create a “stop doing” list

There are only so many hours in a day. As your to-do list grows, you cannot keep accumulating more tasks. Solitude gives you the space to reflect on where your time is best spent, which provides you with the clarity to decide which meetings you should stop attending, which committees you should step down from, and which invitations you should politely decline. This is something that Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has been advising people to do for many years.

Mike Erwin

In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage. Harvard Business Review. October 19, 2017. 

See also, How Do You "Stop Doing?" by Jim Collins. jimcollins.com 2017.

and Saying 'Yes' To 'No': The Power Of A Stop Doing List by Robert Glazer. Forbes. Sept. 12, 2018

commander's intent

From a leader’s perspective, intent is the starting point. “Commander’s intent” has a special meaning in the military that requires time and thought. A commander must state his relevant aim. Intent is a formal statement in which the commander puts himself or herself on the line. Intent must accomplish the mission, it has to be achievable, it must be clearly understood, and at the end of the day, it has to deliver what the unit was tasked with achieving. Your moral authority as a commander is heavily dependent on the quality of this guidance and your troops’ sense of confidence in it: the expectation that they will use their initiative, aligning subordinate actions. You must unleash initiative rather than suffocate it…

By conveying my intent in writing and in person, I was out to win their coequal “ownership” of the mission: it wasn’t my mission; rather from private through general, it was our mission. I stressed to my staff that we had to win only one battle: for the hearts and minds of our subordinates. They will win all the rest…

Jim Mattis

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 238, 239

our verbosity is a cover for insincerity or uncertainty

In that premortal council, when Jesus meekly volunteered, saying, “Here am I, send me,” it was one of those significant moments when a few words are preferred to many. Never has one individual offered, in so few words. To do so much for so many as did Jesus when he meekly proffered Himself as ransom for all of us, billions and billions of us!

By contrast, in our unnecessary multiplication of words, there is not only a lack of clarity but often an abundance of vanity. Sometimes, too, our verbosity is a cover for insincerity or uncertainty. If there could be more subtraction of self, there would be less multiplication of words.

Even As I Am by Neal A. Maxwell. 1982. Deseret Book Company.

the humility mantra

I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. 

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.33

4 communication approaches

Effective communications: a combination of four approaches:

1. Leaders who have to tell and retell a story over and over again should remind themselves to approach it with a “beginners’ mind” – and not lose sight of what it’s like to tell and hear the story for the first time. As Alan G. Lafley, former CEO of P&G notes, “Excruciating repetition and clarity are important – employees have so many things going on in the operation of their daily business that they don’t always take the time to stop, think, and internalize.” Paolo Scaroni, who has led three Italian public companies through major change as CEO of Techint, Enel, and Eni, agrees as he indicates the key to successful communications is “repeat, repeat, and repeat… throughout the organization.”

2. Ensure the message sticks by coining and relentlessly repeating language that is simple and memorable. Consider Walmart’s “10-foot rule,” which reminds frontline employees of the company’s customer service aspiration: whenever you are within 10 feet of a customer, look them in the eye, smile, and ask how you can help.  At Microsoft, at the end of every meeting the question is called as to, “Was that a growth mindset or a fixed mindset meeting?” This acts not just as a reminder of the desired shift, but also prompts the act of continuous learning that a growth mindset is meant to manifest. As Willie Walsh, former CEO of British Airways, explains, “The simpler the message, the easier it is to deliver. The simpler the message, the more likely it is to be consistent. The simpler the message, the easier it is to control and manage the communication.”

The language not used can be just as powerful as that which is. When Australian telecommunications and media company Telstra wanted to improve internal collaboration, it banned people from using the word “they” in conversations about other teams and unites to remind employees to work as one organization. Posters proclaiming, “no ‘they’,” like the one below appeared everywhere, and people started to call attention to references to “they” and “them” even in casual conversations.

3. Move from “telling” to “asking.” This has the benefit of also leveraging the “lottery ticket” effect to build ownership. With this technique, even chance conversations can be put to good use. At Emerson Electric, CEO David Farr makes a point of asking virtually everyone he encounters the same four questions: “How do you make a difference?” (to find out whether people are aligned on the company’s direction); “What improvement ideas are you working on?” (to emphasize execution edge health recipe); “When did you last get coaching from your boss?” (to probe on the people development management practice); and “Who is the enemy?” (emphasizing collaboration – the right answer is to name a competitor and not some other department!). This sends a clear message that these issues matter. If employees don’t have good answers for you right at the moment, you can bet they will when they are asked next time. 

4. Ensure the story doesn’t just come from leaders and instead is reinforced through as many channels as possible: speech, print, online, actions, symbols, rituals, and so on. Using multiple channels reinforces the consistent message…. The most progressive two-way communications programs take what’s known as a “transmedia” approach – not just telling the same story through multiple channels but telling different aspects of the story through different channels that all add up to the integrated picture in ways that otherwise wouldn’t be possible to build. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

google leadership evaluation

Here are Google's leadership evaluation questions (a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree)):

1. My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance.

2. My manager does not "micromanage" (get involved in details that should be handled at other levels).

3. My manager shows consideration for me as a person.

4. The actions of my manager show that he/she values the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from his/her own.

5. My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables.

6. My manager regularly shares relevant information from his/her manager and senior leaders.

7. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about career development in the past six months.

8. My manager communicates clear goals for our team.

9. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, selling in Global Business, accounting in Finance) required to effectively manage me.

10. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers.

11. I am satisfied with my manager's overall performance as a manager.

Then Google employees are asked to complete two other questions: 

12. What would you recommend your manager keep doing?

13. What would you have your manager change?

The evaluation spends almost no time assessing a manager's knowledge, skill, and experience. All but one question focuses on soft skills: communication, feedback, coaching, teamwork, respect, and consideration.

What you know matters, but communicating, delegating, creating a sense of autonomy and purpose...that matters a lot more.

Granted, you could argue that possessing superb technical skills is less important for Google's team managers; after all, it's easier for Google to recruit and retain incredibly skilled people than it is for many companies. 

But that argument misses the larger point. While most employees need some degree of training early on, the emphasis soon shifts from what they know to how they use their knowledge and skills.

Jeff Haden

"Here's How Google Knows in Less Than 5 Minutes if Someone Is a Great Leader" Inc. November 18, 2020

provide a vision

In every successful transformation effort that I have seen, the guiding coalition develops a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees. A vision always goes beyond the numbers that are typically found in five-year plans. A vision says something that helps clarify the direction in which an organization needs to move.... A useful rule of thumb: if you can’t communicate the vision to someone in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are not yet done with this phase of the transformation process.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995

the leader's number one job

[Clear direction] is the leader's number one job. If you don't do anything else, you absolutely must give clear direction to your team. Let them know what the goals and objectives are. Too often there is a lack of clarity, which can lead to confusion, misalignment, frustration, and disengagement. Sometimes, clear direction is all a team needs; General Patton said, "Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Gordon Tredgold

"4 Simple Things Every Team Wants From Their Leader" inc.com. May 8, 2017

give people the feedback they need

“There’s a Russian anecdote about a man who loved his dog so much that when the vet told him he needed to cut the dog’s tail off he couldn’t do it all at once, so he did it an inch at a time. Don’t be that kind of manager.”

Giving unclear, infrequent feedback has somewhat of the same effect — though slightly less violent. You end up hurting the person receiving the feedback more, even though you’re just doing what your parents always told you empathetic people do: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.

This is where Scott says she’s seen managers make the most mistakes. “No one sets out to be unclear in their feedback, but somewhere along the line things change. You’re worried about hurting the person’s feelings so you hold back. Then, when they don’t improve because you haven’t told them they are doing something wrong, you wind up firing them. Not so nice after all…”

In order to give people the feedback they need to get better, you can’t give a damn about whether they like you or not. “Giving feedback is very emotional. Sometimes you get yelled at. Sometimes you get tears. These are hard, hard conversations.”

Interview with Kim Scott

"My Management Lessons from Three Failed Startups, Google, Apple, Dropbox, and Twitter" firstround.com 3/19/2014

ignorance

In the mid-1980s, a University of Arizona surgery professor, Marlys H. Witte, proposed teaching a class entitled “Introduction to Medical and Other Ignorance.” Her idea was not well received; at one foundation, an official told her he would rather resign than support a class on ignorance.

Dr. Witte was urged to alter the name of the course, but she wouldn’t budge. Far too often, she believed, teachers fail to emphasize how much about a given topic is unknown. “Textbooks spend 8 to 10 pages on pancreatic cancer,” she said some years later, “without ever telling the student that we just don’t know very much about it.” She wanted her students to recognize the limits of knowledge and to appreciate that questions often deserve as much attention as answers. Eventually, the American Medical Association funded the class, which students would fondly remember as “Ignorance 101.”

Classes like hers remain rare, but in recent years scholars have made a convincing case that focusing on uncertainty can foster latent curiosity, while emphasizing clarity can convey a warped understanding of knowledge.

In 2006, a Columbia University neuroscientist, Stuart J. Firestein, began teaching a course on scientific ignorance after realizing, to his horror, that many of his students might have believed that we understand nearly everything about the brain. (He suspected that a 1,414-page textbook may have been culpable.)

As he argued in his 2012 book “Ignorance: How It Drives Science,” many scientific facts simply aren’t solid and immutable, but are instead destined to be vigorously challenged and revised by successive generations. Discovery is not the neat and linear process many students imagine, but usually involves, in Dr. Firestein’s phrasing, “feeling around in dark rooms, bumping into unidentifiable things, looking for barely perceptible phantoms.” By inviting scientists of various specialties to teach his students about what truly excited them — not cold hard facts but intriguing ambiguities — Dr. Firestein sought to rebalance the scales.

Presenting ignorance as less extensive than it is, knowledge as more solid and more stable, and discovery as neater also leads students to misunderstand the interplay between answers and questions.

People tend to think of not knowing as something to be wiped out or overcome, as if ignorance were simply the absence of knowledge. But answers don’t merely resolve questions; they provoke new ones.

Jamie Holmes

"The Case for Teaching Ignorance" The New York Times. 8/24/2015

know thyself

Skills and experience might land you a leadership position with a large business organization, but they don’t make you a true leader.

Leadership comes from inside—and the greatest leaders first question themselves before they tackle the world around them.

Develop an inner clarity. Understand your bright and dark sides, your personal strengths and weakness. Self-comprehension is a fundamental precondition necessary for real leadership.

In the 6th century BC Thales, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, is reported to have offered the famous instruction “know thyself.”  This idea of self-inquiry as a mandatory feature of a well-lived life rapidly attained proverbial status among the Greeks.  In fact, it was even deemed worthy of inscription on the wall of Apollo’s temple at Delphi.  Sayings based on great wisdom, such as this one, all have one thing in common, regardless of the time and place where they occur: they all share one thing in common: they are encouragements to engage in conduct which is demanding and out of the ordinary but offers prospects of great reward.  Thales’ teaching is a classic illustration of this point.

Panos Mourdoukoutas

"The First Golden Rule Of Leadership" Forbes. 9/5/2015

leadership is not a position

Real leadership requires personal influence -- persuasion afforded by a long track record of strong relationships built by trust. That reserve of trust may have been built by any number of things:

• Direct, clear communication without intention to deceive
• Consistency- actions that match your words
• Transparency and openness
• Explanations about goals and decisions
• A private life that matches the public life
• Competence
• Concern and compassion for others
• An upbeat, positive attitude about the future

When others observe these attitudes in a leader, the personal influence compels them to listen with an open mind -- and often to accept the leader's ideas and opinions as their own.

When the personal influence is missing, a positional title often demands little more than a "hearing" -- often met with open skepticism.

Dianna Booher 

"3 Things Leadership Is NOT" Huffington Post. 9/22/15

simplify and focus

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following...

Simplify and focus. When things are going badly, there is rarely one obvious problem. In fact, the issues are usually more like a giant knot of yarn, rich in complexity with threads running randomly through the organization. To untie the knot, you can’t pull on every part of it at once. Instead, you have to reduce your activities to a few focused efforts that are both urgent and important. As you begin pulling on those areas, more clarity will emerge, and logical next steps will appear. The secret to solving complex problems is actually radical simplicity.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015