Three Ways to Be More Agile

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Ray

In their definitive book on the subject, Bill Joiner & Stephen Josephs define leadership agility as, “The ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions.”[1]“Complex, rapidly changing conditions” certainly characterizes the current era that we are all experiencing, an era that has been given the name The Fourth Industrial Revolution – “a technological revolution blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres (Klaus Schwab).”

The role that technology is having on our lives goes way beyond tools that increase our productivity and convenience. It is also profoundly changing the way we live, work and relate to each other. Think about this: it took 75 years for the telephone to get 100 million users; it was only two years for Instagram to reach 100 million users; and the Pokémon Go app only needed two months to reach 100 million! Consider the pace, pervasiveness and meaning of the societal changes represented in this one example.

When I work with leaders they often express grudging acceptance of complex, rapidly changing conditions as being the new normal. But they are still stressed and frustrated by their teams’ or their own personal inability to be agile enough to feel like they are doing more than responding to constant chaos.

How can you be more agile? First and foremost, agility requires a curious mindset that is always looking to learn. In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, subject matter expertise will be less valuable than a growth mindset that actively desires to see things differently. In the book Agility Shift[2] author Pamela Myer offers three good suggestions to put this kind of mindset into practice:

Hold Mental Models Lightly. Question your assumptions and proactively try on different perspectives to open your mind to new ideas and possibilities for action. Don’t give into an immediate impulse to disagree. Rather, ask yourself what might be good or worthwhile about something.

Adopt an Attitude of Inquiry. ASK QUESTIONS!! Studies of effective teams show that they spend equal amounts of time asking each other questions as they do advocating for particular positions or solutions. Also, be intentional about asking questions whose answers may challenge your own assumptions and biases. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella urges “working to shift from fiefdoms of know-it-alls to a more open, collaborative culture of learn-it-alls”

Cultivate confidence. Be curious and willing to learn by seeking out experiences that will stretch you or take you out of your comfort zone. The result may be that you broaden the scope of skills you have to confidently apply to a wider range of situations and problems.

One of the jobs of a leader is to enable wise and effective action. When the conditions are ambiguous (what your choices are is unclear), complex (hard to analyze) and constantly changing, agility will be an essential quality to succeed in this current age.

[1] Joiner, B., & Josephs, S. (2007). Leadership agility: Five levels of mastery for anticipating and initiating change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[2] Meyer, P. (2015). The Agility shift: Creating agile and effective leaders, teams, and organizations. Brookline, MA: Bibliomotion.

The Day I Met George Bush

Posted on December 3, 2018 by Ray

“You’d think if the President was coming, you would have dressed up,” my co-worker says to me.

I froze, eyes wide, hands outstretched. “What? Really? Today? When?”

“Yes, soon”, my co-worker said. “You won’t have time to change.”

“Soon” became evident when the Secret Service agents came into the offices, walked around and decided they needed to have somebody stationed right outside my corner office with adjacent floor-to-ceiling windows across from a parking garage. Later on, I found out I wasn’t going to be able to leave, anyway. Our building was on lockdown, the high-end shopping plaza our offices were in was cordoned off and traffic around that area was being diverted.

At the time, I was working for George’s youngest son Marvin at a start-up hedge fund. Through this job I had already met a variety of famous people: an ESPN star, an NBA agent, an NFL quarterback. I always figured it was a possibility that Dad (now less than two years removed from the Presidency) would show up to the office one day. And I sort of tried to figure out how I would handle that moment. Now, I was really having to figure it out. I decided to take a passive approach thinking he was here to see his son and there was no reason for me to pursue an interaction. If one happened, I decided to keep it simple and basic with some kind of, “It’s an honor to meet you sir.”

And then it happened. HE WALKS INTO MY OFFICE!!! I get out of my chair and walk towards him warily keeping an eye on that Secret Service agent outside my door. He smiled, stuck out his hand and said, “Hi. I’m George Bush.”

Seriously?

The just recently most powerful person in the world casually introduced himself as if we were meeting at a networking event?

At this point all my preparation went out the window. Making matters worse was the fact that I’d seen him on TV so much that he looked familiar. And he was less physically imposing than my fantasy of what a leader of the free world was supposed to look like. And he sticks out his hand and says, “Hi. I’m George Bush.”

My response? I shook his hand and said, “Howya doin’?”

OMG, Ray. You just said what to George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States?

“Howya doin’?” Seriously????

And much to my delight, it went uphill from there. A congressman recently said about him, “He was kind. He gave everyone a smile, a handshake and respect.” That was exactly what I experienced. He didn’t treat me like he was President of the United States. And because of his totally disarming manner, I didn’t feel like I had to treat him like he was, either. We ended up having a delightful conversation in my office, two strangers getting to know one another – albeit with the Secret Service guy standing outside the door.

Moreover, he honored my request to sign something personal to me. What that thing is doesn’t matter and as a memento of that day, it’s taken on a new meaning for me, anyway.

R.I.P. Mr. President.

Going Outside Your Frame of Reference

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Ray

I like to begin leadership agility classes with the following exercise. I ask small groups to work together to identify the different items that have experienced the changes in the table below. About half of the time, the groups make an interesting but flawed assumption – they believe that the data refers only to their industry.

What Is It?	2000	2010	2017
	100 million	2 billion	4.5 billion
	$10	6 cents	3 cents
	2.7	18	42
	17 million	188 million	1.24 billion
	12 million/month	247 million/month	781 million/month

A frame of reference is “the overall context in which a problem or situation is placed, viewed, or interpreted. A too-narrow frame may leave out critical factors, whereas a too-broad frame may include many irrelevant distractions.”[1] In the cases I described, the groups had a too-narrow frame of reference.

The ability to choose an appropriate frame of reference is a key leadership agility skill, especially as it relates to two specific competencies: context-setting agility and creative agility. Context setting agility involves determining the optimal scope of an initiative as well as seeing connections “outside the box” of one’s specific function, company or industry. Creative agility requires thinking outside of habitual assumptions.

The challenge that we all face when it comes to frame of reference is our immediate tendency to take what Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) calls an “inside view” where we solve problems and make decisions by searching for evidence within our specific circumstances and our own experiences. This kind of thinking will be extremely problematic in the Fourth Industrial Revolution where new ways of doing things are being merged from different industries and technologies at unprecedented speeds and dramatically changing the ways in which all work is being done. The ability to agilely shift contexts and think with creativity will significantly enhance leadership responsiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Unfortunately, as much as organizations strive to overcome “business as usual”, operate outside of “silos” and to encourage “out of the box” thinking, the inside view is a problematic bias as the pervasiveness of these phrases (and my exercise) will attest. It’s quite natural to solve problems and make decisions based on what we know. However, in doing so we are failing to account for what Donald Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknowns”.

So how does one take an outside view? In terms of researching a problem, one way to take an outside view is to look for data that contains information outside of your own thinking and: 1) don’t discount it; 2) consider how it might be relevant.

In terms of collaborating with others, outside view thinking means to move from “What?” to “What else?”. In other words, you must challenge your initial conclusions about “what” you think something is and then consider “what else” it could be. A good initial “what else” question is what would a person with a different frame of reference see? To move from an inside view or frame of reference to an outside view/frame of reference, one must be intentional about questioning initial assumptions and encourage the expression of multiple viewpoints. This ability to shift contexts agilely among multiple frames of reference without being attached to any single frame allows for a perspective outside of conventional “wisdom” and makes it easier to be more creatively agile.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will require new approaches to new and complex problems. In order to combat the tendency of inside view thinking, we must hold our frames of reference loosely, while going outside our frames to question the sufficiency of our own knowledge and experiences.

Oh. The answers to the table? Here they are.

What Is It?	2000	2010	2017
Daily Google Searches	100 million	2 billion	4.5 billion
Hard Drive Storage $/GB	$10	6 cents	3 cents
Weekly Hours Online	2.7	18	42
Websites	17 million	188 million	1.24 billion
Text Messages, U.S.	12 million/month	247 million/month	781 million/month

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[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/frame-of-reference.html

Keys to Success in The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Ray

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will reinvent work and the workplace. Even as “machines” and devices do more and more, those tasks that are non-automated will require people to be more connected and work more collaboratively than ever.

The successful team will be made up of people who:

Learn, share and connect ideas.
Build good relationships with colleagues and stakeholders, inside and outside their organizations.
Are able to work productively and agilely across multiple boundaries whether they be functional, industry, governmental and/or national.
Fundamentally understand that the impact of technology on society is not just about consumers and producers but that it is also about driving progress and not just profits.

Given this, leadership in The Fourth Industrial Revolution will have to be evolve. Leaders will be required to:

Be co-creators rather than innovators.
Be empathetic collaborators rather than forceful commanders.
Be humane and emotionally intelligent.

The following article articulates some of the trials and successes that NASA has had in being challenged “to be more agile, think differently, buy smarter and develop more efficiently”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-change-agents-bringing-tradition-bound-nasa-into-the-future/2018/08/24/626e6f02-a646-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7ebecabf3e56

Book Review: The Leaders We Need: And What Makes Us Follow

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Ray

The one irrefutable definition of a leader is someone that people follow. And right from the words WE and US in its title, there is the hint that this book on leadership is different. It completely flips the script on typical leadership how-tos by focusing on the people following rather than the one doing the leading.

This expansive and insightful book asks two critical questions: why do people choose to follow someone; and how do they follow them? The answers to both questions are surprising in that techniques are less important than context. In other words, a leader’s style may be out of step with their followers’ needs given the times; and a leader’s style may cause others to follow in ways that are inconsistent with the disruptive and unstable nature of today’s organizational environments.

Dr. Maccoby is a brilliant mind and innovative thinker who draws on decades of psychological and anthropological experience from around the world to provide leaders with an understanding of their followers’ attitudes to work and leadership, i.e. how people become socialized and motivated to succeed in a particular environment. Together with his co-author Tim Scudder, they offer a unique perspective that focuses on how people relate to each other in the workplace. A critical part of that perspective is the need for the development of Personality Intelligence, the ability to understand and collaborate with people, an increasingly necessary skill in today’s globally connected world.

This is an important and necessary book that is a goldmine of useful ideas and concepts. It is applicable to every leader in any organization. With so many organizations wrestling with the question of what makes effective leaders, The Leaders We Need and What Makes Us Follow answers that by asking a different question – what motivates someone to be an effective follower?

You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-We-Need-Makes-Follow/dp/193262712X/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Seven Resolutions to Be Like Santa

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Ray

Are you resolving to be a better leader in 2018? If so, where do you begin in deciding what to do in the coming year? A Google search of “leadership books” produces an overwhelming 45 million results. And yet, pretty much all we need to know on that subject is embodied in one, very familiar person who has produced results year after year for, well, centuries – Santa Claus. Relying on three brief but classic pieces of literature on Santa – Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and A Visit from St. Nicholas (“The Night Before Christmas”), here are seven ways to be as consistently successful as Santa in the new year.

Santa is disciplined: “He’s making a list, He’s checking it twice” . . .

. . . and holds others accountable: “He knows when you’ve been bad or good. So be good for goodness sake!”

Santa confidently gives clear direction: “To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

Santa shows support by giving name-specific encouragement which lets you know he’s counting on you: “And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: “Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!”

Santa is inclusive and empowering: When the team “never let poor Rudolph play in any reindeer games”, Santa recognized his unique qualities and asked him, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

Santa – Ho! Ho! Ho! – laughs: “He laughed . . . a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him.” Emotions are contagious and research shows that positive affect increases intuition, creativity, resilience to adversity and happiness. No wonder Santa’s team of elves are so productive! Santa inspires a can-do attitude in others by spreading positivity.

Santa has a legendary track record of success. So why don’t you resolve to be more like Santa in 2018?

Forgiveness to Change, Part 2

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Ray

In my prior blog post I wrote about the role that the absence of forgiveness can play in motivating people to embrace change. Basically, I made the point that some people may be uninterested in moving forward because they choose to remain stuck in lingering resentments from a past perceived offense.

In such cases, it’s crucial to understand that forgiveness is a choice. It is something that one party gives to another. Forgiveness can’t be demanded nor can it be coerced. You are also dealing with personal experience and emotions that won’t be overcome by persuasive arguments. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem when it exists. However, there are some general principles that can be applied at both a one-to-one conversational level as well as at a broader team/organizational level.

Listen with empathy. What people often want to do with their anger is share it with somebody that they feel cares. While listening you are also perspective taking – seeing their situation from their vantage point rather than your evaluation of them from your vantage point. This will help you to gain an understanding of why they are feeling and acting in a certain way, and it may also breed some compassion for them. The key idea is to meet their anger and resentment with compassion.

Invite their help in ways where they feel valued. When you listen with empathy you may get insight into what matters most to them and clues to their intrinsic motives. Who doesn’t respond with great energy and enthusiasm to, “I really need your help with [something I know you’re really good at/interested in].” The key idea is to meet their anger and resentment with appreciation.

Be authentically vulnerable regarding past challenges. Vulnerability isn’t weakness. Vulnerability is openness that makes you more approachable, more trusted and more influential. Therefore, inspirational appeals for change should not just be, “Rah-rah we can do it!” Acknowledging the reality of the past – “I recognize that was harder than we thought and we could have done some things better to help you” – may actually be the point where people choose to change their mindset. The key idea is to meet anger and resentment not with disregard or defensiveness but with transparency.

While it’s crucial for leaders to inspire passion for looking ahead, they also must realistically bear in mind that some followers are looking back at issues that they haven’t forgiven the leaders for. Sometimes the key to moving followers forward isn’t selling them on the benefits of the future but helping them release their resentments from the past.

Forgiveness to Change, Part 1

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Ray

A metaphor I like to use for describing what leaders need to do to create change is that of a golfer. To successfully execute a golf shot, a golfer needs to look two ways. They need to look down to understand how the ball’s current position impacts the available options as to where it can go, as well as the risk vs. reward tradeoffs inherent in those options. A golfer also needs to look up to determine where they want the next shot to land. The “look up” deals with vision. The “look down” deals with current reality.

There is one look that the best golfers don’t allow to influence their next shot and that is the look back. In other words, while they learn from their past mistakes, they are also quickly forgiving of them.

Forgive: stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake[1].

I was inspired to think about the role of forgiveness in leading change by religious teacher Richard Rohr. Recently he wrote, “. . . to receive reality is always to bear with it for not meeting all of our needs. To accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is . . . Without forgiveness nothing new happens, and we remain frozen in a small past [emphasis mine].” It occurred to me that one of the challenges leaders face is that while they are looking up with optimism at a transformed future, many followers are looking back with resentment at past offenses.

These offenses can be personal such as a raise/promotion/transfer/bonus/position they felt was warranted but not given. But they often also include past organizational mistakes they believe have been made:

“We used to care about the relationships with our customers but now it’s just about the numbers.”
“We’re not doing enough to retain our best people.”
“We’ve never been the same since [fill in the blank].”
“Why do “they” (some part of the organization) always think they know better than us?”

Whether it’s for personal or systemic reasons, many followers are living having not forgiven a reality that they believe didn’t meet their needs. As a result, rather than embrace change and a new future, they continue to look back in anger and resentment, and “remain frozen in a small past”, as Rohr says. Such people become pockets of resistance and negativity that can make change difficult more for emotional than tactical or strategic reasons.

So what is a leader or change catalyst to do? I’ll give some answers to that in Part 2.

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[1] Apple Dictionary

Rules One, Two and Three

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Ray

Recently I posted three “rules” on my social media sites that a LinkedIn member asked me to comment more on:

Rule #1: allow yourself to learn from smart people.
Rule #2: don’t allow yourself to be offended by stupid people.
Rule #3: sometimes the smart people are the ones who think very differently than you. They’re usually worth listening to.

These rules have several points of inspiration. One is an ancient proverb that says, “The one who loves a quarrel loves transgression; whoever builds his gate high invites destruction.”

This piece of ancient wisdom suggests a mindset that is useful in all situations when you are presented with points of view that are in opposition to your own. This is especially true amidst the recent onslaught of opinions being put forth on social media. It is actually the continual shouting of people taking sides against each other that was the stimulus for me to create these rules to better manage my own reactions.

The word transgression means an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense. One way to think about this ancient axiom is that the person who loves to argue vehemently also loves to offend while demonstrating no concern for how they should conduct themselves. And what the second part of the proverb – whoever builds his gate high invites destruction – says to me is that the people who seek to defend what they believe they already know aren’t protecting themselves at all. In fact, they are inviting their own ruin!

Why? Most obviously, trying to influence someone’s point of view by offending them is hardly a winning strategy. Secondly, if I allow myself to believe my opinions are under attack, my natural inclination is to defend myself. Moreover, to the extent that these attacks are from people whose opinions won’t change – and yes, at those emotionally charged moments I’m thinking they’re being “stupid” – I’m defending myself in a battle of opinion that I cannot win. In this case, it’s better to follow Sun Tzu’s (The Art of War) advice, “If a battle cannot be won, do not fight it.” Finally, metaphorically defending myself with the proverb’s “high gate” prevents me from learning anything new. In today’s rapidly changing Information Age, those who refuse to learn get left behind.

A better approach, hence why it’s Rule #1, is to engage with people from whom you can sharpen your thinking by increasing your perspective. The old proverb relates to a more recent one – Steven Covey’s Habit 5 of successful people, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

That can often come from intentionally seeking out the views of those that think differently than you. This is rule #3, which was inspired by an interview with billionaire entrepreneur Sean Parker, the co-creator of the pioneering music-sharing service Napster and ex-president of Facebook (and if these accomplishments aren’t enough, he was played by Justin Timberlake in the movie The Social Network). When asked, “Who do you bounce ideas off of?” Parker responded, “People I’ve argued with. I think most of the things I’ve done so far were largely considered really unpopular or really fringe when I started doing them.” In other words, one of the most renowned innovators of our time isn’t successful by building “high gates” to protect his point of view. Rather, he influences others by lowering his gate to allow in others that can influence him.

Having others agree with my views on flags, people’s rights, names of sports teams, a new product strategy, or who to hire for a key position is not something I get to choose. But I cannot allow that lack of choice I have in what someone believes to become a distraction to me. What I can choose is to learn and grow in my own understanding by productively seeking intelligent points of view that enhance my perspective.

As Carl Rogers said, “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” And according to Einstein, to do that, “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Wisdom from the C-Suite

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Ray

It is ironic how often people hear from others (like me) about what great leaders do and how infrequently people hear from great leaders themselves about what they are actually doing! Recently, I did have that opportunity as part of a yearlong leadership development program I am co-facilitating.

Each year’s cohort begins with a dinner followed by a Q&A session with several members of the organization’s C-suite, including the CEO. The firm’s success as measured by its exceptional growth; profitability; high employee engagement and low turnover; and impact on the communities it serves across the country, are all a testament to the wisdom and insight of these leaders.

Here some nuggets I captured from that session:

Leaders need to be inquisitive and willing to keep learning. Furthermore, they need to be aggressive about finding new opportunities for learning.
It is of utmost importance to keep transmitting the culture as the company grows in size and complexity.
The reason “soft skills”, i.e. relationships matter in business is the value of spontaneous human interaction.
People when they are encouraged will do great things.
You can’t work with the people you want; you have to work with the people you have.
I’m not leading if I’m telling.
Vision emerges from the relationships that exist.
You can’t overvalue situational awareness.

Which one(s) of these speak to you? Which do you need to embrace?

Ray Linder

Helping People Who Work Together, Work Together Better

Category Archives: Leadership