January 5, 2009
Friends,
It’s not only a new day and a new week, but also a new year. I’m guessing that about 50% of my readers already have written goals for 2009. And of those, I would guess that 80% of those goals are oriented around work - often prompted by someone else’s expectations if not demands on them. So, perhaps only 10% have written, personal goals – related to but not exclusively driven by business goals.
Imagine though if you had a central focal point for the year, a north star to guide you, all the time. One goal that mattered to you deeply. Maybe you build a whole plan around it. Or maybe you just keep it in mind, like a mantra, repeating it, maybe praying about it: “a happier marriage,” or “an agent for my book,” “the promotion I feel I have earned.” Or maybe you look at that goal once a week and chip away, for instance, towards: “twenty pounds lighter in body and mind,” “making the career move I’ve dreamed about a reality by 1/1/10.” Maybe you could have a single picture of success that you also entrust with a friend or significant other, “to give myself two full weeks vacation to recreate,” to “get the credential that will give me credibility and open doors,” to “rehab that injury in order to become active again,” or “to simplify our life, spending less, saving more, and replacing nagging worry with a sense of building security.” What would be your one goal?
As you have probably read, I am offering large group retreats in Southfield this month and more intimate, small group retreats in Las Vegas in February to give people a chance to “Align for ‘09” and consciously strive to make 2009 the best year of their life. In those retreats I’ll help guide you to think out five years, create a clear picture of what you want, and actually build workable plans to get there. I invite you to consider those retreats. But in the simplest – which is often the best – way possible . . .
I offer this invitation: Hit “forward” for this message, address it back to yourself. When you get it, spend no more than 5 minutes answering these two questions:
| 1. |
In the last three years, the single most important thing that has driven my sense of fulfillment (or caused my lack of fulfillment) has been |
Therefore,
| 2. |
If there was one goal I could offer myself that would have real merit in making 2009 a great year it’s this: I deeply want to have . . . |
Let me know if you write it and what happens – right away or during the year. Or go to the comments page if you want to share stories or processes that tell how you have developed goals and achieved them.
Goals help make you an everyday leader - to
Lead with your best self,
Dan
If you like Reading for Leading, sign up for the Reading for Leading newsletter, and tune in to The Winners Circle with Dan Mulhern every Saturday morning at 7am.
December 22, 2008
Friends,
This weekend we were in need of a little flight of fancy, so Jen and the girls and I went to see Jim Carrey in Yes Man. It wholly fulfilled our needs.
I wouldn’t make too much of a movie that lampoons the power of positive thought, but one thing I took away.
Creative leadership flows from a lightness of being.
I’ve seen such lightness at Google and at Quicken. I’ve seen imagination and chance-taking at – of all places, hospitals. I’ve seen an enlivening flairfulness in some moves of Pistons President Joe Dumars. Even though Joe can be serious as a heart attack, he’s out there looking and leaping (and even laughing a little about the leap off the cliff called Darko Milicic).
By this time of this year – with the pounding that so many have taken – even before the minus -10 degree wind chills blew in – the whole thing could get you tired, worn out, ossified, calcified, oxidized, rigidified, concretized, and otherwise heavy, slow, dark and cautious.
So my hope for you and me as we head into this break is that we come back lighter in our step, our outlook, and demeanor. Give freely. Breathe deeply. Laugh heartily. Jews lit the first light of Chanukah yesterday. Today the nights begin getting shorter. Christians welcome a new life and light. Let in the light. Get light.
And come back ready to lead
With your best self,
Dan
December 15, 2008
Friends,
If you have heard me speak, or read my book (a great, well, a different Christmas gift for your favorite leader), you know that I believe that without vision and communication leadership is doomed. Boy have we seen that in the ongoing struggles of the Big 3 in Washington! What congressmen, journalists, and others have uttered as “obvious” and “well known,” and “everybody knows” about the Big 3’s weaknesses have often times been remarkably false.* “Gas-guzzling, shoddy cars that no one wants.”
Here’s the factual record from the past year:
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Consumers Report put Ford at the top of their list for the number of “top safety picks” – with sixteen models. Toyota and GM had eight. |
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JD Powers’ 2008 “survey of initial quality” ranked Porsche as the only 5-star. At 4-stars, Mercury was tied with Mercedes, Infiniti, Lexus, and Toyota. Next behind: Ford, Chevy, Pontiac, Lincoln all tied with Acura and Honda. What were the top 3 quality cars? Chevy Malibu, Mitsubishi Galant, and Ford Fusion. Is there really a huge quality gap? |
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The # 1 selling vehicle in America? Despite the truism that American automakers “don’t make products that consumers want,” The Ford F-150 remains the best-selling vehicle not just in America but in the world. |
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Motor Trend’s Car of the Year? Cadillac CTS. |
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While Toyota has 8 cars that average 30 mpg or more, Chevy has 7. The 2009 Malibu Hybrid gets nearly 40 MPG. While GM, Ford, Honda, and Toyota ALL introduced hybrids in California in the late ‘90s, it wasn’t just GM’s EV1 that was taken out of production: They all failed commercially and were retired. “What consumers want” - which congressmen and coastal journalists speak of as though it as obvious as the faces on Mount Rushmore - remains mightily hard to name with any precise foresight. |
So, here’s the point: Perhaps the greatest failing of – and greatest challenge for – domestic automakers is their inability to articulate clear, factual and relevant messages. No wonder they’re in the trouble they’re in when people are still thinking they are building the cars of the 80s. Of course there’s plenty of room for improvement, but there is clearly a monster gap between perceptions and realities.
And, here’s the message for us “everyday leaders”: How do WE get our messages out in what someone called a “culture of permanent attention deficit disorder?” (my own ADD prevents me from quoting that person by name). For instance, what’s the central message you were trying to communicate to your kids and staff this year? What is the core message going forward? Can you say the central facts about your organization’s identity (e.g., the Michigan government is about excellence, integrity, teamwork, and inclusion)? Can you put it on a matchbook? Do you have a core message for your children or grandchildren about the value and meaning of these holidays? Or could they miss the point and miss the facts, just as the vast majority of this country has done when it comes to the last 15 years perceiving the domestic car business?
With all the noise out there, think: post-it, note card, matchbook. Keep it simple, repeat it a lot, and
Lead with your best self,
Dan
* For an outstanding look at the myths that have dogged American automakers see this fine article by Mark Phelan who covers the auto beat for the Detroit Free Press.
If you like Reading for Leading, sign up for the Reading for Leading newsletter, and tune in to The Winners Circle with Dan Mulhern every Saturday morning at 7am.
December 8, 2008
Friends,
As the New Year approaches, so does opportunity. It might be hard to see amidst the layoffs and foreclosures. Maybe you read as I did that newspapers are laying people off in big numbers. After criticizing so many others for not facing change, it seems the newspapers haven’t done so well with it either.
I was talking to an exec who recently took a buyout and I asked him, “Knowing what you know now, what do you think your paper should have done fifteen years ago?” He said, “R & D.” He said that putting out a new product – which is what a paper is - every 24 hours makes it very hard to look outside the immediate demands of the business. He said they would spend six months redesigning a section of the paper, but almost no comparable energy thinking about the new information technology. What a missed opportunity! Look what they had: Smart people; great writers, who had loyal followers; the ability to freely advertise and drive traffic to electronic sites; advertisers aplenty; yet they were stuck in their identity: we are newsPAPERS, after all. In internal conversations they frequently saw the internet as a threat to them instead of as an enormous opportunity, and now they’re desperately scrambling to catch up.
What if they had steered right into what they had long recognized as a threat? What if they set aside brainpower, time, and money to seize OPPORTUNITY outside their paper world? Imagine where they might be, if they had looked for what are sometimes called “disruptive technologies” - ideas or products that don’t fit the core business strategy but have real promise in another domain.
If you want to be an everyday leader: adopt the mindset that there ARE always opportunities. Yes things are tough now. But you can buy things – stocks (I bought 100 shares of Ford for my kids - and out of love for the company and my state - for $160 dollars last week); cars, inventory, brainpower, real estate are all at prices you could not have imagined even six months ago. I hear you say, “Mulhern, have you heard there’s a recession out there? Duh! Nice that you have money.” Well, if your brain went to that as quickly as I suspect it did, then you’re doing the natural, but not so helpful thing, of focusing on scarcity and not on opportunity and abundance. In every ebb and flow there is opportunity.
Consider these:
- The hearings in DC created an opportunity for the Big 3 to begin to get at the incredibly wrong-headed myths that so many Americans have about their vehicles.
- Opportunities exist that flow from our changing demographics, e.g., serving aging populations.
- There are new technologies every day that open whole new possibilities (for example, are you hating LinkedIn messages, or setting aside some time to understand what LinkedIn could do for you?).
- Via the internet, you can sell stuff to people around the world, e.g., through eBay or in your own backyard, through Craig’s list or those local papers.
- Even an adult child moving back in out of economic necessity creates opportunities: for family relationships, shared work burdens, the synergy that comes with diversity.
- Even our tight holiday budgets give us opportunities: to set priorities, to appreciate the priceless things at the heart of the holidays, or to turn our office holiday parties into parties of thanks, with donations to those in need. Tough times tighten human bonds.
As you look ahead, fight the doom and gloom, and seek for opportunities that lead to economic, social, and spiritual growth. Especially in seemingly terrible times . . .
Lead with your best self,
Dan
December 1, 2008
Friends,
About an hour before writing this on Sunday night, I had one of those parent – although it could have been boss - moments. Jennifer, Jack and I were driving back from Detroit and the weather was Michigan at its worst – a wet snow and dropping temperatures. The usual 70 minute ride took three hours, as we forsook the parking-lot-expressway for slow and slushy surface roads. My 18-year old daughter and a friend were planning to drive my 19-year daughter the seventy miles back to college – over the same freezing freeway Jen and I were avoiding. I texted, texted and called: “Are you sure you don’t want to wait ‘til I get home and let me drive?” I considered turning my query into a managerial command: “I am driving.” Instead, I deferred. They drove.
So, when do you assert control? When do you retain the decision and power, especially if things are complex, and they may not have your experience? When do you allow the chance of a mistake – that may cost you, the business, or even your own family’s well-being? As every parent knows, and as too many bosses forget: there is no right answer, no easily applicable rule to be applied to an infinite number of fact situations. That’s a little scary. It’s a little scary that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen is making a lot of these solutions up, experimenting with a situation no one’s ever seen before. More accurately, the President has delegated this policy to him (for which some feel relieved), and Paulsen in turn is undoubtedly seeking and following the advice of others who think he should try this or that. How much rope does he give them? Such questions of how to deal with complexity, and whether to let the Gen-Xers or Gen-Yers handle it, abound these days in the workplace. It’s a little scary to let those “kids” have the keys.
On a serious matter like this, I turn to Saturday Night Live for great wisdom that’s buried beneath a spoof about the “expert.” You’ll find it here, and you can slide the bar over to 2:00 minutes remaining if you only have 2 minutes. (I’d encourage you to do that now, and then come back for the exciting conclusion to this week’s RFL.) The SNL spoof is funny but like most humor it’s funny because of the underlying truth: In times of crisis, people desperately look to their managers – whether they are big or small, whether parental or presidential –to FIX IT. But in times like these – especially in times like these where the problems are huge and complex - we need everybody to fix some things.
I am trying to raise kids who can handle tough situations and complexity. I gave them advice: “DRIVE SLOWLY,” as persuasively as I could. But I want them out in that world, taking it on, making decisions, making mistakes sometimes (I hope not tonight!), and learning. And I want them knowing these things: I trust they can handle it, I’ll offer advice and I’ll be there for them. I might have made a mistake tonight. But there’s too many things in this world before them, where someone is going to holler at them “FIX IT,” and I hope that they are ready to fix it. Perhaps more importantly, I want them at those moments to have the confidence to give the work back to those who need to do it with them - offering them advice, support, and confidence.
You’ll never be sure you’re right, but sometimes you gotta let go to
Lead with your best self,Dan
November 24, 2008
Friends,
I look forward to that wonderful stuffed feeling I’ll get this Thursday. You and I can’t do that every day, but we can go a long way to sustaining in ourselves and others the joy that comes on the day on which we give thanks.
Two weeks ago I wrote about Professor Kim Cameron’s great little book Positive Leadership: Strategies For Extraordinary Performance. One of the driving forces in positive leadership is an abundance of thanks giving. Cameron cites the work of one of his colleagues, Robert A. Emmons who teaches at UC Davis. Emmons has been doing research on thankfulness, which he summarized in his book last year, How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. As part of his research Emmons randomly assigns adults to three journal-writing groups. One is asked to daily journal 3 things they are grateful for that day, the second group journals some of the hassles or irritations of the day, and the third group is asked to write about “things that had a major impact on them.” The results of gratitude journaling are stunning.
Emmons described the results from the thankfulness journal group in this way: We “saw a positive effect on hours of sleep and on time spent exercising, on more optimistic expectations for the coming week, and fewer reported physical symptoms, such as pain. Additionally, we observed an increase in reported connectedness to other people and in likelihood of helping another person deal with a personal problem.”* The positive-journalers were as much as 25% happier, and were not only happy relative to the complainers but even to the neutral group. Remarkably, Emmons found sustained, positive results after people had been gratitude-journaling for four nights a week for as short as three weeks time.
Emmons and Cameron both find that giving thanks to someone else, and not just for them, has doubly positive benefits. Not only does the giver of thanks feel better, but there is also what Cameron calls a virtuous effect: those who are thanked are much more prone to thank others in turn. The result: not a vicious, but a virtuous cycle.
So, wait til Thursday for the turkey, but start giving thanks today and tomorrow and Wednesday, to
Lead with your best self!
Dan
* Read an interview with Emmons: “Enhance Happiness and Health by Cultivating Gratitude: Interview with Robert Emmons,” found at SharpBrains.com, posted on November 29, 2007, at http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/11/29/robert-emmons-on-the-positive-psychology-of-gratitude/
If you like Reading for Leading, sign up for the Reading for Leading newsletter, and tune in to The Winners Circle with Dan Mulhern every Saturday morning at 7am.
November 17, 2008
Friends,
Maybe the greatest moments in parenting are those threshold moments - the firsts: first smile, word, step, word read out loud, or first day of school. But those first adult thoughts are especially cool. Not just the unconscious brilliance of a four-year old, but the moments of self- and other-consciousness that happen before the teen years bring on defiant challenge. On Saturday, during one of those great car rides, with the distractions of TV and Blackberry gone, Jack started to tell me about what really rankles him. It really annoys him, he told me, when the adults in his life tell him “no” and won’t give him a reason. “I just don’t understand why they can’t give their reasons,” he said.
It made me think about when - if ever - authority is justified in answering the “why?” that all kids and followers ask, by saying “because I said so; that’s why.” I told him there may be times when his babysitter, or his teacher, or Jennifer or I are under so much time pressure that we won’t give a reason. Or, maybe his teacher or sitter can’t give an explanation at a moment in time, because there are hidden reasons: For example, they don’t want to embarrass someone else, or there is something in their personal needs that they just shouldn’t have to divulge. But Jack and I also agreed that followers lose respect for managers who can’t or won’t say why. Trust grows when management explains their reasons. And trust really grows when management - in explaining their reasons - actually listens to what you’re saying, sees your point of view and even changes course as a result. Those of us who have authority have work here: We have to cultivate patience to hear people out, and we have to cultivate open-mindedness to listen fully. Perhaps most of all, we have to develop the self-confidence to overcome our fear that those who challenge us may show us up, embarrass us, or stump us.
Shannon Deegan, Director of People Operations for Google, spoke at our Next Great Companies conference this past week. During the Q & A , a man pointed out that Google and the other renowned companies* at the conference had great cultures. He asked what is the central prescription Shannon would give for those Michigan companies who are not yet so enlightened. Shannon said: Focus on being transparent. The Google founders have a happy hour every Friday where all employees can attend - live or online - and anyone can ask anything of them. Employees get access to all the reports the chairman makes to the board. Anyone can ask any manager anything about the business strategy and decisions. Openness abounds.
So, guess what people feel like? The same thing Jack is striving for: They feel like respected adults.
At work and at home - leading your staff, your children, and your aging parents - you gain insight, trust and buy-in by being intellectually open,
Leading with your best self!
Dan
* Other great companies who are or have been on the Fortune list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” and present at the conference were: Quicken Loans, Valassis, Plante & Moran, Dow Corning, MSU Federal Credit Union, Cascade Engineering, Herman Miller, Bronson Health System; and Mill Steel, repeat winner of the Grand Rapids Business Monthly’s “Best of the Best” also presented.
November 10, 2008
Friends,
Said Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. . .” Dickens told his readers that what they were about to find in A Tale of Two Cities was a period was “so far like the present period.” And so now with us: we have the darkness of economic uncertainty and the dawn of a new day in America – meeting in the week just past. We’re at an intense historical junction, a crisis in which everyday leadership will determine the arc of our future – individually, corporately, communally, nationally and even across our globe.
On my radio show on Saturday I invited people to “think globally” by offering their thoughts of what Bush, Barack, Paulson or Granholm should be focused on, but I also said I’d ask them to think locally, as “everyday leaders” about what they could or would do, think, or say differently in these tough times. My first caller talked about trade policy with great passion, and when I asked him what he was going to do differently in these challenging times, he pulled up short, “me?” he wondered aloud with some incredulity. It turned out that he had received a layoff notice for February in this very historic week, but he wasn’t really sure what he would, could, should do to lead (himself) in crisis.
On the show (it streams at www.michigantalknetwork.com on Saturdays from 7-9 am and is available as a podcast on iTunes) we talked about how meeting the challenge of this economy demands changes in attitude, knowledge, and skills. I offer today a source to pick up some help on all three – attitude, knowledge, and skills – by pulling down an easy 120-page book called Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, written by Kim Cameron a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Although both short and highly readable, Cameron has managed to squeeze in a boatload of research on the power of positivity, yet also a whole bunch of specific strategies and workable tools. There’s proof that positive personal attitudes and behaviors, as well as positive cultures, create numerous physiological benefits and as the subtitle suggests: positivity can generate extraordinary performance improvements.
There are also good rules and tools. I’ll share one. Cameron reviews the business research and asserts that you should strive for a 5:1 positive to negative ratio in communications. This ratio turns out to be one of the most salient factors in distinguishing high performing teams from average or lower performers. Now, more than ever Professor Cameron’s strategies make sense. I’m going to work on the 5:1 and use some of the inventories and tools this week with my staff (and family) to help us, as it might help you, in these challenging times to
Lead with your best self,
Dan
November 3, 2008
Friends,
I was kicking some ideas around with my daughters today, and one had a perspective very different from that of her sister. They love each other a lot, their values are very similar, they have shared so much together, AND they just see the world through completely different lenses. They’re the kind where relatives say, “It’s hard to believe they came from the same family?”
They were debating a point about college and growing up, and I felt the temperature in the room rising. Oh, it was a long way from the boiling point, but it was getting hotter. Jennifer had walked into the room, and the pace was quickening. I said to Jennifer and the one daughter who was questioning the other, “what if instead of debating this point we just try to understand what she is saying? What if we switch from discussion to inquiry about how she feels and what she means by it, instead of talking about how we think she understands it, or how we think she should understand it?” It really worked! We all understood her point, and now that she wasn’t being pushed (and therefore defensive), she could begin to see (all by herself) that there was another way she could look at the issue.
I was like the proverbial blind squirrel who occasionally finds a nut. What I wish I did more often is to remember to practice the power of genuine inquiry. So often, we think we know what someone is saying. So often, we want to correct their view before we truly understand it. So often, when we don’t understand, people respond with defensiveness and aggression. Then, the heat goes up, and as the heat goes up, the light goes down. People say more and listen less and the vicious cycle speeds up.
We’re pretty smart. We think we get it. We are in a hurry – who isn’t? We say our part. We defend our view. We’re more into being right than understanding. Inquiry through good listening is like Karate, a good golf swing, or great teamwork: there is a sweet efficiency that follows. Trying less yields more. There’s smoothness as things work themselves out, as the gift of listening-with-trust, allows the other person to speak with candor and completeness. At St. John’s on Sunday Fr. Joe said something about time with God, which also applies well to the way we listen to family, co-workers, and even our adversaries, “Quit doing something, and just stand there!”
Care to join me in opining a little less and inquiring a little more? Inquire more to . . .
Lead with your best self!
Dan
October 27, 2008
Friends,
What is constant in our world: personal and organizational uncertainty, and constant need for improvement.
What’s the result: stress
What’s the prescription: build your “psychological hardiness”
Psychologists Salvatore Maddi and Suzanne Kobasa coined the term “psychological hardiness” and spawned much research into the relationship between it and physical health. They concluded and others have largely affirmed that hardiness promotes physical health under stress. Maddi and Kobasa identified three dimensions that tend to promote this sense of hardiness and in turn physical wellness. As you read them, you might ask: how do I promote this both in myself and in those experiencing stress around me. They are:
1. Commitment. People with psychological hardiness tend to have and hold a sense of purpose in what they do. Meaning seems to be part of their game. So, if they are on the sinking Titanic, they are working with purpose; if in a downsizing company they are holding to purpose. Personally, this measure invites us to reach to our deeper values, which exist no matter what the context. So, if dignity, respect, honesty, love, or creativity (not to mention God) matter to me, I can invoke these core values no matter where I am.
2. Control. People who have a sense that there are things they can do, and people who focus in the domain of what they can do, rather than what’s outside their control, tend to be more hardy and less painfully stressed.
3. Challenge. People with hardiness, enjoy challenge. They generally see themselves as capable of change and expect life around them to change. They don’t respond in the mode of my friend Charlie Ross’ line: “Change is great; you go first.” Instead, mistakes are cause for learning, losses are preludes to winning, weaknesses create opportunities to grow better.
Maddi and Kobasa in their original research found that people who possessed the three C’s were flat-out healthier. But their research begs two questions, which are the challenges for each of us in these tough times: How do I build my psychological hardiness? And: How do I build a team, company, culture, family where others continually increase their given level of hardiness?
Re-commit to your values and purpose this morning, keep fixed on your sphere of control, and grab an attitude that says: I’m gonna keep learning my way to success. And that’s a heckuva good start to
Lead with your best self!
Dan
Visit www.michiganadvantage.org/ngc to register for Michigan’s Next Great Companies November 12, 2008 Summit in Ann Arbor.
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