Category Archives: Leadership

10 Ways to Tell You Are Not a Leader

Leadership
  1. Everybody always agrees with you. Because they don’t. They’re lying to you. And it’s your fault they are, because you make them.
  2. You talk more than you listen.
  3. Nobody who works for you owns anything by themselves. And I mean ownership as owning a task, having responsibility, being empowered to operate, make decisions, and – yes – make mistakes.
  4. You do all the work. Because you don’t, really. If you think you do, then you’re not giving others enough credit.
  5. You correct people more than you applaud people.
  6. You take more credit than you give.
  7. Achievement in your group is something you bestow on people, rather than something they achieve themselves in the objective numbers they’re responsible for.
  8. It takes your people time to think when asked what ideas you stand for, or what you believe in.
  9. You don’t get bad news quickly. That means people are worrying about how to tell you. People hide bad news or, worse still, spin it to look like good news.
  10. You criticize more than you collaborate.

(Image: bigstockphoto.com)

Bad News As a Test of Leadership

Leadership

How does bad news flow where you are? I think the handling of the bad news is an interesting test of leadership and organizational health. expect delays

  1. Real leaders get the bad news first. If the boss isn’t the first one a person tells about problems and bad news, then there’s something wrong with that boss. Why is there a delay? What are they afraid of? People instinctively go to a real leader with bad news because they want the leader to know quickly and they expect the leader to come up with the right response.
  2. Real leaders deliver bad news quickly and well. In many ways that’s a test of leadership. Hiding bad news is rarely a good idea.
  3. Real leaders take responsibility for bad news. They jump in and collaborate on solutions. Bucks don’t get passed.

I’ve seen this phenomenon for years, in small business and entrepreneurship. I think I see it in larger politics, too.

What do you think?

Test Your Leadership With These Two Questions

Leadership

Are you running a business, or an organization, or a team? For a quick rating of your own leadership, ask yourself these questions about bad news:

  1. How quickly do you get the bad news? A real leader is the first person to hear bad news. People don’t wait to tell you. They don’t tell each other first. And they certainly don’t hide bad news from you. That happens because they know you want to hear bad news fast; and because you handle it well (see below). That doesn’t mean you’re always on the lookout spotting the bad news first, but it does mean that when anybody in your organization sees bad news, you are the first person they tell.
  2. How do you respond to bad news? A real leader responds immediately with collaboration that includes the team. You focus on reaction, response, changes required, but not blame. If you react to bad news by establishing blame, you will not be the first person to hear it.

To make this test work, be honest with yourself. If the answers to these two questions seem like bad news, respond to the bad news with change. Change your style, talk to your team, make it clear you want to hear bad news first.

Good news is great, but the bad news is where the management comes in. Bad news is where you look first for what has to change.

(Image: istockphoto.com)

It’s Analytes Vs. Justdoers in a Battle to Business Death

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management,

In a darkened arena with a spotlight on a fighting ring in the middle, the crowd hushes as an announcer walks to the middle of the ring and announces the next battle.

“In this corner…” — his voice echoes through the arena — “… we have the analytes.”

The analytes can’t move without the numbers. They study. They research. In their world, answers are there for the taking, if you just do the numbers hard enough. You resolve uncertainty by looking harder at the data. Every problem has an answer. There is no uncertainty that can’t be resolved by further research. Their critics call it paralysis by analysis.

“And in this corner,” the echoing voice announces, “we have the justdoers.”

The justdoers trust hunches. They want action. For them, it’s all just guessing, so let’s take our best guess and get moving. They don’t worry so much about uncertainty because it’s all uncertainty, and the answer is to guess.

The justdoers drive the analytes crazy. “Come on,” they shout, “what are you waiting for? We’re going to miss the market. Let’s go.” meter

And the analytes drive the justdoers crazy. “That’s irresponsible,” they say, “we haven’t done the research.”

And, unfortunately, never the twain shall meet. I think the happy medium is somewhere in between. Especially with entrepreneurship and small business, I think you have to remind yourself to slow down and educate those guesses … and that you can’t ever study enough to eliminate uncertainty. The past doesn’t predict the future.

This difference in style is really significant. Each of the extremes makes the other extreme very, very nervous. We have the paralyzed vs. the loose cannons.

I’d like to think there’s a medium range in between the two extremes, where people understand that they are guessing, so they educate their guesses with practical research wherever possible, but they take only the right amount of time before taking their best guess and moving forward.

And I’d like to think I’m close to the medium, because I like to absorb the data before I discount it in favor of common sense. I hope the data affects my decisions, but only in a non-specific osmosis sort of way. And when in doubt, I know that it’s all uncertainty, so we might as well get moving.

Where are you on this scale? Where are your key cohorts? Are you compatible? What do you think: should everybody be the same on this scale, or is it better for a team if it includes a mix?

Can You Define Good Management Technique?

Business Mistakes, Leadership, Management, , , , ,

With due respect to some of the great thinkers who have, I don’t understand how anybody even tries to define, teach, or even predict good management technique.

Even if it’s just one manager and one person being managed, there are already three huge factors: the manager, the other person, and the situation. Both the people involved have their strengths and weaknesses and all that. And the situation itself, what’s going on, is an entire additional set of factors. Then there’s baggage from the past, and, well, it becomes an infinite problem. Higher math. Condemned to infinite case-by-case analysis. screen shot

I think about what I’ve heard about coaches in professional athletics. Sometimes a supposedly hard-nosed, tough coach will win the championship, and sometimes a supposedly “people person,” softer coach, will. And occasionally you hear about a coach who is either hard or soft to each individual player, depending on his sense of how that specific player responds. There too, though, with coaching, it’s a pretty complex problem, because it’s about the nature of the coach, the nature of the player, and the nature of the situation.

So too with wielding authority in your own business.

What reminded me today was Karen Hough’s Handling Tough Conversations in 3 Simple Steps, on Small Business Trends. She’s sharing data from interviews with more than 1,000 of managers in larger companies. She found that the hardest part of their job was “tough conversations.” Here’s a quote:

Conflict makes most people nervous, so we avoid having those tough conversations, even if we know it may produce a better outcome. A study of more than 1,000 project managers across 40 companies found that if project leaders were willing to break a code of silence, they could substantially improve their ability to execute on initiatives.

Although that study was done with middle managers in larger corporations, I know that it applies very well to small business and entrepreneurship. The code of silence is a reluctance to deal with poor performance, bad news, and negative feedback. It’s certainly a problem every manager has to face.

In her post, Karen shares is three-pronged strategy to break what she calls the code of silence, changing the motif from authority to coaching. It’s not a cure-all by any means, but it could help. And I wish I had a better solution to offer, but I don’t.

Company Culture Is What You Are Not What You Want To Be

Business Planning, Leadership, Management, , , , ,

I got this business plan question in email:

When you’re starting your business, does “company culture” have an impact in your business plan? Do you start your “culture” when the company is small and create one that will easily expand as your company expands. How important is that type of thing as you go forward (in picking your employees, in the benefits you offer, etc)

To me company culture is something that exists only when you’re not looking. It comes up a lot in articles and stories about business, but rarely in real life. Consultants see it. It makes some things easier, some harder. It exists,and it sometimes matters, but it’s not something you can grab a hold of.

While it’s important, it’s not something you can plan on and track. As you start a new company, and more so as it grows, company culture will be formed around the decisions you make. As more people come on board, your personal role in culture diminishes, and it ends up being a lot a matter of who you hired.

Company culture isn’t what you say nearly as much as what you do. Who gets the raise or promotion, and why; what happens at the meetings; what values you respect; and group dynamics. You can influence it, but not with plans or promises, just with actions. It’s all those decisions that you make, and, quite often, things as hard to influence as the expression on your face at random times.

The best positive example of company culture I’ve ever heard of was when Eli Halliwell of Jurlique told a group I was in how he built that company around values. It’s focused on natural organic cosmetics. Eli told a Princeton Entrepreneurship Network group that the common bond among his early team members was believing in the importance of the mission. He said that made the company stronger. But he didn’t refer specifically to “company culture.” And he didn’t imply that he’d set out to do that from the beginning. It sounded like he was saying it happened naturally.

I ran into big-time company culture in the 1980s when I was consulting with Apple Computer and the team I worked with established a strategic alliance with Xerox. I traveled with the Apple group to visit Xerox headquarters in Connecticut. The two groups were very different in management style and background, even dress, and the buzzwords and phrases they used. However, it was interesting more for curiosity value than anything else. It didn’t affect the business one way or another.

So it’s there, after a while, but it’s really hard to purposely influence. And I don’t think you do much with it in your planning, simply because it won’t work. It’s a lot like parenting: it’s what you do over the long term in all those collected moments of decision, not what you say. Trying to plan company culture reminds me of coolness as explained by one of my daughters when she was a teenager.

“Dads,” she said “are by definition not cool. And the more you try to be cool, the less you are.”

You may – just a chance, not a certainty – be able to talk about it later, when it’s established. But in your business plan, the most you can do is define the values you think are important. Then try to remember them every day from then on.

Leadership and the Man Killed 47 Years Ago Today

Baby Boomer, Leadership, , ,

It’s November 22. Today 47 years ago I was sitting on the gym floor in high school physical education when a kid who’d been to the office told us President Kennedy had been shot and killed.

How important was this? How much did it change our history? I don’t know and people debate that still. But anybody American who was even partially grown up on that day can tell you exactly how and where they heard the news. The world changed on that day more than on most.

I’ve seen two different President Kennedy moments used as excellent examples of leadership that changed the world.

First, when in 1962 he challenged a nation to put a man on the moon before 1970. Speaking at Rice University, he said:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win . . .

Of course you know they did go to the moon in that decade. And Kennedy’s leadership is used as an example of setting ambitious goals and getting people to achieve them.

A prof I had in grad school used The book Thirteen Days, A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis to teach leadership. That was an excellent course, and it’s a fascinating book. It’s full of real leadership.

In the old days, leaders stood up against the wind and took on popular opinion and stood for what they believed. And, on the other hand, they weren’t subjected to public scrutiny of every aspect of their personal and private lives (the media chose not to write about Kennedy’s less-than-faithful marriage behavior). I like to think that there are still leaders around, but we don’t see them, or their leadership, because we don’t give them a break. Or we don’t believe them. Or we’re too damn polarized.

Final note: I was working on a different blog post for today but when I went to post it I discovered the date. Is there anybody American in my generation who doesn’t attach special meaning to November 22? Even 47 years later?

Nice People Can be Bad Bosses. Way Too Often.

Business Mistakes, Entrepreneurship, Growing a Business, Leadership, Management, Weblogs, , ,

I’m troubled. The problem, in a nutshell, is that saying jerks and idiots are bad bosses is a bit too easy. It implies that not being a jerk or worse makes you a good boss. And that’s not always true. Nice people can be bad bosses.

I like Bob Sutton’s work a lot. He blogs at Bob Sutton Work Matters, he teaches at Stanford, and his books are good and good for you. I’ve quoted him often on this blog. His latest book, Good Boss Bad Boss, is brilliant. Every boss should read it.

Still, there’s this problem: By focusing so much attention on what not to do, and who not to be, we tend to undervalue the hard side of being in charge.  Being a good boss also means following up on unmet expectations and disappointing performance with leadership, advice, teaching, and demanding better.

I think I did this wrong myself. I think I let being a supposed nice guy interfere with my managing a company. You can’t be liked by all and also optimize performance. Sure, some people work best when left alone and encouraged, but – hard, ugly truth – others lose interest and grow entitled. Good bosses deliver both positive and negative feedback. Good bosses make the company better.  Whether they’re liked or not.

This is not Bob Sutton’s fault, not the fault of his work. But he tells great stories of jerks and idiots, and stories are powerful, so stories gather. So we unconsciously think being a boss is about being nice. We forget the hard part.

Beware of What Used to Work But Doesn’t Anymore

Business Stories, Leadership, Management, Marketing, , , ,

This is a great example of how quickly business assumptions change, and how badly we can screw up just by assuming the status quo. I just read Coffee Shops are Taking Wireless Off the Menu. News StoryIt reports how coffee shops are turning away from free wireless. It’s an interesting commentary on changing times, but, much more important, a really good business reminder. The LA Times reports:

Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, flipping the switch to lure customers. But now some owners are pulling the plug. They’re finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Others want to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into “Matrix”-like zombie shacks where people type and don’t talk.

That shift could gather steam now that free Wi-Fi is less of a perk after coffee giant Starbucks stopped charging for it last month.

Put yourself in the place of coffee shop owners. Just yesterday, free wireless was a feature, a sign on the outside window, a customer lure. You just blink, and now it’s no wireless instead. Business climates, competitive environments, customer loyalties, and customer preferences changed in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, what worked isn’t working anymore.

Think about the rise and fall of direct mail marketing, Web banner ads, V8 engines, artificial sweeteners, TV dinners … we’ve all seen that happen so many times. In business, you keep your mind open. Revisit your assumptions as often as you can.

Because something similar is about to happen in your business. Or maybe it already did. Maybe what you think works, what used to work, isn’t working anymore.

Too Many Bullets and Not Enough Zen

Leadership, Management, , , , ,

I posted here Monday on Kermit Pattison’s interview with Randy Komisar. That was about the writing, which I found intriguing. I can’t resist commenting as well on what Randy Komisar says there.  He’s now a partner in prestigious VC firm Kleiner Perkins, and has been a co-founder, CEO, or founding director of several major successes including Apple’s Claris, Tivo, and LucasArts. carrots and sticksAnd what he says there is brilliant.

On classic mistakes of manager-wannabe-leaders:

A key point here is that leaders aren’t necessarily managers, and vice-versa. Randy says assuming a good manager is a good leader is “a classic mistake.” Here’s more:

Management is more operationally focused. It’s more of a supervisory role of setting priorities, allocating resources, and directing the execution. Leadership is more forward thinking, more about enabling the organization, empowering individuals, developing the right people, thinking strategically about opportunities, and driving alignment.

On needing the right kind of leadership at the right time:

The conversation there goes through how CEOs are like breeds of dogs, and I’ll leave you to click to the original to get Randy’s description of the retriever, the bloodhound, the husky, and the St. Bernard. The important lesson there, which I completely believe, is:

There are different talents in the creation of businesses and running of businesses that need to be taken into consideration.

And Randy fills that idea in with practical examples:

A mistake often made in the venture investment business is rushing to bring in a big CEO into what is still a small venture. The mismatch of skills is severe. The big CEO needs resources, needs a strong sense of direction and momentum, and is not very effective day-to-day with a bunch of people putting bits and bytes together. The other mismatch that’s harder to foresee is the small company with momentum. You say, great, let’s bring in the guy who can grow it to $100 million and take it public. The problem is that you may face yet another significant right or left hand turn in your business which that CEO may be completely unqualified to do.

Too Many Bullets and Not Enough Zen

This is my second post on that phrase now — bullets and zen — and I’m still loving it. Kermit asks Randy who’s being particularly thoughtful about leadership lately. I love his answer (warning: this is another Zen reference, even after my not Zen post last week. Discretion is advised.)

I’ve given up on the guru model and think more in the Zen model: things will change and that’s okay. What we need is a set of constant provocations. What I like to read are those things that really challenge my assumptions, authors who are willing to think differently, no matter whether I agree with them or not, because they at least broaden my own thinking. What I don’t like reading is the pablum–the 10 habits of great leaders or whatever. Those are constraining and not very effective for the average person.

I agree. Well said.