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Wisdom is Not Enough
I love history. I
am also an entrepreneur at heart. Recently,
I combined my passions by developing a business that uses battlefields
as classrooms for corporate leaders.
Since the fall of 2007 I have taken twelve groups of
approximately 180 managers to the Gettysburg and Little Bighorn national
parks. We have had incredible experiences together while studying these
momentous events through the lens of individual leadership and team
dynamics. I am continually struck by the power of history to teach.
The learning from these battles is amazingly timely and highly
relevant for leaders right now, especially in the deeply troubled times
in which we live.
The
challenges in history were the same as business leaders face today:
How do we manage through profound change?
How can we motivate our people in chaotic circumstances?
How do we make good decisions despite imperfect information?
How can we communicate more effectively?
How do we see things from another person's point of view?
How can we understand another culture in a global economy?
How will we win or even just survive in a highly competitive and
uncertain world?
One
of the most dramatic leadership lessons that repeatedly presents itself
is the idea that "wisdom is not enough."
Author
and humorist Douglas Adams said: "Human
beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so." How
true. When faced with
problems and challenges, no matter how complicated and unfamiliar, we
all have a strong tendency to rely on skills, abilities and
methodologies that have proven successful for us in the past.
But sole reliance on personal experience can be a severely
limiting factor and can hinder the new insights that are frequently
necessary to achieve complex problem solving.
George
Armstrong Custer had seen intense combat in the Civil War and was a
veteran Indian fighter after the war.
Everything in Custer's experience taught him that swift offensive
action resulted in victory. He
had led charge after charge at the head of his troops.
He survived all of this violent action over many years virtually
untouched, despite having eleven horses shot out from underneath him.
Further,
Custer had never seen his Plains Indians opponents do anything other
than scatter when attacked directly by a body of U.S. soldiers.
Time and again he had known smaller numbers of white cavalry and
infantry, and even scouts and civilians, to defeat larger Native
American forces. Finally,
Custer was a well-trained soldier and practitioner of the military arts.
The conventional tactical wisdom of the day was that to split a
combat unit, allowing one contingent to hold the enemy while the other
moved around his flank, might be risky but could potentially provide a
big payoff.
Given
all this, Custer's decision-making at the Battle of the Little Bighorn
in Montana on June 25, 1876, was not surprising.
He had received warnings from his frightened scouts about the
immense size of the Native American village they confronted.
Nevertheless, he moved quickly into action, confident in his own
charmed existence, leading in the saddle and from the front.
Despite his numerically superior enemy, he divided his forces
into multiple wings in hopes of moving around and entrapping the
village. To what was
undoubtedly his shock and dismay, the angry young manhood of the Lakota
Sioux and Northern Cheyenne nations turned and fought.
Every man in Custer's immediate command perished.
For
Custer, what might have been we will never know.
Could he have risen above conventional wisdom- indeed his own
wisdom based on hard-won personal experience- to think differently about
the extraordinary situation he faced?
Could he have decided differently based on his own studies of
military history (he was a great reader and student of his profession)?
Could he have behaved differently out of sage advice from people
who knew what they were talking about- his scouts- but whose counsel he
disregarded? In all
probability, old mental models blocked the possibility of new insights.
For his poor choices, disaster befell the team Custer was
entrusted to lead.
Simply
put, wisdom is not enough. Most
of the time our lifelong learning serves us well (don't put your hand on
that hot stovetop or you will feel pain).
The challenge for today's leaders is, first, to recognize and
acknowledge situations that may on their surface appear familiar, but
are in reality new and more complicated than what has come before.
Next, the trick is to marshal resources and elevate
understanding. This can come
through reading and study, discussion with knowledgeable people,
feedback from diverse and unbiased sources, or development of rigorous
processes. The goal, in the
end, is to achieve better awareness and the higher level of
decision-making capability necessary to make good choices in tough and
unique scenarios.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Teams
Need Common Purpose
Teams without common purpose are rudderless and have no hope of
achieving at a high level over time.
If you are a leader of people ask yourself, does my team have a
common purpose? If you are
unsure or the answer is no, find a common purpose and communicate it
soon.
What is common purpose? Regardless of the verbiage used- vision, mission, strategy,
identity, purpose- no team
sustains effective performance without the benefit of a single
compelling idea that drives it forward.
During his 20-year tenure as CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch-
like him or not- dramatically demonstrated the importance of common
purpose. When Welch took over in 1981 GE contained 42 strategic business
units: appliances, lighting,
transportation, motors, medical materials, industrial electronics,
aerospace, financial services, etc.
The profound challenge for Welch became how to develop a common
vision for such seemingly disparate disciplines.
He said, "We were in so many different businesses.
In those days, if you were in a business that was profitable,
that was good enough reason to stay in it."
Welch believed that strategy is not a lengthy action plan.
It is the evolution of a central idea through continually
changing circumstances. He said: "The winners in this…
environment will be those who… insist upon being number one or number
two in every business they are in- the number one or number two leanest,
lowest-cost, worldwide producers of quality goods and services..."
Welch also said, "... where we are not number one or number
two… we have got to ask ourselves [management guru] Peter Drucker's
very tough question: 'If you weren't already in the business, would you
enter it today?' And if the
answer is no, face into that second difficult question: 'What are you
going to do about it?'" Welch's
simple ultimatum was that those businesses would be fixed, sold, or
closed.
Welch did his best to convey the idea:
"... I repeated the No. 1 or No. 2 message over and over
again until I nearly gagged on the words... The organization had to see
every management action aligned with the vision."
But while "One or two, fix, sell, or close" passed the
simplicity test, and most employees understood and agreed to it
intellectually, the emotional leap was a more difficult process.
Welch spent a good deal of time in his first five years earning
the nickname "Neutron Jack" (he left buildings intact but the
people were gone). One
quarter of GE's employees left the company during this period, 118,000
total. As Welch himself
admitted, "The turmoil, angst, and confusion were everywhere."
On the other hand, under Welch's leadership GE's revenues
improved from $27 billion to $130 billion.
Market value jumped from $12 billion to $410 billion.
Welch presided over more than 600 acquisitions and aggressively
pushed GE to enter newly emerging markets.
By the end of Welch's reign GE was the largest and most valuable
company in the world. In
1999 Welch was named "Manager of the 20th Century" by Fortune
magazine. Many of the
business methodologies and leadership concepts he espoused continue to
be emulated by corporate executives the world over.
I can speak to the importance of this fundamental lesson from
personal experience. In a
25-year career that has spanned military service, legal practice, and
business, I have observed teams without a common purpose.
I have been a member of teams without a common purpose.
I have been the leader- shame on me- of teams without a common
purpose. Those teams do not
work.
In contrast, teams that know with confidence what they are about
can become juggernauts. They
are led by men and women who make a point of finding a common purpose
and sticking with it.
Perhaps my favorite and most memorable personal example of a
common purpose was the creed that bound me and my fellow infantry
Marines: "To seek out, close with, and destroy our enemy, through
fire and maneuver." No
ambiguity there. Not
coincidentally, the U. S. Marine Corps is by far and away the best team
with which I have ever been associated.
Common purpose doesn't have to be complex or blindingly original.
To the contrary, it should be simple and reflect common sense.
It doesn't have to come from on high, although it might.
It can come from you. Not everyone has to agree, and there may be
pain in the implementation, but everyone must understand the common
purpose.
Use your own business savvy in the discovery process.
Read and study. Consult
with your team and other valued advisors.
Take advantage of both internal and external resources.
The goal is to find a common purpose that is compelling and makes
sense. Then you must
communicate until you nearly "gag on the words."
Finally, follow through to make sure that your team acts to carry
out that purpose. You may
not become "Manager of the Century," but you will see improved
business results.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Seek
Honest Feedback
Most of us intellectually grasp the importance for success in
business of giving and receiving honest feedback.
Why do so few of us do it well?
Because it is difficult.
Many
of us are averse to hurting someone's feelings and so are reluctant to
deliver the full truth as we see it.
We are also generally loathe to receive feedback ourselves.
It can be embarrassing and unpleasant.
How many people (both supervisors and employees) actually enjoy
the annual review process, which is all about feedback?
Not many that I have met.
With
all that said, I am still struck at how often in my ten-year career in
human resources I came across even very senior leaders who would not
give straightforward feedback when they should have, nor were they at
all interested in what anyone had to say about them either.
This fundamental
unwillingness to tell and/or hear the truth costs organizations dearly
over time.
Meg
Whitman, during her decade-long run as CEO of online trading behemoth
eBay, provided a dramatic example of a leader who not only sought honest
feedback, but could not function without it.
She listened carefully, mostly to her customers but also to
anyone else who offered a useful point of view, and used what she
learned to create a unique and powerful success story.
Whitman
came aboard as CEO in March of 1998.
Any number of skeptics felt that she was not qualified to run
eBay for lack of technical expertise.
She quickly demonstrated her willingness to roll up her sleeves
and learn. In mid-1999, the
eBay site crashed for 22 hours, and weeks of uncertainty and instability
followed. Whitman sat
through endless technical discussions to get at root causes, pulled
all-nighters with the team and, when she did sleep, did so on a cot in
the office. The problems
were fixed and Meg Whitman
impressed everyone, including her detractors, by acknowledging what she
did not know and working to educate herself.
Whitman
was also quick to credit eBay's success to its enormous community of
buyers and sellers, who in essence run the business by determining which
transactions will take place, and by managing inventory and shipping.
The power of the business model, said Whitman, "is in the
community of users who have built eBay."
Whitman
spent considerable time monitoring feedback from buyers and sellers by
perusing discussion boards. She
said, "The great thing about running this company is that you know
immediately what your customers think."
She organized annual member conferences that brought thousands of
eBay customers together to swap ideas and learn how to more effectively
use the site. She spent time
during these events on the floor interacting with as many customers as
possible.
Numerous
sellers have been able to make a handsome living trading on eBay
full-time, and Whitman enjoyed interacting with them.
Whitman declared, "Actually, most of these sellers know more
about eBay than [eBay] employees. They
use it every single day. They're
the experts... The businesses that have been built on this platform are
remarkable."
Whitman
oversaw explosive expansion at eBay.
In 2002, for example, revenues rose 62% to $1.1 billion, with an
earnings jump of 172% to $249 million.
By the time Whitman resigned her position in 2008, eBay had
15,000 employees, just under $8 billion in revenue, and 300 million
registered users. Meg
Whitman was honored as Fortune magazine's most powerful woman in
business in both 2004 and 2005. Much
of what she accomplished can be attributed to her desire to hear what
people were telling her, learn from it, and take appropriate action
based on that new knowledge.
As
a leader, if you arrive at a point where you lose interest in receiving
feedback- assuming you had interest in the first place- or you say you
want feedback but create an environment that is clearly not safe for
providing it, you cannot succeed over the long haul.
Good
leaders foster a culture in which it is okay to speak up, even if the
message might be painful. The
very best leaders not only accept feedback but actively, even manically,
seek it out. They could not
function without the information they receive, virtually always from
multiple sources. It is like
the air they breathe. They
use that data to drive change in themselves and their organizations.
Meg
Whitman is a shining example of just such a leader.
She constantly sifted through countless bits of information,
especially from her customers, the buyers and sellers who were
foundational to eBay's success. She
used what she learned to create one of corporate America's all-time
growth stories.
Two
final questions are critical: 1)
Do you have someone in your professional life- at least one
person- who pushes you and provides you with genuinely honest feedback?
If yes, good for you; 2)
If the answer is no, why not and what will you do about it?
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Appreciate
the Power of Words
As
business leaders we often fail to fully appreciate the ability we
possess, for both good and ill, to influence people and situations
through the simple choice of the words we use.
Our teams are listening closely to what we say.
The very best communicators select their words carefully and work
hard to ensure that followers understand their meaning.
This necessity to speak and write clearly is a truly basic
leadership objective, but ever so difficult to consistently execute.
Last
week I was honored to take a group of executives through a leadership
seminar at the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.
At the end of our day-long tour of that sacred place, one of the
participants read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address near the spot
where Lincoln delivered it at the National Cemetery in November 1863.
As she read that beautiful little speech- only 272 words long- I
was reminded of the power of an idea well expressed to move people to
think differently and, sometimes, change the world.
Lincoln
had less than a year of formal schooling but he read constantly from an
early age in an effort to educate himself.
He became a master communicator whose innate yet carefully honed
abilities as a story-teller and humorist enabled him to reach and teach
ordinary people in unforgettable fashion.
His deep study of the Holy Bible and Shakespeare influenced the
lovely cadences of his speeches.
Lincoln's
masterpiece, the Gettysburg Address, forever changed the way Americans
think of themselves. He
explained the meaning of the sacrifice of so many lives on the
battlefield just a few months prior.
He asserted the Declaration of Independence and its central idea-
equality- as a matter of founding law.
The Civil War, Lincoln told us, was the great struggle around and
testing of this new principle. As
historian Gary Wills said, "By accepting the Gettysburg Address,
its concept of a single people dedicated to a proposition, we have been
changed. Because of it, we
live in a different America."
Few
people, even among great historical figures, possess Abraham Lincoln's
gift for language. Of
speeches that compare with the Gettysburg Address, for me, only the
inspirational words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind,
delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, telling
his countrymen: "I have a dream today…"
So
what does that leave for those of us who are mere mortals?
For those of us who often get tangled in our own syntax?
For those of us who dread having to put our thoughts down on
paper?
There
is a popular historical myth that Lincoln penned the Gettysburg Address
on the back of an envelope as he rode the train from Washington D.C. to
Pennsylvania. To the
contrary, the speech was carefully composed beforehand at the White
House. He wrote and rewrote,
revising the speech even as late as the morning it was to be delivered.
Lincoln was incredibly particular in his choice of words, and he
worked hard to get the message just right.
He knew that his followers, and even future generations, would be
paying close attention. In
that way, he was a teacher to all of us who would aspire to be leaders
who communicate well.
With
written communication, take the time to be thoughtful.
Who is your intended audience?
What message do you want to convey?
How can you write that piece- whether a short e-mail or a
full-blown speech- in the simplest, most concise way, yet still get your
point across (remember Lincoln's 272 words)?
Nothing is more frustrating for a team of people than
to read something their boss or colleague has produced that causes
confusion. Credibility is
lost and time is wasted. Proofread
what you write. Better yet,
have someone that you trust check your work.
Be open to suggestions and make changes accordingly.
Like Lincoln did, practice your writing.
As with any other skill, writing ability can be developed over
time with effort, repetition and feedback.
The
spoken word can prove more difficult because we frequently don't have
time to be as reflective as we might with a writing assignment.
We are often called upon to give an opinion quickly without the
benefit of all the information we need to make a judgment.
Still, the best communicators are thoughtful in speech as well.
Take a pause before you speak.
Collect your thoughts. Consider
the audience. It's okay to
acknowledge what you don't know and take time to do some research.
Gather data. Ask good
questions. Select your
words. Deliver them well.
Confirm understanding.
As
always, the old saying holds true: "Talk is cheap, but whisky costs
money." Words without
appropriate and consistent actions to back them up are mere words.
With that said, leadership begins with words.
Especially in the difficult economic environment in which we all
live and work, anxious business teams are keenly in tune with what
leadership is saying. So
take the opportunity to be thoughtful with your words.
The future of your organization may depend on it.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Great
Teams Never Give Up
Great
teams never give up. In
business, as in sports or any other human endeavor, the very best teams
simply refuse to be defeated.
I
was reminded of this fact several years ago when I had the honor to
coach my daughter Lucia and her 3rd and 4th grade peers in basketball.
Basketball, like business, is a fast-paced, rough and tumble game
that involves lots of strategy and, in order to win, requires high skill
and determination from its participants.
At least at the highest levels of the sport, this is true.
But
for Luci and her pals practices consisted mostly of social time,
laughing, doing each other's hair, taking
bathroom breaks together
en masse, and some basketball. I
tried to teach basic fundamentals, with a focus on teamwork.
They took a vote and decided to call themselves the "Hot
Peppers." I was not crazy
about this team name, but went along.
Did I mention the laughter?
This
was a middling team, at best. During
the regular season we might have won a couple more games than we lost.
No one predicted
greatness for this team.
But
in the annual year-end tournament that determines the overall league
champion, something came over the Peppers.
They pulled together as a unit and demonstrated, almost
heroically, that great teams never give up.
There
was a team that had dominated the schedule all year long.
This team had several girls who were big, strong and skilled.
This team had gone undefeated in the regular season.
Somehow the Peppers got through the preliminary rounds to face
this team in the championship game.
I
knew we were up against it, but wasn't sure if the girls knew.
I did not want to invoke the Holy Bible and cite David and
Goliath but, trust me, my thoughts went there.
Instead, I recalled the recent Super Bowl, where a lowly underdog
had defeated the mighty favorite.
"Did
you girls see the Super Bowl?"
"Yes." "Who
won?" "The team
that wasn't supposed to." "Right."
The
Peppers went out and fought hard. They
were behind most of the game. But
suddenly, the other team started to play not to lose.
They sat back on their heels.
They made mistakes. They
even panicked a bit near the end. The
Peppers came back.
Pretty
soon, with no time left, one of our little gals stepped up to the free
throw line, score tied 15-15, with a chance to win the game.
First shot missed. Second
shot hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the
hoop. Pandemonium erupted.
The Peppers had triumphed. Dairy
Queen beckoned.
What
are the ingredients that go into creating a team with this kind of
capability? First,
leadership. And not just
leadership of the obvious kind, as important as that is, from the head
coach or the team leader in business.
Leadership can come from any person, at any time.
Our final couple of baskets came from one of our best athletes,
who had played a quiet game up to that point.
Isn't it amazing how your top performers always seem to come
through, demonstrating leadership in the clutch?
The
second ingredient is skill. Several
girls on the Peppers, silliness aside, could put the rock in the
hole when they felt like it. This is where hard work, repetition, and
practice together as a unit
come in. These are essential
fundamentals in business, just as they are in sports.
Finally,
there is the most important ingredient.
This one is the most difficult to describe.
Call it team chemistry, call it trust and confidence, call it
swagger, call it what you will. A
truly great team believes in itself in a way that is palpable.
You can see it in the way such a team carries itself, interacts
together and ultimately performs.
We
are in difficult times right now, but teams that possess that magical
something will survive the trial. They
will emerge stronger than they were before.
What
will your team do in this economy? Will
you play not to lose? Will
you let events dictate what happens to you?
Will you sit back? Will
panic set in? Or will you
look each other confidently in the
eye, take control, count on your leaders, work hard together, trust each
other, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?
This decision cannot be postponed.
In 1941 during the throes of World War Two, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill addressed the students at Harrow School, his
alma mater, outside London. He
said, "Never give in. Never
give in. Never, never,
never, never- in nothing great or small, large or petty- never give
in…" That was good
advice for young people during dark days, but isn't it interesting how
young people can sometimes teach us too?
Occasionally,
when I face a moment of truth in today's tumultuous world I think back,
smile, and whisper to myself, "Remember the Peppers.
Never give up."
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Share
Knowledge and Information In All Directions
I
spoke with an executive recently who told me about the corporate culture
in his company. Secrecy,
withholding critical information, and inconsistent communication were
common practice. My friend was
frustrated to no end. Organizations
that fail to share important knowledge and information up, down and across
struggle in the long run.
No organization achieves perfection with regard to information
sharing, because human judgment is involved.
Obviously, some data is not appropriate for wide distribution.
Sometimes, confidentiality is a necessity.
To communicate well requires time, focus and effort, which are
often in short supply.
Nevertheless
some companies, such as Pixar Animation Studios, excel as learning
organizations that openly and honestly share knowledge.
Pixar is one of the most successful film production companies of
all time. The "fraternity
of geeks" who work at Pixar succeeded in transforming hand-drawn cel
animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics.
The string of movies thus created, starting with Toy Story in 1995, have been hugely popular and critically
acclaimed.
Through
it all, a corporate culture that highly values information-sharing at
every level within the organization has enabled Pixar to continue to
produce one hit after another.
The
September 2008 issue of Harvard
Business Review cited several reasons for Pixar's sustained creative
success. Among other things,
the company espouses a philosophy that "we are smarter than me."
The company believes that everyone needs to be involved in the
creative process and, to that end, communication throughout all levels is
imperative.
Next,
Pixar works to hire good people, to support them, and to foster an
environment where trust and respect are a given.
More specifically, those good people are encouraged to take risks,
knowing that they will inevitably make mistakes.
Talented people will learn from failures and use their hard-earned
discoveries to move forward more effectively on subsequent projects.
Finally,
Pixar's culture is flat, collegial and extremely peer-oriented.
Hierarchies are out, everyone is treated with respect, and both
honest feedback and careful listening are encouraged and rewarded.
One
very specific and practical example of the way information-sharing plays
itself out is Pixar University. Every
employee is encouraged to spend as many as four hours a week furthering
his/her education. Pixar
University offers more than a hundred courses, from filmmaking and writing
to sculpture, painting and drawing.
Randy
Nelson, dean of Pixar University, says, "We offer the equivalent of
an undergraduate education in fine arts and the art of filmmaking."
And this is not just fun time or a way to avoid work, but rather a
critical job expectation. Nelson
says, "This is part of everyone's work.
We're all filmmakers here. We
all have access to the same curriculum.
In class, people from every level sit right next to our directors
and the president of the company."
Pixar
University epitomizes the concept of broad knowledge-sharing.
Nelson asserts, "The skills we develop are skills we need
everywhere in the organization. Why
teach drawing to accountants? Because
drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw.
It teaches them to be more observant.
There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having
people become more observant."
At
Pixar University, employees are also encouraged to try new things, take
risks, and learn from mistakes. The
University crest says in Latin: "Alienus Non Diutius," which
translates to "alone no longer."
Says Nelson, "It's the heart of our model, giving people
opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes
together."
In
addition to excellent financial results, Pixar has earned countless
industry accolades for its work, including 22 Academy Awards, four Golden
Globes, and three Grammys. Every
Pixar film produced since 2001 was nominated for a Best Animated Feature
Oscar and four of those movies, Finding
Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E,
came home with the little golden statuette.
Pixar
Animation Studios provides an incredibly compelling example of an
organization that sees the critical value in gathering information from a
diverse variety of sources and then sharing it openly up, down and across
the company. Those individuals
who hold information closely would not survive in such a culture.
Pixar's reputation as a place where creative genius thrives is
indeed well-earned.
Companies
like Pixar that set themselves up as learning organizations and follow
through on that commitment tend to be successful.
Other organizations-- where
secrecy, lack of clarity, and generally poor communication all around are
the rule-- suffer in the end.
Where
does your organization or team sit on the communication spectrum?
Do you openly share important knowledge and information in all
directions? Does your culture
foster honest feedback and careful listening?
What do you personally contribute from a communication standpoint?
A human or animal organism needs circulation of blood and nutrients
to all parts of the body in order to have full physical health.
Similarly, freely flowing knowledge and information are the
"lifeblood" of any organization that hopes to achieve robust
business outcomes.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Actively
Manage Your Career
In a recent interview in the New York Times, Ford
Motor Company President and CEO Alan Mulally was asked to provide his
best career advice. He responded, "Don't manage your career. Think
about just exceeding expectations in every job you do, continually ask
for feedback on how you can do a better job, and the world will beat
down your door to ask you to do more…"
I respectfully disagree. Exceeding expectations and seeking feedback are
important but, in my experience, success and advancement come most
often to those individuals who actively manage their careers.
I spent more than a decade in human resources at Target and Best Buy. I
can't count the number of times that people came to me frustrated over
their perceived lack of career progress. The common theme sounded like
this: "I work really hard. Feedback is positive. Performance
reviews are good. Yet no one seems to notice. The best opportunities go
to others."
What I frequently found was that many of these individuals simply
assumed that if they "exceeded expectations," someone would
notice and ensure that their career moved forward. Also, some of these
folks could not answer the most fundamental question, What do I want to
do with my career?
There may be lots of people- your supervisor, colleagues, human resource
professionals, mentors- who think highly of you and will work to help
you advance in your career. But, trust me, no one is going to do it for
you. You must take personal responsibility for actively managing your
own career.
And if you are going to manage your career, you need to know to what
end. Ask yourself some tough questions, and be honest about the answers:
Am I happy in my current job? Is it challenging and rewarding? Do I have
room to grow, or have I hit a plateau? Where would I like to be one
year, two years, or five years from now? Backing up from those goals,
what affirmative steps must I take now to get there? In short, you need
to be able to clearly answer the question, What do I want to do with my
career?
Don't measure your progress or self-worth solely by money, title, power
or prestige. It is great to be ambitious. We need people in corporate
America like Alan Mulally, who want to rise to the top of their
organizations. But remember, just one person gets to be CEO. For the
rest of us, at some point, we top out. If you are only seeking more
money or the next title, you will be forever unhappy, because someone
else will always be richer or outrank you.
Consider other measures of success. Is your work interesting? Are your
skills put to the test? Are you learning new things? Do you receive
recognition for your efforts? Do you believe in the mission of your
company? Are you adding not just to the bottom line for your
organization, but creating value for society as a whole? Does your work
match with your personal values? Consider the definition of career
success as broadly as you can, with a focus on those internal measures
of satisfaction that are personally important to you.
I do agree with Alan Mulally on the criticality of feedback. In order to
successfully manage your career, you need to be in a continuous cycle of
seeking, receiving, absorbing, and adjusting to constant feedback. Seek
feedback from as many different sources as possible, not just from your
boss. Find those one or two really valuable people who will unfailingly
give you honest feedback on how you are doing. Listen carefully to what
they say. Insist on specifics.
If you are told you lack good communication skills, ask for details. Do
you need to work on written skills? Spoken skills? Ask for examples of
when you have fallen short and suggestions on how to improve.
Make changes based on the feedback you receive. Demonstrate flexibility
and a willingness to learn and grow. Put together a personal development
plan with clear milestones and share it with your boss and other trusted
advisors. Work that plan with seriousness of purpose. Adjust the plan
when appropriate as your career moves forward.
Finally, don't think of leadership or advancement in your career as
simply a matter of managing a checklist, like a boy or girl scout
completing activities to earn a merit badge. Sometimes people would say
to me, "I've done the three things you told me to do… now I'm
ready to be promoted, right?" The very fact that they asked that
question told me they weren't ready. Think of leadership and your career
not in terms of finishing a to-do list, but as an ongoing journey. A
sometimes complex and difficult journey.
Managing one's career is challenging, even in the best of times. These
days, when so many of us are in crisis-mode, reacting to rather than
shaping the reality around us, career management frequently goes to the
back burner. Don't let it.
Remember these suggestions:
• Take responsibility for actively managing your own career.
• Develop a clear picture of what you want to do with your career.
• Measure success broadly, with a focus on intrinsic factors that are
important to you.
• Seek specific, actionable feedback and respond appropriately.
• Put together a personal development plan and work it with energy.
• Consider leadership and career progress as a journey.
With these tips in mind, go forth and have a great career. Enjoy the
adventure.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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Lead
Courageously in a Challenging New World
There
are some positive indicators that we are currently rebounding from the
worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The stock market is
thriving. Manufacturing activity is increasing. Retail sales are up.
With that said, unemployment now exceeds ten percent. Many experts
predict the recovery will be slow and arduous at best. We all hope for a
better future. But I think we also know- regardless of how the future
takes shape- things will never be the same again. To quote the great
philosopher Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, "We are not in
Kansas anymore." For business leaders, the critical new skill set
will be the ability to lead courageously in a challenging new world.
Survival in a deeply recessionary economy and building for a healthy
future requires leaders to take on two important tasks. The first
involves stabilizing the current situation. The second involves adapting
to a new and uncertain future and seizing opportunity wherever it
presents itself.
The old adage "when you are up to your [posterior] in alligators,
it's difficult to remember the original objective was to drain the
pond," has come to my mind often during these trying times. The
down economy has very understandably caused businesses to focus
attention on the immediate task of survival. Research shows that both
people and organizations are far more highly motivated to take action by
the possibility of loss than by the prospect of gain.
Indeed, it makes sense during tough times to take every reasonable step
to protect the existing business. Is your financial house in order? Are
there opportunities to trim costs or otherwise gain efficiencies? Are
you staffed and organized correctly? Does your product mix make sense?
Is your product or service priced right? Are there opportunities to
divest? These are all important questions that should already have been
part of a rigorous review of your current business model.
The risk in undergoing this kind of crisis-mode analysis involves the
inclination to hunker down and wait out the storm once near-term steps
are in place. All of us as leaders have a tendency to rely on skills and
abilities that have worked for us in the past. We look for recognizable
patterns so we can respond to them just as we have successfully done
before. We want to be able to reassure our teams that things will return
to normal soon. But there is great danger in this mindset because the
future that we face will be unlike anything any of us have ever
previously experienced.
The businesses that will go beyond mere survival and thrive into the
future are those that aggressively seize opportunity. They see lean
times not as a disaster to endure, but as a challenge to overcome.
During the last recession, approximately one in three industry leaders
lost their perch at the top of their fields as savvy competitors
maneuvered skillfully during the downturn. Those who follow bicycle
racing know that in an event such as the Tour de France, the ultimate
winner frequently overtakes the leaders during the mountain phase- the
toughest part of the contest.
Do you have an opportunity to rethink your business model? In the
recession of the early 1990's, IBM experienced its first revenue decline
in over fifty years. Losses mounted year over year. CEO Louis Gerstner
took time during the downturn to seriously reconsider a business model
based on sales of mainframe computers. IBM shifted its focus from
hardware into computer services and solutions, and it flourished.
Are you continuing to think about the future by investing in research
and development? In 2001, the beginning of a two-year recessionary
period, Apple Computer experienced a revenue decline of 33 percent. Yet
Apple bravely chose to increase R&D expenditures by 13 percent, and
continued to maintain that level of investment throughout the downward
cycle. Such innovative technologies as the iTunes music store and
software, the iPod Mini, and the iPod Photo were developed during this
period. Rapid and healthy growth resulted for Apple.
Are you continuing to invest in your people? Remember, even during bad
times, your top performers have other options. Do you have the right
players in place? Are you encouraging them in their development? Do they
see a future with your organization? I believe that one of the most
short-sighted moves that many companies make when the going gets tough
is to immediately cut training and development dollars.
Finally, these pragmatic steps of rethinking your business model,
investing in R&D, and taking care of your people should not just be
one-time responses to a crisis, but rather an ongoing part of how you do
business. In a Harvard Business Review article from 2003, business
authors Gary Hamel and Liisa Valikangas state that the strongest
businesses are those that continuously "reinvent business models
and strategies as circumstances change," rather than just making
singular adjustments in reaction to an emergency. The authors argue that
those companies that work incrementally to try numerous different ideas
on a micro scale- while involving many people in the discovery process-
succeed over time. Businesses "should steer clear of grand,
imperial strategies and devote themselves instead to launching a swarm
of low-risk experiments."
No matter how we cut it, the future is daunting and unknowable. But it
is also richly abundant with opportunity. Those leaders who work hard to
strengthen their organizations in the short run and then courageously
look to the future will end up on top of the mountain when the economy
improves. A continuous cycle of scrutinizing the business model,
investing in lots of new ideas, and developing people will bring success
in a challenging new world.
Jeff Appelquist,
Blue Knight Battlefield Seminars, www.blueknightseminars.com. He can be reached at
jeff.appelquist@blueknightseminars.com.
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