Tag: Behavior

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Behavior Empathy Leadership

Why an Open-Door Policy is Insufficient in Building Trust

Leaders who profess to having an open-door policy are often puzzled by the fact that very few team members tell them what’s really going on in the organization. They receive all the positive developments, even if they are a bit of a stretch, and none of the negatives. Even when asking specific questions that are intended to encourage participants to share risks and issues they are answered with a positive spin.

Another situation which we see frequently, and as advisors we experience this too, is when we ask for any comments or observations we are met with silence. Now, is that because no one has anything to say or because they don’t want to say it in our presence? If only the water cooler could share what it overhears.

Over the years we have had this conversation many times and the answer invariably rests on the leader’s behavior. To build an environment where people are free to share their ideas, opinions, and observations you have to make people feel safe.

Words and actions matter here. Saying you are open is not the same as acting open. If you meet disagreement with an explanation as to why the speaker is wrong, then you shut down future dialogue. If you interrogate and pepper managers with questions every time you meet to discuss an assignment or project, they’re not going to want to meet with you. If you’re more focused on your ego, being right, or not creating extra work for yourself you’re unlikely to develop an environment for safe dialogue.

“Emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence; it is not the triumph of heart over head – it is the unique intersection of both. 

– David Caruso

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the basis for creating a safe environment for people to grow, develop, and excel.

EQ is a Superpower.

Research suggests that EQ alone explains 58% of a leader’s job performance and that 90% percent of top performers are high in EQ. Limeade, an employee experience software company, in their 2019 whitepaper “The Science of Care” noted that when employees feel safe, they are 10 times more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work and 9 times more likely to stay at their company for three or more years.

When conducting an executive search experiences, education, and capabilities begin to look similar across an array of candidates. What differentiates a successful candidate is their EQ and their ability to understand and relate to others and use that to improve outcomes, relationships, and develop others.

So, if you have an open-door policy and feel that you are still not receiving the feedback you would like then begin by focusing inward. Check your EQ.

Categories
Behavior Complexity Leadership

Avoiding Suddenly is really a Story of Fixing Gradually

Eddie Cantor coined the phrase “It takes 20 years to become an overnight success.” His public debut was in 1907, singing in a music hall. Cantor spent a decade touring, refining his craft, developing new material and finally made his Broadway debut in 1918. It wasn’t until 1927, after another decade, that he reached notoriety with Kid Boots in 1923.

Gradually to suddenly applies to successful outcomes as well as devastating outcomes. This is the because the power of compounding affects our upside just as much to as impacts our downside. Seth Godin refers to how incremental daily progress is what actually causes transformation. 

“Showing up, every single day, gaining in strength, organizing for the long haul, building connection, laying track — this subtle but difficult work is how culture changes.”

Seth Godin

The same is true for organizations. Some of the best, well known brands such as McDonald’s, Nike, and Starbucks all had their twenty years of success making.

Even looking at companies out there today; we can see them building their craft, refining their brand, and building customer loyalty. Peloton, the creator of the indoor, connected biking experience, is a great example. They are eight years into their journey and already have over 2.5M members and their members now regularly complete 1M workouts a day. They’re just getting started. For sure, Peloton has seen a bump in both members and workouts as a result of the lockdown(s) in the USA and UK but in April 2020, its debut ‘Live from Home’ ride broke the record for the largest live class. They had over 23,000 participants.

Peloton is looking to the future, aiming for 100 million subscribers, through broadening their product portfolio, expanding their geographic reach, and creating better experiences. People aren’t necessarily going back to the gym and Peloton may well provide an alternative to those looking for a competitive spin class experience at home. We are looking forward to following their success.

What Cantor and Peloton, and so many others, make so blatantly clear is the need for consistency and repetition. Whether it is singing a song or hosting an online class being consistent is really important. I’m sure Cantor sang to a crowd of a few on more than one occasion and Peloton had classes that were attended by only one or two participants. Consistency builds reputation, facilitates feedback, and allows you to refine your message and product. Repetition unlocks your value proposition and makes it available to everyone.

In the same way that gradually can lead to devastating consequences so too can it lead to success. The difference comes down to our values, beliefs, and attitudes. Or culture. It is up to you; success is within your reach. You too can become an overnight success!

Categories
Behavior Leadership People

How to Avoid Cultural Debt

In July 2020 we began a conversation about culture with an assertion that culture is the sum of all of the behaviors in your organization. We also noted that, in general, culture tends to modify our behaviors and yet individual behavior can also shape the culture of your organization. This is why culture is constantly evolving. Good leaders behave in a way that highlights and supports the culture of the organization. Conversely, toxic people diminish your culture.

Subsequently, we have talked with many of you about how individual behaviors influence culture and how culture modifies, or constrains, our behavior. Overwhelmingly, we agree that while culture typically helps to modify our behaviors we each have one or two examples of individuals who have shaped culture. Both positively and negatively.

Back in July we said that culture is often shaped by the worst behaviors that leadership is prepared to tolerate and our conclusion was that managing behaviors is preferable over managing people. 

Building on this point, tolerating poor behaviors actually contributes extensively to cultural debt in organizations. Cultural debt accrues when individuals undermine the values, attitude, and beliefs embedded in your organization. When leaders and employees don’t address these behaviors directly it acts as a tax, or interest payment, on the business. These taxes come due sometime in the future and are often the underlying reason for poor business outcomes. Other impacts can be seen in employee engagement, employee turnover, and business results. 

Allowing poor behavior to continue unchecked means that you may well experience “Hemingway’s Law of Motion: Gradually, then Suddenly”. In his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s character Mike, when asked “how he went bankrupt, responds “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.

Rudiger Dornbusch

This is very much they way cultural debt operates. If we tolerate it and let it go unchecked we create this gradual grinding on the business and then one day we are surprised by the sudden impact of our culture.

All of a sudden, things seem to come to a head.

How to avoid “Suddenly”

  • Have a defined set of values, beliefs, and behaviors.
  • Communicate broadly and consistently connect actions and results to values, beliefs, and behaviors.
  • Immediately address behaviors that are inconsistent with the cultural expectations.

Of course, avoiding suddenly is really a story of fixing gradually. Having a standard by which to measure interactions is useful. Actually taking action when behaviors do not meet expectations is a more important action. Unfortunately, all to often, we see poor behaviors go unchecked and gradually becomes suddenly.

Categories
Behavior Complexity Leadership

Under the surface: Meetings and Complexity

A Google search of ‘how to run an effective meeting’ returns 555M entries in about 0.64 seconds. Hopefully that is sufficient to persuade you that there isn’t a shortage of instruction on how to lead a productive meeting. There are reportedly about 11M meetings a day in the US yet Harvard Business Review in their “Stop the Meeting Madness” article said that 71% of executives interviewed said meetings are unproductive.

It was hardly a surprise therefore that during our research on the topic of Complexity versus Simplicity a consistent theme from every single one of our interviewees was related to “too many meetings” and “unproductive meetings”.

Why then, with so much instruction available and a clear understanding of what good looks like are we still creating interactions that are unproductive?

To be fair, most people don’t attend meetings with the intention of making them unproductive. We approach them optimistically, forgetting quickly about the last time we met and hoping that we will do better this time. Good intentions apparently aren’t sufficient.

What meetings say about your organization

Poor meeting outcomes are signs of three underlying issues:

  1. Lack of engagement – whether this is “it’s not my job to prepare the agenda” or “hey, they’re paying me to sit here” most staff are disengaged during a meeting and most likely before and after as well.
  2. Lack of leadership – leaders need to insist on the appropriate process: objectives, agenda, actions, etc. This of course means that when leaders hold meetings that they lead with the appropriate process too.
  3. Lack of accountability – if it’s OK to go from meeting to meeting with no real process or outcomes then there is clearly an accountability problem. If it’s culturally acceptable to have unproductive interactions quite often this is demonstrated in other parts of the organization.

The opposite of these signals is also true, in that where you have productive interactions, it is normally an indication of a positive culture with an engaged workforce, competent leaders, and acountability. Certainly, given the behavioral components of an effective meeting it isn’t unusual to find pockets of an organization where engagement, leadership, and accountability thrive. A lot comes down to the leadership style of an individual, department, or group.

Meetings continue to be an important way in which we collaborate, share ideas, and gain alignment. Moreover, they provide a human connection, a social connection and a place to further business and personal relationships. When conducted properly they are energizing. When we fail to bring the discipline, structure, and process to the interaction the result is fodder for the next Dilbert cartoon.

Categories
Behavior Complexity Simplicity

Five Ways to Recognize Complexity

Complexity is not particularly difficult to recognize. Most of us know it when we see it. The hard part is putting it into words and being able to discuss it in a way that is productive. The lack of a widely used framework prevents us from really tackling complexity head on.

Our recent research on recognizing, unraveling, and replacing complexity has begun to shine a light on how leaders think about complexity and how they recognize complexity in their organizations. 

During our research we specifically asked executives how they recognize complexity in their organization. At a high level, they all made reference to the lack of speed in decision making and desired outcomes as being evidence of complexity. The analysis of their answers created five indicators that led executives to their conclusion.

  1. Business performance – the ability to achieve results is a signal of a high performing organization. Of course, meeting your objectives does not necessarily mean that the business is not complex. On the other hand, continuously missing deadlines, key performance metrics, or even just your commitments are a signal that complexity is working its way through the organization. 
  2. Ambiguity – The lack of clarity slows down decision making and increases the number of interactions between people and departments. It opens up the opportunity for misunderstanding, interpretation, and misalignment. Creating clarity and building alignment was seen as key to success to many of our interviewees.
  3. Employee engagement – Complexity creates a degree of frustration for employees. When complexity gets in the way employees find it difficult to understand why the organization doesn’t resolve the complexity and how the organization wants them to move forward. Complexity undermines individual employees in terms of understanding, empowerment, and learning.
  4. Meetings – The issue of meetings was raised by almost all of our interviewees. Too many meetings, meetings to prep for meetings, and too many people are involved are felt to be indicative of complexity. Many of us have been in back to back meetings and wondered when am I supposed to get any real work done? In addition, the number of organizational layers in a meeting was called out as creating complexity along with poor meeting discipline, as this creates ambiguity and reduces clarity.
  5. Accountability – The lack of accountability in organizations whether created by roles, organizational structure, or individual behavior adds to complexity. Siloed functions, combined with risk aversion, the fear of being wrong, and knowledge in the hands of the few are all indicators of complexity.

None of these indicators are evidence of complexity when experienced individually. It is when we notice multiple indicators that it becomes more of a signal than just a noise. Even then, the lack of a framework to discuss complexity makes it difficult for people to raise it as an issue, difficult for executives to take action, and difficult for the organization to adopt new ways of working together.

If you notice any of these indicators in your organization, or you have experienced them first-hand, please join the conversation and share your perspective.

Final Thought

As we discussed on LinkedIn recently, complexity is best evidenced by three things: how long it takes to get stuff done, how hard it is to do stuff, and how frustrating it is to be part of the process.

We’d love to hear from you.