Writing

The One Characteristic of Great Leaders

Posted on by simongterry in Leadership

One characteristic makes great leaders stand out. The characteristic is not their performance. All leaders, good and bad can drive performance.

So what defines a great leader?

Great leaders make you better than you are. Great leaders make you better than you think you can be. They connect people with purpose, provide context and grow capabilities. They lift people up and help them realise potential.

The best leaders in my career helped me understand the context, challenged me to live my purpose and the organisation’s purpose, coached continuously and shared their experience, wisdom and lessons. They were also the most ruthless in providing feedback and setting stretching targets. They expected more and trusted you to deliver.

If you are a leader, don’t put up the drawbridge, drop down a ladder. Focus on how your people can stretch and grow. Build a strong pipeline of successors. Become an engine of talent for the business.

If you aren’t yet a leader, look out for the leaders who develop their people and grow their opportunities. Who you work for can be more important than the role in advancing your career. Ask yourself if you can begin to develop others in what you do now.

The easiest answer

Posted on by simongterry in Leadership
Some people think the easiest answer is always:
 
 
 
NO
 
 
 
It shifts the accountability.  It avoids work.  It reduces complications.  Most important at all it is seen by many as risk free.  Who can be held accountable when they said no?
 
No is simple.  No is safe.  No is permanent.  No is easy.
 
And that is exactly why the answer is:
 
 
 
YES
 
 
 
Nothing in life is simple, safe, permanent or easy.  We live in complex, changing and difficult times that call for Yes.  Yes means more work and it means change.  Yes is harder and it will be riskier.  Yes will require you to innovate and be at your best.
 
Take accountability to be part of this challenging future.  Yes is your pathway to change and owning something of which you can be proud.
 
So next time you feel like saying ‘No’, ask yourself 
 
‘how do I make it a yes?’
 
 
PS:  Perhaps a voice is telling you “but it can’t always be yes”.  Challenge that voice for a little:  What if things were done differently?  What risks or issues would you need to mitigate to make yes possible?  Push that voice hard before you succumb to it.

Trust is a design choice

Posted on by simongterry in future of work, Leadership

A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts – Harold Macmillan

At the beginning of any organisation, whether you realise it or not, you are faced with a design choice:

Do I trust my people?

The answer to that question and the culture that grows around that answer determines how so many processes, conversations and other interactions will occur across the organisation.

If you don’t trust your people

Should you be going ahead with your organisation?  Seriously.  Think about it.  They are going to have to act on their own at some point.  Nobody can or should remove every independent decision from another person.  

Can you build their capability to earn your trust?  It is worth investing some money in recruitment and development to avoid the costs ahead in an organisational design without trust.

If you still want to go ahead, prepare yourself for lots of controls, hierarchy, and monitoring processes and people.  A lot of value will be invested in controlling people, managing the lack of trust out of your business so that you can function. You will also be more likely to have silos of power and information separating haves and have nots.  These processes will all impede the agility, engagement, flexibility & potential of your people.  Remember you don’t trust them so that’s what you chose.

Of course, trust may only extend so far. If they are not trusted in one process, do you trust them in others?  Can you explain why the processes differ.  You will need to or the lack of trust will be corrosive to an overall culture of trust.  We all have heard examples of the refrain “I can discuss a $1m deal with a client, but I can’t post a comment on the intranet without approval.”  If there is a reason then you need to be able to explain it. 

Often you hear the excuse “but the consequences of failure are catastrophic, we cannot afford to trust”.  If the consequences of failure are extreme, you need trust more but you might want to think about how you genuinely engage your people in mitigating the risks.  Taking the risks out of their control may be no improvement at all if the result is apathy or lack of responsibility for the risks.

If you trust your people

If you trust your people, focus on the culture of personal accountability in your organisation.  Work to build your people’s capability to that they are better able to exercise that trust.  Give people real meaty challenges to enable them to show your potential.  Ask yourself if you can have a flatter organisation, fewer approvals and put more upon your people.  They might just revel in the challenge and surprise you.

A word about ‘Trust but Verify’

‘Trust but verify’ is a commonly discussed way to enable organisations to loosen the shackles and create a higher trust environment.  In many cases, some verification will be mandated by regulatory or other requirements.  People need follow-up and follow-through to see the reinforcement of their responsibility and to understand that there are consequences of breaches of trust.

However make sure you have the order right.  If your process turns out to be ‘Verify, then Trust’, you have no trust at all.  If someone can’t act on their own and wear the consequences, then you don’t have ‘Trust but Verify’.

Great advances are social

Posted on by simongterry in Change, Collaboration, Innovation

I was fascinated by this article on new research into the rise of the Mayan civilisation.  You might wonder why I post this article here and why you are reading about the birth of the Mayan civilisation.  The punchline is at the end:

“great civilizations don’t grow out of previous dominant groups like the Olmec, nor do they arise in isolation. They are the result of hybridization”

Hybridization requires the very human and social processes of conversation and exchange of knowledge to enable cultures to exchange information, ideas and technology.  

Our organisations need to be social and connected well with customers, community and the environment.  In our hyperconnected world, the pace of these interactions is increasing around us.  

If we are not engaged, we will be isolated while others advance.  That can only increase the danger of digital disruption.

The Velocity of Knowledge in Flight

Posted on by simongterry in future of work

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.― Mark Twain

Knowledge in flight – faster flight

As you focus on knowledge in flight, you see the power of accelerating the sharing of knowledge.  You also start to be able to see where knowledge has value and is moving.  Focusing on these movements pushes us to think about how we can accelerate the systems of the flow of knowledge into and through our organisation.  Savings of time, waste and rework arise when knowledge can move quickly to where it is most needed.
 
Nobody wants to accelerate the velocity of knowledge as speed for speed’s sake.  If anything one of the challenges of the digital age is we have to much quick data and information.  Instead, we need to accelerate the effective use of knowledge to create additional value across the organisation.  To do so, we will need to accelerate the sourcing, sharing and the practical application of knowledge.
 
How to accelerate sourcing, sharing and use of knowledge?
 
  • Map expertise and tacit knowledge: Tangible knowledge is increasingly searchable.  However too many talents are hidden inside people’s heads.  Do you know all the Postgraduate degrees that your team has?  What about their blogs, conferences, memberships and followers? Networks, skills and experience may not align with roles or responsibilities
  • Reward frequent flyers: Encourage people to share all of their expertise and to explain aloud the tacit knowledge to benefit others.  Track successful contributions back to source & give credit.  Celebrate people’s talents and reward their many contributions beyond their roles.  Build this practice into your organisational culture & systems.
  • Increase flight connections:  The better connected the networks of knowledge in your organisation and your organisation to others the more ways there are for knowledge to flow.  Work to network your centres of excellence, gurus, communities of practice internally and externally. If you use an enterprise social network or external social networks focus on building following and using @mentioning to add new connections and trace paths to knowledge.  Importantly this also incease the opportunities for serendipitous meetings to add value.
  • Build flight paths & schedules:  You travel faster on paths that are mapped in advance and where your path is managed for you.   If there are common requests or known experts, make those paths easier to navigate.  An operating rhythm of sharing allows everyone to plan and participate in a consistently level of the activity.  It may also mean getting slow moving traffic or lower value out of the high traffic routes.  Regular moderated Q&A sessions or knowledge cafes can be a great way to deliver this rhythm in an easy way.
  • Manage delays:  Some times a stop-over allows the overall journey to go faster.  Include time for thought, reflection, planning, documenting, feedback, learning, sharing, collaborating and addressing issues in execution.
  • Reroute flights: Avoid single points of failure for the flow of knowledge in your organisation.  Who else knows and could help if something goes wrong?  What other ways can people access this knowledge?  How do you share jams (leave, large projects, heavy workloads, etc) publicly to let people route around the issue themselves?
  • Cancel flights quickly:   Mark Twain’s quote above is amusing but it underlies a truth.  Organisations which have a culture that allows people to admit lack of knowledge, errors and doubt can move faster and far more effectively.

Data and information is flying around faster than ever.  Even so, we would all like to accelerate the flight of knowledge that can add value to our organisations.

What are you doing to accelerate your organisation’s knowledge in flight?