Category Archives: Leadership

Sometimes Ancient Wisdom Needs to be Left Behind

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

I recently visited Panama and learned the incredible story of how the indigenous Emberá people there helped to teach jungle survival skills to Apollo mission astronauts. It is a fascinating combining and contrast of ancient wisdom and modern technology, equipping the first men to go to the moon with insights from both realms.

Humans tend to have a natural reverence for old wisdom that is probably woven into our DNA. It stands to reason that people more willing to stick with the tried and true might have a survival advantage over those who were more reckless. Ideas that stand the test of time are, by definition, the ones that worked well enough to be passed on.

Paradoxically, to move forward we need to abandon old ideas. It was only by discarding ancient wisdoms that we were able to create the modern world. In much the same way, to move forward now we’ll need to debunk ideas that qualify as expertise today. As in most things, our past can help serve as a guide. Here are three old ideas we managed to transcend.

1. Euclid’s Geometry

The basic geometry we learn in grade school, also known as Euclidean geometry, is rooted in axioms observed from the physical world, such as the principle that two parallel lines never intersect. For thousands of years mathematicians built proofs based on those axioms to create new knowledge, such as how to calculate the height of an object. Without these insights, our ability to shape the physical world would be negligible.

In the 19th century, however, men like Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Riemann started to build new forms of non-Euclidean geometry based on curved spaces. These were, of course, completely theoretical and of no use in daily life. The universe, as we experience it, doesn’t curve in any appreciable way, which is why police ask us to walk a straight line if they think we’ve been drinking.

But when Einstein started to think about how gravity functioned, he began to suspect that the universe did, in fact, curve over large distances. To make his theory of general relativity work he had to discard the old geometrical thinking and embrace new mathematical concepts. Without those critical tools, he would have been hopelessly stuck.

Much like the astronauts in the Apollo program, we now live in a strange mix of old and new. To travel to Panama, for example, I personally moved through linear space and the old Euclidean axioms worked perfectly well. However, to navigate, I had to use GPS, which must take into account curved spaces for Einstein’s equations to correctly calculate distances between the GPS satellites and points on earth.

2. Aristotle’s Logic

In terms of longevity and impact, only Aristotle’s logic rivals Euclid’s geometry. At the core of Aristotle’s system is the syllogism, which is made up of propositions that consist of two terms (a subject and a predicate). If the propositions in the syllogism are true, then the argument has to be true. This basic notion that conclusions follow premises imbues logical statements with a mathematical rigor.

Yet much like with geometry, scholars began to suspect that there might be something amiss. At first, they noticed minor flaws that had to do with a strange paradox in set theory which arose with sets that are members of themselves. For example, if the barber who shaves everyone in town who doesn’t shave themselves, then who shaves the barber?

At first, these seemed like strange anomalies, minor exceptions to rules that could be easily explained away. Still, the more scholars tried to close the gaps, the more problems appeared, leading to a foundational crisis. It would only be resolved when a young logician named Kurt Gödel published his theorems that proved logic, at least as we knew it, is hopelessly broken.

In a strange twist, another young mathematician, Alan Turing, built on Gödel’s work to create an imaginary machine that would make digital computers possible. In other words, in order for Silicon Valley engineers to code to create logical worlds online, they need to use machines built on the premise that perfectly logical systems are inherently unworkable.

Of course, as I write this, I am straddling both universes, trying to put build logical sentences on those very same machines.

3. The Miasma Theory of Disease

Before the germ theory of disease took hold in medicine, the miasma theory, the notion that bad air caused disease, was predominant. Again, from a practical perspective this made perfect sense. Harmful pathogens tend to thrive in environments with decaying organic matter that gives off bad smells. So avoiding those areas would promote better health.

Once again, this basic paradigm would begin to break down with a series of incidents. First, a young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis showed that doctors could prevent infections by washing their hands, which suggested that something besides air carried disease. Later John Snow was able to trace the source of a cholera epidemic to a single water pump.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these were initially explained away. Semmelweis failed to format his data properly and was less than an effective advocate for his work. John Snow’s work was statistical, based on correlation rather than causality. A prominent statistician William Farr, who supported the miasma theory, argued for an alternative explanation.

Still, as doubts grew, more scientists looked for answers. The work of Robert Koch, Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur led to the germ theory. Later, Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain would pioneer the development of antibiotics in the 1940s. That would open the floodgates and money poured into research, creating modern medicine.

Today, we have gone far beyond the germ theory of disease and even lay people understand that disease has myriad causes, including bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, as well as genetic diseases and those caused by strange misfolded proteins known as prions.

To Create The Future, We Need To Break Free Of The Past

If you were a person of sophistication and education in the 19th century, your world view was based on certain axiomatic truths, such as parallel lines never cross, logical propositions are either true or false and “bad airs” made people sick. For the most part, these ideas would have served you well for the challenges you faced in daily life.

Even more importantly, your understanding of these concepts would signal your inclusion and acceptance into a particular tribe, which would confer prestige and status. If you were an architect or engineer, you needed to understand Euclid’s geometric axions. Aristotle’s rules of logic were essential to every educated profession. Medical doctors were expected to master the nuances of the miasma theory.

To stray from established orthodoxies carries great risk, even now. It is no accident that those who were able to bring about new paradigms, such as Einstein, Turing and John Snow, came from outside the establishment. More recently, people like Benoit Mandelbrot, Jim Allison and Katalin Karikó had to overcome fierce resistance to bring new ways of thinking to finance, cancer immunotherapy and mRNA vaccines respectively.

Today, it’s becoming increasingly clear we need to break with the past. In just over a decade, we’ve been through a crippling financial crisis, a global pandemic, deadly terrorist attacks, and the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. We need to confront climate change and a growing mental health crisis. Yet it is also clear that we can’t just raze the global order to the ground and start all over again.

So what do we leave in the past and what do we bring with us into the future? Which new lessons do we need to learn and which old ones do we need to unlearn? Perhaps most importantly, what do we need to create anew and what can we rediscover in the ancient?

Throughout history, we have learned that the answer lies not in merely speculating about ideas, but in finding real solutions to problems we face.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides from http://misterinnovation.com

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Metaphysics Philosophy

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Metaphysics Philosophy

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Philosophy is arguably the most universal of all subjects. And yet, it is one of the least pursued in the liberal arts curriculum. The reason for this, I will claim, is that the entire field was kidnapped by some misguided academics around a century ago, and since then no one has paid the ransom to free it. That’s not OK, and with that in mind, here is a series of four blogs that taken together constitute an Emancipation Proclamation.

There are four branches of philosophy, and in order of importance they are

metaphysics,
ethics,
epistemology, and
logic.

This post will address the first of these four, with subsequent posts addressing the remaining three.

Metaphysics is best understood in terms of Merriam-Webster’s definition: “the philosophical study of the ultimate causes and underlying nature of things.” In everyday language, it answers the most fundamental kinds of philosophical questions:

What’s happening?
What is going on?
Where and how do we fit in?
In other words, what kind of a hand have we been dealt?

Metaphysics, however, is not normally conceived in everyday terms. Here is what the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has to say about it in its lead definition:

That branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing.

The problem is that concepts like substance and essence are not only intimidatingly abstract, they have no meaning in modern cosmology. That is, they are artifacts of an earlier era when things like the atomic nature of matter and the electromagnetic nature of form were simply not understood. Today, they are just verbiage.

But wait, things get worse. Here is the OED in its third sense of the word:

[Used by some followers of positivist, linguistic, or logical philosophy] Concepts of an abstract or speculative nature which are not verifiable by logical or linguistic methods.

The Oxford Companion to the Mind sheds further light on this:

The pejorative sense of ‘obscure’ and ‘over-speculative’ is recent, especially following attempts by A.J. Ayer and others to show that metaphysics is strictly nonsense.

Now, it’s not hard to understand what Ayer and others were trying to get at, but do we really want to say that the philosophical study of the ultimate causes and underlying nature of things is strictly nonsense? Instead, let’s just say that there is a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense that calls itself metaphysics but that isn’t really metaphysics at all. We can park that stuff with magic crystals and angels on the head of a pin and get back to what real metaphysics needs to address—what exactly is the universe, what is life, what is consciousness, and how do they all work together?

The best platform for so doing, in my view, is the work done in recent decades on complexity and emergence, and that is what organizes the first two-thirds of The Infinite Staircase. Metaphysics, it turns out, needs to be understood in terms of strata, and then within those strata, levels or stair steps. The three strata that make the most sense of things are as follows:

Material reality as described by the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology, or what I called the metaphysics of entropy. This explains all emergence up to the entrance of consciousness.
Psychological and social reality, as explained by the social sciences, or what I called the metaphysics of Darwinism, which builds the transition from a world of mindless matter up to one of matter-less mind, covering the intermediating emergence of desire, consciousness, values, and culture.
Symbolic reality, as explained by the humanities, or what I called the metaphysics of memes, which begins with the introduction of language that in turn enables the emergence of humanity’s two most powerful problem-solving tools, narrative and analytics, culminating in the emergence of theory, ideally a theory of everything, which is, after all, what metaphysics promised to be in the first place.

The key point here is that every step in this metaphysical journey is grounded in verifiable scholarship ranging over multiple centuries and involving every department in a liberal arts faculty—except, ironically, the philosophy department which is holed up somewhere on campus, held hostage by forces to be discussed in later blogs.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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The Tricky Business of Tariffs

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The Tricky Business of Tariffs

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Tariffs are creating havoc and panic for both customers and businesses. Depending on what you read, the cost-of-living increase for the average consumer can be thousands of dollars a year. And it’s the same for business, but often at a much higher cost. Anything a business purchases to run its day-to-day operations is potentially exposed to higher prices due to tariffs. Whatever businesses buy—supplies, inventory, equipment and more—when it costs them more, that cost is passed on to their customers.

This isn’t the first time there has been “tariff panic.” As recently as 2018, there were tariffs. I wrote a Forbes article about an e-bike company that was forced to raise its prices due to a 25% import tariff. The company was open about the reasons for the price increase and embraced the problem rather than becoming a victim of it. Here are some ways to manage the impact of tariffs:

Be Transparent: Everyone may know about the tariffs, but explaining how they are impacting costs will help justify the price increase. In other words, don’t hide the fact that tariffs are impacting your costs.
Partner with Vendors: Ask vendors to work with you on a solution to lower costs that won’t hit their bottom lines. If you buy from a vendor every month, maybe it’s less expensive to buy the same amount but ship quarterly instead of monthly. Work with them to find creative ways to reduce costs. This can benefit everyone.
Improve Efficiency to Offset Costs: If you’ve thought about a way to improve a process or efficiency but haven’t acted on it, now may be the perfect time to do so. Sometimes being forced to do something can work in your favor. And be sure to share what you’re changing to help reduce costs. Customers may appreciate you even more.
Add Value Instead of Just Raising Prices: When price increases are unavoidable, find a way to justify the higher cost. It could include anything—enhanced customer service, a loyalty rewards program, a special promotion and more. Customers may accept paying more if they feel they are getting more value in return.

What NOT to do:

Don’t Take Advantage of Customer Panic: As I write this article, people are going to car dealerships to buy cars before the prices increase and finding that the dealers are selling above the retail sticker price because of the demand. Do you think a customer will forget they were “gouged” by a company taking advantage of them during tough times? (That’s a rhetorical question, but just in case you don’t know the answer … They won’t!)
Don’t Say, “It’s Not my Fault”: Even when price increases are beyond your control, don’t be defensive. This can give the impression of a lack of confidence and lack of control that can erode the trust you have with your customers.
Don’t Say, “It’s the Same Everywhere You Go”: If the customer understands tariffs, they already know this. Stating you have no choice isn’t going to make the customer feel good. Go back to the list of what you can do and find a way to avoid this and the “it’s not my fault” response.

Customers want to hear what you’re doing to help them. They also like to be educated. Knowledge can give the customer a sense of control. Demonstrating genuine concern for the situation and sharing what you’re doing to minimize the impact of tariff-related price increases builds trust that will pay dividends long after the current economic challenges have passed.

Image Credits: Unsplash, Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Strategy Lacking Purpose Will Always Fail

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Strategy Lacking Purpose Will Always Fail

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama published an essay in the journal The National Interest titled The End of History, which led to a bestselling book. Many took his argument to mean that, with the defeat of communism, US-style liberal democracy had emerged as the only viable way of organizing a society.

He was misunderstood. His actual argument was far more nuanced and insightful. After explaining the arguments of philosophers like Hegel and Kojeve, Fukuyama pointed out that even if we had reached an endpoint in the debate about ideologies, there would still be conflict because of people’s need to express their identity.

We usually think of strategy as a rational, analytic activity, with teams of MBA’s poring over spreadsheets or generals standing before maps. Yet if we fail to take into account human agency and dignity, we’re missing the boat. Strategy without purpose is doomed to fail, however clever the calculations. Leaders need to take note of that basic reality.

Taking Stock Of The Halo Effect

Business case studies are written by experienced professionals who are trained to analyze past situations from multiple perspectives. However, their ability to do that successfully is greatly limited by the fact that they already know the outcome of the situation they are studying. That can’t help but to color their analysis.

In The Halo Effect, Phil Rosenzweig explains how those perceptions can color conclusions. He points to the networking company Cisco during the dotcom boom. When it was flying high, it was said to have an unparalleled culture with people that worked long hours but loved every minute of it. When the market tanked, however, all of the sudden its culture came to be seen as “cocksure” and “naive.”

It is hard to see how a company’s culture could change so drastically in such a short amount of time, with no significant change in leadership. More likely, seeing Cisco’s success, analysts looked at particular qualities in a positive light. However, when things began to go the other way, those same qualities were perceived as negative.

When an organization is doing well, we may find its people to be “idealistic” and “values driven,” but when things go sour, those same traits come to be seen as “impractical” and “arrogant.” Given the same set of facts, we can—and often do—come to very different conclusions when our perception of the outcomes changes.

In most cases, analysts don’t have a stake in the outcome. From their point of view, they probably see themselves as objectively analyzing facts and following them to their most logical outcomes. Yet when the purpose for writing an analysis changes from telling a success story to lamenting a cautionary tale, their perception of events tends to change markedly.

Reassessing The Value Chain

For decades, the dominant view of business strategy was based on Michael Porter’s ideas about competitive advantage. In essence, he argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, new market entrants and substitute goods.

Yet as AnnaLee Saxenian explained in Regional Advantage, around the same time that Porter’s ideas were ascending among CEOs in the establishment industries on the east coast, a very different way of doing business was gaining steam in Silicon Valley. The firms there saw themselves not as isolated fiefdoms, but as part of a larger ecosystem.

The two models are built on very different assumptions. The Porter model sees the world as made up of transactions. Optimize your strategy to create efficiencies, derive the maximum value out of every transaction and you will build a sustainable competitive advantage. The Silicon Valley model, however, saw the world as made up of connections and optimized their strategies to widen and deepen linkages.

Microsoft is one great example of this shift. When Linux first rose to prominence, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it a cancer. Yet more recently, its current CEO announced that the company loves Linux. That didn’t happen out of any sort of newfound benevolence, but because it recognized that it couldn’t continue to shut itself out and still be able to compete.

When you see the world as the “sum of all efficiencies,” the optimal strategy is to dominate. However, if you see the world as made up of the “sum of all connections,” the optimal strategy is to attract. You need to be careful to be seen as purposeful rather than predatory.

The Naïveté Of The “Realists”

Since at least the times of Richelieu, foreign policy theorists have been enthralled by the concept of Realpolitik, the notion that world affairs are governed by interests, not ideological, moral or ethical considerations. Much like with Porter’s “competitive advantage,” strategy is treated as a series of transactions rather than relationships.

Rational calculation of interests is one of those ideas that seems pragmatic on the surface, but is actually hopelessly academic and unworkable in the real world. How do you identify the “interests” you are supposed to be basing your decisions on if not by considering what you value? And how do you assess your values without taking into account your beliefs, morals and ethics?

To understand how such “realism” goes awry, consider the prominent political scientist John Mearsheimer. In March, he gave an interview to The New Yorker in which he argued that, by failing to recognize Russia’s role and interests as a great power, the US had erred greatly in its support of Ukraine.

Yet it is clear now that the Russians were the ones who erred. First, they failed to recognize that the world would see their purpose as immoral. Second, they failed to recognize how their aggression would empower Ukraine’s sense of nationhood. Third, they did not see how Europe would come to regard economic ties with Russia to be against their interests.

Nothing you can derive from military or economic statistics will give you insight into human agency. Excel sheets may not be motivated by purpose, but people are.

Strategy Is Not A Game Of Chess

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist who researches decision making, became intrigued when one of his patients, a highly intelligent and professionally successful man named “Elliot,” suffered from a brain lesion that impaired his ability to experience emotion. It soon became clear that Elliot was unable to make decisions..

Elliot’s prefrontal cortex, which governs the executive function, was fully intact. His memory and ability to understand events were normal as well. He was, essentially, a completely rational being with normal cognitive function, but no emotions. The problem was that although Elliot could understand all the factors that would go into making a decision, he could not weigh them. Without emotions, all options were all essentially the same.

In the real world, strategy is not a game of chess, in which we move inert pieces around a board. While we can make rational assessments about various courses of action, ultimately people have to care about the outcome. For a strategy to be meaningful, it needs to speak to people’s values, hopes, dreams and ambitions.

A leader’s role cannot be merely to plan and direct action, but must be to inspire and empower belief in a common endeavor. That’s what widens and deepens the meaningful connections that can enable genuine transformation.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Seeing the Invisible

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Seeing the Invisible

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

It’s relatively straightforward to tell the difference between activities that are done well and those that are done poorly. Usually sub-par activities generate visual signals to warn us of their misbehavior. A bill isn’t paid, a legal document isn’t signed or the wrong parts are put in the box. Though the specifics vary with context, the problem child causes the work product to fall off the plate and make a mess on the floor.

We have tools to diagnose the fundamental behind the symptom. We can get to root cause. We know why the plate was dropped. We know how to define the corrective action and implement the control mechanism so it doesn’t happen again. We patch up the process and we’re up and running in no time. This works well when there’s a well-defined in place, when process is asked to do what it did last time, when the inputs are the same as last time and when the outputs are measured like they were last time.

However, this linear thinking works terribly when the context changes. When the old processes are asked to do new work, the work hits the floor like last time, but the reason it hits the floor is fundamentally different. This time, it’s not that an activity was done poorly. Rather, this time there’s something missing altogether. And this time our linear-thinker toolbox won’t cut it. Sure, we’ll try with all our Six Sigma might, but we won’t get to root cause. Six Sigma, lean and best practices can fix what’s broken, but none of them can see what isn’t there.

When the context changes radically, the work changes radically. New-to-company activities are required to get the new work done. New-to-industry tools are needed to create new value. And, sometimes, new-to-world thinking is the only thing that will do. The trick isn’t to define the new activity, choose the right new tool or come up with the new thinking. The trick is to recognize there’s something missing, to recognize there’s something not there, to recognize there’s a need for something new. Whether it’s an activity, a tool or new thinking, we’ve got to learn to see what’s not there.

Now the difficult part – how to recognize there’s something missing. You may think the challenging part is to figure out what’s needed to fill the void, but it isn’t. You can’t fill a hole until you see it as a hole. And once everyone agrees there’s a hole, it’s pretty easy to buy the shovels, truck in some dirt and get after it. But if don’t expect holes, you won’t see them. Sure, you’ll break your ankle, but you won’t see the hole for what it is.

If the work is new, look for what’s missing. If the problem is new, watch out for holes. If the customer is new, there will be holes. If the solution is new, there will be more holes.

When the work is new, you will twist your ankle. And when you do, grab the shovels and start to put in place what isn’t there.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Is Your Innovation Strategy on Track?

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Is Your Innovation Strategy on Track?

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

A solid innovation strategy is key to setting your organization up for long-term success. But how do you know if you’re on the right path? Here are a few signs that your innovation strategy is sound – and some KPI/metrics tips to guide you along the way.

1. Alignment with Corporate Strategy

A strong innovation strategy doesn’t stand alone—it’s integrated with the overall corporate strategy. While innovation teams often lean more visionary, the core business balances daily execution with future growth. Finding the “sweet spot” between these perspectives helps shape an innovation strategy that is bold yet achievable.

KPI/metrics: Strategic alignment score. Are innovation initiatives aligned with overall business goals and timelines? Does the strategy push far enough to create the future, but close enough to today’s realities?

2. Clarity on Innovation Type

It’s critical to know what type of innovation your organization is pursuing. Incremental innovation? Breakthrough or radical? Or perhaps you’re aiming for “in-between” innovation – meaningful advancement without the high stakes of disruptive change.

KPI/metrics: Track innovation project distribution across types (incremental, in-between, breakthrough). Are you focusing on the sweet spot for your capabilities?

3. Understanding of Ecosystem Dynamics

In-between innovation, where companies push beyond small improvements but not into complete market disruption, often benefits from ecosystem collaboration. This means tapping into external assets and building alliances that complement internal capabilities.

KPI/metrics: Number and quality of ecosystem partnerships. How many productive partnerships are helping you access needed assets or knowledge?

Six Innovation Models by BCG

4. Balance Between Vision and Reality

The innovation team may lean toward bold, future-shaping ideas, while the core business focuses on today’s realities. A sound strategy balances both perspectives – pushing boundaries while staying feasible within current business structures.

KPI/metrics: Time-to-market for innovation projects. Are projects moving efficiently from concept to market, indicating a practical balance between vision and execution?

5. Talent and Skills Alignment

A clear innovation strategy should inform talent requirements. Are the right skills and roles in place to support the type of innovation you’re aiming for?

KPI/metrics: Skills gap analysis for innovation-related roles. Does your team have the capabilities needed to bring your strategy to life?

6. Adaptability and Resilience

Innovation doesn’t follow a straight line. A sound strategy allows for flexibility and quick pivots based on market feedback, technology shifts, and emerging opportunities.

KPI/metrics: Percentage of innovation projects adapted or redirected based on feedback. How adaptable is your team in responding to change?

Your innovation strategy should guide you in defining what’s possible, aligning with your corporate strategy, and fostering a collaborative yet grounded approach. The right KPIs help you measure progress and ensure alignment with your strategic vision.

I hope this shorter post can help spur some reflection and raise some guiding questions for your efforts and initiatives.

Image Credit: Pexels

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Three Strategies for Overcoming Change Resistance

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Three Strategies for Overcoming Change Resistance

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Max Planck’s work in physics changed the way we were able to see the universe. Still, even he complained that “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

For most transformational efforts we need to pursue, we simply don’t have that kind of time. To drive significant change we have to overcome staunch resistance. Unfortunately, most change management strategies assume that opposition can be overcome through communication efforts that are designed to persuade.

This assumes that resistance always has a rational basis and clearly that’s not true. We all develop emotional attachments to ideas. When we feel those are threatened, it offends our dignity, identity and sense of self. If we are going to overcome our most fervent opponents we don’t need a better argument, we need a strategy. Here are three approaches that work:

Strategy 1: Designate An Internal Red Team

Resistance is never monolithic. While some people have irrational attachments based on their sense of identity and dignity, others are merely skeptical. One key difference between these two groups is that the irrational resistors rarely voice their opposition, but try to quietly sabotage change. The rational skeptics, on the other hand, are much more eager to engage.

While these are different groups, they often interact with each other behind the scenes. In many cases, it is the active, irrational opposition that is fueling the skeptics’ doubts. One useful strategy for dealing with this dynamic is to co-opt the opposition by setting up an internal red team to channel skepticism in a constructive way.

Red-teaming is a process in which an adversarial team is set up to poke holes in an operational or strategic plan. For example, red teams are used in airports and computer systems to see if they can find weaknesses in security. The military uses red teams to test battle plans. Perhaps most famously, a red team was used to help determine whether the conclusions that led to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout were valid or if there was some other explanation.

Recruiting skeptics to be an internal red team provides two benefits. First, they can alert you to actual problems with your ideas, which you can then fix. Second, they not only voice their own objections, but also bring those of the irrational opposition out into the open (remember, irrational resisters rarely speak out.)

What’s key here is to make the distinction between rational skeptics and the irrational saboteurs. Engage with skeptics, leave the saboteurs to themselves.

Strategy 2: Don’t Engage And Quietly Gain Traction

Have you ever had this happen?: You’re in a meeting where things are moving slowly towards a consensus. Issues are discussed, objections raised and solutions devised. Toward the end of the meeting, just as things are shifting gears to next steps, somebody who had hardly said a word the whole time all of a sudden throws a hissy fit in the middle of the conference room and completely discredits themself.

There’s a reason why this happens. Remember saboteurs are not acting rationally. They have emotional attachments that they often can’t articulate, which is why they rarely give voice to their objections, but rather look for more discreet opportunities to derail the process. When they see things moving forward, they panic.

This doesn’t happen just in conference rooms. Those who are trying to sabotage change prefer to lurk in the background and hope they can quietly derail it. But when they see genuine progress being made, they will likely lash out, overreach and inadvertently further your cause.

This behavior is incredibly consistent. In fact, whenever I’m speaking to a group of transformation and change professionals and I describe this phenomenon to them, I always get people coming up to me afterwards. “I didn’t know that was a normal thing, I thought it was just something crazy that happened in our case!”

It’s important to resist the urge to respond to every attack. You don’t need to waste precious time and energy engaging with those who want to derail your initiative, which is more likely to frustrate and exhaust you than anything else. It’s much better to focus on empowering those who support change. Non-engagement can be a viable way to deal with opposition.

Strategy 3: Design A Dilemma Action

I once had a six-month assignment to restructure the sales and marketing operations of a troubled media company and the Sales Director was a real stumbling block. She never overtly objected, but would rather nod her head and then quietly sabotage progress. For example, she promised to hand over the clients she worked directly with to her staff, but never seemed to get around to it.

It was obvious that she intended to slow-walk everything until the six months were over and then return everything back to the way it was. As a longtime senior employee, she had considerable political capital within the organization and, because she was never directly insubordinate, creating a direct confrontation with her would be risky and unwise.

So rather than create a conflict, I designed a dilemma. I arranged with the CEO of a media buying agency for one of the salespeople to meet with a senior buyer and take over the account. The Sales Director had two choices. She could either let the meeting go ahead and lose her grip on the department or try to derail the meeting. She chose the latter and was fired for cause. Once she was gone, her mismanagement became obvious and sales shot up.

Dilemma actions have been around for at least a century. One early example was Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels who picketed the Wilson White House with his own quotes in 1917. More recently, the tactic has been the subject of increasing academic interest. What’s becoming clear is that these actions share clear design principles that can be replicated in almost any context.

Key to the success of a dilemma action is that it is seen as a constructive act rooted in a shared value. In the case of the Sales Director, she had agreed to give up her accounts and setting up the meeting was aligned with that agreement. That’s what created the dilemma. She had to choose between violating the shared value or giving up her resistance.

How Change Really Happens

One of the biggest misconceptions about change is that it is an exercise in persuasion. Yet anyone who has ever been married or had kids knows how hard it can be to convince even a single person of something they don’t want to be convinced about. Seeking to persuade hundreds or thousands to change what they think or how they act is a tall order indeed.

The truth is that radical, transformational change is achieved when not when those who oppose it are convinced, but when they discredit themselves. It was the brutality of Bull Connor’s tactics in Birmingham that paved the way for the Civil Rights Act in 1964. It was Russia’s poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 that set Ukraine on a different path. The passage of Proposition 8 in California created such controversy that it actually furthered the cause of same-sex marriage.

We find the same dynamic in our work with organizational transformations. Whenever you set out to make a significant impact, there will always be people who will hate the idea and seek to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. Once you are able to internalize that you are ready to move forward.

Through sound strategies, you can learn to leverage opposition to further your change initiative. You can co-opt those who are rationally skeptical to find flaws in your idea that can be fixed. For those who are adamantly and irrationally opposed to an initiative, there are proven strategies that help lead them to discredit themselves.

The status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. The difference between successful revolutionaries and mere dreamers is that those who succeed anticipate resistance and build a plan to overcome it.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Unsplash

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Prioritization Drives Productivity

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Prioritization Drives Productivity

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you haven’t noticed, the pace and complexity of our work is ever-increasing. There’s more to do and there are more interactions among the players and the tasks. And though there’s more need for thinking and planning, there’s less time to do it. And the answer from company leadership – more productivity.

With the traditional view of productivity, it’s do more with less. That works for a while and then it doesn’t. And when you can no longer do more, the only remaining way to improve productivity is to do less.

If you try to do all five things and get four done poorly, wouldn’t it be more productive if you tried to do only three things and did them well? None of the three would have to touched up or redone. And none of the three would occupy your emotional bandwidth because they were done well and they’re not coming back to bite you. And because you focused on three things, you spent only three things worth of energy. Your life force is conserved and when you get home you still have gas in the tank.

If you get three things done each day, you’ll accomplish more than anyone else in the company. Don’t think so? Three things per day is fifteen things per week. And if you work fifty weeks per year, three things per day is one hundred and fifty things per year. (I hope you don’t work fifty weeks per year, I chose this number because it makes the math cleaner.)

It’s not easy to get three things done per day. With meetings, email, texts and the various collaboration platforms, you have almost zero uninterrupted time. And with zero uninterrupted time, you get about zero things done. And if I have to choose between getting three things done or zero things done, I choose three. It’s difficult to allocate the time to get three things done, but it’s possible.

Three things may not seem like enough things, but three is enough. Here’s why. You don’t do just any three things, you do three important things. You choose what you want to get done and you get them done. The key is to decide which three things you’ll get done and which three hundred you won’t. To do this, take some time at the end of the day to define tomorrow’s three things. That way, first thing, you’ll get after the right three things. It’s productivity through prioritization. You’ve got to do fewer things to get more done.

And you can still deliver on large projects with the three-things-per-day method. For large projects, most, if not all, of the day’s three things should be directly related to the project. Remember the math – you can do fifteen things per week on a large project. And it works for long projects, too. Do one thing per week on the long project and you will accomplish fifty things over the course of the year. When was the last time you completed fifty things on a project?

And if you think three things is too few, that’s fine. If you want to do more than three things, you can. Just make sure you know which three you’ll complete before moving on to the fourth. But, remember, you want to leave work with some gas still in the tank so you can do three things when you get home.

Image credit: Pexels

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Performance Reviews Don’t Have to Suck

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Performance Reviews Don't Have to Suck

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Traditional annual performance reviews are confusing, dated, messy, time-consuming, and sometimes just plain inaccurate to what’s really going on in your team. As organizational psychologist Bob Sutton said, “If performance evaluations were a drug, they would not receive FDA approval. They have so many side effects, and so often fail.” According to a survey of 837 companies across the globe only about 1 in 4 companies in North America said their performance management systems were effective. And only-third of companies surveyed said their employees were evaluated fairly.

The employees and the employers have spoken.

The workplace, and work itself, has gone through some radical transformations in the past few years. It’s time performance reviews do the same. Managers don’t like evaluations because they can get confusing. It’s a hassle, and it feels like extra work on top of their existing work

Employees feel the pressure of being graded through a system that is confusing because typically it has the potential to make or break a potential raise for them. The intent of the review process—to fix problem areas, develop skills and set people up for success—breaks down into debates about what rating scales mean and the semantics of every definition.

And then there’s the time involved. On both sides of the review process, it just takes a long, long time. Adobe found that managers spent about 17 hours per employee on their performance reviews. You can interpret that amount of time two ways:

1) either managers are taking their time to thoughtfully reflect and analyze an individual’s performance and contributions over the course of a year, or 2) it’s an audacious amount of time that goes on top of regular meetings and check-ins about performance that happen naturally throughout the year.

But if you’re leaning toward the latter, trust your instincts.

How did performance reviews become so painful?

The Ranking Method, or stack ranking, or “rank and yank” was popularized by Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. If you didn’t already know him as a very influential figure in corporate America, then you might recognize him as the mentor of Jack Donaguey on 30 Rock.

GE went through a massive hot streak through most of his tenure as CEO, and a lot of that success was attributed to his popularized ranking method of his employees. It worked like this:

The manager will have a list of all employees and will first choose the most valuable employee and put that name at the top. Then he or she will choose the least valuable employee and put that name at the bottom of the list. With the remaining employees, this process would be repeated.

In addition, there is a bell curve at play here. Not everyone is going to get a top rating or perfect marks, even if theoretically everyone on a team is a superstar and exceeds expectations. Under Jack Welch, in a team of 10, everyone knew only two of them would get a great rating, and at least one would get a negative rating, and possibly be…yanked.

This method or some variation of it became a norm at a lot of companies until about 2012 when more research started to come out and leaders were questioning whether the method was doing more harm than good.

Managers reported that people became obsessed with the rankings, and that it also created unhealthy, siloed competition between everyone, especially top performers. Great employees would distance themselves from other great employees out of fear they might fall in the rankings.

Great employees should be collaborating, not competing

Microsoft recently overhauled their performance review system after realizing how damaging rank-and-yank was to performance and morale. From 2000 to 2012, Microsoft’s market cap had declined from $510 billion to half of that value. Employees pointed their finger at one big reason for the nose-dive: Stack Ranking.

Turns out pitting your individual employees against one another created a culture where innovative ideas were killed, and fast. It was all about the rankings, and not about the actual work. Top performers were even ditching the company where more value was placed on the work and not just a metric.

So, Microsoft ditched the stack rankings. And a handful of other Fortune 500 companies quickly followed suit after finding the same negative effects. Motorola, Expedia, and Adobe were all yanking their rating methods in favor of more frequent, informal, focused conversations with individuals throughout the year.

Performance reviews should be an ongoing conversation

Removing the annual ritual of performance reviews and replacing them with more targeted sessions throughout the year may sound like more work, but it actually saves time. At least it did for Motorola which reported saving 50-70 percent of time spent on review processes after they ditched their once-a-year ranking method.

These check-ins don’t have to be grueling, high stakes sessions—in fact, they should be very informal. Just like the name suggests. A check-in. Schedule it sometime at the end of the month with your direct report and…check-in. The best check-ins hit on three topics: expectations, feedback, and professional growth. Don’t confuse this with just another stand-up, progress check that you usually do with your whole team.

And if you’re reading this as an individual manager, with no authority to ditch annual reviews, remember that nothing is stopping you from doing more frequent check-ins with your team. That will leave you better prepared when the annual performance review season comes up, and it will make them more willing to accept your feedback. The annual review becomes just another check-in.

Use AI, but sparingly

There is a lot of enthusiasm for AI and what it can do to make work easier. But as a leader, you should remain highly skeptical and cautious if you’re considering using AI tools in your performance review process. Pew Research came out with some recent data finding, not surprisingly, people are mixed on AI being used to monitor them in the workplace. Tracking especially.

Have AI help you figure out where to look, where to find problem areas. But AI shouldn’t be making decisions in the evaluations. Great teams are made up of humans, and when we evaluate others, we need to look them in the eye and come prepared to back up whatever we have to say, person to person. It can be an intensely vulnerable process, for both sides of the conversation. If you’re looking to bring in AI to make it easier on yourself as a manager, to take away the awkwardness you might feel when you have these conversations…you might not be cut out for being a manager.

Conclusion

The evolution from the rigid, competitive ranking systems of the past to the more flexible and supportive frameworks of today marks a significant shift in how companies view and value their employees. By focusing on development, continuous feedback, and a collaborative environment, modern businesses are paving the way for a more engaged and innovative workforce. This transformation not only enhances individual performance but also drives collective success, ensuring that the workplace remains becomes one where everyone can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on August 26, 2024.

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Creative Confidence Beats Market Signals

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And How Johnny Cash Used it to Resurrect His Career

Creative Confidence Beats Market Signals

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

The best business advice can destroy your business. Especially when you follow it perfectly.

Just ask Johnny Cash.

After bursting onto the scene in the mid-1950s with “Folsom Prison Blues”, Cash enjoyed twenty years of tremendous success. By the 1970s, his authentic, minimalist approach had fallen out of favor.

Eager to sell records, he pivoted to songs backed by lush string arrangements, then to “country pop” to attract mainstream audiences and feed the relentless appetite of 900 radio stations programming country pop full-time.

By late 1992, Johnny Cash’s career was roadkill. Country radio had stopped playing his records, and Columbia Records, his home for 25 years, had shown him the door. At 60, he was marooned in faded casinos, playing to crowds preferring slot machines to songs.

Then he took the stage at Madison Square Garden for Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert.

In the audience sat Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and uber producer behind Public Enemy, Run-DMC, and Slayer, amongst others. He watched in awe as Cash performed, seeing not a relic but raw power diluted by smart decisions.

The Stare-Down that Saved a Career

Four months later, Rubin attended Cash’s concert at The Rhythm Café in Santa Anna, California. According to Cash’s son, “When they sat down at the table, they said: ‘Hello.’ But then my dad and Rick just sat there and stared at each other for about two minutes without saying anything, as if they were sizing each other up.”

Eventually, Cash broke the silence, “What’re you gonna do with me that nobody else has done to sell records for me?”

What happened next resurrected his career.

Rubin didn’t promise record sales. He promised something more valuable: creative control and a return to Cash’s roots.

Ten years later, Cash had a Grammy, his first gold record in thirty years, and CMA Single of the Year for his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” and millions in record sales.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, what I had written in my diary was now superimposed on the life of this icon and sung so beautifully and emotionally. It was a reminder of what an important medium music is. Goosebumps up the spine. It really made sense. I thought: ‘What a powerful piece of art.’ I never got to meet Johnny, but I’m happy I contributed in the way I did. It wasn’t my song anymore.” — Trent Reznor

When Smart Decisions Become Fatal

Executives do exactly what Cash did. You respond to market signals. You pivot your offering when customer preferences shift and invest in emerging technologies.

All logical. All defensible to your board. All potentially fatal.

Because you risk losing what made you unique and valuable. Just as Cash lost his minimalist authenticity and became a casualty of his effort to stay relevant, your business risks losing sight of its purpose and unique value proposition.

Three Beliefs at the Core of a Comeback

So how do you avoid Cash’s initial mistake while replicating his comeback? The difference lies in three beliefs that determine whether you’ll have the creative courage to double down on what makes you valuable instead of diluting it.

Creative confidence: The belief we can think and act creatively in this moment.
Perceived value of creativity: Our perceived value of thinking and acting in new ways.
Creative risk-taking: The willingness to take the risks necessary for active change.

Cash wanted to sell records, and he:

Believed that he was capable of creativity and change.
Saw the financial and reputational value of change
Was willing to partner with a producer who refused to guarantee record sales but promised creative control and a return to his roots.

Your Answers Determine Your Outcome

Like Cash, what you, your team, and your organization believe determines how you respond to change:

Do I/we believe we can creatively solve this specific challenge we’re facing right now?
Is finding a genuinely new approach to this situation worth the effort versus sticking with proven methods?
Am I/we willing to accept the risks of pursuing a creative solution to our current challenge?”

Where there are “no’s,” there is resistance, even refusal, to change. Acknowledge it. Address it. Do the hard work of turning the No into a Yes because it’s the only way change will happen.

The Comeback Question

Cash proved that authentic change—not frantic pivoting—resurrects careers and disrupts industries. His partnership with Rubin succeeded because he answered “yes” to all three creative beliefs when it mattered most. Where are your “no’s” blocking your comeback?

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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