“OK, Alan. If you’re interested in us, I’d be interested in you. I’ll need to talk to Sam, my partner. He may want to meet you.”

I had been a booking agent selling engagements for celebrity speakers on college campuses for six years. I was twenty-six years old.  I was attending the national  conference of the National Entertainment Conference, (NEC) a trade association of  Directors of Student Activities and college lecture and entertainment committee chair people at the Shoreham Hotel. In Washington, D.C.

It was a rough conference for me. I had worked very hard to build relationships with NEC leadership, which helped me get referrals  and increased my sales. My boss disliked the NEC intensely. My boss wasn’t the most ethical person in the business and the NEC had used its watchdog role to publicly reprimand him. In fact I had worked very hard to overcome a blackball order in my territory and had been invited to join the national board. My boss did not approve.

At the conference I learned that my boss had made several decisions, which the board disagreed with and which completely undermined all the relationship building I had done. It was a very stressful three days.

A friend had joined Lordly & Dame, a competing agency. Phil asked me if I’d be interested in joining L&D and arranged a meeting with David Lacamera..

Big Dave

“There’ll be a lawsuit, but that won’t bother us. He’s sued us before and we’ve won before. So I’ll talk to Sam on Monday and call you after,” smiled  Big Dave.

David Lacamera was a year older than me, a little taller and weighed in at about two hundred fifty pounds. His manner was friendly and “gentle;” he spoke slowly and quietly in a field characterized by loud motor-mouths.”

I met Sam Dame within a week, who let me know, this was a formality insisted on by David. “If David wants to hire you then that’s OK with me. Lectures is his business and he runs it.”

There was a law suit and we settled. As part of the settlement I would have to work the West Coast territory rather than the New York, New Jersey territory I had been working. It was a startup territory for L&D. There were no established customer lists with phone numbers. I also came to find that Lordly & Dame had no direct mail program like my previous agency.

I made phone calls, lots of phone calls, something Big Dave described as “burning the phones,” but I longed to have some incoming phone calls. I asked Dave if I could start a simple direct mail program. “It won’t cost much. I’ll get the addresses and stuff envelopes.  I’ll print mimeo sheets for the mailers and I’ve found a template we can use for the addresses so Kate’ll only have to type ’em once.”

“Do whatcha gotta do.”

“Really? I can give you an accounting of all expenses. . “

“Alan, do whatcha gotta do. You try it out. If it works, great. If not, try something else.”

It worked. I mailed. The phones rang. The West Coast territory grew up quickly. My sales didn’t rival New York, but they were quite respectable, sooner than expected.

I suggested that we might produce a brochure and mail nationally.

There were some agents who objected. “I don’t think people respond to direct mail. I think they want to have a personal phone call,” said Bill, who mostly sold poets and authors to English departs and other staff.

“I’m not so sure that’s true, Bill, said Dave. “I see the results Alan is having out West and I think we should try it for the rest of the country.” I thanked David for backing my suggestion.

“Alan, I didn’t hire you to do things the way we always have done. Of course I want your ideas, and this one seems like a no-brainer. I mean it’s already working.”

We tried a national mailing. Phones rang. Sales went up.

Over the next three years, I came up with ideas and David encouraged me to try them. His answer was al3ays the same.

“Alan, do whatcha gotta do.”

On one of the little start-up enterprises I attempted, I challenged him. “David this is likely to require more money than anything else I’ve tried. Lordly & Dame has never done anything like this. You’ve never done anything like this. ‘Do whatcha gotta do’ doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Dave scowled. He didn’t look angry often, but he was clearly frustrated with me.

“Alan. Why would I hire you to do stuff we’ve always done? I didn’t hire you to implement my ideas. I’m not the only one who has ideas. So far, you haven’t done anything stupid, so why wouldn’t I trust you to take a shot at something you think will work? I appreciate you asking and like that you think things through before you ask, but don’t give me a hard time about letting you do what you think it important to grow this business. Do whatcha gotta do.”

I’ve worked many places since L&D. There have been a few times when a leader gave me the kind of autonomy that Big Dave Lacamera did, but it definitely wasn’t the norm. I went to work for myself twice seeking autonomy and in fact of the thirty-seven years I spent in consulting, twenty-three were spent working for myself.

Autonomy

I am motivated by autonomy. Perhaps Dave knew that instinctively or perhaps that was just the kind of leader he was. He ran a fun place to work and we all felt part of a team, but we were in sales so the only collective work product we had was the growth and reputation of the firm. Somehow we shared that.

I often differentiate between leaders and managers in terms of the environment they work in. Managers get the work done and develop people in a steady state. Leaders communicate direction and attract followers in abnormal circumstances like change or emergencies. By this definition Dave Lacamera was demonstrating his management skill developing me to think for myself to come up with new ways to get the work done.

The autonomy he gave the whole team  created a willingness to follow him. The differentiation leader or manager is not so clear.

Lessons:

• Managers are accountable for developing their people, not just to get today’s work done, but developing them for the future. That requires giving autonomy,  which attracts followers – an accountability of leadership.
• Autonomy is key
  • Hire people as capable or more capable than you but different.
  • Evaluate their ability to operate autonomously.
  • Give them as much autonomy as they can handle (or more).

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about leadership:

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, people say, we did it ourselves”   Lao Tzu

“Oh, Man! I can’t believe I did that.”

I’m reviewing my life (so far). I suppose that might be expected for someone my age. After all, looking back is easier than looking forward, reflecting is easier than planning to change and at seventy-five there’s a lot to review.

The presenting cause for all this historical navel-gazing is my new “career” as a writer.(Can I call work for which I am not paid a career? Dunno.) I am writing three books, Traveling the Consulting Road, Change Leader? Who Me?, and  Wisdom from Unusual Places.

The first book could be called, “My Mistakes as a Consultant.” The second might be titled “My Mistakes Leading Change,” and the third “My Mistakes in Life, plus some interesting people who tried to set me straight.” Are you sensing a theme?

Truth be told, for much of my life, I was a terrible follower. In cleaning out my parents’ house I came upon my fourth grade report card – My grades were still As and Bs, but Mrs. Keshan had written a note to my folks.

“Alan is bright, catches on very quickly, but if he doesn’t get over his problem with authority, it will limit him in his life.”

I don’t feel particularly limited, but for most of my life, I battled anyone who had the slightest bit of power over me. I used to joke as an independent consultant, “I work for myself because I discovered I’m a lot nicer to clients than I am to bosses.”

And I taught Leadership

This is perhaps a slight exaggeration. I designed and ran multiple workshops about leading change for corporate managers. I came to simplify the difference between managers and leaders. “managers get the work done in a (relatively) steady state and develop people: leaders work in abnormal circumstances (emergencies, war, change) and are accountable for direction and attracting followers.”

I emphasized attracting followers, by joking “If you think you’re a leader, look over your shoulder, if there’s no one there, you might just be delusional.” There was more to my practice than jokes, but I don’t think I spent enough time on followership.

Following can be an act of Leadership

I wasn’t always a poor follower. Several times in my life, I was committed to an idea, a leader’s vision, the purpose of an organization. I worked hard to get stuff done, not just stuff I was assigned to do, but stuff that aligned with the vision that I saw needed to be done. I built my own competency and asked for help when I needed it. I encouraged peers to have the same spirit and confronted anyone who veered away from the vision.

I experienced good followership in many contexts, Boy Scouts, the theatre, Habitat for Humanity house building, and at various points in every job I had, factory worker, waiter, booking agent, trainer, and consultant.

Recently, I read an Psychology Today blog post by Dr. Ronald Riggio, professor of n Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College, entitled “In Praise of Followership.” Dr Riggio referenced an Harvard Business Review article “In Praise of Followers,” written by Dr. Robert Kelley of Carnegie Mellon University, which I had read when I lived in Pittsburgh in the late 80s. I reread that article.

Here are some points from each:

Dr Riggio:

• “Research on leadership has paid little attention to the critical role of followers.
• Leaders and followers co-create leadership in a specific context. There is no leadership without followers.
• It is imperative that followers support the leader when the mission is a good one or stand up to the leader when the path and goals are wrong.”

Dr. Kelley

• A good follower has active behavior and independent critical thinking
• Good followers self-manage well
• Good followers commit to the vision, the organization, the purpose or the mission.
• Good followers build the competencies they need to deliver.
• Good followers, are courageous, honest, and credible.

No where does either professor recommend sucking up to a leader, nor blind loyalty, nor only delivering news the leader wants to hear, nor putting up with a toxic environment.

Learning to become an effective follower

Dr. Kelley uses a matrix to evaluate follower behavior.

The upper right, effective follower quadrant shows independent, critical thinkers with active behavior patterns.

Followers Kelley calls “sheep” are too willing to accept whatever the Leader thinks or says.

Those he calls “Yes people” operate from fear or seek approval, betraying the requirement for courage and honesty, and losing all credibility as a result.

When I failed as an effective follower, my particular failure mode too often fell into the alienated follower quadrant with passive-aggressive behavior I might have described as “righteous indignation.” Over time I learned how to “disagree agreeably,” as Kelley recommends, but it took me far too long.

According to Kelley effective followers confront leaders constructively. I have done more than my share of confronting, some more constructive than others. Perhaps my best follower behavior though was in getting stuff done. I learned early to deliver on what I was assigned and to look for things that needed to be done and just doing them. That trait increased my workload, but it bought me some forgiveness for my “disagreeable disagreement.”

Some my best follower behavior I honed in leaderless groups, or teams where the leadership role rotated according to the skills and knowledge needed. I also learned a great deal from facilitating groups and keeping my own opinions to myself.

I’m still working on the “problem with authority,” counter-dependent behavior thing. I’m helped in that struggle by the fact that as a retiree I have fewer bosses and as an old man others seem to just shake their heads and smile when I get obstreperous.

I’ve also learned that “do as I say not as I do doesn’t work with children and grandchildren,” so they’re lousy followers too, but. . .

. . . maybe some of you, dear readers, can learn from my mistakes.

Learn to follow.

Hiring Consultants = Weakness?

My social circles do not afford opportunity to attend many black-tie events, but I do own a tuxedo.  So, even though I thought it pretentious, I attended my thirtieth LBS reunion formal dress dinner in the Kent castle.

“Boards are simply intolerable.”

A tight circle formed around Mike, our only a public company CEO classmate. My class had mostly gone into finance, so Mike was surrounded by ten retired investment bankers who chimed in as Mike lamented the inefficacy of Boards of Directors. I joined the group.

““People arrive late or come unprepared.” “Everyone talks at once.” “They think they are there to make decisions, when they are there to advise and consent.” “I’m the only one who understands the issues, but still everyone has an opinion.” “Meetings go on forever.”

I spoke up. “It sounds like a meeting that might benefit from third party design and facilitation.”

Heads snapped toward me followed by a three second stunned silence and many frowns..

“Of course you’d think that as a consultant” sneered  my “friend” Rob, a retired business professor, now an “investor.”

Vigorous consultant-bashing ensued.

“Consultants know nothing. “They’re arrogant. “ “They destroy morale.” “Consultants find any negative information and paint a picture of doom.”  “They always want to sell you something more expensive. “They use their Board contacts to make you look bad.” “Their recommendations are either naïve, or destructive.”

Finally Mike raised his voice. “Only weak leaders hire consultants.”

“I’m not sure that my clients would agree with you, Mike.” I said, but soon went to look for another conversation and the group went comfortably back to complaining about directors, regulators, and environmentalists.

I retired from consulting after thirty-seven years and I admit that some complaints about consultants are justified. Some consultants sell by fear. Some are arrogant and demean staff. The percentage of jerks in the profession is smaller than reported but larger than it should be.

Some leaders hire the wrong consultants or hire them for the wrong reason. The “weak” characterization is unfair, but few in leadership talk about why to hire a consultant.

Why leaders hire consultants – the rational case.

A leader might need expertise, to understand circumstances not faced before. The leader may need specialized knowledge and skill it doesn’t make sense to hire full time. A leader might just want experienced heads and hands to help his company through a rough period of change. Or he or she might believe that the organization could use a partner to teach them how to master skills they not needed in the past but required now.

Those are “process needs,” describing how the leader works with the consultant and the first indicator of the kind of consultant the leader wants to hire:

• An expert – who provides answers.
• A trained resource – who alleviates a staffing crunch
• A partner, collaborator, who works with you to solve a problem and implement a solution.

Sometimes a leader starts with the kind of help they want. Many times they start with a problem or an unspecified awareness that something needs to change.

There are only three “problems” – reasons to hire a consultant. These are desired outcomes (mostly); we need to:

• Grow revenue
• Grow profit, or
• Resolve “people stuff”

What about strategy, supply chain optimization, digital transformation?” Strategy, innovation, product design, marketing, sales systems projects bring in more customers or more revenue from existing customers. Supply change optimization, inventory management, process improvement, operational systems projects reduce cost and increase profit.

Not all leaders naturally think in outcome terms. If they did there wouldn’t be a category called “people stuff.” An organization design reduces cost (increasing profit) or specifies accountability for customer acquisition or retention (growing revenue). Compensation and benefits work, or union employee grievance reduction would be a way to reduce the cost of hiring and managing staff. But in my experience, leaders with a people problem often don’t think about it in economic outcome terms. “People stuff” is messy, emotional, uncomfortable for many executives.

Consultants think in terms of service offerings and the academic press has trained leaders to think this way. “I need a continuous improvement initiative” or “Blue Ocean Strategy, or Digital Transformation.” So, many consulting engagements have process deliverables disconnected from results.

The leader has to achieve those results. If you hire an expert for the solution, you’ll have to implement it. If you hire “trained resources” you’ll have to manage them to the outcome. Even if you hire a collaborator, the leader “owns” the outcome.

This is the rational case, but business decisions have more than just the rational. There is often “behind the scenes people stuff,” which influences hiring a consultant,

Behind the scenes people stuff.

“My boss told me to,” “the Board strongly suggested it,” “there are two distinct factions on this issue,” “the last time we attempted this we crashed and burned,” “we have a young team with  little credibility with senior management,” or “everyone is complacent, it’s time to ‘shake things up’ a bit.”

Are any of these issues driving your decision to hire a consultant?

• Resolve an internal dispute? or
• Avoid a mistake? or
• Grow internal capability? or
• Build internal credibility? or
• “Shake things up?”

If so, refocus on outcomes. These are real issues and a leader must resolve them, but they shouldn’t be the only reason you hire a consultant.

Why leaders shouldn’t hire consultants.

Don’t engage a consultant to do the leader’s job or to outsource a core business process.

I’ve seen this happen with “people stuff” projects. Consultants evaluate and coach poor performers outsourcing performance management responsibilities. Sometimes a consultant decides who to let go during downsizing.

Some leaders hire consultants for the same work repeatedly – a new strategy or a new organization every two years. Bring those skills inhouse. Likewise, some companies try multiple continuous improvement or innovation initiatives, using a new methodology each time; Pick one methodology and stick with it.

Don’t hire a consultant to find a solution you won’t implement.

This often happens when a company hires a consultant to resolve a dispute the leader has a strong view about. The consultant comes up with the opposite answer and the report is buried. Sometimes this leader was directed to hire a consultant or is too busy to engage in the project

There are leaders who hire a consultant and “delegate” the entire relationship to a junior person, never seeing the consultant again until the report is presented. In my view, this is not delegation but rather abdication, and won’t produce lasting results. A successful consulting project is determined by the engagement of the leader in the work. Don’t “buy a dog and then bark yourself” as the Cockneys say, but you should “never let go of the leash.”

Don’t buy the latest management fad

Some executives want bragging rights at the Round Table or country club. “We use Six Sigma.” Sometimes they say, “it is good to “shake things up” every now and then. Their people say “Oh, here comes the flavor-of-the-month.”

Don’t hire your friend

A consultant-client relationship is based upon trust, reliable information, respected judgement, and a track record of doing what is promised. A leader must hire a “truth teller,” a person who can deliver bad news without giving offence, but without concern for a personal relationship.

Hire a consultant with a plan to leave. Disengagement with a consultant friend is hard because of the personal relationship. Even non-friend consultants want endless extensions, expansions, and an impressive rebuy rate. A disengagement plan should include how you will deliver results and learning the skills to do this yourself.

How a real leader hires consultants.

I think of consulting as a “helping profession.”  So in the spirit of being helpful, don’t hire a consultant without thoroughly thinking through these ideas:

• Be very clear about why you are hiring the consultant:
  • What are your expected outcomes? What action will you take? (Who might take it and when?)
  • If there are “behind the scenes people stuff” reasons you are hiring a consultant, don’t let those cloud expected outcomes.
  • What role do you expect from the consultant: expert, extra resource, partner?
• Be open with your consultant about the answers to these questions.
• Have a plan to bring the consultant’s process inhouse:
  • What can you learn?
  • Who should learn it?
  • What will they do with this new knowledge?
• Hire a consultant with a plan to disengage.
• Roll up your sleeves and engage with the consultant yourself. If you don’t have the time to do this, delegate, but make sure this person engages and arranges for you to interact (and not just at the final presentation).
• Resist the “pitch for additional work” that comes at the end of most project presentations, at least until you have achieved the planned results.

This requires the engagement of the leader. Consulting firms often say there is one client. There is also one person who is the consultant. Yes, there is a team on both sides, but in each case one person is the leader and accountable for outcomes. Many corporations have a staff person send out a boilerplate request for proposal (RFP) to twenty firms and then have the short list of five come in for “bake-off” presentations. This common consulting purchase process obscures the leader to consultant contract and makes success more difficult..

In my experience, real leaders, know why they are hiring a consultant and are intimately involved with the decision.

“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.

Farm Radio

In the late 1980s I did projects for a firm that sold national spot advertising on thousands of radio stations across the United States. The firm’s salespeople would call on media buyers to pitch stations they represented for campaigns for which radio was a part of the advertising plan.

Of course, radio advertising was, even then, a decreasing share of advertising campaigns. So the firm created another sales force to call on media planners, agency client account executives and even advertiser marketing directors to sell the idea that radio was a viable part of the marketing mix.

One part of this effort was farm radio. I was asked to help the national farm radio rep. “Farm radio?” I was completely clueless.

“Farm radio,” Lloyd explained in his West Texas drawl, “is what the farmer wakes up to at 4:00 a.m.. It’s what he listens to on his tractor radio at 4:30-5:00. It’s what’s playing for 15 minutes at 11:15 when he comes in for lunch and at 5:45 when he’s washing up for dinner. The programming is mostly local crop market prices and weather, but there’s an occasional news piece if a supplier has a new product or there’s a bill in the legislature that affects farmers.”

Farm radio was a part of the programming of radio stations of all formats country, rock, news talk, but it was definitely the “red-headed stepchild” department. Programming and on-air were usually given to the most junior person or the one who should have retired ten years ago.

Problem was farm radio was starting to attract big advertising dollars. Equipment makers like John Deere, big seed companies, big fertilizer companies, banks and investment firms were discovering that farmers didn’t read magazines or watch TV, but they did listen to farm radio.

Lloyd’s idea was to document farmers’ media use and to improve the quality of farm programming, with a “weekly fax newsletter” that  on-air “talent” could just read.

My engagement was to research farmer media usage  and then to help Lloyd and his tech guy Emmet, set up the infrastructure for a weekly broadcast fax.

Talking to Farmers

This was classic market research. We did some interviews and sent a survey. We built an interview and mailing list getting names and addresses from the radio stations, (yeah, snail mail – it was the 80s) and sent a survey. We did some telephone interviews, but quickly learned that getting a farmer on the telephone (pre- wide-spread adoption of cell phones) was hard. I could however make an appointment with a farmer’s wife and drive out to see him. The farmers I talked to were mostly men, but not all.

The interviews were tough to schedule. The ones we got were often because of relationships at the radio station. They were fascinating. I had one sixtyish guy take me under his wing early on.

“Ya know, a farmer isn’t a farmer. We’re all different. First a farmer is defined by his crop. A corn farmer is different from a soybean farmer, uses different equipment to plow, fertilize and pick. Cotton farmer? Man those guys have it rough. Weevils come along and completely wipe you out before you can turn around. You can pick cotton by machine now, but still the best way is by hand and that is hard work. Course most family farmers like me learned to rotate crops, have a field fallow, but the corporations don’t really do that.

Next a farmer is defined by his land. Some soil is easy, some ain’t. Sometimes wind blows your topsoil and fertilizer away, no matter what trees you plant as a windbreak. A hill farmer’s different than a valley farmer, A river bottom farmer? That guy’s a gambler. He plants in the best soil there is, but one in three years gets washed away ‘cause he farms a flood plain. The good years he has the best yield and when he’s flush you see ‘im in Vegas, Bad years he’s always optimistic. ‘Next year,’ he says.”

For anyone who grew up on a farm this information would have been old news, but this forty something year-old suburban kid drunk it in. I used it to shape survey questions.

I did interviews in Texas, Mississippi, California’s central valley, central Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana. I came to understand just what a tough business farming is. Your product is dependent on the weather avoiding insect pests and bacteria and fungi. It is hard all-consuming work and even if you do everything right there is no predicting market prices. If you had a great yield year and everyone else did too, market price is down and you barely break even.

A Farmer’s Time

One of the last interviews I did was recommended by a Chicago radio station manager. The farmer grew multiple crops and had been quite outspoken about “getting chemical ads of television.” It seems like the fertilizer and pesticide companies were running 60 second TV spots in prime time on Chicago stations hoping to reach Illinois farmers. Unfortunately the “pounds in the ground” visuals were reaching a lot of other people too and his work was being interrupted by newsmen and environment protesters. He was an advocate for using radio to reach farmers.

“No farmer I know has time to watch sitcoms, so they’re not reaching buyers and the pictures they show are from huge corporate farms with little regard for the land. So why do I have to spend time explaining that to the media and these kids who come to my farm carrying signs.”

From the point of view of our research these quotes were pure gold. I did feel a little bad for him. He had a big family farm, passed to him from his father. His brothers weren’t interested in farming. Of his kids, only his daughter was interested. They had a crew and hired seasonable labor. His wife worked on the farm too and she arranged the interview. Seemed like they worked all the time.

“Bill will only have twenty minutes to talk with you and you’ll have to break it off because once he starts talking he can’t shut himself up. He’s in the barn. Remember -twenty minutes.” I assured her I would shut down after twenty minutes.

After about fifteen minutes, a blue pickup truck with an orange “I” on the door screeched up outside the barn.

Bills said something under his breath that may have been a cussword. He didn’t look happy.

A twenty-something in a white checked short-sleeve shirt and freshly pressed chinos bounded from the truck carrying a big manilla envelope and a clipboard.

“Hope this is still a good time, Bill.” said the young man eagerly looking at me.

“Did you clear it with, Marge, Andy. I’m pretty sure I asked you to clear your visits with Marge..”

“Well. . . no. Actually you said you’d be available today and I drove up here from Urbana. We were  gonna talk about what we been working on at the Extension. We were  gonna talk about some new methods.”

“New Methods? Bill exploded. “Son, I can’t talk to you about new methods. I’m only farmin’ Half as well as I know how NOW.”

By this time Marge had arrived to shepherd the university ag. extension worker back to the house. Bill and I finished up with pleasantries and my promise to send him any of his quotes before we used them. I don’t know if Bill found time to talk to Andy that day or if Marge scheduled him for another time, but I often thought of this conversation when I worked on continuous improvement (CI) initiatives.

Time to Improve

Leaders and the consultants who sell continuous improvement  projects are often a little like Andy, fresh-faced true believers in a new and better way of doing things. These leaders and consultants often look at a long time horizon in planning change.

“By this time next year we’ll be able to take twenty percent of waste from the system.” It’ll save everyone time so we can focus on some new things.”

Further exacerbating the problem, leaders often pick their “go-to” people to start learning new methodology. These people are always the recipients of new tasks because they are hyper-conscientious and “find a way to get it done.” In organizations like these you often hear the cliché “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

As a consultant I heard reactions like Bill’s, “I don’t have time to improve,” frequently. I advised leaders to take on time saving work first. One exercise we used CI teams addressed this issue directly. Collectively they listed current workload and categorized responsibilities.

• Tasks we can stop doing – (even temporarily).
• Tasks we can reassign or delegate.
• Time-suck processes where if we took out waste it might free up time.

Some leaders resisted. They wanted to work on improving “big stuff” first. Often their “go-to people” understood and convinced them to free up time to improve.

Now if I can only apply this disciple to my own to-do list.