yes, brother”.
Then the younger monk asks again, “But then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside?”
The elder monk smiled at him and told him ” I left her on the other side of the road, but you are still carrying her.”

What common dogmas are you abiding by? In our world, our work, our life, we commonly see others, and ourselves, abiding by principles and ideas we take for granted, for truth. Yet some of these ideas we intuit naturally that they don’t seem quite right. Some of these ideas may be unchallenged, but our conscious knows. Choose carefully, but if you have a better idea contrary to collective beliefs and ideals, act on them and see who follows. If you persevere with resolve and conviction, the truth with out.

Positive deviance is a bottom-up, not top-down, approach to innovation that systemically recognizes people doing innovative behaviors and adopting them for universal use. Consider the story of Jasper Palmer, a transport medical worker at Albert Einstein Medical Center, who noticed that the gowns and gloves he and other staff wore while moving patients infected with a virulent Staphylococcus virus were overwhelming the hospital’s trash cans. The piles of discarded attire spilled out of disposal bins onto the floor, contaminating surrounding surfaces. So Mr. Palmer devised his own method: He took off his gown, rolled it up into the size of a baseball, and pulled his gloves over it to contain it in a tight package. This simple innovative behavior then became taught and part of the common behavior of all medical technicians.

“Positive deviance uses a process of interviews to highlight these people’s solutions and spread them throughout the community. Rather than imposing externally defined best practices, as is common in many quality-improvement initiatives, it generates solutions from within.” – Curt Lindberg, Chief Learning and Science Officer at the Plexus Institute

Don’t go it alone. Give Trust.

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“I don’t care how talented you are, if you cannot work as part of a team, you cannot reach ultimate success.  With a talented team that wants to work together, you can accomplish anything.  I have taken very talented smart people who did not play on a team and shown them the door.” – Joe Tucci, CEO EMC

The temptation is great to take over the process, assignment, or whatever task, and either lead or wholly do it yourself, knowing with self-confidence that if you do it, it’ll get done ‘right.’  Or at least the way you want it done. And maybe you will accomplish that specific task to your satisfaction. But at what expense? If you are responsible for working with multiple people and projects, your myopic diversion means you aren’t spending time and energy in what matters strategically, and then of course – what message does that send about trust?  Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote an entire book about the intersection of confidence and trust, and in it, she examines what the winning teams have in common (trust and respect), and what short-lived winning teams have (Prima Donas or luck).

In my experience both as an entrepreneur and lead collaborator, if any project hits the rails it’s either because of my own lack of communication, or lack of support and follow-through, not because the people I trusted where incapable or unwilling.  Here’s what I suggest (and Julie Gebauer and Dan Lowman back it up with the numbers in their book.)

  • Show the entire picture. Imbue Purpose: No one ever cares for perceived make-work activities that they feel have no relevance or value in the major game plan.  Explain why the task matters in the whole story and people will feel part of something larger and important.
  • See it through: Check in regularly with a little “how can I help” attitude which conveys that you didn’t just check out and expect that a package will arrive on deadline day.  Yes, set clear deliverable expectations, but stay with it and convey the attitude that everyone is on board to support and reassure success.
  • Don’t take over:  When watching the project unfold, resist any urge to jump in with a “I’ll just do it myself” attitude.  That don’t fly.  This is a key part of the give-trust equation.
  • Roll up your sleeves: When checking in on progress, find points of inflection and challenge and offer solutions that you are willing to contribute to.  Then do it.  Play your part.  As Terri Kelly, CEO of W.L. Gore says “No one may commit another.”  Communicate that this is as much your deal as theirs.
  • Bring in the resources: This is an opportunity to reach deep into your own network – internal or external – to bring talent and expertise that can aid the solution.  But be careful not to over-engineer.  If you are at, say, a design point, then tap a graphic artist who can aid just enough to allow the team champion to leverage that talent and bring the project to completion.  Don’t make it about the sourcing in such a way as to hijack the project.  That sounds to anyone like, “Well, looks like you couldn’t do it.  I guess we’ll bring in a pro now.  Thanks for your efforts thus far.” Remember, you trusted them as the pro.  Treat them like a pro and give ownership to the project.

In Julie Gebauer and Dan Lowman’s book, Closing the Engagement Gap, they show an internal EMC study demonstrating 93% of EMC people enjoy working with their coworkers.  Since this is true at EMC and elsewhere, facilitate and enable, but dear friends, please don’t get all Prima donna about it.

Your Carbon Strategy is a Market Opportunity

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We recently had the opportunity to film Andy Hoffman, at the University of Michigan Ross School of Management, regarding market opportunities in a carbon-constrained world.  He frames the discussion in a purely apolitical manner – regulation is emerging at the state, federal and international levels that will dictate corporate carbon emissions; the question for you is: do you want to merely react to this shift in the market environment, or do you want to proactively build the next-generation corporate and product innovations that will put you on the leading edge?  Put another way: do you want to be exploiting the opportunities in this pending market shift, or scrambling to catch up?

Historically many people have had a tree-hugger notion of save-the-planet fringe activists asking us to recycle, reduce, reuse and encouraging costly regulation.  Andy asks us to instead, “Think of climate change as a market shift, one that will create both winners and losers. Changes in regulation coupled with shifts in consumer, investor, and energy will change the competitive landscape. How will you innovate to respond to this shifting landscape? ”  He frames the discussion in strictly business terms.

Consider Tom Friedman’s argument that regulation can be an incredible competitive advantage.  If you are a U.S. based multi-national corporation employing the best and brightest engineers, programmers, architects and technical professionals, you want the bar raised. You want your product innovation to be setting the standard in your market, and you want the barriers to entry to be increasingly higher to provide your company with a competitive advantage.  In fact, that bar is already being raised around the world and US business needs the right incentives to keep up.  Make no mistake, we want market innovation wherever it comes from but if you are a market-leader, you want to be defining the baseline to entry in the market

Coaching: It’s not about you

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goldsmith3.jpgEffective coaching isn’t complicated, and mostly it isn’t about you. According to Marshall Goldsmith, the key to effective coaching is more about asking the right questions than providing answers. Since people only change if they want to, the most valuable thing you can do as a leader is to pose the right kinds of questions to help people identify their own behaviors they want to change, which can often provide the incentive necessary for them to start a change process. Of all of these, this has got to be the most powerful: “If you were your coach, what would you suggest for you?” Enjoy!

Marshall Goldsmith Live June 26: Life is good!

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Our live interactive webcast on June 26 with Marshall Goldsmith was a fantastic success! We broadcast this event live and interactive to organizations internationally by webcast, satellite and videoconference and the response thus far has been universally positive.

He covered material based on his new best-selling book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and showed participants how to use his proven coaching techniques for behavioral change. He explained why it can be so challenging for successful people to change – including the key beliefs they have about themselves and the behaviors that hold them back.

Some of the initial responses included:

“I enjoyed the speaker, he was very direct and did not sugar coat the subject matter…the direct approach seems to be lacking in a lot of training and management these days.”

“Mr. Goldsmith was great. Very unique and useful approach to being successful

“As usual Marshall is informative, to the point, and very entertaining.”

In the control room at Magno Sound and Video in NYC, we had the skilled direction of Dave Walzer and Katie Moran managing the constant emails and questions coming in. In fact, the volume was so great we didn’t have a chance to pose all questions live during the presentation.

Later I shared these unanswered questions with Marshall and to our delight he personally answered all questions submitted!