January 5, 2009
01:39 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
President-elect Obama has stated his intention to stimulate the economy by creating jobs improving education, transportation infrastructure, and health care.
I heartily agree with those areas to focus upon, but the vision of each may need to be adjusted according to what the desired and successful end result of each looks like.
For example, what does being educated look like? Does it mean being able to read and write? Understand mathematics and science? Speak a foreign language? Would those by themselves enable American youth and young adults to compete successfully with their peers around the world? Maybe so... but maybe not.
I would submit a slightly different and additional goal, especially with regard to how older workers in their forties and older are now having to "learn new tricks" to stay employable. Let's make the goal of education that every American at age 18 if they don't attend college and age 22 if do, be teachable and trainable. More than that, let's make the educational process something where they want to learn more at those ages and to continue to learn past them. Have them develop the mindset to accept, embrace and look forward to lifelong learning.
That would be in stark contrast with an all too common mindset of many young and older Americans which is to hate reading, thinking, learning and the all too common tendency to quit or bail when subject matter becomes challenging, not easily mastered.
Jack Welch said: "I avoided the Internet, because I couldn't type." Too many Americans avoid becoming educated (even if they "passively" and reluctantly attend classes), because they can't stand reading, thinking and learning when it stops being fun. And how can education compete with the fun of video games, face book, shopping? In essence how can becoming more competent and capable compete with having or doing things just for the sake of a distraction?
America's greatest challenge if it is to compete successfully with the youth and young adults of the rest of the world is to enjoy learning as opposed to viewing it as a burden and hoping to never have to do it again once they graduate high school or college.
*Future blogs will cover the challenges of defining what greater infrastructure and health care looks like.
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December 27, 2008
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America, abandoned on its own petard
It took Pearl Harbor for America to enter WW II despite Germany and Japan having all but ravaged its enemies. It took the Cuban missile crisis for America to risk nuclear war even after many countries had fallen to Communist totalitarianism. It took 9/11 for America to take terrorism and the enemy across the border seriously enough to wage an all out war while other countries and continents have been living with that reality for decades.
Before that America slept just as Britain had prior to WWII (and that was written about by John F. Kennedy when he was a college student in 1940).
Why did we sleep? Because despite Americans having espoused their lofty ideals (maybe it’s a case of “the country doth protest too much”), when push came to shove perhaps it really hasn’t cared about other countries unless it served our self interests. It is not lost on the global observer that yes, helping rebuild Germany and Japan may have helped them, but it also enabled America to help itself to those countries as a market for our products and services that spanned decades.
Now what if America is getting a taste of its own “your problem, not my problem” medicine from countries that we served up to them for decades (maybe even centuries)? What if just like us they are content to let America be in the crosshairs of terrorist regimes and turn a jaundiced eye rather than roll their sleeves up and help? Why put their young men and women in harm’s way, when we resisted doing the same in every international conflict until we were unable to avoid it any longer?
Bless President elect Obama and I wish him luck. He is running on all cylinders enjoining us to finally get it. It’s no longer about “us” vs. “them,” it has to be about “we” with “them.”
Until America switches its mineset (only about America) to ourset (about the world), we will remain stuck.
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December 6, 2008
12:23 pm | 1 recommendation | 2 comments
Management is about doing what can be seen and executing it well;
Leadership is about envisioning what can’t be seen that spontaneously enrolls people to make it happen.
- Ivan Rosenberg, CEO, Frontier Associates
When America was born it had before it the tremendous opportunity to utilize massive untapped resources, a desire to explore the unknown mindset, an eagerness to be educated and develop the necessary skills to be successful, and a chance to build a new infrastructure without being mired by the outdated ones supporting Europe and Asia.
For most of the past 400 years (dating back to 1620) America has made the most of that opportunity. An analogy is how most law firms or investment firms are similarly opportunistic and mostly transactional (find the client/deal, do the case/deal, next – and bigger and more profitable – case/deal). The problem is that America (and possibly law firms and investment firms) and its mindset, skillset, and infrastructure have become outdated like those of the rest of the world when America was born.
Truth be told seizing an opportunity can get you into the game and win early and expand, but only developing the vision that Rosenberg mentioned at the top can keep you growing.
To Obama’s credit, he has been able to be transformational in his mindset and values. However he is surrounded by transactional and often non-cooperative players. His vision of more jobs (to stem the panic and give fearful out-of-work people something purposeful to do instead of just spinning their wheels), be more energy efficient (America and the rest of the world have not been too kind to the Earth), have better health service (unhealthy people tend to withdraw and not participate) and improve education (we need to go from a “what will it get me” educational myopia to “learning is fun”) is one that can enroll Americans to make happen.
His biggest challenge will be in transforming the American mindset from “all about me” to “all about us” (still not global minded and us vs. them) to “all about we” (becoming communally proactive vs. reactive).*
In essence, how to stop looking for a competitive advantage and replace it with a Collaborative Advantage.
*The best guide that I know for doing this and something that should be on Obama's short list is Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher-Wright.
Visit Dr. Mark Goulston at www.markgoulston.com
SPECIAL TO FAST COMPANY COMMUNITY: December 11, 2-3:30 PM EST, 1-2:30 PM CST, 11-12:30 PM PST. Your chance to go from bright and smart to wise. Listen with your teams to "Moving from Managing to Leading" a live webinar where Mark Goulston will interview Warren Bennis and take your questions. Use this link to get a special Fast Company $50 discount off the regular fee of $349 when you register.
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November 24, 2008
07:34 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment
As Goodness as It Gets – Why Obama will succeed
McCain and Clinton made you think you’d get a better deal,
Obama makes you want to be a better person
Skeptical though I may be, here are three reasons that I feel optimistic that President elect Obama has “the right stuff” to lead us out of the crises we face.
1. Actions speak louder than words. For us to get through this crisis, we need to act as a “we.” “All about me” and “All about us” are passive and reactive mindsets. Children – and Americans – learn more how to behave not from what parents and Presidents tell them, but from what they do. Obama in conducting his campaign and in selecting the best, the brightest and hopefully the wisest is not just talking about the need for “us” to work together, he is demonstrating in actions how “we” can do it.
2. Engender trust, command respect and inspire confidence. Many reasons have been given for why Obama won including his mastery of the Internet, his amazingly error and gaffe free campaign and his playing it cool. All of those were important, but we still would not have voted for him had he not engendered trust, commanded respect and behaved more presidential than his opponents. The latter quality inspired our confidence in spite of his lack of experience.
Why did we trust and respect him as a person more than Clinton or McCain? Why did have trouble trusting and respecting and why did we lose confidence in Clinton and McCain to make up for whatever confidence we didn’t have in Obama?
Rightly or wrongly, Clinton’s, McCain’s and Palin’s ambition, need to be right, and appetite for power kept seeping and peaking through much of what they said and did.
Too often they appeared to care more about winning than in helping America. Too often they resorted to tearing down Obama than in proposing solutions. When in the face of their attacks, Obama occasionally chuckled I was reminded of Ronald Reagan saying repeatedly to Jimmy Carter, “There you go again” as if he was sharing an inside joke with all of us suggesting, “Look at my opponents posturing and thumping their chests. Look at how they are losing your respect each time they do it, and they don’t even see it. I’m even a little embarrassed for them aren’t you (think of third Obama McCain debate).” Both Barack and Michelle Obama appeared more comfortable in their own skins because instead of trying to poorly disguise ambition in power hungry clothing as did their opponents, the Obamas manifested aspirations in possibilities clothing.
3. The mom and dad we didn’t have, but wished we did. Children get their mannerisms from either parent, but get the values they live by more from how their parents like, respect, trust, support and collaborate with each other.
Many people over the years have told me that they were “homesick for a home they never had and sick from the one they had.” Children who see parents who are “all about me” grow up into “all about me” adults who don’t value cooperation or collaboration and are unable to do it.
Barack and Michelle’s regard for each other serve as a wonderful role model for the “we” that is lacking between most mothers and fathers. I have heard many people say how much they wish they’d had parents like the Obamas instead of the parents they did have.
The more we see them trusting, respecting, supporting, cooperating and collaborating the more we want to entrust our well being into their care.
A skeptic is reluctant to believe; a cynic refuses to believe. A skeptic is someone who once believed and was disappointed; a cynic is someone who once believed and was betrayed. Deep inside all skeptics and even most cynics is a deep hunger to believe once more but to do so without the fear of being disappointed or betrayed again.
I know that I for one am hungry for it.
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November 19, 2008
07:38 pm | 1 recommendation | 4 comments
Leading is easy, the hard part is getting people to follow.
- Yogi Berra
I recently attended the International Leadership Associations’s wonderful 10th Annual Conference: “Portraits of the Past, Visions for the Future” that included some of the best international minds, scholars and resources. I resisted the temptation to buy several of the books with tantalizing titles displayed. I have yet to internalize—much less finish— the pile of books on that subject that I have purchased over the past year.
One of the main honorees at the conference was Warren Bennis. Warren is always on the short list, if not at the top, of authorities on leadership in the world. On a personal note, he is my mentor (as he has been to hundreds of other lucky mentees during his career). The most satisfying aspect of our relationship is not just to know him, but to feel known by him.
As he was being introduced and then when he spoke, it was clear that the audience deeply trusted, believed, had confidence in, enjoyed (if not adored) and respected him. As I left the conference it occurred to me that perhaps the key to effective leadership was evoking those experiences in followers.
How as a leader do you spawn those feelings in those you lead? Here are several tips that would do it for me and that would cause me to sign on as an enthusiastic follower:
1. Trust
a. Speak the truth – People will forgive an honest mistake, they won’t forgive you if you lie.
b. Do what you say you’re going to do – Follow through means never having to say you’re sorry.
c. Be transparent and candid along the way – As Louis Brandeis said, “Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant;” never be hesitant to let it shine on you.
d. Take full responsibility for the consequences of your actions and those of people working for you – The buck stops with you, don’t pass it.
2. Confidence
a. Be clear and concise – as opposed to confused and confusing.
b. Be prepared to the best of your ability – Don’t shoot from the hip and don’t be afraid to say you’ll get back to us when you don’t know, but then get back to us.
c. Know how to get things done – By getting the right people in the right positions, doing the right things.
d. Have a track record of already getting done positive measurable results – And for the benefit of others (vs. your own ambitions) that you represent
3. Enjoyment
a. Be comfortable in your own skin – Comfort and discomfort are contagious.
b. Put a smile on other’s faces – And cause others to feel that they put a smile on yours.
c. When you smile, have it touch your eyes (and when possible your heart) – The eyes are the royal road to the soul and not a bad lie detector.
d. Don’t take yourself too seriously – Laugh at yourself and the world laughs with you and not at you, and we could all use a good laugh.
4. Respect
a. Know what’s important and what isn’t - Have the wisdom to know the right the thing to do, the integrity to do it, the character to stand up to those who don’t, and the courage to stop people who won’t.
b. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should - When possible, have your personal house in order (you can still lead if people discover your having engaged in personal indiscretions that don’t substantively and negatively affect them, but their positive feelings for you will be sullied by wishing you hadn’t).
To borrow a quote from the iconic film Field of Dreams, if as a leader you engender in followers trust, confidence, enjoyment and respect,“People will come” and enthusiastically follow.
We need look no further than the campaign and election of President elect Barack Obama to see how true that is. Whether or not he can build a field for our dreams remains to be seen. We’re all hoping that he will.
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November 18, 2008
01:18 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
Don't start a post merger integration -- or Presidency -- without it
If you don't get the wheels for your car balanced and aligned, they'll pull to the left or right and wear out faster. Evidence of that is how many of us have had to replace our tires with the tread on one side okay, while the other side was bald. A faulty balance or faulty alignment and you may not finish the journey.
Front end alignments are not just about automobiles and road trips. They are critical to successful change initiatives, post merger integrations and even to new Presidential administrations. Former head of strategy at Texas Instruments during its heyday, industrial engineer turned management consultant and founder/owner of Los Angelesbased Management Overload (www.m-overload.com) Ward Wieman has developed a Triaxial Model™ to do for management teams what your car mechanic does to keep your car on track.
Before you can take his model for a ride, your company, organization or your administration needs to pick a destination - a compelling, convincing and consistent vision of a future that your people will want to be part of and make a reality.
X Axis – What's important? Wieman has set out 14 key functions that most business leaders would agree are essential to the success of any enterprise. Ask your team members to prioritize which of the 14 key functions they believe are the most important to success. This will immediately tell you two things: 1. What people view as the most important and critical functions to focus on; and 2. Who's on the same page.
Y Axis – How good are we at those things ? After arriving at a consensus about the most mission critical functions, do an assessment of how good your company or organization is at them. This type of assessment approach has the wonderful advantage of preventing your organization from becoming distracted by people's personalities; rather, it's about making sure that there are only strong links in the chain. It's not personal, it's about performance.
Z Axis – How do we align the corporate culture to get good at what we need to be good at? This is about getting the right people in the right job doing the right things, realigning others who might not be a fit, and letting others go who might be a better fit in another company or organization (Note: delaying the inevitable hurts everybody).
Wieman claims that he helps companies and organizations run like a swiss watch. I've watched him do just that for fifteen years.
P.S. - So that there is no confusion, Wieman is not an auto mechanic or tire salesman. Therefore, you are still stuck with the more basic task of aligning your own car tires.
NEXT: Part 2: Building an "All for One, One for All Team" in an "All About Me" World
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November 10, 2008
09:19 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment
One of my spiritual challenges is to find inspiring thoughts and ideas that can help me lift myself above my “day to day” worries that I know will pass, but in the moment don’t believe they will.
Here are several I found today:
MARTIN LUTHER KING
In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly affects all indirectly… I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.
PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN
The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egotistically the extremity of ‘everyone for himself’ is false and against nature… The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the entry into the super-human — these are not thrown open to a few of the privileged or to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will only open to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth… No evolutionary future awaits man except in association with all other men.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
A human being is part of the Whole…He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest…a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
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November 9, 2008
12:45 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
To err is human, to take full responsibility for it, divine.
I don’t know how heartfelt or sincere John McCain’s concession speech was on Tuesday, but there was much in it to be admired, learned from and emulated by all Americans.
The two most important elements were in his going from critical to gracious and from making excuses to taking full responsibility for the results as the commander-in-chief of his campaign.
As a management consultant, group facilitator, team builder and marriage therapist I have taken to setting the stage by asking the participants three questions:
1. What would success look like at the end of this meeting?
2. What would be the effect on achieving that success if everyone could monitor themselves so that instead of being critical and disrespectful they were gracious and respectful and instead of blaming someone else or making excuses for problems they were to acknowledge and take personal responsibility for their contribution to causing them?
3. How can we institutionalize this?
If Americans in their dealing with each other in their families, marriages, communities, work places, towns, cities and in reaching across the aisle in Washington and across oceans and borders to the rest of the world could practice that, there is no telling how much good will, cooperation, collaboration, peace of mind and peace on Earth we might find.
Why don’t you give it a try? Couldn’t hurt.
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November 9, 2008
12:42 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
I first wrote this in August, 2007 for Fast Company. It was about the fact that we have been turned into silos. This has enabled us to focus on our areas of expertise, but has hurt the ability to cooperatie, collaberate and innovate. President-elect Obama has implored and will continue to implore us to work together across the aisles, across the country and across the world. Let’s hope he can be the silomaster we need.
Until you rise above the fray of WIIFM (”what’s in it for me”)-minded participants,
everyone will put their needs above that of their company or their country.
A couple years ago, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal reported: “Mike Wall has led Northridge Hospital Medical Center to become one of the strongest high-tech hospitals in the San Fernando Valley. He has taken the Catholic Healthcare West facility from a position as a money-losing operation in 2000, to one that netted a $10 million profit in 2004.”
How did Mike accomplish this? I spoke at an offsite for Northridge Hospital in 2006 and was especially interested in discovering the answer to this after I observed Mike receiving five spontaneous standing ovations from the heads of the hospital departments who were attending the retreat.
I asked Mike the secret to his success. Like most “Good to Great” (Level 5) leaders, Mike is too busy discovering the “meaning in life” by living it through his actions and deeds to search for “the meaning of life” by endless, often meaningless, introspection. Like such leaders, he doesn’t focus on himself too much, but on defining a vision, articulating it, and then actualizing it.
Therefore, it didn’t surprise me when he smiled shyly (when the spotlight was focused on him) and said with great humility, “I don’t really know or spend much time thinking about that. However two things were clear to me when I arrived at Northridge Hospital: a) it’s lousy to be sick and b) it’s lousy for the families of people who are sick. So one of the first things I did was tell those two things to everyone who worked at our hospital with the two directives: a) let’s give every patient and every patient’s family the best possible experience when they are sick when they come in contact with Northridge hospital and b) don’t be sending me a lot of emails about stuff that would distract me and that you can handle on your own.”
I don’t think Mike realized it at the time (because he is not needlessly introspective), but that ability to see and articulate an observation about how lousy it is to be sick was something that everyone understood and had experienced. Furthermore, making illness a less lousy experience for patients and their families was a noble vision that everyone in the hospital would want to make happen.
It was on the heels of that offsite that I coined the phrase “silomastery,” because I had seen first hand what a great “silomaster” Mike Wall was. What is silomastery and who are the silomasters?
As I sat at tables with people from different departments of Northridge hospital I observed how different — or siloed if you will — each of them were. Purchasing was different from housekeeping; housekeeping was different from human resources; human resources was different from nursing; nursing was different from doctoring and the list went on. It was clear to me that these departments would never truly understand what it is to walk in each other’s shoes or understand and empathize with each other’s concerns. In other words, despite all of these different departments trying to cooperation with each other, they would still be siloed because of how specialized each was.
What was also clear to me was that Mike Wall, who had a bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s degree in hospital administration, had transcended all of his prior specialized training to become a “dyed in the wool” leader. As such, he was able to sit atop the siloed departments,enspire and embolden all of them to achieve the vision of “giving ill patients and their families the best possible experience when they are sick.” So compelling was his vision that siloed departments put aside their own self-interests to be part of something grander, something more satisfying, fulfilling, and gratifying.
Silomastery is not only something that has application within a company or organization, it also plays a vital role in any merger or acquisition forming a “new” company. In those instances, there is a great hazard that the pre-merged and pre-acquired companies will have such entrenched, self-interested silos between and within each company that they will never be able to get in the same canoe and paddle in the same direction.
In order for the merger or acquisition to succeed, “merger mastery” between companies is every bit as important as “silomastery” within a company. In both instances leaders must do the following: 1) develop and articulate a compelling vision that people from both companies will not merely share, but will passionately want to be a part of; 2) develop a consensus of the most important processes to focus on to get there (one of the best people and best companies I know to do this is Ward Wieman, owner of Management Overload; 3) identify the strengths and passions of your key people and make sure they align with those processes to getting there; 4) get rid of distractions and of people who will never climb aboard and whose negativity and naysaying will only sap the energy of those who want to make it a success.
One of best examples of a merger master and the merger both between reality and fantasy and father and son was portrayed in the iconic father-son movie, Field of Dreams. In that movie Kevin Costner played Iowa farmer (and “merger master”) Ray Kinsella who was compelled to build a baseball field that fulfilled the unfulfilled dreams of the long forgotten and disgraced Chicago Black Sox baseball team. In doing so, Ray not only fulfilled those players’ dreams, but also his own of: 1) helping his worn down father fulfill a dream to play baseball; 2) having his father meet his wife and daughter; and 3) getting to “have a catch” with his dad (get out your handkerchief). When the field was finally built with the promise that “people will come” the movie ends with a pan away from Ray playing catch with his dad and miles of cars of coming to the field.
Interestingly, despite that movie being nearly twenty years old (filmed in 1989), the baseball field built for the film continues to be a top tourist draw in Iowa.
I guess the merger lasted.
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November 6, 2008
12:41 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
American democracy has been the grand experiment of humankind for more than two centuries. Being an ocean away from Europe and Asia, with no threats from the North or South and having a new world upon which to build a non-old world infrastructure enabled us to transcend the restrictive and limiting mindsets and capabilities of the rest of the globe and transform this country into something that had never been seen before.
However for the past four decades we have lost our way. I think this dated back to the 1960’s when idealism and all that was possible was snuffed out by the assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and replaced by hurt and betrayal, Vietnam and a string of less than transformational Presidents. This cast us into skepticism which hardened into cynicism. Instead of remaining transformational and transcendent we slid into transactional myopia and now into transactional blindness that is fueling the fear-on-the-brink-of-panic that we are living in daily.
The hope that President elect Obama brings is that he might fulfill the promise of “what might have been” that ended with the deaths of those larger than life luminaries of the 1960’s whose lights were darkened too soon. Everything we have seen thus far in Obama is that he has been able to transcend the “zero sum” transactionally myopic AND limiting mindset of politics as usual and offer the possibility of transforming America into the world’s champion of what could be.
His victory was in no small way due to Americans being sick of bipartisan pettiness based more on winning and not losing than on helping the common good and tapping into the common goodness that we all possess.
An early criticism of his being too high minded and not relating to the masses of mere mortals bespeaks his challenge of how to be truly transformational in a world that is largely transactional. That is the elephant in the room and the worry we all share. We all want him to help us transcend our fears and immediate needs to lead us to something grander, but we live in the world of transactions (one need look no further than the volatile stock market to attest to this). The devil IS in the details and it’s in the details that we live, but if we only keep our eye on surviving today we will miss out on thriving tomorrow.
Like many, I eagerly await President elect Obama’s arrival in Washington to see if he can meet the challenge of presenting us with a future that we will all want to make happen that will be promising enough to transcend our transactional needs for immediate relief and after our fears lessen for immediate gratification. You can’t solve a transformational problem with transactional solutions.
Let us hope that a President Obama will be that rising tide we need to lift us all up and cause us to stay committed to our noble cause and calling. And good luck to him in dealing with the lowering tide of bipartisan, transactional myopia that threatens to sink us all.
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