Stop focusing on lagging indicators!

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I was supporting a technology company that was going through tremendous growth and change. They had ripped apart and restructured their entire business and they were working very hard on integrating the new pieces.

Even though they were going through all this change they were given no relief from achieving their bold sales numbers. What made things worse is that they had fallen short in their few previous quarters. Needless to say, the pressure and stress were very high. Everyone was focused on achieving the next quarter’s results.

But, a growing number of leaders were becoming frustrated. They felt that the short-term focus was part of the problem. They believed that the team’s single focus on the next thirty-day and ninety-day results was perpetuating the short-term challenges and problems that were causing the continuous shortfalls. The short-term focus was preventing the team from coming up with longer-term strategies that may not help in the near future but would lay the foundation for elevating the team out of its predicament in the longer run.

It was hard for this team to change its mindset.  Many leaders felt that if the team doesn’t make its short-term results the company won’t have a longer-term future.

Have you ever been in a situation like this? Where your existing results were in jeopardy and even though you knew that reacting to the poor results in the short term would be a mistake you couldn’t help but do so.

I see this dynamic in organizations all the time.

Many leaders don’t seem to understand that their business results are lagging indicators, therefore focusing on them, or reacting to them is the wrong thing to do.

You don’t want to focus on the lagging indicator. You want to focus on their source.

Context is the source of results.  In organizations context manifests through the culture of the organization: how people at all levels, functions and locations behave and act, what people consider possible and impossible, achievable and unachievable, and the degree to which people feel that they matter, they can make a difference and they can affect and change things.

Leaders who understand this know that they have to focus on and nurture their people’s ownership, commitment, empowerment and motivation. Everything else falls out of that.

If your people are frustrated, they feel like the company is not doing the right things and they can’t speak up or influence and change that, they’ll leave or worse – they will stay as skeptical, cynical and resigned team members. You can be sure that if this happens the results will start stalling or declining – it’s not a matter of if, only when.

But, if your people feel genuinely excited and committed; that they matter and they can make a difference, they will own the objectives and they will go the extra mile to reach them. And, if the results are declining, they will work together in a very transparent and candid way to get to the source of the issues and turn things around.

Your people’s level of excitement, commitment and ownership, as well as their clarity of destination and sense of empowerment to make the difference in achieving it, is your leading indicator of success.

Strong results will dry up when the context is weak. On the other hand, a strong context will overcome any bad results! And, don’t get confused about the benchmark: you could be better than your competitors, even the best in your industry and still be much less than you could be.

If you and your team are clear about who you are, what you stand for, what you are committed to, and you have a plan, and then you and your team act and behave consistently with your commitments, values and plan, it is only a matter of when, not if you will achieve what you want.

The universe three tests rule – a Fable:

A team of professionals who were successful for many years in their craft decided to take their game to a new level. They took on a bold stand and aligned on a set of audacious objectives to leap themselves beyond anything they have ever done or achieved before.

The universe listened to their declaration and said skeptically: “I have heard so many empty declarations. What is different with this team?”

To check them out, the universe threw at them a few small obstacles and challenges to make their new endeavor more challenging.

The professionals remained calm and collected, they stayed the course, overcame these small curveballs and moved on.

The universe took notice, but it wasn’t overly impressed. “Beginner’s luck,” it said as it released a bigger wave of issues and problems for the professionals to deal with.

These bigger obstacles definitely raffled the professional’s feathers. They scrambled and struggled to overcome the problems. Their partnership and trust were strained. However, eventually, they figured it out and continued forward with commitment and resolve.

“OK, you have my attention!” the universe stated. “Now let’s see if you are truly for real.” The universe unleashed issues, challenges, problems and unfavorable circumstances bigger than the first two times combined.

The team scrambled and struggled. Their performance and results declined, some of their people gave up and left, and their own partnership, trust and belief in the future were significantly strained. But, at the end they endured, they figured it out and continued forward with commitment and resolve.

The universe, who was taking notice the whole time finally exclaimed: “Yes! You are for real!” and then everything began to change. Instead of issues, problems and obstacles, the universe started sending favorable incidents, meetings, material assistant and circumstances that the team couldn’t have anticipated would come their way. As a result, they started to gain momentum towards their desired change and eventually achieved it.

The End!

Most teams give up too quickly!

Their first mistake – they focus on the results, which are lagging indicators.

Their second mistake – they don’t focus on nurturing people’s commitment, ownership and empowerment, which are leading indicators.

Their third mistake – they don’t stay the course for long enough to pass the universe three tests and get to the other side, where they could reap the rewards.

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?

 

Be careful what you wish for…

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A wise man once told me that there are two things that make people upset – when they don’t get what they want and when they do get what they want.

Here are two real stories…

I was invited to help an organization that was struggling to survive. They had not made their revenue targets for more than two years. As a result, they had to undergo several cost-cutting initiatives, including letting people go. The lack of investment and reduced headcount meant that the remaining people had to do more work. As a result, people felt overworked, under pressure, anxious and stressed with a poor work/life balance. People were resigned and upset, and as you can imagine employee morale and confidence were low.

When I was introduced to the organization, I spent a few days interviewing people at all levels. Even though there was a general atmosphere of gloom and resignation everyone expressed a yearning for a better, more dynamic, active and exciting future of big change and growth.

Contrast that with the story of another smaller company that was doing well but wanted to grow and got to the next level. They were known in their market as a ‘Tier B player’ who can only sell and deliver smaller size projects. They wanted to change their predicament and reputation and become a ‘Tier A’ player with large-scale projects. They gathered their team, aligned everyone around a bold growth objective and started to pursue this new direction.

Through some bold courage and a lot of hard work, as well as a bit of luck too, they landed a huge project – the biggest in their history – which more than doubled their revenue overnight.

At first, everyone was elated. However, as the weeks and months passed and customer demands started to ramp up things started to change. They couldn’t hire new people, train them and make them productive fast enough.

Over the following months, things were deteriorating internally, as people couldn’t keep up with the workload. The company started to miss important deadlines, which made the customers increasingly frustrated. Some good people who couldn’t take it any longer even jumped ship.

When I came in to help this organization most people were also feeling overworked, under pressure, anxious and stressed with a poor work/life balance. They were wishing for a break, relief, sanity, and stability.

Bold and ambitious people always look for bold and ambitious opportunities, problems and challenges to solve. They wouldn’t have it any other way. If you are one of these people, ask yourself the question: If you had a 9-5 job in which everything worked in a completely smooth, effortless and eventless way, would you be excited about coming to work every day, or would you be bored out of your mind and go elsewhere?

While problems are problems and they are going to feel the same in your day-to-day experience – overwork, lack of life balance, pressure, anxiety, and stress – there is a significant difference between problems that stem from struggle or failure versus those that stem from growth and success.

But, for some reason, we tend to overlook this simple truth. We complain and suffer when things are broken/not working and we have to fix them. We also complain when things are so good that they require us to grow, expand and elevate our leadership and performance in order to keep it up.

So, if you are dealing with fixing an environment that isn’t working don’t think that when things get better you will have fewer problems. You will have different problems but not necessarily smaller ones.

On the other hand, if you are blessed with problems that are associated with growth and success count your blessing and don’t think that things are easier in a status quo environment.

The question is not ‘Will you have problems?’ and the challenge is not ‘How to avoid them’. The actual question is ‘What type of problems do you want to have?’

The Power of Starting

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Many years ago, I played the classical guitar. At the time I was even half-decent at it, and it brought me great pleasure. I stopped playing about 26 years ago, but about a year ago I picked it up again and I have been playing ever since.

To be honest, it took a while between the time that I decided to start and the actual time that I started. I kept procrastinating the starting point because every time I intended to start playing negative thoughts came up about the challenge of starting again from scratch. Starting again as a beginner felt daunting, so I convinced myself to start another day, and this happened a few times.

I was coaching a highly committed and passionate professional on his wellbeing. He was struggling with his commitment to lose weight and get in shape. He lost a lot of weight, then gained it back again and he wanted to lose it again. He knew what he needed to do. In fact, he had a comprehensive plan, including exercise and a meal plan from a nutritionist. However, he couldn’t get himself to restart the program.

Have you ever experienced this type of situation in which you wanted to start something new or restart something you had done in the past, but you found yourself delaying starting because of overwhelming feelings of invalidation, fear and/or doubt?

Well, the good news for me is that I did start playing about a year ago and in the process, I learned something simple, but profound about the ‘Power of Starting’:

Starting is critical for success. Being able to start is powerful. I know I am stating the obvious. However, even though everyone knows this, so many people get stuck in starting. Another proof point that knowing and doing are two different things.

If you want to be someone who can start effectively here are a few of my thoughts:

To be a powerful starter you need to untangle the act of starting from all your thoughts and internal conversations about it. You will have thoughts and feelings. They will try and delay and stop you. It is a natural human reaction to any uncomfortable situation which ‘starting’ is always one of. You need to expect the thoughts and feelings and act anyways.

To help you focus while you have all the noise in your head, I recommend you clearly state to someone you trust what you are going to do and then do it. In simple terms: “Say what you will do and then do what you say!” Make it very explicit. Something like: “I will go to the gym 4 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for an hour” or “I will practice 4 times a week for an hour”.

When you start you may feel that your initial actions are not ‘natural’, ‘easy’; they are mechanical, contrived and artificial. That is completely natural and alright! Even if you feel that what you are doing and the way you are doing it is counter-intuitive still go ahead and do it. In simple terms: “Fake it till you make it” Put one foot in front of the other until it becomes walking motion.

It takes tremendous courage to start. Don’t underestimate that. It is a big deal.

When you are about to start it may feel like you are jumping off a cliff and you will learn how to fly in the process of falling. It is not a comfortable feeling. It takes a leap of faith and trust in yourself. That takes courage!

If you have missteps in the starting process, don’t over think it, make it mean anything or agonize about it. Just start over! Say what you will do next and do what you said. Keep it short-term – what you will do today, not this month. Keep it very practical, not aspirational or visionary. Box yourself in day by day, say what you will do and do what you say. Follow this routine until you start to see that you are back in a routine.

The more you do what I told you here, the more you will begin to regain your power and self-confidence. This will quickly lead to higher energy and motivation and enable you to promise bigger things and deliver them.

Motivation and action are like the chicken and the egg. They feed, fuel and inspire each other. When you are at the top of your game, your motivation inspires your action. That is the time to declare your vision, commitments and what you stand for, set goals and act spontaneously.

But, when you are stuck, promising what you will do and doing it will get you unstuck and back on track with your motivation and commitment. You will regain your integrity and recover your motivation and power.

It may sound too simple, but it really works.

Are you promoting ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking?

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Most leaders and teams don’t seem to be good at thinking outside the box; thinking in new and different ways from the way they are accustomed to.

Even when teams are engaged in conversations about improvement and change these conversations frequently have their roots in, “What have we done to date?” “What are our current resources and capabilities?” and “How do we measure up against others?”. The end game so often seems defined by some rearrangement of the same familiar stuff. As the saying goes:

“Rearranging the deck seats on the Titanic”

Even though the benchmark mania has somewhat passed in corporate America, for many companies the bar seems to still be set by other companies’ levels of success. With few exceptions, there is very little courageous and independent thinking when it comes to inventing a company’s future.

But where these exceptions do exist, they are startling. I would venture to guess, for example, that Apple did not, and does not benchmark itself against anyone else. Apple’s scale of success in recent years is wholly their own. In fact, Apple has been reinventing the scale that everyone else in the industry has been trying to emulate and use.

But unfortunately, Apple is not the rule. Most businesses today approach their future from year-to-year by figuring out modest, reasonable and incremental objectives, based on past performance.

Leaders simply don’t feel comfortable promising or expecting something that they don’t know how to achieve.

Most leaders don’t know how to promise something they don’t feel they have enough control over; something that is not an easy enough extension of what they are already doing or have done in the past.

Countless business books, seminars, and coaching programs promise the much-sought-after breakthrough thinking and high-performance leaders claim to crave. But a closer look at the way most organization function reveals that despite the stated desire for new thinking and breakthroughs, there is an almost institutionalized conspiracy around not thinking outside the box.

A regional sales team of a global technology company engaged me to coach them on taking their game to the next level. This was a very disciplined, reliable and successful sales team. They had a whole routine of forecast and prospect management meetings each week for managing their weekly sales targets. They were good at it and for the most part, they achieved their weekly results. They got a lot of recognition from their superiors, both verbal and financial, and overall all sales reps were doing well. Needless to say, no one was in a hurry to change things.

However, the market was changing, technology was evolving, new competitors were entering the race and all this meant that customer needs and consumption models were shifting fast. The sales team members understood that if they didn’t adjust and adapt to the new market trends they would be at risk. However, knowing this didn’t make thinking differently any easier.

I was able to help them articulate a new strategy and agree to do things differently, but the continuous expectations and demand from above to not miss a beat in delivering the short-term results, as well as their own comfort level in continuing to do what they were good at, made it very difficult for them to change.

In most organizations, employees are incentivized, rewarded and compensated for continuing to do the same things they always do that bring short-term results. In fact, you could say that in most organizations rewards and compensation are designed to minimize risk, not to maximize new and creative thinking.

When Kennedy declared that the USA would put a man on the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade that was a bold, out-of-the-box idea. However, Kennedy’s courageous future-based vision and strategy changed the course of history.

He did not look to the past to determine if his vision was realistic or doable. In fact, at the time of inception, it wasn’t. Instead, he marshaled his priority, energy, and resources to pursue his dream, fulfill it and prove to everyone that his vision right!

If you want to enable your people to think outside the box, promote an environment where people are encouraged, recognized and incented for taking a stand and coming up with out-of-the-box business ideas, operationalizing them, executing them and proving them right.

In addition, develop the patience in your organization to go through the inevitable rollercoaster associated with being in a new learning curve while new routines and practices become the new norm. Also ensure the organization has the tolerance for the inevitable cycle of failure before success, and things getting worse before they get better.

This lack of patience and tolerance makes it very challenging for people to think outside the box. Afterall, no matter what you say to the contrary, if you don’t show people that you have the commitment and capability to support them to turn their new innovative business idea into reality, they won’t come up with these in the first place.

Bottom line – if creating a culture innovation and out-of-the-box thinking is truly important for your business, not merely a ‘nice to have’, then ‘put your money where your mouth is!’

Move your orientation from Activities to Outcomes, then Breakthroughs

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I was participating in a performance review meeting with a successful division of a global technology company. In this meeting, the team members responsible for leading the key strategic initiatives were updating the entire management team on the status and progress of their initiatives.

With slight variations, pretty much every presenter jumped almost immediately into the details of the metrics they are tracking, the status of these metrics and the activities their initiative team is involved with.

None of the presenters provided any higher level context on the purpose and objectives of their initiative, or where they aim to take it. Based on these updates you could tell how efficient the team was at tracking the metrics and activities they chose, but not the impact and value of their initiatives, or the greater potential of their initiatives to reach a new level in the future.

Many leaders and managers have the same tendency to jump right into activities. I see it all the time. In fact, many leaders think that the higher purpose and objective stuff is “fluff” and “nice to have”.

These leaders are so mistaken! They are oblivious to a different level of powerful strategic approach.

When it comes to creating and achieving powerful strategies and extraordinary results, there are three levels of the game a team could be operating at: Activities, Outcomes, and Breakthroughs.

Activity-Orientated

Most leaders operate at the activities level. Managing and tracking activities is the easiest and safest strategic approach. You think about where you want to be and then you identify and commit to the activities that you assume and hope will get you there. In many cases leaders don’t even spend much time on where they want to get to, they just identify activities, because that is what they are most familiar and comfortable with.

In the activities approach, there isn’t typically a conversation about commitment, and if there is it is about promising to carry out the activities. People tend to take on comfortable, familiar and realistic activities in order to reduce the risk of challenging the status quo or thinking outside the box.

In the performance review meetings, the activity oriented leaders give a detailed account of what they have been doing and what they will do moving forward. In this approach, success is ‘ticking the box’ on on-scheduled activities.

What can happen is that you carry out all the activities and you still don’t achieve your results. Usually, when that happens activity-based leaders come up with excuses or they blame the circumstances and others; things like: “We did our part but they didn’t do theirs” and “We were on track but the circumstances changed”.

If you push on the activity-oriented leaders to promise the end results, not the activities to get there, they typically get nervous and defensive. They would tell you something like “How can we promise outcomes that we don’t have enough control over“.

Accountability for Activities is no accountability at all!

Outcome-Orientated

Leaders who focus on outcomes want to know “What are we out to achieve?”. For them, the activities are a derivative of the outcomes, not an end in themselves. As, the circumstances or the status of the outcome change, so do the activities.

I work with a powerful technical leader who has become outcome oriented. Every time one of his managers gives him a report on what they are planning to do he stops them and asks: “What is the outcome you are going to achieve with all these activities?“. As he has shifted his managers’ orientation from activities to outcomes, they have been able to elevate their results and impact.

Outcome-oriented leaders want their managers to promise outcomes, not activities. This shift is a big step up. Sometimes the outcomes are clear but many times they are not, and the team needs to engage in a deeper and more powerful strategic dialogue to align around what they want their future state to look like.

You can only reach the breakthrough level if you are oriented around outcomes.

Breakthrough-Orientated

If you move from “What will we do this quarter?” to “What outcome will we achieve this quarter?” you are making a big step forward, but it still doesn’t mean you have taken the game to a new level. In order to generate a breakthrough mindset and conversation, you need to promise an outcome that is beyond what is predictable; you need to put a stake in the ground for a bigger, bolder future that requires you and your team to think, behave and work differently together. You need to ask: “What breakthrough outcome are we going to cause this quarter?“.

You could call it a stretch goal. However, in most organizations stretch goals are driven down from above. If you want to create a breakthrough orientation in your team you need everyone to think bolder and believe that they can shape their destiny, set the bar and achieve more than what is predictable.

As Alan Kay called it:

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it!”

The most powerful leaders feel comfortable to promise a bold future state and trust themselves and their teams to get there without knowing how to do so in advance.

You can do it too!

Are you able to unplug and disconnect?

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I just returned from a successful winter vacation at a great beachside resort. I say “successful” because being the proud workaholic that I am I determine the success of my vacations on my ability to unplug, disconnect and truly rejuvenate.

A long time ago I concluded that when I really want time off, I have to spend it in a place that supports that cause; a place where I don’t need to carry a wallet, buy food and drinks; a place that doesn’t have easy access to internet or internet at all.

Unfortunately, in today’s digital era it is becoming increasingly challenging to find places that don’t have internet. We can’t even escape from it on flights anymore. There doesn’t seem to be many places left where you can hide from the rat race these days.

In most companies, it’s accepted, even expected for people to continue to work or stay connected while on vacation. Most professionals find it hard to disconnect, even if their company doesn’t require them to stay in touch. Even if you love your work, it requires personal determination and discipline (for us fast-paced workaholics) to truly disconnect and unwind.

Personally, I need this physical and mental disconnection every so often. In addition, unplugging has greatly contributed to my business success. These periods of time off have provided invaluable opportunities to think, reflect, gain new perspectives, take stock of progress, create and plan for the future.

As my wife and I were sitting on the beach and by the pool, I was blown away (though not surprised) by the number of people of all ages who were constantly glued to their smartphones.

I could tell most of them were not just taking photos or videos, they were doing emails and/or interacting with Facebook, Instagram, and other social media apps.  Many of them were just with their swimsuit and smartphone. Some were standing on the beach with their feet in the ocean and their eyes glued to their smartphones.

It was the same way at the restaurants during breakfast, lunch and dinner – people sitting around a table, each glued to their phones in their private virtual world, consumed by what was on their screen rather than ‘being’ with the other people in their company. I would predict that in some cases they were texting and posting with each other, rather than looking each other in the eyes and having a conversation.

Why would you spend the time and money to travel away from your home to a beautiful isolated beach destination, with different scenery, climate, and atmosphere in order to merely continue with the same routine and behavior that you do at home?

And, if you take a vacation and spend the majority of your time and attention on your device, when do you actually get time to enjoy and reap the benefits of your vacation?

I am not naïve, and I pride myself on being open-minded and not judgmental. I understand the modern digital age we live in. I take part in it every day. I can’t live without my iPhone, iPad, and laptop too. I fully get it.

However, I try very hard to manage and control my smartphone usage and not allow it to manage and control my life. It seems that so many people have reached an unhealthy point, and this vacation again validated that.

In fact, it often seems to me that some people are more focused on showing off their life than just living it.

Some people may push back and say, “Being on my smart device doesn’t take away from my vacation, it enhances it,” or “It doesn’t distract me, it helps me relax.”

I don’t buy it! 

When you are consumed by your smart device, you are not fully present in the moment with the people and activities around you. It is as simple as that. We live more in our conversational worlds than in our physical worlds.

For example: Leaving behind an unresolved issue or upset at work could ruin your entire vacation because you constantly think and agonize about it. Participating in a conference call while driving your car on the highway dangerously takes your attention from the dynamics on the road because you are so consumed by your conversation.

How many times have you seen someone board a plane plugged into a conference call, speaking loudly, even about sensitive things, without any regard for the people around them?

When you are on your smartphones 60-80% of the time, you can be fully present with your immediate environment only 20-40% of the time – at best.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I value the digital transformation, I try to take the fullest advantage of technological innovations and smart devices and social media have already brought many benefits to my life.

At the same time, I also see the negative effects of technology – mainly with people being so preoccupied with their devices that it undermines their ability to relate, communicate and drive intimacy with others.

Where are you on this spectrum?

What are you out to prove?

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Being a leader means adopting a certain point of view about people, circumstances, opportunities and challenges. It means being oriented around perspectives and conversations that promote and generate new possibilities and effective action, rather than cynicism, resignation and excuses. It means always being the champion for “what’s possible” and “how can we make it work” rather than “why we can’t…” and “why it won’t work…”.

Every point of view is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you ever noticed that when you have a point of view that something isn’t possible you always gather evidence and proof of your circumstances and environment to support and prove that point of view? And, if you change our mind, even 180 degrees, and adopt a different point of view, you will immediately find new evidence and proof in the exact same environment and circumstances for your new point of view?

If you have a strong point of view that one of your team members is lazy and uncommitted I am sure you would have a lot of data points to prove it; things like: he keeps coming to work late and leaving early, he seems distracted most of the time and his output is not very good compared to his peers. However, if you learn that this person is going through a major personal tragedy in his life – he lost his significant other to cancer and another family member is unwell – that new information may completely change your mind. Suddenly, you have a new sense of empathy and compassion for your team member. In fact, you now reflect on recent events in a completely new light. Perhaps he isn’t lazy at all, he is just temporarily immobilized. Anyone in his shoes would behave the same…

With every thought, comment and conversation we are constantly promoting and proving one point of view or another. Sometimes we do it consciously, but most of the time we are not aware of doing it at all.

If you have a negative or cynical point of view about an area that is important to you, you may have the point of view, something like: “I won’t get what I want…“, “Things don’t work out smoothly and amazingly in life, at least not for me…” and “Some people are lucky, just not me…“. Perhaps without realizing it, you would constantly be promoting and out to prove that point of view. It will be reflected in your thoughts, comments and conversations.

Every time things don’t work out you may say or imply things like “you see, I knew it.” or “you see I told you so.” And, if someone criticizes you, you may come back with “I am not negative, I am just being realistic!”. This is a common rationalization and justification for cynical people. And, every time something great does happen, you may view it as a “one-off” or something to be “cautiously optimistic” about.

However, you can stand for a drastically different point of view, such as: “Life works and I can and will have what I want in my life, with no compromises…”. In this mindset, your life will be oriented around proving that point of view. Every time something great happens to you, it will serve as evidence – “you see, life works for me…”. Every time something doesn’t work and you don’t get what you want you will view it as a “glitch” or a “one-off.” You will try to learn something worthwhile from the mishap to validate and strengthen your point of view.

We often say “I can’t believe what I see“. But, in fact, we don’t believe or disbelieve what we see. We see what we believe or disbelieve. We don’t really see with our eyes, we see with our point of view. That’s why two people can participate in the same “physical” circumstance or situation and experience it drastically differently, often contradicting.

One of my clients (the CEO of a small but ambitious Marketing company) took on a significant change initiative to elevate his company’s brand, client base and market share from sixth to third in his marketplace. After a lot of hard work, his team lost a mega bid after making it to the final shortlist of two companies out of eight. While many of his team members were upset and discouraged by the loss, the CEO felt extremely proud and encouraged by the fact that for the first time his team made it that far in such a lucrative opportunity. For him, the fact that his team made it to the top two, even though they lost at the end, only signified proof that they were in fact on track to achieve their goal.

If you accept the premise that you are constantly out to proving your points of view, and therefore your points of view are always self-fulfilling prophecies, you have a choice about what point of view you will promote in your comments and conversations.

Contrary to what many people may think there are no “right”, “true” or “correct” points of view. There are only “empowering” or “disempowering” ones; points of view that enable more possibilities, ideas and dreams, and ones that shut down possibilities, ideas and dreams, and explain and justify why these can’t and won’t come true.

I recommend building a life that reflects the point of view: “I am going to have it all“.

I can tell you from experience that being out to prove that things work is much more exciting than proving that they don’t.

What point of view are YOU out to prove in your life?  

Are your commitments strong enough to justify your time?

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Do you have a commitment to any of these things: To be healthy and fit? To advance at work? To have a nurturing relationship and/or family?

Are you spending enough time doing the things you want and need to do in these areas in order to be as successful and happy as you would want?

If not, are you one of those people who say: “I know, I have to find the time to exercise…” or “I have to make the time to spend with my family…”???

Too often I hear people give the excuse of “I don’t have the time…”, “I can’t find the time…” or “I need to make the time…” when they don’t live up to their prime commitments.

I understand how busy people feel. I talk to so many busy people who want to do things in other areas of their life and they feel that “they don’t have the time for that commitment.”

Perhaps people who don’t have enough time for their commitment, don’t have a commitment at all!

Perhaps you need to look at the commitment and time equation the other way around:

Perhaps: 

It is not that you don’t have enough time for your commitment, but you don’t have enough commitment for your time.

Time is an interesting phenomenon. Every hour of the day is equal in length as the next hour. However, our experience of an hour could be quite different depending on the circumstances and what we are up to. Not for naught, people say: “Time flies when you are having fun” or “Time moves at a snail’s pace when you are not enjoying what you are doing”.

I live in Canada, and every year around January my wife turns to me and says with a sigh, “This winter is so long. Seems like it is taking forever.” In fact, we are in that phase right now… And, around mid-to-end of July, she says in a panic: “I can’t believe how fast the summer has passed by. I wish I could slow down time!”

I have noticed that on the day before the weekend or a vacation when I feel like “I must get everything done in order to have the peace of mind during my time off”, I seem to be much more productive and I have much more time to spare too.

If you Google “People are most productive when they are happy in their lives” you’ll find a host of articles and surveys that provide more insight into this topic.

Perhaps if you really want to be healthy and fit or have a very intimate relationship at home you should think about how serious you are about your commitment. Be honest about it. Is it something you “must” achieve, or merely a “nice to have”? If it is a ‘nice to have’ you most likely won’t have enough time for it. However, if you honestly declare that being healthy or intimate are critical to you in order to live up to your most precious values, make the commitment and then live by it.

Pick a few commitments that are “must haves” and create the time for them in your calendar. Schedule the activities associated with fulfilling your top priority commitment in your calendar – for example: exercising 3 times a week, date night with your spouse, quality time with kids, etc.

Then, keep your schedule, “religiously” no matter what. Don’t cancel your exercise or time with your kids because of workload.

Say no to others who want to double-book things with you when you have personal activities planned. Be kind, firm and responsible about it and offer alternative times.

I am not saying that it is easy to manage multiple commitments in a busy life with high integrity. However, I can promise you that if this is important to you and you take it on after you get through the initial phase of – doubting, feeling like you are dropping the ball and perhaps anxiety associated with all that – your activities would start adjusting themselves to your new routine. Most importantly, you will start seeing and experiencing the benefits of fulfilling your commitments and that will give you a tremendous amount of added sense of happiness, confidence and self-fulfillment.

Remember, people always find and make time for things that are really important to them.

Complete 2017 in a meaningful way

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As we enter the holiday season and end of 2017 it seems appropriate and timely to write something about “completing the year.”

Completing a chapter, initiative or task effectively can be just as powerful and exciting as starting or executing it effectively. However, it seems as if most people tend to focus more on the starting and executing part. We underestimate the power and value of completing things effectively, not merely finishing or ending them.

The dictionary defines finishing as Bringing a task or activity to an end‘. It defines Completing as ‘Making something whole or perfect’.

You don’t have to do anything for something to end. It is the nature of life. Things begin, go through their evolution and end. A year, a project or a lifetime, it’s all the same. But, in order to complete things – or more accurately to feel complete with activities or situations you need to apply a deliberate and mindful focus and awareness.

How do you complete things?

If you review the year’s events without the distinction completion in mind, you are likely to focus on the cold facts of what actually happened. You will ask yourself questions such as: “What did I do?” “What didn’t I do?” and “What results did I achieve?” While you may find intellectual satisfaction in taking stock of this year’s events in the most factual, objective and accurate way, this information won’t empower or uplift your spirit and soul.

In contrast, if you look at 2017 through the lens of completion you will be compelled to push your thinking and reflection beyond the cold facts of what happened to a deeper level. You will be compelled to own what happened and what didn’t happen in a more meaningful way.

You will ask yourself questions such as “What did I accomplish?” “What did I learn?” “Where and how did I grow?” and “How am I better, stronger and more prepared for the future?” This type of taking stock will deepen your connection with your higher purpose and vision and it will make you feel more satisfied and complete.

The notions of success and failure are interpretations, not facts. You can feel victorious and successful even when you haven’t met your goals. And, you can feel disappointed and unfulfilled when you did meet your goals. The feeling of success or failure is often determined by the notion of completion.

Completing the past will enable you to put things into a more powerful perspective. It will help you put the past behind you, and this will leave you feeling freer, stronger and more empowered and excited to focus on the future from a clean slate.

However, if you leave things incomplete, past incompletions could haunt you and cloud your thoughts, plans, and aspirations for the future. Furthermore, you could become more hesitant because of past failures and/or blindly confident because of past successes. In both cases, you would be reacting to your past and that won’t be effective or satisfying.

The good news is that you can bring completion to your past at any moment, no matter how good or bad things were. You just need to take stock, draw empowering conclusions from past events and then declare the past complete. It requires taking a stand, and, it takes courage. But, you can do it!

How to complete 2017 in a practical and meaningful way:

As you are ending 2017, reflect on your year. First, make the list of the facts – what happened, what you did and didn’t do and accomplish. It’s useful to start there. But don’t end there.

Ask yourself:

  1. What did I accomplish?
  2. What did I learn?
  3. Where and how did I grow and improve in the areas I care about?
  4. How did I forward my bigger personal and professional vision and purpose?
  5. What am I most grateful for?
  6. Who do I want to recognize and thank? (Make sure you tell them.)

Once you declare 2017 complete, you will feel a sense of satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment. In that space, you can powerfully start creating your next year to be your best year ever.

In conclusion, on a personal note  – thank you for following my blogs during 2017. I hope at least some of them were useful to you. I will be taking some time off myself and will post my next blog in the week of January 8th, 2018.

Wishing you and your family a Happy Holiday Season and Happy New Year!

 

Make your meetings more effective!

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One of the most common complaints I hear in organizations is “too many meetings.”

I believe in most organizations there are too many meetings. However, I also believe that what is causing and augmenting people’s frustrations about meetings is the fact that most meetings are ineffective. They don’t produce enough and they don’t leave people with the experience of time well spent and having produced great accomplishments.

If you make your meetings much more powerful and effective I believe people will feel differently about “too many meetings.”

I want to share two useful and powerful guidelines that if you follow would make your meetings much more effective and productive:

  1. Focus your meetings on achieving outcomes, not discussing topics.

    This guideline may seem simple and common sense. However, it is counter-intuitive for most teams and people. In fact, most teams orient their meetings around filling time slots with discussion points. Most teams plan for their meetings by making a list of important topics that require dialogue or decision, then attributing time to each topic on the list, then slotting them into the agenda that gets distributed to the team.I have been in so many meetings that begin with a slide that shows the agenda – the sequence of topics in their time slots. Further, I can’t tell you how many times when I ask people “How did the meeting go?”, they say “Great, we kept to the agenda”.

    • Instead of falling into the trap of filling time with topics, begin each meeting with creating clarity and alignment around the intended outcomes of the meeting. You can do this prior to the meeting as part of the preparation or in the meeting itself. Always state the intended outcomes in terms of clear end results, not activities.
    • Having clear outcomes in front of you throughout the meeting will help you to navigate the discussion and stay on topic, especially when people react to others’ statements and want to steer the dialogue down unproductive rat holes or in unplanned directions.
    • Also, make sure that when you achieve an outcome acknowledge its fulfillment and completion. Don’t just jump to the next one. This will generate a sense of progress and accomplishment, consistent with your purpose.

  2. Spend as little or much time as is needed to achieve the outcomes.

    As we all know, people will discuss any topic for as long or short as the time allocated for that topic. This is unrelated to what is effective.

    • The less time the better. If you allocate 45 minutes to discussing a topic but achieve the outcome you set in 20 minutes, that is a good thing!
    • I was working with the leadership team of a technology startup. They understood the value of generating total alignment around important decisions and commitments. However, they were asking “How can we gain genuine alignment faster?”.
    • I was participating in one of their meetings as they were making a key decision about a new direction. Two of the senior leaders presented the information and then it was time to align and make a decision. So, the senior leaders asked “How do you all feel about this?” and “Does anyone have anything to say?”. I see this in many meetings – when the time to align comes the leader asks “Does anyone have an opinion to express?” And, surely, every time many people do.
    • Now, this may seem trivial, but it isn’t – if you ask people to share how they feel or if they have anything so share, guess what – they will. How people feel is not a critical topic for alignment. Rather, there are two key questions that would make the conversation more effective: “Does anyone have any questions about our new direction?”. If so, someone should answer the question as rapidly and effectively as needed. Second question: “Are you all willing to align with this direction?”. If everyone says “YES” the topic is complete. If someone says “NO” then you need to continue the dialogue to see what is missing or needed for the unaligned to align.
    • Last note on this – there is no contradiction between “I am aligned” and “I still have concerns, fears etc” As long as everyone has the same understanding of what “Alignment” means – “Owning the decision/commitment as your own” – you should be in great shape.
    • Don’t shortcut topics – On the other hand, if an important topic takes more time than allocated, do not shortcut the discussion and move on without having achieved its outcome. Manage the agenda based on achieving the outcomes, not time allocations.
    • Sometimes topics are large and complex and you may need more information or time in order to align on the decision, beyond the time you have during the current meeting. That’s fine, just make sure that in this situation clear decisions and commitments are made about when you will make the decision by. Don’t leave anything vague or open.
    • It’s also legitimate to say “Let’s agree to not make any decision or commitment here.” That statement is a clear commitment. Just make sure everyone understands and owns the consequence of that commitment.
    • As stated above, some topics require more debate. Don’t lose patience, react or make shortcuts to alignment. It will come to bite you in the future.
    • When people passionately debate topics they often say things like “That’s just semantics”, but then they continue to fight for their point of view with vengeance. Everything is semantics. We live in semantics. How we articulate and say things – especially decisions and commitments – is critical to our future direction and team strength. Remember, another few minutes today could save you many hours and heartaches in the future. Therefore, reach genuine alignment.

In one of my Leadership on a Napkin series I wrote:

If you want your team members to speak and engage in effective conversation that achieves 100% alignment especially around complex issues or decisions, get your people to follow this rule: “Always forward the action when you speak”. If you don’t have something to say that will forward the action – don’t say anything!

There are simple, powerful and practical tips there on how to manage your meetings and conversations in a powerful way. 

Click here for more Leadership on a Napkin lessons

 

 

How to make clear commitments and fulfill them

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I was coaching a senior management team of a successful technology company. The management team wasn’t operating or being viewed as a strong leadership team. One of the main complaints managers and employees had was that the senior team didn’t make enough clear decisions in areas that needed change, especially in areas of divide and conflict, where tough and uncomfortable decisions were needed. In addition, when the leadership team did make decisions the leaders often didn’t do a good job following up and executing on what they had agreed to and decided. So, decisions were often ignored, forgotten or pushed aside and deprioritized due to the day-to-day burning topics that constantly came up.

After dealing this dynamic for a few years, leaders, managers, and employees got used to the status quo and many simply adopted a cynical mindset about decisions. In fact, people stopped expecting and/or demanding clear decisions or effective execution of decisions.

There were enough decisions made to continue to drive progress and success. In addition, the company was a leader in its market, so things were tolerated. However, in many critical areas where decisions were needed and not taken, people had to find ways to get things done in alternative ways, for example: relying on personal relationships, improvising or simply working harder rather than smarter.

This organization was a good organization. But the lack of effectiveness in making and keeping decisions was preventing it from going to the next level and becoming the great organization it strived to be.

So, I worked with this senior team and through a series of steps over the course of our engagement together, I helped them drive great improvement in their unproductive predicament.

The process and steps we used were transformational. In fact, you could apply them to any transformation you wish to undertake in your own team or reality. Furthermore, these steps could even be used for your own personal breakthroughs too. So, I am sharing them with you.

If you want to take on a transformation in your own team in any area follow these following steps:

  1. Face reality and tell the truth, especially about what isn’t working.
    Every breakthrough begins with facing reality and telling the truth, especially about what is not working. To that end, I conducted a culture analysis where I interviewed all the leaders, as well as a handful of managers and employees. People were very forthcoming and blunt about the challenges and hardships associated with the leaders’ lack of decision making and follow through. I shared the grim outcome of the interviews with the leaders and had them fully understand and own the reality that they had created, both in terms of organizational effectiveness and productivity, as well as people’s spirit and their own reputation.
  2. Commit to the transformation you want. Once the senior leaders took responsibility for their lack of making and keeping decisions, they committed to transforming their weakness. They committed to a future state, within 12 months in which they are really good at making and keeping decisions and commitment. In fact, as part of their 12 months future stated they specifically promised to be recognized throughout their organization as a role model in this area.
  3. Promise specific actions and practices for turning your future goal into reality.
    The leadership team committed to simple practices. Here are some of them: (1) Every dialogue will lead to a clear decision and promised action, (2) Each commitment will have a deadline assigned to it (a “by when”), (3) Each decision will have a clear owner who is responsible for the fulfillment of the commitment, (4) All decisions and commitments will be written up and sent out to the leaders, and (5) Every other week the team will dedicate 30-60 minutes to review status of all decisions/commitments still in play.
  4. Track and manage your promised actions over time.
    Every other week the team came together and took stock on their progress. They reviewed every decision and commitment they made and whether or not they kept them. They even run a tally of “number of decisions/commitments made,” and “percentage of decisions/commitments kept.” They turned this “soft” area into a “hard” one by assigning metric to it. If there is an art and science to decision/commitment making and keeping, they highlighted the science aspect.
  5. Expand on what is working and correct what isn’t working.
    The leaders took this transformation on like a military initiative. They stayed focused and didn’t let anything slide. If they fell short, stumble or outright failed in a decision or commitment they took responsibility and acknowledged it right away, and made the necessary correction. At first, the leadership team focused on the easier, smaller, shorter-term decisions/commitments. However, as they became better at this they started to make bigger, tougher and more strategic decisions.
  6. Continue until your new behaviors become your new norm and DNA.
    We continued this for many months until the focus and skill of the senior team around making and keeping decisions/commitments became ingrained in the leaders’ awareness and DNA. In addition, one of the by-products of this transformation initiative was that the same new behavior started to trickle down to the managers and employees. At some point, it became clear that the initiative had fulfilled its purpose and it was no longer necessary to track this new area the way we did thus far.

There are many leadership competencies that shape, define and distinguish a powerful and effective team. I believe that one of the biggest ones is the ability to make and keep decisions and commitments. Furthermore, a team that lacks the ability to make and keep decisions and commitments lacks a fundamental integrity; the integrity to think and operate cohesively and generate accomplishments that are larger than the sum of their parts.

So, if you want to create an environment where your intentions and commitments regularly get realized faster, smoother and even bigger than your expectations, make sure your team is really good at making and keeping decisions and commitments.