The Simplest Thing That Works

Leading - Now and Always

I’ve been thinking about leaders lately, and how important good leaders are going to be over the next couple of years. As we start to come out of this recession, and to right our ship of state on a variety of levels, I’m noticing more than ever before how important it is for organizations to have strong and flexible leaders.  I watch as those organizations whose leaders are too inflexible, too cautious, too short-sighted or too fear-based continue to founder, while those whose leaders are far-sighted, passionate, courageous, wise, generous and trustworthy seem to be finding their way much more quickly and easily.

And it just so happens that we at Proteus have and use a leadership model based on those six qualities, so it’s reinforcing our sense that these truly are the essential characteristics of good and effective leaders. We evolved our model based on “leader stories” from all over the world, going on the premise that folk and fairy tales tend to carry the “DNA” of our cultural expectations about what good leadership looks and feels like. If you’re interested, here is a little more explanation about the six qualities as they show up in these leader stories:

In these stories, the young leader-to-be can see beyond his current situation to his ultimate goal (save his father, win the princess, kill the monster), and can express it clearly and in a compelling and inclusive way – especially those whose help he needs – even when others lose sight of it, believe it’s impossible, or ridicule him for trying.  He is Far-sighted.  

Moreover, the leader-in-training doesn’t just go through the motions.  He is deeply committed to his quest.  His every action is directed toward achieving it.  Nothing dissuades him, even the inevitable setbacks and disappointments attendant on any quest.  He may not be loud about it, but he is relentless. He is Passionate.

Throughout the story, he is confronted with difficult situations.  He may be afraid and lonely; he may feel like running away, longing for the comfort and safety of home.  He often faces situations that are particularly trying for him personally. But he doesn’t turn aside; he doesn’t (unlike his brothers or others who attempt the same journey) make the safe and easy choices.  He doesn’t wimp out.  He is Courageous. 

He’s not a cardboard action hero, though.  His brain is tested, and he must be able to learn from his mistakes.  In many versions of the story, he doesn’t initially follow the advice given him, and his mistakes create complexity and danger.  The next time a similar situation arises, he behaves differently and succeeds at his task.  He doesn’t deny or whine or blame; he improves.  Finally, he uses his powers of discrimination to think through difficult choices and arrive at the best and most moral solution. He is thoughtful, appropriately humble, clear-headed and curious.  He is Wise. 

Along the way, the future leader meets people or creatures in need, and he helps them or shares with them even though his own supplies are low; even if helping them takes him out of his way or slows him down.  In some versions of the story, he actually has to seem to sacrifice his life for those he loves or to whom he owes his loyalty (this always turns out OK in the end).  And later on, when he is king, his people are prosperous and happy because he rules with an open hand — the leader is not stingy, miserly or selfish.  He is Generous.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, his word is his bond.  If he tells his dying father that he will find the magic potion to cure him, you know that he will.  If he tells the princess that he will come back to marry her, she can send out the invitations. The hero does not equivocate or exaggerate.  He is Trustworthy.  

My next book (which I’m writing as we speak) is focused on this model and how to apply it in your own lifeas a leader – including how to build each of these characteristics in yourself and others.  I’d love to hear ay feedback from you about what you’d like to see in the book and how I can make it most useful and interesting for my readers.

Many thanks in anticipation…

Kind and Clear

Office-Politics.

My extremely prolific and smart friend Franke James, of Dear Office-Politics and Bothered by My Green Conscience fame, has just done me the honor of writing a wonderful review of Being Strategic on office-politics.com.

As usual, she is both very kind and very clear - I love what she says about the book.  She notes that the core of the book for her is the understanding that being strategic is a life skill, an understanding I hope for everyone who reads the book.

Esepcially now, as we all work to create sustainable post-recession careers and businesses, my wish for everyone is the ability and will to consistently focus on those core directional choices that will best move them toward their hoped-for future. 

Thank you, Franke!

Sibling Revelry II

A few weeks ago, I posted a dialogue my brother Kurt and I had about this "reset" time in our nation's history.  A number of people said they enjoyed it, but thought it was too long for a single post.  So I've split it in half: here's the second part.

Continued from October 12...

KA: You say, “In my experience, it’s even better if you have a whole senior team who come to that vision together (often with the visionary leader as catalyst).” Well, sure -- but my hands-on experience (in magazines, TV, the web and radio) is all startups, so it starts with the founder(s) who need(s) to possess and then instill the missionary vision in the team.

As for the Times, I meant: an irreplaceably excellent product that must struggle and reinvent to survive but isn't one (like the nightly network news in this day and age) that IMHO has become obsolete. The managers of most newspapers now, however, are simply presiding over their decline and fall.

EA: OK, so let’s get specific.  How could the managers of excellent newspapers like the Times NOT simply preside over the dissolution of their businesses?  I’m not asking you what they should morph into, but how you think they should go about re-inventing themselves – what’s the process?  In other words, how do they get out of their own way and shift the momentum from decline-and- fall to renewal?

(And I do agree with you about start-ups, by the way.  One or a couple of people need to have a great idea about which they’re passionate – and then to gather around them other people who catch that fever and are willing and able to translate it into reality.)

KA: The difficulty for newspapers, or "old media" generally -- or for that matter any enterprise that finds the technological and financial underpinnings of its venerable existing business dissolving -- is that they didn't really believe in the total analog-to-digital phase change for a long time. The denial was chronic and understandable. They had lucrative monopolies or quasi monopolies for a century or more, deeply entrenched editorial protocols and business models that worked, and a very high opinion of themselves that reached a kind of apogee in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam last third of the 20th century.

Then, 15 years ago, came the web, which very very few of them took very seriously, even as its transformative inflection-point power became the elephant in their room. Even as recently as five years ago, as newpaper circulation declined and they gave away their content for free to readers online, most of them weren't really scared or scrambling -- because the market was telling them not to worry too much.  But newspapers' dire position was obvious: at a symposium five years ago at the NYU journalism school I caused a small ruckus by saying that "newspapers are fucked." Back then  the New York Times company's share price was $40, and now it's $8. And 95% of newspapers, because they aren't excellent and don't have a global brand, are in even worse shape. Newspapers should have started focusing hard (and still should, if they have a prayer) on what they can do well and uniquely, really forced themselves to understand and embrace digital opportunities deeply, proactively downsized and reorganized their staffs, generated online ”circulation” revenue, and so on. Hindsight is 20-20, sure, but the extent of the dithering and denial over the last decade is hard to defend

So what I'm saying is that it's very difficult for the proverbial frogs in the slowly heating pot of water to realize they're about to get boiled, and by they do they're so panicked it's almost impossible to think clearly about how to hop out of the pot. Or, to use a different metaphor, it's very hard for a complacent, business-as-usual government army to reconfigure itself as a nimble special-ops force. Because the Times has the luxury of betting that they will survive, they have responded, finally, pretty smartly, by becoming a very good web-based entity -- and even more, by starting to think of itself as something like a perpetual startup, perpetually in danger. If an existing company in this reset age has a chance to survive, let alone thrive, I think its leaders and staff need to think of themselves more as scrappy guerillas in perpetual startup mode. And for many or most existing companies in many industries, that won't really be possible; the legacy mindsets and current dread are too dispiriting and hobbling. Which is why this is a great moment for actual startups.

EA: I completely agree that’s what’s needed.  It’s the “beginner’s mind” you talk about in Reset.  I very often offer the Michelangelo quote, “I’m still learning” as a mindset to emulate.  Just today I was talking to some clients about questioning their business-as-usual assumptions.  They kept saying “we have to do this in order to...” and I kept saying, “do you?”

And yes, the ‘legacy mindsets and current dread’ are huge impediments. Back to our earlier topic, though, I think vision, when connected to strategy, is a powerful antidote to that past-gravity mindset. If you create a possible future that’s more compelling than fear and inertia, and a practical path to get there, people quite often wake up and start moving in a right direction.

The good news is, even in a really big company, all it takes is one strong, clear, positive visionary at the top, who has the smarts and clout to surround him/herself with a team of like-minded and highly competent individuals.

KA: Those leaders who can "create a possible future that’s more compelling than fear and inertia, and a practical path to get there" are, of course, rare, but yes, it can be the whole ball game -- for families and countries as well as organizations.

My Money Is Going Where?

Recovery.org – Tracking Economic Recovery Spending.

Lately I've found myself wondering what exactly the "recovery money" is being spent on.  Here, by the grace of the internet, is a way to find out.

This site seem to have pretty accurate, un-spun data about where all the money's going, and interesting reactions to that data, including which projects are "most discussed," considered "most worthwhile," and "most unnecesary" (and why).

There's lots of pork, as you might suspect (my favorite being $8,000,000 worth of "fence" in Arizona), but there are also some pretty great things, including updating or new construction on dams, highways and sewage treatment plants, and projects to support alternative (less fossil-fuel intensive) forms of transport.

I  hope it's creating lots of work for folks who needs jobs, vs. lining the pockets of the already wealthy. 

Making Work Better

Give More Media | committed to making work better.

The subtitle of my blog is "making work better." So today I Googled that phrase, just to see what came up. I found this great company called "Give More Media," whose whole purpose, in their words, is this:

"Give More Media, Inc. is a group of people passionately committed to making work better. We do it by creating and publishing tools, information and material that help people get more meaning from their work."

I love that something like this exists.  (I'm going to buy their Margaret Mead note cards - very, very cool)

Sibling Revelry

I've heard from a number of folks that they enjoyed this dialogue between my borther Kurt and me, but that they felt it was too long, and the font was too small.  So I'm dividing it in half: the second half will be on November 3.

My brother Kurt and I have both had books published in the past few months. His book, Reset, focuses on this unique time in our evolution as a nation, and how we need to think and act differently going forward.  As you know, my book, Being Strategic, offers a mindset and a process for thinking constructively about your future, professionally or personally, at any time.  He and I had an email dialogue over the past several days, discussing the intersection of our two books: our perspectives on how to take best advantage of the circumstance we all find ourselves in at this particular point in history.

EA: Kurt, you talk about this being a great time for the “seeds and saplings” - smaller, newer companies that might have a better chance to grow in this environment where some giant trees have toppled.  What can these seeds and saplings do – approaches, assumptions, relationships, anything else you’ve thought about — in order to have the best chance to thrive?

KA: Well, of the districts of the economic forest where big old trees are most obviously falling, I don't have any idea what to tell startups in the automobile or retail or real estate or financial industries, but I do know the media businesses fairly well. And my major advice to seedlings/saplings there would be: 1) don't just have "a vision" for the product, which everyone thinks they do, but make sure the leader or leaders of the or enterprise are actually visionaries, with distinct, instinctive, thoroughly thought-through understandings of and commitment to the Big Idea, 2) create a thing that you personally want or need and can love, and 3) know and really understand all the flavors of conventional wisdom in your world, and then reject the correct majority (but probably not all) of that conventional wisdom. Now that I look at them, maybe those pieces of advice are pretty generally applicable, and I suppose not so different than I would give in more normal economic times. What this Reset moment does is make my #3 in particular more difficult, crucial and exciting to do.

EA: If we move toward a buy-what-you-need mentality, and away from buy-everything-you-want, how can companies continue to grow and prosper while serving this new, more discerning consumer?

KA: See #2 above. Creating excellent things becomes more important, I think. In rich countries like ours, a plurality of the stuff that most people consume is somewhere in the gray middle zone -- not quite needs, strictly speaking, but not utterly and plainly superfluous. And of course, as I say in the book, we're not, happily, going to turn into a nation of Puritan goody-goodies. But right now I'd rather be in the businesss of selling the New York Times and Ford Fusion hybrids than, say, network TV news programs and Hummers.

How about you? How do you think the sky-is-falling moment changes the nature of strategic thinking? I think for a lot of businesses, in industries that have really gone off the cliff, conceiving and executing "strategy" in any meaningful sense becomes impossible beyond triage.

EA: I’m with you about vision being at the core of what’s needed.  From my point of view, being truly strategic implies both vision and strategy; having, in your words “distinct, instinctive, thoroughly thought-through understandings of and commitment to the Big Idea” is essential to the creation of good strategy.  In fact, one of my pet peeves about what most people call strategy – even people like Michael Porter – is that it’s quite reactive: Look at the marketplace, look at your competition, look at your assets, then figure out how to best use your assets to capture the market in a more cost-effective way than your competition.

I think that analyzing your current state in that way is only the beginning (and certainly won’t serve for businesses that really need to re-conceive themselves in this environment).  The critical step — and I think this is what you’re saying, too -- is to then envision that 3-dimensional future.  If you have a visionary leader who can do that and communicate it in a compelling and inclusive way, that’s great.  In my experience, it’s even better if you have a whole senior team who come to that vision together (often with the visionary leader as catalyst). And once you’ve fully envisioned and committed to that future, then strategy (and tactics) are the path to get there.

Now I’ve GOT to go back to something else you said — you’d rather be in the business of selling the New York Times?  Help me understand that.

Continued on November 3....

Ah-ha!

I've never been able to do Sudoku.  Which has always irritated the hell out of me, and been puzzling as well, because I'm good - generally speaking - with numbers.  I just couldn't find a way in: I'd look at a Sudoku puzzle in a newspaper, and I'd try random guesses for a few minutes, make no headway, and quit in frustration.

Then this weekend Patrick and I were visiting his daughter Kate at school in Cleveland, and she told me two simple things about how to get a Sudoku started: what to look for, how to proceed.  I felt as though someone had turned on a light  in my brain. Having a place to start opened it up, and then I could see other, more complex ways to think and progress. I'm proud to say that I've since completed four Sudokus.

Today I was working with a client group, teaching them Social Styles.  And there were various times when I saw an interpersonal version of the same thing happen for someone in the group. First, not getting each other: frustration, blockage.  Then that sudden "ah-ha": the light goes on, and another person's point of view or approach that had seemed completely un-understandable suddenly makes sense.  It's still maybe not the way you would do it, but it makes sense.  You can work with it.

And here's MY ah-ha.  I wouldn't have been able to benefit from Kate's Sudoku wisdom if I had assumed that Sudoku was completely beyond me.  But I didn't.  My assumption was that I just hadn't figured out how to get into it yet (Which turned out to be the case).

I think people often assume that there's simply no way to understand and work with someone who's wired really differently from them.  So they can't.  But if they assume, instead, that they just haven't yet figured out how to make it work  -- then when a tool or model is offered that might provide important insights into that person, they can be open to it.

So, the moral of the story is: stay hopeful.  If you assume there just might be a way to solve a semingly insoluble problem, you'll be open to considering the solution when it shows up.

William Safire: The Life of a Writer - by Judy Bachrach - Obit Magazine

William Safire: The Life of a Writer - by Judy Bachrach - Obit Magazine.

A friend sent me this William Safire Obit today - I wasn't aware he had died, and reading it set off a whole memory train.

My mom, Jean Andersen, who died in 2004, was a huge William Safire fan - not of his politics (she moved further and further left as she aged) so much as of his writing and of his unyielding and often irritable passion for the English language.

The two of them, Willam Safire and my mother, were soulmates in that regard - both of them dearly loved the language, were appalled at any ill-use of it, and were the staunchest defenders of grammatical purity and syntactical clarity.

I remember her reading snippets of his NY Times columns to me over the decades, always with a kind of relieved glee (finally! someone else on the side of the angels!) and always nodding in complete complete agreement.  Understand: my mother was more than capable of an extended rant on the sad state of proof-reading in the world of modern newspapers; she had a special disdain for failures to spot the improper use of the apostrophe.

So, as I read Safire's obituary, and thought about him and my mom, I realized how much I owe them both. She (and later he) called out, supported and honed my own love of language, and my passion for expressing myself as well and clearly as possible, from my earliest years.  Certainly I've been inspired and encouraged to a high standard in my use of language by many other people (my brother Kurt, for instance, and my partner Jeff) but my mother influenced me most, and she introduced me to Safire as an influence, as well.

Thanks, mom, and thanks, Mr. Safire.

Being Strategic: Live from the Inc. 500

Being Strategic: Live from the Inc. 500.

I had an absolutely wonderful time yesterday, speaking at the Inc 500 conference, and this is a live-from-the-event blog post from Janine Popick of Vertical Response.

So, Janine: thank you!  You have truly made my day; you understood everything I was trying to say, you got why it's important, and you've made it your own.

This is why I do the work I do.  I'll go back into the fray on Monday, knowing that some of the people in that session (or at least one) found it valuable.

Onward and upward!

A Good Thing for Free

Macmillan, the parent company of my publisher, St Martin's Press, has invited me to participate in a promotion to celebrate the release of my new book Being Strategic, as well as the release of Allen Adamson's BrandDigital in paperback. They’ve set up a three-book prize giveaway of Being Strategic, Brand Digital, and Allen's earlier BrandSimple.
 
Here’s how to win: Write a comment on this post naming a company – any size or industry – that you think is being strategic about their brand; approaching branding in ways that are both innovative and powerfully focused on the future.

  Allen will be posting this on his blog, as well, and Macmillan will choose 3 winners from the entries we receive.  We’ll announce the winners on our blogs, and each winner will receive his or her copies of the three books  directly from Macmillan. (And now for the legalese: the contest is only open to US and Canadian residents, and the prizes cant be sent to a PO box.)

The contest starts right now and ends on November 2, so start your mental engines!

I look forward to reading your comments....