Thought Patrol Podcast: Recent Episodes
Thought Patrol
We help business owners and their organisations to drive, create wealth and build a legacy. You need three things to get your breakthrough – clarity, productivity and scalability.
Our Stragile Method will assist you to explore, engage and equip. In practical terms that is: discover and focus for success, collaborate and motivate to action, reduce constraints and resource to execute effectively.
Our Stragile components include Strategic Mapping, a Leaders' Excellence Program and a Leaders' Forum. These are designed to help you and your leadership team see clearly, get stuff done and grow quickly.
As a leader, you need to learn how to communicate. Take feedback. Improve and go again.
Learning is like climbing a mountain. Hard work and often just one step at a time. But when you get there it’s worthwhile.
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Collaboration and coordination are worthless without true communication. In this episode, we will cover the need to plan your communication and not leave it to chance. VIEW HERE
How and what you communicate will very often determine the success or otherwise of your endeavours. It’s that important! At the core of all great communication is an ability to build trust.
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Most people prefer an environment with high degrees of empowerment. If you want to create an engaging environment and the productivity that flows from that, there is no doubt you must empower your team. But if you do not balance this with high degrees of personal responsibility and agreed accountability, then you will fail to align the latent potential to agreed priorities.
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A team is more than the individuals involved and there is value between roles. As a leader we need to connect those we lead, with each other. Don’t fall for the temptation to make decisions without collaboration. Collaboration and coordination are important in every team to make it a success.
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In this episode, I am going to share with you about the need to coordinate with your team and how to properly do it in order for it to be more effective.
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Christmas is very special. For me, it's a time to be thankful, to be grateful, and to give thanks for the larger and the smaller things in life, and a time to remember God's gift to us.
In this special season, just have a great time and enjoy. Have a wonderful New Year looking forward to 2022. I'm sure it'll have its challenges, but it will be interesting.
From my family to your family, have a fantastic Christmas and a prosperous and blessed 2022!
In this video we're talking about the team in regard to collaboration and the desire to create an engaging environment. Which sounds kind of redundant. Of course, you'll need a team if you're going to collaborate.
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Today we're continuing our series on collaboration in regard to how to engage your team, to elicit more productivity. Specifically, today we will be dealing with the individuals under your tender leadership care.
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This is the first in a series about how to engage your team. In this first round of three videos, we're going to look at how collaboration impacts engagement. Bear in mind that if you don’t value collaboration, everyone will be doing their own thing and disagreeing on priorities. Where you have a diversity of priorities you have inefficiency. If you are in an organisation where there are silos you will have disruption, low productivity and probably a high degree of frustration and politics...
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If you have a pulse, you’ll have noticed that things changed fast in 2020. The security of the plans we had, the certainty we had assumed, all got thrown out of the window, by of all things, a tiny virus.
One thing I teach my clients, and help their companies embrace, is to learn fast and stay agile. It's front and centre in some of the successes that I've had in my leadership past. Yet 2020 has absolutely galvanised that view as I've seen those locked in their old ways failing to respond. Leaders who learned fast were proactive and reactive. Their solutions were relevant, and they pivoted productively. The organisations that were agile we're just able to move faster. As the environment changed, the needs changed, and the opportunities were seized by those able to learn fast. As leadership guru Tom Peters says, “Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.” So true and never so important as now.
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One of the most profound lockdown leadership lessons I've learned, with 2020 hindsight, is the importance of staying connected. I've always known this to be true from a leadership perspective. The aloof leader, locked behind doors, not connecting and not engaging, is rarely effective. 20 years as a CEO of six different companies taught me the power and importance of connection. Yet this year it has been profoundly highlighted to me, and the leaders that I serve.
So, what do I mean by connection? I’ll leave that to the venerable Brené Brown, who said, “I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” That is a very high bar for any commercial environment, and unfortunately not even close in most. But I think we should all be on that journey as leaders, albeit that Brown’s definition is the ideal.
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We're continuing our series of 2020 hindsight; a look at lock down leadership lessons, I've learned over the past 12 months. One important factor in successfully navigating a crisis is the need for simplicity. I think there is a lesson for businesses and their leaders to keep it simple.
There definitely seems to be something innate in us, that compels us to add complexity where it's not necessary. I think underlying this is the wrong assumption that complexity is a sign of competence. When I hear people being complex or giving long answers, it’s often used as a cover for incompetence or self-justification. In the many turnarounds I've been involved with, the solutions have always been very simple, even in the most complex environments.
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One of the things that has been a surprising outcome of meeting with groups of leaders during 2020 is a definite change in the usual priorities. Once the urgency of protecting the business and preserving the company was in place, leaders started talking about other things. The often-robust conversations of a purely commercial nature became deeper, and more personal.
Forced time away from work, more connection with family, and a prevailing threat helped us all to reassess our priorities. My 2020 hindsight, leadership lockdown lesson is the importance of putting ‘love’ first. Yes, this is commercial leadership content and yes, I’m talking about love.
We're taking a look at some of the things I've learned over 2020 with a little bit of 2020 hindsight. In this session, I'm going to cover the importance of building trust. Lincoln Chafee, the American politician said, “Trust is built with consistency.” Very true, but I would add transparency and integrity.
As a leader, when you don't have trust, or haven't created an environment of trust for your team, things move slowly. With low trust, you experience low productivity and even toxic environments. Often when there is no trust, that gap is filled with fear.
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This is a continuation of a small series I'm doing on 2020 hindsight. These are leadership lessons I've learned from the lockdown. In this session, “Know what comes first”. In a year where there was a lot going on, as you may have noticed, having clarity around priorities has been paramount. “Our life is the sum total of all the decisions we make every day, and those decisions are determined by our priorities.” According to the Bahamian Clergyman, Myles Munroe. Wise words.
If we don't know what comes first, we will be busy, but not necessarily effective. We all have a huge amount of noise in our world. The tendency will be to become reactive rather than proactive. We will randomly respond to what's happening, rather than considering our primary most effective response. If we do have a sense of what should come first, then we have more clarity. If we cut through the clutter and the noise, we tend to make better decisions.
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Here’s a 2020 hindsight; a lockdown leadership lesson I've learned during this ‘interesting’ year. Embrace uncertainty. Danish Physicist Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.” I do like a physicist with a sense of humour. But it's very true, we do like to think that we are in control, that our futures are certain. We are the most insured, some would argue, over-insured people in history. We try and reduce risk, increase certainty and think that we can control our future's.
Once again, there's nothing wrong with those things, but if we do not learn to embrace uncertainty, we can be left disappointed, resentful and cynical. It can also lead to a lack of resilience. Yet if we embrace uncertainty, recognise that the environment and life in general, cannot always be shaped into our desired state, we can be both realistic and resilient. This year taught me that embracing uncertainty is essential to sustainable growth, as an individual, as a leader and for our organisations.
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I thought it was a good time to take some of my own advice and review this year with 2020 hindsight. We all know it's been an extraordinary year. We all came into 2020 with 2020 Vision. As with any new year, there were expectations of what we would do, what we wouldn't do, and what the year was going to look like. The overused quote from Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get a punch in the face”, is so true for 2020. I want to take a look at the “lockdown leadership lessons” that I've learned or at least have had reinforced, with 2020 hindsight.
The first one for me has been to “enjoy the journey”. Greg Anderson, the American author, said “Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” It's such a simple concept, yet worth contemplating if you're like me; very focused on the outcomes, the destination, and the achievements.
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You may have heard me talk about the importance of simplicity and refining for growth. But it’s important to note that these drivers have a third companion. Repeat. These principles are not a one-time event, they are an ongoing part of a successful culture. Repetition, repetition, repetition. It’s important.
Harvey Mackay said, “Learn from the past, but don't live there. Build on what you know so that you don't repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company's life.” I love that!
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We're talking again today about how do you equip for growth; in particular, how do you simplify and refine systems and processes to aid the potential to grow. There's something beautifully elegant in simplicity.
Great design efficient processes beautiful things tend to be simple. It's relatively easy to come up with a complex system but finding the simplicity in the complex, is a whole different story. If we are not mindful of creating simplicity, complex confusion will prevail.
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We're talking here about what it takes to equip your company for growth. Specifically, in this session, how to simplify. Today we're talking about the first factor in simplification; the importance of testing, test, test, test.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has an example of a test. He said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Personally, I think paradox and being comfortable with it, is ‘part and parcel’ of being a good leader. But it is a good example of a test. Test and see as they say.
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When we are endeavouring to support growth, one of our significant challenges is the allocation of resources. I mean this in its broadest context, that is not only financial but also people, time, and focus.
“Never underrate the importance of asset allocation.” Wise words from John C. Bogle; it’s very important. The frustration here can be the want to grow, and even the ability to do so, yet being constrained through a lack of resource, be it people, tech, systems, capabilities, or finance.
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Today, we're talking about responsibility. It's almost becoming an unfashionable word; especially when you add the word ‘personal’. However, today we're talking about responsibility in the context of supporting growth.
Mitt Romney, like him or not, said something that I think holds true, “Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.” Again, not necessarily a popular or even contemporary topic. I'm a big believer in personal responsibility and I ask for it in the people that I've led over the years, and now with the leaders I mentor.
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When we're looking to equip for growth, we're trying to reduce constraints and resource for effective execution. Specifically, here we're talking about how to support these initiatives by ensuring pressure is in the right places.
Ernest Hemingway said, “Courage is grace under pressure”. I think that is a great combination, because it does take courage to apply pressure in the right areas, yet there is a measure of grace required to activate this in the right way.
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“Virtue is a moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behaviour that shows high moral standards: doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.” At least that is according to that font of eternal knowledge; Wikipedia. The key for me here is the word behaviour. Often when we talk values, they are abstract; whereas virtues are translated into behaviours which is absolutely key if you want to grow your business successfully.
We’re talking here about growth and in particular, where to scrutinise for growth. I've put a section here on virtues because I think it's important to view them as a part of an organisational structure. Yes, we do cover this in other areas that are more aligned to people, but I think it's worth a mention here from an organisational perspective around what to scrutinise for growth.
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Every business has certain things in the organisation that constrain growth. They may even be processes, systems or people, who have served you well up to this point. In order to grow and equip your business for scalability, you will need to scrutinise constraints.
Jeff Bezos, you could argue knows a thing or two about growth. He said this, “I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.” So, there are positive constraints, and in fact they can promote innovation. However, the constraints I’m talking about are those limiting factors that constrain growth and limit full expression of potential.
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If you want to equip your business for success and to grow strongly, you need to look at certain areas of the business itself. You will need to scrutinise your business, and in particular, scrutinise drivers. This is all about knowing what to focus on and drilling down with ruthless efficiency to the absolutely critical drivers of success.
“Starting a business from scratch and having little money in the bank focuses your mind in a way that running a multibillion-dollar business never does. It brings the key drivers of performance into sharp relief. I promise.” According to Sallie Krawcheck.
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We live in an imperfect world, as you may have observed. Whilst we think we can fully control our environment; control is ultimately an illusion. Things change, so we must adapt and be agile, and not lock ourselves into strategies without considering their progress.
All strategic milestones need to be reviewed on a regular basis. In our Stragile Method the 12 month milestones are reviewed every 90 days. I like 90 days. It's long enough to get something done and short enough to create a sense of urgency.
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Let's take a moment to talk about ownership not ownership of a company but ownership of milestones. You’ve begun to activate your strategic map. You've identified the actions you need to take for future success. You’ve clearly articulated those with simple, measurable, demonstrable milestones. Nice work!
Your next step is to ensure that total responsibility for the delivery of a milestone lies with a single individual. One person. Your role as a leader of the team is to ensure that the capabilities of the milestone owner, mirror the needs in the milestone. For example, a people related milestone should obviously sit with someone in Human Resources.
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There are three phases to Strategic Mapping, Appraise, Align and Activate. Let’s talk about activate. This is where the rubber hits the road, by taking action. The talking’s over it’s time to do something. Unfortunately, I’ve seen so many well-meaning strategy sessions deteriorate into ineffective talkfests. Ultimately it is only action that will move you forward.
The other constraint I’ve observed is a desire to have the perfect way forward before action is taken. In a fast-moving environment you will never have a perfect solution, because you have imperfect clarity.
The answer is to create momentum and have a process and culture that allows for review and response. At the core of that is clear and simple milestones. Mike Huckabee said, “It's when ordinary people rise above the expectations and seize the opportunity that milestones truly are reached.”
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We've been talking about how to Align from a strategic perspective. We've learned how to identify trends and how to create Success Factors. The third leg of the stool here is to Focus.
We know the broad areas where our strategic investments need to be applied; this is about making sure that we are laser focused on the right areas to invest. By invest I mean the ability to create characteristics and capabilities that will drive our future success. Whilst it may mean financial it also means the application of other resources including time, people, and attention.
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Today we're talking about Success Factors. These are the factors that will drive success in our organisations, given the trends we've identified that will shape our future. This is all about aligning with the future operating environment and the characteristics we need in our organisations to succeed. What are those factors?
Nina Tassler noted that, “failure is a fundamental factor of success.” I think it's important to note at this juncture that we will not be able to predict with 100% certainty the characteristics we need to be successful in the future. Just as the trends can only be drawn from our observations, and as such are imperfect, so too are the Success Factors we're looking to build. However, we can and should draw some conclusions, start implementing them and begin to observe the impact. We will fail and should learn to fail fast and fail forward, as they say.
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Today we're talking about trends, those things that will define our future operating environment. Dick Clark said, “I don't set trends. I just find out what they are and exploit them.” in that little phrase is all the wisdom you need to align your organisation to the inevitability of a changing environment.
When you don't align to trends you are always, catching up and never getting ahead. Always in the crowd, and never ahead on your own, enjoying the freedom of demand with low competition, and the economic rents that engenders. Quite simply your organisation becomes reactive rather than proactive.
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When we're talking about the need to appraise from a strategic perspective, one of the most important components is understanding opportunity. What are the opportunities, are they good are they not so good?
I love this quote from Thomas Edison, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Unfortunately, it is very true. If we are to look at opportunities, there is usually hard work involved. We often must try and fail, to learn where those opportunities are. Whilst occasionally they do drop into our laps, it is a very rare phenomenon, unfortunately.
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When we want to appraise from a strategic perspective, one of the key elements to consider is our capability. Whilst I believe we should always begin with the ‘end in mind’, I think it is wise to also look at what are we good at now, what do we have in place, where is our area of expertise, what are we known for. In short, what is our capability currently or core competencies? Whilst we may have to adjust and grow and change our capabilities, knowing our starting point is important in appraising strategically.
“Success means at least you are finding full potential to who you are in terms of your intelligence, your capability and competence: you are finding full expression to who you are." This is important, according to Jaggi Vasudev. Whilst he was referring to an individual, I believe it also holds true for the organisation.
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Our reference point today is the ability to appraise strategically. Strategy doesn't live in isolation from a ‘reason for being’. Today, we’re talking about purpose, but from a strategic perspective. Strategy almost by definition must be aligned to the organisation's purpose. I think there's something innate in us that needs to have a sense of purpose, we need to be part of something that's larger than ourselves, to be fully activated.
Robert Byrne, said, “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” I like that. There is a sense of potential being released, when we find a sense of purpose and direction. When organisation's lack clear purpose, a few things happen. A lack of purpose can lower motivation, as people ask themselves, “why am I here?”, “what's the point?”. Clear purpose can be a clarion call, engender alignment, cooperation and be a great motivator.
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In the last two videos we talked about Productivity and Clarity, two of our drivers of growth. Our third driver is Scalability; the ability to grow fast. You can have clarity of direction and a productive workplace, but if you are constrained in other ways, if you don't understand your pressure points, or resources are not allocated correctly, we will still fail to grow.
This can be very frustrating, with growth restricted and constrained, and your organisation limited and impeded. But if you have Clarity and Productivity and you add in the pragmatic Scalability to the mix, hold on, you'll have the proverbial tiger by the tail. Leadership in this area is often forgotten but as Martin L. Abbott quite rightly observed, “If you can’t lead, you can’t scale.”
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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything”. There has been a lot of talk about productivity, perhaps the lack of it. Despite technological advances, productivity growth is declining, almost static.
You know when you have productivity as things just get done. Momentum is a wonderful thing, productivity drives momentum. When you don't have productivity, your organisation is disorganised and ineffective. Lots of busy people, but not much progress, is a sign of a lack of productivity. It may not always feel like that, but when you've experienced pure productivity, nothing else will suffice.
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If you want growth on scale, and who doesn't, then you only need three things. Clarity, Productivity, and Scalability. Starting point of this transformation is Clarity. Robin Sharma said that "Clarity precedes success." There's a lot of insight in that simple sentence.
Without Clarity there is confusion and complication. Organisations that lack clarity have competing priorities; are focusing sometimes on good things, but not on the great things that really drive success. Without Clarity, there is an increase in complexity; people are confused with what they should focus on, priorities are clouded, and teams become inefficient and ineffective. Bobb Biehl said it best when he said, "Without focusing and getting to Clarity you cannot lead. You cannot motivate. You cannot plan. You cannot communicate."
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What is it about bad news? It sells well, travels fast and seems to catch our attention. Our 24-hour news cycle is unfortunately built on it. Despite all the views to the contrary there is nothing wrong with communication in most companies. All and every staff survey will put communication at the top of things to improve, and yet bad news will get around a team at the speed of gossip.
Organisations leak news and despite all the efforts to maintain secrecy, people inevitably know something about what is going on. Many leaders endeavor to cloak everything on a ‘need to know’ basis, as if there is a risk of everyone knowing what’s going on. The trouble with this is, people talk and if there is bad news brewing, they will automatically assume the very worst. So even if you have dire news, let people know, be transparent, go broad in your reach for ideas and input, and trust your team to handle it well.
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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything."
Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get things done? Why is that? What would it take to get higher productivity? We do have a major problem with productivity levels of below 1%, despite all our technological advances. Something is fundamentally wrong, not at the fringes but at the core of how we do leadership, business and run organisations.
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People are human, would seem to be self evident; yet do we treat our teams that way? Are they just organic machines? Of course not! Sometimes as leaders we become so fixed on our goals and KPIs we forget we are hiring flesh and blood, flawed, inconsistent and subject to outside influences. They are not unlike you and I.
Occasionally I wake up and don’t want to do today, it’s not my usual good morning God, it’s more like good God it’s morning. We all have families and relationships that aren’t always perfect; or is it just me.
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Do you have people in your organisation who don’t or won’t make decisions? Is there a lack of ideas? It’s almost as if they’re afraid. What you may need is more trust. ‘Trust trumps fear’ all day!
A recent YPO Global Pulse Survey of thousands of CEOs showed that, nearly all (96%) of leaders rate building and maintaining trust with stakeholders a high priority, with nearly half (42%) saying the importance they place on building trust with stakeholders has increased in the past five years.
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The marketplace is moving at a staggering rate, digital disruption is everywhere. Your business model is under duress regardless of your industry. Business models used to fail every ten to twenty years now it’s every three to four years; sometimes less. Recently Spotify disrupted iTunes, the iconic disruptor of the music industry. “No innovation no business!”
To move fast enough organisations and their leadership have to be inherently agile, encouraging innovation to be in their DNA. Only in agility and innovation is there the likelihood of sustainability. If you don’t innovate, you die.
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Is it hard to implement strategies and get alignment in your organisation? Are your team not engaged in your strategic direction and lack passion? Perhaps they lack ownership; and there may be a reason for that. “People own what they help to create.”
How inclusive are you when you plan, create ideas and establish direction? I have found that almost universally in our Stragile planning sessions, we have high involvement and engagement, and subsequently implementation is a breeze in comparison to traditional strategic planning. Check out Stragile.co if you want to know more.
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Cutting costs is a simple way to improve profitability, in theory at least. However in the real world of a dynamic marketplace, imperfect people, unforeseen circumstances, collateral damage and unintended consequences, the spreadsheet seems to lie.
No one has ever cut their way to sustainable profitability. Then when the result isn’t met, a new round of cost cutting and the inevitable and perennial restructuring continues. The axe is not your friend.
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Do you find that small things slow you or your team down? Do you get dragged into issues that are really inconsequential in the scheme of things? What you need in momentum and lots of it! Momentum crushes problems.
John Maxwell has a great metaphor that I’m going to borrow, because it’s a great one. John talks about a train being in a station waiting for passengers. When it’s ready to go, a log of wood is placed in front of it. This seemingly small obstacle will make the train unable to depart; spinning its wheels, unable to move. Yet, if the same log were placed on a track when the train was moving at full speed, it would provide no resistance at all. Probably not even noticed, as the momentum of the train overcomes the resistance, of a now insignificant obstacle.
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I want to challenge a cultural phenomenon; when asked how we are, especially in a work or business context, our positive response is that we’re busy. Now whilst the complete opposite of that is a problem, being busy may not be our most effective state. Being busy is not necessarily good.
Recently the World Health Organisation added burnout to its official list of diseases. The term was first applied as a psychological diagnosis in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger. Which is a splendid name.
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Do you feel like you are always working working working, with little or underwhelming fruit? Does your workday leave you feeling tired, ineffective and unfulfilled? This is actually very common in leaders and their teams.
Sometimes we have to slow down to speed up; and build some white space into our hectic schedules. We are not wired for a sprint; we’re built for a marathon. Like all good runners we have to pace ourselves if we want to win. As the great piece of racing advice says, “to finish first, first you have to finish”.
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I mentor and train a lot of leaders, a number note that their teams don’t take responsibility, won’t make decisions and don’t think for themselves. Often this frustration is driven from a desire to control them?
“I love to be micro-managed,” said no one ever. Whether we like it or not, control is an illusion. Even if we think all is under control, it seldom is.
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Is your team not operating well? Do you seem to have ongoing people issues in your business? Here’s some bad news, that may turn out to be good news. Often your team is a reflection of you?
Leaders set the tone and a team will take their standards and even their ethics from you. The standard you walk by will become the team standard.
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Mindful Leaders see alternatives. Often when disruption comes, we are blindsided because it comes from industries, sectors or competitors that are outside our experience. If we don’t look far and wide for possible alternatives to our products and services, we get disrupted, replaced or at least commoditised. If we are mindful of alternatives, then we can recognise new opportunities, lower our risk, embrace changes we need to make early and adapt.
Alternatives like car-sharing rather than ownership, or AirBnB as an alternative to hotels can sideswipe an entire industry. The choices then become very difficult to make, especially if you see it early. These pivots are extremely challenging for the established players because as Kenneth Eade points out, “Most people, faced with two difficult choices, prefer not to choose at all.” This probably explains why incumbents lose to new disruptors especially if it is due to an alternative.
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Mindful Leaders know the trends. We all operate in an environment that’s changing. Being mindful of how those trends will change the future operating environment, is critical if we are to lead constructive change. If we're not attuned to trends, we will get sideswiped and surprised by what, in hindsight, will look like the seemingly inevitable. We will be subjected to being reactive, rather than proactive.
Another unfortunate consequence of not identifying changes is not changing quickly enough, is that we are in the middle of the pack of other companies, and so in a highly competitive environment. These pressures, and this situation, lead to a stressful workplace, challenged revenues, with margins under pressure as we fail to innovate into expected trends.
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Mindful Leaders challenge the status quo. Business models are failing faster now than at any time in history. Corporate history is littered with examples of what happens when you don’t innovate and are wedded to the status quo.
Blockbuster, Nokia, Polaroid, Pan Am, General Motors, and ironically the inventor of the digital camera, Kodak. You can even develop the next wave of innovation and still fail through failure to adopt. “Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march”. said Howard Schulz. Harsh but non the less true.
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Mindful Leaders know the team. If your leader I just want to challenge you for a moment, how well do you know your team? Do you know what makes them tick? What are their aspirations? What really motivates them? If we don't know our team well, then we will tend towards micromanagement. “I love to be micromanaged” said nobody ever.
If we're not mindful of an individual’s agenda, we'll end up with low engagement, and therefore low productivity. But, if we can connect with those around us, in a way that is authentic, and releases them into their passions and their desires, aligned to their talents we will create engagement and high productivity.
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Mindful Leaders respect Partners. Organisations are complex systems that don't necessarily just sit in four walls. If we only think of our organisation in terms of those employed by us, then we are limiting our scope. The whole idea of organisations being a linear contained entity is rapidly being dissolved. Contractors, micro-contractors, broad ranging stakeholders, globalisation, hyper connectivity, and the digital revolution are all causing our organisations to become less distinct. Those that are embracing a multi-stakeholder view are doing well.
If we don't have this perspective and focus on the short term, then whilst we may get some initial gain, in the long-term or even in the medium term, we're isolating ourselves, limiting relationship, and arguably diluting possible competitive advantage. Certainly, in the longer-term, relationships and partnerships with multiple stakeholders is the only sustainable model.
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Mindful Leaders understand authority. We all, regardless of our roles, have people who are in authority over us; those we report to. Even when I was running 40 countries or leading a listed company, I had boards, their Chairs, Owners and shareholders to report to.
If we don’t manage these relationships well, we end up with misaligned priorities, and misunderstood agendas. It results in low, or no trust, relationships can begin to polarise and productivity shuts down.
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Mindful leaders know their strengths. As leaders we are unique, we are individuals, we have certain strengths, things we are good at, and certain things that we're just not good at. If we are trying to be the perfect leader, we will ultimately fail.
Being mindful of what we are good at, recognising that, being comfortable with that, allows us to operate in our strengths. If we don't do that, we will be in effective, or at least not as effective as we could be if we operated in our strengths. This also allows us to encourage others around us with difference strengths to operate in theirs.
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Mindful leaders know their capacity. We should know what we're capable of and obviously what we're not capable of. We all have a level of capacity that if breached, at least lowers our operating potential, and at worst can lead to a dangerous cycle into stress and burnout.
We're all capable of working hard for a certain amount of time. I work with some particularly strong-minded entrepreneurs who have an incredible amount of resilience and strength, but even they have their limitations. If we're aware of our capacity, we can manage it appropriately, which leads to long term effectiveness, consistency and sustainability.
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Mindful leaders are present, they are aware of what is happening right now. They are in the moment. Have you ever talked to someone and it's like there is no one else in the room, and you know you have their undivided attention? That is what I mean by being present, in the moment self-aware, deeply aware of others and the environment.
When we are rushing around in a sea of busyness or even looking too far into the future, we are less engaging, we don't connect fully, and we lose something in the relationships with those around us. If we operate like this, the most we can get from our team, is compliance not commitment.
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Today I'd like to talk about mindful leaders; this is the start of a new series. I want to explore why it is important for leaders to be mindful; mindful of themselves, mindful of others, and mindful of the environment they operate in. Matt Tenney described a simple mantra for inspiring, effective, mindful leadership: “Cultivate peace of mind and go about doing good.”
If we as leaders go about our business not being mindful of ourselves, others, and the environment, we are operating on assumptions that are not necessarily true. Whilst most of us don't deliberately ignore what is happening around us, or even within ourselves, our busy lives, deadlines, and the inevitable sea of e-mails, DMs, and calls, make us so reactive that we don't take time to consider the ramifications of our actions. This can manifest in us not managing ourselves well, the misunderstanding of others, and a failure to see the environment shifting and changing which it is inevitably doing.
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Sustainable leaders reflect regularly. I am challenging myself today as much as I hope I'm challenging you. There is definitely power in taking the time to reflect on how effective we are or have been. However, the discipline to do so has somewhat eluded me over the years. Like all of us I am still on a leadership journey and this area is one that I'm wanting to improve in.
This I do know. It's healthy to stop and pause as we've discussed previously, but it's even better to stop pause and reflect. At the centre of this reflection is taking the time to ask yourself the pertinent questions. This is not about self-reflection with a critical spirit. That can be a minefield for those of us who lean towards a desire for perfection, which can lead to paralysis by analysis. I'm talking about a balanced time of self-reflection.
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Sustainable leaders find space. Do you feel like you are always working working working, with little or underwhelming fruit? Does your workday leave you feeling tired, ineffective and unfulfilled? This is actually very common in leaders and their teams. Sometimes we have to slow down to speed up; and build some white space into our hectic schedules. But finding that space is sometimes quite difficult.
We are not wired for a sprint; we're built for a marathon. Like all good runners we have to pace ourselves if we want to win. As the great piece of racing advice says, "to finish first, first you have to finish".
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Sustainable leaders stay connected. Leadership can be a lonely pursuit. It's tough at the top and crowded at the bottom, as they say. Most leaders I know, in their more candid moments, will talk about the loneliness of leadership. It’s a tough job to deal with the paradox of competing stakeholders and the lack of people to connect with who have no agenda.
If we are not connected as leaders, we don't have the benefit of good counsel. We can become unbalanced in our view, if it is not checked and counted by our peers or wise advisors.
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Sustainable leaders keep learning. “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” According to Peter Drucker. Learning how to learn sounds like an odd concept, yet like anything it's a discipline that we need to include in our lives; if we want to be effective.
Drucker is an incredible thinker and draws a lot of wisdom from experience but also from study and learning from others. To do likewise we have to remain flexible and humble. “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught,” said Winston Churchill. I can relate.
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Sustainable leaders stay curious. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious,” said Albert Einstein, recognised for his genius in innovation and thinking. I think there's something healthy in that.
Curiosity gets a bad name, usually associated with the cat for some unknown reason. Or it is tainted by some misunderstanding that is for those lacking in knowledge or the young. Yet as leaders if we do not stay curious, we will not be sustainable.
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Sustainable leaders know their work priorities. “To change your life, you need to change your priorities,” said Mark Twain, always the master of the understatement. It is I think self-evident, that to change things you need to change your priorities.
But we rarely stop to consider and get caught up in the enormity of the daily challenges. We get too busy, so stretched, almost paralysed with the enormity and the multitude of the tasks ahead. We end up in an unproductive cycle, as we react to the noise rather than being proactive and effective.
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Sustainable leaders know their life priorities. “Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters,” according to Margaret Peters. Hindsight is a wonderful thing; at the end of our lives we can look back with the benefit of wisdom and hindsight.
Very rarely do we take the time to think about our lives from the position of the ultimate hindsight, on our deathbeds. I don't mean to sound morbid or fatalistic, but we only get one crack at this life. It matters, it really matters how we live our life.
A survey of people in the latter years of their life, in the nursing homes, waiting for God as they say, revealed something I found profound. They had good stories and bad stories, and almost universally some regrets. Interestingly the regrets weren't about work, or wealth, they were about relationships, people and love.
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Sustainable leaders look after number one. It might sound selfish, and it can certainly be misunderstood, but if we look after ourselves, we are available to look after others.
Unfortunately, burnout is a massive problem for leaders. It can be driven by many things. Perhaps in a drive for success or wealth, we sacrifice not only those around us but also ourselves. But even if we have an altruistic view of life, serving those around us, there is a danger in not looking after ourselves.
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Sustainable leaders know themselves. They know who they are, they understand themselves and they take the time for some self-examination. If we don't know who we are, will always put up an artificial front and have a lack of authenticity.
Socrates said, “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”. I'm a firm believer that we are created unique with unique talents and gifts. When we operate from a position of self-knowledge and acceptance, we unlock our true potential. Knowing our strengths and weaknesses can allow us to prioritise our time on things that are productive for us, and therefore allocate time to others to exercise their strengths. But front and centre for this is self-awareness.
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The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.
When in a crisis the overwhelming temptation is to think and act short term. There is definitely a need to prioritise, preserve and persevere in the early conservation stage. However, the earlier you can start thinking about the new needs that have been created, and the possible opportunities they represent, the better prepared you’ll be for the post crisis world.
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You can plan, collaborate, engage and do all the things you need to do and still fail unless you do this one thing. Commit! Risk is a relative measure. In a crisis the riskiest thing you can do is do nothing. The second riskiest thing is to react rather than consider and act. Be proactive not reactive.
Nike’s famous slogan is ‘Just Do It!’ Great advice in a crisis. Having a can-do attitude goes a long way in leading in a crisis. You have to be action oriented but remain flexible and learn as you go. In strategic terms it’s an action learning cycle. That cycle of act, think, adjust and go again. Without action there is no result. Commitment is a great trait as long as its balanced with an understanding that you will sometimes be wrong, and that’s OK.
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"Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential." Said Jeannette Wall, and I tend to agree. Necessity is indeed the “mother of invention”. A need or problem encourages creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem. This saying appears in the ‘Dialogue Republic’, by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. So, its nothing new. Yet we still reach for the blunt axe when faced with a crisis.
Taking a moment to consider the consequences. Thinking a little more medium term, looking at our resources, considering options, understanding the changing landscape and appearing opportunities, is how we become successful. It’s where the true pivot comes from. Unlocking creativity in crisis is not a natural response and we have to remind ourselves, and our people, to keep calm and considered, in order to remain creative.
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In a crisis situation resources become scare or stretched. With dwindling resources come reduced options. Conservation whilst absolutely required to preserve resources, is as much about reallocation and mindful distribution. Organisations that can make the clarity of priorities early, have more options to preserve resources, more resources to reallocate, and more potential to pivot.
Again it requires some foresight, some thinking and some medium term consideration whilst still acting with urgency. "Every little thing counts in a crisis." said Nehru. I think that is a wise observation. Small actions and small amounts of resources applied in the right spot at the right time can yield great fruit.
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You maybe the smartest person on the room, but you are not always right. You have one perspective, one set of experiences and one world view. Regardless of how smart and experienced you are, if you’re human, you’re often wrong, or as we like to say, “not quite right”. When we are surrounded by a team, why wouldn’t we unlock that potential and leverage the collective experience in the room?
Steve Jobs may have had an enormous ego as the head of Apple, but he understood his place in the information age when he famously quipped, “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
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Almost all of us have a set of values for our organisations; we all say our people are our most important asset. Which is a terrible saying. We should indeed manage assets, but we lead people. But it is only under pressure our true organisational values are exposed, as are our personal virtues. If they are true values and virtues they do not change due to circumstances. "Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to our eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become" according to renowned scholar Brooke Foss Westcott.
So what will we choose? Will we throw out our values because the pressure is on, or will we stay true to what is important to us and those around us? It’s a pivotal question for me because at its core, is a call that will determine the engagement of our stakeholders, and therefore ultimately the organisation’s sustainability. A crisis is a test of our character as well as our company.
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There’s a need to be action oriented in a crisis. We need to get a lot done in a hurry. But, there is danger in haste, if actions are taken at the expense of due consideration. The team and the organisation will loose out. There is a need for fast efficient decision making protocols, which still allow an appropriate level of input and collaboration. I’m sure we’d all agree its not time to be sitting in circles, holding hands, physically or metaphorically. Yet if we do not operate from a perspective of empathy and care, we will make decisions that may well yield short-term gain, but cause medium term damage.
This happens if we don’t consult and collaborate; we don’t leverage the collective intelligence and experience around us. The result is we alienate those who are there to help. When our teams feel trusted and in on the tactics, they own the actions and implement well. Teddy Roosevelt said it best; “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
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How and what you communicate in a crisis will very often determine the success or otherwise of your endeavors. It’s that important.
Building trust quickly is essential. You will need people to respond quickly and effectively if you are to move fast enough to react to the crisis unfolding.
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In the midst of a crisis there is overwhelming pressure, both from within the organisation and from external forces, such as stakeholders and environmental factors.
The key is to generate clarity in uncertainty by holding to a set of agreed priorities. The opportunity to be distracted by the urgent rather than the important is heightened in a crisis. Beware the noise that comes from someone else’s agenda. Ensue the organisation is focused on what is truly important, and absolutely foundational, or it will busy itself in the urgent minutia. Whatever you do, if it’s going to be effective it has to be simple, super simple. This is not a time for complexity it’s a time for simplicity. You need a clarion call to galvanize an organisation to change its behaviour based on a simple set of imperatives.
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In a time of crisis we all reach for those words of wisdom and experience that have echoed down through time. My intellectual giant of choice is Mike Tyson who said, somewhat aptly in my view; “everyone has a plan ‘til they get punched in the face.” Crude yes, but that’s what COVID feels like for most of us.
One thing that has become very apparent to us all is that, control is an illusion and our environment a lot less predictable than we like to think. Great leaders help define reality. In this case it’s the impact of COVID, on our individual team members and collective organisation.
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What is it about bad news? It sells well, travels fast and seems to catch our attention. Our 24-hour news cycle is unfortunately built on it. Despite all the views to the contrary there is nothing wrong with communication in most companies. All and every staff survey will put communication at the top of things to improve, and yet bad news will get around a team at the speed of gossip.
Organisations leak news and despite all the efforts to maintain secrecy, people inevitably know something about what is going on. Many leaders endeavor to cloak everything on a ‘need to know’ basis, as if there is a risk of everyone knowing what’s going on. The trouble with this is, people talk and if there is bad news brewing, they will automatically assume the very worst. So even if you have dire news, let people know, be transparent, go broad in your reach for ideas and input, and trust your team to handle it well.
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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize [winner] in economics, once wrote: "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything."
Are you frustrated by how long it takes to get things done? Why is that? What would it take to get higher productivity? We do have a major problem with productivity levels of below 1%, despite all our technological advances. Something is fundamentally wrong, not at the fringes but at the core of how we do leadership, business and run organisations.
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People are human, would seem to be self evident; yet do we treat our teams that way? Are they just organic machines? Of course not! Sometimes as leaders we become so fixed on our goals and KPIs we forget we are hiring flesh and blood, flawed, inconsistent and subject to outside influences. They are not unlike you and I.
Occasionally I wake up and don’t want to do today, it’s not my usual good morning God, it’s more like good God it’s morning. We all have families and relationships that aren’t always perfect; or is it just me.
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Do you have people in your organisation who don’t or won’t make decisions? Is there a lack of ideas? It’s almost as if they’re afraid. What you may need is more trust. ‘Trust trumps fear’ all day!
A recent YPO Global Pulse Survey of thousands of CEOs showed that, nearly all (96%) of leaders rate building and maintaining trust with stakeholders a high priority, with nearly half (42%) saying the importance they place on building trust with stakeholders has increased in the past five years.
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The marketplace is moving at a staggering rate, digital disruption is everywhere. Your business model is under duress regardless of your industry. Business models used to fail every ten to twenty years now it’s every three to four years; sometimes less. Recently Spotify disrupted iTunes, the iconic disruptor of the music industry. “No innovation no business!”
To move fast enough organisations and their leadership have to be inherently agile, encouraging innovation to be in their DNA. Only in agility and innovation is there the likelihood of sustainability. If you don’t innovate, you die. Look at Nokia, absolute global dominance gone in less than a decade. They ignored the smartphone revolution and became irrelevant very quickly. Their response was to defend the status quo. This is a very natural reaction. Defend what you know, but now we have to embrace what will kill us.
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Cutting costs is a simple way to improve profitability, in theory at least. However in the real world of a dynamic marketplace, imperfect people, unforeseen circumstances, collateral damage and unintended consequences, the spreadsheet seems to lie.
No one has ever cut their way to sustainable profitability. Then when the result isn’t met, a new round of cost cutting and the inevitable and perennial restructuring continues. The axe is not your friend.
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Is it hard to implement strategies and get alignment in your organisation? Are your team not engaged in your strategic direction and lack passion? Perhaps they lack ownership; and there may be a reason for that. “People own what they help to create.”
How inclusive are you when you plan, create ideas and establish direction? I have found that almost universally in our Stragile planning sessions, we have high involvement and engagement, and subsequently implementation is a breeze in comparison to traditional strategic planning. Check out Stragile.co if you want to know more.
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Do you find that small things slow you or your team down? Do you get dragged into issues that are really inconsequential in the scheme of things? What you need in momentum and lots of it! Momentum crushes problems.
John Maxwell has a great metaphor that I’m going to borrow, because it’s a great one. John talks about a train being in a station waiting for passengers. When it’s ready to go, a log of wood is placed in front of it. This seemingly small obstacle will make the train unable to depart; spinning its wheels, unable to move. Yet, if the same log were placed on a track when the train was moving at full speed, it would provide no resistance at all. Probably not even noticed, as the momentum of the train overcomes the resistance, of a now insignificant obstacle.
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I want to challenge a cultural phenomenon; when asked how we are, especially in a work or business context, our positive response is that we’re busy. Now whilst the complete opposite of that is a problem, being busy may not be our most effective state. Being busy is not necessarily good.
Recently the World Health Organisation added burnout to its official list of diseases. The term was first applied as a psychological diagnosis in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger. Which is a splendid name.
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Do you feel like you are always working working working, with little or underwhelming fruit? Does your workday leave you feeling tired, ineffective and unfulfilled? This is actually very common in leaders and their teams.
Sometimes we have to slow down to speed up; and build some white space into our hectic schedules. We are not wired for a sprint; we’re built for a marathon. Like all good runners we have to pace ourselves if we want to win. As the great piece of racing advice says, “to finish first, first you have to finish”.
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I mentor and train a lot of leaders, a number note that their teams don’t take responsibility, won’t make decisions and don’t think for themselves. Often this frustration is driven from a desire to control them?
“I love to be micro-managed,” said no one ever. Whether we like it or not, control is an illusion. Even if we think all is under control, it seldom is.
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Is your team not operating well? Do you seem to have ongoing people issues in your business? Here’s some bad news, that may turn out to be good news. Often your team is a reflection of you?
Leaders set the tone and a team will take their standards and even their ethics from you. The standard you walk by will become the team standard.
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We're talking about transparency and you can't talk about transparency without talking about Openness and Trust.
It's really the core. It's really the definition of being transparent. It's that willingness to be vulnerable and to be open and, ultimately, I think transparency, and I'm a great believer in this, transparency builds trust. If you want to have a high-performing team, if you want to have an environment where people do well and things happen, you have to create a culture of trust, an environment of trust where people genuinely believe that you have their best in mind, and transparency is a great way of doing that. So, be open. Be open to listening to people, be open to their ideas, and that's your responsibility, really, to remain the student and not the critic.
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Today, we're going to talk about values.
I sometimes think that when we talk about values, we tend to think of that group of words sitting on a wall and yes, they're values. However, if they're not activated, they're not really true values.
And a word that hasn't been used a lot recently is Virtues.
It's kind of gone out of vogue, but if you think about values as virtues, those things that drive us and our personal way of doing things, it's a lot more personal.
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If you're part of any organisation, well, any organization that I know, then politics is, you know what? It's kind of part of the game and the larger the organisation, the more politics that can occur.
But even in small teams, it can be a little nitpicking, politics, little things going on all the time that can be really disruptive to having a great culture and people being open and transparent and politics can really cut across what it is that you're trying to achieve as a leader, as you build a great team. There's a number of ways you can deal with it and, for me, the first thing is don't engage in it yourself. Demonstrate a way of doing things that's not aligned with a political mindset. If people see you stabbing them in the back or stabbing other people in the back or gossiping or running down the company or talking about your superiors in a way that's undermining them, then they're gonna take that as acceptable behaviour.
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Transparency builds trust, as we've said. But, why would you want to do that?
Really it's around Leveraging Potential.
We have a lot of people in our organisation and we can be the one smart person doing all the thinking or we can leverage the potential of those that are around us. For instance, I do a lot of strategic planning and we put 20 people in a room and you literally have couple of hundred years worth of commercial experience, and not only commercial experience, but a whole life experience. And diverse people bring you all sorts of different backgrounds and perspectives to issues and opportunities. It's so much more constructive than one person coming up with a random idea. Could be a good one, could be a bad one. We don't know. But, if you have a number of people, you can collaborate.
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I wanted to talk a moment about Leveraging Diversity.
Often, when we go out and hire people, we like the people that are like us and I see it often in teams that I deal with where everybody's kind of the same. You have this sort of homogeneous group of people who think alike, do alike, play the same sports. They're very, very similar. And whilst that can be a fun environment to work in, it's very narrow and diverse teams work really, really well. If you create an environment where diversity is valued, then you really unlock an extraordinary amount of potential. I have no idea, for instance, why we still have this debate around women on boards. I mean the science is there, the stats are there. If you have a diverse board from a gender perspective or race or background or religion or whatever it might be, all that diversity creates a melting pot of ideas and background and perspectives.
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It's something that doesn't get talked about in leadership circles very often.
Vulnerability.
We have this image, an artificial image in my view, of what a great leader looks like. Very stoic. "Nothing hurts me. I'm just... I'm the man." We have a very male-dominated thinking around what a great leader looks like. We go to Braveheart, Donald Trump, and Patton, General Patton. Very larger-than-life characters that have a very sort of singular view of the world, not what you'd call vulnerable. And yet, I believe vulnerability is, or a willingness to be vulnerable, is a great way of engaging with team.
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Servant Leadership.
Sounds a little wussy, sounds a little soft, and yet it is and continues to be, more importantly now than ever, the most effective way of leading an organisation. Serving those around you, putting others before yourself. It's been around for a couple of thousand years. Western civilization, the idea of it was really built on the back of the individual having sanctity and serving those people around us. And creating a Culture of Honour is paramount, I think, in an environment where the momentum of the marketplace is so quick that you have to leverage the collective experience and intelligence of those around you or you'll fail as an individual. And so it's about serving the team. The team is more important than the individual.
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Passion and Purpose.
Two things that are very aligned.
We talked about vision where you create a sense of direction very much around the same thinking around purpose. A sense of purpose. Something that's important to us that we can activate in our workplace.
Bring your heart to work.
As leaders, sometimes we think we need to be cold and stoic and just functional. It's dog eat dog. And yet, you know, bring your heart.
Get emotionally involved in what you're doing. It's genuine. It's authentic. Get excited about what's happening around you. And other people will catch up on that and it does create a sense of momentum when there's passion and people have a sense of direction and purpose.
So bring your heart to work.
Daniel Pink, who I really like, he used to be a lawyer but we've forgiven him for that. He talks about 3 areas that will create motivation, that will create passion and sense of purpose in your organisation.
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