Critical business gaps are a universal challenge, especially for “first company CEOs”.  Because performance gaps are new and always changing, trial and error is the only way forward in the journey of becoming who a CEO is meant to be.  The following comments on my last post from readers can give us a closer look into this journey:

“We’re moving more quickly than we can sustain, and we don’t have anyone who owns these growing pains.”

“I know in my company many times over the years, we would set programs and goals and then over time we lacked follow through.”

“I have two people with a very long tenure. They seem to go in and out of being engaged in the business, the executive team, and their teams.  I don’t know what is causing it.”

The graphic below helps me clarify the relationship between the individual, the culture, and what happens next.  Culture is the word we use to symbolize “who we are together”.  A bent culture will eventually bend new employees and new plans.  Everything eventually is conformed to culture.

Company culture may be intangible, but results can’t hide.  When the tension builds around a performance gap, leaders are naturally motivated to find quick fixes.  However, more potent solutions can usually be found by first asking questions like “Is there something I’m unable to see and why?”

I once worked with a local Seattle company who unfortunately, continues to suffer needlessly in a “cycle of waste”.  A “first company CEO” led this substantial business, but his formation had stagnated.  In hindsight, I see how the company culture rebelled against structure and as a result, the company’s performance remains marginal to this day and their long-term existence is threatened.  I did not have the experience then that I do now so I wasn’t able to help.  I wish I had a do-over, but in my work that rarely happens.

Now to my point: Company culture reflects the progression of the CEO’s personal formation journey (who am I?) and a “first company CEO” is naturally searching because the performance gaps are often new and changing.  Until these experiences accomplish their purpose, changing and experimenting is the only way forward.  You may be thinking – how can I accelerate my formation?  The antidote is receiving help from others on this same journey.

In my recent Vistage CEO Peer Group meeting, Mark shared, “I am constantly churning through different scenarios in my mind and I’d like to be free from this burden.  How can I change?”

Every CEO in the room became quiet when they heard Mark and I realized that each had had an epiphany.  Subconsciously, they too, were constantly churning through scenarios in their heads – they were preoccupied!

When I’m preoccupied with the disease of introspection, I can’t see what is right in front of me.  In this moment I have nothing but a reaction to offer – I am blind to “what is”.

By sharing this truth, Mark accelerated his own formation as well as the other “first company CEOs” in his Peer Group meeting.

When a CEO shifts from unaware to aware, the next question becomes more potent – “what now”.  Mark woke up that day in his Peer Group and he set the stage to be more aware and engaged with his senior team.

As always, I’d love to know your thoughts.   Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

When a CEO has a critical gap in the business, it’s natural to feel inadequate until a solution is in hand.  Feeling vulnerable sucks so we naturally prefer to move to a place where we feel secure – we quickly move to a fix.

This move is a slippery slope because when we avoid the discomfort associated with vulnerability (not knowing what to do and needing help), we slam the door shut to at least two important opportunities.

For example, every organization has a never ending list of important but non-critical gaps to fix and if the CEO doesn’t know how to model vulnerability to peers and followers, then the organization’s culture will remain stuck at the comfortable level of problem solving.  Solving the safe important gaps is a certain path to mediocrity.

Recently, a coaching client offered a real example of this when he said, “I wish I didn’t always have to look for the gaps in the business; I’d prefer that my people voluntarily offer them to me.”  His statement contained a critical gap with no apparent solution and it naturally generated a very personal question, “Why do you think your people don’t bring the problems to you?”

The second lost opportunity is even greater.  By avoiding vulnerability, we surround ourselves with people just like us who also need quick fixes, which ensure that the critical unanswered gaps in the business never get worked.

Inadequacy is a natural feeling we experience in the body as a bio-reaction.  We fight-or-flight-or-freeze when we feel that way.  Learning to remain present without a fix is the shift we need to make.

I recently spoke with a leader who asked, “Why can’t my company attract and retain top talent?”  I might ask one of the following “quick fix” questions in response like: ”How strong is your compensation?”, or “How strong are your systems?”, or ”How strong is your recruiting process?”, or “What do you think is wrong?”

But after spending over 30,000 hours working with leaders, I know that the best response is a thoughtful question like, “What are prospective top talent candidates finding unusually attractive about your company’s leadership?”, or “What seems to be unattractive about your company leadership?”

These questions get to the heart of the matter because top talent is attracted to leaders and cultures and the state of a company reflects the heart of the leader.

I asked the above Vistage CEO members another question, “On a scale of 1 to 3 rate your ability to be vulnerable.”  When they shared the truth that most were at level 1, they became vulnerable by not having a solution.  Why did I create this?  So that nothing remained hidden, that could block our path.  Great groups are fierce with reality.

What critical gaps are you unable to see?  I’d love to know your thoughts.  Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

Generally when I ask CEOs to describe what “good work” looks like from a subordinate their response begins with what they don’t want to see and shifts to describing what they do want to see using concepts like “accountability, delegation, process or strategic”.

Telling a person what we do not want to see is an elementary level of coaching and it’s usually ineffective.  Slightly more effective and very common, is sharing concepts as a diagram for good work.  These tactics target the head.

Follow the life of a typical heart transplant survivor for the first year and you will notice that the rational brain is incapable of sustaining change.  On the other hand, the brain is a wonderful tool when the heart forms a picture of what “good” looks like for the brain to see.  The heart is the source of energy that engages the head.

If the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” is accurate, then why do leaders persistently defer to impotent concepts and words to improve performance?

When we are hurried, we defer to our old behaviors.  However, when we experience a relaxed place for reflection and intense listening and learning with others, our hearts naturally develop fresh pictures and new outcomes.  Our hearts synthesize what we see, hear, feel and sense so our heads can implement the harvest.

In my 1:1 with Steve (the CEO of an early stage company) he commented, “As our roundtable helped Tom (a fellow CEO in Steve’s roundtable) work his problem, I was able to put my finger on my problem.  I see it differently now.”

Seeing is believing.

Steve constructed a new picture of success for himself during the roundtable process while he and the other CEO members worked on Tom’s problem.  They all asked Tom questions, but in the background, Steve’s open heart synthesized everything he heard, saw, and felt and was trying it on in his world.  How does that happen?

When a high performance team works on a member’s problem, new possibilities cascade effortlessly into the hearts and heads of everyone.  The knowledge and experience represented by individual members is quickly exceeded when the free flowing spark of collaboration ignites.  This is what Steve experienced.

Conversely, when a person works on their problem independently, other things happen.  They analyze – by reducing the problem to its component parts, or they use their imagination to generate a solution, which can never exceed all the knowledge and experiences they have acquired, or they become impatient, which lures them to form quick solutions.

Expanding leadership capacity requires a vulnerable connection to others.

There is good work and great work, but when you solve problems independently, the best you can hope for is good – but great is right around the corner.  Great work only happens when we collaborate with others.  During the above roundtable experience, Tom’s vulnerable connection to the others in his group helped Steve expand his leadership capacity.

A good rose bush can be pruned to beauty, but a picture of beauty is first required.  If good is all we can see then that is all we will produce.  A company can be a thing of beauty.

Do you need a different picture?  I’d love to know what you are thinking.   Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

If I view a company through the rational lens of “means and ends”, the person this manager described falls into a category called “extractors”.  Extractors are there to maximize what they get.  Bosses tolerate extractors because they believe that without them they won’t be as successful.  Bosses and extractors have an unwritten agreement and they willingly accept the organizational tension their relationship creates.  I know because I have been an extractor.

Other employees are in a second category termed “converters”.  Converters efficiently do what their boss asks of them without complaint.  They convert their need for security into a motive to meet the boss’s basic needs, whatever that might be.  In reality, converters dominate the landscape of most companies.  Bosses and converters also have an unwritten agreement to avoid tension.

We commonly describe a final category as “organizational citizens”.  Citizens make a choice to act through discretionary behaviors that go beyond the requirement of their job description.  Citizens contribute positively to overall organizational effectiveness.  Citizens are willing to hold the uncomfortable tensions of organizational life through a faith that says, “Good will eventually materialize and I can contribute.”

The company is a primary place for citizens to create life’s meaning.  This is their “practice field”.

Given this framework, ask yourself these questions:

1. In your company, how do the relationships between extractors, converters and citizens’ impact productivity?

2. How does this influence the way human energy flows throughout your company?  Try to notice the “cycles of value” and the “cycles of waste” that are present.

In a recent post we said, “Promises summon the sort of social integrity that lays the ground floor for all community.  Life together survives as a human togetherness, not on a diet of warm feelings, but on the tough fibers of promise keeping.”

Now to my point: If you view promises, activities and results through the lens of “what do they teach me”, they become clues to the invisible living architecture of your company.

Why is this important?  A living architecture acts as an invisible fabric that folds everyone into the way your company expects them to think, act, and relate amidst the stimulating and sometimes confusing swirl of the tensions they experience in organizational life.  Tensions never go away, but when embraced properly they are an amazing source of invention.

Without clarity, your company becomes like an overgrown garden with tangled activities sprouting uncontrollably while the competitive context of your marketplace simultaneously shouts for a leaner cost structure.

Tensions characterize a leader’s work and that is why it’s lonely!

I have never seen a business problem that can prevent profitable long-term growth.  However, I do see confusing webs of incongruent unwritten agreements and values that drive good people toward becoming extractors and converters, when they would rather be citizens.

Deep down, every extractor and converter would rather be a citizen and it’s your responsibility to sponsor their transformation.

A company with less than 1,000 employees can become a living “practice field” – a place where meaning is created and citizenship becomes the standard.  By upgrading your living architecture, you upgrade performance.  Going at it alone is tough.  Would you like some company?  As always, I’d love to know your thoughts.   Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

In my years of teaching communication to senior teams, I have often felt frustrated; however once I discovered the critical role of communion, a door into a room appeared that I didn’t even know existed.

For the purpose of this post, I define the term communion as creating meaning for each other and ourselves by sharing our thoughts and emotions and creating intimate conversation, resulting in a mutual deep understanding and trust.  Our company is our common possession: where it is an honor to provide for each other, our community, our partners and ourselves.

While communication and communion are inseparable, I have found that when communion is weak among senior team members, their activities and communication are aggregated through the artificial channels of management.  However where communion is strong, the river of activity flows through the deep banks of meaningful relationship, at the speed and depth needed to flourish in the conditions encountered.

Capacity is cultivated not acquired.

Recently the CEO of a growing company mentioned to me that expanding growth opportunities were emerging for his company, yet he was discovering that his people lacked the capacity to execute.

You can hire the right talent and you can fire the workers that no longer fit, but something about this ultimately begins to stink.  The cognitive rational mind wants to view business as a process and people as inputs.  This leads us to solve many of our problems by upgrading process or people.

While we do not want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, people are not inputs and they do not work for money.  Our heart leads us to engage our minds, so when we have a reliable long-term opportunity to create meaning with others we willingly do good work.

The shared meaning that people create through the communion of work is the social fabric of success.  When people commit themselves to this communion of work, it becomes self-regulating and they organically learn and adjust.

A “job well done” is a gift because it strums the innermost strings of our hearts especially when we do the job with others.  Others are not inputs; they are the people that appreciate and need us – they help us create the doorway to meaning.

Without communion, a business becomes like an overgrown garden with tangled activities sprouting up uncontrollably and where “whack a mole” becomes a powerful metaphor.

Creating a legacy company requires communion.  Weak communion sustains a void that must be filled.  It’s like a bird trying to fly with one wing.  When the senior leadership team lacks strong communion, it is like sailors navigating a ship without instruments.  So what fills the void?

Pause for one moment to think about what changes in your heart as your minds eye helps you visualize your company as a practice field – a place where your people practice communion (imperfectly) and they create lasting meaning together.

This is the starting point of a legacy company.  Legacy companies emerge when workers, customers, investors and partners flourish through their mutual interaction.

Wholeness says that growth and profitability are byproducts of meaningful and functional relationships.  Alternatively, when we funnel our leadership energy through the paradigm of “means and ends”, our lust for horizontal progress devalues the time and space for cultivating communion.  (I’ll write more about this in another post.)

Is your company flourishing?  What will your legacy be?  I’d love to know your thoughts.    Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

While desires and intentions seem invisible, they are like powerful magnets.  When we attach ourselves to them, they draw us into a new version of the future.

Desires sponsor curiosity, which can lead to innovation.  Desires are also lofty while intentions are closer to the ground.  We ponder our intentions in our heart – where they can ripen and when they are ripe, their power can be overwhelming.

Promises are very different – they transform mutual desires and intentions into reality.  The only way to create a better future together is by making and keeping promises.  So how can we do this?

Chesterton asserted, “The person who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place and he gives up freedom in order to keep it.”

Making and keeping promises is the only foundation that binds us together in our workplace.

Look at social security for example.  Personally, I have a desire for “social security”.  I also intend to create this for my family and myself.  Becky and I have promised each other that we will strive to be debt free and while this promise has been extremely difficult to keep, we remain committed – even when the promise trumps our shorter-term personal desires and intentions.  Making and keeping promises is the social bond that tells us who we are in our life together.

Promises are risky because unlike our inward desires and intentions, we declare promises publicly.  A promise exists between people for their mutual benefit and without clear promises leading is like herding cats.

By making and keeping promises, we willingly anchor ourselves to a common future.  We freely give up short-term options for a better long-term life together.  Freedom is a currency that finds its meaning when we willingly limit our options.

When followers cannot list the promises that their leaders made and are keeping, a leadership void exists, which breeds indecision, inefficiency and mistrust.

Elected officials at all levels, regardless of political party, seem to struggle with powerful personal desires and intentions to be re-elected.  The tension this struggle creates can derail them from their vital leadership role of making and keeping the right public promises.  At some point in our life, we all struggle with this tension and we can mistakenly avoid making and keeping the vital promises that the best future requires.

In the words of Lewis Smedes, “Promises summon the sort of social integrity that lays the ground floor for all community.  Life together survives as a human togetherness, not on a diet of warm feelings, but on the tough fibers of promise keeping.  It is not easy.”

So how would you describe your company culture concerning making and keeping promises?

Value Creation Groups (company leadership teams), CEO Roundtables and Key Executive Roundtables will flourish to the degree that they learn to make and keep the right promises to each other, which is never as straight forward as we would like it to be.  Do you have the support you need to make and keep the right promises?  What are your motives for leading?

I’d love to know your thoughts.     Jim@peer-pace.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

High performance cooperation is collaboration.  Collaboration is cooperation but with intensity and purpose.  A common purpose anchors collaboration, and without it, relationships grow static and creative problem solving becomes self-sourced.

Think about it, we all have unlimited quantities of creative ideas available to us and that’s a fact.  Your willingness and ability to collaborate can limit or expand the value you create for each other and your customers.

One component of the Value Creation Group process includes a wrap-up exercise we do at the close of each monthly meeting.  Each partner records the new insights they gained and describes the value of each insight.  They also record which partner in the group created value for them and how.  From here, partners record any adjustments they intend to make with a date.  Lastly, the partners verbally share this with each other.

At the next monthly meeting, all partners review these items and an interesting pattern usually emerges:

• Members consistently complete their intended adjustments when they are self-sourced.  In other words, when they work independently of each other, they almost always complete their adjustments.
• Opportunities that require thoughtful partner collaboration, coupled with learning from each other and the application of the insights gained from their previous partner meeting, are rarely completed.

Learning and adjustment are not core values in most companies – yet.

The willingness and the ability to collaborate, to create value together, are widely recognized as key 21^st century skills.  However, most leaders have not had access to the kind of learning that includes a picture of success and specifically teaches how to do it.

When a leader publicly declares an intention to adjust but fails to follow through, they maintain their dignity in the group by either finding some way to rationalize their choice or they face their choice with humility.

Either way, our curiosity leads us to ask them if their declaration was a desire, an intention or a promise.

I’ve been facilitating Value Creation Groups since 2005 and I’ve never heard any leader answer that question with conviction, and I think I know why.  They simply do not know that there is a difference, but when they learn that there is, they move forward with engagement.

Desires are valuable – they sponsor curiosity, which always precede innovation.  Desires are also lofty, while intentions are closer to the ground.  We hold our intentions in our heart where they can ripen and once they are ripe, their power is amazing.

Promises are very different – they transform desires and intentions into reality.  The only way to create a better future together is by making and keeping promises.

I’ll write more on this in my next blog, which I promise you will receive on December 6, after I return from our family Thanksgiving on the Gulf Coast.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving break!  As always, I’d love to know your thoughts.   Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

I’ve come to realize that goal setting is challenging and when we do it poorly, strategic planning can consequently seem fraudulent.  Many privately owned businesses unintentionally fall into this category.  In comparison, the public companies I’ve been part of do this better.

Loss aversion refers to the relative strength of two motives: We are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains.  A reference point is sometimes the status quo, but it can also be a goal in the future: not achieving a goal is a loss, whereas exceeding it is a gain.

Two economists at the University of Pennsylvania, Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer, suggest that golf provides the perfect example of a reference point: par.

For a professional golfer, a birdie (one stroke under par) is a gain, and a bogey (one stroke over par) is a loss.  In other words, failing to make par is a loss, but missing a birdie putt is a forgone gain, which isn’t a loss.  Pope and Schweitzer analyzed more than 2.5 million putts to test their prediction that players would try harder when putting for par than when putting for a birdie.

They were right.  Whether the putt was easy or hard, at every distance from the hole, players were more successful when putting for par than for a birdie – even Tiger Woods.  Avoiding a loss motivates greater effort even with the pros.

Let’s face it; whether you are a CEO or a member of the leadership team, like all of us, you have your par.  In other words, the minimal level of success that is acceptable to you determines the amount of effort you put in.  Avoiding failure is a strong motivator and goals create the possibility of failure.

If you find this blog relevant, then your company’s pattern may look something like this:

• You enthusiastically launch the year with a strategic plan and by the end of the third quarter; it’s rarely mentioned.  That’s your par.
• You set new operational and growth goals that create opportunity for you and your people, yet by year-end your historical growth patterns re-emerge.  That’s your par.
• You set goals and forego weekly operational conversations or as the year moves on these weekly conversations become less frequent or focused.  That’s your par.

Humans run in packs – each leadership team is a pack and each person in it has their par.  The pack’s par reflects its members, until someone breaks through and stays out of the pack.

Culture eats strategic planning and goal setting for breakfast.  Breaking out of the pack requires outside objective influence, which most of the people reading this blog have little of or none at all.  This is why leaders join CEO Roundtables, Key Executive Roundtables or form Value Creation Groups within their company.

Risk takers with a strong desire to break out of the status quo and reset your par need support and outside influence.

The New Year is a perfect time to become part of a group.  I’d love to know your thoughts.   Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teachers’ skill development in eighty schools and found something interesting.  Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only 10% of the time.  Even when they added a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback, fewer than 20% made the change.  However, when a colleague watched them try new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions – adoption rates passed 90%.

A surgeon named Dr. Atul Gawande, writes about a time when his professional growth seemed topped out.  He shares his conversation with world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, who mentioned that he’d had a coach for the past forty years.  Pearlman stated, “The great challenge in performing is listening to yourself.  Your physicality, the sensation you have as you play the violin, interferes with your accuracy of listening.”

Someone once said that you are the average of the ten people you spend the most time with – this can be especially problematic for CEOs and Key Executives.

If you desire to grow as a leader, you need people you trust to help you improve.  With trusted peers advising them, teachers saw their rate of change surge to 90%.  Similarly, when CEOs and Executives participate in monthly roundtables with trusted peers, their growth rate is 100% and when management teams allow me to facilitate Value Creation Groups in their company, the growth rate is 100%.

This begs the question, “With these strong results, why aren’t more people involved in collaborative groups like this?”  One reason is that many simply don’t know they are available.

Beyond this there is always more to consider.  In every high performing group I’ve facilitated every person feels an element of risk.  In my experience, four fatal fears influence all leaders to one degree or another:

Fear of Failure: I need success so I only hang out with people who affirm my success. (Good luck being married.)

Fear of Rejection: I need acceptance so I hang out with people who make me feel accepted. (Good luck breaking new ground.)

Fear of Emotional Discomfort: I need emotional comfort so I only hang out with people that I feel comfortable with. (Good luck with your blind spots.)

Fear of Being Wrong: I need to be right so I hang out in places where I am the smartest person in the room. (Good luck increasing the size of your room.)

Acknowledging these fears is the one thing that seems to separate people who are stuck and people who are not.  Flourishing in life is found at the edge.  Learning and adjusting is a gift waiting to be unwrapped.

As the New Year approaches, ask yourself what changes you would like to make in your capacity to lead?  Is it time to explore joining a group?

I’d really like to know your thoughts.    Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com

Emotional experiences are the primary barometer of leadership effectiveness.  Ask any follower how they feel about their leader and their answer will likely depend on their most recent experience.  Those that follow us react to our leadership moves through their feelings.  Yet trying to interpret emotions is a fool’s mission.  This leader wanted facts.

Addressing important questions with hard data is critical to running any company.  We use financial models, metrics, key performance indicators, milestones, goals and benchmarks to help us run our companies.  Rare is the leader who invites facts to inform her of how effective she is.

Leadership is very personal and shaking the tree by asking for feedback can be risky and unproductive.  Feedback becomes valuable when a structured process is used for collecting the feedback, which is why 360-degree reviews are widely used.

When you invite followers to help you objectively, by providing quality tools and structure, you train them to be constructive with their feedback and ultimately, they become better followers.  When you allow them to invest in your future, they take ownership for your success.

Like any goal we pursue, perfection is impossible.  However, with proper tools leadership can be broken into parts, objectively assessed and improved upon.  Measurable categories that you and your leadership team can assess and develop are:

How many of your followers know what to expect from a leader or how to help you maximize their contribution?  It’s probably a minority.

Cicero said, “It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

It’s easier to lead followers that are attracted to who you are and how you lead.  In my experience, followers are attracted to the force of your character, the quality of your judgment and your personal ability to learn and adjust (your reflective nature).

Do you have a picture of your leadership potential?  When leaders receive objective data, they feel empowered to improve – without it, they are left to guess.

You can learn, adjust and grow into your potential.  Would you like to?  I’d love to know your thoughts.    Jim@peer-place.com

Jim

www.peer-place.com