A sense of purpose helps in adverse conditions.  You have more distance, you have the big picture, and that helps you to relativize things, to realize what is important.  ~Marc Le Menestrel

The Stonecutter’s Tale is an insightful metaphor to illustrate the significance of helping those you lead stay focused on the big picture.

One day a traveler, walking along a lane, came across three stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of stone. Interested to find out what they were working on, he asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. “I am cutting a stone!” Still no wiser the traveler turned to the second stonecutter and asked him what he was doing. “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, and its dimensions are uniform, so that it will fit exactly in its place in a wall.” A bit closer to finding out what the stonecutters were working on but still unclear, the traveler turned to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am building a cathedral.”

In Peter Drucker’s version, when asked what they were doing, the first stonecutter replied: “I am making a living.”

The second kept on hammering while he responded: “I am doing the best job of stone cutting in the entire country.”

The third stonecutter, when asked the same question said: “I am building a cathedral.”

Drucker focuses particularly on the second stonecutter, suggesting that perhaps this narrowly-focused, professional approach could be detrimental to the project or organization as a whole. This worker’s pride and attention was limited to the narrow scope of his own work, ignoring any contribution to the organization’s overall success or big picture.

The topic of leadership and the big picture has come up repeatedly for me recently.  In supervisor training, focusing on the big picture was a suggested approach when trying to re-engage an employee.  In identifying a group of board members to lead a not-for-profit, considering if they can stay focused on the big picture or do they allow themselves to get lost in the weeds.  In a manufacturing plant that drives home the value of hard work but fails to connect that hard work to a big picture, something meaningful for the employees to grab onto.

We all get caught-up in details and trivia from time-to-time.  The most effective leaders recognize when this happens and they quickly shift the focus back to the big picture – back to building a cathedral!

We need to stop spending so much time trying to make the right decisions and instead start spending our time making decisions and then making them right.  ~Rory Vaden

Have you ever been stuck in a decision loop?  You keep circling back because there are too many options, or the perfect choice isn’t standing out from all of the other options?  Or maybe you’re thinking one decision will make your life easier than the other decisions so you want to identify that choice.

You might think that Rory Vaden is suggesting the “quick fix” approach to decision making.  Actually, he’s suggesting just the opposite.  This quote comes from a book authored by Rory entitled, Take the Stairs.  He argues that there is one specific value that is diminishing in modern culture: self-discipline.  We’re looking for immediate satisfaction and we live in a shortcut society.  So when faced with the option of the stairs or an elevator, 95% of us will take the easier option and forego the stairs.  Rory states:

Ask an Olympic athlete.  Read Michael Jordan’s autobiography.  Listen to what Peyton Manning says is his secret.  They all attribute their successes more to having the self-discipline to work harder and push farther in practice than to an innate talent.  Sure, people who achieve greatness in any endeavor might be blessed with some natural talent; and sure, timing and luck play a part.  But as Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated in his book Outliers, there’s no substitute for hard work—10,000 hours of it, to be exact!

Getting back to decision making, if we’re honest, how many of us make a decision and then expect the outcome to somehow mysteriously materialize, because after all, we made the decision.  Many times we spend very little time (due to lack of self-discipline) making our decisions right.

Let me illustrate.  I frequently spend hours upon hours with an organization’s leadership developing a strategic plan.  Making decision after decision about where the organization intends to head in the next few coming years.  Yet, far too frequently, it stops there.  The decision is made but then little to no intentional effort is made to make all those decisions right.  In other words, they look for the metaphorical elevator and skip the stairs.  Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are nothing.  Planning is everything.”  As I see it, plans are essentially a decision but planning is the self-discipline to make it right.

Here we are in mid-April.  How many of us started the year with making decisions about what we would change, do, accomplish, achieve, etc. in 2016?  How many of us have already abandoned those decisions?  Is it because they were not the right decisions?  Or is it because we have lost our self-discipline to make them right?

As Rory suggests, imagine what our lives and organizations would look like if we shifted some of our time making right decisions to time spent making our decisions right?  What if we had the self-discipline to take the stairs?  For Rory, it’s more than a metaphor.  He, literally, really does choose to take the stairs as a visible reminder to himself and others that it’s not the quick fix, easy way, or short-cut that leads to success; it’s the self-discipline to make decisions right.

Think of it as a shift from valuing size to valuing significance.  “How much?” and “How big?” aren’t the right questions.  Instead we should be asking how we can create organizations and societies that mirror our deepest values.  ~Dov Seidman

Seidman says:

The flood of information, unprecedented transparency, increasing interconnectedness—and our global interdependence—are dramatically reshaping today’s world, the world of business, and our lives. We are in the Era of Behavior and the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. It is no longer what you do that matters most and sets you apart from others, but how you do what you do. Whats are commodities, easily duplicated or reverse-engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success for organizations and the people who work for them now lie in the realm of how, the new frontier of conduct.

The idea of behavior and leadership isn’t new, and Seidman would agree with that.  However, Seidman would say that behavior has taken a new priority, new importance, and a new mandate for organizations and individuals.  He believes that what will really set organizations apart is how they do what they do or stated another way, how they behave.  He suggests successful organizations will be those that out-behave their competition.

This past week I attempted to get several groups to create vision statements.  On their first try they all described “what” they were going to “do.”  With Seidman on my mind, I challenged them to think more about “how” the future would look different because of what they were proposing to do.  In other words, paint a compelling picture of the future.  It took some effort, but the changes were fairly dramatic.  Using vivid language, they were able to describe a future that truly expressed the values they were trying to emulate.

Organizationally, Seidman suggests that we shift our thinking from valuing size to valuing significance.  In some regards that almost sounds un-American.  We want to super-size everything!  And we’ve been taught to live by the mantra that you’re either growing or dying, bigger is better, etc.  Imagine for moment how your own organization might look different if the focus became significance as opposed to size.  How your organization might look different if it truly mirrored your deepest values; mirrored them so clearly that they were evident to anyone within the first few minutes of interacting with your organization.  Would that difference establish a degree of significance that would set you apart from all other organizations that do what you do?

Leaders: Is it time to shift from valuing size to valuing significance?

The emphasis on relationships, purpose, and personal development that are strong core beliefs among Millennial leaders can benefit us all.  ~Dylan Taylor, President & COO of Colliers International

The topic of Millennials has gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion.  Even though by age I’m a Baby Boomer, I seem to align with the leadership philosophy of most Millennials.  And I can become rather passionate about that philosophy.  That passion emerges when I see people of other generations belittle, demean, or devalue Millennials’ redefinition of leadership.

We (the non-Millennial generations) can beat our drum as loud as we want to, but that’s not going to change the evidence, and there’s plenty of it!

Deloitte’s research confirmed the basic theme: Millennials want leaders focused on “soft”concerns such as well-being and employee development.  Respondents’ top traits of “true leaders” were the ability to inspire, vision, decisiveness, and passion.  Only 1 in 10 felt that true leaders are solely focused on financial results.

Millennial respondents also identified what they think their current leadership’s priorities are.  The only alignment was in “ensuring the future of the organization.”  In all other areas, there was a 10 to 20 percent difference between Millennials’ top priorities (well-being and development of employees) and their perception of the senior leadership’s priorities (short-term profit and their own income).

In Virtuali’s 2014 report, Engaging Millennials Through Leadership Development,

U.S. Millennials placed similar emphasis on people-centered leadership, with communication, relationship-building and the ability to develop others as being top qualities.  So-called “hard skills,” such as technical expertise and general business knowledge, ranked lowest.  In a more recent Virtuali survey, 63 percent of Millennial respondents expressed the desire to be “transformational leaders who inspire others.”

According to Dan Schawbel, founder of Workplacetrends.com and managing partner of Millennial Branding, a millennial-focused research and management consultancy:

Boomers have been autocratic leaders that are all about command, control, and policies, such as working nine to five.  Millennials want to create a more collaborative environment where they exchange ideas with peers and accomplish a mission instead of a corporate culture that’s rigid with policies and procedures.

Sooner than we realize – in about 10 years – most of the Baby Boomers will be retired and out of the workforce and this generational leadership clash will be a thing of the past.  In the meantime, I’ll likely continue to get myself in trouble as I join the Millennials in the quest for people-centered leadership.

When you remove just the right thing in just the right way, something good usually happens.  ~Matthew E. May

The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew E. May is one of the books that I periodically pull off my shelf because it just feels like I could benefit from some editing in my work and my life.  Excess has taken over and it is time to “remove just the right thing in just the right way.”

May says, “I believe subtraction is the path through the haze and maze, one that can allow us to create clarity from complexity and to wage and win the war against the common enemy of excess.”

Several months ago I facilitated a training class on effective presentations.  Over the course of two days the participants had to give a number of presentations, two of which were video-taped.  For a number of reasons (time, logistics, technology, etc.), I did not let them use PowerPoint for any of their presentations.  That frustrated some of the participants.  Not only had PowerPoint become a crutch, it enabled them to add more to their presentations, and more doesn’t equal better.  They could use flipcharts, the whiteboard, visual aids, etc., all of the old-fashioned stuff they had put aside.

When I forced them to subtract the excess because they couldn’t add slide after slide of text, information, data, etc. they created presentations that turned complex information into clearly articulated ideas.

This was hard work for these participants and there’s a reason.  Matthew May reminds us that “Subtraction doesn’t come naturally or intuitively.  We are hardwired to add and accumulate, hoard and store.”  He continues and quotes from The Laws of Simplicity, “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”

Here are three questions leaders can ask to determine if they need to do some subtraction.

• What are you currently offering, doing, participating in, spending money on, etc. that is hindering your overall success instead of contributing to your success (organizationally and personally)?
• When you communicate – whether in emails, speaking, reports, or plans – do you subtract the obvious and add the meaningful?
• Can you identify the one priority that is most important for the next 90 days (organizationally and personally)?

May puts it this way.  “At the heart of every difficult decision lie three tough choices:  What to pursue versus what to ignore.  What to leave in versus what to leave out.  What to do versus what not to do.  If you focus on the second half of each choice—what to ignore, what to leave out, what not to do—the decision becomes exponentially easier and simpler.”

So leaders, why not subtract your way to success?