Adapt or Fail – Why 70% of Your Team Isn’t Committed to Your Success

Posted on by Real Leaders

Whenever you work really, really hard and fail, it is because you’re missing something. Usually it’s reality. It is tempting to deny that anything has changed. Or that you need to know something that you don’t. Or that others aren’t inspired by the same things you are. Or that you’re going to have to take responsibility for things you don’t want to. The list goes on. There are countless reasons to deny the real reasons we are failing. So we wait.

We wait for things to get back to normal. Well, things are not going to go back to normal because something really, really big has changed. It is a revolution of epic proportion. It is simply this.

Anyone can know anything, instantly. 

In the last five years, access to knowledge through smartphones enables almost everyone to know anything they want to know within minutes. I frequently tell my career classes that anyone can become an expert in a specific field within six months. 

Hell, you can become more knowledgeable about a certain topic than 80% of people in three weeks. All you need to do is spend 20 minutes a day with a search engine on the Internet watching videos, reading articles, or searching the research. Want to become knowledgeable about 3D printing, how to finance a business, what makes a happy marriage, how to surf, garden, play the guitar, write a book, write code, manage a project, meditate, or quantum physics? It’s all there.

And there’s more. You can connect with people who are interested in the same things you are very, very easily. I know, you’ve heard versions of these breakthroughs incessantly. This is hardly new news.

But what is new is the radical impact these things are having on businesses and organizations of all types.

And radial is not too strong a word. Consider this. The invention of the printing press in 1450 was the beginning of the end of the dark ages. Remember the dark ages were really dark. In many places, human beings took a step back in terms of their calling in life and even life expectancy. For instance, in Roman times indoor plumbing, clean water and municipal sewage systems were common.

In the dark ages, people threw their crap out the window. Only 1% of Europeans could read or write the year the printing press was inventing. 50 years later, 50% of Europeans were literate. This democratization of knowledge spurred new questions and massive curiosity. The grip of the Catholic Church on people’s thinking violently conflicted with the Protestant Reformation.

The age of world exploration was born and the Renaissance flourished. The philosophers of the Enlightenment created new models of thinking about individual rights and human potential, and led to modern democracies, explosive growth in university education and the scientific method. Okay, that was a big change. Now, imagine that kind of world shaking change happening in a very compressed timeframe. That’s what’s going on. In my work, I see it being played out every day in the area of business. It shows up in tow powerful palaces… leadership and culture.

I think we should face the fact that most of our efforts at leadership development have failed. 

Although billions have been invested over the last 50 years and tens of thousands of books written to promote better leadership, there is virtually no evidence that leaders are any better today than they were five decades ago. When I ask business audiences today how many great leaders they have enjoyed working for over their careers, the highest number I get is two. That’s exactly the same number of audiences were giving me 35 years ago when I started working with Stephen Covey. Perhaps that’s not because developing great leaders is futile, but rather because the challenges of leadership are expanding faster than our ability to help leaders improve.

And, I’m convinced the gap between what’s needed and what’s happening is getting worse. 

It is because the technology and social revolution has changed the way value is created, work gets done and they very nature of the workforce. Here are the main points.

1. Organizational hierarchies are relics of the industrial age.

They are in the way of success. They are designed to maximize the productivity of routine work and minimize risk. When General McChrystal took over the Special Forces command nearly a decade ago it took 96 hours to plan a special operation. Within two years he was able to reduce that time to 20 minutes. He did it by converting the Special Forces command from a hierarchy to a network. Leading networks is a very different skill set than leading a chain of command. And most current business leaders are very, very bad at leading networks.

2. Competence is measured by strategic velocity.

That is the speed at which strategy is decided upon and executed. Most leaders today are still relying on PowerPoints and annual planning cycles. That is leadership malpractice. Today there is a huge gulf between what must be done and what gets done.

3. To be competent, leaders must open-minded enough to constantly evolve strategy and agile enough to stay engaged in the details of execution.

This requires the expertise to create strategy that is responsive to constantly changing trends, opportunities and threats and the social intelligence to work with teams of people as a peer to execute it. (Steve Jobs was an emperor in terms of strategy. But he was a teammate in product development meetings.) In my experience most leaders don’t have a clue on how to do this.

4. The workforce is changed.

Not just millennial’s… everyone. Employees used to give their best efforts because they had the security of long-term employment. They also felt they had a stake in the organization’s long-term success. No more. Research reveals that 80% of employed people constantly search the Internet for a better job. Global surveys that determine the level of commitment employees have to their employer’s success reveal that 70% are not very committed. This is unsustainable. For a network to thrive people must be focused, creative, collaborative and absolutely committed to results. Creating that requires number 5.

5. Human purpose is not optional. Since virtually all employees feel like they are simply hired guns it is impossible to create high-performing teams without genuine shared purpose. Survival and success on their own are not shared purpose. Shared purpose is working together to improve the quality of life of customers’ in a distinct way.

This is not just corporate social responsibility. It is not simply sustainability. It must be your reason for being in business. Real value-driving-purpose has to be at the core of an organization’s money making business model. Haley Rushing of the Purpose Institute recently shared their research with me. It’s simple.

Clear purpose drives:

    • Innovation, product development, pricing, brand, culture, advertising, hiring, technology investment, market segmentation, supply chain management… everything.
    • Purpose makes hard decisions easier and faster.
    • Most important, human purpose connects people directly with their job and the enterprise. It increases commitment and reduces friction.
    • Purpose is the inspirational glue that keeps networks working at very high rates of innovation execution.

6. You have to know what the hell you doing. Leaders must have extremely high levels of business acumen and competence. Purpose is no substitute for competence. Passion alone can put you out of business faster because you mistake your good intentions for good outcomes.

That’s my brief explanation of why old models don’t work, employees are disengaged and once great enterprises will fail if they are not lead in radically new ways. The good news is there are lots of people interested in this new way of leading and working. I hope you are.

 

Are You Your Biggest Problem?

Posted on by Will Marre

I am. I am a big fat problem for myself. So are you. We all are. That’s the way life is. It’s natural to think you are normal…but you’re not and neither am I. We are all quirky as hell. Of course we have a self-protective inner story to tell us that we’re not…but we are…each of us.

Decades of psychological research confirms that our greatest weakness is a lack of self-awareness. 

If you ask five friends to describe your strengths and weaknesses and the impact you have on others those five are likely to say things that are very similar. However, if you wrote down your answers to that same question and compared it to what your five friends say about you…your answers would be the most different. We don’t see ourselves the way others see us. We tend to exaggerate our strengths and make excuses for our weaknesses. Or we make the mistake of thinking our strengths compensate for weaknesses.

Like our family and coworkers don’t care that we’re crabby and short tempered because we mean well…we are just stressed. But that’s just a story. We made it up.

We make up a lot of stories.

The brilliant research on self-awareness, Daniel Goleman, tells us that we are Olympic gold-medal winning self-excusers. We expertly blame and rationalize to shirt responsibility for our frustrations and failures to people and forces beyond our control. The universal human pattern for this is simple.

First, we deny there’s a problem. 

That’s because if there is a problem, we will have to attend to it. We will have to invest energy and do something different. We just wish problems would go away on their own. Maybe if we wish hard enough…

Second, we blame others.

This takes a lot less effort than changing out behavior of ourselves to get a new outcome. We are not very psychologically agile. It’s much easier just to keep doing what we’re doing and blaming others for what doesn’t work.

Finally, we rationalize. 

We accept the previously unacceptable. We convince ourselves it doesn’t matter after all. We even use those terrible words “it is what it is.” This pattern is very common in human relationships going bad. It happens with couples, families and friends. It’s universal because we are all low on self-awareness and high on self-protection.

We judge ourselves through our motives but others by their behavior. 

This is much more than a personal problem. It is a central problem in leadership. It’s why countries go to war, governments stop working, and corporations fail. Research confirms that low self-awareness is the most common, single leadership weakness.

The signs of low self-awareness in leaders are overconfidence, insistence  and closed-mindedness. 

These outer behaviors are most often a mask for inner self-doubt. You see self-doubt as a natural outcome if you don’t have a strong sense of your essential identity. This is the deep, genuine inner ‘you’ that would remain the same no matter if you won the lottery or were forced to live on the street. Sometime when I’m coaching a leader I ask them “who would you be if you had been born and raised by a poor family in a developing country?  Who would you be if you hadn’t gone to college? Who would you be if you were born 200 years ago? “ Yes, I know these are strange questions… they are meant to be.

What I’m trying to get people to think about is who are you at your core?

Who are you independent of your circumstances, your upbringing, your job, your car, your house, your family? Who? How do you find meaning in life? What do you most value? Do you have any commitments or beliefs that you would die for? And if you do…. are you willing to live for them? Are you willing to stand for them? Speak up for them? The best way I have learned to transcend self-doubt is to get acquainted with your authentic, inner self.

The core part of you, your essential self, has no doubts about you or inflated views of your capabilities.

Neither is it self-protective or defensive. This is not New Age woo-woo. Rather it is at the core of deep, life-satisfaction. I have deeply enjoyed working with a few well grounded CEOs. I knew they had capacity to become great leaders because they sought feedback. They had the inner strength to remain non-defensive and very curious about their impact on others. Above all they know who they were, what they stood for and how they felt about important things. They demanded a lot from themselves but were also self- compassionate when they were tired or foolish.  They didn’t pretend to be perfect or to be anybody they were not. At the same time they had no excuses for their own failures.

Confidence without arrogance is extremely powerful.

So how about you? What’s your level of self-awareness? What’s your level of non-defensive confidence? Are you curious enough? Open-minded enough? Do you know what makes your life worth loving? Aristotle said that the best life is one in which you fulfill your nature in the pursuit of a noble purpose.

Do you know what it means to “fulfill your nature?”  

If you do, turn up the volume on your efforts. If you don’t know, invest your energy in becoming self-aware… it is the only foundation that will weather the storms of life.

 

How to Have a Career That Matters

Posted on by Will Marre

Are you whispering or are you singing at the top of your lungs? When I was doing research for Save the World and Still be Home for Diner, I interviewed scores of people who wanted to matter. Not in the look-at-me way. Not in the I-want-to-be-famous-on-YouTube way. They just wanted to bloom where they were planted. To sing their song. To make their difference. I talked to them and watched them work. As I listened to their stories about how they discovered their calling and turned it in to a career, I discovered something I never suspected.

Their success came because they were pushed by the current of two fast flowing rivers that converged in one glorious torrent.

River One is the river of ‘Inspired Desire.’ They really wanted to make the world better. Although some were now rich and famous, that was not their goal. Never. Making their difference was.

Research reveals at least six big challenges for humanity.

If you want the world to get better…becoming great at addressing one of these six challenges is pretty damn important. Here are the challenges:

  1. Human rights/oppression: equality, equal justice, dignity, women’s and children’s rights, tolerance, freedom of speech, worship, assembly, etc.
  2. Health/disease: wellness, sports, entertainment, disease prevention, education, research, children’s and women’s health, access, affordability, cancer, AIDS, heart disease, stress, care-giving, etc.
  3. Peace/violence: respect, diplomacy, communication, negotiation, ending war, terrorism, nuclear prolifereation, genocide, abuse, etc.
  4. Education/ignorance: literacy, graduation rates, arts education, science and math, girls and women, computer/digital early childhood, gifted special needs, etc.
  5. Sustainability/environmental collapse: pollution, water shortages, resource depletion, conservation, park development, cleanup, climate change, energy research, etc.
  6. Wealth/poverty: access to capital, food, housing, budgeting, entrepreneurship, career development, job creation, skill training, economic literacy, trade homelessness, etc.

There are many additional ways to help individual human beings and humanity. This is just a list to get you started thinking… Most of us will spend 100,000 hours of our lives working. Most of our waking hours. So why not do something that makes the world a better place to live?

With all the needs humanity has, it seems a shame to invest your gifts doing something trivial. 

What I discovered from the difference-makers I studied was that you can turn virtually any career into something that benefits humanity. You just need to hold that intention and the infinite numbers of ways you can make a difference show up every day. So, I am not suggesting that each one of us has to become Gandhi or Lincoln or Einstein…remember a humble janitor prevents the spread of disease by just doing their job well. I just wonder what kind of world we’d have if all of our mission statements for Me Inc. arose from turning our values into value. I am not suggesting that you take a vow of poverty, but rather a vow of purpose.

I suggest that because the happiest, most creative people I know work that way. 

And, it’s not that hard. That’s where the second river flows in. My interviews and observations of ordinary people with extraordinary careers helped me see it clearly. For these people, River Two is the river of their own Design. They are highly self-aware. They know what they are best at and what brings them joy ‘in the doing.’ They’ve come to understand how their talent and skills work together to create a measure of unique greatness. Most important, they know how to learn what they need to learn in order to do what they really desire to do.

Their stories taught me that sometimes learning is difficult. Painful. Exhausting. Yet necessary to unleash the power of their talents and passions. 

So that’s it. When you harness the river of your Desires in the river of your Design, your career begins to flow so fast it carves its own path to the canyons of life. Let me make this practical. I teach lots of career workshops for corporations for University of California at San Diego. And one thing I found is that people want fast, practical tools to convert these fancy-schmancy principles into immediate action. So here you go.

First, get clear on where you are in your career. You can do that by answering these questions about your work.

  1. What do you do? (What is the essence of your work?)
  2. Who do you do it for? (Who pays you?)
  3. What is the human and economic impact of it? (Why do you get paid?)

Some real examples:

  1. “I do computer programming.”
  2. “For an e-commerce company.”
  3. “To quickly change product offers to customers so my company grow.”

Here’s another:

  1. “I am the Chief Executive Officer that determines strategy and allocates resources.”
  2. “For a sports shoe and athletic apparel company.”
  3. “To ensure the company grows by designing and selling best-in-the-world products.”

One more:

  1. “I do project management.”
  2. “For a technology company.”
  3. “To eliminate waste and shorten delivery time.”

Okay, that’s pretty simple. Now, let’s paddle down the river you’re floating on. This time, do the same exercise except…imagine how you might answer those question two years from now if all your most inspiring career development plans paid off. And add one question.

How’s the world better off for you doing your job?

Here are some answers that are follow-ups to the examples above. The programmer:

  1. “I do artificial intelligence programming.”
  2. “For a progressive video games studio.”
  3. “To create wildly popular products.”
  4. “That teaches players real history and the consequences of making good or bad decisions.” (pretty cool)

The CEO:

  1. “I align our business strategy with a bigger purpose of using our resources to create a better world.”
  2. “For sports shoe/apparel company.”
  3. “To increase our customers worldwide in order to grown, prosper and…”
  4. “Promote the value of sports in developing self-discipline, skill, health and camaraderie.” (just plain amazing)

The project manager:

  1. “I design lean development processes.”
  2. “For the biotech industry.”
  3. “To help speed development time.”
  4. “To get life-saving medicines and therapies to people faster.” (so much more exciting than being a project manager)

See how easy that was? It all begins with your mindset.

Once you become clear on your deepest desires and understand how you are best designed to succeed, you will know what skills you need to master to do something extraordinary. 

You’ll naturally tell the world what you’re up to. You’ll find people who are interested in the same things you are. And you will see opportunities that were previously invisible. Maybe even in the job you have right now. The amazing people I interviewed didn’t have any special intelligence and often had major disadvantages compared to their peers.

What they had was clarity. 

And a willingness to invest in  their future self. They got started by taking the daily steps that got them moving in the direction that was most fulfilling. Anyone of us can do the same. My conviction is that non of us are extra. We are all different for a reason. We all have a difference only we can make. Just start.

 

How You Think – 5 Ways We May or May Not Be Wired for Achievement

Posted on by Will Marre

We have learned more about how our brains work during the last five years than the last 5,000. For instance, we know the old “right-brain, left-brain” model is a gross over simplification of how our brains really processes information and decides to act. The brain functions like a network drawing on vital information that is gathered and evaluated throughout the three pounds of flesh that rests within our skull.

We are constantly building our new neural network. Depending on what we are constantly thinking about, what stresses us, what interests us, what is vital to us. We are constantly constructing new “cell towers” that powerfully shoot electrical energy across our thinking network so that we can act and react. Each of our neural network is as individual as our fingerprint. Yet new research from Harvard’s Stephen Kosslyn (“Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Surprising Insights into How You Think”) confirms that each of us use one of several Brain Achievement Maps.

A Brain Achievement Map, something I call BAM, is our habitual way of thinking. It’s how we individually select what’s important to us. What keeps our attention, how we learn what we need to learn, who we go to for help, when to act and when not to. Most importantly, it helps us set goals and achieve them. So, there are five common BAMs.

Not surprisingly, most men are wired up for two of them and most women for the other three. 

Here they are:

  1. Achiever: This BAM is found among most business leaders. It focuses your brain on goal achievement. You set the agenda and establish goals. WHen this is your BAM you are looking at trends, competitors and opportunities. You tell others WHAT is important to achieve.
  2. Motivator: This BAM causes people to answer the question – Why? It is your brain seeking purpose. It seeks moral achievement over money, fame or power. When this is your BAM it is difficult to act unless you’re clear on WHY you should.
  3. Collaborator: This BAM seeks interaction. Clarity is created through conversation. Different points of view are welcomed. Inclusion is vital. Decisions are the result of synthesis. The HOW is arrived at as a team. WHen this is your BAM social harmony is pure oxygen.
  4. Driver: This BAM thrives on action. It requires sustained high energy and focuses on immediate goals. Results are what matter. DO it now, no excuses. When this is your BAm you insist on accountability and relentless effort.
  5. Adapter: This BAM seeks practical, immediate improvement. It focuses on what’s working and what might work better. Improving is what matters. If this is your BAM, you thrive on “do, learn, do some more.”

It shouldn’t surprise you that male brains tend to be more Achiever and Driver brains. Females tend to be wired as Motivators, Collaborators and Adapters. What’s critical to understand is these gender differences don’t seem to be solely related to the differences in how boys and girls are raised.

The white matter in a female brain is significantly greater than in a male’s brain. White matter is the substance the brain uses to connect the dots from the far reaches of our neural networks. This means the female brain is engineered to be more collaborative, more diversity-embracing, more synthesizing, more empathetic, and quicker to improve. Even the neural connections between our prefrontal cortex where our values reside, and the rest of our brain capacity is greater in women than in men.

That’s why women generally have better impulse control and start far fewer biker gangs than men do. 

All this has leadership implications that are mission-critical for our future. There’s a stream of new data from organizations such as Sodexo, McKinsey and Company, Catalyst, and the Center for Talent Innovation that convincingly make the case that having many women in leadership positions have a direct impact on growth, profitability and innovation. Sodexo’s research reports that when one third of board members are women, profit margins are 42% better.

That’s a lot better. The key seems to be in having enough women in leaders. One token female does little to influence the achiever-driven brains of men. So organizations become half-brained. Resulting in half-assed business strategy, and poor executed with disengaged employees. That – in my experience – is the norm. Whole-brained organizations have enough women in senior business-driving positions to make a difference.

Having a female head of HR is not sufficient. Women also need to be driving business development, R&D, sales, marketing, operations and every other male-dominated domain of the enterprise. This is not to say that all women teams are the best.

The evidence is that mixed teams of men and women leaders produce better results than one gender teams of either. 

Perhaps now we’re learning why that’s true. Brain Balance. And now some coaching for aspiring women leaders. Please recognize that leading is not easy because your’e doing a lot more thinking than men do. I know this is no surprise. A recent review of 46,000 male and female brain scans revealed that women’s brains were significantly more active in nearly 90% of human brain function.

Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast. All this super-strong brain activity makes you more vulnerable to self-doubt, self-criticism, anxiety and chocolate cravings. There’s an area deep in your prefrontal cortex (anterior cingulate gyrus) that makes you hyper sensitive to personal perfectionism. Your “How am I doing?” meter is supersensitive. Your heightened social awareness makes you feel vulnerable to judgement.

And your strong sense of responsibility can drive you to be over-controlling. Perhaps the most difficult news is that your brain doesn’t produce even half of the serotonin that men enjoy. Serotonin is the brain chemical that gives you a feeling of continuous well-being and the sense that all is well.

That’s why it’s usually men who say, “Life is good.” Women on the other hand are much busier trying to make life good.

I’m convinced that women are the primary source of civilization. Some current proof of that is the amazing 98% repayment rate of microloans make to women in developing countries. Microloans are made without collateral but with the mutual social guarantees of 6 to 8 women borrowers.

Each woman pledges her hundred percent support to every other woman in the group to ensure all loan payments are made. So they are. Most microfinancce organizations don’t even loan money to men. That’s because they either spend the loan proceeds or the profit from their business on gambling or alcohol. Women, on the other hand invest their profits in building their businesses, their children’s education or community projects.

Yes, that’s awesome and all, but very stressful. My counsel to women is to realize that in many ways you have one foot on your accelerator and one foot on your break. That creates a lot of noise and smoke, but not speedy progress. Your accelerator is your bright brain that is perfectly designed to thrive in our complex 21st century world. Your break is that inner voice that is constantly second-guessing you.

The bottom line is don’t expect men to behave much differently than they do they are simply not equipped to. And don’t you hang back. Don’t you wait. 

Our future needs a leadership revolution led by men and women working together to create a future we want our children to grow up in.

 

Ask More of Yourself

Posted on by Will Marre

I’ve been invited to attend a meeting of area executives to discuss corporate social responsibility in the San Diego (California) region. We will be discussing good things like how to increase volunteerism and sustainability among the large and small businesses fortunate enough to be located here.

This is good stuff… but not great stuff.

For years I have been pointing out that in poll after poll consumers view the first corporate social responsibility of business to be the well-being of a company’s own employees.

For instance, over the last 10 years Walmart has turned itself into quite a green company. They are world class at eliminating packaging waste and even reducing their carbon footprint. Of course they do this because it helps them save money. Nothing wrong with that but you have to wonder if it didn’t save money would they care about any of these things? Meanwhile how do you think they’re doing with their higher corporate responsibility of treating their employees with respect? If you think not good, you’d be right.

Their reputation for corporate social responsibility with consumers is in the basement. I don’t mean to pick on Walmart all the time it’s just that they’re such a juicy target. And they embody all the unintended consequences of shortsighted, self-interested capitalism. They have played a key role in the dismantling of America’s small business manufacturing capability, which has lowered the average wage for high school educated workers. These of course are Walmart’s key customers who are now spending so little money at Walmart stores the company simply cannot grow and it’s stock has been stagnant for years.

It’s been observed that capitalists are so shortsighted that they would sell their hangman the rope used to hang them with.

The fact that today that rope might be made with recycled help is of small comfort. So here’s another way to look at corporate social responsibility. Economists talk about “switching costs” as a key factor in making financial decisions. When switching costs are low consumers are not very loyal.

For instance, it’s easy to drive across the street to save two cents on a gallon of gas. Gas seems to be all the same and gas stations are all over the place, so getting the best deal seems to always make sense. On the other hand switching costs to change the source of your electricity from your local utility to putting solar panels on your house is quite high.

Switching costs are also a factor in social relationships. Dating websites are popular because switching costs are so low. You can suddenly quit talking to one dude or dudette as soon as a more attractive one shows up. But the switching costs of a 20-year marriage are much greater.

When switching costs are high, we have a high “stake” in the value of the relationship. 

Whether it’s with the company, our doctor or a spouse, we really want the relationship to work. When switching costs are low, you don’t care so much because there is no big price to pay by choosing something different. So what do switching costs have to do with corporate social responsibility? It’s simply this: corporate responsibility is fundamentally connected to creating benefit for all your stakeholders.

The moral question is,”Do corporate leaders have a greater responsibility to shareholders, consumers or their employees?” 

The prevailing idea promoted in business school is leaders have a primary responsibility to shareholders because they have invested money. Because of this view we created a hyper self-interested, short term ethic that dominates the decisions going on in most corporate offices. Not all, but most. But when you consider the switching costs the moral answers change.

Today, with high-speed computer trading, mutual funds hold company shares for an average of seven minutes. Now that’s speed dating! Even conservative mutual funds readjust their portfolios every 90 days. That’s why in many circles shareholders are not considered investors but simply gamblers. And their switching costs are tiny. There are thousands of stocks all over the world to choose from which you can readily buy and sell on a seconds notice. So it seems that investors have the smallest stake of all stakeholders.

Now consider consumers. We live in an age of tens of thousands of virtually interchangeable products. Companies are crazy about branding because their brand name is the only difference between a Dell or an HP computer. The switching costs for consumers is very low so they don’t have a very high stake in your company’s success.

But there is one group whose lives depend on a company’s fortunes. 

That group, of course, is the employees. Their switching costs are enormous. Losing a job is extremely brutal for older employees. Research reveals that out of the ocean of workers over the age of 50 who lost their jobs in this last recession, over half will never earn as much as their previous job. We also know that job loss has a stressful, health affect that actually lasts longer than divorce. So the stakeholders with the greatest stake in their employer’s success are the employees.

The biggest challenge that employers and employees face together is to keep the skills of employees up-t0-date and relevant. 

Employers need employees that add value. And the value they need to add is constantly changing because of the nature of our competitive economy. Yet the investment is improving employee’s capability, knowledge and skills, and health and well-being is infinitesimal. This is not true in Germany, the world’s largest exporter of advanced technology goods. There, employee development, health and well-being are welded into the armor of the employer-employee relationship.

They have a system of mentoring and apprenticeship that is the backbone of their value-added manufacturing base. And here, a crazy company called Zappos takes employee development to the extreme. Every entry-level employee gets four weeks of training and is then put on a development track consisting of constant classes over three years. Employees are constantly taught both hard and soft skills to help them excel in their job, and their lives.

Zappos employees are expected to advance into management within 5 to 7 years. No one gets to stay at a minimum pay job unless they choose to.  This process of on-the-job training formal classes and mentoring is how you professionalize a workforce.

And when people who have the greatest stake in the company’s success are nurtured and developed, a game-changing culture emerges.

That’s not hard to understand. It’s simply rare. So what about you? If you’re a leader perhaps it’s time to put some concentrated effort into how you could create a more remarkable workplace by over-investing in your people’s success. If you are an employee your focus needs to be on your own development. The question to ask yourself is

“What do I need to know and what experiences do I need in order to be in complete control of my own career?”

The best way to insulate yourself from the short-term thinking of Neanderthal leadership is to make the switching cost away from you too high. Invest in your own future.

Become extraordinary at something you value that brings value to others. 

It is time to become a warrior in the pursuit of your best future.

 

Becoming Great is Simple, Just Not Easy

Posted on by Will Marre

(Note to readers: the response to my recent blog, Three Reasons Why We Need Women Leaders Now has been nothing less than astonishing. What’s clear to me is that there is a deep thirst for practical leadership advice for women who want to excel as leaders, as well as a business need to elevate more women to senior leadership positions. So, I’ve decided to add a special note to women leaders whenever my blog deals with a subject that has a unique application for women. This blog does. The note is at the end.)

Good to Great, that leadership book with the red dust jacket, sits on the shelf of virtually every leader I’ve ever coached. The reason is simple, it’s a great book. For instance the hedgehog principle in which author Jim Collins (above) encourages people and companies to focus on things they do well that they are passionate about and can make money on is wisdom in its profound form.

Yet there is one big idea in the book that has caused lots of confusion.

It’s called Level Five Leadership. Collins tells us that the most successful leaders lead with paradoxical combination of iron-willed commitment and personal humility. What’s confusing about this is that many of the leaders we most admire don’t seem to have much humility. Nobody would accuse Steve Jobs or Winston Churchill of being humble yet both are widely admired as truly great, world changing leaders. And the list of not very humble leaders seems endless. Amazon hotshot Jeff Bezos and look-at-me Richard Branson are just two more that come to mind. So what’s up?

Did Collins simply get it wrong?

Well maybe not… In my 35 years of coaching leaders, some great and some not so great, I come to appreciate what Collins was getting at. I think we can all see that an unwavering commitment to build a special organization is essential to truly great leadership.

The nature of people working together generates chaos driven by the three-ring circus of human weaknesses.

Rampant nuttiness ranging from jealousy and revenge to arrogance and intimidation constantly tear at the fabric of any organization. Leaders who understand the value of a unified, agile team of people working to fulfill an inspiring vision need to expend oceans of energy to drown the demons of social chaos. That takes infinite commitment. I think that is easy to understand… but humility? What about humility? What I’ve come to understand about leadership humility is that it is not the ‘Aw shucks I’m nobody special’ kind.

Rather, it’s the humility of being keenly aware of the limits of your own knowledge and the fallibility of your own judgment.

It is open-mindedness. Of course nearly everyone claims to be open-minded. Who walks around beating their chest about their prejudices and unwillingness to entertain any newfangled ideas or different points of view? Yet those are the most common human behaviors of all. And unless we really work at it our inner voice is saying “I know I’m right, we disagree, therefore you must be wrong.”  Yes, we may act as if were open to new ideas and different points of view but our brains are wired for certainty not open-mindedness.

Much of the time our ‘humility’ is just an act. 

That’s why so many people are attracted to start up enterprises. Entrepreneurs frequently walk a tight rope were one false step can plunge the company into a crash dive. In those circumstances successful leaders are hungry learners. The best of them are passionately open-minded and constantly seeking the next best step necessary to create momentum and sustainable success.

And it turns out the most common characteristic of failed entrepreneurs is stubbornness… which is persistence without creativity.

Close minded passion is a kind of narcissistic poison. So, it appears Collins was dead right. Great leaders are both driven and humble; committed and open-minded. Rare qualities indeed. So how about you?

As the chief entrepreneur of your own career, are you at level five?

Do you have strongly held opinions about your career or your work that lead you to only look for evidence that confirms what you already believe? It is possible to reinvent your future. New research reveals that 93% of successful startups fundamentally change their business strategy in order to succeed. In other words the first business plan didn’t work.  It’s no shame if you’re stuck.  Just don’t spin your wheels. If things are not turning out the way you expected…stop doing what you’re doing.

Spend 30 minutes every morning for the next week reflecting on your deepest desires.

Ask “what’s something new that I could do that might get me on track…” that’s open-mindedness.  And if you are moving in the right direction, ask yourself “what can I do to accelerate progress?” Do that.

Note to women leaders:

I find that women are often a little too open minded in the workplace. It’s common for women to have a hard time saying “no” when other people want to mess with your agenda. You may have been so busy helping others achieve their goals that you become a bit timid in recruiting others to help you achieve yours.

So exercise your strong commitment muscles necessary for level five leadership. Don’t apologize for your vision, your goals and the fury of your commitment.

 

How Clear is Your Vision?

Posted on by Will Marre

The essential responsibility of a leaders is to form, hold and promote a clear version. Having a vision of a better future is both noble and powerful.

Virtually all that we have and enjoy that is worthwhile is the result of someone’s vision.

Great vision, world changing vision, focuses on one thing…creating new value. By that I don’t mean economic value. Creating value for shareholders or increasing your own net worth is a means, not an end. Making money is like food. It is necessary for survival because without it we starve. But being solely focused on making money is like centering your life on how much food you can eat…it will make you sick. The kind of value-vision I’m talking about is the seven core ways people’s lives get better. WHen I am helping people develop their vision, I start with a question like this:

How will you make people…

  1. healthier?
  2. happier?
  3. smarter?
  4. safer?
  5. more socially connected?
  6. economically secure?
  7. experience deeper meaning?

While there are other forms of value creation, there seven seem to get people thinking about creating value more than just harvesting it.

Notice that big vision is driven by what you can do for other people rather than tricking them into doing something for you. 

Lately, the news has been full of stories that illuminate failures of no vision. For instance, Microsoft finally threw their very bright and unimaginative CEO Steve Ballmer overboard. For years, Microsoft focused its mighty effort on harvesting the value of their Office software monopoly. The software itself has not materially improved in six or seven years. In fact, instead of making our lives easier, Office software has become bloated, clunkier and harder to use.

Meanwhile Microsoft has dabbled in things like Xbox, Bing, and MSN all of which are different but not better products than their competitors. With all the billions that Microsoft has and with their unique access to tens of millions of desktops around the world, you would think they could’ve come up with something that would truly make our lives better. But no, just a series of worse versions of old products.

There’s no doubt they could have done something big, like revolutionize worldwide education, which is the largest single economic enterprise in the world. 

After all, Microsoft has armies of very bright, well-meaning people. But without big vision, there is simply nothing. An now it appears that all the helium has gone out of Apple’s balloon. I truly hope Steve Jobs is on to better and bigger things. If he can see what is going on with his old company, he must be averting his eyes.

With nearly $150 billion in the bank, you think Apple could come up with something better than a new phone that is clearly worse than Samsung’s old one. It appears that the great and bold creators have been muzzled while harvesters are busy at work in the halls of Apple. With its oceans of goodwill, ability to attract genius-class talent and permission to be wildly creative, you think Apple would pursue the vision that would make us healthier, happier, smarter, safer, more connected, and more creative all wrapped in a “cloud” of meaning.

Instead we get a cheaper iPhone in pink…Awesome. And finally we come to Syria. Our leaders have had no big vision for a relationship with the Middle East for 50 years. Our interest in that region has been solely defined by extracting oil and protecting Israel. I am not so idealistic that I do not believe those goals are necessary. Yet, they’re simply not enough.

When either people or countries act only in their self-interest, they are neither loved nor trusted. 

Of course we need to do what’s necessary to stop the use of chemical weapons. But that’s not big vision. Big vision begins with how we might help the millions of Syrian refugees now living in Jordan and Turkey live a decent life. Perhaps if we spend our time and some of our enormous defense budget helping these suffering masses become healthier, happier, smarter and safer, they might feel more connected to us.

Our vision in the Middle East needs to focus on the younger and future generations who are much more likely to adopt the values of our Bill of Rights as they integrate them into their own traditions. General Patraeus became successful at stopping the civil war we triggered in Iraq in large part by creating trust between us and the warring factions driven by the values of tolerance and fairness and the vision of a better future.

Of course we left and it’s a mess again. The Middle East will not suddenly become a great place to live by liberating it militarily or manipulating it politically. The only investment that will ever payoff is the investment in ideas and ideals that actually create healthier, happier people. This will not be easy or simple or fast. It may take 50 years or two generations for universal human rights to be effectively embraced.

But if we don’t start now, where will be when every country has weapons of mass destruction because technology has made them so easy to build?

While it’s easy to take potshots at big companies and inept leaders, it’s harder to be self-critical. I frequently struggle with my own big vision as I begin what is likely to be the last lap of my race of life. While I many not have the assets of Microsoft of Apple or the responsibilities of creating peace, I have some role to play in my world I seem to wrestle daily with how to best invest my time in ways that might make others healthier, happier, smarter, more loved and more loving.

I am struck with how difficult it is to think in a big way without acting in small ways. My wife understands this far better than me. She is a hospice volunteer and a few nights ago we visited a 90-year-old bed-ridden woman in a clean but modest nursing home. Debbie simply fed her, brushed her hair and asked her about her life when she was a young mother.

In those few minutes of creating value for another human being, I experienced how a personal big vision changes the world. 

There is something infinite in the infinitesimal. I believe we all need a big vision…a vision for creating value for others right now, right where we are.

 

Vain Ambition

Posted on by Will Marre

The reason that nothing gets done in Washington D.C. is vain ambition. It’s a lesson for all of us in the downside of vanity. Have you read “This Town?” It’s written by the chief national corresponded for the New York Times Magazine. He rather proudly says that he is a part of the political -media- lobbyists’ club that runs America for us.

He calls Washington D.C. “suck up city” and compares it to high school… one where the students never graduate. It’s a surreal town where cheerleaders put on endless parties and jocks play politics. You see the deal is, whenever you get to Washington, you never want to leave. The sense of power, fame and specialness is just simply too intoxicating.

Like high school, the main motivation is personal vanity. 

People want to be popular and will do anything to go to the right parties, have the right friends, and have plenty of money to do what popular kids do. Imagine waking up every morning wondering who has said what to whom about you. Imagine being obsessed with whose news program you’re going to be interviewed on and whose sound bite might make the 24-hour news cycle.

Imagine having your mind constantly churning about what gossip you can create to make yourself more important and more popular right now. Imagine worrying about whether you’re going to get the invitation to a state dinner or the right party. Yes, it’s just like perpetual high school. Sure, when people first get elected they might come to Washington on a mission to serve the rest of us. They may even be sincere about their current convictions.

But convictions don’t run our political system… money does. 

And there is plenty of money and lots of lobbying jobs in Washington to go around for anyone who’s had a ticket to the party. That’s why no one leaves. It may sound awful at first, but psychologically, it’s pretty darn addictive… especially for the vain part of us. The addictive force of vanity is not limited to Washington. In my 35 years of helping high achieving leaders to fulfill their dreams, I’ve witnessed the push and pull between vain ambition and moral ambition.

It’s no secret that lots of high achievers are driven by an inner voice that spurs them to do whatever it takes to please their unpleasable or absent father. And there are others that are striving to fulfill the high expectations of adoring and supportive mothers. When this is the case, there is an unquenchable thirst for recognition.

But no achievement, no fame, and no amount of money can fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop people from spending their whole lives trying. The problem is vanity is a powerful motivator but a lousy conscience. That’s why we so often see talented people work like dogs in the pursuit of things that have no intrinsic significance… of things that don’t create any real human value. Too often they sacrifice their health, their relationships, and their lifestyle for “success” that doesn’t really matter. It’s hard to see things clearly, I grant you that.

Our whole modern media world where everyone can try to build a personal brand and create personal fame by blogging, podcasting, videos, and tweeting has made us all a little crazy. Me included. The voice of vanity is never fully silenced. I think the only way to stay grounded is daily reflection.

I’ve developed a morning ritual in which I consciously think of what I’m really grateful for and the most important things I can do for others that day. 

I am never grateful for the things driven by vanity but rather for all of the things that neither money nor fame can buy. I am very fortunate. The years have taught me how important a psychologically healthy lifestyle is. It causes me to think daily about what’s most important to make sure that I create the time to attend to those things.

If there is one practie that has guided my life it is that… and I needed it. 

When I graduated from high school, my ambition was to be governor of California. Not because I had some unique agenda, but because it sounded good. It was my vanity speaking. Somehow, with the help of wise parents, humble teachers, and suffering at just the right moments, I traveled a better path. I am so glad I graduated from high school… if only our leaders would.

 

Who Has The Guts To Change The World?

Posted on by Will Marre

I saw this coming clearly. Five years ago I attempted to raise venture capital to start a free University. The opportunity was huge. You know a market is ripe for disruption when the price of something becomes outrageous in relationships to its value.

Welcome to the cost of college. It’s not a secret that college tuition rates zoomed past any rational connection to inflation because of low-cost government insured loans. These no-questions asked loans make it easy for colleges to maintain one of the most inefficient business models in history.

A quick look at college budgets reveal how relatively little is actually spent on classrooms, professors, research and teaching compared to building and maintaining huge inefficient campuses and scores of activities unrelated to education. Student demand was fueled by the public relations myth that college education would automatically lead to higher earnings in the good life. Of course higher education is correlated with all the things we want for children – higher earnings, happier marriages, greater health and longer lives. But correlation is not cause, and living a truly good and meaningful life is more complicated than earning a degree.

And spending as much as a quarter of a million dollars to learn what you can learn for virtually free doesn’t make much sense.

In fact, it’s outrageous. It’s outrageous because this craziness has created a generation of Americans with over $1 trillion in student debt. This is not the path to the good life. The fact is our 20 to 30 year-old children are not starting businesses, getting married, buying homes or becoming independent.

The primary economic reason for their ‘stuckness’ is that the soundtrack to their lives is the drumbeat of student debt.

The insane irony is that they are not even earning as much as their parents at the same age. I’m not simply an observer of these facts, I’m a fully engaged parent, coaching my three children between 25 and 30 to help them find their launch code to blast free. It isn’t easy even for the very capable and motivated.

The good news is that we are seeing the beginning of a new era of worldwide education.

For over 40 years we have known that the concept originally called “distance learning” can be more effective than in-person classroom teaching if some simple principles are followed. 1) a great, engaging, expert teacher using multimedia, 2) social learning with peers and 3) application of learning by doing. What educational researchers have discovered over the last 10 years is a way to combine online multimedia teaching, Skype tutoring, social learning where possible “learning-meet-ups.” All this both accelerates and deepens learning. Hallelujah! The educational revolution is marching ahead in full fury.

Universities and colleges are having business model meltdowns behind closed doors because they know a new generation of digitally savvy college students are simply not going to pay $50,000 a year for a college education.

When a major name brand university breaks ranks to create a low tuition option for a full bona fide degree earned largely online combined with a network of onsite experiences, hundreds of colleges will close. The university combatants are already circling each other in a worldwide cage fight to see who goes first. Already 200 universities ranging from Harvard and MIT to colleges in Europe, India and Australia are offering courses by partnering with education start ups liked EDx, Coursera, and Udacity. Imagine this… what if a university like Stanford got together with Google and multimedia creators like Disney to create courses taught by one of the world’s most charismatic experts.

What if the development and maintenance of these courses were paid for by large corporations whose brands were tied to certain subjects?

Like Johnson & Johnson on health related topics or GE for engineering classes. And what if Stanford partnered with Barnes & Noble to turn their declining bookstores into a network of Stanford student unions found in almost every city in America? And what if you could earn a first class four-year Stanford bachelors’ degree for say… $10,000? How many millions of students would choose this? One bonus for a school like  Stanford is that they have impressive athletic teams.

Imagine every basketball game being a home game no matter where they travel? Just think of how many T-shirts they could sell! The good news is that something like this going to happen. Education is one of the largest economic enterprises in the world. Using today’s technology to improve education and create a whole new business model is simply too tempting to ignore.

The question is who will have the leadership courage to bless the entire world with truly universal, first class education. I’m not using the words “leadership courage” lightly. There are many who believe a well-rounded education is the ultimate path to world peace.

You see, two of the outcomes from a university education are open-minded tolerance of people who are different than you and opportunity.

Open-minded people who have opportunity don’t want to fight; they want to build. The future we must build is one of sustainable abundance. For that, we need the full talent of our global brainpower. Everybody has a difference to make. My personal attempt to get something like this kicked off via a project called Citizen One was too far ahead of its time. But now there are others who are far more capable that me, who will literally change the world. I am rooting for them… how about you?

If you could change the world, what would you do?

 

When More is Less, or Don’t Leave a Horse Alone

Posted on by Will Marre

I grew up on a ranch. Dad always taught me to never leave a horse alone in the hay barn. The reason, he explained, was that horses would eat themselves to death. That’s right, if horses can get access to a lot of easy to eat feed they will quit eating only when their bloated stomachs burst.

For this reason Dad never considered horses all that smart. I have found it’s not all that uncommon for human beings act a lot like horses around money. There’s been a lot of recent research on whether money can buy happiness. The answer is a little murky.

Some research suggests that for Americans’ $75,000 a year pays for an enough of the good life to reduce stress and produce a sense of security and optimism. This research indicates that increasing income over that amount has a decreasing impact on additional life satisfaction. In other words, more money helps a little but not all that much.

What becomes much more important once our needs are met is the quality of our personal relationships, the satisfaction of our work, and the joy of our lifestyle.

Newer research says that making more money can increase your happiness a lot if you know what makes you happy. In this research it’s not about how much money you make so much as what you spend your money on that determines your happiness. Spending money on experiences that broaden your mind, stimulate new knowledge and positive feelings is high on the list of happy activities.

So is charity… people who spend significant amounts of their income on relieving suffering or solving serious human problems report higher levels of intrinsic self-worth and life satisfaction. The sad fact is that a relatively small group of super wealthy people spend their time helping others or improving their inner life from their outer life experiences. Their most favorite activity is making more money and spending more money on stuff.

Here are the three most common pitfalls about how money can make us miserable or how we can act like horses in the barn full of hay.

1. Your money owns you. Years ago I had a friend who worked for a billionaire heiress. Her father had made an enormous fortune from a business that just wouldn’t stop spewing money. The heiress spent nearly all of her time keeping track of all her stuff. She owned houses all over the world filled with furniture she rarely used. She had yachts in two oceans and enough clothes to fill several department stores.

She had a staff whose jobs was to keep all these possessions form falling into disrepair and help her find the latest version of nearly everything. Managing these people and making decisions was her full-time job. All this made her very stressed-out and my friend reported she was almost never in a good mood because she was always worried about something she owned or wanted to own.

2. Social comparison. Social research confirms that the one common measure that human beings use to gauge their well-being is how they’re doing compared to their neighbors. That’s one reason why people who live in ghettos can be very happy. They may not be rich but compared to the people they live around they’re not so bad off.

One mistake newly successful people often make is moving to a neighborhood they can barely afford. Although they were once happy with their $30,000 car now they seem miserable because all their neighbors have $50,000 cars. Trying to keep up with the richer “Joneses” is a prescription for continuous stress.

3. Untamed ambition. Humans are meaning-seeking beings. And that makes us feel good about ourselves… but not that good. There will always be people with more status or more stuff which threatens our inner peace if it’s built on validating ourselves by what we accomplish, where we live or what we drive. Yet research confirms that much of our ambition is built on a never ending drive to achieve or to compete. Those are very useful motives but are poor foundations for experiencing deep life satisfaction.

In worldwide research, the happiest people are those whose lives reflect their inner values and their choices bring them closer to their circle of loved ones whether they are family or friends. We are all motivated by the things we want but do not have.

The wisest among us are continually making sure the things that they want are relevant to their genuine happiness. Continually seeking more of what you used to not have… Now that is what a very dumb horse would do.

 

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