Tag Archives: learning

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?

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

Stretch assignments

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Here’s my biggest question when I consider Acts 6: did the apostles choose the right people for the job?

Here’s who they selected: Stephen, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas of Antioch. All Greeks. All who were well respected, full of the Spirit and wisdom. It intrigues me that those were the job qualifications for running a food program. I would have listed people who showed a servant heart or gifting, who saw a need and met it. I would have gone after practical people, and perhaps a few who could think bigger and more strategically, perhaps to grow the program. The apostles, and those they included in the decision-making process, didn’t go in that direction.

On the surface, I’d say they chose the wrong people for the task. I’m not saying they weren’t leaders. Two of these new leaders take center stage in the next two chapters, but not because of the food program. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Stephen is described as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” and “a man full of God’s grace and power.” He is a miracle worker, a debater who was unrivaled in “the wisdom and the Spirit with which [he] spoke.” He’s a preacher who is unafraid to challenge those in power. And these gifts cost him his life. I even wonder if there was time to be part of the food program between his selection in 6:6 and his arrest six verses later.

When the persecution spreads after Stephen’s death and the believers disperse (perhaps ending the food program?), Philip takes on an identity as a traveling evangelist and miracle worker, quick to follow the Spirit’s guiding, bold in crossing cultural borders and loathe to miss an opportunity. Later, he’s a cross-cultural resident of a Roman town, and a father who raised four girls to follow Christ, and who become known for the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:8,9).

There seems to be a double standard here. If the apostles were so concerned about working in their own giftings and responsibilities, shouldn’t they have also worked to empower Stephen and Philip to serve in their giftings rather than giving them a task that was beneath their abilities and perhaps a bad fit?

My conclusion is that the food program was a developmental step, a stretch assignment. It was a platform to explore and expose their real gifts. In addition, it was a chance to raise their profile, take on responsibility and improve their leadership credibility. They’re not the only ones in Scripture who followed this kind of path.

  • Joshua spent decades as Moses’s assistant, and got his first stretch assignment as a spy in Canaan (Ex 33:11, Num 11:28 and 13:16).
  • King Saul asked David to be his harp player and armor bearer, and reluctantly gave him an opportunity to fight Goliath. These opportunities became a springboard for David’s military career and fame (I Sam 16:14-18:9)
  • John Mark hung around Jesus and Peter, then joined Paul and Barnabas on a mission trip as their assistant, where he didn’t exactly serve with distinction (Acts 12:12,25, 13:13 and 15:13-38).

Leadership is best learned by doing it, and stretch assignments are a perfect vehicle for experiential learning. We love to go back to “the usual suspects,” the 20% who do 80% of the work. But when the apostles demonstrated their faith in these new leaders, they lessened the work on themselves and introduced a new generation of leaders with apostolic gifts.

So next time you’re putting together a project, a challenge or a study team, consider the age-old practice of stretch assignments. If it’s good enough for Peter, it’s good enough for me.

A dearth of curiosity

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I was recently telling a colleague in Canada about a friend of mine I’ve worked with for some time who has a lot of leadership ability. This individual has a lot of influence, is engaging, has strong networks and is very competent. But something’s lacking. While relating to people well and even reading audiences intuitively as a speaker, this young leader is missing a key part of emotional intelligence. I finally think I’ve identified it: a dearth of curiosity. When I told my colleague about my friend, she challenged me: “Then how can this person be a leader?”

A dearth of curiosity is a career derailer. Curiosity is critical to leadership. It’scritical for lifelong learning. It’s critical for teamwork. And it’s critical for diversity.

On my flight to Toronto, I read an article by David Marcum and Stephen Smith, called “The Ultimate Team.” The authors point out that we all assume that good teams need diversity. However, diversity of viewpoints, age, ethnicity and experience doesn’t guarantee anything.

Diversity, without curiosity, isn’t worth much. Great teams know how to tap into the collective experience  and POV of everyone of them. But that “tapping” isn’t frequent enough on most teams to move them from “good enough,” to great.

One of the problems with a lack of curiosity is that it’s a form of arrogance. It signifies a person has concluded they know everything they need to know. They therefore hold back on colleagues and team members. They make judgments quickly, and are often unfortunately final in their decisions.

So if a dearth of curiosity is death to a leader and to a team member, is there no hope for my friend? There has to be a way to grow in curiosity. How do you increase your capacity for curiosity? Give me your best ideas. There are a lot of people who need your help.

Efficiency vs. learning

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“Stop wasting water!” One of my pet peeves is when I’m busy at something, vaguely conscious that my kids are doing something in the bathroom and then suddenly realize that the water has been running a long, long time. I’m not sure why wasting water bugs me so much. Is it the cost or the environmental responsibility of living in a state with a draining aquifer? I clearly value efficiency when it comes to water. If you have any doubt, just look at my lawn.

I recognize my hypocrisy, however. My kids are simply doing the same thing I did when I was their age. There’s no way to explore without a little waste. I used to love pouring water from one vessel into another, inverting a glass and pushing trapped air beneath the surface, finding the best way to turn my hands into a cup to bring water up to my mouth, or watch greasy water flee from a drop of soap. Water is fascinating, and you don’t learn about it without wasting a little.

The older we get, the more we value efficiency at the expense of discovery, joy and innovation. Organizationally, the bigger we get, the more we value efficiency, too. We love the economies of scale that come with standardizing processes. And in so doing, we squelch innovation.

As leaders, how can we assure that doesn’t happen? First, allow room for dreaming. I recently read a colleague’s summary of Leadership Divided – What Emerging Leaders Need and What You Might be Missing, by Ron Carucci. Here’s an excerpt that caught my attention:

The explosion of enterprise-wide technologies has fueled efficiency and standardization. A negative consequence, though, has been the tendency to approach challenges in terms of process compliance rather than allowing for dreaming. There exists a tension between standardization and innovation as a result. Incumbent leaders often view dreams in terms of precision rather than desire.

Of course, we know the tension that results when dreamers encounter one of these big, immovable objects. Too many  emerging leaders have given up on established businesses, churches or organizations and fled to start their own where they could dream, innovate and bring about the change they long for. But established organizations need dreamers and innovators lest we become dinosaurs.

What’s the solution? I think Carucci hits on a good start: “Dream first, set targets later.” I like that approach to planning. We should include a time for dreaming before getting down to process and rigid goal-setting. Leadership IQ wrote an article called, “Are SMART Goals Dumb?” in which they challenged the traditional view of goal-setting: to create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. The data shows that there’s a better way to create goals that will be implemented. Make sure they’re HARD:

  • Heartfelt – My goals will enrich the lives of someone besides me — customers, the community, etc.
  • Animated – I can vividly picture how great it will feel when I accomplish my goals.
  • Required – My goals are absolutely necessary to help this company.
  • Difficult – I will have to learn new skills and leave my comfort zone to achieve my assigned goals for this year.

Picture the end. How great it will feel. Leave my comfort zone. Not the traditional way we approach goals, but the territory of dreamers. Start with a vision of the future and then set targets toward making it reality.

Second, be sure to leave room in your business model for waste. Experimentation and learning are not always easy on the bottom line. For that matter, it’s almost always easier and more efficient to do things yourself than to pass on your knowledge. But a truly healthy organization is like a family. You have to be passing on and empowering the next generation. They’re going to make mistakes, and they’re going to waste resources as they experiment. Then, one day, they’re going to make a discovery that we “adults” never saw. That’s the way with innovation.