Ron’s Short Review: Very profound book on the need to change yourself before leading change with others. A great section on the Tyranny of Competency that I’ve found very useful.
I know, I know, enough of the Coronavirus already. We’ve been self-isolated and at this point have no idea what to believe is true and what is hype. What I do know is the interesting journey I’ve been on in relation to Deep Work.
Deep Work
The COVID-19 virus may be offering the opportunity that you’ve been looking for to stand-out in a crowded world. In his book Deep Work by Cal Newton he makes some great points about Deep Work and the lack of it.
One of the things that Cal says is:
To remain valuable in our economy you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind as technology advances.”
“A McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a worker’s time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.
This state of fragmented attention cannot accommodate deep work, which requires long periods of uninterrupted thinking. At the same time, however, modern knowledge workers are not loafing. In fact, they report that they are as busy as ever. What explains the discrepancy? A lot can be explained by another type of effort, which provides a counterpart to the idea of deep work:
Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”
How not to be replaced by a computer
The “easy to replicate” emphasis is my note. Why did I highlight that particular statement? Because when something is easy to replicate it means that a person who makes less wages can easily to the same work. More importantly, a computer can be taught to do easily replicable work. Your job is in danger of becoming computerized if you don’t shift from shallow work to deep work!
How do you counter this danger of being replaced by either cheaper labor or a computer? You learn, practice, and become good at and known for your deep work and deep thinking.
Cultivate Deep Work (Thinking)
You can pick up almost any article, magazine, podcast or post that will tell you how to survive working from home. These sources talk about
- Get started early (don’t let your day get away from you before it starts)
- Act like you’re going to the office (wrong, take advantage of doing things differently)
- Have a dedicated workspace (good idea, but focus on making it a non-interruptable workspace)
- Go to coffee shops, libraries, public lounges (may not be a bad idea but discipline must tag along as well. You can’t go to a coffee shop just so you can enjoy your favorite drink) And during the pandemic, many of these public places are not even available to us.
- Stay off the public media! (great suggestion. Regardless of where your working from, stay off public media.
What you really need is the discipline and focus for deep work.
Living a life of Deep Work and Thought
As Cal Newton closes his book he says
Deep work is way more powerful than most people understand. To leave the distracted masses to join the focused few, I’m arguing, is a transformative experience.
The deep life requires hard work and drastic changes to your habits. For many, there’s a comfort in the artificial busyness of rapid e-mail messaging and social media posturing, while the deep life demands that you leave much of that behind.”
Take advantage of the opportunity being offered
We’re all looking for a silver lining to the isolation caused by our current pandemic. Take advantage of the forced isolation to become a deep worker and deep thinker. It will pay rewards that you can’t even think of at the moment.
Ron’s Short Review: This book changed my habit of getting meaningful work done. I have carved out time every month to isolate myself and my thinking on particular projects. The productivity improvement has been astounding.
I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blog posts about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.
Farson starts this section by identifying C. Northcote Parkinson, author of the famed Parkinson’s law, as the godfather to the idea of management of the absurd! I guess if you were going to be the godfather of something, this would be a fun one. A couple of Parkinson’s famous quotes include:
- Work expands to fill the time available.
- The time a committee takes to discuss an item on the agenda is inversely proportional to the amount of money involved.
Good humor works because it contains a grain or foundation of truth.
He also includes one of my favorite quotes from Henry Kissinger, “The reason university faculty discussions and disputes are so time-consuming and acrimonious is that the stakes are so low.”
Big changes are easier to make than small ones. I’ve seen this at play a few times in my career. Farson is careful to point out that making a big change doesn’t necessarily make it appropriate to the strategy. It’s not just big but it’s big in the right direction. But, given a prudent decision process, it’s often easier to jump right into the big change than move forward with incremental changes.
A couple of places where I’ve observed this working well included the move of a corporate headquarters. There was a reasonable argument for moving to one of the corporations existing facilities and expanding as a cost saving argument. But, part of the reason (a big part) for moving the headquarters was to kick-start a new corporate culture. This had a better chance of happening with a move for everyone to an entirely new environment. Big cost but big impact.
People changes is another place where big changes can create change better than smaller changes. Sometimes it’s a complete reorganization. Sometimes it’s promoting someone who has consistently shown great promise or leadership but may be down the ladder on the org chart or in a completely different role. Probable the best HR professional I have worked with had been the Chief Operations Officer but was called on to fill the void of the HR role when health issues required a change. Bold and unexpected move.
Another people change is dealing with what Robert Quinn in his book Deep Change calls the Tyranny of Competence. This is when an individual is seen to have such a high level of competence in a certain role that no changes are made even when there seem to be numerous character or leadership deficiencies. In the few cases where I’ve worked with managers who made changes (usually asking the person to leave the company) it’s amazing how much competence and creativity came out of the organization that was no longer suppressed by the tyranny.
If a change is needed and has been well deliberated, consider making a bold move rather than incremental. Bold moves often have a better chance of success.
Ron’s Short Review: Quinn thinks and writes very deeply.
Last week we looked at the Top 10 most popular posts from 2020, specifically #10-6. This week, we’ll finish the list by looking at the Top 5.
#5 – Culture: Involvement – Adaptability
Adaptability and Involvement are the two quadrants that make up the left side of the Denison Culture Chart. This side of the chart identifies “Flexible” cultures. Cultures that adapt well. Cultures that respond quickly to customers and markets… continue
#4 – Character vs Competence
Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character… continue
#3 – Being Humble is Being Down to Earth
It doesn’t seem to make much sense, but truly great leaders are humble.
The problem comes with how the word is normally used: Humble is thought to mean shy, retiring, unobtrusive, quiet, unassuming. Being humble can seem weak or, horrors, even borrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggggg… continue
#2 – Opposite of Victim
Some people I’ve worked with have what we might think of as that victim mentality. The Leadership Style instrument I use (LSI from Human Synergistics) measures two areas titled Dependent and Avoidance that collectively describe a style that starts with the assumption that they are the victim in most circumstances… continue
#1 — Performance vs Trust
Those are not my words. Those were spoken by Simon Sinek. If you have not discovered Mr. Sinek, look up his website. I read him and Share Parrish more than any other blog writers out there… continue
And now we’re ready to begin to learn more about teams, leadership, and cultures in 2021. Thanks for reading my blog in 2020.
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve looked at the Project Oxygen findings at Google related to high-performing teams.
This list is from the book Work Rules by Laszlo Bock who is the person at Google that has helped shepherd the project.
The eight findings that help teams perform at their peak include:
- A good coach
- Empowers the team and does not micromanage
- Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
- Is productive and results-oriented
- A good communicator – listens and shares information
- Helps with career development
- Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
- Has key technical skills that help advise the team
In this week’s blog, we’ll cover the last three findings.
6. Helps with career development
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs on this topic, it’s difficult for me to distinguish between Leadership issues and Team issues. This has mainly to do with my Mental Model of Team, Leadership, Culture.
This is not to say that Laszlo’s approach is incorrect, it’s just that I come at it from a different perspective.
In my mind, it’s difficult for a team to help a member in their career development. Teams can certainly contribute but it is often the leader who is in the best position to help with career development. What comes to mind is the lack of career development. I have often been hired as a consultant to work with an individual who has “gone off the rails” in the mind of their leader. The leader will tell me that unless this person deals with the issue, they will no longer have a position at the company. In every case, the individual has held a senior position in the company, often they have been Vice-Presidents.
Shocking News
When possible, I have looked back over several years of performance reviews. It’s always been amazing to me that if the person has worked for the company for any length of time, their annual performance reviews mention the issue I’ve been hired to help them deal with. And yet, when I mention to the individual that unless they correct this issue they will no longer have a position with the company, they’re shocked. They’ll say to me something to the effect that “no one has ever mentioned to me that my continued employment depends on me fixing this problem.”
People Pleasing
Why is there such a disconnect? The person dealing with the issue says “no one” has ever told me it could cost me my job. The person hiring me to tell the person will say, “I’ve put this issue in every performance review for the last several years.” Why the disconnect? I believe it’s because almost everyone wants to be a people pleaser and believe that giving people bad news counters that desire. Managers will say to an employee “you must fix this issue.” They might even say “unless this issue is fixed I can no longer keep you in this job.” But, because people don’t like to give bad news, they’ll almost immediately shift their conversation to tell the person all the things they do well. The bad news never sinks in or is dealt with. Think about that for a minute. My boss says to me: you must fix this issue. It can’t go on like this.
Yet almost immediately they will say: but I love how you handled such and such or you’re great at dealing with certain kinds of problems. What does the employee hear? Blah, blah, blah, but I love how you handle this or how you deal with these issues. You’re doing great!
If there is an issue that must be dealt with
- state the issue
- don’t accept excuses
- don’t move on until the is a plan in place
- make sure there are milestones to fix the issue
- make sure the consequences are clear if the issue is not fixed
People Caring
The way to be people-pleasing is to be people caring. If people feel they are being held accountable with caring and support, they’ll be the happiest.
7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
Once again this sounds more like a leader issue than it is a team issue. However, while a leader should have a clear vision and strategy for the team, it should never be used to dictate to the team a course of action.
Team members need to be bought into the strategy/vision
If team members don’t have a shared strategy or vision, the team will never grow and develop together. I’ve worked with too many teams through the years that didn’t take the time or make the effort to develop a shared strategy/vision. In every case, competition develops as managers try to implement their own vision at the expense of others. It becomes a tremendous waste of resources.
Leaders must have a strategy/vision but leaders must also be humble enough to see beyond their own vision and they must have enough grit to bring the team together around a joint vision.
8. Has key technical skills that help advise the team
This final “Oxygen” is true at both the leader and the team member levels. Trustworthy teams and members must have both character and competence. It never works to have one or the other, there must be both.
Information Technology
From a leadership standpoint, I believe the Information Technology (IT) area of the business is the most vulnerable. The IT portion of the business is:
- Complicated
- Fast-moving/changing
- Many faceted
I’ve seen too many IT leaders that fall short on one or all of these issues. When that happens, the IT department can buffalo the leader.
Tyranny of Competence
With team members, I have more often seen what Robert Quinn calls the “Tyranny of Competence” in his book, Deep Change. This happens when an individual has so much competence in a given area that it is felt the competency must be protected at all costs and therefore, the individual may have a lack of character and there are no consequences.
Character and Competence must be present for teams to thrive.
Project Oxygen
This covers the eight elements found to be meaningful in building great teams. Think about them. Incorporate them. Discuss them. The more you can build these into your own makeup or a team’s makeup, the more success and satisfaction you’ll experience in life.
Amy Cuddy has written at least three very profound books:
- When They Trust You, They Hear You: A Modern Guide for Speaking to Any Audience
- Leadership Presence – Part of HBR Emotional Intelligence Series (14 Books)
- Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
Amy says the first two things people want to know when they first meet you are:
- Can I trust this person?
- Can I respect this person?
Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively.
Warmth is not measured on corporate evaluations
I often run an experiment with teams where half the team gets a list of characteristics found in a fictitious person. The other half of the team gets a similar list of characteristics on another fictitious person.
Both lists contain words such as:
- Intelligent
- Skillful
- Industrious
- Determined
- Practical
- As well as a few other descriptions
There is one (and only one) difference in the two lists:
- One list contains the word “Warm”
- The other list contains the word “Cold”
I then have the whole team vote on characteristics such as:
- generous vs. ungenerous
- unhappy vs. happy
- reliable vs. unreliable
- frivolous vs. serious
- imaginative vs. hardheaded
- dishonest vs. honest
- There are 16 total comparisons
(Remember that the lists are identical except for the words warm and cold.)
The group that has the word “warm” in their descriptor attributes the more positive characteristic to their fictitious person.
The group with the word “cold” in their descriptor attributes the more negative characteristic to their fictitious person.
Is a person warm or cold? This one factor will set our expectations for that person and can be the difference of our trust factor! Be a warm person. It pays rewards.
Respect or Competence
In the book, Speed of Trust, author Stephen M. R. Covey lists four characteristics that need to be present before we trust someone. This list has often helped my consulting when there is obvious (at least to me) mistrust on a team. However, when I ask the team if they trust each other, the answers are almost always a positive yes.
But when I break down trust to this subset of characteristics, there is usually one where people have a concern. “Yes I trust the person but….”
The list is
- Integrity – Is the person always the same person no matter who they are talking with or what the circumstances are?
- Intent – This one usually revolves around the issue of what is best for the team or company vs. what is best for the individual. Is their intent focused on the best for others or the best for themselves?
- Capabilities – The person may be sharp and accomplished but do they have the experiences necessary to work through the situation they face? Are they capable?
- Results – Has the person actually produced positive results.? Often people talk a good line or more likely have a list of reasons why something didn’t work. Did they actually produce results in spite of the difficulties they faced?
When you break down the question of trust into these four components, it’s easier to deal with and identify.
Trust/Respect
Is trust more important than competency? Or is competency the supreme measure of success and reliability? If you think competency is the superior measurement, you need to read a chapter from Deep Change by Robert Quinn. The chapter is titled “Tyranny of Competence”.
Amy Cuddy says “But while competence is highly valued, it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire”.
Be trustworthy first! It’s the only way your competency will have value.
We’re recapping some of the most popular posts of 2017. Today we dig into posts 5 through 1.
5. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Attending and Perceiving: Sensing vs iNtuition – Part II
Most successful business people have figured out that they need to balance this function. This balancing act most often takes the form of a trusted partner, colleague or consultant.
Continue Reading…
4. Being Humble is Being Down to Earth
It doesn’t seem to make much sense, but truly great leaders are humble.
The problem comes with how the word is normally used: Humble is thought to mean shy, retiring, unobtrusive, quiet, unassuming. Being humble can seem weak or, horrors, even borrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggggg.
What does it really mean to embrace humility?
Humility is derived from the Latin word humus, meaning “ground.” One way to describe truly humble leaders is that they have their feet on the ground.
3. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Judging vs Perceiving
I have set up the following two signs in a team meeting:
- I have to get my work done before I can play.
- I can play anytime
I then ask the team to position themselves along the spectrum between those two signs. Once positioned it almost always correlates between their Judging vs Perceiving preference on this scale.
2. Absurd!: The More We Communicate, The Less We Communicate
People don’t want more information; they want more meaning. What does this mean? How should we interpret these numbers? Give us meaning. Tell us stories. Help us understand.
1. Character vs. Competence
Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character. They assume the character flaws would never cause enough negative issues to overcome the positive impact of being really good at their job.
Don’t ever think that. The destruction caused by lack of character is always greater than the competency provided.
Source: contemplativechristian, Creative Commons
Tyranny of Competence
Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character. They assume the character flaws would never cause enough negative issues to overcome the positive impact of being really good at their job.
Don’t ever think that. The destruction caused by lack of character is always greater than the competency provided.
Steven Covey gave us the image of leadership, being equal parts character and competency. You can be the most competent person ever, but without good character, you’ll never become a great leader. Conversely, you can be a person of utmost integrity and character, but without being competent at what you do, you’re no longer trustworthy and therefore will never make a trusted leader.
I’ve always been a little surprised at the lack of visibility around this issue. I’ve often thought that maybe I’m more tuned into the destructive aftermath of this character issue than the executives I work with. And quite honestly, the measurement systems of our corporate environments tend to be more competency based than character based.
Rock Stars of Competency
Then one morning I experienced a little incident that added some clarity. Because of a heart operation and subsequent complicating factors, I had been living in a hospital environment. Beyond dealing with my own personal health issues, the thing that occupied me the most was observing the culture of an operating hospital from a patient’s (customer’s) point of view.
Now a hospital is certainly competency-based. Without a doubt, I want the most competent surgeon handling my heart so I can get healthy. But it’s amazing that even at this “rock star” level of medicine, how much of a difference character makes. From the patient’s point of view, the doctors I consider the best are the ones that treat me as a human being. I have been very blessed with great doctors but what’s even more interesting is how the hospital staff reacts to these surgeons.
The high character surgeon treats the staff with respect and relates to them as human beings, even as simple as using their name. The entire staff is very eager to provide to the patient whatever the doctor thinks necessary for the health and well-being of the patient. However, when the doctor forgets to exhibit that good character to the staff, the patient actually suffers. The staff goes back to a checklist approach. It’s clear that the overall care of the patient diminishes when the providing doctor doesn’t demonstrate good character, but assumes it is only great competency that gets the job done.
Character Based Environments
Below the doctors are the nurses and the rest of the caring staff. Down here, it’s character that makes the difference. Without exception these nurses and “techs” (one nurse and one tech assigned to each patient) are there to help you get well. There are still competence issues of taking “values”—pressure, temperature, weight, etc. and administering meds but for the most part they mainly want to know how you’re doing and what they can do to make your stay more comfortable. The most precious commodity is sleep. And while the timing of the system conspires against you, many of the nurses and techs will delay almost anything if they think it will allow you to sleep just a little bit longer. Except Alex!
Don’t Be Like Alex
Alex is a young, energetic tech who was new to me until one morning. At 5:00a.m. (one of the few times during the day that I could actually fall into a deep sleep) Alex bounded into my room, turned on the lights, and asked if he can check my weight. My answer was, “No!” Undaunted, Alex wheels in the scale (light still on) and offers to help me out of bed. It’s obvious he’s not going to leave so I slowly bring myself to consciousness, drag myself out of bed, stand on the scale and satisfy Alex that he’s done his job. He even encourages me to get some sleep as he departs with his poundage figures in hand.
My reaction to Alex’s overall performance?
Competent? Yes.
Showed character? No.
Overall, rude, obtrusive, failure as a tech.
In competency based environments, lack of character is always destructive but may be under the radar. In character based environments, lack of character is seen as complete failure.
The message in all of this is balance, balance, balance.
Regardless of which aspect is more valued in each environment the best leaders, the most cherished and valued people are the ones with both great competencies and the same time exhibit the greatest of character. They are respectful and treat others with great dignity.
If you yearn for success, be the best you can be and at the same time, care and respect those around you for who they are.
In my previous blog on the book “American Icon” by Bryce Hoffman, I commented on the leadership style exhibited by Alan Mulally as he led the Ford Motor Company through some of their darkest days. He exhibited two key characteristics, Humility and Endurance that are hallmarks of great leadership and may have helped him save Ford.
Photo credit: John Spooner, Creative Commons
Dedication to Teamwork
But it may have been his dedication to teamwork that was equally important to the survival of Ford. The auto industry and Ford in particular were not pillars of teamwork at the top. While I’ve worked with many great teams within the auto companies, the warring chiefdoms of the larger corporation often seemed to be the culture de jour.
Self-Selection
When Mulally first arrived in Detroit, both the existing leadership team and the outside community (mainly the press) assumed there would be a clean sweep as Alan brought in his trusted team members from his years at Boeing. But, Mulally surprised them all when he answered one of the first reporters that his team was already in place, meaning the previous team members of Bill Ford’s team. He commented with a very particular statement that I have shared with many of the leaders that I’ve worked with through the years. Build the right vision and culture and the people who don’t belong there and won’t work out in the end will self-select out. Once they realize that you, as a new leader, are truly taking the team or company in a new direction and you endure through all of the setbacks, they’ll either get on board (as Mark Fields did in the book and is now the current CEO of Ford) or they’ll realize they don’t belong and figure out how to save face and move on.
The Tyranny of Competence
This may be the more difficult issue to deal with when creating great teams. The Tyranny of Competence is a title Chapter in Robert Quinn’s book Deep Change. Quinn states that “It is fairly easy to find an extraordinarily competent person who plays a particularly powerful role in the organization.” “The person often argues, ‘The only thing that should matter is how well someone does the job.’” In Mulally’s case, it happened to be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This was not only a powerful role but a critical role. Hoffman writes of the CFO “[He] had devoted his life to Ford and worked as hard or harder than anyone else in the building to save it. But he was dividing the company at a time when it needed to be united like never before. He had to go.”
The Darkest Moment
In this darkest moment, when you would think that you need all of the hard working competency you can find, Mulally decided that teamwork was more important than experience and hardworking competency. And he acted. Mulally, was not looking for blind loyalty, he had demonstrated time and time again that he preferred to hear contrary opinions and radical ideas. But the CFO was making decisions on his own that were contrary to the team decisions and enforcing them in spite of where the team and Mulally thought they should be going. This was not going to work. Teamwork was more crucial in the darkest of days.
What have you seen or how hard have you worked at really building team? A lot gets written about teamwork in companies. What are you actually experiencing? Share some stories with us.
Why is humility such a key quality on a leader’s personal resume?
For starters, being humble prevents most of the mistakes that cripple a person who is proud. Consider Henry Ford, for example.
He was an icon of American industry. His revolutionary ideas about manufacturing and design put him near the top of anyone’s list of great American businessmen. Ford carried out his vision with the Model T. The car literally changed the face of America and the priorities of American citizens. By 1914, Henry Ford’s factories built nearly 50 percent of all the cars sold in the United States. Now that’s market share!
There was, however, a chink in Henry’s armor.
He was so proud of his Model T that he never wanted it to be changed or improved. One day, as the story goes, a group of his best engineers presented him with a new automobile design prototype. Ford became so angry that he pulled the doors right off the prototype and destroyed it with his bare hands.
Not until 1927 was Henry Ford willing to change. Grudgingly, he allowed the Ford Motor Company to introduce the Model A. By that time, the company was well behind its competitors in design and technical advances. Ford’s market share had plummeted to 28 percent by 1931.
Image Source: Zeetz Jones, Creative Commons
Henry Ford just could not let go. He had created something, and he was unable to imagine that his “baby” could be improved. Nobody could help him, and he was unwilling to stretch himself to learn how he could make his product better or different.
Consequently, he lost his executives, created havoc in his family, and damaged the company’s market share beyond repair.
Henry Ford’s leadership approach probably resembled what some now refer to as the hero-leader. Many organizations look to a hero-leader to deliver the power, charisma, ideas, and direction necessary to ensure a company’s success. In many cases, the hero-leader does create blips in performance. For a time the dynamic chief is seen as a savior of the organization.
For a time.
In an interview with Fast Company magazine, Peter Senge said,
Deep change comes only through real personal growth—through learning and unlearning. This is the kind of generative work that most executives are precluded from doing by the mechanical mind-set and by the cult of the hero-leader.
Senge points out that the hero-leader approach is a pattern that makes it easier for companies to not change or move forward. The hero-leader weakens the organization and in many ways keeps it at an infant stage, very dependent upon the hero-leader’s creativity and ideas. The people around the leader do not seek or promote change because the hero-leader is not open to new ideas (or ideas that he or she did not originate).
Under the hero-leader, people tend to acquiesce rather than work together as a team with a free exchange of ideas. The hero-leader may take the company in a new direction, but the troops within the organization only go along because it is a mandated change. This type of change is superficial at best.
Despite all of Henry Ford’s incredible qualities, it sounds as if he was a proud rather than a humble leader. In his case, the Bible proverb certainly was true: “Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
Is your pride getting in the way of doing something you’ll really be proud of? Or, often easier to answer, do you see someone else who could do great things if they would just let go of their pride? Share some stories with us.
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