Transformational Leadership

The Matrix of Leadership cannot be found, it must be earned.

Thus saith the Ancient Primes to Sam, hapless nerd/hero of the Transformers movie franchise. Sam, of course, earned the Matrix of Leadership, or else Optimus Prime would remain dead and The Fallen would have destroyed the sun. So we can say thank-you to Sam.

How did he earn the Matrix, though? It was not through any particular bravery (he gets called a little girl by his girlfriend) or desire to save the world (he turned down Optimus' offer for that earlier). Two things earned Sam the Matrix of Leadership: loyalty and hope.

He was loyal to the Autobots, and specifically his friend Optimus to the end, risking his life and the life of his family to save him. He then maintained hope that Optimus could be saved, even when all others had given up and the method of salvation itself had dissolved into dust.

Leaders should listen to this. Among the 638 other attributes that the leadership literature says leaders need, here are two that even a second-rate summer blockbuster can make clear. Be loyal to your friends and your people. Never give up hope. If a leader betrays, or a leader loses, hope, there is nothing left for the followers. Earn the Matrix of Leadership, and you may not save the sun, but you will be a better leader.

5 reasons to make everyone in your company reapply for their job

1. Your maximum productivity targets are being exceeded.
   
2. Morale is uncomfortably high.
3. You lack the organizational will to cut staff strategically.
4. Unintended consequences are your cup of tea (they're like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're going to get).
5. The reorganization was moving too quickly and you'd prefer to drag it out.
   

Safety first...after you show you care.

At Shell, we are big on safety. We have big programs and we talk about it a lot and we are serious about it. We have to be. Our job is to extract, transport, process, and sell some of the most flammable, explosive, and toxic chemicals on earth. Safety matters, big time.

Yet sometimes all the talk falls flat. Sometimes it feels rote, like our leaders talk about safety because they are supposed to, not because they really care whether everyone goes home in the same condition they came to work in. Why is that? How can something so important end up sounding insincere?

I think it is because we all get cynical. All the talk about safety can quickly become a matter of statistics, lost time, and bad press. If that is all my leadership seems to care about, then I am not going to believe they really care about my personal safety...only their own stats. It is only when I believe they care about me as a person will I believe that they care about my health as more than a means of production. Only then will I buy into the safety programs and whatnot.

This is a key lesson for all leadership, it seems. If you want people to care about what you care about, care about them first. When they believe that you have their best interests in mind, or at the very least are aware of their interests, they are willing to listen and perhaps get on board with your leadership. If they think you are not interested in them, it is unlikely they will be interested in you.

John Piper rocks my world

Noel Piper, John Piper's wife, has been posting their daughter's adoption story over the last couple weeks. One of the posts that stood out to me was a reproduction of John's letter voicing his agreement with the adoption. It highlights two challenges for me.

1. A model of Biblical submission and love. Noel states several times that after many hours of discussion, the final decision would be John's - submission. In his letter, John states that Noel's heart's desire is the most important factor in his decision - love. He agrees to adoption not purely out of his own reasoning, but primarily to love and sacrifice for his wife. When was the last time I made a decision like that?
   
2. Consistency of commitment and character. John makes it clear that after honoring his wife, adoption is a way to live a radical commitment to love, racial reconciliation, male/female role modeling, pro-life, and every area of his life's ministry. He is (and they are) willing to put their beliefs on the line visibly, publically, and irrevocably. Have I ever done that?

If I didn't respect John Piper before, I certainly do now. He is far from perfect, I know, but he has established an impressive platform to speak from.

Normal Expectations

One of many books I am in the middle of is Wooden on Leadership, written by the great UCLA coach John Wooden and published when he was 95 years old. It is an impressive, common sense guide to leadership based on his career as a basketball coach. I recommend it highly.

The thought that struck me reading it recently, though, is the stark difference between his basketball teams and any team that I have ever worked on. His teams were strict, not out of misplaced authoritarianism, but out of a single-minded drive and passion for excellence. He talks about the "Normal Expectations" for his team, including being a gentleman, on time, a team player, industrious, emotionally controlled, and unselfish.

How is that different from teams at work? Those characteristics would never be mentioned. In an individualistic society where independence  is valued above all else, people would rebel against being told that they were expected to be "industrious". We are all professionals here, right? Don't tell me what to do or how to act.

Yet excellence on the basketball court or in the meeting room require the same basics of human respect, interaction, and hard work. Very few leaders require such things of their teams, putting faith in the "professionalism" of individuals and caring only about the final work product.

Wooden is one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time because he cared not about the score, but about the details of character and behavior. The score took care of itself. Should we not be following his example?

Followership

There are lots of books about leadership out there written by leaders. Those are good, but I would like to see some stuff written for followers. After all, we are all followers, so should we not want to be better at it?

No? Why not? Because we should all aspire to leadership, not improved followership? Those things are not exclusive, though. I know of no leader who is not following someone and/or something. In fact, we can go through life without ever leading anything, but we would be hard-pressed to avoid following.

Here is a start to what I would like to see in a book on followership.

1. How to pick a leader. If I must follow, I might as well follow someone/thing worth following.
2. How to support the leader. If the leader is leading me where I want to go, I want to do everything in my power to make him successful.
3. How to lead and follow simultaneously. In any organization with more than 2 people, there is a very good chance I am leading someone at the same time I am following someone else. How do I live in the middle?
4. How to influence the leader. I suppose this is similar to leadership stuff about "leading upward" and 360 degree leadership. It is hard to take someone seriously when they write about me "leading" my vice-president. Influencing, though, makes sense.

Would you buy this book? What else should be in there?

The power of simplicity

Jonathan Fields recently posted his eleven rules for "moguls in training." It is a short list of leadership lessons based on extensive reading that he has done. I found it interesting for two reasons.

The first is that it is a pretty good list. It does a good job distilling leadership experience and theory into tag lines that are good for posters and daily reminders. They are powerful in their simplicity.

The second is how useless the list is in the absence of all the background reading. If you take that list and try to lead only on what is there, you will probably fail. If you have the background (from reading and/or experience) to understand where the lessons come from, then a short list is helpful.

It is a key thing to remember...there is power in simplicity, but only with an understanding of what lies behind it. E = mc² is one of the simplest and most powerful equations in physics. If that was all, though, anyone could be a nuclear physicist and atomic fusion would be a high school chemistry experiment. Clearly, there is more to the equivalence of matter and energy than a short equation. The power comes from summarizing complexity with a simple statement, not eliminating the complexity.

Keep this in mind the next time someone tries to share the "3 Steps to Happiness" or "15 Ways to Make Money Blogging" or any other simple formula. Simplicity is powered by underlying complexity that cannot be ignored.

Relationship budgets

Seth Godin recently posted about Dunbar's Number, which is the number of productive relationships most people can generally maintain at any given time, essentially a relationship budget. The number is about 150, despite social networking's attempts to convince us that we have 400, 1000, 2500 "friends."

This got me thinking about organizational design and how a relationship budget could be applied to leaders in a large organization.

Take an executive and give him a budget of 150 relationships. 10 go to his family (spouse, kids, parents, siblings, etc.). Another 10 go to personal friends. If he has been around for a while, he has networking contacts to maintain as well, maybe 50 throughout his industry. That leaves 80 for his job, of which another 30 are devoted to peers and bosses, leaving 50 for subordinates...his span of control. (Note that all numbers here are arbitrary, but the central concept of a limited number of relationships is independently valid.)


The span of control will not only consider direct reports, but also those reporting to them. This means that if you lead an organization larger than this, you will not have a relationship with everyone. Additionally, they will not have a relationship with you.

What are the implications of all this rambling?

• Consider spans of control in light of productive relationships during organizational design.
• If leading an organization larger than you can directly relate to, deliberately and continuosly monitor the transfer of information and the transfer of relationships down the line.
• If you use up your relationship budget at work, there will be nothing left outside. Beware the curse of the workaholic.
• Do not over-reach. Trying to expand too far past your relationship budget will cause everything to collapse.

Are there other implications?  Have you seen this concept used well or poorly in your experience?

What will you be when you grow up?

We are in the midst of a giant reorganization at work, with one of the results being a reposting of nearly every job in the company. A favorite recreation in the office, therefore, is browsing the postings for jobs you may want now or later or never. The biggest thing I realize in doing this? I'm not qualified for any job I really want.

So, what now? My first reaction is to be frustrated. Why do they put the stupid experience requirements in there? I could run that business, I'm sure I could! Why should I need relevant skills? I read a lot!

This, of course, is not helpful. What is more helpful is to think back a few years to who I was and project forward a few years to who I will be. They are not the same people. I change over time, hopefully growing, but not necessarily. So what I need to remember is simple.

1. Be patient. I may not qualify for what I want to do right now, but chances are someday I will. Probably sooner than I think, too. So just chill.
2. Grow now. Who I am tomorrow is who I am today plus growth. How am I growing today? What am I reading, experiencing, doing? I do not need to get 15 years of experience today, but how will I take the first step?

 What about you? Which do you struggle more with?

First impressions

First impressions are powerful.

I have two sons, spaced 363 days apart. The older was not a "good sleeper" as a newborn. That is, I did not get good sleep for the first eight months of his life. I got good reading, game playing, and movie watching between 10 PM and 4 AM, but not good sleep.

The younger was a different story. He (and his twin sister) liked to sleep from the beginning. We got more sleep from day one with two newborns than we did with the one older one.

So to this day, in my mind, the elder is a "bad" sleeper and the younger a "good" sleeper. Yet when I stop and actually think about the reality of the last week, I realized that I was up three or four nights to comfort the younger one, and never for the older. My first impressions dominate my current reality.

Sleep characterization is a small thing. What are the chances that the same phenomenon applies to other things, too? Will I judge one as fast, the other slow, based on their crawling speed? Is one smart and the other not because of how they interact with Boynton books? I must be careful to treat my kids the way they are, not the way I have prejudged them to be.

How about you? How do you characterize your kids? Or colleagues? First impressions are powerful, and possibly dangerous.

The language of truth

Does the language we use affect the truth we hear?

I attended a wedding recently where Scripture was read in 5 languages (English, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Thai), only one of which I understood. Yet it was a powerful experience. I heard truth that I knew (the passages were familiar) spoken in a way I could not comprehend. Two thoughts came to my mind.

Truth can be spoken in many ways. The way I am accustomed to hearing truth (or Truth, it makes no difference) is well and good, but it is not the only way. Others will hear it differently, or even not hear it at all with the same words. I must be careful not to claim a monopoly on truth only because I have a monopoly on the form of communication.

I must communicate in the way my hearers need. Just because I understand what I am saying, that does not mean my audience does. My wife needs different words than I do, and my kids need different words than she does. The guy who speaks Mandarin will need different words again. It is not their responsibility to understand what I am saying, it is my responsibility to communicate in their language.

What words do you need to change? How has the form of communication affected your understanding of truth?
Does language influence meaning?

Conflicting advice

Careful readers of this blog may have noticed that I recently gave some conflicting advice. First, I recommended giving up, while the very next day I said to not give up. What gives? Am I really that bad at advice? Should you quit reading now?

The answer to the last question is up to you, though I would say no. Whether I give bad advice or not is also a question for you to answer, but it has nothing to do with the conflict. The crazy thing about advice is that it is almost never wrong. That is, nearly any advice given by anyone is applicable to someone, somewhere. This is one reason that there are always new books, articles, and blog posts...the market for advice is insatiable, and authors can always say something new.

What should you do with that, then? First, never take general advice to be specifically directed to you. You can apply general advice to your life, but only by using it to sharpen your own thinking. Doing something just because you read it in a book (which I am often guilty of) is lazy and irresponsible. The author does not know you, and what he or she says may have no relevance to your life whatsoever. Critical thinking is important.

Second, take specific advice from people you trust and who know you. Notice that there are two criteria. Does the person have a platform to speak from (is their own life in that area in order) AND do they have the information to speak to (do they know enough about your situation)? Without the first, it is likely bad advice. Without the second, it is general advice and you need to go back to the critical thinking.

So should you give up? Or not? I have no idea. But you probably should do one of them.

The Power of One

The Daily Voice posted an article the other day about Olympia Snowe's lone Republican vote in favor of the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill. In the middle of it, the writer asks and answers a question:

How did one senator from a state smaller than the size of my New York City area code become so powerful? By being the only one.

The rest of the article deals with the political wrangling around health care. That is all important stuff, but what struck me was the power of one. By choosing to not go along with her peers, Senator Snowe gained power, fame, and influence.

I think this points directly back at us. Where can we be The One? The One to stand up to a bully, The One to reach out to your enemies, The One to stand out from the crowd?

There is strength in numbers, but power in The One.

Lessons from the Little Engine

Yet another book I have finished recently is The Little Engine That Could. In fact, my toddlers have encouraged me to finish it a couple times a day for the last several weeks. That has given me lots of time to see the brilliant lessons it contains that make it a timeless classic.


Enjoy your work
"She was a happy little train for she had such a jolly load to carry."
The first character we encounter in the book is a happy little train who enjoys her work. As we will learn later on, she does not have the most important or fanciest of jobs, but her load was jolly, and she enjoyed it.


Leadership involves action 
"'Here comes a shiny new engine,' said the funny little clown who jumped out of the train."
The only doll who actually does anything in the book is the "funniest little toy clown you ever saw." The other dolls and toys spend their time whining or crying or being sad. The clown jumps out of the train and waves his flag and as a result is the default leader of the group, despite his red nose and blue bow-tie.


Always be polite 
"Please, Shiny New Engine..."  
"Please, oh, please, Big Engine..."  
"Please, Kind Engine..."  
"Please, please, help us, Little Blue Engine."
What's the magic word? There is no guarantee that it will work, but saying "please" is always a good idea, particularly when desperate. Notice that after several rejections, the clown is still polite. That is good leadership.

Don't give up.
"Here is another engine coming...Let us ask him to help us."  
"Here comes another...perhaps he can help us."  
"Here is another engine coming...maybe she will help us."
The first three requests for help were turned down. Only on the fourth did the dolls and toys get the ride over the mountain they needed. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Persistence can pay off.

Don't close your eyes to possibilities.
"...the boys and girls on the other side won't have any toys to ply with or good food to eat unless you help us."  
"...won't have any toys to play with or good food to eat unless you help us."
"...unless you help us."  
"...unless you help us." (emphasis mine)
During every request, the clown repeats the same message, that disaster will strike unless you help us. Yet 75% of the engines surveyed did not help and the boys and girls still had food and toys. While the statement may be simply part of a hard sell on the part of the clown, it reads like he is putting all his hopes on a single engine savior at a time. There is always an alternative, do not get locked into the choice in front of you to the exclusion of all else.

Stay positive. 
"The Passenger Engine is not the only one in the world."
"He looks very old and tired, but our train is so little, perhaps he can help us." 
Sometimes the best thing to do is to put on a brave face and keep going. So what if the big Passenger Engine just blew you off? Maybe the Rusty Old Engine has one more trip over the mountain in him. Chin up now, everybody all together, "the sun'll come up, tomorrow!"


Try new things.
"I have never been over the mountain."
So what if you haven't been over the mountain? Metaphorically or physically, there is no need to let the fact that you have never been over the mountain before stop you from going over it now.


Take control of your own destiny.
"Here comes a shiny new engine...Let us ask him to help us."
Besides taking action in general, the funny little clown leads by taking control of his own destiny. At the beginning of the story, he's a passenger, riding a train wherever it takes him. When that train breaks down, though, he jumps out and takes charge. Knowing that he wants to be on the other side of the mountain, he makes it happen. Are you riding a train, or flagging one down?


Care about others.
"'What is the matter, my friends?' she asked kindly."
The Little Blue Engine is kind from the beginning, and through her kindness is given a chance to climb the mountain into literary history. The book is not named for the arrogant Passenger Engine or the gruff Freight Engine, but rather for the kind Little Blue Engine.

There's nine lessons without even mentioning the "I think I can" tagline. What else have I missed? What other so-called children's books would you use as a life coach?

Who needs conflict?

I do.

I hate it, but I need it.

A long time ago, the writer of Proverbs said "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." I have heard that verse talked about as friends gently encouraging each other, cheering each other on like buddies on the JV track team.

Now I confess to having no experience as a blacksmith, but is that how iron sharpens iron? When iron and iron come together, I do not imagine gentle. I imagine Braveheart-style two-handed longswords and the like. That is not cheering. That is conflict.

The description is that of two unyielding forces rubbing against each other hard enough so that little bits come off of one or both of them. Afterward, they are more able to do what they were intended for.

My thoughts and opinions are the same way. Unyielding until they come up against something else equally as hard. Then they rub and create friction and eventually come out sharper and better for it. Only through conflict does that happen, though. Without it, I am dull and therefore useless.

So I challenge you (and me) to disagree today. Create some conflict (maybe on this blog) and be the sharper for it. I do not like it, but I need it.

Contemplating hermitage

I hate conflict. I do not want to rock the boat, make waves, sail into a storm, or engage in any nautical metaphor that could involve drowning, even metaphorically.

I have therefore decided to become a hermit.

The way I see it, that's the only way to avoid conflict. Exposure to people equals conflict. I wish to avoid conflict, so therefore...I must avoid people. However, four things prevent me from following through on this, all found in the title of this blog.

• Learn - without other people to show me where I am deficient, why would I ever learn? If no one spoke Spanish, how would I know that it was worth learning?
• Love - one of my goals in life is to love people. Hard to do without people around.
• Lead - the simplest definition of a leader is someone with followers. No people, no followers.
• Live - the culmination of the first three, life is not, for me, worth living alone. Hard to not be alone without people.

So I'm stuck. I need people, so I will have conflict. Which leads to another thought. If I need people, and people bring conflict, perhaps I need conflict?

Love your polish

I don't polish my shoes very often. My job doesn't require much formal dress, so well-scuffed shoes don't stand out much. Recently I did polish my shoes for a wedding though, and I thought about how powerful and humble shoe polish is. When done right, no one notices the polish. They notice the shoes. Without the polish, though, the shoes are not remarkable at all.

The parallel to the rest of life hit me hard. No one looks good on their own. Everyone has people in their lives who make them look better than they would look by themselves without taking a bit of the glory.*

Who polishes you? An assistant, a spouse, a parent, a friend? Have you given that person the credit and appreciation they deserve? Do it now, because without their polish, we would all be looking mighty scuffed indeed.


*For extra credit, diagram the preceding sentence.

He who is faithful with little

Jesus once told a parable about a master and servants. Toward the end, he shares this line:

Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. (Matthew 25:21)

I  was reading a book where this was discussed, and I was struck by how counter this is to my own way of thinking, which I think is a reflection of either the nature of man, current culture, or both.

Don't waste time with the small stuff...put me in charge of many things RIGHT NOW!

I have the education. I have the test scores. I've read Drucker and Collins and Lencioni. It is clearly a waste to put me in charge of only my own work, or just my kids, or some other small and (seemingly) insignificant responsibility. Paying your dues is such the Baby Boomer thing to do. We Gen XYZ-ers don't have time for that.

... ... ...

Color me convicted. Maybe there's some merit in demonstrating competence with small things before being entrusted with large ones. Humility is critical for great leadership, and expecting responsibility to be handed to me instead of earning it may indicate a touch of arrogance. Maybe just a little.

Crisis America

Can we have a problem anymore without it being a crisis? Recently I've read or heard about the following issues in America:

• The Water Crisis
• The Climate Crisis
  
• The Economic Crisis
• The Kids-in-Nature Crisis
• The Education Crisis
• The Health Care Crisis
• The Food Crisis
• The Energy Crisis

Are we really in this much trouble? Is everything about to collapse on us?

(Editors note: a crisis can be defined as "a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive change" and does not necessarily imply a negative result. But still.)

I'm not sure. Maybe. Perhaps the world really is in that much trouble. Perhaps we only talk about the problems that are at crisis-level. Perhaps in the growing cacophony of media, the only way to get noticed is to convince people that your issue is a crisis issue (David's lawn care crisis, anyone?).

Unfortunately, when everything's a crisis, nothing's important. No one has enough time, energy, focus, or money to deal with more than a crisis or two at the same time. It is analogous to trying to fight a war on several fronts at once. Occasionally necessary, but rarely effective or a good idea. At best, we just worry a lot. At worst, we do nothing.

The problems are out there, though. Something needs to be done about most of them. Let's just pick a couple, though. If we are all individually focused and we stop blowing some things out of proportion, maybe The Crisis Crisis can be averted.

Acting Poor vs. Being Poor

NPR aired a story about the definition of poverty the other day. It coincided with me thinking about poverty and the difference between acting poor and being poor. I'm not even an amateur sociologist, but this is what I see.

Acting poor is about attitude.


Being poor is about cash.

Not having the cash to meet basic needs makes you poor. Living life as a victim, blaming others and always hoping for a hand-out is acting poor. Being poor is often out of our control (a result of family history, tragedy, macroeconomics, etc.), while the responsibility for acting poor lands squarely on the shoulders of every one of us.

The amazing thing about modern capitalism, and the United States specifically, is that being poor is not necessarily permanent. Acting poor makes it that way. By not acting poor, by taking responsibility for our own choices and working hard, anyone can stop being poor.

I am not naive in this. Ending personal poverty in a week won't happen. A year or a decade may not be enough time. Yet hundreds of thousands of first-generation Americans can testify to the fact that within a generation, a family that doesn't act poor will no longer be poor.

If you're reading this blog, it is unlikely you are poor. It is likely that your grandparents, or their grandparents, were. They didn't act poor, and we should be grateful. We also owe it to them to continue. Work hard, take responsibility. Whatever your income, don't act poor.