Right now I’m working with a remarkable woman leader. She is the head of Human Resources of North America for a major global company. To sum it up, she is smart, fearless and savvy. But it’s not just what she is but what she does that makes her powerful. If I were to identify the single leadership problem that is an epidemic today it is confusion. People don’t perform well when they’re confused and most employees in most organizations are very confused. It’s not surprising.

We live in a time of great complexity. Competition is ferocious. Companies used to have competitive advantages that would last years. Now that’s been reduced to months. External factors in the economy, technology and social trends all work to create employee whiplash caused by constant changes and escalating demands.

I’m not exaggerating this problem of confusion. Recently, Franklin-Covey published some research that asked employees to rank their leaders against 77 management behaviors. Although people ranked “being a hard worker” the number one trait of their boss, the worst traits were ones that are at the root of basic leadership. They said their bosses were lousy even terrible at:

• Prioritizing work so that time is spent on what’s most important
• Setting up your expectations when assigning tasks
• Planning ahead to reduce working in a crisis mode
• Providing timely feedback on performance

These behaviors were the lowest scored. They were dead last among managers of some of the world’s most prominent enterprises. This is a big problem. Lousy leadership creates lousy performance which fills organizations with dysfunctional anxieties. When people are worried and confused they hunker down into all the toxic forms of self-protection which makes working in large organizations seem like you are trapped in a Dilbert cartoon. Whenever I’m able to work with exceptional leaders it’s like breathing pure oxygen.

I really hunker down and take notes on their behavior. I try to be a leadership anthropologist watching for what causes success in challenging cultures. At the core of leadership is the wise development and use of power. By power I mean the leadership ability to focus peoples’ attention, motivate their abilities, and prioritize their work to achieve meaningful goals. In many ways leadership is very simple. People want to succeed and leaders who make success easy are given a lot of power. As I have written before most male leaders rely on hard power strategies to push people to get things done.

But when people are confused pushing people to work harder always makes things worse. Product failures, angry customers, plunging sales and passive aggressive cultures are all signs of employee confusion. Many female leaders mistakenly try to balance the shortcomings of hard power by over-relying on the tools of soft power such as empathy and collaboration. But getting people together to try to figure out what their boss really means only leads to more confusion.

It also weakens the power of women who may be misusing their emotional intelligence when it’s their practical intelligence that will make a difference. That’s exactly what my client does that is so refreshing… and so powerful. She wields SMART Power like a samurai, cutting through confusion by constantly simplifying complexity. She is able to articulate the big picture and the vital business priorities using an array of simple declarative sentences.

She always ties her HR agenda to the urgent needs of the business. She can articulate the strategic imperatives of the enterprise as clearly as the CEO. Then she states what must be done immediately and has a question such as, “Does it make sense to you that we replace our annual performance reviews with short, biweekly feedback sessions since people need a constant flow of coaching to stay focused on emerging priorities?”

This technique of making recommendations in the form of a question consistently raises her power wattage. Her questions frame the discussion and contain compelling ‘if-then’ logic. It also helps her not fall into the trap of either whining about or insisting on a change she wants to make. This technique is not trivial. There is plenty of research that confirms when women try to exert power using the same techniques as hard power males they actually reduce their power and influence and become labeled as “overly aggressive, or worse…”

To sum it up, if you want to increase your SMART power then simplify confusion, clarify priorities, and lead people to follow you by asking them smart questions. Above all have a leadership agenda. Don’t wait for orders and don’t spend your life trying to achieve other people’s goals. Your goals are probably smarter!

I’m racing against the speeding train of the future. I am trying to get to the track-switch before the speeding train of humanity arrives at the switch point. It’s vital. If the train doesn’t switch direction the track it’s on will take it right off a cliff.

 

Fortunately I am not running alone. Millions of us are running to various switch-points where we will collectively raise our arms on the giant levers and pull with all our might to push the rails in a new direction that will take humanity to a future of sustainable abundance.

 

I am one of the older runners. In fact some people wonder why I’m still running at all. At times, the lure of retirement is seductive. My major interests require health and vitality yet today I get eye injections to fight creeping cloudiness. Last year I spent months with heart specialists who were worried that my heart might just switch off.  That seems much less likely now. Yet I find that no matter how much good food I eat and bad food I avoid and how many days I walk 3 miles and sneak in an hour-long surf the warranty on my body parts is coming to an end. I feel a lot like an old car that requires constant tune-ups, frequent oil changes and a new set of tires.

 

But if that’s what it takes, that’s what I will do because I am still running. You see I have unfinished business. I was thrilled this year with the 25^th anniversary of the publication of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. With 25 million copies sold it is one of the most read business books in the world. I believe it’s truly a great book. One that is practical as well as inspiring. One that almost never got written. I remember vividly the day that Stephen Covey (above) walked into my office so exhausted from his repeated teaching of the Seven Habits workshop that he wanted to move on to something else. “Something in leadership” he said.

I tried to commiserate with him while I told him that he would never produce anything as relevant and life-changing to more people than the Seven Habits. He looked at me with very tired eyes and said “I hope that isn’t so.” He had a right to be exhausted. His speaking was the financial engine of the company and we were investing heavily in the future. Brad Anderson and I had recently finished a successful tour of our most supportive clients raising money to develop the Seven Habits video-based training course so that certified trainers could teach. We were young and stoked because this would be the tool that would let us reach millions worldwide… if we could just ignite widespread demand.

 

That seems quite unlikely to almost everybody at the time, especially Stephen. 

It’s true, we had gold-plated clients like Disney and Procter& Gamble but every client was a hard-fought win. Sales cycles were 12 to 18 months. We were doing the business version of trench warfare. What we needed was a book. A big bestseller. But Stephen was too busy to write something he was proud of. We had tried many editors and ghostwriters but none of them could capture Stephens’ voice, so on that day Stephen wanted to give up on the idea of a book.

 

When he left my office I felt twin motives of compassion for his discouragement and a passion to solve the problem. In that instant I turned to the bookshelf behind a  and gazed at a  thick transcript of eight hours of recorded video training of Stephen delivering the Seven Habits in front of a live audience. This was destined to be the core of our new training program. But as I looked at that transcript what I saw was every core principle and every great story expressed in perfect cadence in Stephen’s own voice.

 

Within an hour I had taken the section known as the Emotional Bank Account and given it to Roger Merrill to work on with his wife Rebecca over the weekend to see if they can transform the recorded word into the written word. By Monday they had. And it was perfect. Within a few days we sent that section to Stephen’s literary agent and within a month we had a real book deal with Simon & Schuster. I soon found out that writing a good book is not the same as selling it.

A year after publication the publisher announced that they were going to end the hardback edition and issue it in paperback. We had sold 300,000 copies.  The publisher was pleased but I was devastated. We needed to sell millions of books to create sustained demand for our training. Even 300,000 books had done little to generate organic interest in our training. It was time to make a decision.

 

I have found every success story has a moment of truth where you either go all in or shrink. 

I talk about this cautiously because we only tend to hear the stories of mind-boggling success. Yet there are many more stories of risking it all and losing all. That’s what makes going all in so hard. By this time we had a nice slow-growing training business. We were then faced with investing in a risky national speaking tour. The plan, developed by Greg Link, a wild man marketer, was to rent 3,000 seat symphony halls in 17 major U.S. cities to enable Stephen to do three-hour mass workshops.

Greg was a great believer in critical mass by getting lots of people to experience the same message at the same time. He wanted to engage entire business communities of cities to create a chorus of buzz. He beat back more reasonable people inside our company who were willing to support venues for 300 people but thought selling 3,000 tickets at a time was impossible. But Greg would have none of it.

 

The task and expense of direct mail and outbound call center to sell tickets was huge. Ultimately Greg and I convinced Stephen to give the green light while risking the company’s future and his own financial well-being on this audacious plan.

 

Fortunately it worked.

 

Some of the events made money, some lost money.  But midway through the tour our phones started ringing. Companies were calling us to bring the training to them as fast as we could. The new paperback version was flying of the shelf and we never looked back. Even today, 25 years laterThe Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is frequently a top 10 business bestseller.

 

The reason we fought so hard for so long and spit in the eye of risk is that we really believed in what we were doing. The consequences of failure were tiny compared to the consequences of success. We were also very lucky.

 

But I personally still have some unfinished business. 

We launched the Seven Habitstraining in major corporations in the 1980s. It was an audacious message to bring to business at a time when Milton Friedman’s ridiculous contention that ‘corporations only responsibility was to make money’ was gaining massive traction.  Our training had leaders writing personal mission statements, striving for life balance, negotiating win-win solutions, collaborating respectfully and espousing the balance between seeking golden eggs and taking care of the goose. We did this at the same time the movie Wall Street eloquently portrayed our emerging economic system that legalized greed.

 

During the last three decades there has been a war going on for the souls of leaders. 

It’s the same war I entered into at the beginning of my career. In some ways it’s sad that a book like The Seven Habits which is rooted in the universal morality of the Golden Rule and calls people to aspire to express their highest selves would be so popular at the same time our economic system has become so corrupting.  We are at a point of major system failure. Our finance-based economic system rewards and gives power to people with pathological self-interest. For our children to inherit a world we want them to live in this must change.

 

There are small and mighty forces that are focused on positively changing the way we all think about the purpose of work, our economy, business and society.  The opposing force of the powerful status quo is well financed and very noisy. They are both powerful and stupid. They justify what is unjustifiable. Yes, we can defeat them.

 

I honestly believe that SMART-Power thinking and leadership practice combined with the essence of conscious capitalism and new structures like B-corporations can become the business norm as a new generation of leaders and more women ascend into leadership.

 

My job is to equip them with tools that will enable them to lead, innovate and out-compete business as usual.

 

This can’t be done with soft ideas of asking people to behave better. This can only be done by resolving the paradox of hard and soft leadership, science and spirit, discipline and love, action and reflection. This is the core of wisdom.

 

It is time for aggressive wisdom.

 

So the reason I still run alongside humanities’ train is that not only do I want people be more personally effective… I want a future that creates more effective institutions so that our best ideas, our most inspiring hopes, and our moral imaginations can prevail.

 

And one thing I notice that makes me smile is that today there’re a lot more people running with me.

In a few hours I’m leaving for Tucson to talk to 200 business owners about going beyond branding. The Convention and Visitors Bureau has asked me to come to see if I can convince the critical mass of hotel owners, restaurants, stores and attractions to adopt Tucson’s brand identity captured by the tagline phrase “Free Yourself.” “Free Yourself” is a big idea.  It wasn’t created one late afternoon drinking beer after a round of golf by a bunch of hon-yawkers. A smart group of branding consultants traveled the country asking potential and former tourists for their impressions of Tucson. What made it attractive, enjoyable, worthy of a return visit or a first vacation?

Their research revealed that Tucson already had of positive reputation.  In marketing–speak it was boiled down to two words…“active authenticity.” I know. At first those words seemed a little awkward. But after digging a little deeper I came to understand that visitors considered Tucson to be a great place to get outside and do fun stuff. Bike ride, hike, swim, play tennis and golf and a zillion other things we have invented that make life fun. People also considered Tucson to be unpretentious… a place you can dress anyway want, say what’s on your mind and be accepted for who you are.

So it turns out “Free Yourself” is a lot to work with. I’m going to give these business people some ideas about how to turn their brand into employee behavior that encourages visitors to free themselves in positive and inspiring ways. This is essential. It is one thing to have a brand and quite another to be famous for it.

There is a lot of talk these days about our personal brands.

Our personal brand is our reputation. When I talk about business brands I challenge people with the notion that there are three choices. You can be famous for something good (Disneyland). Infamous for something bad (Exxon). Or invisible. Most businesses and most of us end up in the third category… being invisible. And the reason isn’t because we don’t have a lot of Facebook friends or are not willing to do outrageous things to become noticed on frivolous media.

It’s because we’re afraid to stand out right now, right where we are.

And it’s no wonder. Almost all of us are raised and schooled to fit in, get along, like what everybody else likes, and do what everybody else does. It’s stupid really. The people we most admire are people who stand out. We are drawn to the courage of nonconformists. We focus our attention on those few who are positive revolutionaries. People who have vision to take on the status quo and are willing to say and do things that matter.

I particularly admire business leaders who repeatedly thumb their nose at Wall Street. 

The pressure on CEOs of publicly held companies to do the stupid and immoral things that we’ve come to accept as part of business-as-usual is immense. But those who cave-in are invisible. They aren’t making much difference in the world and much of the difference they are making is bad. The new leaders of Southwest Airlines come to mind. Under their wild man founder, Herb Kelleher, air travel became affordable and cheerful. When their former head of Human Resources became CEO, Southwest expanded with the same spirit of customer first. You may have had to jostle for a seat but bags were free and planes were on time. Now Southwest is run by their former chief financial officer Gary Kelly. It shows.

They’ve made their seats smaller with less padding in order to fit a few more on each plane to increase revenue. They’ve gone from first for on-time to almost last. Most of that’s caused by a mandate to save fuel.  They are now considering whether it’s time to charge travelers for our bags. (They call it ala cart pricing as if it’s a consumer benefit.) Most importantly I get the feeling they really don’t care about their customers the same way they use to. We have just become wallets. It’s sad.

But once in a while a leader does something truly astonishing.

Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, just announced that they would pay the college tuition for full and part-time employees who attend Arizona State University’s well-regarded online University. And there is no catch. An employee can choose from over 40 majors and they don’t owe Starbucks any time or money after they graduate. Wall Street, of course, considers this insane. Starbucks’ health coverage for part-time employees costs $200 million every year. Most financial analysts think this crazy tuition program will cost the same. But as Schultz said. “Starbucks is a humanitarian brand.”

For him that goes way beyond fair-trade coffee and recyclable coffee cups. My daughter worked at Starbucks for a couple of years. It wasn’t perfect… no company is. But at least they stand for something. At least they’re willing to make a difference in a world where few others are.

So where does that leave you and me?

I think we have the same three choices the business brands have. We can be famous for something good; infamous for something bad; or remain invisible. I don’t believe our life’s purpose is served by being quiet, fitting in or just trying to get along. We do not have to become literally famous but I think the world would be much better off if we all stood up for things that matter to us.

We don’t need to accept the world as it is or our current life if it is sapping our spiritual strength. Neither do we have to go wild losing all our commonsense. But our self-respect and inner well-being is calling us to say what’s in our soul and behave as if the future depended on us making our difference. There are over 7 billion ways to do this.

We discover ours through action and reflection, action and reflection.

All of us have values we would be willing to die for… those are the same values we should be willing to live for.

Free Yourself!