January 2007

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LEADERSHIP TIPS FOR A NEW YEAR

1. Choose your celebrations don't let them choose you
   
   I've always found it fascinating that people opt to begin a new year, usually drunk and often depressed.
   
   Like lemmings we gravitate, more often than not, to the ritualized night of excessive partying, drinking and feigned 'festivity', never quite evading the feeling that someone, somewhere must be having more fun than we are.
   
   After the ritual excess, we eventually wake up on the 1st, hung over, down, depressed (the post-party 'slump'), and having to face the reality that it's time to get up and get going.
   
   The other extreme are those who having grown weary of the above, pride themselves in doing 'nothing'. They sit home and watch re-runs and make no notice of the passage of a year, of achievements rung in, or dreams awaiting activation.
   
   If leadership is about choosing your reactions rather than just reflexively following suit...why don't we create our own rituals?
   
   One of my favorite authors, Peter Mayle (he of the 'Year in Provence' fame), says that he and his wife settle in on New Year's with the most expensive bottle of wine they can afford. At midnight, they toast each other with a glass of bubbly. Then, while the rest of the world is sleeping off their excess, or as bad, just starting an unimaginative morning, Mr. and Mrs. Mayle head off to a favorite restaurant and have a characteristically Gallic, long lunch to welcome in the New Year.
   
   Whether that's your glass of Bordeaux or not...create your own occasion. And why not do likewise for Valentine's Day, anniversaries and more? Given what they signify, let's choose how we wish to celebrate them.
   
   Our occasions reveal us...they shouldn't be an empty shell of inane imitation or else exasperated lethargy.



2. Start the year off right...with feedback!
   
   How about a feedback party to welcome everyone back to work? Gather everyone together, order in some refreshments, throw down some blankets, or cushions, create a different context and mood.
   
   Then, let everyone take turns in the hot stand. Each person can share with their team the 2-3 personal breakthroughs they would most like to make. The team supportively listens, and then provides some feedback about the demonstrated strengths they feel will most help take their colleague toward these aspirations; as well as some of the areas of growth they fear may hold them back.
   
   Also, at this occasion, colleagues can make requests of each other. If not immediately agreed to, they commit to making time to meet together within the next fortnight to discuss and explore the request. Wonderful conversations and connections will potentially flow if this is followed through.
   
   Such a kickoff to the year gets everyone to crystallize their key goals. It allows their team-members to gain insight into each other's struggles and aims so that targeted support can be offered. Additionally feedback can be offered as a way to help the person succeed, rather than to pull them down.
   
   As a fantastic way to get ROI from this, hold the feedback party once a quarter. In subsequent quarters, people can report on their own perception of progress since last time, and also get both appreciation and constructive challenge. If well facilitated as a relationship and achievement building exercise, the dividends can be significant, the impact, powerful.



3. Try to really create ignition for a Business Plan...take a Vision Challenge
   
   Following the logic of the feedback party...let's take it to an enterprise-wide level.
   
   Johnson&Johnson in one of their global locations asked us to help them to create a way they could really evaluate if they were living their vision. They also wanted an innovative way to give real impetus to their business planning process.
   
   What we did was invite key customers, suppliers, a few global stakeholders, partners, along with the senior and next-level leaders of J&J.
   
   The invitees gave feedback on various aspects of the stated J&J vision. The feedback was based on their living experience...so they didn't refer to the wording of the statement or the philosophy behind it...but whether it was being exemplified in daily action, output and decision making.
   
   Even for a company of the caliber of Johnson&Johnson, to get unvarnished feedback from an external perspective (internally we tend to create excuses for where there is a deficit -- because of course we know 'why') was jolting. But the jolt was a healthy and creative one. Together with these stakeholders, new actions and commitments were created...and the potential for extraordinary collaboration and loyalty was also laid.
   
   This exercise is not for the faint-hearted. After all, after opening Pandora's Box, you have to wrestle with the 'demons'. If you ask for this insight, and then continue to replicate the dysfunctions that are pointed out -- then we breed the truly embittered cynicism that comes from first raising people's expectations and then ultimately demonstrating that we wasted their time.
   
   On the other hand, by acting on what hear, enthusiastically and decisively, we create extraordinary conviction among our stakeholders as to our commitment to them, our overall integrity and our capacity for constructive action. Thereby we also forge relationships where real-time feedback and consultation are more forthcoming and are actively welcomed by us as ways to help make our vision REAL.



4. Don't just hope for improvement, create Wow contracts
   
   Very few business cultures get coaching right. Many leaders believe they are coaching when they are just barking orders.
   
   Legendary business leaders like Jack Welch argue that the primary problem in most businesses today is that people never get an honest appraisal of how they're doing -- an honest, no-nonsense view of where they are and how they must improve.
   
   The Wow contract addresses both of these problems. As a leader meet one-to-one with each of your direct reports. Most of these direct reports will have KPI's that essentially express the length and breadth of their areas of responsibility.
   
   Nice, but not enough. Imagine it's 9 months hence say. And this person has truly 'Wowed' you...beyond just completing the KPI's they have positively surprised you...they have truly fulfilled their own potential and your greatest hopes for that role. What are the 2-3 specific things that would make that true?
   
   After taking your team member through this thinking process with you, so they understand how you came up with these, state these 2-3 'Wows'. Why state them? Because you have them anyway, they operate on and forge your expectations. So whether you state them or not, you will actually be judging the person at some level against them.
   
   By sharing this 'top 3', those critical few that would really make the difference and represent a breakthrough, you help to elevate the aims and hopefully amplify the energized engagement of each team member.
   
   Once you have shared the Wows, ask the other person what support and coaching they need from you to take really make these happen. And then, ask them to drop you a quick note within 24 hours of the discussion, summarizing what you've agreed. Finally, agree a monthly (at minimum) check in, of at least 5-10 minutes where progress towards the Wows, as well as the mutual commitments made by you both of you in terms of delivery and support are reviewed. There should also be an agreement that while there will be a planned review of this type, real-time feedback in these arenas will be an ongoing accountability for you both.
   
   We have often helped entire teams create Wows (always 3-5 maximum) for each team-member. This then becomes something that can be tracked at team-meetings and becomes a basis for mutual coaching, appreciation and stimulus among and between team members.
   
   Team members focusing on and delivering Wows allows us to blast past plateaus and self-imposed limits by coaching people to amplify their sense of what's possible and doing so in a collaborative partnership that is purposeful and continually calibrated.



5. Create a Manhattan Project
   
   Just as it can be powerful to launch a year with Wows for each contributor, nothing will bond and bring together a team more powerfully than their own (currently) 'impossible dream'.
   
   To us, something qualifies as a 'Manhattan Project' if it is currently unachievable, currently seemingly impossible. It may not necessarily be impossible because it lies outside the domain of existing technology...more likely, it may be impossible because of our current ways of working, or the way we allocate resources, or how we do or don't cooperate, or because of our limiting paradigms that blunt fresh innovation.
   
   By stating a project that has urgency, audacity, potentially great impact, by gathering our top talent to lead the project, by allowing for an intelligent threshold of risk-taking, by creating enough visibility and excitement around it, we can liberate all kinds of otherwise dormant energies, ideas and passion.
   
   Such a project should be truly game-changing, it should move the goal posts significantly. It can be operational, like moving manufacturing effectively and yet still responsively to few regional hubs; it can be about introducing a new product in a literal blitzkrieg into the market so that we capture 'first mover advantage'; it could be a dramatic new redefinition of how we serve our customers and how we follow up to ensure we become a cherished part of their lives; it could be a way to stop the high turnover rates for top talent even if we currently meet industry average, and creating an Employee Value Proposition that is truly unbeatable; it could be about entering a new global market and becoming the employer of choice in that competitive market; it could be about introducing a new IT solution and ensuring that our mindset evolves with our technology so that we reap full benefits.
   
   Pick a way to break through any impasse or current ceiling in front of you today...and galvanize your team to help make that so. How? Again, a powerful aim, a top team, tight and challenging time-lines, enough buzz and visibility to create urgency, good coaching and support, sponsorship from senior leaders, the bar raised to uncompromising excellence, encouragement of rapid prototyping and multiple sources of feedback and continuous improvement -- these are the levers of success in such an undertaking.
   
   The team will grow, the business will come together, and tremendous unexpected offshoots of opportunity are likely to also be created from that all-out effort.



6. Create a 'stop doing' list and take aim at a mess
   
   We all thrive on 'to do lists'. It would be fantastic to have a 'to don't list'. A great discipline is to each year create a list of things we will either dramatically decrease our energy and time investment in, or which we will stop doing altogether. If you can do this both in terms of your own leadership life and then collectively with your team...this can be a treasure trove of potentially liberated energy, time, possibility, passion and more.
   
   A good way to stimulate this is to ask: "If I had only three working days, instead of five, what are the things I would either stop doing or delegate elsewhere? And by extension, what are the things I genuinely believe I must do personally?" As we try to create work lives that approximate this 'bullseye', we'll get telling insight into what we can and should jettison.
   
   Similarly, pick either personally, or with your team, an area of chronic frustration. This could be a wretched process that malfunctions all the time, an area of rework where it has become habitual to continue to tinker iteratively rather than plan wisely, or perhaps somewhere where we lack a key skill or ability that is clearly needed. Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan pithily calls these 'messes', a place where I have energy and time obligated that squanders progress rather than delivers it.
   
   If we can identify one of these each quarter with our team, and/or for ourselves, and actually clean it up (rather than just 'tinkering' again with it), we will release exceptional energy and positivity that can then be redirected to those areas of focus we've identified above.
   
   What are 2 things you will stop doing this quarter? What mess will you and your team decisively clean up in the coming 12 weeks?



7. Become a trusted advisor to your customers
   
   Consultants, lawyers, financial advisors and others, hope to become more than a transactional choice for their customers. We aspire to be the 'trusted advisor'...where in that realm, whatever the current issue or challenge, we will be invited to support -- not just because of our expertise, but because of our commitment to that client's success and well-being.
   
   In an increasingly impersonal world, characterized by 'high-tech', high-touch becomes increasingly important.
   
   While the above is very understandable for advisory roles like those above, it is actually applicable to virtually all businesses and all industries.
   
   This year select a highly profitable niche in your market, or some of your most profitable customers, and explore how you can become a trusted advisor. The best way to begin that thought process is to ask, 'If I were truly committed to this customer's success, not just their temporary satisfaction, how would I re-jig what we offer, what we produce, and/or what or how we deliver?'
   
   No less a corporate titan than GE has implemented this under Jeff Immelt. They call this 'ACFC' or 'At the Customer For the Customer'. This is an initiative where GE has team-members present at customer strategy sessions and key brainstorming meetings, so they can understand what the aims of that customer are. Therefore they can bring critical feedback re what products and services to develop or to offer. Moreover, they can help customize cost-effective and value-effective solutions to their customers by having an 'inside-out' understanding of their hopes as well as their challenges.
   
   Other companies, from P&G to Sony, are creating 'communities of practise'. These are committed customers who actually are part of the extended innovation team of the companies. They get customers to give feedback on what works, to share what they would most like, to try out prototypes. But this is more than 'market research' among an uncommitted group of average consumers. This is dedicated, highly involved feedback from people who want to influence what will be provided to them -- people who care about what you offer, because they plan to partake of it.
   
   While there are great examples of this, again this can be a double-edged sword. British Airways developed a high degree of loyalty from business travelers with their flat-bed in business class, their arrival and departure lounges with complimentary massage and shower suites, and more. By listening to this 'community of travelers', they have recently gotten ready to introduce what they call 'a new generation' of business traveler seats.
   
   However, the world has moved around them. Flat-bed business class seats will now be 'de rigeur'. Singapore Airlines is introducing the widest such seat in its class. Lufthansa is set to follow suit.
   
   But when looking for customer success, not just transactional satisfaction, you have to look at the entire experience. BA is associated with Heathrow...lamentably run by BAA. It may be argued, and it often is by BA, that this is a separate organization, and nothing to do with them.
   
   However, they are doubtless major partners of BAA, and the fact that they claim to have no influence is worrying. Baggage handling at Heathrow is appalling. While the security scare about liquid explosives has lead now to a consistent policy re liquids and carry-ons in the US and EU (the zip-loc bag equivalent of no more than 10 100 ml bottles or thereabouts), Heathrow insists you can only have one piece of hand luggage (virtually every other airport allows at least a purse or laptop bag in addition to your main piece of hand luggage). Moreover, while other carriers allow for a maximum weight of checked luggage to be 32 kg, BA has brought that down to 23! So BAA will compel you to check in more bags while BA will simultaneously limit how much each one can weigh.
   
   So, as a traveler, who is on the road 250 days a year, as I decide where to route my flights, will I be swayed by an increasingly commodified Business Class seat (which can be matched by other carriers) over and above the fact that if I carry a separate laptop I have to check in even a small overnight bag through Heathrow, and then deal with the terrible baggage delivery and general congestion? If they think that is unproblematic, and all the innovation goes only to what happens onboard, they are missing the boat.
   
   Across the oceans, there is a reason, we all happily transit through the award-winning Changi Airport, and SQ reaps the benefits.
   
   So in terms of customer success, you have to not only deliver personally, but influence all your partners in the value chain, and really get into the skin of the customer and experience the world as they do -- as they try to get the value of which you are a part.
   
   Pick a niche, or a few key customers. How can we help them 'join our brand', rather than just use it? How can we get them to co-innovate with us? And let's make sure our innovation covers the entire gamut of their experience as much as we can. Let's make sure we are part of their success, and they reciprocally, are invited to be a part of ours.



8. Life Balance: we return to rituals
   
   We started off this newsletter arguing that we have to choose our celebrations, rather than letting them choose us.
   
   A phrase I detest is 'work/life' balance. It suggests there is work...and after you get done with that, there's life! How appalling. Clearly we have to bring life to work. And frankly, we may also have to do some work on our life...outside office hours.
   
   However, while it's important to plan our get-aways, and ensure we guard our vacations, and intelligently select those recreations that most energize and renew us; in terms of daily life, we need rituals that preserve the life balance we're after.
   
   Perhaps it's agreeing with your office that you'll arrive at 0930 rather than 0830 on 3 mornings so you can have breakfast with the kids and take them to school. But you'll stay an extra hour, or do some extra work from home over week-ends so that your office can stay in better touch with partners in other parts of the world in different time zones or weekly schedules.
   
   One of my coaching clients had a wonderful evening ritual. He'd work like the blazes until about 6, then return home except when entertaining. He would cook and his wife would give the kids a bath and get them ready. They'd share a meal, tuck the kids in, and then it was adult time. They'd spend an hour over a glass of wine just reconnecting, chatting about the day. And then they might read, take a stroll, watch TV, or whatever. But this family and couple connection time was a daily ritual of renewal and love. Fantastic!
   
   One Finance Director I coached literally told his team...I'm available to you from 8 to 6 on weekdays. After 6, I'm with my family, giving my kids a bath, spending time recharging personally. If my phone rings after 6, you better hope it's an emergency...because otherwise, by the time you put the phone down, it will be an emergency!
   
   Other rituals can for example negotiating 2 days of extra-long lunch breaks where you go to the gym, and then have lunch...but on those days you come in early before everyone else, and make impressive strides on high-priority items.
   
   As a team-leader, having lunch with a different team-member each week as a way to explore how things are, how to improve mutual support, or just to strengthen relationships, can be a work-related ritual that has meaning. Taking a team hiking and then discussing key strategies over a picnic can be a refreshing change of context. This too can become say a quarterly ritual where everyone 'empties' themselves of any resentment, doubts, unexpressed issues, and fully focuses on making the key priorities happen in the period ahead.
   
   Rituals can be as varied as we are...and 'balance' depends on what's in imbalance. Indeed balance at home and with loved ones must be guarded. But creating a 'new balance' of communication and connection at work is also important in keeping our overall batteries charged and making sure that as human beings we evoke and liberate in each other the type of attention and engagement we most want.

Omar Khan,
Senior Partner, Sensei International
Phone: 1 (212) 295 2191, Fax: 1 (212) 295 2121
e mail: omar@sensei-international.com

Omar Khan is a globally acknowledged leadership development innovator and success coach. He is a sought after change catalyst and a pioneer in transformational learning. He is the author of the acclaimed book SYNERGY as well as the newly released and much awaited, TIMELESS LEADERSHIP.

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