Sep 12 2016

Think Like An Artist

When a truly new innovation emerges, I find myself thinking, “why didn’t I think of that?” It seems so obvious, how did this get overlooked until now? Someone could see an opportunity which hadn’t been seen before.

Leonardo da Vinci thought sight was humankind’s most important sense and eyes the most important organ. He stressed the importance of saper vedere, “knowing how to see.”

Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar made the comment that “an artist isn’t someone who can draw, but rather, someone who can see.”

Many executives are so focused on the the next benchmark; they miss the real opportunities flashing at them. Like a race horse running with blinders on, they can only see the race track. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christianson suggests that management has a vested interest in merely sustaining or maintaining what they have and maybe don’t want to see anything new.

Sears, Kmart, and JC Penny were at one point leaders in retail, they failed to see the changes in the market. Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and other niche stores stepped in.

GM had over 50% of the automobile market and was encouraged to break up to stimulate innovation. They didn’t, and Japan automakers took advantage of it.

IBM was dominant in technology and didn’t see software as the leverage point, Microsoft did. IBM was focused on business computing and Apple exploited the personal computer.

Microsoft was dominant in software and didn’t see the internet or changes in mobile technology; Google and Apple exploited the opportunities.

Howard Shultz saw something in Europe that he applied to the U.S and created Starbucks. Mark Zuckerberg saw other’s ideas and exploited an opportunity to create Facebook.

Some would say that vision is inspired, I would suggest that seeing takes action. The great artist Edgar Degas said, “I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the old masters. Of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament… I know nothing.”

Peter Drucker said, “I don’t predict, I look at the future that has already occurred”. He saw management, decentralization, and knowledge work years, if not decades, before others did.

Never before have we had such visibility into society, demographics, culture, and data as we have now. And yet, so many institutions are becoming so irrelevant. Maybe Clayton Christianson was right in one respect, and there is a tendency for management to avoid change. Those who are able to see and have the courage to act on the change are the ones who will be the leaders in the next season.

Jun 22 2016

Transformation through Preservation

Consider the changes we have experienced since the millennial celebration. There have been wars, stock market bubbles and crashes, technological changes, social change, global change, political change, and economic change. It is most likely that rate of change over the next 15 years will at least continue.

While transformation, disruption, and abandonment are necessary strategies for every organization, there is also the fundamental need for continuity. Without continuity change cannot happen.

MIT professor and author Peter Senge said, “There’s a principle in biology about the history and evolution of species. A famous biologist said, “history is a process of transformation through conservation.” It is precisely the way that nature preserves a very small set of essential features that allows everything else to change. As human beings living and working together at some level, we’re always asking the question, “What are we preserving?”

This is an important question for the organization to wrestle with. Products will change, processes will change, customers will change. What are the elements of the corporation that will not change?

Peter Drucker added, “…it’s by no means an accident that all animals have the same number of heartbeats during their lifetime-forty million? Once nature learned that this is optimum, it preserved it and didn’t play around with it. If you look at organizations, what is the equivalent? It is trust, and we are not really doing the things needed to preserve the trust in organizations. Trust basically means some predictability”

He went on to say, “You do things differently, you have to, with different tools, with different markets, but the things you fundamentally are committed to remain the same. They are values; they are not tools.”

Simon Senek has made it quite popular to discuss the “Why” of the organization, the purpose or reason for being. While important, the answer to this question will probably change as society and markets change. Jim Collins would say you need to focus on “Who?”. This is also an important, but people change and move around.

Values answer the question of “What?”. What are our beliefs that must be preserved? This is the continuity that must be preserved to create change. Many of us go through the exercise of stating our values, beliefs, or convictions and maybe even hanging them on the wall or posting on the website. Have you dusted them off recently to see if they are being protected and preserved? These are the guard rails for you and your people that through change they can trust.

Apr 13 2016

The Achievement of Trust

Recently, the “Panama Papers” revealed a sprawling web of corruption among world leaders. Following that, the CEO of Massey Energy was convicted of conspiracy to willfully violating mine health and safety standards. Last year, Volkswagen was caught cheating on emission testing. FIFA, Soccer’s governing body has been embroiled in bribery charges.

Scandals abound.

According to the Gallup organization www.gallup.com, our confidence in big business is under 30%; in the medical system is under 44%; and in public schools is under 37%. Trust in media is at a historic low. Trust in nearly all aspects of our government is also at a new low.

What has happened? Is this due to rapid changes in culture and/or technology? I believe leadership lies at the heart of the issue -specifically, we’ve been scammed. As a result, the leaders we get are at best ineffective, and at worst, terrifying.

As Peter Drucker cautioned:
“Let me say bluntly, I don’t believe in leaders. All the talk about leaders is dangerous nonsense. It is a cop-out. Forget about it. And I am very unhappy that after the 20th century, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao as the great leaders – maybe the greatest leaders in the hundreds of years – I’m very unhappy that anybody wants leaders with those examples of misleaders so fresh.”

Drucker called leadership an “achievement of trust,” and said that true leaders “have two things in common: they get things done and you can trust them.”

The only way to achieve trust is to be trustworthy. The most trustworthy people I know embody the “Greatest Commandment” or the “Golden Rule”. That is, they serve others and they honor others because they value others.

George Washington was a complicated person, yet with all his failings, he earned trust and admiration with the continental army. He was able to hold together his troops through lack of resources, no compensation, and horrible conditions. His men trusted him, because he did everything in his power to fight their cause. When elected president, he was elected unanimously because of this trust he earned, and nobody believed he would take advantage of the position for his own gain. In fact, he was quite reluctant to be reelected because his service cost him personally and he struggled financially. (Ron Chernow)

Today, trustworthiness is not fashionable. What is fashionable is making billions of dollars. Or, creating a technology that makes billions of dollars. Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook allegedly by stealing ideas and duping his partner. Steve Jobs has been sainted for his brilliance and creative genius, but when you consider how he got there, he was a tyrant. Fortune magazine has anointed Jeff Bezos leader of the year, despite the stories of Amazon’s terrifying culture.

This is the plot, make a pile of money and then you are the latest heroic celebrity. This story sells because we’re seduced by the money and we buy it. It isn’t cool to learn about sacrifice or subordinating to others. It doesn’t sell to learn about how to negotiate with the other’s best outcome in mind. Being a fiduciary (a legal term indicating responsibility to the client’s best interest), is actually considered a strenuous burden.

Trustworthiness has been described as building a wall with small stones, each stone building on the other, always susceptible to being undermined by a lie or deceit that takes all the stones down. If you wish to be a leader, take the unconventional path and look for ways to build your wall. It’s a project that has enduring value for those you lead. Don’t get seduced by the short-cut, or the loop-hole, it ain’t that great. And let’s collectively celebrate those who have quietly persevered, piling trustworthy stones and building characters of strength, these are the leaders worth following.