He makes the point that this kind of change management and culture change may not come from on top, but brew up at the grassroots level. I believe for such innovation to be sustained, it comes from both grassroots courage to innovate AND top line courage to stimulate and build on innovations that work out. This is how we change the world – one innovation at a time.

Don’t think you can do it? Bet you can. Make a bubble within which you can act and then break a pattern and see what results. Here’s a sample prescription:

1. Get some co-conspirators (e.g., three people on your customer service team).
2. Put a boundary around the experiment (e.g., one day a week for 3 months).
3. Put a big hairy problem on the table (e.g., inability to satisfy customer type X).
4. Get out of the way.
5. Be ready for success and failure.
6. Turn every failure into a learning that leads to success.
7. Repeat.

What patterns can you break this week?

How do you measure leadership? It’s an odd question, isn’t it? Leadership is inherently challenging to even describe because it’s a quality of being human. Psychologists and Change Management Consultants find ways to measure everything and I’m sure they have some metrics for this. However, my Google research on this subject reinforced my experience that most people’s take on measuring leadership is really one of two things: 1) measuring management metrics (e.g., did revenue go up?) Or 2) measuring behaviors, absent their impact.

Leaders Do Both

So here’s a little leadership coaching on how I think about measuring leadership. Leadership is the ability to get things done and change the world, i.e., leave the world better off than when you started. So it’s not enough to get stuff done, and it’s not enough to sit on a mountaintop sending out good vibes.

Here’s how you know you’re leading:

• Revenues go up, and so do employee and customer satisfaction numbers.
• Your team is more productive with less stress.
• Things don’t go as planned, but they go just fine and everyone’s happy with the results.
• You make both qualitative and quantitative impacts on people’s lives.

Get the point? Leaders accomplish both/and goals and intentions, not either/or. As a bonus, this is often the secret of innovation too!

How To Measure Both

If you work for a big company that measures stuff, make sure you’re measuring the both/and, and even more importantly, make sure you’re correlating the two. Make this part of your goals statement. Set your intention on both, and when you achieve it make sure everyone knows that it’s possible and who benefited. (If you make it a bragging all about you thing, they will discount the both/and as good luck and you want them to take on this challenge themselves, so make sure they believe it’s possible!)

Even if you work for a big company, but especially if you don’t, start keeping track of the both/ands that matter most to you, personally. Being self-aware is a critical leadership skill, so be it!

• Keep a little pad of paper by your desk and make a hash mark for your interactions with staff, vendors and customers that go well and poorly.
• Track improvement in staff productivity related to how you coached them.
• Track how many of your intentions you set and then achieved.
• Track your angry/frustrated moments and set your intention for them to go down.
• Track the favors you call in from your network and the ones you ask for.

Remember, your job isn’t to be pissed off, frustrated and angry. Your job is to get things done and change the world. The more energy you spend on being upset means you’re putting less energy into doing the job as leader. So above all else, make sure those pissed off, frustrated and angry hash marks go down!

How do you measure leadership?

Sure, sometimes you’re the lucky recipient of spontaneous innovation, but according to business gurus, consistently good innovators actually have strategies for leveraging luck (the good and the bad) when it trips across their paths.

In “Great by Choice” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have unearthed a fabulous idea they’re calling Return on Luck, and we all have something to learn from this concept.

Luck Happens

There is power in recognizing reality, even when you can’t explain it.

The first brilliance of Return on Luck is that the researchers noticed it at all. Luck holds a position in business school lexicon somewhere near “magic,” i.e., somewhere near the bottom. But Collins and Morten recognized that just because it’s not predictable doesn’t mean it’s not real – or a function of business success.

After what sounds like exhaustive analysis on whether successful companies are luckier than others (they’re not), whether luck is a rare occurrence (it’s not) and whether luck is quantifiable (it is), they discovered that the luck itself wasn’t the interesting phenomenon.

It is a companies’ response to a “luck event” that matters.

Luck, A Change Management Ally

When you’re thirsty it doesn’t matter if the glass is half empty or half full.

It turns out that the most successful companies accepted that good and bad luck occurs naturally and – rather than moaning, crowing or treating luck as an anomaly – they consistently asked themselves, “how can we turn this to our advantage?” The answer to that question often turned out to be a huge win for them regardless of the type of luck they experienced. Collins and Hansen cite the example of how Progressive Insurance used a bad luck event (a political referendum that dealt them a huge financial blow) to catalyze a massive change effort that overhauled the company.

This makes sense, doesn’t it? When we look at luck’s patterns, even randomness is ok once we’ve accepted the reality that a luck event changes the rules and – for a brief period at least – the appetite, need and desire for larger change has increased. If part of your leadership strategy is change, this is great news.

The research proves that, more often than not, those who don’t waste luck live to reap its return.

This last year blogging here on Reclaiming Leadership has been fun and fascinating. Along the way I found myself speaking to and with wonderful, powerful women. And I’ve also been having fun blogging on women’s web sites, like Blogher, The Glass Hammer, Success in the City and Owning Pink. But I wanted to have a place of my own to speak to women about the trends I see from reading the leadership research that many women – heads down in their career – don’t get a chance to see. So I’m starting a new leadership and professional development blog and website for powerful, high-achieving women.

Here’s my opening play: The Woman Effect (1:48 min video).

Thanks for all of you who have friended, followed, commented, discussed and debated with me over the last year. I’ve never had so much professional fun in my life and it’s only getting better!

In a recent leadership development workshop I ran, one woman bravely spoke her truth about the reality of the toxic corporate culture they all worked in. It was dysfunctional. Managers were petty and their pettiness was only overshadowed by the pettiness of the leaders above them. All these great ideas we were generating in the training – all this great energy – how could they keep it alive when everyone went back to their regularly scheduled work life the next day?

Enter, Reality

I welcomed this dissolution of the kumbaya moment, because acknowledging the reality of a situation – warts and all – is a critical step to claiming our own personal power to deal with it. (Reality, that is. Not warts.) In addition to giving me a chance for a short pep talk, I also jumped on this opportunity to demonstrate to these rising leaders how, even within the larger culture, they had the personal power to create their own little “culture bubbles,” with different agreements within their sphere of control on what would and wouldn’t be tolerated. (Chris McGoff has a wonderful and actionable definition of culture as the line between what a group does and doesn’t tolerate. Check out his PRIME, CULTURE

Together we developed some cultural bubble definitions that could survive within the larger, more toxic culture. And then we had an illuminating conversation. I asked them to choose the single most important principle (chosen from The PRIMES , universal principles of group dynamics) to promote into the toxic culture in order to change it. The results were conclusive: INTEGRITY  got 13 votes and the next most popular on the list only got four votes. The group believed that INTEGRITY had a better chance – beating out its closest competitor by more than 400% – to impact the culture for the better.

An (Anti) Poison Pill?

It got me thinking about culture-making projects I’ve worked on where everyone accepts defeat at the outset, because “Cultural change is impossible. Toxicity wins.” These projects stand in stark contrast to the situations where culture change happens spontaneously when new leadership comes in and – just changes it.

I believe it’s true. I believe that a value and practice as simple and strong as INTEGRITY could actually become an antidote to toxicity in corporate cultures. I believe it because I’ve seen it work and it invariably works best (but not only) from the top down. When toxic cultures bubble from the bottom up, it’s because leadership allows it to happen; but truly healthy cultures can only flow from the top down. Leadership shoulders the responsibility for being this kind of change and being the change is not the same as modeling it. When you model an attitude, it’s as though you’re wearing a jacket, which everyone including you knows you can take off when the door closes. Cultural change only happens when behavior is consistent behind and in front of closed doors.

So what chance does a single principle have to “infect” an entire culture for the better? With enthusiasm like a 400% greater popularity index, INTEGRITY is a leading contender for a simple antidote to cultural toxicity.

If It Was Easy….

So why hasn’t anyone invented this little red pill yet? The reasons are numerous, of course, but I would say that it comes down to a simplistic understanding of what integrity actually is. When I do PRIMES Leadership Development trainings  –  I always ask people what integrity means to them. People consistently use the definition we use: do what you say you’ll do. So simple. The reality of life makes following this little six word maxim challenging, of course, but primarily because we’re so used to saying what others want us to say, regardless of what is actually doable. If you know your boss wants to hear that you’ll make it back for the 3pm staff meeting when your client meeting wraps up across town at 2:45, how often do you just say, “sure boss, see you there!” and just show up late? How often does s/he let you get away with it because it’s what they want to hear?

Living in integrity has other benefits too. It buffs up your personal brand and helps you live in alignment with your higher self. Literally, you have nothing to lose. Working in integrity isn’t so hard if you give yourself permission to:

• Be precise about what you commit to based on factors under your control (e.g., I’ll leave the client’s office no later than 2:50 and come straight back to the meeting.)
• Be the first to recognize your own breaches of integrity (they will happen!)
• Be consistent so that others come to believe your word is your action.
• Let go of the guilt that you can’t do everything you or everyone else wants you to and enjoy the fact that you’re living in integrity!

Try it. Create your own little “culture bubble” of integrity. Teach your team to do the same. The higher up you are, the broader impact you can have. Go ahead, be the antidote. I dare you!

How do you feel about self-promotion? Take the survey  (Hurry! Survey closes on January 27!)

Sometimes we have to accept the reality that innovation can’t always be planned,  but when we find a pattern to help us increase the likelihood of spontaneity – why not try to learn it and bake it into the corporate culture?

In their new book “Great by Choice,” Jim Collins and Morten Hansen have identified some of these patterns. One I loved was “Zoom In Zoom Out” that describes how executives at innovative companies “Zoom Out” to take a strategic view of the situation before “Zooming In” to take action when the ground shifts under their feet. But they don’t just get all zoomy for the fun of it; they look for a specific data point when they Zoom Out, which is how much time do we have not to act before our risk profile changes? This designated time parameter then becomes the de facto boundary of our tactical response, allowing more strategic actions if more time is available and less if it’s not.

How Come Doctors Get All The Protocols?

I love the specificity of this observation, which makes it prescriptive. “Zooming Out” isn’t just about “getting perspective,” it’s about developing a protocol, which can be trained and integrated into the corporate culture to be followed in specific circumstances. When things shift fast, Zoom Out to determine how much time you have to act before your risk profile changes. Then Zoom back In to work with the time boundaries you’ve got. Wouldn’t this be a great leadership development tool to train all your up-and-comers?

I used to work in a company where volatile public relations realities were periodically a factor. Our office had a ringed corridor and several of us used to “walk the ring” at least once before responding to emergency press calls during certain delicate periods. I think we were “Zooming Out” and didn’t really realize it. When “walking the ring,” became a cultural phenomenon, everyone learned to respect and offer to help the walker. I’m sure as a result we made better decisions.

Do you have experience Zooming In and Zooming Out? Have you seen how evaluating your time parameters leads to better decision-making?

How does self-promotion help (or hurt?) your career? Take the survey

Sometimes true wisdom hides behind sensational headlines. I often think this when I read gender wars articles; you know, the ones that toss the sexes in the ring?

Here’s my latest beef: Women need to self-promote to make more money. (Forbes Woman , Catalyst Inc.)

So apparently women suck at self-promotion. Is that the deepest wisdom here?

I’m not arguing the data, but rather the interpretation.

True Leadership is Gender Neutral

I’m a champion of women in business,  but my gender lens is screwed on a little funny. See, I start with the premise that people (men and women) who want to change the world have to advance to positions of power and influence to have the greatest impact. To have a meaningful impact when they get there, they need to work out their own “stuff” and claim their personal power along the way. So anything that helps them do that, including learning to toot their own horn so they can advance and gain greater scope of responsibility – is great.

Women aren’t alone, by the way. IT professionals including CIOs – a notoriously male dominated sector – apparently suffer from the same discomfort with self-promotion.

Why should women have a chip on their shoulder about this? Because of equal pay? The study itself says that women can close this gap themselves by learning this leadership skill, so dump the chip and speak up, Ladies.

True Leadership Challenges Us To Claim Our Power

The fact that some people, many of whom are women, find self-promotion culturally and emotionally uncomfortable is simply an indicator that owning our accomplishments is an area where all leaders must learn to claim personal power.

Coaching Tip: Don’t want to be a braggart? Then don’t be. Learn to own your success without bragging.

This question – about self-promotion, how it helps us and what we’re comfortable with – intrigues me so much that I’m fielding a survey on the subject through the end of January. Take the survey here (you can request copy of the results for free when it’s published).

Consensus means different things to different people. Be brave. Do Your Job.

Don’t take the ”easy” path.

The word consensus is based on the Latin word “consent,” which according to Dictionary.com means “to be in agreement.” Most people take this into the absolute realm and interpret consensus to mean, “everyone agrees with everything.”

Bad idea. Executive Coaching tip: people are designed at the molecular level NOT to agree on everything. So why set yourself up for the tyranny of the minority?

Leader, Do Your Job

If you’re a leader trying to get everyone to agree with you, you’ll end up optimizing for the squeakiest wheel instead of doing your job, which is to involve those who have a stake in the issue and then shoulder the burden, risk and opportunity of decision to move things forward. The inability to use consensus to manage conflict is particularly debilitating in change management initiatives.

There are three primary reasons leaders don’t do this and struggle (usually in vain) to get everyone to agree:

• They think the “easy way” is to avoid conflict by getting 100% agreement up front, but avoiding initial disagreement usually leads to “subversive agreement” and ensures conflict and confusion down the line when differences re-emerge and muck up your efforts to actually produce something.
• They’re afraid to take risks to achieve opportunity, falling prey to management-by-CYA.
• They never learned how to manage a workable definition of consensus to management conflict up front and thus become skilled at mitigating the risks of achieving opportunity.

A Workable Definition of Consensus

I learned the workable definition of consensus early on in my career when I was an international government affairs rep for big tech. The long and short of my job was to advocate my company and industry’s position to government regulators, policy makers, legislators and negotiators around the globe. Here’s what I noticed, the negotiators were masters of achieving workable consensus, and everyone else in government pretty much sucked at it.

Why? Because the negotiators were on the hook to produce something. They set deadlines to force agreement (or not) and to give their stakeholders a reason to reach workable consensus if it was reachable. I spent many a late night in a little room with other industry reps over cold pizza crusts waiting for the lead trade negotiator to come in with “the final” deal for us to weigh in on. At 11:35pm facing a 12am deadline, do you know what consensus looks like? It looks like what people can live with – most people, not all people – the most important people, not all people. [Sidenote: I didn’t work for “the most important people” so I learned this lesson too, if you want to win, align yourself (if you can) with the most important people.]

Does this make all leaders negotiators? Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far, but when your decision affects many stakeholders, fostering a negotiations mindset is a good idea because at the end of the day the decisions you make that have important-people-buy-in are going to be easier to implement. Implementation is messy enough; don’t increase your risks of disaster by sloppy consensus mismanagement up front.

Although I’ve seen this definition of consensus in action through the years many times, it wasn’t until I saw Chris McGoff’s CONSENSUS PRIME that the simplicity of it struck me. I think every leader should be schooled in CONSENSUS, which states:

• The process must be explicit, rational and fair.
• Participants must be treated well and their inputs must be heard.
• Participants can live with and commit to the outcome.

(Watch Chris explain this concept in his 2.5 minute video.)

Empower Your Team With Workable Consensus

Recently I’ve been reminded – not just of the power of workable consensus – but of the powerlessness that the “easy” Latin definition of 100% agreement can foster. Several government agencies recently brought me in to provide leadership development training to mid-level government management teams. I presented the CONSENSUS PRIME and shoulders slumped all over the room. This happened consistently across agencies. “Why the long faces?” I asked, sure that would have welcomed workable consensus to help them manage so many conflicting priorities. “That’s the answer to our problems,” everyone said. “But can you teach it to our bosses?” (And they meant bosses all the way to the top.)

With some work, these mid-level managers did come to understand how they could make workable consensus effective for them even in the face of CYA-happy superiors, but the implications were clear. Until leaders are willing to accept the challenge of achieving workable consensus – being brave, taking risks and believing they’re on the hook to actually produce something – the CYA Latin definition of consensus will rule our culture and we’ll just keep passing the implementation mess on to our future.

This month when things are so crazy, I’m reminded that the holidays are a good opportunity to practice a leadership skill that I believe is #1 for anyone at any level: Integrity. The ability to do what you say and say what you’ll do is much more challenging than the simple words themselves. When you really commit to the principle of integrity, you think much harder about what you’re capable of doing within any given timeframe, you ration your most important resource – yourself – much more precisely, and you accept your own mistakes with more grace.

I gave a leadership development seminar last week and one mid-level manager, an attorney, stood up and declared that he credited his personal commitment to Integrity with his own career success. He went on to say that his office director had made a public commitment to this core principle as well and he’d witnessed the reputation of their office do a 180 over the course of the last 18 months. A simple little principle that pays off in deep and powerful ways for individuals and groups.

For an inspirational 2 – 3 min video on Integrity, watch Chris McGoff’s PRIME, INTEGRITY.

Integrity is a Cure for Holiday Stress

So here’s an executive coaching tip; there is no time when Integrity is more needed than at the holidays. The potential for distraction and falling out of Integrity is greater than ever. Stay fast to your principles. Say “yes” when you mean Yes and “no” when you mean No.  Be your word and watch the stress melt away.

There is no perfect solution to this challenging time of year – only your own.  And this is the test of true leaders, to internalize all the lessons “they” toss out at you about what it means to be a leader. It’s all “true” but it only makes you a powerful leader when you make it your own. Then it’s inside you. It’s yours. You’re In Power.

If it sometimes feels overwhelming, don’t despair. Know that you’re not alone and that the world will forgive you if you bail out on that one last party that was going to drive you mad or take you away from something truly important. Just be straight up about your intent and live by your word as you decide what you’ll do and what you won’t do.

Have a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate, a peaceful time when the world shuts down for a few hours here and there and a Happy New Year ringing in 2012.

It seems pretty clear, from anecdotes like this and research conducted more recently, that a culture that encourages new ideas and open dialog breeds innovation, but human nature seems to work against us here. The research shows that due to “the boss effect” the higher up they go, the less bosses listen and (presumably because more messengers get shot), the more trepidation people have about speaking up.

Corporate cultures are so strong! What’s a leader to do?

Hire a fool.

While there are ways of shaping corporate culture intentionally, I loved O’Toole’s revival of an idea – again from the 80′s – he credited to a man named Verne Morland. Every King Lear needs a fool, “to challenge by jest and conundrum all that is sacred.”

Are Modern Change Agents Fools?

I’m skating on thin archetypal ice here, perhaps, but in the interests of levity and perspective maybe we can look at the ancient role of the fool for insight as to how leaders can insulate themselves from the “boss effect” and receive information they need, even when others are afraid to speak. The traditional fool was protected by the King, who forgave him his silliness and allowed him to live outside of court rules in order to see the things he could see that the King could not. The fool was tolerated as a useful ally, valued precisely because he spoke his truth.

In modern times I hope that we don’t have to ostracize those who play this role. After all, why would more people seek this role if the price was as high as the fool paid in ancient times? It seems barbaric to exact the price of personal pride and self-respect the old kings demanded of their fools.

Valuing the Modern Fool

There is a saying among change management consultants, “You can create change or take credit for it. Pick one.” Sadly this is many people’s experience for speaking up and helping those in power see meaningful alternatives. But as with all things, whether the change agent sacrifices credit is a choice by those in power. If you want advisors surrounding you who do not act like fools, best to reward them and give them credit when credit is due.

The question is, what kind of leader are you? The kind who values the fool or the kind that becomes one?

New research confirms that the more power(*) a manager or leader has, the more likely they are to ignore advice.

To some extent this makes sense. I mean, being rewarded with powerful positions means you must be doing something right, right? And if you’re doing something right, why not trust yourself and your decisions?

We can all see the fallacy in this logic taken too far. While trusting yourself is a good leadership skill and facilitates decisiveness, it can also contribute to the ego-centric leader’s sense of infallibility. This leads to all kinds of bad stuff, including bully bosses and just plain jerks.

Why It’s Not Just About Them

Here’s why you should care.

The price paid for these powerful people who ignore advice shows up in shareholder value. The Corporate Executive Board analyzed data over a ten year period and input from over 300,000 employees while studying something similar to powerful bosses willful ignorance. Their study showed that bosses and companies that didn’t ignore input and actually stimulated an open communications environment performed 5.8% better on average than those that didn’t. Bosses who ignore input or actively run around shooting messengers just aren’t as innovative and don’t produce as much for their shareholders.

This finding is reinforced by my own study of people’s experiences in speaking up to bosses and other powerful people. Turns out almost 50% of the 155 people I surveyed withhold their input from bosses most of the time.

Think of all those good ideas dying unspoken. This is too bad for the company, but it’s also too bad for you if you’re one of the ones staying silent. 72% of the respondents in my survey reported getting career advancement opportunities when they did speak up and managed to get the boss to listen. I know from personal experience, research and client work that when you know how to speak up effectively, you can definitely be part of the 72% who get ahead (learn more).

Why Not Take The Ignorance Perk?

But why work so hard? Maybe ignoring people is a way to get ahead? Um… maybe. I mean, it does seem to work for some of them. But then again, think how the mighty are falling these days (Ed Whitacre/GM, Tony Hayward/BP, Jon Corzine/MF Global). I can guarantee you that all these individuals had some right-thinking people in their contingent trying to save them from themselves. Ignoring the good counsel of others – and your own voice of conscious – is a risky business and the higher you go the farther you have to fall.

And if the research is right, a whole bunch of powerful people are out there risking a lot right now. Just think about how competitive you’ll be if you succeed by listening to the wisdom of others, adding it to the power of your own wisdom. Getting ahead and staying there is risky enough without taking this kind of stupidity risk, isn’t it?

So you want pass up the ignorance perk and choose to get ahead? Here’s a little executive coaching on what you can do:

• work on yourself to remain open to new ideas while you move up the ranks;
• mentor those below you not to let success shut them off to others’ input; and
• speak your truth to your own bosses, even if they don’t want to listen.

*”Power” in the context of this article, I believe, refers to what I call “external power.” External power – the authority to manipulate external resources – if fundamentally different than the ability to manipulate internal resources (watch the video on this page).

Note: I’m getting ready to launch a new website/blog on women’s leadership in the new year. I plan to continue blogging here on corporate culture, change management and leadership but I’m scaling back here to a few posts a month. If you want to receive an announcement of the new site launch, sign up for a launch announcement here or follow InPower Women on Facebook or LinkedIn, orTheWomanEffect on Twitter.

Breaking news for creative types: you’re not crazy. Your innovative ideas really are being ignored, downplayed, sidelined and squashed.

So says a study out of University of Pennsylvania Wharton, University of North Carolina and Cornell last year. Turns out that experiments turn up some disturbing findings for those of us hoping to spur innovation in our organizations: new ideas increase feelings of uncertainty and stimulate an anti-creativity bias. The anti-creativity bias causes people to unconsciously ignore the thing causing uncertainty – and your idea along with it.

Even more sadly, objective evidence in favor of your idea doesn’t really help it get through the anti-creative bias.

People just like to play it safe.

What To Do About It

Corporate culture is shaped by this safe-playing instinct. We know from experience that whining won’t help, but knowledge is power. So here are two strategies to use.

1. Don’t go out of your way to poke them in the uncertainty. Now that you know it’s their uncertainty that makes them want you and your idea to go away, be sensitive and emphasize things that reinforce a feeling of safety. A good way to do this easily is by highlighting boundaries around the issue (e.g., timeframes, maximum/minimums, scope etc.). Boundaries make people feel safe.
2. When you do poke them in the uncertainty, do it intentionally and strategically. Sometimes making them feel unsafe is precisely what you need to do to get their attention. But now that you know that doing so can work against you (remember when they guy in Jurassic Park succeeded in getting the T-Rex’s attention? – oops), plan to manage their uncertainty once you’ve got them listening. Use strategy #1 above, but also be ready to explicitly acknowledge the discomfort of uncertainty and move them into an explicit process as soon as they pay attention. Process makes people feel safe when they know what it is.

What this looks like

A skilled innovator can practice both of the above strategies in a single conversation. Here’s an example.

Don’t say: “Hey Bob, Sue’s got a great idea coming out of the innovation lab that will put the Division A’s main product line out to pasture!”

Do say: “Hey Bob, did you know that our 2012 numbers look pretty bad? Big problem in Division A’s projections. I know, (sympathetic) bonuses are looking shaky for another year, but Sue has an idea coming out of the innovation lab that we think can help. I’ll send you an invite to a meeting next Tuesday where we’ll start to vet it. We’ve got a meeting scheduled with the Board next month and this is on the fast track. Hope to see you there.”

The meeting on Tuesday can also be structured this way. Get their attention, create uncertainty and then use process and innovative ideas to move them back towards safety.

This is one of my favorite strategies for any meaningful strategic planning effort. Begin the strategic planning process with new information – new to most of the participants – that creates a sense of urgency to change. This gets their attention out of the gate, which is necessary because many people walk into the strategic planning process convinced nothing useful will happen. The first order of business with this new information is to knock them off their center (gently) so they have to open up to new information to get centered again. It also helps with teambuilding in the strategic context if you design the process to bring the group back to safety through team effort.

This is a process that has to be managed, but it will help you get innovations introduced in a meaningful context.

~~~~~~~Announcements~~~~~~~~~~

Get Ahead With Authenticity & Integrity: Speak Your Truth to Power. This eCourse will help you learn how to tell them off with skill, grace and a likelihood of reward. It’s entirely self-serve at your convenience. Why not spend some downtime over the holidays investing in a career skill no one teaches at leadership camp? Learn more & register.

Update: I’m getting ready to launch a new website/blog on women’s leadership in the new year. I plan to continue blogging here on corporate culture, change management and leadership but I’m scaling back this blog to a few posts a month. If you want to receive an announcement of the new site launch, sign up for launch announcement or follow InPower Women on Facebook or LinkedIn, orTheWomanEffect on Twitter. 

New Study:

Old Problem: Weak leaders think they lead by doing stuff.

At least that’s my interpretation of the study reported on Forbes last week by commentator Holly Green. While I generally agree with the Holly’s advice – have a vision/mission and share it, walk the walk, listen, foster teamwork etc… – I don’t think that gets to the heart of the problem.

The problem is that we think leadership is something you can do. It’s not. It’s something you are. And the only way to tap into the leader YOU are inside is to go there.

Be introspective. Know who you are. Understand your own unique power so you can use it effectively to accomplish what you set your business intention on. Be a scientist and experiment.

When you’ve got a handle on who you are, then you can do stuff that leads others by example and guidance. Then your actions have real power.

What does this look like in action?

• Pay attention to what you are thinking and how you are speaking – watch how others around you respond.
• Manage your thoughts and words carefully to create the kind of behavior in others you want based on what you put into the world.
• Watch what happens when you think and do X vs. Y and choose to do X or Y in the future – intentionally – based on that experience.
• Pay attention to what is a good expenditure of energy for you and what – by contrast – pays little dividend. Use your personal energy more wisely as the months pass.
• Keep experimenting.

The problem? Too few go spelunking in their insides to gain this perspective.

The solution? Dig deep inside yourself to master your own internal resources – your thoughts, your energy – to gain the personal power to master your external actions and become an amazing leader of teams, divisions and organizations.

I spent much of last week doing some of this work in team power-building training with mid-level government execs teaching them to look at power paradigms in groups and corporate culture – and how to shape them intentionally through their own behavior. We had a blast and I loved how the lightbulbs kept going off when they saw their own personal roles within the group more clearly. They loved it too. It can be done.

PS-Taking a break for Thanksgiving. I hope everyone has a relaxed holiday and uses this precious time – when few people expect you to return an email – for some introspection. Ask yourself – where does my personal leadership power come from? See what answers arise.

No, not right. After listening beneath the words of my friends and the media beginning to tell the stories of many men affected by this sad story (by which I don’t just mean Sandusky’s victims, but male victims of coach and priest abuse as well) I believe that the fallout from this tragedy is going to continue for some time.

And as sad as I am for the victims – the boys and men who experienced the abuse and those millions of others whose heroes have fallen recently – I’m glad our sports heroes are being exposed for the human beings they are. Why? Because we too easily accept that money and greed breed cynicism. The fall of Wall Street and political icons is something we’ve come to expect; but the fall of sports icons to something other than financial greed makes it impossible to ignore the simple fact that abuse of external power can happen everywhere and lead to greater harm than simple financial ruin.

My husband said a wise thing to me when we were discussing this recently, and it has vast implications for leaders and those of us in leadership development. He said, “When are we going to understand that there are no heroes? Only heroic deeds?”

The Myth of Paternalistic Leadership

As a culture, we cling to the paternalistic myth of leadership, that our leaders must be strong, brave, courageous and – perfect. They must always know the answers, be right, never show weakness and protect us from all manner of outside threat. In business, this means that the most successful leaders should thrive on conflict and competition, win or come back fighting to win in the end. We excuse a**hole behavior (e.g., Steve Jobs) to perpetuate this myth, and we penalize many up-and-coming leaders who value authenticity over braggadocio because they don’t live up to this image. And of course, many people succeed within this paternalistic culture following these rules so we can point to them and say “See? It works!”

But many people fail too, because the paternalistic myth isn’t real. Everyone is human and no one knows all the answers.

As our economy and institutions hang suspended in uncertainty and polarization, we continue to look for the hero white knight who will sweep in and save us.

Guess What, America? He Isn’t Coming.

While we wait for our hero, the world keeps falling apart. We look around and see our heroes tarnished and fallen. Our media culture crouches nearby waiting to take down the next one that pops up and we’re feel deserted by the hero when no one takes a stand. But really, who wants to be eaten alive in the media eye? So who’s left to save us?

Us.

This is what happens to children on the brink of growing up, when we see dad through the eyes of adult. Dad has always just been a human and had his foibles and weaknesses, but as kids we couldn’t see them because we needed to believe someone else’s power kept us safe until we were strong enough. He didn’t want to show his weaknesses to us because he thought we wouldn’t love and respect him. A perfect standoff until we take that last step, grow up, shoulder the responsibilities of leadership for ourselves and let dad off the perfection hook while holding him responsible for his actions.

A Call To Leaders Everywhere To Tap Their Internal Power

For those of us in business leadership and leadership development, the time is now to help our colleagues, mentees and organizations step into a new model of leadership. And no, as strongly as I champion women in leadership I don’t mean a maternalistic model. Yes, I believe that an integration of the feminine and masculine leadership characteristics is part of the solution, but it’s an integrated model that will get us out of this mess.

The challenge we face in our leadership culture is that we’ve put too much emphasis on the benefits of external power – money, authority and the ability to manipulate external resources. In doing so, we’ve underinvested in developing our understanding and ability to manage our internal resources – our thoughts, energy, actions – to lead change and transformation in a world that desperately needs it.

Think about how dad does it when he does it well. The more he accepts his weaknesses himself; the more he learns to manage them – not hide them – so his strengths help him do what needs to be done; the more he helps us understand as children how to manage our own unique strengths and weaknesses to be proud of who we are and effective at making good things happen in the world; then it’s easier for us to see his humanity as noble – even with his weaknesses – and learn to emulate him as we grow into adulthood. When he calls on his internal power to lead he makes it easier for us to transition through the (inevitable) disappointment of losing our heroic father and accept the strong, capable and fallible man who has supported us, kept bread on the table and brought us up to share the burden of leadership for the next generation.

Think this still sounds too perfect? Don’t. It happens every day. In millions of households and in millions of organizations lead by unsung men and women who don’t make the front page of Forbes or Sports Illustrated but who work to build their internal power to lead others to prosperity, failure and success.

You. Don’t Wait Any Longer.

If you’re one of these leaders who uses internal power effectively, I call on you now to step it up and show others what it means to use this internal power. Internal power isn’t brash, but it is strong and it can be vocal. Be explicit about what you’re doing and mentor those around you. Own your power by sharing it and recognizing it in others as well so they can own theirs too.

If you aspire to this kind of leadership, invest in developing your internal power to lead effectively. I’m investing in helping you, and you can start by learning to speak your truth to power effectively and well to get ahead in your career, accomplish meaningful things and live and lead in integrity.

Women, I Mean You Too

Ladies, this means you too. I’ve heard several women say in the wake of the Penn State debacle that if a woman had found Sandusky he never would have gotten away with it. I’m not so sure this is true. The male culture that covered up this travesty could easily have intimidated a woman into silence. However, I do feel confident in saying that if there had been more women involved in the Penn State culture, the coverup would never have happened. But this isn’t a men vs. women thing. Just as the paternalistic leadership style is failing us, we’re waking up to the fact that the maternalistic archetypes no longer serve us either. We can’t succeed and be what our businesses, families and culture needs us to be if we remain demure, shy and on the sidelines. We have what it takes to claim our 50% role in leadership and no hero is coming to sweep us onto his white horse and give us the Queen’s crown either.

All of us must step up and step In Power. Now.

A personal note. Kudos and gratitude once more to my husband’s leadership for making this transition into adulthood easy on my sons.

But as a species, business leaders could be a lot better at the emotional contracting we rely on much more frequently – with employees, superiors and peers – to move the project forward, file the quarterly report or just get through the day. Negotiating emotional agreements smoothly is a critical leadership skill for increasing productivity and reducing emotional angst in the workplace so it contributes to employee satisfaction, innovation and all the other good stuff we like to see at the office. It’s also very handy for managing that business partner once the legal process is complete and in that sense probably helps reduce overall legal fees!

So here’s a little free eCoaching to help you manage those difficult relationships at work – and hopefully it will help you keep your legal fees under control;)

Emotional Contracts Precede Paper Ones

We like to pretend sometimes that emotions have no place at the office, or that it’s “not our job” to worry about the emotional well being of our employees. (I once heard a manager say about a challenging employee, “That’s his therapist’s job, not mine!”)

But here’s the deal, if you have to deal with them, then you need to take responsibility for at least half of the emotions involved in your interaction – your half. And if your relationship – with a boss, employee, peer, customer, partner, vendor – isn’t going smoothly, or you want it to, you’re going to make more progress faster if you tackle the emotional contract before diving into the legal one.

Emotional Contracting 101

The good news is that emotional contracting isn’t that tough, especially if you’re used to negotiating business agreements. It’s the exact same skill set, just focused on internal contract terms instead of those you’ll find external – on paper.

One difference that matters, though, is that unlike business negotiations that start with an agreement to explore common ground, most emotional contracts aren’t written down, discussed or even surfaced, so don’t expect to find the place to start anywhere else but inside you and in the behaviors you and the other person exhibit when in each other’s presence. This means most emotional contracts need to be reverse engineered before they can be renegotiated. Here’s a quick guide to reverse engineering your emotional agreement with someone.

Jot yourself some notes about your relationship:

• What have I agreed to do and what do I expect in return?
• What do I think they agreed to do and what do they expect in return?
• Where am I not living up to this agreement?
• Where are they not living up to this agreement?
• What’s the gap and what’s the “emotional price” of the gap? (I.E., what problem does the gap create? It can come in hard business terms like disappointment in shoddy deliverables, emotional issues like feeling betrayed and everything in between.)

Piece of cake, right? Ok. Well, with some people it’s really tough, especially when there’s a lot of anger involved. But go ahead and go through the steps above to help dispel the anger and clarify for yourself why the emotions are there in the first place. A good leader understands and negotiates the emotional contracts around herself constantly.

Here’s what it looks like in action when a boss feels an employee isn’t responsive enough and too error prone.

Susan the VP of Customer Service asks Carol the Account Rep for a write-up on a customer complaint before calling the customer back after a scathing complaint email. Susan is upset when Carol doesn’t provide the write up until 5:30pm and it’s incomplete. Susan has to put off calling the customer until the next day, making her feel unresponsive.

This isn’t the first time Susan has been disappointed with Carol’s performance and she expects to end up in a fight if she expresses her dissatisfaction. This time before getting upset and angry with Carol directly, Susan reviews the emotional contract using the questions above and realizes that while she had agreed to contact the customer by the end of the day, she hadn’t made it clear to Carol that she needed the information back no later than 3pm to give her time to ask questions and play telephone tag. Even though Susan might expect Carol to have understood that, she admitted to herself she hadn’t been explicit about the deadline. However, Susan had expected a complete write up and it was clear reading the customer’s original complaint that Carol hadn’t provided all the relevant information. This left Susan feeling unsupported, exposed, disrespected and angry.

Opening Negotiations

Now that you think you know what the breach of contract is, it’s time to bring it up with the other person and open negotiations. Word of warning, though, don’t assume they have any idea what an emotional contract is. Part of leadership is doing the work and modeling it for others, so in this case, you can introduce them to the idea of emotional contracting by simply stating:

• What I agreed to do.
• What I thought they agreed to do.
• A request for confirmation that they see it the same way and if not, to express what they believe the agreement is.

When Susan addresses the issue with Carol the next day, she opened with an admission that she hadn’t been clear and promises to be more precise in the future with exactly what she needs and by when, thus thwarting much of Carol’s anger and surprise by opening with an apology. She asks Carol what she thought the task had been and whether she had been at all unclear about the request, and they discover Carol had been confused but didn’t ask for clarification. Susan shared with Carol that by not asking questions, Carol delivered something incomplete that left Susan feeling exposed when preparing to talk to the customer. The two agree that in the future, Susan will be clearer. Also, Carol agreed to ask for clarification when she needs it as well as confirmation from Susan that she feels prepared before the deadline.

Sure it might still be messy, but you’ll be surprised how often simply breaking it down like this will start to help you have a more productive conversation than the last one you had that was cloudy with emotion. In future posts we’ll look at how these relationship agreements can help sort out other difficult office phenomena like micromanaging, tyrannical behavior and disrespectful employees.

By the way, if you’re a mentor, this is an awesome skill to pass on to your mentee to help her deal with a challenging boss or difficult relationship at the office. Emotional contracting is a great way to manage a relationship from a position where you feel powerless to one where you’re squarely in your own power and it’s something we want all our aspiring leaders to know how to do in order to help shape our business cultures intentionally.

How good are you at negotiating emotions that get in the way of your business dealings? Got any personal tips and tricks that others can learn from? Leave them in comments!

A constant discussion topic among every professional woman I know – and no small number of men – used to be work-life balance. We judged ourselves and each other harshly when it came to our skill in balancing. In our 20’s it was secondary; in our 30’s it was a conundrum; and in our 40’s we made whatever adjustments were necessary and lived with the consequences as our careers developed and families expanded.

Most of us took on the leadership, entrepreneurial and volunteer challenges our choices left us with and succeeded. Somehow, most of us are still married and no one’s kids have gone to the dark side (though I suppose there is still time left;)

We survived and so did our families. This discussion is now old news.

“Balance” is a Misnomer

I admit that juggling a rich family life and professionally rewarding career can be a strain, but I don’t think of it as a balancing act any more. It’s just life. We live life the way we live it, and it is the sum total of all the choices we make along the way – at work, at home, on the commute and on our time off. This is how we stay in our power, by making these choices consciously.

Balancing implies you can favor one over the other, weigh one more heavily than the other, do one well and muddle through the other. I don’t know anyone who consciously chooses to sacrifice their family for their work or vise versa – we all just make choices.

Here’s some free business coaching:

You Can Have It All… Just Not All At Once… Or Can You?

Define “it” and “all” appropriately and IT is ALL yours right now. Your choice.

Once More, Women Lead the Way

This whole discussion started when women took on the burden of two jobs, and yet within two generations, the professions of house-husband, full-time dad and daddy blogger pop up on my radar all the time. Younger generations of men and women are defining happiness and success differently than my generation. Men and women of all ages now struggle with work-life “balance”, until they stop and realize that it’s just life. Women led the way but men are quickly catching up to the blended opportunity of working and living. And in this blend, there is great potential for success.

Success can mean anything you choose to make it. And if you can define it, you can achieve it.

What does this have to do with Leadership?

Leadership is many things, and prioritization of resources, setting of intentions and modeling good character happen to top the list of both employment and family leadership. The day I became a true leader in my family and in my career was the day I accepted responsibility for every decision I make. My life has been far from balanced ever since, but it has been incredibly rewarding, successful and full of love.

Still struggling with the balance?

Look at your next choice as simply a choice about what is in front of you now. Make your choice and move on to the next one. Feeling out of balance? Redefine success and factor that into your next choice. And the next one.

Don’t think it’s possible with your particular set of choices? I say baloney.

What say you?

I don’t buy that image of leader. To me, a leader is ANYONE who takes a stand and influences other people to cause the world to be better.

Leaders run corporations and PTAs; they have authority to make decisions and they rely on heart-felt pleas; they get big name recognition and nobody notices.

If you feel strongly about something, stand for it and cause the world to respond, you’re a leader in my book and I want you to succeed because you’re already changing the world just by being in it.

Take your responsibility seriously.

Stand for what you believe most passionately and learn how to be as effective as you can.

The future depends on your success.

We listed out the challenges Kathy was having and tried to decide if these were issues more challenging to women than men. We concluded that they really weren’t women’s issues but were more related to the “Leadership Stretch” that requires us to take on a broader perspective when we are ready to – or just have – jumped up a major level in management responsibility. We also agreed that it was possible men received help with these issues more regularly through mentoring than women did.

Here is what we identified Kathy was struggling with, and how Meg could help her.

Get a Grip on Magnitude

Meg was pulling her hair out watching Kathy prepare for a board presentation by micromanaging her staff to the decimal point when the overall message and theme of the presentation were still weak – two days from showtime!

Kathy didn’t have a sense of magnitude and where she should be spending her own energy. When you start your career as an individual contributor farther down the food chain – i.e.,  before you get promoted into leadership – you’re typically held accountable for details your superiors don’t have time or skills to manage. You’re rewarded for focusing on the weeds and then later on the trees. Quite often you spend years of your career wandering the forest without even realizing there are such things as oceans, plains and moonscapes. If the trees are all you know, you take them for granted and get fixated on the smaller stuff. But when you want to rise in the ranks, or survive a bit higher up, you’ve got to get a handle on the magnitude of challenges at ecosystem, forest, tree and weed level. Most importantly, you need to learn to spend most of your personal time at the higher levels. When you have a problem to solve, learn to rely on your staff –  i.e., delegate the trees and weeds to them – and manage the forest-as-ecosystem level issues. Good leaders understand the magnitude of each issue and problem they work on and allocate their time and energy accordingly.

Meg’s job was to help Kathy understand that her energy was needed on the higher level messaging issues and she needed to let go of the details she was no longer paid to spend all her time on.

Master the 80/20 Rule

Kathy struggled with tackling a big project that landed on her desk where she had an extremely short turnaround time. Meg had told her she didn’t expect perfection in the first client deliverable – knowing Kathy didn’t have time to get fully up to speed – but Kathy flailed around trying to decide where to start. Meg realized that if she’d understood the 80/20 rule, Kathy would have been in Meg’s office the next morning with the question, “What one thing can I do to knock this out of the park for the client? What about you?”

Focus on what matters most. No matter how complex the situation, there are only a few things that will actually make the big difference you’re seeking. The 80/20 rule traditionally refers to what customers care about. It goes something like “we spend our energy getting right the 20% that meets 80% of our customers’ needs” and the implication is that by meeting 80% of the customer’s needs you’ll gain their satisfaction. This approach isn’t necessarily enough if you’re in a precision environment that requires .99999 reliability, but even in those environments, if you become adept at sussing out the 20% that meets the 80% need, you quickly focus on what to do first, then second then third. It’s a good way to put the details – even the ones that matter – into immediate perspective so you can focus on what will give you the biggest bang for the buck.

Mastering this rule requires that we get better at thinking like our customer/audience/superior. Many of us find this challenging – not always having walked in their shoes. Those that master this skill, however, learn to ask good questions and find out.

Meg’s job was to help Kathy understand the 80% – and to help her see that it was her responsibility to ask about the customer and boss’ perspective until she felt like she understood what a home run looked like.

Delegate In a Project Planning Framework

Kathy struggled with pulling together an internal report on the accomplishments of her new group. She blasted out the detailed reporting requirements and final deadline to the whole team, but her people were confused on which part they needed to deliver when. Kathy was crestfallen since she’d taken time to spell out every detail and thought they would appreciate her thoroughness. Meg decided she needed to coach Kathy on how to lay out the high level deliverables, accountabilities and interim deadlines and let them bring the details to her in the time frames she gave out.

Even if your work has nothing to do with project management, there are a few tricks that project managers learn to do intuitively that will help you delegate. This approach can also help you anticipate where your projects are likely to go haywire so you can make sure they don’t. The key is understanding the critical path and its key dependencies, which becomes the focus your energies personally. If you’re a detail person, go ahead and list out everything that you know must happen in order for a project to be completed, but then go back over it with a highlighter and highlight the major tasks that can only happen in a certain order (this is the critical path). Choose the fewest most important ones that must happen correctly and on time and in that order. Even in complex projects, that “must do right and on time” list should be fairly short with lots of other subtasks feeding into them. You take accountability for the short list and manage your team to this short list of “must-do-right item, concentrating on looking for and helping them clear obstacles to the short list. This puts all those little subtasks into perspective so you can assign broader accountability to your team and help your team members manage them in light of their importance to the delivery of the overall process – a process you now understand at a higher level and own.

Meg’s job was to help Kathy develop the high level project approach and see that she learned how to do it on her own, focusing her energy on the big deliverables and holding her staff accountable to everything that contributed to them.

You’ll notice all of these issues relate to perspective and detail. Your perspective changes – about what issues are at stake, who will pay the price, and what your choices and resources are for approaching the challenge – as you move up the food chain. The main competency of managing “the stretch” is to recognize that your perspective must shift as you go higher and that your best strategy is to tackle this challenge proactively. Taking on the Leadership Stretch is a great way to position yourself for a promotion, to show you understand the broader perspective, and it’s a must-do once you’ve been promoted to demonstrate you can handle it.

It was interesting, by the way, that when we identified these things to help Kathy, Meg recognized she also still dealt with the same issues at the executive level – just another level higher. No matter how high you go, the stretch is there.

What’s your experience with the Leadership Stretch? Did I miss something else to help Meg and Kathy in the stretch between management levels?

*The real Meg has agreed to give her persona over to Everywoman Executive and will become the lightening rod for “typical workplace power vs. powerlessness issues” that women often face. These issues will be suggested by Meg, other women executives I know or meet or – you! What power and powerlessness issues would you like “Meg” to confront? If you’re an Everywoman Executive, what issues have you confronted and handled you’d like me to share with my readers? Contact me to speak to – or through – Meg! (“Kathy” will be a recurring theme too, as Meg helps her with your issues.)

Efficiency is Great

This fall I’m teaching change management and teambuilding to a Lean Six Sigma class at GWU’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, and the more I learn about Lean Six Sigma the more I realize it’s a good thing. Lean 6 is all about squeezing the .04% inefficiency out of a process that can return millions in savings and productivity. And in large scale predictable processes, the returns for such increased efficiency can be huge. All necessary. All good.

When I stop to think about it with my strategic planner hat on, it seems obvious that the entire art of business planning is an intentionally small investment in inefficiency (i.e., an overhead activity) built into the front end process designed to reduce or eliminate efficiency on the back end. “A tea cup of planning and an ocean of execution,” Ross Perot used to say.

This strategy makes sense if the back end includes the deployment of humongous resources, such as those it takes to fight a large scale war, build an airplane or issue social security checks.

But what if that’s not your game? What if you’re trying to hold a formerly-terrorist-held neighborhood? Creating/responding to an emergent market/need? Struggling to launch an important nonprofit program on behalf of people who can’t speak for themselves? Or playing basketball against an aggressive and resourceful team? What if you’re trying to lead change and transformation in places typical managers and leaders don’t venture into?

Inefficiency is Inescapable

In all scenarios, but especially in the fast moving potentially world changing ones where uncertainty and risk are highest, you simply can’t plan enough. No matter what you strategize in the locker room, things just happen in new and unpredictable ways out in the real world. You have to learn by doing. And learning is inherently inefficient. This is what I discovered when I decided to go ahead and launch the new site. Yes, it will be more costly to convert and upgrade it later, but then I’ll have more customers and I’ll know what the upside is to know exactly when and how much to invest in the upgrade effort.

Eric Ries in his new book The Lean Startup advocates spreading the cost of learning inefficiencies across the entire product development, testing, tweaking and operating cycles. He holds that the downside of pissing off early customers is lower than the upside of getting it right faster so they love you in the end. While this approach might not work for building an airplane, it has a lot of merit for many other aspects of business.

Part of me – the strategic planning part – struggles to understand why this idea of planning on inefficiency might be valuable. After all, my “big brand business school” mind cowers at the potential for customer satisfaction debacles, brandshine erosion and sales channel confusion. But then my own website accident occurred and I suddenly got it. When you’re in the locker room planning what “might” happen when quarter starts, you’re motivated to win and you can eliminate a major amount of inefficiency by planning the most likely scenarios.

But when you’re on the court and in the game – knowing you could not possibly have planned for every eventuality, knowing you’re learning on the job, knowing you are vulnerable to uncertainty no matter what you plan – you instinctively shave off the seconds needed for faster response time, you go for the 20% that produces the 80% without energy-wasting debate and you learn what the market really demands. Assuming you planned your resources well enough, even when you lose, you live to play another game.

In other words, inefficiency happens, so you might as well plan on it and plan for it to happen in an environment where everyone’s tolerance for it is minimized because the risk is high and they’ve got their eye on the prize.

Inefficiency As Fuel for Innovation

We talk a lot about innovation in business literature and it strikes me that there is an important link here. Innovation often looks highly inefficient – until you can apply hindsight and see the benefits it did or didn’t produce. Only then can you do a cost/benefit analysis to see if there really was a more efficient way of producing… whatever.

Yet if we look at innovation through the on-the-court/minimized-tolerance-for-inefficiency thinking above, we can see that if we throw ourselves into the game, where the risk is high, we not only create the conditions to minimize inefficiency, but we also increase the potential for innovation. Innovation isn’t just a product of the (ever shrinking) R&D department who has time, money and resources to dream, it’s also quite often produced by necessity, no or low resources and a distinct lack of time.

So what if we just accept that inefficiency happens and plan to build it in where it’s most likely and most naturally going to be minimized? I’m trying this experiment real time at the moment, so I’ll let you know how this approach plays out!

What’s your response when inefficiency happens? Do you welcome it or allow it to frustrate you? What’s your best story of inefficiency-gone-bad? Gone-good? How have you experienced inefficiency and innovation working together? Do you plan on inefficiency? How does that work out for you?

NOTE: My new web site is www.InPowerCoaching.com and it’s an experiment in self-serve executive coaching, launching with the Speak Truth to Power eCourse to help executives and exec-wannabe’s tap into their own personal power to vault them to leadership success. I’ll probably formally “announce it” around the first of the year but feel free to have a peek, take a taste and become part of my real time experiment!

BUT, being a human being fundamentally works against this principle. Why? Because humans are wired to care.

Attachment Is The Key to Success

Think about it. We work hard to achieve great things and support our families because we care and love. Love (in its broadest form) is one of the greatest powers we humans call upon. Families, religion and popular culture are all built around it. We can’t deeply love what we’re detached from – can we?

Attachment bonds between a parent and a child are a critical component of that child’s success in life and in becoming a functioning human being. In many ways, our entire childhood is defined by the effort to attach, first to our environment, then to our family, then our friends and finally our world. We can’t become functional human beings if we’re unattached – can we?

Attachment Is an Important Component of Leadership

How can a leader help their organization or group accomplish great things if they don’t care about the results? The answer is that they can’t. They have to care. They have to attach some aspect of their own success to the outcome or they won’t have the passion, energy and stick-to-itness necessary to see it through to the end. They won’t have what it takes to change the world.

And yes, we know that the best leaders all fail. They all mess up and come back stronger, smarter, more determined and wiser. So are good leaders masochists? I hope not. What allows a good leader to care so much, drive so hard, fail so spectacularly and come back so passionately and wisely and fail and succeed again and again? Great leaders can’t achieve spectacular success through non-attachment to outcomes – can they?

Attachment Isn’t the Issue – It’s Freedom

After wrestling with this concept for literally decades (since studying Buddhism as a young mother very attached to my children and stumbling through startup after startup after startup…), I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re missing the point. Attachment/NonAttachment is a limiting dichotomy that no longer serves this discussion. Great leaders and great human beings do attach to many things, but we do so as much as possible out of conscious choice. We recognize our power to choose to attach to the effort and the outcome, to commit ourselves to it’s success but to also choose to define our personal success separately from the outcome.

It’s the difference between choosing to derive a chunk of your self-worth from the car you drive (attachment) to choosing your car as a vehicle to get you from place to place (temporary attachment to serve a goal). Both owners will be bummed if a car thief steals their wheels, but the second person is much less vulnerable to letting the car thief steal their power.

In the case of leaders, they attach themselves to organizations, jobs and causes and then detach when the game is over – regardless of the result – because then they can have a greater impact somewhere else. They attach their primary definition of success to themselves – over the course of their lives – not any particular job, project or event. They attach to accomplishing their intentions, not needing to be right or execute a plan that’s outlived its usefulness, simply because they “said they would”.

I realize that this implies a tremendous level of personal discipline and self-mastery, but I also know it’s attainable, desirable, possible and a key aspect of leadership success.

Success is Messy

So here’s the thing. Being attached takes energy and involves a certain amount of effort/discomfort/pain to attach and reattach. It feels most of the time like “ups and downs” and yet we strive for total inner balance and peace, never ruffled.

Maybe that’s possible, especially if you have a handy mountaintop nearby, but I’m not sure it’s desirable. Attachment, passion and commitment are where so much joy, love and making-a-difference comes from, let’s not idealize it’s absence. Instead, let’s accept that true power and success come from the ability to attach and yet remain free of the thing we’re attached to, detach when it’s “time” and serves all parties even if part of us isn’t ready to, and especially accept a little bit of messiness and inefficiency in exchange for progress and meaningful change.

I know this is a bit esoteric, but this has really been brewing in me for a long time as I wrestled with these concepts. If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening. And by the way, for those interested in this topic, check out the COMMITMENT VS. ATTACHMENT PRIME by Chris McGoff. He says this extremely well. (Watch the video.)

Postscript:

Props to Terry Sexton on one of my posts last week for flipping over this brain cell. We were discussing the relative importance of a leader’s need to apply “healthy skepticism” to their business – not to fall into paranoia, but not to fall into the swoon of success either. Here’s what Terry said that spurred my thinking about the proper level of “attachment” to the business a good leader should have.

I agree that leader’s should not be paranoid. Healthy scepticism, yes maybe. However, their relationship to success and failure should be one of non attachment so that both of these can be used equally as data. This will inform them about themselves, the effectiveness of their strategy and their organization.

Cultivating this non attachment to both failure and success is a difficult task and a life’s work. I,m still working at it.

Kudo’s to Terry for admitting that cultivating freedom is damn hard. I’m right there with you, buddy.

What’s your biggest messy success? Do you strive for non attachment? Do you struggle with attachment? What lessons have you learned?

I’m proud to share that I just had a major Op Ed piece posted to The Glass Hammer – a preeminent professional woman’s blog. Here’s a short summary and I encourage you to read the full article on The Glass Hammer for the executive coaching advice at the end.

Abstract:

There’s no snappy research study to prove that “just being yourself” is every woman’s ticket to upper management, but I believe it’s true. There’s a lot of research coming out that paints a dismal picture of women’s chances of getting into top leadership posts. This data, plus the ever present equal pay dilemma, makes it hard to find the silver lining in being a woman aspiring to leadership positions these days. However, there is a ton of evidence that women in leadership actually help companies perform better than those with fewer women up top.

Do you know what this means? This means we have it in us. We ARE the right stuff. We’re full of what our companies and economies need to succeed, and we balance the uber-testosterone leadership style that is currently responsible for putting our companies and economy at such risk.

I know this argument can be both terribly inspiring and a tad frightening. It’s easy to read the stats, but what do we DO? How do we “be authentic?” Isn’t that an oxymoron? Aren’t we already authentic? There are many ways to simply tap into your own power – your InPower – that’s already inside you. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it, all you have to do is confront a little fear, but there are techniques for doing that and it’s not nearly as hard as you think. Here are a few suggestions to get started. Read more…

Old boss – mentoring and advancement opportunities. New boss – frustration, competition, neglect, stupidity and powerlessness.

What’s your strategy for getting ahead now?

In the last week, I’ve talked to three people in situation “new boss” – at all levels including a CXO (no, my friends, powerlessness is not limited to the minion ranks). So the topic seems ripe for an executive coaching post.

5 Ways to Advance Anyway – Despite A Dysfunctional Boss/Corporate Culture

1. Accept the Challenge.

No one can help you get ahead in your job more than you can, so when you face the situation of a superior (whether it’s a manager or the new Chairman of the Board) who’s got you in their crosshairs or is blocking your every move, the first step to accessing your own power in the situation is to accept the situation as an opportunity for you to demonstrate your potential despite obstacles. Whining won’t work if what you’re looking for is advancement opportunities.

2. Get Clear on Your Audience.

While the difficult individual may become a friend and advocate if you play your cards right and they turn out to be just clueless instead of malevolent, don’t start trying to win them over right away because this just gives them more power and you less. Be courteous, respectful and responsive, but view everyone but the challenging individual as your audience for your effort, including yourself. Will you be proud of what you accomplish and how you do it? What do your actions communicate to your peers, staff, clients/customers and others who are likely to be in positions to help when a 360 analysis or new job opportunity opens up. How can you give others the chance to help you?

This was Sarah’s strategy after the board meeting where the new Chairman didn’t back her up and left her hanging like fresh meat. By the next meeting, she’d lined up advocates in the room and didn’t need the Chairman’s support to survive.

3. Set Your Intention and Achieve Results.

Honestly, you probably can’t outthink total dysfunction, especially if the organization (i.e., the boss’ boss) supports it overtly or covertly. So don’t even try to rationalize the stupidity. Focus on your desired outcome – imagine it from every angle and commit yourself to realizing it in the world. You’ll be surprised at how this approach can help you identify ways around obstacles and even draw them to you when you start sharing your intended outcome with others. With your intention solid, achieve it. Set achievable intentions, nail them and move on to the next set. Whether for kudos in your current job or stepping stones to your next (or both), actual results matter. Intentions aren’t goals, they’re more adaptive to reality and thus a better measure and tool for success. There’s a method – learn it. It works.

Meg focused on this approach, using her toxic boss CEO’s neglect and fear that customers would complain to him personally, as leverage to test her own methodology for customer intimacy and relations. Focusing on the desired relationship with the customer helped her work with obstacles and craziness to put the essential system in place, prove its efficacy and make her case to the acquisition team so that her methodology became part of the acquired assets – advancing her reputation.

4. Speak Your Truth.

One of the most debilitating impacts of powerlessness caused by dysfunction is that you feel like when you speak up to help your new boss see the problem, you’re not heard or respected. And when the stakes are high – for yourself, the company, the customers – it’s even more rankling as you’re stymied from being able to do the right thing. In these circumstances, you need to learn to communicate at the deeper levels of principles and belief – to speak your truth. This is how you maintain personal integrity in this situation, knowing you’ve given your boss and company the benefit of your best advice and intent. But to be truly successful – in swaying the outcome and/or maintaining your own integrity – you must do this by releasing your need to be right. It’s tough, but you can learn to regularly and reliably tap into your own reserve of wisdom/insight in this way Learn how to do it well, without putting the boss on the defensive, before your next opportunity!

Anthony used this approach to turn a “lost” opportunity – where he disagreed with his boss, stated his case on principle only to be overruled – into personal credibility. When his boss began trusting him more in the future for being willing to speak up with meaningful perspective and not get into a power struggle when they disagreed, Anthony’s boss began to give him more tough assignments and listened more to his input in the future.

5. Distinguish Your Internal Power from Your External Power

Sometimes a bad boss is a sign. It’s not always a sign you need to run right out the door. Sometimes it’s a sign you’ve gotten too comfy, you need to buckle down, set and achieve some intentions, speak your truth, get clear and THEN run out the door – or off to the side – or up the ladder. Whatever your personal situation, use the shift into dysfunction as your wake up call to get clear on your personal power – your InPower. To the extent you see your fate as independent of the business culture around you, you gain power in that environment and it can help you move out or carve yourself a place in the current culture you can live with.

This was my story – going through multiple dysfunctional companies until I woke up one day and decided I deserved better. Every job and contract I received after that wake up call (many of which still had dysfunctional aspects to them) gave me a chance to claim more and more of my internal power to the point that I now see myself and my power as completely independent of every organization I choose to associate with. Rich took a different tack and targeted an independent contributor position that allows him to do work he loves with a minimum of exposure to the craziness of the home office. He loves going to work every day and establishes his personal power around his expertise and ability to help his customers despite the organization he works for. Pamela took yet another approach, put together a funding proposal for a new non-profit organization based on the goofiness of her old one and is now the Executive Director of a nonprofit that is helping more people more meaningfully than the old one could ever hope to.

As you can see, there is no single solution. Find yours.

There’s merit to this approach, of course, and I happen to believe in the value of failure in the leader’s repertoire of success tools – in part because we simply can’t avoid it. But it’s no wonder the average leader does their best to avoid and ignore failure when it happens.

We all love a good failure

The business press loves nothing more than to haul out any public failing and shout it from the rooftops.

Just in last week’s feeds:

• CFO Blog: Advice to Netflix – Shut Up
• Reuters: Richard Li’s financial alchemy fails to wow
• Solyndra CEO Resigns As Company Faces Questions From Lawmakers

This is basic human nature. People have a foundational fascination with watching someone else’s demise, but we face huge blind spots when it comes to our own situations. In fact, success is apparently the biggest predictor of failure.

Success breeds failure?

According to “Why Smart Executives Fail” by Sydney Finkelstein failure is usually the result of success and arrogance that breeds a willingness to ignore one’s own – and one’s company’s – vulnerabilities.

It’s easy to see the siren song of success as the precursor to disaster from the outside and after-the-fact, but I’ve been on the inside, too, and it is such a seductive situation. In 2000 we were a struggling startup and then we got a huge investment from another startup that had “made it.” We felt validated, breathed a little more easily, didn’t sweat the cash flow for a month or two, appeased our investors, set our sights on bigger markets, more employees and longer sales cycles. We lost our paranoia.

This was in the boom right before the bust of 2011. But our investment was in stock, not cash, and guess what that became worth all too quickly?

Should good leaders be paranoid?

I don’t happen to think that paranoia is a healthy way to live life in general, so no, I don’t think good leaders are paranoids. But good leaders do understand the natural cycles of success – which must include failure.

Good leadership is about personal maturity as much as anything. The best leaders we evaluate with 40/40 hindsight as brilliant – Steve Jobs for example – all suffered tremendous and often public failure. They don’t let failure or success stop them in their relentless pursuit of a personal vision of success and this allows them to ignore (or at least filter) the banterings of the echo chamber, which tend to get all caught up in the extreme ends of the cycle.

Leaders as Masters

The best of anything – especially leaders – learn to watch the cycles that crop up in everything they do; they learn to anticipate them, plan for them and ride the waves to minimize extreme results that knock the system out of balance. They master the cycles – primarily within themselves – and use this mastery to guide the system into more productive behavior – which hopefully looks like profits, jobs and value (not in that order).

This is a level of InPower – personal – mastery that requires some experience, but more than even experience, it requires wisdom. The potential lives in us all. Are you tapping your reservoir of potential mastery?

It’s this level of mastery I’m interested in for myself and my executive coaching clients. Everything else gets you trapped inside the echo chamber.

What leaders have you admired who were masters of themselves and their businesses? Did success precede your most spectacular failure? What is the relationship of success and failure in your career? Has paranoia worked for you? How have you transformed failure into success?

Ready to go up a level in personal power? Learn the subtle art of speaking your truth to power. No matter how high you go, you’ll go higher in greater integrity when you can stand up for yourself and others effectively.

Meg really didn’t deserve this. She’s way too nice.

But Meg realized that this was, indeed, part of the problem. She was way too nice. She had been bringing up the issue of her options (which – having been awarded before the most current agreement – were valued differently than everyone else’s) every three months instead of every week, the way she realized she should have been doing for the last six months. She watched a male colleague in a similar situation walking into the CEO’s office daily and making a bit more – albeit not much – progress. As this all-too-female practice of being unobtrusive hit her as a bad idea, she nodded knowingly and said, “Won’t be making that mistake again.”

We explored ways she could speak her truth and strategized about how to approach the CEO, the other execs, the board and the acquiring company to save the situation somehow. I had to agree with her assessment that even if she won, she wasn’t likely to “win” full compensation based on the contracts in place.

But to my surprise, Meg wasn’t hugely upset. She admitted that she’d worked hard to get beyond the anger, but that another factor had been at play, one I could relate to. You see, for both of us in the “startups that didn’t pay out as promised” scenarios, it hadn’t really been about the money.

How to Create Personal Victory

Meg reminded me that when she’d taken this job she’d had one kid still at home and the other newly in college. She’d been looking for a financially stable position while the kids flew the coop, a break into the executive ranks and a chance to build out a methodology she’d been developing in hopes of going out on her own someday. She had known this company was a risk, but it had offered her opportunities to accomplish all three of these goals, and she’d made a conscious decision that those three goals were worth the risk. Her decision wasn’t really a traditional work-life balance tradeoff, but a multidimensional tradeoff choice.

Here at lunch, a few years later, she had to admit that she’d accomplished all three of her goals. Her kids were out and (almost) paid for, she’d nailed her VP role and her methodology was proven and documented. She even had a bit of a name for herself in certain circles outside the company for her forward thinking in the field. “So,” she said, “I can’t be upset. I got what I came here for.”

Of course, part of me is mad on Meg’s behalf for getting financially screwed by an egotistical and short-sighted CEO, as is she. But when faced with the choice to be bitter or see the upside – which reinforces her sense of personal power and mastery in an otherwise powerless situation – I have to admire her greatly.

Who says it has to be about the money?

Maybe Meg and I have just been around the startup merry-go-round enough times to know that the big payout is more a dream than a reality. Or maybe, we both have worked for the money enough to realize there’s more to life and our careers than that. In any case, I totally resonate with her reasoning. In my career, I’ve taken lower paying contracts for the experience and been happy about it. I’ve also been unhappy sometimes, and talking to Meg, I was reminded of what makes the difference.

When you make a conscious decision – setting your intention clearly in your career and in life – you own the responsibility for your choice. From that point forward, it’s not about them and what they “do” to us but about us and our decision to act – or not. Make a conscious decision about something, fully aware of how the situation may resolve – in your favor or not – and you’ve protected yourself in a powerful position from the idiots and the bad luck and the powerlessness of waiting for “them” to make it all better. You’re in your own power – InPower.

There’s nothing more powerful than a person conscious of the choices that have led them to where they are in this moment. Our choices only get better from here on out.

My hat’s off to Meg the Powerful!

What’s your experience? Have you taken the money and regretted it? Has the conscious decision paid off for you even when the job didn’t? Is this a uniquely feminine perspective of balancing money with other aspects of success? Do you see our career choices are more complicated than just “work-life balance” decisions? Share your story.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Group rates available for the Speak Your Truth to Power eCourse launching October 24. Contact me for more information.

Both of them were smart as heck and personally driven, and they drove me earlier in my career. Being a Type A (then, not now), I rose to the challenge and learned a ton. I learned how to do things to make them happy – which led me to contribute greatly to the business. They saw potential in me and went out of their way to help me learn more. My experiences working for them were crucial in shaping my professional resume and ethic. I owe them both great debts of gratitude for that. I would not be who I am, or have the opportunity in my career that I do, without both of them.

What not to do

But both of them were insecure human beings on a power trip, and they took much of that out on me (and others, it’s not like I was singled out). Granted, I was young and stupid in some ways and allowed this. One was emotionally abusive, passive aggressive and sometimes I thought a bit bipolar. The other was just egocentric. Working for them was very difficult.

Their greatest gift

But in retrospect, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not only did I learn a ton, but I began to claim my personal power by deciding I was done with being treated that way. I’ve left lots of jobs in my time, but in these two cases, I was doing it as an act of power – not out of spite but out of respect for myself. Of all the “I quits” I’ve ever delivered, those two meant the most to me. In the years since, I’ve  simply been growing into who I started to become on those two days.

Their other gifts – 5 lessons I’ve internalized

The whole time I worked for them, I watched carefully, trying to understand what made them powerful to me – which was often not at all what they thought made them powerful. I’ve also watched my good bosses (and clients in both categories since becoming a consultant) and watched how my own boss behavior affected my employees. Here’s what I’ve personally internalized from the good, the bad and the downright stupid and which I am sure to pass on to my executive coaching clients. For anyone new in management, I recommend internalizing this early. You’ll get more out of your people by doing so.

1. Respect your people. “At will” employment is not just a contract term. Your employees are free agents. Treat them with the same respect you would a consultant who has the right to leave on a moment’s notice. I don’t care how bad the job market is, your employees can leave too – and will.
2. Think ahead. Don’t get lazy about making decisions at the last minute just because you can. If you’re going to make a decision that affects people’s time and work, do your best to make the decision in time for them to adjust smoothly without tons of rework and overtime. Of course you don’t control everything, but if you make an effort to respect their time and energy (see #1), they’ll appreciate it and you’ll actually make better decisions about resource utilization. This is also known as the don’t-burn-out-your-best-because-you’re-lazy-or-on-a-power-trip rule
3. Get your ego out of your way. Be honest with yourself about your insecurities and deal with them. Otherwise you’re just taking them out on everyone else – your family, your employees and your friends – and pissing everyone off. We all have things we could be better at. The more insecure you are, the more your power and authority is making you insufferable. The day of the authoritarian king is over; the better your character the greater chances of your success. Also, with your own ego out of the way people will trust you more and tell you what’s really going on instead of telling what they think you want to hear.
4. Be the best jerk you can be. The business requires that you be a jerk sometimes, so do your best to be a good human being when that happens. There is a natural tension between being a good business boss and an empathetic soul – so just accept that this tension is part of the job. Don’t try to be a good human at the expense of the business, but don’t let the business become your excuse for being a colossal a$$+@|& either.
5. Speak your truth to power and let them speak theirs. It’s not about who agrees with you or how often you are right, it’s about how disagreement and agreement are reached. The business benefits from the tension of good ideas so learn to invite their ideas and mix it up in ways that not only deliver the best business solution but honor and respect both you and your employees. The better YOU are at speaking your truth to power, the more easily you will be able to hear it when others speak it to you. Be strong, learn to speak and listen.