“There is one aspect of a leader’s personality that is both their greatest asset and greatest potential liability at the same time. And if it is not dealt with correctly, it has the ability to stop a promising career dead in its tracks.

That element of human personality is ego, and its power is seductive.

Early in a leader’s career, it helps a young executive seek new innovations, stay the course when others would quit, and push through to higher levels of excellence where others would settle for less. But if a leader does not channel their ego properly it can also lead to a willful disregard of reality, a lack of self awareness, and an unquenchable need to be the best.

When that happens, the results can be disastrous. In their book Egonomics, authors David Marcum and Steven Smith point to Ohio State research that shows

• Over one third of all fatal business decisions are driven by ego.
• Nearly 2/3 of executives never explore alternatives once they make up their mind.
• 81% of managers push their decisions through by persuasion or edict, and not by the value of their idea.

So how can you draw on the benefits of ego while avoiding the pitfalls? How do you find the combination of intense professional will and extreme personal humility that Jim Collins describes in his best-selling book, Good To Great? For Collins, part of the solution includes

• Self-reflection
• Conscious personal development
• Help from a mentor

Madeleine Homan Blanchard, cofounder of Coaching Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies agrees and recommends a similar course of action. In a recorded webinar on Leaders: Avoid These Fatal Flaws, Homan-Blanchard recommends that leaders keep their ego in check through three strategies.

• Name it and claim it—Without self awareness there can be no restraint or modulation. Know your least desirable traits and own up to them. Learn what triggers you and leads you to engage in your worst behaviors.
• Get feedback and commit to development—Ask questions. Sit down with direct reports and find out what you could do to be a more effective boss. Listen carefully and say, “Thank you,” when they offer feedback. Take action on trouble spots.
• Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you—Be courageous when hiring. Make sure you have colleagues and direct reports who think differently from you. Also make sure you have at least one colleague you can count on for an honest opinion and who serves as your “truth teller.”’

Read the full article here

I was looking into my blog, and found this article, which I shared almost a year back, however, I realized it was not published and kept as draft. It came as a great conincidence as I am reading the ‘Steve Jobs: Biography by Walter Isaacson”. One of the thing I personally admire about Apple and Jobs is how they nurture overperformance and excellence, Insanely great people who delivers Insanely great products. It all narrowed down to Jobs vision of keeping only A-players, while letting B and C players out. It’s incredibly ridiculous to see companies doing the other way a round; keeping the rotten apples!

Go thru this article and hope to get some insights!

Mouaz / 31st Oct 2011

“Do you have an exceptional performer on your team — a person who stands head and shoulders above everyone else? If you do, it can be a wonderful gift for a manager to have an employee whom you can count on to get the right results; who thinks about what else needs to be done without being told; who doesn’t need to be pushed or motivated; who is always asking to do more.

Unfortunately many managers don’t know how to deal with such exceptional employees. They often unintentionally dampen their star performance or cause them to find better opportunities elsewhere. I’ve seen many cases where, instead of leveraging top talent, the manager has quietly suggested that the employee “slow down” or “do more research” or “wait for the right time” or “keep those ideas to yourself for now.” I’ve even seen managers allow their teams to ostracize or marginalize the top performer so that other people won’t “feel bad.”

What’s behind this kind of counter-productive behavior? Let’s start with two possible reasons for these seemingly irrational actions:

The first is lack of self-confidence. Some managers, instead of being grateful for a top-notch employee, feel threatened when a subordinate is more capable, more energetic, or smarter than they are. Particularly for managers whose self-image is to be “in charge,” a high performer triggers tremendous anxiety. How can I be the boss if one of my reports is more capable of getting things done? What will happen to my authority if subordinates go to someone else for help and advice? What will my boss think if one of my team members is the one who knows all the answers? Based on these concerns, the insecure manager might overexert authority, demean the high performer’s contributions, or even take credit for much of the high performer’s work.

The second reason for not leveraging a highly talented person is lack of imagination. Sometimes managers simply don’t know what to do with an exceptional performer. When a subordinate finishes a first assignment quickly, the unimaginative manager often is at a loss for a next assignment. So the high performer ends up doing busy work, helping someone else who may not need it, or creating a new project alone. When the high performer is an entrepreneurial self-starter this pattern may be all right. But more often the exceptional person isn’t challenged sufficiently — and the organization doesn’t receive the full benefit of his or her capabilities.

Naturally insecure or unimaginative managers don’t attract or keep great talent, which diminishes their team’s ability to get results. So if you think that you might unconsciously be exhibiting these behaviors, and would like to better leverage your best people, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind:

• Remember that hiring and developing people who are smarter than you is one of the best decisions a manager can make. The more talent you have on your team, the higher your performance. There is no substitute for an A-team.
• Once you have really good people, take advantage of them. Stretch them. Challenge them. Find out what they are good at — and what they need to learn. Craft assignments that will take them to the next level.
• Give your best people credit and visibility. Let others know what they are doing. Remember that they are corporate assets and not just members of your team.
• Be willing to let your best people go to new opportunities if it makes sense for their development and learning. Don’t push them to leave before they have made a real contribution, but don’t needlessly hold on to them either.

By following these guidelines you’ll eventually develop a reputation as a talent developer, which means that you will be multiplying your contribution to the organization many times over. Gifted people will be beating down the doors to work for you — and you’ll always have a team around you that can deliver.

What’s your experience with managing exceptional performers?”

… Full article is here.

Interesting research!

“A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies shows that poor leadership is costing the average company an amount equal to 7% of their annual revenue. That’s over a million dollars a year for any organization with $15 million dollars or more in annual sales.

The three big culprits?

1-Employee turnover.
Poor leadership is responsible for up to 30% of the reasons why people leave their organizations according to exit interviews conducted by The Saratoga Institute.

2-Customer turnover.
Poor leadership negatively impacts employee satisfaction, which in turn negatively impacts customer satisfaction and retention. Research published in Harvard Business Review calculated that every 5 point change in employee satisfaction scores caused a 1.3 point change in customer satisfaction scores.

3-Employee productivity.
Poor leadership leads to poor employee productivity. Research from Blanchard shows that direct report productivity can be improved 5-12% through better management practices.

Most senior executives instinctively know that leadership impacts the bottom line, but quantifying that impact has been a challenge in the past. This new white paper (and the free online calculator that the information is drawn from) is a great way for leaders to put some facts behind their suspicions.

You can download a copy of this new white paper, Making the Business Case for Leadership Development: The 7% Differential here. If you are interested in calculating what poor leadership practices might be costing your organization, also check out Blanchard’s free online Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator. This is the same free online calculator used by survey respondents in the white paper.

Full article is available here.

Very often, I emphasize on the importance of “facing the brutal facts” for businesses to overcome their challenges and have a good strategy for winning. Unless you know, unless you acknowledge, unless you accept that a problem exists, you simply can not fix it.

This is simply what Professor Richard Rumelt attempts to explain in his insightful article at McKinsey Quarterly recently. He contends that bad strategy exists because of:

1. Failure to face the challenge,
2. Mistaking goals for strategy,
3. Bad strategic objectives, and
4. Fluff.

He draws on examples of International Harvester company in the US, as a loosing company, as well, Nvidia as a wining company, while the crucial difference was, in both cases, acknowledgment that a problem exits and defines a strategy to fix it.

Mr.Rumelt contends that the inability to select, and using a template-style strategy are key sources of failure and ending up with a bad strategy. So often, senior managers fail to agree on a single way forward strategy to drive their companies. This leads to assuming and initiating so many plans and pursuing various critical endeavors in undisciplined manner, which, in return, drives the same set of managers to the denial state of risks and perils of their plans as noted by Jim Collins in his book ‘How The Mighty Fall’. Collins coined these two states as ‘Undisciplined pursuit of more‘ and ‘Denial of risks and perils‘, in his book, which eventually leads to total loss or nonexistence.

Template-Style strategy is not any different. A document that has a mission, vision, and set of values without a soul and clear action plan often dies on the printer. Companies and organizations can not survive or win, merely on a creation of a document.

Mr.Rumlet, eventually, proposes that businesses should consider his kernel for a good strategy that is built on problem diagnosis, an approach and a coherent set of actions.

To learn this kernel, I suggest you read the article at McKinsey Quarterly here.

In several occasions, I ask people; once they complain about the performance of a colleague, subordinate or even a manager, “Is he unable or unwilling”?. The answer I; most often, receive is: “what! I do not know”. Many perceived my question as so theoretical and unrealistic. Their argument is that he or she has a job to do and they have to do it, no matter what!; and they simply care nothing about their ability or willingness. So often, I tried to explain the difference, and how important it is for us to realize the difference. Is it really unclear to see the difference!

To show the difference, let’s try this example. While driving your car with a friend (who supposedly turned to be an engineer) in a high way, in a middle of rainy weather, after mid night; your car suddenly stopped functioning. You tried to turn on, it failed to work. Immediately, you looked to your presumably savior; your friend; the engineer.  Your initial expectation is that he would promptly jump in to fix the car and get it rolling. However, he just froze there; doing absolutely nothing.

If, at this critical point of time; you realize that he is unable, incapable of fixing your car; you will simply save time; call some emergency and get help from dedicated able persons. If, instead, you kept pushing him to fix it; while he does not know, and convincing yourself he does; then, most probably, you will have your night under rain; in the middle of nowhere!.

Imagine that we practice this in-differentiation in complex business issues. Imagine you assign a manager to lead a transformational enterprise project, which costs hundred of millions US dollars, and would impact the lives of many employees, their families and local communities; without evidently recognizing that this person is simply unable to do it. He might be willing (for whatever reasons; good pay, exposure…etc), but simply unable. What would be the impact? incredibly catastrophic!

Once a manager or leader realizes the capacities of their teams, understands their levels of willingness and abilities, and acts accordingly; we will see better results, and less layoffs. We will see better utilization of resources, and more efficient training and self development programs.

For your unable resources, train them, get them into the right track of development and training; of course, if you afford it, or simply, replace them. In all cases, you must acknowledge their inability and give them a chance to develop.

For able, yet unwilling resources, you better show them the door! immediately!

Cheers,

Mouaz

Recently, I was part of an audience for several product demos. This was part of a bidding process to select an enterprise solution for my company. A specific audience, with various calibers, expertise and interests were assembled from IT and business. There were finance managers and executives, procurement officers, project managers, business analysts and architects. They all gathered to see products walk-through from set of top players and domain experts in that enterprise solution field.

My team was good enough to set the expectations right for the presenter and his team. In fact, they provided a detailed showcase for them to follow to better demonstrate the product capabilities and address the bid functional, business and technical requirements; completely, smoothly and to the satisfaction of various interest groups.

What truly shocked me; after attending three out of six demos, is how incredibly weak, unprepared, and lost the presenters were. It is as if they were presenting for the first time in their professional career, or even, they have not seen their products before.

The three demos I have seen are for products by leaders of specific enterprise solutions in the world, and were delivered by their local middle eastern offices. These products are classified as leaders in Gartner and Forrester reports.

In every single book, management training course, or even orientation sessions by companies; presentation skills are, undoubtedly, underpinning pillar. You google the word, and you will find thousands and millions of articles, papers, and various materials on the importance of presentation skills, the importance of knowing your audience, the importance of rehearsal and preparation for the success of your presentation, your business opportunity, and even your job.

A presentation might fail… What a big deal! but, once you are in a bidding process, and you are leaving a quite horrible impression on the client, then, it is a big deal, and you are loosing business!

I always say; you will never get a second chance to make the first impression. What these three lousy presenters did is they simply ruined their products’ image in my team’s minds. It is evidently becoming hard to reexplain and sell the product to the business users anymore; even-though it looks fantastically well from IT and technical perspective.

It is simply like giving a bugatti L’Or Blanc car to a lousy a driver!

Before you step into a presentation; I suggest, you follow my SAPPER model:

1. S: Know what exactly the Subject is you are supposed to present and talk about
2. A: Know your Audience beforehand, their interests and what domains they represent
3. P: Prepare the Presentation and the supporting material.
4. P: Present the material to yourself, and in the venue to ensure all audio/video works well for you
5. E: Engage peers or colleagues for feedback
6. R: Rehearse… Rehearse… and Rehearse

… and remember, get the bugatti the driver it deserves!

Cheers

Mouaz Al-Zayyat

Interesting reading… Provocative thought!

By Scott Goodson.

“Companies understand that to be successful they and their brands need to stand for something. This results in bold and principled declarations to the world: “At Acme Amalgamated, we’re committed to X. We believe in Y. We care passionately about Z.” Unfortunately, in the end, it all starts to sound like generic ad-speak.

Here’s a modest suggestion: If you really want to show the world what you believe in and stand for, how about telling us what you stand against?

Recently, my agency StrawberryFrog launched a new campaign for smart car that was rooted in this kind of oppositional thinking. We understood that the smart car brand stands for some pretty good things: efficiency, economy, reduced environmental footprint. But put way, it sounds rather dull and predictable.

By defining instead what smart is against — over-consumption, excess, thoughtless behavior — we began to craft a statement with more of an edge. As we boiled down the idea some more, what emerged was a simple yet powerful declaration of principle, stating that we are “against dumb.” It felt a little more gutsy and provocative than your typical ad line, which may be why the campaign immediately drew press attention. At the same time, by giving customers something to rail against (everything from gas-guzzlers to oversized Venti lattes), the campaign created a vocal community of smart car advocates. In a short period of time, the brand more than quadrupled its audience.

Marketers may be reluctant to take a stand against anything because it can feel controversial or divisive. But the truth is, some of the boldest marketers have been doing this kind of thing successfully for quite a while. Think of Apple, which in its early days came out strongly against conformity and the “Big Brother” world of computing (represented then as now by the larger, more conservative IBM). Later, fashion brands such as Diesel railed against all kinds of establishment views; in its ads during the 1990s, Diesel even seemed to be against advertising itself, which resonated well with its youthful, independent-minded customers.

The marketing writer Adam Morgan has said that brands sometimes need to create “fake monsters,” so that everyone (meaning all your potential customers) will come together to fight the monster and save the village. But I would amend that to say the monsters aren’t or shouldn’t be fake — they ought to be based in real concerns and issues in today’s world.

Wherever there’s a possibility for improvement, you can speak out against entrenched ways or status quo attitudes. Or you can defend tradition by taking on trendy new attitudes and behaviors. Either way, there’s no shortage of things worth taking a stand against. Just be sure that the cultural values and behaviors you take on do indeed run counter to your brand philosophy. These can be matters large or small, serious or playful. A campaign we once did for IKEA took a stand against being a “gray mouse” (which is to say being timid and safe in one’s choices). A more recent one, for Sabra hummus, directly challenged the bland, unadventurous eating habits of many Americans.

One caveat: Don’t simply take a stand “against” your competition. You may hate your competitor’s guts, but nobody else cares; the outside world is looking for you to take on something more meaningful and interesting.

Defining what your company is against has longer-term benefits than a compelling ad campaign. Thanks to social media, more companies now understand that consumers want to participate in a real conversation with brands. To make this conversation (or any conversation) work, there must be an honest exchange of views. A big part of that is for both sides to be willing to say, “I’m for this” and “I’m against that.”

And if you want to expand that conversation so that it becomes a cultural movement built around your brand — which is something that all marketers should be striving for today — then you need to give that movement a sense of purpose and action. The truth is, it’s often easier to rally people against something than for something. Just think of some of the most successful social and political movements through history — up to and including the current Tea Party movement. More often than not, these movements start with people protesting against or saying “no” to something.

Which is not to suggest that your campaign, or the movement you’re trying to lead, should amount to one big gripe-fest. The conversation you have with the public may start by pointing out something wrong, but ought to move beyond that to offer better alternatives, ideas, and actions you can help people take. If you can do that, it’s possible to transform negative energy into a positive force — both for your customers and for your brand.”

…read it at HBR: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/what_is_your_brand_against.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-management_tip-_-tip041511&referral=00203&utm_source=newsletter_management_tip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tip041511

I like this insightful management tip by HBS.

“Measurement is critical to understanding current and past performance, but data can only tell you so much. Measurement can fall short when you need to predict the future. Many companies have been blindsided by unpredictable changes in the market: see GM and Motorola. To envision the future, use your imagination. Employ qualitative insights, inferences, and logic to help you determine what the future might be like and how your company can adjust, prepare, and be proactive. Think beyond what can be proven with data and use hypotheses and deduction to determine likely scenarios.”

Advocating self-acknowledgement! Managers and leaders to acknowledge that they are not bullet-proof humans, and can do mistakes! Interesting reading by HBR.

“When is the last time you said words like these to the people who work for you?

“I don’t know.”
“I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Would you help me?”
“What do you think?”
“What would you do?”
“Could you explain this to me? I’m not sure I get it.”

No one, boss or not, likes to admit error or ignorance. But an inability to recognize and admit openly when you lack knowledge or make a mistake will make you less effective as a manager in two ways.

First, it will keep you from learning. If you’re in a first-level manager’s position, you may know more than your people because you once excelled as an individual in the work they do. But, as you advance, you’ll soon rise beyond the level where you can be expert in the work of all those you manage. Sooner or later — probably sooner — you must learn to manage those who know more than you and know they know more.

Linda once worked with someone in a global investment bank who took over a trading desk where he managed a group of experienced traders. At first he tried to give detailed instructions for adopting or closing specific positions or pursuing different trading strategies. The traders, who knew he lacked experience in many of the foreign markets where they were active, resisted his directions and demanded to know his rationale. He interpreted their resistance as a questioning of his authority, and tension grew between them. However, he did know he lacked knowledge of foreign markets, and one day he asked a trader to explain a certain aspect of pricing. The trader gladly spent several minutes on the subject and even volunteered to talk more at the end of the day. The incident, the manager said, provided an important insight. Because of it, he stopped talking all the time, and began to ask questions and to learn. And as he learned, traders stopped questioning his decisions so much, and tension in the group dropped.

The second reason to acknowledge error or ignorance is the issue of trust. The foundation of your ability to influence others is their trust in you as a manager, their belief that you will do the right thing. Pretending you know more than you do, or failing to recognize and draw on the expertise of others, is a good way to keep people from trusting you and your judgment. People know when you don’t know something; they know when you’re wrong or made a mistake or need help. They’re reassured when you know it too and are willing to say so. People expect you to understand the business and how it works and to know enough to make sound judgment calls. But you needn’t be the expert-of-experts.

Having said that, let’s be clear. This is another of those fine lines that managers must approach but not cross. On one side of it, people respect your ability to recognize your own shortcomings and your willingness to learn. Without those qualities, people are less likely to trust you. On the other side of that line, however, too much expression of weakness, error, and uncertainty will also diminish people’s trust in you. In every situation, you must find that line and remain on the positive side. Straying too far from it, one way or the other, will make you less effective”

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2011/02/the-words-many-managers-are-af.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

“There’s a clothing drop box down the street that says, “The American Red Cross of Massachusetts is a humanitarian organization, led by volunteers, that provides relief to victims of disasters and helps people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.” Good enough, so far. But adjacent to those words, in a font four times the size, and in bold, mind you, are the words, “Mission Statement.” Which made me wonder, is this Red Cross’s mission, or its mission statement? I don’t want to go off on the Red Cross — the messaging on the drop box could just be some junior graphic designer’s idea, and not an organizational mandate. But it spoke volumes about what was in the mind of the person who put it there. It gave away the context in which that person’s work occurs: public relations. See, if you’re on a mission, the box says something like, “Red Cross Emergency Clothing Drop Box!” in gigantic reflective lettering, and not a damned thing else. Because you’re on a mission to get as much clothing as you can. But if the goal is to satisfy a contemporary set of communications and public relations standards, then it says trendy things like “Mission Statement.”

A person or organization on a mission is inspiring. A mission statement is an abstraction. Add to this disadvantage the fact that most mission-statement writing is an exercise in compromise and equivocation, and now you’ve really depressed people.

The world is full of examples:
“At IBM, we strive to lead in the invention, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, storage systems and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions, services and consulting businesses worldwide.”
Cancel my Ambien prescription. There’s nothing less exciting than careful jargon. Is it any wonder Apple’s market cap has left IBM’s in the dust? “Strive?” Did no one watch Star Wars? Remember what Yoda said? “Do. Or do not. There is no trying.”"

Read the full article at HBR here:

http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/01/do-you-have-a-mission-statemen.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Interesting work! Article by by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown. HBR.

“Mindset is everything. If that statement seems too strong, consider that we bring these basic assumptions to every decision and action we make. Left unexamined, they may unnecessarily restrict us or lead us in the wrong direction altogether. Perception may not truly be reality, but when it comes to how we approach challenges and opportunities, mindset determines the world we encounter and possibilities we apprehend. Achieving the power of pull requires us to make our assumptions explicit and examine them in different contexts — testing, challenging and refining.

As we began to discuss in our last post, adapting to the Big Shift and harnessing the potential of pull requires embracing a new mindset. This posting will focus on another key set of assumptions.

In her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck distinguishes two extremes of the mindsets people tend to have about their basic qualities:

In a fixed mindset, “your qualities are carved in stone.” Whatever skills, talents, and capabilities you have are predetermined and finite. Whatever you lack, you will continue to lack. This fixed mindset applies not just to your own qualities, but to the qualities of others.
In a growth mindset, “your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts…everyone can change and grow through application and experience.” Qualities like intelligence are a starting point, but success comes as a result of effort, learning, and persistence.
The distinction between fixed and growth mindsets has tremendous implications — as individuals and organizations — for how we address the growing pressures around us.

The Mindset Paradox: The greatest threat to success is avoiding failure. One of the most provocative aspects of Dweck’s work is what it says about our approach to challenges. In a fixed mindset, you avoid challenging situations that might lead to failure because success depends upon protecting and promoting your set of fixed qualities and concealing your deficiencies. If you do fail, you focus on rationalizing the failure rather than learning from it and developing your capabilities. With a growth mindset, you focus on learning and development rather than failure and actively pursue the types of challenges that will likely lead to both learning and failure. This sounds a lot like the questing disposition we have discussed previously.

Mindset profoundly shapes key business practices:

Business Ecosystems. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that there are a finite set of smart people and valuable resources outside your company. The challenge is how to identify, connect with and mobilize them to deliver more value to the marketplace — static resources tied together in a static ecosystem. The ecosystem benefits from the network effects of adding more and more participants because more diverse capabilities are connected and accessible.

If you believe that both the resources and the ecosystem itself are dynamic, then the role of the ecosystem is not just to connect and mobilize existing resources but to build relationships that help all participants get better faster. This leads to a more powerful form of increasing returns — not just network effects but new mechanisms to accelerate learning and performance improvement — as each participant learns faster as more and more participants join the ecosystem.

Talent Management. A fixed mindset leads you to focus almost exclusively on attracting and retaining talent. The assumption: each person’s skills and capabilities are set. You will tend to devote too many resources to those with a perceived stock of knowledge and overlook (and eventually lose) employees with limited stocks but great learning potential. Worse, because you underestimate the value of learning and development, you won’t likely get the most out of those employees you do value.

With a growth mindset, you understand that individual and organizational capabilities can be cultivated and developed, to improve performance and to expand in new directions. You focus more on talent development, creating work environments and practices that enable employees, regardless of work classification, to develop new skills and to learn by working with others, by problem-solving and experimentation.

Relationship-building. A fixed mindset fosters a zero-sum view of the world: if you win, I lose. With a fixed and finite set of value, the only question is how to allocate it. This perspective fosters conflict and mistrust and, not surprisingly, relationships governed by relative power, tend to be transactional and are rigidly defined to protect each party’s share of the value.

A growth mindset fosters a broader view of the possibilities: by working together, we can create more value than if we work individually. While there are still issues around allocation, relationships are cultivated based on a goal of creating an even bigger pie. These relationships center on improving the performance of all participants, and the process of creating value together fosters trust. The levels of collaboration and trust deepen with time, creating a more valuable relationship.

Mindset may be destiny but it is changeable. While mindset has a profound impact on our ability to harness the power of pull, Dweck (displaying her growth mindset) offers hope: “Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them. Just by knowing about the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways.”

The future belongs to those who can adopt a growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset will likely be increasingly stressed and overwhelmed by mounting performance pressures and sustained uncertainty. Worse, the more they avoid failure, the more susceptible these individuals and organizations can be, not learning from mistakes and missing opportunities.

What assumptions do you make about the world and how do they play out in your decisions? What techniques have been useful for exposing your unexamined assumptions? Have you succeeded in actually changing your mindset? ”

Link:

http://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2010/11/do-you-have-a-growth-mindset.html

Provocative, insightful and Must-read for every CEO!

Read the full article at Strategy & Business.

“How CEOs can turn conflict, dissent, and disagreement into a powerful tool for driving performance.

Chief executives most often work in a pressure-cooker atmosphere where two kinds of tension are present. The first kind is the natural tension that exists among top teams, in which talented, driven people who have to work together are also competing with one another for results, power, and stature. The other kind is performance tension: the stress caused by three pairs of important objectives that, in many companies, come into conflict on a daily basis. These are profitability versus growth, the short term versus the long term, and the success of the organization as a whole versus that of its individual parts. Over many years, we have worked with hundreds of CEOs as they confronted difficult situations, and we have observed that the most successful chief executives are the ones who get these tensions right. They have an uncanny ability to turn conflict, dissent, and disagreement into progress. Their mind-set is that having the “right fights” — embracing the right tensions and making them work for you — is the most effective way for companies and teams to move forward. As Brian Pitman, the former chief executive of Lloyds TSB, liked to put it: “You need real disagreement first to get true agreement later.”

The dynamics that exist within boardrooms and top teams vary widely, but most fall somewhere on what we call the relationship spectrum. At one end of this spectrum are the boards and teams that could be characterized as dysfunctional in a friendly way. The inclination to avoid conflict and to be in agreement is so strong that important issues never really get resolved. Consensus in these groups really means the absence of apparent disagreement rather than the presence of a shared commitment to decisions and actions. The lack of tension in the atmosphere fools everyone into thinking that the team members are aligned and collegial when in fact they are neither.

At the other end of the spectrum are the teams that are dysfunctional in an unfriendly way. This is where personal agendas, excessive pride, and turf battles over lesser issues get in the way of the real work that could improve a company’s performance and potential. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife. But people are fighting against one another rather than for the company’s good.

The place to be is in between, as a productively tense team. Here there is enough like-mindedness on foundational matters (mission, goals, the facts, and so on) to allow the group to have the right fights in the right way over what matters most to the company’s current and future performance. The tension is real, but it creates a positive energy that moves the company forward. It is good tension — productive and healthy for the company.

Too little tension puts a company to sleep; too much bad tension diverts precious energy into the friction it creates. In our experience, creating a productively tense dynamic is essential to having a high-performance company. Therefore, instead of trying to eradicate tensions, leaders must choose to cultivate them productively.

Embracing the Right Tensions
Every business faces the opposing forces of the pull for more growth against the pull for more profitability; the demand to show profit today against the need to invest in the company’s future; and the call for optimizing the whole against the tendency of individual parts to maximize their own performance. The three performance tensions — growth versus profitability, short term versus long term, and whole versus parts — provide fundamental energy that can be harnessed to deliver superior, sustainable results. The ability of the board, CEO, and executive team to navigate these tensions largely determines their company’s ability to both create wealth and serve society.

If the CEO, the top team, and the board aren’t spending the majority of their time on issues that address at least one of these three tensions, they are wasting their time on matters that are relatively unimportant. Conversely, they are engaged in the right fights when they wrestle with how to get more growth without sacrificing profitability (or the other way around); when they fight about how to improve current results without mortgaging the future, or how to sustain investment for the long term when short-term results are suffering; and when they battle over individual versus collective performance. Three examples — one for each tension — illustrate our point:

1. Profitability versus Growth. John Sunderland, the former CEO of Cadbury Schweppes, often responded with a parable when an executive argued that the business could increase either margins or sales, but not both. Sunderland would remind the executive of a time when people lived in mud huts and struggled to get both light and heat: Put a hole in the side of your hut, and you let the daylight in, but also the cold; block the opening, and you stayed warm, but sat in the dark. The invention of glass made it possible to have both light and heat. He would then ask, “Where is the glass?” He wanted them to look for ideas that would expand both their margins and their top line. By demanding both growth and profitability from the company’s strategies, Sunderland purposely added tension for his executives. He found that it created more energy and raised the quality of thinking and debate.

2. Short Term versus Long Term. Norman Bobins was the chief executive of LaSalle Bank (now a subsidiary of ABN AMRO) in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was one of the most successful middle-market banks in the United States. He tells this story about how he turned the short term versus long term tension into a productive tool for driving performance: “One of my managers came forward and proposed a [US]$180 million profit plan. I had in my head that $200 million should be possible. The manager’s response when I challenged him was, ‘Just tell me what you want and I’ll deliver it.’ I said to him, ‘You don’t get it. It’s not what I want; it’s how I want it achieved.’ The quality of earnings is as important as how much earnings are produced. It would be easy to achieve $200 million just by lending more to customers with poor credit histories. That’s why in the budgeting and negotiating process with my managers, understanding how earnings will be generated next year is as important as how much earnings will be generated this year.”

Bobins’s approach was a masterful example of using the tension between short term and long term to improve the quality of management. He neither let the manager off the hook nor left him alone to sort out the tension for himself.

3. Whole versus Parts. Soon after Matthew Barrett became chief executive of Barclays PLC in 1999, he purposely introduced tension into a meeting of his executive committee (Exco), which included the executives who led different parts of Barclays. Barrett had become frustrated with how everyone put his or her part of the bank first. “When I’d been at Barclays about six months,” he recalls, “I took the Exco out for an away-day. Over dinner the night before, I said, ‘I’ve got some good news: I’m disbanding Exco.’ There was a stunned silence around the room. Then the question: ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I’m really respectful of your time, and it’s not good for any of us to have a series of bilateral meetings with an audience.’ They all objected. No one wanted to lose the status of being a member of Exco. So I said at the end, ‘You either persuade yourselves that your first job is the co-management of the group and your second job is managing your piece, or I’m disbanding Exco.’ I wanted to create a sense of ownership for the [group’s most important] issues wherever they sat in the organization. It really turned things around. [They] understood I was serious.”

Barrett created a right fight over one of the most important tensions that exists in any large, complex company: how to make the whole more than just the sum of the parts. He used tension deliberately, aiming it squarely at improving the team’s effectiveness in driving the bank’s performance.

These CEOs have in common a focus not just on the right tensions, but also on using them in the right way: to move things forward, to energize, to spark new thinking, to wake people up! This is how they transformed their companies into great performers.

No business can escape the three performance tensions that pull it in different directions. Any top team or board that tries to ignore them is fooling itself and taking productive tension out of the company.

TEST THE TENSIONS WITHIN YOUR BOARD AND TOP TEAM

How much time in your boardroom and with your top team is going toward the right tensions?
How well are performance tensions being addressed by your strategy?
How well do dissent, different views, and competing ideas surface, get discussed, and get productively decided?
How good is your board’s or team’s alignment? Is it strong enough and focused enough to support right fights fought right?
Making Tensions Work for You
When CEOs, top teams, and boards are operating too close to either extreme of the relationship spectrum, at least one of three situations is nearly always present: The right tensions may be sitting under, rather than on, the surface. They may be recognized, but are not being resolved in the right way. Or there may be insufficient alignment around the foundations of high performance, such as vision, mission, goals, and facts.

The first step in replacing unproductive tension with productive tension is to embrace the reality of the often-conflicting demands that a company can never fully avoid. As we saw with Sunderland, Bobins, and Barrett, a productively tense dynamic at the top of a company keeps the most important tensions on the surface at all times for all to see. It calls for more growth and higher profitability; it spells out goals for short-term results and investment for long-term sustenance; and it addresses how the company will be more than just the sum of its businesses without undermining the accountability of those businesses and their ability to perform individually. This helps the entire company stay focused and prevents less-important matters from taking over the agenda.

But although keeping the right tensions on the surface at all times is the first step, it’s not the whole story. Right fights fought badly usually produce terrible results, leading to volatility, unpredictability, and the loss of energy and momentum. The idea is to pick the right fights, put them on the table, and then fight them in the right way.

For example, when Rolf Classon took over as CEO at a large health-care company, he unexpectedly found himself facing a very tough call. The company was far down the path of considering an acquisition that would make it a dominant player in its market. The deal had been blessed by the former CEO, and the entire top team appeared to support it. But shortly after he took the job, Classon discovered that there were real doubters among the team members, including people whose opinions he respected.

Classon called together the team and told them he was uncertain about the acquisition. Some were angry — they thought it was a done deal. He invited all of them into a blunt, no-holds-barred discussion. He told them he didn’t know the business and that this would make him a fair referee. His own mind was not made up. He wanted to know what the team thought and to have them dig deeper into the substance of the reservations that many felt but hadn’t vocalized — questions for which there were no clear-cut right or wrong answers.

When the team members realized that Classon was engaging them in a new kind of inquiry — based on his belief that the relationships at the top had sufficient trust and respect to tolerate and even embrace dissent — a lot of new thinking came forward. In the end, the team concluded that the deal would probably work from a financial perspective, but that it wasn’t as good a fit strategically as many had thought. They decided to pass. Six months later, a much better acquisition opportunity came along, and the team had the resources, the time, and the mutual trust to act. The resulting acquisition took the company to another level.

In orchestrating this right fight, Classon had one important thing going for him: a strong foundation of alignment on which to build success. Another CEO, Douglas Conant, had no such foundation when he took the chief executive role at Campbell Soup Company in 2001. Throughout the previous decade, in the pursuit of higher margins, the prior management team had systematically cheapened the company’s products while raising their prices. They’d even taken the chicken out of their chicken soup. Without a common view of what the organization was trying to accomplish, the leadership had become consumed with conflicting priorities and infighting, blaming one another for the financial mess they were in. The once revered American brand had lost its way and become the poorest-performing major food company in the world.

Conant faced each of the three performance tensions — in spades. But he was in no position to tackle them right away. He first had to build a foundation of alignment. So in his first 90 days, he worked with the leadership team to create a values statement, an “employees matter” promise, and a mission statement that defined Campbell’s purpose as “nourishing people’s lives everywhere, every day.” Fixing the company’s performance was important, but the mission had to come first.

At the same time, Conant knew he had to re-energize the organization and make it more innovative — and efficient. He started at the top, rearranging the hierarchy into a matrix to provide team members with broader lines of sight to facts (avoiding silos), and requiring them to “own” more than one perspective. This new structure encouraged senior leaders to produce visions and plans that affected more than just their own departments. It provided a foundation for Conant to build Campbell’s ability to take on right fights and fight them right.

Conant was candid about Campbell’s problems, telling his team that the company couldn’t “talk its way out of a situation it had behaved its way into.” He promised consistent, well-measured improvement, year over year. Slowly but surely, his focus on the future began to work. Pricing came into line. Product quality improved. The innovation pipeline became full again.

By the end of 2008, Campbell’s was ranked in the top 10 percent of food companies in financial performance and in the top quartile of Fortune 500 companies in employee morale.

By starting with building sufficient alignment on vision, mission, goals, and facts, and then structuring a way forward that made the lines of tension visible and safe, Conant stopped all the fighting about things that didn’t really matter and turned his team’s attention to fighting really well about the few critical things that did.

Becoming Productively Tense
Many boards and top teams have too little good tension in them; they fear that open dissent and disagreement will undermine their collective effectiveness. Many others have too much bad tension in them; the members are too focused on their individual results, power, and stature to attend to the tensions that really matter (profitability versus growth, the short term versus the long term, and the collective whole versus its individual parts). Both dynamics are dysfunctional and ultimately undermine a company’s ability to realize its full potential.

The sweet spot is the dynamic of being productively tense — where the fights are primarily about the right performance tensions, where the fights are conducted in the right way, and where there is sufficient alignment to make dissent and disagreement work in favor of better decision making, faster learning, and more effective solutions.

Every CEO must master the management of tensions, raising and lowering them. This is one of the most important tools a top leader can use to realize a company’s and team’s true potential. Chances are, there is at least one thing your team is fighting about that’s not worth the effort, and one thing the team has let pass that needs to be addressed now.

Reprint No. 10301

AUTHOR PROFILES:

Ken Favaro is a senior partner with Booz & Company based in New York. He leads the firm’s work in enterprise strategy and finance.
Saj-nicole Joni is a business strategist and confidential advisor to CEOs and their top executives around the globe. She is the founder and CEO of Cambridge International Group.
Examples in this article were drawn from The Right Fight: How Great Leaders Use Healthy Conflict to Drive Performance, Innovation, and Value, by Saj-nicole Joni and Damon Beyer (HarperBusiness, 2010), and The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform without Compromise, by Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro (Jossey-Bass, 2007).”

Perfectly said. Thanks John.

“Confidence is an attribute that every leader needs to embrace and to foster in others. But when confidence goes too far, it can become hubris.

Overdosing on confidence is easy to do. Jim Collins writes about the organizational side of hubris in his latest book, How the Mighty Fall. Stage 1 of organizational failure is “hubris born of success.” It “sets in when people become arrogant, regarding success virtually as an entitlement, and they lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place.”

Many leaders veer into hubristic behavior without realizing their shortcomings. We may be well intentioned, but we all suffer from a blind spots.So how can leaders know when their own confidence is verging on hubris? Here are some warning signs:

1-You make many decisions independently. No, dithering isn’t good. But bosses who make all of their own decisions without speaking to others are asking for trouble. How much do you ask for others’ input?

2-You can’t remember the last time you spoke to a customer. Failure to discover what people think about what you offer is not only foolhardy, it’s a recipe for failure in the future. If you think you’re “too busy” to connect with customers, that’s a warning sign.

3-You always have lunch with the same people. Socializing only with select peers cuts you off from people who might offer alternate views.

4-Your team always seems to agree with you. If no one has contradicted you in a while, you may have inadvertently created a no-bad-news culture. Surrounding yourself with people who can only do one thing — nod — is an invitation to disaster.

5-When something goes wrong, the first thing you ask is, “Who’s responsible?” This may be a sign that you overemphasize accountability at the expense of problem-solving — which your team may see this as finger-pointing.

If any of this sounds familiar, consider what you need to change. What can you do?

Start by asking people to talk back. Employees need to be able to tell their bosses what they really think. Bosses who make people uncomfortable about telling the truth are asking for trouble. They end up sandbagging reality.

So take it a step further — insist on candor. Ancient Romans embraced the concept of simplicitas — straightforwardness. Every boss owes his employees straight talk about their own performance as well as the performance of the team and the company. Candor can be cleansing in that it clears out the haze of “smoke and mirrors” that organizations tend to create.

Make time to walk the halls, talk to customers, and speak with vendors. Get the straight dope on how the company is performing. Do not take internal reports at face value. Sometimes reports are created to shield the guilty from accountability. Use your own “walk the beat” approach to finding out the truth.

Finally, remember that once your stakeholders start talking more openly, it’s your job to listen.

Confidence is very often a virtue. Without self-confidence, a manager is one waiting for someone else to step forward. Leaders need to have faith in themselves in order to have the gumption to lead, and they need to spread that self-assurance throughout their organizations. Every employee needs to know that his boss believes not only in himself, but also in the capacity of the team to achieve its objectives.

But, as we have seen so often, too much confidence is a toxic cocktail, one that can lead to a very long hangover.”

Published by HBR blogs at: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/09/how_to_recognize_and_cure_your.html

“Let’s sit you down in front of a video camera and and ask a simple question:

What is the biggest mistake a leader can make?

What’s your answer? My initial response, after pondering the recent fates of  Tony Hayward, Mark Hurd and Gordon Brown, was this: The biggest mistake that can be made is to surrender humility (the greatest asset any leader can have) to ego. It’s being directed by that swelled feeling that I’m the boss, people listen to me for a reason, I am the organization.

Now let’s look at what nine experts on leadership had to say to the same question. You can see the video on HBR.org, called The Biggest Mistake a Leader Can Make (link: http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2010/08/the-biggest-mistake-a-leader-c.html), but I’ll summarize the responses.

1-Putting their self-interests ahead of the interests of the organization. (Bill George, Harvard Business School).
2-Betray trust. (Evan Wittenberg, Google).
3-Being certain. (Dr. Ellen Langer, Harvard University).
4-Not living up to their own values. (Andrew Pettigrew, Oxford.)
5-Lose capacity for self-doubt. (Gianpiero Petriglieri, Insead).
6-Arrogance and hubris. (Carl Sloane, HBS)
7-Act too quickly. (Jonathan Doochin, Harvard College)
8-Inconsistency and arrogance. (Scott Snook, HBS)
9-Failure to be self-reflective. (Daisy Wademan Dowling, Morgan Stanley).

Their answers in aggregate were rather surprising. It’s not a failure of intelligence or technical skill that brings down powerful people, our experts mostly agreed. Rather, it was a failure of character and values. Bill George of HBS calls it being on “True North,” and leaders who deviate from this compass heading definitely lose their way.

This is a dilemma that all business management schools are grappling with today. We can teach students great skills and technique. We can show them the history of successful companies and people. We can develop them into better managers and critical thinkers. But how do we teach moral fiber and integrity — the key ingredients needed to create successful leaders?

How would you answer when asked, What’s the biggest mistake a leader can make?”

Full article is available at HBR here.

Though simply, yet provocative and crucial to consider next time you write an email or deliver a presentation!

“The speaker had just been introduced. A slide behind him had his name and institution on it. A program in each member of the audience’s hands had the same information. And still, how did he begin?

“Good Morning, my name is Gary Anderson and I’m a managing director at Acme and I’m here today to talk about…” Yet again the chance to make a powerful first impression by a presenter was lost. The audience settled in for another mediocre presentation, and they were not wrong. All too often business leaders forget the classic adage “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” In both written and oral communication it’s just too easy to begin with the mundane, the uninspired, and the ordinary.

As we’re designing presentations or crafting emails or letters, it’s acceptable, perhaps even easier, to start by writing the heart of our content. How will we shape it? What flow makes sense? What matters most to my audience? What aspects must be included and what elements are optional if time, or space, allows? But once the draft of your communication is complete, then step back and consider the total package you are delivering to your reader or audience and decide carefully how you wish to begin.

Each year we likely see hundreds of presentations at work or professional conferences. The speaker who commands our attention from their first breath is one we want to listen to. At TED 2009, Elizabeth Pisani, an AIDS researcher with unconventional methods of field research, did just that. She looked out at the audience and began “People do stupid things; that’s what spreads HIV.” She had us. She then went on to discuss four distinct groups of people (drug users, sex workers, gay men, and health policy nerds) and what each found to be rational. Her talk, from her very first breath, was brilliant, well-designed, and powerful. It began well and just got better.”

Read the full article at HBR here: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/effective_communciation_begins.html