Across the nation, in organizations everywhere, there seems to be a new mantra, “Stop all action!”
Leaders and their teams are hunkering down and discontinuing all the basic actions necessary to move businesses forward – producing, implementing, innovating, spending money, traveling, hiring, training, rewarding, recognizing, and the rest - at least until we can be more sure, have more information, trust that we have enough resources. A perfect example of when “helping actually hurts” this new phenomenon is sure to make matters much worse rather than better.
Lack of movement is stagnating everything from the market to our own businesses. Cutting back doesn’t mean holding back, it means focus. Downturns don’t mean don’t move, the mean move and listen more.
Why the temptation to just stop as much as possible, hunker down, play it safe, and wait until the coast is clear?
For one, it feels safe and feeds into our wide-spread illusion that we should wait for clarity and help before we can or should act.
But survivors – those in airplane crashes or economic crashes credit their survival to the fact that they committed to surviving, made a plan in their minds and acted on that plan. Those that stayed back and waited do not generally survive.
We also mistakenly attribute our past failures to quick action, bad ideas, poor judgment and/ or inadequate plans.
When, in fact, our past failures were caused by lack of compelling vision, shaken employee confidence, placing personal motives over long-term organizational goals, and our lack of openness to the feedback from our employees, customers, and the market.
The way forward is not to stop acting and wait for things to improve, the way forward is to create a clear and compelling vision about what we what to create, create a core of believers, act in focused ways, and to enter into an iterative process of feedback and adaption.
It is easy to adopt a mindset of retreat to a smaller world and simpler times. Many organizations are reverting to past and exclusionary approaches, returning to the basics, to the easy stuff. Reality based leaders work instead to adopt a mindset that seeks to maintain the progress and innovation of recent years, the expanded footprint of the business, while conserving resources.
Here is how to resist the urge to retreat and keep your teams moving forward.
The clarity you and your team are seeking is not clarity of “What should we do?” but clarity about “What is it that we are trying to create?”
To get your team staged for success, communicate a clear and compelling vision about what is possible and call people to greatness. Our past failures were in part due to the fact that the visions we laid out were not compelling as they called for short term financial success rather than calling the people to be part of something greater than themselves, creating a better place for all. If the vision only excites those who can personally benefit from its realization, than it isn’t a vision at all – it is an emotional bribe.
Whether your team believes the vision possible or impossible, either way they will be right.
In order to survive and thrive, team members need to be believers not only in the possibility but in the real probability of success, even in challenging times. Keep the vision alive and long-term so that individuals don’t revert to using their own motives as their guiding principles. Work on the building the confidence of your team in the future and most importantly in their ability to deliver that future.
Know that clarity does not come to you through thought alone – it comes from action followed by reflection.
Many are adopting a very dangerous and faulty belief – that action should follow clarity and inspiration, when in fact it is action itself that generates inspiration and leads to further clarity. Reality-based leaders first create believers and then they insist on action – not blind, go forward no matter what, action but action.
Risks created by moving forward with a “good enough” plan rather than a “perfect” plan are mitigated by the talent on the team who are clear about what we are trying to create and are bought into the vision and are held accountable to ensure that the customers do not feel the effect of any plan imperfections. Many of the risks of the past could have been mitigated but were not due to team members who personally experienced the issues but did little to help. Move and listen, paying attention to the risks. Don’t stop movement with the risks appear, move to mitigate the risks and move again.
To even become aware of the risks that need to be mitigated by the application of talent, the leaders and their teams need to eradicate the “I know” mindset and open themselves up to the feedback coming their way on a daily basis – not about how great their plan is but feedback indicating the need for adaption, potential issues, and unwanted effects. All plans need to included a process for iteration, not abandonment of the plan but real-time improvement of the plan. All leaders need to be on high alert for learning, very different from the usual actions of collecting evidence to prove ourselves correct.
So I am calling all leaders to get moving. Be wary of those wanting to stop the action, falsely believing it to be a safe and a great survival strategy. Move forward, listening intently, believe the results when you see them, rely on the talent of team to mitigate risks and adapt your course. You will either get the results you sought or a great deal of learning – which is really just future results.
And remember,
Cy rocks and you rock!
Lead on my friend.
Economic downturns are fertile ground for soul-searching and for re-visiting the proposed ROI on all business activities. I am amazed that some HR business activities are immune from the great review. It is almost considered blasphemy to question conventional HR practices such as employee satisfaction surveys or employee relations efforts. Leaders that are questioning the true value and impact on culture of these activities are seen, at times, as demonic in the HR ranks.
And yet, I remain a firm believer in the fact that we must challenge a great deal of what we have been taught as HR “gospel.” Frustrated leaders are finding that many of the approaches that have been endorsed by many are working for few.
Most leaders have jumped blindly on the “empowerment” bandwagon, working hard to give their employees the power to direct their own workflow. Great theory, who would not want to be self-directing and free? Unfortunately, those adopting this philosophy dangerously assume that those being empowered are also highly personally accountable. When in fact, empowerment without accountability is chaos!
The same employees who insist on empowerment, also insist on having a group of employee relations specialist reserved for them in HR to enable them in their relationships with their leaders. If any issue arises, they who are empowered, need not take accountability for their own dissatisfaction and address their manager in a professional manner to engage in problem-solving but can instead, invoke the resources of HR to facilitate that process. Empowerment and accountability are must go hand in hand, when we are funding one without insisting on the other, resources are wasted and dysfunction reigns.
The chaos is heightened when leaders, seeking to empower their employees, conduct an employee satisfaction surveys, weighting all responses as equally valuable. In the survey, the employees all comment on what they would need to be even more successful in their positions. These comments are tallied and followed up by “action planning” sessions in which the manager ends up with a list of changes that they need to spearhead in order for the employees to give them the gift of their work.
The flawed assumption here is that all who are answering the surveys have the same level of personal accountability! The problem is that at least 30% of those surveyed are low in personal accountability and living life as victims. Any action on the suggestions of the victims will only prolong the entitlement mindset and will be a complete waste of time and money.
To make matters worse, leaders have blindly bought into the concept that engagement and happiness come from lack of stress or issues at work. When in fact, engagement and happiness come from the level of personal accountability one exhibits in their own life. So, instead of spending time and resources on surveys to find out how to change the circumstances of your employees, spend your precious time and energy on teaching your employees how to succeed in spite of their circumstances. Work to “bullet-proof” the people instead of attempting to make their world a cozier place. Once your people are resilient, learning agile, and personally accountable, they are immune to the random “shocks” that come their way. Their engagement actually increases with this approach as they gain the confidence that they can succeed in spite of the facts, not from you softening their world.
If you simply must spend resources on satisfaction surveys, adopt a better but radical approach! Leaders in these challenging times need to enhance their survey approach, adding in a second component that will help them to know how much credence to give the responses. I would propose that the accountability level of each respondent be assessed at the time they are surveyed about their satisfaction levels, in a manner that keeps individual responses and accountability levels anonymous. Then to restore sanity to the process, leaders can assign a weight to the responses. So, those responses which originate from those employees scoring high in accountability are weighted at a higher level and deemed more worthy of attention than those suggestions originating from the “victims”.
To the leader that wants to skip the expensive satisfaction surveys and implement this concept tomorrow – ask each of your people, “What is one thing that you need to be more productive in their work?” Then follow up by asking them “What are three things you are willing to do to get that which you have requested.” For example, if the employee answers that they would need access to information and better communication from the leaders. They need to identify three things that they can do to get that which they need such as: ask for updates on a regular basis, when in doubt make a phone call rather than judging their leaders and whining to colleagues, and document what they do know in a knowledge management system and take it viral to their co-workers. Leadership made simple and easy.
Challenge all that you have come to believe as the truth. Change the way you think. Change the way you lead.
Remember, you rock and Cy rocks.
Lead on my friend!
Cy
