The Dynamic Leader: Parenting Lessons for Growing a Team

In both life and work, change isn't just inevitable; it is a vital metric for assessing growth. My experiences as a parent have led me to a deeper understanding of this concept, offering insights that are readily applicable in a leadership role.

Children Grow Unapologetically

As a parent, it’s now obvious to me that children are constantly evolving, forging paths into the unknown with a defiance that seems to fuel their growth. Despite a parent’s natural instinct to shield them, children have a way of pushing boundaries, a clear indicator that change is underway. This undying curiosity and defiance not only foster growth but necessitate a constant evolution in parenting styles.

Today, my youngest is venturing into the world as a wobbly walker, necessitating a shift in my approach to offer more freedom and encouragement, but with a ready stance to help our toddler the most dangerous falls. Meanwhile, my older sons are becoming more socially independent, which requires me to step back and allow them to resolve their disputes over toys themselves. It's evident; as they grow, my parenting style needs to adapt, setting a cycle of growth and adaptation in motion.

The Echo in Leadership

In reflecting on this, I couldn't help but notice the clear parallel to leadership in a corporate setting. A leader's adaptability to the changing dynamics of the team and the operating environment is critical in fostering a team's growth. If a leadership style remains static, it likely signals a team stuck on a plateau, not achieving its potential.

A stagnant leadership style not only hampers growth but fails the team. It is thus imperative for us as leaders to continually reassess and tweak their approach to leadership, ensuring alignment with the team's developmental stage and the broader organizational context.

This brings me to a critical question: how often should a leader change their style? While a high frequency of change can create instability, a leadership style untouched for years is a recipe for failure. A quarterly review strikes a reasonable balance, encouraging regular adjustments to foster growth without plunging the team into a state of constant flux.

Conclusion: The Dynamic Dimension of Leadership

In the evolving landscapes of parenting and leadership alike, adaptability emerges not just as a virtue but as a vital gauge of growth and effectiveness. Thanks to my kids, I was able to internalize this pivotal point of view: understanding the dynamic or static nature of one's approach is central to assessing leadership prowess.

For leaders eager to foster growth, the practice of self-assessment can be straightforward and significantly revealing. It is as simple as taking a moment during your team's quarterly goal reviews to ask, "How has the team grown this quarter?" and "How should my leadership style evolve to support our growth in the upcoming period?"

By making this practice a routine, we can ensure that our leadership styles remain dynamic, evolving hand in hand with our teams' developmental trajectories, promoting sustained growth and productivity.

Photo by Julián Amé on Unsplash

It is what it isn’t: surfacing struggles as a key leadership responsibility

When we all use phrases like “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” - portraying that we’re doing fine while masking our struggle.

And honestly, that actually seems rational. Talking about struggles is really hard! And most of the time, we don’t know if the person we’re talking to actually cares or is just interested in making small talk.

And so we use a phrase like, “it is what it is” and move on.

In our culture, we have lots of phrases like these, which have a double meaning - where we’re trying to suggest that we’re doing fine enough but are actually feeling the weight of something difficult.

But just because it’s rational, doesn’t mean we should use phrases like these and just move on - letting the struggle remain hidden.

And if we’re taking the responsibility to lead, whether at work or at home, surfacing and resolving struggles is part of our responsibility as leaders.

The difficult question is how. That’s what I’ve been reflecting on and what this post is about: how do we surface and help resolve struggles when it’s rational to mask them?

Surfacing Struggles

Luckily, we often use consistent turns of phrases when we are surfacing struggles. If we listen for those tells, we have a chance to double down when we hear them and try to learn more.

I asked a question on facebook this week to try generating a list of these phrases which create a subtle and believable facade. Thank you to anyone who shared their two cents, these were the examples folks shared:

• “Living the dream.”

• “I’m fine.”

• “It’s going.”

• “I am okay.”

• “I’m hanging in there.”

• “That’s life.”

• “I’m here.”

• “Another day in paradise.”

• “Eff it.” (Used causally)

If we hear someone use phrases like these (or we say them ourselves) we can use it as a trigger to pause and explore, rather than as a cue to move on.

Surfacing Struggles With Kids

Kids are less obfuscating with their struggles, they come right out and share their little hearts out. They just struggle with being specific about their woes when then say or do stuff like:

• “I can’t do this!”

• “I’ll never figure this out!”

• “This is too hard!”

• [Screams and foot stomps]!

• [Pterodactyl noises with hands over ears]!

• “Poo-poo, poo-poo, POO-POO!”

• “I forgot how to walk!” (My personal favorite from our kids)

With kids, these can be cues to pause, gather our patience and saddle up to emotional coach through some big feelings.

Surfacing Struggles At Work

At work, we’re more opaque, deftly deflecting and misdirecting with our words to make our inner struggles seem like obstacles outside our control. How often have you heard phrases like this?:

• “We don’t have the resources.”

• “We’re too busy.”

• “It’s not our job.”

• “We’ll just CYA and keep it moving.”

• “We need to run this by the executive team first.” (or replace executive team with “legal”, “audit”, or “HR”)

• “We’re breaking the guidelines set out in [insert name of esoteric poorly defined policy that’s only tangentially related to the issue at hand].”

At work, it’s so easy to take these phrases at face value and assume that there’s nothing to explore. But there usually is.

Once I started listening for them, I found that these phrases of deflection came up at home and at work, all the time.

Resolving Struggles

When others use subtle but believable facades to avoid or deflect from their struggles, the key is to decipher what they would actually be saying if they felt like they could be honest and vulnerable.

If we can figure that out, we can meet the person in front of us (or ourselves in the mirror) where they are, understand their true needs, and then help them deal with their struggles.

When someone uses a subtle but believable deflection, they usually, deep down, mean something like this:

• “I’m overwhelmed. There’s so much happening and I can’t even figure out where to start.”

• “I’m scared. Things are not going well and I don’t know whether the future will be better.”

• “I don’t trust you. I need you to give me reasons to put my faith in you.”

• “I’m stuck. I’ve been trying to make this better but nothing seems to make a difference. I need help.”

• “I feel alone. I don’t feel the support of other people on this very difficult thing we’re going through.”

• “I don’t believe in myself. I need convincing that you won’t let me fail.”

• “I don’t care. To keep going, I need to feel like what we’re doing actually matters.”

• “I don’t trust our group. I’ve been let down before and I don’t want to be hurt again.”

• “I’m confused. I don’t know what to do or what’s expected of me.”

• “I’m ashamed. I need to feel included and that my behaviors don’t make my worth conditional.”

• “I feel guilty. I need encouragement and guidance that I can do better.”

• “I feel like I’m in danger. I need you to help me feel safe.”

If we discover the real root feeling or struggle, the posture we need to take is relatively straightforward. It’s rarely an easy struggle, but if we know what the person in front of us is actually dealing with, we actually have a chance to be helpful to them. If we don’t understand, we definitely won’t be helpful, even if we’re well-intentioned and try really hard.

Practical Skills Matter: Listening, Integrity, Compassion

The practical lesson that I’ve learned is twofold.

First, we need to listen very carefully for these very subtle deflections and instead of being fooled by them, we need to sharpen our focus. We need to pause and graciously lean in. These deflections are really tells that the person in front of us, or ourselves if we say them out loud, are actually struggling.

Second, we need to find a way to hear precisely what the person in front of us is having a hard time saying. That can happen in one of two ways. We either have to listen and observe very carefully, or, we need to show integrity and compassion so unflinchingly and consistently that the person in front of us feels safe enough to tell the truth.

Conclusions

Beyond the practical tools around how to surface and resolve struggles, there’s a broader point that’s important to make: we have a choice to make.

On the one hand, one could completely reject my point of view. Someone could say, “I’m not responsible for helping every person in front of me with every single one of their struggles. They need to suck it up, they need to figure some of this out on their own. They need to take responsibility for their own struggles, that’s not fully on me.”

Maybe that’s true, at least to some degree. In my life, I’ve found it impossible to help someone who’s not enrolled in the journey of finding a better way. And, it’s also true that we have practical limits. We as individuals can’t possibly do this all ourselves - there’s not enough time or energy available to us to take every struggle of the people we care about onto our shoulders alone.

But at the same time, I believe we need to try because we owe it to each other. We have all struggled. We have all needed someone to help us surface and resolve our struggles. We all have been helped, by someone, at some time. Nobody in this world has done it alone.

And if we want to move forward - whether it’s with our kids at home or with our colleagues at work - someone has to be responsible for it.

So when someone in our orbit next says something like, “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” I hope we all choose to say something like, “oh really, what do you mean?” Instead of letting the conversation pass as if nothing happened.

That’s the choice we have ahead of us. Let’s choose to listen deeply.

Photo by Christina Spiliotopoulou on Unsplash

My Dream: Bringing CX to State and Local Government

My number one mission for my professional life is to help government organizations become high performing. If every government were high performing, I think it would change the trajectory of human history for the better in a big way.

One way to do that is to bring customer experience (CX) principles pioneered in the private sector and some forward thinking places (like the US Federal Government, the UK Government, or the Government of Estonia) and bring them to State and Local Government.

It is my dream to create CX capabilities in City and State Government in Michigan and have our state be a model for how CX can work at the State and Local level across the country.

Dreams don’t come true unless you talk about them. So I’m talking about it.

If you have the same mission or the same dream, I want to meet you. If you have friends or colleagues who have similar missions or dream, I want to meet them too. We who care about high performing, citizen-centric government want to make this happen. I want to play the role that I can play to bring CX to State and Local Government and I want to help you on your journey. Full stop.

I have so much more to say about what this could be, but I had to start somewhere. I had ChatGPT help me take some thoughts in my head and convert them into a Team Charter and a Job Description for the head of that team.

What do you think? Have you seen this? What would work? What’s missing? Maybe we can make something happen together, which is exactly why I’m putting a tiny morsel of this idea out there for those who care to react to.

The country and world are already moving to more responsive, networked, citizen-centric models of how government can work. Let’s hasten that transformation by bringing CX principles to the work our City and State Governments do every day.

I can’t wait to hear from you.

-Neil

—

Team Charter for Customer Experience (CX) Improvement in City or State Government

Purpose (Why?)

To transform and enhance the quality of government services and citizens’ daily life through CX methodologies. High impact domains include touchpoints with significant impact for the citizens who are engaged (e.g., support for impoverished families obtaining benefits) and those touchpoints affecting all citizens (e.g., tax payments, vehicular transportation), and touchpoints with high community interest.

Objectives (What Result Are We Trying to Create?)

• Increase citizen satisfaction

• Strengthen trust in government

• Elevate the quality of life for residents, visitors, and businesses

Scope (What?)

This initiative will focus on the top 5-7 stakeholders personas driving the most value to start:

• Improve how citizens experience government services, daily life, and vital community aspects

• Drive change cross-functionally and at scale across interaction channels

• Foster tangible improvements in the quality of life

• Create and align KPIs with community priorities and establish ways to measure and communicate success

Activities (How?)

• Segment residents, visitors, businesses, and identify top personas and touchpoints

• Develop customer personas, journey maps, and choose highest-value problem areas to focus on for each persona

• Prioritize and create an improvement roadmap

• Partner with various stakeholders to drive change

• Measure results, gather feedback, and align with community priorities

• Share progress regularly and communicate value to stakeholders to gain momentum and support

Team and Key Stakeholders (Who?)

• Leadership: A head with experience in leadership, CX methods, data, technology, innovation, and intrapreneurship

• Department Liaisons: Individuals driving CX within different governmental departments

• External Partners: Collaboration with other government agencies, citizen groups, foundations, the business community, and vendors

• Core Team: A mix of professionals with expertise in relationship management, digital, innovation, leadership, and related fields

Timeline and Next Steps (When?)

• 0-6 Months: Segmentation, personas, and journey mapping

• 6-12 Months: Problem analysis and a prioritized roadmap creation

• 9-18 Months: Tangible improvements and iterative changes in focus areas

• Ongoing: Continual refinement and adaptation to changing needs and priorities

—

Job Description: CX Improvement Team Leader

Position Overview:

As the CX Improvement Team Leader for City or State Government, you will drive transformative change to enhance citizens’ experience with government services and improve quality of life for citizens in this community. You will guide a cross-functional team to create innovative solutions, aligning with community priorities and creating tangible improvements in quality of life.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and inspire a diverse team to achieve objectives

• Create and align KPIs, establish methods for measurement

• Develop and execute an improvement roadmap

• Engage with stakeholders across government agencies, citizen groups, businesses, and more

• Regularly share progress and communicate the value of initiatives to gain momentum and support

• Collaborate with external partners and vendors as needed

• Foster an innovative and responsive culture within the team

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in customer experience, leadership, technology, innovation, or related fields

• Proven ability to drive change at scale across various channels

• Strong communication and relationship management skills

• Experience in government, public policy, or community engagement is preferred

• A visionary leader with a passion for improving lives and a commitment to public service

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

A practitioner’s take on goals and dreams

There is a time and a place for SMART goals.

Like when we want or have to achieve something that’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. (See what I did there?)

Put another way, sometimes we need to outline a goal like this: “I will publish my book in 2023, and have 1000 people download or purchase it within 6 months of publication.”

But there are times when SMART goals are precisely the wrong approach to take.

Sometimes we have to dream. And a good dream is probably the inverse of a SMART goal: A audacious, unorthodox, and slow to achieve.

Put another way, sometimes we need to put a dream out there, something like: “I dream about a day when America is a more trusting place, probably because our government is innovative and citizen centric, we have skilled leaders on every block, and our culture becomes one where everyone reflects on their own actions and is committed to developing their own character.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about both, as a real person, living a real life, trying to achieve goals and dreams for real:

First, dreams are a paradox. The most visionary dream feel too crazy to talk about - and so we often don’t talk about them. At the same time, the surest way to never achieve a dream is to keep it a secret. The only way our dreams become a reality is if we talk about them even when it feels awkward.

Second, it’s really important to know whether the situation at hand requires a goal or a dream. If the situation is well understood and we need to “get it done”…goals all day.

But if we’re trying to imagine a better future, and contemplate a new way of being, dreams are the only way.

Third, both goals and dreams are worthless if they are not specific. If the finish line is blurry, collective action grinds to a halt, especially when there’s no hierarchy to scare people into action.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both dreams and goals require an action which deviates from the status quo. That’s why we dream and set goals in the first place, we want something to be different.

A good question is: “Do my goals and dreams require me to act differently? If so, how? If not, how do I get better goals and dreams?”

That’s there’s the unlock.

Photo by Estee Janssens on Unsplash.

Leaders must create profound silence

Imagine walking into a bustling coffee shop. The whirring of espresso machines, heated debates over the latest news, and the clatter of cups and saucers create an overwhelming din. Now, imagine if all those noises were amplified by a microphone and broadcast over a loudspeaker as you sipped your coffee.

But finally, imagine if someone in the middle of this chaos could flick a switch, transforming the noise into a hum, the hum into a whisper, and finally, the whisper into silence. Suddenly, in the quiet, you can hear the person next to you, the words of a book being read aloud, or even your own thoughts. This is the power of creating silence.

We live in a world of ceaseless noise. At work, we often find that the louder we are – the more assertive in meetings, the more vocal in lobbying for promotions, the more boisterous in attracting customers and followers – the more recognition we receive. Particularly in large organizations, there's a perceived correlation between the volume of one's voice and the likelihood of reward.

Likewise, our family and community lives are marked by volume, though less as an incentive and more as a trap. Community meetings frequently devolve into verbal contests of who can yell the loudest. As parents, we often get swept up in hectic schedules and an unending flood of information, resorting to yelling out of sheer desperation to keep things under control.

Then there's social media, which amplifies this noise to near-deafening levels. It equips everyone with a microphone, fostering an environment that rewards those who shout the loudest. I'm not criticizing influencers or social media—a trend that's fashionable to critique these days. I'm merely labeling our day-to-day American life for what it is: incredibly loud.

The usual advice is to promote listening, to foster better listeners in this noisy world. But listening, as underrated as it is, may not suffice. Amid the cacophony of voices and plethora of microphones, effective listening becomes an Everest to climb. What we need, in professional settings, at home, or within our communities, is the ability to create silence.

Creating silence differs from listening. Listening involves one person attentively comprehending and empathizing with another—a personal act. On the other hand, creating silence entails reducing the ambient noise, enabling everyone in that space to hear and listen. While listening is a two-person tango, creating silence resembles providing noise-cancelling headphones for the entire room.

So, what does 'creating silence' look like? At work, it might be the pause in a meeting that encourages thoughtful responses, allowing even the quietest person to be heard and respected. It could be a company creating a safe space for critical feedback or praise from its customers and partners. It's the breakthrough idea emerging during a moment of quiet reflection in a workshop. It's a team communicating so effectively that members eagerly anticipate meetings or even deem them unnecessary.

In our homes and communities, creating silence might be even more crucial. It happens when those in power amplify the voices of the less powerful—be it our children or marginalized groups. It's when community leaders stay calm and receptive, encouraging constructive dialogues even when faced with challenging questions. It's the genuine connection made during a family dinner where everyone feels comfortable enough to discuss their week, free from platitudes and arguments.

Creating silence requires a particular kind of swagger—not an arrogant narcissism, but a quiet confidence stemming from self-belief and humility. Only when we are secure within ourselves can we create the silence that allows others to flourish.

Creating silence isn't without challenges, though. It could be misconstrued as suppressing voices or dismissing dissent. In our quest for quiet, we might unintentionally stifle vibrant discussion or inhibit creative conflict. The genuine creation of silence isn't about muffling noise but about cultivating an environment where every voice gets a chance to be heard without being drowned out. It's about discerning when to speak, when to listen, and when to simply relish the silence.

There's also a risk of silence being associated with absence or inactivity. In our fast-paced world, we're conditioned to see quiet as wasted time or empty space needing to be filled. We must remember that silence isn't emptiness but a space full of potential. In silence, we find room to think, reflect, and connect on a deeper level.

Perhaps the concept of creating silence has never been as vital as it is now, given our world's unprecedented noise levels. And why is it so crucial? Because silence makes space for collaboration and connection. We can't collaborate or build relationships unless we hear each other. Even the best listener can't function if they can't hear. That's why we must create silence.

So, where do we start? Like most things, we start with ourselves. We begin by creating silence within our own minds. We can work to silence catchy songs, the hum of to-do lists, or our own inner critics. Whether it's through meditation, self-expression, therapy, or exercise, we need to create silence so we can listen to ourselves.

But we mustn't stop there. Our teams, families, and communities need us to create enough silence so that the shouting subsides. Then we can stop worrying about being heard and truly begin to listen.

As we learn to create this silence, let's maintain an open dialogue about what works and what doesn't. Because in a world that's becoming louder, it's not just about who can shout the loudest, but also about who can create the most profound silence.

How to build a Superteam

In today's dynamic business landscape, the concept of building high-performing teams and managing change has been extensively discussed in management and organization courses.

However, as I've gained real-world experience, I've come to realize that the messy reality we face as leaders is far different from the pristine case studies we encountered in school. Collaborating with other teams, even within high-performing organizations, presents unique challenges that demand a fresh perspective.

The Dilemma of Collaboration for High-Performing Teams

As high-performing teams, we often find ourselves operating within larger enterprises, requiring collaboration with teams from other departments and divisions. However, the reality is that not all these teams are high-performing themselves, which poses a significant challenge. Most enterprises lack the luxury of elite talent, and even the most high-performing teams can burn out if burdened with carrying the weight of others.

Over time, organizations tend to regress to the mean, losing their edge and succumbing to stagnation. If we truly aspire to change our companies, communities, markets, or even the world, simply building high-performing teams is not enough. We must contemplate the purpose of a team more broadly and ambitiously.

What we need are Superteams.

As I define it, a Superteam meets two criteria:

1. A Superteam is a high-performing team that's able to achieve difficult, aspirational goals.

2. A Superteam elevates the performance of other teams in their ecosystem (e.g., their enterprise, their community, their industry, etc.).

To be clear, I mean this stringently. Superteams not only fulfill their own objectives and deliver what they signed up for but also export their culture. Through doing their work, Superteams create a halo that elevates the performances of the people and partners they collaborate with. They don't regress to the mean; they raise the mean. Superteams, in essence, create a feedback loop of positive culture that is essential to make change at the scale of entire ecosystems.

One way to think of this is the difference between a race to the bottom and a race to the top. In a race to the bottom, the lowest-performing teams in an ecosystem become the bottlenecks. Without intervention, these low-performing teams repeatedly impede progress, wearing down even high-performing teams. Eventually, the enterprise performs to the level of that sclerotic department. This is the norm, the race to the bottom where organizations get stale and regress to the mean.

Superteams change this dynamic. They export their culture to those low-performing teams that are usually the bottlenecks in the organization, making them slightly better. This improvement gets, reinforced, and creates a transformative, positive feedback loop. As other teams achieve more, confidence in the lower-performing department grows. This is the race to the top, where raising the mean becomes possible.

The biggest beneficiary of this feedback loop, however, is not the lower-performing team—it's actually the Superteam itself. Once they elevate the teams around them, Superteams can push the boundaries even further, reinvesting their efforts in pushing the bar higher. This constant pushing of the boundary raises the mean for everyone, ultimately changing the ecosystem and the world.

How to Build a Superteam

The first step to building a Superteam is to establish a high-performing team that consistently achieves its goals. Moreover, a Superteam cannot have a toxic culture since it is difficult, unsustainable, and dangerous to export such a culture.

Scholars such as Adam Grant, who emphasizes the importance of fostering a culture of collaboration, have extensively studied how to build high-performing teams with positive cultures. Drawing from their work, particularly in positive organizational scholarship, we can further expand our understanding of Superteams.

In addition to the exceptional work of these scholars, it is essential to focus on the second criterion for a Superteam: elevating the performance of other teams in the ecosystem. How can a team work in a way that raises the performance of others they collaborate with? To achieve this, I propose four behaviors that make a significant difference.

First, a Superteam must act with positive deviance. Superteams should feel materially different from average teams in its ecosystem. Whether in composition, meeting structures, celebration of success, language, or bringing energy and fun, Superteams challenge conventions. Such explicit differences not only generate above-average results but also create a safe space for others to act differently.

Second, a Superteam must be self-reflective and constantly strive to understand and improve how it works. Holding retrospectives, conducting after-action reviews, or relentlessly measuring results and gathering customer feedback allows Superteams to make adjustments and changes with agility. This understanding of internal mechanics and the ability to transmit tacit knowledge of the culture enable every team member to become an exporter of the Superteam's culture.

Third, a Superteam walks the line between open and closed, maintaining a semi-permeable boundary. While being open and transparent is crucial for exporting the team's culture, maintaining a strong boundary is equally important. Being overly collaborative or influenced by the prevailing culture can hinder positive deviance. Striking the right balance allows Superteams to create space for exporting their culture while protecting it from easy corruption.

Finally, a Superteam must act with uncommon humility and orientation to purpose. By embracing the belief that "you can accomplish a lot more when you don't care who gets the credit," Superteams prioritize the greater purpose of raising the mean instead of seeking personal recognition. This humility allows them to make cultural improvements without expecting individual accolades, empowering others to adopt and embrace the exported culture.

Over the years, I've become skeptical of mere "culture change initiatives." True culture change requires more than rah-rah speeches and company-wide emails. Culture change demands role modeling and the deliberate cultivation of Superteams. Any team within an ecosystem can change its culture and aspire to build Superteams that export their culture, ultimately transforming the world around them for the better.

Leadership in the Era of AI

Just as the invention of the wheel revolutionized transportation and societies thousands of years ago, we might actually stand on the brink of a new era. One where generative AI, like ChatGPT, could transform our way of life and our economy. The potential impact of AI on human societies remains uncharted, yet it could prove to be as significant as the wheel, if not more so.

Let's delve into this analogy. If you were tasked to move dirt from one place to another, initially, you would use a shovel, moving one shovelful at a time. Then, the wheel gets invented. This innovation gives birth to the wheelbarrow—a simple bucket placed atop a wheel—enabling you to carry 10 or 15 shovelfuls at once, and even transport dirt beyond your yard.

But, as we know, the wheel didn't stop at wheelbarrows. It set the stage for a myriad of transportation advancements from horse-drawn buggies, automobiles, semi-trucks, to trains. Now, we can move dirt by the millions of shovelfuls across thousands of miles. This monumental shift took thousands of years, but the exponential impact of the wheel on humanity is undeniable.

Like the wheel, generative AI could be a foundational invention. Already, people are starting to build wheelbarrow-like applications on top of generative AI, with small but impactful use cases emerging seemingly every day: like in computer programming, songwriting, or medical diagnosis.

This is only the beginning, much like the initial advent of the wheelbarrow. Just as the wheelbarrow was a precursor to larger transportation modes, these initial applications of generative AI mark the start of much more profound implications in various domains.

One area in particular where I'm excited to see this potential unfold is leadership. As we stand on the brink of this new era, we find ourselves transitioning from a leadership style that can only influence what we touch, constrained by our own time. Many of us live "meeting to meeting", unable to manage a team of more than 7-10 people directly. Even good systems can only help so much in exceeding linear growth in team performance.

However, with the advent of generative AI, we're embarking on a new journey, akin to moving from the shovel to the wheelbarrow. Tools like ChatGPT can serve as our new 'wheel', helping us leverage our leadership abilities. In my own experiments, I've seen some promising beginnings:

A project manager can use ChatGPT to create a project charter that scopes out a new project outside their primary domain of expertise. This can be done at a higher quality and in one quarter or one tenth of the usual time.

A product manager can transcribe a meeting and use ChatGPT to create user stories for an agile backlog. They could also quickly develop or refine a product vision, roadmap, and OKRs for annual planning—achieving higher quality in a fraction of the time.

A people leader can use ChatGPT as a coach to improve their ability to lead a team, relying on the tool as an executive coach to boost their people leadership skills faster and more cost-effectively than was possible before.

These are merely the wheelbarrow-phase applications of generative AI applied to leadership. Now, let's imagine the potential for '18-wheeler' level impact. Given the pace of AI development, it's plausible that this kind of 100x or 1000x impact on leadership could be realized in mere decades, or possibly even years:

Imagine a project manager using AI to manage hundreds of geographically distributed teams across the globe, all working on life-saving interventions like installing mosquito nets or sanitation systems. If an AI assistant could automatically communicate with teams by monitoring their communications, asking for updates, and creating risk-alleviating recommendations for a human to review, a project manager could focus on solving only the most complex problems, instead of 'herding cats.'

Consider a product manager who could ingest data on product usage and customer feedback. The AI could not only assist with administrative work like drafting user stories, but also identify the highest-value problems to solve for customers, brainstorm technical solutions leading to breakthrough features, create low-fidelity digital prototypes for user testing, and even actively participate in a sprint retrospective with ideas on how to improve team velocity.

Envision a people leader who could help their teams set up their own personal AI coaches. These AI coaches could observe team members and provide them with direct, unbiased feedback on their performance in real time. If all performance data were anonymized and aggregated, a company could identify strategies for improving the enterprise’s management systems and match every person people to the projects and tasks they can thrive, and are best suited for, and actually enjoy.

Nobody has invented this future, yet. But the potential is there. What if we could increase the return on investment in leadership not by 2x or 5x, but by 50x or 100x? What if the quality of leadership, across all sectors, was 50 to 100 times better than it is today?

We should be dreaming big. It's uncertain whether generative AI will be as impactful as the wheel, but imagining the possibilities is the first step towards making them a reality.

Generative AI holds the potential to revolutionize not only computer programming but also leadership. Such a revolutionary improvement in leadership could lead to a drastically improved world.

When it comes to the impact of Generative AI on leadership, the sky's the limit. Let's dream BIG.

Photo by Ēriks Irmejs on Unsplash

The Leadership Trifecta: Management, Leadership, Authorship

When we choose to lead, the first question we must answer is: who are we leading for?

Are we choosing to lead to enrich ourselves or everyone? Are we doing this for higher pay, social status, career advancement, and spoils? Or, are we doing this to improve welfare for everyone, enhance freedom and inclusion, or better the community?

If you're not in it for everyone (including yourself, but not exclusively or above others), you might as well stop reading. I am not your guy - there are plenty of others who have better ideas about power, career advancement, or gaining increased social status.

But if you're in it for everyone, if you're willing to take the difficult path to do the right thing for everyone in the right way, you probably struggle with the same questions I do, including this big one: what does choosing to lead even entail? Do I need to lead or manage? What am I even trying to do?

Is the goal management or leadership?

For many years, I’ve rolled my eyes whenever someone starts talking about leadership versus management or how we need people to transcend from being “managers” and elevate their game to become “leaders.” In my head, I'd question anytime this leadership vs. management paradigm comes up: “what are we even talking about?”

After many years, I finally have a point of view on this tired dialogue: management, leadership, and authorship all matter. What matters is the nuance, because the three affect dynamics at different levels of organization: management affects individual dynamics, leadership affects team dynamics, and authorship affects ecosystem dynamics.

Management, Leadership, and Authorship

Management, though the term itself is not what matters, can be defined as the practice of influencing individual performance. Think "1 on 1" when considering management. In management mode, the goal is to ensure that every individual is contributing their utmost.

Management primarily influences individual dynamics. Hence, when discussing management, we often refer to directing work, coaching, providing feedback, and developing talent. These are the elements that shape individual performance.

Similarly, leadership can be viewed as the practice of enhancing team performance as a collective unit. Think "the sum is greater than its parts" when contemplating leadership. In leadership mode, the goal is to ensure the team can make the highest possible contribution as a single unit.

Leadership predominantly affects team dynamics, which is why discussions about leadership often involve vision, strategy, culture, and processes. These elements impact the performance of a team functioning as a single unit.

Authorship, however, is the practice of influencing the performance of an entire network of teams and organizations aiming to achieve collective impact, often without formal or centralized coordination.

Authorship has become more feasible in recent history due to the rise of the internet. Unlike 50 years ago, many of us now have the opportunity to consider authorship because we can communicate with entire networks of people.

When considering authorship, think of it as being part of a movement that's larger than ourselves. In authorship mode, the goal is to mobilize an entire network to benefit an entire ecosystem - whether it's an industry, a community, a specific social issue or constituency, or in some cases, society as a whole. The aim is to ensure that the entire network is making the highest possible positive contribution to its focused ecosystem.

Authorship primarily affects ecosystem dynamics. That's why, when I ponder authorship, I think about concepts like purpose, narratives, opportunity structures, platforms, and shaping strategies. These elements influence entire networks and mobilize them to create a collective impact, particularly when they're not part of the same formal organization.

To illustrate, consider a software development company. In the context of management, the team lead may ensure every developer is performing at their best by providing guidance, setting clear expectations, and offering constructive feedback.

When it comes to leadership, the same team lead would be responsible for setting the vision for their team, aligning it with the company's goals, creating a positive team culture, and facilitating effective communication.

Authorship, however, would usually (but not necessarily) involve the CEO or top management. They would work towards building industry partnerships, contributing to open-source projects, or organizing industry conferences, ultimately aiming to influence the broader tech ecosystem, perhaps to achieve a broader aim like improving growth in their industry or solving a social problem - like privacy or social cohesion - through technology.

It all boils down to three questions:

Management question: On a scale of 1 to 100 how much of my potential to make a positive impact am I actually making?

Leadership question: On a scale of 1 to 100, how much of our team’s potential to make a positive impact are we actually making?

Authorship question: On a scale of 1 to 100, how much of our potential positive impact are we making, together with our partners, on our ecosystem or the broader world?

To assess your potential impact on a scale from 1 to 100, start by understanding the maximum positive impact you, your team, or your ecosystem could theoretically achieve. This '100' could be based on benchmarks, best practices, or even ambitious goals. Then, honestly evaluate how close you are to that maximum potential. This is not a perfect science and will require introspection, feedback, and perhaps even some experimentation. The important thing is to have a reference point that helps you understand where you are and where you could go.

In my own practice of leading, these are the questions I have been starting to ask myself and others. These three questions are incredibly helpful and revealing if answered honestly.

To really make a positive impact, I’ve found that it’s important to ensure all three dynamics - individual, team, and ecosystem - are examined honestly. If we truly are doing this to benefit everyone (ourselves included) we need to be good at management, leadership, and authorship.

Developing skills in these three areas isn't always straightforward, but you can start small. The easiest way I know of is to begin asking these three questions. If you’re in a 1-on-1 meeting or even conducting your own self-reflection, ask the management question. If you’re in a weekly team meeting, ask the leadership question. If you’re meeting with a larger team or a key partner, ask the ecosystem question.

Beginning with honest feedback initiates a continuous improvement engine that leads to enhancement in our capabilities of management, leadership, and authorship.

In conclusion, whether we're discussing management, leadership, or authorship, it's clear that each plays a crucial role in achieving positive impact. From enhancing individual performance to influencing entire ecosystems, each area has its distinct but interrelated role. As leaders, our challenge and opportunity lie in understanding these nuances and developing our capabilities in all three areas. Remember, it's not about choosing between management, leadership, and authorship - it's about embracing all three to maximize our collective potential.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these three aspects of leading - management, leadership, and authorship. How have you balanced these roles in your own leadership journey? What challenges have you faced? Feel free to share your experiences and insights in the comments below or reach out to me personally.

Photo by Aksham Abdul Gadhir on Unsplash

Maximizing Organizational Performance: 7 Key Questions

Leaders are often charged with "making the organization perform better." That's an incredibly difficult mission unless we understand what an organization, especially ours, is and how it works. Only then can we diagnose organizational problems and make improvements.

This is a pretty long, nerdy post, so here's the tl;dr for those in a hurry, and for those who need a little taste to prove the read is worth it.

If you're trying to make an organization perform better, start by asking (just) seven questions. I think you'll make sense of your biggest problems pretty quickly:

1. Value Proposition: What do we create that other people are willing to sacrifice something (i.e., pay) for?

2. Market: Who cares about what we have to offer?

3. Capabilities: What are the handful of things we really need to be good at to create something of value?

4. Go-to-Market Systems: How will we engage with our market?

5. Resource Capture Systems: How does the organization get the resources it needs?

6. Collective Action Systems: How will we work together to turn our capabilities into something of value?

7. Investment Systems: How will we develop the capabilities that matter most?

8. Making organizations better is hard, but it doesn't have to be complicated.

Leaders are often charged to “make the organization perform better”. That’s an incredibly difficult mission unless we understand what an organizations, especially ours, is and how it works. Only then can we diagnose organizational problems and make improvements.

This is a pretty long, nerdy, post so here’s the tl;dr for those in a hurry, and for those that need a little taste to prove the read is worth it.

If you’re trying to make understand and organization and help it perform better, start with asking (just) seven questions. I think you’ll make sense of your biggest problems pretty quickly:

1. Value Proposition: What do we create that other people are willing to sacrifice something (i.e., pay) for?

2. Market: Who cares about what we have to offer?

3. Capabilities: What are the handful of things we really need to be good at to create something of value?

4. Go-to-Market Systems: How will we engage with our market?

5. Resource Capture Systems: How does the organization get the resources it needs?

6. Collective Action Systems: How will we work together to turn our capabilities into something of value?

7. Investment Systems: How will fwe develop the capabilities that matter most?

Making organizations better is hard, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

The Seven-Part Model of Organizations

So, what is an organization?

I'd propose that an organization, at its simplest, is only made up of seven components:

• Value Proposition

• Market

• Capabilities

• Go-to-Market Systems

• Resource Capture Systems

• Collective Action Systems

• Investment Systems

If we can understand these seven things about an organization, we can understand how it works and consequently make it perform better. There are certainly other models and frameworks for understanding organizations (e.g., McKinsey 7-S, Business Model Canvas, Afuah Business Model Innovation Framework) which serve specific purposes - and I do like those.

This seven-part model of organizations is the best I've been able to produce which maintains simplicity while still having broad explanatory power for any organization, not just businesses. Each component of the model answers an important question that an organization leader should understand.

The seven parts (Detail)

The first three parts of the model are what I think of as the outputs - they're the core foundation of what an organization is: a Value Proposition, a Market, and a set of Capabilities.

Value Proposition: What do we create that other people are willing to sacrifice something (i.e., pay) for?

The Value Proposition is the core of an organization. What do they produce or achieve? What is the good or the service? What makes them unique and different relative to other alternatives? This is the bedrock from which everything else can be understood. Why? Because the Value Prop is where the internal and external view of the organization come together - it's where the rubber meets the road.

It's worth noting that every stakeholder of the organization has to be satisfied by the Value Proposition if they are to engage with the organization: customers, constituents, shareholders, funders, donors, employees, suppliers, communities, etc.

Market: Who cares about what we have to offer?

Understanding the Market is also core to an organization because any organization needs to find product-market fit to survive. This question really has two subcomponents to understand: who the people are and what job they need to be done or need that they have that they're willing to sacrifice for.

It's not just businesses that need to clearly understand their Markets - governments, non-profits, and even families need to understand their Market. Why? Because no organization has unlimited resources, and if the Value Proposition doesn't match the Market the organization is trying to serve, the organization won't be able to convince the Market to part with resources that the organization needs to survive - whether that's sales, time, donations, tax revenues, or in the case of a family, love and attention from family members.

Capabilities: What are the handful of things we really need to be good at to create something of value?

Thus far, we've talked about what business nerd types call "product-market fit," which really takes the view that the way to understand an organization is to look at how it relates to its external environment.

But there's also another school of thought that believes a firm is best understood from the inside out - which is where Capabilities come in.

Capabilities are the stuff that the organization has or is able to do which they need to be able to produce their Value Proposition. These could be things like intellectual property or knowledge, skills, brand equity, technologies, or information.

Of course, not all Capabilities are created equal. When I talk about Capabilities, I'm probably closer to what the legendary CK Prahalad describes as "core competence." Let's assume our organization is a shoe manufacturer. Some of the most important Capabilities probably are things like designing shoes, recruiting brand ambassadors, and manufacturing and shipping cheaply.

The shoe company probably also has to do things like buy pens and pencils - so sure, buying office supplies is a Capability of the firm, but it's not a core Capability to its Value Proposition of producing shoes. When I say "Capabilities," I'm talking about the "core" stuff that's essential for delivering the Value Proposition.

Finally, we can think of how Capabilities interact with the Value Proposition as an analog to product-market fit, let's call it "product-capability fit." Aligning the organization with its external environment is just as important as aligning it to its internal environment.

When all three core outputs - Value Proposition, Market, and Capabilities - are in sync, that's when an organization can really perform and do something quite special.

In addition to the three core outputs, Organizations also have systems to actually do things. These are the last four components of the model. I think of it like the four things that make up an organization's "operating system."

Go-to-Market Systems: How will we engage with our Market?

How an organization "goes to market" is a core part of how an organization operates. Because after all, if the product or service never meets the Market, no value can ever be exchanged. The Market never gets the value it needs, and the organization never gets the resources it needs. A good framework for this is the classic marketing framework called the 4Ps: Price, Product, Place, and Promotion.

But this part of the organization's "operating system" need not be derived from private sector practice. Governments, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and others all have a system for engaging with their Market; they might just call it something like "service delivery model," "logic model," "engagement model," or something else similar.

The key to remember here is that go-to-market systems are not how parties within the organization work together; it's how the organization engages with its Market.

Resource Capture Systems: How will the organization get the resources it needs?

Just like a plant or an animal, organizations need resources to survive. But instead of things like food, sunlight, water, and oxygen, and carbon dioxide, organizations need things like money, materials, talent, user feedback, information, attention, and more.

So if you're an organizational leader, it's critical to understand what resources the organization needs most, and having a solid plan to get them. Maybe it's a sales process or levying of a tax. Maybe it's donations and fundraising. Maybe for resources like talent, it's employer branding or a culture that makes people want to work for the organization.

This list of examples isn't meant to be comprehensive, of course. The point is that organizations need lots of resources (not just money) and should have a solid plan for securing the most important resources they need.

Collective Action Systems: How will we work together to turn our capabilities into something of value?

Teamwork makes the dream work, right? I'd argue that's even an understatement. The third aspect of the organization's operating system is collective action.

This includes things like operations, organization structure, objective setting, project management approaches, and other common topics that fall into the realm of management, leadership, and "culture."

But I think it's more comprehensive than this - concepts like mission, purpose, and values, decision chartering, strategic communications, to name a few, are of growing importance and fall into the broad realm of collective action, too.

Why? Two reasons: 1) organizations need to move faster and therefore need people to make decisions without asking permission from their manager, and, 2) organizations increasingly have to work with an entire network of partners across many different platforms to produce their Value Proposition. These less-common aspects of an organization's collective action systems help especially with these challenges born of agility.

So all in all, it's essential to understand how an organization takes all its Capabilities and works as a collective to deliver its Value Proposition - and it's much deeper than just what's on an org chart or process map.

Investment Systems: How do we develop the capabilities that matter most?

It's obvious to say this, but the world changes. The Market changes. Expectations of talent change. Lots of things change, all the time. And as a result, our organizations need to adapt themselves to survive - again, just like Darwin's finches.

But what does that really mean? What it means more specifically is that over time the Capabilities an organization needs to deliver its Value Proposition to its Market changes over time. And as we all know, enhanced Capabilities don't grow on trees - it takes work and investment, of time, effort, money, and more.

That's where the final aspect of an organization's operating system comes in - the organization needs systems to figure out what Capabilities they need and then develop them. In a business, this could mean things like "capital allocation," "leadership development," "operations improvement," or "technology deployment."

But the need for Investment Systems applies broadly across the organizational world, too, not just companies.

As parents, for example, my wife and I realized that we needed to invest in our Capabilities to help our son, who was having a hard time with feelings and emotional control. We had never needed this "capability" before - our "market" had changed, and our Value Proposition as parents wasn't cutting it anymore.

So we read a ton of material from Dr. Becky and started working with a child and family-focused therapist. We put in the time and money to enhance our "capabilities" as a family organization - and it worked.

Again, because the world changes, all organizations need systems to invest in themselves to improve their capabilities.

My Pitch for Why This Matters

At the end of the day, most of us don't need or even want fancy frameworks. We want and need something that works.

I wanted to share this framework because this is what I'm starting to use as a practitioner - and it's helped me make sense of lots of organizations I've been involved with, from the company I work for to my family.

If you're someone - in any type of organization, large or small - I hope you find this very simple set of seven questions to help your organization perform better.

Making organizations better is hard, but it doesn't have to be complicated.

Preventing Trust-killers

There are three general types of problems.

Type A problems are where the state of the art isn’t good enough. Even if we executed to the fullest extent of possible we’d still fall short. Cancer is like this. Even if the state of the art was applied with full fidelity, tons of people would suffer and die early deaths.

Type B problems are where the state of the art solutions would be good enough, but something’s not going to plan. Many operational problems are like this. We have a process, but life is messy so things go wrong even though the issue was “never supposed to happen.” So we fix the problem, improve our ability to execute, or both.

Type C problems are the ones caused by bad actors with nefarious intent. It’s the problem that arises because someone tries to screw over someone else, on purpose, because they can get away with it. It could be someone taking credit for a colleagues work, or a person running a Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors of billions of dollars. In a Type C problem, the bad actor knows what they are doing is wrong, unfair, or sub-optimal, but they do it anyway.

A good way to judge a team or enterprise is by looking at the proportion of time spent on each type of problem. Organizations that are well led and well managed tend to spend a lot of their time on Type A problems. They create systems and coach people well to minimize Type B problems, and they simply don’t tolerate Type C problems and the people that cause them.

Well run organizations and their leaders know that Type C problems are trust-killers which make working the more important Type A and Type B problems infinitely harder.

Luckily, creating safeguards to prevent Type C problems is not complicated. All it takes is the team or its leader articulating a set of values, behavioral norms, and performance standards that that make it clear how we’ll act and how we won’t. Then, the leader has to coach people up to those standards and remove people who continually violate them.

This may take courage, but it’s not complicated.

To me, thinking through the “how” of work, might be the most underrated activity in all of management and leadership. And it can be so easy - even talking for literally an hour with a team about “how are we going to act and how are we not going to act” can make a huge difference.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @quinoal

In-sourcing Purpose

When it comes to being a husband and father, doing more than just the bare minimum is not difficult. At home, I want to do much more than mail it in.

The obvious reason is because I love my family. I care about them. I find joy in suffering which helps them to be healthy and happy. I believe that surplus is an essential ingredient to making an impactful contribution, and with my family I give up the surplus I have easily, perhaps even recklessly. I love them, after all.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @krisroller

And yet, love doesn’t explain this fully. The ease with which I put in effort at home taps into a deeper well of motivation and purpose.

With Robyn, our marriage is driven by a deeper purpose than having a healthy relationship, or perhaps even the commitment to honoring our vows. We find meaning in building something, in our case a marriage, that could last thousands of years or an eternity if there is a God that permits it. We’re trying to build something that could last until the end of time, until there is nothing of us that exists - in this world or beyond. We’re trying to make a marriage that’s more durable than “as long as we both shall live.” We find meaning in that.

Though we’ve never talked about it explicitly, I think we also find meaning in trying to have a marriage that’s based on equality and mutual respect. It’s as if we’re trying to be a beacon for what a truly equal marriage could look like. I don’t think we’ve succeeded in this yet; I’m certain that despite our best efforts, Robyn still bears an unequal portion of our domestic responsibilities. But yet, we try to find that elusive, perfectly equal, and mutually respectful marriage and we find meaning in that pursuit.

As a father, too, I find purpose and meaning that exeeceds the strong love and attachment I have with my children. I find it so inspiring to be part of something that spans generations and millennia. I am merely the latest steward to pass down the love, knowledge, and virtues of our ancestors. I find it humbling to be part of a lineage that started many centuries ago, and that will hopefully exist for many centuries in the future. Being one, single, link in this longer chain moves me, deeply.

I also believe deeply in a contribution to the broader community, to human society itself. And there too, fatherhood intersects. Part of my responsibility to humanity, I believe, is to raise children that are a net force for goodness - children that because of their actions make the world feel more trustworthy and vibrant. Through my own purification as a father, I can pass a purer set of values and integrity to our children, and accelerate - ever so slightly - the rate at which the arc of humanity and history bends towards justice. This is so lofty and so abstract, but yet, I find meaning in this.

These sources of deep purpose make it easy, trivial even, to put forth an amount of energy toward being a husband and father that a 16 year old me would find incomprehensible.

Finding this deep and durable source of purpose has been harder in my career, though I’m realizing it might have been hidden in plain sight all along.

I often felt maligned when I worked at Deloitte, especially when it felt like the ultimate end product of my time was simply making wealthy partners wealthier. At least Deloitte was a culture of kind people, and also had a sincere commitment to the community - I found some meaning in that.

But in retrospect, I think I missed the point. Deloitte, after all, is a huge consultancy. Its clients are some of the largest and most influential enterprises in the history of the world. Deloitte also produces research that is read by leaders and managers across the world. The amount of lives affected by Deloitte, through its clients, is probably in the billions. While I was there, I had an opportunity - albeit a small one - to affect the managerial quality of the world’s largest companies. That is incredibly meaningful. In retrospect, I wish I would’ve remembered that when I was toiling away on client projects, wishing I was doing anything else to earn a living.

While working in City government, sources of purpose and meaning were easier to find. It was easy to give tremendous effort, for example, toward reducing murders and shootings. I was a civilian appointee, and relatively junior at that - but we were still saving lives, literally. But even beyond that, I found meaning in something more humble - I had the honor and privilege of serving my neighbors. That phrase, serving my neighbors, still wells my eyes up in tears. What a gift it was to serve.

And now, I work in a publicly traded company. We manufacture and sell furniture. These are not prima facie sources of deep meaning and purpose. In the day-to-day, week-to-week, grind I often find myself in the same mindset as I was at Deloitte, asking myself questions like, why am I here, or, am I wasting my time?

And yet, I also realize that with hindsight I would probably realize that meaning and foundation on which to assemble a strong sense of purpose was always there, had I cared enough to look for it.

Why, I have been thinking this week, is it so easy to to find meaning purpose at home, but so difficult at work? There must be a deep well of meaning from which to draw, hidden in plain sight, why can’t I find it?

At home, I realized, we are free. We have nobody ruling us, but us. We are free to explore and think and make our family life what we wish it to be. I think and talk openly with Robyn about our lives. We reflect and grapple with our lived experiences and take it upon ourselves to make meaning from it. We aren’t waiting for anyone else to tell us what our purpose as partners, parents, or citizens.

In a way, at home, we in-source our deliberations of purpose. We literally do it “in house”. We know it is is on us to make meaning of our marriage and our roles as parents, so Robyn and I do it. We have, in effect in-source our search for meaning and purpose.

At work, I have done the opposite.

In my career, I have outsourced my search for meaning and purpose. I’ve waited, without realizing it, for senior executives to tell me why what we’re doing matters. I’ve whined, in my head at least, when the mission statements and visions of companies I’ve worked for - either as an employee or as a consultant - have been vacuous or sterile.

In retrospect, I’ve freely relinquished my agency to create meaning and purpose to the enterprises for which I have worked. What a terrible mistake that was. Why was I waiting for someone else to find purpose for me, when I could’ve been creating it for myself all along?

When companies do articulate statements of purpose well, it is powerful and I appreciate it. My current company has a purpose statement, for example, and it does resonate with me. I’m glad we have one.

But yet, that’s not enough. To really give a tremendous amount of discretionary effort at work, I need to believe in something much more specific to me. After all, even the best statement of purpose put out by a company is, by design, something meant to appeal to tens of thousands of people. I shouldn’t expect a corporate purpose statement to ignite my inspiration, such an expectation is not reasonable or fair. No company will ever write a purpose statement that’s specifically for me, nor should they.

Rather than outsource my search for meaning and purpose, I’ve realized I need to in-source it. Perhaps with questions like these:

What makes my job and working as part of this enterprise special? What’s something about it that’s so valuable and important that I want to put my own ego, career development, and desire to be promoted aside and contribute to the team’s goal? What can I find meaning in and be proud of? What about being here makes me want to put effort in beyond the bare minimum?

Like I said, I work for a furniture company - certainly not something glamorous or externally validated . And yet, there can be so much meaning and purpose in it, if I choose to see it.

We are in people’s homes and we have this ability to rehabilitate people’s bodies and minds. We create something that brings comfort to other people and for every family movie night and birthday party - the biggest and smallest moments in the lives of our customers and their families, we are there. That’s worth putting in a little extra for.

And we’re a Michigan company, headquartered in a relatively small town. I get to be part of a team bringing wealth, prosperity, and respect to our State. I can’t tolerate it when people from elsewhere in the country snub their noses at Michigan, calling us a “fly over” state. I find meaning in that competition to be an outstanding enterprise - why not have the industry leader in furniture manufacturing and retailing be a Michigan company?

Without even considering the meaning and joy I find in creating high-performing teams that unleash people’s talent, there is so much meaning and purpose that’s hidden in plain sight - even at a furniture company. But that meaning is nearly impossible to find unless we stop being dependent on others to create meaning for us - we have to bring the search for purpose back in house.

How interesting might it be if everyone on the team created their own purpose statement, rather than depending on the enterprise to provide one for them? What if companies helped their employees create their own purpose statement instead of making one for them? I think such an approach would be interesting and, no pun intended, meaningful.

Organizations are energy processes

When I have an organizational problem - like an underperforming team, or an organization that seems like it’s stuck - I just want a mental model to help me figure it out that is practical and simple to use. As a practitioner, what I care about is having something that works.

I found inspiration after reading a Works in Progress article about making energy too cheap to meter: organizations are energy processes which create, harness, and apply human energy. To solve organizational problems, all we need to do is improve how the organization creates and applies energy.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @pavement_special

When I say “energy processes”, I mean something like what I’ve outlined below. Take nuclear fission as an example. The end to end process for creating and applying nuclear energy happens in four steps:

1. Accumulate a fuel source (uranium) from which energy can be created

2. Create energy from the fuel source (i.e., using a nuclear reactor)

3. Harness and transmit the energy (create electricity via a steam turbine and deliver it to a plug in someone’s home)

4. Apply it to something of value (the electricity goes into a lamp which someone uses to read a favorite book after sunset)

Organizations, similarly, are an energy process:

1. The fuel that powers organizations are people and the ideas, information, expertise, and the motivation they bring to the table (i.e., like the uranium)

2. Organizations try to get their people to put forth effort that can be used to create something of value (i.e., like the nuclear reactor).

3. Organizations then create systems to harness the efforts of their people and channel it into collective goals (i.e., like the steam turbine and power lines)

4. The organization tries to ensure all the energy they’ve created goes into something that the end customer actually cares about, which they can be compensated for (i.e., like the reading lamp used to read a novel)

Thinking of organizations as energy processes can help us understand organizational challenges quickly and simply. When I have an organizational problem I can quickly ask myself these four questions, and determine where my organization’s issues lie:

• Do we have enough “fuel” to create energy?

• How much energy are we creating?

• How much energy are we harnessing?

• Are we applying our energy to something of value?

You can be the judge of whether this mental model is simple and useful. The rest of this post gives some detail on how to actually use the energy process model to diagnose an organizational problem.

Question 1: Do we have enough “fuel” to create energy?

One of my favorite questions to ask a teammate is: what percent of your potential impact do you feel like you are actually making? In my experience, most people are not even close to fully applying their skills, talents and ideas. A tremendous amount of potential is wasted in organizations.

To get a sense of whether there’s sufficient “fuel” in your organization or the degree to which potential is wasted, look for the following:

• Complaints - if people are complaining, it means they have energy they’re not using and care enough to say something.

• Regrettable losses - if people are leaving your company and getting good jobs and promotional opportunities elsewhere, at least one other organization seems something that you do not

• Ask the team - people care about whether they’re wasting their time and energy. If you ask them, they’ll tell you if they have talents and energy that are being wasted

• Ask yourself this question: if I assumed the people around me had talent, potential, and cared, would I be acting differently? If you answer that question with a “yes” it probably means you have more potential around you than you realize.

In my experience, it is almost never the case that an organization lacks sufficient “fuel” to create energy. Don’t shift the blame to the people around you, look inward first.

Question 2: How much energy are we creating?

I loved The Last Dance, the ESPN Films miniseries the 1997-1998 NBA Champion Chicago Bulls. It was remarkable to me how that team seemed to try so hard, and how Michael Jordan was able to be a catalyst, pulling tremendous amounts of energy from his teammates. Watching the documentary, the energy being created was obvious.

To get a sense of whether your organization is creating energy, look for the following::

• Body language and non-verbals - If you work in an office, walk the floor and observe people through the windows of conference rooms, so you can’t hear what people are saying - just observe with your eyes. Do people seem like they want to be there or are trying very hard? Do they look bored? It’s pretty easy to see the parts of your organization that have energy just by being a fly on the wall and paying attention.

• Experiments - When people are trying new things - whether its practices, sharing new ideas, or under the radar projects that nobody has asked for - it’s a good indication that energy is being created. It doesn’t have to be a grand novelty. I just had a colleague the other day, our team’s agile scrum master, that tried out a new framework for debriefing our bi-weekly sprint of work. He literally changed our four usual questions to four new questions. He just did it. I immediately thought, “our team has some energy and psychological safety if our scrum master is trying new things - this is awesome.”

• Spontaneous Fun - I love to see teams that celebrate birthdays, bring snacks to work, create trivia games, or play pranks on each other. These are examples of activities that take energy that don’t have to occur to get the job done, they’re just for fun. If people are spending time putting energy toward having fun at work, it probably means they have plenty of energy for the work itself

• Engagement Scores - Again, there are lots of survey companies that can help your organization execute a simple engagement survey. The ball don’t lie, and you can track engagement over time. If you have high engagement it probably means your organization is creating a lot of energy..

Question 3: How much energy are we harnessing?

One of my favorite bits of comedy is the Abbott and Costello, “Who’s on first?” skit. Nobody has any idea what’s going on and they have a pointless conversation with no conclusion. It’s hilarious to watch, and an excellent illustration of what it feels like when there’s lots of energy around but it’s not being channeled and applied.

To get a sense of whether your organization is effectively harnessing and applying energy, look for the following:

• Low value work - In a factory setting, it can be easy to spot waste. In corporate offices, it’s harder to spot or prove inefficiency. Low value work is a good tell. If people don’t have anything better to do than low-value, non-impactful, work it probably means your organization isn’t harnessing energy well because it’s going into something that’s not worthwhile. When people have the opportunity to do something more impactful, they tend to.

• “It’s not my job” - The phrase “it’s not my job” or when people toss work over the fence, it’s a strong indicator that someone, somewhere, doesn’t know what their job actually is or that they have any direction on what to do. If your organization is constantly trying to offload work to someone else, it probably means energy is being wasted and that there’s ambiguity around what matters and what doesn’t.

• Silos and Bad Meetings - Every organization I’ve ever worked for has talked about how they’re “siloed” or that there are a lot of “useless meetings”. These are signs, again, that teams don’t know what they’re doing or know what the organization’s goal is. If people have the time to tolerate “silos” and “bad meetings” (which are easily fixed with clear goals and basic discipline), it probably means the organization isn’t harnessing energy well.

• Sprint and Milestone Velocity: There’s a great concept from Agile called “sprint velocity”. It basically measures how much work (measured in “points” which are pre-assigned) the team was able to accomplish in a given amount of time, usually two weeks. When the sprint velocity rises, it means the team accomplished more with the same amount of time and resources invested. You don’t need to operate on a sprint team to use the concept - just look at how long simple things things - like making decisions, building presentations, or executing a contract - takes to complete. If you find yourself saying, “there has to be a faster way to do this” it probably means your organization isn’t harnessing and applying it’s energy effectively.

In my experience, organizations harness just a fraction of the energy they create. Sometimes all it takes it setting a clear goal and making it clear “who’s on first”.

Question 4: Are we applying our energy to something of value?

This area of the framework is where the stereotypical strategy and marketing questions come into play, like “where do we play”, “how do we win”, and “how are we differentiated”. To get a broad sense of whether your organization is in a virtuous cycle of value creation or a doom loop of commotodization, here are some quick heuristics to get a sense how bad your strategy issues are:

• Revenue per employee or market share growth - if your organization’s revenue per employee or market share (or it’s equivalent) lags comparable industry players, you’re probably not doing something right - either you have energy problems further upstream, or, your organization is putting your energy into something people don’t actually care about.

• Races to the bottom - if your company is trying harder and harder to grow, but you are constantly feeling downward pressure on prices, it probably isn’t providing a compelling product that people are happy to pay a premium for - because they get more than they pay for. If you feel like you’re in a race to the bottom, you need your customers more than they need you.

• Customer feedback and referrals - This is obvious, if people are telling their friends about you or sending you thank you letters, it probably means you’re doing something of value to them - they’re literally marketing you for free. That willingness to show gratitude and spread the word means you’ve done something worthwhile for them.

That Works in Progress article I linked was so interesting, to me. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. It suggested that something that disproportionally drives human progress is when energy becomes exponentially cheaper. What the author argued for was trying to make it so that energy was so clean, so cheap, and so abundant that it would be “too cheap to meter”.

Most of the time, organizations I’ve been part of miss the big picture about their organizational problems. Thinking through the lens of the energy process model brings this to light: the biggest opportunities for organizational energy are in creating it, not harnessing it.

To be sure, improving how we harness and apply energy matters - there’s opportunity at each phase of the organizational energy framework. But creating energy is the largest and most game breaking area to explore, by far.

Can you imagine what organizations would be like if there was so much human energy created that it was “too cheap to meter”? None of the world’s problems would be out of reach. Not one.

Leaders vs. Heroes

As is the tradition in our household, we were preparing for a dinner with our extended family to celebrate the 3rd birthday of our second son, Myles. And as any parent knows, that means the entire day leading up to dinner is spent joyously on…cleaning!

Today, I thought of a new frame to try with our older sons, Bo and Myles, to motivate them to help us clean, starting with their explosion of toys in our small family room.

“Bo and Myles. Mommy and I spend a lot of effort cleaning, like the kitchen, floors, bathroom and laundry, on behalf of the entire family. Could you be leaders on cleaning up your toys in the family room? We need you to take the lead in the family room, just like mommy and I take the lead on other things, so that we can be ready for Myles’ birthday party and so we can all live in a clean house.”

The reframe worked instantly. And more importantly, it was more true and sincere than how I usually chirp and nag at our sons to tidy up after themselves. We really do need them to take lead on cleaning up their toys in the family room on behalf of us all.

But as Bo, our five year old gleefully said, “Yeah! I wanna be a leader! I wanna be a leader”, I paused.

Am I goading our sons to obsess with being a leader? Am I feeding the hero-worship our culture can have around leadership? Am I pushing them into conflating leadership with praise and celebrity?

As I kept sweeping and they dug into putting way magnet tiles and action figures, I began thinking about the concepts at play in the moment. In our country and culture, we seem to conflate the idea of being a “leader” and being a “hero”.

This is how the concepts seem to work, at least in the United States. A “leader” is someone who takes responsibility. A “celebrity” is someone who is popular and exalted by others. A “hero” is an intersection of both.

It seems to me, that what we really need in the world is more people who take responsibility. We need leaders on every block.

I want my sons to take responsibility and lead. I want to take responsibility and lead myself, for whatever my team, my family, or my community needs me to take lead on. I want there to be more people who take responsibility for every little nook and cranny of the world - I think the world would naturally become a wonderful place if that was the case.

If some of those people who are taking responsibility become celebrities, I suppose I don’t mind.

What I observed and realized this morning while cleaning, is that I feel the pressure to be a “hero.” I feel the tension of the prevailing culture that makes it seem like success is success if and only if I am exalted. I see the people who get promoted because they’re good at promoting themselves (without actually being good at their job responsibilities), and I feel the pressure of self-promotion, too

It makes me think: what am I committed to? Am I committed to taking responsibility, even if I’m not applauded for it? Am I committed to leading, even if it’s quiet and unnoticed?

As a parent, what am I helping my sons to become? Am I teaching them to lead, or am I teaching them that taking responsibility only matters if we also become celebrities?

And then of course, there’s the vexing version of these questions for anyone who is the designated leader of a team or an enterprise: are we creating an environment where people care about taking responsibility, or, are we creating an environment where they fight to become company celebrities?

I think I ought to be creating teams and enterprises which value responsibility over celebrity, but is that what I’m actually doing? Is that what I’m actually role modeling?

These questions matter because how people are motivated in organizational life is an expansive, global, flywheel for talent development, culture, and value creation at the planetary-level. It feels daunting, and anything we try to do might feel insignificant.

But that’s not true, our individual actions affect what the collective culture around leadership becomes. Even though the scale of leadership culture is literally worldwide, we can start by examining how we tell stories about ourselves, and how we reinforce behavior on our own teams. We can start making improvements in our little corner of the organizational world, and we ought to.

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I was sitting on the couch writing this post and our five-year old son, Bo, was interested in what I was writing. I just had a great conversation with him about leaders and heroes. Here are some notes and a few tools if you’re a parent that wants to talk about why being a leader is important, even if you’re not a hero.

Me: What do you think a leader is?

Bo: Someone who does the right thing.

Me: I agree with you. I think a leader is someone who does the right thing and takes responsibility to help people.

Me: Let me explain what a Venn Diagram is to you. [I used the diagram below and we talked about dogs and animals we know. I explained how in this Venn diagram some animals are dogs, some animals have black fur, and if a dog has black fur it goes in the middle.]

Me: Now, let me show you what I was writing about. [I showed him the Leader vs. Hero vs. Celebrity Venn diagram above] Do you think a leader has to be popular and everyone has to know and talk about them?

Bo: Yeah!

Me: I disagree with you bud, let me explain why. What about Captain America. Does he do the right thing and help people?

Bo: He does!

Me: Do a lot of people know him?

Bo: I think so?

Me: I think you’re right, a lot of people do know about Captain America and talk about him. What do you think matters more - that Captain America does the right thing and helps people, or that a lot of people talk about him?

Bo: That he does the right thing! That he does the right thing!

Me: I agree with you bud. Some people are heroes, like Captain America. They do the right thing, take responsibility, and help people. They’re also popular and a lot of people talk about them. That’s what I think a hero is. But I agree with you, it’s fine if someone helps people and is popular, but I think what’s more important is that they do the right thing and help people.

Bo: Mommy, mommy! Captain America helps people and is a leader, that’s the best part about him!

We can learn to be lucky

Learning only when we make a mistake is not enough.

Life is too hard. Creating value in enterprises is too hard. Marriage is too hard. Reaching goals and making our dreams come true is too hard. All these aspirations are too hard to only learn some of the time.

Some people say we learn more from failures than from successes, and that may or not be true. But the way I see it, that’s a misleading trade off: we can learn a lot from both.

However, what I’ve observed in organizations is that in practice teams usually learn much less from successes than from failures. It’s not that they can’t learn more, they just don’t.

This is for two main reasons. First, teams usually have less motivation to learn from success - why be a downer and interrogate our victory when we could be celebrating? Even when teams choose to debrief successes, they seem less willing to be introspective and self-critical so the debriefs they do are less fruitful. Moreover, most organizations have more systems that force debriefs of mistakes to happen.

The second reason why teams tend to learn less from success is a matter of technique. Learning from failure is a bit more familiar because it’s an exercise of cause and effect. We saw bad effects, and the goal of a debrief is to understand the root causes. By understanding the root causes we can make different choices in the future.

Learning from success is different (and perhaps harder) because it’s an exercise of understanding counterfactuals. What could we have done to obtain a better result? What aspects of our success were because of our decisions and skills, rather than good circumstances? The fundamental questions when trying learn from a success are different than those needed to debrief a failure.

When you’re doing your next debrief, try these three questions to get the most learning possible out of a success. I’ve included some rationale for the questions and some examples within each.

Question 1: What would’ve had to be true to have a 2x better result? What about a 5x or 10x better result?

This question helps us understand the money we left on the table. If we were successful it means we already had some level of competence or skill related to the challenge at hand. Could we have done better? Why didn’t we? Are we at a plateau of performance? How can we break the plateau and get to the next level? This is what this question gets at.

I thought about this question a lot when working on violence prevention programs at the Detroit Police Department. There were quarters and years where we had substantial drops in shootings and murders. A lot of time that was because the community-based gang violence prevention programs we launched were working. But in Detroit, even after those successes, violence wasn’t at an acceptable level for our team, our leadership, or our community.

When we asked questions like, “why can’t have a 30% drop instead of 10% drop” we thought about other avenues for reducing violence. We started to explore domestic violence prevention, partnerships with social service organizations and faith-based organizations, and other non-traditional avenues. Thinking critically about our success helped us to lean in harder to the problem.

Question 2: What was a near-miss? What almost was a big problem but we got lucky?

This question helps us understand where caught a break. Teams generally discount their own luck, and do so at their own peril. Because the next time around, we might not be so lucky.

I just experienced this at Thanksgiving. Our family’s tradition is to go to the Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day football game, and we host an early brunch at our house since we live closest to Downtown Detroit where the stadium is. I make bagels & lox, a breakfast casserole, and coffee. My father-in-law makes bloody marys.

When he arrived, he asked, “do you have ice?”

We usually do not have ice in our house. Our refrigerator is old, and doesn’t have a built-in ice machine. But this Thanksgiving, we were lucky - we happened to have extra ice in the freezer from a party we hosted a few weeks earlier.

Even though our family brunch was a resounding success, I learned something important: make ice part of the plan for any party. I added “get ice” to the party prep checklist I keep on my phone. I also plan to look into a better set of ice molds to make it easier to have ice on hand all the time.

Question 3: What gifts were just handed to us that we did nothing to earn?

This question helps to understand and shape luck. Teams usually have some headwinds or beneficial circumstances that just fall into their lap without even trying. Usually, those headwinds aren’t a guarantee for future challenges. But if we understand what made us lucky this time around, we can actively try to shape those headwinds in the future.

I saw this happen on a project some of my colleagues recently completed. It was a data analysis to understand a large area of SG&A for our company. The project was a clear success because the insights uncovered will have a huge benefit for our company and our customer. By all accounts the team did a great job and they executed flawlessly.

But they did have a healthy amount of luck, too. The executive sponsoring the project had an incredibly clear and specific question they wanted to understand. The clarity the team received up-front led to a very focused analysis on a specific set of data. Many times people who request work of analytical teams have no idea what they actually want to understand, and that creates huge drag on an analytics team.

It was a big headwind to have a clear, and focused question from jump. That’s definitely not a given on any project. But what we learned is that in the future we can push for clarity and actively shape the question very early in any analytics project to create headwinds for the team. We can shape our own luck.

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Every team and every organization I’ve been part of underperforms. Even the best teams out there have even higher ceilings. We can and should learn from failures, but we can learn just as much from successes with the right questions and approach. And if we do that, we can learn to be better and contribute more to our teams, our customers, and our communities.

Photo credit: Unsplash @glambeau

Leadership as artistry

In a second, I’m going to suggest that leadership can be considered artistry. But first, what is an artist?

I’ve been thinking non-stop about this take from the comedian, writer, and producer Hasan Minhaj.

Here’s a clip (link to Instagram Reel) from his appearance on the Colin and Samir podcast (heads up: there’s some profane language in the clip). Here’s a key blurb:

It’s artistry vs. the algorithm…An artist is someone who has something in their head or their heart that they gotta SAY. And they want to get it out - that’s an artist. I have to get this out into the world. You’ve got a short film? Let’s show it in the park TONIGHT.

I love this framing: an artist has something to say. They have a point of view that they have to share out into the world.

And then there’s the algorithm. Serving the algorithm is not expressing a point of view, it’s putting something out based on whether other people will like it. Whether other people will click it. Whether other people will buy it. You’re not serving up a point of view, you’re serving up something that optimizes some variable.

Like Minaj says in the clip, I’m not trying to be disparaging about living by the algorithm or pejorative. Choosing artistry over the algorithm (or vice versa) isn’t necessarily better…but it is a choice.

Is leadership artistry? I know it can be, because I’ve seen leaders communicating a point of view through their leadership. I’ve seen leaders who have something in their heart that they’ve got to say. A recent example I’ve encountered is Alan Mullaly’s interview (he’s a former Boeing and Ford CEO) on The Knowledge Project podcast.

The entire interview is worth listening to, but I’d summarize Mullaly’s point of view on leadership with his phrase “love by design.” It’s clear that his whole worldview on leadership - from the language he uses, to his framework of key ideas, to the management operating system he uses to manage the process of leading a team - all come down to loving and serving others.

Mullaly has a point of view, that he needs to communicate. He’s an artist. His medium just happens to be leadership.

I’ve found that many successful leaders I’ve observed also express a unique, personal, cohesive point of view through their leadership.

Like a colleague of mine who’s one of the founders of Joybird furniture: his point of view, which I learned within an hour of meeting him, is to create growth - for people, for enterprises, and for customers.

Or there’s Reese Witherspoon, whose entrepreneurship founding Hello Sunshine centers around the importance of telling stories that celebrate women and puts them at the center of the story.

Or there’s former Joint Chiefs Chairman and Secretary of State Colin Powell whose point of view centers on solving problems and taking care of people. When I was an intern at the State Department, I heard personal tales from my colleagues about Secretary Powell embodying this through behaviors like eating in the canteen with everybody else or personally seeking out the families of personnel who died or were injured in action and finding ways to help them.

Of course, the alternative to leadership as artistry is leadership by algorithm.

We can do what makes the most money with the lowest risk. We can do what optimizes for a social metric. We can do what gets us promoted the fastest. We can copy the generic management system we learn in graduate school. Whatever variable we choose, there’s there’s a leadership algorithm to optimize for it.

Leadership by algorithm is a legitimate choice, and maybe even the right one for the circumstances. And just like on social media, playing to the algorithm works if you do it well enough.

But like Minhaj opined in the clip above - leadership by algorithm may work well, I just don’t want to live like that.

In my experience and study of organizations and leaders for the past 25 years, algorithmic leadership has consequences I’m not willing accept.

Just like social media, algorithmic leadership leads to “inflammatory content” like when ego-maniacal leaders develop cult followings with their extreme tactics.

Just like social media, algorithmic leadership leads to “content mediocrity” - like when the leadership quality of the entire cadre of listless middle-level managers in the world seems to mirror the endless supply of mediocre cat videos on the internet.

Leadership by algorithm can work, but it has consequences.

Behavior Is communication

The hard part, as is usually the case, is the “how.” How do we actually do this? How do we actually develop a point of view that we can express through how we lead?

Robyn, my wife, recently shared a concept she learned during her training to become a high school teacher: behavior is communication. In the education (or parenting) context, the lesson is simple: when kids are acting out, they’re actually trying to say something that they aren’t capable of expressing in words. Their behavior is communication.

If we want to think of our leadership as artistry, we can apply the same lesson. Our behaviors - when we’re trying to lead a team or make a positive contribution - say something. The beliefs we have in our hearts are represented in how we act. Our point of view is reflected in how we operate.

Just like artists can express a point of view with their scripts, paintings, or music - we can express a point of view with how we behave in the organizational world.

If we want to think of our leadership as artistry with a point of view, we first have to explore and try new things. We have to listen and observe. We have to hone the fundamentals of our craft - like communicating, being authentic, delegating, and more. And then, we have to reflect, and do deep introspection about what we’ve experienced and form a point of view.

That practice of introspection can take many forms, but I think this question is as good as any to start: when I try to behave in a context of leadership and organizations, what am I trying to say? What am I trying to communicate, from deep within my heart, through my behavior?

If we explore as artists do and introspect as artists do, we can practice leadership as artistry.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @timmossholder

Management Is Shifting From Leadership to Authorship

It’s not that management is about to change at a fundamental level. What I’d propose is that it already has changed, but we just haven’t noticed it yet.

I predict that we will start noticing dramatic change in management practices within the next 10 years, because Covid-19 accelerated two trends that have been brewing for the previous quarter century: the digitization of internal firm communications, and, the adoption of Agile management practices.

What’s the fundamental change that’s happened in management?

In a sentence, the way I think about this fundamental change is that management is shifting its primary paradigm from “leadership” to “authorship”.

The paradigm of leadership is that there are leaders and followers. In a world oriented toward leadership, the manager is responsible for delivering results, making the efforts of the team exceed the sum of its parts, and aligning the team’s efforts so they contribute to the goals of the larger enterprise. The leader-manager takes on the role of structuring the vision, process, and the management structures for the team to hit its goals. The leader is directly responsible for their direct reports and accountable for their results. The leader-manager paradigm is effective in environments that call for centralization, control, consistency, and accountability.

The paradigm of authorship is that there are customers and needs to fulfill, that everyone is ultimately responsible for in their own way. In a world oriented toward authorship the manager is responsible for understanding a valuable need, setting a clear and compelling objective, and creating clear lanes for others to contribute. The author-manager takes on the role of finding the right objectives, communicating a simple and compelling story about them, and creating a platform for shared accountability rather than scripting how coordination will occur. The author-manager paradigm is effective in environments that call for dynamism, responsiveness, and multi-disciplinary problem solving.

This distinction really becomes clearer when thinking about the skills and capabilities critical to authorship. To be successful as an author-manager one must be incredibly good at really understanding a customer, and articulating how to serve them in an inspiring and compelling way. The author-manager has to create simple, cohesive narratives and share them. The author-manager needs to build relationships across an entire enterprise (and perhaps outside the firm) to bring skills and talents to a compelling problem, much as a lighting rod attracts lighting. The author-manager needs to create systems and platforms for teams to manage themselves and then step out of the way of progress. This set of capabilities is very different than the core MBA curriculum of strategy, marketing, operations, accounting, statistics, and finance.

In both paradigms, management fundamentals still matter. Both postures of management - leadership and authorship - require great skill, are important, and are difficult to do well. I don’t mean to imply that “leadership” is without value. The relative value of each, however, depends on the context in which they are being used. And for us, here in 2022, the context has definitely shifted.

How has the context related to the internal organizations of firms shifted?

In a sentence, firms are shifting from hierarchies to networks.

I’d note before any further discussion that this is idea of shifting from hierarchies to networks is not a new idea. General Stanley McChrystal saw this shift happening while fighting terrorist networks. Marc Andreessen and other guests on the Farnam Street Knowledge Project podcast also hint at this shift directly or indirectly. So do progressive thinkers on management, like Steven Denning. I’m not the first to the party here, but there’s some context I would add to help explain the shift in a bit more detail.

After the industrial revolution, as economies and global markets began to liberalize in the 20th Century, companies got big. Economies of scale and fixed cost leverage started to matter a lot. Multinationals started popping up. Globalization happened. Lots of forces converged and all these large corporations and institutions came into existence and needed to be managed effectively.

Hierarchical bureaucracies filled this need. In these hierarchical bureaucracies, tiers of leader-managers worked at the behest of a firm’s senior management team, to help them exert their vision and influence on a global scale. The vision and strategy were set at the top, and the layers of managers implemented this vision.

I think of it like water moving through a system of pipes In a hierarchy, it is the job of the executive team to create pressure, urgency, and direction and push that “water” down to the next layer. Then the next layer down added their own pressure and pushed the water down to the next layer, and so on, until the employees on the front line were coordinated and in line with the vision of the executive team. This was the MO in the 20th and early 21st Century.

A network operates quite differently, it functions on objectives, stories, and clearly articulated roles. In a network an author-manager sees a need that a customer or stakeholder has. Then, they figure out how to communicate it as an objective - with a clear purpose, intended outcome, measure for success, and rules of engagement for working together. This exercise is not like that of the hierarchy where the manager exerts pressure downward and aims for compliance to the vision. In a network what matters is putting out a clear and compelling bat signal, and then giving the people who engage the principles and parameters to self-organize and execute.

Both approaches - hierarchies and networks - are effective in the right circumstances. But a trade off surely exists: put briefly, the trade-off between hierarchies and networks is a trade-off between control and dynamism.

Why is this change happening?

In the 20th century, control mattered a lot. These were large, global companies that needed to deliver results. But then, digital infrastructures (i.e., internet and computing) started to make information to flow faster. Economic policies become more liberal so goods and people also started to flow faster. And all these changes led to consumers having more choice, information, and therefore more power. Again, this was not my idea, John Hagel, John Seeley Brown, Lang Davison, and Deloitte’s Center for the Edge articulated “The Big Shift” in a monumental report almost 15 years ago.

Here’s the top-level punchline: the internet showed up, consumers got a lot more power because of it, the global marketplace was disrupted, and firms started to have to be much more responsive to consumers’ needs. The trade-off between control and dynamism tilted toward dynamism.

What I’d suggest is that these same force that affected the global market also affected the inner world of firms. That influence on the firm is what’s tilting the balance from leadership and hierarchy to authorship and networks.

To start, digital infrastructures like the internet didn’t just change information flows in the market, it changed information flows inside the firm. Before, information had to flow through cascades of people and analog communication channels. The leader-manager layer of the organization was the mediator of internal firm communications. In the pre-digital world, there was no other way to transmit information from senior executives to the front-line - the only option was playing telephone, figuratively and literally.

But now, that’s different. Anyone in a company can now communicate with anyone else if they choose to. We don’t even just have email anymore. Thanks to Covid-19, the use of digital communication channels like Zoom, Slack, and MS Teams are widely adopted. We now have internal company social networks and apps that work on any smartphone and actually reach front-line employees. We have easy and cheap ways to make videos and other visualizations of complex messages and share them with anyone, in any language, across the world. Just like eCommerce retailers can circumvent traditional distribution channels and sell directly to consumers, people inside companies can circumvent middle managers and talk directly to the colleagues they most want to engage.

Now, more than ever, putting out a bat signal that attracts people with diverse skills and experience from across a firm to solve a problem actually can happen. Before, there was no other choice but to operate as a hierarchy - middle level managers were needed as go-between because direct communication was not possible or cheap. But now that’s different, any person - whether it’s the CEO or a front-line customer service rep - can use digital communication channels to interact with any other node in the firm’s network if they choose to.

I’ve lived this change personally. When I started as a Human Capital Consultant in 2009, we used to think about communicating through cascaded emails from executives, to directors, to managers, to front-line employees. Now, when I work on communicating strategy and vision across global enterprises, our small but mighty communications team works directly with front-line mangers who run plants and stores. We might actually avoid working through layers of hierarchy because it slow and our message ends up getting diluted anyway. Working through a network is better and faster than depending on a hierarchy to “cascade the message down.”

Agile management practices have also enabled the shift from hierarchies to network occur. Agile was formally introduced shortly after the turn of the 21st century as a set of principles to use in software development and project management. There’s lots of experts on Agile, SCRUM and other related methodologies, but what I find relevant to this discussion is that Agile practices allow teams to work more modularly and therefore more dynamically than typical teams. Working in two week sprints with a clear output scoped out, for example, makes it so that new people can more easily plug in and out of a team’s workflow.

What that means in practice is that the guidance, direction, accountability, and pressure of a hierarchy is no longer necessary to get work done. Teams with clarity on their customer, their intended outcome, and their objectives can manage work themselves without the need for centralized leadership from the focal point of a hierarchy. Agile practices allow networks of people to form, work, and dissolve fluidly around objectives instead of rigid functional responsibilities. Especially when you add in the influence of Peter Drucker’s Management by Objective in the 1950s and the OKR framework developed at Intel in the 1970’s, working in networks is now possible in ways that weren’t even 25 years ago. For the first time, maybe ever, large enterprises don’t absolutely need hierarchical management.

I lived this reality out when our team hosted an intern this summer. I was part of a team which was using Agile principles to manage itself. Our team’s intern was able to integrate into a bi-weekly sprint and start contributing within hours, rather than after days or weeks of orientation. Instead of needing a long ramp up and searching for a role, he just took a few analytical tasks at a sprint review and started running. Even though I’m biased as a true-believer of Agile, I was shocked at how easily he was able to plug in and out of our team over the course of his summer internship, and how quickly he was able to contribute something meaningful.

Even 20 years ago, this modular, networked way of working was much harder because nobody had invented it yet, or at a minimum these practices weren’t widely adopted. Now, these two ideas of Agile and OKR are baked into dozens, maybe hundreds, of software tools used by teams and enterprises all around the world. It’s not that these new, more network-oriented ways of working are going to hit the mainstream, they already have.

The adoption of digital communication tools and Agile practices inside firms has been stewing for a long time. Covid merely accelerated the adoption and the culture change that was already occurring.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the landscape could be entirely different a decade from now if and when blockchain and smart contracts emerge, further blurring the boundaries of the firm and it’s ecosystem. It’s not that management is going to shift, it already has, and it will continue to.

Why does it all matter?

I wrote and thought about this piece because I’ve observed some firms become more successful than their competitors, and I’ve observed some managers become more successful than their peers. I’ve been trying to explain why so I could share my observations with others.

And the simple reason is, some firms and some managers are embracing authorship and networks, while their less successful peers are holding tight to traditional leadership and hierarchy.

Managers who want to be successful act differently. If the world has become more dynamic, managers can’t stick with the same old posture of leadership and clutching the remnants of a hierarchical world. What managers have to do instead is lean into authorship and learn to operate effectively in networked ecosystems.

But I think the stakes are much larger than the career advancement and professional success of managers. What’s more significant to appreciate is the huge mismatch many organizations have between their management paradigm and their operating environment.

The way I see it, enterprises that are stuck in the 20th Century mindset of leadership and hierarchy rather than authorship and networks are missing huge opportunities to create value for their stakeholders. If you’re part of an organization that’s stuck in the past, prepare to be beat by those who’ve embraced authorship, networks, and agility.

But more than that, this mismatch prevents forward progress, not just for individual enterprises, but for our entire society. Management scholar Gary Hamel estimates this bureaucracy tax to be three trillion dollars.

For most people, thinking about management structure is burning and pedantic, but I disagree. Modernizing the practice of management is just as important as upgrading an enterprise’s information technology and doing so successfully leads to a huge windfall gain of value. To progress our society, we have to fix this mismatch so that the management practices deployed widely in the organizational world are the best possible approaches for solving the most critical challenges our teams, companies, NGOs, and governments face. I honestly don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say this: the welfare of future generations depends, in part, on us shifting management from leadership and hierarchy to authorship and networks.

To make faster progress - whether at the level of a team, a firm, or an institution - embracing this fundamental shift in management from leadership and hierarchy to authorship and networks is non-negotiable. Remember, it’s not that this shift is going to happen, it already has.

Photo from Unsplash, by @deepmind

Culture Change is Role Modeling

Probably 80% of “culture change” in organizations is role modeling. Maybe 20% is changing systems and structures. Most organizations I’ve been part of, however, obsess about changing systems instead of role modeling.

In real life, “culture change” basically work like this.

First, someone chooses to behave differently than the status quo, and does it in a way that others can see it. This role modeling is not complicated, it just takes guts.

Two, If the behavior leads to a more desirable outcome, other institutional actors take notice and start to mimic it.

This is one reason why people say “culture starts at the top.” People at the top of hierarchies are much more visible, so when they change their behavior, people tend notice. Culture change doesn’t have to start at the top, but it’s much faster if it does.

Three, if the behavior change is persistent and the institutional actors are adamant, they end up forcing the systems around the behavior to change, and change in a way that reinforces the new behavior. This is another reason why “culture starts at the top”. Senior executives don’t have to ask permission to change systems and structures, then can just force the people who work for them to do it.

If the systems and structure change are achieved, even a little, the new behavior then has less friction and a path dependency is created. A positive feedback loop is born, and before you know it the behvaior is the new norm. See the example in the notes below.

Again, this is not a complicated. Role modeling is a very straightforward concept. It just takes a lot of courage, which is why it doesn’t happen all the time.

A lot of times, I feel like organizations make a big deal about “culture change” and “transformation”. Those efforts end up having all these elaborate frameworks, strategies, roadmaps, and project plans. I’m talking and endless amount of PowerPoint slides. Endless.

I think we can save all that busywork. All we have to do is shine a light on the role models, or be a role model ourselves…ideally it’s the latter. The secret ingredient is no secret - culture change takes courage.

So If we don’t see culture change happening in our organization, we probably don’t need more strategy or more elaborate project plans, we probably just need more guts.

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Example: one way to create an outcomes / metrics-oriented culture through role modeling.

1. Head of organization role models and asks a team working on a strategic project to show the data that justifies the most recent decision.

2. Head of organization extends role modeling by using data to explain justification when explaining decision to customers and stakeholders in a press conference.

3. Head of organization keeps role modeling - now they ask for a real-time dashboard of the data to monitor success on an ongoing basis.

4. Other projects see how the data-driven project gets more attention and resources. They build their own dashboards. More executives start demanding data-driven justifications of big decisions.

5. All this dashboard building forces the organization’s data and intelligence team to have more structured and standardized data.

6. What started as role modeling becomes a feedback loop: more executives ask for data, which causes more projects to use data and metrics, which makes quality data more available, which leads to more asks for data, and so on.

*Note - this example is not out of my imagination. This is what I saw happening because of the Mayor and the Senior Leadership Team at the City of Detroit during my tenure there.

If true, am I really a “leader”?

If I choose to…

…say “just give it to me” instead of teach,

…set a low standard so I don’t have to teach,

…blame them for not “being better”,

…blame them for my anger instead of owning it,

…let the outcome we’re trying to achieve remain unclear,

…keep the important reason for what we’re doing a secret,

…leave my own behavior unmeasured and unmanaged,

…set a high standard without being willing to teach,

…proceed without listening to what’s really going on,

…proceed without understanding their superpowers and motivations,

…withhold my true feelings about a problem,

…avoid difficult conversations,

…believe doing gopher work to help the team is “beneath me”,

…steal loyalty by threatening shame or embarrassment,

…move around 1 on 1 time when I get better plans,

…be absent in a time of need (or a time of quiet celebration),

…waffle on a decision,

…or let a known problem fester,

Am I really a “manager” or a “leader”? Can I really call myself a “parent”?

If I’ve shirked all the parts requiring responsibility, what am I?

To me all “leadership” really is, is taking responsibility. It’s the necessary and sufficient condition of it. The listed items I’ve prepared are just some examples of the responsibilities we can choose (or not) to take.

And, definitely, there are about 5 of those that I fail at, regularly. My hope is that by making these moments transparent, it will be more possible to make different choices.

We Need To Understand Our Superpowers

Surplus is created when something is more valuable than it costs in resources. Creating surplus is one of the keys to peace and prosperity.

Surplus ultimately comes from asymmetry. Asymmetry, briefly put, is when we have something in a disproportionately valuable quantity, relative to the average. This assymetry gives us leverage to make a disproportionally impactful contribution, and that creates surplus.

Let’s take the example of a baker, though this framework could apply to public service or family life. Some asymmetries, unfortunately, have a darker side.

Asymmetry of…

…capability is having the knowledge or skills to do something that others can’t (e.g., making sourdough bread vs. regular wheat).

…information gives the ability to make better decisions than others (e.g., knowing who sells the highest quality wheat at the best price).

…trust is having the integrity and reputation that creates loyalty and collaboration (e.g., 30 years of consistency prevents a customer from trying the latest fad from a competitor).

…leadership is the ability to build a team and utilize talent in a way that creates something larger than it’s parts (e.g., building a team that creates the best cafe in town).

…relationships create opportunities that others cannot replicate (e.g., my best customers introduce me to their brother who want to carry my bread in their network of 100 grocery stores).

…empathy is having the deep understanding of customers and their problems, which lead to innovations (e.g., slicing bread instead of selling it whole).

…capital is having the assets to scale that others can’t match (e.g., I have the money to buy machines which let me grind wheat into flour, reducing costs and increasing freshness).

…power is the ability to bend the rules in my favor (e.g., I get the city council to ban imports of bread into our town).

…status is having the cultural cachet to gain incremental influence without having to create any additional value (e.g., I’m a man so people might take me more seriously).

We need to understand our superpowers

So one of the most valuable things we can do in organizational life is knowing the superpowers which give us assymetry and doing something special with them. We need to take the time to understand our superpowers, as individuals or as an organization, so we have the best chance to create surplus.

And once we have surplus - whether in the form of time, energy, trust, profit, or other resources - we can do something with it. We can turn it into leisure or we can reinvest it in ourselves, our families, our communities, and our planet.

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Addendum for the management / strategy nerds out there: To put a finer point on this, we also need to understand how asymmetries are changing. For example, capital is easier to access (or less critical) than it was before. For example, I don’t know how to write HTML nor do I have any specialized servers that help me run this website. Squarespace does that for me for a small fee every month. So access to capital assets and capabilities is less asymmetric than 25 years ago, at least in the domain of web publishing.

As the world changes, so does the landscape of asymmetries, which is why we often have to reinvent ourselves.

There’s a great podcast episode on The Knowledge Project where the guest, Kunal Shah, has a brief interlude on information asymmetry. Was definitely an inspiration for this post.

Source: Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

Coaching Requires Dedicated, intensely Focused Time

People develop faster when they are coached well, but coaching doesn’t happen without intent. To be a better coach, start with making actual “coaching time” that is intentional and intensely focused.

First, as a manager, we must dedicate one-to-one time with whomever we are trying to coach. 30 minutes per week, used well, is enough.

Second, that time can’t be about projects or status. It has to be spent on debriefing to glean learnings from past performance, or on how to create and prepare for future stretch opportunities.

Find a better way to manage status and project work than during a 1-1 and dedicate that time too and use it with intense focus. Personally, I like daily stand-ups from Agile/Scrum methodology and a once weekly full project review with the whole team.

Then, set a rule that during the dedicated time you will not talk about project status or the daily grind of work. If you dedicate time and hold firm to that rule, you’ll end up having a productive coaching conversation. Here are four questions that I’ve found work well to structure a 30-minute coaching conversation.

• On a scale of 1 to 100, what percent of the impact you think you could be making are you actually making? (2-4 minutes)

• Compared to last week, is your rate of growth accelerating, decelerating, or about the same? (2-4 minutes)

• What do you want to talk about? (20-25 minutes)

• What’s something I can do to help you feel respected and supported? (2-4 minutes)

This concept applies broadly: whether it’s coaching our team at work, our kids, our students, a volunteer group we’re part of, or co-coaching our marriage together with our partner, we must dedicate and focus the time. In my experience, the results of that dedicated time are exponential after just a few weeks.