Category: ‘mutual learning’ leadership

Why a Healthy Company Culture Encourages People to Share Bad News

“A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved” – says Ben Horowitz in his book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’.

good news, bad newsI have observed numerous times how cover-up cultures finally lead to disaster. The role of the leader is essential in that respect. Ben Horowitz continues: “The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards— not punishes— people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved“. In other words, don’t shoot the pianist!

That leadership approach is incompatible with control-and-command styles in particular when terror is part of it. It is easy to find out on what side an organization lies: just listen to people speak about senior management and whether they can be heard when they raise issues.

Of course it is also important to celebrate the good news when they happen. That should not be forgotten either, because the organization should not just look at issues. Some leaders fall in that trap as well.

Still, cover-up is not a sustainable proposal. Candidness is, and I have found over time that it is better to raise issues even if it can lead to being shot in the short term. If your leadership can’t bear bad news and goes up to dismissing you, it might not be worth staying anyway.

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How to Negotiate Properly To Reach Agreement

In the book “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury (veterans of international and corporate negotiations), the useful approach of Principled Negotiation is exposed. It is based on four powerful points:

negotiating
Avoid this particular negotiation tactics!
  1. People: Separate the people from the problem.
  2. Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
  3. Options: Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains before deciding what to do.
  4. Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.

Of course proper and consistent implementation of these principles requires some practice. It also sometimes requires quite some work to get the other party to agree on this approach and play the game of that type of negotiation.

If I had to choose one of these points as the most important, the creative ability to come up with a number of options (and at the same time, to be sufficiently resilient from an emotional point of view to be able to assess the actual pros and cons of these options), would probably be my choice. Having as many options as possible a key asset in a negotiation. Be creative!

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How to overcome the 5/ 15/ 80 rule

The 5/ 15/ 80 rule states that “we enter any given assignment knowing 5 % of the relevant information. A further 15% of the information is that which we know we don’t know. And the 80 represents the 80% of the relevant information that we don’t even know we don’t know” (from Jon Steel in ‘Perfect Pitch‘).

pixelization
Much information is missing, we can still see the overall picture!

While the first 5+15=20% of the issue is not so scary (we always enter a new assignment with information we know we must seek), the remaining 80% is probably much scarier. This “black matter” will have to be uncovered, piece by piece – that is, if we manage to realize that there is stuff our there we don’t even know we don’t know.

It is similar to the usual cycle of learning: the transition from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence is probably the toughest because it sometimes requires us to overcome our filters and beliefs.

Does it really matter? We can recognize patterns even with only a little bit of information, such as the enclosed picture shows. Thus, provided there is a pattern we can recognize, poor information is not an issue. That is, if our experience and the patterns we have formed over time are relevant.

The issue is maybe not the quantity of information, but to seek if there is any that contradicts the pattern we would expect. If that is the case, it is a sure indicator that there is some stuff out there we don’t know. And then we need to search.

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Why You Should not Seek to Adapt too much to your Circumstances

“The Better Adapted You Are, the Less Adaptable You Tend to Be“. Systems and living beings tend to adapt as much as possible to their environment. With a dramatic effect: if they become too adapted, too specialized, they become vulnerable.

lab mice
It can be dangerous to be too specialized!

Human success in nature is mainly due to our adaptability across different climates, seasons and living conditions.

Yet we tend to forget too often that adaptability has been our key for success for generations, like for example when the Industrial Age taught us that specialization was best for our social success (see the post ‘Stop to be Excessively Specialized – Become a Generalist to be Successful in the Collaborative Age‘).

Gerald Weinberg, whom this quote is from (in ‘The Secrets of Consulting‘), continues: “This law provides one reason why people need consultants. Consultants are less adapted to the present situation, and therefore are potentially more adaptable. Their perception of now/then tradeoffs is different from those close to the problem, which makes them a valuable source of ideas (as well as people not to be trusted)“. That’s why you need to have candids in your meetings and make sure you always bring people that have not been too associated with your ideas.

Remain adaptable. Seek outside advice. And you’ll be successful.

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How to Overcome the Experts’ Confidence Conundrum?

“If someone’s confidence is high, we believe they are probably right; if they are less certain, we feel they are less reliable“, research suggests, as reported by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.

low confidence expert“Obviously, this means we deem those who are dead certain the best forecasters, while those who make ‘probabilistic calls’ – like “it is probable this will happen but not certain” – must be less accurate, and anyone who dares to say the odds of something are 50-50 will be met with scorn“. The author goes on to add that it is not a conscious decision path.

So let’s summarize: we tend to believe those confident experts – who are probably wrong. And we tend to discredit those experts that don’t look too confident and who qualify their statements or speak about probabilities – who are probably closer to the truth or what can be said about it at the present moment. That’s quite an annoying situation, isn’t it?

I have personally drawn a personal conclusion: when too many experts agree with high confidence, I conclude that is groupthink and that it is worthwhile to take a contrarian position. At least you establish a noticeable difference with the bulk of the experts!

Be careful of experts that look too confident – they are probably wrong when it comes to predictions.

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People Don’t Care How Much You Know, Unless They Know How Much You Care

This classical quote is mentioned the excellent book “the Perfect Pitch – The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel about public speaking and presenting.

They care about how much you careYet it obviously also does apply to many other instances in our daily lives.

It is amazing how turned-off people can turn on if you show a little bit of caring.

What is caring but the expression of an attempt an emotional connection?

Show that you care in negotiations, and in any situation where you interact with people. And be certain that in all cases, nobody cares about how much or what you know!

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How we underestimate how meaningful our words can be

Who doubts the power of words? Still we probably underestimate how meaningful the words we are using can be.

small words, big meaningIn his excellent book ‘the Secrets of Consulting‘, Gerald Weinberg describes how helpful it is to a consultant ‘.”It’s gotten so I can actually identify many of my client’s problems by the gilded language used to describe the problems. Clients who use euphemisms are hiding something – event from themselves. For example, most of the time, cost-benefit analysis means cost analysis, and no attention is paid to benefits. In plain language, this means “we’re going to list every expense we can possibly associate with this plan, to make sure it’s smothered””.

With my experience as a consultant I agree fully with that statement. In particular when I start an intervention at a new client, the words that are being used are so strikingly describing the culture that it gives instantly a flavor of the issue.

Of course, it is less obvious if you are immersed in it. What about taking some time to think about the real meaning of the words you are using on a daily basis?

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How to Really Being Productive in the Collaborative Age

“Being productive isn’t about wringing every last minute out of every day doing something or checking stuff off a to-do list and building a relentlessly efficient system that allows nothing through the cracks.” – Amber Naslund

Productive Ape
Is that the way you are productive?

Now that’s quite an interesting thought, which is further developed in this blog post “Rethinking Productivity“.

Amber Naslund is an entrepreneur and she’s working in social networks business. She’s quite advanced in the Fourth Revolution. So, no wonder that when she looks at productivity, she looks at it from the point of view of the K.E.E.N. (Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networker): productivity of the K.E.E.N. is very much about creativity, not about repeating tasks efficiently!…

Let’s leave the last word to Amber:

“We need time to float along on the breeze. Have a casual, spontaneous conversation. Enjoy some silence. Write a bunch of random stuff that we never finish, and be okay with that. Productivity, at its essence, means being able to bring things about.”

The good thing, is that it just killed our guilt of doodling around (next time you’re asked, say that you are growing your next ideas)!

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How essential it is to check information sources on internet

Mid-February, the web went viral with a study that showed that there were not more than 19 links between any page of the internet (examples here, here and here (in French)). This epidemics followed a paper published on 18 February 2013 by the Royal Society.

world wide web graphics
The worldwide web galaxy is smaller than you think – only 19 links to get anywhere!

The thing is, when you read the paper (link to the original paper of the Royal Society here), you realize that this discovery was made in… 1999. Is it still valid? Nobody knows, actually. It is quite possible actually that today there are even less links needed thanks to the Googles and other search engines, plus all the social tools.

Some publications did correct their initial post (like the Smithsonian here), but most did not, in particular the news outlets from where most of the public gets its information.

There are two interesting lessons to take from this event:

  • On the negative side, what you read on the internet, in particular what is viral, might have been severely distorted by transmittal, editing, search for sensationalism, etc
  • On the positive side, thanks to the internet, one can access the original source easily – I was able to find it in a very few minutes thanks to the links embedded in the published pages and Google! (and actually it took only 2 or 3 clicks, not 19) (think what would have happened if you had read such a news in a newspaper 50 years ago: would you have ever been able to go back to the original sources within less than a few weeks?).

It is easier now than ever to post and disseminate trash or inaccuracies, but it is also easier than ever to check – or at least get various opinions on a subject. Do we teach ourselves and our children enough to enhance their critical skills and how to search by themselves for diverse opinions?

Note – for those who are interested, reading the original short article (by Barabási in the Royal Society publication) is quite instructive on the topology of the internet.

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Thrive Through Complexity by Leveraging Collaboration of an Effective Team

Not only is Collaboration the key to deal with Uncertainty; the extreme collaborative setup, the Effective, Performing Team, is the key to tackle Complexity. That’s in effect the meaning of the conclusion of Jim Collins we quoted in the blog post “How to Take Decisions in a Complex Environment“.

team table
Are you presently mobilizing an effective, performing team?

It is tough to reach the point of achieving a high performing, effective team. In effect, this is the ultimate model of collaboration, where connection between individuals reaches such an emotional depth that it allows to mobilize all of the participant’s resources for the sake of the team’s purpose.

Depending on the level of performance of the team, different levels of complexity can be tackled; but the most uncertain, most complex situations can only be dealt with a totally committed, effective team.

In my consulting work I often observe how getting the leadership team of organizations to work as a performing team is the first condition for any effective transformation. It should be the first focus, instead of launching initiatives all over the place (as most organizations stuck in a rut tend to do).

Do you have an effective, performing team to help you through complexity? If not, what are you going to do to get it working as it should? That should be your first priority, now!

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Stop to be Excessively Specialized – Become a Generalist to be Successful in the Collaborative Age

In the late Industrial Age, to be successful in our careers we were supposed to be specialists. How often did I hear career advice in the form of dismissing any effort at being rather a generalist (and generally, deploring that I did not want to specialize in a well-recognized discipline).

Mutitasking (exaggerated)
Are you a Jack of All Trades?

Being specialized was great for the organization because the bureaucracy could fit you in a pre-determined box, could figure out what you should or could become, figure out what to pay you and in general, identify you as a particular commodity type. The Corporation hated types that could not be classified properly.

In the Collaborative Age, being excessively specialized is becoming a burden. We are not speaking here of being a Jack of All Trades; what we support rather is that the Knowledge Enhancing Exchaning Networker (K.E.E.N.) of the Collaborative Age needs to be a generalist with a few areas of particular excellence.

Excessive specialization precludes agility. Specialization is based on deep knowledge of something which necessarily stems from the past; it might help understand similar features in the future but certainly not significant, disruptive changes that would come from somewhere else. The specialists of the cathodic screen – a highly complicated device – have been wiped out by flat screens in a merciless manner.

Today you need to understand enough of the world to be agile enough. That is being a generalist. being well-travelled is a great way to understand the limits of personal assumptions. Of course, you also need to be world class at certain skills – and they might not be those skills that had been painfully codified by the Industrial Corporation. It might be creativity, leadership, networking, a gift for understanding computer code…

In start-ups everybody needs to do a bit of everything – which is also why deep specialists won’t fit in. Start-ups are about creating a new way of doing certain things – not repeating the old ways even slightly better. They don’t need specialists to thrive. They need generalists.

Even the Harvard Business Review makes the case for General Managers in this post “Bring back the General Manager“, lamenting that departmentalization of corporations since the early 1980’s has fostered specialist careers and that organizations are missing generalist General Managers!

Successful people of the Collaborative Age will be generalists with certain highly developed gifts. Don’t become a too narrow specialist. Open your eyes to the world and get ready to contribute through multiple channels.

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How to, and Why Foster our Enthusiasm

According to Churchill, keeping enthusiasm when moving from failure to failure is the key to success. According to Emerson, “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm“. What happens here?

Nothing GREAT was ever achieved without enthusiasmEnthusiasm, etymologically, means ‘inspired by the Gods‘, or even ‘possessed by the Gods‘. It described a quasi-divine state of excitement and zeal. It describes an energy that we can’t really explain, due to an attraction to an idea, a goal, a calling.

Can you foster enthusiasm? Do you need to wait for that Divine spark and energy? What can you do kindle your enthusiasm?

I believe that we can certainly work to improve our enthusiasm and excitement and do not need to wait for divine inspiration. It is certainly the key to much action and realization. We need to foster it and grow it within us.

How can we do that? By caring about our enthusiasm and helping it grow, notwithstanding ‘failures’ and ‘successes’. What counts is the journey, and how enthusiastically we discover more of the world around us and how we can influence it.

Kindle you enthusiasm, you need it; and we need it!

 

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