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A post from Mark Howell from Strategy Central cites an interesting quote from David Maister’s blog on how to move from the language of destinations to a language of action….

"Whether you are talking about purpose, mission, vision, values, goals, objectives or almost ANY of the traditional concepts that people use, the only practical way to make it real is to do two (simultaneous) things:

(a) stop talking about the future destination, and start thinking about the rules you would have to live by in order to get there; and

(b) translate the generalities of the organization’s purpose, mission, values or principles into what it would mean for individuals and confirm that the organization’s members are, in fact, prepared to be held accountable and live by those individual rules.

How often do we develop vision and mission statements that do not result in a change in anyone’s behaviour. Vision should result in a set of values and principles, that enable all people in the organisation to act independently, towards the achievement of the vision. Unless something changes as a result of the vision, the vision is meaningless. Moving from vision to action can only happen, if it results in a change in behaviour, either your doing different things or doing things differently. To ensure that behaviour change in ways that achieve the vision, a vision must be supported by a set of "rules" or principles to guide the journey.

• How’s your vision? Has it resulted in action?
• Do you have "rules" or principles to guide you on the journey?
• Have you translated the vision into what is means for individuals?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Vision, Purpose, Goals, Action, Execution, Roadmap, Principles, Future, Strategy, Management, Business

Fortune has a great feature on Steve Jobs, titled "Steve Jobs speaks out" that looks at some of Steve’s perspectives on business, leadership and technology. In the article Steve reveals some interesting insights into Apple and his leadership principles.

On Apple’s focus

"Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

"I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. The clearest example was when we were pressured for years to do a PDA, and I realized one day that 90% of the people who use a PDA only take information out of it on the road. They don’t put information into it. Pretty soon cellphones are going to do that, so the PDA market’s going to get reduced to a fraction of its current size, and it won’t really be sustainable. So we decided not to get into it. If we had gotten into it, we wouldn’t have had the resources to do the iPod. We probably wouldn’t have seen it coming."

Focus is critical for effective leadership, with so many options choosing the right one can be extremely difficult. Small changes can have big results, if you focus on the key issues and execute relentlessly on those key issues. To focus on the most important issues means you have to say not to a whole range of alternative opportunities.

On finding talent

"When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else.

"Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. We do it ourselves and we spend a lot of time at it. I’ve participated in the hiring of maybe 5,000-plus people in my life. So I take it very seriously. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? Why are they here? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data."

Passion rules! Passion is about our emotional energy and a love for what we do. Without passion it becomes difficult to fight back in the face of obstacles and difficulties. People with passion find a way to get things done and to make things happen, in spite of the obstacles and challenges that get in the way.

On his marathon Monday meetings

"When you hire really good people you have to give them a piece of the business and let them run with it. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to kibitz a lot. But the reason you’re hiring them is because you’re going to give them the reins. I want [them] making as good or better decisions than I would. So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business.

"So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we’re having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda — 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.

"We don’t have a lot of process at Apple, but that’s one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."

Social architecture, meetings and their structure (drama, purpose and conflict) keep people engaged in the organisations vision. Regular meetings ensure effective communication and that the organisation is making steady progress towards the vision.

Technorati Tags: Communication, Passion, Meetings, Talent, Focus, Priority, Apple, Steve Jobs, Example, Strategy, Management, Business, Leadership

Patrick Lencioni author of the numerous books including "Death by Meeting" wrote an interesting article "Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’" which provides some great insights on creating an effective meetings. Patrick describes the two primary reasons meeting are ineffective as..

1. Meetings lack drama. Which means they are boring.
2. Most meetings lack context and purpose.

Drama and Conflict

Great meetings need what Patrick calls drama he says that "The key to making meetings more engaging - and less boring - lies in identifying and nurturing the natural level of conflict that should exist." Conflict keeps us engaged and interested, encouraging us to participate and contribute to the discussion. A leader’s role is to ask questions that matter so as to encourage engagement around the key issues.

Context and Purpose

In addition to drama meetings need context and purpose, "Unfortunately, no amount of drama will matter if leaders don’t create the right context for their meetings and make it clear to team members why the meeting is taking place, and what is expected of them. To create context, leaders must differentiate between different types of meetings. Too often, however, they throw every possible conversation into one long staff meeting. This creates confusion and frustration among team members who struggle to shift back and forth between tactical and strategic conversations, with little or no resolution of issues."

Effective leaders take a four pronged approach to effectively address context and purpose, they create and sustain the following four meetings.

1. The Daily Check-in: is a schedule-oriented, administrative meeting that should last no more than five or 10 minutes. The purpose is simply to keep team members aligned and to provide a daily forum for activity updates and scheduling.
2. The Weekly Tactical: is what most people have come to know as staff meetings. These should be approximately an hour in length, give or take 20 minutes, and should focus on the discussion and resolution of issues which effect near term objectives. Ironically, these work best if there is no pre-set agenda. Instead, the team should quickly review one another’s priorities and the team’s overall scorecard, and then decide on what to discuss during the remainder of the meeting.
3. The Monthly Strategic: is the most interesting kind of meeting for leaders, and the most important indicator of a company’s strategic aptitude. It is the appropriate place for big topics, those that will have a long-term impact on the business.
4. The Quarterly Off-Site Review: is an opportunity for team members to step away from the business, literally and figuratively, to reassess a variety of issues: the interpersonal performance of the team, the company’s strategy, the performance of top-tier and bottom-tier employees, morale, competitive threats and industry trends. These can last anywhere from the better part of a day to two full days each quarter.

Creating the right meeting eco-system or "social architecture" is critical to effective leadership. Ensuring that we have the appropriate levels of conflict and that each meeting has the right focus, the right conflict and purpose, is essential for great performance. How are your meetings? Do they have the right amount of conflict and drama? Do you have an eco-system where you have daily check-ins, tactical and strategic meetings?

Technorati Tags: Meetings, Social Architecture, Management, Business, Leadership, Purpose, Context, Conflict, Drama, Communication

The need for effective "social architectures" within organisation is critical if we are too ensure that we develop future leaders, to drive innovation and to create an organisation that has a great legacy. If we examine our leadership, I’m sure we’ll find that meetings are where we do much, if not most, of our leading.

Peter Block in his book “The Answer to How is Yes” discusses the importance of the leaders’ role as social architect which he describes as follows:

"Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space….. the role of the social architect is to create service-orientated organisations, businesses, governments, and schools that meet their institutional objectives in a way that gives those involved space to act on what matters to them…. The social architect’s task is to create the space for people to act on what matters to them."

Social architecture is about leading in a way that creates space for what matters! To focus on creating the necessary conditions for acting on what matters is one of the most urgent needs of organisations today. Peter Block goes on to say that "Acting on what matters is an act of leadership, it is not dependent on the leadership of others." This means we all need to take responsibility for our choices and our actions. Leadership is a choice, it’s a decision we make to act on what matters. Issues such as integrity, responsibility, and authenticity are all issues that matter.

The five capabilities of the social architect

Peter Block describe the following five capabilities as being necessary for the social architect to be effective. Paradoxically much on these ‘capabilities’ seem to get lost in the organisation we work in today…

1. Convening: "Social architecture is fundamentally, a convening function, giving particular attention to all aspects of how people gather. The future is created as a collective act…… The fundamental tenet of social architecture is that the way people gather is critical to the way the system functions." In many organisations meetings are seen as a ‘necessary evil’, something to be tolerated, in between more important events. The consideration of how people gather and meet is of secondary importance.
2. Naming the question: "The social architect has an obligation to define the context, or the playing field, and then define the right questions, at least to start with". Too many people dive into the how, selling solutions and describing best practices. Not enough people lead by taking the time to understand the quest that matters.
3. Initiating new conversations for learning: "To sustain the habitability of a social system we must initiate new conversations and manage the airspace so that all voices stay engaged with each other." Too many conversations in organisations are initiated to ‘align’ people to lead them towards a predetermined answer, with not enough learning happening.
4. Sticking with strategies of engagement and consent: "…dialogue itself is part of the solution…. Commitment and accountability cannot be sold. They have to be evoked, and evocation comes through conversation." Organisations change through effective conversation.
5. Designing strategies that support local choice: "If our intent is to create a social system that people want to inhabit then the social architect’s job is to demand that the inhabitants join in designing the system."

Looking at the above list it seems that organisations are failing in their ability to create social systems that encourage people to act on what matters. Instead organisation are creating systems of compliance. What has been the result of your leadership?

Technorati Tags: Social Architecture, Leadership, Systems, Conversation, Communication, Change, Purpose, Management, Business, Social, Architecture, Vision, Meeting

“The more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.” — Walt Disney

Warren Bennis one of my favourite leadership authors, in his book "On Becoming a Leader", he discusses how leaders are originals and not copies. To be an original, a leader must know and understand what and who he is. In the book Warren spends time talking about how important it is to understand who we are, some of his insights….

"Leaders have nothing but themselves to work with…. we are our own raw material. Only when we know what we’re made of and what we want to make of it can we begin our lives - and we must do it despite an unwitting conspiracy of people and events against us….. To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life….. Know thyself, then, means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be….. Until you make your life your own, you’re walking around in borrowed clothes."

These are great insights. We too often either go with the flow or adapt ourselves to the environment, and if we do this too often, eventually we lose ourselves.

• How are you doing in his area?
• Do you spend time reflecting on who you are and who you want to be?
• Are you striving to become more of who you are?
• Are you an original? Are you unique?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Reflection, Original, Quote, Business, Book, Management

An organisation’s culture can be a source of competitive advantage or a huge obstacle to achieving it’s objectives. The importance of culture really struck me after reading Lou Gerstner’s book "Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?" In his book Lou Gersner, the former CEO and Chairman of IBM, reflects on the turnaround he orchestrated during his time at IBM….

"I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game - it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. Vision, strategy, marketing, financial management - any management system, in fact - can set you on the right path and can carry you for a while. But no enterprise - whether in business, government, education, health care, or any area of human endeavor - will succeed over the long haul if those elements aren’t part of its DNA."

As Gerstner proved, in the turnaround of IBM, that leaders can shape and indeed change an organisation’s culture. The fact that Lou Gerstner could change the culture, of one of the world’s largest organisations should give all leaders hope. Leaders are instrumental in shaping an organisations culture a post from Anecdote describes the leaders role….

"…Edgar Schein noted a decade ago: cultures are largely created and modified by the actions of the organisation’s leaders. And here we view leadership in its broadest sense as someone who people take notice of and follow their lead. There are a relatively small set of things leaders do that affect culture:

• What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis
• How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises
• How leaders allocate resources
• Deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching
• How leaders allocate rewards and status
• How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate

The short-hand for this list is, ‘How do you get ahead around here?’"

Leaders cannot afford to let an organisation’s culture just evolve. Just as Lou Gerstner shaped IBM’s culture based upon an end goal, leader who wants to share their organisations culture need an end goal. The key to effectively shaping your team’s or your organisation’s culture begins with purpose. Wikipedia defines purpose as "Purpose in its most general sense is the anticipated aim which guides action." Leaders wanting to shape an organisations culture need purposefully act, aligning all the above six leadership practices towards the organisation’s end goal and purpose.

• Are you purposely acting to shape your organisation’s culture?
• What are you paying attention to?
• How do you react to critical moments?
• What are you teaching?
• What do yo allocating resources to?
• What do you reward?
• Who are you recruiting and promoting?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Business, Culture, IBM, Management, Purpose, Vision, Values

Kevin’s Eikenberry has a great post that caught my eye titled "What to Communicate" discussing the importance of communication to leaders. I really believe that we do not spend enough time figuring out the why before we move on to figure out the how. Kevin reminds us of this principle by providing the following rule of thumb:

Communicate why before how, and don’t switch too soon….. In most organizations and teams the ‘why’ is missing. When the why is strong enough, the how will be figured out. Besides, if you are trying to empower your organization, as a leader you probably need to spend less time on how anyway…. Focus more of your communication and conversation on why and less on how.

A similar view is expressed by Annette Clancy from the blog Interactions in the post "The Management/Leadership Conversation", who makes the following observation:

"In order to follow I need to know ‘why’ and once we’ve worked out the ‘why’ I want to know what the implications are. Lots of people can manage, but leaders do things in their own inimitable way. Too many ‘leaders’ are really managers who are preoccupied with the ‘how’ and the ‘what’."

The importance of spending time to understand the why before the how is discussed in detail in Peter Block’s book “The Answer to How is Yes”, some of the reasons Peter gives in his book, to support focusing on the why are:

• "We often avoid the question of whether something is worth doing by going straight to the question ‘How do we do it?’"
• "Too often when a discussion is dominated by by questions of How? we risk overvaluing what is practical and doable and postpone the questions of larger purpose…"
• "…engage in conversations about why we do what we do….. create the space for longer discussions about purpose, about what is worth doing. It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question, rather than what is the right answer."

• Are you acting on what matters?
• Are you acting on what’s worth doing?
• Are you giving priority to what matters?
• how will the world be different tomorrow as a result of what we do today?

Technorati Tags: Vision, Purpose, Mission, Management, Leadership, Book, Why, How, Question, Communication

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