The Real Secrets to Creating Ownership

Image source by George Hodan

No one cares like you when you own it. But, the more you own the less they own.

No one wants to own what you own too.

Individuals take ownership, you can’t give it. When someone gives you something you don’t want, you protest. “No thanks.” If it’s forced on you, you take possession but not ownership.

Possession is assigned; ownership is taken.

Ownership factors:

1. Owners desire what they own. I worked and saved for the first bike I bought as a kid. I wanted that bike. Ownership is about desire not assignment.
2. Control expresses ownership; those who own, control. If you control everything, they own nothing, regardless of roles or assignments.
3. Owners sit at the table. If direct reports never attend meetings, you still own what they only possess.
4. Owners speak for themselves. Bosses who report for you are the real owners. Bosses who won’t let you speak usually take credit in the end because they owned it all the time.
5. Reward reflects ownership. The people receiving recognition and reward are real owners. Who gets the pat on the back?

Inspiring ownership:

Ownership is about them, first. Individual desire motivates ownership. You own what you want.

1. What personal or career goals pull them forward?
2. What aptitudes and passions drive them?
3. Where do they best align organizational mission and vision? Alignment is found never forced.
4. What organizational future most fuels their fire?
5. What makes them proud?
6. Why are they still with the organization?

Focus more on people and less on projects to inspire ownership. Are you spending most of your time explaining projects and little time understanding people? You’re still the owner.

What blocks ownership?

How are you creating ownership?

10 Reasons Leaders Fail, Plus One

“The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” William Pollard

10 reasons leaders fail:

1. Stop learning.
2. Don’t build the team.
3. Can’t collaborate.
4. Won’t adapt.
5. Won’t delegate.
6. Assume.
7. Blame.
8. Lack focus.
9. Don’t communicate.
10. Don’t plan.

Adapted from contributions on Facebook (10/16/12). See more.

Learning from failure:

I talked with Alan Wurtzel, former CEO of the now defunct Circuit City Stores, Inc., yesterday. (From more than 500 stores and 10 billion in sales to nothing.) He’s also the son of the founder, Sam Wurtzel.

Jim Collins chose Circuit City Stores, Inc. as a “great” company in, “Good to Great.” What happened?

Alan’s book, “Good to Great to Gone,” is his personal journey to make sense of what went wrong. Its part history, part explanation, and most importantly, filled with powerful leadership lessons. I loved reading it.

Plus one:

Arrogance is the main reason leaders fail.

You could say there are many reasons leaders fail. I’ll say arrogance is behind most. How many of the 10 reasons listed above are expressions of arrogance?

Circuit City thrived when its leadership acted humbly and died because of pride. Wurtzel didn’t say that, I am. You might suggest they failed to adapt. I’ll say pride prevents leaders from adapting. Arrogance destroys.

Four Symptoms of leadership arrogance:

1. Focusing on short-term success.
2. Over concern about the opinion of others. Arrogant leaders are controlled by public opinion. Fear, not confidence, drives arrogant leaders.
3. Unwillingness to admit mistakes; lying to save face.
4. Blaming rather than taking responsibility.

Five powerful words from Wurtzel:

“I may not be right.”

Wurtzel’s five simple words answer arrogance. The greatest power of humility is it makes room for doubt. The most deadly power of pride is it prevents it.

How can leaders address the challenge of arrogance?

How have you seen arrogance hurt organizations and leaders?

Two Ways to Overcome the Pipe Dream Problem

Ivory-tower-leaders mastermind their own demise when they craft strategies and plans without considering the talent on the team.

Your dreams are doomed
if the horses in the barn can’t pull the wagon.

In, “Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream,” Steve Van Remortel asks,

“Can you name one aspect of your business
that strategy or talent won’t address?”

Organizational challenges can be solved by:

• Improving strategy.
• Optimizing talent.

One without the other, however, is a disaster.

Steve’s Five Fundamentals of Strategy and Talent

1. Differentiation. Make your differentiation so clear your customers will choose you over your competition and pay you more when they do. Stop selling vanilla ice cream.
2. Tangible value. Don’t just say you’re the best – prove it.
3. Talent management. Identify, select, develop, and retain the talent that’s able to execute and deliver your competence and plan.
4. Tactical/Department plans. Develop and execute action plans that work “on” the business in each department.
5. Plan execution. The journey doesn’t end with the completion of a plan; it’s only the beginning! Create a culture of discipline that focuses on accountability.

Questions:

1. What makes us most different from our competition?
2. How can we let customers understand and appreciate the value we bring?
3. Where can our current talent take us?
4. How can we enable talent to create the future?
5. What’s the execution plan?

Getting started:

Steve believes the process of improving strategy and optimizing talent begins by building a team that can guide you through current challenges into the future. His book comes with a code to access free online behavioral style assessments to aid formation of strategy making teams.

Follow Steve on twitter: @stopthevanilla

What are the core components of organizational strategy?

How can leaders successfully optimize talent?

How to Uncover Your Greatest Value

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The people you serve determine the value you bring.

The owners of a growing company didn’t appreciate the greatest value they brought their customers. Surprisingly, it wasn’t their products and services.

Their best customers said:

1. They understand us and our business.
2. They take the time to understand the way we do things.
3. I want to hear their recommendations because I feel like they understand us.
4. I know I can trust them because they didn’t try to sell me the most expensive product.

The owners didn’t realize:

I asked the owners to predict what customers said when I asked about their greatest value. They couldn’t predict it. When I told them the first thing their customers said was, “I feel like they understand our business.” A light came on.

They thought they were delivering products and services.
More importantly, they were making people feel understood.

Permission to play and beyond:

Great products and services are permission to play. It doesn’t matter how well you understand your customers if you deliver lousy products.

What happens beyond permission to play matters most.

Point of success:

Your point of success goes beyond products and services. Success is always about unexpected value; never what you get, always what you give.

Power of clarity:

Benefits of understanding your greatest value:

1. Affirming what you do right. You may not realize your greatest value because you do it unconsciously.
2. Developing skills that enhance your ability to deliver your greatest value. The company I dealt with more fully appreciates the power of curiosity and compassion. Something they already possessed but now can enhance.
3. Hiring criteria. Hire people who deliver your greatest value.
4. Stopping behaviors that diminish your greatest value.

You may not realize your greatest value as an organization or individual. The people you serve know.

How have you been surprised at the value you brought others?

How has knowing your greatest value changed the way you lead?

Top 15 Strategies for Leadership Success

The first thing you need to know is:

Success is a result not an end in itself.

Five organizational strategies:

1. Always create more harmony than discord.
2. Build up more than you tear down, much more.
3. Long-term views build stability.
4. Short-term views produce quick results.
5. Make life easier for those over you.

Three relationship strategies:

1. Friends represent who you will become.
2. Show respect.
3. Always act with kindness, especially when being tough.

Two personal development strategies:

1. Identify wise leaders and seek their counsel, often.
2. Read. If you don’t read, listen to books.

Five communication strategies:

1. Never pretend you know when you don’t.
2. Always speak clearly, directly, and honestly.
3. Talk less; listen more.
4. Stay in the moment in public.
5. Focus on and enjoy others.

Bonus: Define success.

What top strategies for leadership success can you add?

Mintzberg on What’s Wrong with Management

Henry Mintzberg thinks modern management is off the tracks. While we spoke, I got the feeling if I asked what’s wrong with management he’d say practically everything. This from one of the most respected business thinkers in the world.

He went so far as to say,

“The problem in America
isn’t the economy it’s management.”

Mintzberg speaks against:

1. MBA’s with no experience.
2. Shareholder value.
3. Separating management from leadership.
4. Top-down strategy making. He believes strategy emerges from conversations within an organization.
5. Excessive executive compensation. He juxtaposed narcissist with over-compensated CEO.
6. Using terms like “human resources” and “human capital”. He thinks it’s sick.
7. Pushing employees to work harder and longer.
8. Current hiring practices.

Hiring a CEO:

“Stop hiring people who can impress.” Henry Mintzberg

Stop looking for perfect candidates. Mintzberg said, “Flaws aren’t fatal.” I got the idea that he doesn’t believe in savior-CEO’s.

Mintzberg said, “Listen to the people who know them best, the people who worked for them. There are only two ways to find out someone’s flaws, marry them or work for them.”

Searching for perfect – flawless – candidates prevent anyone from saying the emperor has no cloths. In a world filled with “perfect” leaders, fakery prevails. On a personal level:

Fakery exacerbates stress in an already stress filled world.

Email:

Mintzberg isn’t a big fan of email, to add an ninth item to the list. It obviously has a place but, “It does have an off button.”

He asked me to send him an email when to let him know I posted and then with tongue-in-cheek said, “I check email every three weeks.” At least I think he was joking. I found him to be contrarian but not contrary.

Read his thoughts on “The Offline Executive“.

What do you think is wrong with modern management?

Mintzberg’s Magic Wand

I asked Professor Henry Mintzberg, author of 140 articles and 13 books, “If you waved a magic wand over businesses, what would you change?”

He said, “I’d get rid of all MBA’s.”

He explained, “We’d lose some good people but in the whole it would be a positive move.” Mintzberg’s quiet voice disarms but he never minces words. Never mistake quiet for weak.

Mintzberg believes management has gone completely off the rails. Things that trouble Mintzberg about MBA’s include:

1. They graduate with distorted pictures of management. They believe management is about management principles, for example.
2. They believe they can manage anything regardless of the business.
3. They have knowledge without experience which leads to hubris.

“If management isn’t about management principles, what’s it about?” I asked.

“Management is connecting.” Henry Mintzberg

Although he didn’t use the terms human or humane, they seem to explain his passion. He despises an emphasis on productivity that’s built on the backs of over-worked, burned-out employees. He believes pushing people only works in the short-term.

Bloodletting:

He also believes cutbacks and layoffs are equivalent to the failed practice of bloodletting. They produce short-term profits and long-term loses. Mintzberg loves saying, “If you want productivity, fire everyone and sell from inventory.”

Long-term success:

Mintzberg believes organizations should be built for long-term success rather than quick profits. Shifting to the long view may be the most radical change businesses can make because it requires connecting.

*****

Recent article by Mintzberg and Todd: The Offline Executive

A new approach to leadership development: Coaching Ourselves

*****

If you could wave a magic wand over businesses, how would they change?

How are you navigating short-term vs. long-term views of business, management, and leadership?

Overcoming the Futility of Doing the Next Thing

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Repeating things without improving them means you’re dead in the water, stuck in the muck, dying on the vine. Don’t simply do the next thing; make it better.

Leading isn’t repeating.

Your calendar includes reoccurring things  like, performance reviews, company meetings, client calls, and staff development, to name a few.

Don’t repeat, improve.

But isn’t improvement hard? Is there time, energy, and resources? Improvement isn’t an option it’s an imperative. Making things better is better when it’s easy. Remember, making things harder isn’t an improvement.

Making it easy to make things better:

1. New techniques. Do old things in new ways. What new approach to performance reviews can you employ, for example?
2. New value to clients. Quarterly client calls gain value when you bring new value. Clients who trust you want your recommendations and suggestions for improving their business.
3. More humanity.
4. Variety. Try new locations, times, participants, even order of activity.
5. Next level. Last time we had balloons this time we’ll have clowns.
6. New value to employees. Shift from receiving value to giving value. How can you delight staff?
7. Build on the present, don’t eliminate it.
8. Eliminating antiquated systems, rituals, processes, and procedures. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, it’s time to stop it or rediscover why.
9. Surprise.
10. Define “better”.

Bonus: Improvement means canceling a minimal-value  meeting. Send an email instead.

Don’t change everything but improve something.

Waiting for big improvement often results in no improvement. On the other hand, small improvements make a big difference.

Where and how can leaders make simple improvements that make things better?

Lessons from the End of the Rope

Your failure-to-success journey is the most interesting thing about you. All successful leaders stumble, fall, and climb out of the ash heap only to be better for it. Flaunt it; don’t hide it. Facades cripple leadership.

Success coupled with frailty is beautifully inviting.

Your transformations represent your greatest ability to transform others. Don’t tell me about arriving; tell me about the journey.

“Leaders are defined, not defeated, by setbacks.”
Alyse Nelson

Setbacks are opportunities for clarity, humility, growth, and wisdom; faced well, they strengthen resolve. I asked Alyse Nelson, author of Vital Voices, about her own setbacks,

“It was hard for me to ask for help. I didn’t realize how much help I needed to start Vital Voices (The organization not the book). I was only twenty-six years old.”

I didn’t ask her about it, but I felt a coming to the end of the rope behind her comment. The end of the rope is life’s turning point.

“So what did you learn? I asked.”

Alyse said, “The turning point in my leadership came when I overcame the need to prove myself. Today, I care more about the success of Vital Voices than my own success.”

The greater our need to prove ourselves
the more reluctant we are to ask for help. 

Nelson’s lessons from the end of the rope:

1. Admit what you don’t know.
2. Seek people who can help.
3. Hire highly competent people.

Still more:

Alyse said, “I was very fortunate to have a strong group of mentors in my life.” She explained how her mentors encouraged her to take risks and stuck with her during setbacks.

While she talked, I thought about the power of standing with people during their struggle rather than retreating to safety. It’s easy to stand with winners. It takes courage, character, and compassion to stand with someone during their dark days.

Bonus: Read and add your comments to “The common mistakes of young leaders ______.” on my Facebook page.

What lessons have you learned from the end of the rope?

How to Find the Heart of Business

If you don’t know why you are here,
how will you know what to do?

Life without purpose has no dignity, no direction, and no enduring passion. What’s true for you is true for business.

Purpose and business:

David Lapin explains, “The purpose of economic activity is to make a valuable contribution to the well-being of others.” (Lead by Greatness)

• What businesses do? Engage in economic activity.
• Why businesses exist – purpose? Make valuable contributions to the well-being of others.

Purpose is the heart of your business. Every great organization understands and owns its “valuable contribution to the well-being of others” – purpose.

Power of Purpose:

1. Purpose drives business.
2. Purpose directs business.
3. Purpose evaluates business.
4. Purpose enhances business.

Personal purpose:

Your difference explains your unique potential.

What’s good for business is better for you. Life without purpose is living death. Lapin suggests finding your purpose by, “analyzing [your] differences.”

Find how you fit in by
exploring what makes you stand out.

Three steps:

After exploring your difference, Lapin suggest three steps to discovering your purpose.

1. List your capabilities. “Assets, skills, and experiences all come together to give you that unique set of capabilities.” Consider: physical abilities, upbringing, education, personality, world view, and more. (pg. 78)
2. Identify primary beneficiaries. Who are the, “single set of people or entities that could derive the most value capabilities.”
3. Uncover your passion. “…What activities in your work or personal life energize you?” Go one step more, “…What about them energizes and uplifts you…?”

Leadership and purpose:

Great leaders maximize differences. You may be tempted to look down on – minimize – those who are different from you. Small leaders judge everyone by themselves.

Always maximize uniqueness.
If you can’t, you’re on the wrong team.

How has purpose made a difference for you or others?

How did you clarify your purpose? Your business’ purpose?

This post is based on “Lead by Greatness” (ch. 6) and my conversation with it’s author, David Lapin.