Purposeful Abandonment: The Art of Letting Go

© Qrius4ever | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

You employ systems and strategies for starting, maintaining, and moving forward. Adopt systems for stopping, as well.

People who can’t say, “No,” chase all the spilled marbles at once. They’re confused and empty handed in the end. Too many yeses distract, weigh down, and waste energy.

“In order to grow, a business must have a
systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown,
the obsolete, and the unproductive.”
Peter Drucker

Abandonment conversations:

Begin 2013 with, “What do you need to stop,” conversations with key people. Ask:

1. What frustrates?
2. What drains energy?
3. What wastes time?
4. What produces small returns?
5. Which customers should be sent to competitors?
6. Is it time to stop petting a pet project?
7. What distracts from leveraging strengths?
8. What has low impact?
9. What can be stopped?

Paperwork is on many lists of frustrating, energy drainers, for example. Are reports necessary or antiquated? How much time is spent completing reports that seldom, if ever, get used?

“Planned, purposeful abandonment of the old
and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite to
successful pursuit of the new and highly promising.” Peter Drucker

You’re tough when it comes to endurance. Get courageous and tough on stopping things, too.

Abandonment meetings:

Schedule a monthly abandonment meeting. Carve off part of your business or organization and ask:

1. Do returns justify expense?
2. How much would it matter if we stopped …?
3. How are we squandering strengths?
4. How are these activities aligned with mission and vision?

Abandonment lists:

I don’t remember when I first heard, “Not to-do list,” but its genius. Make one. Variations of abandonment lists:

1. Do less of list.
2. Put it off till you’re tired and grumpy list.
3. Don’t care if it’s ever done list.
4. Have someone else do it list.

How can leaders and organizations get better at abandonment?

The Struggle and Power of Divergent Values

It’s a mistake to expect everyone to fully align with your values. Shared values are never fully shared.

Power of values: 

Shared values are the heartbeat of vibrant organizations.

1. Values drive decisions.
2. Decisions drive direction.
3. Direction drives satisfaction.

Diversity in values:

Close alignment and diversity
are better than full alignment and unity.

Mary and Carl share the values of growth and systems, for example. Carl’s top value is systems. He believes systems assure success. Systems precede growth.

On the other hand, Mary’s top value is growth. She prefers learning as you go. Systems follow growth.

They share values but have divergent priorities and intensity. Can you see a collision in the making?

Collisions:

Collisions between values challenge decision making. Do we pursue growth and organize as we go or do we organize first. Mary embraces the former. Carl holds to the latter.

Full alignment of values creates lopsided organizations.
Diversity stabilizes.

Respect:

Successful leader understand varying levels of intensity and priority within shared values. Losing Mary or Carl is problematic.

Divergent values add value.

Both/and:

Successful leaders embrace both/and. Do we pursue growth and create systems as we go or is it the other way around? YES! Wise leadership leverages both.

Breaking points:

Either/or choices occur when Carl refuses to support Mary. On the other hand, as long as Mary respects and supports Carl’s values she enrich their organization. However, when they don’t value the other’s values, one has to go.

Never make the mistake of cutting people off because their values don’t fully align with yours. Successful leaders get excited about things that excite others.

How can leaders navigate diversity in values?

When does diversity become distraction?

Facing the 3 Pressing Challenges of Leadership

Image source

The first pressing challenge of leadership is focusing on the thing that matters most.

People matter most.

In one sense, you are the person that matters most.

Nurture and develop you
as much as you nurture and develop others.

In another sense, others matter most. You make others matter when you:

1. Celebrate effort and progress, even if outcomes fall short. You frustrate the hell out of people when you constantly press for more without celebrating effort and progress, too.
2. Honor character qualities, not just performance.
3. Recognize talent. Talk about their talents and skills, not just what they do.
4. Press the stagnant.
5. Encourage the discouraged.
6. Develop people, not just skills. Think about the whole person.

The second pressing challenge of leadership is making what’s obvious to you obvious to everyone.

Make the obvious, obvious again:

1. Say it again. What gets repeated gets remembered.
2. Ask about it again. What gets asked about gets done.
3. Celebrate it again. What you celebrate gets remembered and repeated.

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If you don’t say it, no one knows.

If they can’t see it, it doesn’t matter.

If they can’t repeat it, it’s irrelevant.

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The third pressing challenge of leadership is narrowing your focus.

Opportunities and challenges exceed resources.

1. Amid all the urgencies, choose today’s priorities. Include problems, products, processes, and procedures, but, do something that demonstrates people matter, today.
2. Keep yourself and others in their sweet spots.
3. Choose to say no to lesser issues so you can say yes to what matters most. “No” sets you free.

What are the daily challenges of leadership and how can leaders best face them?

The Destruction of Potential and Joy

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Leave the good ole days in the past. Enjoy memories but never try recreating experiences.

Some years back, my wife and I went to an amusement park with another couple. It was the perfect storm of fun. The day was perfect. The crowds were small. We smiled, laughed, and played till it hurt. I feel nostalgic thinking about it. I love remembering, but trying to recapture that experience insults the present.

Warm fuzzy “I remember when conversations” are filled with misconceptions that drag you backwards into futile frustrating pursuits that always disappoint.

Build your future don’t recreate your past. Treat history like a platform not a magnet.

History is useful in that it helps you:

1. Understand noble values. Your history is filled with noble thinking and behaving. Think back to behaviors that made you proud. Embrace the intent while employing present methods and leveraging present opportunities. Wishfully looking back always frustrates and never brings out your best.
2. Identify enduring priorities. Think back to your greatest successes. Repeat enduring principles that matter.
3. Relish points of joy. Let joys from the past propel you toward new joys. Dreams of recreating old joy destroys potential for new joy.

History can’t:

Although history unveils noble values, enduring priorities, and points of joy, it doesn’t uncover relevant methods. History hinders progress when we cling to methods that once worked. Furthermore, history’s magnetism is magnified through repetition. Before long you’re saying, “We’ve always done it that way.”

Recreating history blinds and eventually destroys your leadership.

Radical vision:

Vision may build on the past but radical vision always breaks with it. Think major movements like the Protestant Reformation or the Civil Rights Movement.

Successful leaders always create the future.

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How can leaders leverage the past without being trapped in it?

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The People You Try to Please Control You

The people you try to please control you and your organization. Customers drive organizations, you don’t.

Drucker said, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” You are all about pleasing customers. Pleasing others, however, presents problems for you.

The more people you try to please:

1. The more frantic you and your organization become.
2. The less focused you become.
3. The blander you, your product, and your organization become.
4. The fewer people you please.

The fewer people you try to please:

1. The more focused you become.
2. The more creative you become.
3. The more distinct you become.
4. The more you’ll be unpleasing.

Displeasing:

Purposing to please fewer is not purposing to displease or offend many. It takes courage, however, to be willing to displease. The courage to displease sustains uniqueness.

Cowardice creates putrid mediocrity.

Offending:

Don’t intentionally offend many in your attempts to please fewer. If pleasing fewer offends – so be it. But, in most cases pleasing fewer simply makes others ignore you and that’s good.

Offending may be a clash of values. In that case offend nicely.

Offending may indicate you are offensive. In that case apologize and adjust.

Just please yourself:

If you’re an immature, selfish ass, pleasing yourself won’t take you far. If you’ve shifted focus from serving yourself to serving others then please yourself.

Use what pleases you in service to others. For example, Steve Jobs created produces he loved using.

What role does pleasing others play in your organization or life?

Is there balance between pleasing others or pleasing ourselves? Or, is it an either/or situation?

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The One Exclusive Secret to Managerial Success

Denny Strigl, former president and CEO of Verizon Wireless explains the secret to managerial success when he says, “Managers have one priority and only one; deliver results.” His book, Managers, Can You Hear Me Now: Hard-Hitting Lessons on How to Get Real Results, explains how.

The four exclusive fundamentals that deliver results.

“If the things you are doing as a manager don’t produce the following results, then you need to stop doing them. They are the only things that are important.”

1. Grow revenue.
2. Get new customers.
3. Keep the customers you already have.
4. Eliminate cost.

Dad went bankrupt when Denny was a freshman in college; it was a defining moment. Denny told me he didn’t want to be like his dad. He loved his dad but his dad never succeeded at business because, according to Denny, “He was wishy-washy. Dad couldn’t get specific. He couldn’t say the hard things.”

Hard work doesn’t guarantee success.

Denny explained that his dad was a hard-working, honest businessman. “I learned my work ethic from him.” Our conversation reminded me of my dad, who is still the hardest working man I know. I want to be like him. But, like Denny’s dad, my dad never succeeded at business because he was “too nice.”

How to be tough and tender?

Effectively exhibiting and appropriately applying toughness and tenderness epitomizes successful managers. If you can be tough without being mean and tender without getting walked on, you’ll rise to the top.

Respecting people balances toughness and tenderness. For example, setting high expectations respects a person’s abilities to deliver results. Giving employees authority and getting out of their way also demonstrates respect.

Denny wrote, “Any work climate that focuses on results must also possess respect.”

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How do you get results while showing respect?

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A What Without a How

A “what” without a “how” is like a car without gas.

My “what” statement:

What I’m doing in life is adding value to others in ways consistent with who I am and that energize me. Sounds great but it’s comfortably ambiguous.

Asking how:

“What” is not enough.

Asking how I can add value moves me from pie in the sky to rubber hits the road. That’s what I did while driving home yesterday. “What” determines destination. “How” explains action.

The first “how”:

Five “hows” that give feet to my “what”.

1. Encourage, nurture, support, and believe in my wife.
2. Help others know themselves by listening for their values and creating or exploring meaningful opportunities that express their values.
3. Help others to say the hard things about their performance.
4. Because I’m a talker, I’ll talk less and listen more.
5. Find people with passion and help them enhance their value.

The second “how”:

The first how helps but doesn’t go far enough. For example, how will I encourage my wife? Or, how will I focus on people with passion?

I’ll encourage my wife by cleaning the kitchen. That’s no impotent mirage that makes me feel like I’ve done something when I haven’t.

How will I find people with passion? I’ll gravitate toward frustrated people and see if I can fuel their fire.

Take action:

Leaders always focus on “what” first. But without two “how” questions you’ll stagnate.

You may be wondering, what about “why”? That’s a good question for another day. Today is “how” day.

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“How” can you add value today?

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Don’t miss a single issue of Leadership Freak, subscribe today. It’s free.  It’s private.  Go to the main page of Leadership Freak by clicking the banner at the top of this page, look in the right-hand navigation bar, enter your email and click subscribe.  Your email address is always kept private.  Note:  if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam filter for a confirmation email.

Vacillation or Agility

Changing organizational-direction may feel like instability. Worse yet, some may think that leaders that adapt are weak. The end result is uncertainty among the troops.

Uncertainty drains vitality which leads to disloyalty and ends with poor performance.

“… Agility is less a matter of adapting one’s direction continuously and more a matter of being open to different ways to achieve the directions you have set for yourself. In other words, real agility isn’t about heading north one day and south the next; that’s vacillation.” (From, “Strategic Speed – Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution.”)

Frequently, what is perceived by others as changing direction is actually adapting methods, strategies, or tactics.

Organizations seldom change their True North. However, successful organization frequently adapt to changing circumstances in order to stay on course. When the wind blows against them, they reset the sails and begin tacking.

Course adjustments may destabilize organizations because it feels like they’re heading in the wrong direction.

Bringing stability into agility

Successful leaders always keep True North uppermost in everyone’s mind. Adapting methods can be a point of leadership-strength as long as organizational mission remains in the forefront and new methods connect with changing circumstances.

Don’t say, “We’re trying this new … ”  Do say, “We’ll better fulfill our mission if we … “

Organizations that believe changing their methods is changing their mission (True North) die. They cling to antiquated, ineffective programs, strategies, and techniques.

However, organizations grounded in mission and committed to agility are more likely to thrive. An added benefit, adapting methods is perceived not as weakness but strength.

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Have you seen others perceive changing methods as changing True North? What happened?

How can organizations learn the difference between agility (changing methods) and vacillation (changing True North)?

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This post is inspired by Davis, Frechette, Jr., and Boswell’s book, Strategic Speed. I’m reviewing it soon.

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The “P” word for leaders – Priorities

(This is the “P” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” Freya Madeline Stark

Ever wish you had more time? Who hasn’t? However, if you don’t have priorities, creating more time won’t help. You’ll end up just as over-booked, over-worked, and over-whelmed as you are now.

Truth is I feel good when I’m busy. Actually, I feel more than good. I feel secure, useful, and important. Are we sending a subtle message when we say we are busy? Do we need busy-ness to prove our worth?

“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy – very busy – without being very effective,” Stephen Covey.

If life is about doing things then priorities point to things that must be done. Perhaps more importantly, priorities point out “good” activities to leave undone.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least,” Goethe.

A person with priorities does what matters.
A person without priorities does what is urgent.

Time management begins with priorities that protect you from the tyranny of the urgent. One enemy of a priority driven life is email. My reading indicates leaders spend at least 40% of their time working out of their inbox. “If you are working off your inbox you’re working off the priorities of others,” Donald Rumsfeld.

Furthermore, Priorities express values, mission, and vision. Most importantly, the “big three” always explain your impact on stakeholders, employees, and customers. In a word, priorities are about people.

If you’re like me you need to make establishing priorities a priority.

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Click here for 10 time management tips.

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How do priorities impact your daily life?

What are the steps to establishing priorities?

What other “P” words can you offer leaders?

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Note: The life circumstances of some LF readers may require them to live exhausting lives simply to stay afloat. In this case, your priority is survival. You have my respect.