The key steps for transforming your organization

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At any given time I am typically involved in several transformational initiatives around the world. Some are local in nature, and others are global. Some are very complex and others more straightforward.

The goals and context of each transformational initiative can also be different:

  • Some are going through major organizational restructuring and they want their people to accept and own these changes quickly.
  • Some want to grow their market share from #5 to #4, or even to #1.
  • Others feel their cultural values, spirit and pride have deteriorated and they want to ignite and energize their workforce again.

The dictionary defines transformation as:  A thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.

All successful transformational initiatives take the organization or team from one state to another.

For example:

From a culture of cynicism, resignation and discouragement – to a culture of enthusiasm, passion, high energy, and pride.

From teams working in siloes, hiding and looking out for themselves – to a dynamic of genuine cross-function alignment, collaboration, trust and sense of “we are in this together”.

From people blaming others when there are issues and behaving like victims who can’t make a difference – to a state in which everyone feels empowered to think and behave as courageous owners who take risks and do the right thing.

So, what are the key principles and steps that must be in place for any transformation to succeed?

Step one – Own the need for change.

Every change has to start at the top!

So, if you want to succeed make sure that your leaders own the need for change. This includes the leaders acknowledging what has worked and what hasn’t worked about the organization – and also what has worked and what hasn’t worked about the leaders themselves.

Step two – Build your leadership team as a high performance team that can lead a bold transformation.

Leading a transformation effort is not an easy mission.  In fact, things often get worse before they get better.  So, the top team has to be ready to climb this mountain. The senior leaders have to be prepared to stay the course.

Step three – Create a bold strategy that is BOTH truly transformational, AND that every leadership team member owns with 100% commitment and accountability.

You need a bold strategy for the transformation effort in order to be clear on where you are going and what success looks like. If you articulate a clear vision and strategy you will be able to engage others in your bold journey. However, if your leaders don’t fully own the strategy, they can’t expect others to do the same.

Step four – Get the middle managers to co-own and co-lead the transformation.

The middle managers are a critical link in the transformation chain – because they sit between the strategy and its execution.

If the managers are on-board they will go out of their way to break down silos and drive a new level of cross-functional collaboration. But, if they are not… they’ll play along and say all the right things. But they’ll find subtle ways to undermine the effort…AND…they’ll be the first to blame others and say, “we told you so…”

Step five – Get the employees on-board.

When you have the leadership team and managers genuinely on-board you will start seeing a tipping point.

Getting the employees on-board is much easier, because all the employees want is to do a great job and be part of something great. They don’t want to be stuck in silos or be pawns in political games that are often imposed by their managers and leaders.

Step six – Align your key stakeholders and customers with your transformation.

When the entire team is on the same page, you will want to start aligning your interactions, partnerships, collaborations and expectations with your stakeholders and customers.

Step seven – Execute and stay the course.

Now that you have all the pieces in place it is all about execution, staying the course, addressing obstacles and pursuing opportunities – with discipline – consistent with your new future.

If you execute step seven well and stay the course, you will create a new state. As the dictionary defined it: A thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.

And, this new state will begin to have a life of its own, or what I call: Irreversible Momentum.

Buckle up!

Are you dreaming big enough?

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Most teams approach strategy development by looking in their rear-view mirror.

Starting from their present reality, they review their past successes and shortfalls. They analyze their capabilities and means. And, based on that analysis they project their expectations into the future – typically coming up with ‘best case’, ‘worst case’, and ‘most likely case’ scenarios.

Sometimes teams benchmark other companies in order to understand industry standards so that they know how high to aim. Benchmarking is often a limiting exercise, as it is merely another way to shape your aspirations based on the past – this time another company’s past.

There is nothing wrong with this approach if your business is mature, predictable or you are operating in a status quo pace. However, if you want to take your business to a new level and achieve much bolder results – this approach will not suffice.

When Kennedy declared in May 1961 that the USA would put a man on the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade, many people around him were very skeptical because most of the crucial technologies and organizational structures necessary to achieve his bold vision and strategy did not exist.

However, Kennedy’s future-based vision and strategy brought about a new stream of events and priorities, that ultimately enabled the USA to fulfill his bold vision and strategy.

The way Kennedy approached strategy is much more powerful and compelling than the way most companies and teams approach strategy. He went straight to describing the future state he was committing to in a very simple, clear and powerful way: ‘Man on the moon and back safely by the end of the decade’.

He did not look to the past to determine if his vision was feasible. In fact, after consulting with Vice President Johnson, NASA Administrator James Webb, and other officials, he concluded that landing an American on the Moon would be a very challenging technological feat.

But Kennedy didn’t approach his declaration casually. He didn’t put it out there and then stand aside to see if it would work. Instead, he marshaled his resources to pursue his dream, fulfill it and prove his vision right!

And as we all know, the Man on the Moon story had a happy ending, as Kennedy’s goal was achieved on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Luna Module’s ladder and onto the Moon’s surface.

Create your vision

You can use the same approach as Kennedy used to create your own team or personal vision.

Start the vision development by placing yourself in a future time. Then, from that place, articulate the outcomes and future state that you are committed to. Then think your way back from that future state to the present, in order to create your milestones and execution plan.

So often teams try to derive realistic objectives by running numbers and trying to foresee all the circumstances that could affect their outcome. I strongly advise against that!

Make sure your strategy development exercise is not merely an accounting exercise, informed by a bit of leadership. In fact, do it the opposite way. Make sure your exercise is a leadership exercise, informed by a bit of accounting.

The accounting part helps you bring some realism, feasibility, confidence and believability to your bold future vision. When Kennedy promised the Moon, even though the key technologies did not exist, he was encouraged by the fact that the USA was leading the global space exploration race.

However, if your goal is predicated too much on accounting assumptions, this will diminish your ambition to the mere predicable. And, if your goal becomes too realistic and doable, it will lose the exciting thrill and adventurous feeling associated with taking on something that has never been done before.

In addition, if your vision is conditional upon certain predictions and assumptions, the minute these circumstances evolve and these assumptions change the entire vision could become invalid.

I have had the chance to help teams and individuals generate bold strategies for many years. I have seen a great number of them achieve extraordinary results beyond their expectations this way.

People always emerged from this exercise extremely energized, with high levels of ownership and commitment every time.

You should try it within your own team and in your own life!

Are you a narcissistic leader?

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I was speaking to a senior executive of a global technology company about leadership. During our conversation, he made an intriguing declaration: “I’d rather be a dwarf that manages giants, than a giant that manages dwarfs”.

It was obvious to me that he was referring to the difference between narcissistic leaders who always take the credit, seek the limelight and who remain the stars of the show under all circumstances, versus leaders who view their role as an opportunity to empower, promote, recognize and elevate the people around them.

I liked the senior executive’s proclamation because it was powerful, simple, catchy and relevant to many leaders and executives. I have come across and worked with many narcissistic leaders. While every leader is different, there are similarities among them.

Here are a few examples:

  1. They always have to be “the star”.
    They don’t like to share the limelight, elevate others and overall enable others around them to become too powerful, influential or great. In fact, they seem to be threatened by others shining and they get quite upset when others play too much of a dominant role.
  2. They don’t trust and empower others very naturally or effectively.
    When there are challenges, their first reaction is often to step in and take control, rather than trust and delegate. They tend to divide and conquer, rather than build a cohesive team to rely on.
  3. They don’t communicate very clearly and directly, especially around uncomfortable topics.
    They shy away from conflict or having straight conversations. They don’t bring clarity and closure to issues. When they are frustrated with someone they tend to engage in back channel talk, rather than face the issues head-on. And, often, when they believe that they have communicated clearly and directly regarding an uncomfortable topic, those with whom they have communicated were left confused, uncertain and with a different message.
  4. They are erratic, inconsistent and unreliable in their reactions and behaviors.
    They are often late to meetings; everyone else arrives on time and have to wait, sometimes for hours. They constantly make last-minute unannounced changes to schedule and meetings with no apparent regard for the impact on others. And, they often make decisions that have a significant impact on others out of impulse and emotion, which they later regret and reverse.
  5. They don’t really create a genuine and effective environment of accountability.
    They preach accountability, say all the right slogans but they don’t establish clear and specific objectives and expectations with their people. They also don’t manage and hold people to account for their commitments and deliverables.
  6. They know best and are not very open to feedback, criticism, and coaching.
    They avoid conversation in which criticism could be forthcoming and they are defensive when criticism is given.
  7. They blame others and circumstances for failures, and take the credit for all successes.
    In fact, they love to talk about their own successes, but they avoid talking about failures and they definitely don’t like to take responsibility for the negative impact of their behaviors on others.

If you are not sure if you are a narcissistic leader, assess yourself against these seven characteristics. Or even better, ask yourself:

“How do people around me see and experience me?”

Other people may view you differently than you view yourself. Try to understand their experience – you may find it eye-opening and enlightening.

If you want to improve in this area and become a more empowering leader here are a few practical principles and tips that may be of help:

  1. Be a big person – Give the credit to others when there are successes.
  2. Be responsible – Take the responsibility on yourself when there are failures.
  3. Be generous – Recognize, acknowledge and praise people around you every day.
  4. Be respectful – Recognize people in public and criticize them in private.
  5. Be empowering– Make sure every conversation and interaction you have with others, no matter what the topic, leaves them more energized, focused and empowered.
  6. Be trusting – Make sure your people have clear objectives and expectations that they own and then let them implement their objectives in their own way.
  7. Be reliable – Keep your promises, commitments and timelines, no matter how small or big, with no excuses, just like you expect others to do.
  8. Be a role model – Model everything you want others to do, and treat others exactly the way you want them to treat you.

Do Senior Leaders have the courage to confront and own their shortfalls?

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If you want to elevate your team to a new level of ownership, accountability and performance you have to start by taking stock of, and owning your current reality and past.

You have to confront what worked, what didn’t work and what still isn’t working. Sometimes, you even have to take responsibility for things that happened before you arrived.

Why is this important?

Because when you are honest and own your past it is easier to put it behind you. You can then create the space for a powerful new chapter, unlimited by past constraints.

If you focus too much on the things that worked, you can easily get comfortable, complacent and/or arrogant, and that could limit your ability to do new things and improve on what is working.

If you avoid looking at your past, you won’t learn the lessons that it has to offer and you can easily repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Obviously, it’s easier for leaders to take responsibility for the good things. In fact, many leaders don’t like to review the things that haven’t worked, especially if they feel issues and shortfalls are associated with them in some way.

In fact, many leaders don’t like to review the things that haven’t worked, especially if they feel issues and shortfalls are associated with them in some way.

Take, for example, one leader who was promoted to the highest position in their global function after being the number two for many years. Being a global support function inside a sales organization, this function struggled for many years with its credibility and reputation. Its customers didn’t feel the function was providing the value and impact they wanted. As a result team members felt criticized, under-valued and demotivated. In fact, many managers and employees in the function also felt that their senior management was too caught up in silo and political games, instead of providing the team with a powerful direction, priorities, support and air coverage to do a good job.

When the new leader took the job, everyone was hoping for change. But, first people wanted an opportunity to express their frustrations about the past, including feedback about the new leader. They wanted to be heard. They wanted the new leader to listen and acknowledge what hadn’t worked.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the leader was unwilling to hear criticism about himself or past performance or the dynamic of the function, which he felt was being associated with him.

Another very senior executive in a different global company, also head of a global function, avoided and prohibited any discussion about past failures with her team. Team members wanted desperately to bring up, acknowledge and address the political issues that had held this function back from being world class for so long. However, their boss wouldn’t hear of it. When team members attempted to bring up past issues or criticism, in meetings, in order to move beyond them, she would shut down the conversation.

When I asked her why she was doing that she said: “Discussing our past ailments and failures only brings our past back and this prevents us from moving forward.”

I see the same types of mindset and dynamics in so many teams. In fact, I have seen several cases leaders avoided entering a much-needed change initiative just because of their fear of confronting their shortfalls.

So, why is it so hard for leaders to deal with the past?

Most leaders either don’t know how to confront past issues in a productive way. Like our first example, many leaders simply take the bad stuff too personally.

And, like our second leader, many leaders feel that if they don’t bring bad issues up it makes them go away. This is not true! In fact, when you are honest and own your past, it’s easier to put it behind you. Then you can create a space for a powerful new chapter, unlimited by past constraints.

If you are defensive about the past or avoid it or try to build a new future on top of it, the undercurrent will keep dragging you down. And, even if you are able to produce great results, it will usually come with people collateral damage.

Of course, I also have examples of senior leaders who are genuinely open and interested in confronting and taking ownership of past issues and shortfalls, including their own. In my experience, these leaders have generated much greater results with much higher motivation and sense of fulfillment in their teams.

You would think that the most senior leaders would be the most mature and self-confident, therefore they would be less threatened by criticism and more open and prepared to hear it. But, unfortunately experience has shown me that it’s often not the case. Senior leaders are often less open to embrace and admit mistakes, or take responsibility for things that they did or didn’t do that caused others to suffer.

Do you have the courage to confront and own past shortfalls?

 

 

 

Who are you inspired by?

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I was debriefing a session with the CEO of a European division of a global technology company. Just before we parted ways, the CEO, who through our work together had also become a friend, turned to me and asked me a seemingly simple question:

“Who are you inspired by?”

Knowing that we were going to meet again the following day he added, “Don’t answer now. Sleep on it and let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

My first inclination was to quickly rattle off a list of people and be done with it. However, being the perfectionist that I am, I couldn’t leave it at that. In addition, I liked that the CEO’s question made me dig deeper, so I thought it would be a relevant blog topic.

Over the course of our lives, we are touched and inspired by many people, in many ways and at many levels. People come into our life, sometimes they stay with us for a long time; however, sometimes we are inspired and touched by people with whom we have short encounters.

There are people that we enjoy spending time with, people who make us happy, people who help us when we are in need, and people who teach us useful professional and personal lessons. And while we are grateful for these relationships, encounters, and lessons, not all the people who contribute to us along the way also inspire and touch us profoundly.

The people who truly inspire us leave a monumental mark on our character, energy, outlook and behavior. They stimulate us to break barriers and do things we have wanted to do but have never dared to do before. And, they make us more enthusiastic, courageous and optimistic. In fact, I believe we can often associate specific qualities, values and achievements in our life with the people who inspired us to take these on.

In the book The Celestine Prophecy, there is a passage that reads: Whenever people cross our paths, there is always a message for us. Chance encounters do not exist. But how we respond to these encounters determines whether we’re able to receive the message. If we have a conversation with someone who crosses our path and we do not see a message pertaining to our current questions, it does not mean there was no message. It means we missed it for some reason…”

We all have abundant opportunities in every phase of our life to be inspired by others around us. We just have to open our hearts to living an inspired life.

Here are a few examples of whom I have been inspired by:

At the top of my list are my parents– both extremely sharp, charismatic, disciplined and intellectual artists whose unique qualities made a profound difference in who I am today.

My father, who I am blessed to still have in my life, taught me at a very early age that, “the early bird catches the worm…” That lesson shaped my personal and professional work ethic and discipline from thereon.

My mom, who passed away a few years ago, trained me to have a keen eye for quality, design, and esthetic. She made me an artist at heart. My obsession with being excellent is from her.

My wife, Na’ama, who I have had the fortune to share my life with for the last 36 years, has inspired me and made me a better person, over and over again, in more ways than I could describe. She has inspired me to be more generous, open-minded, authentic, optimistic, courageous, and confident.

Lastly, my clients inspire me all the time. Their courage to stand for their vision, fully express themselves, take risks, lead and inspire others around them, and allow others, (including yours truly), to contribute and inspire them, inspires me every day. My clients’ confidence and trust in me, as well as the genuine partnership and friendship they have allowed me to build with them, has touched me deeply, inspired me, and made me feel very blessed.

Many people have inspired me over my life and continue to inspire me all the time. I can’t possibly recognize all or most of them here.

Now it’s your turn. Ask yourself, “Who am I inspired by?”

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

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Are you a boss or manager?

A close friend sent me this chart:

I see this chart as outlining some of the differences between leaders and managers. There is such a significant difference between the two. Here are some of my thoughts:

Managers manage and focus on the existing reality. Leaders always look forward and think about how to create new realities.

I often hear managers brag about how their team’s performance is the best in the region or group. Leaders, on the other hand, seem to care less about how to reach the top of the current scale. They seem to be more interested in how to put their teams at the bottom of the next-level scale.

Managers ask for permission, while leaders ask for forgiveness. Managers tend to be more hesitant about taking initiative and doing things that haven’t been done before. Leaders tend to be more comfortable making bolder decisions and overall their tolerance for taking risk is higher.

Leaders seem to always stand in the bigger picture and destination. They are concerned with the question “Where do we need to get to?” while managers are constantly looking for “What do we need to do?”

  • Managers strive to drive discipline, consistency, and order. They are often afraid to shake things. However, leaders promote and expect disruptive thinking and productive chaos that shakes things.
  • Compliance is very important to managers because they see it as the route to efficiency. For leaders, compliance is the enemy. The most powerful leaders I know constantly look for how to inspire ownership and commitment in their people.
  • Compliance always promotes an environment of fear. Ownership and commitment inspire courage and innovation.
  • Managers drive things through their authority. Leaders drive things through their personality and charisma. Even when they have the authority to mandate things, leaders choose the path of inspiring and enlisting their people in their vision.

While there is a significant difference between the orientation, demeanor, energy, qualities, and skills of leaders and managers, both are required to make things work. Both have a key role in achieving the best outcomes. And both need to work very closely to complement each other.

In the most powerful teams that I have seen, the leaders facilitated the creation of a bold vision and they inspired everyone to get on board and own them. Managers helped them to turn their bold visions into realities and results.

Unfortunately, too often I see managers playing the roles of leaders. They stifle their team’s energy, innovation, and success.

I also see leaders who don’t empower and use their managers wisely and effectively. Things don’t get done, people don’t see progress, and over time, they get frustrated and discouraged.

When you have clarity and harmony between the two, you can form the best teams who can drive the greatest change, progress, and accomplishments.

So, are you a leader or manager?

The Five Myths of Strategic Planning: Part Two

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Henry Mintzberg, in his seminal 1993 book The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, refers to strategic planning as an “oxymoron,” claiming “the process can straitjacket an organization by stifling innovation and commitment.”

In my last blog, I shared the first three of five myths that undermine most leaders’ effectiveness at generating powerful strategies and creating the ownership and accountability of their teams toward their execution. Here are the remaining two:

Myth #4: Size Matters

The typical strategic planning process is an exclusive affair. Executives often believe that the fewer people who are involved in the process, the easier it will be. As such, they often limit participation to a small group of business unit heads and/or the strategy development group.

But putting together the strategic planning team is not a matter of finding the perfect group size — it’s about gathering together the right people.

In order to create the most powerful strategy with the strongest sense of ownership and accountability for execution, you must include both those individuals who have the best expertise about where the organization needs to go and the people who are going to support and implement the agreed upon direction and objectives.

While some impatient executives might see this broader inclusion, for example of support functions, as slowing things down, slower in this case is faster – since doing things right from the start saves time, money, and prevents having to do it all, all over again when people are paying lip-service to the execution down the road.

Myth #5: Communication Creates Commitment

Town halls, road shows, all-hands meetings, and webinars are all popular vehicles for spreading the word and gaining buy-in once the strategic plan has been crafted. Most senior executives will tout these communication efforts as a critical step in helping the organization understand what the strategy means, and what role each person plays in bringing it to fruition.

But while these types of events can generate a significant amount of energy and excitement, they also contain serious pitfalls that can lead to cynicism rather than commitment.

One of these pitfalls is the mistaken belief that staff are empty vessels, just waiting for the word from above about where the company is headed and what they should be doing to help it get there.

Far from being empty, people are already full. Full with frustrations and disappointments about what executives have said they were going to do in the past and what they actually did. Full from promises made and not kept, and full from accepting requests to get involved in a company strategy and then being ignored when times got tough.

Employees who have been around have little time— or tolerance — for fanfare and hype. What employees want to know is that their bosses understand, and are committed to addressing, the challenges they face in putting a strategy in place.

For example: If staff communicate that a certain supervisor is a tyrant, will management listen and hold that person accountable for demonstrating the values they are promoting? If systems are broken or inadequate, will management hear the impact that this has on staff and make the proper investment to set things right? If staff are caught in the crossfire of feuding bosses, will the leaders of the company leave them to their warring factions or let them know political gamesmanship won’t be tolerated?

Only by listening to what the staff are saying, with both their words and behaviors, will leaders become aware of and able to address the issues that are preventing them from embracing the strategic objectives management is asking them to pursue. When this type of listening happens, and action is taken, commitment to the strategic plan follows suit.

Strategic planning is not an accounting and forecasting exercise; it’s not an offsite spent in a room hashing out who’s willing to go along with what, and it’s not a well-written bunch of words put to paper and placed in a binder. It is a living, breathing, organic leadership action. It requires not a calculator, but the courage and conviction to inspire everyone to be their best and get on the same page.

As Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola famously said:

“The first step in making a good movie is getting everyone involved to be making the same movie.”

Photo by: Michael Cardus

The Five Myths of Strategic Planning: Part One

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Every year, executives around the world go through the time-honored tradition known as strategic planning. They emerge from days or weeks of meetings with a sacred document that — if adhered to — will increase their sales, make their services shine, engage their staffs and secure their futures. Well, that’s the story they tell us in business school anyway.But unfortunately – as Professor Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School and his associate, David Norton of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative tell us – as much as 90 percent of all corporate strategies fall short of stated objectives.

From many years of experience helping global executive teams generate a clear and compelling direction for their organizations, I have observed several key misunderstandings that lead to wishful, wasteful, or less-than-worthwhile strategic planning efforts and outcomes. In the next two blogs, I want to share five myths that undermine most leaders’ effectiveness at generating powerful strategies and creating the ownership and accountability of their teams toward their execution:

Myth #1: Content is King

Most executives believe that if you get the content of your strategy right, the success of that strategy is a foregone conclusion. They assume that the substance of the strategy must be composed of realistic objectives based on the most accurate and valid information. In many organizations, this belief leads to “analysis paralysis”

What goes unrecognized and unaddressed is that no strategy can ever be right or reasonable enough to account for all the events that might emerge on the road to its fulfillment. Therefore, perfect content, as a path to success, is an illusion and leads to an increasing investment of resources in the pursuit of the one true strategy that will win the day.

In reality, any strategy is only as good as people’s ownership and commitment to its fulfillment. Even the most accurate and well-crafted plan will fail if people don’t own it and take accountability for delivering it.

Myth #2: Predicting the future is key

Most executives create their strategic plans by looking at their rearview mirror. They determine their future goals by benchmarking and analyzing their own, as well as others’, historical performance and trends.

In today’s rapidly changing technological, consumption, and economical environments, this approach can be risky as no one has a crystal ball, and no one knows what the future will bring. So, the more you try to predict the future by analyzing the past, the more you are likely to merely repeat past cycles and trends.

Of course, you need a healthy understanding and respect for the past. However as Alan Kay, ex-Apple Fellow, said, “The only way to predict the future is to create it.”

The most powerful strategies are informed by the past, but more strongly influenced by future thinking. This means a team envisions the future, takes a stand, and commits to a direction and destination as a responsible, plausible, and calculated risk. Then everyone commits to that destination – not because it is perfectly accurate, but because they believe it is the right future to pursue.

Myth #3: Consensus Equals Success

In the eyes of many leaders, the ultimate “buy-in” prize for a strategic plan is reaching consensus. The belief behind this myth is that as long as everyone feels pretty good about the plan, and has no strong objections, that’s about the best that can be hoped for, especially in a diverse system.

But the problem with a consensus-oriented approach is that it requires settling for the lowest common denominator everyone can agree with, rather than striving for solutions that challenge current thinking.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it quite elegantly: “To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.”

Consensus is way too low of a bar for the fulfillment of any strategic plan that requires substantive organizational change. It leads to compliance at best.

To generate this commitment, executives need to set the bar at the higher level of alignment. To reach alignment requires putting people’s concerns, doubts, uncertainties, and water cooler conversations on the table so they can be dealt with out in the open.

Alignment is achieved when people leave the strategy discussions fully on board with whatever decision the group has reached, with no “Plan B,” no pocket vetoes, and no reservations about fully investing themselves in pursuing the agreed upon direction.

Taking a stand ALWAYS requires courage

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No matter how committed we are to living courageously, and how experienced we are at taking a stand for the future and living accordingly, it doesn’t seem to get easier or less scary with time.

I have been a student and teacher of these concepts and conversations for more than 30 years. I practice them in my own personal and professional life, and I teach and coach others to do the same. Still, with all my experience, every time I need to take a stand in my life, I find myself confronting my own fears, doubts and skepticisms.

It takes openness, faith, trust and courage to live consistently with your stand and commitment.

Openness to the idea that our internal mindset and commitment really do affect, impact and shape our external world and circumstances.

Most people don’t reach this level of enlightenment. They are too skeptical, pragmatic or close-minded to even consider or accept the notion that there is more to life than what they can physically see. Whether it is Religion, Astrology, or the Law of Attraction, I often hear smart and successful people reject these by saying things like, “I don’t believe in that Voodoo, BS or Nonsense stuff…”

Faith and trust in your own ability to take your life to a new level, starting with a bold stand. Also, have faith and trust that the universe will reciprocate consistently with your commitment and energy.

Even when people believe in the Law of Attraction notion, many don’t believe that it could work for them – that their life could ever be as blissful as they truly desire. So, they maintain a conceptual, theoretical and academic mindset about these transformational topics. I often hear people give others ‘taking the next level’ advice when they themselves avoid doing the same, even though they desperately want and need to.

Courage to take a stand for what you want and bet your future on that stand – even when your current circumstances are quite different from your desired state, and people around you may judge you for being naïve and unrealistic.

Most people, despite what they may say to the contrary, are too comfortable in their personal and professional status quo. They may talk about change, but most don’t get up and do something about it, even when their circumstances are challenging, unfulfilling and dissatisfying. They are too afraid to take a stand and ‘go for it’ for risk of failing, disappointing themselves or others, or simply appearing naive or not credible in the eyes of people around them who they respect and like.

There is a big difference between “wanting to change” and actually “changing.” Most of us are much better at the first.

We are creatures of habit. We like continuity, stability, familiarity, and predictability. We need it to feel confident and safe. We fear change and the unknown.

Taking a stand for a better future brings about change, unknown and unpredictable directions, and dynamics. This is counter-intuitive to our ‘keep things the same’ orientation. It disrupts our order and fundamentally scares us.

That is why taking a stand will ALWAYS require courage.

Photo by: The U.S. Army

 

How to make meaningful progress when taking your game to the next level

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If you want to be successful at taking your game to the next level, you have to be conscious of how you think and what comes out of your mouth.

I was leading a meeting recently with a telecom management team that had taken on a bold commitment to take their team’s leadership and performance to a higher level.  This was a good team that had been performing well. However, the changes in their markets, customers, and technologies were requiring them to think, innovate, and perform at a different level.

They were about three months into their transformation process and, in this meeting, we were reviewing their progress.

One by one, the leaders shared their views. One of the leaders summarized: “We are making progress, but not enough!” Everyone nodded their heads in agreement. People added: “We need to bring more energy, courage, innovation, collaboration, and change to the game.”

I asked them “Why are you not making enough progress?” “Why are you not bringing the level of energy, courage, innovation, collaboration, and change that you know you need?”

Their responses were things to the tune of: “It’s because of the holidays,” “It’s because of the year end,” “It’s because of the wider changes that are taking place in our company,” “We are doing quite well, so there’s not a lot of opportunities for big improvements,” and “It just takes time to make progress.”

So many teams and people, when taking on new levels of game, fall into the same traps of blaming their circumstances for their lack of progress and talking about their transformation in ways that undermine what they are trying to achieve.

If you want to avoid these pitfalls and make significant progress in taking your game to the next level, follow these principles:

  1. Take 100% ownership for your progress or lack thereof. Give up blaming your circumstances for not making enough progress or for not bringing enough energy, courage, innovation and/or collaboration to the game. Always relate to what you have or don’t have as your own doing.
  2. Promise clear results that require you to rise to the occasion. People bring high energy, courage and innovation to the game when they have promised specific results that are important to them, that require high energy, courage, and innovation. For example: one of the leaders stated that the people are not yet seeing any change in this leadership team. So, the team took on a promise that by our next meeting, three months later, their employees would notice a new level of energy, courage, innovation, and collaboration coming from the team. By promising this new state, the leaders now had an obligation to step up their leadership and performance in order to deliver.
  3. Focus on the areas of gap and opportunity, not how great you are. One of the biggest impediments to transformation is when people feel threatened or invalidated by acknowledging deficits and gaps. When discussing progress, I often hear people say things like: “We were already good at this.” If you are already good at something you will not be compelled to improve it. Even the greatest teams and people can find “next level” gaps, deficits and opportunities for improvement. Focusing on these does not invalidate your greatness.
  4. Avoid using phrases like: “We should do X” or “We have to do more of Y.” People simply don’t do what they “should” or “have to.” Either promise that you “Will do X” or don’t expect to see progress in the area you are talking about.
  5. Go out of your way to prove the validity of your commitment. When teams are driving significant change, team members often remain skeptical throughout the process. They adopt the “let’s see if this works” point of view. This mindset is understandable, but not powerful. If you want to be most effective, be clear about the future state you want, be all-in and trust your journey, no matter what ups-and-downs you encounter along the way. Don’t check if it works. Prove that it works.
  6. Collect as much evidence for progress as you can. Transforming a team to the next level is never about perfection. The focus should be driving as much progress as possible. In the realm of progress, everything counts – big, medium and small wins. And, being public about them is key. So identify, acknowledge and celebrate all of them. The more you identify areas of progress, the more it gives you appetite to find more. So, make it your priority to collect as many areas of progress as possible.

At the end of the meeting, the leaders took on a new perspective. They stopped accepting the reality: “We are making progress BUT not enough” and took on a commitment to cause a new genuine state: “We are excited about the progress we are making.”

This seems a simple shift, but it is very powerful. It is also a future worthy of proving right!

Photo by: Richard Potts

Why Are Leaders So Afraid of Change?

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It’s common for organizations and teams to undergo changes in leadership or structure.

This typically happens when organizations make cuts in their workforce, when they spinoff businesses or functions, or when they merge with, or acquire new businesses or functions into their portfolio.

Change also takes place when a new leader is brought from outside to lead the team, or when an internal member of the leadership team is promoted to become the new leader or CEO of the group.

These types of events always provide leaders with opportunities to create a new chapter and new beginnings, which is a very good thing.

I think most people would agree that it doesn’t really work to simply jump from one chapter to another without a proper transition phase. The transition doesn’t have to be long. However, organizations and teams need the chance to bring closure and completion to how they’ve done things in the previous chapter before they can fully start the next chapter of doing something in a new or different way.

The bigger the change, the bigger and more important the transition phase. Those who underestimate this often find themselves carrying forward old baggage from one initiative, chapter or relationship to the next. As a result they often repeat the same mistakes and fall into the same traps and dysfunctional dynamics.

In organizations, people refer to the management of transitioning between phases as “Change Management.” Unfortunately, most organizations and teams are not good at this.

Leaders have an essential role in leading their organization through the transition between the old and the new.

What is the role of the leaders?

Please click here to read the rest of this article which I recently published in Entrepreneur.com about what is the role of leaders in change and why most leaders are afraid of change and their role in driving it?

Photo via Entrepreneur article