“I know I should . . . , but I really want. . .”

The angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other is a common visual device in cartoons: Tom the cat chooses whether to eat Jerry the mouse, Sylvester the cat struggles with a similar dilemma with Tweety Bird or as is pictured above Homer Simpson struggles with eating another jelly doughnut. (Spoiler alert: for Tom and Sylvester the devil may win short term but the prey escapes, but for Homer the doughnut always wins.)

We all face temptations. Some are better than others at resisting their devils. Me? My angel won on alcohol, and speeding. My devil wins too often on exercise and the devil and angel are tied on ice-cream.

Business leaders may face such obvious ethical decisions, whether to tell a customer that you’ve discovered that they paid you twice or wait and see if they notice. Some make the wrong choices. However, most difficult decisions are not a good versus evil, angel or devil, “I know I should, but I really want….” They are more often trade-offs, greater good or least harm..

What do we want from our leaders?

We want them to know where they are going.

We lead toward something or away from something. We followers depend on leaders for direction. In times of change, the end destination may not be absolutely clear, but the leader must communicate that which is clear.

“We seek the land of milk and honey,”  – a place we can call our own where we can raise goats to have kids and keep bees. That is the vision Moses communicated to nomads wandering the desert for forty years.

“Pipes, people, profit, in that order,”  an oil field leader’s values as guideposts.

We want them to inspire us.

Leaders attract followers. They may do it with an exciting vision.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

We want leaders to express our shared values.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associate, the world’s largest hedge fund and Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a global supplier of manufacturing technology and services, may be entirely different as men. They do have one thing in common. They each designed consistent organizational cultures based upon their values.

Ray Dalio and Bridgewater Associates (BA), believe in “radical truth and transparency.” The culture, as described in Dalio’s book Principles,” insists on open, honest feedback, at any time by anyone to anyone. BA keep data on individual success and failure available to all, and has created systems of real-time evaluation of people, in meetings for example. They use data to drive emotion out of the workplace.

Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller (BW) believe in “the extraordinary power of caring for people like family.” The culture, as described in Chapman’s book Everybody Matters, also values direct and honest feedback and doesn’t tolerate gossip, but they strive to do it with emotion, caring.

Stock trading and manufacturing equipment are different business. Dalio and Chapman are likely different men. Each company hires people and leads them based upon the leader’s values. The values are different and likely the people they hire are as different as the leaders.  Both leaders understand the importance of shared values.

We want decisive leaders.

We say we “trust a leader’s judgement” (or we don’t). That doesn’t mean we agree with every decision. That means the leader has made the facts and the process transparent, so we understand how the leader came to the decision.

Decisiveness isn’t always what we want. “He is frequently wrong, but never in doubt,” doesn’t describe a leader that many would follow.

Sometimes we want leaders who allow us to make decisions.

We want leaders who share all the information we need for us to decide even when we ask for them a decision. I once had a boss who used to say, “I’m of two minds on this subject. . .”

“. . .  on the one hand a low introductory price may clinch the deal. On the other hand it sets the tone for future business and we may lose out in the longer term.”

Making the trade-offs explicit helped me make the decision.

I tried this with my kids with less than ideal results “OK, Pop, what does Mind #1 say. . . And Mind #2? Any other minds in there?” (One of the downsides of being a wiseass is that you inspire the same quality in others.)

What about the true dilemma?

These may be ethical decisions. Or they may be decisions where there are no good choices. Or they may be decisions that will change everything and from which there is no going back.

To make tough decisions, I have been known to write balance sheets  or weighted priority matrices. This is especially useful for joint decision making.

It is worth knowing that some people dislike this mechanistic form of fact-based decision making.  To folks who make decisions by comparing outcomes to their deeply held values, writing down values, or worse applying quantitative weighting one against the other, seems like trivializing their values..

Sometimes discussion about the greatest good or least harm or greatest equity with notes not a matrix, overcomes this objection. Sometimes you just have to ask, “How would you make this decision.”

Dilemmas, decisions with equally good or equally bad outcomes, are hard. Intractable conflicts are hard, manufacturing vs. sales, activists vs. business, economic safety net supporters vs. those who believe that a safety net encourages indigence. Framing those differences as cartoon angels and devils isn’t helpful. The implied value judgement escalates the situation and makes the decision harder. But is their something such a simple dilemma might teach us?

“I know I really should. . . , but I really want to . . . “

There’s the voice that wants the ice cream and the voice that hates the number on the scale the next day. Some would say this is an easy ethical dilemma,

“You definitely should not eat the ice cream.”

“Come on! You’re 75 years old. Enjoy yourself!”

Two voices, not an angel and a devil on opposite shoulders, they are both me

Acceptance of each voice is the first step to integration or unification. I mostly have this dilemma in a unifying equilibrium. Ice cream two days a week.

Is this how we get off the horns of the dilemma? Acceptance, integration, compromise?

The horns of the ice cream dilemma are goring only me. Two voices. “I’m of two minds.” Other dilemmas, business ethics, political conflict, international diplomacy, have multiple voices. How could we decide until we have heard and accepted them all? “Any other minds in there?”

We expect our leaders to have the wisdom of Solomon.

“It’s my baby!”

“No, It’s my baby!”

“Cut the baby in half!” decrees the king.

“No! No! No! You take the baby!” cries the real mother.

Is expecting the reincarnation of Solomon an abdication of our own responsibility to discuss, accept, integrate, unify, and compromise?

 

“I don’t know?”

What do you think?

The X Things Every Leader Must . . .

We’ve all read these articles, “Five Critical Traits Every Leader Must. . .”  “Every Leader Should Do These Three Things.” “When the Chips are Down Leaders  Keep Focused On.. .”

The articles are filled with leadership buzzwords originating in the 1980s. Words like Vision, Empowerment, Empathy, Trust, Walking the Talk, Gratitude, Be the Change are always capitalized, an emphasis convention from PowerPoint presentations, invented around that time.

Heck, I’ve written stuff like that:

“Leaders are accountable for two things, direction – we lead toward something or away from something – and attracting followers. If you think you are a leader, look over your shoulder. If there is no one there, you might just be delusional.”

The truth is that every set of circumstances is different and requires different behaviors, often from a different leader who arises to meet those challenges.

Instinctively, we nod our heads affirming historians who say, “Abraham Lincoln was the one leader forged for the crucible of the Civil War,” or “Winston Churchill was the leader who was needed for Britain at the time. After the war ended his time had passed and Britain moved on, but during the Battle of Britain, during the Blitz, he was the man of the moment.”

We know this. So why do we look for the magic elixir, the three traits or seven actions for every leader? Perhaps because we learn from checklists or crave simplicity; perhaps both.

Abnormal Circumstances Require Different Leaders

I describe the difference between managers and leaders by the conditions each face. Managers get the work done in a steady state. Leaders step up when events move beyond normal, in emergencies like fires, floods, and process safety accidents, and in times of change.

In successful turnarounds, the change CEOs typically come from outside the existing organization.

They are hired from competitors: Lee Iacocca was hired from Ford to turn around Chrysler. Les Moonves (CBS) came from Warner Brothers.

They are turnaround specialists hired from other industries. Lou Gerstner arrived at IBM with a track record from RJR Nabisco and American Express. John King had a series of successful turnarounds in Britain before Margaret Thatcher charged him with the privatization of British Airways and he hired Colin Marshall from Avis.

Sometimes founders who have left the business are recalled as was Steve Jobs at Apple and Howard Schultz at Starbucks.

On rare occasions change CEOs come from unexpected divisions or functions within a company as was the case with Jack Smith at General Electric, and Mary Barra at General Motors.

Outsiders bring a “fresh set of eyes;” founders bring a lost sense of mission. They see the current context differently. Often a change in perspective is what is required.

Leaders Encourage Different Behavior

“The thing about change management,” intoned Dr. Nelson Repenning, Faculty Director of the Leadership Center, at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, “is that nothing actually changes until someone does something different or differently.”

It was a chuckle line intended to open people’s minds through laughter. It seems obvious, which is why this audience of oil executives laughed. It is also profound. A leader wants a critical mass of people to do more of something, less of something or something differently.

The desired behavior is situationally dependent as is the leader’s encouragement of that behavior. If you are leading people to exit a burning building, your “This way, follow me!” sounds different than if you are leading a team creating a game-changing technical innovation.

When do you lead with urgency and passion, and when do you lead with calm patience? Under which conditions would a leader harken back to founding values and when might a leader reject any nostalgia for the “way we used to do things?”

Planning to Lead

Every opportunity to lead is different, depending on the circumstances and the capabilities of the leader. Therefore any plan to lead is specific to that context.

Non-commissioned officers who are suddenly called to take charge on the battlefield, workers who step up to save lives in an emergency, or department heads redeployed on change teams do not have the same planning luxury as generals, engineers, or CEOs, but everyone can plan, even if some must be “on the fly.”  It all comes down to a few basic questions:

Why?

I saw Simon Sinek’s famous Ted talk toward the end of my change consultant career. For years I advised leaders to make the “compelling case for change” and say that “going back was not an option.” Sinek’s “Start with Why” message was simple and straightforward. He advocated respecting people and rationality explaining  the “why” change before the “what.”

A simple model of change is Insight-Action-Results. We take in new information, decide new actions and achieve results. Many things can go wrong in this process, but change can’t begin until people don’t share the “why.”

Back to my burning building example of leadership, “The building is burning, there is one exit still open. This way. Follow me!” is more effective than “This way, follow me.”

What? How?

For some types of change, the why and some objectives are all that is necessary. Smart people, closer to the work will figure out the what. For others, more specificity is required

The objectives might specify desired results, or desired actions, or detailed procedures. Sometimes further guidance is given, “Be safe,” “No spills, no injuries to people or damage to the environment.”

Who?

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins recommended first deciding “who is on the bus,” who was up to the task, before embarking on the change. In post-merger integration picking the right skills, knowledge, and relationships for a combined organization could be contentious, but it facilitated consolidation. “It’s hard to work until you know you have a job.”

The danger is that a leader will pick those they know or the “agreeable over the competent. “Sometimes that “argumentative maverick” truly has better ideas; sometimes that person is just hard to work with.

When?

Time horizon is critical. If bankruptcy looms, speed is more important than the pristine solution. Business is often driven by the “time value of money.” A “hamburger today” is worth more than “a dollar next Tuesday.” (Apologies to the Popeye comic strip character and the British Wimpy burger chain.)

Unfortunately, the need for speed hinders imagining unintended consequences of our actions. Roger Smith of late 1980s General Motors correctly assessed the low cost threat of Japanese automotive production. He authorized the purchase of many assembly robots and closed poor performing plants. He greatly underestimated the reaction of workers, unions and communities. He gave rise to Michael Moore, the filmmaker whose debut film “Roger and Me” about the devastation of Flint, Michigan when the GM plant closed, has been a thorn in GM’s side ever since. Moore went on to be a thorn in politicians sides too. Unintended consequences can’t always be anticipated but failing to try isn’t the answer.

Preparing to Lead

In my thirty-seven years as a change consultant, I conducted many leadership development workshops. These “training” programs were often like bugles, sounding the alarm, signaling the “charge.”

We explained the “why” of the change, and began to plan the “what.” These workshops were rich in context, specific to the change faced and leaders’ actions. Sometimes we framed actions with those leadership buzzwords, Vision, Urgency, Empathy, Walking the Talk, etc. However they were always specific the change. British Airways was about customer service and profit, GM was about reducing vehicle or platform cost, BP was about process safety improvement.

At one of these sessions a workshop participant asked,

“I understand that these traits and behaviors will help us get out of our current predicament, but are they the same as what we would need to do to avoid getting into this pickle.”

I was taken aback and don’t think I answered his question, which was really “what development would be required for leaders to avoid this kind of gut-wrenching, company shaking change?”

The answer I might give today is that leaders must be steeped in the context that they will lead, but they must be able to anticipate change.

That means they must

• Constantly scan the environment for causes of change .
  • Competitive activity,
  • Technological innovation,
  • Changing customer, supplier, worker values.
• Become skilled at the three types of change
  • Improvement, doing things better
  • Innovation, doing new and different things,
  • Integration, making sure that people across the organization adopt and adapt to new and different ways together.

Some societies train their future leaders. Romans trained their leaders in the military, as have many societies before and since.

The ancient Greeks trained city state leaders with classes by philosophers in debate and oration. Selected leaders were invited to the Eleusinian Mysteries, a death-rebirth ritual from the Persephone-Demeter-Hades myth symbolizing Winter to Spring. The mysteries are lost, but archeologists found ergot fungus (LSD) and psylocibin (mushrooms) at the shrine in Eleusis, so it was either psychedelic introspection or one heck of a party.

Now humanity faces some profound challenges,  including responding to climate change, and avoiding unintended consequences of new technologies like artificial intelligence.

How can we develop leaders and ourselves to be up to these challenges?

Leading where? Exactly.