Leadership for Sustained Change-Management

Inspiring change is easier than sustaining it.  All you have to do it is move people with a vision or paint pictures of what could be and you are on the road to moving people to consider and even adopt a change for which you are advocating. That's a step toward change but it IS NOT CHANGE.   The goal of any change process must not only be to initiate change, but sustain it.  The required leadership skills for initiating and then sustaining change are complementary and yet different.  Like the popular t-shirt saying goes in SE Asia:  "same same but different". 

Most non-profits do very well at inspiration-driven change.  In fact, since they tend to rely more on a committed volunteer vs. motivated-for pay personnel base, this is a necessary leadership skill set.   However, inspiration-driven change that is sustainable is rare. Most change requires the sustained effort of committed leaders.

Coming from the church world, I know a lot of them right now are in their budget and ministry planning process.  Voices abound expounding visions for change and rationales for financing those changes.  Personally I am launching a project right now that I believe will effect change.  I am inspired by it and a few others are 'catching the vision'.  But I know that I will need to create a framework and add personal commitment to sustaining the vision over the long haul.  If I don't commit to that, I am a passing fad, a whiff of wind that was refreshing for a moment.

Reminds me of the movie Braveheart.  At one point William Wallace waxes eloquent to his followers about his vision & aspirations.  To which one of his key guys responds:

 

"Great speech.  

Now what do we do?"

Once you have cast the vision, how will you make that a reality over the long haul?

The following critical success factors in sustained change management are adapted from “Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management” (Second Edition; 2007; David Axson; John Wiley & Sons).

11 Critical Success Factors for Sustained Change

1. Don't count on a silver bullet. 

·         Usually a combination of approaches and skills is needed.

2. Stage the process. 

·         Extend it if necessary to ensure success.  Each stage must have clear outcomes.  Staging the process also allows for organizational learning along the way, and opportunities for adaptation of the process to enhance its success.

3. Plan comprehensively. 

·         Breadth is more important than depth in planning.  Identify all the component parts first. Planning the detail is not absolutely necessary up front because good planning is an ongoing activity to 'fill out' the component parts.

4.   Dedicate the resources.

·         Assign the best people and funding to the project.  The calibre of resources influences not only the optics, but also the outcomes.

5.   Build commitment through involvement.

·         The PRIMARY key here is that the organizations' leaders themselves must believe in the change and be seen as embracing the changes that the process seeks to implement.

·         There are 7 elements of securing commitment:

i)        Commitment is earned; it is not an entitlement, even in hierarchical organizations.

ii)      In the early stages, find the people who 'get it'.  They are your 'evangelists'.  Get them resourced with information and other supports.

iii)    Once earned, sustain the commitment.  The tendency is to expend the energy and vision in the creative process and then let it dissipate in the execution.  This is extremely damaging to any change process. Cynicism sets in.  Volunteers and finances begin to depart.

iv)    No single method to secure commitment works in isolation.  Match the message and the medium to the recipient(s).  Take into account their motivation, personal style etc.

v)      Security is top of mind with people.  People generally fear uncertainty more than the change itself.  Therefore consistent and redundant communication is crucial. Use common 'talking points'; create communication schedules across various media; provide easy access to information through vehicles such as websites.

 vi)    Communication by itself won't secure commitment.  You must also

·         provide 2-way processes

·         use pilot programs

·         develop templates/prototypes

·         conduct workshops

·         involve a wide spectrum of people and provide feedback loops

vii)  Know you won't convert everyone.  Plan for how you will deal with resistors.  You must deal with them because if left ignored, they will negatively affect the project. (see point # 11)

6. Gain momentum quickly. 

·         No false starts.  Momentum is a function of activity and delivery.  Produce something visible every 3 months.

7. Make the investment of time, money and personal focus.

·         It means you must reduce your commitments in other areas to make this work.

8. Work the organizational politics. 

·         Success is the best offence, so create it early; tell the story and repeat it often

9. Be flexible but don't compromise the end objective.

·         You will never define all the steps ideally or anticipate all the events along the way, but don't lose sight of the objective

10. Keep Boards informed and focused on the goals with regular updates.

11. Don't let naysayers get you down.

·         A small number will never sign on.  The greater number of naysayers are those who, at the first sign of trouble start to question the viability of the change.  Addressing this starts with the leader and his/her change implementation team. 

Is your vision worth more than the inspirational story you are telling?  If it is, my challenge to you (as I am making it to myself), get in for the long haul and roll up your sleeves to create some sustained change.

Harv

harvey@visiontracks.ca
www.visiontracks.ca

1-403-970-4148

Skype: visiontracks05

Leading Beyond the Bottom Line

Every for-profit or non-profit leader has a bottom line.  It’s why you were hired. What is your bottom line? 

Social change – shareholder value – product innovation – spiritual transformation – profit...

Before you read on, name your organizations' bottom line here:_________

I suggest you add a bottom-line measure to your leadership:  the personal development of the people you lead.  In the long run it isn’t about what you leave behind for your organization ~ it’s about who you leave behind. 

Although our world places great value on leaders who accomplish great things, it’s the leaders who ‘accomplish’ inspiration in the lives of others who endure in our collective memories AND have left a legacy of change in thinking and behaviour that continues to serve the world.

Look at these pictures (or insert the image of a leader you admire) and describe for yourself the legacies of each leader:

• What was distinctive in their life? 
• How did they inspire you?
• To what extent has their leadership endured beyond their organizational ‘bottom line’?

  

Now, here’s a counter-intuitive point:  the clearest path to influencing the character and personal development of others is to pay attention to your own growth!  Developing others isn’t so much about being an inspiring motivator, providing leadership coaches, or implementing a team-development plan (as helpful as they are).  It’s really based in YOU, in the “quality of you” as their leader.  You best lead others by consciously leading yourself.

A leaders’ self-awareness is the basic building block of effective leadership.  

Leaders who lead themselves acknowledge that there are typical stages and phases of development through which all people travel.  Throughout life we will cycle through these phases.  At times they are painful and uncomfortable.  Effective leaders don’t avoid these stages, but rather normalize them as natural building blocks of their inner life and character.  It’s from that inner life that they lead in the most profound ways ‘beyond the bottom line’.

Here’s my broad description of the phases of:  

Questioning/Clearing/Crucible/Clarity

Questioning

At various points throughout life a sense of ‘dis-ease’ with our context settles over us.  I have often observed this in the lives of leaders when I hear them express: “Is this all”?  After a period of years in their role, after the initial building phases of projects, visions or teams and after the job has settled into some kind of pattern, a dis-ease with life and leadership enters their thinking.

This does not mean something is wrong.  It does mean something in you is stirring.  Something is calling you to self-examination and possibly to re-calibration of your place in life, in relationships, in leadership.  This is a good and healthy place – so don’t shake it off by ramping up your work life or hastily exiting your role.

It’s just good to sit in the place of questioning for a while.

Clearing

Our life/heart/soul longs for something deeper to connect with than the typical bottom-line of a leadership role.  We are inherently connected to something more than money, honour, status or achievement.  It’s a sense of destiny or legacy – the deep knowledge that we are on this earth for a purpose and that when our role is done and our life is finished, we have meant something to someone in this world.  I believe it’s the God who created you that put that stirring there.  Whether you believe that or simply that we as humans are meant to contribute something for the benefit of this world, we find our greatest meaning & contribution outside of ourselves.

Yet through our lives we encounter things that get in the way of living a legacy-producing life.  The fog of deadlines, demands & distractions enshroud our life and we are in desperate need of emerging into a clearing.  That is why “The Questioning” is such a critical phase!  It starts a process where you hear the deepest longing of your soul speak back to you.

“The Clearing” is a place (and a process) where you come face to face with yourself.  In this place the most powerful thing you can do is to give a name(s) to the deficits you are discerning:

-in your personal character

-around your unfulfilled aspirations

-about what you lack to be a ‘legacy’ leader 

I urge you to a ruthless honesty about yourself.  It’s not only critical for you, but for the world!   WHY? Our for-profit and non profit leadership positions need character-leaders who see beyond the hard facts of most bottom-lines.  They see impact on people, on the environment, on communities, on culture, on well-being.  This is ‘another way’ of leadership needed by our world.  This way of leadership isn’t acquired through an MBA program.  It comes through honest reflection on the very nature of who you are as a leader. 

Crucible

Chinese symbols for 'Crisis'

Articulating your deficits and aspirations is one thing.  Owning them to the point of making a choice to act is something else.  Crucible creates personal crisis.  Here we come face to face with the limitations of our current self and realize that without change, we will never become who we aspire to be.  The choice is stark:  remain in status quo, coast for the rest of your life and surely wither on the vine, OR get off of your chair and make some commitments to move your life forward.

Ambivalence at this stage is natural, because change is hard.  We become accustomed to our current state of being and so will ask ourselves: “Do I really want to go through the effort of becoming a different/better person”?

This push-pull between our knowledge of a need for change and our disinterest in the energy required to change creates an internal tempest.  What you choose in that storm of self-analysis forms your character development going forward.

Clarity

“Clarity” is defined as ‘the quality of being clearly expressed’.  It comes only to those who act on (express) their choice for change.  Notice I said it comes to those who act.  Clarity is profound when it first comes to your awareness.  But that’s not true clarity.  It’s just awareness.  True clarity is when your choice is ‘expressed’ not only in words, but action.  You need commitment and discipline to act until what you have chosen becomes a regular part of your life and/or thinking.

You have been there before.  Remember those meetings when the team had ‘clarity’ on a direction?  Everyone left the meeting inspired & hopeful.  But there was no commitment to regular and sustained action.  The ‘clarity’ you thought you had died because of lack of expression beyond the words.

It’s simple, but curiously get’s missed too often:   

MAKE A PLAN + EXECUTE A PLAN = ACCOMPLISH REAL CHANGE.

In summary:

...Let the questions come & sit with them for a while.

...When face to face with yourself, be honest about what you are and what you aspire to yet become.

...As hard as it may be, own who you are, and the changes you need to make.

...Express your aspirations by making a plan and executing it.

There is a greater metric than the economic or social ‘bottom-line’.  You run your business or non-profit by it’s’ bottom line, but don’t run your life that way.

Your life will be judged.  What will it say to the world?

Harv Matchullis

harvey@visiontracks.ca

www.visiontracks.ca 

If you or your team desire support to turn your aspirations into action, contact me for an initial discussion and sample session on how coaching can ensure you enact the change you know you need

Track Your Organizations' Impulses

 

If you like where you are; if your organization is all about itself and maintaining stability & control at the centre, don’t read any further.  I won’t convince you to change.  You are the person who tunes the radio to their favorite station and then pulls the dial off the radio so it can never be changed. 

Enjoy your music.

But if there is even a hint of impulse toward serving someone or some purpose outside the space your building and people occupy, keep reading. 

Businesses often state they are about innovation for the ‘marketplace’.  Churches say they are about the ‘mission’.  Retailers focus on the ‘customer’.  Non-profits express their existence is for the ‘client’ or a broader social purpose.  Most state their organizational impulse is for a purpose or people beyond themselves.  Wonderful. 

However, if your impulse is truly beyond yourself, do your current organizational structures and processes reinforce & support  that?

Within our North American culture we pride ourselves on our ability to change with the times.  We believe we are innovative and flexible enough to adjust to the needs of our customer or target audience. Yet in the business world the field is littered with once-great, well known companies who have talked the talk but could not take the walk.  Blockbuster, Eastman Kodak, Sears and Yahoo are but a few of the big-name examples of companies with commitments to change but who did not adapt well.  I can identify a few non-profits who started with the most altruistic and noble of impulses, but as they grew in size they grew in complexity and along with it found they became bloated or myopic, and inevitably off course.

Much of the reason for this is that with time and success, people in groups, whether as businesses or non-profits, think less and less about the further development of ways to serve their original ‘outward’ impulses, and more about how to preserve what they have.  (By the way, that’s a natural tendency of all human beings).  They will walk and talk right up to the edges of change, but taking the step over into real change is rare.  Leadership talks about innovation in order to keep serving the needs of the person or customer, but leaderships' walk usually reinforces it’s about keeping the business or the organizations' status quo.  When you see a company driven by stock price over principle, or a non-profit influenced more by its donor-base than the needs of the people it serves, you have an indication of what I mean.  No one likes hearing this because we all live in the illusion that we are change-agents.  Our culture regularly streams out the message of change, but our collective rhetoric proves we no longer get the point.  Talk about change has become a cheap and easy way to maintain leadership currency.

But true leadership is about identifying and declaring current reality in light of where you want to go and then being bold enough to address the gap.

Conduct a brief audit of your own organization:

·         How do we expend our primary personnel resources?

·         What does our budget indicate to an outsider as our priority areas?

·         Where do most of our activities take place and what does that say about who and how we serve?

·         What gets celebrated in our organization and what does that indicate about what we value?

·         What are the top 3-4 areas where leadership expends their energy?  How does that define the core ‘impulses’ of our organization?

(Would you be bold enough to use these questions as a 360 of your organization?)

If the assessment reveals a significant gap, let me propose a solution:

An ongoing perpetual strategy for maintaining focus on your core impulses is to identify and release the people within your organization who already have the capacity for reflection, ingenuity and innovation.  I can tell you right now that there are people within your organization who are connected to your original impulses and who think about it...a lot.  How are they heard?  Is there a place for them?  They often exist a little ‘in orbit’ around the hairball of your organizational inertia.  Sometimes you might feel they work for you and against you all at the same time.  They ask too many questions.  They might even be complainers.  Their ideas are just a little too off the wall.  “Can’t they ever just put their nose to the grindstone and do the job”??

Yet they are a key to ensuring that you make whatever changes are needed to stay true to your original organizational impulse.  Rarely do the answers to needed change & innovation come from corporate strategy sessions.  Rather, they come from within individuals who are not only set free by the organization to think innovatively, but who carry within themselves the capacities for ingenuity. What you need to do as a leader is find a way to let them be themselves to examine, criticise, dream and innovate.  Come into their space once in a while and hear what they have to say.  Spin them off in orbit on a retreat, or in specialized task groups.  Ground them in the organizations’ core impulse, and then release them to discover how to stay true to that.  Feed them with the freedom of thought and innovation towards a grounded purpose.

 

The Jesuits, of all organizations, have the most to say to all of us about releasing ingenuity.  They were/are one of the most decentralized yet focused organizations on earth.  (You can read in detail about their founding principles and extremely dispersed organizational philosophy in a book by Chris Lowney, a former Jesuit himself who worked in the banking and non-profit industries.  His book is “Heroic Leadership”, 2003, by Loyola Press).  For them, ingenuity is the readiness to ‘cross the world’ at a moments’ notice in pursuit of a good opportunity.  It is the willingness to work without a script and the creative embrace of new ideas.  It is not achieved merely by developing the skills leadership pundits always champion for innovation:  imagination, adaptability, creativity, flexibility etc.  Rather, it is about adopting the demeanour, attitudes and worldview that make creativity and adaptation possible.  What is that stance? It is an “optimistic view of the world thoroughly shot through with (divine) love. Ingenuity blossoms when the personal freedom to pursue opportunities is linked to a profound trust and optimism that the world presents plenty of them.  Imagination, creativity, adaptability and rapid response become the keys for finding and unlocking these opportunities” (pg 128 – Heroic Leadership).

Ingenuity is NOT however the blind pursuit of anything new and creative.  It is in pursuit of a broader purpose or a core impulse that ingenuity takes on meaning.  The Jesuits had a purpose to ‘help souls’ and left it up to the ingenuity of their people to make that happen.  What resulted was a global kaleidoscope of endeavours, but all in pursuit of this purpose.

Your organization may grow to get involved in many things, but do they serve the core impulse of why you exist?  Reject the impulse of inertia.   As the leader, restate your organizations’ core impulse and release the ingenuity of your people to help you regain that ground and innovate your way back (or forward) towards the accomplishment of your primary purpose for existence.

Harv Matchullis

Diversify...Your Dreams

This is a re-post of a blog from the Harvard Business Review on Tuesday Feb 28, 2012, written by Daniel Gulati, who is a tech entrepreneur based in New York. He is a coauthor of the new book Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders. Follow him on Twitter at @danielgulati.

While Daniel focuses his attention on the under-35 crowd in this blog, my experience is that for many "Nomadic Leaders" this is not exclusive to that age group.  Nomadic Leaders love to 'wander' their world looking for ideas, opportunities and new fields of engagement.   An intriguing question is:  "At what point will you be content to settle in for a while?

Harv Matchullis

Here's Daniels blog post in full...

If you ever want to lie awake at night, go ahead and think about your "one thing" — the one thing you were born to do, the one career you were built to succeed at, and the one person you were destined to spend the rest of your life with. Attempting to solve these impossible optimization riddles is a sure path to emotional turmoil, an unsatisfying professional life, and, well, a pretty bleary-eyed morning.

In writing Passion and Purpose, I learned that smart, well-intentioned individuals have a destructive tendency to oversimplify their passions and dreams, distilling them down to a series of these "one things." I saw a young accountant's elaborate plan to land his dream job of becoming CEO of a professional services firm, else be considered a failure. I witnessed one of my peers who, just days after her wedding, became absolutely angst-ridden about whether she had married her one universal soul mate. Still others float from job to job, from life tragedy to triumph, in the never-ending quest to discover their one purpose.

If you're smart, well-intentioned, and under 35, you're particularly at risk. After analyzing our survey of over 500 business school students, this much is clear: You're a generation of idealists. Free from the traditional shackles of perceived prestige and financial compensation, you rate intellectual challenge as the most important reason for choosing a job. Not content with mere intellectual idealism, you also demand geographical optimization. You travel from country to country (an average of 4.6 times within 10 years of graduation), with 92% of your peers agreeing that more gender, professional, functional, sexual orientation, racial (and you-name-it) diversity is better. You're cross-pollinating industries, with 84% agreeing that it's essential for business leaders to understand the public and nonprofit sectors. And you're aggressive connectors — members of an average of 2.4 social networks. In short, you're feeling the unrelenting pressure to optimize amongst the vast array of choices available to you, and you won't stop debating, traveling, pollinating, and connecting until you hit on your "one thing." You've been told all your life not to compromise, and you're doing what you're told.

But there's a dark side to this behavior that applies to everyone. In the process of trying to hit life's elusive home runs, at least two negative things are happening to you. Firstly, you're focused obsessively on the things you desperately want and probably haven't got. Clinical psychologists have long warned against the dangers of excessive introspection, arguing that when people are already down, ruminating on their problems makes things worse. But more importantly, you're putting all your eggs in one basket. The irony is that by convincing yourself that there's one dream job out there for you and questing for one dream job only, you're jeopardizing your chance of realizing your dream and setting yourself up for deep regret and unhappiness if you eventually fall short.

There is an alternative, and that's to diversify your dreams. You wouldn't invest all of your savings into one stock, because, for a variety of reasons both in and out of your control, that one stock might never generate a return. Why treat your dreams and passions — arguably your most valuable assets — any differently? Let's embrace the entire portfolio of our passions and diversify our dreams, and avoid designing our lives around ever-elusive silver bullets.

The time to diversify is now. With permanently new dynamism in the job market and the elimination of the career ladder, the days of signing up for a 20-year, pre-configured journey to the top are over. Instead, success will be marked by flexibility and agility — how quickly you can adapt to the world around you and how quickly you can seize exciting new opportunities. Having multiple paths and career dreams up your sleeve is a more effective way to navigate this exciting, but riskier, world.

But there's more good news: The information technology revolution just lowered the cost of experimentation. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be a headhunter in Hong Kong, there are more than a million published resources online that can inform your decision. Your social networks are a valuable asset, and your connections are waiting to be tapped. Best of all, this buffet of content and connections can be accessed at any time, at record speed. Technology makes diversifying your dreams more achievable than ever.

So how do you start moving from one dream to many? A practical tip I've seen work well is to develop a "folder of gratitude," a constantly-updated list of all the things in life you're grateful for. Chances are, many of the things on your list correspond neatly with your underlying passions. Then, take your list and amplify these passions with intelligent experiments. Test and invest in your areas of interest, and cultivate the joy of learning from failure. Finally, just like any investor worth their salt, double down on winners. If something strikes a chord, reallocate more time and energy to it. View your dreams as organic and ever-changing, and you're much more likely to be pleased with the outcome.

There's no reason to put all your eggs in one basket and cross your fingers. Your dreams are precious enough to diversify.

This post is part of a series of blog posts by and about the new generation of purpose-driven leaders.

When Leaders Are Lost

LOST - there's never really a 'final season'.

I recently lost my way.

Feeling confident of my direction, I left a great non-profit role to start a business.  Things started well, but who knew the economic fall of 2008 was just around the corner?  However another opportunity emerged that seemed perfect to bridge the financial gap and simultaneously launch the business further towards my long term goals.  But another redirection happened and there I was – not even back full circle to where I started, but further behind.  It was a loss.  I felt lost.  Defeat and failure (real & perceived), enshrouded my psyche & soul.

While this is a common experience to entrepreneurs, it’s also common among most leaders.  The truth is that as we navigate our way through the leadership journey, some roads don’t work out.  What then?

In the story of an ancient Biblical character named Job, at one point he complains to God:  

“You have unstrung my bow”

That’s a captivating description.  It’s one thing not to have any arrows to shoot.  But it’s completely another issue when there is no string on the bow.  Without the string, there is nothing to propel the arrows of your dreams, skills, talents or resources forward.  What I had experienced was not a loss of my skills, but the string: my dreams, confidence and character.  Loss, whether real or perceived, ‘unstrings our bow’.  When the source of power to launch your arrows has been dealt a blow, you had better pay attention.  No increase in your arrow count will enable you to lead unless you deal with getting that string back on the bow.

FOUR FACTORS THAT CAN GET US ‘UNSTRUNG’

(Of course there’s more...you fill in yours)

1.       Unexpected circumstances.  Let’s face it, all the strategic foresight, scenario and contingency planning in the world cannot predict everything that may come down the pike.  The future is not determined by the past, nor are the ends fully determined by the means. Unpredictability is predictable.  Yet when it comes it is often still a shock to our system.  And, if you have bet the farm on a particular result, the string on the bow of your leadership get’s especially slack.  Not only does it shake your confidence and your future-modelling scenarios, the “I have never been here before” sensation is an unpleasant reminder that you are still imperfect!

2.       Uncooperative people.  Leaders are nothing without people, and if those people refuse to be led, it’s a tragedy.  You have a quiver full of arrows but no ability to use them.  Sometimes the solution may be to fire them, but more often than not this is also an issue of a leader who has lost his/her ability to motivate and propel people into service.  The bow has been unstrung.  

3.       Hubris.  From the fable of Humpty Dumpty to the Bibles’ “pride goes before a fall” declaration, when leadership overconfidence & pride run up against the walls of reality, they crash.  It’s not pretty.  Think the Costa Concordia’s captain, or Enron, or other leaders’ names you can pluck from the news.  The great tragedy here is that it not only reveals a leader’s immaturity to themselves, but to the rest of the watching world.  The captain of the Costa Concordia still has his mariner’s skills.  The arrows are still in the quiver.  What he doesn’t have is the confidence of the world (or Carnival Cruise Lines) to likely ever use them again. His bowstring holds no power today.

4.       Inattention to the personal side of leadership.  Defining leadership only by the set of skills required is a devastating deception. Thankfully leadership development authors & programs lately are putting a greater emphasis on value formation and the inner life.    A leader is a package of both personal and professional components.  When a leader experiences losing their way (and all leaders will at various points in the journey), their core self is revealed.  Crisis does not so much MAKE character as much as it REVEALS what is already there.  Before the crisis hits, every leader should ask themselves:  “What will keep the bowstring tight enough so I can continue to utilize the arrows at my disposal”? 

FOUR SOLUTIONS WHEN THE BOW IS UNSTRUNG

1.       Power up and power through.  This is usually fueled by one of the factors that get us unstrung in the first place – pride/hubris.  On the surface it seems like a true leader’s reaction. Suck it up; pull it up; get things up and running; create a sense of ‘up’ for yourself and your followers.  When a leader encounters a stressful event, brain science teaches us that a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones is released into his/her system resulting in a short-term increase in strength, concentration and reaction time. These changes may be helpful in the initial response to a stressful event, but if the stress remains high enough for a long enough period of time, disastrous effects will follow. Unfortunately this natural and ‘instinctive’ approach ignores the deficits currently existing within you.  You are already diminished and yet you are trying to expend greater energy.  How long will that last?  In the end you will be throwing arrows by hand.  Trying to do the right things but with no power behind them.

2.       Protectionism.  This is a common personal and even political reaction to becoming unstrung.  The US economy is a current example on the political front.  Their national economic foundations are unravelling, so they have put up barriers to keep things within national walls.  We also practice protectionism on a personal front by:

a. Deflecting criticism so as not to be seen as ‘wrong’.

b. Going ‘dark’: restricting or shutting off communication as a way of avoiding accountability.

c. Staying the course and dealing with the situation using status-quo thinking, tools and strategies.

What’s ironic is we build these walls with our arrows, using up our skills and energies to preserve what we have. It’s not even so much that our power (the string) to launch arrows is diminished. Our skills are being preoccupied to keep things ‘as is’.

3.       Complacency.  This is different than protectionism – at least protectionism is a strategy.  Complacency isn’t.  The only ‘solution’ complacency provides is to numb the pain.  It’s like taking drugs – a temporary relief from reality, but at some point reality will return, and it won’t be pretty.  The other challenge that the complacency-solution presents is its compounding deterioration of personal leadership identity.  Leaders are born and made for moving forward.  Complacency causes you to build a permanent structure around your circumstance.  Rather than being a nomadic explorer-leader by nature, you have settled into a lifestyle in conflict with your leadership character.  The bowstring goes slack.  

4.       Live IN it.  The only solution is to STOP and pay attention to the unstrung bow.  Dwell there for a while.  It seems counter-intuitive to not act, but in reality taking time for assessment and any necessary adjustments is a leadership action.  The downside of visionary leadership is we so easily get our sights set on something that is so far out in the future that we miss what’s going on in our life as it exists right now.  Character is diminished in a thousand small acts of negligence but is built by stopping long enough to pay attention to the burning issues in our lives.

WHAT CAN YOU PRACTICE TO KEEP THAT BOWSTRING TIGHT?

·         Build solitude and meditation into your life.  This is true for all leadership-types, but especially those who are naturally extroverted.  The shadow-side of extroversion is neglect of the inner life.  Begin and end your day with some moments to reflect on WHO you intend to be during that day and HOW you will demonstrate your intentions.  End the day with an assessment of your performance to your own intentions.

      Don't get out too fast!  Instinct drives us to get out of a crisis as soon as possible.  Resist that urge and choose to stay in the moment and the context long enough to truly discern the lessons for you and for your organization.  If you don't opt for learning, you are opting to repeat your errors.

·         Create and sustain a peer network.  It’s simply foolish to lead alone.  Yes, you may feel lonely at times but it’s not inevitable or part of the package that you be alone.  Proactively recruit 2-3 other people (they don’t need to be in your organization) who are peers in leadership.  Invite them to sit with you to talk and keep each other accountable to maintaining the values, character and personal strength needed to keep the bowstring tight.  Invite those people to these specific criteria.  You will be surprised at how many are longing for a group like you are proposing.

·         Give yourself away.  Where are you involved that demonstrates your life isn’t about YOU?  Leadership can too easily be about ego, compensation and other selfish ambitions.  Getting involved in a volunteer capacity with something/someone completely outside (and disassociated with) your work will enrich & expand your perspective on what true life entails.

·         Check-in with yourself once in a while.  This is a matter of intention.  When and how will you take inventory of your life?  If it’s true that the unexamined life is not worth living, what form will those examinations take?  Some ideas include:

o   Journaling

o   Personal retreats (guided or according to your own agenda)

o   Prayer & meditation

o   Counselling

o   Coaching*

o   Peer or friendship accountability

As for that Job character, he lived with the feeling of being ‘unstrung’ for a while longer until he gained some truly ‘divine perspective’ on his life.  As for me, it’s been the most challenging road ever, but I do know my character & perspectives have matured.  How far they have matured will be known the next time I'm on a road that isn't working out.

Harv Matchullis

* I work with motivated people and organizations to help them ‘check in’ and then lay the tracks to where they need to go next.  Contact me for a discussion about personal, leadership or team coaching.  info@visiontracks.ca  or www.visiontracks.ca

Why Planning Fails

Planning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

That doesn’t mean don’t plan. 

But let’s be clear - a strategic plan itself will not guarantee success. When I think of the 'nomadic leader' living in a context that regularly presents new landscapes of challenge and opportunity, it's not his/her "travel plan" that will equip them for the next step.  It's their ability to know what is needed to establish and adjust their plans.

It’s far too easy to go through the motions of strategic planning and neglect critical INPUTS needed to actually achieve IMPACT.  Think of it this way: just because you eat, good health is not guaranteed.  Choose your foods wisely.  

‘Garbage in-garbage out’ as they say!  

What are you “feeding” your plan?

Of the 6 INPUTS described here, only one relates to the written plan itself.  The rest determine it’s quality and potential success.   I am indebted to Nell Edgington of Social Velocity for this blog.  I am basically revising her blog post on this topic (http://www.socialvelocity.net/2011/04/the-problem-with-strategic-planning/) .  I have added my own thoughts plus a key ‘coaching question’ you can ask yourself about your planning processes.

What I am writing here relates to my context of the non-profit organization.  However it’s not really a leap to see how this also applies to the business context. 

Here is the ‘menu’ of inputs that make for a healthy, impactful and dynamic, strategic plan...

# 1          Discern the environment

Discern, or Discernment are not common words in our daily vocabulary, but are very descriptive.  The global (read: Wikipedia) understanding of the term is: “a term used to describe the activity of determining the value and quality of a certain subject or event. Typically, it is used to describe the activity of going past the mere perception of something, to making detailed judgments about that thing. As a virtue, a discerning individual is considered to possess wisdom, and be of good judgement; especially so with regard to subject matter often overlooked by others.”

• Pray, think, look around.  Get out and SEE who you want to impact, where they live etc.

• A good plan starts from an in-depth understanding of the outside community in which the non-profit operates. Whereas a bad plan is created in a vacuum among only board and/or staff who sit in a retreat and determine the future.  By the way, just because someone is articulate about an issue is no guarantee they really understand it or are convicted to act!  WHO HAS HAD THEIR BOOTS ON THE GROUND LATELY?

 The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How do we know this is the right idea”?  

#2           Value Proposition 

• A good plan forces the organization to articulate its value proposition, i.e. how the organization will uniquely use its resources and those it generates to create significant social value.  You must clearly lay out how you plan to address the social issue your mission defines.
• Articulate values as behaviour statements.  Behaviour shows what you value, so rather than mushy, feel-good, mother and apple-pie “we value...” statements, describe values by how they will be demonstrated, i.e. “We will...”
• A poor plan fails to articulate value propositions and assumes that everyone outside the organization loves what you want to do and understands its value just as much as everyone inside the organization.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How will this entity be of service”?

#3           Truth First 

• A good plan puts everything on the table and allows no sacred cows or pet interests. It’s all about the mission, not your place in it.
• A poor planning process only deals with the easy or non-controversial issues and leaves the difficult questions aside.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:  

   

“What have we not yet said?"

 #4          Disciplined Alignment

• A good plan makes sure that the strategy for programs is aligned with the organization’s operational and financial model so that the resulting strategic plan includes programs, financing and operations in an integrated way.
• A poor plan focuses only on programs and assumes that the money will somehow follow.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:     

“How have we connected all the dots?"

 #5          A Written Plan

• A proper strategy includes a tactical plan so that the broad goals are broken down into individual steps to get there. This allows the organization to monitor and revise the plan on an on-going basis.  It drives the day-to-day activity of the organization.
• A poor strategic plan has no tactical plan or monitoring system attached to it.  The most foolish and wasteful thing you can do is make a plan and not ‘check-in’ on your progress and adjust to any changing circumstances/opportunities on a regular basis.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:  

    

“What and where are our goals and action steps”? 

#6           Inspirational

•  A good plan is inspiring and compelling to staff and potential funders.  It sets forth a bold vision for the future and a specific road map for getting there.  It’s the vision-story AND the plan in tandem which inspires confidence and investment.
• A poor plan is boring, maintains the status quo, and will elicit only nominal external support.

The coaching question to ask yourself/your team:

  

“When people hear this plan, how will it lift their spirit and feed  their commitment?”

It’s not enough to go through the “strategy” motions. A real strategic plan is bold, compelling, tactical, well-financed, integrated and inspiring. It gets everyone (staff, board, funders, volunteers, clients) moving forward in a common direction from which real change happens.

Press on;

Harv

...and if you need some help 'getting there', contact me at Visiontracks:

info@visiontracks.ca  and also see my work on my website at:  www.visiontracks.ca

Building the Bridge from Ideas to Impact

“from ideas to impact”...     

This is the tag-line for my coaching & facilitation venture: Visiontracks Facilitation and Coaching: www.visiontracks.ca.  I chose it carefully to challenge not only those I work with, but myself!  My passion is to help bring life to individuals’ and organizations’ dreams by helping them articulate it and then lay the tracks that lead to desired impact. 

A plan isn’t satisfactory.  Its impact that matters. 

The truth is many ideas never cross the bridge to impact.

I have observed some barriers over the 20 years I have coached individuals and organizations. Each of these I have faced in the execution of my own dreams.  It seems to be part of the human condition.  However rather than just identify barriers, I will describe THE BRIDGES that lead to impact.

I see 3 primary barriers that affect the ability to reach the stage of impact:

Execution Anxiety

Execution is the ‘other side’ of planning.  Problem is, it’s the planning that we love more.  We love it because it is all about possibilities, opportunities, dreaming.  It is an artful stage: intellectual fun with no responsibilities.  Even more, when you are done with the plan you can declare a ‘victory’.  Most of you reading this have experienced participating in strategy development only to watch it die on the shelf of neglect.  It’s similar to our new years’ penchant for goal setting.  There is enthusiasm for the plan, less energy for the execution side. We’d rather plan than execute.

 

To build THE BRIDGE from planning to execution:

·         Keep your plans simple with enough room for ongoing adaptability.  I have become less enamored with the rigid, detailed and highly structured strategic plan.  That’s not because I have become lazy, but as a result of observing that not only do people respond poorly to overly complex and rigid plans, but the complex and fast-moving environments in which we lead require plans with built-in adaptability. Simplicity makes sense and allows room for adaptation.

·         Centralize the questions; decentralize the answers.  In the execution of the plan, move key operational decisions out to the edge.  Central planning has not served world economies very well and it’s not likely to work for you.  The generational forces currently at play have influenced & empowered a grassroots leadership environment (note the Occupy Movement).  Trust your people to execute.  If you can’t, either you have the wrong people or you should not be the leader.

·         Act as though your plan is never done.  Planning does not end when you produce and publish it.  It’s an ongoing process.  By that I mean adaptation along the way is what completes the plan.  Think about this - it’s only with hindsight that you ‘see’ the actual plan.

·         Praise execution, not planning.  Execution is real results.  Plans are fond hopes that must survive the brush with reality.  Therefore as the leader, the most critical part of your role is to accomplish the mission by caring for the people who face reality and execute the plan.  Praise and support them in the acts of bridging ideas to impact.

Fear

Fears matter.   They are natural to leaders and teams when entering the unknown territory that visions typically demand. 

 How do we walk across THE BRIDGE from fear to courage?

·         Resist simply powering through them as your solution to the fears expressed in the team (or in yourself). While it may appear as courage or ‘leadership’ to be stoic and committed to the vision “come hell or high water”, it’s actually foolish because you are setting yourself up as unwilling to adapt to changing conditions and information. 

·         Address fears by naming them.  Fear feeds retreat, so if you really want to move ahead, you must deal with fear.  Label them.  Lay them on the team table. This takes courage, trust and openness.  Doing this as a team is a profound team-building experience, because better than a rock climbing exercise, the honesty & vulnerability required transforms co-workers into true colleagues.  True vulnerability starts with the leader.  Once you lead in this way, over time the team will be willing to express more than just superficial fears and concerns. 

However they are finally labelled, I find fears typically emerge from: resistance to change, a desire to maintain status quo, caution because of past failure, lack of information or sufficiently robust research and lack of confidence in team members with whom they must execute a plan.  Astute leaders need to stay tuned for the ‘elephant in the room’ and coax that invisible yet monstrous obstacle out from the shadows of team silence. Give it a name.

·         Now decide if the expressed fear is one of execution (accountability), or one that legitimately reveals an operational weakness and requires adaptation. 

Some fears are legitimate, so don’t push those fears aside because you want to appear ‘strong’.  If you let fear fester, it will eventually breed doubt, lack of courage and even cynicism toward the plan.  By that stage it’s hard to peel back all the layers that covered your original fears.  You have gone from naming the fear to blaming someone or something and have given up your power to create change and impact.

Wavering Focus

Although we enter a planning process in order to gain the kind of focus that will marshal our resources and efforts in a concentrated way, once a plan is decided upon, the ‘what-if?’ syndrome can kick in: 

“What if this isn’t our best plan?” 

“What if our planning scenarios change?” 

“What if we had tried option ‘C’ instead?”

“What if...”

No matter how robust your planning process, this kind of ‘what if’ thinking always lingers among leaders and team members.  Resist the temptation to abandon your plan and take a completely different road.  Adapt – yes.  Abandon – no.  The execution road is never as easy as the planning road.   

I have observed that pining for a different road happens when:

• We resist the accountability of execution
• We don’t accept limitations.  This is especially a problem for visionaries & conceptualizers.  They LOVE ideas and options.  It’s their world, their fuel, their food.  To finally commit to one road/plan although it may make intellectual sense, feels like it is now limiting them.   There are limitations in ANY plan.  (By the way, that ‘other road’ you desire to take has its own limitations!)
• We don’t create the support mechanisms which keep us progressing toward our goals.  Regular check-ins with the team to track & acknowledge progress, make necessary adaptations and celebrate achievements, are ways to maintain focus.

 

THE BRIDGE to FOCUS is paved with 4 stones which I find are foundational when I am coaching individuals or teams:

·         Time:  Change leading to impact requires commitment to a reasonable time period for execution.

·         Attention:  A regular ‘check-in’ which brings the goals to the front of your mind ensures you don’t create a ‘distance’ that easily leads to neglect.

·         Repetition:  Reviewing where you have come from, as well as reminding yourself of the vision and the steps to get there keeps you grounded.

·         Affirmation:  Being generous with affirmative comments to your team creates positive psychological momentum; a motivation to keep striving for fulfillment of the vision.

It’s one of the ‘large’ questions of life, whether for an individual or an organization:

 What impact will I have on this world?

The larger question is:

Have you built the bridge that gets you there?

If you need help as a leader or a team to walk across the bridge from ideas to impact, consider connecting with Harvey as your coach.  

      

info@visiontracks.ca  .       1-403-970-4148   .      www.visiontracks.ca