Tag Archives: context

Fashion the right people from the team you have now

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We’re continuing the idea that the wrong people can become the right people within the right culture, so take a look back at my previous post for the introduction. Now I want to ideate around the how.

With passion and a bit of conviction, I started drafting this blog post, but I’ve wrestled with it for at least five years. My first question was whether these ideas could actually work. I haven’t been entirely successful with my efforts, but I have seen each of these methods work in at least one person or team I’ve led, so I’ll share from personal experience where possible. My second question was how to talk about these situations while still honoring the people I have worked with. I trust I’ve walked that wire appropriately. 

This post is a bit long, but I want to unpack some practical ways you can use to put this idea into practice.

1. Change the context, change the person

In Topgrading, Brad Smart offers a warning about recruiting a high performer from another company, because you’re extracting her from the team and context that made her successful. So doesn’t it stand to reason that some people might be viewed negatively or perform poorly because of the team, systems and environment they’re in? Change the circumstances, and you may get a very different result. Why couldn’t you build a winning team by intentionally developing a new context around some high-potential but underperforming team members? 

A number of years ago I took over a sales team like that. I could see their potential, and their frustration and discouragement. I was convinced that, with a bit of work to advocate for their concerns, introduce servant leadership, and get them supporting each other, they were capable of delivering fantastic results. I didn’t know their core business, so there was no danger of me telling them how to do their jobs. I simply changed their environment. I worked for them, and morale and teamwork improved dramatically. They had a record-setting year.

2. Trace systemic causes

As I’ve described in this blog before, I have my own experience with working in a challenging environment… and contributing to that environment. I don’t point fingers, because I became a poor follower and poor performer. But that experience didn’t prevent a senior leader from taking a risk on me. He saw enough to invite me to work for him. His example has shaped how I view staff. Ever since, I’ve kept an eye out for opportunities to pay it forward. 

Sometimes when I hear of an internal staff member whose career path is floundering after a poor annual review, I will still consider him for a transfer into an open role. There are pretty good cost reasons to retain existing staff rather than start fresh. Here’s what I look for:

  • I try to read between the lines to see potential, as this senior leader did with me. 
  • I look into the circumstances—reading subtext in the annual review or finding oblique ways to explore the candidate’s team—and try to determine what other factors might be at play. 
  • I look to see whether his resume shows examples of past success and what might have contributed to those successes.
  • I consider whether the good or bad results were in part a product of the team he was in, or the style of supervision, or his working environment. 

If the setting I can offer resembles the ones where he has thrived, can I accept the risks of it not working out? 

3. Look for aptitude and attitude

Someone who has gone through a difficult experience will obviously show grief, sadness and anger over the experience. Negative attitudes themselves are not necessarily a deal-killer, because the person may have reason for that negativity. Perhaps she has been silenced, or overlooked, or passed over, or had too many supervisor handoffs. Unless that negativity has metastasized into bitterness, she may be able to turn things around. 

The primary criterion is this: has this person owned her part in her failure and made it a learning opportunity? Indicators of ownership include a commitment to reflection, acceptance of blame and expressions of regret over personal actions. You should also look for signs of hope. In Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull suggests a couple of indicators that a person can make the shift. With one influential staff member at Disney Animation, he looked for “intellectual curiosity and a willingness to remake [her unit] in a different image,” along with an ability to think in new ways about her job (p160). It took time, but she was able to turn the corner.

With evidence of indicators like those, I occasionally take a risk on someone that others have written off.

4. Signal a change

Culture is notoriously difficult to change. But sometimes it only takes a small catalyst to make a dramatic change. It’s like the characteristics of yeast; the Apostle Paul pointed out that a little affects the whole lump of dough (1 Cor 5:6, Gal 5:9). 

I heard a recent example about an employee-owned airline, with an incredible culture, that merged with another airline. They inadvertently introduced some cynical yeast. The new employees began openly questioning the motivations of the company’s leaders, and it soon infected everyone. Loud whisperers, those who tend toward suspicion, or those who repeat every negative thought can bring the team down. 

Let me also add prima donnas who deliver results but poison the culture by failing to see their success as a team effort and demanding exceptional treatment. I once heard Dave Ramsey share how he told his best salesman, “The next time you’re late to work, bring a box.” When the puzzled man asked why, he responded, “So you can pack up your desk.”

The good news is that it doesn’t take much to send a powerful signal to the rest of the team. I’ve seen the extra spring in a staff member’s step when I released a longtime staff member from the team—someone who had been a thorn in her side, who seemed to get away with bad behavior. This reckoning signaled a change. The fact is that if you keep someone who is flaunting the rules, you’re likely to lose someone you want to keep. 

5. Plant a catalyst

If one or two wrong people can ruin a team, could it work the other way? Bring in one or two staff who exemplify the desired values to try to influence the entire team. However, it would be easy to lose new staff to the dominant culture, so this path only works if you protect them. I’ve seen this happen with young leaders, when the president backed them and provided a direct line to bring him their frustrations. Your backing should be consistent, but it may also need to be conspicuous; you may need to offer both carrots and sticks to those who would hammer down the nail that stands up.

Remember that some leaders are less visible, influencing from the back. So either a positive catalyst or a bad apple might not be the most obvious, up-front staff. It might be far more effective to drive change obliquely through a back-row leader.

And here’s a radical thought: What if you could win over your biggest existing critic? When Catmull and Lasseter went to Disney Animation, they identified a few surprising catalysts within the existing team: an HR director “steeped in the old ways of doing things” (p160), the head of a competitive division set up to leverage Pixar’s intellectual property (p160) and two people who had been let go by the previous leader (p167). All four already had influence, and when they started supporting the new direction, there was instant credibility.

How many staff would it take to create a tipping point for change? McKinsey & Company says it can take as few as seven percent of a team to drive a change. I would posit that a few of the right people can hit above their weight in moving the rest of the team.

6. Create pairings

Like a wine or coffee, where the notes are drawn out by the right food pairing, people can draw out the best or worst in each other. It’s about matching. Catmull says, “Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it.” (p 53)

Don’t think melody, but harmony. Cultivate diversity of viewpoints, because the wider the range of skills, experience, perspective, the more effective the blend can be. Then balance tensions, not letting one viewpoint win out, but highlighting and managing differences and strong opinions. 

How do you find the pairings? Watch for unexpected symbiosis between individuals, or better results when certain people work together. You can also get to know your people and learn their strengths, weaknesses and biases. Where a weakness is identified, how can someone else’s strength, or a combination of strengths, compensate? If you don’t have that strength in your team, it might provide a focus for your next catalytic and strategic hire.

Conclusion

So did it work for Ed Catmull? Shortly after he brought in his values and systems and made a few strategic staffing decisions, the Disney Animation team began an improved trajectory that led to two #1 films: ”Tangled” (2010) and “Frozen” (2013). Rather than replace the existing staff to accomplish this success, Catmull proudly says the studio ‘was still populated by most of the same people John [Lasseter] and I had encountered when we arrived'” (p170).

People are not pawns to be moved around or downgraded. Do we believe in people? Do we love people enough to try to draw out their best and have patience with them as they adjust? Do we use failure as an opportunity for learning? And when people are not performing, do we try to change their setting to give them every chance of success before assuming we should let them go?

Let’s make this a conversation. Do you agree or disagree with this line of thinking? Leaders, what has worked or not worked for you as you shift an existing team?

Concluding shrewd

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So what can we conclude in our study of shrewdness, a megacompetency that I believe is needed more than anything in these days when we are sent out as sheep among wolves?

First, a quick review:

  • Rick Lawrence has proposed a definition of shrewdness: the expert application of the right force at the right time in the right place.
  • The people of our age are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than Christ-followers are.
  • We can learn a lot from observing shrewdness in the world around us, even when done with evil intent—such as in Jacob’s family line.
  • Our practice of shrewdness must be paired with the innocence of a dove—as a number of Bible characters did.

To wrap things up, here are some specific aspects the average believer needs to grow in to deal with this current world.

1. Use situational tactics

When did niceness become the primary value for Christians? Certainly there’s a place for traits like meekness, compassion, sympathy and even naïveté, but Lawrence says those are not an across-the-board rule for the believer. By boiling Christianity down to a single trait, the world is defining us in order to sideline us. Jesus did not use the same approach to every situation, and he urged his followers toward shrewdness in dealing with our own kind and in relation to the world’s hatred of our values. Paul became all things to all people in order to win some (1 Cor 9:19-23), and urged us to wage war with appropriate weaponry (2 Cor 10:3-4). And God shows himself differently to different audiences, including appearing shrewd to the devious (Ps 18:25-26).

2. Counter our enemy’s shrewdness

Paul fully expected believers to be aware of Satan’s schemes (2 Cor 2:11). Lawrence urges, “we must beat Satan (and those in his service) at his own game by practicing a greater level of shrewdness than he does, but with none of his cruel intent or evil motivation” (Shrewd, p34).
He offers an example of Satan’s strategy from James Ryle:

Don’t expect a frontal assault from the enemy. He’s far too clever for that. He knows that you love and treasure the Word of God, and that you would not stand for any attack against it. Instead, he sabotages your time and distracts your attention. He preoccupies you with skirmishes on other battlefronts, or he lulls you into complacency with prolonged cease fire. All the while he feverishly working at cutting you off from communication and supplies. If he succeeds he will win the war!” (Shrewd, p144)

3. Practice obliquity

Oxford professor of economics, John Kay, coined a term, “obliquity,” for avoiding the frontal approach and finding ways to outflank an obstacle or opponent. As mentioned above, this is a favourite practice of Satan’s, but there are positive models we can use to spark our own ideas. Esther learned that King Xerxes could be shifted by an oblique approach rather than the direct challenge Queen Vashti made to stand up to power (Esther 1,5,7). Another great example is the prophet Nathan, who drew King David in with his story about a rich man stealing a poor man’s sheep and then sprang the trap on David (2 Samuel 12). Jesus also used story to cloak hard truth in a deceptively-palatable package.

4. Avoid dichotomy

Imposing false choices is a form of power. In response, shrewdness finds a way to navigate between the poles to find another way. In some cases, it means finding a way to avoid war by creating a third space—a space to establish safety and neutrality and have opposing parties find common ground. In other cases, it might mean discovering an alternative that doesn’t require acceptance of the assumptions behind the two stark choices readily apparent. Jesus regularly avoided the traps the Pharisees laid for him, such as when they asked where his authority came from (Matt 21:23-27) or whether they should pay taxes (Matt 22:15-22).

5. Learn discernment

My final thought is that all of this calls for discernment. How did Paul know when to adjust his strategy and approach to each audience (Acts 22-23)? Even Jesus, who had previously sent out his disciples in pairs as sheep among wolves and telling them to take only shrewdness as their weapon, in Luke 22:35-36 says now is a time for a different approach: his disciples should bring a purse, a bag and a sword. The world these days is volatile and unpredictable. It requires constant awareness of what God is doing and ongoing listening for his guidance. Above all, it requires that our weapons not be the weapons of the world (see my post on under armor).

May God guide you as you put these ideas into practice. Let me know your thoughts, and share your examples. We can all grow in these skills, and we can learn from each other!

Shrewd Series

Commending shrewdness

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These are unique times. Unprecedented, I’m sure you’ve heard. I believe the circumstances we’re facing right now call for a leadership characteristic that most Christ-followers haven’t put any thought into: shrewdness. After all, doesn’t shrewdness suggest cunning, conniving, deceitful and devious characteristics? Yes. Yet Jesus twice urged his followers to grow in shrewdness. In fact, he said we should pay attention to shrewdness in the world around us and learn from it. So we must be missing something. Let’s take a look at what Jesus was trying to tell us through these instances.

The shrewd manager

In Luke 16:1-10, Jesus tells a strange parable about a manager. This man knows he is about to lose his job for mismanagement, so he uses his last days to settle accounts with each of his master’s debtors at 50¢ or 80¢ on the dollar. It doesn’t change the immediate outcome, but as he lets the manager go, the master commends the man’s shrewdness. Sometimes you just can’t help but shake your head at some people’s sheer audacity and cleverness.

So what exactly is Jesus commending in sharing this story, if it isn’t deceit or dishonesty? The big idea is in verse 9: The people of this world, even in their sinful actions, show more shrewdness within their context than the people of light do in theirs.

That negative contrast helps us understand something Jesus said earlier about a context very much like ours.

A critical pairing

After teaching his disciples for a year or two, Jesus decides it’s time for them to put their learning into action. It’s time for a mission trip. So he puts them in pairs and then shares some final thoughts in Matthew 10:16:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

They are heading into a context where they will be surrounded by people who hate and seek to destroy them, yet Jesus tells them to take nothing with them. Yes, they’re empty-handed, but with these two things—the shrewdness of a serpent and the innocence of doves—they have what they need.

The pairing is important because there are a lot of traps; Christ-followers’ practice of shrewdness cannot resemble the world’s. Rick Lawrence, who literally wrote the book on Shrewd, explains the nuance in Jesus’ instructions:

“The word He uses here for “serpent” is the same one He uses for Satan. And the word He uses here for “dove” is the same the Bible uses to describe the Holy Spirit. He’s telling His disciples to be as shrewd as Satan is, but as innocent as the Holy Spirit is.”

Remember that comparison Jesus made in Luke 16? The problem is that, while evil has practiced shrewdness, we’re not very good at it. Lawrence summarizes:

“Jesus wants us to study the shrewd ‘people of this world’ like they were textbooks, instead of complaining about them or picketing them or ignoring them or gossiping about them… He’s asking us to watch how shrewd people—even and especially those we’re repelled by—get things done.” (157-158)

Christians are still sheep in a world of wolves, but if we put these two passages together, it allows us to see that world of wolves as an opportunity—an opportunity for study and contextualization. Remember this caveat from Lawrence:

“It’s the tactics, not the heart, we’re to pay attention to—translating the ‘what and the why’… into redemptive resolve.” (163-164)

Jesus is sending us out with the same advice he gave long ago, but we’ve ignored or misunderstood at our peril. It’s time to re-invest in shrewdness. How do you build expertise? By study and by practice. But it starts with a change of perspective.

Shrewd Series

Incipience

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In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo recommends changing the way we look at things. He suggests that our global financial crisis resulted from our tendency in the West to try to take things apart to figure them out or look at individual parts of a problem. For instance, a viewpoint that isolates mortgages from insurance fails to see the interconnections that brought the whole system down. Instead, he recommends taking in everything at once instead of fixating on pieces. He likens complex systems to a sandpile, where every grain is dependent on the others. It has an inherent instability and very little predictability. The way to anticipate change in a complex situation is to look around the edges, in unexpected places.

Ramo tells of a study where 100 graduate students were tested to track their eye movements. Half were American-born, and half were Chinese-born. The Americans fixed their eyes on the main object in the foreground, to the extreme that they sometimes didn’t recognize that the background image changed. Ramo goes as far as saying, “When it came to the environment, Americans were almost completely “change blind.” In other words, they stared.

The Chinese students kept their eyes moving, searching the background for additional context. They didn’t stop with a tiger in the woods. Instead, they looked for threats, clues to location, tensions, etc. that might influence the tiger. In fact, some spent so much time on context that when a new picture came up with the same background and a different foreground object, they thought they had seen the image before. His conclusion was that Americans typically stare at a small handful of data points while high-context cultures believe that the environment contains clues to what will happen next.

More than anything, what you want to know is when change is going to begin. In Chinese philosophy this sense is known as a mastery of incipience, and the skill is often praised as the highest form of wisdom.

Ramo’s point is that today’s world requires a different way of looking. Those who will be successful in the present and future are not those who narrow their gaze, looking for specific data points. He’s seen it in foreign affairs, venture capital and intelligence: those who can take in a broad range of data and infer conclusions are more successful. Ramo’s conclusion:

The chance for real brilliance or flair is usually best seen out of the corner of the eye.

So, how’s your eyesight as a leader? If you have a distinctly western view of the world, this is a great argument for diversity. Surround yourself with people who see the world differently than you do, and you might do well to bring in people who from birth have been trained to look at the edges of the paintings — to look at the whole to gauge what’s just around the corner.

Romans 12 – self awareness

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3 Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

It happens every year. A young lady shows up on American Idol, sings her heart out… and the judges cringe. When someone informs her that she’s bad, she appears genuinely shocked.* Why? Because her entire life, she’s been told that she can sing. She has never received honest feedback until Simon Cowell.

* Go with me here. I know it’s all rigged.

Do you have a Simon Cowell in your life? Okay, bad example. Do you have someone in your life who has the privilege and authority in your life to tell you the truth? Paul had the ability to say this to the Roman church because of his role as spiritual father and apostle. Perhaps for you it’s a pastor or mentor or Proverbs-worthy friend, but you need people to give you an honest assessment, particularly as you move up in leadership.

What if you’re not really as good a leader as you think you are? This is a tough question, so take a minute to think about it.

I’ve read many times that when a superstar executive is plucked from a team by headhunters to fill a new leadership position in another company, they can’t reach the same success in the new setting. Why? It’s the drumbeat I’ve been saying for some time now: leadership is contextual. You are likely only as good as the team you’re surrounded by and the ideal match of your abilities to the challenges and opportunities you’re facing. Before you take credit for things that God has given you, read Daniel 4 as a warning from King Nebuchadnezzar.

I believe self-management is the first requirement of leadership. The Bible is clear that if you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead others. The first step, then, is to know yourself. Know what you’re good at and what you’re not. Leaders have as few blindspots as possible and know their weaknesses well so they can lead to their strengths and staff to their weaknesses. But it’s true that the higher you move up in leadership, the more difficult it is to keep from living in a coccoon. There’s no one to tell you the truth, and it’s difficult to stop believing your own press.

The sticking point in these verses to me is that line, “measuring yourself by the faith God has given us.” What does that mean? For starters, if faith is the assurance of things unseen, then our plum line is not anything readily apparent to us. It’s not the media or our kiss-up friends. Our plum line is how God sees us. He’s the one who can see our insecurities and our coping mechanisms. He’s the one who sees past our false bravado. He’s the one who sees how our “courageous decision” was really just a guess, and this time it worked. He knows all that… and more.

Yet he also knows our full operating potential, because he’s the manufacturer. I think God believes in us. When we consider others better than ourselves and are quick to give credit to others for the success we enjoy, I think we’ll uncover a lot of the potential he built in.

Matthew Henry has a great admonition to sum up my last two posts (and this is a nice counterpoint to my recent posts on ambition):

We must not say, I am nothing, therefore I will sit still, and do nothing; but, I am nothing in myself, and therefore I will lay out myself to the utmost, in the strength of the grace of Christ.

Romans 12 – no conformity

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2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

This verse has been covered in relation to the Church engaging culture, so I’m not going to go there today. Instead, I want to focus on what it says to leaders — more of a personal application. I want to hit two areas of conformity that I think a lot of leaders struggle with, particularly those working in ministry.

It’s very easy for churches and non-profit ministries to embrace secular management and business philosophies. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot of good, helpful advice that can be applied to our settings. I remember hearing Jim Collins describe his astonishment at how many non-profit leaders were reading his books. He cautioned “social sector” leaders to discriminate, noting that non-profits shouldn’t necessarily embrace business practices. Just because businesses do it doesn’t make it worth copying, because most businesses are average at best. Instead, he noted that the same principles that make a business great can make a non-profit great. Copy the greatness principles, he urged.

Too many ministry leaders spend time reading the latest leadership techniques when greatness is found in more ancient texts. The Bible’s principles are still applicable today. I remember Dave Ramsey noting one time, “Who knew you could make so much money teaching people what the Bible says?” He’s not the only guru making money repackaging biblical concepts. Consider Collins’ Level 5 leader idea. Humility and a deep passion for the work are not new ideas.

The second thing leaders struggle with is the desire for easy success. A simple way to do that is to see what works for others in ministry — Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, you name it — and copy that in your context. By now, you know that I think leadership is contextual. I’m sorry, but there are only so many of Hybels’ strategies that work in my church of 350. Different scale, different world. I think a desire to copy the behavior of others — be it the world or even other ministries — comes down to laziness.

Instead, Paul calls leaders to transformation built around an experience with God. God’s will for me is personal, and it involves my mind and will. God has gifted me differently than any other leader, and he has a plan for my ministry and my part in my ministry. When I’m transformed by God’s work in me, I don’t look to others as a measure of my success, but work for an audience of One. I don’t measure myself by the expectations and requirements of others. And I don’t look at what God is doing in others’ ministry, but I look at my context and my situation.

When I’m transformed, I can freely exercise my leadership gifts and do my thing where God has called me, in my context.

Leadership is contextual

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I’ve blogged on this subject before, but I heard and read some really interesting thoughts on the subject in Leadership Rising, Wycliffe’s one-week, strengths-based leadership development program.

First of all, our president referred back to the last four presidents of Wycliffe USA. He pointed out that the board brought in each one of them for a specific purpose to transform our organization. Each one had his own strengths and weaknesses but was ideal for the role he was asked to fill. That reinforces to me the idea that there is no single pattern for a successful CEO. I suspect that in the room I’m sitting in, every single one of the Myers-Briggs types is represented. And yet, we’re all leaders in our own contexts.

Second, a friend of mine sent me a challenging new leadership book, The 52nd Floor: Thinking Deeply About Leadership. The following quote stood out to me, quoting from “a famous Gulf War general”:

The act of leading is a process that undergoes constant change. When you find what works, such as your “six keys to success,” you’ll eventually fail. All the elements in a leadership situation are constantly changing. You as a leader are growing and changing. Your workforce is developing. Some employees leave the organization, others enter it. The situation changes all the time. The easiest way for a leader to fail is for him or her to apply what worked yesterday to today.