The Fallacy of the Status Quo

Like death and taxes, change in business is at once inevitable and difficult to comprehend. It also happens to be necessary if your aim is to create a sustainable, competitive enterprise. Ignore this imperative at your own peril, as history has taught us over and over again. Once great firms like AT&T, Polaroid, and A&P exist as a shadow of their former selves while others including Bethlehem Steel disappeared altogether, in large part because they couldn’t change.

This is not just a large company phenomenon; when it comes to change, size doesn’t matter. Smaller firms fall victim to this slow demise with great frequency, it’s just that their stories are rarely the stuff of MBA case studies. Whether it’s hubris, a virtual monopoly, or flat out denial of external circumstances and events, the common denominator of these sad endings is a literal death grip on the status quo by otherwise competent leadership.

The concept of status quo is misleading, because in fact nothing ever stays the same. Just like a wad of cash buried in your back yard inevitably loses value over time, so it is with the status quo in business. Your markets, your clients, and your competitors will eventually outgrow and outpace you if you are unable to change and evolve. Although it may feel comfortable, the status quo is not a good thing at all; it is a slow motion business killer.

Whether you are conscious of it or not, odds are that you and your team embrace the status quo in a variety of areas. One client of mine – the president of a mid-sized Insurance agency – retained a problem manager for far longer than he should have – because of a misplaced sense of loyalty to her. Another delayed a much-needed technology upgrade because “things are working fine as is” (including, by the way, a number of labor intensive manual tasks). For over 6 months, a third client postponed a difficult conversation with a high-end producer who had become complacent in outside sales and spent virtually all of his time working his existing book.

During good times, we tend to give ourselves and our people credit for a job well done (think high-fives, healthy bonus checks, and lavish holiday parties). The result? “Let the good times roll, and let’s continue to do what we’ve been doing.”

When performance falters, our impulse is to identify and then blame external circumstances as the cause immediately followed by pushing harder to improve results (think it’s “the economy” and any underperforming employee you’ve recently counseled). The result? “We are underperforming because of the economy overall, so let’s buckle down and get more appointments to win our share.”

Ironically, both extremes reinforce the status quo; that is, you and your people generally continue to do what you’ve been doing. Your rationale is the only thing that actually changes!

What are your areas of status quo and why is it so difficult to move yourself and your organization beyond them? Where are your people stuck in the status quo?

The paradox of the status quo is that it makes us feel so comfortable. Only you can decide whether that’s good enough or if you’d like to plan for change to make your business more competitive over time.

A Leadership Checklist: 7 Questions to Ask Yourself (Part II)

(This is part two of a two-part post on Leadership. Please see last week’s post for part one)

Ask yourself how you’re doing and what you should be doing differently—and be sure to answer truthfully. As simple as this may sound, many people are shocked by their answers to basic management and leadership questions.

Last week’s blog covered the first three checkpoints of leadership questions to ask yourself:
1. Vision and Priorities
2. Managing Time
3. Feedback

This post will cover the last four leadership checkpoints:
4. Succession Planning
5. Evaluation and Alignment
6. Leading Under Pressure
7. Staying True to Yourself

Succession Planning

Have you picked one or more potential successors?

If you aren’t identifying potential successors and developing their leadership abilities, then you are contributing to business and personal stagnation. There won’t be enough leaders to grow the business.

When challenging and testing people, you must frequently delegate more to them. This frees you to focus on critical strategic matters facing the business. When people are not being challenged, they may leave to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Planning for succession means your people will improve their performance, you’ll be more successful through them, and you will pave the way for your own promotion. Failure to actively plan for succession means you do not delegate sufficiently and become a decision-making bottleneck.

Ask yourself:

• Have I, at least in my own mind, picked one or more potential successors?
• Am I coaching them and giving them challenging assignments?
• Am I delegating sufficiently?
• Have I become a decision-making bottleneck?

Evaluation and Alignment

Your business is constantly changing. So are your customers. Depending on your industry, this may be rapid—or extremely rapid. If you don’t change along with the business environment, you may become seriously out of alignment. What got you here today won’t necessarily get you there tomorrow. The people you hire, the way you organize them, the economic incentives you offer them and even the tasks you delegate may no longer create the culture and outcomes that are critical to success.

Have you checked to see if the design of your organization still aligns with key success factors for your business? Effective executives regularly seek advice and fresh perspectives from people who are less emotionally invested in their business. This allows them to determine whether historically relevant aspects of the business remain critical to tomorrow’s success.

Ask yourself:

• Does the design of my company still align with key success factors?
• If I had to design my business from scratch, how would I create it? How would it differ from the current design?
• Should I create a task force to answer these questions and make recommendations?

Leading Under Pressure

A leader’s actions during stressful times have a profound impact on the firm’s culture and employees’ behaviors. Successful leaders must be aware of their personal stress triggers and reactions. Behaviors should be consistent with beliefs and core values, no matter how severe the stress.

Pressure is a normal part of doing business, but it affects people differently. What may evoke anxiety for one individual may not bother someone else. As a leader, you are watched closely. Emotions are contagious—even more so when they come from the leader.

You must be sufficiently self-aware to recognize the situations that create anxiety for you and manage your behavior to avoid sending counterproductive messages to your people.

Ask yourself:

• Which events create pressure for me?
• How do I behave under pressure?
• What signals do I send to subordinates?
• Are these signals helpful, or do they undermine the success of my business?

Staying True to Yourself

Successful executives develop leadership styles that fit their business needs, as well as their personal beliefs and personality. While many leaders ask themselves about the former, few analyze the latter.

Companies require leaders who can express strongly held views, rather than mimic the party line. Do you hold back for political reasons? Do you encourage your people to express their opinions and make waves, if appropriate?

Don’t tiptoe around significant issues or foster an atmosphere that encourages employees to do so.

Ask yourself:

• Is my leadership style comfortable? Does it reflect who I truly am?
• Do I assert myself sufficiently, or have I become tentative?
• Am I too politically correct?

• Does anxiety about my next promotion or bonus cause me to hesitate when I want to express my views?

In the early stages of your career, you may have received plenty of guidance and support from superiors and mentors. As you’ve been promoted, however, you’ve probably encountered fewer sources of honest and useful feedback. By the time mistakes have come to light, it may have been too late to fix them.

Successful leaders continually ask themselves hard questions to stay on track in a world of rapid change. Remember to step back and gain fresh perspectives so you’re prepared with a new game plan when change occurs. If you’re standing too close to the blackboard, you won’t see mistakes until it’s too late.

These questions are designed to ignite serious introspection. They can be even more productive when discussed with a trusted advisor, coach or mentor.

When is the last time you had a leadership checkup?

How to Stack the Deck in Favor of Making the Right Tough Decisions

 

Leaders are remembered for their best and worst judgment calls, especially when the stakes are high, information is limited and the correct call is far from obvious. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and conflicting demands, the quality of a leader’s judgment and decision making determines the entire organization’s fate.

 

That’s why leadership experts Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis claim judgment is the essence of leadership. In their popular book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (Portfolio, 2007), they write: “With good judgment, little else matters.  Without it, nothing else matters.”

 

But there’s no one-size-fits-all way to make a judgment call, the authors emphasize. Every organization has distinct problems, people and solutions.

 

A Framework for Judgment

 

A judgment call should not be viewed as a single-point-in-time event.

 

The process begins when leaders recognize the need for change and for a decision. They consequently frame and name the issue, set clear goals and objectives, align people and continue through successful execution.

 

Three Critical Judgment Domains

 

People: Leaders cannot set sound direction and strategy for their enterprises or deal with crises without smart judgment calls about the people on their teams. This is definitely the most complex domain. Sound judgments about people require leaders to:

1. Anticipate the need for key personnel changes
2. Specify leadership requirements with an eye toward the future – not the rearview mirror
3. Mobilize and align the social network to support the right call
4. Make the process transparent so it can be deemed fair
5. Make it happen
6. Provide continuous support to achieve success

 

Strategy: When the current strategic road fails to lead to success, the leader must find a new path. The quality and viability of a strategic judgment call is a function of:

 

1.      The leader’s ability to look over the horizon and frame the right question

2.      The people – both internal and external to the organization – with whom he/she chooses to interact

 

Crisis: During a crisis, leaders must have clear values and know their ultimate goals. A poorly handled crisis can lead to business failure.

 

The Process of Making Judgment Calls

 

In all three domains, good decision making always involves a process that starts with recognizing the need for the call, with steps that facilitate effective execution.

 

1. The Preparation Phase: This phase includes sensing and identifying the need for a judgment call, framing and naming the judgment call, and mobilizing and aligning the right people. While these steps may seem obvious, many factors can contribute to faulty framing and naming, which can result in a bad judgment call. For example, what is your process to separate symptoms from underlying causes? It’s important to allow “redo moments” and continually adjust to get it right.
2. The Call Phase (Making the Judgment Call): There’s a moment when leaders make the call, based on their views of the time horizon and the sufficiency of people’s input and involvement.
3. The Execution/Action Phase: Once a clear call is made, execution is a critical part of the process. Resources, people, capital, information and technology must be mobilized to make it happen. During this phase, feedback loops allow for adjustments.

 

Your Storyline and Why it Matters

 

Winning leaders are teachers, and they teach by telling stories. They develop a teachable point of view: valuable knowledge and experiences that convey ideas and values to energize others.

 

This teachable point of view is most valuable when it is woven into a storyline for the organization’s future success. As a living story, it helps the leader make the judgment call and makes the story become reality because it enlists and energizes others.

 

Winning story lines address three areas:

 

1. Where are we now?
2. Where are we going? (The inspirational storyline boosts the motivation for change and defines the goal)
3. How are we going to get there?

 

If judgment calls are difficult for you, or if you have difficulty creating the storyline for your organizational vision, it’s probably time to revisit these 3 key, strategic questions.

 

Are You Walking the Walk of Accountability?

“Our deeds follow us, and what we have been makes us what we are.”  – John Dykes

Although accountability has various definitions, it is typically used to describe personal responsibility for getting something done. Accountability is an essential element of focused accomplishment and, therefore, of the business world.  Successful organizations build systems that encourage accountability in alignment with their strategic plan. Strategic planning provides guidelines to define accountability – “who” will get “what” done by “when” – and accountability drives results in the direction of the plan.

A sound plan without a process for accountability is like a brand new sports car without any fuel.  It may look great, but it’s not going to get you anywhere.

The subject of accountability evokes different responses from different people. We routinely experience both positive and negative reactions, because accountability is closely related to responsibility, ethics, and (quite often) both blame and guilt. Resistance to being held accountable is common – not necessarily because we don’t want to do a good job, but because it pushes the limits of our personal comfort zone.

What does this mean for your company? Do you struggle with holding yourself and others accountable? Although this can certainly be a challenge, you can learn how to create more accountability more often – and have better results to show for it.

To get your staff to be more accountable, begin with open, straight-forward communication.  Communicate your vision (you do have a vision for your business, right?), communicate the elements of your strategic plan (you do have a strategic plan, right?), and help you team understand how they fit and why matters.  We often assume our way out of communicating (and, for that matter, planning) because we think that things should be obvious to others.  It may be obvious to you, but you just can’t make that assumption about others.  In addition, last time I checked, it’s impossible to communicate something you haven’t yet figured out yourself, so if you don’t have a vision and a clearly focused plan, that might be a more appropriate place to start.

It sounds trite, but perennially rings true: you must lead by example. As a manager, it is virtually impossible to hold others accountable for their actions if you don’t hold yourself accountable for your own. Walk the walk, and let everyone see you do it.

Dwight Eisenhower once said: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” In other words, the pattern of your own behaviors and the environment you create influences the behaviors of others.  Leadership lies in helping them become invested, generally by asking them to be accountable for some action or set of actions. When someone makes a commitment to doing something concrete they’re much more likely to do it and ultimately take pride in their accomplishment.

How do you hold yourself accountable? This is a common concern for my clients who own small and mid-sized businesses. You may have high expectations for yourself and for those around you, but how well do you really live up to your own standards? How often do you let yourself off the hook? Who is there to push you when your resolve is flagging?

One solution for this common business owner dilemma is to form an accountability partnership. Enlist the help of a close friend or business colleague, or you may even want to hire a personal coach or consultant who will help you stay focused and engaged. The most important thing is to identify someone who you can count on to support your goals, and who will take you to task when you need it.

Accountability sews the seeds of accomplishment. Accountability to your staff, accountability to your work, accountability to yourself – it all matters.  Your business and your reputation depend on it.

Time Management in Wonderland

“Warning!  Dates in calendar are closer than they appear.” 

Now wouldn’t that be a handy reminder on the welcome screen of your PDA or in your date book? Time is not given to us; rather, it is only made available to us.  As a non-renewable resource, time is – quite literally – here today and gone tomorrow. How you choose to utilize it, however, is entirely up to you.   

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Alice asked. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.  As the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland points out, a lack of clear direction can result in sub-optimal decisions and wasted time.  Did you know that the #1 factor contributing to time inefficiencies in an organization is the absence of clear goals and priorities? This makes decision-making a chore and generally causes confusion about what should be accomplished, why, and by when. Not exactly the stuff of precision time management! 

Think about a situation in your life where you exhibited exceptional time management.  Maybe it was the day or two before you departed on vacation when you had a number of things to accomplish in a tight timeframe.  If you’re like most people, you probably made yourself a list of things that you needed to get done before you left town.  And wasn’t it miraculous?  In that situation, you seemed to “find” the time to get everything accomplished so you could go on your merry way. 

What happened here is – gulp! – you set clear, time-bound goals for yourself.  More importantly, you got them done.  Yes, sometimes something as simple as a “to do” list can go a long way to improve time effectiveness in an organization.  Seeing the items on the list (your goals), knowing when they must get accomplished (the timeframe), and understanding what’s at stake for yourself (vacation!) work together to create an invisible motivational force that impels you to act and to become very time efficient. 

Just imagine if you could create that environment throughout your organization – clear goals, timeframes, and a gut awareness of the rewards for success – each and every day!  Well – you can, so why not give it a try?   

The clock is ticking…