5 Attributes to Lead Real and Lasting Change

Leadership

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~African Proverb

For some time now, my neighborhood has been under construction, one high rise after another. That means I walk around a construction site pretty much every day, and the construction process appears to be slow and arduous.

I first start receiving legal notices in the mail from the developer’s attorney, a requirement for anyone owning property within 250 feet of any construction. There is typically some type of informational meeting to describe the zoning changes, offer up any concerns, etc. Once they have all the legalities in order, they bulldoze what currently exists, that always seems to happen quickly.

Then the new construction begins. Just imagine a high rise 30+ stories high and each additional floor is exactly the same as the previous floor. The change process seems measured, meticulous, and detailed, but the final product is stunning and adds a striking complement to the Chicago skyline.

The construction process parallels change efforts in organizations. Everyone is informed of the change and why it’s necessary, there are probably various informational meetings. Followed by a “bulldozing” of what currently exists, whether it’s processes, cultural attributes, services, products, programs, etc. Then the “new construction” begins, replacing what previously existed.

Here’s where I think leaders can really learn from high rise construction. Building anything new will likely be a slow, meticulous, and a detailed process. It may even feel repetitive, much like adding one identical floor after another on a high rise.

I believe many leaders become impatient with change efforts. Using the construction metaphor, they want to go from bulldozing to completed high rise almost instantly. That’s just as unrealistic for organizational change as it is for high rise construction. Change requires time, discipline, and patience. Below are five attributes that I believe are critical for any leader who is hoping to lead real and lasting change.

  • Communicate, communicate, communicate clearly, completely, and often.
  • Listen, not just at the onset of the change effort, but continuously until completion and the change has been fully instituted.
  • Empathize with those who are being asked to change, put yourself in their shoes and demonstrate that you understand their struggles.
  • Credibility will go a long way toward creating a smooth change process – consistently do what you say you will do.
  • Take on a project management orientation – establish clear goals, objectives, timelines, specific actions, and manage the process, beginning to end.

Sure, you might be able to make small changes in your organization quickly (i.e., go fast and go alone). But if you want to create significant change (i.e., go far), then you need to go together and that requires communication, listening, empathizing, credibility, and a plan to manage the process.

Want to achieve more, rethink what you’re measuring.

Leadership, Strategy

What we measure gets improved. ~Peter Drucker

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens may have been onto something about measuring in the 21st century way back in mid-1800s. With the plethora of information, tools, and technology, we can figure out how to measure just about anything—the best of times. But with so much to measure, are we measuring the right things that will truly enable us to achieve more—the worst of times.

Before I jump into measuring, I want to define some terms. I’ve found the definitions for a goal, lag measure, and lead measure in the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling to be quite helpful.

GOAL (from X to Y by when): Decrease total body weight from 190 to 175 pounds by May 30.

LAG MEASURE (ultimate measure of success): Weight on the bathroom scale.

What activities can I measure to track my progress in this situation?

LEAD MEASURE (predictive of achieving the goal and that you can influence): A) reduce calories consumed, and B) increase calories burned.

These two measures (calories consumed and calories burned) strongly indicate if you’ll lose weight (note, strongly indicate not guarantee), and they are directly influenceable by you. Unfortunately, leaders spend most of their time fixated on lag measures, even though you can’t directly affect them.

Lag measures tend to be more visible and easier to define and obtain. As an example, it’s easy to measure your weight, just step on the scale. However, measuring the number of calories consumed and calories burned, every day, not as easy and requires discipline. But isn’t that how we really lose weight?

It’s easy for someone in sales to tally the number of sales for the month (lag measure), or for a fundraiser to total the number of dollars raised last quarter (lag measure). Lag measures tend to be the response to “What does success look like?” Don’t’ get me wrong, we need lag measures; they point the direction. But achieving those lag measures happens because we know what lead measures will significantly increase the odds of actual achievement of our goal.

I believe that understanding and focusing on lead measures can determine the difference between someone being promoted or overlooked, or an organization that moves forward or remains stagnant.

This is a significant reason why, I think, the majority of strategic plans fail, or at least never gain any traction. We determine goals (lag measures), and then develop a “to-do list” of objectives. But the objectives many times are not directly tied to lead measures. It takes time, and effort, to determine the best lead measures, especially in an era when we have the tools and technology to measure almost anything.

Consequently, we become either impatient or complacent and just start “doing,” assuming that our goals will be achieved. In my experience, those individuals and organizations who achieve their goals, are those who first do the hard, taxing work of asking and identifying lead measures: “What activities can I measure to track our progress in this situation?”

Want to achieve more, re-think what you’re measuring.

Are you strategic, or just efficient?

Leadership, Strategy,

Strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value. ~Michael Porter

I have found that while the idea of strategy sounds intriguing to many, turning strategy into reality is far more challenging. It becomes easy to start listing what you currently do, and then assume that’s your “strategy.” You might also identify how efficiently you manage your operations and assume that’s your “strategy.”

Michael Porter is the quintessential expert on strategy. The words that Porter emphasizes when he defines strategy are different and unique.

Porter says “the root of the problem is to distinguish between operational effectiveness and strategy.”  Things like productivity, quality, speed, customer satisfaction, benchmarks, outcomes, and best practices have created entire industries of tools and techniques, all very helpful for a well-run organization. However, that isn’t strategy.

You might be asking, if operational effectiveness means a well-run organization, then why is strategy even necessary? Here’s where I think leaders in the for-profit sector could learn from the leaders in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit experts Steve Zimmerman and Jeanne Bell said, “sustainability lies at the intersection of exceptional impact and financial viability.” I would argue that all organizations (nonprofit and for-profit) will discover that intersection through strategy not through efficient operations.

The basic premise of strategy that Porter outlines, I believe, could apply to organizations of any type or size, and even to individuals. Looking for a new job? Consider how you might describe yourself differently in a job interview if you were being strategic.

Here are Porter’s three key principles that underlie strategy.

  1. Create a unique and valuable position.
    • Serving few needs of many
    • Serving broad needs of few
    • Serving broad needs of many in a narrow market
  2. Choose what not to do.
    • Some activities are incompatible. Gains in one area can be achieved only at the expense of another area.
  3. Create “fit” among the organization’s activities.
    • Fit drives sustainability: when activities mutually reinforce each other, competitors can’t easily imitate them.

3 Questions to Test Your Strategy

  • What unique value do you offer/provide?
  • Is it clear what you are choosing not to do?
  • Do the activities (products, programs, services, delivery systems, staffing, etc.) fit together and reinforce each other?

Leaders: Are you living in an echo chamber of you own opinions?

Leadership

Communication isn’t about speaking, it’s about listening. ~Unknown

I have no doubt that many people would argue with this quote—communication isn’t about speaking, it’s about listening—especially as it relates to leadership. If you’re one of those people, I’d like to ask you to press the pause button on that reaction for just a few minutes.

As I look at our culture today, there seems to be a lot of speaking going on. And when we don’t like the reaction to our speaking we speak even louder, and it’s being done under the guise of “leadership.”

I recently stumbled upon a blog post authored by Olaf Werder, lecturer in health communication from the University of Sydney. In the global blog The Conversation: academic rigor, journalistic flair Werder says:

Whereas the idea of the internet as a democratic source of information and active engagement was noble, the web algorithms that filtered what someone was exposed to along their interests created an echo chamber of one’s own held opinions. It effectively reduced communicative competency to engage in human dialogue.

On an individual level, we need to balance impersonal with personal communication, seek out and engage with opposing opinions on purpose, and try understanding the background for someone’s position by actively listening.

This goes beyond the freedom of speech idea. It forms an attempt to find common ground when talking to each other, which is not coincidentally also a definition of the term “community.”

It feels like most of us are intent with trying to make a difference, but it also feels to me like we’re trying to do it by a lot of speaking and very little listening. We have to find the discipline to show empathy. Yes, I just used the words discipline and empathy in the same sentence. I don’t know how we can be empathetic without first listening. And to listen first, for many of us, that will take some intentional discipline.

Here are just a few more quotes to illustrate my point.

Carly Fiorina (former CEO of HP and 2016 Republican presidential primary candidate) said, “Leadership is about making a positive difference and you cannot do that without empathy.”

Stephen R. Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) said “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Carl Rogers said, “Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.”

One of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

We are in desperate need of courageous, empathetic leaders who will listen, engage in human dialogue, and build community.

Want to increase your productivity? Work less.

Leadership

Productivity is about what you accomplish and not how much you produce; a nine-to-five workday makes as much sense as diligently tracking your time out on the farm. ~Chris Bailey

When I read the second half of that sentence, “a nine-to-five workday makes as much sense as diligently tracking your time out on the farm,” light bulbs must have been glowing over my head. I grew up on a farm, so I could totally relate to that analogy. No, farmers don’t track their time because the focus is on what you need to accomplish. You don’t stop halfway through feeding the cattle because time is up.

Chris Bailey provides what I think is a fascinating account of the history of “time” and work. For those who may not find it as interesting as I do, I’ll only provide a very short summary.

We’ve only been working by the clock for 175 years. For example, in 1918 (only 99 years ago!) the United States went from using hundreds of time zones to using just four, and time zones were codified into federal law. Within just a few decades, we went from selling goods we produced ourselves (think: farmers) to helping create mass-produced goods (think: manufacturing), which meant we were trading our time for a paycheck. Back then, there was a direct connection between how many minutes and hours we worked and how much we produced. Think of this as the time economy.

We’ve transitioned again, from working in factories to working in offices. We are now in the knowledge economy. We now trade a combination of our time, attention, energy, skills, knowledge, social intelligence, network, and ultimately our productivity for a paycheck.

As Chris Bailey says, “We [especially leaders] have to step out of the time economy and into the knowledge economy to become more productive.” We’ve been in the knowledge economy for years (late 1900s to early 2000s) yet many of us still function as if we’re in the time economy. And no, it’s not just the Baby Boomers who are stuck in the time economy. Chris Bailey, who I’m quoting today, was born in 1989, a Millennial!

The difference: instead of thinking about how much time you’ve spent working, begin to think about the energy and attention you’ve invested in your work. Energy and attention have a greater impact on your productivity than does time. In fact, research shows that after 35 or 40 hours your productivity begins to plummet. That’s because we’ve not taken the time to replenish our energy and attention.

Here’s just one reason why I think this is so important. I see leaders who want to give pay increases to people they see burning the midnight oil. The people still in the office at 8pm are those who deserve raises, right? Giving those folks raises could be rewarding them (and enabling them) to be less productive than what they could be. Instead, if they were rewarded with raises because they demonstrate a keen ability to manage their attention and energy, over spending more time, that could be a better means to encourage accomplishment which translates into productivity.

The real crux of all this for leaders is that defining expectations around what needs to be accomplished may not be as straightforward as what needs to be produced. It’s a major shift from asking what do I need to “do” this week, to what do I need to “accomplish” this week. And, how will I best manage my attention and energy to get that accomplished.