Category: Team effectiveness

“John, the team has to understand that winning is our number-one priority. Winning eclipses everything.”
That’s what the CEO of a booming Bay Area fintech company told me shortly after he hired me to help accelerate his company’s already impressive success. I was meeting with him to hear his views on his team’s performance opportunities.
“Of course, the ideal scenario is for us to win together,” he went on, explaining his aspirations for the executive team. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about winning – period.”
The intensity in this CEO’s voice was clear, and I’d heard similar mantras from many other business leaders over the years. In my stints as a CFO at Microsoft and Novartis, I encountered this “win no matter what” mentality dozens of times, and I’ve often run across it working with clients at my executive coaching and leadership development firm too.
It’s not surprising that such a mindset is so prevalent in the corporate world. After all, leaders face intense pressure to succeed – not only from shareholders, competitors, and boards of directors, but from their very own teams.
And yet, I’ve also spent many quiet moments with senior leaders who lamented the harshness of a “take no prisoners” culture. These leaders have often told me that the pressure to maintain this posture puts them at odds with their highest ambitions – things like leading a balanced life, helping others succeed, treating people with dignity, and so on.
In fact, while senior business leaders might not reveal these vulnerabilities in public, they’ve often privately told me they feel torn between the imperative to deliver awe-inspiring results and the moral sacrifices they think they have to make to achieve them.
For example, one rising star on my team at Microsoft confessed, “I think I have the talent to become a corporate vice president, but I’m not sure I’ve got – or want – the killer instinct to get there!” That is, she felt torn between her personal values and the Machiavellian maneuvering she believed getting to CVP would require.
Although achieving success while living a life you can be proud of might sound like a paradox, the truth is that this dilemma can be resolved – and interestingly enough, the resolution lies in the definition of “success” itself.
To show you what I mean, I’d like to take a step back and examine a distinction we hear a lot about in today’s business world: the difference between the “what” and the “how” of a targeted outcome.
The “what” is our business results – sales growth, profits, innovation, market share, customer satisfaction, and so on. The “how,” on the other hand, consists of a series of behaviors on the road to get those results. In other words, the “how” is the way we interact with the humans around us as we strive for the “what.”
The key here is that our mindsets and values inform our behaviors, which in turn produce business results – ideally the results we’re aiming for. 
But of course, you’re not the only person whose behavior impacts your business results. Those outcomes also depend on the behaviors of the people you work with: bosses, peers, team members, and even customers.
It follows logically, then, that the way to maximize results is to optimize your interaction with other people, the humans around you. That’s the “how” that leads to the “what” you want. Neglecting the “how” eventually negatively impacts the “what” – kind of like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Imagine you own a restaurant at a busy airport. Most of your customers aren’t regulars; they’re just passing through. What’s more, local labor is plentiful and cheap – so you decide to cut corners on meal quality and pay your employees a pittance.
At first glance, this business model seems to yield great results: your transaction volume stays high because the airport is always busy – and you never see your dissatisfied customers again, so who cares if they’re unhappy? Meanwhile, your stingy wages keep costs low, and when an employee complains you simply replace them with one of the faceless applicants lined up at your door. Seems like a successful approach, doesn’t it?
Well, like I said a moment ago – that depends entirely on your definition of “success.”
If your “what” is only to make money, then poor service and low salaries will certainly get you to that goal. At least in the short term. However, if your “how” includes things like serving delicious meals, offering convenience to busy travelers, and providing employment to people who need it, then shortchanging customers and employees isn’t acceptable. With those conditions in mind, no matter how much money you’re making, you’ll never feel proud of your work – or at peace with yourself.
As you can see, success can show up in lots of other places besides your financial statements.
I’m not saying hitting your goals is not important. It is. Especially if you want to keep your job. I’m saying the surest way of attaining sustainable success you can be proud of is by focusing on how you do what you do.
This is the concept of “winning beyond winning” or “success beyond success”. When you work toward objectives in a way that’s congruent with your most important values, you win – even if you don’t hit your stated goals – simply because you’ve acted with integrity.
This approach is more than a platitude for consoling yourself in case you miss the corporate mark. It’s a measure of intellectual honesty, and an effective acid test for judging performance you can be proud of.
What’s more, by focusing on your behavior, you double down on the only thing that’s truly within your control – your ability to choose your response in the situation. In every circumstance, there are factors outside your control. But one factor that’s always within your control is your ability to choose your course of action, even if you can’t control the outcome of that choice. As the sacred Hindu text of the Bhagavad-Gita says, “You have a right to your action, but not to the fruits of your action.”
As human beings, we’re endowed with consciousness, the awareness of the choices around us. This awareness allows us to reflect on whether our behavior aligns with our values, whether we “walk our talk.”
Next time you’re faced with an apparent choice between “success” or honoring your values, take a moment to pause, breathe, and reflect – and consider the possibility of broadening your definition of “success.” You might discover there’s a way for you to get everything you want.


We are all young revolutionaries in the early years of the biggest revolution in human history. The digital/tech revolution (a.k.a. the Third Industrial Revolution) is barely 50 years old. It took us more than 200,000 years to reach a population of 1 billion and only 200 years more to reach approximately 8 billion. But having more humans won’t help us win this war. To “beat the bots” (#BTB), we will need to BE more human. This isn’t about living in harmony; it’s just about living.
 
~8 billion of us are still learning what Game of Thrones and Facebook already know:
The best way to successfully pursue happiness and take care of ourselves is to take care of each other.
 
We are still learning how to become one healthy global community.
The exponential change— VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) — that we are experiencing today brings a spectrum of possible futures and unintended challenges (e.g., algorithmic loopholes). We think it’s going to turn out OK, but none of us knows what’s really going on or what’s going to happen next. It’s like “a horse loose in a hospital”— we’ve never seen this before; everything is changing so fast.
But there are some things that aren’t changing fast enough.
We all seek our own happiness; we’re mostly taking care of ourselves. We have the same survival instincts, selfishness and self-preservation blindspots (biases). We are prone to be focused on protecting our individual throne or on smaller tribal conflicts and drama. “It seems like everyone everywhere is super mad about everything.” In our revolution, there are many isolated individuals and communities and too much unnecessary suffering.
Too many people in the world come to these challenges of disruption, conflict and differences with the wrong mindset and a limited, outdated set of tools:

  • We approach these challenges with arrogance, impotence and counterproductive habits
  • Our brains go “reactive” during the real-life stress, emotional scarcity and sideways pressure of pursuing our goals during times of change
  • We resort to unhealthy social sorting, polarization, hostile sports fan identity politics, negative partisanship, etc.

 
THIS ISN’T ABOUT LIVING IN HARMONY 
We’re so ineffective when we’re working on VUCA alone and when we’re not fully awake— even when our intentions are good. Our traditions and fears are stronger and more reliable than our declarations and desires to change. Without a “next level” of proficiency in building healthy communities, expanding constructive cultures, finding common ground and inviting a sense of belonging, there will be continued polarization and isolation.
 
IT’S JUST ABOUT LIVING
If all we have is isolation, silos, passive defensive and aggressive defensive norms, then we can forget about adapting successfully, we can forget about innovating effectively, and we can forget about getting to the complex problem-solving more quickly. We can forget about winning this war. 
 
THE FOCUS & MINDSET OF THE PROTAGONIST/LEADER
In a healthy community, the role of the leader is to name the focus, priorities and purpose—the debate. Whether you use Facebook, read stories about Mark Zuckerberg, or have seen the global HBO sensation “Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin, the protagonist in each of these narratives speaks of a similar storyline.
 
FACEBOOK AS A PROTAGONIST
Mr. Zuckerberg has named the similar debate: shifting away from the old, broad mission of “making the world more open and connected” toward the next level (2017) Facebook mission statement: “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.”
 

Despite our differences, Facebook’s new mission today is to help people all over the world find common ground and bring the world closer together— a new manifesto, presumably with new performance goals that will require increased levels of teamwork, collaboration, agility and innovation.
 
GAME OF THRONES AS A PROTAGONIST

In the Game of Thrones series, rulers of various thrones struggle mightily to bring the world closer together as one community, to join forces, to fight together, to focus on a common goal and a common enemy. The final season 8 airs April 14, 2019. In the last episode of season 7, the protagonist Jon Snow and many of the rulers of other thrones put aside their differences to build an alliance. All of these are very different communities and some are life-long, brutal enemies— and they are now risking everything to come together.
“There is only one war that matters — the Great War. And it is here. There is only one enemy worthy of our attention.”
They are more aware that the time has come to stop fighting each other and instead join forces to become one united community, with one goal, standing side by side, fighting one new, unexpected enemy (it’s in the box). In this scene, Jon Snow intends to reveal what they are up against. Jon Snow names the debate. He says:
“This isn’t about living in harmony, it’s just about living. The same thing is coming for all of us…a general you can’t negotiate with…an army that doesn’t leave corpses behind on the battlefield. A million people live in this city, they are about to become a million more soldiers in the army of the dead.” 
 
NEXT-LEVEL SHIFTS HAPPEN IN COMMUNITY
Every expansive shift from our “current level” to our “next level” happens more predictably, more quickly and more deeply in community. In an earlier scene of season 7 in the caves of Dragonstone, Jon Snow sees drawings on the walls from the Children of the Forest depicting White Walkers. He realizes that the Children and the First Men fought together against a common enemy, and now he shares that in order to win, they should too.
“They fought together, against their common enemy. Despite their differences, despite their suspicions— together.  And we need to do the same if we’re going to survive, because the enemy is real. It’s always been real.”

Rising to the next level happens during the ongoing, mutual process of raising one another up, shifting to higher levels of awareness and higher standards of purpose, relationship and performance— thus changing the way we think, behave and collaborate so we can more effectively get to the complex adaptive problem-solving needed to deliver next-level business outcomes. When you “take your eyes off of yourself” and take care of each other (train together), amazing things happen.

Just like Game of Thrones and Facebook, we are shifting from our current level of performance (previous mission) to our next level of performance (a new master plan).
In order to rise to the challenge of our next level, we have to walk that talk. We have to BE the kind of people and BECOME the kind of community that can deliver on the new mission. At the end of season 7, they tip the box over and the horrible creature is revealed…the enemy that defies their logic. It doesn’t defy our logic; it’s a zombie story about a zombie apocalypse. We all love zombie apocalypse storylines. The leaders of the thrones are in shock and disbelief about what they have just seen. Jon has made his point…he thinks.
But like Game of Thrones, in real life, we never get around to focusing 100 percent of our resources on the bigger goal of fulfilling the mission and delivering on the growth goals until we get past our own smaller conflicts, drama and distractions. Getting to the next level doesn’t happen unless we can first win the war— the Great War. For us, it is right here. Do you see it?

Note the box with the next level/new mission. What do you see standing between our next level (new mission) and us?
This line represents a massive transition, a massive transformation and a massive local+global breakthrough. To rise to the occasion, we will need to become masters at getting unstuck, liberators of our unsober minds, and masters at winning the transition. Those with the fewest blindspots win. We all know that, right? So why do we delay and struggle when it comes to prioritizing our own deep/identity work and our culture transformation programs?
 
THE STRATEGY OF REVOLUTION
As a fellow crusader, I have worked in the business transformation domain, innovation strategy space and studied social and cultural change (revolution) for a couple of decades. I have been focused on learning all I can about the challenges happening in the trenches of the Great War, specifically about this transition point. I have found insights from people you may know. I have studied the work of global scholars and collaborated with researchers and thought leaders like Gene Sharp and Jamila Raqib at the Albert Einstein Institution. They have documented the most effective techniques and strategies for nonviolent action from almost every revolution throughout history. The mission of the Albert Einstein Institution is “advancing freedom through nonviolent action.” There is an award-winning documentary on them and their work called “How to Start a Revolution.”

People all over the world seek after this documentary and their books. In some countries, being in possession of one of these books will get you thrown in jail. Countries around the world seek these books—anywhere where people are:

  • Opposing dictatorship, combating corruption and pursuing economic fairness.
  • Shifting the politics and strategy of dominant social power structures.

Securing civil rights, women’s empowerment and environmental protection.

Jamila Raqib works with Gene Sharp in Boston, Massachusetts, where she has been the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution for the last 15 years. She was a 2017 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Interestingly, Jamila is also a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab where she has been exploring how innovations in technology and education can contribute to more effective, nonviolent strategies that lead to healthy, liberated communities.
 
THE ENEMY IS NOT WHO YOU THINK IT IS
Jamila and I have talked about some interesting lessons to be learned from their research that can be applied to business transformation today. You can decide if this applies to your business. I’ve been experimenting with these insights with Jamila’s help for the last decade.

One of my biggest takeaways was this: In the face of both business transformation and social revolution alike, we hear ourselves say that it is easy to spot the champions of change (revolutionaries) and the resistors of change (evil dictators). In our hearts, we instinctively feel like we are champions of change over on the right.

And since we are “champions of change (the good guys),” we are (of course) focused on the mission and are committed to defeating the remaining “resistors of change” that are defending the status quo. Very few of us, if asked, would ever say that we are in the “resistors” category. They are the problem, not us. It’s us versus them.
But if we are over here in this camp championing the mission of change, why do we still have so much trouble with change? How is it possible that only a few remaining “resistors of change” could wield so much power over the system, undermining our progress?

What do the defenders of the status quo know that we don’t? What is the counter force or the dominating power they have over us champions? What’s the other secret in the box?
The power of the status quo doesn’t come from the resistors. It comes from the implicit consent of non-resistors…the silent neutral majority…the folks in the middle.
The essence of Jamila and Gene’s theory of power is this: Without the implicit unconscious consent, obedience and silence of non-resistors, the dominant power structure would have little power. (A dictator’s source of power is not violence, guns, tanks, armies…it is the people that are cooperating, manufacturing the guns, delivering the equipment, etc.) The power of the status quo comes from the silent neutral majority’s unconscious obedience to the norm and the current-level priorities, traditions and preferences to focus on other things.

Without full awareness of what’s happening, we tend to react unconsciously in autopilot mode. We let our brains go to sleep, like the Zombies that Jon Snow was talking about.
What does that sound like or look like in business? Organizational contradictions are a clear symptom of this unconscious obedience to the status quo. When the people inside of our company are only partially awake (also partially asleep), our companies exhibit this as organizational “walk the talk” contradictions. The more leadership zombies, the more dominant the zombie culture, the more contradictions we have.

We all have individual “walk the talk” contradictions where our behavior does not match our constructive values. They may show up like common aggressive-defensive and passive-defensive leadership styles that we resort to under stress. If these styles are blindspots, that’s trouble. We can’t fix what we don’t notice.
It can also be rooted in mindsets that sound like this: “I’m not against the new mission. I’m all for change and the future, but I’m really busy,” says the zombie leader.  Busy is another safe place for avoiding the work that matters. We don’t get points for being busy. Points are for successful prioritization, efficiency, productivity and progress. “No points for busy.”(Seth Godin)
Many of us are trapped in a scarcity mindset, fixed mindset or knower mindset. These contradictions + mindsets + frozen worldviews create a sense of powerlessness.

This unconscious obedience is NOT a conscious choice but a preconscious choice. Thousands of years of evolution have taught us to focus our attention in the wrong place— the place that does not make us more resourceful and does NOT make us CHAMPIONS of change. Instead, it points our focus in places that make us trapped along with the silent neutral majority. Most of us will resort to old habits, like when we diet or have a New Year’s resolution to lose 20 pounds. For example, when it’s late at night, I’m tired and there are cookies in the pantry, I’ll give in. Or when I promise my wife and kids that I’m going to try to not yell so much or get angry so quickly over little things. Or when I tell my boss that I’m going to try to ask more questions, be more curious at work and collaborate with my colleagues more often because I’ve been told that I seem controlling or too forceful. It isn’t that I’m consciously resisting doing what I said I wanted to do; it’s my unconscious obedience to the current level–a blindspot of obedience to the devil I know.
Part of the problem is that our instinct isn’t to prepare or get ready for this kind of war. Our instinct says “just GO; go change your behavior; just do it now.” And we try to shift to new behaviors using our old mental models, summoning more willpower so we can try harder. Seriously, that’s how many of us try to fix evolutionary brain biases. Then we’re surprised when it doesn’t work.
This preconscious, zombie-like challenge especially affects those of us who think of ourselves as successful, accomplished, intelligent leaders of change and champions of the new. It affects us the most because our identity (our ego) couldn’t possibly let us believe that we might be trapped in the silent neutral majority. We think, “I got this.” We couldn’t possibly believe that we might also suffer from the same learned helplessness and unconscious biases as others. We think we are over here, but most of us are unknowingly and unconsciously trapped like everyone else in the middle.

Jon Snow says: “There is only one enemy worthy of our attention.” Can you see who our enemy is now?
 
THE ENEMY IS US 
We all have this latent zombie source code already in us: unconscious obedience to the norm. It’s how our inner game (mindset) drives our outer game (our behavior). It drives the results we get unless we choose to be conscious and rewrite it. Without awareness, we only have our default ways of thinking and behaving. Without awareness, we only have habit. We are on autopilot (asleep) like zombies.

The enemy is our own lack of awareness and socially defined, default (status quo) reactive state. Most companies are investing in the individual and collective shift away from a current level that’s stuck in a bureaucratic, zombie-like, drama-filled culture known for being too slow, territorial (siloed) and driven by toxic competition, perfectionism, risk aversion, command and control, CYA leadership… toward a more constructive culture with healthier achiever-oriented norms that are humanistic, encouraging and full of engagement.

With awareness, we have a choice. We can learn to see more and use new paradigms/mental models. With awareness, we have the ability to add multiple outside perspectives, ideas and distinctions to our own. We can choose whatever is most resourceful and effective. More options and choices help us make better decisions, design better strategies and take better action— all of which lead to better results. When we see more, we can intervene more effectively in the things that we care about most.

YOU& I CAN CHOOSE TO BE THE PROTAGONISTS
You are Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sheryl Sandbergand Mark Zuckerberg. You are the protagonist/revolutionary of your life, your family, your team and your community. I am the protagonist of my life. Anything that happens in my life is my responsibility. Anything that happens in your life is your responsibility. Being the kind of person that orients from a protagonist mindset more often is not an intellectual exercise. To actually rewrite the source code, walk the talk and be a champion of change versus a zombie leader, it takes practice…a lot of practice.

It is not a trivial thing to do, but it is a compassionate and kind thing to do. It takes practice to help others realize that their current story is not the whole story. We can help each other recover more quickly and help everyone find their power without insulting, labeling or blaming each other.
Transformation is a learned capability. Everybody has these muscles; they just haven’t been developed yet. To grow them, we have to train them every day. We have to get our reps in— in every conversation, every phone call, every meeting, every agenda, every disagreement, every failure and every celebration. It has to be an integral part of our community, not something we heard in a workshop or read in a book. It has to be integrated into who we are.
 
WE WIN THE WAR BY TRAINING TOGETHER, IN COMMUNITY 
If we want to build these muscles and get stronger, faster, we need to train together. That’s how adult development works: peer-based learning communities of practice, constantly building protagonist mindset muscles…together.
The protagonist knows we are always practicing something—every second of every day, we’re practicing something. Either we will practice keeping the old knower/victim mindset and zombie traditions in place, or we will practice the new ones. Whatever we practice grows stronger.

Breakthroughs don’t just happen. We have to prepare for them. And to do that, we have to come together and learn to stay awake—learn to BE more human – to stay in the tension and discomfort long enough to learn how to win this war together. We won’t beat the bots alone. We won’t make it through as individuals. We make it through as a team. The more of us who are ready, the further we get.
If you are not yet motivated to be more human – then at least be a dragon.  Just don’t be a zombie or a sheep.

EMBEDDING THE PROTAGONIST MINDSET 
Would it benefit you if you knew in advance what mistakes not to make so you could avoid the pitfalls and false starts that other champions in similar situations like yours will unknowingly make for one, two or three years before they realize it’s not working? I’ve written before about high-performance team programs, conscious business facilitators and international coaches at Axialent. They know how to design and facilitate the step-by-step learning journeys and culture change programs that help leaders embed the protagonist mindset, nurture high-engagement organizational environments and achieve exponentially better results.

By Fred Kofman
 
The worst leader is he who people despise. A good leader is he who people worship. A great leader is he who makes people say: “We ourselves did it.”
Lao Tse
 
Just as in the theory of systems, the whole is more than the addition of its parts. In management, the team is more than the addition of its members. That which makes a team differ from a group of working people is synergy. Through the development of a shared vision, an engagement with certain essential values, a context of mutual confidence and respect, and a unifying interpretation of certain recurrent practices for the efficient coordination of actions, a group of individuals can generate a creative energy that largely exceeds the mere addition of individual energies. Such as a light beam may organize itself by means of a crystal into a laser ray, a beam of individuals may organize itself through a field of intellectual, emotional and existential forces, producing an extraordinary team. The leader is the person in charge of creating and maintaining such field of forces.
Traditionally, the leader is identified as a person detaining formal authority. From ancient heroic myths to modern management literature, the leader appears as an individual capable of leading others. This image is valid all right, but it conceals other possibilities. In this article, we want to put forward an alternative idea: shared leadership. To do so, first we will analyze the role of the leader, and then we will propose that it can be played by a collective person. Moreover, our thesis is that in highly uncertain situations, exercising shared leadership has advantages over individual leadership. Quoting Peter Senge, “Our traditional idea about leaders — special persons who determine the direction to be followed, take key decisions, and instill energy — is based on a nonsystemic and individualist vision of the world. Especially in the West, leaders are heroes, great personalities occupying the center of the scene. As long as these myths prevail, the focus of attention will increasingly fall on immediate facts and charismatic heroes rather than on systemic forces and collective learning.” (The New Task of the Leader, the Creation of Learning Organizations — Sloan Management Review, Fall 1993.)
 
The role of the leader
The leader develops precise functions destined for keeping cohesion and alignment of the organization, directing it toward its objectives, assuring a maximum utilization of its resources, honoring its system of values, feeding the individual enthusiasm of its parts, and continuously regenerating the culture that supports the interactions. The leader maintains the creative tension. Every action (be it individual or collective) sets off from the difference between a present reality that is unsatisfactory and a desired future possibility. The leader is permanently busy “charging the battery” of the organization through a dual strategy: (a) interpreting the present world, (b) imagining possible future worlds.
The first focus of a leader is hermeneutic (interpretative): He looks at the world, reading its signs and providing sense to the group reality, for instance, studying the market and casting an analysis of its forces, weaknesses, opportunities and risks. As Max de Pree, ex‐president of Herman Miller, says: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Much of the multiplying effect a leader exerts lies on his ability to help people see the reality in a more generative, deep and energizing way. The leader can see (and show) opportunities where others only see problems.
The second focus of a leader is poetic (creative): He looks into his heart, reading its wishes and imagining a possible reality that may make them real, for instance, making up a new way of doing business. Quoting Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than information because knowledge is limited while imagination embraces an infinite possibility.” The leader’s power derives from his ability to paint futures that can light up the passion of the members of an organization. This “sacred fire” that burns in men’s spirit is the fuel of the organizational engine.
Every individual exerts this leadership task for himself. The responsibility for one’s life and the actions being displayed is not feasible of being delegated. An organization that demands the subordination of personal autonomy becomes a cult that deprives individuals of power and discourages and neutralizes its members. The way to build a community collectively responsible for its creative tension has to do with encouraging a continuous reflection on reality and organizational aims.
The leader teaches and redesigns the organizational culture. A culture is a set of ideas and practices that aid a community to locate itself in the world and to sail about it — a collective “mental pattern” that organizes the experience of those participating in it coherently. Quoting Schein: “Leadership is related to the formation of the culture.” The construction of the organizational culture and its evolution management is the “sole and essential function” of a leader.
Mental patterns are systems of deeply rooted assumptions, generalizations, images and archetypal plots that influence how we understand the world and how we take actions in it. They condition our personal, organizational and social lives and help us to make sense of reality and perform our functions efficiently. They determine what is rational, correct, moral, convenient and legitimate for us. They help us decide how to interact with others and with the world so as to maximize efficiency and keep coherence.
The leader is the cultural architect. Through his example, his words and his actions, he exerts a deep influence on the way of thinking and on the way of being of the organization. With his behavior, the leader is constantly sending subliminal messages about what is good, true and beautiful — the three dimensions that, according to Plato, define the essence of a cosmovision. This design task is a fundamental lever point to create the organizational synergy. The “adequate” culture becomes the link connecting the present reality with the future vision, through efficient and ethical mechanisms of behavior.
Cultural design is a continuous task. Beliefs and behavior systems tend to become age‐stiff and lose contact with the dynamic reality that generated them. The obsolescence of certain ideas and practices represents one of the major risks threatening the survival and vitality of the organization. On a social level, Michel Foucault analyzed this phenomenon and concluded: “The history of thought and culture throws a continuous pattern of great liberating ideas — ideas that inevitably become oppressive straitjackets containing the seed of their own destruction at the moment they face new emancipating conceptions, which will eventually turn enslaving.” The leader is he who is permanently busy updating the culture, to keep it fresh and vibrating.
Every individual has a personal leadership world in this area. As a father, a mother, a brother, a friend, a therapist or a manager, the person is able to show and project his cultural influence over his immediate environment. In organizational life, the coherence of culture demands a “traffic director” who helps to negotiate and align cultural forces emanating from each individual.
The leader defines structures, strategies and politics. To implement the ideals and cultural values, the organization needs to literally “incorporate them,” or “make them corporal.” The structure is the body of the organization, the visible side of culture. The leader is the person in charge of conducting the generation and maintenance of the structures, strategies and politics. In particular, the leader is in charge of keeping up the strategic compromise against environment pressures. When the temptation for straightforward gratification threatens with deviating the organization from its objectives and fundamental values, the leader works as an “anchor” and reminder, of that which, though essential, may turn invisible to the eyes of urgency.
Such as the designing of a culture, this defining of structures, strategies and politics is a continuous and dynamic task. To keep its coherence, the organization must fit the evolution of its mental pattern to the evolution of its forms and courses of action. The leader coordinates the design conversation in which the organization permanently reinvents itself.
Again, we emphasize the necessity of an individual leadership in life. Particularly, the creation of personal structures — such as the family, the job, friends, a religious congregation or other groups — are essential actions. To live in plenitude, the individual needs to examine his conscience and implement behavior standards that enable him to be at peace with himself and ethically proud, disregarding the pressures of the moment. In an organization, different individuals gather around directing ideas. While in the past, these ideas exclusively came from the leader, in the future, they will be born from a community dialogue. (The term dialogue comes from the Greek “dia‐logos,” which stands for “shared sense.”)
 
Shared leadership: The leader as a collective person
The great risk of charismatic leaders is the temptation they generate in others to delegate on them the responsibility of leadership. In situations of high uncertainty and volatility (such as those proposed by the present century), nobody has enough cognitive and emotional ability to totally assimilate the complexity of reality. If the community (and each of its members) does not take upon itself the role of leadership, it is highly probable it lives trapped in its childhood, depending on what the “parents” (leaders) dictate it to do. The problem is that paternalism, be it heroic or tyrannical, generates order through the eradication of the differences.
Such homogeneity brings about peace, but it reduces the possibilities of managing increasing complexity. Organizations are coming to understand the value of preserving diversity.
Diversity, though, is a double‐edged weapon. Provided there is a common place where the different points of view can align one another seeking a transcendent welfare, the organization learns and develops with effectiveness. When the common place is absent, the discussion creates friction and wearing away rather than light and energy. We have attributed the leader the responsibility for creating that common place, but no leader can substitute the individual compromise of each member of the organization. In the world of the future, those companies that have members both individually and jointly responsible for leadership will bear a clear, competitive advantage over those where the passivity of the personnel delegates such leadership to the “boss.”

In cased you missed it, here are the first five questions.
 
Dear CEO,

6) We are not going to refer to this as “the soft stuff” anymore. Devaluing the human dimension compared to the technical dimension of business is not helping us adapt more quickly. We will learn to measure and understand the direct business benefits of our transformation efforts across all three dimensions of success: i) the task, ii) the team, iii) the self. We will overdeliver on all three dimensions.

Regardless of the outside help we get, we can’t “outsource” this work. We have to do this ourselves. We have to become transformation exemplars, and that will require us to integrate the human and technical dimensions of business. We will work on designing and capturing tangible ROI from the beginning. The experts I am bringing in will teach us how to do that in a practical way that matters to us. At the same time, we can also illustrate tangible value by comparing the culture/leadership investment to the cost of NOT shifting (e.g., employee turnover, inability to attract star employees, stalled customer focus improvements, stalled innovation, slower implementation times, lack of agility).
 

7) Expect a significant transition during year 2 and year 3. Companies like ours that are successful shifting culture do not usually say, “we got it” during year 1. This is not an HR project; this is a business prototype, which will give us a chance to “really learn by doing.”

The experts I’m bringing in will take us through a series of 90-day sprints that will help us “learn by doing.” These prototypes will help us learn what helps us deliver better results in the context of working on the business, not in theory. They have seen and lived through all kinds of scenarios facing other peer executives in situations like ours. They heard me admit and ask the same textbook questions while giving me the objective, outside, cold-water-wake-up-call answers that we need to hear…

  • We’re stuck. How do we break free from the inertia of learned helplessness and tyranny of low expectations to get to the next level? Clarify the culture standards (and learning gaps) that we have between our current level and our desired level, then clarify how committed we are to get to the next level (and why). What’s at stake for you? me? our team? the organization?
  • How do we avoid the early-on potential for unskilled false starts (e.g., too big or too fluffy) or snapping back to homeostasis/current level? We won’t get tricked into shortcuts and we won’t “bolt this on.” Connect the development work directly to high priority business imperatives — that’s the best reason to train. We won’t treat this like a communication project; it’s a business prototype.
  • How do we accelerate the process? We will stop delaying it, and we will go deeper faster. We will let the leaders and teams also “learn by doing” with high-impact, real-world, 90-day sprints where we can experiment to see what works here (what we’re ready for).
  • How do we extend and keep the flame going? Let’s stop asking that “cascading” question right now. We’re not sure that we’re willing to do what’s necessary to even “pack the snowball tight” with the senior executives and focused experiments. Let’s focus on that first. If that sticks, then we’ll start building peer learning communities as well as formal/informal communities of practice where we all will learn while doing — we train together while delivering business imperatives.

 

8) Expect to pay attention to things you haven’t paid attention to before.

  • We are going to be doing something that most leaders have not been invited to do before…to courageously observe our own leadership style/techniques, the impact it’s having on delaying the organizational performance/shifts, and then optimize them according to what we say matters most to us.
  • We are going to start with the initiation phase of a vertical learning adult development program, where we will become more objectively aware of our current level and next level gaps…and we will see more clearly than ever before.We will be even more committed than ever to the possibilities that come with our next level goals. We all deserve to get to the next level!
  • It will take deliberate, focused practice to shift these specific organizational capabilities from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent, and to deliver consistently on the high-performance attributes we have chosen. Some individuals will go faster than others, and some microcultures will influence others faster. Meanwhile, our brain’s biases, our history and our system inertia are working against us more than working with us to support the change. However, once we build our transformation muscles, we will have more wind at our back…exponential business benefits and odds of success for 202X and beyond.

9) I need you to ask for more help.

Not because you are weak but because you are strong — because you have all the power. When it comes to preparing yourself to be an exemplar transformation mentor/leader, you need to ask for more help so everyone will see that being a learner, “asking for help,” and being transformed ourselves is something we value at the highest levels of the organization. Saying “I don’t know how to do this” and asking for help is not a sign of weakness around here anymore. From now on, we win by learning.

You (we) should be asking for more feedback and more guidance on how other companies make this shift — on how to best mentor the executive team through this beyond stepping up as a public player in workshops. The majority of adult development/learning doesn’t happen in the workshop; it will happen in the learning experiences we share with each other during the course of running the business. And it will come from the social influence that we contribute in every meeting, every agenda and every interaction that we have within the leadership team.
 

10) We are going to lead the way.

 
 
 
 


Based on several true stories inside of multinational organizations:
When the chief human resources officer (CHRO) or any C-suite executive finally refuses to be a complicit bystander and commits to leading the business (like a real business leader)…here are 5 ways to start the conversation:
Dear CEO,

1) We have a serious problem …a culture problem.


We are witnessing a historic shift in what’s expected of us when it comes to understanding and evolving our company’s culture. We can’t deny or minimize the negative impact that our executive leadership is having on our culture any longer. The crisis of unconscious leaders is all around us, AND it is clearly a disadvantage for our business performance. This is a new era with new rules. We need to let go of some of the old success formulas…not all of them…just some. We are up to this challenge. We are going to shift the culture and expand the future-focused capabilities that we need (e.g., alignment, collaboration, curiosity, innovation, agility) so that we can not only stay relevant and competitive in the future but so that we can win. I (CHRO) am going to help you lead the way through this. I will need you to trust me. We will do this together.
 

2) Our industry, our history and our future are at odds.

It’s time for us to reactivate some of our originating startup/adaptive DNA and take our enterprise transformation seriously if we expect to win in the future.
Yes, we’re already rich, we have plenty of reserves, and we’ll probably stay afloat beyond your retirement…but we’re just floating right now. We’re not moving forward. We’re stuck. That’s not the kind of legacy we want to leave here after all this time, after all our hard work. The business case for change is undeniable, and yet we keep putting our head back in the sand, hiding in our offices, telling our employees and each other, “we got this.” But we’re just floating — and floating is insufficient. Just “getting by” is creating a long-term disadvantage for us, and it’s creating a ridiculous amount of unnecessary suffering right now.
“Just floating” is not going to be your legacy. And it’s not going to be mine either.This is not going to be fixed by having a two-day workshop or retreat. There is no shortcut. We need to shift some of our default thinking patterns/habits and close the gap on some key organizational attributes/behaviors that can make us more agile, collaborative and innovative. To be a legitimate competitor, we need to perform these attributes consistently at a professional, world-class level. This is not amateur hour or a time for dabbling/hacking away at this like it was a hobby to pick up over a weekend seminar. We have to evolve rapidly. We have to transform. We’ve been talking about this for years. If it were easy for us, we would have already been doing it. We’re stuck. We clearly all have a lot to learn. We need to adjust the way we think, relate, make decisions and take action. It’s never too early (and hopefully not too late) to ready our teams and ourselves for the future.

3) Our employees are losing faith…

So we have to act decisively. You saw what they wrote in the annual engagement survey. The research firm quantified just how much they are losing faith. You read the verbatims. You were upset by the quantity and toxicity of verbatims. You asked me:

“Who does that? Who writes that kind of terrible stuff, knowing that their bosses are going to be reading it?” Seriously, who does that? The “un-led” do that. (JL)
We can lead better. The people in our organization are telling us that we have a problem, and they want us to create a more constructive work environment.

  • They basically called BS on our leadership team’s ability to deliver on a majority of our company core values (e.g., teamwork, innovation, courage, respect, trust, creativity, integrity). They notice the incongruence. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they have 20 percent less confidence in our business potential over the next two to three years compared to their confidence a year ago. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they are 25 percent less engaged than a year ago across all business units. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.

None of this will fix itself. We MUST ready ourselves to respond more effectively by leading a sustainable, strategic culture shift.
 

4) Our leadership team is not yet equipped to respond/lead a transformation like this alone. We don’t know how to do this effectively yet (and pretending to know is only making things worse). 

By our own words, we are at an inflection point that our default thinking patterns, behaviors and leadership muscles are NOT prepared for and need to change in order to achieve our three- to five-year plan success/goals — LET ALONE THIS YEAR’S STRETCH GOALS. We can do this, and I am going to lead this. We’re not transformation experts yet, so I’m going to get you and our entire leadership team the expert support, learning and development we all need to feel strong leading the way.
We will focus on consistency over intensity. We’re going to play the long game — no culture “change theater” or quick fixes. We will lead the way, with humility and empathy — not by knowing but by BECOMING LEARNING EXEMPLARS, showing that we value learning more than saving face. We are not yet personally connected to the kind of transformation that we are asking of our people, but we will be. This journey will be one of the greatest achievements of our career. We can do this.
 

5) To ready the organization for change  we should expect to invest in both expanding leadership capabilities and building internal capacity. 

We need to work on our inner game (transforming our mindsets) and our outer game (the way we execute the business). Our internal team of leaders will be fully involved and take on this initiative in a way that integrates with all of our existing work. Our leaders will be doing the majority of the training and development of middle manager cohorts — once we get a couple of cycles under our belt and I am confident that we can skillfully marry executive mentors and the extended leader/team cohorts into effective, sustainable programs that simultaneously support specific business priorities. For the transformation and readiness part, we will need to partner with an expert firm for the high-leverage areas that require their expertise, and we will need to be focused on the C-suite leadership development and culture change readiness (mentoring and coaching) work as well as ensuring high quality, internal capacity building.





To successfully achieve next level results/culture shift that we say we want, to maintain momentum and to build internal capacity to sustain it, I would expect us to work with expert resources/interventionists over the next three-year time frame while we build internal competency. It will more likely be front-loaded than equally spread out across those three years. It doesn’t have to be incremental learning and development dollars; we can reallocate some of our other important learning and development budget for this essential work.
Here are five more questions to engage the CEO.
 

To me, the most intriguing paradox of conscious business — and the hardest to explain — is the interdependence of openness and resolve. How is it possible (even necessary) to be curious, open, humble, and yet at the same time, decisive and action-oriented?
This question is not just academic. If it weren’t possible to be both decisive and open, the whole set of mindsets and skills that we call “conscious business” would be of very little use. Why would anyone with leadership responsibilities want to practice being curious, flexible and open if it meant being ambivalent, indecisive and fickle as a chameleon?
I believe that skillful leaders get a “feel” for how to be “decisive learners.” They don’t just get it cognitively. An experiential component leads them to “get it” in the same way that you first found your balance on a bicycle or learned to look up while dribbling a ball.
By the same token, there is a risk of overexplaining such things. How long would you want me to explain how to ride a bicycle? (For that matter, how long would you want me to evoke the paradox of the decisive learner before asking you what you already knew about it?)
I’m going to offer two stories: one from the martial arts and one from business. Then it will be over to you!
As you may know, Tai Chi is one of the “soft” martial arts, like Aikido. The joke about Tai Chi is: “How can you expect to defend yourself when you are moving in slow motion?” Yet meticulous practice of these slow movements (the “form”), as well as “holding” postures, are a critical part of training for the dynamic and interactive part of Tai Chi “Push Hands.” And Push Hands can be lightening fast (and rock hard).
Traditionally, Push Hands is not taught to novices. I had been learning the “form” and related exercises for almost a year before I was allowed to join a Push Hands class in 1989. That is when I got my first taste of “open/flexible/receptive and tough/decisive/resolute.” My assignment was to try to “push” my Tai Chi teacher, Lenzie Williams (i.e., make him lose his balance or even just move his feet). The difficulty began when I couldn’t even find anything to push on. No matter where I thrust my arms, he seemed to just disappear. (He was “yielding.”) And yet when he pushed me, I went flying across the room. It was a major “aha.” I felt, quite tangibly, how it was possible to be totally receptive, open and relaxed, and at the same time grounded, decisive and powerful. Lenzie demonstrated these qualities without a shadow of a doubt. The only problem was that I had no idea how to do it! I had taken the most important step in my learning journey. I was now “consciously (rather than just unwittingly) incompetent.”
With practice, I became “consciously competent,” which meant that if I really paid attention, I could evade my more experienced classmates, and sometimes even push them out. The thing I paid attention to was staying relaxed and receptive as I yielded and also as I pushed. Lenzie always emphasized (and demonstrated) that the greatest strength came from the greatest “yielding.” It was by practicing softness that we developed our “rooting” — the ability to stand firm like a tree and push people in a way that was powerful and irresistible.
So that is the martial arts story. I also want to share with you the story of a CEO who transformed his leadership style from directive and controlling to receptive and encouraging, without losing any of his action orientation. In fact, he became more resolute, not less.
What happened is this: Bob wanted to engage his staff more. He recognized that there were unintended consequences when he “cut to the chase” and went into director mode. His staff would become remarkably passive, waiting for him to tell them what to do. This was frustrating to Bob. What he really wanted was for them to be energized and take more initiative, yet he seemed to be influencing them to do the opposite.
Following an Immunity to Change approach, Bob wrote down his improvement goal: He wanted to be more receptive and encouraging to his staff, particularly when they were tackling a problem that he had a strong opinion about. Next, he listed the things he did (unwittingly) that undermined this goal: interrupting, taking over, correcting, focusing on flaws, failing to inquire. He asked himself what did he worry would happen if he did the opposite of those things? The worry that first occurred to him was that they would steer the company into an impasse, and the results would reflect badly on him as a leader.
In other words, Bob came to see that he was ambivalent. He was committed to energizing and empowering his staff, but he was equally committed to never letting them get off track. Each of these competing commitments triggered the other. When he got carried away “correcting” his staff, he resolved anew to empower them, but when he trusted them to take charge, he felt an equally compelling need to reassert control. He was oscillating in a state of “unresolve,” never fulfilling either commitment to his satisfaction.
Bob did not resolve his ambivalence by “trying harder”; the problem was not willpower. Rather, he began to question the assumption that was holding it in place — that if he let others take the initiative, he would end up being neglectful (because they needed him to course correct) or worse, obsolete (because they didn’t). So long as this assumption remained “true” for him, he was bound to buck and bridle when he felt the initiative passing into others’ hands and out of his control.
Instead of remaining subject to this assumption, however, Bob conducted a set of deliberate challenges to it, in each case comparing what the assumption would have predicted to what actually happened. First he tried a new behavior. He listened; he left the initiative to his subordinates; he made himself notice, appreciate and acknowledge their progress. Then he asked himself, “Well, did they go off track? Am I being irresponsible or neglectful? Do I feel superfluous? Are they wondering what value I’m adding?”
To his astonishment (and relief), when subjected to such direct scrutiny, his “big assumption” crumbled; its predictions just did not hold up. And just beyond the movie that had been projected by this limiting belief lay a much bigger landscape of possibilities: His staff could seize the reigns enthusiastically, and he could feel good about it. They could suggest things he had never thought of, and he could be intrigued. He felt much more connected to his staff, more “on task” as he delegated, and more fulfilled as he discovered his role as a coach and mentor. Now his way of adding value wasn’t just to “keep the business on track.” It was also, in a more complex view of the world, to “grow leaders.”
Through this learning journey, Bob did a lot of letting go. He became less controlling and more curious, open, receptive, engaging, encouraging and patient. As he put it, he learned to avoid the “impatience trap.” His staff noticed the changes, and they were responsive and relieved. As Bob had hoped, they became more energized and took more initiative. He willingly relinquished the initiative. Most of all, he let go of a way of thinking about himself — a self-image as “company savior,” as the one who could discern the risks that others missed and save the day. He also let go of the corresponding self-doubt — his fear that he would have no other way of adding value.
But here is the paradox: In letting go in these ways, Bob did not become ambivalent or indecisive. On the contrary. He became resolute. He stopped oscillating between competing commitments and became more consistent in his mindset and behaviors. Rather than getting caught on the horns of a false dilemma (“if I empower my flock, they will stray”), he was now integrating the poles of a paradox. He could offer challenge and support, leadership and development.
Bob’s story is not unique. It describes a pattern of human development that Psychologist Robert Kegan has described as the movement from subject to object[1]. An assumption or belief that we were subject to — that functioned as a premise for our behavior without our being aware of it — becomes an object of reflection, and it can thus be modified to adapt to the realities we are dealing with.
My aim in evoking Bob’s story was to provoke recognition of this pattern. Have you observed it in someone at work? In your family? In yourself? Can you recognize how this form of human development follows a paradoxical pattern? On the one hand, you let go of a limiting belief or assumption — of an attachment to seeing things a certain way; you become more flexible, open, receptive to possibilities; you learn. On the other hand, you become more resolute — less ambivalent, more aware, congruent, clear and decisive.
If so, then you may also be able to see the connection between Bob’s story and the martial arts story mentioned previously. Each illustrates not only the possibility but also the necessity of being both receptive and resolute, decisive and open.
[1] Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self (Harvard University Press, 1982)

How to master the art of high performance in a VUCA world.
What does it take to develop a high-performance team in the face of industry disruption and market volatility? In today’s world, businesses are required to reinvent who they are and why they exist to remain relevant. To do this, leaders and their teams need to develop their capacity to lead confidently and make decisions quickly in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Many teams struggle to deliver consistently and collaborate effectively under this pressure when tensions run high. In order to cope with the stress, people check out or blame others, avoid hard conversations or erupt to find relief and then relationships suffer. Other people struggle with burnout, anxiety or overwhelm, which impacts productivity, creativity and well-being. To make things even more challenging, these types of environments require high trust between team members at a time when individualized development and culture conversations often get deprioritized.
As an executive coach and culture consultant, I dedicate a significant amount of my energy to developing conscious leaders and teams in organizations. Teams are the performance lever of an organization. Most organizations acknowledge the link between team performance and business results but are unclear about what it takes to develop high performance in a VUCA world. Here are a few of the ways conscious leaders develop their teams:
 
Shift from individual awareness to team consciousness.
The most successful teams operate from full spectrum consciousness. They understand they are part of a system and are aware of and tend to the needs (physical/emotional) and motivations (meaning/making a difference/service to all stakeholders) of the group, maintaining awareness of interdependences and interconnectedness and skillfully managing these tensions. Research in the last decade has proven the advantage of group decision-making over that of even the smartest individual in the group. But the exception to this is when the group lacks harmony or the ability to cooperate. Then decision-making quality and speed suffer.
The important difference between effective teams and ineffective ones lies in the emotional and social intelligence of the group (team consciousness).Teams have an emotional intelligence of their own. It is comprised of the emotional intelligence of individual members plus a collective competency of the group. Emotional intelligence enables individual team members to deal with their own internal responses, moods and states of mind. Social intelligence informs how we understand and interact with others. Leaders with high emotional mastery are effective because they act in ways that leave people around them feeling more capable.They are able to manage themselves effectively under stress and ambiguous circumstances (presence under pressure).
If a team member begins to break down under pressure, other team members can help the person recover by maintaining a positive mental state (learner and player mindset) and treating the mistake or error as a learning opportunity versus lashing out in frustration with blame and criticism. This could also include creating an awareness for the team member by sharing constructive observations about the person’s impact on the group and business results. If the team joins the person in a furthering negative spiral, you will intensify the judgment and emotional state that advances the breakdown in collective performance.
 
Have a clear mission that generates a powerful, shared purpose and meaningful contribution.
When clarity of mission and a higher purpose are lacking, teams lose focus and flounder in the face of business and market challenges. Knowing what you aspire to and take responsibility for and why it matters is key to sustainable execution and finding deeper meaning in the challenge. This requires asking questions like: Why do we exist? What is our shared purpose? What do we really want to achieve?
We define shared purpose as a unique way of being in service in the world. It defines why you exist as a group and then expressing this with clarity, consistency and constancy as part of your team culture. This includes understanding what makes work meaningful for each person on your team and being a catalyst who inspires and empowers team members to fully express their gifts and talents in service of the mission.
 
Focus on both “hard” (structure) and “soft” (behavior and culture) for sustainable success.
Most simply, this means the team has clear processes, roles and structures for accountability to achieve its mission “hard” (structure) and a solid emphasis on the human dimension of business “soft” (behavior and culture). We teach a mental model called Three Dimensions of Success that helps keep this focus in balance. Exceptional, sustainable results come from integrating three critical dimensions:

Times have changed. The last 20 years have brought as much change as the previous 50 years combined. This increasingly rapid change has created new challenges for today’s modern enterprise. Do you feel it? This new context or “new normal” is characterized by something experts have come to call, “Living in a VUCA world.”
LIVING IN A VUCA WORLD
This new VUCA world is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Add to this the increasing forces of “velocity” that drive the need for speed, and “transparency” that drives a need for more effective communications, and we begin to see how the environment wherein project management occurs has changed drastically from what it was just a few decades ago. This new normal impacts how project managers make decisions, plan, manage risks, manage change and solve problems. When was the last time someone told you, “Take your time” or “Don’t worry, someone else will figure it out”? Exactly!
In today’s VUCA world, project managers need to move beyond receiving information to the leading activity—from organizing spreadsheets to managing people and their multiple positions of interest, and from tracking activities to being business partners who understand the subject matter of their clients, help to foresee risk, propose solutions and challenge their client’s approach so as to maximize effectiveness. In the end, what clients want can be summed up by Larry the Cable Guy, “Git ’er done.”

SEVEN CONSCIOUS PROJECT MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES
What follows are seven conscious project management capabilities for today’s VUCA world. Do you have them all? If not, it’s time to start working on them.

  1. LEADERSHIP

Today’s project managers need to lead and manage teams, set a clear vision, get buy-in, motivate teams, coach them, inspire them and resolve conflict effectively. Without good leadership skills, people and teams can become demotivated and burn out, thus impacting the quality and timing of a project. To avoid this, today’s project management requires developed leadership skills that help project managers lead both strategically and operationally.
From a strategic perspective, project managers need to understand the business value proposition of the project and then be able to communicate it effectively to work streams and teams. They need to be able to clearly explain the work stream’s role and contribution to the project in the context of the desired value proposition to the business.
As projects move faster and include greater complexity, it’s important to be able to get people and team’s buy-in on both high-level strategic positions as well as commitment to more tactical tasks. This requires sensitivity, empathy and clarity—all essential to self-awareness, emotional intelligence and the development of leadership skills. This means sensitivity to the needs of the business to assure alignment; empathy for the work streams, their requirements and task load so as to continually load balance teams effectively; and clarity of direction, risks, milestones and mitigation plans so as to maximize time and resources. Together, sensitivity, empathy and clarity create buy-in.
Once buy-in has occurred, the project manager needs to leverage leadership skills to motivate, coach and inspire people and teams through the ups and downs, successes and setbacks of project implementation. Along the way, conflict will arise. Project managers with strong leadership capabilities are adept at managing conflict and resolving it with respect and honesty that leaves all parties further committed to the task and the team.
Leadership is a core competency of today’s project managers. By leveraging leadership skills, self-awareness and emotional intelligence, project managers galvanize participant buy-in while deepening trust and resolving conflict between multiple actors.

  1. COMMUNICATIONS

Perhaps more than any other skill, communications can make or break a project. It can be the source of strong alignment and synchronization between moving parts of a complex project, or it can be the source of ambiguity, confusion, misdirection and assumptions run amuck.
The communication skills of today’s project managers should allow them to build strong rapport with work streams and teams and to be interpersonal and engaging throughout interactions. Deeper rapport and engagement allows project managers to build deeper trust with work streams, which in turn makes challenging their thinking and holding them accountable for commitments more effective.
Additionally, project managers need to be clear and concise in their ability to communicate why, what, how and when things need to occur. They know how to use data and fact-based information to communicate risks and challenge work streams in a clear, contextualized message. Great communicators know how to get to the point effectively while building engagement at the same time. But communicating is only half of the communication skill required for today’s project management. Active listening is the other half.
Active listening skills include knowing how to listen to the words being spoken. It also includes a deeper skill for reading body language, tone and implied meaning. It requires checking one’s assumptions and inferences as discussions in advance so as to make sure that all parties involved understand the same thing at the same time.
Communication and listening are as vital project management skills in today’s complex work environment as any traditional project management capability. Knowing how to listen actively and communicate clearly and concisely helps to advance project goals while building rapport with key stakeholders.

  1. NEGOTIATIONS

Similar to communications, negotiation skills require understanding relationships and stakeholders’ interests. However, more than communications, it requires specific skills and techniques to help people move from surface level positions to positions of interest where common ground can be found.
Additionally, project managers require political savvy to manage communications and interactions between multiple work streams and actors in order to implement solutions. This in turn requires tactful compromise and the skills to bring people together to settle the ongoing reallocation of resources, changes in work stream activities, and managing the limits placed on a project by moving timelines.
All projects will require consensus building and compromise. Negotiation skills are core to achieving both. Negotiation skills provide lubricant to the scheduling of activities, allocation of resources and the movement of timelines.

  1. RISK MANAGEMENT

The best skill for effective risk management is experience. Project managers need to know what could go wrong and have the humility to ask others. Oftentimes, project managers get caught up in the act of reporting and requiring, without the flexibility required to engage others and seek their input on potential risks early on. In fact, risks can often be seen as important but not urgent and can lead project managers to a false sense of comfort.
Risk can occur at the macro and micro level of a project. Risks can be associated with people, lack of knowledge in required areas, contractors, sequencing, timing and resources to name a few. But risks can also exist at the work stream activity level due to the same variables mentioned and their being part of a smaller activity within a work stream. The risk can more easily be overlooked, coming back to create larger problems down the road.
Risk assessment is only of value if plans to mitigate risk are also considered and developed. No one likes surprises, and it is the project manager’s role to minimize surprises by foreseeing risk, communicating its potential impact, and providing stakeholders with plans to mitigate negative impact.
Today’s project managers are only as successful as their ability to manage risk. Successful risk management requires experience and knowledge. Great project managers are always seeking both for themselves and from others.

  1. SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE

Today’s project management is increasingly complex. It requires that project managers delve deeply into the business they are serving as well as the work streams they are managing. Project managers don’t need to be experts in all things, but the more they immerse themselves in the subject matter of each work stream and the business the project is serving, the more they can foresee potential risk, challenge the effectiveness of work stream activities, and understand where focus needs to be given.

  1. CRITICAL THINKING

Project managers need to take in information and weigh the pros and cons while assessing people’s ability to respond. The speed and complexity of today’s projects require a keener ability to think critically than ever before, as the issues and implications to be considered often span multiple groups and occur within matrixed work environments.
Strong critical thinkers have the ability to identify individual and integrated work stream challenges and propose solutions. They are able to manage project work streams in the context of the value proposition being delivered by the overall project/initiative and propose solutions that support the project’s business goals.

  1. MEETING MANAGEMENT

Meetings are the activity that most bring together project managers with their stakeholders. Due to their frequency, poor meeting management can lead to distrust in project managers and even avoidance of their involvement by work stream leads. Although a seemingly obvious skill, many project managers tend to “wing it” in meetings without leveraging them to build confidence and address the most important issues impacting the project at any given time.
Today’s project managers need to know how to run effective meetings with clear purpose, desired outcomes and agendas. Project managers need to know how to manage the three different types of meeting modes—inform, discuss/debate and decide—so as to adapt their approach to the required meeting mode.
By conducting productive meetings with clear purpose, desired outcomes, agendas and closings, project managers garner greater respect and confidence from their stakeholders.
 
CONCLUSION
Today’s complex work environment creates a “new normal” wherein traditional project management is not enough to successfully deliver desired outcomes.
The bottom line is that project managers are increasingly called upon to anticipate the issues that impact the project’s progress; understand the consequences of issues and actions; appreciate the interdependencies between multiple work streams and other variables; prepare for alternative realities and challenges; and to foresee, interpret and address relevant opportunities for effectiveness along the way.
In short, today’s project managers require a higher awareness of self, others and situations and should be ready to act decisively. Project managers need to be leaders as well as managers, strategists as well as tacticians, and business partners as well as business servants.
 
SOURCES
Kofman, Fred. Conscious Business. Sounds True, Reprint edition, 2006.
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Mango, 2016.
Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline. Crown Business; Revised and Updated edition, 2010.
Lonoff Schiff, Jennifer. “7 Must-Have Project Management Skills.” CIO from IDG 30 Aug. 2017.
Aston, Ben, “7 Essential Project Management Skills for 2018.” The Digital Project Manager 1 Aug. 2017.
Harrin, Elizabeth. “15 Top Skills Project Managers Need.” Strategy Execution 8 Jan. 2015.
Udo, Nathalie and Koppensteiner, Sonja. “What Are The Core Competencies of a Successful Project Manager?” Project Management Institute Jan. 2004.
 


Speed matters in business.
Many executives today are leading high-growth companies and startups. Velocity-driven organizations and type A executives work hard at delivering new standards of performance and handling increased levels of change and creative tension without sacrificing trust or momentum. That is no accident though. These high-velocity and high-trust organizations are consistently working on their team dynamics and culture.
Most of us are only aware of our culture and its impact on our team’s performance when we have to adapt to something. Culture matters when there’s a problem (e.g., explosive change) – otherwise it’s just there. (paraphrased from E.Schein)
Sometimes, though, (even for business juggernauts) the continued pressure to make history and deliver on deadlines and commitments may lead to breakdowns. Despite the consistent good intentions and impressive accomplishments of the individuals on the team, team members may understandably get caught up in a “swirl” of counterproductive, cognitive conflict (causing drag forces) and affective conflict (causing drama/gravitational forces).
In physics, velocity, efficiency and momentum are negatively affected by drag. The faster you go, the more drag you create. Even tiny changes in drag can create large differences in performance.
At best, the “drama, drag and swirl” may be:

  • Distracting and diverting the team’s energy away from more value-added activities.
  • Decelerating the potential for additional momentum (i.e., maximum velocity).

At worst, the “drama, drag and swirl” may be:

  • Undermining the team’s effectiveness and ultimate success of their business objective.

Approximately $350 billion U.S in lost productivity occurs annually in organizations, due to negative behavior (e.g. swirl, toxicity) according to Gallup research. As much as 40 percent of manager’s time is spent dealing with conflict, drama and unhealthy tension another research indicates. (Source: http://powerofted.com/the-costs-of-drama/)
Everyday (default/reactive) methods for responding to this kind of tension/drag may not help regain collaborative momentum or help your organization recover quickly enough. In these cases, gravity becomes the overpowering force compelling your organization to a complete stop.
Instead of default methods of diffusing conflict, high-velocity teams and cultures practice staying above the drama, drag and swirl more effectively, with a shared set of drag-reducing mechanisms (e.g., tools, skills, mindsets). To maintain speed, they practice with these tools (see chart below) consistently — especially at critical moments when it doesn’t seem like there is time to stop and practice.

What is creating drama, drag and swirl inside of your organization?

Strategy planning is all about setting targets and key performance indicators, right? If your planning process is primarily a financial exercise, you may be missing the greatest leverage to be derived from planning — that is, building a culture of team effectiveness.
Today, much of strategy planning is about conversations and choices that will guide the firm’s focus for the next one to three years. It may result in spreadsheets with target performance indicators or objectives for divisions, teams and individuals. These are all important items for driving clarity about business direction and focus, but they will not deliver results by themselves.
Equally important, the planning process can be used to drive the right mindsets and behaviors that support real-world business objectives and outcomes. The right targets and performance indicators alone do not ensure that people will collaborate effectively to achieve them. When planning strategy, collaboration takes the form of various discussions.
Strategy planning is about conversations — or a series of conversations — and viewing the business through different lenses to define areas of opportunity for growth. Discussions, debates and choices need to occur along the way. How do we analyze the current business situation? What are the implications of today’s market for our business? Additionally, talks are needed to define risks and to assign responsibilities and timing of tasks.
Conversations shed light on how people work together. As such, the process of strategy planning can be a great way to work on behaviors that can improve the effectiveness of individuals and teams. In a word, planning strategy is a reflection of an organization’s culture.
As an example, we recently worked with the senior leadership team of a global retail product manufacturer. We observed that their meetings consisted of each individual speaking their opinion about a topic but with no questions being asked of one another. It was as though each person put forth their belief as fact and spoke at each other rather than with each another. We shared this observation about their heavy attachment to their points of view and the obstacle it was creating in their ability to move forward, craft a direction and make choices concerning future strategy. We introduced the idea of asking more questions of one another rather than only speaking one’s opinion. With this approach, they immediately started to see possibilities that did not exist previously. The result was improved collaboration and creativity as they built on one another’s ideas. They arrived at answers in minutes that the previous six months of conversations were not able to provide.
Culture can simply be defined as how one perceives the need to act in order to be accepted and successful within the organization, division and/or team. It’s about how people come to share common modes of behavior and perspectives in the workplace.
Teams share organizational culture norms and tend to develop additional characteristics as a team, often driven by the leader’s beliefs and behaviors. Oftentimes, the culture is not something consciously developed; therefore, bad habits can go unchecked, lessening the impact of individuals, teams and the organization.
For example, as new ideas were introduced during a meeting with a worldwide consulting firm, the common response was that these ideas were not the way they usually did things. This exhibited a mindset that they were heavily biased to the ways of their past, even when those ways were no longer producing results.

 
Three pitfalls to planning strategy
Here are three common behaviors that become pitfalls to planning strategy. They often go unchecked, as teams focus only on the culture or the content of their conversations and not on how they have them.
1. Focus on assigning blame to what’s not working.
Strategy planning requires confronting issues that may hold risk for the business. When confronting risk, people often revert to explaining situations using factors outside of their control. This allows people to be innocent when facing the consequences of risk but also leaves them powerless to address it.
When people perceive a risky outcome, they will look to the economy, the infrastructure of their company, decisions made by others, the wrong product at the wrong time, poor execution, etc., to explain their situation. All may be issues easily understood, as they may indeed exist. However, if blaming any of the aforementioned issues becomes the lens through which a team plans strategy, then in order for them to be successful, the team requires that these same issues do not exist. As such, the team becomes a victim of circumstances beyond their control and is limited in their ability to respond.
While working with a global software company, the leadership team became focused on how they were unable to overcome disrupting forces in the marketplace that were threatening their ability to grow. This dialogue went on for some time without any investigation as to what was really holding them back from responding more successfully to the issue. We made the leaders aware that their mindset was focused on external factors beyond their control versus any consideration of what they may need to learn as a team to address disruption. As soon as the discussion shifted to focusing on their ability to respond, possibilities began to flood the conversation. They prioritized them based on time and resources, and they crafted a new strategy based on becoming a stronger learning organization. The result was proactive approaches to identifying what they most needed to learn and to then deploy new tactics based on these learnings.
The alternative to this victim mindset is to instead focus on how the team will respond in relation to the challenges they are facing, even when the challenges are outside of their control. This requires recognizing what individuals, teams and the organization may need to learn in order to confront their challenges. Through this empowered lens, teams will become aware of opportunities that could not be seen from within their victimhood.
For instance, team members may discuss their situation and determine that they do not have the necessary resources or budget to achieve their desired goals. An alternative is to face the truth that the team may not know how to do it given the resources and budget they have. With this latter mindset, teams avail themselves to what is within their control. They can then focus their time and attention on seeking out the information and learning required to achieve their goals instead of the impotence that remains when only focusing on what’s outside of their control.
 
2. Conversations that spiral and go nowhere.
Teams often place their emphasis and energy on the content of their discussions without considering the efficacy of how they are having them. A common result is that teams begin conversations without a plan for how to effectively have them and consequently have deliberations that go on and on without resolve.
We recently worked with the leadership team of a Fortune 100 company that needed to restructure its business to focus on the key areas that would create growth. In doing so, they needed to choose which parts of the business to divest. Many long-standing parts of the business had provided growth in the past but weren’t any longer. Instead, the company was using valuable resources and capital that could have been spread to new areas.
The back-and-forth between them was endless. People would defend one business area over another, share the reasons why each unit should be preserved, or why another new area of business should be pursued more heavily with investment. The team was unable to stop the exchange and move on to making important choices about where to invest and divest moving forward.
These never-ending conversations led to frustration among team members. They felt their input was not getting them anywhere. People stated their beliefs about an issue but did not know how or when to stop debating so they could move into decision-making mode.
All conversations in strategy planning can fall into one of the following three categories:

  • Inform — The purpose is to inform people about something. No decision, discussion or debate is required. It’s about making sure people understand the topic being presented and are aligned with their understanding.
  • Discuss and debate — The purpose is to gather input and perspectives from participants to enrich understanding and potential responses.
  • Decide — Once a topic has been presented and discussed, options become clear and a decision can be made regarding which option is best for the situation.

If a team can define the type of conversation they are about to have, they can more easily respond accordingly (i.e., check understanding, gather input, debate solutions and ultimately decide between two or more options).
Without this clarity, a number of participants can be in different conversation modes at the same time. While one person believes the purpose is to receive information, another believes a debate is supposed to occur, while yet another believes a decision needs to be made. This creates confusion and frustration, which impacts the effectiveness of how teams plan strategy.
It may indeed be the case that all three modes need to occur, but all three should never occur at the same time. Awareness of their sequence and conscious participation in line with the appropriate mode can make planning conversations more effective and easier to manage.
 
3. Difficulty making decisions.
Just as teams can get stuck in conversations that seem to have no end, they can also become paralyzed with the need to make decisions. This most often occurs when teams have not thought about how they will make a decision.
Returning to the example of the company that needed to restructure its business to focus on the key areas that would create growth, we intervened with a meeting discussion and decision-making model that allowed the team a structured way to share opinions and then to create clear options between which decisions could be made. Because there was now a clear method for making a decision, the team was able to decide and commit to a direction that had eluded them for the past two years. Their choices led to investments in new areas while preserving income from more mature areas of the business. The result has been a return to growth that matches their competitors and has even put them in the leadership position in their key area of focus.
Decision-making requires a clear and agreed upon method or roadmap. All decisions are a choice between two or more options. However, if decision-making rights are not made explicit from the beginning, then teams may struggle to make important decisions because no one is clear on who has decision-making rights and how they will be deployed.
For example, decision-making can occur through different ways. It may be as simple as the team leader making the final decision. Or perhaps the leader wants the team to discuss and the leader will then decide. Or maybe the team discusses and the team decides, which then requires the use of consensus-building techniques or other modes of group decision-making, such as voting. Still further, a leader may decide that the team is to discuss the issue, but a single member of the team is to decide, as the issue pertains to their area of expertise. And finally, the leader may simply ask another team member to decide.
Any of these methods bring clarity to how decisions will be made, and if one of these is chosen at the beginning of the conversation, then decision-making can occur more rapidly, preventing the team from becoming crippled by the process.
How teams respond to their situation, where they choose to focus, and how they have conversations and make decisions are all a reflection of cultural norms within a team and/or organization.
By bringing awareness to these areas, teams can consciously participate in the planning process and yield more effective outcomes. As such, the planning process becomes the perfect opportunity to reflect on the “how” we do things as much as the “what” we are trying to achieve. By proactively focusing on the “how,” teams and organizations can build more effective cultures of collaboration.