Category Archives: strategy

Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success

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You remember the cliche, success breeds success? Some recent research on decision making suggests that success can, in fact, breed failure by hindering learning at the individual and organizational level. Learning from success can present major challenges.  Gino and Pisano (April 2011) outline 3 interrelated traps: 

1) Fundamental attribution error: When we succeed, we think it was because of us. When we fail, we think random or external events conspired to derail us.

2) Overconfidence bias: Success breeds self-assurance and reinforces that we are on the right track. This overconfidence bias can lead to institutional arrogance and a “Not Invented Here” mentality.

3) Failure to ask why: This challenge involves the tendency to fail to systematically investigate causes of good performance: Leaders don’t ask the tough questions that can help them learn.

It’s always good when you read an article where there is a problem and a path forward toward a solution.  In this case, Gino and Pisano suggest five tactics  leaders can use to avoid these traps:

1) Celebrate but analyze your success: When a project is successful, leaders should lead investigation on reasons behind the success with the same rigor and scrutiny applied to failures.

2) Institute systematic reviews (After Action Reviews): Reviews should ask these questions: What did we set out to do? What actually happened? Why did it happen? What are we going to do next time? What are the top 5 things we would do again and the top 5 things we would not do again. The key is to ensure the same rigor for both failed and successful projects.

3) Use the right time horizons to gauge success or failure: By understanding the correct time horizons, you can prevent yourself from being fooled by randomness.

4) Replication is not learning: Six Sigma and TQM are great for determining root causes. Add to that by reviewing factors that are under your control as well as those that are affected by external events.

5) Experiment: Experimentation is a way to test assumptions and theories on what is needed to achieve high levels of performance. The right question for leaders is not “What is going well?” but “What experiments are we running?”

5 Key Thoughts and Principles of Leadership (Part 5 of 5)

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This is the last in the series of key thoughts and principles of leadership from an interview with a CEO.  You can find the previous key thoughts and principles below:

Part 1: Know Who You Are     Part 2: Be a Listener/Listen Broadly

Part 3: Courage and Attitude   Part 4: What is your Philosophy of Leadership

5-COMMUNICATION-What do you believe in and how can you communicate that most effectively?  You say more by saying less. Be authentic and genuine. We all can learn a lot and do a better job with this.  Style never displaces substance.  you have to avoid the situation where your team says…”Pass me the hemlock please”.  You have to work on your communication skills all the time-you always can improve.  You deploy the right style with the right audience , then tailor the message-length, style, substance.

Are leaders and great communicators born or made? I get this question a lot.  I believe that lots of leadership skills that can be learned. Even if you are not wired that way-you can get over that.

Two questions you need to ask yourself:

1-Before you say anything that is emotionally charged, ask yourself “Is what I am about to say necessary?” I have to ask you…If you sit in meetings, how much commentary would not pass that test?    Ask yourself, “Will what I am about to say advance the discussion, add a new dimension that matters and is relevant and important OR is what I have to say a regurgitation of what others have said?”   If what you want to say needs to be backed up, it is necessary. But if it is argumentative for sake of disagreeing, you don’t do it. This works in families as well.

2-Is what I am about to say, kind?  I mean this in an exploratory and inquiry based way, not sugar and spice.  How you say things is more important than what you are going to say.  Will you say it in the right way and will it be constructive or destructive?  How many times have we seen a relevant point delivered in the wrong way?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secrets of Success: North Carolina GOV Jim Hunt

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This is an occasional series of lessons learned from values based leaders profiled in the book, Secrets of Success, by GEN H. Hugh Shelton.  This first set of nuggets comes from former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt.  Governor Hunt is now actively involved in  NCSU’s Emerging Issues Institute. Here are some selected nuggets:

  • During my life, I came to realize that one of the best ways to exercise leadership is to do it with partners.  This leadership by partnership requires a lot of people working together to to achieve success.  Now, good leaders have to have good ideas, a vision.  They have to understand the importance of ideas and that their own idea may need a lot more, a lot of vetting. 
  • Then I had an experience that really shaped me.  I think that all good leaders can cite something that happened in their life that really touched them, that grabbed their attention.  I used to run on my farm in Wilson County and on my route – across the interstate highway – was an old ramshackle house.  There were beer bottles covering the front yard, old worn-out cars up on blocks, and I noticed that this little child would come out the front door with a millk bottle in his hand trying to get some milk from the bottle.  He’d be sucking this empty bottle, always in a diaper and nothing else, even during the coldest winter days.  It was clear to me that there was nobody in that house taking care of that child.  So I said to myself “What chance is that child going to have?  This isn’t right!” 
  • I laid out my idea: to give these children a good start, to provide high-quality early childhood education for them, and to help their parents be successful.  Again, this was in my campaign for the governorship in 1992: there were town hall gatherings, one-on-one conversations.  The people of North Carolina answered by re-electing me overwhelmingly for a third term, and in doing so, they were saying what they wanted to do about one of the biggest problems in the state.  They didn’t just elect a governor; they made a commitment to education for young children, to Smart Start.  The key or secret to that success was this:  the leadership was a partnership with the caring people of North Carolina.

What instances have you seen where leadership through partnership was very effective?

How do experts shape culture? 6 key insights from Jon Katzenbach.

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One of the giant thinkers on organizational culture is Jon Katzenbach. I’ve set up a Google alert for any of his work on organizational culture.  Periodically, I go back and review some of his insights on organizations and organizational culture. I’ve summarized 6 insights from an article he wrote on organizational culture and change

1. The existing culture can be a powerful source of energy and influence for behavior change. Culture is rarely “all bad”.

2. If you don’t have to overhaul or replace a culture, don’t! A deeply embedded culture does not change very much, very fast. Moreover, a major culture replacement requires extensive programs and structural redesign.

3. Start with changing behaviors, not mindsets. It is much easier to “act your way into new thinking” than to “think your way into new actions.”

4. Focus on changing only the few critical behaviors at different levels within key populations. This is less disruptive than attempting wholesale change — and certainly more manageable and sustainable over time.

5. Use viral (i.e., cross-organizational) methods to motivate behavior change, not just formal top-down programmatic methods. Storytelling social media, and informal tools enable and accelerate formal change methods.

6. Mobilize both rational and emotional forces to reinforce the new behavior patterns and achieve lasting change. Both the rational and the emotional elements need to “jump together” to yield sustainable change.

To what extent do you agree with his perspectives on culture and change?

How Leaders Use Culture in their Organizations to Reinforce Areas of Emphasis

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Last week, I was talking to a local senior executive who was discussing the importance of culture in his organization. He mentioned how important it was for leaders at all levels to understand the key elements of culture when one rolls out a new initiative, reinforcing certain behaviors to accelerate momentum, and to grow one’s team.

He noted, “Nobody is going to change anything simply because you think it is a good idea.  You have to set up and find ways to embed elements of your current culture into your daily work and into the work of your team.  Find ways that your current culture supports what you are looking to do and build on your current strengths.”

How do you do that? One of the leading researchers on culture, Ed Schein, outlines some primary elements and mechanisms that leaders use culture to embed and reinforce areas of emphasis:

  • What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control regularly
  • How leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises
  • How leaders allocate scarce resources
  • Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching
  • How leaders allocate rewards and status
  • How leaders recruit, select, promote, retire, and excommunicate organizational members

Secondary reinforcement mechanisms include:

  • Organizational design, structure, systems, procedures, rites, rituals.
  • Stories, legends and myths about people and events
  • Physical space, buildings, and facades
  • Formal statements of organizational philosophy, values, and creeds
    (Source: The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, p. 98, Schein, 2009)

How have you seen leaders in organizations use culture to embed culture to reinforce areas of emphasis?