Are you a micromanager?

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Employee performance is directly linked to their sense of ownership, commitment, and accountability for the success of their organization. Their passion, ownership, commitment, and accountability is reduced when they feel distrusted, disrespected, and/or under-valued by their managers and/or by the senior leadership of their company.

By micromanaging their people, managers generate an environment of compliance and fear, which causes employees to play it safe and “cover their behinds” instead of stepping up and going beyond the call of duty to drive progress, overcome obstacles and pursue opportunities.

Most managers who micromanage their employees suppress their spirit and performance. That in itself is a bad thing. But, it is also the wrong focus. Instead of trying to control their people, managers should be providing leadership and confidence to their team; they should be highlighting their strategic objectives and priorities and inspiring their employees to take them on. They should also be ensuring that their people have the wherewithal to execute and succeed.

In fact, micromanagement puts in motion a destructive vicious circle: The manager relates to his people as uncommitted, incompetent and/or unreliable. The people, in turn, play it safe and don’t take ownership, risk, and accountability. Results suffer. This confirms the manager’s point of view and he continues to micromanage.

Most of the time the issue lies with the manager. Managers who micromanage and control their people do it because of their own insecurity and fear of failure and not because their employees are, in fact, incompetent, uncommitted, or unreliable.

If you think about it, the only time micromanaging can be an effective management strategy is when the manager truly trusts his or her people, AND their people know it. In this condition, people won’t feel belittled and disempowered by their manager’s inspection of their actions and achievement.

If you are a manager (or part of a team) and you want to strike a healthier balance between trusting and inspecting without suppressing your reports or peers, you must put the following building blocks in place and manage them effectively:

  1. Build a team that you genuinely trust in terms of commitment and competency. Use this foundation to establish a dynamic of authentic, honest, and courageous communication within your team.
  2. Communicate and enroll/align your team members around your future vision and objectives. Make sure all your team members clearly understand and are on the same page about your shared future. Make sure they feel genuinely passionate about it, committed to it, and accountable for it.
  3. Orient your team members around results and deliverables rather than tasks and activities. In order to build an environment of real accountability. Accountability can only exist when people publicly promise clear, measurable results, and they expect to be held accountable for them.
  4. Ensure that roles, responsibilities, expectations, and processes are completely clear to all team members. This is to eliminate the chance of ambiguity, confusion, excuses, or the mischief of the popular finger-pointing game.
  5. Put in place a simple and effective mechanism/process for tracking all key commitments, deliverables, and promised results. Make sure to check-in on a monthly and quarterly basis.
  6. Lastly, recognize people who step up in attitude, behavior, performance and/or results. Don’t be stingy or lazy about recognizing the people who step up. If you apply the same passion for recognizing people as you do to micromanaging them, it will help you strike a positive balance.

If someone is not performing up to an agreed-upon standard or expectation, you must be willing to have a straight and honest conversation with them.  This conversation will either need to elevate the individual to a higher level of performance or make it clear that they are not up for the task, and they should be replaced. But, make sure to give people a real opportunity to understand, own, and do something about their poor performance.

If you build a strong team dynamic, where people own the game and communicate in an honest and direct way, you will either not need to micromanage, or if you still continue to inspect on a regular basis, people will not feel intimidated, invalidated or discouraged by it.

Always remember – that in the absence of genuine ownership, commitment, and honest communication, no amount of micromanagement will be effective anyway.

 

Stop Prioritizing and Start Promising!

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You would think that getting your priorities straight would be the answer to the overwhelming, stressful burden of too many commitments, too little time and scarce resources.  Well, you may want to think again!

Setting priorities is definitely a solution, but it isn’t the most powerful and effective one.

You write down everything you are supposed to do, want to do, said you would do and have to do. You then take that list and through some form of screening criteria, rank each in order of importance, sense of opportunity, urgency or obligation. You then tackle each item on your to-do list in order of importance starting with the “A” priorities then, as time and capacity permit, getting to those ranked “B” and “C”.

From a practical content standpoint, this method sounds very clear, logical and effective. However, in reality, things often don’t work out according to our lists. In addition, from a mindset standpoint prioritizing often gets us to compromise and sell-out too easily and quickly. .

Take the following real story (fictional name):

George was a very ambitious, driven and impatient sales manager. He had many things he wanted to achieve in his professional and personal life. In fact, he wanted to achieve everything right away. But he knew it wasn’t realistic, so he made a list of his six commitments and prioritized them from first to last. At the top of his list was to achieve a record sales year with his team, in the middle he had going to the gym at least 3 times a week and at the bottom, he had dating and finding a relationship.

His first priority was all consuming. He worked 80-hour weeks in order to achieve his sales goals and when he got to the weekend he was so exhausted that most of the time he simply couldn’t get himself to go to the gym, never mind going on dates. At first, he was frustrated with his inability to get beyond his first priority to the others. However, as time passed the frustration turned into resignation, apathy, and skepticism. He simply stopped believing that he could have a life beyond achieving his sales goals.

Every time one of his friends or family members would ask why he isn’t exercising or dating he would blame his work for it. In fact, when he would socialize with some of his other professional friends who had the same predicament he had, they would often talk about how “you can’t have a personal life while having a successful career, especially being a successful sales manager.” They all believed that.

In contrast, Kevin, a mid-level lawyer was also very ambitious and driven. He was putting in extreme hours hoping to become a partner. He was completely dedicated to his professional success but, like  George, he wanted a life beyond work.

Prioritizing and Promising are two completely different approaches to achieving your goals. They evoke and compel a significantly different mindset and behavior.

Prioritizing evokes the mindset of “I’ll do my best and if I can’t get to the other priorities it’s because the previous ones took too much of my time and effort…”

Promising evokes the mindset of “I’ll keep my word no matter what. No excuse is acceptable…”

It is much easier to prioritize than to promise. The prioritizing approach has a built-in tolerance and acceptance to excuses, justifications and copouts. That is why when you don’t live up to your commitment it is so easy to say things like: “Something more important came up” or “I didn’t get to it because I was too busy with something else…”  After all, like in George’s story, it is acceptable that if you are so busy in your work you won’t have time to exercise, spend time with your wife or husband and/or kids and do other things that are important to you.

Neither of these approaches guarantees success. However, promising is a much more powerful approach.

It evokes a higher and more authentic mindset of ownership and accountability and it makes you much less determined and limited by circumstances. No matter what circumstances you have to deal with, when you make a promise you tend to not get stopped by these.

Making promises about what you will fulfill in your commitments could be more challenging because you have to be honest with yourself and own the truth about what really is important to you. You have to take a stand and not sell out on it. This requires courage. As my friend’s 8-year-old son said to his dad: “Daddy if I make you a promise, I’m going to keep it.”

I don’t know about you, but if I am going into battle with someone, I want them fully committed, not merely “doing their best…”. You are only going to get that level of relentless commitment from someone who has promised to do something.

No one keeps their promises all the time. Hopefully, we will keep them most of the time. However, there will be times when we won’t. That’s a fact. However, by making explicit promises you carve-out a clear path for action and fulfillment. This reduces the chance for surprises, excuses, and drama, especially when challenges arise.

While the dialogue around priorities is often a one-way street – you decide what your priorities are and you are the one to tell others that “you just couldn’t get to it today” the dialogue of promises by design is a two-way street.

Promises are really only effective if you make them to someone. In fact, if you promise your entire family that you are going to lose a certain number of pounds (weight) in the next 6 months, it’s probably going to be more powerful and effective than if you tell one person or tell no one at all. The minute you make a promise to others you are now tied at the hip. The promise is no longer just your commitment – it becomes our commitment. The success of this project is now our success. The dialogue of promising evokes a much deeper and more powerful dynamic of open, honest, courageous and effective communication, and trust. It also generates a stronger sense of bond, partnership, trust and owning each other’s success with the people you promise to.  A joint approach is more effective and fulfilling than going it alone.

When people have a more earnest relationship with their promises it causes two things.

First, they are much less casual about saying “I promise” than the myriad of ways people add a priority to an already overflowing list. “I’ll do my best”, “Let me see what I can do”, “I’ll get to it as soon as I can”, “I’ll try”, “Leave it with me”, and many other half-hearted statements that fill the conference rooms and corridors of corporations.

Secondly, when people make a promise to do something, and at some point, prior to the time it is due they realize their promise is in jeopardy of not being fulfilled, they are far more likely to reach out to the receiver of that promise and attempt to negotiate – in advance – a mutually agreeable solution. Together people can figure out alternative ways to fulfill the same commitment with new or different promises. This also strengthens the partnership and trust between the promise maker and receiver.

Obviously, if you don’t do what you say repeatedly your credibility and sense of partnership with others are likely to suffer. However, when you keep using the “lower priority” excuse and you assign the blame for not living up to your commitments elsewhere, it will also undermine your own sense of possibilities, ability, and power to make things happen and have the life you want.

The point of prioritizing is not to avoid responsibility and make excuses for the commitments you make, but rather to be more effective at making and keeping commitments. This being the case, making and managing promises, rather than hiding arm’s length behind “not-up-to-me” excuses of “priorities changed” puts us in the driving seat,

Which of these approaches appeals to you most?

 

Are you managing your objectives or are they managing you?

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Aspiring people have personal and professional goals as do most driven teams.

However, having goals is a double-edged sword. Goals could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you relate to them.

Why?

We create goals in order to focus, compel and motivate ourselves and others. If we are ambitious, we typically take on bold and aggressive ones. We don’t stop there; we typically create a detailed execution plan with strategies and milestones.

Then we delve into implementing our goals and it doesn’t take long before we are so immersed in the roller coaster of our day-to-day life that we forget that we are the ones who came up with our goals in the first place.

When we achieve our goals, meet our milestones and/or achieve our plan as we wanted, we feel great. More than that, we believe we are great. Our mood and spirit are uplifted, we feel empowered and invincible.

However, when we fall short or fail to achieve our goals, milestones or plan we tend to feel disappointed, upset, anxious and/or stressed. We often second-guess our ability to achieve future goals, in the same or other areas. We get nervous about how others will view us. We often even make it mean that we will never achieve our vision or that it will never work smoothly for us.

For the most part, our relationship with falling short is not simple or objective; we don’t view it as: “we have failed to achieve a goal”. We make it mean something much bigger: “we are failures”.

Actually, in both success and failure, we tend to have a reactive and undermining relationship. Both leave us smaller than our circumstances, commitments and dreams. If we fail to achieve a goal, we feel a failure. If we achieve our goal, we feel invincible.

In both scenarios, our identity and self-worth are wrapped up in external circumstances. In either scenario, we are only as worthy as our results in relation to our objectives. And, because we created our objectives and then forgot that key fact, we are now prisoners of our own creation.

The only reason for having goals in the first place is in order to empower and inspire us to reach higher grounds. Creating goals that compel us is a powerful act. However, by forgetting, or not owning that we are the creators of such a powerful dynamic, we lose all the power.

Corporations often take the objective game to a whole other level of drama.

I was supporting a regional sales team of a global product and service organization that recently became public. The company was growing steadily due to the sales team achieving their sales objectives each quarter.

Then, toward the end of one-quarter things changed. A few big regional deals that the team was betting on to achieve its goals didn’t go through according to the plan and the region was at risk of missing its sales objective.

The global sales leader called the regional president multiple times urging, even demanding him to do whatever it took to meet his objectives.

The regional account managers started giving excessive discounts, at times giving up all profitability just to move deals forward in order to achieve their objectives.

The region ended up barely achieving their objective. However, no one felt good about it. People felt they did the wrong thing for the wrong reason; they felt the price of the apparent success was too high – giving up profitable business and ravaging the next quarter’s prospects just to cross the line with the objective at hand.

I guess it is easier to give a huge discount to a client, even at the expense of doing the wrong thing for the health of the business, than to have the tough conversation with your colleagues or boss about not allowing objectives to dictate bad behavior.

I recently spoke to the CEO of a different company who took on bold objectives and missed his first milestone. He shared with me that he felt guilty about the high bar he set, because had he not done that his people would have felt happy and successful.

I see this type of unhealthy, reactionary, survival-based behavior around objectives play out all the time in so many companies.

The lesson here is:

  1. All goals, strategies, and plans are made up.
  2. Don’t be a victim of your objectives.
  3. Own the fact that you created them for the purpose of focus and empowerment.
  4. Have the courage to manage your objectives, including saying ‘no’ to them when they are no longer the right way to go.
  5. Most important, don’t let your objectives manage you.

 

Are you afraid to be articulate and clear?

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Would you stay on an airplane that was about to take-off if the pilot said the following as part of their pre-flight announcement:

“This is your captain speaking. We are about to take off, we’re just waiting for the fuel truck to finish refueling us. They had an issue with fuel earlier on, but I am confident they’ll give us enough fuel for our flight… In addition, as you can see the weather isn’t great out there. Nevertheless, we have a strong aircraft that can withstand the storm, let’s just hope we don’t encounter any lightning…”

Would you put your brain, heart, eyes or any part of your body under the knife of a surgeon who came across in your pre-surgery consultation as lacking clarity, rigor, knowledge or confidence?

I don’t believe you would tolerate any level of approximate or vague measures when your life is at stake. You would want absolute clarity, precision, and transparency.

So, why do we tolerate so much vagueness and lack of clear, explicit and rigorous conversations in business?

This may sound strange to you, but one of the reasons teams find it so hard to drive alignment, ownership and effective collaboration in important strategies and plans is because people simply don’t speak plain English.

I don’t mean that people don’t speak the English language. I mean that people in corporations tend to talk about important things in a conceptual, vague, unclear and convoluted corporate language.

To say it politely, there are too many professional slogans, acronyms, and other jargon, shortcut phrases, and noun-type words and too little plain-old direct, explicit and articulate conversations. I see this dynamic all over the globe.

For example, people say things like: ‘We want to be Best in Class‘, but it is hard to tell if that means ‘best among their peers in the industry’, ‘best among other teams in their company’ or ‘much better than they are today’?

Or, people say: “We need to upgrade our talent”, but do they mean to fire the poor performers, hire new people, train everyone, improve specific systems and tools, or all of the above?

Phrases such as: “operational excellence”, “customer excellence” and/or “enablement” what do they mean??! You may jump and say: “I know what these mean!”. However, I assure you that if I asked another 10 people around you they most likely would have 10 different takes.

Everyone assumes that everyone else understands what is said and what it meant. However, more often than not that is completely not the case.

Then everyone goes off to do things in their own way, and then people wonder why not all team members are aligned, on board and owning the strategy and rowing in the same direction.

There is a big difference between plain language and corporate language. The latter is a language of high-level, implicit and vague clarity.

You would think that with so much at stake within the business world people would want to leave nothing to chance. However, experience shows that leaders actually prefer to leave declarations, commitments, promises and expectations at a general and vague level.

It enables them to stay off the hook and eases the pressure of committing to things unequivocally. After all, if you define things too clearly it becomes crystal clear what you’re saying, what you stand for, what you are committing to, and what you are accountable for. But, if you leave things more general it gives you wiggle room, especially when facing adversity.

At the core, it’s not a language issue. It is a commitment issue.

So often when supporting teams in creating their strategic plan I listen to the dialogue and even though I am not an expert in their field I can immediately tell that their inability to converse in plain language is hindering their ability to think, create and articulate thoughts and ideas effectively.

Simply by asking: “So, what do you mean by that?” everyone realizes that different people have different assumptions and interpretations about what is being said and what it could mean.

My questions are often met with a blank stare or a long-winded response, which only further illuminates the lack of clarity. In other times, I get a barrage of different, sometimes even opposing responses from different team members, which again emphasizes the point.

People seem to be so entrenched in the conceptual noun-based language-style used in PowerPoint presentations that they seem unable to move away from this style when conversing and interacting face-to-face.

The typical corporate language is sufficient for perpetuating the ordinary and status quo. However, if you have bolder ambitions in mind of being extraordinary – the ‘best of the best’ and/or taking your game to a new level, you better challenge the vague corporate language norm and start promoting and demanding a new level of simple, straightforward and rigorous dialogue.

 

Can you tell the difference between Statements and Questions?

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I am sure that if I asked you if you can tell the difference between statements and questions you would be offended by the mere question and respond with “Of Course!”

However, based on my experience of working with hundreds of teams in many organizations, I have to tell you that people don’t know the difference between the two.

You would think that people understand that the appropriate and effective thing to do in conversations and meetings is to “Answer questions” and “Acknowledge statements“. However, in reality, most people tend to “Answer statements” and “Acknowledge questions.” To be honest, people often simply “Ignore questions“.

If you want your meetings to take less time, move faster and be much more productive and satisfying follow this seemingly simple rule…

I frequently hear people say, “I’d like to ask a question” and then they go on and on expressing their opinion with no question in sight. At times, when this happens, I stop the person and ask: “So, what is your question?” Typically, everyone cracks up, because they all realize the obvious.

At other times, when a real and clear question is asked, I hear others talk in length without ever answering the question. I often stop the conversation and ask: “Would you please answer the question“, people crack up about that too.

I also frequently hear people say “I would like to respond to what the other person said” as if they are answering an urgent question when no question was asked and even when not responding to someone else’s opinion when no question was asked and when their opinion doesn’t contribute value to the dialogue. People seem to be quite unconscious and reactive in most conversations.

If you want your conversations to be more powerful and effective and your meetings to be shorter, more productive and more enjoyable, start paying attention to these distinctions and adhere to the following four simple common-sense principles:

  1. If someone says, “I’d like to ask a question” and they go on without a question, stop them (politely) and ask “so, what is your question?”
  2. If someone expresses their opinion, at the end of their opening simply say, “Thank you” or “Thank you for sharing” and move on. Do not react to what someone else had said.
  3. If you feel you must express your opinion after someone else’s opinion, simply say: “I would like to build upon what X said” or “I would like to offer another view on the matter.” Don’t react to what someone else has said. There is room in the conversation for more than one opinion or truth.
  4. If someone asks a “yes” or “no” type question – for example: “Do you think we should do this?” or “Do you agree with my view?” just answer with a “yes” or “no”. Hold back your temptation to go on about it. If they ask you to explain or elaborate, then, of course, do so.

 

Don’t let past failures stifle your future success

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It is a well-known fact that most change initiatives outright fail. Most initiatives start with high expectations and hope for a better future, but because of a lack of follow through and staying the course, they end up producing the opposite effect; managers and employees at all levels who are even more skeptical and cynical about any future prospect of change, including their inability to make a difference in shaping a better future.

This is the starting condition of most change initiatives. I see it in most companies.

Take for example the regional senior leadership team of a large global manufacturing company that was operating in a very competitive and commoditized market in which their fixed costs were growing faster than their top line growth.

They had to figure out how to do things differently and work smarter in order to accelerate their revenues while reducing their expenses. This meant a significant transformation in their operating model and mindset about their business.

This company was very successful, and its leadership team members were very seasoned, experienced and smart executives who had been in their jobs for many years. They knew what they had to do. In fact, they had many great ideas about how they could do things differently.

However, because they had seen so many change initiatives come and go without delivering on their promise and hope, it was extremely hard for them to get excited about the new change. They simply couldn’t help but feel extremely skeptical about the likelihood of success.

If you want your change effort to succeed, you have to first free yourself from that notion that if you have failed in the past you are doomed to fail in the future.

You can do that by understanding and taking ownership of why your past change initiatives didn’t work. In most cases, it is because leaders didn’t follow through and stay the course.

You can’t change the past, but you can learn from your past successes, failures, and mistakes. You must be clear about your future aspirations and commitment so that you can be guided by them, and not by past events.

Secondly, you need to manage the mechanical and process aspect of your change. This means, aligning on clear, bold and measurable objectives that define the end-game or what success looks like, breaking them down to mid-course (six-months or annual) milestones and then scheduling a cadence of frequent follow-up meetings to track, inspect and drive your commitment.

You must make this routine the highest priority, keep each follow-up and review meeting religiously, and not delay or cancel these meetings, no matter what.

If you Google “How long does it take to form a new habit or change a habit?” you will get a variety of answers. Most popular seems to be 21 Days.

However, when it comes to forming new practices, rituals and disciplines within a team or organization, it takes much longer.

From my experience as a practitioner – depending of course on the size and complexity of the organization – it takes around a year of staying the course and keeping to your cadence of follow up meetings to integrate your change initiative into your team’s DNA. And, this is considered to be fast.

Last, but not least, you need to drive a mindset of what I call Unconditional Ownership. This means promoting an attitude of “let’s prove that this change will work“, rather than the common default resigned attitude that exists in most teams: “let’s see if the change will work”

The mental attitude is the most important component. In the case of the leadership team described above, they were very good at the discipline of setting goals and metrics, execution and managing process. However, because they carried so much baggage of skepticism and cynicism from the past, it hindered their ability to think outside the box and believe in their power and ability to drive the change they wanted.

You always have a past and a future. The most powerful relationship you could have to them is to be your future and have your past. Or as Mahatma Gandhi put it: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

 

Do you love your job?

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Early in my career, I was facilitating a manager meeting at a manufacturing plant. There were about 100 people in the session and the managers were going around introducing themselves, one-by-one they stood up and shared a few personal things about themselves.

At the far-right corner of the hall sat a supervisor, from simply observing his demeanor and everyone’s attention on him I could tell that he was one of the factory veterans. At his turn, he stood up and introduced himself using the following words:

“My name is Bill. I don’t remember how many years I have been here, but I have 64 months to go!” and he sat down. There was then awkward laughter in the room.

Can you imagine Bill’s mindset as he gets up in the morning and comes to work each day? It seems to me that the definition of his attitude is “Doing Time“.

He probably had a calendar hanging in his locker and every day he would cross off another day until his “release“.

In a different example, I have a client friend that every time he describes his job to me, he refers to it as his “eight-hour inconvenience“. At first, I laughed when I heard his words. However, after hearing them a few times it started to appear quite tragic. I actually started to feel sorry for him.

First of all, no one works eight hours these days. Most of us spend most of our life at work. Second, who wants to come to an ‘eight-hour inconvenience‘. I don’t know about you, but I want my job to be my eight-hour bliss, self-expression, kicking-ass, having fun and making a difference.

Third story… I have a personal friend who every time I ask her how she is doing she gives me the same answer: “The same shit different day…” Painful!

Let’s be real, not everyone loves their job. If you are one of the people who loves their job, consider yourself very lucky and blessed. It’s a privilege.

Some people find their calling and self-expression in their occupation and job. But others don’t. For some people, their job is purely about the salary. They need the job to pay the bills, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Coming to work to pay the bills is a noble and honorable reason to work.

My father in law used to say “No matter what your occupation or job is, any employment honors its employee“.

However, if you want to stay powerful, centered and present at work and not lose yourself, I recommend you adhere to the following principles:

  1. If you love your job, count your blessings, be happy and make the biggest difference you can.
  2. If you don’t love your job make sure you can genuinely choose your job, own your job or at least accept your job.
  3. If you can’t at lease choose, own or accept your job – leave your job and find another job that you can either love or at least choose, own or accept.
  4. Under any circumstances, do not accept or tolerate suffering.

It takes a certain level of numbness to stay at a job you are suffering in.

It’s like when your immune system is weak, the body is susceptive to disease. When you are deadened, you lose your self-expression, joy, creativity, and power. As a result, you are much more susceptive to become cynical, resigned, negative and a resentful victim.

It takes commitment and courage to not accept and buy into resignation, cynicism and the victim mentality.

There are two types of people that you could surround yourself with:

  • Those who are negative and cynical victims, who frequently complain and blame others
  • Those who are not interested in drama and mischief, and always take ownership and look to learn from their successes and failures.

The former will drain your energy and do everything to drag you down with them. The latter will support you to stay centered, strong and true to your greater self.

I am sure you know who to hang out with….

Are you failing often enough?

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Strange question, you may think, and you are probably right. I don’t mean it literally.

However, I am sure you would agree that people who make bolder decisions and choices; people who go for it ‘all out’ tend to have a higher risk of failing. In fact, the bigger you play in any area if you fail you will most likely fail bigger.

In contrast, people who play small and safe tend to avoid failures and if they do their failure is much smaller.

So, perhaps the right question is: “Are you playing big enough?”

What’s big enough? There is no objective definition or metric. Each one of us has to determine that for ourselves.

However, there are a few guiding principles that I would believe most of you would agree to.

  1. Do you have a vision for your life? It doesn’t have to be fancy. It could be any type or level of articulation of your desired future outcomes, commitments, ambitions, desires. Many people don’t have any of that. It takes courage to dream, desire and want. It takes greater courage to declare it in public. By doing so you are positioning yourself in the world as an optimistic, positive and committed person, rather than a resigned, cynical and negative person. As a result of you raising the bar on your brand, people will hold you to a higher standard, they will expect more from you and they will judge you more harshly if you don’t live up to your declarations/commitments.
  2. Are you taking action consistent with your life vision and commitments? My youngest daughter who is studying psychology at university reminded me this week that wanting something is much easier than actually going for it. In fact, she gave me examples of people we know who keep talking about what they want, but they don’t take any actions to pursue it. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy. You could start with small steps in the right direction. In fact, walking before you run is a good strategy. When it comes to action, the direction of your action – ensuring that they come from your commitment – is more important than the quantity or magnitude of your actions – at least in the beginning. It doesn’t take courage to want. It does take courage to take actions.
  3. Are you pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone? Once you have got the basic and psychological needs of the survival pyramid down you could start pushing yourself to perform at a higher level. Eleonora Roosevelt’s quote says it quite eloquently: “Do one thing every day that scares you!” If you are doing something, which takes you out of your comfort zone and your stomach is turning, that is probably a good indication that you are playing big enough.
  4. Are you celebrating your accomplishments and successes? From my experience, people who acknowledge, own and celebrate their accomplishments and successes tend to be more positive, happy, fulfilled, powerful and effective! It makes complete sense if you own your accomplishments and successes you are owning your greatness. You are self-empowering yourself. You are promoting a personal brand of someone that is bigger than their circumstances. As a result, you will strive for more, be more open to taking risks and have more confidence in dealing with obstacles and challenges. If you avoid owning your accomplishments and successes, you are fostering a scarce, circumstantial and small self-brand. Great people accomplish great things. Small people don’t accomplish much.
  5. Are you confronting, owning and learning from your failures? As I stated above, if you play big and go beyond your comfort zone you may fail more often and even bigger. However, if you have the courage to confront, own and learn from your failures falling isn’t that bad. In fact, every failure is the opportunity to learn from your shortfalls, put in the corrections and grow.

You can grow from successes and/or failures. So, perhaps my initial question “Are you failing often enough?” isn’t that farfetched after all.

If you don’t have a clear outcome and someone who owns it, you have nothing!

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I was supporting a group of senior leaders in a global technology company to create breakthrough projects in a few key areas of their business in which they wanted to elevated performance. As a kickoff, I asked each of the project teams to present their ‘Starting Point Status’.

Different projects were at different stages of maturity. However, they all shared a few common mistakes.

One team outlined several initiatives, but it wasn’t clear what was the overarching outcome of their project.  So beyond the individual outcome of each initiative, I couldn’t tell if the initiatives they’d taken on were the right ones for this breakthrough project.

Another team outlined the outcome of their project, but when I asked who was accountable for that overall outcome they stuttered and started to tell me what each project will do and what each function in the company will do to support it. Not what I was asking…

The third project team had a clear outcome and they had outlined the owners of the overall project as well as the different initiatives that supported it. However, when I asked if all the leaders who were listed owned their role and felt passionate about it, they acknowledged that in some cases not and in other cases, they picked leaders by assumption based on their functional role, without talking directly to these people.

All the projects were very strategic to the company as they spanned across multiple functions. In one case, I asked the entire group of senior leaders to share and acknowledge the level of belief, ownership and passionate within the senior team about the project. It became clear quickly that the level was not strong.

The fourth project leader stood up and acknowledged in a heartfelt way that the area they were trying to turn around was an area the company has repeatedly said they wanted to fix but had failed to do so. It wasn’t hard to detect that the same powerful project elements were missing here too.

Generating breakthroughs is both an art and a science.

The art part is people’s personality and style, and their ability to inspire motivation and confidence in others to believe in a bigger cause and follow them to achieve it.

The science part is a few elements that make or break any breakthrough effort.

If you want to structure your projects to achieve breakthrough-results make sure you have the following elements:

  1. An overarching measurable outcome for the project.
  2. A clear and genuine owner for that overarching outcome. You cannot assume this. Someone has to stand up and declare: “You can count on me to ensure this outcome will be achieved!” This doesn’t mean that the project is their problem, or that they have to do everything. In big complex projects, there are multiple people and functions who are involved. But, one leader has to be the driving force.
  3. A passionate belief by all team members in the purpose and importance of the project and in the fact that it can be and will be achieved.

You can view this as the classic “What?” – “Who?” – “Why?”.

People jump to activities and plans too quickly. Why?

Because it is easier to identify activities and plans than it is to confront ownership and commitment.

I have seen elaborate plans be presented so many times. These are often misleading because it appears the team is on top of the project, whilst in reality, they are generating a lot of activities that won’t necessarily hit the mark.

If people don’t wholeheartedly believe in the project, in its purpose and reason for being, as well as in the fact that it can be and will be achieved, you don’t have a strong enough foundation to drive a breakthrough.

And if you don’t have a clear outcome and someone who owns it you have nothing!

 

Take One Little Step…

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One little step stands between being courageous or being a coward. Literally!

The difference between being courageous and being a coward is – Action.

If you are committed to an outcome or direction that is beyond your comfort level and you take action toward it, you are courageous. If you don’t – you are a coward.

If you are committed to an outcome of direction that is beyond your comfort level most likely you will be afraid; you will have anxiety and/or nervousness about your ability to succeed. You will have moments of doubt, second-guessing yourself and even moments in which you will regret having committed to the direction. You will definitely be tempted to buy-in to excuses such as “It’s the wrong time”, “The risks are too high” and the variety of “I am not good enough” justifications. The fear and anxiety aspects are the same whether you are courageous or a coward.

In fact, the essence of courage is to acknowledge and embrace your fear and then go forward in the face of it. To not be stopped by fear. If you didn’t have the fear, you wouldn’t need to be courageous. Fearless people don’t need courage. However, what makes the difference is how you behave when you are afraid; do you take action to fulfill your commitment or not.

I was coaching a manager who unexpectedly lost his job after dedicating 25 years of his life to the company. He needed to work and earn an income, but he believed he was too old and unqualified to find a new job. He was discouraged, and this led to overwhelming hopelessness and desperation, that paralyzed him.

He made some attempts to reach out to people in his network seeking employment opportunities, but after these weren’t fruitful, he stopped trying. In fact, he stopped other things too, like going to the gym and eating well.

When I met him, he wasn’t in good physical and mental shape. However, he was in good enough shape to sincerely want to change.

My conditions for helping him included him going back to exercising at least four times a week and returning to eating well. These were small familiar actions that he could easily take on. I could see a noticeable difference in his energy and outlook within a few days.

We then made a list of contacts and leads and devised a plan whereby he would contact at least one person every day and then call me to share his progress. Within, a week he lined up two job interviews. Needless to say, this boosted his morale significantly. After four weeks he landed a new job.

If you adopt the mantra of “Progress, not perfection” it will empower you to take action.

You can get yourself unstuck from anything by taking small steps of action. Don’t try to take on too much at once, otherwise, you are likely to fall short, get discouraged and fall back into a bad place. Start with small steps of action in the right direction. I know it may not seem enough, but I promise you that small steps will eventually lead to bigger steps. Progress evokes more progress.

The good news is that we all have everything that we need to be courageous and take action. We may convince ourselves and others of all the reasons why we cannot take a small action forward. However, even if our reasons are legitimate, they are never the true cause of not taking action.

Taking action doesn’t guarantee the outcomes you want. However, if you go full out and fall short you will probably feel much better about yourself and your chances to succeed next time than if you fail because you didn’t try much in the first place.

One of my early professional mentors once told me:

“You either have the results you want, or you have the story why not.”

This mindset has stayed with me ever since.

There are two types of players in life: those who are brave and take action, and those who avoid action.

Which of these do you want to be?

 

Are you addicted to your smartphone?

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I spent a few days on the beach in Miami with my wife, and I couldn’t help but be shocked by people’s behavior with their smartphones.

My day started early at the gym with a small handful of exercisers. Even at 7am many of the exercisers were glued to their smartphones for the entire duration of their exercise. People were walking on the treadmill and cycling on the bike while being completely immersed in their smartphone for 90 minutes, without lifting their eyes from it.

At breakfast I saw a few couples and families sitting around the table, everyone with eyes glued to their smartphone as they were eating, with an occasional brief exchange of looks and words.

And, then at the beach, so many people sitting in their beach chairs glued to their smartphones for hours at a time. I even saw a few people walking on the beach holding their smartphones in front of their eyes literally walking and typing. I’m not sure how they managed to watch where they were going.

And then again at the restaurant over dinner, same behaviors.

I don’t know what the official statistics are of daily smartphone usage, but assume it is very high. In fact, I would bet some people spend 60-70 percent of their day glued to their smartphones. And, to be clear, the people I saw were not all teenagers or young adults. Some were clearly in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.

This is our modern, enlightened society.

If modern, enlightened means not being able to put your smartphone down and control your usage, not being able to make eye contact and/or converse with your loved ones, and/or not being able to simply be present in the moment in order to ‘stop and smell the roses’ – then, count me out!

Please don’t get me wrong, I love technology; I depend on it; I can’t imagine being without my computer or my phone for even one day. My entire life is entangled in technology – my personal and business calendars, my food and exercise apps, my immediate and extended family WhatsApp groups, my personal and business contacts, my emails, texts and more…

However, I don’t want to be so consumed by my technology that I am unable to function without constantly glancing at my smartphone. I don’t want to be impatient and anxious to receive the next message; I don’t want to worry that if I go off the grid for an hour or two, I may miss something. I want my technology to be my tool, resource and support mechanism, not my addiction. I want to control my impulses, I don’t want my impulses to control me.

Call me old fashion, but when my kids come over and we spend time together I want us to just be with each other and catch up, without smartphones. The same with my friends. I want to have quality time with my wife without either of us thinking about or looking at our smartphone. I want to exercise and do yoga without being concerned about missing out on something at work while I am nurturing my body and soul.

My wife often challenges me to eat my salad without dressing and to try other foods without sauce or gravy, in order to remember the taste of vegetables, grains, and meats in their natural and pure form. To be honest, I don’t love doing that because I have become used to the taste of meat with honey mustard or fish with Hollandaise.

However, when it comes to my connection and quality time with my wife, kids and loved ones I will do my best to keep our relationships as natural and pure as possible.

 

Stop wasting time in worthless meetings

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I was working with two different organizations that were going through significant growth and change. One company had completed its second acquisition of a large competitor and was in the midst of integrating teams, products and strategies to optimize this significant change and growth.

The other company had done such a great job in their core business of selling machines and hardware that they were expanding their market reach into adjacent areas of software development and consulting. This change required new capabilities, skills, processes and mindset.

Needless to say, in both cases, there were many complex details for the leadership teams to debate, make decisions about and iron out both in their growth and change strategy, as well as in its execution. In both cases, decisions were not being made fast enough.

The leadership teams of both of these companies had a similar routine of holding a weekly call for about 90 minutes each, where leaders, in turn, shared updates on the activities they were working on. These weekly calls were mostly oriented around updates and sharing with little-to-no interaction or debate. In fact, most leaders didn’t find these weekly calls very productive and critical, so throughout the calls, they were busy doing their emails while the call was going on, so they weren’t even paying that much attention to their colleague’s updates to begin with.

Needless to say, these weekly update calls were not the forum where the leaders could debate and dig into the big topics of challenges and opportunities that were affecting everyone’s day-to-day life given all the massive growth and change they were going through.

Every one of the leaders in both companies felt a burning need for their leadership team to spend quality time together in order to debate the urgent topics that were on their minds, but they had no other meeting scheduled beyond the weekly calls to do that in.

The leaders actually did have plenty of opportunities to meet each other in-person in their quarterly business reviews (QBR) and other company functions, but these always included many other participants beyond the leaders so there was no opportunity for alone time for the leaders. They occasional dinners together as a leadership team also didn’t provide the opportunity for meaningful debates.

Everyone was frustrated about the lack of quality leadership team time, but no one did anything much about it. When I asked why the leaders don’t schedule additional leadership team meetings people responded with: “We are too busy with the day-to-day” and “We can’t find the time….”. When I challenged them they added and explained: “We have too many other meetings that are filling our schedule, that are a waste of time; things we could cover via email”

I see this exact same dynamic with so many companies!!!

The “We don’t have time” excuse is exactly that – a lame excuse and a cop out!

It’s actually worse, the need for the leadership team to spend quality time in order to debate and address the big challenges and opportunity of their growth and change is real and critical. It is not a “luxury” or “nice to have”. It is a “must” and a “leadership responsibility”. Not doing it is unacceptable.

The solution is actually quite simple and straightforward:

  1. Have the courage to stop/cancel all the meetings that are unproductive and not a good use of time.
  2. Share information that could be shared/updated via email – via email.
  3. Schedule meetings with enough time, on topics that are important. For a company that is going through significant change, the leadership team should meet no less than once a quarter for one or two full days. In some periods/phases of change, even that is insufficient and the leadership team should meet every month or every other month.
  4. Make sure the important meetings are productive, with clear objectives, agenda and someone to manage/facilitate them. Don’t let them decline or get out of control.

If you stop the ineffective and worthless meetings and you make sure the important meetings are productive and worthwhile people won’t feel like there are too many meetings. They will simply see these as “what we do to be successful”