Book Review: Getting Change Right

Getting Change Right: How Leaders Transform Organizations from the Inside Out
Seth Kahan
Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2010)

One of this book’s greatest strengths is Seth Kahan’s unique ability to focus on the most important “whats” of change initiatives and then explain with both precision and eloquence how to do what must be done to ensure the success of those initiatives. He draws upon a wealth of real-world experience from which he learned a number of valuable lessons. He cites seven in the Introduction to this book, then devotes a separate chapter to each.

For example, here’s #7: WorkLifeSuccess to sustain high performance in the midst of change. “By this, I mean doing whatever it takes to achieve and sustain overall excellence.” Kahan envisions leadership at all levels and in all areas. He suggests that change agents must be “practical visionaries,” people “with their eyes on the horizon and their feet on the ground.” Kahan himself is a “practical visionary,” sustaining throughout his lively narrative a sharp focus on what works, what doesn’t, and why.

I especially appreciate his skillful use of a number of reader-friendly devices such as checklists and summaries of key points as well as contributions from prominent business thinkers such as Ken and Mary Gergin (“Social Construction and Leading Change”), Steve Denning (“Operating Without Budget or Authority”), Rick Stone (“The Power of the Story”), Jim Wolfensohn (“Talking to Everyone”), Madelyn Blair (“Storylistening for Reconnaissance”), Etienne Wenger (“Communities of Practice”), Lesley Shneier (“The World Bank’s Knowledge Fairs”), Larry Forster (“The Competency for Collaboration”), and John Kotter (“The Greatest Positive Impact”). It seems especially appropriate for Kahan to include such a variety of perspectives, given the inherent ecumenical nature of change agency. I also want to commend him for also providing two appendices, “Sample Strategic Engagement Plan” and JumpStart Storytelling.”

The Battle Of Midway, One of Many Great Battles To Remember On This Memorial Day

(These quotes come from Ben Bradlee’s essay, The Turning Point:  The Battle of Midway, included in Defining a Nation, edited by David Halberstam).

This is what they called a decisive battle.

On May 7, 1942 (five months after Pearl Harbor), American forces under General Wainwright surrendered in the Philippines.  The Americans gave up a “tactical victory” to the Japanese at the Battle of Coral Sea.

The scene was now set for the critical sea battle of World War II, the Battle of Midway.

On one side was the greatest sea force ever assembled – more than two hundred Japanese combat ships, including eight carriers, eleven battleships, twenty-two cruisers, sixty-five destroyers, twenty-one submarines, and more than seven hundred planes.  The fearsome Admiral Yamamoto was in command.  The size is no easier to grasp today than it was on June 3, 1942.  This armada was divided into three groups:  a four-carrier strike force approaching from the northwest; an invasion/occupation force approaching from the west; and a main battle force of the battleships between the other two.

On the other side, Admiral Nimitz had only three carriers, eight cruisers, and fifteen destroyers.  One of the carriers, the Yorktown, had been so badly damaged at Coral Sea that experts said it would take three months to repair her, but 1400 repairmen managed to patch it up in a Pearl Harbor dry dock in two days.  Nimitz split this force into two groups – one commanded by Admiral Fletcher, the other by Admiral Raymond Spruance, a last-minute substitute for Admiral Bull Halsey, who had come down with a severe case of shingles.  Many students of the Pacific war consider Spruance to have been its greatest American admiral.

Scene on board USS Yorktown (CV-5), shortly after she was hit by three Japanese bombs on 4 June 1942.

The rest of the essay tells the story of the battle.  The key “lucky break” for the Americans was an almost simultaneous attack on three Japanese carriers, all three of which happened to have planes and ordnance on the deck, loading fuel, making them sitting/defenseless targets.

Japanese planes on all three carriers were warming up for take off.  Gasoline lines snaked across all three decks.  Ordnance was stacked everywhere to reload returning planes…  In less than ten minutes time, the tide of the war would turn.

When the Japanese commanders finally learned that the Hiryu was sunk, the fate was clear.  The invasion of Midway was aborted.  The tide of the Pacific war had definitely turned.  The Japanese would never again be on the offensive.

I am certainly not a World War II expert.  In fact, I know few of the details.  I know that my wife’s father was a young, 20 year old signalman who watched his companion killed in front of his eyes from a direct hit by a kamikaze attack, just feet from where he was standing.  (No, he has never been able to talk about it with me).  But I know that the effort, the courage, the doggedness of countless people gave us our way of life, and, yes, many gave “the last full measure of devotion.”

And I also think this.  All progress, all victory, in war and in every thing else, is fought one campaign, one battle at a time.  We write the history in big phrases.  But it was the single pilot, flying next to the other single pilots, working together in first this battle and then that battle, with their individual acts of courage, that describe the “bigger named” battles (the Battle of Midway), that ultimately led to the biggest description – we won World War II.

It’s Memorial Day.  It is right to remember those who deserve our memories, and their memorials – those from the earliest days of this nation to the ones who carry on with individual acts of courage in places far from home today.

And so, as always, we remember these words from Lincoln, after one so very costly battle – one single battle that cost nearly as many lives as the loss of American life in the entire Vietnam War:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

———

Personal note:  if you made me clear out my library of all but a handful of books, one that I would keep is this volume edited by Halberstam.  You can buy it used from Amazon for as little as $4.00, including shipping.  It is a great volume!  I encourage you to order a copy, and read it slowly.

Robert I. Sutton on 12 things good bosses believe

Robert I. Sutton

Here is an excerpt from article written by Robert I. Sutton for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

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What makes a boss great? It’s a question I’ve been researching for a while now. In June 2009, I offered some analysis in HBR on the subject, and more recently I’ve been hard at work on a book called Good Boss, Bad Boss (forthcoming in September from Business Plus). In both cases, my approach has been to be as evidence-based as possible. That is, I avoid giving any advice that isn’t rooted in real proof of efficacy; I want to pass along the techniques and behaviors that are grounded in sound research. It seems to me that, by adopting the habits of good bosses and shunning the sins of bad bosses, anyone can do a better job overseeing the work of others.

At the same time, I’ve come to conclude that all the technique and behavior coaching in the world won’t make a boss great if that boss doesn’t also have a certain mindset. 
My readings of peer-reviewed studies, plus my more idiosyncratic experience studying and consulting to managers in many settings, have led me identify some key beliefs that are held by the best bosses — and rejected, or more often simply never even thought about, by the worst bosses. Here they are, presented as a neat dozen:

[Actuaslly, here are the first four. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.]

• I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.

• My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.

• Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.

• One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.

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If you’re like most people I meet, you’ve had your share of bad bosses — and probably at least one good one. What were the attitudes the good one held? And what great, workplace-transforming beliefs could your worst boss never quite embrace?

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Robert I. Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He studies and writes about management, innovation, and the nitty-gritty of organizational life. His last book was the New York Times bestseller The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

“Which is the best day to interview for a job?”

Mark Di Vicenzo

That is one of several hundred questions that Mark Di Vincenzo answers in Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That, and Go There, published by Harper in 2009.

“The day after another company has offered you a job. After you receive a job offer, you may be tempted to cancel other scheduled interviews with a company, but that’s the last thing you should do. With a job offer sitting on the table, your confidence couldn’t be higher, and that will help you make a great impression. That confidence and your positive attitude can be worth a lot of money to you when it comes to negotiating a salary and benefits. If you have another offer in hand, you’ll have nothing to lose. Your supreme confidence may cause the hiring manager to offer you a job, but it probably won’t cause him to offer you the most the company is willing to pay you. You’ve got to ask for what you want or else you won’t get it, and you can’t be afraid to ask for more money. Another view: Friday. Many people report being in the best mood and more relaxed at the end of the week, and that can only be a good thing when you’re interviewing.”

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Mark Di Vincenzo was a journalist for 24 years before launching Business Writers Group, a company that completes writing assignments for its corporate clients.

Dan McGinn on Simon Cowell’s managerial legacy

Here is an excerpt from article written by Dan McGinn for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

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I woke up this morning feeling guilty, ready to admit a journalistic lapse: I watched only about five minutes of last night’s marathon season finale of American Idol.

That’s partly because I’ve never liked the show, and partly because both the Red Sox and Celtics were playing on other channels. But I’d meant to tune in last night to watch Simon Cowell’s swan song. Even though I’m no “Idol” fan, I’ve always thought Cowell’s style, while over-the-top, is relevant for managers.

Cowell rose to fame and fortune on the basis of his brutal honesty, ignoring conventions of politeness to give candid feedback. Yes, he’s unnecessarily mean and nasty — hey, it’s a TV show — but he’s also one of the world’s foremost practitioners of a word that pops up in HBR every so often: candor.

Jack Welch made candor a celebrated management principle at GE. While his forced-curve employee-ranking system of As, Bs and Cs has been criticized over the years, I still think there’s solid wisdom in his fundamental notion that there’s something cruel about keeping a low performer in the dark about his shortcomings, a scenario that sets people up to be downsized (and probably less employable) later in their careers. Writing in HBR in 2009, James O’Toole and Warren Bennis looked at candor through an organizational lens, advocating for honesty in communications between subordinates and bosses, within teams, and between boards and executives.

Thinking about Cowell’s approach to artistic criticism while flipping channels last night, I was struck by how Americans tend to expect (and offer) frank, even harsh feedback in many realms except for the workplace. While Lee and Crystal took the stage for their final performances last night, on another channel David Ortiz was hitting a home run — extending a much-needed hot streak after weeks of blistering criticism for failing to produce the hits needed to justify his $13 million annual salary.

Further up the dial, on Larry King Live, the male and female winners of The Biggest Loser were being interviewed, accompanied by personal trainer Bob Harper. I’ve only watched a few minutes of The Biggest Loser, but that’s all it takes to see how that show’s personal trainers use loud, harsh and brutal feedback — basically, many variations of “Move your fat ass NOW” — to get contestants to burn more calories and consume fewer.

On public radio this morning, The Takeaway offered an homage to American Idol‘s truth-teller. The commentary pointed out how sports and the military are two places in which we’ve come to expect honest, sometimes harsh feedback. It’s probably no coincidence that a lot of renowned leaders spent time playing sports or serving in the military during their formative years.

I’m not saying I’d ever want to work for a boss with an attitude like Simon Cowell, whose candor is more vicious than constructive, whose comments usually leaves recipients feeling only discouraged and with too little sense of what they need to do to improve. Nor am I saying that workplaces should resemble drill camps, football locker rooms or fat farms.

But in my limited experience, workplaces tend to have too much politeness, and too little candor. It’s hard to talk about our shortcomings, or those of the people who work for us. During a short stint as a manager, I recall how hard it was to give negative feedback during performance reviews. That’s especially true in fields such as mine, with murky performance metrics; my friends who are sales managers seem far better able to manage by the numbers and take a Welchian approach to providing honest feedback.
It’s also hard to be on the receiving end of honest criticism, particularly for people who’ve had a track record of being successful, or who’ve been brought up in our increasingly attaboy-filled grade-inflated, every-child-gets-a-trophy society.

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In other words, maybe workplaces could use a few more kinder, gentler versions of Simon Cowell, to help us all have a better sense of where we stand and what we need to improve.

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To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Dan McGinn is a senior editor at HBR. Previously, he was Senior Articles Editor, National Correspondent, and Detroit Bureau Chief at Newsweek.

Why wasting time weakens strategic thinking

Consider these four brief excerpts:

“Our research suggests that 85 percent of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing their unit’s strategy, with 50 percent spending no time at all.” Robert Kaplan and David Norton “The Office of Strategy Management,” Harvard Business Review (October 2005)

“Our findings on managerial behavior should frighten you: Fully 90 percent of managers squander their time in all sort of ineffective activities. In other words, a mere 10 percent of managers spend their time in a committed, purposeful, and reflective manner.” Heike Bruch, “Beware the Busy Manager,” Harvard Business Review (February 2002)

“Eighty percent of top management’s time is devoted to issues that account for less than 20 percent of [a] company’s long-term value.” Michael Mankins, “Stop Wasting Valuable Time,” Harvard Business Review (September 2004)

“The main problem identified by the majority of senior executives was strategic thinking. ‘Our senior executives tend to get carried away by details and lose their strategic perspective. It is a major challenge to get our decision makers to think in strategic, rather than operational, terms.’” Ingrid Bonn, “Developing Strategic Thinking as a Core Competency,” Management Decision 39 (2001)

A lack of strategic (as opposed to tactical) thinking not only prevents individual managers from maximizing the critical resource of time but also can stop the entire organization’s progress in its tracks.

My favorite Art Linkletter moment….

I forget the year but one afternoon I happened to watch a portion of Art Linkletter’s television program during which he visited with children. There were five seated upon stools. He made his way along, chatting with each child. Finally he reached the last one and apologized for keeping her waiting.

“That’s OK but my foot’s asleep.

He smiled and asked exactly the right question, “What does it feel like?”

“It feels like ginger ale.”

In my own version of television’s Hall of Fame, Linkletter is in it, joined by Burr Tilstrom (Kukla, Fran & Ollie), Fran Allison (the aforementioned Fran), Fred Rogers, Marlin Perkins (Zoo Parade), Bob Smith (Howdy Doody) and Don Herbert (Mr. Wizard).

Ron Ashkenas asks, “Do you have too much on your plate?”

Here is an excerpt from article written by Ron Ashkenas for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

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The most common complaint that I hear from managers these days is that they simply have too much to do — and can’t get everything done without stretching and stressing themselves and their people. One explanation, of course, is that downsizing done over the past eighteen months has left many companies without the resources to support increasing levels of business. Another factor is that now, in the aftermath of the recession, many firms are rethinking how they do business, and driving these changes also requires extra effort.
While in some cases new hires or the use of consultants or temporary staff will relieve the pressure, the reality is that most organizations want to hold the line on expenses, and not add substantial resources. If that’s your situation, then you need to think about alternative ways to manage the overload. Here are a few options to consider:

[Here are two.]

• Review the workload across strategic priorities. If you have many projects going on simultaneously, all of which are considered high priority, take a hard and holistic look at the subinitiatives that flow out of these projects. Most projects are like trees — with branches of various sizes sprouting from the trunk of the project. This means that even if you have only five or six key strategic projects, you still might have dozens of subinitiatives, many of which call upon or affect the same people. Often managers look at each strategic project in isolation. Instead, take a more comprehensive view, perhaps with the help of a centralized project management organization (PMO), to identify opportunities for combining, deferring, or resequencing the subinitiatives.

• Eliminate zombie projects. In large organizations, it is very common for people to keep working on projects that have been “killed” or have not been officially commissioned — and that are not currently priorities. These “below the radar screen” efforts often stem either from an emotional connection to a cancelled project (and not wanting to let it go) or a well-meaning attempt to get out in front of an issue that hasn’t yet risen to a strategic level. Whatever the case, these projects drain resources and need to be nailed back in their coffins.

In the current economic environment, almost all managers will probably feel that they have too much on their plates at some point. Since additional resources may not be forthcoming, the best approach will be to focus not only on reducing the volume of work but also on recalibrating the process we use to get that work done.

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Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates and a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.

Max Klau on Twenty-First-Century Leadership: It’s All About Values

Max Klau

Here is an excerpt from article written by Max Klau for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

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(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, and Scott Snook. This week’s focus: values.)

Are values an essential ingredient of leadership?

Amongst those who study such matters, one school of thought says no, that leadership is a simple matter of power and influence, regardless of why or how that power and influence is used. From this perspective, a leader is someone who has followers, and a great leader is someone who has a lot of followers. The matter of whether that leader marches those followers off a cliff or towards a more perfect and sustainable society is secondary or irrelevant.

This view leads naturally to what I’ll call the “Gandhi/Hitler problem.” Gandhi had a great many followers, but so did Hitler. If leadership is essentially a matter of power and influence, then both individuals must be deemed great by virtue of the fact that they both changed history and influenced the lives of millions. For anyone with a moral compass and respect for human dignity, however, that’s an uncomfortable — actually, a repugnant — assertion.

There is, of course, a different perspective: that leadership is all about values. That in order to understand leadership, you must consider where an individual is going, and why and how he or she is going there. An individual with tremendous influence who offers flawed diagnoses of communal challenges, “solutions” that fail to address real problems, and who operates with a fundamental disrespect for human dignity and interdependence is, actually, not a leader at all. In contrast, an individual whose influence extends no further than immediate family, friends, and local community may well be a leader, if he or she is devoted to improving the human condition — at any scale. 

But whose values, then? And what exactly does it mean to “improve the human condition?” After all, Hitler had values, and saw himself as working for a “better” Germany. Any attempt to assert that some values should be elevated over others generates controversy and debate, creating a quagmire of moral relativism. Reasonable people may be inclined to throw up their hands and decide to walk away from the values question altogether.

That would be a terrible mistake. Here at City Year, we insist that it is simply impossible to live and work together without shared values. Michael Brown, our CEO and Co-Founder, has written that “without widely held shared values, our society will come apart. In particular, if we do not deliberately provide our young people with powerful, positive values, they will often receive powerful negative values by default.”

Despite the controversy and debate around values, a strong case can be made that widely shared values can be identified. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an example of a value that echoes across all the world’s major religions and informs civic values in both East and West. “Great Spirit! Grant that I will not criticize my brother or sister until I have walked a mile in his or her moccasins” is a Native American prayer that resonates with the wisdom of communities across the globe.
However, perhaps the most compelling example of a widely held value is service. The importance and nobility of dedicating one’s time and energy to serving a community or cause greater than oneself shatters cultural, racial, religious, ideological, and geographic boundaries. The commitment to serve others unites individuals who would otherwise never connect, creating the type of bonds, understanding, and insight that can only come from working together side by side in pursuit of the greater good.

This is the understanding of leadership that informed Martin Luther King’s statement that “Anyone can be great, because everyone can serve.” King understood that leadership is not exercised by just a few “great men” with formal authority; it can potentially be exercised by anyone, no matter how modest or elevated their station in life. That sentiment is echoed by Robert Kennedy in his assertion that “few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”

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To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Max Klau is Director of Leadership Development at City Year, Inc.

Book Review: 168 Hours

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think
Laura Vanderkam
Portfolio/Penguin (2010)

In this book, Laura Vanderkam rigorously follows what Albert Einstein recommends: “Make everything as simple as possible…but no simpler.” For example, in the first chapter, she suggests, “Picture a completely empty weekly calendar with its 168 hourly slots.” She then helps her reader to document his or her (the reader’s) current allocation of time. She achieves that objective as well as each of her other primary objectives such as disabusing her reader of major misconceptions about how much time (on average) people spend on sleep, work, and leisure time components. While doing so, she cites real-world examples (i.e. real people in real time) that both illustrate and confirm basic strategies that produce more and more enjoyable as well as better, and achieved sooner, in less time. She also identifies the core competencies that her reader must develop and then leverage to achieve that same objective. She is at her best when explaining how to determine what the “right job” is, what it requires, and how to obtain it.

[She cites Teresa Amabile’s admonition, “You should do what you love, and you should love what you do.” If that doesn’t suggest what a “right job” is, I don’t know what does.]

Vanderkam also explains how to control investment of time so that “there should be almost nothing during your work hours – whatever you choose those to be – that is not advancing you toward your goals for the career and life you want”; how to determine what the “next level” of personal and professional development looks like and how to “seize control” of the schedule while completing a transition to that level; and what a “breakthrough” is and how to achieve it to expedite the transition process. Vanderkam believes, and I fully agree, that our lives proceed through a series of levels above or below, better or worse than where we were previously; the journey to each should be one of personal discovery; and that it is important to know what we value most but we must realize that priorities change at various points in our lives as circumstances, relationships, obligations, and aspirations change. Each life is, quite literally, a “work in progress.”