Dear Madeleine,

I am a supervisor and team leader in a technology company. We have several products on the market that are doing well. All my projects are in new products—a combination of market research and product testing; and all my teams are cross-functional—project management, software developers, marketing and customer support, and designers. The timelines for going to market keep shrinking and the demand to get high-quality products to the testing stage (i.e., in perfect condition) keeps growing.

I have noticed a shift in my teams. People are getting quieter in meetings, though the volume of general grumbling is growing. I finally asked someone I trust if they have noticed it, and she told me that people have developed a fear of speaking up.

When I asked her opinion about why this is happening, she wasn’t able to point to one thing. I think it may be the constant pressure to get new products to market faster—because to innovate, we have to experiment and make mistakes.

I have spoken to my boss about it and he said the only solution is to innovate faster. I get that, but I also know that getting new things right takes the time it takes. I’m not at all sure what to do to get us back into the rhythm that always worked well before.  

I would appreciate any ideas you have.

Faster & Smarter

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Dear Faster & Smarter,

Well, something happened. Is this all your teams? Something is off here. This doesn’t sound like a response to the constant “better, faster, cheaper” refrain that anyone working in business is now accustomed to. People don’t disappear like snails into their shells for no reason.

Your people are acting as if they feel threatened. You can waste a lot of time and energy speculating about what it is, or you can come right out and ask them. Britney Cole, our chief innovation officer, says that Enemy #1 of innovation is fear, so getting to bottom of what people are afraid of is one possible avenue for you. Either they are afraid of something you haven’t registered, or they are afraid of you.

You can meet with each whole team or with individual people, share your observation that something has changed, and simply ask questions:

• Did something happen that I am unaware of?
• What am I missing here?
• Is there something I have done or said that has made an impact I did not intend?
• Is there something that someone else has done or said that has resulted in people feeling uncomfortable or unsafe?
• Is there something you think I should know about?

Our Fearless Innovation program proposes that leading innovation calls for grace, curiosity, and proactivity, and that the environment as a whole needs to support innovation. Your investigation will reveal that there is something you can do to be a more effective leader, or that there is messaging/feedback from the organization that is causing the dampened spirits.

This article about leading innovation might spark some ideas for you and help you shape more targeted questions. And here is an eBook that details the factors that encourage innovation in organizations.

You may not like what you discover. Either you will hear something about yourself that you need to work on or you will see a larger pattern in the organization that will require you to step up and advocate for your teams. Hopefully, you will uncover enough intel to help you craft a plan to increase the sense of safety and trust and get your teams back on track.

It will take a lot of grace and curiosity. It will require action on your part, which will require grit and courage. If your team sees you being proactive and speaking up, it will give them permission to do the same. And hopefully that will help you all get your groove back.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services as well as a key facilitator of Blanchard’s Leadership Coach Certification course. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I work in fashion manufacturing. I was promoted about six months ago. I manage the supply chain, timelines for delivery of goods, etc. I have a huge team and work all hours because I am in western Europe and my teams are in China, Mexico, and Vietnam.

When I took the job, things were a bit of a mess, and I am very pleased to have turned things around. I instituted new software and updated processes. We have worked through the kinks and things are humming along nicely.

My boss seems pleased with my work but told me the executive team is seeking more innovation in my area.

I have asked for more detail because I am stumped. I thought the place for innovation was in the design of the product, not in the execution required to get it to market. Taking the job felt like a big risk for me, and I am more confident now that I have had success. But my sense is that innovating requires taking risks—and there is no tolerance for errors that might impede our ability to deliver on orders.

I have zero confidence in my ability to innovate in this job. My boss is not offering any insight into what “more innovation” might mean for my group. Maybe I am asking the wrong questions.

Any ideas?

Zero Ideas

_________________________________________________________

Dear Zero Ideas,

You might be suffering from a language dilemma—because the crazy thing, ZI, is that it sounds like what you just did was innovate, and in a big way. You see yourself as someone who spots what isn’t working and does what needs to be done to make it work. A problem solver, perhaps. It probably didn’t occur to you that everything you did to fix the mess (trying new ways and working through the kinks) was, technically, innovating.

I would submit that the executive team sees you as an innovator because of what you just accomplished, and they are asking for more. So just for a moment, at least for the time you spend reading this, can you accept that you are already an innovator? It is a shift in your mindset that may require suspension of disbelief, but may be worth trying on.

Britney Cole, our vice president of innovation, has a lot of wisdom on this topic (you can read her most recent article here). She says the first step to innovation is to define it. Her definition: “Innovation is the discipline of applying ideas that solve problems in new ways to create value.”

Can’t you see yourself in that definition?

Another of Britney’s insights is that to be successful, innovation efforts need to have two specific things in place:

1. A person who is dedicated to continual improvement (you).
2. An innovation-friendly company culture.

As you seek to develop yourself as an innovator, you can rely on your natural talent for identifying problems and finding the best solutions. You can build on that talent by asking yourself these questions:

• What is working brilliantly (that might be applied elsewhere)?
• What pain points still exist in our business (that could stand improvement)?
• What new ideas have surfaced that might benefit from further inquiry (that perhaps we have discounted in the interest of efficiency)?

I suspect ideas will begin to pop immediately. For more guidance on what to keep in mind as you go, here is another article from Britney.

An additional suggestion, which I learned directly from Britney, is to apply the design thinking “How might we” approach to solving problems or making improvements. (Please forgive my total ignorance of your business, but I am going to make up a few examples based on your letter):

• Now that things are working well, how might we leverage technology to make them even more efficient?
• How might we minimize confusion caused by working across multiple time zones?
• How might we scale so that our business can grow more quickly?

It’s possible your organization may not be that friendly to innovation, so you may have to be a trailblazer to shift your culture. This might even be what the executive team is asking for. When senior leaders in companies want more innovation but have no idea how their culture actually discourages it, they tend to identify individual innovators and hope that they can help. It is a classic example of how lack of clarity at the top of an organization can show up; it is a bit of an “I’ll know it when I see it” attitude that is, frankly, irresponsible—especially since a culture of fear already exists that you will need to work against.

Here is an e-book about The Factors That Encourage and That Discourage Innovation in Organizations. This may help you identify the potential obstacles you could face from a systems standpoint as you seek to experiment.

It is totally fair that you require more detail, and you are probably right that asking more questions may help you get what you need. Your instinct to ask questions is right on the money. The key is to keep asking until you get the insight you need.

Here are some ideas. If none of these is quite right, I hope at least they will spark others that feel more useful.

• What will the executive team see or have if I innovate more?
• What results would make a difference to the organization?
• What is making the executive team most nervous about our business/ the marketplace/ the economy?
• What problems does the executive team see that innovation would solve?
• What is most important to the executive team, and is maybe not being addressed?
• Are there things our competitors are doing that we need to be doing?

And finally:

• If we rely on the above definition of innovation, how might our business add or create new value that would excite the executive team?

Your first step, ZI, is to shift your self-concept. That alone will increase your confidence. Continue to do the things you are good at: spotting problems and solving them. Keep asking questions. Go slow. Build plans and get feedback. Get buy-in every step of the way.

I suspect you will surprise yourself.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I am fairly new to the workforce. I have a degree in accounting and got a great job right out of college, working in the finance department. I’ve been in this job for almost two years now. I like the company, the products we make, my manager, and my work.

My issue is that I feel there is so much more our company could be doing to appeal to people my age. Our CEO and our head of marketing are the age of my grandparents. I hate to be ageist, but we could be so much more successful if they were willing to expand their view of the market and to use social media. I don’t have a degree in marketing or even work in marketing, but I don’t need to be an expert to see the missed opportunities.

I hear a lot about generational differences, and I worry if I say something that I will be seen as a know-it-all or worse. Do you think I should say something?

Big Ideas

____________________________________________________________________

Dear Big Ideas,

I can’t really say. But I can propose some ways you can look at this that might help you think it through and come to a decision that feels right.

The first thing to consider is the company culture, values, and overarching strategy. Are there stated values? If so, is there anything about innovation or continual improvement? Does your CEO communicate about where he sees the company going and the goals that are going to help it get there? You might find some clues there as to how open senior leadership might be to new ideas. You can connect any ideas you want to share to the values and strategy of the organization.

Your next stop would be a conversation with your manager. Generally, people in finance aren’t thinking much about marketing, but your manager should be able to offer some guidance of who might be open to hearing your insights. There could be a young counterpart of yours in the marketing department who sees things the same way you do. It wouldn’t hurt to develop a relationship with someone like that.

Finally, you might think about framing your ideas in compelling terms, depending on who you are talking to. Anything you can do to get to know people and what is important to them will help. You can check out their social media to see what interests them, and then tailor your pitch to leverage that. Some people will be interested in market share, others in revenue, and still others in creativity and the reputation of the company.

Be ready to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. If you ask “what ideas have you had?” you can weave others’ thinking into subsequent pitches so it doesn’t sound like you are only sharing your ideas.

The more you get people talking, the more they will end up thinking any ideas that get adopted were theirs. This would be a win! Start slow, with just a few people, and build from there.

I love big ideas! And, being a grandparent myself, I find that my world view is vastly enriched by engaging with the younger generations. But, of course, that’s me. Start by enlarging your network and developing relationships with as many people as you can. Find ways to connect your ideas to what interests them. Take your time and be respectful. You might just be able to spark some interest that becomes a fire. As long as you aren’t worried about controlling the outcomes, or being seen as the owner of whatever happens, you might be surprised at the impact you can make.

Having vision for what is possible is a leadership trait, Big Ideas, and figuring out how to influence people to see what you see is a critical leadership lesson. There are great things in store for you, my friend!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine

I am fairly new director in a large global organisation. We are a liaison team designed to work in tandem with product development and marketing.

I have a great team—all inherited and all very skilled and experienced. Their former boss (who was let go) was very rigid and very focused on process and details. He was not able to accomplish what the organization needed his team to accomplish.

I appreciate that the department runs like a well-oiled machine but I have been tasked with getting this team to innovate, try new things, and experiment. How can I get them to loosen the reigns and stop being so wedded to “the way we do things”? They were all initially hired because of their creativity, but it seems to have been beaten out them. How can I bring them back to life and help them get their spark back?

Catalyst

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Catalyst,

My first thought is that it has to be easier to get people to loosen up than try to corral a bunch of creatives to stay in their lanes. But I guess we’ll see if that’s true. Somehow the former director managed to create order and compliance, but he left the critical deliverable for the team on the cutting room floor. He probably used fear and intimidation to do it. So the first thing you need to do is make sure your people feel safe. They spent years trying to figure out how to make their last boss happy and therefore retain their jobs, and now here you are telling them that none of that matters anymore. It is bound to fill them with fear. So remember to tell them that you know the transition will be messy, you are committed to helping, and no one is at risk. Be ready to repeat it. A Lot. Don’t assume they will remember, because they won’t. Once the adrenaline and cortisol released in the face of big change stops pumping through their systems, they will calm down.

You might want to start with context. Explain where things went off the rails and what all of you, as a team, need to do to get yourselves back on track. Simply tell the truth without criticizing anyone or badmouthing the former boss. Just state the facts and clarify your mandate.

Then, so you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, ask the group what they think works really well about their current processes. Managing the chaos that innovation and creativity invariably causes will be easier if you can maintain some of the well-oiled-machine aspects of the team.

Take some time to meet one on one with each member of the team so you can ascertain what each person’s strengths are and what they love to do most. You will be able to use your insights to put small groups together to work on projects.

From our research, we know a team leader’s role is to:

• set clear goals for the team;
• ensure the team’s purpose is clear;
• communicate how the team’s purpose is aligned with the organization’s vision, values, and strategies;
• track progress on deliverables; and
• hold team members accountable for their commitments.

For more detail on this, click here.

You might think about working as a team to create a team charter. This is defined as a set of agreements, developed through a collaborative team effort, that provides a framework for what the team wants to accomplish and how the team will work together to achieve results. A charter will help establish the team purpose, the team’s goals, who plays what roles, and the agreed upon behavioral norms. If you create the charter together, you will have a lot of buy-in from the team as they try on new ways of operating.

This covers all the basics—but I know you also want to find a way to encourage everyone to find their way back to their creative selves. Consider leading your team through a twelve-week program laid out in the book The Artist’s Way at Work. It is based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, now almost 30 years old and, honestly, as fresh as ever. I have been using concepts from these books with clients for decades. I’ve also used them myself when I have lost my mojo, so I can attest that they always make a difference and provide powerful results. Working through the program as a team will help everyone to bond—but, more important, it will help your square pegs find their way back to who they were before they were jammed into round holes. If it feels like too much to do the whole program, maybe choose a couple of chapters to work through. Or do the whole program over a longer period of time. It can only help—and will definitely get the wheels turning!

Tell the truth. Be crystal clear about how the expectations have changed. Keep the stuff that works. Help your people reconnect with themselves.

It is a lot—and it sounds like there is a lot riding on your being successful. Your team is vulnerable, but if you can earn their trust and make them feel safe, they will blow you away.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

When we think of innovation, people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs tend to come to mind. The lone hero in solitude has a hold on our imagination, but the truth is that innovation is rarely the result of an inspired genius toiling away in a garage.

Groundbreaking innovation takes lots of people. Consider that more than 1,000 engineers worked on the first iPhone. More than 7,000 people worked on Curiosity (the rover on Mars). The takeaway? Innovation is a team sport.

Innovation doesn’t have to be splashy either. Call it micro-innovating. In fact, small and incremental changes can have an oversized impact on your work life. When to innovate? Anytime you feel your work isn’t serving the greater good. Micro-innovation can be extraordinarily powerful.

So how best to micro-innovate? Let’s take a closer look at what gets in the way of doing it and how you can harness your power.

Micro-Innovation Killer #1: To-Do Lists, Tunnel Vision, No Vision

A typical day: Most of us create a to-do list and strike items as we finish them. I know I personally feel a sense of completion and satisfaction when I click my task off my calendar. To-do items can become so ingrained in our routine. At its worst, checking off items becomes mindless, and we don’t even think about it. When that happens, our to-do lists have more meaning than the tasks themselves. Over time, the work loses significance, and we question why we do the things we do in the first place. Our perspective narrows and our thinking becomes siloed.

Purpose? Process improvement? Innovation? Forget about them because we’re so focused on completing a task—even if the task no longer serves a need. It’s easy to have tunnel vision and wear self-created blinders. And to be fair, we must make so many decisions in our personal life, it’s easy to turn it off at work. But, when our work is filled with tasks, we lose sight of our larger goals.

Micro-Innovation Killer #2: Fear Kills Creativity

Recently, I was speaking to one of my peers, a manager of individual contributors. She manages the leadership development at a large company and was making some updates to a program. She had asked one of her people for their honest opinion, wondering what they might change and how they might improve it. She loved the suggestions and wondered why the person didn’t share these great ideas sooner. The answer was disarming. The individual assumed that the choices were made for a reason and who was she to question those choices. She did not feel empowered to share her fresh perspective; there was no psychologically safe space to share her opinions.

How many people remain silent because of a fear? The majority. In fact, McKinsey found that just 26% of leaders create psychological safety for their teams. Where there is fear, there is little innovation.

Five Tips for Micro-Innovating

Innovation is one of those words that can be intimidating. But it’s inherent in our nature—or else we’d still be living as hunter-gatherers. We are attempting to improve our lives every day and innovate in the smallest ways. Whether it’s preparing meals on a Sunday before a busy work week, optimizing schedules with a planner app, using Microsoft Teams or Slack instead of email, we are always trying to improve our status quo.

Here are five tips to ignite your creative spark and start micro-innovating.

1. Give others permission to speak: Those ubiquitous “If you see something, say something” signs in the airport are relevant for innovating. A leader’s job is to make sure their people feel safe to say, “This task doesn’t feel helpful to what we are trying to achieve. I’d like to understand more about the importance of the task to the overall process—what do you see that perhaps I’m missing?”

Don’t expect your people to have an answer at the ready—and be clear that it’s okay they don’t have one. Pointing to areas of improvement is NOT complaining! They may not know how to fix the situation, but they have at least diagnosed that something needs improvement. They have ‘seen something and said something.’ And that can short-circuit a potential problem before it becomes a monumental one.

2. Ensure systems exist for people: Processes are supposed to streamline tasks, but often they become workplace handcuffs. When a process creates unnecessary administration or you get hints of malicious compliance, it’s time to rethink the process and suggest ways to streamline. Ask yourself these questions: “What are we trying to solve with this process? Are these actions having the desired impact on the experience we want to achieve? Does the system support us and the customer or slow us down?”

3. Always be learning: Innovation requires experimentation. This also means the willingness to fail. We learn through mistakes, bumps in the road, misalignments. It’s where we improve how we work together and how we meet the needs of our customers/business. The words of Thomas Edison, on the painstaking task of inventing the lightbulb, are a good reminder: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

You can speed innovation by having a learning mindset. Ask your people: “What do you see that I’m missing?” Then remember the iPhone and how it was an iterative invention driven by thousands of people. It takes time and patience. So be easy with your people and yourself.

4. Adopt the right mindset: Throw away your preconceived notions about innovation and focus on fostering a culture of innovation for yourself and your team. Be mindful of your emotional reactions and others by pausing before you respond. Be curious and open-minded and you will bring in multiple perspectives. Have courage to push through your fear of failure. Be resilient to overcome challenges you will face while converging and diverging along the innovation process.

5. Take needed downtime: Ever take a shower and a great idea comes while you’re shampooing your hair? Ever wake up in the middle of the night with a “eureka” moment? The brain needs downtime. When it gets a break, it can make new connections and serve up inspirations. So instead of relentlessly hammering away at the task, take a purposeful break. See what brilliant ideas spontaneously arise.

Micro-innovation is something for the ambitious and courageous. It requires the willingness to be wrong; to fail; to be resilient. All this can be humbling. And it likely will undermine your self-confidence at times. But what’s the alternative? Doing the same old thing over and over—even if it’s no longer useful.

Ready to rally your self-confidence, resilience, and fearlessness to create a small revolution?

Dear Madeleine,

I manage an IT group—12 people—that does the tech stack for all supply chain management for a national chain of service providers. We also sell some product, but not a lot. I report directly to the CTO and have a good relationship with him.

At the beginning of the year, after much discussion and review by my boss, I presented my strategic plan to the executive team. They practically yawned. It was so obvious to me that none of them really care—they just want things to go smoothly. Afterwards, my boss told me he needs me to be more innovative in my thinking and planning. This is the first time I have ever received that kind of feedback. I asked for more detail, but he didn’t have much to say to expand on it.

I try to keep up with the constant change in technology, but supply chain management is a not generally thought of as a place to get super creative. I have been walking around thinking about it, and I have no idea what to make of it.

How to Innovate?

______________________________________________________________

Dear How to Innovate,

Well, at least this is kind of fun—I mean, not a pressing problem that needs fixing right this minute, which is nice. First things first: I do think you need to get your boss to provide a little more context for the feedback. Perhaps he wasn’t prepared the first time you asked, or he didn’t have the language to describe quite what he meant. I will say this: Senior executives in all sectors are experiencing the need for their organizations to be more agile, more responsive, and more creative to stay competitive. So it might be as simple as that—a general directive for everyone as opposed to something specific to you and your work.

The way around this is to ask questions that will help him to put his thinking into words. Here are some that might make his mind pop:

• What are you not seeing in my current plans that you would like to see?
• Is it that you need me to cut time or cost out the systems?
• Can you point me to examples of innovation in supply chains that look interesting to you?
• If we were more innovative, what would we have that we don’t have now?
• Do you want to see me express myself more creatively? Or jazz up my presentations?
• A definition of innovation is “the creation, development and implementation of a new product, process, or service, with the aim of improving efficiency, effectiveness, or competitive advantage.” Which of those dimensions do you think needs the most attention?
• What would a good job—me being more innovative—look like?

Once you get a little more detail, you will be able to make a plan. Of course, it’s possible your boss still may not have much for you. It simply may have been his reaction to the executive team’s chilly response to your presentation—he hopes you can make your future reports a bit more interesting. (For ideas on how to tell a great story to evoke interest and emotion with presentations, check out Nancy Duarte’s work.)

If you do decide to up your innovation, I have two approaches for you to consider. One is to increase new ways of thinking among your team, and the other is to focus on yourself. I suggest you start with one and see where it leads you.

Ideas to encourage innovation in your team:

• Explain the objective to team members. If you get some clear direction from your boss, you can use that. If you don’t, you will have to articulate it yourself.
• Ask your team to practice beginner’s mind. For you, this might mean looking at your entire strategy (which you are probably sick to death of) with a new lens. Ask yourselves:
  • What have we done the same way for a long time?
  • What could we do better, faster, with less effort?
  • What are we doing that we really don’t need to do?
  • What are we not doing that I suspect we should be doing?
  • What did we try once, fail at, and perhaps quit too soon?

• Start with existing problems or pinch points and decide which to tackle first. There are two ways to do that:
  • Start with the low hanging fruit—little stuff you haven’t gotten around to fixing that has a straightforward solution.
    • Decide to address a big, complicated, systemic issue that has been frustrating your team for a while.
• Run a design thinking hackathon. Design thinking traditionally has five steps:
  • Empathize (understand the pain point of users or customers)
  • Define (the problem)
  • Ideate (brainstorm ideas)
  • Prototype (map out a solution or a couple of solutions)
  • Test (pick one and test it out)

I guarantee you will hear things from your team you have never heard before.

Assuming your team is mostly virtual these days, if you don’t already use a white board app, there is a free one called scrublr. I have used it with a few teams. It works well and is fun.

• Run a contest to generate ideas.
• Create an idea board for your team, either on a Teams site or a shared drive, where people can post ideas—none of which will be judged as dumb or farfetched.
• Find a fun way to reward the ideas you end up using. Or the funniest ideas. Or the most out-there ideas. Or based on sheer volume. Or all of the above! Use Starbucks cards or get creative—even badges seem to motivate people.

Ideas to encourage innovation in yourself:

• Walk. Research shows that creative thinking and problem solving is vastly improved while walking, and for some time after. It is real, and it makes a huge difference for some people.
• Spend time with people who inspire you. Or read about them. Or watch movies about them.
• Learn something new that is completely unrelated to your job—a new body of knowledge or skill. Have you always wanted to learn to play the banjo? All about dinosaurs? Baking bread? Bird watching? Take an improvisation class? It may feel counterintuitive, but it will force your brain to create new neural pathways and increase the chance of an aha moment.
• Sign up for an advanced class on supply chain. Get more comfortable with being a little uncomfortable and out of your depth.
• Find an undisputed supply chain master and ask that person to mentor you.
• Keep a log of your ideas; perhaps in a notebook by your bed. (Don’t look at your phone in the middle of the night—it is the thief of sleep.)
• Question everything you have already done, everything you take for granted, and anything you spend time on that isn’t mission critical.
• Expand your horizons. Take a trip (if feasible) somewhere you have never been. Get out into nature. Take a walk on the beach or by a lake or river. Look out at an actual horizon. Go to a museum, or your local aquarium, or an art installation. Do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do. (This idea, called an Artist’s Date, comes from Julia Cameron’s book and program The Artist’s Way, which I highly recommend for anyone who feels like they have lost their creative spark.)
• Eliminate time-filling habits—mainly: get off your phone! Stop checking the news, scrolling social media, playing addictive games. And delete TicToc, right this minute.
• Change up your work environment. Rearrange your furniture, get rid of ancient files that are taking up space and collecting dust, take all the old crud off your bulletin board, repaint a wall in a beautiful color, get a stand-up desk, get a little Zen garden and make designs with the mini rake, get a small fountain.
• Listen to music if you haven’t been, or different music if you have been.

The watchword to engineer a shift toward innovation is curiosity, which can be defined as a strong drive to know or learn something. So get curious. Even if you get absolutely nothing from your boss, making the decision to be more innovative will almost certainly make your work more fun and your life more interesting. Ultimately, it will only add value. And who knows what it could do for your career? Probably good things. You say supply management isn’t known as an area where people are super creative, but you may change your mind about that!

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

You cycle through the loop by observing the results of your actions, reviewing and revising your initial decision, and moving to your next action. It needs to be a smooth, continual process, and the faster you can move through each stage the better. In fact, if you were to sit down and map out each step, it would slow down instead of speed up.

The initial concept was based on military combat operations. Consider a fighter pilot trying to shoot down an enemy aircraft. Before the enemy is even in vision, the pilot considers information of the enemy pilot (level of training, cultural traditions, etc). When the enemy aircraft comes into the radar, our pilot gets more information on speed and size of the enemy plane. A decision is made based on the available information. Our pilot can then loop back to observation: is the attacker reacting to the action of our pilot? Then to orient: is the enemy reacting characteristically? Is his plane exhibiting better-than-expected performance? Based on these, he can cycle back through the loop to making a decision on his next course of action, and carry it out.

If you’re looking to work on your leadership, and become a better leader, your first step might be to create an action plan. “In order to be a better leader, I want to do this, this, and this”. Whilst this action plan might focus your efforts, and provide a roadmap; it is just that: a plan.
When it comes to leadership, the way to produce the change of mindset – to improve the skills you require to become a better leader – is to act differently, rather than just think about it.
In fact, acting differently is more likely to make you think differently.
Someone once told me that, if I act like someone that I would like to meet, in time, I’d become a person that other people want to meet (and this is now written on a piece of A4 paper, stuck on the ceiling above my bed, and I read it every morning when I wake up). This is Boyd’s OODA Loop theory applied to being a ‘nicer’ person; but the same can apply to leadership. Act like the leader that you would like to have leading you, and in time, you’ll become the kind of leader that others want leading them.
You can try something new and, after action, observe the results – how it feels to us, how others around us react – and only later reflect on what our experience taught us.
In other words, we “act like a leader” and then “think like a leader”.

Looking past the viral-oriented nature of this video, the main concept presented is critical for leadership. Thoughts, when attached to emotions other than sadness, generally have higher “infection” rates.

Thus, it is important to generate more emotion (hopefully positive and not anger-inducing) around messages that you want your direct reports to remember or share. It seems idea is lost at times in the data-driven world of today, where it’s more important to get across the numbers and metrics than it is to tell a story.
So communicate with feeling and generate positive emotions in your direct reports. Make the topic relevant to them. They will be more receptive to your messages and will remember them better. Let’s infect the world with the good germs to promote healthy thoughts.

Just don’t anger them… or you may end up on the wrong side of a thought germ!

pent behind fancy knot

Who could rejoice with thee now?

 
Pent beneath fancy knot

 
Still pent beneath fancy knot
 
by J. Diamond Arnold
Jason Diamond Arnold is a Leadership Consultant and Learning Media Producer at The Ken Blanchard Companies. He is Coauthor of Situational Self Leadership in Action a real time, real work, leaning experience that develops effective communication and collaboration skills for individuals in the workplace. He is Co Producer and Director of Stepping Up to Leadership with Scott Blanchard, at lynda.com.
 
 

With this knowledge of the power of thought, you can become a better leader and, as well, motivate your employees to become better workers. Imagine successfully navigating through a difficult conversation. Imagine making your employees feel cared for. Imagine implementing positive change. The more you imagine, the more successful you can be when it comes time to act.

The same holds true for your employees. Let them know that visualizing success can have a huge impact on actual success. Share this video with them. Encourage them to use imagination as a tool for practicing on a new task when hands-on time is limited.

About the author: Hart is an HR Data Analyst at The Ken Blanchard Companies, finishing his Ph.D. in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at hart.lee@kenblanchard.com.

The goal was “get the delicious cake” and you had to draw your solution. No other rules were given.

One response showed the figure crawling through the spikes, while others used elements from pop culture to get the cake. For instance, Harry Potter magic spells, Star Wars lightsabers, and Super Mario warp pipes were all presented as solutions to this challenge. The following are a few of the more original and creative ways people attained the cake:

Use the door!

When you want to get rid of something in an image, the eraser tool is handy

Thinking outside of the box

The lesson I took from this was that people can get very creative when presented with a problem and given the freedom to devise a solution.

As a leader, you may have goals you need to accomplish, but it is left up to you to determine how to accomplish those goals. With a little time and ingenuity, you can come up with many different and often surprising ways to achieve those goals, particularly when you have the help of others.

So how would you get to the delicious cake? Type your solution in the comments, or you can use your favorite image editor or an online one and post a visual of your solution.

How quickly things change in 10 years

Technology changes so rapidly that it is incredibly difficult to keep up with the rate of change. But looking at leadership, have there been as many revolutionary changes in the last seven years as there have been in technology?

Mobile World Congress was this week in Barcelona. For those who don’t know, it’s a huge annual conference where some of the top smartphone manufacturers introduce their latest products. Though Apple was absent, Samsung announced their latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S5. Some advances from the previous version include improved battery life, updated camera, faster processor, a heart-rate monitor, and a new fingerprint scanner (a la iPhone 5s), but despite all of these, its reception has been generally lukewarm because the changes weren’t quite revolutionary.

The response to the S5

Consumers of technology these days demand constant innovation from products. Why shouldn’t your direct reports, the consumers of your leadership, demand the same? Would you be able to keep up?

Let’s get the ball rolling on change. Are you currently doing something differently from other leaders to improve your leadership skills and/or meet the needs of your direct reports? Perhaps that thing you do is actually the game-changer that will revolutionize leadership as we know it. Share it in the comments.

Image Credit: 1 | 2 | 3

Have you ever wanted to take Data Analysis for Genomics at Harvard? Well probably not, but now you can as the class starts in early 2014. If Poetry in America: Whitman is a course that more interests you, sign up now as class begins on January 15th at the edx MOOC.

Various MOOC offerings

Corporate America is now jumping at these ideas and are giving incentives for their employees to take these course and have incorporated them into their corporate training programs. In a recent survey by Future Workplace, 70% of HR and Learning professionals said they saw opportunities to integrate MOOCs into their own company’s learning program.

There are many, but here are my favorite.
https://www.coursera.org/
http://www.udacity.com/
https://www.edx.org/
If you enroll in a course, I wouldn’t run out and by a Harvard alumni sweater, but you can still get America’s highest quality education for free. Many questions are still surrounding the MOOC. Will the MOOC transform the way we look at education? Are schools and universities ready to accept these free online courses as transferable credit? What impact will MOOC’s have on the cost of education? Although many of these questions are yet to be fully realized, we know that they are growing and aren’t going away anytime soon.
Gus is a Learning and Performance Professional at the Ken Blanchard Companies and is currently finishing his PhD in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

• How painful is it to implement?  Is there a way to minimize the potential impact?
• Does it solve a problem perceived by many?  If not, is there a way to increase awareness of the issue?
• How fast does it solve the problem?  Is there a way the move up the time table?
• Does it require individuals to give up something they cherish as a trade-off?  How can you limit the trade-off?

There is a lot more to Dr. Gawande’s article about the spread of new ideas, so I highly recommend it for a fascinating read.
Leave your comments!

For goals where momentum has stalled, the two authors recommend reconnecting with the vision and purpose behind that goal and also looking at the resources and structures that have been put in place to support goal achievement.

As they explain, “In a quickly changing business environment, it’s easy to lose sight of exactly what we are doing and why it matters. Focusing on a clear vision and purpose is the first step to staying on track.”

Then take a look at the resources that have been allocated to achieve those goals.  As they explain, “We often see situations where great strategic direction is set but little is done to work out the structures and processes that need to be in place to put the plan into operation. This type of leadership resembles a classic case of “all hat, no cattle”–a big declaration about what you’re going to do and what needs to happen, but little attention to implementation, identifying resources, and making sure that people are deployed properly to create the results you’re looking for.

As you look at resources, it’s important to keep an open mind and consider where you might be allocating resources that are not getting you the results you need.  When it comes to sorting through initiatives, the Blanchards recommend taking a rose gardener’s approach.

“An everyday example of this is probably visible in your neighborhood. Next time you’re walking or driving down your street, look at roses growing in people’s yards. You’ll find that the gardeners with the most beautiful roses are the ones who most aggressively prune their bushes.

“When you prune a rose bush, you are providing the plant with a way to concentrate its resources to create the best-looking roses on the strongest branches. If a rose bush is not pruned, the result is a diluted response and less than spectacular flowers.

“It’s tough to prune, but you have to do it–and you have to do it frequently and consistently. That’s where a clear vision comes back into play. Being confident about where you are going gives you the willpower to cut back on things that aren’t helping you reach your goals. Eliminating what’s not necessary will free up additional resources and time so that goals become attainable and new opportunities can emerge.”

Don’t continue down a path that isn’t taking you where you want to go. Midyear is a great place for a midpoint correction. Evaluate where you are. Reconnect with your purpose and vision. Identify distractions and energy drainers. Break from what you are doing–before the situation demands it.

To read more about the Blanchards’ thinking on making a mid-course correction, check out their column in Fast Company, Half of 2013 is Gone, So Where are You Headed? 4 Steps to Get You in the Right Direction

One time my wife asked me if I had tried one of the new purple beans with the green flecks. I couldn’t have tried them; I never really saw them. But how does this happen?

There is a switch in our brains called the Reticular Activating System. A tangle of neurons and fiber in the spinal cord, the brain stem, and the mid-brain, it helps us reduce all incoming data down to a few chunks of information. We don’t feel it happening, but all day the RAS is making subconscious choices. Should we focus on this or on that? And we have a lot of decisions to make. In one second, we experience over 100 million bits of data. They are constantly coming in through our senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling.

As you are viewing this blog, other things are also within your range: the wall, outside noise, the odor of fresh coffee, the light level, an itch, etc., and perhaps a fire in the room. You can’t possibly make go/no-go decisions on all of these distractions. Filtering incoming information is a big part of why the human species has survived. Our forebears stopped etching pictures on the cave wall if they heard or felt the presence of a tiger. They didn’t go through a logical search for a solution. They moved. And if your RAS senses a fire in the room, you move too.

The good news is that you can help “set” the RAS: your own and others’. If you are consciously considering the purchase of a Corvette, you will automatically notice them on the highway. You actually see other cars, but you won’t remember them, just as I saw the purple jelly beans with the green flecks, but didn’t recall them. If you’re in a store looking for a certain color of clothing, you filter out the other colors and immediately connect with only one. Hundreds of choices, but few of them get much consideration.

The challenge is that we do the same thing at meetings. When people are talking about something that captures my attention, I can stay focused on that subject matter for quite a while. On the other hand, other agenda items may not make it into my conscious thinking at all. Have you ever “zoned out” for a while and realized that the last five minutes were a total mystery to you? So the trick is to decide what your RAS should select.

Here are ways to help the Reticular Activating System enhance your capacity to lead and be led:

• Balance thoughts and emotions. “I don’t like the current strategy, but other people apparently do. Even though I am skeptical, I will actively listen for the benefits of going the other way.”

• Be there. “When I let myself be distracted, I miss out on important issues.” Daydreaming effectively shuts down your RAS.

• Take action. “Let’s put a stake in the ground.” The RAS takes notice of tangible data. It is more convinced by early wins than by opinions. Franklin Roosevelt used to say that we can’t do everything, but we can do something.

• Reinforce incoming data. “This matches up with other information I have.” Our brains can only hold about seven chunks of information, and for less than a minute. Memories are volatile. We have to repeat and connect in order to retain.

The Reticular Activation System is real. Take advantage of it to help yourself and others move forward.

About the author

Dr. Dick Ruhe is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read his posts here on LeaderChat the fourth Saturday of each month.

So, of course, they decided to sleep in and didn’t do any physical training for the day.
And of course my team was upset that they didn’t get to sleep in and come to work at 9:30. The last thing I wanted to create was resentment across the two teams. I thought that maybe a “team building” exercise was in order, but I didn’t carry it out because I felt I would probably screw that up too.  I was upset about the whole situation, but mainly I was irritated at myself.
After looking back on the incident, here’s what I learned:

• I never really gave him full autonomy

Here’s what I really said: You can have full autonomy unless you do something I don’t want you to do or something that I disagree with you on. What I told him he could do and what I wanted him to do were two separate things.

• I shouldn’t have given him full autonomy

Giving full autonomy over everything is not really leadership at all. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving him autonomy, but what I should have done in that situation was to give him more direction as to what is expected and necessary. Autonomy has its place and limitations; using it correctly is when it’s the most impactful.

• My communication was not aligned with my expectations

I was never clear on my expectations. What was standard and status quo for me was not necessarily the same for him. Talking through each other’s expectations would have been helpful for minimizing conflict and building trust.
For any further information or questions contact me at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

 “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” —William Shakespeare

When recently opening a package of Green Tea, the quote, “It’s not a privilege to know others. Know yourself. That’s a privilege,” was attached to the string. Perhaps the tea manufacture was having a caffeinated paraphrasing of a Lao Tzu philosophy to push the notion that you’ll some how be more enlightened when you drink this potion.

Self Reflection?

Recently, I decided to try some new ways to be more productive and less stressed:

1. Spa water – in a scientific study, those who were fully-hydrated had improved mood and were less sleepy. So, I decided to try drinking spa water (sometimes called “infused water”) and I’m hooked. You get your water in for the day and it’s flavored without all the calories and chemicals. Refill as needed and enjoy. Here is a wikihow on how to make spa water:

How to make spa water

2. Concentration Music – it is said that listening to baroque classical music has been scientifically shown to improve mood, productivity, and concentration. So, I decided to give it a whirl and wouldn’t you know, it works! I get more work done faster and more precisely while being relaxed the entire time. Gotta love classical music! Here is a sample for your listening pleasure:

3. A Timer – scientific studies also show we have a limited attention span for tasks. This time has varied in studies anywhere from 10 minutes to up to 40 minutes. So, I set a timer and only worked on a task for a specified period and then took a break. I also used a timer to go back and forth between tasks. This has worked wonders for getting many more things done in a day than I could have imagined. A link to a fabulous, easy-to-set online timer:
Online Timer
These tips for containing the crazy work well for my own personal work style and help me to be a more calm, productive, and focused leader.
Share with us your tips to contain the crazy, increase productivity, and reduce stress. No matter how unique they may be, please share! What works for you?

Ok, so we like to watch a little TV and play video games, so what’s the big deal? We live life on the edge (of reality) and love to surf (the web) and socialize (on Facebook) all day. We are the doers. We seek not war, but peace. We love reality television and hang on every word they say (even the illiterate ones). We are not better than any of you, but we are special. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are just extensions of our inner self. We love rap music, iPhones, and Dancing with the Stars (my wife made me put that in here). We are not all about ourselves; everyone is just all about us.
This is our motto.
Tom Brokaw accurately named the World War II generation as the Greatest Generation. After reading the book, watching the Band of Brothers series, and hearing the stories from WWII vets themselves, I can’t deny this. These men and women were some of the purist of Americans—hard-working, dedicated, and loyal to their values. I remember visiting Normandy about 10 years ago and seeing the crosses of the buried soldiers neatly displayed—such a beautiful display of sadness and pain. In my own experience as a captain in the Army and a combat veteran serving in Afghanistan, I hardly saw any sense of entitlement among the troops. There were men and women who were generally unhappy to be there (I admit even sometimes I wondered why we were there),  and hated everything about the war, but they still wanted to fight. There was a sense of pride about them and they fought long and hard. While in Afghanistan, I had a West Point Captain tell me about his 18-month deployment. He said the length of the deployment really hit him hard at the first Thanksgiving dinner. They were just about to start eating when one of his soldiers said, “Hey sir, don’t worry about saying grace. I’ll do it this year and you can say grace next year.”
I don’t claim we are the Greatest Generation but I do think Gen Y has contributed significantly more than just TV and video games. We are a young generation, but like many others we adapt, overcome, and move on. I never liked the label, “entitlement generation” because frankly I don’t think we deserve it. I hope this generation can rid ourselves of this brand and demonstrate the core American qualities that have been delivered to us from previous generations.
For any further information or questions contact me at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

• 52% believe their workplace environment helps them innovate.
• 26% believe their organization’s leadership encourages innovation and idea sharing regardless of organizational hierarchy.

That’s a huge gap in the number of Millennials who feel innovation is critical, yet who also feel their leadership teams aren’t fostering cultures of innovation.
Where does your company leadership stand on innovation?  Do you believe that innovation comes only from the top?  Should new ideas be shared and implemented based on seniority, or do employees on the frontlines have opportunities to innovate?
A lot of this deals with change.   Well-established companies may be struggling with an old way of thinking that leadership is where all of the good ideas are generated.  53% of respondents perceived that newer businesses were better able to innovate compared to older businesses.
In reality, innovation should come from all levels.  Innovation shouldn’t be thought of as flowing in a pyramid starting at the top.  Instead, think of innovation spreading across a level playing field in an organization.
Frontline employees who work directly with customers are often the ones who see areas for change.  They can spot problems with processes and even products and services.  They’re the ones who hear the most feedback from customers.    That makes them a great source of new ideas.
How do you know if your employees feel they can innovate?  Can they come to you and/or other company leadership and bring up new ideas for products, processes, and solutions?  Do you have any established process for those ideas to be shared?  Are you open to listening to those ideas, or are they quickly dismissed regardless of how innovative they may be?
There are various other studies/surveys that have shown Millennials are less “loyal” in staying with a single employer.  In other words, if they aren’t getting what they perceive is essential to their work environment, they are more likely to find employment elsewhere compared to the other generations.
In seeing how important Millennials feel innovation is, this could also lead to a possible conclusion that businesses who don’t foster a culture of innovation will have a hard time retaining talent from this generation.
There are some other key data points in the Millennial Innovation survey:

• 66% of respondents agreed that innovative organizations will be better positioned to attract talent.
• Innovation was considered a top reason for the purpose of business.
• Employee satisfaction and retention was ranked as the #1 non-financial  measurement for business success (the interesting part about this is that this category could be further broken down by the Employee Work Passion survey published by The Ken Blanchard Companies on what factors affect employee satisfaction).

No matter where you are in your organization’s hierarchy, what are you doing to foster innovation?
Leave your comments!

As a leader, how do you judge which learning modality will lead to the most effective, quality learning experience? How do you appeal to learners on your teams at differing levels of technological savviness without discouraging their development? Or, worse, avoid humiliating anyone who is not as technologically savvy while simultaneously avoid disengaging your digital learners? Preventing yet more training materials being set up on a shelf never to be used again is key!

Steps you can take to lead your team to effectively use technology to learn include:

1. Understanding how your team learns – Become intimately familiar with how your team learns. Do you offer a learning product on a flash drive only to find you run out before you can order more or are you scheduling face-to-face classes on their behalf with little resistance? Are your most productive employees viewing recording links from live stream workshops because they want to learn in their own time in the comfort of their office? How your employees learn will help you intuit in what form content should be delivered to increase learning. Don’t discount your own observations regarding what your employees seem to gravitate toward.
2. Determine their favored modalities – Fit how the content is offered to the learner by offering it in various forms such as audio, video, face-to-face, and asynchronous. Have a workshop that you know learners on your team will love but know it’s in a format they won’t be interested in learning from? Encourage your employees to determine if they would be interested in learning the same content in a different modality. If the content is off the shelf, inquire as to whether it is offered as mp3, asynchronous, and face-to-face format. Purchase and offer multiple forms and see which format your team seems to prefer. Learn from your purchases and take note of what your employees want more of and most often request.
3. Then…limit options – mp3 audio books, asynchronous learning groups, virtual book clubs , CDs, DVDs, hard-copy libraries, face-to-face workshops…the list goes on as to how employees learn and you could potentially intimidate and confuse learners by creating modality overload. Most important after determining how your team learns is to introduce new technology and options slowly by choosing their favored modality. Then, let them get comfortable with change by limiting the options offered to those two or three favorite modalities the team gravitates toward. Don’t get caught up with the new, shinny technology if you know your employees will most likely not be interested in learning in that particular format. Perhaps you have determined your team enjoys reading hard-copy books, listening to CDs, and asynchronous learning. Invest in these three modalities by allowing your employees to show you this is how they most feel comfortable learning. If the content is then offered as a webinar with live chat, don’t spring it on the team. Wait to allow them to lead you in their own learning.
Understanding how your employees learn will help increase the benefits derived from learning in modalities that best fit the learner and resultantly most benefit the organization.
***

Cheryl DePonte is a Human Resources Learning and Performance Specialist at The Ken Blanchard Companies and has over 15 years experience in the fields of organizational effectiveness and human resources development.

In a special presentation on Motivation as a skill: Strategies for managers and employees, Facer will be sharing some of the research underlying Blanchard’s new Optimal Motivation program and workshops.  Participants will explore real-world examples and learn pragmatic strategies that can help managers and individual employees make progress in important areas such as engagement, innovation, and employee well-being. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,000 people expected to participate.

Immediately after the webinar, David will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes.  To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

• Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
• Type in your question
• Push SUBMIT COMMENT

It’s as easy as that!  David will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received.  Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Click here for more information on participating.

Harvard Yard Autumn

Enter Wisdom

Enter to Grow in Wisdom  

As I roamed the colorful yard, painted by the tip of Autumn’s brush, gazing upon the buildings surrounding this beautiful centerpiece, I contemplated this place as the temporal home to some of the most influential leaders and thinkers since the enlightenment.  Great men and women who had entered the hallowed halls of her academia—a host of United States and International Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Dignitaries, Lawyers, Authors, Poets, and Business Leaders. (It was also here that FaceBook was conceived to the delight of us contemporary learners).
As I stood at the statue of John Harvard, reaching for my iPhone to make a status update, gather some information about Mr. Harvard and the history of the university, a funny thought struck me. I pondered what he might think of the device that I, and the many people standing around me in Harvard Yard at that moment, held in our hands. Like an ephinay that Emerson or Eliot might have had in this very yard, I sensed the merging of classic learning with contemporary learning.

John Harvard

Depart to Serve

Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind. 

 And so it remains, at this cross roads of the classic and the contemporary, it requires action to advance learning into posterity. Higher learning is not about ascending up a mythological mount, it is about going out and into the world to apply what we have learned at our own personal Harvard Yard. We do not remember all of the great people who attended Harvard for entering into a campus or buildings; but rather, we remember them for what they were able to achieve after they passed back through the eye of the needle and into the world, apply what they learned in the buildings surrounding Harvard Yard.
Today, we have that same opportunity, without the need to depart; because we are already there. The wisdom is within us, and it is all about us, and we are always ready to serve thy kind.
Jason Diamond Arnold is a Learning Media Consulting Associate at The Ken Blanchard Companies in San Diego, CA, and is the Co-author of Situational Self Leadership in Action, a virtual learning programmed designed to help individuals develop personal strengths while collaborating with others for success.

Innovation also requires collaboration.  Very few ideas can be successfully implemented without the cooperation and buy-in of others.  Unfortunately, innovators often struggle in this area–especially if they fall in love with their idea and become defensive about feedback.

In an upcoming Leadership Livecast on Un-Leaderlike Moments I share a story about the way this sneaks up on unsuspecting innovators.  See if this has ever happened to you.

The birth of an idea

You come up with an idea—it’s one of your best ideas—and you can’t wait to share it with the other people on your team. So you do. And you know what? They’re just as excited about it as you are. You decide to go in together and make this idea a reality.

But soon after, something you didn’t plan on starts to occur. Your teammates like your original concept, but they have some thoughts for making it better.  They begin to share their thinking and give you some feedback.  How do you react?

Dealing with feedback–two typical paths

If you are an experienced innovator, you take some time to really listen to what your team is sharing with you.  You explore what they are saying, you ask for details, and you draw out the essence of their ideas.  You realize that no matter how good your original idea may be, it’s always smart to treat feedback as a gift and to listen closely with the intention of being influenced.

If you are a relatively new innovator—and you are really attached to your idea—you may see feedback from your team in a completely different light.  Ego can often get in the way and now you become defensive when others suggest changes.  You dismiss their feedback as uninformed, uninspired, or just plain limiting. Instead of listening with the intent of being influenced, you listen just long enough to respond and remind everyone why the team should stay on course with your original concept.  You become so focused on leading change that you don’t notice the energy, enthusiasm and participation of team members falling off as you march to the finish line.

It’s not until you get there and turn around for a group high-five that you see their weary exasperation with your leadership style.  They congratulate you on your project.

A better way

Don’t let that happen to your next idea. Here are three ways to innovate and collaborate more effectively:

• Create space for other people to contribute. Take advantage of everything that people bring to a team.  Utilize their head and heart as well as their hands.
• Listen to feedback.  Explore and acknowledge what people are suggesting.  Listen in a special way—with the intent of being influenced.
• Recognize that no matter how good your idea is, it can always be made better through the input of others. As Ken Blanchard likes to say, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

True innovation requires passion and collaboration.  Create some space for others. It will make your ideas stronger, give you a better chance for success, and create needed buy-in along the way.

****

PS: You can learn more about the 40 different thought leaders presenting in the October 10 Un-Leaderlike Moments Livecast here.  It’s a free online event hosted by Ken Blanchard.

Learn more.

****

—Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own, U2

Nike’s Find Your Greatness Campaign

Release Your Greatness

Some organizations see mistakes as opportunities to learn.  These are the organizations that create innovative environments where people grow, develop, and improve.

Other organizations respond to mistakes by finding fault and assigning blame. As the Blanchard’s explain, “It’s a negative approach that assumes neglect or malfeasance that requires punishment. This type of attitude produces a risk-averse organization where people play it safe instead of stepping out and trying new ideas.

“Now your organization takes on a culture similar to the classic arcade game, Whac-A-Mole, where most employees keep their head down except for the unsuspecting novice who pops his head up only to have the oversized mallet pound him or her back down if their initiative fails. Once an organization develops that type of culture, it is very difficult for innovation to take hold.”

What type of culture do you have?

For organizations looking to improve, the Blanchard’s recommend a three-step process:

1. Examine your current attitude toward mistakes. As a company, what’s your typical reaction to mistakes and failures? Are they seen as an opportunity to learn or to assign blame?

2. Consider your impact as a leader. What you are personally doing to encourage people to take risks and try something truly innovative? Keeping new ideas alive is hard work. Are you recognizing the efforts of people who take risks in spite of the threat of failure?

3. Find ways to engage in positive practices as a discipline. It’s so easy for things to turn negative—both internally, inside your own head—and externally as a corporate culture. As a leader, it’s important to shift from a backwards looking attitude of fault and blame to a more forward-focused approach of identifying cause and responsibility.

Give your people the benefit of the doubt.  Assume the best intentions.  Instead of assigning blame, look to assign responsibility for moving the organization forward given what was just learned. Leaders who take this more constructive approach can begin eliminating the fear and negative inertia that plagues many organizations. With practice, you’ll see the difference you can make in the creation and adoption of new ideas.

To read the complete article, check out To Encourage Innovation, Eradicate Blame at Fast Company

Imagine going into a job interview or pitching a new project with the premise of retaining an individual’s services through the commitment to a steady dose of procrastination and indifference toward key tasks and reasonabilities. It’s an absurd notion. That organization would be foolish to hire for such a promise. It would be foolish for a person to settle for being average as an employee.
So then, why do organizations hire for excellence and settle for mediocrity? Why do teams within organizations get away with doing just enough to “get the job done?” Why do so many individuals settle for coming to work and being average, at best?
While modern thinkers like Jim Collins, in Good to Great, have evolved the meaning of the word “good” to mean something less than great, ancient writers, teachers, philosophers like Aristotle defined “good” as something extraordinary – exceedingly great. The classic notion of good is manifest excellence—actively pursuing behavior that excels beyond the normal, everyday basics of our mere existence—encouraging us to thrive, rather than simply survive. The pursuit of excellence has led individuals to a greater happiness in living and working throughout history.
The Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most important books in the whole history of philosophy and certainly the most influential works of Aristotle. It is a collection of his most profound thoughts and was based on an exhortation to his son to live the best possible life.
Though taught thousands of years ago, Aristotle’s thoughts on excellence—becoming exceedingly good, still serves as a call to action for those who desire and are willing to lead themselves at a higher level. Although there are many narratives that can be culled out from Aristotle’s epic work, there are a several broad narratives that have practical application in our modern workplace.
A Greater Good
For an individual to perform exceedingly “good,” they must believe that “good” is something beyond just their own need, but also the good of the community, organization, or society they live in. According to Aristotle, excellence is a mindset rather than just a set of activities. Most activities are a means to a higher end, or at least they should be, and our work is no exception.
When individuals start showing up to work just to pull a pay check or organizations get too focused on the profit margins, they loose site of why they exist—to serve a greater good. Excellent employees focus on using their skills and knowledge to serve a purpose greater than themselves and in the process meet their basic needs while achieving excellence.
Virtue, Vision, and Values
Excellence depends on living in accordance with appropriate virtues, vision, and values. A virtuous individual is naturally inspired to behave in the right ways and for the right reasons, finding happiness in behaving according to a set of higher standards of excellence—personal standards as well as the standards expected of them by their community.
The Excellent Employee performs all of their duties with clear expectations of their role and responsibilities, in alignment with the core values of the company. Aristotle is not referring to some imaginary notion of perfection, and neither should organizations expect that of employees. But striving for higher levels of behavioral excellence, creating a greater value in products and projects, should be the goal of every employee.
Know Thyself
The phrase, Know Thyself was inscribed above the entrance to the Lyceum that Aristotle attended as a young man in Athens. Most historians attribute the phrase as an admonition to those entering the sacred temple to remember or know their place before entering into the learning process. Modern philosophies and leadership theories have expanded the notion of self awareness as a means to become more in tune with one’s own personal strengths and weaknesses, beliefs and behaviors.
Excellent employees are committed to knowing themselves through a daily process of understanding the vision and values of the organization, and then aligning them with their own Key Areas of Responsibility. They are also keenly aware of their own assumptions about the organization or a project that may be holding them back. They are aware of where they are at in their own learning process, and what they need from others to successfully complete their daily tasks. Most individuals struggle to move beyond periods of disillusionment and conflict, settling for something less than exceedingly good. The Excellent Employee is equipped to understand their own needs and move through those periods of doubt and disillusionment efficiently and effectively.
Relationships
Aristotle believed that the bonds that tie citizens together are so important that it would be unthinkable to suggest that true happiness can be found in a life isolated from others. This understanding applies to the modern workplace as well. But excellent employees aren’t just good at building effective social and professional networks on Facebook and Linked In, they are dedicated to building intimate and meaningful relationships through personal one on one communication. They’re also aware of the fact that there are more ways to getting a job done by gaining the support of people in positions of power, but rather influencing peers and colleagues through other types of personal power in order to meet the needs of the greater good and do an exceedingly good work.
Action
Aristotle did not think that virtue could be taught in a classroom down at the local Lyceum or simply by means of a “good” argument, but rather by applying virtue and values to your daily actions. His claim that virtue can be learned only through constant practice implies that there are no set rules we can learn from in just a workbook or a presentation alone; rather we must find a means of transferring that knowledge into action. The Excellent Employee is committed to training in the skills sets that will help them excel beyond average. They are consumed with creating solutions and meaningful results, rather than wallowing in the challenges, setbacks, and conflicts that arise in the workplace.
Become Excellent
The Excellent Employee has a strategy to consistently align their vision and values to the organization’s vision and values, through a clear understanding of themselves and their needs. They also utilize key relationships and apply their knowledge and skills to their everyday workflow, aligning it with the greater good of their company and their clients.
Life is short. Be activly committed to living and working at a higher level, for yourself and the greater good. Aristotle would challenge today’s modern employee to become excellent by doing excellent acts.
Jason Diamond Arnold
Co-Author of Situational Self Leadership in Action

As Scott and Ken Blanchard identify in a new post for Fast Company online, “When you run an idea up the chain of command, you almost never get the permission or the resources to innovate well.

“It’s very hard for people who are invested in the current business to truly embrace disruptive new ideas.

“People at the top of the organizational pyramid are usually running the business using lagging indicators. In general, their focus is on defending present revenue streams. More often than not they are nervous about anything that might cannibalize, compete with, or distract from the company’s core business.”

It’s understandable, say the Blanchards.  In many ways, this is exactly what top executives should be concerned about. But that’s also why true innovation usually happens in the corners of the business and works its way up.

How to proceed with your next new idea

Instead of trying to sell an idea to top leadership before it’s ready, the two Blanchards suggest starting off with just enough permission to experiment.  This gives the idea a chance to develop and gain momentum. It also gives the innovation a chance to generate tangible results that can be used later in making the business case to senior leaders.

They also recommend identifying the different levels of readiness and capacity to understand change that might be present among members of an executive team.

Highlighting the work of Robert Marshak, the senior scholar in residence at American University, they share Marshak’s descriptions of four different mindsets, represented by different metaphors, which affect how people view innovation.

1. Fix and maintain
2. Build and develop
3. Transitional
4. Transformative

What is your relationship to innovation?

Finally, the Blanchards remind readers that an “organization is only as innovative as the people who work within it—which brings up a good question.  What is your organization’s mindset when it comes to innovation? 

To read the complete post, see The Number One Killer of Corporate Innovation.

PS: Scott and Ken Blanchard will be featured speakers—along with best-selling author Jackie Freiberg and innovation expert Jim Carroll, at this year’s 2012 Blanchard Summit.  This year’s theme is Fast Forward: Lead, Innovate and Cultivate.  Use this link to learn more about this event (and request an invitation).

—If by Rudyard Kipling
Work is hard! If it’s not, you’re probably not working hard enough. Every good employee who pushes to higher levels of success goes through major challenges in the pursuit of worthwhile work. There are dreams and shattered dreams, hopes and hopes deferred, projects launched and projects crashed. The one easy certainty in today’s workplace is that nothing is certainly easy.

Lead Up

But most leaders don’t know how to create that environment, explains Bob Glaser, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. “Many leaders would prefer to deal with what they know instead of taking a risk with what they don’t know. As a result, leaders don’t think outside the box to look at other options. They know things are not where they need to be, but they are not able or willing to deal with it, or move in a new direction.”

The result is sub-optimized performance, says Glaser. “If you don’t have engaged employees, then they are not really going to take care of customers….they just do what they need to do, day to day, and not much more.”

“It’s normal behavior during economic downturns,” shares Glaser. “But it causes people to focus more on protecting their turf as opposed to looking for innovative new ways to contribute to the organization. It’s a self-serving, ‘circle the wagons’ type of attitude that is counterproductive to the organization.”

Breaking the cycle

While you may not be able to influence the organization as a whole at first, most managers have a sphere of influence where they can make decisions and where they can impact results and outcomes. Inside of this team, group, or department, managers can change the environment that will allow employees to be more engaged. For leaders up to that challenge, Glaser recommends a three-step approach.

1. Create a micro-vision. Leaders need to have a vision of what they want their team, their department, or their group to look like when they are performing at a high level of excellence. Focus on both results and the behaviors that will drive the results.

2. Get everyone involved. Next, involve people in shaping that vision for the department, group, or team. When it’s done right, it’s not just the leader’s vision, but it is the collective vision of where the group wants to go. Work together to create solutions where everyone feels that they can contribute, that they can make a difference, and that they are owners of at least that part of the organization.

3. Reward and recognize desired behaviors. Everyone is operating under a huge scarcity mentality. That takes its toll. People are stressed, working hard, and they’re trying to do the right thing, but their efforts just seem to maintain the status quo. Without explicit rewards and recognition to move in a new direction, it’s not going to happen. Be sure that you explicitly define expected behaviors and then measure alignment with the expectations.

Are your people growing—or just trying to survive and get by?

Ready to start growing again?  Begin by putting fear on the back burner and focus instead on moving in a positive direction encourages Glaser.  “Rally people around an organizational vision and show them how they contribute to the vital work the company is involved in.

“When everyone understands how they contribute and how their work makes the organization better, when leaders can put their own self-interest aside and focus on the needs of others, it can have great impact on morale, engagement, and results.”

You can read more of Glaser’s thoughts in this month’s main article of The Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter.  Also check out a free webinar that Glaser is conducting on May 23, Leading from Any Chair in the Organization, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies

Mud Time

Circles of Work and Play

–Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time

About the Author: Jason Diamond Arnold is a Consulting Associate with The Ken Blanchard Companies, and Co-Author of Situational Self Leaderhip in Action

Dilbert by Scott Adams

• It significantly reduces costs. Gas is expensive. A plane ticket is, in most cases, even more expensive. And, don’t forget about travel expenses (especially if you have 5 star tastes). This, of course, doesn’t include the high cost of day rates you’d either be on the receiving end of as a client or, on the billing end as a service provider.
• It significantly saves time. Time is money so, by extension, travel time is very expensive. Does it really make sense to meet in person when that four hour meeting ultimately costs you three full days after you factor in the travel time?
• It allows you to build and develop relationships. Generally speaking, healthy, positive, productive relationships require a certain amount of face time. When you can’t physically be in the same room, this is how you can get it (with frequency and regularity).
• It forces you to be present. When you’re on the phone only, it’s easy to tune out or multi-task. When you’re on video, you’re engaged…you’re conscious of your body language and emotions because you’re observing the same from others.
• It forces you to improve your personal hygiene. If you’re working from home and know you have a video conference, you’re forced to get out of bed, get dressed, do your hair, and, well, look professional.
• What used to only be possible in sci-fi cartoons is now a reality for YOU. And you gotta admit, that’s pretty cool.

Follow me on Twitter: @adammorris21 | Add me to your Circles on Google+: gplus.to/AdamMorris21

The lingering economic slowdown has created a real motivational problem for today’s leaders.  A shortage of resources has limited the ability of organizations to provide raises, promotions, and other perks. It’s been just as bad for employees as the widespread scope of the problem has left them with few alternatives beyond their present organization.

The result has been a perfect storm where millions of workers have resigned themselves to their jobs and effectively “quit and stayed.”  These workers show up and do their job at a basic level, but they are sullen and unmotivated in a quiet way that is hard to get at. 

It’s not so much what these workers do, as much as it is what they don’t do.

Here are the five intentions that passionate employees embrace.  Wondering if your people have “quit and stayed?”  Ask yourself to what degree your people:

1. Actively endorse the organization as a good place to work?
2. Go above and beyond the basic requirements of the job in terms of performance?
3. Think beyond themselves and strive for win/win solutions?
4. Go the extra mile when it is necessary to get the job done?
5. Intend to stay with the organization long term?

If you can’t answer YES confidently to these five questions, here are a couple of additional questions to ask yourself to get at the cause of the problem. A lack of passion is usually caused by negative perceptions at a job, organizational, or relationship level.  Probe a little bit in each of these areas and you will likely find the problem area. 

• Job Factors: Do your employees see the importance of their work?  Are people empowered to make decisions about their work and tasks? Are workloads reasonably proportioned for the time people have to accomplish them?
• Organizational Factors: Does the organization still seem committed to growth? Have clear goals been set? Are decisions about resources being made fairly?
• Relationship Factors: Do people feel connected? Do employees have a supportive professional relationship with their leader? Are leaders checking in and providing feedback regarding employee performance?

No one wants to be the type of person who quits and stays, but sometimes people fall into that trap.  Help people up.  Open up a dialogue around these issues.  Just taking the time and asking how things are going in each of these areas will show people that you’re noticing, that you’re willing to help, and that you care.

PS: Do you have a “quit and stay” solution to share?

On January 25, The Ken Blanchard Companies will be hosting a Leadership Livecast on the problem of Quitting and Staying.  Have you successfully addressed quitting and staying in your organization? Can you share it in five minutes or less?  Videotape yourself and send it to us.  You could be a featured speaker!  Click here for details.

See if any of these bad habits are present in your organization:

1. Mimicking best practices instead of underlying values.  Organizations looking to learn from best-in-class companies often move immediately to copy the best practices of a leading company instead of taking a moment to understand the concept behind the practice.  Don’t substitute copying for thinking.  It’s not the foosball table that makes it a great place to work—it’s the corporate value that makes buying a foosball table a good idea that is the real best practice.
2. Staying conceptual instead of getting practical.  Theories and models have their place for understanding and organizing content, but they are no substitute for working on real business issues.  It isn’t until people put concepts into practice, with real consequences, that learning takes place. 
3. Planning and deciding instead of doing.  A slightly more sophisticated version of staying conceptual that only seems more action-oriented.  Remember the question, “If five frogs are sitting on a log, and one decides to jump, how many frogs are left on the log?”  (The answer is five until the frog actually jumps.)  Never mistake planning and decision-making with doing.  They are two different activities.
4. Punishing failure instead of encouraging initiative.  When people stretch and take action, it often ends up in failure—even under the best of circumstances.  How does your company react to failure?  Is it seen as a chance to learn and adjust, or is it time to punish and reprimand?  If you want your organization to have a bias for action, people need to have the freedom to fail occasionally.
5. Setting a poor example at the top.  People know to watch for actions instead of announcements when it comes to trying to figure out where senior leadership really stands on an issue.  Don’t announce an open-door policy: simply leave your door open.  Demonstrate desired behaviors through your own actions.  Nothing speaks louder.
6. Creating a competitive internal environment.  People need and want to collaborate but organizations often set up structures, policies, and incentives that create internal competition.  Encourage teamwork by designing policies that promote collaboration instead of competition.
7. Poor measurement and tracking.  What gets measured is what gets managed.  Be picky in deciding which key metrics to focus on.  Some organizations measure everything, or leave it to individual departments to decide what is measured.  This can lead to “siloed” thinking and a focus on departmental goals instead of the big picture.  Think overall and organization-wide when it comes to measurement.

Develop an attitude of action.  Understanding, planning, and deciding are just the first step.  Doing is what counts.  Take action today!

• Change the organizational mindset. In many companies people have been hunkered down and focused on the short term for almost two years. The emphasis has been on cutting costs, holding down expenses, and weathering the storm.  Now that the worst is over, how do you let people know that it’s okay to lift your head, look around a little bit, and cautiously make new plans for the future?  One thing that leaders can do is share a vision for the road ahead, indicate that growth is a goal again, and let people know that they can try new things that have some risk involved. You want people to start thinking about stepping out again, but they have to feel safe in order to make that leap.
• Give people behavioral examples. What does “try new things that have some risk involved” really mean? The best organizations define the values, attitudes, and practices they desire in clear behavioral terms. People have gotten pretty clear about what they shouldn’t be doing over the past 18 months; make sure they are just as clear about what they should be doing now. The more specific and granular the examples are the better.
• Stay open to change. Constant adaptation is a key for thriving in the new business reality. Pay attention to customers’ expectations and competitors’ innovations. Especially after an extended time of downsizing it’s important for organizations to embrace new ways of thinking to breathe new life into old practices and generate innovative new ideas.
• Involve everyone. Smart leaders look for good ideas everywhere. This means checking in with people who are informal leaders in the organization as well as the people who are in formal positions. By listening to everyone—including people with divergent points of view, you increase the odds that the organization will be more responsive, adaptive, and successful in the face of change.

 By sharing power and expanding influence, leaders can create an organization with a strong overall capacity to change and succeed. The new business reality demands that organizations find new ways to address old problems. To learn more ways to increase your organization’s ability to succeed, be sure to check out the complete white paper, Thriving in the New Business Reality from the Blanchard website.

What gets in the way of managers making the shift from knowing to doing?  In their book Know Can Do! authors Ken Blanchard, Dick Ruhe, and the late Paul Meyer, identify three big reasons why people don’t put more of their good ideas into practice. See if any of these rings true for you.

• Too much knowledge
• Too much negativity
• Bad habits

To overcome these roadblocks, the authors recommend three strategies—a “less is more” approach, positive—instead of negative filtering, and spaced repetition with active coaching.

• Less is More. Before you can take a step, you have to decide on a direction.  Don’t become paralyzed wondering if there might be a slightly better idea out there.  The key is to move from analysis to action.  Which diet works best for you?  The one you stick to!
• Avoid Negative Filtering. While it is important to evaluate an idea from different perspectives, make sure that you are not letting a “why that won’t work” mentality keep you from moving forward.  What’s easier for you?  Seeing the reasons why something will work, or the reasons why something won’t work?  If you tend to see the negative first, practice seeing the positive side as well.  It will help you get started with taking action.
• Repetition, Repetition, Repetition. There is no substitute for just doing it.  Take action—evaluate the outcome—adjust accordingly—repeat.  You’ll be surprised how much you will accomplish once you set yourself in motion. 

At its core, behavior change is a personal process. Any real change has to start by addressing the beliefs, limitations, and thought processes going on inside of a person.

Today, the gap between knowing and doing is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.  Close that gap in yourself and your organization by identifying and resolving the three challenges.  Make the shift from knowing to doing.

Q. What is your top business or management challenge as you look forward into the year ahead?

A. For us, the top challenge is managing a couple of questions that all center on innovation in a global world. Specifically—

• How can you influence innovation?
• Who has the technical competencies within the organization?
• Who owns the process?
• And finally, who knows the most about the consumer?

What we are finding–probably not surprisingly–is that different people have different parts of the puzzle—some have the competencies, others own the process, and still others are the ones who know the consumer best. Yet, when we are trying to push innovation globally, that creates some challenges that we are keeping our eye on.

For example, one of our goals is to create innovative and authentic Italian pasta products. Here in the US, our local marketing research and development group knows the US consumer best. Yet our people in Italy are the ones who have the competencies about what true authentic Italian is. The question then is who should own that innovation pipeline?

Q. What are some of the potential challenges associated with this?

A. The challenges on the business side are primarily the complexity of the manufacturing environment and the capacity and the technology needed to implement whatever the innovation is.

We have an innovation business team here for our local geography, but we are also playing on a bigger team in terms of global innovation. While we don’t necessarily need, or want, to be first to market, when we do lead we want to lead well, but that means coordinating locally and globally.

Another challenge from an HR or OD perspective is being able to know the business well enough as an HR OD person that you are invited to the strategic discussion. It doesn’t matter if you have HR-speak, what senior leadership wants to know is if you have business speak. The reality is that you have to be a business leader first, and an HR leader second.

Senior leadership is interested in how a new strategic direction is going to impact people, but they don’t really ask it from an HR perspective. Instead they ask, “What are the risks of us being able to execute this in our business from the people side?” As an HR professional, you need to be in on that conversation early. But if you don’t have the necessary business acumen, then you are not going to be at the table, or be able to chime in or ask the question.

Q. Any advice you might give to peers if they want to get a head start on this challenge in their organization?

A. For me, personally, I’d recommend volunteering to facilitate strategic planning meetings. I’ve found it helps me to anticipate and think about some of those risks we should consider. People always appreciate good facilitation and while you are serving as facilitator, you are also getting great insight about the direction and strategy the company is considering.

Second, I’d recommend spending more time with business people. Actually go and be with them in their work. If they are salespeople, go on sales calls, go to their meetings, be a fly on the wall.

Finally, ask people, “How are we doing?” Sincerely ask them. And I think that when you spend time with them, and sincerely ask them, they are going to be very open to giving you feedback about how you are doing on helping them solve their issues. And if they ask you to come to the table, it is a pretty good signal on how you are doing!

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear blogger:  As a writer of fables, to me the current explosion of social networking begs a fable. A fable provides a fictitious world and whimsical characters that are fun to read about, while conveying some lesson or simple truth. I want readers to say, “Thanks, I needed that. It’s something I tend to lose sight of when I’m Twittering and blogging and Facebooking.” So I am requesting your help as a participant in this online community-building world. If you would kindly take the time to respond to the following 4 questions, you will furnish me with insights and guidance. Thank you in advance. -Jim

a.  How has social networking helped you be more connected to people?
b.  Less connected?
c.  What are the biggest benefits?
d.  What are the biggest pitfalls?

Has a change initiative ever “died” in your organization?  Who would you point to as the likely suspects?  Take our poll below, and also leave a comment and let us know about the biggest killers of change you’ve experienced.

• Resting on your laurels. You see companies ignoring the numbers on their balance sheet, or in their employee turnover or customer satisfaction numbers. These companies treat bad numbers as a blip on the screen rather than as a trend over time.
• Discounting customers’ expectations and competitors’ innovations. These companies stick their head in the sand and seem bent on protecting the way that they have always done things. They are more interested in defending their decisions and their approach than they are in exploring new ideas.
• Discouraging new players and new voices within the company. A tendency to find ways to say that “the next generation doesn’t really understand the situation” or that some people with strong opinions based on experience elsewhere “haven’t been here long enough to really have a voice at the table” is a sure way to stay stagnant.

Pat’s recommendation for keeping your organization change-ready? Increase involvement and influence. To find out more about Pat’s thinking on improving your organization’s capacity to change, check out her interview in this month’s edition of Ignite—our free monthly eNewsletter.

I was reminded about that as I was staring at a blank Personal Action Card at the end of a day-long planning meeting.  Three hundred employees had just finished a four-hour strategy session to identify ways to decrease costs and increase revenues and now we were individually being asked to commit to four things:

1. What can I do to save money?
2. What can I do to support company growth?
3. What can I do to help someone in another department or workgroup?
4. What can I do to help myself?  

I was surprised at how much trouble I was having at this critical moment in the process.  Earlier in the day I had been very active with ideas on what the organization could do to cut costs and increase revenues, but now that it had gotten to a personal level, I was struggling.

Have you driven your organizational change down to the individual level?  Are people ready to change?  Have they committed to a new course of action?  It’s not really going to happen until they do.

That’s part of what I found out after finishing an interview with Chris Edmonds, a senior consulting partner here at The Ken Blanchard Companies. My interview with Chris will be featured in next week’s issue of Ignite!, our monthly e-newsletter and Chris will also be our featured presenter for an April 14 webinar on Revitalizing the Downsized Organization.   Both of these resources are free and you can find out more by clicking on the links above.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Chris speak, here are a few of the ideas that Chris will be sharing: 

• Most leaders are more comfortable managing metrics like productivity but may not be as comfortable having the type of wide-open conversations about issues that you have to have if you are going to build the passion and commitment you need to move forward in trying times.  And because leaders don’t take the time to stop and get everyone involved, you can end up making a stupid short term decision that may look really good right now, but a month from now, or six months from now, continues to have really negative impact on your business.
• You want your people to be passionate and engaged in the work that they are doing. And you are only going to get the discretionary energy of your people is when they are feeling trusted and respected as a valued partner and stakeholder in the way that the business operates.   
• It’s the secret behind organizations like Southwest Airlines where even when times are tough they don’t have folks leaving, demonstrating, or picketing.  Instead, they’ve got folks constantly meeting together about how they can help the organization get through this economy.  It is a great example of how overall employee commitment and demonstrated discretionary energy is driven by clear communication of what is happening, open involvement in trying to influence the decisions that are being made, and what can happen when people are consistently cared for as a vital asset.

Ben had spoken at our company a couple of years ago at our annual Week of Excellence all-company meeting and encouraged all of us to replace “downward spiral thinking” with “possibility thinking” instead.  Ben also cautioned us not to fall into the trap of thinking that leadership is just for those people at the top of the organization.  For an organization to truly move forward together, everyone has to be involved and feel that they play a role.

To illustrate his point, Ben told the story of an accomplished cellist who joined the Boston Philharmonic but who was disappointed when she found herself ranked as the 11th cellist among the twelve seats available.  Still, she persevered and at Ben’s urging, she volunteered an idea of how to play a certain section of a symphony the Boston Philharmonic was scheduled to perform.

The piece was performed the following week to rave reviews.  After the performance, the cellist came up to Zander excitedly and asked, “You played the piece the way I suggested, didn’t you.”  Ben nodded in agreement and saw the woman’s whole attitude change. 

“From then on,” he continued, “this cellist who sat in the 11th seat played like a completely different person.”  Instead of just being technically correct, her playing took on an added dimension that she hadn’t displayed before.  When Ben asked her about this, she explained that ever since that night when she first saw the possibility that she could influence the orchestra from her modest position in the 11th chair, she felt like she had been leading the orchestra every night since then.

But can a person sitting in the 11th chair of your organization really make a difference?  You bet.

I found this out for myself when I talked with a co-worker who said Ben Zander touched her heart and reminded her that each one of us is important to the bigger goal.

“It creates a feeling in me of my worth in the workplace,” she said. “What I like about this idea is that it makes me feel like I might have an idea that would contribute and that I have value to the company,”

It got me thinking about who needs training.  If training is just for training’s sake, the answer is probably no one.  But if it is training designed to help people be more productive on the job, serve customers better, or impact the bottom line in some way, then that’s a different story.

So who in your company needs to be more focused and productive?  Who could benefit from managers better able to prioritize work, manage expectations, and provide support?  There are probably a number of people depending on the situation your company is in.

In any of these three situations, training can help your organization immediately, and also position it for new growth in the future as the economy improves.

I can’t say that any of us were surprised when we saw the full parking lot and the line out the door when we drove by our local Denny’s at eleven-thirty thinking we would beat the lunchtime crowd. We ended up eating at another restaurant down the street—which was also packed. (A scene that was probably played out near many Denny’s restaurants yesterday—a thank you note for the spike in business is probably in order.)

Even though I didn’t get a chance to enjoy a free breakfast at Denny’s I still want to compliment the senior leadership at Denny’s for taking a proactive stance in a tough economy.  It’s great to see an organization moving forward, building enthusiasm for their brand, instead of sitting back hoping that people will still come in as usual.  It’s something we can all probably learn from.  Think about what they accomplished yesterday.

• A great goodwill gesture that generated a lot of buzz and press coverage.
• Getting folks reacquainted with the store—many people stopped by for the first time in years.
• A chance to sample the product—“This Grand Slam breakfast is good, and it’s normally $5.99 for two eggs, two pancakes, and two strips of bacon or sausage, that’s still a good deal.”

 What can you be doing to shake things up in your organization?  (You can be sure that I’m thinking about it.)  And you can bet that I am still hungry for that breakfast now that Denny’s has planted it in my mind.

It was also comforting to see that some people—marketers especially—are still working hard.  It was fun to see them adjusting their messages to fit the current economic situation.  No panic—just a necessary adjustment.  It’s probably something we can all reflect on.  What’s the approach in your organization?  Are you adjusting, moving forward, dealing effectively with the situation, or are you holding back, unsure of how to proceed.  That’s a sure recipe for failure.