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Absurd!

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

by Ron Potter May 8, 2017

“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!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

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

by Ron Potter April 24, 2017

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?

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

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

by Ron Potter April 10, 2017

“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.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

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

by Ron Potter March 27, 2017

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!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

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

by Ron Potter March 13, 2017

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?

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Organizations Change Most by Surviving Calamities

by Ron Potter February 27, 2017

“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.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

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

by Ron Potter February 20, 2017

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.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Everything We Try Works, and Nothing Works

by Ron Potter February 13, 2017

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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Absurd!: We Want Not What We are Missing, but More of What We Already Have

by Ron Potter February 6, 2017

Feedback. That word alone strikes fear in some and appreciation in others. The word was originally coined during the early days of rocketry. When the rocket scientist pioneers were trying to figure out how to design, build and fly rockets, they quickly found that they could generate enough thrust to make the rockets fly. What they couldn’t do was hit a target. They had to spend more time and brain power developing what they termed “feedback systems” so they could adjust the thrusters to hit the desired target.

If you look around any corporate team, thrust is not usually the problem. There is enough education, experience and drive to accomplish almost any goal. The problem is aligning all of that thrust to hit the desired target. Feedback is needed.

So why do we resist or ignore feedback? Farson tells us “One study shows that people wanted for themselves not something that was missing in them and that others might think important to them to have – but more of what was already their special attribute. When people described what they wanted for themselves, they seldom mentioned qualities that others would later suggest were missing from their personality or performance.”

Leadership teams are filled with people who have been good at what they do. It’s their expertise, knowledge, and productivity that has rewarded them through the years and brought them to a leadership role. The problem is that leadership requires trust, influence, and alignment of goals. Farson puts it this way “The difficulty for all of us is that our absorption with what we do well may blind us to what will enable us to do even better. The particular challenge for managers is to remain mindful that organizations can set themselves up for trouble when they rely solely on the things they are already doing well and fail to see what they really need to do.”

We seldom need feedback on our technical skills or expertise. We need feedback to get better at leadership which includes building trust, aligning goals and creating a commitment to the overall good of the team and company.

Feedback is required to hit a target. What’s your target? Are you soliciting the needed feedback?

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Absurd!: We Think We Want Creativity or Change, but We Really Don’t

by Ron Potter January 30, 2017

Clients often ask me to come in and help them with their creativity. The market place is changing, new more nimble competitors are popping up. Their clients are asking for a more creative approach (although that is usually a code word for reducing prices). The leaders are asking every team to think and act more creatively.

However, my first words to the team under the creative pressure is that your leaders are using the word “creative” but they don’t really want that. They’ll resist your ideas every time. What they are really asking is to be more innovative. I’ll go into the difference of those words in a minute but it needs to be said here that the real need may indeed be creativity, it’s just that the leaders will still resist anything beyond innovation.

Creativity and Innovation: What’s the Difference?

I first learned about the difference between these words from Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan in their book Execution. Creativity is blue sky, it’s outside the normal boundaries, it’s breaking the rules. Innovation is executing what you do well faster than the competition. Regardless of the words used, corporate leaders are usually (not always) looking for better, faster execution, not untried, unproven, rule-breaking creativity.

The “Problem” with Creativity

Our author Farson says “Creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit. To implement an idea is a tougher task. The fundamental problem with creativity is that every new idea requires the manager and the workforce to undergo significant change. Real creativity always violates the rules. That is why it is so unmanageable and that is why, in most organizations, when we say we desire creativity we really mean manageable creativity. We don’t mean raw, dramatic, radical creativity that requires us to change.”

I think manageable creativity is what Bossidy and Charan were talking about when they defined innovation. The challenge for all corporate leaders is to be clear about what is needed and what the team is being asked to accomplish. If it’s innovation, then clearly define what part of the system you’re trying to simplify and execute faster. If it’s true creativity, then the leaders must start thinking more creatively themselves. And creativity always requires letting go of control. That’s a tough one for corporate leaders.

History has shown us that true creativity usually happens in small autonomous groups. Think skunk works. Farson says “When a company wants to stimulate creativity, it may need to organize quite differently. Companies have learned that scale is the enemy of creativity and are finding ways to break into smaller more flexible units.”

Skunkworks require a great deal of risk tolerance. But the alternative may be fatal. If you truly need creativity to survive, take the risk.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Big Changes are Easier to Make Than Small Ones

by Ron Potter January 16, 2017

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.

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Absurd!: The Better Things Are, the Worse They Feel

by Ron Potter January 9, 2017

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

Most of us know Abraham Maslow from his Hierarchy of Needs. However, I’ve enjoyed his work called Eupsychian Management: The attitude of self-actualizing people to duty, work, mission, etc. This was written when he was working as a management consultant.

Farson has also picked up on this work as he devotes much of this chapter to Maslow’s concepts around the meaning of complaining. Here’s what Farson learned from Maslow:

Abraham Maslow advised managers to listen not for the presence or absence of complaints, but rather to what people were complaining about. Here he unpacks a hierarchy of needs, of sorts, in an organization:

Least healthy organizations

You can expect to hear low-order grumbles – complaints about working conditions, about what he called “deficiency needs.” (“It’s too hot in here.”, “I don’t get paid enough.”, etc.)

Healthier organizations

Healthier organizations would have high-order grumbles – complaints that extend beyond the self to more altruistic concerns: “Did you hear what happened to the people over in Plant Two? They really got cheated.” Or “We need better safety standard around here.”

Very healthy organization

A healthy organization would have “metagrumples” – complaints having to do with needs for self-actualization: “I don’t feel that my talents are being utilized.” Or, “I don’t feel that I’m in on things enough around here.”

There is the absurdity. Only in an organization where people are in on things and where their talents are being utilized would it occur to someone to complain about those issues.

Absurd as it seems, the way to judge your effectiveness is to assess the quality of the discontent you engender, the ability to produce movement from low-order to high-order discontent.

The paradox is that improvement in human affairs leads not to satisfaction but to discontent, albeit a higher-order discontent than might have existed before. Why is this phenomenon important to understand? Because the motivation for continuing change and growth comes from the development of higher-quality discontent, then moving on to the solution of more important issues.

This observation by Maslow and Farson has served me well many times in my consulting career. Many times, the leaders I work with just don’t seem to understand why people are still complaining after periods of great success for both the individuals and the company. When I ask them the question “What are they complaining about?” We begin to see tremendous growth taking place because people are now complaining about much higher-level needs.

People will always find something to complain about. They’re on a journey and they haven’t arrived yet. It starts at a very young age when you kids start asking “Are we there yet?” twenty minutes after your journey began.

I like Farson’s closing remark, “Pity the poor manager who can’t imagine how a well-intended action led to such grousing.” What are they grousing about? That’s the question that will clue you in on your leadership journey’s progress.

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