Harvard on TEAMS

1. Overview. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams. The Harvard BusiessReview has gathered some of its best articles on teams into one convenient book. Authors and scholars like Hackman, Pentland and Katzenbach, Eisenhardt, and Amabile fill this volume with rich content for leaders seeking research-based guidance. For example, using high-end sensors, Sandy Pentland and his MIT colleagues describe accurately how great teams behave based on massive data tracking. Theresa Amabile uses hundreds of daily work diaries to help us understand that people just want to make progress toward a meaningful goal every day—the “progress principle.” And Kathleen Eisenhardt and colleagues teach us how to engage in constructive conflict to produce excellent results while preserving relationships. Here is a summary of several of the best articles in this volume.

2. The New Science of Building Great Teams (by Alex “Sandy” Pentland). What separates average from great teams? MIT researchers equipped over 2,500 people with sensor badges (like those ID badges people wear at work). MIT’s special high-tech badges collected copious interactive communication data, such as voice tone, position of speakers relative to each other, time spent talking and listening to each other—but not recording conversation. From this communication data, highly reliable patterns emerged that allowed researchers to make reliable predictions about effective team behavior. “Those communication patterns were as significant as all other factors—intelligence, personality, talent—combined.” The three key communication factors that impact on performance are energy, engagement, and exploration. Thus, in the best teams, members of the team: 

a. Talk about the same amount of time and in short bursts—no speeches!

b. Face each other and energetically gesture.

c. Connect with the team and each other individually. 

d. Carry on back-channel discussions within the team. 

e. Explore outside the team (conferences and meetings) and bring back new info to the team.  

3. Why Teams Don’t Work (Richard Hackman interview). Teams often underperform due to issues with coordination, competition, and motivation. Even excellent leaders often don’t produce great teams. To increase the chance of a great team:

a. Appoint and protect a deviant. A devil’s advocate (deviant) helps to keep the team from agreeing too much—becoming too homogeneous—a real danger to innovation. The deviant says what others might be thinking, but no one has the willingness to say. S/he must be protected and allowed to tell the truth to power and the team.

b. Keep the number of team members low. Hackman suggests no double digits, even no more than six members. Become ruthless about whom you allow on the team. ONLY the necessary few should be allowed. Don’t let politics or lack of courage of the leader get in the way of key selections. 

c. Set a compelling direction and purpose. People need to know the strategic direction—the why—of what they’re doing to have any chance at being aligned and successful. A compelling purpose with a single agenda needs to be the rule. 

d. Focus on group process. Forget guiding and correcting individual behavior. Rather, use a coach-approach and group process. Leaders need to know how to launch and assess team progress and outcomes.

e. Stabilize teams. Data shows that stable teams win more often—whether flying planes, conducting surgery, or running companies. Regular turnover destabilizes teams.

f. Engage a team coach. Leaders who receive executive coaching are not as effective as the entire team getting coaching—especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of a team project. 

4. The Power of Small Wins (Amabile and Kramer). When people make progress toward a meaningful goal every day, they stay engaged. These authors reviewed the daily work diaries of hundreds of knowledge workers and found that a positive inner work life made the difference between average and high-performing, engaged workers. And engaged employees and teams produce measurably more than others. The finding of this research is that when leaders help people make regular progress toward a goal, people feel empowered and motivated. The authors call this finding “the Progress Principle”—the single greatest motivator a leader can offer. In these diaries, best days were described with the word “progress” and on worst days, the word “setback” showed up.

5. How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight (Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, Bourgeois) Leaders want differences to be debated without having personal attacks. Thus, separating personalities from issues is critical. Constructive conflict in a high-speed economy will be critical in the future. So how to do it? Vigorous debate on the issues but little time name-calling and politicking. These steps will help: Focus on facts. Develop alternatives. Agree upon goals, not solutions. Inject humor. Maintain a balance of power. Resolve issues without demanding consensus.  

6. Virtuoso Teams (Fischer and Boynton). Successful virtuoso teams consist of top performers; intimate and intense relationships; strong communication systems, collaboration and conflict; assumptions that consumers are smart. The temptation is to settle for OK teams. The authors’ advice: DON’T. Ordinary teams produce ordinary results. With the right strategies, virtuoso teams produce high-end results. So, 1) Assemble stars. It’s an investment worth doing; 2) Build the group ego, not individual egos; 3) Make work a contact sport. Cause face to face contact/conflict that’s managed.;4) Respect the customer’s intelligence; 5. Herd the cats. Respect individualism and keep the team focus.  

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams by Harvard Business Press, 2013, reviewed by Steve Gladis, June 2018.

ACT Before You Think!?

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra (HBR Press, 2015), reviewed by Steve Gladis

Overview:  Act before you think!  Not exactly the advice we might give our kids, but sage advice that the author, Herminia Ibarra, offers her readers based on her myth-shattering research about career transition. Leaders need to act—experiment their way into leadership—and not overthink it. Social science research shows us that people change their minds only after changing their

behavior. We think of ourselves as writers, runners, lovers only after we’ve acted—written, run and loved. And becoming a leader from the outside in helps generate the author’s slogan: Outsight comes from action—by redefining your job, your network, yourself. Regarding leadership, we act like a leader when we offer new ideas, network with new people to reach goals, and make contributions beyond our expertise. To become a better lder, we must stretch. And, when we’re in transition, reflection should always follow action, not the other way around. By contrast, too much insight reflects on internal knowledge, past experience and thought—too much of which can get you stuck in the past. Rather, advancing your leadership emerges from your acts first, then your thoughts and reflections.

1.      The “Outsight Principle.” A rapidly changing world calls for an adaptive, do-it-yourself (DIY) transition. Not waiting for your organization to step up, but taking charge of your own leadership development makes sense. Called the “outsight principle,” the author’s revelation says that we need to act against habit and follow a three-pronged strategy: 1. Work on your job—try new ways at work; 2. Work on your network—meet new people; and, 3. Work on yourself--connect and engage with people in new ways.

2.      Redefine Your Job. We tend to stick with what we’re good at because it feels good—and we’re also lazy! Nearly 60% of leaders spend time in meetings—getting bogged down. Shifting from driving day-to-day results to becoming more strategic is how leaders advance.  But that shift isn’t easy, and we like easy—staying with who and what we know. Getting off the “dance floor” and onto the “balcony” forces managers to see their job in a more strategic way. To evolve, leaders must act as bridges between diverse groups, envision new ideas, engage with people and embody/become the change they want to see. To do these things, leaders need to get more involved in outside projects, carve out more time for strategic work, and communicate their purpose—their “why.”

3.      Network Across and Out. Getting strategic things done demands that leaders become better networked with stakeholders (both lateral and vertical) to sell ideas, identify trends, and compete for resources. To develop, leaders also need to know how to do new things (get new tasks done), which often requires help—coaching, mentoring, encouragement. Thus, expanding networks to more strategic levels and well beyond their current tactical levels makes sense.  In one study, managers rated external training (outside networking) as far more valuable than their boss in developing them as a leader—reinforcing the do-it-yourself (DIY) model of transition. Leaders need three kinds of networks: Personal (to develop yourself); operational (to get things done); and strategic (to get to the next level). And, leveraging between networks leads to synergy. Critical components of a good network are breadth (diverse), connectivity (links between groups), and dynamic (evolving).  But we tend to network with people who are like ourselves—an evolutionary instinct. In fact, at the beginning of any job interview, finding something in common with the interviewer dramatically increases the chances of getting to the next level. Thus, the more diverse, dynamic and wide a network, the better.

4.      Be More Playful with Your Self. Talk to any successful person and they’ve either felt or are feeling like a fraud. So common is this phenomenon that it’s been called “the imposter syndrome.” Often, we get trapped into this situation because when you step up to leadership, the position feels new, weird. Experimenting with new behaviors helps us role play as we adapt to new identities—which can feel less authentic. However, who we were in the past is not who we might become. Three ways to play/experiment:  draw from other leaders, focus on learning, and rewrite your story.

5.      Stepping Up. Evolving into the next-level leader is not a single event but a process over time.  Transition is never a linear, straightforward process—more a bunch of false starts and readjustments. It’s a lot like going to buy a pair of running shoes. You try them on, test drive them on a treadmill or around the store first. Who you are as a leader isn’t preconceived but conceived of testing, failing and trying again. According to Daniel Levinson, we go through transition (3 years) and stability periods (7 years). We tend to incrementally change in stability periods and make bigger changes in our transition phases. There are five stages when stepping into transition as a leader: 1. Disconfirmation—a gap between where you are and want to be; 2. Simple Addition—adding and testing out new roles and behaviors; 3. Complication—setbacks that happen along the transition; 4. Course Correction—reflection on new endeavors and impact; 5. Internalization—confirming your new identity and sticking with changes. Bottom Line: To become a leader, act first, then think and reflect on it. Change how you work, who you hang around with and how you express yourself. In his commencement speech at Stanford, Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots going forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” So, stepping out and trying/acting into leadership may not immediately make perfect sense, but one day it will form a coherent narrative if we stay true to our quest to become a better leader.

6.      More Good Stuff Inside: Check out these nuggets: The Outsight Graphic (p. 11); Is Your Work Environment Telling You It’s Time to Change (p.19); A Network Audit (p. 73); What’s Wrong with Your Network (p.102); The Big Questions (p. 102); Are you in a Career-Building Period or in a Career-Transitioning Period? (p. 179).

Smile. Breathe. Listen.

As a busy executive, you might think you don’t even have the hour it takes toSmile. Breathe. Listen: The 3 Mindful Acts for Leaders. Here are some highlights that might just encourage you to read the entire book or at least recommend it to your team.

read

Smile.

• We are hard-wired to smile. We’re even smiling in the womb. Kids smile like crazy, and mirror neurons allow us to “catch” smiling from others.
• Smiling is good for your long-term health and for a longer and more engaged life.
• Smiling reduces stress, helps us work better, and makes people want to be around us.
• The “Duchenne” smile—a smile that engages the muscles of the eyes as well as those of the mouth―is viewed as genuine and authentic.
• Smiling makes us appear more likable, courteous, and competent.
• Leaders who smile put people at ease, spread positive emotions like a virus, and create an environment in which people can do their best work.

Breathe.

• Breathing is automatic. However, leaders who understand how to control their breathing will be much more effective.
• Mindful Breathing is the “Big Switch” that helps us move from mental rumination or anxious thinking to more a more thoughtful, relaxed state.

• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a research-based, highly successful program based on mindful breathing and consistent, regular practice.
• Regularly sitting or lying quietly starts the “practice” of mindfulness.
• The impact of mindful breathing can be seen in our personal, team, and corporate health.
• Leaders who learn mindful breathing not only help themselves become better people but also help those around them to do the same.

Listen.

• Listening is a skill possessed by the very best leaders.
• Listening represents an important gift that every leader can give―a leader’s time and attention are highly valued by those around the leader.
• Good listening consists of presence, technique, and practice.
• Presence is demonstrated when leaders are fully engaged, focused, and not distracted when talking to people.
• The Speaker-Listener Technique focuses on the listener fully understanding the speaker’s concerns.
• The Ladder of Inference demonstrates how anyone, including leaders, can jump to conclusions based on their own often erroneous assumptions and beliefs.
• Despite a prodigious amount of data and statistics about how important listening is, a number of leaders—in business, medicine, and any other profession—have poor listening skills.
• Unfortunately, the prognosis for whether people will become more focused, better listeners is not good, because of technology intrusions (emails, texts, phone calls vying for our immediate attention.

An Essay: Finding Your Larry Bird

Finding Your Larry Bird

By Steve Gladis

We all need a touchstone—someone who makes us the best person we can be. I’m not talking about superstition, like rubbing the bald guy’s head before you place a bet at the race track or throwing salt over your shoulder for good luck. No, I’m talking about finding the person who makes you the best you possible— your Larry Bird.

Who is Larry Bird?  If you don’t know pro basketball, Larry played his entire career with the Boston Celtics. He’s arguably one of the very best to ever play the game. He’s been on 3 NBA championship teams, been the MVP several times, was on the Olympic Dream Team, coached the Indiana Pacers and now is their president and guiding light. In Boston and Indiana, Larry Bird is an immortal.

Larry’s coach, the famed and storied Red Auerbach, regarded Bird as one of the most coachable players ever. As legend has it, Auerbach had a rule that no matter who scored, Bird had to touch the ball at least once on offense, because 99% of the time Bird would make the best decision about whether to pass or shoot. Larry Bird was the natural touchstone for the Boston Celtics. In fact, one quote attributed to Bird affirms this legendary practice of having Bird touch the ball:  "It doesn't matter who scores the points, it's who can get the ball to the scorer.”  

Like basketball, business has had its share of great leaders with their own Larry Birds. Steve Jobs (the marketing genius) had Steve Wozniak (the technical genius) to pass to at Apple. At Microsoft, Bill Gates had Paul Allen. Warren Buffet has Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway. Michael Eisner had his own Larry Bird at Disney, now deceased Frank Wells. And, Larry Paige and Sergey Brin have each other at Google.

Some people are lucky enough to find their touchstone. I married mine! My wife, Donna, has always been my Larry Bird. She has the uncanny ability to always stay calm, untangle emotion and facts, and either “pass or shoot the ball” at exactly the right time.  In short, she gets the ball to the scorer. There are many examples in my life. I remember when I was set to leave the FBI where I had been an agent for years. I was being recruited by a large firm. In fact, they had made me a very nice offer, which I was close to accepting. However, I brought home an advertisement for a job on the faculty of the University of Virginia that a friend had given me. Donna saw it and thought it might be worth my consideration. When I mentioned how financially good the firm’s offer was, she said, “You’ve never been about money.” She was right, and I ended up at the University where I was very happy.

The two keys to finding your own Larry Bird are simple: Look and listen.

Look at what people do. The Romans had a saying, “facta, non veba,” which means “deeds, not words.”  People say, even promise, all sorts of things but often don’t actually deliver. For example, an executive might give speeches about integrity and honesty and then do shady things to maximize corporate profits and look good to Wall Street. A father might talk about healthy eating to his children and then constantly stuff his face with junk food. Sure, we all disconnect from our words from time to time—but the Larry Birds of the world have a better track record at staying close to what they say. In my world, Donna’s as consistent a person as I’ve ever met. Her say-do consistency is remarkable. So, keep your eyes wide open for people who consistently do what they say.

Listen to what they say. While I don’t have a lot of empirical data to support this, my personal and professional experience with thoughtful advisors has been heavily weighted on the side of introverts. And there is data on them. In the world, there are roughly 3 times as many talkers (extroverts), as there are listeners (introverts). This means that there’s a lot of chatter or noise going on. However, when extroverts talk, it’s like brainstorming. It’s often unrehearsed and free form. Don’t listen too much to extroverts, at least not to their early “rough drafts.” If you let them talk long enough, you may get to what they really mean.  However when an introvert speaks, listen up. Introverts don’t “publish” words or advice unless they’ve thought about it a lot and are strongly committed to what they’re saying. Donna is the kind of person who talks softly and a lot less frequently, certainly less than me. Something we extroverts need to learn is to shut up and listen. Often the wisdom of an introvert can get muted by the barrage of words from extraverts. Be careful to avoid suppressing introverts and listen.

In short, it might take you some time to find your Larry Bird. But if you find a person with a sense of say-do integrity who speaks softly but profoundly, you might just have found yours. Run your critical ideas by them before you shoot or pass the ball—you’ll be glad you did.

Leadership Essay: In Praise of Working Mothers by Steve Gladis

In Praise of Working Mothers

In my life, I have been a jerk—regrettably, on more than one occasion. Just ask my wife. Fortunately, I have learned a lot. Indeed, the great gift of aging is wisdom.

In one of my many states of “jerkdom,” I believed that in the workplace everyone should be treated equally, including working mothers. That sounds like a great democratic notion, however impossible and wrong-headed. Many critics of such special accommodations are often men—like me years ago—and woman without children, both of whom share once tragic flaw: They have NO idea what it means to be a working mother. Personally, I did not appreciate what it took to work full time and raise a family. In my era, one partner worked and the other stayed home to raise the children—usually, but not always, the wife.

However, when I had a close-up-and-personal look at what my two grown daughters, both with young boys,  have to do just to get out of the house in the morning to get to work, I was stunned. It’s like having two full-time jobs, not one: Your “work” job and your child-rearing job. And in many cases you also run the family business—the household—a third job. It’s a wonder more working mothers don’t just quit all their jobs and head off to Tahiti to escape.

If propagating the species is one of humankind’s primary responsibilities, we have to make special accommodations for working mothers. It’s simple: No new babies, no future for the world. We accommodate the workplace for all sorts of reasons: Injuries as well as both physical mental disabilities. Surely, mothers don’t have a disability; rather, they just have the most important of all jobs—raising children.

So, how do you teach people who want equality in the workplace that raising kids requires the help of the village? I’ve heard of a great experiment that high school kids are put through to teach them about having children. Each of them is asked to bring in a five-pound sack of flour to class. For one month, they must take it everywhere with them or ask someone to take it, while they go to the bathroom or go out on a date! It doesn’t take long to get the big picture: Raising a bag of flower—that doesn’t get sick, doesn’t cry, and doesn’t need to be changed, rocked, taken to expensive daycare, fed, bathed, put to bed or be worried about—is still an enormous amount of work.

So, the next time some very-hard-working mother has to take her child to the doctor or stay home for an extra half-hour to help her child get over a nightmare—just ask yourself: How much do I care about the human race? 

Team of Teams: Post #1--Overview

Overview. General Stanley McChrystal and his author team tell us that to beat an agile foe
in an uncertain environment, an efficient team is never as effective as an adaptive one. Restructuring the Joint Special Operations Command from a classic command-and-control military management style to a more team-based, team of teams, McChrystal was far better able to fight the allusive al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under the notorious leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Forsaking the Frederick Taylor reductionist paradigm of always being efficient and effective, at the expense of being adaptive, even entrepreneurial,  McChrystal remade his command into a team of teams—adaptive, trustful and with common purpose—one that communicated well, asked questions, and figured out how to be successful in an uncertain environment.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell (Kindle Edition, Penguin, 2015), Reviewed by Steve Gladis, August 2015).

Fully Charged: Post #3--Interactions

Interactions. Keep your interactions positive and watch your life change.
a.    Ripple Effect: When we act happy, are kind, even lose weight—do anything positive—we can positively impact 10 and even 100 people around us (Yale research). And frequency of interactions is more important than intensity of our interaction. Little things count, not amazing gestures. People experiencing them are four times more likely to have a high level of well-being. Also, the closer you live to someone who’s kind or loving, the higher your happiness—up to 40% more if a half mile or less.
b.    Positive Ratios: When we interact with people, negative statements far outweigh positive ones. In fact, it takes about 3 positive ones to counter 1 negative one. Rath suggests 80% of our conversations should be focused on what’s going well; however, work-related performance reviews do just the reverse—spend 80% of the time on what’s not working well. Also, small acts add up: Studies show that making someone smile with a kind gesture is more important than trying to make them happy. Small, concrete goals to help the well-being of another make the difference.
c.    Make Experiences Count: Invest in experiences with other people, not simply on yourself. Such experiences have a greater impact and a more lasting one. Even if you’re waiting in line for an experience, like buying tickets to a concert, you’ll enjoy it more. However, this does not work if you’re just trying to impress someone.

Fully Charged: Post #2--Meaning

Meaning. Find meaning and purpose in your life.
a.    Progress toward meaningful work every day is what people seek, according to Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile. And, small wins get to meaningful progress. Pursue meaning by helping others, not happiness focused only on yourself. There is science/biology behind this purpose vs. happiness dilemma. People who lack meaning in their lives express a gene pattern that activates an inflammatory response, which can become chronic. However, people with purpose in their lives showed no such gene expression.
b.    Motivation from meaningful intrinsic values (recognition, respect, and impact) and not extrinsic (rewards and money) has significant positive impact on people’s lives. Research: Before starting to write, writers who thought about intrinsic motivations vs. those who thought about extrinsic motivation produced much better writing. People who did meaningful work outside of their work, performed better at work.
c.    Strengths: According to Gallup’s intensive research on strengths, we all have distinctive talents, which can develop into world-class strengths only if we recognize and practice those talents. And when we use those developed strengths, people are six times more engaged at work and three times more satisfied.  Unfortunately, we can often “fall into the default career path” and pursue a job because our parents or mentors think it’s a good idea, often without regard for our talents. Job crafting (U. of Michigan) instructs us to look at tasks that give us energy and meaning in our work and recast our jobs toward those tasks.

Work Rules: FINAL--Performance

Performance—Bock provides an in-depth look into the struggle that Google had with

performance assessment and why they separate it from development discussions. Pay: he suggests paying people “unfairly,” meaning that high performers deserve much more money than average workers; Bias: We’re all biased in one form or another, so remove it from the selection process. Check out the summary in the appendix of the book—in the “Work Rules” section.

New Kind of HR. In the “Afterword for HR Geeks Only,” the author provides a blueprint for this new kind of HR. This section will be critical to anyone trying to build a great company with great people. This book is a very worthy read as is this particular section.

Work Rules: Post #3--Recruitment and Hiring

Recruiting and Hiring. Google only hires 0.25% of applicants. Harvard

takes about 6.1% of its applicants. Thus, it’s about 25 times harder to get into Google than Harvard! Referrals from Googlers are the best source of recruits, but even that yields only 5%.  Treat hiring as the highest priority. Take time, hire the best and make recruiting part of everyone’s job. Note: The hiring manager does not make the final decision! People are being hired into the company, not just a particular division. Also, pressure can make a hiring manager rush, give in, and settle. Write-ups from the manager, peers, and others go to a hiring committee that keeps selection more objective. What they look for in new hires: 1. Cognitive ability—ability to learn; 2. Emergent Leadership—willing to step in and step out; 3. Cultural Fit—comfortable with ambiguity and conscientious humility; 4. Expertise—need to be very good at their work.

Work Rules: Post #2--Google's Culture

Cornerstones of Google’s Culture. The philosophy at Google

is that people are fundamentally good [often called “Theory Y”]. Thus, Google is a high-freedom culture—allowing people rather than restricting them, saying yes much more often than no. Three fundamental drivers of Google’s culture:

Meaning--A mission that matters—Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Companies with strong cultures—Google, IBM, Wegmans—all have a kind of moral imperative rather than a strictly business or financial goal. Great people “…want an aspiration that’s inspiring.” And they want to be able to directly connect their job to the company’s mission. There’s a very good research illustration about how fundraisers who talked with scholarship recipients quadrupled their results.  Getting employees to think like owners and see their work as a calling, not just a job, is a clear focus at Google and other high-freedom, mission-focused cultures.

Transparency--If you think people are basically good, then you should want to share corporate info with them—treat them like owners.  Google’s philosophy is “Default to open,” a model of transparency. For example, new engineers get to see Google’s source code on their first day! Google hosts TGIF every Thursday. Larry Page and Sergey Brin host an all-employee 30-minute meeting both in person and streaming video that gets broadcast around the world to Googlers. Anyone can ask any question. Transparency improves performance. Bridgewater Associates records every meeting and posts it for employees—call it “radical transparency.”

 Voice--Give people a say in how to run the company if you believe in the theory that people are fundamentally good. Through good corporate internal surveys, Google launched “Bureaucracy Busters”—an annual program targeted at reducing bureaucracy to get more done with less interference. Research at UT Austin has shown that giving  employees a voice is key to organizational effectiveness.

Work Rules: Post #1--Overview

Overview What do Google and Wegmans have in common? They both are high-freedom companies that believe employees really matter; they should have a worthy mission; they should get lots of corporate information (from a transparent organization); and, they should have a say—a “voice” in what happens.  Some great ideas emerge in this book, like not allowing hiring managers to make the final hiring decision, which eliminates any bias; hosting TGIF meetings where the CEO answers any questions in an open forum; and, treating HR as People Operations and conducting regular people experiments. Written by Google’s Chief of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, this book opens up Google’s people process to us and provides a worthy roadmap for any progressive company, big or small.

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock (Kindle Edition Hachette Book Group, 2015), reviewed by Steve Gladis, June 2015.

Mindful Work: Post #5--Corporate Impact

Corporate Impact: Adding to the quadruple bottom line—profits, society, environment, and now employees’ emotional and spiritual well-being. Companies like Google, General Mills, Aetna, Linkedin, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, Genentech, Ford, Cisco and many others have adopted meditation-based programs to calm executive minds, contributing to better leadership. 

Immunity to Change: Post #10--Leadership Development

Growing Your Own: A final word about leadership development.
a. In an ever-and-faster changing world, adaptive change becomes more crucial for both success and sustainability. Taking a development stance or a leadership development frame of mind can make this happen. The authors provide seven (7) attributes of this development stance:
i. Adulthood is a time for growth. We evolve throughout our lives.
ii. There’s a big distinction between technical and adaptive changes.
iii. Individuals have intrinsic motivation to grow.
iv. Such mindset changes take time.
v. Mindsets shape feelings, so change needs to involve head and heart (Jefferson would like this one).
vi. Change in mindset and change in behavior are co-dependent in this system.
vii. A development stance provides a safe place for people to experiment and take risks.
b. Leaders who move teams and organizations through this process are adaptive leaders, who themselves take the risk of creating a development frame of mind. But the alternative—treating problems as cosmetic and technical—leads to a very unsatisfied place.

Social Animal: #1--Overview

Overview: It’s no startling surprise to find out that we’re all social animals, each belonging to our tribes, whatever we call them—families, companies, churches, or political parties. However, David Brooks, vaunted journalist and author, scrapes off the layers of paint atop that old truism down to its bare metal, exposing three key insights: 1) the power of the unconscious; 2) the centrality of emotions; and 3) the deep interpenetration and interconnectedness of our minds. Using the power of a narrative to weave in Brooks’ prodigious experience in politics and people, as well as the depth of his observations and interpretation of scientific research, the reader gets a decent story packed with solid facts. It’s a bit like reading excellent historical fiction; but, this book is about how we live today. Using two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, to carry the narrative and provide the scaffold for his story, Brooks borrows from the tradition of parable and fable, thus weaving extraordinary scientific research into a story we can actually remember. And these two characters emanate from two very different social classes—Harold from the upper middle class and Erica from a family of immigrants. As such, they come at life very differently, yet somehow connect with each other in what might be described as a rich cocktail of humanity. The author raises the old Greek notion that we suffer our way to wisdom. Such wisdom operates below the surface of our conscious in our intuitions, emotions, and biases that formulate our thoughts while we navigate the choices of life. In essence, we’ve all been given a gift of the unconscious—but until now have not realized its power so well. Brooks talks about a lot of skills that operate as we play out these three insights of unconsciousness, emotions, and interconnectedness. This week, I’ll explore his book in detail

HBR October: Post #7--Coke CEO

Shaking Things Up at Coca-Cola (interview by Adi Ignatius, p. 94).
When CEO Muhtar Kent took over the CEO position at Coke in 2008, he strove to develop a long-term vision and double the business in 10 years—neither of which is a small feat. He also moved toward other supporting issues. For instance, he moved 20% of his media buys to social media, supports sustainable communities, and is pushing Coke to become water neutral…return every gallon of water Coke takes from the earth. Concerning leadership, he contends that CEOs, especially of large companies, have less power than most people think and can only influence people! I find influence a critical element for all CEOs to recognize and practice

HBR October: Post #6-- Bad Bosses

The Cure for Horrible Bosses (Rosabeth Moss Kanter, p. 42).

We’ve all worked for jerks. Hopefully, only one or two in a lifetime. But the worst, according to Kanter, are disrespectful of your time. They ask for things without a decent deadline or apply more pressure than necessary. The best cure is forming alternative relationships among colleagues to weaken control of the autocratic boss. Oftentimes, such an alliance ensures that people above the horrible boss get wind of his/her style and will control or fire him/her.

HBR October: Post #3--Retaining High Potentials

How to Hang On to Your High Potentials (Fernandez-Araoz, et al, p. 76).

Unemployment may be down, but only 15% of companies in North America have the level of high potentials they need. The talent wars are alive and well. In a key study conducted on high potentials, the authors (practitioners and academics) have developed what will become a classic in the field of talent management. They recommend developing a high potential program focused on corporate strategic alignment, a rigorous selection process, a balanced reward and incentive program (both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards). There are lots of specifics, examples, and meat in this article to help guide a company to start or modify its current high-potential company.

Good Strategy-Bad Strategy: Post #6 The Kernel

The Kernel of a Good Strategy: “Good strategy is coherent action backed by argument, an effective mixture of thought and action with a basic understanding of what I call the kernel.” For Rumelt, the kernel consists of three key elements: 1) A diagnosis—a simplified explanation of the issue or challenge being faced; 2) a guiding policy—an overall approach to face the obstacles identified; and 3) a set of coherent actions—focused actions to implement the guiding policy.

Crossing the Divide #4--Social Psychology & Intergroup Leadership

On the Social Psychology of Intergroup Leadership: The Importance of Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes by Michael Platow, et al. Great leadership is rooted in the ability to employ social influence, not just with in-group members but also with intergroup membership as well. A shared sense of social identity must exist for intergroups to flourish and for leaders to lead. The equation is stark and simple: No followers = no leadership. Put another way, a leader moving forward without followers is just out for a walk! There must be a strong sense of “us” between leader and all the followers for social identity and resulting success to happen. Thus, intergroup leaders are influencers, persuaders if you will, who help groups develop meaning and purpose—the whole of which is greater than the parts—any subgroup.