Floricane LLC

Books To Shift Your Thinking

Entrepreneur Brad Feld recently posted his top three reads for entrepreneurs with this twist -- books that have made an impact on his life, or could help shape a starting entrepreneur. His list of three books included Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. He describes his rationale for the three in his blog post.

Feld's post made me think about the business I'm operating, and where some of the core principles and guidelines I've adopted for Floricane may have been born. Here's my quick take, not ordered in any specific manner, except that they're mostly not about leadership or business.

The Answer to How Is Yes by Peter Block - If you know me at all, you know that Peter Block and Charlie Seashore did more to shape my perspectives on leadership, culture and community in three and five days respectively than any other guides on my journey. The gist of Peter's thinking is that when we begin to consider a new path, we might want to begin by avoiding old questions.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Strangely enough, I didn't read this one in high school. I read it in a hotel room in France one rainy spring night, and I think it was more powerful at the age of 34 than it would have been when I was 17. It's essentially a book about kindness, which is one of the more transformational gifts we have to offer each other.

Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas: Of all the books about Robert Kennedy I've read, Thomas' had the most profound impact on my thinking about community and service, and about the ability of an individual to discover the best version of themselves. Kennedy is mercurial, contradictory and (by the end of his life) so easy to love as a man and an icon. He's an example of how courage, risk and self-doubt can combine to create an energy that can shift worlds.

That's just three. There are 300 more where those came from. What books have shifted you?

Are You Building Your Culture, Or A Shared Culture?

Bret Simmons has an excellent post up about creating a culture of partnership, and the power of creating an organizational culture where everyone is acting with purpose -- where people give their best effort as a matter of course. He calls such people "partner followers".

That sort of engaged culture comes with a cost, he says -- though the cost is a richly rewarding one for leaders willing to make the investment.

Is there any reason YOU would not want all partner followers?

When I ask this question to groups, most people have no problem with the give 110% effort part.  But many balk at the thought of a follower challenging.  If you have a problem with the thought of being challenged by a follower, I would encourage you to take a hard look at your power paradigm.  Are you building a culture of performance around the shared purpose, or a culture of personality around your authority? 

True partner followers challenge the leader, but they also assume responsibility for correcting the situation they are concerned about.

Which creates several rich opportunities for leaders interested in reshaping their culture -- creating ways in which everyone can be engaged at their best; opening channels for employees to constructively challenge ways of operating; and creating a culture of accountability.

As Bret notes in a response to a comment to his post, reshaping your organizational culture requires a systemic approach. And you have to have high (and clear) expectations, and model the partnering behaviors you want the organization to emulate.

As you look around your organization, is there clarity about the sort of culture you and your fellow employees are living every day? Is there a system that recognizes and rewards people in small, meaningful ways for their contributions to that culture? Is there freedom to dissent -- and a clear sense of accountability attached to new ideas or criticism?

But I think the most important question to ask (and to answer and address) is whose culture are you creating -- yours or a collaborative culture informed by everyone in your organization?

Where's the Value-Creating Brilliance in Your Organization?

Writing in Forbes, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones (authors of Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People) make the argument that we do a poor job in our organizations of identifying, leading and inspiring our most creative people. A primary reason is that such people have a tendency to be difficult, they suggest, and it manifests in the following ways:

• They know their worth (their skills are not easily replicated).
• They ask difficult questions.
• They are organizationally savvy.
• They are not impressed by corporate hierarchy.
• They expect instant access to decision makers.
• They are well connected outside of their organizations.
• Their passion is for what they do, not for who they work for.
• Even if you lead them well, they won't thank you.

Exactly the kind of person you want on your team, right?

Well, maybe.

As I've suggested previously, if your organization isn't spending time right now positioning itself for 2012 or 2015 or 2030, you're setting yourself up for failure. And while vision and strategy are essential elements of such positioning, so too is having exceptional talent in place to execute on it.

Expect some of that exceptional talent to be creative and maddening -- simultaneously. Those will be the individuals who help you create something unique, a product or service or process that will set your organization apart in a clear, and compelling way. If you help them be successful, and if you help the rest of the team understand their value.

It's one of the great joys of leadership -- the opportunity to adapt yourself, and the rest of your culture, to meet the needs of every person you lead. Even the ones who drive you nuts.

Lessons from Brand Camp: Don't Think Different, Do Different

VCU's Brandcenter apparently likes to beat down creative directors and their friends. A recent intensive on digital leadership and creative skills took 35 creative directors from the advertising field and ran them through their paces -- with an emphasis on how technology is going to consume their very souls.

The best thing about Cathy Monetti's blog post about her experience at Brand Camp is that it is short, sweet and tells the story. It's good advertising. She works and blogs for Riggs Partners, an agency in South Carolina.

She told the story of her week in a series of short parables, or lessons:

Monday - Mike Hughes. The Martin Agency Get your creative team, and your client, to see what’s possible.

Tuesday - Rick Webb, The Barbarian Group Align with what internet builders care about: Build cool shit people want.

The beauty of her post is that you can sit down with each lesson, read it three times and begin to rethink some of your own decisions, processes or ways of seeing the world.

For instance, how would you go about bringing your creative team and your client together to see what's possible?

That's the essence of a piece of work I'm about to start with one of Richmond's leading history institutions -- helping to align their staff and their board with some best guesses about the year 2030. Creating actionable (and meaningful) work in the short-term that drives longer-term strategy is some of the hardest work I do. It's also where the fun, energy and excitement tends to happen.

What Questions Are Your Leaders Asking You?

There were six men (sadly enough, all men) in my last job whose role, span of influence and personal characteristics all conspired to put them in positions of leadership in the organization.

Two of them were strategically savvy thinkers who had learned to combine their smarts with their hearts, to lead as much with what they knew as they did with the degree to which they cared. Two of them were driven to a large degree by a need to be connected to people and in relationship with those they led and managed -- both of them were natural storytellers; one of them also had the capacity to dream big. The last two were powerful intuitives who had charisma, could make great visonary leaps and knew how to fill a room with their ideas and personalities.

When it came time for me to ask serious questions about my business, guess who I called?

Right or wrong, I called the first two.

I thought about this as I was reading Steven Spear's latest piece on the Monitor Talent Group Blog at Harvard Business -- "Leadership and Innovation in a Commoditized World."

Spear essentially says this in his post:

And that is the essence of what a leader has to do in any innovation driven organization. Not tell people what to do but constantly challenge them to identify challenges and obstacles, investigate their source, develop and test solutions, all the time asking: "So, what did you learn from the experience and how can we put that learning to good use?"

While the second pair of leaders would have helped me get more grounded in how I was emotionally experiencing this stage of my start-up, and the second pair would have challenged me to push harder and be more creative and visionary, the first pair started with fundamental questions.

The first question: What have you learned so far that is going to help you moving forward?

As you think about your challenges -- as an individual, a leader or an organization -- a good starting place might be by asking yourself what kind of questions you need asked of you at this moment.

A good leader or an effective consultant, like a good doctor, knows that a useful diagnosis starts with curiosity. Asking the right questions is an art, and answering them is often the best medicine money can buy.

Mentoring Is a Gift, Not a Profession

A brief piece in Success Magazine recently focused on the mentors of Walter Cronkite, James Earl Jones and others (hat tip Bed Time Stories).

Think back on the people who helped shaped you -- personally and professionally.

Odds are that none of them were specifically paid to be mentors. Instead, it is likely that they were paid to be teachers, pastors, sports coaches or managers.

Here's another bet: You can't stop at one.

I can go through every job I had, every team I was a member of, every significant chapter of my life and tell you who at that moment helped shaped me to be better -- at what I do, at how I treat others, at who I am.

There was Miss Spindler, who tied my left hand behind my back in third grade to teach me to write with my right hand (she failed) and made me memorize songs in Latin and German (she succeeded). There was John Burton, the dairy manager at the Carytown Ukrop's store where I worked during college -- he taught me to have a sense of humor about work, and to work hard. There was Stephanie Halloran, my first boss at VCU's University Relations Office -- she taught me lessons about living and dying.

My next boss, the one I inherited after Stephanie's untimely passing, has been a boss, a mentor, a friend, a father. Tom Poe has been a significant part of my life since we worked together at VCU in the early 1990s -- he even got a one-time license to officiate my marriage to Nikole.

Each of the people I mentioned gave me a gift. There are dozens more I didn't mention, and their gifts are all valuable.

And so here come the inevitable questions.

Who in your life has given you a gift -- of time, of compassion, of discipline or learning or courage? Who were your coaches and mentors and guides? And when was the last time you paused to reflect on the ways in which they shaped who you have become? Or thanked them...

And as you move through your day in the here and now, how often do you pause to reflect on the small life lessons you are imparting to the people around you? How aware are you of the fact that what you model, how you act, the way in which you treat people will deeply shape their memories, their actions, their futures?

What gifts are you giving to the people in your life? Do you even stop to notice?

Leaders Don't Ignore the Alligators, or the Swamp

Perhaps one of the hardest experiences for a leader championing culture change -- or for the willing participants in that change -- is when faith, investment and effort get derailed by external forces, poor judgment or missed signals.

Chip Bell and John Patterson, authors of Take Their Breath Away (Wiley, 2009), recently published a Change This manifesto on the risks of culture change (along with an accompanying PDF document).

In an economic environment where every small action gets attention and the details are the very devil our leaders feel an obligation to chase, it's easy to lose perspective on the big picture. That's when the investment of time and energy loses all its value, Bell and Patterson argue:

Losing the bigger picture dooms the effort to becoming a victim to the swirl of minutia and swallowed up by organizational politics. Unplug the tactics from the strategy and they simply become tasks on a “to do” list. Tactics without a connection to a substantive strategy doom the strategy, and ultimately the vision, but not the tactic. Energy is invested but progress is imaginary.

They use the old metaphor about alligators to emphasize the importance of keeping your leadership focus elevated during times of challenge and churn -- "When you are up to your backside in alligators,” goes the oft-quoted line, “it is hard to remember you were there to drain the swamp.”

At these moments, focusing all of your energy in one direction is a recipe for failure. Ignore the alligators to drain the swamp, and get eaten. Dismiss the swamp drainage, and the alligators keep breeding. And you'll get eaten.

The best leaders I've encountered in recent months have been the ones who have simultaneously grappled with the immediate challenges and decisions -- and been able to grapple with the creation of a new vision that encourages their teams to seize the high ground and move into the future.

A final takeaway from Bell and Patterson's PDF manifesto:

The real make-or-break component, however, is leaders who demonstrate three traits: congruence, consistency and courage.

Congruence means leader actions are in sync with the vision, i.e., they “walk the talk” under the floodlight that highlights for watchful employees their actions, beliefs, and values. Modeling is not about on-a-pedestal perfection, it is about leader signage of what is priority.

Consistency suggests leaders stay the course rather than simply engage in superficial pap and shallow pomp. It is borne out of the fact that the first time a leader acts in sync with the new change it is viewed by their employees as amusing. The second leader action that is in sync is assumed to be in response to an edict from on high; the third time as a likely “good soldier” acquiescence. It is not until the fourth time employees view consistent action as the possible beginning of something new. Too often, employees never get to see consistent action beyond the leader’s first or second try.

Courage involves defying the skeptics, recruiting the undecideds, and taking bold steps forward that depart from the more comfortable and complacent past. It means championing the vision even in the face of temporary setbacks and defeats. Courage is not about being foolhardy or reckless. It is a demonstration of character that comes from a deep conviction for what is right and best for the organization—and those it serves. Courage includes the commitment to working on the culture change throughout the journey to successful change. It is an acknowledgment that culture change requires hard work over an extended period of time.

Best Leadership Books

The Washington Post has a great online section called "On Leadership" which pulls together a wide range of discussion around leadership and current events. Some time ago, they posted "The Leadership Playlist" and described the 10 best leadership books as determined by the folks who run 800 CEO Read.

It was not a surprise to see Warren Bennis' name at the top of the list, or Kouzes/Posner's big yellow book of leadership -- The Leadership Challenge. I liked what they had to say about Bennis -- and how they said it:

"His message is, you can't be a leader until you know who you are. It's that simple," said [publisher Todd] Sattersten. "Once you know, you have amazing ability to lead successfully."

But I was surprised at the rather narrow scope of the list; Winston Churchill was the only author who probably wouldn't be considered modern. There were no women listed. There was nothing global about the top authors, either, except that they've probably all summered in Italy.

Three books that would fall on the list if I were involved in inking such a list would be:

• Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time by Meg Wheatley. Wheatley brings nuance, poetry and a simplicity to what can be one of the most complicated topics of our time. If there is a singular point to her work, it is that control and dominance breed anxiety and disengagement in our communities -- business or otherwise. There is another way to lead.

• Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute. The first time I read it, I gave up. It was too simple. The second time, I found plenty of information with which to judge others. The third time, I genuinely realized that change starts with me. That's the hardest work ever. This book proved to be a kick in the pants for hundreds of people at my last organization.

• The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block. Its not a book on leadership, but it is one of the few books I've read recently that reframes the way our leaders (and we) should go about the business of asking questions, engaging teams and organizations, and looking at problems.