307 Leadership Best Practice 7 : Mobilize And Act

"What we do matters.... Action is, in the end, the only thing that counts."

Effective performance has three essential components:

  • Focusing on where we can add the most value, and prioritizing tasks, will eliminate stressful overload while directing our concentration
  • Speed and the timely use of "in-course correction" will reduce frustration and wasted effort while overcoming reluctance to act
  • Perseverance and dogged pursuit of mission and dream along with understanding the vital importance of knowing when to stop

Time Allocation

For leaders "time allocation is where the rubber meets the road". It means taking control of our agenda. The 80:20 law especially applies to leadership - - 80% of our effort produces only 20% of the benefits, and 20% of our effort produces 80% of the benefits or results we are pursuing. Our 80:20 dilemma is all about time and our ability to focus on the 20%. As leaders we need to take proactive control of how we spend our time. This means stepping back from the day-to-day razzle-dazzle to look at our long-term objectives. It means identifying the 20% that produces 80% of the benefits.

Our efforts to spend the bulk of our time on high-value-added tasks of leadership are most difficult for us to achieve. The time we most desperately need for long-term thinking gets squeezed out. Much of the problem comes from followers who put their needs and agenda onto our plate.

Of course, we have to get control of our own schedules as one event after another comes to dominate our day. We need to apply Jim Collins's "stop doing list" to the details and urgent trivia of the moment. We need to work smarter, not harder. As leaders we must attempt to search for the unattainable: that perfect set of tasks that only we can do. Our "to do list" needs to balance creating long-term value and accomplishing our vision.

Our 20% should be realigned to concentrate on five functions :

  • Self-management: paying attention to our self to achieve personal balance and alignment in order to focus on high leverage activities that center on the essence of our vision.
  • Mobilize our vision: our followers and our organization needs to know where we are now, where we are going and why; as leaders we need to set the course and put muscle into our purpose - - we need to show how to turn internal potential and possibility into external reality.
  • Managing key relationships: Upward and lateral stakeholders are "powerful agents within whose gift lie the resources, freedoms and support you need to achieve your goals" A crucial test of leadership lay in the diplomatic skills required to build powerful coalitions to get things done.
  • Organizational alignment: through coaching, teaching and leading we need to mobilize our organization to act in concert - - delivery of strategic goals comes as we help our followers become more capable. As we supercharge people's capabilities a "wavefront of empowerment can cascade down through the organization".
  • Key systems and resources: we need to align both technical and social systems to be able to provide resources that are sufficiently flexible to be able to respond quickly to changes in the environment.

As leaders we need to make specific time for the above five specific responsibilities of leadership:

  • Self-management
  • Mobilizing our vision
  • Forming coalitions
  • Aligning our followers
  • Readying our resources

We need to allocate chunks of time for each of these. We must go further in managing our time, however.

One Big Thing

Stephen Covey asks leaders "what one thing could you do with your personal and professional life that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life?" In some ways, this is the one big thing that Jim Collins' hedgehog knows.

Another way to think about this most critical leadership responsibility is to take "the Golden Hour test": if we had one extra hour in the day how would we spend it? Upon answering this question, we now make sure we do this for the first hour of every day.

Nonetheless, our schedules seem to remain most hectic as we attend to the urgency of others to the neglect of our own agenda. To become an effective leader we must make a paradigm shift from being reactive to proactive.

In being proactive we make a direct expression of our most deeply held values. It means we positively schedule our critical activities instead of somehow hoping we might be able to fit those activities into our day. We need to decide where we want to spend our time and in what proportion. Taking control of our own agenda means allocating chunks of time to work on what we value.

Delegate

To accommodate core activities, we need to block out other activities. As leaders, we need to make deliberate efforts to dispense with or delegate less important tasks. Further, the process of delegation often plays a critical role in developing followers into leaders.

Delegation is the process of replacing tasks we used to do our self with relationships - - through a relationship we surrender critical tasks to another human being. This process of delegation means giving up control of both goal (what we're trying to achieve) and means (the way of achieving those goals). Delegation also means the recipient is given the resources needed to accomplish the goal. Obviously, delegation can be made to either an individual or a group.

At the same time, delegation does not mean giving up responsibility. We are always still responsible for what we delegate. Before giving up complete control, often we must first negotiate the extent we give up control of both goal and means; later we facilitate the progressive exchange of control. Because responsibility remains with us, we can see the critical function of coaching and teaching in leadership. As both followers and leaders we are always stretching ourselves.

Time

As we gain control of our time, will find ourselves living prominently either "in time" or "through time". We live "in time" when we live in the moment and our attention is focused on what is unfolding right now. We tend to live in the now and enjoy the moment. We will be less likely to be anxious about future or prone to brood about the past. However, we will have the corresponding problem of forgetting upcoming commitments and deadlines. In this mode we need to either learn how to plan or find a partner who lives "through time" to either act as a coach or act as a counterbalance.

When we live "through time" we tend to distance ourself from the now seeing the present in relationship to the past and future. We see activities undertaken in the present in relationship to the future outcomes; we easily identify competing needs; we see cyclical and spiral relationships and their enduring impact. But we have trouble focusing on the moment and truly enjoying it. Instead, they are likely to be worrying about what comes next. We have difficulty giving people the attention they need. We will have to a tendency to over-plan and to become too rigid in scheduling. Again the best solution tends to be finding a partner who lives "in time" to act as a coach and to help us live for the moment.

Mobilize with Speed - - Ready, Fire, Aim!

"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Since the arrival of the Internet we have lived in an age of unexpected change amidst information overload. Human and organizational evolution is occurring at an accelerating rate. Business revolution is everywhere. Speed matters as it never has.

"Serial entrepreneur" David Guo explains "our strategy changes every five minutes. Our vision and goal have not changed, but the strategy changes every time there's new information". Speed is about cycling between effective preparation (ready), responsive action (fire), and regular review of progress against vision in the form of strategy, mission, and culture (aim).

Leaders build organizational readiness. This means being clear about the overall goal and at the same time having a deep understanding of the business of the organization. Only from such a deep understanding will the organization be ready to understand the significance of weak signals.

Organizational readiness means establishing processes to provide the evidence of the need to act. Readiness is a state of mind that ties anticipation to evidence. Ready leaders set up criteria for evidence (clarity) and procedures that determine the trigger points for action (early warning activation).

Good evidence procedures follow six guidelines.

  • State the goal of the procedure in specific and positive terms - - give examples of what good and bad outcomes would look like.
  • Establish the purpose and benefits of the evidence procedure - - everyone needs to understand why the evidence is necessary.
  • Connect evidence to certain cues and observable patterns in indisputable terms.
  • Evidence procedures need to be easy to operate and maintain.
  • Time frames and milestones need to be established so evidence is produced at the right time and in the right form.
  • Anticipate problems - - anticipate objections people might have and try to understand the positive intentions behind their objections.

Decisive evidence must be acted on right away. Evidence does not have to be clear and unequivocal but it has to be credible. The evidence found in weak and ambiguous signals is important because they are signs of earliness. The decisiveness is not found in its strength but rather in its implications - - in what it would mean if it were true. Evidence that should be acted on right away most often comes in the form of weak signals.

Measurement Systems

Related to evidence systems are measurement systems. In simpler and slower times when a measurement indicated trouble, leaders intuitively knew what to do (Hammer, 2002). Now the age of intuition is over: "Businesses are so complex and change so rapidly that a gut feel for what is important is extraordinarily difficult to develop and impossible to maintain" (p. 34). Good measurement systems make a connection between the items being measured and the company's objectives. Typically, traditional accounting methods are unable to do this.

For measurement to be an essential part of managing it must have two basic features:

First all data must include a rationale and a purpose; people must know why things are measured and, more important, what they are supposed to do about them.

Second, all measurement must be based on a careful analysis of the business, one that links the objectives of the business to the things over which managers and front-line personnel have control.

Only then can the recognition of a problematic measure lead to the right actions that will correct it and to improved performance of the business as a whole.

Sometimes, to build an effective measurement system an organizational model must first be built. The model must be qualitative in terms of understanding why the organization's product or service is sought out. It should answer all the brand questions of value, user experience and satisfaction, what happens at the "skin" of the organization (front-line interaction with users), and organizational image.

The model also needs to be quantitative in measuring the relative importance of each factor of the qualitative brand. The model shows how products and services affect user behavior. A complete model correlates all of the organization's specific activities with desired outcomes. The model allows the leaders to determine what is important to "stop doing", as superfluous or even counterproductive, and to concentrate on what is important to the user.

This organizational model reaches its usefulness, says Hammer, when a formal system for using information is created. Target levels need to be established for each of the important measures. Calculations must be performed regularly so the value of each measure can be monitored. The comparison between achievement and aspiration becomes the critical gauge. These models will need to be revised and retooled over time as conditions and environment change. The true value of the model lies in the learning process, not in the end result.

How We Use Measurement

In terms of leadership, nothing differentiates energizing leaders from non energizing ones more clearly than how they use measurement. It is amazing how measurement is perhaps the single most motivating aspect of sports and games but one of the most demotivating aspects of work. People love feedback and measurement as long as the process is objective, constructive, and especially, non-threatening. Too often performance appraisals and measurement systems are just the opposite. Measurement systems properly constructed motivate in the same way games and sports help people to do their best.

Great organizations develop unique standards of performance and most often the standards involve people. Such measures help people to define what success is - - it tells them when they are doing "good" or when they are excelling.

Every organization has a few key drivers of success. It is the job of leadership to make sure followers understand these success factors. Measurements for the key drivers need to be developed and adapted as the environment changes. Leaders focus their followers on these measures and in so doing help them achieve high performance.

Measurement practices work hand-in-hand with high commitment leadership. Measurement systems help to build distinctive competencies and capabilities that, because of their internal organizational coherence, readies the organization as a whole for technological and macroeconomic environmental change.

Beyond Comfortable

As leaders our vision will differ from others who are looking at the same map - - we are moving forward beyond what people are currently familiar and comfortable with. Henry Kissinger once said "the task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been".

Our clarity of purpose spreads to our followers as we ask them what their activities achieve for those whom they serve. Different people become personally accountable for different parts of the organizational vision. As they consider strategic goals, positively measuring their achievement of objectives helps them to become more nimble and become better performers.

Measurement extends beyond the quantification of strategic goals - - culture and people development as part of the visionary plan needs to be measured too. Readiness is all about having the right people and resources doing the right things to fulfill the vision.

Fire!

There is never the perfect moment to act, so it is best to be in the habit of acting. Leaders need to keep their followers in motion. It is a universal principal that new pathways open up when we stay in action.

Opportunities open up when communication with other people is frequent. Having vision helps us be aware of opportunities and to not filter them out. In this fast-paced world we need to learn to fire first (act) and ask questions (curiously) later.

When leaders have their organizations in action, speed and time is less of an enemy. It is easier to reshape, reinvent and reinvigorate our organizations when they are in motion then when we are fighting the specific gravity of inertia. Growth is found in action. When we have made our followers ready they are alert, aligned and hungry.

Nothing could be more demoralizing than inaction.

Correct course - - Aim!

The ubiquitous nature of the Internet and advancing technology has removed much of the time lags, transaction costs, information imperfections, differentials (commoditizing) and other market frictions in business and society.

"The absence of friction speeds everything up and makes windows of opportunity far narrower".

Yet with the advancement of technology comes the wherewithal to make in-course corrections. It is far more important in these days to point in the right general direction and act than it is to aim precisely at what has become a very fast-moving volatile target.

Today's world is one of constantly adapting to fast-changing circumstances with flexible and "emergent" plans. Adaptive planning is "skin-driven" if it is to be effective. Course corrections are found by keeping organizations in touch with their skin. The interaction between frontline people and the world external to the organization is the guiding mechanism for ongoing targeting.

To lead effectively today we need to act before we know exactly where we are going or how we will get there. "The concept of in-course correction is at its most powerful when we are taking the results of our actions... and using them as the basis for creating a better future".

Today, leaders need to charge their followers with "Ready, Fire, Aim!" Thank you Tom Peters for giving us that concept.

Dogged Pursuit

"If it first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it"

- W.C. Fields

For top-performing companies continuity, and direction and leadership may be the most critical factors to success over a sustained period - - at the same time it is but a small step from obsessive commitment to a hopeless quest. In the business world good ideas become fads when they are not pursued with enough determination and patience. Conviction and energy are lacking so other fads soon replace them.

As leaders - - if we are to be successful - - we must embody in our own behavior our vision, values, and ideas. Implementing our vision requires no less than a high degree of personal sacrifice, pain, and dogged persistence.

When we set goals with insufficient effort behind them to achieve them, we rob the idea of any chance to prove its worth.

Secondly, without sufficient effort we simply destroy our followers' faith in us and set up negative expectations. Because of our mercurial attention and lack of commitment our followers know they will never be called to account for failing to follow - - it is all a matter of perceived commitment and conviction.

Leadership goes far beyond asking followers to abandon old habits and values to adopt new ones. Leadership is about transforming our organization through our example of visionary patience and dogged perseverance. Our vision must be clear and compelling enough to transcend frustrations, failures and setbacks that we will inevitably encounter along the way.

As leaders we can do no less than commit ourselves with unlimited resources towards our goal as we articulate our compelling vision, and stick with it through thick and thin:

The leader capable of dogged pursuit has very distinctive characteristics. In addition to patience and tenacity, leaders must cultivate other personal qualities that may not be part of their natures: skins thick enough to cope with personal attacks without getting disheartened, but sensitive enough to detect weak signals; the mental agility to find alternative routes through an apparently impenetrable obstacle; and the resilience needed to retain their self-esteem after personal failures.

In terms of commitment and perseverance, it is worth considering what the late Chancellor of Ambassador College, Herbert W. Armstrong, framed as the Seven Laws of Success:

  • Law one - - Fix the right goal: Understand our personal purpose in life.
  • Law two - - Education: This is not necessarily formal education, but rather is preparation, acquiring the know-how. Often such education comes from mentoring or multi-mentoring.
  • Law three - - Good health: There are seven laws to health as well:
  • right nutrition
  • sufficient sleep
  • plenty of fresh air and sunshine
  • exercise, cleanliness and proper elimination
  • avoid bodily harm
  • moderation or balance, and most importantly
  • peace of mind along with forward-going positive thinking
  • Law four - - Drive: Use self-starting whole hearted effort. Act with constant relentless energetic propulsion. Acquire an enthusiastic can-do attitude.
  • Law five - - Resourcefulness: When complications, obstacles, unexpected circumstances, setbacks and unexpected hazards block our path use astuteness, skill, discernment, ingenuity and your gifts to solve the problem and continue on your course.
  • Law six - - Perseverance: Each law is more important than the previous. Law Six is crucial. It becomes the greatest point of separation between success and failure. Too many have fallen just short when everything worked for was just beyond their grasp – they gave up and lost everything. Just a little more faith and a little more stick-to-it-iveness have often turned apparent certain failure into glorious success. Perseverance is a determined never-quit belief that carries us to our goal.
  • Law seven - - Connect to Creator and Creation: Man is a spiritual being – only the most materialistic can deny this. Without connectivity and purpose our lives are empty and unsatisfying. Gaining our goal, making big money, attaining recognized status, enjoying the finest of pleasures – none of these -- give us lasting, permanent, enduring happiness. The seventh law is the law that changes everything. It is the most vital in importance.

With harmony and connectivity come purpose, peace, empowerment, joy, encouragement, meaning and happiness.

Knowing When to Stop (to innovate)

Jim Collins has recently been making the point that once we know what our essence is - - what the one big thing is that makes us uniquely successful - - we are able to discard all else not in its service. We can prune for better growth.

We can separate critical from habitual clutter and free ourselves. Much of what we cling to is irrelevant or counterproductive but personal to us. Amputating what holds us back is as difficult as lopping the nose off our favorite idol. To personally change or to change organizationally, we really do need a "stop doing list".

The act of stopping seems to violate the rule to never give up. We need to bring to our conscious mind, both personally and organizationally, the validity of our values, beliefs, traditions and habits.

We need to test our assumptions. We need to understand clearly that what brought success yesterday may be today's recipe for disaster. We need to test whether we are being wise or foolish.

We needed to know what is and is not worth fighting for. We need to know what's worth fighting for so we can discard the rest. And, when we achieve that freedom - - that freedom of knowing what is truly essential - - we can bring untold creativity and innovation to our followers and our organization.

Leave the Past Behind

Tom Peters says "Forgetting", not learning is the key to strategic creativeness. He quotes Dee Hock, creator of the Visa card: "The problem is never how to get new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out."

Repeatedly strategists react to threats of change by "polishing yesterday's apple". They not only resist radical innovative threats but they actually resist all efforts to understand their nature "preferring to further entrench positions in older products". Such reaction is a sign of the impending death of their business as they know it. "Yikes! You can't improve your way to success" Sometimes success begins with destroying the old and the irrelevant.

Innovation is organized forgetting; innovation is strategic forgetfulness. IBM had to forget its mainframe mentality in order to continue to exist.

Peters suggests:

  • Putting the word "forget" at the top of the next meeting's agenda.
  • Make a list of the organization's core beliefs and formulate an idea team to systematically attack every one of them.
  • From the work formulate a "Strategic Forgetting Plan" that is at least as detailed as the strategic plan currently in place.

Steve Ross, the late CEO of Time Warner said in his company, "you'll be fired for not making mistakes". Forget failure!

Peters tells us "Mistakes are not the spice of life. Mistakes are life …. Failure is the only precursor to success".

"Forget balance – balance sucks!"

Work in order to have a constant tension in the team. Have everyone charging off in their own direction to do their best. Then when they meet let them fight and shout it out (nothing personal). Eventually the strategy will have the right fit.

Forget consensus, and forget right and wrong. When it comes to innovation as the strategy, there is no right and no wrong. Let the silly and the blasphemous rule. Cannibalize. Prototype fast! Learn that we can't live life without an "Eraser". Only then can "forgetting" be adopted as a strategy, says Peters.

Creative Destruction

"So what works? The relentless pursuit of inefficiency!" In considering the biggest challenge facing a business, Tom Peters concluded that after his many years of watching organizations thrive then shrivel, he has formulated but one crucial and foundational belief: "To loosen the reins to allow a thousand flowers to bloom and a hundred schools contend, is the best way to sustain vigor in perilous, gyrating times." Further Peters goes on to preach that "Destruction is cool". He quotes Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control:

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially. Organisms by design are not made to adapt beyond a certain point. Beyond that point, it's much easier to kill them off and start a new one than it is to change them.

Tipping Point Leadership

Tipping point leadership theory helps us comprehend organizational dynamics and politics. It shows the flow of power and how it can be channeled. We can see where the levers of influence are.

This theory helps us understand how to build a growing coalition for a worthwhile cause. We can see how to find and leverage resources. The tipping point theory can be utilized to transform reactive managers into proactive leaders. And, people like to be lead - - not managed - - in the business setting and in every other kind of organization.

The theory of tipping points hinges on the insight that when the beliefs and energies of a mass of people create an epidemic movement towards an idea, fundamental change can happen.

The theory rests on concentrating effort and building on disproportionate influence.

To achieve tipping point leadership this disproportionate positive influence must be focused on overcoming four elements:

  • The Cognitive Hurdle: put kingpins (human centers of influence) face-to-face with problems and customers; find new ways to communicate - - make unforgettable and unarguable calls for change.
  • The Resource Hurdle: focus on hotspots (lowest resource expenditures for highest performance gains) and bargain with partner organizations - - concentrate the organization's resources on what really matters. Identify “the mostest for the leastest”.
  • The Motivation Hurdle: frame the challenge to match the organization's various levels - - mobilize the commitment of the venture's key players.
  • The Political Hurdle: identify and silence internal opponents while isolating external opponents - - silence the most vocal naysayers.

The Tipping Point refers to the instant that the forces of inertia are overcome.

The Need For Change

Getting people to agree on the causes of current problems and the need for change is often the hardest battle in a turnaround. The way to accomplish this is to put key personnel face-to-face with the operational problems so that they cannot evade reality.

“Performance is low and needs to be fixed” is the battle cry.

Once the debate on the changes needed and what needs to be done is reconciled, the second battle is facing the stark reality of limited resources. Avoidance behavior and more hiding behind new debates is a trap.

Instead, leaders need to concentrate their resources on the places that are most in need of change and that have the biggest possible payoffs. The facts and figures that describe the resources need to be applied in a cold hearted manner to what precisely is wrong with the operating practices.

Innovation must reign supreme here as assumptions and past methods of doing things are examined. Changes in key policies can free up badly needed resources.

After the resources are located that can be employed in achieving needed changes, members of the organization need to be motivated to want to make the changes. This can be done by singling out key influencers. Thus, for change momentum to have real impact, individuals at every level of the organization have to “move en masse”.

Kingpins

Kingpins are targeted for their natural leadership ability, the respect they have learned, their persuasive abilities, and their ability to unlock or block access to key resources. When they are influenced, the rest of the organization follows with them. Kingpins are motivated by being placed in “fishbowls” where their performance is made highly visible to all stakeholders.

They are also motivated by “fair processes” where their modus operandi and decisions are made very transparent. The transparency levels the playing field for the entire organization and promotes trust. This can lead to a dramatic cultural change. By making results and responsibilities clear to everybody, a new culture of performance begins to emerge. Blame and cover-up is not tolerated and disappears. High achievers are recognized.

Kingpins are encouraged and begin to compare notes. Lessons are discovered and stories told incorporating learning into the culture. Achievements and failures can be discussed without bravado or shame when the key leaders make it clear that such discussion needs to be detailed for the learning process to occur.

Overcoming challenges becomes a heralded value. Framing the challenges so that the members believe results are attainable becomes the key to motivation. Breaking goals down into small tasks becomes a way of identifying and achieving success throughout the organization.

Political Hurdles

All ventures and organizations have political individuals who in subtle ways will oppose change often through plotting and intrigue. This often occurs after the tipping point has been reached in spite of attempts to quiet nay-saying opponents early in the change management process.

Political hurdles are knocked down by identifying “devils” (resistors of change) and "angels" (supporters). The key here is to never fight devils alone - - instead gang up on them. In making the assault, it is important to know all the attacking angles and to build up counter arguments backed by irrefutable facts and reason.

Political opponents often come from unexpected sources, often directly or indirectly from outside the organization. Powerful forces can act and react to maintain the status quo. Opposition often has to be silenced by example and indisputable fact. Isolating negative influence(s) and surrounding them can be particularly efficient. Group influence by the onboard kingpins is often effective.

Figurative or literal advertising campaigns to promote the new solutions may be required. In extreme cases, sanction may have to be used. Ultimately, the full force and power of the converted collective must reign.

In effect, first the kingpins need to be sold, then their constituencies, and then outsiders. At some point, the organization tips, fueling a further mass movement towards the intended change. The tipping leads to rapid strategy reorientation and rapid strategy execution. Resistors capitulate to overwhelming momentum. Residual opposition must be convinced that, at as the Borg say, “resistance is futile”.

Tipping point leadership begets a culture of achievement, innovation and learning that can turnaround troubled ventures and organizations.

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