HSM Inspiring Ideas

Leadership and Emotional Control--Is there a Time and Place for Strategic Loss of Cool?

Over at N2Growth, Bloggers Hub member Mike Myatt is encouraging leaders to exercise EC--emotional control:  "Emotional outbursts, rants, and rages will rarely do anything but cause you to make poor decisions and to lose credibility." So what to do with those pesky emotions that so clearly under-gird human behavior, but can just as easily destroy your ability to lead as help it? Clearly, you can't escape them entirely--nobody wants to follow a passionless leader. But, nobody likes a hothead either. Chess legend Gary Kaspaorov wrestled with the issue and came up with this:

So let's assume you have your emotions in check, and you've integrated them into your decision-making, but you make a tactical decision to engage them to light a fire under your team. You're still in control of your emotions--you just think that a strategic rant makes sense. Good or bad? Take it from another Bloggers Hub member, Terry Starbucker, who pondered To Yell or Not to Yell, That Is The Question (And 5 Things To Think About Before You Answer It). Starbucker thinks "the rant" can be a leadership tool, if used properly and only after you take into account the following five factors:

• Like any other messaging delivery system,  what we really need to look at is the content of that message.
• Then there is the timing of that message. [Pick] a time when everyone [is] already in a heightened state of awareness.
• Frequency: If you are prone to yell at the slightest provocation, or need to jack up the volume every time you feel you need to provide inspiration, it will get old really fast, and people will tune you out.
• Another consideration is the person behind the yell – how “outside the box” is this outburst?  I classify rants in several ways – there are the natural “in the moment” sounding ones, very contrived and fake ones, and then there are the “fight or flight“  fear generated ones.  Humans are very perceptive creatures, and they can pick up on these nuances very quickly.
• Lastly,  you have to “put your money where your mouth is” - that is, if you’re going to yell at people to get them to perform at a higher intensity and focus, then you better do the same yourself. 

If it sounds like the strategic rant would be hard to pull off...well, it should be. What Starbucker is suggesting doesn't run counter to the advice of Myatt or Kasparov. Starbucker is suggesting that you be able to do a little method acting now and then to express appropriate emotion. And that is the height of emotional control.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in recent business blogs:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Bernanke Translated (WSJ Real Time Economics )

When U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talks, people listen, though they may not understand what he says. On November 19, Bernanke spoke in Frankfurt to explain and defend the latest round of quantitative easing (QE2), as well as to assail China for failing to allow the Yuan to appreciate faster. If you're head is already spinning, Wall Street Journal economis editor David Wessel arrives to offer up some plain english for Bernanke watchers, juxtaposing excerpts from the Chairman remarks against the lay translation. Example:

• “The level of output in the advanced economies is currently about 8% below its long-term trend, whereas economic activity in the emerging markets is only about 1.5% below the corresponding (but much steeper) trend line for that group of countries. Indeed, for some emerging markets the crisis appears to have left little lasting imprint on growth. Notably, since the beginning of 2005, real output has risen more than 70% in China and about 55% in India.” TRANSLATION: “China, India and other emerging markets have resumed their rapid growth with surprising speed, but despite all my efforts the U.S. is mired in painfully slow growth — and Europe and Japan aren’t doing much better. Sigh.”

Enjoy.

Leadership, Performance, People:

How to Treat New Employees (Alexander Kjerulf--The Chief Happiness Officer)

"Studies show that new employees who have undergone a successful start-up process are 69% more likely to still be in the company after 3 years and they reach their full production rate 2 months faster." The CHO offers four tips on how your organization should treat new hires:

1. Be there for them the first day;
2. Have the practical stuff ready;
3. Give them a solid technical introduction; and
4. Lay down the culture.

Because it's never a good sign when the first day is the beginning of the end.

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

What Makes a Great Tagline (Denise Lee Yohm--Brand as Business Bites)

The title says it all. Why do we remember "The Ultimate Driving Machine," while forgetting other marketing taglines that are, well, forgettable? While Yohn doesn't offer a precise answer to the question, she does review Forbes list of 25 "best loved" taglines (that BMW line gets number one honors) to determine if the best taglines share particular attributes. She can't detect any, which means that a great tagline may well be just a moment of inspired genius. So don't try and turn this art into a science; know your product and let the feelig express itself.

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for the past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

The 50K College Club (Paul Kedrosky--Infectious Greed)

Is there a higher education bubble? In an economy where education is more and more important, is it becoming ever more unattainable for most? And is your company positioned for a world in which education again becomes the domain of an elite and where the next, great manager might not be able to go to school? It might be time to give some thought to what the following means for the already displaced workforce: the new list of colleges and universities with an annual tuition in excess of $50,000.00 has been released, and now exceeds 100 institutions, many of which are not what you'd consider "elite" in any sense of the word. Along with the price of gold, this could be one of the top "eye popping" charts of the year.

Leadership, Performance, People:

Three Ways to Make the Workplace Richer in Feedback (Daniel H. Pink--danpink.com)

Is it time for managers to consign the annual performance review to the dustbin of "that used to work," or at least enhance it with new workplace feedback opportunities made possible by technology and a new generation of workers that crave, even demand more feedback? Daniel Pink thinks so. Millennials have been connected their entire lives--they've grown up in a constant feedback loop and expect more than an annual "how'd you do" when they show up for work. In light of technology, annual reviews are a vestige of a bygone time when frankly, offering feedback was more complicated. It doesn't have to be anymore. Feedback can be a regular process, and Pink offers three ways to make it so: "DIY performance reviews, peer rewards, and some groovy new software — to pump a little more feedback oxygen into our employment caves."

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

Don't Innovate - Steal Ideas and Create Value (Caspar Van Rijnbach--Blogging Innovation)

Anyone with a memory or a few minutes on his hands knows or can deduce that the i-pod was not an original idea, in the sense of being first-to-market. So how did Apple succeed with borrowed technology where others could not, and how can this inform your innovative process? Steve Jobs is a believer in "stealing" ideas and using them to competitive advantage. With i-pod, "Apple combined all the ideas and inventions [that made up the MP3 revolution], incorporated them in the i-pod and i-tunes and did it a little better than anybody else (while making sure to stay ahead in the game). Besides that, the company knew how to market the innovation and how to protect it." Bottom line--you don't have to be Einstein to be a successful innovator.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for that past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Will the Verizon iPhone Cripple Verizon? (Nick Bilton--New York Times Bits)

The mobile wireless battlefield is heating up once again. For years, U.S. consumers have clamored for Apple's iPhone to be made available on a network other than AT&T, which has been jammed since the phone's debut. (Calling an AT&T iPhone owner can be nightmarish.) The question is whether the same will happen if/when Verizon introduces its long-awaited iPhone. And what does a new iPhone carrier mean for carriers in general--for AT&T, which might suffer abandonment, as frustrated users flock to the competitor, or for the second-tier carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint?

Leadership, Performance, People:

Howard Roark Would've Made a Great Football Coach (S.M. Oliva--Mises Daily)

Do ideas matter more than talent? Oliva examines that difference between entrpreneurial and bureaucratic leadership highlighting an October 31 NFL football game between the Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins--specifically Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan's decisions late in the fourth quarter to pull star quarterback Donovan McNabb and replace him with journeyman Rex Grossman. Answer to the question opening this paragraph? "Ideas without the talent to execute them are worthless in the marketplace. It doesn’t matter how brilliant an architect you are if nobody wants to buy and occupy the damn building."

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

3 Steps to Foolish Marketing (Brian Clark--Copyblogger)

Applying the tactics of the highly successful Motley Fool investment advisory service, Clark highlights the differences between foolish online advertising (which most online ads are) and Foolish online advertising--that is, "without wasting your money and annoying people" (which most online ads do). This is all about the power of content-driven, opt-in, education-based strategies that cost little and guarantee you no income at first (because you're always giving something away for nothing). Your content replaces traditional banner and click-through ads. This works because online consumers want content; your educational content becomes your advertising. And eventually, you can pitch to your new, loyal students.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for that past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Pimco's Bill Gross: Dollar Could Fall 20% (Wall Street Journal Market Beats)

As the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank prepares to engage a second round of quantitative easing (i.e., turning on the printing press by buying bonds), money pros are speaking out, in particular PIMCO Chairman Bill Gross. The point of quantitative easing (QE) is to jump-start economies by making exports cheaper. But the bond-house big says QE2, as it is not so affectionately referred to, could lead to debasement of the dollar and then an all-out currency war as other nations, in response, try to protect their export base. What does it mean for business when countries begin a race to the "currency bottom"?

Leadership, Performance, People:

Efficient vs. Effective (N2Growth Blog)

While there's nothin wrong with efficiency efforts, Mike Myatt laments that, too often, they come at the expense of effectiveness: "If efficiency starts diluting productivity rather than increasing it something is woefully amiss." Sometimes, the innefficient process can leader to the most productive outcome.

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

Managing Innovation is About Managing Change (Blogging Innovation)

Innovation always sounds great; we assume that innovative companies have a bunch of geniuses sitting around coming up with revolutionary products and processes that the companies seamlessly integrate into the business model. That may be so when it comes to what Braden Kelly calls "incremental innovation," which doesn't require much genius anyway. But in his new book, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire (excerpted in this Kelly post), Kelly examines the difficulties presented to all companies by "disruptive innovation." The changes generated by such innovation "often disrupt not only the market but the internal workings of the organization as well – they also require a lot of explanation." And even more internal management of a company's entire "ecosystem."

Six Core Traits of Effective Teams: Telling the Orange Revolution Story

Have you worked in an organization in which everyone knew the story of how during a blinding blizzard, a certain manager and her team hand-delivered key materials by walking three miles in the snow? Or how about an organization in which everyone, new employee as well as old, can recount the story of how a team came up with the idea and execution for the company's leading product? If so, you may well be part of a "breakthrough team."

Breakthrough teams and how they can remake a company is the subect of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton's latest book, The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization (Simon & Schuster 2010). What's more, they will be presenting, for the first time in public, the data that went into the new book during the free, live HSM webinar on November 3 entitled appropriately enough, The Orange Revolution. (Why "orange" and not, say "purple"? Orange is the color of carrots, and Gostick and Elton's best-seller was The Carrot Principle: How the Best Mangers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance. The Orange Revolution is the logical next step from recognition management.)

To write the new book, the authors surveyed over 350,000 people at some of the leading companies. The November 3 webinar will reveal what the authors discovered about the characteristics of breakthrough teams. In a recent Business Week article excerpting the book, the authors explain that while breakthrough teams "always include competent people, most are not comprised of a preponderance of people with remarkable intelligence or unique expertise. They are not so-called Dream Teams." The authors realized that "world-class results come only partly from who makes up these teams, but more importantly what these teams do." All told, The Orange Revolution identifies six core traits that the authors consistently found at companies with breakthrough teams:

• big dreams and ambitious goals;
• belief in in each other
• belief in what the team can accomplish together;
• take calculated risks while closely measuring results;
• perseverence despite problems or conflicts that arise; and
• they have a "charming habit of Telling Stories" exemplifying what they are trying to achieve.

That last one that makes you stop and think. What are they talking about? Well, anyone who has worked in such an organization can attest to the importance of the story, as it makes every team member a part of the evolving company narrative and history. And that's what makes a team breakthrough in every sense of the word.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

We're going to change it up at the Bloggers Hub Cap. Starting this week, the hub cap will highlight three of the best recent blog posts on the business web. Enjoy.

Economy, Trends, Change:

Power of Ten Interface (Thomas Frey's Futurist Speaker)

The distance between information and our brain is getting shorter. Twenty years the time between a request for information and finding the answer in the Library of Congress averaged 10 hours per question. We have shaved that time today to 10 minutes, and we are headed for a world in which we can find answers in as little as 10 seconds. "The ease and fluidity of our information-to-brain interface will have a profound effect on everything from education, to the way business is being conducted, to the way we function as a society."

Leadership, Performance, People:

Servant Leaders Outperform Because They Connect (Michael Lee Stallard)

Do certain types of leaders garner out-sized loyalty? Because they move people to “surrender the me for the we” and create "connection cultures," the teams of "servant leaders" accomplish more because they pull together rather than drift apart: the fascinating case of retired Chief Naval Officer Vern Clark, under whom re-enlistment soared from 38% to 56.7%.

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

Top Ten Reasons Your Company Shouldn't Blog (B.L. Ochman's What's Next Blog)

Every company needs a blog, right? Maybe not. Companies need to consider whether they are willing to commit the time, energy and money to making a blog successful.  Leveraging your business by blogging takes a lot of work, and most company blogs are failures--not read, not interesting, not original and you can't expect them to drive sales.

Patrick Lencioni Returns to HSM to Help You Build a Winning Team

In the introduction to his landmark work, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Patrick Lencioni declares, quite forthrightly, "Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare." Is he right? Well, think G.E. under Jack Welch; Apple under Steve Jobs; the New York Yankees from 1918 until today. The best teams have an uncanny knack for superior performance--that can't be an accident. Maybe we can conclude that regardless of the circumstances, high-functioning leadership teams will more often than not find the right financing, develop the right strategy, adopt the best technology. They will also attract the best talent, further enhancing the team. Why? Because high-functioning leadership teams know who they are, share trust, core values and aims.

Whatever the endeavour, where this is no teamwork, the work becomes drudgery and success like pulling teeth. Most everyone has experienced being on such a team; it's not a pleasant experience. Maybe you're on one now, or maybe you're part of a team that could be better with a little tinkering. It's for you and your team that Lencioni developed his Building Winning Teams seminar, which returns to HSM October 26-27. Designed for the participation of managers and their teams (though individuals can derive equal benefit), the program starts from the fundamental premise that effective teamwork is the bedrock of organizational success.

Lencioni employs a hands-on style that begins with the intimate nature of the seminar. Limited to 150 participants, it requires teams to take a hard look inward by guiding them to an understanding of the five dysfunctions that can hinder performance and by helping you to identify them in your team. If that sounds like it can include some discomfort, Lencioni would say so be it. Or as he puts it, "All too often, team leaders and members operate under the assumption that success is dependent on never having to deal with a moment of interpersonal awkwardness or pain." That is,

[e]very great team must suffer a little, and sometimes a lot, in order to achieve greatness. It must confront, experience and struggle with uncomfortable and relationship-threatening moments of conflict and confusion, and then it must work through those moments by demonstrating interpersonal courage, persistence and forgiveness. By doing so, it establishes levels of trust that simply cannot be otherwise achieved.

For a little taste of classic Patrick Lencioni, check out his last appearance at World Business Forum, in 2009, where he discussed the four disciplines of a healthy organization:

 

Building a team is about confronting and overcoming the dysfunctions in your organization and realigning it around its core purpose, values and business. And in two days, Lencioni leads you to do just that. The seminar's breakout sessions reinforce the lessons by providing practical structure to address and evaluate, individually or with your colleagues, the issues relevant to you and your organization. In addition, all attendees receive a copy of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, Inc., a specialized management consulting firm focused on executive team development and organizational health. He has been described by Ken Blanchard, author of the business classic The One Minute Manager®, as “fast defining the next generation of business thinkers.” Lencioni has worked with Southwest Airlines, New York Life, Microsoft, Charles Schwab, Amazon.com, Sam’s Club, Cisco Systems, the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, and FedEx, among others. To join him October 26-27, register for Building Winning Teams today.

MWW Group Publishes #WBF10 Leadership Survey Results; Panel: Are Today's Leaders Up to the Task?

Leading up to WBF10, we urged attendees to participate in the MWW Group's leadership survey. More than 130 executives from around the world participated. On October 11, MWW released the complete results of its survey along with highlights of the VIP luncheon on "Sustainable Leadership" it sponsored with HSM during the Forum. If you recall, the survey sought answers to four questions: 

1. What has been the biggest leadership "game changer" over the past five years?
2. Where does "leadership" come from?
3. What do you think the most important skills/qualities will be for leaders in 2025?
4. Is it more important for a leader to be visionary or decisive/action-oriented?

And the survey says...

• Speed of Information (33%) was cited as "the biggest game changer for leaders today, according to one third of the respondents, closely followed by the economy (26 percent)." Eleven percent said leadership has not changed at all. 
• "Leaders are Born, Not Made" -- 68 percent of survey takers believe you either are a leader or are not. But "the panelists [at the leadership event] were split as to whether leadership can be a learned skill versus solely an innate ability."
• 25% believe that "Leadership has been Democratized." That is, "the power lies with those who follow. Only six percent of respondents place the power of leadership within the position -- automatically conferred upon assuming a role."
• "Innovation and Nimbleness in Leaders are Valued More than Character, Salesmanship or the Ability to Build Consensus." Two-thirds of the survey respondents picked innovation and flexibility (i.e. nimble and anticipatory) "as the single greatest quality for future leaders, ahead of traditional leadership traits such as character, salesmanship and consensus building."
• "Visionary vs. Execution -- a Toss Up."  Survey takers viewed visionary leadership as preferable by a small margin (55.6% to 44.45) to decisive or action-oriented leadership.

Panelists at the VIP luncheon included WBF10 speaker and Former White House Adviser David Gergen; Michael W. Kempner (President & CEO, MWW Group); Jim Quigley (CEO, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.); and Arkdai Kuhlman (Chairman & President, ING Direct USA), each of whom offered their view of what leadership requires of leaders today. Key quotes from each:

• Kempner: "In this economy and times of doubt, those companies, those brands, those leaders that can re-establish trust will be the winners on a going-forward basis."
• Quigley: "Sustainable leadership is leadership that works through the entire business cycle. It's an approach to leadership that is effective during a downturn when you're trying to reset a cost structure and it's effective during sustainable expansion, when you're trying to capture share."
• Kuhlman: "To be a leader, you need to eliminate doubt. *** The way out of this (economic crisis) is for leaders to step forward."
• Gergen:"A reputation for excellence matters. That excellence is about trust and it is also about a continuous refreshing of your organization so that you're innovative and entrepreneurial and so that people know that you are going to keep moving ahead. It's too easy in this world to be seen as yesterday, and an effective leader needs to continually adapt to new conditions.

In the end, Gergen may have expressed the sense of the times best, asserting, "We have a crisis of leadership today. Business has failed. Governments have failed. People don't know who to trust."

Day 2 Agenda at #WBF10

Here is the rundown of speakers at Day 2 of World Business Forum 2010:

• 9:00 Steve Levitt
• 9:40 Joseph Stiglitz
• 11:00 Marvin Odom
• 11:15 Al Gore
• 2:00 A.G. Lafley
• 2:15 Renee Mauborgne
• 3:15 Vijay Govindarajan
• 4:20 Luca Majorski
• 4:30 Nando Parrado
• 5:05 James Cameron

Great Lineup!