“They have chocolate in the States”

After walking a new plant construction site in Hyderabad, India, we were hosted to share a traditional Indian lunch. The location was a nice hotel and the service was fantastic. There was a nice variety of desserts and I selected one. My traveling partner returned to his seat with a much more interesting and aggressive choice of desserts. He looked at my plate and said, “You can get chocolate in the States!” He was quite right and I caught myself following habit (yes, I got up and tried things I did not recognize).

The same can be true in how you lead and what solutions you apply to problems. Learning, wisdom and habits have many benefits, but if they cause a leader to avoid trying new techniques, styles and approaches, they become a hindrance. We all need to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and sometimes others do it for us. We just need to listen and hear them when they do.

When have you been reminded in a to stretch out of your comfort zone? How did you respond?

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Where is this “new place we are going?”

As leaders, every so often one of your team members asks you an honest question that makes you stop in your tracks and reconsider exactly what messages you are sending. Most of our LiaV community knows that I recently accepted a new executive assignment on the East Coast. It’s a great chance to use all I’ve learned in the last 30 years of aerospace manufacturing, supply chain and program management.

I arrived on the scene asking many questions, listening, meeting people and internalizing what I was hearing. These are all the things we talk about so often. After a fair amount of time, I came to conclusions of what was needed and started to point a vector in that direction. While we worked hard to find and deploy tools and processes, I also talked about the journey we are about to start. Progress was slow, but acceptable. That was until one of my long-time leaders, Tim, walked into my office very frustrated and said, “John, we understand that you are here to take us to some new place and we accept that, but can you just tell us what you expect from us?”

In a flash, it occurred to me that I was working hard within the organization on the detailed mechanics and with the leaders on the vision, but I was not as clear as I could be on what I expected differently on a day-to-day basis. It was an easy thing to correct by writing out some top-level expectations and having a team discussion. Thank goodness I took the time to build trust with Tim early so he knew he could share his frustration without risk.

Have you ever been “leading” so fast and hard that when you looked back, the team was not as close behind you as you thought? What did you do?

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Pioneers are lonely

Have you ever noticed that the first people to try something new are treated as outcasts? Think about it. This is particularly true as it pertains to teenagers, music and fashion. Think about the kids with the long hair, then the short hair, then the colored hair and the no hair. The first kids to wear grunge were considered bums. Nobody understood rap or gangsta to start and now it is some of the fastest selling music.

The same thing is true in business. Those who believed the internet would change the world were thought to be wasting their time. The first leaders that believed people could work from home were considered crazy. How would we ever keep track of them? The forward-looking leaders that first understood the importance of executing flawless complex supply chains were exiled. Now we all know the supplier chain management is a competitive discriminator. There are still many leaders that have not embraced the impact web 2.0 can have. Many of us already use it as the norm.

If you accept that these pioneers are lonely front liners, then that is exactly where we should always be looking for talent. Leaders need to look for what is new and where trends are headed.

How do you stay current and find fresh ideas, talent and trends?

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“Wal-Mart killed the country store”

It was about 1:15 in the afternoon and another rain shower was starting. There was only one stage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival that was fully covered by a tent, and we headed that direction. I had never heard of Reverend Payton’s Big Damn Band before that time, but I’ll remember them from now on. The band only includes Peyton, his brother and his wife, and they play an eclectic brand of self-published bluegrass “truths,” as they call them.

When they performed their single that is downloaded the most, “Wal-Mart killed the country store,” the crowd really responded. Even the people like me that had never heard the sound before were curious. I thought to myself, “I wonder if Wal-Mart leadership knows of this song?” They should. It is feedback. Then I wondered if many companies really make the effort to move beyond the recognized media to see what their reputation really is. There are plenty of blogs, chat rooms, web sites. There are even web sites like www.jobvent.com that specialize in allowing employees to expose culture and environmental factors about their companies. I know a businesswoman that uses information like this during the due diligence process when considering a merger or purchase of a company.

Do you believe this information reaches senior leaders? Have you ever found and used such information?

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Dunk your leader

Many companies have team building or charity fund raising events that include a dunk tank. There are typically all different kinds of people sitting on the dunk board. People pay small fees for the opportunity to throw a couple of balls at the target, resulting in the person dropping into the tank of water. It is always a fun undertaking, particularly if you are the one on the dry side of the tank!

My sister recently had the opportunity to dunk her boss in one of the events and posted some pretty funny pictures on our family web page. That started an interesting dialog on “boss dunking.” Many comments revolved around the idea of dunking the boss to gain some sort of equity for the way the boss treats others. Others thought the idea of boss dunking was all in fun.

I was asked if I would allow myself to be boss dunked if I knew the dunking was because I was not liked. Wow! That was hard to consider. While I know it is not reasonable to be liked by everyone, a leader has certain hopes they are at least respected. Having participated in dunk tanks in the past, I know the team building value. My guess is that managers that are generally not liked would not volunteer for this potential embarrassment.

Are you the leader that gets dunked for fun or pay-back?

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Culture comes from someplace

Whenever you travel a foreign country, there is the challenge of language. For some, this is so intimidating that they will never travel someplace too far off the beaten path. It does not seem to bother others.

While on a 3 country operations program review (including about 15 city stops) the importance of having a healthy curiosity cultures occurred to me. During one of my many flights, I debated which was more important – the language skills of the country visited or a healthy curiosity of the culture and history associated with the country. While the language helps you directly communicate, learning the culture helps you understand everyone. I concluded that language is a skill and culture is an attitude. A leader can hire or teach and skill, but it is more difficult to develop a curious nature. For this reason I chose cultural curiosity as most important.

Which do you believe is more improve for an international business person – language or cultural curiosity?

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It’s the people stupid!

New York, Munich, Ankara, Eskisehir, Ankara, Munich, Warsaw, Rzeszow, Mielec, Krakow, Krosno, Rzeszow, Warsaw, Helsinki. I’m half way through a half globe-trotting It has been a few months since I’ve been on a global supply building review trip, but like riding a bike, one does not forget. There are always plenty of planes, airports, factories, conference rooms and dinners. Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t do this profession if that was all I remembered.

It is about the people you meet with and along the way. The striped haired girl with piercings in the Rzeszow airport that explained to me what was being announced during the fog delay. The two young professionals in Poland that are taking the lead developing complex supply chain management metrics. The highly trained, Turkish machinist demonstrating the improvements on his statistical process control charts. And, the well intentioned waitress in Turkey that brought the boss a martini that was like no other. Sometimes we forget through the meetings and shop tours, but it is all about the people.

Have you found yourself at times focusing more on the task that the people? How do you remind yourself to refocus?

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The road from Bethel

A couple weeks ago, we took a motorcycle for a ride to a popular 2009 pilgrimage. Yes, this would be to Bethel, NY for the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. While it was an enlightening opportunity and the people of Bethel have a great job restoring the grounds and presenting the museum, it reminded me of an old blog posting titled “Freeze.”

“Freeze!

Leaders, stop! Freeze! Close your eyes. Go back for just a moment to 1969, or whenever you were entering the workforce. Do you think for a moment that the leaders of American industry were feeling comfortable about turning over the keys to us? Not likely. Well, they did and we are in charge. Some might argue, but it seems like we are doing an ok job. We are now ready because people took chances and put us in charge of projects, programs, work groups and teams to learn the leadership skills we need. We made early mistakes and learned from them.

We need to do the same with the Gen X and Y’s on our teams. You might believe your hands are tied by Human Resources or some other authority. They are guidelines and expect you to select the most qualified candidates. It is absolutely critical we follow our respective selection processes and select the best qualified candidate, but it is up to us to develop the skills to make these teammates ready. I personally disagree when people generalize that these folks are not loyal. They are loyal to being challenged, and it is our job to keep them stretched beyond what they even think is possible. This is fun stuff if you change your paradigm on what is possible.

Do you have an example of a Gen X and Y that over delivered in a leadership role?”

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Half Century

For the first time in almost two years, LiaV was not updated last week. While I had plenty of lessons and learning to share, I made a decision not to post as I was on a road trip celebrating my half century birthday. I was coached almost thirty years ago not to work on my birthday and years later started taking the full week off. Now this has matured to major travel and festivals where I can learn and experience new environments and cultures.

This year it was the Austin City Limits music festival. It was an amazing collection of bluegrass, country, rock, alternative, metal, folk, jazz and soul musicians. It also had a lot of rain and five inches of mud this year. Once you conceded that you were going to be a little wet and muddy, it was a blast. Even more important was the people we met and the experiences. We were learning all the time. Learning about Texas, music, people and crowd behavior.

Thanks for the week off and you’ll see some of the learning mentioned in upcoming posts.

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Follow Virginia

A very nice old woman in our building invited Barb and I to her art gallery a while back. We put it on our list and this past Saturday rode the motorcycle there. It was a nice, but odd, selection of art. But Virginia was extremely knowledgeable and nice as can be. The more we talked and listened, the more it became clear that Virginia was fairly famous in the NYC art and modeling world. She shared old news clippings of herself with famous artists of the times, and she was a beautiful young woman. She had that Marilyn Monroe look all dressed up.

As we talked more, she shared that her father was one of the first WWI Naval Air pilots flying amphibious planes out of Long Island, NY and then Pensacola, FL. POW. There it was! There were very few WWI pilots and most knew each other. Having just assembled a museum nomination for my grandfather (Fitzwilliam Dalrymple), I had a lot of information on this topic. We were both so excited to explore this topic more.

It makes me wonder how many people would have skipped the gallery invitation and never met such a fascinating lady and then made a family connection! Would you have?

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Culture versus Climate

A recent LiaV post entitled “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” resulted in over one hundred community comments. It was a record. They went in many directions, but one particular comment by Gail Johnson Morris made me think. Gail asked us to think about the difference between culture and climate.

This concept really caught my attention because in my last position, we took the results of employee surveys seriously. The team I led worked hard taking into account the real time “environmental factors” that would have an impact on our scores that were often outside the control of the team. Complex topics like the economy, company employment status, stock price, news articles and customer feedback on products fell into this category. Gail’s insight now provided me the ability to clearly rationalize the difference.

When you work on improving your workplace culture, do you consider climate? Have you confused good climate as good culture in the past?

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Titans of leadership?

It was a simple family home. A mere seventy-five rooms, walls gilded in gold and platinum, an entry way larger than many places of employment, enough exotic marble to be a place of worship, and fresh and salt running water to the bath tubs. While this was the biggest home in the neighborhood, it is among others of similar peers.

The mansion is called “The Breakers” and was the family summer “cottage” of the William Vanderbilt family in Newport, Rhode Island. We visited this fantastic location this past weekend and learned more of the accomplishments of the Vanderbilt family. William was the grandson of founder Cornelius Vanderbilt who created the shipping and railroad empire.

After the tour, I thought to myself, “what a great leaders the Vanderbilt’s must have been.” As I thought and walked around, it occurred to me that they were great businessmen, family patriarchs and community influences. But leaders, I wondered. If critical roles of leadership is building ongoing compelling visions and developing people, then the Vanderbilt’s do not measure up. If their initial vision of controlling the shipping and railroad lines had true life, it would not have faded once monopoly laws and alternative modes of transportation evolved. I looked more and was unable to find clear examples of great achievers that developed under the Vanderbilt system.

While paying respect to their achievements, do you feel vision and developing people are compelling enough reasons to keep the Vanderbilt’s out of the Leadership Hall of Fame?

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137 MPH

It started with the 9:12 AM train to Grand Central. Then the 9:56 to Long Island. Exit at Flushing Meadows. The net had the distinctive 6-inch center slope, there were six official line judges, six ball chasers stood at attention when not darting to recover wild balls, seventeen cameras focused from all angles and high-powered microphones picked up every whisper (yes, if they wanted us to know what Venus Williams actually said; we could know).

I’m not a serious tennis fan, but I was given the opportunity to attend the US Open last Sunday at Flushing Meadows, Long Island. It was a stark reminder that we should all take opportunities to try new things. The crowd was into tennis. They were polite and knew the competitors. It seemed like many of them had been there multiple times in the past. I even got to see Juan Martin del Potro crush a 137 MPH serve a few times.

I have blogged often about “staying out of the white aisles” and trying new things. Whether it is new work projects, making new friends or trying a new sporting event, all of us need to continuously expand our environment. Going to the US Open reminded me to follow my own advice.

What things are you doing to continuously expand your world?

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Passion or money?

“Take exit 29 off I95 North, turn right on Stratford, travel about a mile and turn left on Freeman, go a block and cross Connecticut Ave into the parking lot. Don’t mind the neighborhood, it looks more intimidating than is actually is. I’m on the 4th floor of the old brick building. I’ll have to come down and get you in the parking lot.”

From the parking lot, we walked up an old staircase, by many art, yoga, music and small business studios. We waited for the freight elevator a moment and decided to walk up the remaining stairs to Debbie’s fourth floor studio operation (Art Bags). It was not the cleanest I’ve ever seen but produced a quality product. The product was not something I totally understood, but one that has raving fans. The building’s tenants each did their own thing and lived special lives.

I have not seen Debbie in fifteen years. She was an aerospace executive colleague with the usual executive tendencies. I recently reconnected with her and visited her Bridgeport, CT studio. It was so refreshing to talk to someone with so much passion and personal fulfillment. Debbie shared that the business she was forging was not the most profitable in the world but brought her more enjoyment and personal satisfaction than any career up to this point.

Driving home that night, I could not help but feel good about Debbie and Art Bags. I also could not help but wonder how business leaders could assist their teammates find such passion in their professions and careers.

How do you help your teams feel Debbie’s passion in their work?

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Who are your Whos?

Independent of your role in life, we are all interested in gaining insights from those who have already achieved what we are trying to do. Over the last year, I have learned to stop asking people how to do things. The problem with this question is people are inherently helpful and will try to answer even if they don't always know the correct response. I have moved to asking do you know someone "who" has done something. This is one of the learnings from John Strelecky's "Big Five for Life” book.

"Dr. Sharon" is one of my whos. I originally met her in her executive coach role as she was working with a couple of my colleagues. We had mutual leadership interests, so when I starting building this blog and preparing material for a book, she was a multi-role “who.” I recently listened to her free download on discovering your purpose. I answered her five questions to determine WHO I was and WHO I was becoming. It was short, simple, fun and enlightening. I highly recommend you try it.

From the experience, I believe her “Heart's Way” Tele-workshop Program, Discover your Passionate Calling in nine weeks could be very helpful for anyone asking: 1) What am I here to do? 2) What is my next step? or 3) Why do I feel something is missing in my life? Her Tele-workshop begins September 24th - November 19th on Thursday evenings from 6:00 - 7:30 pst (all workshops are recorded in case you miss a class). It is an interactive 9-week transformative experience using an innovative telephone workshop format and and an even greater value if you use the website coupon.

So - I've shared a "who" with you. What "whos" would you like to share with others?

Note - Dr. Sharon Lamm-Hartman is the CEO, Inside Out Learning Inc., and adjunct faculty member with Columbia University. She was recently quoted in The New York Times and The Oprah Magazine. 480-502-4766.

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R U Age Blind?

Guest blog by David Armstrong:


As an older worker, I’m sensitive to hiring issues regarding people of my vintage, however, as a manager, I always thought that I totally disregarded age when I was hiring or evaluating employees.

Recently, I had two experiences that gave me a wake-up call to own perceptions regarding age as it relates to jobs.

The first was when we were introduced to a friend of my daughter, a bright, pleasant, intelligent young man who was reviewing for his annual flight simulator qualification. He is an airline pilot and daily is responsible for the safety and hopefully uneventful shepherding of hundreds of passengers across the country. He is 27. As we left the meeting, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “”He’s too young to be a pilot”.

The other occurrence was a call I received from my niece, an accomplished musician and who has been a substitute teacher in California schools. She now expects to be out of a job due to the California budget situation. She is 51. In her call, she told me she was applying for a job as a musician on a cruise ship. When I told my wife, we both said, “She’s too old”.

There is no question that each of these individuals is fully qualified and capable to pursue their respective career interests. Yet, my experience showed to me that despite by belief that I was age “blind”, I had stereotypical notions about the “proper” age for certain positions. I am now much more sensitive to my own perception and hope that with my awareness, I will not be judgmental in the future.

Have you have a perception that certain positions can only be filled by people in a certain age range? Did you act on that perception or ignore it? What was the outcome?


David Armstrong is a Principal at Inventory Curve and a member of the LiaV community.

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To the boys in the hood

Hi Guys,

The East Coast is not nearly as bad as you warned me about. Different from what you told me. There really are nice people and things east of the 405 freeway. I’m happy to report that the other hoop players did not actually punch me in the throat when going for a rebound. Everyone does not pack pistols and it only rains every other day. The hills in my four mile daily run are not the size of mountains and the mosquitoes are only large enough to carry small babies away!

You were right on a few things – it is really humid and there are far fewer convertibles and motorcycles.

While these were many of the jokes my basketball buddies razzed me about at my going away party, it does make one think about all the silly things people say and how important it is for each of us to sort out what we truly believe. If we take things too seriously we will lock ourselves into inaction and take no risks in life (or in our career).

Have you received silly advice and later found out it was not worthy of your consideration?

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The truth about balance in life

Guest blog post by Mohd Firdaus Bin Mohd Johari:

It was a normal morning, stuck in a traffic jam. Rude drivers cutting through traffic and I let them pass. A friend of mine who was carpooling to work with me asked, "Why do you let that happen?" I replied, "Are we in a hurry? We always leave for work at this time and we reach the office with time to spare." "But you cannot let people walk over you," he answered.

"I'm not." And I explained further. The Taipei 101 skyscraper was built to withstand earthquakes and storms. How? By being flexible where it can afford to, and being tough and stern where is must be. It also applies to our lives. In the case of my argument with my car pooling friend, I know I can afford to let some cars go by, because I have spare time to reach the office. But if it was a matter of life and death, then I wouldn't react in the same way. In a conflict you must know when to compromise and when to stand your ground. Sounds obvious right?

A lot of people talk about 'balance' as far as how they navigate conflict but it is these same people are the ones not being able to uphold this balance. More often than not, they themselves are the ones who get mistreated in conflicts. There is no perfect 'balance', it is not practical.

The 'balance' can be attempted, which ultimately brings us to an acceptable range. However, people fail to do this for three reasons:
• Lack of objective
• Lack of defining their thresholds
• Lack of self-awareness

When you do not know what you want in life, then you will not know what you need to achieve it. If you do not know that, you will not know which aspects of your life that you should prioritize and what you cannot compromise on. You would know your boundaries. All this wouldn't be a problem if you are honest and sincere with yourself, having a better understanding of who you are and what you want to be.

How do you balance your life?


Mohd Firdaus Bin Mohd Johari is from Malaysia, hosts the Beyond Uni blog and a member of the LiaV community.

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It’s not a technology play

It’s a geographically dispersed team that thinks and acts like they are in one place. The assumption is the individuals know how to use the communication tools. If you are lucky enough for this to be true but your virtual team is still struggling, think again.

The challenge for leadership to excel leading geographically dispersed teams is more difficult than most people accept. Virtual teams have many of their own peculiar traits that, if left unmanaged, destroy the potential effectiveness of the team. The book “Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time and Organizations With Technology” by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, and their related website, hits the point that many leaders miss. “Success is 90% the people and 10% technology.” Knowing how to use the tools is a basic element of the virtual game. All your leadership efforts must be exaggerated. You have to try twice as hard.

What are some of your best “people-oriented” virtual leadership techniques?

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“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

A strategy can be written in short order and communicated to the team by using multiple mediums in a matter of weeks. The best part is that if you get it wrong, the strategy can be adjusted and changed as needed. Culture, on the other hand, is a big deal. Every company or organization gets the culture it deserves. To make matters worse, when you end up with the wrong one, it can take a generation to fix it.

In the January 23, 2006 Wall Street Journal, Debbie Holton wrote an article regarding a quote made by Ford that "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." She commented that this quote comes from the war room of the new Ford makeover. The article sums it up in one paragraph. "Mr. Fields says he is now trying to rouse and create a sense of urgency in a corporate culture that has withstood repeated efforts at overhauls, ranging from former CEO Alex Troutman's sweeping Ford 2000 globalization effort, to former CEO Jacques Nasser's dot-com era campaign to remake Ford into a diversified consumer-products company with a strong internet component."

Have you seen a world-class strategy crushed under the weight of miscalculated culture? What could have been done differently?

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