Tue • Jun 30th, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
I heard a professional baseball pitcher attribute his success to throwing only pitches within his ability. He went on to observe that no two pitchers are alike and that no pitcher can throw all the pitches and variations on fast-balls, sliders, change-ups, knuckle balls, curve balls, etc. Trouble would come, he learned, when he tried to throw beyond his ability.
Leadership is like pitching baseball. Leaders have various strengths, abilities and behaviors. Successful leaders learn how to advance within their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.
While leadership strengths may not be as obvious as good pitches, Gallup’s StrengthFinder project provides an extensively researched assessment whereby everyone can identify personal “signature themes” and learn to live, serve and work within those strengths.
StrengthFinders is a Gallup application of the positive psychology movement by Donald Clifton (1924-2003) with research to prove that leaders succeed by advancing their strengths rather than struggling to overcome weaknesses.
“If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything,” is the first sentence in Gallup’s recent book Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. The point is that while leaders don’t have all the strengths needed to succeed, they can create teams with complementary strengths.
Following the introductory chapters in which four successful leaders are profiled and the results of research of what followers want from their leaders (trust, compassion, stability and hope) most of the book is given to an interpretation of the “34 StrengthFinder Themes” to leadership behavior.
I immediately read the pages which refer to my “signature themes.” I learned from a StrengthFinder seminar at Gallup that “signature themes” are the strengths we posses for any assignment or bring to any relationship. “Strength Based Leadership” is about the “signature themes” or strengths that leaders bring with them, wherever they may be.
The StrengthFinder assessment is particularly helpful for leaders who have come to doubt themselves. Because they have not succeeded at something or in a particular assignment they wonder if they are good at anything. Disappointments, failed dreams, opposition or even firing can be devastating.
Even the best of pitchers don’t strike out every batter or win every game. The good ones learn that by training to throw a few good pitches they can win their share.
The StrengthFinder assessment can help reinforce the realization that along with weaknesses, everyone has particular strengths which if developed can lead to fulfillment if not success.
Tue • Jun 23rd, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 1
In a recent NY Times article, U.S. Takes On the Insular G.M. Culture a top GM executive claims that: “Teamwork has been replaced by Balkanization” and adds, “Our culture discourages open, frank debate among G.M. executives in the pursuit of problem resolution.”
One of the biggest impediments facing General Motors is its corporate culture. There is no secret about what it takes to make vehicles that Americans will buy. The GM problem is that this huge multinational company is controlled by a relatively few managers who have perpetuated a counterproductive environment that resists the kind of change that the US Government is demanding in exchange for billions of dollars in recovery funds.
G.M.’s counterproductive culture, resisting change even when faced with bankruptcy is unfortunately not unique. And yet corporate or organizational culture is seldom addressed by leaders seeking to implement strategies for sustainable development and growth.
The biggest need at G.M is not new products with a new business plan. Without cultural change no strategy will work. When I asked Christine Cavanaugh-Simmons, Managing Partner of Emergent Solutions about this, she reminded me of the quote – “Culture will eat strategy for breakfast every time!” She stated that “Firms with strong cultures achieve higher results because employees sustain focus both on what to do and how to do it.”
Corporate or organizational culture is seldom addressed because it is so difficult to define and even more difficult to change. Lisa Marshall, author of Speak the Truth Point to Hope says that “Corporate culture is fundamentally the (usually unwritten) rules about how people are treated and what matters.”
In response to my inquiry she described G.M. as “a giant good ole boy network. How you dressed and who you knew were everything, and what you knew and your competence were pretty immaterial.”
An organization’s culture may be more difficult to describe and change than its strategy. Carl Harshman, a consultant who has been working with culture change in large organizations for almost thirty years sent me a PowerPoint outline (available upon request) for a course he teaches on Organizational Culture. A story which he says typifies the challenge goes something like this:
Someone once said that changing an individual is like looking for a black cat in a dark room and changing a group is like looking for a black cat in a dark room where there is no cat. But, changing a culture is like looking for a black cat in a dark room where there is no cat and somebody keeps yelling, “I’ve got it!”
Dr. Harshman says that if you have ever been involved in a culture change effort, you can understand the power of this story.
Gerald Smith, founder and owner of Premier Studios in Lenexa, Kansas knows what Harshman is talking about. “I used to think” he wrote, “in terms of corporate culture as something to manage and change, if needed. Not any more. I cannot possibly relate to a company the size of GM. But I do know what culture means to a small company.”
Corporate culture in his company is embodied in the “collective group that is assembled through the process of hiring and attrition (personalities, talents, attitudes, etc).” He believes that a productive culture is inspired by compelling stories. “And when,” he says, “culture needs a lift, you replace old stories with new ones.”
For John Baldoni, author of Lead by Example, organizational culture “is the sum of our beliefs, values and practices.” It defines, he says, “what our organization stands for.”
He wrote that “one of the strongest cultures I know of is the U.S. Marine Corps. Those who emerge from basic training are Marines forever; bound to one another with enduring concepts such as duty, honor, country. Marines put the culture into practice the way they sacrifice for one another. They don’t talk culture; they live it, not simply in the battlefield but in barracks, and in the rest of their lives.”
Baldoni says that “culture is meaningless unless you bleed for it. That is, you surrender part of yourself to the greater whole. Part of that surrender involves sacrifice – time, treasure, personal ambition. What you get in return is participation in something greater than yourself. We see this most evidently in those who volunteer for their community, school or church.”
Indeed, corporate culture is as difficult to address in a church as it is in a business. Marilyn McCool, former manager of a multi-branch bank and now the chief financial officer at the Global Ministry Center for the Church of the Nazarene, claims that in the past the church’s top leadership “failed to make the decision to change culture for some time. The culture of employee distrust and customer dissatisfaction grew and affected the pace of growth.”
Changing culture for the denomination, according to McCool is not unlike the challenge facing G.M.. The shift has been extensive including 11 action steps which may be instructive to other organizations.
McCool knows that these steps are necessary to build a positive and productive culture in both the profit and nonprofit world.
In his recent blog Dan Denison notes that while it may be difficult to describe corporate culture, we recognize it, whether good or bad, when we see it. Through Leading to Serve, Inc., I have been approved to use the “Denison Model” to help leaders assess organizational culture.
Good corporate culture – the Marines have it and G.M. doesn’t. It’s like good health, organizations can’t live long without it.
Mon • Jun 15th, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 0
A recent report in the New York Times – Smartphone Rises Fast from Gadget to Necessity has caused me to rethink how leaders convene meetings. I once thought that the only way to chair a meeting was to request, if not require that everyone turn off cell phones and refrain from browsing the Internet and responding to email. It’s obvious that changes in communication require new guidelines for our meetings. Thus the following memo.
MEMORANDUM
Date: whenever
From: your fearless leader
To: the leadership team
RE: protocol for team meetings
Given that most, if not all of you have smartphones – Blackberry, iPhone, Pre, etc., and since your many contacts need immediate response and you need to stay in constant communication with your social network as well as the world outside our meeting, the following protocol will apply to our next leadership team meeting.
Agendas will be emailed to you in advance.
You may now bring and use smartphones and laptops for Internet browsing and email during the meeting. Texting, twittering, even phone conversations are allowed. You will no longer need to go outside the conference room to use your cell phone. We will be quiet so as not to disturb your conversation.
It is also permissible to text, twitter, email or call anyone else in the meeting or outside the meeting during the meeting. Sidebar conversations are encouraged since these conversations, however disruptive will add to the sense that everyone is engaged.
Wireless connection will be provided so you can use your laptop as well as your smartphone – sometimes both are needed simultaneously to stay connected to your network. Please bring headphones if you intend to listen as well as view videos during the meeting.
Feel free to interrupt our meetings with any late-breaking news which we might otherwise not know about until we’re through.
It would be appreciated if your cell phone ringtones could be appropriate for our corporate culture – Beethoven’s 9th, Amazing Grace, Shall We Gather at the River, etc.
Since you will have a chance to review the attached agenda in advance please forward your comments before the meeting.
And, since you will likely be involved in many things during the meeting, I will prepare the minutes in advance for distribution upon adjournment. They will be in a pdf file to prevent additions and/or corrections.
Tue • Jun 9th, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 2
Jim Collins has some explaining to do. The lessons in his books Good to Great (2001) and Built to Last (2005), which according to a recent New York Times article have sold over 7 million copies, have become generally accepted prescriptions for business success. In 2005 he published a brief monograph - Good to Great in the Social Sectors with accommodations for those in the non-profit community for whom the bottom line is changed lives rather than profitability.
By now some of the businesses featured by Collins have not lasted beyond the decade when his books became best-sellers. Once successful leaders have been fired. In his attempt to explain what happened and how to prevent organizational failure he has written How the Mighty Fall: and why some companies never give in.
I’ll be surprised if this book becomes a best-seller since, since as Collins admits, it deals with the dark side of leadership and business or organizational development. Known for his meticulous research Collins offers metrics to prove his “Five Stages of Decline.”
Hubris Born of Success
Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Denial of Risk and Peril
Grasping for Salvation
Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Even as he tracts the decline of once successful companies he contrasts them with other well known enterprises that have reversed the trends and in the same environment, have succeeded.
Collins is honest enough to recognize that just because the successful companies and leaders profiled in his previous books once did the right things to be great and to last doesn’t guarantee future success. Neither success nor failure are inevitable.
There is something too formulaic about Collins’ prescriptions. I’ve seen leaders and organizations work hard at doing the right things, avoid the wrong things and still not succeed. Collins is heavy on vision and strategy. But leaders and organizations have behaviors and cultures that sometimes sabotage bold vision and good strategies.
I know social sector leaders who after listening to Collins promote BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goals – went on to propose wildly unrealistic and eventually unrealized goals for their organizations. Informed by Collins with concepts like “Level 5 Leadership” and the “Hedgehog” some leaders have assumed that their businesses and organizations, if not their careers were fail-safe.
In a final statement in bold print on the back cover he seems to acknowledge that there is more to success and failure than vision-casting and strategic planning.
“Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than what the world does to you.”
Indeed, the leader as a person is just as important to success as strategy.