how information is communicated

When I sat down with the CEO and her executive team to think through their communication plan, I asked not about the change itself, but about how her employees might feel about what’s ahead. We started with her team because, in my work as a communication consultant, I’ve observed the same thing time and time again: how information is communicated to employees during a change matters more than what information is communicated. A lack of audience empathy when conveying news about an organizational transformation can cause it to fail.

Patti Sanchez

"The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy," Harvard Business Review. December 20, 2018

you've got to make mistakes

No one does the leader's job flawlessly, believe me. You've got to make mistakes and learn from them. Yankees manager Joe Torree got fired three times during his career. Now he's looked upon as the icon of the game. He learned some things along the way. 

In his book, Jack: Straight from the Gut, Jack Welch freely admits he made many hiring mistakes in his early years. He made a lot of decisions from instinct. But when he was wrong, he'd say, "It's my fault." He'd ask himself why he was wrong, he'd listen to other people, he'd get more data, and he'd figure it out. And he just kept getting better and better. He also recognized that it's not useful to beat other people up when they make mistakes. To the contrary, that's the time to coach them, encourage them, and help them regain their self-confidence.

Larry Bossidy

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 83

the personal connection

The personal connection is especially critical when a leader starts something new. The business world is full of failed initiatives. Good, important ideas get launched with much fanfare. but six months or a year later they're dead in the water and abandoned as unworkable. Why? Down in the organization, the managers feel that the last thing they need is one more time-consuming project of uncertain merit and outcome, so they blow it off. "This too will pass," they say. "just like the last bright idea of the month." Result: the company wastes time, money and energy, and the leader loses credibility, usually without realizing that the failure is a personal indictment. 

The leader's personal involvement, understanding, and commitment are necessary to overcome this passive (or in many cases active) resistance. She not only has to announce the initiative, but to define it clearly and define its importance to the organization. She can't do this unless she understands how it will work and what it really means in terms of benefit. Then she has to follow through to make sure everyone takes it seriously. Again, she can't do this if she can't understand the problems that come with implementation, talk about them with the people doing the implementing, and make clear - again and again - that she expects them to execute it. 

Larry Bossidy

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 65

the ability to execute

Most often today the difference between a company and its competitor is the ability to execute. If your competitors are executing better than you are, they're beating you in the here and now, and the financial markets won't wait to see if your elaborate strategy plays out. So leaders who can't execute don't get free runs anymore. Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes...

Here is a fundamental problem: people think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived "bigger" issues. this idea is completely wrong. Execution is not just tactics - it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built into a company's strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it. He cannot delegate its substance. Many business leaders spend vast amounts of time learning and promulgating the latest management techniques. But their failure to understand and practice execution negates the value of almost all they learn and preach. Such leaders are building houses without foundations.

Ram Charan

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 5,6

a fear of being seen to fail

Look, your problem is not a fear of failure itself, but a fear of being seen to fail. 

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself 2023 Day-to-Day Calendar: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. January 28/29

the world revolves around change

The world revolves around change. Birth and death, growth and destruction, rise and fall, summer and winter. It’s never the same from one day to another no matter how much it might seem that it is.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice…” – Heraclitus

Our minds would love to predict and plan for everything that’s going to happen. But it’s simply not possible. And these expectations not only have a negative effect on our emotional state, they actually leave us less powerful than we really could be. 

It’s so much more effective to simply take things as they present themselves, to live in the moment (like there’s another moment you could live in), and solve issues and items as they arise, than to constantly expect.

It’s not that I’m anti-planning (I most certainly am not), but the stone-cold attachment to the plan (and all the expectation therein) is a little like falling out of a rowboat and continuing to row even through you have no oars and no boat under you anymore. Your plan (and image) of how this should have gone is no longer relevant but you still struggle to reconcile the space between your expectations and reality. 

Life can be like that at times. On some occasions you have to realize that the game has changed (sometimes dramatically so) and you need to pivot. Deal with your reality.

Wake up, you’re in the water. Stop waving your arms about and paddle to shore, dammit!

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.175. 176

fear of being judged by others

Like plenty of other things in our lives, part of our aversion to uncertainty comes from our fear of being judged by others. We are, in a very real way, afraid of what the tribe thinks and the prospect of being thrown out into the mystery and uncertainty of the wild.

If we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, maybe we’ll look awkward. People will think we’re “weird.” If we push out limits and try to achieve new things, maybe we’ll fail. People will think we’re a “failure.”

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” – Epictetus

You’re never going to achieve your true potential if you’re hooked by what other people think. In fact, you could change your life overnight if you simply abandoned the notion that other people’s opinions matter. Life goes on, opinion-heavy or opinion-lite.

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.108, 109

i believe in discovery

I don't believe in failure. I believe in discovery. The quickest path to innovation is through discovery. The only way to discover is to constantly try new things. The more you try, the more you discover.

In other words, eliminate the word failure from your vocabulary. Failure is negative. It yells at you and tells you never to try again.

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

important to reward failure

It's... important to reward failure. While incentives and goals matter, the act of considered risk taking itself needs to be rewarded, esp in face of failure. Otherwise people will simply not take risk. 

Laszlo Bock

"Work Rules! Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead", 2015, Hatchette Book Group.

failed changes

Each of us can list a number of poorly implemented changes in our organizations. Some changes end up behind schedule. Others run over budget. Some face tremendous resistance when employees experience barriers to adoption. Some changes get implemented, but the expected results never materialize. In some cases, changes fail completely and are abandoned. Many of the reasons past projects didn't achieve intended outcomes are tied to mismanaging the people side of change.

Now consider the cost of these failed changes. How much time and money was spent on initiatives that were not fully implemented? What was the impact to the organization from not implementing these changes? Your organization cannot risk the additional cost and missed benefits of poorly managing the human side of change. 

Building the organization-wide competency to manage change effectively can be a cost-avoidance measure that minimizes impacts from failed changes.

Tim Creasey

"Why Organizations Need To Make Change Management a Core Competency," Prosci. Accessed on April 20, 2023

root-cause mind-sets

Mind-sets ingrained by past management practices remain ingrained far beyond the existence of the practices that formed them, even when new management practices have been put in place.

Here are three business examples that underscore the perils of ignoring this lesson. Example one: a bank that identified how its high performers succeeded in cross-selling decided to roll out a change program with support scripts and good profiling questions for the other bankers to use—and was dismayed to find that these moves had a negligible impact on sales. A second example: a telco introduced a dramatically simplified process and rating system for performance reviews only to find that its leaders still avoided delivering tough messages. Finally: a manufacturer invested hundreds of millions in a knowledge-management technology platform meant to discourage hoarding and encourage collaboration—only to declare, several months later, that the system had been a complete failure.

In all these examples, the companies did a good job of recognizing the behavioral change needed to achieve the desired goals. Yet they didn’t take the time, or use the tools available, to understand why smart, hard-working, and well-intentioned employees continued to behave as before.

At the bank, for instance, two seemingly good but ultimately performance-limiting mind-sets accounted for the failure of the new sales-stimulation tools and training. The first was “my job is to give the customers what they want”; the second, “I should follow the Golden Rule and treat my customers as I would like to be treated.” At the telco, employees had a deep-seated, reasonable-sounding belief that “criticism damages relationships.” At the manufacturing company, people had an underlying conviction that “around here, information is power, and good leaders are powerful leaders.”

The upshot? By looking at—and acting on—only observable behavior, company leaders overlooked its underlying root causes. Consequently, the change efforts of all three organizations led to disappointment.

Once the root-cause mind-sets are identified, the next step is to reframe those beliefs and thereby expand the range of reasonable behavioral choices employees make, day in and day out. That creates the caterpillar-to-butterfly effect described earlier. Would different beliefs, for example, have inspired expanded and better-informed behavioral choices for average-performing bankers? If so, which beliefs? Suppose they believed that their job—indeed, the way they add value for others—was to “help customers fully understand their needs” rather than “giving customers what they want.” Also, what if instead of applying the “Golden Rule,” bankers applied the “Platinum Rule”: treating others as they (rather than bankers) want to be treated.

And what if the telco executives, in their performance-management discussions, had believed that “honesty—combined with respect—doesn’t damage relationships; in fact, it is essential to building strong ones”? And what if the manufacturing managers had thought that “sharing information rather than hoarding is the best way to magnify power”? Had they believed that, the company very likely wouldn’t have needed an expensive (and ultimately futile) knowledge-management system to help employees reach out to one another and share best practices.

Beneath each of the reframes described above, it’s important to note, lies a deeper shift in worldview. For example, moving from the giving-customers-what-they-want mind-set to helping them fully understand what they really need reflects a move from subordinate to peer. Recognizing that honesty builds rather than destroys relationships reflects a shift from victimhood to mastery. And choosing to believe that power is expanded by sharing information, not that hoarding information is power, focuses on abundance, not scarcity.

"Getting personal about change," by Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger. McKinsey Quarterly. August 21, 2019. 

who dares wins

Throughout my career, I always had great respect for the British Special Air Service, the famed SAS. The SAS motto was "Who Dares Wins." The motto was so widely admired that even moments before the bin Laden raid, my Command Sergeant Major, Chris Faris, quoted it to the SEALs preparing for the mission. To me the motto was more than about how the British special forces operated as a unit; it was about how each of us should approach our lives.

Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life. 

Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired)

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... and Maybe the World. Grand Central Publishing. 2017. p.63

if that's respect, then I want none of it

I wish I could say that the need to improve listening skills and less-than-perfect coordination happened only in the past. But the tragic sinking of a Japanese fishing boat off Honolulu by the submarine USS Greenville suggests otherwise. The moment I heard about it, I was reminded that, as is often the case with accidents, someone senses possible danger but doesn't necessarily speak up. As the Greenville investigation unfolded, I read in a New York Times article that the submarine's crew "respected the commanding officer too much to question his judgement." If that's respect, then I want none of it. You need to have people in your organization that can tap you on your shoulder and say, "Is this the best way?" or "Slow down," or "Think about this," or "Is what we are doing worth killing or injuring somebody?"

D. Michael Abrashoff

It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff. Grand Central Publishing. 2007. p.91,92

vitality

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Crack Up. By F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1945. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

who we truly are

What I learned through it is that we are not on this earth to accumulate victories, or trophies, or experiences, or even to avoid failures, but to be whittled and sandpapered down until what’s left is who we truly are. This is the only way we can find purpose in pain and loss, and the only way to keep returning to gratitude and grace.

Arianna Huffington

"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

strategy / tactics

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Sun Tzu

"Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin," by Emil Sayegh. August 2021. 

what to change?

Corporate transformations still have a miserable success rate, even though scholars and consultants have significantly improved our understanding of how they work. Studies consistently report that about three-quarters of change efforts flop—either they fail to deliver the anticipated benefits or they are abandoned entirely.

Because flawed implementation is most often blamed for such failures, organizations have focused on improving execution. They have embraced the idea that transformation is a process with key stages that must be carefully managed and levers that must be pulled—indeed, expressions such as “burning platform,” “guiding coalition,” and “quick wins” are now common in the change management lexicon. But poor execution is only part of the problem; our analysis suggests that misdiagnosis is equally to blame. Often organizations pursue the wrong changes—especially in complex and fast-moving environments, where decisions about what to transform in order to remain competitive can be hasty or misguided.

Before worrying about how to change, executive teams need to figure out what to change—in particular, what to change first...

So how can leaders decide which changes to prioritize at the moment? By fully understanding three things: the catalyst for transformation, the organization’s underlying quest, and the leadership capabilities needed to see it through. Our analysis of stalled transformations suggests that failing to examine and align these factors drastically reduces the odds of producing lasting change.

Bharat N. Anand and Jean-Louis Barsoux

"What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management," Harvard Business Review. November-December 2017. 

who never makes a mistake

Roosevelt is no more infallible than the rest of us. Over and over again I have seen him pause when he had decided upon his line of action, and review it to see where there was a chance for mistake. Finding none, he would issue his order with the sober comment: “There, we have done the best we could. If there is any mistake we will make it right. The fear of it shall not deter us from doing our duty. The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”

Theodore Roosevelt

1900 August, The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Volume 22, Number 2, Theodore Roosevelt by Jacob A. Riis, Start Page 181, Quote Page 184, Column 2, Published by The Review of Reviews Company, New York. (Google Books Full View). As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. See also "The Person Who Never Makes a Mistake Will Never Make Anything," Quote Investigator. December 16, 20214. 

This was a popular phrase widely in circulation at the time of Theodore Roosevelt's statement. Here are some of my favorites:

• 1832: It has been justly observed, that he who never makes an effort, never risks a failure, and, “In great attempts ’tis glorious to fail!” (The New Sporting Magazine)
• 1859: We learn wisdom from failure more than from success: we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery. (Samuel Smiles)
• 1897: THE INFALLIBLE MAN - There was a man who never made, A blunder in his life; He loved a girl, but was afraid, If she became his wife, That he or she might rue the day, That brought them bliss; and so, He put the happiness away, That wedded lovers know. (The Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo)
• 1903: The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all—doing nothing. (Poor Richard Junior’s Philosophy)
• 1903: ‘He who never does anything wrong, seldom, if ever, does anything right,’ and a man whom I know you particularly admire expresses the same thing when he says, ‘A man who never makes mistakes, never makes anything.’ All the wise men of all ages have called attention to the one trait in which all humanity is alike, namely the liability to make mistakes. (Leo Tolstoy)

their shortcomings justify my failure

"You can't focus on results because in the box you're focused on yourself."

...Even most of the people you've encountered in your career who you think are results-focused really aren't. They value results primarily for the purpose of creating or sustaining their own stellar reputations. And you can tell because they generally don't feel that other people's results are as important as their own. Think about it - most people aren't nearly so happy when other people in the organization succeed as they are when they themselves do. So they run all over people trying to get only their own results - with devastating effects. They might beat their chests and preach focusing on results, but it's a lie. In the box, they, like everyone else, are just focused on themselves. But in the box, they, like everyone else, can't see it.

And it's even worse than that. Because, remember, in the box we provoke others to get in the box. We withhold information, for example, which gives others reason to do the same. We try to control others, which provokes the very resistance that we feel the need to control all the more. We withhold resources from others, who then feel the need to protect resources from us. We blame others for dragging their feet and in so doing give them reason to feel justified in dragging their feet all the more. And so on.

And through it all we think that all our problems would be solved if Jack wouldn't do this or if Linda wouldn't do that or if XYZ department would just straighten up of if the company would get a clue. But it's a lie. It's a lie even if Jack, Linda, XYZ department, and the company need to improve, which they surely do. Because when I'm blaming them, I'm not doing it because they need to improve, I'm blaming them because their shortcomings justify my failure to improve. 

So, one person in an organization, by being in the box and failing to focus on results, provokes his or her coworkers to fail to focus on results as well. Collusion spreads far and wide, and the end result is that coworkers position themselves against coworkers, workgroups against workgroups, departments against departments. People who came together to help an organization succeed actually end up delighting in each other's failures and resenting each other's successes.

Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.105-107

time for the right next step

In a hotel room in Denver before the second game of the 2019-20 season, [Deandre] Ayton got a call from the league office. “Bada boom bada bing,” he recounts. “‘At this time, we’re letting the world know you are done.’” Ayton tested positive for a diuretic, a banned substance used to mask PEDs. He was suspended for 25 games.

The first thing Ayton did was walk to [Monty] Williams’s hotel room. “I just knew I had to be honest and make sure I tell my front office and coach what was up before it got to the media, just to show my respect,” Ayton says.

Williams sat Ayton down next to him, hugged him, and told him, “D.A., you did what you did. These are the consequences. Now, it’s just time for the right next step,” Ayton recalls.

Seerat Sohi

"Will Deandre Ayton Get His Moment in the Sun?" by Seerat Sohi. The Ringer. April 28, 2022