Traveling Light Blog

I’m featured as Consultant of the Month by the Society for the Advancement of Consulting. If you’re interested, check it out at http://www.consultingsociety.com/. This group has been of great value in my professional development as a consultant for the past several years. I encourage other consultants to check it out.

Resolutions are great, but only if we act on them. By this stage in your career, resolutions are at least 50% head game, if not 80% or more. Let’s borrow our tools, then, from the ultimate head game: The Olympics. Think about it. At this level, every athlete is the best in the world. It’s not about talent. It’s about the head game.

I’d like to extend a big thank-you to Dr. Roberta Kraus, Olympic sports psychologist, for teaching me this technique way back in the day. I still use it almost 20 years later. Just for the record, she did not teach me this because I was an Olympic athlete. She taught me this because I was a leader who wanted to integrate the best techniques from every discipline into my work. (Yeah, that’s kind of boring by comparison, isn’t it….)

When you’re having trouble with a particular performance (say, you repeatedly clam up in important meetings) or you just want to improve a skill (like putting), give it a try.

There are five steps and I do recommend that you do them all:

1. Pre-Performance:  This is like a rehearsal.  Go through the entire performance in your mind, as close to real time as you can get within the confines of your schedule.
2. Pre-Act:  immediately before the performance, visualize the performance as if on fast forward
3. Performance
4. Post-Act:  immediately after the performance, remember the performance as if on fast forward
5. Post-Performance:  remember the performance more slowly, analyzing how you did and identifying any needed changes in your performance

To get the most value from the visualization process, try the following:

• Visualize yourself in the actual room, on the putting green – wherever you will be performing.
• Imagine the entire situation with vividness and clarity.
• Imagine the feel of the action, what it would really be like to be in the meeting or on that putting green right now.
• This is not an exercise in perfectly predicting the future – just take reasonable guesses about what will happen, what others will say and do, how they will respond, etc.
• Succeed mightily during the rehearsal.  If you start to fail in the rehearsal, rewind and do the failing part over until you are successful.
• Take a few deep breaths before visualization and again before the performance to relax. Unclench your fists, too.
• The night before the event and the morning of the event, relive your best previous performance.  If you have not yet had a successful performance, relive a different successful performance that is in some way similar.

Use this technique for one resolution. Then tell me how it goes!

Readers of our first holiday issue in December 2007 might remember how much I enjoy the Sankta Lucia song popular in Sweden this time of year. Here is a mighty cute version for your festive Friday afternoon: http://www.care2.com/send/card/5668. Happy Holidays!

In looking back at the early issues of Traveling Light, the biggest change I see is that I’ve shifted to writing many more articles that share very little strategy and instead deliver those down-in-the-weeds, here’s-the-technique, start-with-this-script, say-this-not-that tools and advice. Why? You tell me you like them and use them and get results. I really do listen to your feedback!

I’ve also started sharing more of my observations about what’s going on culturally, and how I see this impacting you as a leader. The fundamental nature of our relationships is changing in dramatic ways, influenced by forces that simply were not at play in 2007. The workplace will never be the same, though at the moment this is entirely hidden from most leaders, so I’ll continue to work to bring this into the light.

As I began writing more tool-focused articles, I dropped the even shorter quick tips that used to open Traveling Light, so today, I bring you all of the original quick tips. See which tips you can use now to skyrocket your impact and reduce the load in your life:

1. If you’re in a leadership role, you’re probably in the top 20% of people in intellect, talent, and responsibility. Some people who work for you are your peers in all three areas. Some are not; they bring different gifts to the table. Unrealistic expectations about human beings create a heavy burden for you and for everyone who interacts with you. Free up some energy. Don’t expect everyone to be motivated by what motivates you, as quick to learn, or ready, willing, and able to step into your role.
2. Speaking of successors, who will replace you if you get hit by the proverbial Mack truck today? In 15 years of working directly with leaders, I can say that, with a few exceptions (such as early-stage start-ups), the best leaders seek out, hire, and develop at least one successor, if not two. The weakest leaders don’t want the threat of a powerful underling. Be strong. Hire, support, and develop your successors well. If you never get hit by that Mack truck, it’s a beautiful thing. If you do, your preparation will have lightened the load for you and your organization.
3. While I’m on a roll here, did you know that an astounding number of management positions in the developed nations will be vacated by retiring baby boomers over the next 10 years? Leadership is not a part-time role, no matter how good you are. It’s not a semi-retired consulting project, either, unless clearly defined as interim leadership. What are you doing to reach out to younger people with leadership potential? What are you doing to develop leaders from other countries?
4. Looking to show your appreciation for an employee? Save yourself time: ask directly how he or she likes to be recognized. Sounds awkward. Works beautifully. The downfall of many well-intentioned reward programs is that they reflect how their authors like to be rewarded, which may have little similarity to how your employee likes to be rewarded. Just ask my deeply introverted colleague back in our Amoco days. She declined a $1000 award (a rare thing for oil company employees in 1990) because it involved walking across a stage in front of several hundred people to receive a certificate. The money just wasn’t worth it.
5. Thinking maybe you should show your appreciation a little more often, but don’t have the time? One of my clients came across an unopened box of thank-you notes when packing up his office to move to another building. Instead of packing them, he dusted them off, sat down, and quickly jotted off a note of thanks to each direct report, noting work they had done and how it positively impacted the customers or company. Normally a very particular man, he didn’t have time to worry about forming perfect messages or even getting the spelling right. His team was stunned, and happy, and no one noticed misspelled words or complained that his praise wasn’t as eloquent as his executive briefings. The vibe lasted for weeks. A ten-minute investment with a multi-week reward. Now that’s what I call Traveling Light.
6. Do you have the opposite challenge – you need to give negative feedback to an overly sensitive employee? Start with the right mindset. Feedback that helps a person grow and improve is a gift, even though it may not feel like it in the moment. Why would you withhold information that could help him or her make better-informed choices? Make your feedback specific to behaviors you can see, don’t try to guess at his or her internal mindset or feelings, take a deep breath, and give it your best go. Sensitive employees will only fall behind if you let their fragility stop you from telling them what they need to know in order to grow and keep pace with their thicker-skinned peers.
7. Hate your boss? A Florida State University study found that people with unsupportive bosses are twice as likely to feel sad and helpless, which doesn’t strike me as the optimal state for productivity, creativity, great leadership, and whatever else we may need in our people on any given day. Those who built strong bonds with their coworkers offset some of the stress. Do I have to state the obvious implications for bosses? Too many of my clients say they want to be respected and they don’t care if they’re liked. All well and good, unless your behaviors are seen by your employees as unsupportive. Find out.
8. Think you have to be as depressed as Sylvia Plath to be a creative genius? Luckily, no. One study after another has found that a generally positive work environment, free of interpersonal conflict, stokes the creative fires. I’ve seen this in organizations with which I’ve worked. Now I’ve come across a study from the University of Toronto, indicating that upbeat people produce more ideas and are better able to consider a range of solutions. Maybe Pollyanna was on to something.
9. Need a little perspective after this week’s market slide? Some long-term trivia to remind us that a week is just a week, not a lifetime: In 1907, the average work week for all people (not just harried professionals) was over 60 hours, only 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations, the average woman spent 12 hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning, and sewing. The economic improvements of the last 100 years have been substantial, to say the least. Even those over my lifetime have been impressive. I’m not going lose any sleep this weekend over that little ol’ growling bear.
10. Recent conversations have reminded me how essential it is for leaders to dust off, revisit, and perpetually remind ourselves to tune in to others. Force yourself to listen by both summarizing what the other person has said and asking the individual if you’ve understood his or her key points. Our minds can’t think as slowly as our mouths speak, so simply telling yourself, “I’ll really pay attention now” is a little like telling yourself, “I’ll really ride slowly on the roller coaster now.” It will have no impact on the outcome. Bring your team along for the journey by raising your expectations of their listening as well. Genuine listening and dialogue take more time than shoving your ideas down each other’s throats, but I think of it as an investment to achieve a sustainable solution instead of one that constantly unravels, is sabotaged, or simply fades away.
11. If you want to make a change at work, try spending time with those who’ve already done it, or who are at least committed to similar goals. You’ll be doing what participants in Weight Watchers International have been doing for years. A recent study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that our behaviors are largely influenced by our social networks. Hence, those who spend time each week at Weight Watchers with like-minded individuals are far more likely to make the changes they want than those who go it alone or enroll in programs that don’t involve routine contact with other people who share their goals. While the study focused on weight, it’s not a big leap to see how this influences other aspects of our lives, particularly for us externally-focused Extraverts.
12. Stressed out by the afternoon? Don’t think too deeply about this if your lunch consists of a sandwich and some fries. I’ve had clients come to me with concerns about their waning enthusiasm and commitment to work who essentially were just eating a lousy lunch and then suffering the aftereffects every day. The 25-year-old body can usually handle the sandwich and fries and keep on going. The 45-year-old body generally can’t. I’m waiting for someone to invent a low-carb French fry so I can live by my own advice here. Until then – sigh — I’ll keep relegating the fries mostly to the weekends.
13. When you sit down next to the CEO at a meal, avoid eating his or her food by remembering that your bread plate is to the left and your drink is to the right. You can cue yourself by forming an “o” with your index finger and thumb. On the left hand, this forms the letter “b” for bread, and on the right hand, the letter “d” for drink. Try it now. See? Nifty, huh? Don’t worry about getting caught doing this. It’s a great conversation starter. For example, the person next you just might say, “Ah, I see you read Traveling Light…”

A friend forwarded this fascinating…um…advertisement? Art installation? Movie? All of the above? What do you think? http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=XVTga6GmbGw&vq=medium#t=74

I was recently nominated for a Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The competition was conducted by the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment, a non-profit organization that provides rigorous business training for aspiring low-income, high-potential entrepreneurs.

Though I didn’t win, I did have an opportunity to meet many of the winners, and I was so impressed! If you’d like to learn more about the Women’s Initiative and the 2011 Women Entreprenuers of the Year, please visit http://womensinitiative.org/index.htm.

If you’ve worked closely with me, you have probably noticed that I see what’s going on inside of people, often before they see it themselves. I pick up the zeitgeist of the moment, and the next wave coming. Whether it’s nature or nurture that gave me this gift is too complex a question for a mere ezine, and probably not of much interest to you.

But what does matter is that I’ve been picking something up for the last four years and it’s been growing each year. Now I see it forming into a cultural transition big enough for the big research firms to start reporting about it, so I’ve decided it’s time to reveal this transition to you and why I think it is so important.

My surfing husband, Kirk, will tell you from experience, you have to be the one to catch that big wave or the guy next to you will. Much like a surfer, you can ride this cultural wave if you know what it is and if you prepare to ride it as it’s building, instead of trying to ride it after it’s already fully formed.

This big shift is impossible to describe in pure business terms, so I won’t even try. It’s a massive shift in values, deep down inside for many, many people.

If you’ve ever tried to lead anyone anywhere, you know that it won’t happen unless it resonates with their values. In a business, that starts with the values of your most essential top performers at each tier, the employees with the highest potential, the opinion leaders, and your next generation of senior leadership. If you’re on board with their values, the rest will follow.

So what are the new top values that motivate your employees? Prepare to be surprised. I find that very few leaders are already in tune with this change.

• Love. Yes, the Big L is making a comeback. People aren’t fools. They look around them and observe. They observe that loving personal relationships take time. They observe that working relationships can’t be a substitute for personal relationships because they get torn apart all of the time due to layoffs, reorganizations, and work functions moving to other geographic locations.

There is absolutely no way an individual can have any control over whether he or she will see the same people at work tomorrow who are there today — if they even see anybody at all.

By contrast, investing time, effort, and tenderness with your spouse, children, family, and friends, builds a loving bond that will not be torn apart by events beyond your control. It’s no wonder love is back.

• Doing the right thing. How else do we explain the massive interest of the finest Ivy League MBA’s in non-profit work that pays crap?

This trend pre-dates the Great Recession and is linked to a much larger and longer-term shift. The Baby Boom generation wanted desperately to make the world a better place. Alas, they were unable or unwilling to shake up the fundamental structure of business, they ran out of money, got jobs, kept their heads down, and crammed in whatever world improvements they could fit into their limited free time.

Along the way, they raised the next generation of children and instilled their values in them. We have two absolutely enormous generations in the workplace, both intensely motivated to do the right thing. One generation has 40 years of pent-up desire to unleash, and the other is too young to cynically assume that it can’t be done.

• Personal well-being. A mix of mental, physical, and spiritual health. For years well-being has been touted as something that could be achieved through one’s profession, and tremendous effort has been put into finding a career that suits you, finding a work culture that suits you, and being happy, reasonably challenged, and content at work.

But this notion in isolation is a complete fallacy, since work satisfaction is just one of the elements of well-being, and if work consumes too much of your energy, your well-being will inevitably suffer from the complete lack of attendance to the other aspects of personal well-being.

So how will this cultural shift determine your company’s leadership for the next 20 years, and what can you do to leverage it instead of being the surfer who failed to catch the wave?

Start with the assumption that the biggest challenge you’ll face is that nobody who’s any good wants your job when you’re ready to move on.

Feeling nervous about that? I am. When I look at the current demands of business leadership, I see them crashing against these values. How can you invest in loving relationships outside of work if you’re always working?

How can you do the right thing when every few years you’re ordered to lay off your direct reports because they’re no longer relevant to the new strategy and your senior leadership doesn’t want to invest in retraining them?

Or when you’re ordered to install ergonomically damaging lab equipment because the expense of the cheaper lab equipment plus the projected workplace injuries is less than the expense of the ergonomically improved equipment?

Or when you’re told that you should do the audit at the same client where you’re doing financial consulting services because the consulting is so much more profitable?

(All three are true examples I’ve personally witnessed.)

How can you experience well-being when you have to get up at 4:00 in order to fit in your exercise and you wrap up your workday several hours after dinner? When the dental appointment to fix the rotting nerve in your tooth keeps getting delayed due to work demands? When you have no time to reflect on your day, let alone grow in your spiritual life?

Do you see now why there may be fewer good candidates for once-coveted leadership roles? Fewer candidates who want the top jobs – always a bad thing. You need to be able to pick your next generation of leadership from the best at every level, not settle for the one and only person who could fog a mirror and actually wanted the job.

It’s going to take creativity, flexibility, and the creation of some level of actual job security (what a charming and old-fashioned notion) in order to attract the best people to your pipeline.

Now is an incredible time to begin addressing the challenge. The level of disillusionment in the professional workforce exceeds any I’ve seen in my entire career. They are not happy with their current jobs. They are not impressed with their current leadership. They are disgusted with their company’s business practices. But they’re not going to reach out to another employer and leave the relative safety of “the devil they know.”

Not unless you create an environment that connects in even the smallest way with their deeply held values and internal motivations, because that one true source of motivation is something about human nature that will never change.

The tough economy has employees stressed in nearly every organization of every size, in every industry — particularly those who have seen their coworkers laid off.

The sickening fear that pervades an organization, ironically, interferes with productivity at the very time when you need the most productivity per employee that you’ve ever needed and employees most want to be at their very best.

The fear manifests itself differently for each employee, but generally you should be on the lookout for three signs:

Freezing, generally in the form of reluctance to make any decision that involves even the slightest risk of alienating a powerful person, and an increase in escalations of matters they used to work out themselves.

Wasting time by advocating a point of view without any facts to back it up, although the employee will be quite certain his or her point is correct.

Taking a great deal more time to accurately complete tasks that used to come easily and quickly, despite the employee’s best efforts to work quickly and accurately.

There are seven expedient ways to create an environment in which employees can better deal with the seismic change and volatility around them and get back to optimum productivity:

1. Fully engage the front line in improving operations and customer intimacy. The best improvements come from the people doing the work. In my own consulting, I spend a great deal more time with those doing the work than with the executive team. They best understand the challenges in acquiring customers, keeping customers happy, creating and delivering products and services, keeping track of it all, and maintaining compliance with all laws and regulations and often have the best ideas for improvements which can be quickly implemented.

2. Reserve unilateral top-down decisions only to those which need extremely fast movement, or which are so sensitive that collaboration would be inappropriate. I’m reminded of the executive who actually asked each of his direct reports for their recommendation of which of the team members should be let go – not their team members, their peers who were also his direct reports. Yikes. O.k., there’s one situation in which a unilateral, top-down decision would actually be a good thing, but workforce buy-in and quick implementation of most other decisions will be greatly improved by involving the next level down in making the decision, not just implementing a decision made by the level above.

3. Use your crisis recovery team, if you have one, for input on how to respond to various crises which erupt along the way. Their preparation may have been for earthquakes, floods, and major power outages, don’t underestimate their ability to apply the same skills, mindset, cross-functional collaboration, and processes to providing outstanding recommendations and implementation in other fast-moving situations.

4. Give extra effort to ensure the ongoing successful integration of executives who were hired from outside. Fully 40% of these executives are pushed out, fail, or quit within 18 months of their hire date. I’m not exaggerating here – three separate studies support the same point. Your workforce doesn’t need this additional volatility, created entirely from within rather than by economic pressures. The power to help these executives go from outsiders to insiders lies entirely with you.

5. Let employees be friends. Often employees will shake themselves out of an unproductive funk because they don’t want to let down or burden the friends with whom they work. While many managers tell me they are uncomfortable with this idea of friendships at work, it’s been proven time and again to improve loyalty and productivity in organizations. People bond. Don’t try to stop it.

6. If you are a manager, ask your team to frankly tell you the greatest obstacles to their productivity and then work with them and on their behalf to address these. A Canadian study confirmed what I’ve observed – that employees give their best efforts for a boss who is strong enough to directly address obstacles to productivity instead of passively just telling them to work around it.

7. Publicly acknowledge their contributions and take extra precautions that you do not imply that their ideas were yours or that the success is yours, not theirs. This can not be overemphasized in a fiscal environment in which monetary rewards are so limited, and in truth, for most employees who earn enough to cover their bills and put food on the table, the money has never mattered as much as proper recognition.

So that I never assume, here’s a brief list of services I can provide to you:

1. Hone your leadership and influence through 1:1 executive coaching, group coaching, workshops, and webinars
2. Build your leadership team through assessments, feedback, workshops, and retreats
3. Provide guidance on how to lead a business transition of any size or type – technology-triggered change, acquisitions, spin-offs, process changes, new business directions
4. Manage your own personal transition through 1:1 career transition coaching or new consultant start-up coaching

Additionally, each Selby Group affiliate brings specialized skills in adjacent specialties, such as business strategy, program management, and human resources strategy.

Contact me at 510-595-3800 for an initial consultation.

Have you ever tried to lead a major organizational change that failed? I did years ago, and it hurt! I still remember the sting and the embarrassment of having to retract all of my bold statements and retreat from my position.

That’s why, ever since, I’ve been an avid student of how to make organizational changes successful. Today, after leading and consulting on dozens of big organizational changes, I advise clients on how to avoid all of the mistakes I made and ensure that their changes will be smoother and more successful.

O.k., it’s time to spill the beans: The #1 reason changes fail is NOT that the change was driven by a bad business decision, although that sometimes happens. It’s not IT’s fault. People love to blame IT for failed change (“If only their technology had met our needs, we could implement a whole new way of doing business…”), but that’s rarely the reason a change fails.

No, the #1 reason organizational changes tank is this: the failure to manage the subjective human side. This includes aspects such as:

• The uncomfortable individual process of experiencing change — the loss, feelings of uncertainty, denial, and general discomfort that nearly everyone experiences to some degree, from your most seasoned director to your youngest individual contributor
• Inattention to organizational politics – the change initiative gets sabotaged, intentionally or not
• Inattention to developing the information, knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed to sustain the change
• The counteracting pressures on individuals, that you and the other leaders may not even realize you are putting on them

You CAN be successful, though, by using a structured process to manage the human aspects of implementing a complex change — in much the same way that you use a structured process to manage any other project.

Here are the key steps to make sure YOUR change is one of the 25% that succeed:

1. Widen the circle of involvement to ensure that key stakeholders are involved, not just informed, every step of the way.
2. Assemble a change leadership team. Some members of this team may be needed for just the project start-up, but others will need to stick with it through the entire change. Keep the membership flexible enough to accommodate this.
3. Choose an appropriate organizational change methodology for the scale and depth of the change. If you need to incrementally improve processes, it will require a different approach than if you want to radically alter the fundamental way you view and manage the business.
4. Regardless of the scale and depth of change, create and sustain:
   • highly visible leadership
   • a means to effectively develop any skills and capabilities the organization will need
   • a two-way process for communication throughout the change
5. Pay attention and adjust as you receive feedback throughout the change. You can’t predict everything that will happen. There will be surprises.

Remember, failure to manage the subjective, human aspects of the change will slow your efforts and create a poor end result. Apply this process so your organization can not only survive through a big change, but thrive.