Get Me Jamie Notter

It's All About Trust

Charles Seybold writes a project management blog. Apparently the other day he went to an nifty little workshop filled with startup CEOs and they talked about how to build an effective organizational culture. He was struck by how much the conversation focused on tactics. "Things" management did to try to generate happiness, good will, or a strong culture.

He didn't buy it. For him, it's really all about trust:

I just don’t think that stuff matters if you don’t have trust. If people don’t trust each other you’re just bribing them to keep coming back to work. Culture is like mood; it’s temporary and changes easily and it’s just a reflection of the underlying relationships.

I love that. Culture is a reflection of the underlying relationships. If you want a strong, effective culture, those relationships need to be based in trust. If you want to change culture, you need to get at the underlying relationship patterns. That is why you can't dictate culture or really change it by putting up cool posters on the wall. You just can't control relationships, can you? That's why culture and culture change are so elusive. We want it to be mechanical, and it just isn't.

But you absolutely can nurture and build great relationships. Indeed, if you want a truly powerful organization, you must.

Set Your People Free

In Gary Hamel's book, he suggests three areas on which to focus when creating a more human organization, and one of them is "too much management, too little freedom." As I said in my previous post, most people will agree with that statement at the high level, but I doubt as many will when the rubber meets the road--where people in charge actually have to manage less and dole out more freedom.

So think about your office and the various people that report directly to you. That's probably the easiest place to start. What would happen if you managed them less? It's hard to tell YOU what that would look like, since I assume it varies a lot case to case, depending on the culture of your organization, how many people you manage, how many people THEY manage, your personality, etc. So you have to figure this one out.

What is it you DO that manages these people? In what areas are they not free to do whatever they want--they have to go through you first. Can you see the places where you have the ability to GIVE freedom to your people. Imagine (this is only a thought experiment--for now!) what kinds of things would happen if you dramatically tipped the scales towards freedom. You still get to manage some, just significantly less than now. What are the range of impacts? What assumptions do you have that drive that range that you just came up with?

Even better, talk to them about it. Share the assumptions you have about why you manage. Would you really open yourself up that much? Hmm. Maybe I'll write another post on that.

In the mean time, at a high level, here are my predictions about what might happen if you give your people more freedom and manage them less:

Some people won't like it.
There are plenty of people out there who would rather have you make the decision. You get paid the big bucks, after all, shouldn't you be making these calls? Sure, you will need to make some decisions, but depending on the existing culture, you may be asked to do more than you should. Remember, freedom isn't comfortable, so if people aren't used to it, there will be some resistance. I know it's odd, but not everyone will jump at the chance to be in a more human organization, at least not at first.

You will have more time
The internal bandwidth that is used up by managing when you don't have to can be freed up along with the freedom your people now have. You will have new challenges, of course, so it's not like you're going to be bored. But you can shift that bandwidth to activities that will have more impact for you and the organization. In my opinion, THIS is why you get the big bucks.

You will have some 'splaining to do
This will be new. If it's not new, then the freedom part isn't really happening. Your people will start doing things that they didn't used to do, and you'll get new results, and you will not be managing it all in the same way you used to, and that will feel weird to you, to your people, and to others in the system. Even if the whole organization is you and the people that report to you, there are other stakeholders (members, customers, volunteers, etc.) that will not be used to the new way of doing things. Systems naturally respond to change, and in organizations it's not usually positive. You'll have to address that head on. Like any leadership challenge, there is an extensive communications piece to this.

You'll get better results
Your people will do better work. Freedom will allow them to bring more of themselves to work, and they will produce more. You will be more effective as a leader to, because you'll have the freedom to focus more on leading and less on doing the things you did before you got this position. things will look very different, and it will feel more chaotic at times, and there might be moments where you feel it's not working as well as it did when you had more control. But I am assuming the results you want are long term. Don't shut down the unbounded potential of employees who feel free just to give you the short term comfort of predictable results.

Authenticity a Buzzword? Try Truth

I heard someone say recently that they were already sick of the word authenticity. It's obviously being discussed a LOT in social media spheres. I've talked about it here as well. I think it's a great word, but when any word gets too much play, it can start to lose its meaning.

So here's an alternative: truth. I can hardly think of an organization that could not benefit from more truth. Not that all organizations are baskets of lies--truth is more complex than that. But in most organizations, people hold back, leaders don't reveal, learning takes a back seat, and important conversations remain unspoken for years. The more I think about it, the more surprised I am that we're not doing more about this. I think there are some simple steps we can take to bring more truth into our organizations, and I'm not sure what we're waiting for.

So I'm thinking about putting together some consulting and coaching programs to tackle the issue directly. With much of my consulting work in areas of conflict, trust, and difficult conversations, the topic isn't new to me. But I've never focused on it directly. So tell me what you think of this. I see four areas of focus when bringing in more truth:

• Walk
• Talk
• Culture
• Structure

Walk is about changing behavior at the ground level. More truth requires everyone in the organization to consciously choose new behavior in situations where truth used to take a back seat. You can't order people to do this. You have to get right down at their level and work with them to create new patterns of behavior.

Talk is focused more on people in positions of authority. While those people too also need to change their behavior, because of their position in the system they also need to pay attention to what they say. And I don't mean trying to market the new "truth" program to the masses. I mean speaking the truth in public ways.

Walk and talk both focus on individual thinking and behavior. Culture and structure are more about the system.

Culture is about elevating the importance and value of learning and feedback in the system. If your system rewards and supports extensive learning and the giving and receiving of feedback, then you'll have abundant truth. It's hard work to figure out how to facilitate cultural changes in support of learning and feedback, but it pays big dividends.

Structure is about evaluating and changing organizational structures and processes. You'd be surprised at how much existing structures or even simple processes can make speaking the truth terribly (and unnecessarily) difficult. But if you change individual behavior WITHOUT the accompanying structural change, the individual efforts will fizzle.

As I said, I've been doing work on issues like these in organizations for years, but putting it together into a package focusing on truth is new, so I consider these programs in the "beta" stage. If you're interested in being a test case for application of the programs, send me an email.

In the mean time, you can read my article on truth, or the following blog posts:

• Ignoring the Truth
• Speaking the Truth
• Seeing the Truth
• The Jester Speaks the Truth
• Telling the Truth
• Authenticity and Risk
• Authority, Leadership, and Truth

Leadership is Not Comfortable

I said last week that I would "push back" against some of the things I learned at ASAE & The Center's CEO Symposium. There were times during the presentations where I felt the speakers made some generically accurate statements, yet overlooked some important complexity in the process.

One example was a point they made related to culture and process. As association executives, we are working with volunteer leaders who (in most cases) are NOT association executives. They come from a different field, which has its own culture, processes, norms, expectations, etc. The speaker made the point that to the extent we can make our association's processes similar to the way things are done in that industry, the more comfortable our volunteer leaders will be and the more smoothly our processes will run.

At a high level, this is true. If we force our own processes on them, they are likely to start resisting the message simply because they don't like the medium. In the association I manage, I've been tweaking my financial reporting and budgeting process to present information in a format that I hope makes more sense to my volunteer leaders. It's a challenge, because the association's finances run on an accrual basis with income and expenses concentrated unevenly in certain parts of the year, but their industry is much more about quickly scanning the regular monthly cash flow.

So I'm all for making adjustments, but there's more to this issue that we did not get to discuss in the symposium. Sometimes comfortable is good, and sometimes it's not. Earlier this year I wrote a post about freedom not being comfortable. Comfortable is rarely a stretch goal! There are times when a system NEEDS some discomfort in order to grow and develop. There are times where the dominant ways of thinking and seeing things need to be explicitly challenged in order for the real opportunities to be discovered. Knowing when to push people out of their comfort zones is a critical leadership capacity.

Pithy Quotes that Actually Suck

Maddie shared an interesting opinion on Twitter the other day:

It's true there might be a bit too many people putting up pithy quotes on Twitter. It can be irritating. But as I think about it, SOME of the quotes on Twitter are inspiring to me. So what's the difference? I think it depends on the quote. I am growing weary of quotes that sound pithy but in fact contain very little value. Consider this list I stumbled across today (things the author learned from his or her father):

1.  Failure is what happens when you quit before you succeed
2.  Your reputation is everything
3.  People get what they deserve--you don't need to get revenge yourself
4.  It's better to be lucky than smart (and don't confuse the two!)
5.  Family is the most important thing
6.  Drinks should be cold, food should be hot
7.  Focus on the big idea, but sometimes, be ready to get into the details!
8.  Treat everyone with respect
9.  Tell the truth, always, especially in business
10. Approach everything with beginner's mind

These annoy me. Not because they are on Twitter (in fact, they're not the traditional quotes from someone famous that you frequently see on Twitter), but they annoy me because they sound sort of cool, but don't really mean anything. Look at them one at a time.

1.  Failure is what happens when you quit before you succeed
Um, nope. Failure is what happens when things don't work out. Not everything works out, nor should we expect that. Quitting is not always a bad idea. But hey, if you want to stick your finger in that light socket another dozen times, go ahead!

2.  Your reputation is everything
Sure, reputation is important, but it's not everything. Nothing is everything. And if you over-focus on reputation, you'll likely start screwing up in areas like BEHAVIOR, which is where your reputation comes from to begin with.

3.  People get what they deserve--you don't need to get revenge yourself
No, they don't. Some people do crappy things and never pay for it. And even if they do, why do you care? Why does that matter? The notion that you don't have to get revenge because the universe will do it for you is just as misguided, in my opinion, as wanting revenge in the first place.

4.  It's better to be lucky than smart (and don't confuse the two!)
Actually it's better to be both. I answer this one with a quote from Louis Pasteur: Chance favors the prepared mind. Smart (and hard working) and luck are interconnected frequently.

5.  Family is the most important thing
Wait, I thought reputation was everything. See how confusing these absolutes can be?

6.  Drinks should be cold, food should be hot
What?

7.  Focus on the big idea, but sometimes, be ready to get into the details!
That's like "Breathe in, but sometimes, be ready to breathe out!"

8.  Treat everyone with respect
True. But everyone defines respect differently, so how does this help?

9.  Tell the truth, always, especially in business
Again with the absolutes. Truth is not so simple (and I like to write about that a lot).

10. Approach everything with beginner's mind
Okay, I actually like this one.

Bottom line: if you want to inspire, dig deeper than a quote that sounds cool. Repeat things that helped cause a real shift in your thinking or awareness. And when you have those shifts, write about it. People might start quoting you.

Buzz 09

I don't normally do a whole lot of promotional blog posts. I certainly mention speaking engagements that I have and sure I like to plug the events that friends of mine are doing, though obviously I only plug them when I think they are valuable.

But I want to draw special attention to the one-day conference (Buzz09) that Lindy and Maddie are putting together in July. It is a "Social Media for Associations" conference that gets serious about social media and word of mouth. This isn't a "so what is Twitter?" conference. It's for senior-level marketing or membership staff, or CEOs of smaller associations, who are seriously focusing on social media.

You don't get this opportunity every day. Guy Kawasaki is doing the lunch-time keynote. He actually created a separate Alltop page for association management, as part of this event. Alltop--that gets 45,000 visits per day! Representatives from national companies like National Geographic and California Tortilla will talk about what they are doing. And this is all for a fairly intimate group of less than 100 people!

Maddie's post describes the details of what you'll get pretty clearly. I know our budgets to go to conferences are limited, but this is one that should likely be bumped up in the priority list.

Why Is Your Organization Not Human?

Here's post number two on Gary Hamel's Future of Management. I'm still in the first section of the book where he is talking about the three "meta issues" companies face when trying to actually change the way we manage. The first is creating genuine strategic renewal (more nimble organizations, as was discussed in my previous post about trauma-free renewal). The second is making innovation a priority (for more on that, see EVERY POST Jeff De Cagna has ever written!). The third is creating a workplace where everyone is fully engaged and gives the most of themselves. The short version of the third one: make organizations that are more human.

There has been extensive research on employee "engagement," and in general, it doesn't look too good. The study that Hamel cites concludes that "the vast majority of employees across all levels in an organization are less than fully engaged in their work." Eighty-five percent, in fact, are giving less of themselves than they could. While I suppose it might be too much to ask for every single person to be giving their all in every single job, I can't imagine we should settle for only 15%.

So why don't we do a better job? Hamel gives three answers that require more of our attention:

1. Too much management, too little freedom
2. Too much hierarchy, not enough community
3. Too much exhortation, too little purpose.

You read that list and it's hard to disagree--who's going to argue against freedom, community, and purpose. But to actually do something about any of those three is another matter. Really, are you willing to give your employees freedom? Will you give up the control of hierarchy for the potential of community? Are you actually willing to create an organization to which your people really WANT to give their all?

Historically organizations could succeed without answering these questions. I don't think we have that luxury any more.

Lessons from the CEO Symposium

Last week I attended ASAE & The Center's CEO Symposium. I think this is one of their most successful programs, as it's been running multiple times per year for more than a decade. As a consultant, this is a program I did not have access to in the past, but now I was able to go along with the incoming President of the association that I manage.

They covered a ton of material, but a few themes stuck out for me.

Trust
This was one of their four "cornerstones" of success, but it was mentioned in a number of different contexts, and it was a key piece of what I discussed with my incoming president. In general, I think we tend to assume trust to be there until it is broken, and the more I look at it, I think it's better to assume trust is NOT there until you know it has been built. I don't mean to be paranoid and assume everyone is out to get you. I just mean that in your interactions with your team, or your board of directors, to assume trust is at a lower level than you think it is. This would force us to actively build trust more often.

Fun
For both our staff and our members there is a basic truth that I often forget: people don't like to be involved in activities, jobs, situations, or communities that aren't fun and enjoyable. Period. They don't have to be fun all the time, and for goodness sake we shouldn't try to force the fun on them, but don't overlook fun and devote time to it. I know we have a job to do and tasks to accomplish, but honestly we keep getting more and more efficient, every year and every generation. I think the patience for doing things that lack enjoyment is declining. If you want to harness the productivity of your people, you'll have to actively create experiences they find enjoyable.

Generations
This topic got a lot of attention, as is common these days, and obviously I think it is an important subject. But I bring it up as a theme here more as a warning. Beware the oversimplification of generational differences, and resist attempts to find research that proves the cause/effect relationship between generational trends and what's happening in your small world. Understanding of generations should be used to develop questions, to sharpen your attention, and to enhance your conversations. It should NOT be used to give you answers, tell you what to do, or explain something you don't understand.

Next week I'll post some respectful "push-back" on what I learned at this symposium as well.

Trauma Free Renewal

I am trying to get through Gary Hamel's The Future of Management because (a) it is totally awesome and (b) I have a long list of other books I want to read. So I'm going to start some of my reflections on the first half of the book even before I have finished the second half.

The basic premise of the book is that "management" as a field is basically an aging technology. Things we accept as givens in management now were developed over the last century, and while our technology or our processes were radically transformed at various times, management hasn't changed so much. This is a problem. Hamel argues that management innovation is what we desperately need today. From the first chapter:

There's little that can be said with certainty about the future except this: sometime over the next decade your company will be challenged to change in a way for which it has no precedent.

Changing when you've more or less seen it before is easy. You adjust, adapt, modify, tweak, improve, etc. The problem fits within your model. Some of these changes are harder or more complicated than others, but with enough time and enough people working on it, you can usually make it through. Do your tweaking faster and more adeptly than your competitors, and people will call you a leader.

But what about something that doesn't fit the model? This is harder. You have to make bigger changes, challenge deeper assumptions, and come up with solutions that aren't yet proven. But is it really harder? Hamel points out that when companies are faced with big challenges like this, where they need new business models or make significant change, they are cast as "turnarounds." Important leaders swoop in to make dramatic changes with a crisis-focused change program complete with messaging, training, and powerpoint decks!

It doesn't have to be that way. Bigger change is hard, but it is not by definition traumatic. His goal is "trauma-free renewal," where organizations (much like systems in the human body) make automatic, spontaneous, and reflexive changes as needed. But the way we organize and the way we manage are really not comfortable with automatic, spontaneous, and reflective change. The book then explores ways to change this, and I'll write more about that in upcoming posts.

But for now I want to stay with the connection we have between trauma and renewal. I have faced some changes lately for which I did not have a precedent, and I admit they did feel traumatic. In truth, though, the trauma is mostly wrapped up in letting go of an image you have of reality that does not match the reality of reality. The trauma comes from investing heavily in a static view--that answers are permanent, that results are final--and then discovering that the world is in constant motion and not static at all. We work hard to be done, and then we are surprised and traumatized when the world keeps going. As I shifted my view to expect less permanence, the feeling of trauma dissipated, and I was better able to deal with what was happening.

Management innovation means changing the way we run our organizations in ways that break us from the dependence on being "done" and "right" and "successful." It requires a deeper awareness, both personally and systemically, of what drives our behavior and choices. But with this awareness comes some freedom from trauma, where the change is viewed as a natural shift, rather than a jarring adjustment. The result, Hamel argues, will be organizations that are "capable of continuous self-renewal in the absence of a crisis."

Authority, Leadership, and Truth

I like to push back when people define leadership primarily in terms of the people at the top of the organizational chart. That's authority, not leadership. I define leadership in terms of a system capacity, and I expect leadership to exist everywhere in the organization (though that might just be a typical Gen X view?).

Of course, I don't mean to ignore authority. Positions of authority play vital roles in the leadership equation. This hit me again recently as I was thinking about the concept of truth. Nancy Iannone, in a comment to my last post, wanted to know about "creating organizational cultures where truth is more valued and supported." Authority is huge in answering that question.

Specifically where the issues of organizational culture and truth-telling intersect, the role of the authority figure is paramount. Every statement and every behavior of the "leader(s)" in a system will be examined and interpreted in ways that guide the behavior of others. I think back to Art Kleiner's book Who Really Matters. He argues there's a core group in every organization, and the organization will move in the direction that the core group wants to go, or (and this is key) in the direction people THINK the core group wants to go.

That's right. If you're in the core group, there are times where it won't matter which direction you actually want to go--if your people think you want to go somewhere else, they'll go somewhere else! So if you're at the top of the organizational chart, I have some questions for you:

When an important issue emerges, do you stay silent about it?

When you enter a conversation where some difficult things need to be said on both sides, do you go first?

How do you react when people speak truth you don't want to hear? Do you actively seek feedback from a variety of sources about your reactions?

When it comes to building a culture that supports truth, the leader's behavior is perhaps disproportionately important. Subtle changes in behavior can end up having larger impacts on how others in the system embrace truth-telling. So if you're on top, or at least in the "core group," spend some of your "leadership development" resources on enhancing your truth-telling skills.