Chapter 14
Epilogue: You Go First
If you’ve ever studied martial arts, or watched films like The Karate Kid, you no doubt know the Japanese term Sensei. Even if it’s never been properly translated for you, you probably assume that Sensei simply means teacher. And of course it does mean that. But it also means ‘one who has gone before.’
The best way to understand how to start with what works is to engage in it personally. So here in the Epilogue I invite you – whether you’re already an established leader or whether you’re currently an ambitious individual contributor – to go through the processes we’ve looked at yourself. Because having ‘gone before’ your organisation, you will be that much better equipped to act as the Sensei.
And there’s another related sense of this idea of ‘going before’. It has to do with vision. The leaders we call visionary ‘go before’ the organisations they lead. Their thinking is way out in front. The organisation is not simply an end in itself, and it’s not just a vehicle for their personal enrichment. They are trying to achieve something bigger through their organisation. In a way, the organisation becomes a vehicle for their values.
It’s easy enough to see this in the case of a Steve Jobs, or an Elon Musk, or an Anita Roddick. These people had something they cared about beyond Apple, Tesla or Body Shop. They built their organisations to create legs under their visions (contrast that to the professional corporate plutocrats motivated solely by stock options and status).
Of course, most business people – whatever the size of their organisation – are neither celebrity entrepreneurs nor shadowy plutocrats. But they all have to manage the tension between the important but mundane job of hitting their numbers, and the rewards of building a meaningful career and personal legacy.
The Demands of the Day Job
Many leaders have heard the following excuse for not innovating or changing: ‘I would have, but I had to look after the day job.’ Yet if they are honest, the leaders struggle with the same issue. What are the things that take up a leader’s time and keep them from fulfilling their potential? The list is long, but some of the ones I hear most from my clients are:
●getting pulled into operational minutiae;
●a queue of people wanting you to solve their problems;
●being called upon to adjudicate on disputes that should have been sorted out at lower levels;
●computerised interruptions such as unnecessary meeting requests and email ‘cc’s.
Leaders know they and their organisations have to be more strategic, but they often abdicate a better future because of current demands. They fall foul of an unconscious conspiracy to slow their success (see Box 14.1).
The unconscious conspiracy against the leader
Warren Bennis was a hugely influential authority on leadership, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer, and had significant leadership experience both as an infantry officer in WWII and later as the President of the University of Cincinnati. His most striking book title is The Unconscious Conspiracy: Why Leaders Can’t Lead. In it, he describes his efforts to figure out why his organisation wasn’t making progress on its strategic goals. He describes his shock when, after inspecting his clogged calendar, he suddenly awoke to ‘a vast, amorphous, unwitting, unconscious conspiracy to prevent me from doing anything whatever to change the . . . status quo’. He identified two challenges relevant to anyone trying to get things done in an organisation: not only how to deal with ‘the turmoil and inertia that threaten the best-laid plans,’ but also ‘how to keep routine from sapping their ability to make a real impact’. [my emphasis].
Getting out ahead of your organisation
It’s a commonplace thing to say that leaders need personal agility in a world where technological disruption, climate change, demographic shifts and a global pandemic keep upending things. It’s commonplace, but that doesn’t make it easier.
We human beings have – at the biological level – a predilection towards habit. In particular, people are reluctant to give up things that have worked in the past. That’s one reason why starting with what works is a good idea. We aren’t asked to abandon what’s worked; we instead work to utilise it for new purposes.
Anyway, the fact is, if you expect your organisation to change, you will have to go first.
The only way to change behaviour
There is only one way to change someone else’s behaviour. It’s the same whether it’s a direct report, a customer, a boss, an audience or a team.
How do you do it? You need to change your behaviour in relation to their behaviour. This is both bad news and good news. The bad news is that what you are doing or saying may be the very thing keeping a problem in place. The good news is you therefore have the power to change it.
This first became clear to me after a fascinating afternoon many years ago talking to a top dog trainer. After she had shown me around the kennels, the trainer let me in on a secret: dog training is not for the dog. It’s for the owner.
Dogs are uncooperative because of the cues they get from their humans.
For example, the trainer explained:
‘If the dog stands in front of the TV, most people shout: “Get out of the way, Alfie!”’
‘But Alfie doesn’t understand this the way the owner intends. To Alfie, this shouting is not a warning to move. It’s actually welcome attention. From it, Alfie learns that if he wants more attention, all he has to do is stand in front of the TV.’
‘What the owner should do is wait for Alfie to sit somewhere away from the TV screen, and then make a fuss of rewarding him. Now when Alfie wants attention he can go to that spot.’
‘I teach dog owners to amplify helpful behaviours and not give oxygen to unhelpful ones. That way, the helpful stuff starts to crowd out the unhelpful.’
‘And it works with people, too,’ she confided.
(Just as she said this, I noticed her husband putting a cup of tea on the table beside me. He looked over to his wife, who nodded approvingly, and then he trotted happily back into the kitchen. And then she winked at me.)
Joking apart, there’s a very important lesson here. Amplifying helpful responses, and simply withholding reinforcement from unhelpful ones, is an effective way to shape unfolding circumstances. In other words: if you want to change behaviour, start with what works!
Apparently, most dog owners are not naturals at this: they tend to focus on what isn’t working, be it the dog pulling on their lead or barking at passers-by. The trainer made it clear that if you can change the owners, the dogs change too. The same goes for leadership. Change yourself and change your world.
What kind of leader do you want to be?
One of the best coaching questions to ask leaders looking to make a big leap forward is, ‘What kind of leader do you want to be?’ There’s something about this question that connects people up to a bigger frame of reference. That is often enough to help them see their way clear.
Here’s a framework from the work of Robert Dilts1 that is very effective in thinking about the kind of person you need to be to achieve your leap.
Let’s walk through it. Open up a laptop so you can take notes and fill in your own ideas.
Level | Prompt (ABCDE) | Description |
|---|---|---|
A. Identity | I Am . . . | |
B. Beliefs & Values | I Believe . . . I Value . . . | |
C. Capabilities & Skills | I Can . . . | |
D. Behaviours | I Do . . . | |
E. Environment | Where, when, with whom . . . |
Figure 14.1 Dilts’ logical levels
The idea is that each level in the framework governs the next lower level. Ideally, all the levels need to line up and support one another. Although when we apply it to your situation, we’ll start from the top, it’s easier to understand how it works starting at the bottom.
Here’s how I usually explain it to audiences: ‘Let’s say you go to a relaxed party. That’s the ENVIRONMENT (bottom level of the framework). In that environment, would you say that you could meet someone for the first time, and without any planning, spend 5–10 minutes telling them about your job, your industry, the factors affecting the sector and so on?’
It’s very likely. Whenever I’ve asked audiences, they vigorously nod their head, ‘Yes.’ They’d easily come up with that BEHAVIOUR (next level up) in that environment. They have the CAPABILITY, after all, and they’d use it. No problem.
Then I ask my audiences a new question: ‘If, instead of this happening at a party, I asked you to go to a thousand-seat auditorium, with tiered seating, stage lights and two TV cameras, how many of you could still talk extemporaneously about your work?’
Many people now shake their heads ‘No’.
This is interesting. They must still have the CAPABILITY, the skill, but in the new environment, they don’t produce the behaviour. What’s going on?
Well the idea is that the ability to deploy the capability, to manifest it into behaviour, is controlled by the next higher level: their BELIEFS. If you believe a big presentation is a chance to be humiliated in front of a group of strangers, then you’ll not access your capability. You won’t express it as behaviour. On the other hand, if you believe, as I do after years of experience, that presenting to big audiences is huge fun, then I think you’ll agree that’s going to give you much better access to your capabilities.
Oh by the way, it wasn’t always that way for me. I started my career as a University lecturer. I was pretty hopeless to start with. Students used to come to the beginning of the lecture, take a handout, and then leave before I started to speak!
Other lecturers struggled too. In fact I had one colleague who needed a whisky before he lectured, just to get through the damn thing. As I thought at that time that lecturing was going to be my career, I decided I better do something healthier. So I started to take classes and over time I developed competence and supporting beliefs, and as I was rewarded with success, I developed the IDENTITY of a PRESENTER. I took more courses, tried out ideas and did more of whatever worked. The next level was to think of myself as a SPEAKER, which was even more empowering. Once I started getting paid, and got an agent, I started to think of myself as a PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER. I can tell you that once you really see yourself as a Professional Speaker, all the levels line up very nicely.
How do you need to see yourself to be the leader you want to be? A couple of powerful generic identity statements for executives are Visionary and Dealmaker. Two good ones for professionals are Rainmaker and Trusted Advisor. Any of these are well worth pursuing if they resonate with you, but also try and come up with something with unique significance for you – you don’t have to tell anyone else what it is.
Once you’ve got the desired IDENTITY statement, the next thing is to fill out the other levels of framework. Don’t think you have to approach them in order. If one area strikes you as of particular interest, dive in and develop it. For a visionary leader it might start out like this:
What does your next level look like to you? (Note: the more detail you can come up with, the better. Push yourself. Ask ‘What else? What else?’ Get a trusted advisor to help).
Once you’ve got a sense of the leader you want to be for your next leap, you can utilise the methods we’ve looked at throughout the book to look inside for your own hidden gold and make the personal transformation. Let’s look at that process at a high level so you can get the big picture.
Prompt (ABCDE) | Description | |
|---|---|---|
A. Identity | I Am . . . | a Visionary leader, a Value-creator |
B. Beliefs & Values | I Believe . . . | I’m able to bring resources together to create new value etc |
I Value . . . | Sustainable growth etc | |
C. Capabilities and Skills | I Can . . . | Formulate compelling value propositions Pitch persuasively Negotiate Raise capital etc |
D. Behaviours | I Do . . . | Create high-growth businesses |
E. Environment | Where, when, with whom . . . | Market analysts and investors on investor relations calls Board members in corporate boardrooms C-level executives at potential customers and suppliers |
Figure 14.2 Logical levels example for a ‘visionary leader’
Finding your personal hidden resources
We’ve met a number of techniques that can be applied to the search for individual resources. In particular, you should consider using Scaling (Chapter 5 and Chapter 13) augmented by the Total Person Inventory (Chapter 10).
Scaling
By now this pattern of questioning should be familiar. Ask yourself, ‘On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 represents the leader I want to be, where am I now?’ Let’s say you give yourself a 6.
The next question is: ‘How come I’m not just a 5?’ In answering, you want to take the time, and put in the effort, to generate an exhaustive list.
To go even further, you can fill out a Total Person Inventory for yourself (see Chapter 10). For example, Figure 14.3 shows one that one of my clients came up with.
Accomplishments in Previous Jobs, Hobbies, Interests | So: Capabilities . . . | Which implies other resources . . . |
|---|---|---|
Delivered risk management system for ABC bank | ●Project management/ execution ●Sustaining motivation of a team ●Dealing with difficult stakeholders ●Dealing with regulators | ●Coaching ●Briefing meetings ●Expectations management ●Negotiation ●Educating non-technical ‘buyers’ |
Treasurer of a local charity – applied for a grant to better serve beneficiaries | ●Grant-writing ●Making a compelling case ●Understanding funding landscape ●Understanding factors influencing funders ●Demonstrating ROI | ●Influencing skills ●Political and economic awareness ●Self-motivation to contribute to causes beyond own interests |
Biochemistry graduate – has maintained interest even though now working outside the field | ●Ability to assimilate scientific research publications ●Predisposition to evidence-based reasoning | ●Ability to engage with technical experts ●Ability to sort wheat from chaff when dealing with technologists |
Figure 14.3 Total person inventory example
Again, having a trusted advisor to help with this is invaluable. You are so familiar with yourself that you could miss the really good stuff. Getting other people to contribute their perspective makes a lot of sense. When I’ve conducted 360-degree interviews for clients, we’ve often uncovered hidden personal resources this way.
Box 14.2
Transmuting the negative
Even unhelpful response patterns can sometimes be repurposed if you recognise their positive qualities. For example, sarcastic people often demonstrate great wit and mental agility. Cynics are often the first to see fatal flaws in arguments – annoying but potentially invaluable. And Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel wrote a classic book on innovation entitled Only the Paranoid Survive.
So, you’ve explored why you are not one level lower on your scale and completed a Total Person Inventory. These two techniques make you focus on what already works. They typically connect people with a great sense of resourcefulness. You can now use this resourcefulness to take a decisive step towards being the leader you envisioned earlier.
Ask yourself what it would be like if you were operating at one level up the scale from where you initially placed yourself. What would you be doing? Where? With whom? How would that be different and better? Then ask yourself:
‘Given the platform of resources I’ve identified, what can I do to make that next level a reality?’
You will probably find that you can make more progress, more easily than you earlier thought possible.
Still waiting for better conditions before you start?
Let’s say you’re keen to start with what works, but you just can’t make the space to get started. Maybe you suspect you are suffering at the hand of an unconscious conspiracy to slow you down! Or maybe things are going really well – you’re nearly there – but you meet a sting in the tail – the feeling of resistance that often accompanies efforts to get things over the line. What can you do? A practical response is to make three lists.
1First, a TO STOP list in order to release resources (time, energy, people, money etc.) for more productive uses. Most organisations and individuals are doing things that, while important at one time, now no longer make sense, or are better done by someone else. The question to ask is: ‘If we weren’t doing this already, would we start doing it today?’ If not, then put it on the TO STOP list, and act accordingly.
2A SNAGS list. Over time, we – both as individuals and organisations – accumulate workarounds. These are temporary or less-
than-ideal ‘solutions’, which become habits. In time, our repertoire or standard ways of operating are dominated by them. For example:
●Someone is promoted to babysit a dysfunctional team, and then starts to acquire an empire while the fundamentals are never sorted out.
●A hand-updated, error-prone spreadsheet is controlled by one bottleneck person, where instead there should be a widely accessible database (for which you probably already have the licences).
●Space is used for temporary storage but becomes de facto warehousing, while staff are crammed into an unsuitably small office area.
Making a SNAGS list and picking off a few easy ones straightaway liberates a lot of energy.
3Drawing on what you’ve learned from the first two lists, you can finally turn your attention to a TO DO list. We all have TO DO lists, but do we honestly work through them in the best order? Try prioritising tasks from most productive to least productive, then do the most productive first. Unfortunately, that often means ‘most uncomfortable first’. That might mean calling a customer before scheduling an internal progress meeting or addressing a conflict in the team before a general catch-up on industry news. Doing lower priority tasks first is often a kind of procrastination – you can see you’ve ticked a lot of items off at the end of the day, but if they aren’t the big, often more uncomfortable, ones you could be busy doing nothing. Most people find that having someone to keep them accountable is a big help.
These suggestions are extremely simple – so simple that it would be easy to overlook their power and to say ‘Oh, yes. Already know that’. However, as a mentor of mine used to say: ‘To know and not do is to not yet know.’ The Three Lists exercise is a very fast way to create space to do new things.
How Fast Will You Grow?
Sometimes when I talk to clients, they wonder if starting with what works is going to be a quick fix. And sometimes that does happen. For others though, it might take a while to find the right combination of resources – one that will create a real sustainable breakthrough. That’s true for both companies and individuals. For example:
●Arianna Huffington founded The Huffington Post at age 55. Huffington had a varied early career, among other things working as a political commentator and writer. Those experiences helped her develop a wide base of resources. But it was only when she combined those resources into a new configuration – one that met the emerging needs of media consumers in a unique way – that she became a household name. HuffPost later sold to AOL for $315 million.
●Vera Wang. Wang is world-famous for designing iconic gowns but she didn’t start out in fashion. In fact she was originally a figure skater, but failed to reach the top rank. She then studied journalism. That led to a job at Vogue, where she quickly rose to become their senior fashion editor. She held that role for 15 years then spent a spell at Ralph Lauren. When she got married, she was disappointed by the wedding dresses on offer, so she decided to design her own. One year later she opened her first bridal boutique in New York. As well as her huge success as a dress designer, she has designed many outfits for the US Olympic Skating Team and in 2009 was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
●Reid Hoffman. After studying cognitive science and philosophy, Hoffman intended to become a professor and public intellectual. He decided however that he would have more impact in the world as an entrepreneur. He worked for a winery, then for Apple, where he attempted to set up an early form of social networking. After a spell at Fujistu, in 1997 he formed another early social networking platform called SocialNet. He then became COO at PayPal where he was described as ‘firefighter-in-chief’. He got an incredibly wide range of experience at PayPal: he was responsible for all external relationships, including with payments providers, commercial partners, government and professional advisors. When PayPal was acquired by eBay, Hoffman applied all he had learned to launch LinkedIn.
●Stefani Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga. Clearly Lady Gaga has talents as a singer, songwriter and performer. Yet while these are world class, they are arguably not enough in themselves to have given her such breakthrough results. Neither, on its own, is her capacity for being outrageous. So what was her hidden gold? Here are a couple of examples. When she was at school, she was the weird kid. For many people that wouldn’t have been an asset, but she reframed it and used it to build a unique relationship with her fan base, calling them her ‘Little Monsters’, and reassuring them about the value of their idiosyncrasies. Another valuable but less apparent resource is her ability to bring talented people together to help her. She used these skills to build up a group of people that became known as the Haus of Gaga. This group of artists and designers travel with her on tour and help her develop and execute her creative vision. Subsequently she’s been able to build further on these resources. In 2019, Lady Gaga joined up with Amazon to launch a gender-neutral makeup line, ‘Haus Laboratories’ – again recombining her brand, creative team and relationship-building skills to create further leverage.
Each of these examples enjoyed some early successes. But they only displayed their full potential once they found their winning combination of resources. And – importantly – all of them have enjoyed continuing growth by reconfiguring those resources to meet new challenges and opportunities.
The great advantage of starting with what works is that by basing your next moves on successes and strengths, you and your business can continue to grow in a fast-changing world, and you’ll do so with less risk and in a way only you can.