Someone was telling me the other day that they were sick of mindset. I’ve been a fan of Carol Dweck’s work for 10 years, so I asked her why. She said that in her experience the way it was being used was as a bit of a putdown by managers.
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When it was introduced at the Leadership table, he and the CFO rolled their eyes at each other. In their minds it was one step from hugging trees and singing kumbaya.
But now they’re sold, although they don’t use the mindfulness in public. We call it Active Leadership to distinguish it from personal mindfulness practices like meditation, breathing exercises and gratitude. What we’re talking about is mindfulness@work.
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Acknowledgement: I stole the name from a University Revue in 1979. It’s also a song by Sabertooth Zombie but you probably knew that. At the end of every decade we may feel that the human condition/society has lurched another step down. But the reality is much more uplifting: most of the poorest people today have better lives than a billionaire had a century ago. As we head for the beach and then gear ourselves up for a new decade, give yourself some reasons to be hopeful.
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The HR Industry Benchmark Survey Report 2019 released in November identified that succession planning was a challenge for 16% of respondents – well behind leadership development, culture change and change management.
But for those facing the issue, it can be their greatest challenge.
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I was leading the debate for the cynics by asking why we should start with why. I lost the argument.
Being clear about purpose and values doesn’t drive performance on its own. But it helps you hire and grow people who get what that purpose is about and who you are. And it helps you dehire them too, which is every bit as important.
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There’s not a lot to say about the result that hasn’t been said. That’s sport. That’s life.
But I was interested in how Ian Foster characterized Hansen’s approach. He praised his combination of high expectations, empathy and compassion, which I thought was just a fabulous definition of what good leadership looks like.
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Certainly, one of the things I enjoy about playing guitar is improvising on the spot, just picking it up and playing whatever comes into my head and fingers, creating something that will disappear the minute I stop.
But being self-taught cuts both ways. If you’re a genius like Paul McCartney, you don’t know the rules so you create all sorts of extraordinary music that changes the world, not just the music industry.
But I’m not a genius.
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We want to empower people, let them get on with it, avoid micro-managing, let them make mistakes, allow them to fail, give them responsibility.
However, there are times when it’s your job to chuck all that and read the riot act. Only once, and only when it really matters. But in such a fashion that people never forget the experience of your displeasure. Anger, rarely expressed, can be the best evidence of your commitment to quality.
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I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about performance culture. One of my reference points is the All Blacks who exemplify a self-regulating performance culture
There’s one dimension which I think underpins everything else – the strategy of devolved leadership. This was developed very early in Graham Henry’s tenure.
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The words came back to mind when I was thinking about high performance culture. I’ve believed for a long time that the only source of sustainable competitive advantage is a self-regulating performance culture. That is a culture that is able to adapt to its environment without being directed from above or being forced to change by external forces.
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Emmy Lou Harris has collaborated with many (perhaps even most) of the great recording artists over the last 30 years in the country/folk rock space. She said, "When you combine two unique voices it creates a third phantom voice.”
I know what she means.
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In a recent AMP Co-lab meeting with a client’s team, we discussed both clear transmission and listening actively. Mark made a wonderful observation that sometimes listening is not conducted face to face. Sometimes the most important part of listening is to go away and think about what the other person has said and continue the discussion later.
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What changes is our ambition, and that is underpinned by what we value as important. There’s a lovely book I read years ago called “Rules for Aging” by Roger Rosenblatt. Rule 1 states: it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. I think most of us would say that our preoccupations change as we ease into our 50s. My version is “there’s not much that matters, but what matters matters a lot”.
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The Breakthrough Company has decided to enter the podcast industry and armed with 700,001st mover advantage we aim to disrupt the industry.
You might well ask why we’re entering this space when it’s going to be so hard to compete with the 7000 that have an average download of 35,000 per episode.
Because we’re not seeking to be in the top 1%. We’re aiming to be in the top 10%, with an average of 1100 downloads.
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So many opportunities, so many good ideas, so much to do and so few people (and money).
If you’re not getting traction, it could be because you are trying to do so much you end up doing bugger all. If you’re frustrated with progress, it could be because you start things but don’t see them through to the end.
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I thought of that the other day when I was talking to a business owner who was describing how she is totally over it with her business. She’s at the stage where her enthusiasm for managing people, never very high anyway, has reached an all time low. I didn’t tell her that her team’s enthusiasm for being managed by her, also never very high, has reached a similar position.
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