The Pace of Change

One of the best ongoing online series on leadership and business is the New York Times fantastic 'Corner Office' interviews conducted by Adam Bryant. In each piece, Bryant talks with a company CEO about business philosophy, their thoughts around people management, and often, and of particular interest to HR and recruiting professionals, the hiring and interview process.

In the most recent installment, Bryant talked with Harry West, CEO of the innovation design firm Continuum, and while Mr. West had some interesting things to share about interviewing and hiring -  'I ask a few very basic questions. “What is it you want to do? What is it that you’re good at? What is it that you’re not good at? Tell me about what you’ve done.”, the most intriguing part of the Corner Office piece was an observation West made about change, and specifically the speed in which change can be effected inside an organization. 

Here's the passage from the Times article:

Pacing is really important in an organization. When you’re leading, you’re generally trying to lead change, and I think it was Roy Amara, who said about technology, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” And I think the same applies to change within an organization.

Let that sink in for a second, we overestimate the impact of a (technology) change in the short run, and underestimate it in the long run. I think with the relentless, powered by social networks, 24/7 news and information cycle that can often lead to even more hype and therefore expecations about new technologies, that managing expectations and understanding an organization's ability to navigate through any significant change is more important than ever. But don't take my word for it, check what CEO West has learned about the pace of change in his career:

And so I’ve learned that it’s critical to think carefully about the pace of change, and it’s something that I’ve learned the hard way. It’s important to manage that carefully, because it’s not just about the pace of change that certain people in the company can manage.

It’s about the pace of change that the company as a whole can manage. You can push and push and nothing seems to happen, and then suddenly it takes off and you’re sort of running to catch up.

Look, we all know that change management is critical in any major process, strategy, or technology program or implementation. But I think it is incredibly easy to fail to have the proper appreciation and empathy for those whose worlds our great ideas and plans are going to impact. In other words, it often isn't about your ability to handle change, ambiguity, or stress  - it's about everyone else's too.

Neither West, nor I are advocating standing still, or waiting for the perfect conditions to effect change, but an occasional reminder that the pace of change might be equally important as the nature of the change is a good one.

Telling People What to Do

There are some people that really like giving out orders, and some, (certainly fewer), that like being told what to do. But I suspect the majority of us fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. As leaders or parents or when acting in any role that puts us in a position of authority, we want to set some basic direction or ground rules, and then sit back happily and watch our charges carry out their duties and tasks without much meddling or the need for intervention and correction.Click image for larger size

Face it, how many times do you have to tell your kids to clean up their room or to stop texting at dinner before it gets really tedious? And in the workplace it can get very tiresome to have to keep reminding Peter to include the cover sheets on the TPS reports. I mean come on, when is he going to finally get it? Yep, constantly telling people what to do, and the flip side, hearing again and again what you need to do, (or what you need to stop doing), both are dreary, monotonous, and at times soul-crushing.

What's the solution? I really don't have one except to say that no matter what side of the ledger you find yourself on, the constant repetition can only mean two things. One, the message simply isn't getting across. Or two, the message is clearly understood, and the person that needs to make the change just doesn't have the same agenda as the order-giver. I suppose there is a third scenario, where there is a valid moral or ethical objection to compliance, but that one is kind of rare and usually can be debunked on closer examination. I have not yet acceded to my 11 year-olds 'moral' objections to going to bed.

Click image for larger sizeSo if you find yourself as a crossroads with someone or something that simply won't see things your way, perhaps taking a page from the worlds of marketing or advertising is the best way forward. Take a look at the images that accompany this post. They are taken from the Library of Congress archives of Works Progress Administration posters from the late 1930s and early 1940s. An era known formally as the Great Depression, and less formally as 'absolute crap'. 

Both of these posters, and many of the others in the archive, are attempts to 'tell people what to do' in a time where for most people, pretty much the last thing they wanted to hear was a lecture or an admonition from anyone. Mostly, they just wanted to find work, or hang on to the jobs they had, and find some way to feel better about things. And as the 40s started, the likelihood of entering into World War II was pretty high. Certainly, a country going pretty much straight from economic depression to World War II in short order pretty much created an environment of stress, worry, and real fear about both the present and the future.

So why are these WPA posters so cool and kind of instructive? Well, for one reason they are really cool to look at. They are extremely well designed and artistic, as the WPA had access to and the availability of many top notch designers and artists who had found the normal markets for their work pretty thin during the depression. And secondly, mainly due to the constraints of the medium, they are simple and direct. 'Be Careful', and 'Visit The Zoo'. That's it. That is the entire message. But the design of the posters makes us want to look at them a little longer, to maybe be a little more open to the message, and perhaps, just a tiny bit, be more receptive to the pitch, to being told what to do.

I think it can be really easy to forget that once the message keeps repeating it often gets tuned out or just blends into the white noise.  But making it interesting, making it compelling, making it into art - well if you can do that you might have a chance at being heard.

Now if I can just photoshop 'Clean your room' on the Zoo poster and show it to the kid.

Have a Great Weekend!

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy - Part VI

Now that our long national nightmare, (the NBA labor impasse that resulted in almost a two-month delay in the start of the 2012 NBA season), is over, and a hectic, condensed schedule of 66 games is in full swing, it was only a matter of time before the next installment in the popular 'Jeff Van Gundy' series.JVG

Since it has been some time since the last dispatch in the JVG catalog, perhaps a brief re-set is in order.

Jeff Van Gundy, (JVG), is a former head coach of the NBA's New York Knicks and Houston Rockets. After leaving coaching in 2007, he embarked on what has been a successful career as a broadcaster, providing expert analysis for ESPN's NBA telecasts. JVG excels as an analyst not only for his basketball expertise, but for his good nature, wry humor, and keen insight into motivation, leadership, team dynamics - exactly the kinds of challenges faced every day in the corporate world. 

I have been watching NBA games forever, and chronicling just some of the Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy here on the blog for a while. You can catch up on the previous installments in the series if you wish here -  (Parts I, II, III, IV, and V).

So for this latest installment of the 'Wisdom of JVG' series, I call your attention to an observation JVG made in this week's Dallas Mavericks v. Boston Celtics game, a sloppy, uneven contest eventually won by Dallas. As the game wore on, and the poor play from what seemed like two tired teams continued, JVG offered this insight when talking about the Celtics' veteran star Ray Allen, a player known for a high work rate and dedication to the game.

Look at Ray Allen work. He has natural energy. No one has to 'motivate' him to run hard or to cut to the basket with force and purpose. He doesn't need to be prodded or pushed to give that level of effort. He just does it every night. 

_

JVG went on to talk about Allen's teammate Kevin Garnett in similar terms. But the larger point was that when the star players, the leaders, the team members that others look up to, set an example of pride, discipline, and dedication that it creates an environment where an expectation or a standard is set that in order to fit in, everyone else, who might not have all the physical gifts of Allen or Garnett have to follow. 

Organizations talk a lot about leadership development, building leadership pipelines, and the importance of leadership in the modern age. And while formal leadership capability is certainly important, I wonder if informal, in the trenches, and demonstrated by example leadership from those key players on the team that don't really have formal leadership titles or responsibility is equally important.

It's fantastic when the organization has an inspirational, charismatic, and effective leader at the top of the org chart. But it might be more important and influential in the long run to have more quiet leaders sprinkled throughout the organization that have that natural energy, setting the example for the rest of the team to follow.

For me, I'm just glad the NBA is back so I can try and mine for more 'JVG' posts!

Have a great weekend!

The Wisdom of Crowds?

Although not a Broadway fan, (I think the last Broadway show I actually saw was 'Showboat', you know the 'Ol Man River one), I am a big comics fan, and such have been casually following the saga of the 'Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark' show, a Broadway musical adaptation of Marvel Comics most famous hero.

You may have heard something about this show, even if you are not a Broadway fan - the backstory is quite interesting. It's filled with mega-stars from U2 (Bono and The Edge), writing the music, a series of mishaps and injuries to several actors during preview performances, middling to scathing reviews from audiences and critics, and finally a major re-architecting of the show and the replacement of the show's original director Julie Taymor.

Ms. Taymor's ouster as the director and leader of the production not only says as much about her creative vision, (or lack thereof I suppose), as it does about the role and influence that audiences have over the creative process and results of that process, and how these audience voices are amplified in the social media age.

Last week Ms. Taymor offered a couple of very interesting observations about the show and her dismissal, and I think these insights might also have more broad implications for leaders and creatives of all stripes. 

First - on the immediate feedback loop of social media:

"It's a new time," she said. "Twitter and Facebook and blogging just trump you. It's incredibly difficult to be under a shot-glass and a microscope like that. When you’re trying to break new ground, the immediate answers that audiences give are never going to be good.”

Second - on succumbing to the pressure of social feedback:

"There's always something people don't like. It’s very scary if people are going more towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show. Shakespeare would have been appalled."

Getting past the notion that Ms. Taymor sort of compared a musical about a comic book hero to Shakespeare, I think she does make some important points, or at least raises some good questions. It has never been easier for fans, customers, citizens, employees, candidates - any engaged group of people to gather and wield significant influence over organizations, institutions, and leaders. We have seen this play out time and time again in the corporate world, particularly in the areas of branding and logo re-design.

But, as Ms. Taymor suggests, is that always a good thing? As a leader, or anyone that is involved in creation of products, services, processes, art, literature, whatever - when is staying true to your vision and version of the truth and what you believe in more important than bending to the will of the crowd? Sure, Taymor's 'Spider-Man' may have been a bad show, but is it at all possible that the more accessible, simpler version that now exists is artistically at least, inferior to her creation and vision?

Shakespeare probably did not run 'Romeo and Juliet' by a focus group and he certainly did not monitor the buzz on Twitter.

The question today is do we always have to listen to all the shouting online?

Or can we believe in our creativity, decision making, and direction despite some heat on the backchannel?

The Corner Office and Curiosity

This past week on my travels to and from the Lumesse Customer Conference in Austin, Texas, and the MRA HR Event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (with an unexpected night in a motel near the Detroit airport tossed in for good measure), I had the chance to catch up on some reading I had been meaning to get to.

I managed to make it through the entire contents of 'The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOS on How To Lead and Succeed', by Adam Bryant; and about the first half of 'Idea Man', Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen's memoir.

Both books are interesting and entertaining reads. In 'The Corner Office' Adam Bryant, the author of the New York Times's series of "Corner Office" columns, frames and shares lessons in achieving success, leadership,and management, taken from his interviews with over 70 CEOs in firms of all sizes, industries and geographies. 'Idea Man' by Paul Allen, is a much more personal story about Allen, his childhood, the early days of Microsoft, and Allen's later ventures after leaving the company he co-founded with Bill Gates.

I started 'Idea Man' after finishing 'The Corner Office', and almost immediately the most imporant similarity between the two books, and the stories being shared in each, was the idea of the importance of curiousity. Bryant devotes the entire first chapter to his book to the concept of 'Passionate Curiosity', which is filled with different CEOs talking about how curiosity, an almost insatiable need to seek, learn, and understand more about the world, macro-trends, culture, and even hobbies like sports or cooking, is seen as a common trait and predictor of executive success.

Paul Allen, in describing his earliest experiments with first generation computing technology and programming languages paints a clear portrait of a really energetic and bright mind, not necessarily the most intelligent kid in the class, but one that had a relentless curiosity to figure out how machines and computers worked, and how this understanding could be applied to solve new problems and create new software. That pursuit of understanding, driven by his personal form of 'passionate curiousity', is the foundation for the later success that Allen, Gates and the rest of Microsoft enjoyed later in his career.

Neither author makes the case that 'passionate curiosity' alone is enough to ensure success; but both make it really clear that a deep desire to seek, explore, and understand more than the immediate, the day-to-day, and the 'what's in my job description' set of tasks and topics is an essential part of both personal and organizational achievement.

In 'The Corner Office', Bryant quotes Disney CEO Robert Iger:

"I love curiosity, particularly in our business - being curious about the world, but also being curious about your business, new business models, new technology. If you are not curious about technology and its potential on your life, then you'll have no clue what its impact might be on someone else's life."

David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands offers this observation:

"(the best leaders) want to get better. Are they continually trying to better themselves? Are they looking outside for ideas that will help them grow the business? They soak up everything they can possibly soak up so that they can become the best leaders they can be."

Curiosity. Exploration. Interest.  Looking outside your typical environment and viewing and questioning the world using a different set of eyes.

All really important. All kind of hard.

But a trait seen by Bryant in his discussions with 70 CEOs, and lived by Allen, one of the most successful innovators ever, that is really essential to make a mark on your organization, your profession, and possibly the world.

Have a great weekend!