Passion Part VI - Sacrifice

This is the last in a series of posts about passion as a force multiplier in an organization and the creation of passion through individuals who know their role, are convinced their role matters and see the good of their work.  Throughout the last few weeks, I argued that leaders must focus on the following elements to create and sustain passion; vision, culture, principles, and style.  I received great feedback on these topics and invariably someone says, "this is an interesting point Alex, but how do you actually get something like this done?"  To answer that question, I must conclude the discussion of passion with the topic of sacrifice.  

We can make speeches, write emails, pound our fists on a podium and exhort those around us, but nothing changes unless leaders make believable observable sacrifices.  Sacrifice is a difficult word, for many it has a negative, punishing overtone.  Yet sacrifice merely means giving up something valuable or important for somebody or something else considered to be of more value or importance.  Sacrifice, therefore, is making a choice.  People watch leaders make choices and knowingly or unknowingly choose what the leader has chosen.  Fair?  Maybe not, but it is the reality of the relationship between the leader and their team.  I quoted Robert E. Lee in the post about culture, and I have to repeat him here, "You must be careful how you walk, and where you go, for there are those following you who will set their feet where yours are set"

Choice by itself will not do the deed; the choice must be believable and observable.  Why believable?  A choice that is believable cannot be discounted; the human brain must pay attention to it. Observable?  The choices must be planned out and visible.  We have all heard it said, "Don't just talk the talk, but walk the talk".  Right; but we must also talk the walk.  People have to see the choices occur.  Some things should not be done in the dark.

There are four believable observable sacrifices a leader can make.  We must consciously understand these sacrifices and strategically plan and use them to create and sustain passion.  As you consider the vision you have, the culture you want, the boundaries you set and the style you preach, you must make these sacrifices to imprint your will on the team.

1. Sacrifice time – How we use our time shows what we value.  My son came home from school once and told me, "Dad - today we learned how to spell love; T-I-M-E".  Go back through your calendar for the last six months and look at the use of your time.  Is your time connected to your vision?  Does it support the culture and boundaries you want in the organization?  Let's say you want to be customer focused.  Are you using your time to understand the customer?  Have you cancelled an important internal meeting to be with a customer?  What believable, observable choices do you make with your time?
2. Sacrifice money - What choices do you make with the funds inside your organization? Strategy without resource allocation is just a wish.  Let's say you have preached about leadership development.  Have you allocated resources to teach and engage the front line leadership in the organization? Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are. - James W. Frick
3. Sacrifice ego – The first two are easy to understand, the last two require a bit more effort.  Sacrifice ego?  What does that mean?  Being right can get in the way of what you want to get done with your team. What are you willing to be wrong for?   Sacrificing your ego and going through the pain of "being wrong" in front of your team is humbling and tough.  Publicly acknowledging when you personally break one of the values of the organization is an important way we sacrifice our ego.  If I say, "Customers are our business" and then damage a customer relationship for financial results, will I stand in front of the team and say, "I am sorry I made a choice against our culture"
4. Sacrifice values - In every journey there are moments of truth.  These are moments where you choose between the way it was and the way it will be.  These are moments where you must publicly slay a previous value.  In one post, I talked about boundaries.  Let's say you have implemented a Getting it Done and Doing it Right set of boundaries and Doing it Right includes the value of teamwork.  What if your #1 producing employee is selfish and contributes nothing else to the team?  Will you remove that employee and will your team know why you removed the person from your team?

Many of you have seen the movie, "Saving Private Ryan".  In that movie there is scene with all these sacrifices on display.  General Marshall is approached by two War Department colonels and informed of the deaths of the Ryan brothers, and of the lone surviving brother in the 101st Airborne Division. Marshall reads a letter that had been sent to Lydia Bixby by President Lincoln concerning the loss of her sons during war, and orders that Private Ryan be found and returned home.   Time? The chief of staff of the Army makes time within days of the largest military operation in the history to discuss one man.  Money? Taking a decision to send a group of men after one man is a reallocation of resources.  Ego? Marshall pulls out a letter and it is obvious that he has memorized this letter by Lincoln consoling a mother of several sons who have died and used this letter frequently to remind himself of who he really is and the importance of all soldiers to their mother.  Previous value? Marshall overrides his staff that recommends that it is an unwise use of resources given everything else they are working on. We are all left with a deep sense of who Marshall is and what he believes.

One more example from history rather than film.  Regardless of your own personal belief system, today most scholars estimate there are a little more than 2 billion people in the world that call themselves Christian.  This is the largest religious group making up over 32% of the world's population.  The religion originated with one man 2000 years ago, a man who is acknowledged by other major religions including Islam who sees him as a prophet and Hindus who regard his teaching as solid moral, ethical and social commentary.  If the measure of leadership is related to sustained influence over people across time, then this one man had a level of influence above most others we can study.  And in the end, it was his believable, observable sacrifices that inspired and continue to inspire.

Passion Part V - Style

In this series of posts, I write about passion as a force multiplier in an organization and the creation of passion through individuals who know their role, are convinced their role matters and see the good of their work.  I argue that leaders must focus on five elements to create this level of passion; vision, culture, principles, style and sacrifice.  The previous posts discussed vision, culture and principles, this post is about style and it starts with a question for you - are you an inspector or a coach?

Dr. Rob McKenna is a good friend of mine and Rob has a passion for studying leadership under pressure.  This passion led him to work with the Boeing Company on a project where they followed the careers of 120 executives to explore factors and experiences that had the greatest impact on leadership development (you can read about Rob's work in an excellent article titled "The Differentiated Leader - Specific Strategies for Handling Today's Adverse Situations" - Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp 292-306, 2004).

Through many conversations with Rob, I interpret his definition of pressure to include any or all of these factors; 

1. Driving change and dealing with the associated anxieties in an organization
2. Being on the edge of your performance or capability envelope in a public 
3. Having the possibility of a highly visible failure
4. Operating with other's outspoken disagreement of your decisions and/or direction
5. Assuming responsibility for the direction, success and well-being of other people

Close your eyes and imagine you have all of these factors working against you in a situation.  You are driving change, you do not know what you are doing, your position is visible, factions within the organization are disagreeing with you and many are dependent upon you for their livelihood.  Within the lovely confines of this imagined scenario, one of your folks pulls you aside and unloads a major mistake, issue, decision or option on you. This is not minor; this could significantly divert you and the rest of the team from your mission.

What is your reaction to this person? If you are like me, your antenna tingles; looking for every bit and piece of data about the situation and your brain starts formulating options.  You then proceed to lay out to your young Padawan in a high degree of detail exactly what must get done to accomplish the task.  If you are like me, you become intensely concerned with what they are doing.

It is in these moments that our style becomes evident.  The style we must have to create and sustain passion is coaching not inspection.  You usually get in a leadership role because you have a history of getting stuff done and you are highly motivated.  These two combinations cause collateral fear in others, fear that as soon as the goal is accomplished you will toss them aside.  You probably do not feel that way, but how do they know?  How do they know they are not just a means to an end for you?  Remember passion requires people to believe that their role really matters.  Their role matters when they matter.  You can show them that they matter by coaching, not inspecting.

I have come to realize that the only way to shift from inspection to coaching is to look at someone and genuinely be more concerned about who they are becoming vs. what they are doing.  There is a great story about a promising young executive at IBM in the 1960's.  He had just led IBM into a risky venture that lost $10 million for the company.  When Tom Watson Sr., the founder and CEO of IBM called the executive into his office, the executive arrived with his resignation letter already written.  Watson is reported to have said, "You cannot be serious, we have just spent $10 million dollars educating you!"  Tom Watson was clearly focused on who this executive was becoming.

We do need to get stuff done within our organizations, so this focus on who they are becoming vs. what they are doing cannot be an either/or activity.  We cannot solely focus on who they are becoming.  Instead, I would ask you to think of it as a numerical scale going from -10 to +10.  The -10 end-point is fully concerned with what they are doing and not concerned at all about who they are becoming.  The + 10 end-point is fully concerned with who they are becoming and not concerned at all about what they are doing.  For us to have an effective style of coaching vs. inspection we merely need to spend the majority of our time on the + side of the scale.  We need to have the self-awareness to drag ourselves just barely into the positive side when under duress and it will speak volumes to our team.  When people deeply believe you care about who they are becoming their work will have meaning and through that meaning their passion will increase.

In the late 60's and early 70's the UCLA men's basketball team won ten national championships, seven in consecutive years, back to back undefeated seasons, an 88 game winning streak and 38 straight NCAA tournament victories.  By the standards of this world, UCLA was clearly a winner.  John Wooden was their coach and when asked what was the highest compliment he could receive he said, "The finest thing a player could say about me after he left the team was that I cared every bit as much about him as an individual as I cared about him as an athlete.  It was important to me because I really did care about them.  I often told the player that, next to my own flesh and blood, they were the closest to me.  They were my extended family and I got wrapped up in them, their lives.  Their problems.  There was a great deal of love involved in my coaching.  That is what a team should be to a coach."

Do you care about who your people are becoming or what they are doing?

Passion Part IV - Principles

In this series of posts, I write about passion as a force multiplier in an organization and the creation of passion through individuals who know their role, are convinced their role matters and see the good of their work.  I argue that leaders must focus on five elements to create this level of passion; vision, culture, principles, style and sacrifice.  The previous posts discussed vision and culture, this post is about principles.

Principles or boundaries?  Words matter and boundaries just might be a better word for this topic.  Principles are accepted or professed rules of conduct or action; boundaries are something that indicates a border or limit.  Why would a border or limit increase passion?

How can controlling someone release them to pursue their role with passion?

Many years ago there was a study of child behavior.  Two identical school yards were designed. The yards were the exact same dimensions, terrain and elevation.  Both had a flagpole in the middle of the yard.  The only difference was that one yard had no fence and the other was fenced-in.  In the schoolyard with no fence, the children played in a tight circle around the flagpole.  In the yard with the fence, their play consumed the entire yard.  The control of the fence released their play.  

Another example of control and release is musical improvisation where creativity is based upon melody, harmony or rhythm.  Think about harmony; an instrument produces sound waves that cause air to vibrate at a specific frequency.  At any particular frequency, there will be an overtone at multiples of that frequency.  Our ears perceive the matching up of overtone waves as harmony.  If the improvisation does not occur at the exact multiples of the frequency, we will hear distortion rather than music.  The control of the math behind the overtones releases the creativity that allows improvisation to occur in harmony.

As leaders we must set up principles or boundaries within our organization.  The use of these boundaries will release people much like the school child in the study or the creative musician.  Boundaries that work are Getting it Done and Doing it Right.  The basic principle is both/and, not an either/or.  Our teams must know we expect them to Get it Done and Do it Right.  The both/and is the boundary, the control around which all creativity is encouraged. We are telling our teams we care about what they do and how they do it.

Imagine a 2x2 grid where the vertical axis is Getting it Done (low to high) and the horizontal axis is Doing it Right (low to high).  An assessment of each individual in the organization would create a grid populated with four potential outcomes:

1. Low GID, low DIR - Exit Door - unless something changes this person needs to leave
2. Low GID, high DIR - Coaching Time - all the right ingredients, this person needs to be taught how to do their job well
3. High GID, high DIR - Role Model - this person is studied and raised up to the organization
4. High GID, low DIR - Roadblock - the dangerous one, this person needs to leave quickly, keeping them in the organization will derail your plans.

Labels such as Getting it Done and Doing it Right are ambiguous and clarity must be brought into the boundaries. Getting it Done reflects the person's ability to do the job assigned and has three elements to it; a) does the person have the requisite knowledge and skills? b) do they perform the tasks or processes necessary in the job? c) what is their measurable performance against the key metrics for the job?  An example for a sales executive would be; a) do they know the product? b) do they use the sales process? c) do they maintain the right pipeline and do they make their quota?

Getting it Done elements likely change from job to job.  The Doing it Right elements should not.  Doing it Right reflects how the person does their job and has three elements to it;

1. Team Player - Do they place the team's needs above their own?  Do they willingly share expertise with others?  Do they respect, seek and embrace input from others?
2. Integrity and Accountability - Do they accept blame as well as glory? Are they ethical, trusted by customers, partners and their team? Do their actions match their words?  Do they demonstrate through action that self-improvement is a priority?
3. Optimism and Enthusiasm - Are they a source of energy vs. a use of energy within the team? Do they see the truth, but not for worse than it is? Can they argue their position, but support the organizational decision?

Once these are defined we begin measuring and plotting people on this 2x2 grid.  Imagine combining an objective assessment of an employee's position in the grid with the cultural attribute of straight-talk discussed in the last post.  Through this activity we give our people a great gift; they know their standing in the organization and they have a roadmap to be a star.  This should be done with transparency, as Stephen Covey says, "Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and business".

One last comment on a certain group, the ones who are Getting it Done but not Doing it Right.  People ask me, "Do we really have to get rid of those people?"  Yes and publicly.  Most of my leadership mistakes have been people related and almost always a result of compromising this tenant.  When we have the courage to lay out the Doing it Right principles to our team, their hearts will be stirred.  The majority of humanity really wants to do the right thing. But one compromise and we become seen as a hypocrite.   Nothing punctures passion more quickly and wounds it more severely than hypocrisy in leadership. 

Passion Part III - Culture

In this series of posts, I write about passion as a force multiplier in an organization and the creation of passion through individuals who know their role, are convinced their role matters and see the good of their work.  I argue that leaders must focus on five elements to create this level of passion; vision, culture, principles, style and sacrifice.  A previous post discussed vision, this post is focused on culture.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.  Makes you laugh at first until you realize it is true.  An organization with strategy, but a culture that will not allow the strategy to happen, is cursed from the outset.  The dictionary defines culture as the predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.  A little stilted for me.  Let's try a mental picture; think of a 2x2 table with internal vs. external on the horizontal axis and individual vs. group on the vertical axis.  As an individual, I am judged by my behavior.  That is the external box.  However, my behavior is created by my beliefs.  That is the internal box.  For the group the word that goes in the external box is culture, the words that go in the internal box are shared values.  Culture is the collective shared values of the people in the organization. 

So what shared values create passion?  Some of the values depend upon the strategy of the organization.  The organization might want to be innovative.  If the organization is bureaucratic and punishes risk, innovation is not likely.  The organization might want to deliver the highest quality, but if the culture consists of rapid decision making without data then the strategy of high quality will suffer.  While some of the culture will depend upon the strategy, there are three values that must be shared for passion to exist in an organization:

1. Merit vs. entitlement
2. Straight talk vs. passive aggressiveness
3. Accountable vs. paternalism

Merit vs. entitlement - There are places you walk into where entitlement reigns.  People sashay around with the basic attitude, "because I have this badge - someone owes me something".  It is a be-served vs. a serve mentality.  Merit based cultures share a value of, "I first owe my customer, my colleagues and my company something, once delivered, I can expect something for me".  The best talent wants to be in a merit environment because they know they can win and be proud of their work.

Straight talk vs. passive aggressiveness - Nothing wounds passion more than passive-aggressiveness.  This is the type of behavior where you might say to me, "Alex, you are doing such a wonderful job, your work is great and you are a fantastic contributor to the organization".  Then you walk into the next office and say, "Alex is such a waste of oxygen, I have no idea why he is here".  Straight talk is difficult.  Straight talk means looking someone in the face and telling them the truth about their capability, contribution, skills or style.  And then coaching them.  Humans tend to avoid this conversation, or as my 12-year old Aristotle-like son Will says, "Dad, grown-ups tell you want you want to hear, kids tell you the truth".  One way to get into a rhythm of straight talk is to imbed the words 'judge' vs. 'observe' into your skull.  Avoid judging and focus on observing.  To judge is to form an opinion or estimate; to observe to see, watch, perceive, or notice, especially so as to learn something.  I was taught this rhythm by a good friend of mine Damon Beyer who is a partner at Katzenbach Partners.  Damon is one of the real leaders in cultural change management and drilled into my head;  Observation, Effect, Recommendation.  Observation is  fact with detail, Effect is the real impact on people or situations and Recommendation is a concrete statement to retain or change that which was observed.  When this pattern is followed, judgment rarely occurs. Without judgment straight talk can thrive.

Accountable vs. paternalism - Organizations that share a value of paternalism tend to follow a similar pattern.  If things are going well, everyone thinks they are individually doing a great job.  If the organization is struggling, people stand around the water cooler and talk about how much they need or want 'daddy' to fix it.  The real danger with paternalism is that the origin lies with the leadership.  The leaders assume they are smarter and can make better decisions than anyone else in the organization.  They get involved in details at all levels and if someone is deciding every last detail of how you get your job done, you stop thinking for yourself.  Given the type of world we are all competing in, we need a lot of individual initiative.  People with courage, intelligence, competence and self-confidence bloom in an organization with accountability and decision making at the right levels.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.  We must have the right shared values in place for passion to exist.  The basic foundation includes merit, straight talk and accountability.  If these don't exist and you have been the leader of your organization for more than six months than the first place to look is in the mirror.  Because whatever the leader is interested in, the people become fascinated by...or as Robert E. Lee once wrote, "You must be careful how you walk, and where you go, for there are those following you who will set their feet where yours are set"

In the next three posts, I will write about principles, style and sacrifice - three elements that the leader can use bring a merit-based, straight talk accountable culture into their organization.