“What kind of a world are we dealing with?” One that is wounded….

Jonathan Gosling

In response to the question “What kind of a world are we dealing with?” here is a portion of Jonathan Gosling’s response, synthesized from several sources.

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It’s wounded world, socially and environmentally, struggling to deal with the damage we are doing. This is not all new; in many ways, it’s the same old world. Most things continue: we need to eat, preferably with savour; to educate ourselves and others, enjoy nature, care for the people we love and deepen ouyr our humanity through art, culture, and spiritual life. Heaven save us from leaders who champion change if they forget or ignore all that continues and should be preserved! This is where distributed leadership becomes crucial; no central authority or charismatic hero can know enough detail about the particular pleasures and local conditions of our lives; it’s down to us to get organized (loosely) and vocal (sonorously), and to take a lead in making things better.

Note: Gosling also thinks ours is a wiki world and a worldly world.  I share those thoughts in separate posts.

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Jonathan Gosling is Professor of Leadership and Director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at University of Exeter Business School since 2002. He is currently leading the worldwide launch of the One Planet MBA while conducting research into emerging concepts of leadership, extending earlier work on the distribution and practice of leadership in Higher Education. Other on-going research includes the study of change and continuity in large organizations, and the processes by which leadership is legitimized in minority communities.

Vince Lombardi, Leader of Men – He Made Them Better; He Loved Them

Think about this.  To succeed, you have to hire the right/best people.  Then, these people have to reach their highest level of competency; they have to get better, and then keep getting better, at what they do, constantly; they have to identify their weaknesses and overcome them; they have to work well with others — as a team.

So, where do we go to learn how to get all of these steps right; hire the right/best people, make them better; help them become a close, committed team.  One name that may be a true exemplar, worthy of study, is the name Vince Lombardi.

Two keys:

1)   He made his players better.

2)  He loved his players.

These are two key points that come through in a new play based on Vince Lombardi’s life and career.  And, in this segment on the play on NPR by Mike Pesca (Weekend Edition, Saturday), it is clear that a whole new theater audience, notably different from the typical theater audience, is attending this play:  people with Packers jerseys and helmets in hand, former players who laugh, and cry, within the first five minutes.  This is a wonderful segment!

Here are a couple of key excerpts (from the transcript), quotes from Dan Luria who plays Vince Lombardi, and from Judith Light, who plays his wife, Marie Lombardi:

Mr. LURIA: I’ll tell you one thing about his players, everyone one of them the first five minutes I’m on the floor laughing, and within five minutes every one of them had a tear in their eye. Did you see Sonny Jurgensen last night? He had tears in his eyes. They really love this guy. He made them better. He made them better.

Ms. JUDITH LIGHT (Actress): (as Marie Lombardi) He loved his players. And I don’t mean he just likes them an awful lot; he truly actually loves them.

Hire the right people.  Make them better.   Love them along the way.  This is the challenge of true leadership.  It always has been — it always will be.

{Click here to listen to this segment (it is about 5 1/2 minutes long), and read the transcript}.

 

Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant advocate, “Stop Stereotyping Female Leaders”

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant 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 click here.

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Women’s leadership programs are charged with imagining a new type of woman leader for whom leadership is an attainable aspiration. But effective leadership education for women is still a haven for bad practices that send mixed messages to aspiring leaders. There are two types of practices that work to stereotype women in leadership:

First, programs rely on bringing out the superwoman as a model of leadership.

On the final day of our leadership program, a woman was invited to present her tips for getting ahead to a group of aspirational young female leaders. She was in her mid-forties, a professor and dean of a business faculty, and had just given birth to twins through IVF. She was immaculately put together, on stilettos all day. Can we do all that? Why do so many women’s leadership programs send out this unrealistic and exhausting message? There is a lack of women leaders as role models,  but sustaining stereotypes of the superwoman is no solution. For role models to be effective, they need to be both inspirational and motivational. Consider the context of aspiring women leaders, who dismiss the idea that work is your entire life and a woman needs to go it alone and to have it all. The superwoman is not affirming of choices and balance. She continues to perpetuate the traditional notion that doing leadership about getting control, dominance, and power, at all costs. Instead, leadership programs need to increase the repertoire of role models so leadership is feasible, flexible, and appealing at all stages of a career. Such role models could be better fostered from our networks and our exemplary peers, rather than from exaggerated tokens of women’s leadership.

Second, programs focus on the common narratives about the woes of women in leadership.

Glass ceilings, the double binds of family and work, and discriminatory nature of organizations reinforce ideas that women are vulnerable and need fixing. Women need a better way to use the language of self-promotion and accountability. We know that language creates the reality of how individuals see themselves. So, while leadership language for women still focuses on barriers and struggles, this practice maintains the backlash avoidance model of success, which suggests that women fear negative repercussions from self-promotion and standing out. It is no wonder that women can often negotiate a better deal for others than they can for themselves. Compare this language context to that of male leadership programs which are littered with the narratives of success. Males learn to take charge, tackle challenges, develop talent, driving innovation and guide change. Disrupting the stereotypical use of language should be a focus of women’s leadership programs.

Women’s leadership programs are necessary to accelerate women’s leadership aspirations. But just having a women’s leadership program isn’t enough. If it’s not done right, women can’t move forward. Effective programs for tomorrow’s leaders should disrupt stereotyping.

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Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant are academic researchers working in education and leadership at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia. Presently they are writing a book, Glass Wall Barriers.

They can be contacted at info@glasswalls.com.au.

Steve Tobak on “4 small ways to solve big management problems”

Steve Tobak

Here is an article written by Steve Tobak for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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Whether you’re a product manager, an HR professional, or a CFO, we all face difficult challenges. That comes with the territory. But sometimes, critical issues are also the hardest ones to solve because they’re outside our functional expertise or there simply is no training to help resolve them.

For example, what if you’re not connecting eye-to-eye with your boss, an important peer, or a key employee? I’m not talking about a conflict; we’re all trained in conflict resolution. I’m talking about a relationship that’s just not clicking. You’ve racked your brain and can’t figure it out. Even the other person doesn’t know why.

Or your staff meetings are lifeless and unproductive, nobody’s engaged. You’ve bounced some ideas around and nothing seems to work. Or you’re constantly double-booked in meetings and deluged with interruptions and just can’t seem to find time to get any real work done. Something’s got to give.

Well, I’ve often found that small, simple changes can solve some of the most daunting management problems. Here are a few stories that will offer some interesting ideas. More importantly, they’ll get you thinking about how to solve your biggest challenges in a different way. You’ll see what I mean:

1. The curious case of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde CEO

Years ago, I was having one helluva time connecting with my boss, the CEO of a public company I’d just joined. He was a stoic, methodical, and controlling guy. I was having difficulty with his micromanaging style and the mismatch seemed uncomfortable for him too.

I was commiserating with a peer who had worked for the guy for years, when he asked:

“When do you have your weekly one-on-ones with him?”

“On Tuesdays,” I said.

“No, not the day,” he said, “What time are your meetings?”

“Um, 10 o’clock,” I replied, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Try moving them to the afternoon, after lunch,” he said. “It’ll make a big difference. You’ll see.”

“Okay, I’ll try it.”

To say I was skeptical is an understatement. Still I was willing to try anything. So I did. And you know what? That was it. Everything changed. He was like a different person after lunch, more open and collaborative. No idea why.

We got along famously after that. What started as a nightmare, probably for both of us, ended up as a great relationship.

2. How taking walks saved a company

Then there’s the CEO who showed up for our usual weekly meeting and asked if I wanted to take a walk. I said sure. I love to walk. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but it had to do with growing up in Brooklyn, where my family didn’t own a car. My dad loved to take walks, so that was like our bonding time, when I had him all to myself. I loved those walks.

Anyway, the weekly meetings with my CEO turned into weekly walks around the neighborhood surrounding our headquarters. I don’t know if it was the open air, the exercise, or the father-son thing (for me, anyway), but something clicked. We were in the midst of restructuring the company, and those walks became our strategy sessions that solved a host of critical issues.

3. Dilbert fixed my staff meeting problem

I used to hold my weekly staff meetings in the morning and, for some reason, they really sucked. Then, in a Scott Adams Dilbert book, of all places, I read that managers should hold meetings in the afternoon because most people did their best thinking and were most productive in the morning.

Well, I floated the idea to my staff and they all concurred. We changed the time to afternoon and, lo and behold, everyone was happier and more engaged. The meetings were more effective. Go figure.

4. Can’t work at work? Try working somewhere else

Executive life can be hectic, especially in the fast-paced technology industry. I was always struggling to find time to get any “real” work done. Most days I had back-to-back meetings I couldn’t get out of. And during my rare office time, there were constant, but important, interruptions. That was the nature of our business.

So I started doing my “real” work — strategy, thinking, presentations — in the evenings at home. I’d relax with a glass of wine and be remarkably productive. It wasn’t an everyday thing, just when necessary. And you know what? That was the ticket. It’s been part of my “process” ever since.

Those are just a few examples of how a simple tweak can solve a big, thorny management problem. What big challenges have you solved with small changes?

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Steve Tobak is a consultant, writer, and former senior executive with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He’s the managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a Silicon Valley-based firm that provides strategic consulting, executive coaching, and speaking services to CEOs and management teams of small-to-mid-sized companies. Find out more at www.invisor.net.

Arkadi Kuhlmann (ING Direct USA) in “The Corner Office”

Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in

Arkadi Kuhlmann

the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Arkadi Kuhlmann, chairman and president of ING Direct USA. Each year, he asks his employees if they want him to stay on, because “I don’t want to serve here unless I’ve got the commitment of people genuinely wanting me to serve.”

To read the complete interview and Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

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Bryant: What advice would you give to somebody who’s about to become a C.E.O. for the first time?

Kuhlmann: The one thing that you’re going to have to work on is being able to think on your feet. If you didn’t grow up as a street kid, you’d better start thinking like a street kid, because you’re going to have lots of surprises.

People are always testing you. People are always watching you. You are always on. You have to understand that everything’s being interpreted, and you have to keep thinking in two and three dimensions.

The only reason you’re going to be a leader is because people are going to follow you, and they’re only going to follow you if they have confidence in you. And the No. 1 job of a C.E.O. is to eliminate doubt. My only job, really, is to eliminate doubt in every situation.

Bryant: But it’s also a C.E.O.’s job to ask questions.

Kuhlmann: You’ve got to understand the timing. No one expects you to always say, “My way, my way.” That’s not what I’m talking about. But if we have this meeting, somewhere in the meeting or at the end of the meeting, they’re going to look to you because you’re the C.E.O., and they’re going to say, is there any doubt? There may be disagreements, different views, but people need confidence. Companies need confidence, and that’s a big part of my role.

Bryant: Were you always a leader, even when you were younger?

Kuhlmann: I do put my hand up. In school, if the teacher asked a question, I’d put my hand up. If I’m in a room or a crowd of people, I tend to just get involved. Usually, I really like whatever the problem is. I like to get close to the fire. Some people have a desire for that, I’ve noticed, and some people don’t. I just naturally gravitate to the fire. So I think that’s a characteristic that you have, that’s in your DNA.

Bryant: How has your leadership style evolved over time?

Kuhlmann: I’m probably a bit more deliberate now than I probably was 10 or 15 years ago.

Bryant: What does that mean?

Kuhlmann: I used to do meetings and say, O.K., somebody’s got to lead. Enough discussion. This isn’t a democracy. We’re doing it and that’s it. I probably did more of that in the past. I do probably a lot less of that now.

Bryant: Why?

Kuhlmann: I think I’m able to handle a lot more frustration now than I used to. I can tolerate much more chaos. I can probably emotionally tolerate you making mistakes for another week and a half, whereas 10 years ago I would have said, “O.K., that’s enough.”

Now I’m willing to let you sort of stir around because I’m very conscious of you being critical of me micromanaging or making decisions too fast or saying that I won’t listen. I’m a little bit more sensitive about those issues than I was years ago.

Bryant: What else?

Kuhlmann: The other thing I’ve learned is that a lot of times, things work a lot better when I’m not there. I hate to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

And I learned that, actually, from my two young boys. You know, like a typical dad, you play with them, and then they have something they’re working on, and I try to help them. And then I go away because I’m off running an errand or doing something else. I come back, and they’ve done it actually quite well on their own. And the light bulb goes on, saying, well, sometimes you’ve just got to let people do their own thing. And they will get it done.

Bryant: What is unusual about the way you run your company?

Kuhlmann: I’ve been the C.E.O. for 10 years. In December, I’m asking the employees again, would you vote for me to serve with you another year? And all my colleagues think I’m nuts, and the board thinks I’m nuts. But I don’t want to serve here unless I’ve got the commitment of people genuinely wanting me to serve.

Bryant: Tell me more about that.

Kuhlmann: It’s a vote. It’s anonymous, of course. I’m not asking for a popularity contest. Part of it is, do you have faith in the mission? Do you have faith in the company? Do you have faith in me? Now, the shareholders are O.K. with me, the board’s O.K. with me, the regulators are O.K. with me, and my customers seem to like me. But what about the associates? It’s a big question.

The difficulty is getting people to interpret why I do this vote. I want people to get two things from this. One is that I don’t take the job for granted. And, No. 2, that I’m willing to be accountable to them, not because I work for them in a broader sense, but I’ve got to walk the talk, right? So if I keep walking around saying all the time that our associates are so important, then why don’t they have a say in terms of whether or not I’m leading?
Corner Office

How would you finish a paragraph that begins, “My philosophy of leadership is … ”?

Kuhlmann: My philosophy of leadership is to be authentic in the way you deal with people. And that means if you’re going to walk the talk, that you actually do that. The second thing is that leadership is about service, and you can’t lead if you can’t follow. And so you’ve got to create a mission.

It is never about you. It is always about the mission. And people will follow you if you’re prepared to get a mission done, something with a goal that is a little bit beyond the reach of all of us. That’s what leadership’s about.

The current economic crisis: perils or opportunities?

The Chinese character for “crisis” has two meanings: “peril” and “opportunity.”

According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation, nearly half of the companies on Inc. magazine’s 2008 list of fastest-growing companies were founded in a recession or bear market. Fifty-seven percent of the Fortune 500 companies were founded during downturns, an above-average number of them during the Great Depression. Instability forces change.

In fact, most of the biggest brands in the world today are vulnerable. Most people simply don’t trust them. It’s tough to get 96 percent of Americans to agree on anything. But according to a 2009 Harris poll, that’s the number that agree Wall Street, major banks, and credit card companies are dishonest and can’t be trusted. Only 14 percent now trust big business, period.

My take on all this?

1. Individuals as well as organizations can be greedy.
2. Individuals as well as organizations can live beyond their means.
3. The current economic crisis is somewhere between the end of its beginning and the beginning of its end.
4. It has created both perils and opportunities.
5. Those who focus only on perils will forfeit opportunities.
6. Those who focus only on opportunities will fall victim to perils.
7. Prudence urges “pruning” all non-essentials while leveraging resources only where they will have the greatest ROI.

Mary C. Gentile: An interview by Bob Morris

 

Mary C. Gentile

Mary C. Gentile is Senior Research Scholar at Babson College; Senior Advisor, Aspen Institute Business & Society Program; and consultant. Previously Gentile was faculty member and case development manager at Harvard Business School. She is author of Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (Yale University Press 2010, www.MaryGentile.com. Gentile is Director of Giving Voice to Values (GVV), a business curriculum launched by Aspen Institute and Yale SOM, now based at Babson College. This pioneering approach to values-driven leadership has been featured in Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, strategy+business, Stanford Social Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly, BizEd, etc. and has been piloted in over 100 business schools and organizations globally. Gentile consults with corporations, non-profits and schools on leadership development, ethics and education. At Harvard Business School (1985-95), Gentile helped integrate ethics into the MBA. Gentile co-authored Can Ethics Be Taught? Perspectives, Challenges, and Approaches at Harvard Business School (with Thomas Piper, Sharon Parks, HBS Press, 1993). Other publications appear in Harvard Business Review, Risk Management, CFO, Academy of Management Learning and Education, BizEd, Strategy+Business, etc. Gentile holds a B.A. from College of William and Mary and Ph.D. from State University of New York-Buffalo.

Morris: Before discussing your brilliant book, Giving Voice to Values, a few general questions. First, as the titles of your various books and articles suggest, you have an especially strong interest in diversity. Why?

Gentile: First, thank you for the opportunity to talk about these topics that I believe are so important. As for my interest in diversity, I believe it is closely aligned with my work on the project, Giving Voice To Values. That is, there are often times when we may witness (or personally experience) situations where some individuals are not treated with the same respect or care as others, precisely due to some difference in their identities, their styles, their experiences, or their perspectives. Often it is difficult to speak up in such a situation, for ourselves or for others. What’s more, when we do speak up, sometimes it is with the kind of emotion or judgment that can lead our audiences to become defensive and to freeze in their positions.

While at Harvard Business School, I developed a set of pedagogical materials and designed and taught the first course there on Managing Diversity, precisely because I wanted to better understand this phenomenon and to find ways to enable future managers and leaders to talk about and address these kinds of inequities constructively. I believed that we would all come to better decisions and we would create more humane and ultimately more livable and more sustainably productive workplaces if we knew how to speak to each other about difficult issues and if we were more able to listen to and learn from diverse points of view.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like Giving Voice To Values?

Morris: It certainly does. Here’s my favorite passage in Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Please share your own opinion of it, especially in terms of its relevance to effective leadership.

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

Gentile: Well, this is a wonderfully succinct expression of participative and empowering leadership. It reflects an approach that is both respectful and pragmatic. In this way, it is quite akin to the Giving Voice To Values (GVV) approach to values-driven leadership.

That is, GVV does not dictate that there is one way to voice and enact our values. Rather we do well to examine our own strengths, style and preferences, and then to frame our values conflicts in ways that draw on our best. So if I am most comfortable in a “learner” role, I may raise my values-related concerns by asking the well-crafted and well-timed question, rather than by strenuously arguing a particular point of view. Or if I am a risk-taking, aggressive manager, I may frame the values conflict as just one more challenge that I want to take on, as opposed to a “constraint” on my action choices.

Much like the leaders in the Lao-Tzu quotation above, GVV ‘begins with what we have and builds on what we know,’ but GVV is as much about leading and enabling ourselves – to be more of who we want to be and to do so more effectively – as is about leading others.

Morris:Whenever I hear the phrase “shoot the messenger,” I think of corporate whistle-blowers. In your opinion, why are so many of them reviled and punished rather than praised and rewarded?

Gentile: Well, of course, there are many answers to that question. Whistle-blowers may be punished because they are seen as disloyal, as stepping outside of the organizational circle and exposing their own colleagues to negative consequences. They may be seen as somehow uncommitted, lacking in the strength or commitment that is needed to “get the job done.” And at the most basic level, they may be seen as “spoilers” who ruin the boss’s or their organization’s or their colleagues’ plan. At a deeper level, they may be reviled because they make visible to the rest of us the very things we don’t want to look at, about our own choices and our own failures to take a values-driven stand.

However, the Giving Voice To Values approach was designed precisely because the costs of whistle-blowing are often so high – not only to the whistle-blower and his or her family, but also to the organization itself, the whistle-blower’s colleagues, and so on. The thinking was that, in many of these whistle-blowing scenarios, there are likely other individuals, earlier on in the process, who also saw the problems but who did not feel that they had an option to speak or act. We wondered whether there was a way to better prepare and equip organizational participants to speak and act constructively, possibly collectively and early on, so as to avoid having to get to the point of costly and often devastating whistle-blowing scenarios.

Morris:After I read several of your articles, including those published by Harvard Business Review, here’s a question that occurred to me: What specifically can be done to establish and then sustain a culture within which everyone feels “safe” (if that’s the word) to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of rejection, ridicule, perhaps even abuse and punishment?

Gentile: I am so glad you asked that question. Often when people are introduced to the GVV approach to values-driven leadership development, they make the assumption that it is focused only on the individual. However, by more fully understanding how and why we can, as individuals, be more empowered and more skillful at voicing our values, we also are identifying a set of conditions that make it more likely that we will do so. These conditions become a sort of checklist for our own career choices – that is, they become a list of cultural characteristics we will look for in any potential employer. But these “enabling” conditions also become a sort of “recipe” for the kind of organizational culture and context that we will want to develop in the organizations that we lead.

Interestingly, many of the organizational characteristics that have been identified as conducive to effectively managing diversity and as conducive to fostering innovation and creativity in the workplace are also important for enabling employees to voice their values. Some examples include:

•  Invite alternate viewpoints. By creating explicit occasions to invite dissenting viewpoints on a new project, strategy or policy, leaders enable employees to feel that their questions are welcomed and appreciated.

•  Create “islands of time.” Although time pressures are a reality of business life that cannot be eliminated entirely and that even can create a beneficial focus at times, it can be powerful to set aside discrete occasions where individuals are invited to step back, to look at their projects from different vantages, to consider input not usually examined, and so on. This again encourages folks to express alternative points of view.

•  Share your own thought process – and of times you changed your mind because of your values. When leaders are willing to talk through their own decision-making process, making visible that values are an important consideration, this sends a powerful signal to employees.

•  Share stories of values-based choices. Communicating and celebrating the times when individuals have made values-based decisions is, of course, empowering and can provide role models. But perhaps more importantly, it removes the sense of futility that often prevents employees from speaking up.

•  Provide opportunities to pre-script typical responses to values conflicts. GVV is premised on the idea that both anticipating the kinds of values conflicts we are likely to encounter in a particular industry or firm or profession, and literally practicing responses to them, out loud, is hugely important.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

You are cordially invited to check out the resources at

www.MaryGentile.com

www.GivingVoiceToValues.org

The Power of Design

Here is an abbreviated version of an article written by the staff of Fast Company magazine that appeared in its June 2005 issue. It anticipates the subsequent publication of so many books (e.g. Roger Martin’s The Design of Business, Tim Brown’s Change by Design, and Thomas Lockwood’s Design Thinking) and an even greater number of articles on a subject that has yet to be fully explored.

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Look around you: The evidence of design’s power is everywhere. Customers expect, even demand, more from the design of everything they buy. Companies as varied as Adobe, Nokia, Toyota, and Virgin understand that great design is a prerequisite for turning consumers into customers. Whether it’s software or sippy cups, when something works right, looks right, and feels right, it sparks an emotional connection. People come to love it and loyalty soon follows, along with the three Rs: repurchase, reuse, and recommendations — benefits that fall directly to the bottom line. Such is the power of design.

Design is shaping the way we communicate and educate; it’s a catalyst for reinventing cities and reimagining nonprofits. Look at how companies such as Whirlpool are leveraging design as a competitive weapon — and stealing market share from formidable foes. Or how companies like Procter & Gamble and Samsung are using design thinking to recast their strategic thinking. As Ideo CEO Tim Brown puts it, “Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems. When you bring design thinking into that strategic discussion, you introduce a powerful tool to the purpose of the entire endeavor, which is to grow.”

Even a quick look at the design world shows that many of today’s designers defy easy categorization. They might have expertise in architecture, the graphic arts, or industrial design, but increasingly their work takes in many other fields: animation, anthropology, biology — just follow the alphabet. That’s why we devised five categories that encompass all of the design world and reflect this need to break through old boundaries.

Peak Performers have innovated over the long haul; they are design’s leaders and influential thinkers. Impact Players are those who, over the past year or so, have demonstrated design’s capacity to shape strategy.Game Changers are the agitators who are transforming the way we think about design. Collaborators are allies from outside the design world who work with designers to reinvent their organizations and even their cities. Next Generation billboards the rising stars who are creating design’s future.

If you are leading a team or company, mapping out a marketing strategy, innovating part of a supply chain, or streamlining a manufacturing operation — that is, if you are a decision maker facing a problem — think about this question: What are you and your organization doing to fully seize on design’s power and promise?

Col. Bernard Banks on “How Companies Can Develop Critical Thinkers and Creative Leaders”

Col. Bernard Banks

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Col. Bernard Banks 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 click here.

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This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military.

Today’s leaders are continually cajoled to act as “outside-the-box” thinkers. Such pronouncements give the impression the only sound solutions are ones never previously conceived. However, what industry and the military really strive to produce are leaders possessing strong critical and creative thinking skills. Both implicitly eschew the notion that a box even exists. What can industry learn from the military about how to advance the development of such leaders? One tangible example is how to construct and execute experiential training while continuing to meet the needs of customers and stakeholders.

Today’s organizations operate in what the U.S. Army War College defines as a VUCA environment. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are constant realities in the 21st century. The military seeks to prepare for the challenges it will inevitably face by crafting realistic training scenarios and routinely integrating such activities into its ongoing operations. The goal is not to teach them what to think, but to enhance their ability to think critically and creatively about the myriad of contingencies posed by a fluid environment — in essence to teach them how to think.

In industry, 90% of time is typically devoted to executing business actions, and less than 10% is allocated for increasing organizational and individual capabilities through training. The military, on the other hand, spends as much time training as it does executing — even in the midst of high stress/high risk operations. A unit in Afghanistan or Iraq will not suspend its experiential training program while involved in combat operations, because its ability to cogently and creatively address future challenges is enhanced by an enduring commitment to improving people’s competence and adaptability through experiential exercises, as well as actual experiences. But the real lesson for industry leaders is not simply that training is important. What’s really valuable is how the military crafts its training opportunities.

The Army defines leadership as both accomplishing the mission and improving the organization. Permanently improving the organization requires the development of its human capital. The military believes you substantively improve people by improving their ability to adroitly address challenges in their environment. Therefore, we do not seek to confine people’s thinking by restricting the solutions available to them, unless the proposed action violates any of these criteria: is it immoral, unsafe, unethical, or illegal?

In order to have people wrestle with what it takes to conceive of action plans where the aforementioned criteria constitute their only boundaries, the military structures its experiential training activities with wide parameters. Events are constructed to reflect ambiguity in the operating environment (while also targeting specific organization needs). Leaders are responsible for setting the conditions in every training event and resourcing them appropriately, as well as for reminding participants throughout the exercises that there are a myriad of potentially elegant solutions to each ill-defined challenge.

Two other things are important to take away from the military practice of engaging in routine experiential training. First, feedback is crucial. The military practice of conducting intermediate and final after-action reviews (AARs) — in which all participants examine the planning, preparation, execution, and follow-up of any significant organizational initiative — fosters a learning culture. Second, coaching is required to translate feedback into behavioral changes. Research has demonstrated that feedback without coaching rarely results in behavioral changes. So, all leaders must develop their capacity to coach others. Reflection and dialog lie at the heart of development. Experiential training creates the impetus for both to occur.

If you wait for the right time to train it’ll rarely occur. Today is the opportunity to prepare for tomorrow, regardless of how much else is going on.

*     *     *

Bernard (Bernie) Banks is a faculty member in the Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership at West Point and a Colonel in the United States Army. He has presented on the topic of leadership at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and consulted or provided training to companies including GE, IBM, Citigroup, Best Buy, and Procter & Gamble. He is a graduate of West Point and holds graduate degrees from Harvard, Northwestern, Columbia, and the U.S. Army War College.

Clutch: A book review by Bob Morris

Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t
Paul Sullivan
Portfolio/The Penguin Group (2010)

According to Paul Sullivan, “Clutch, simply put, is the ability to do what you do normally under immense pressure. It is also something that goes far beyond the world of sport. And while it has a mental component, it is not a mystical ability, nor somehow willing yourself to greatness…Being under great pressure is hard work. This is part of the reason why we are so impressed by people who seem immune to choking. These people come through in the clutch when others don’t…Just because someone is clutch in one area of his life does not mean he will be clutch in others…Transferring what you can do in a relaxed atmosphere to a tenser one is not easy – or else everyone would be clutch.”

That said, we now understand why Sullivan wrote this book: To share what he learned while seeking the answers two questions: First, “Why are some people so much better under pressure than other, seemingly equally talented people?” In response to the first question, Sullivan organizations his material according to six themes (Focus, Discipline, Adapting, Being present, Fear and Desire, and Double Clutch) and devotes a separate chapter to each. Then in Part II, he shifts his attention to explaining why some people choke and others don’t…why people choker in some situations…and nit in others. He also examines the implications and possible consequences of “overthinking.” Then, “Can people be clutch if they are not regularly in high-pressure situations?” Sullivan devotes Part III, “How to Be Clutch,” to answering the second question.

I especially appreciate how Sullivan anchors his observations and insights in a human context. For example, there is much of great value to learn from his discussion of the renowned attorney, David Boies, in the first chapter. “Early in his career, he started to focus on the same two questions for every trial. ‘First, what are the facts,’ he told me. ‘And then, second, what are the basic principles of the law here – not what were the detailed holdings of fifty cases, but just what are the basic principles of law that apply to this area’…Boies’s focus on having a clear understanding of the issues and laws creates a solid foundation. He builds the morality play around that.  However, it is not the play that helps him excel under pressure but his focus on telling the story in court. This ability allows him to withstand the immense pressure of any high-profile trial.”

Boies and other exemplars throughout the book commit years of time and effort to becoming able to excel despite indescribably severe pressure in one or two domains of their lives…but not in all. Tiger Woods is clutch during competition in golf but has encountered well-publicized problems in other areas. Few (if any) of those who read this book will be sufficiently talented to achieve success in competition with Boies or with Woods but everyone who reads this book can – over time and with sufficient concentration – manage more effectively stress and the pressures that create it. One final point: What Paul Sullivan learned and then shares in this book will be of substantial benefit to those who wish to alleviate or isolate and block out stress as well as to those who must cope with it.