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Anyway

by Ron Potter

Anyway by Kent Keith is a small quick read book.  But, in spite of its small size, it is packed full of wisdom.

I’ll list all of the 10 Paradoxical Commandments here so that you can see all of them but then touch on a few that I believe are very powerful.

  1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
    Love Them Anyway
  2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
    Do Good Anyway
  3. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
    Succeed Anyway
  4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
    Do Good Anyway
  5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
    Be Honest and Frank Anyway
  6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest ideas.
    Think Big Anyway
  7. People favor underdogs but follow only the top dogs.
    Fight for a Few Undergood Anyway
  8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
    Build Anyway
  9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
    Help People Anyway
  10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
    Give the World the Best You Have anyway

Love them, do good, succeed, be honest and grand, think big, fight for a few underdogs, build, help, give your best, ANYWAY!

So few of us do it anyway.  There always seem to be obstacles in the way.  I think some of the worst are personal fear and worrying about what others think.  I’ve often heard “what will others think?”  People who are driven by what others think never achieve their own satisfaction, desires, and goals.  As the book says, people always look for ways of stopping you and criticizing you.  Somehow it makes them feel better about themself or superior by stopping your goals and ideas even though they have either non or very small goals themselves.

Let’s take a look at a few of these that I believe have a major impact.

Do Good Anyway

The profound statement in this section is “People who act on their own selfish interior motives commonly accuse others of doing the same thing.”

I can’t say that I’m totally clear of selfish motives.  But I accomplish enough things without ulterior motives that I’m always surprised that other people think I’m only doing things for selfish reasons.

My first reaction is one of total confusion and amazement.  It seems the other person believes I’m doing something entirely for personal reasons when I feel that I’m doing something for the good of the whole or the benefit of another person.  I’m totally confused and taken back.  Then as I think about it, I realize that the person who thinks I’m doing something for selfish reasons runs their whole life on accomplishing things for totally selfish reasons.  Because of this, they assume that everyone does things for selfish reasons and can’t even comprehend when someone is not driven by selfish reasons.

There is no way for them to understand doing something for the good of others because they would never think that way.  Unfortunately, there are too many people in the world who think that way.  It’s good for us to understand who they are, realize that they would never understand our motives, and do good anyway.

Think Big Anyway

Only a few people seem to think big.  One of the reasons is that people don’t think of themselves as being “qualified.”  I’ve gone through three different careers and have never felt qualified.  Even though I had an engineering degree, it mostly taught me about the mathematics of engineering.  I never felt “qualified” to walk structural steel 160 feet in the air.

My second career was developing a software company at the beginning of the microcomputer industry.  I never felt qualified.

My third career was running a consulting business.  I called it TLC (Team Leaders Culture).  I never felt qualified to dispense wisdom in those three areas until a CEO client of mine told me one evening that I was good at all three (building teams by teaching leadership and transferring it down through the culture). But my real value was simply talking with him during our evening chats.  I now felt qualified to simply talk with the client about any topic.

Living the Paradoxical Life

Living the paradoxical life finds great personal meaning in loving and helping others find meaning in their lives.

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BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Management of the Absurd

by Ron Potter

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, next up is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson.

Management of the Absurd

A dictionary definition of the word absurd calls it “wildly unreasonable or illogical.”  I consider myself both highly reasonable and logical so this definition didn’t make sense to me.  Which may be why I read it.  My notes alone for the book totaled up to 15 pages so I guess it caught my interest.

This book is written by Richard Farson.  In the book, he lays out eight parts.

  1. A Different Way of Thinking
  2. The “Technology of” Human Relations
  3. The Paradoxes of Communication
  4. The Politics of Management
  5. Organizational Predicaments
  6. Dilemmas of Change
  7. The Aesthetics of Leadership
  8. Avoiding the Future

I’ll quickly touch on each of the eight parts but I think you’ll notice the absurdity in the titles themselves.

A Different Way of Thinking

The most important discoveries come from taking a fresh look at what people take for granted.  They cannot see it because it is too “obvious” or is what they expect to see or not seen.  Farson calls this the invisible obvious.  I’ve often seen when the “expert” doesn’t pay any attention to the new person on the team or someone who doesn’t have the same “expertise” they do on a particular topic.  The absurdity comes from the fact that the best new creative ideas come from the person who is taking a fresh look at a topic.  This can come from the new person or, if you train yourself well, you can provide that fresh look no matter how much of an “expert” you are on a topic.

The “Technology of” Human Relations

Farson says that “The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.”  In both parenthood and management, it’s not so much what we do as what we are that counts.  It is the ability to meet each situation armed not with a battery of techniques but with an openness that permits a genuine response.

Effective leaders and managers do not regard control as the main concern.  Instead, they approach situations as learners or teachers or sometimes both.

My take from this section is the openness and genuine response that people respect and will be motivated by.  Trying to control or dictate situations will not motivate people.

The Paradoxes of Communication

Paradox is another one of those interesting words.  Webster says that it is “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.”

Listening can also be a disturbing experience.  All of us have strong needs to see the world in certain ways, and when we really listen, so that we understand the other person’s perspective, we risk being changed ourselves.

The best kind of listening comes not from technique but from being genuinely interested in what really matters to the other person.

This is what I have come to think of as listening to understand rather than listening to respond.  Often when we’re listening to the other person, we’re building a list in our head about how were are going to respond.  That’s easier and takes less energy than listening to truly understand what the other person is saying and the belief system they are basing their statement upon.  Listening to understand creates a different set of questions, often forcing the other person to expose their own belief system.

The Politics of Management

Fighting for the rights of special groups has contributed to an erosion of civility.  When people are treated as representatives of special groups, society is fragmented.  The achievement and preservation of the community must become our top priority.  Otherwise, the concept of rights has no meaning.

Organizational Predicaments

Organizations that need help most will benefit from it least.

I experienced this with one client I worked with many years ago.  The head of HR knew that the team needed help and convinced them to employ my services.  After talking with the head of HR, I decided to highly discount my services because I didn’t believe that would have been willing to pay my going fee.  In their mind, they just weren’t in that bad of shape.  After working with the team for almost a year I believed we had learned a lot and gotten much better.  If we were climbing a ten-step ladder, we had just successfully made it up to step one.  However, to the team this was seen as such great strides—they felt like they had reached the top of the ladder.  Because they were so much better than they had been a year ago they no longer had a need for my services.  In their mind, they had achieved everything they could have.

Dilemmas of Change

I’ve talked about the word “dilemma” before.  The foundation is “dilaminent” which meant horns.  Being on the horns of a bull put you in a dilemma.  You’re going to get gored either way.

Our author Farson makes the point that creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit.   Implementing them is a much tougher task.

Farson says that it’s important that we fail.  We need to fail ofter.  If we don’t, it means we’re not testing our limits.

The Aesthetics of Leadership

Farson says, “There are no leaders, there is only leadership.”

One of the great enemies of organizational effectiveness is our stereotypical image of a leader.  We imagine a commanding figure perhaps standing in front of an audience, talking, not listening.  The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of the group.  Leadership is less the property of a person than the property of a group.

Avoiding the Future

Farson closes with “If absurdity is ubiquitous, if the most important goals are lost causes, why do we keep playing this absurd game?  We play it because it is the only game in town.  Of course, it is absurd.  Of course, it is only a game.  But it is a game well worth playing and worth playing well.”

Management of the Absurd is a long thought-provoking book.  I have not done it justice in the blog so I suggest you find a copy, read it, and underline it so that you come away with the greatest learnings for you.

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BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

by Ron Potter

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni seemed like a natural fit after looking at Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.

Lencioni pictures a nice pyramid with the following elements:

  • Absence of Trust (as the base)
  • Fear of Conflict
  • Lack of Commitment
  • Avoidance of Accountability
  • Division of Company Results

Absence of Trust

This comes from the unwillingness to be vulnerable and not genuinely open within the team.  This makes it impossible to build the foundation of trust.

The absence of trust comes from several issues but I believe the main one is a lack of being open about our belief system.  It’s good to hold strong belief systems.  But it’s important to remember that each of us is unique based on history and experiences.  While holding too strong beliefs, it’s also important that we be open to exposing our ideas and beliefs to others on the team for scrutiny and building a shared belief system.

I have three siblings.  We grew up in the same household with the same parents.  However, speaking to each other as adults it became clear that we each have very different memories and belief systems.  Think about that for a minute.  Today’s society assumes that if we’re in a particular category then we all must think alike and have the same belief systems.

Oh, you’re a white person who grew up in rural America, therefore you must have these belief systems!  Not true!  Yes, I am white and, yes, I did grow up in rural America, but as I just explained that even with those similarities I don’t have the same belief system as my siblings who grew up in the same household with the same parents.  Don’t let people (or for that matter yourself) be put into a category just because we have some broad-based backgrounds.

Fear of Conflict

The failure of building trust in a team can be damaging because it sets the tone for fear of conflict.

Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in an unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas.  Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments about people, never allowing their own belief systems to be questioned.

Lack of Commitment

Without healthy conflict, it’s impossible to reach team commitment.  If we lack trust because of fear of conflict, it’s impossible to expose our ideas and beliefs to passionate and open debate.  Team members may sign-up as being committed to an idea or position during the meeting but as soon as they walk out of the room and are questioned by someone who knew they believed something else going into the meeting they may say something like “I don’t necessarily agree with the team goal but I’ll support it until a conflict arises between the team goal and my true beliefs.”  This is not commitment, it’s compliance.  True commitment must be in place for a team to move forward together.

Avoidance of Accountability

This most often happens when team members are fearful to call out other members whose actions don’t align with their supposed commitment.  Not holding each other accountable to the team commitment will quickly break down the trust and commitment of the team.  Being a leadership team means you’ll need to make difficult decisions.  Without the accountability to the difficult decision, you’re not really a team, just a group of people trying to lead on your own belief system without the commitment of a team with you.

Cohesive Teams

Cohesive teams:

  • Trust one another
  • Engage in unfiltered conflict about ideas (not people)
  • Commit to decisions and plans of action
  • Hold each other accountable for the commitment
  • Focus on the achievement of team results
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BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

The Fifth Discipline

by Ron Potter

I retired from business travel at age 70.  I just turned 74 and it seems impossible that it has already been four years.  During my business career, I did a lot of reading.  I read novels and business books.  I never talked too much about the business books I was reading because I assumed that most of the business leaders I was working with were also reading the same books.

I Was Wrong

Those leaders were so engulfed in running and leading their businesses they really didn’t have time for outside reading.  Although some of the books are old, they contain many pearls of wisdom about leading and running a business.  I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing some of the wisdom I picked up from those books.

The Fifth Discipline

This is a book by Peter Senge talks about four skills of great teams then wraps it all together with Integrated Learning, the fifth displine.  He outlines this book into four categories:

  1. Personal Mastery
  2. Mental Models
  3. Building Shared Vision
  4. Team Learning
  5. Integrated Learning
    At the heart of a learning organization is a mind—from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world.
    From seeing problems as caused by someone or something “out there” to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience.

Personal Mastery

Senge talks about people with a high level of personal mastery are people who are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them.

They do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

Mental Models

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations of how we understand the world and take action.  This starts with turning the mirror inward, learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface, and hold them rigorously to scrutiny.  People expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others.

Building Shared Vision

We are hard-pressed to think of any organization that has sustained some measure of greatness in the absence of goals, values, and missions that become deeply shared throughout the organization.

The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance.

Team Learning

Team learning starts with dialogue.  To the Greeks, dialogues meant a free-flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually.

Dialog differs from the more common discussion which has its roots in percussion and concussion.  Literally a heaving of ideas back and forth in a winner-takes-all competition.

Fifth Discipline: Integrated Learning

The fifth discipline is the discipline that integrates the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice.

By enhancing each of the other disciplines, it continually reminds us that the whole can exceed the sum of its parts.

At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems caused by someone or something “out there” to see how our own actions create the problems we experience.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Lost Causes are the Only Ones Worth Fighting For

by Ron Potter

“Whenever I have the arrogance or audacity to believe that I can reform people, I get nowhere. But when I fundamentally recognize that I cannot possibly accomplish those reforms, I can move ahead with a more humble posture and, paradoxically, perhaps then there is a chance that the situation can change. The absurd lesson is to recognize that it is a lost cause and work on it anyway.”

“They make me so mad.”

“I can’t do anything because of them.”

“They’re the reason I haven’t been able to get that promotion.”

Heard these? Spoken these? It’s absurd to think you can change someone. The only person you even have a chance of changing (and sometimes that’s a slim chance) is yourself.

It’s absurd to think that just because you change, the other person will change also. Change anyway! Become a better person. Develop into a better leader, follower, team member. As Farson says, it’s the only game in town. We spend so much energy on wanting, expecting, trying to change other people. “I’ll forgive them when they apologize to me.” Forgiveness is not conditional. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.

Let me close this series on that most delightful small book, “Absurd” with our authors own words:

“If absurdity is ubiquitous, if the most important goals are lost causes, why do we keep playing this absurd game? We play it because it is the only game in town. Of course it is absurd. Of course it is only a game. But it is a game well worth playing – and worth playing well.”

And finally, maybe the best quote in the book “My Advice is Don’t Take My Advice.”

I wouldn’t do any good anyway. My advice won’t change your thinking. Only your own advice will change how you view the world. Advise wisely.

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.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: To Be a Professional One Must be an Amateur

by Ron Potter

Amateur stems from the Latin word amator, which means “lover,” Amateurs do what they do out of love. Love is fundamental to good leadership because leadership is all about caring.

Aristotle spoke of Love as being one of the key elements to the highest level of happiness. His other words included at that level are Trust, Beauty, and Unity. All traits of great teams. Great leaders care for their people. Farson says “Indeed, caring is the basis for community, and the first job of the leader is to build community, a deep feeling of unity, a fellowship. Community is one of the most powerful yet most fragile concepts in the building of organizations.”

I’m afraid the lovers of the arts would never understand or agree that leadership would fall into the same category as a great symphony or painting, but I’ve experienced that kind of joy when great teams really get on a roll. “Management and leadership are high arts. When they are working well, they compare favorably to the other great aesthetic moments of our lives, to symphonies and sunsets.”

Leaders like to think of themselves as professional and indeed they are. “But the amateur performs work out of love, out of sensuous pleasure in the act of accomplishment, in the creation of community, in the bonds of compassion that unite.”

Great teams are built with great leaders based on the highest level of happiness: Truth, Love, Beauty and Unity. Aristotle may not have been thinking about our corporate leadership teams of today when he explained the four levels of happiness. But our nation’s founding fathers knew it was relevant when they declared in our Declaration of Independence that we find life, liberty and the “pursuit of happiness” to be our unalienable Rights.

What will you do to be an amateur today?

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.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Leaders Cannot Be Trained, but They Can Be Educated

by Ron Potter

“Training leads to development of skills and techniques…Education on the other hand, leads not to technique but to information and knowledge, which in the right hands can lead to understanding, even to wisdom. And wisdom leads to humility, compassion, and respect—qualities that are fundamental to effective leadership.”

I like the word develop rather than education but I believe the principle is the same. Early in my consulting career, I wanted to teach leaders everything I had learned. I figured out very quickly that I couldn’t teach anyone anything, all I could do was to help them learn. The only thing they would learn was what they were ready to learn and what they wanted to learn. Beyond that, I couldn’t teach them anything.

New or prospective clients wanted me to provide an outline of my “training program.” I often had a hard time explaining that I didn’t have a program, we would figure out what the leader or team needed at that moment and would learn it together. Farson says is well: “Training makes people more alike. Education, because it involves an examination of one’s personal experience in the light of an encounter with great ideas, tends to make people different from each other. So, the first benefit of education is that the manager becomes unique, independent, the genuine article.” They develop integrity. They lead from who they are. Farson further says: “Managers can gain better self-understanding, learn about their own interpersonal selves, their reactions to and the impact on others, prejudices and blind spots, strengths and weaknesses. A better understanding of themselves and of their feelings gives all managers added trust in their perceptions, reactions, impulses, and instincts.

The following are words that appear in this blog. Go back and read them again with thought and reflection. There’s a lot of buried treasure in these words.

Wisdom leads to:

Examines:

Managers [Leaders] become:

Leaders are not alike. They are unique and whole.

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.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: There are No Leaders, There is Only Leadership

by Ron Potter

As we approach the end of Farson’s book, it really gets meaty as he begins to speak very directly about leadership. He starts this section by saying “One of the great enemies of organizational effectiveness is our stereotypical image of a leader. We imagine a commanding figure perhaps standing in front of an audience, talking, not listening, with an entourage of assistants standing by. The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of the group. Leadership is less the property of a person than the property of a group.”

Organization effectiveness depends on trusting and well function teams. True leaders build great teams. The name of my company is Team Leadership Culture. The order is important. Companies with the stereotypical commanding figure leader don’t often sustain their results. Companies with leaders who build great teams have much greater sustained results. Teams first. But, it takes great team-building leadership to create the teams. Farson reinforces this concept by saying “True leaders are defined by the groups they are serving, and they understand the job as being interdependent with the group. They define their task as evoking the knowledge, skills, and creativity of those who are already with the organization.”

There is so much richness in this section that I can’t possibly cover it in this short blog. I started this series about Management of the Absurd because I thought it was a wonderful little book that was worth the attention. I’ll encourage you to go beyond my blogs and pick up a copy for yourself. It’s worth making the effort.

Farson closes this section with some statements that are near and dear to my heart. “The best leaders are servants of their people. Studies show that those people who are most successful in achieving power did not dominate the group; rather they served it. Humility comes naturally to the best leaders. They seldom take credit themselves but instead give credit to the group with which they have worked. They characteristically make life easier for their employees. They are constantly arranging situations, engineering jobs, smoothing out the processes, removing the barriers. They think about who needs what. They define their job as finding ways of releasing the creative potential that exists within each individual employee and in each group with which they work.”

If you’ve read my book on Leadership Trust Me you’ll know that the first attribute is humility. Farson says that humility comes naturally to the best leaders. I’ll say that the best leaders learn how to keep their ego in check and rely on that natural humility that is sometimes buried deep inside. The world tells us to promote our ego, build your brand, take charge. Humility trumps all those approaches if your desire is to be a great leader.

There are no leaders, only leadership.

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 blogs about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

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Absurd!: People We Think Need Changing are Pretty Good the Way They Are

by Ron Potter

I love this statement by Farson: “Business and industry spend billions of dollars each year to train, encourage, and reward their employees – and to install security systems.”

I remember a statement by Steven Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) that he could always tell the level of trust in an organization by how many rules and systems they had in place. The more the rules, the less the trust. I have also found this to be true. To me, the apex of this is when every member of the top leadership team is expected to know every detail about their operation. It’s stated as an indication of competency but in reality, it’s an indication of lack of trust.

Farson further elaborates by saying, “Situations, more than individuals, are what produce the difficulties, even though it almost always looks as if it is individuals who are fouling up. The better managers try to fix situations, not people, by making structural changes in their organizations.”

In addition to the structural changes, my experience is that building trust must be a regular focus of leadership teams. Like any conditioning, if you’re not constantly working on trust, it slowly erodes. And like any erosion, at some point, the dam breaks and it’s completely washed away.

Farson makes the point that most employees are trying to do the best they can. I agree. People really want to be productive, successful, valued, encouraged, and encouraging. It’s usually the system, structure, leadership, and lack of trust that discourages them from doing their best.

One of his closing statements in this section is, “When we build a team of people, we may, at the outset, wish that its members were different from what they are—we think this one might be too shy, that one too boisterous, another too cerebral, and so on. But once the team is built and begins working together, something pleasantly surprising happens. Instead of continuing to want to change these people, all those characteristics that may have concerned us at the outset become qualities we come to appreciate as simply being part of the way these people are. Absurdly, we find that we really wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Diversity is the key to great teams. But not diversity alone. It’s when the diversity is honored, trusted and appreciated that makes great teams. How much are you working at honoring, trusting and appreciating your teammates?

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.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Organizations Change Most by Surviving Calamities

by Ron Potter

“Like many men and women who have spent their lives struggling and are in many ways better for it, organizations that struggle develop a sense of pulling together, ways of coping that keep them afloat where others sink.”

I was with a group of men the other day and we were going through a set of questions to force us to think and help us grow. One question was “What encouraged you this week?” After we listened to several stories that covered topics of personal, family, work, aging and others, a very clear pattern became visible. Each story of encouragement started with a situation of great pain and struggle. To Farson’s point, great victories and times of plenty are not the first things we think of when asked about encouragement. Encouragement comes through coping with difficulties.

One of the most powerful books I’ve read is The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. The opening sentence in that book is “Life is difficult.” Dr. Peck goes on to explain that avoidance of pain and suffering will lead to mental illness. Life is difficult. We find encouragement dealing with the difficulties.

Farson relates this concept to our corporate world when he says, “Although individuals will acknowledge calamities as important in their development, managers are less likely to cite organizational calamity as the reason for change and growth. Calamities are an embarrassment to management and not likely to be regarded as the key to success.”

Flawless Execution. I’ve heard that concept being promoted in almost every company I work with. Bad idea? Absolutely not. We should always be striving to do our best and execute as quickly and elegantly as we can. Notice that I used the word elegantly, not flawlessly. Take as much friction out of the execution process as you can and operate flawlessly for as long as you can. Increasing your periods of flawless execution is a great goal. But, when you ingrain the idea of continuous flawless execution, you begin to bury the flaws, mistakes, and difficulties that help people and teams grow. You also rob them of encouragement. Encouragement comes through dealing with and overcoming difficulties.

How well do you handle setbacks as a leader? In our work lives, we look at mistakes and setbacks as failures. We need to shift them to learning experiences so that people are encouraged and reduce the number of mistakes and setbacks.

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.

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Absurd!: Planning is an ineffective Way to Bring about Change

by Ron Potter

Farson gets right to the point when he says “Planning is built upon the flawed idea that it is possible to predict the future. Yet the future almost always takes us by surprise. Since there is simply no good way to predict future events, there is no sure way to plan for them.”

Study after study indicates what human beings are terrible at predicting the future. While our weather forecasts are getting better and better with technology, I still haven’t met anyone who trusts the forecast beyond the next couple of hours. I had to laugh this morning when watching Mike and Mike on ESPN. They were broadcasting from an outdoor location and complaining about not being dressed adequately because their weather apps had been wrong. We’re good at predicting rain when we’re getting wet.

Farson reinforces this idea: “By and large, organizations are simply not good at changing themselves. They change more often as a result of invasion from the outside or rebellion from the inside, less so as a result of planning.” It’s easier to plan for change when the barbarians are at the door.

So, do we abandon planning? No, planning is important to make sure everyone is on the same page and doing things as expected. But, we must compliment planning with scenarios. Planning is developing answers. Scenarios are created by asking questions. “What if” questions. What if a new competitor invades our space? What if we no longer have access to that material? What if our customers taste changes? I find that when teams and companies do adequate scenario planning, they’re better able to handle the changes that the future throws at them. When a change occurs, they have the sense that they had talked about that (or some form of it) and therefore are more equipped to handle the change. Farson says “At best, planning becomes a form of anticipatory, strategic thinking – the basis for organizational flexibility and readiness. That may be the most it can offer, but that’s a lot.”

It is a lot. It helps to react more quickly and be less shocked or depressed when the change does occur.

However, one scenario that I seldom see teams tossing on the table is one of great success. What happens if we’re more successful than we anticipate? I remember a TV commercial a few years ago of a small startup company gathering around their newly launched website to see if they get any orders for their new product. As the first order hits there is relief on their face. As ten orders hit smiles appear. As a hundred orders appear cheering breaks out. But as the orders continue to climb into the thousands and tens of thousands, a look of complete horror darkens their faces. They didn’t plan for greater than expected success.

Planning is good but inadequate. Add scenarios. What could (and will) go wrong? What happens if we’re extremely successful? You’ll be better equipped to deal with the future.

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.

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Everything We Try Works, and Nothing Works

by Ron Potter

I can’t tell you how many times in my life someone has asked me “Have you lost some weight?” I used to proudly respond “Yes, I’ve lost 15 pounds recently.” However, after a lifetime of losing that same 15 pounds many times, I’m not so proud of the accomplishment anymore. The difficulty is losing the remaining 25 and keeping it all off. That takes a lifestyle change, not a diet. Ugh!!

Farson, our author says, “People can make lasting changes in themselves only through a commitment to a continuing discipline. For example, crash diets don’t work, but a permanent modification in one’s eating habits do. Visits to spas don’t work but the daily practice of exercising stretching, or weight lifting does.” He goes on to say, “The same is true in management. Lasting change comes only from the adoption of sound management principles that are practiced on a continuing basis. There are no quick fixes.”

How long have you stuck with the commitment to make the necessary changes? Three months? Six months? One year? Many years?

I will usually lose that 15 pounds in three or four months. But where is my weight a year later? That’s the true test.

In my consulting practice, I find that Leadership and Team Building changes follow a similar pattern. Even if the individual or team begin a new healthier approach to leading and teaming, it takes about six months of consistent new behavior before others will give them the benefit of the doubt. If there is a failure or setback any time during that first six months, the reaction by others tends to be “See, same old behavior. They didn’t truly change.” Unfortunately, the six-month clock starts over again and people only seem to grant so many “resets” before they solidify their perception that the changes will never be real.

After six months of consistent new behavior, I find that people will at least grant benefit of doubt. If there is a setback in the second six months’ people seem to say, “They’ve been pretty good at the change so far, let’s see if this is a momentary setback or a failure.” If the new behavior remains through the second six-month period, I find that most people don’t remember the old behavior or that it was ever a problem. The individual or team has accomplished the daily practice of exercising stretching, or weight lifting required to make permanent change.

People and teams can change. I have the data and experience to prove it. But it takes long-term commitment and dedication. Try it, you’ll like it.

This post is a continuation of 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.

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