Jack Welch at Recent B'dos Conference

Recently, Jack Welch, Dennis O'Brien of Digicel and Arthur Lok Jak of Neal and Massy presented at the Caribbean International Leadership Summit in Barbados.

What is remarkable is that there were over 200 attendees to the two day event, each paying some US$1800 per person.

This clearly shows me that there is an appetite for this kind of event here in the region, and that CEOs are willing to invest the time and money to hear top quality information.

It is also great to see that the audios and PDF files from the top presentations are available for download from the website.

Kudos to those who had the vision to bring this together, and I am only sorry that I missed it.

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Creating a Bad Culture pt 2

Here is a continuation of the list of things I would do to create a really bad corporate culture, if I were the CEO.

6. Create a Culture of Fear
   I would fire people at will and without warning, showing people who is in charge. I'd do my best to humiliate others wherever possible so that even the smallest challenges to my leadership are quashed. The "Art of War" would be my friend.
   
   
7. Make it Clear Personal Money is Paramount
   I would casually mention in conversation that my main priority is my retirement, and how I plan to fund it. People would hear from me they they should be doing the same, if they know what is good for them.
   
   
8. Blame the Customer
   I'd make the message plain -- if customers don't want to do business with us, then they should go elsewhere, as it is their "right." They'd need to know they are wrong for asking more than we are prepared to give them.
   
   
9. Focus on the Short Term
   I would waste no time on developing fancy vision statements and the like. After all, no-one can predict what will happen with much accuracy in the future. Instead, I'd gear people to short-term results and meeting the goals that will make me look good to the board. My job would be to motivate people using money and personal gain wherever possible, forcing them to compete with each other
   
   
10. Keep Around Non-Performers
    While I would fire at will, I'd make sure to keep around some employees who are mediocre - after all, we can't ALL be stars, can we? I'd move them from job to job, to keep them and everyone else happy in the short term. Making employees happy and comfortable on a day-to-day basis, without any sense of sacrifice, would be critical to getting them to like me.

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It's interesting, but I was surprised when I made this list how easy it was to create. Changing culture is easy to do badly, or inadvertently. My clients are often surprised at the degree
of fallout they experience when they do something dumb (i.e. against their self interests.)

It is much harder to do everything right, and unfortunately, building a great culture requires a leadership performance that is not perfect, but sets the limit of the change by the weakest area visible to others.

For example, a manager might be a good leader in most respects, but a bad listener. Guess which characteristic will have the greatest impact?

Managers and executives need to be working on themselves all the time, as the bar is constantly being raised by those around them. Success only breeds higher expectations and greater challenges.

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Creating a Bad Culture pt 1

People talk about how hard it is to change a corporation's culture, but I have started to think that they are wrong, in part. I think it's easy to change corporate culture if one wants to make it worse.

Let us imagine a newly appointed CEO, who is really intent on screwing up the culture. Where would he start?

1. Complain about everything
   If I were that CEO, I would start by complaining to anyone who will listen about anything that I think needs to change. If I were skillful, I would make sure that no-one could see what I was doing.
   
   I would complain about things that can't change, like things in the past, or taxes. I would make sure that I pointed the finger at other people, blaming them for anything that didn't go right.
   
   I would conceal how much I enjoy complaining, and pretend that I really wanted things to change.
   
   
2. Listen to Complainers
   I would also encourage others to complain to me. They would be able to commiserate as much as they want, and I would listen and add my two cents worth. I know they would be blaming others, and I would agree with them all.
   
   I would promote the people who are the really big complainers, and support them in passing on responsibility to others. I would have no problem as they justify their poor performance.
   
   After work, I'd support long sessions over drinks while we all spend some more time wishing that things are different.
   
   
3. Break Promises
   I'd make public promises and simply never bring them up again if they are never met. It would be a case of selective amnesia.
   
   
4. Communicates Infrequently and Irrelevantly
   I would rarely speak to groups of employees. I would also never encourage a Q&A and use a script wherever possible. I'd avoid speaking about the issues that people care about the most, unless I have really good news.
   
   
5. Never Let Them See you Sweat
   I'd be sure to communicate confidence and capability at ALL times. No matter what uncertainties or doubts I may have, I'd never show them, and learn to hide my true feelings (the better to build trust in my leadership.)

To be continued...

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Creating a Vision

It occurred to me today that many vision statements leave people unmoved.

At the same time, we all know of visions statements that were inspiring when they were said -- such as "A man on the moon by the end of the decade."

What was it that made this statement so very inspiring? Was it the clarity? Was it the fact that JFK said it? Was it the fact that it was measurable? Or is it because it was time-based?

I think these are all important, but I also think that there is a reason why a company's goal of "being number one in it's industry by 2010"leaves most who are listening stone cold.

It has nothing to do with the words, and everything to do with those who are listening.

Behind JFK's goal, or Bill Gates' (a micro-computer on every desktop) is an implicit understanding that the vision would not be realised in the normal course of events.

In other words, it was understood that a man had never walked on the moon before, and that there was not a micro-computer sitting on anyone's desk at the moment those visions were spoken.

This tension between today's reality and the vision being stated made it inspiring. If there were no tension between the statement and today's reality, it would be useless.

Or, if the gap between today's reality and the vision were not well understood, it would be toothless.

The management of this tension is essentially what management and leadership are all about. Executives do their companies a great disservice when they slip into "how great we already are" talk and start to claim that the vision is already being accomplished, or has already been accomplished. In effect, they destroy what little tension might exist in the listening of their employees.

Keeping this tension alive takes great discipline, and is the key to provoking excellence and extraordinary effort. Without it, employees are unconsciously being encouraged to merely seek the path of least resistance. Mediocre results are the guaranteed outcome.

P.S.

(Many years ago, I read a book "The Path of Least Resistance" that I can only now understand in hindsight. The author's name is Robert Fritz.)

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Caribbean Employees are Exceptionally Sensitive

This is a problem I haven't solved, but I think that by stating it clearly, it might help me to understand how to think about a solution.

Do Caribbean managers have only one of two choices?

Should they be nice (in which case employees run all over them) or should they be harsh (and thereby lose the trust and loyalty of those from whom they most need it)?

Is the set of choices available really as limited as this suggests?

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Swinging the Pendulum of Change

I am listening to Lou Gerstner's book - "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" and am struck by the similarity between his account of his leadership and IBM, and that of every other CEO-turns-around-company book I have ever read.

This is not to say that the recording is boring, which it is not. It's just that there is a common plot behind each of his stories.

In the same way that all operas have 3 parts (I think) and all cricket matches revolve around batting and bowling, I have come to believe all successful turnaround CEOs basically have the same story to tell.

In essence, all companies that are unsuccessful fail because a gap develops between them and their customers. Often, the gap is created when what they have always done successfully stops working.

At a very basic level, the company could just "stop doing it." With simple changes, this is easy enough to do.

However, for complex changes involving hundreds or thousands of people who are entrenched in decade-long practices, the insight that change needs to happen is only the first step. What is much harder to bring about is the large-scale change in thinking that each individual must undergo - a change that cannot be forced into happen with carrots and sticks.

Instead, it must be articulated repeatedly until people are able to convince themselves.

To perform this kind of miracle, CEOs need to be able to identify the frameworks that underly the weak positions that companies fall into.

Imagine that the culture of a company as a huge collection of pendulums. Each swings very slowly from one extreme position to another. Each pathway is distinct from the other. Only a subset can be seen clearly at any given time.

What do the pendulums represent?

Each pendulum describes a particular dimension of awareness.

For example, some companies are market-driven while others are driven by innovation. Neither position is absolutely better, but it IS possible for a company to get stuck in one extreme or the other without knowing it.
Some of the other extremes include :

• ethnically monolithic vs. diverse
• revenue vs. expense driven
• centralized vs. decentralized
• diversification of products vs. consolidation
• faster processes vs. quality processes
• incentive pay vs. base pay
• individual vs. group measurements
• reengineering vs. process improvement
• job security vs. talent turnover
• focus on strengths vs. focus on weaknesses
• strategy vs. tactics
• vision vs. execution

In his book, Gerstner mentions that the quote most attributed to him is the one in which he said "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision."

Basically, he was saying that the company had gone too far in the direction of visioning, and that, for the time being, it needed to swing the pendulum back to the more practical matters of doing business on a day to day basis.

It is the job of every CEO (and every manager) to swing pendulums.

However, based on experience and training, no 2 managers are the same - they "see" different pendulums. There is, after all, some truth to the notion that if you give a man a hammer, he is likely to see every problem as a collection of nails.

A manager will always attempt to solve a business problem by looking at the pendulums that he can see most clearly. Indeed, he must.

It is also the job of CEOs to point out, and distinguish new pendulums for the executives and employees in a company, so that they can see what he/she sees. Without this ability, a CEO is stuck trying to change a company on their own, and are unlikely to be successful.

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Surviving an Acquisition

In the news these past few weeks there have been some significant announcements related to acquisitions across the Caribbean region.

One major acquisition that was announced for the first time was that of Neal and Massy's takeover of BS&T -- Barbados' biggest company.

Also in the news is the announcement that the principals of DB&G (which was acquired by Scotiabank) are leaving the company at the end of June.

Although the LIAT/Caribbean Star merger has not been in the news of late, the sale has still not been completed, although it has been scheduled to happen on June 15th.

The common factor between all three actions is that they were all announced as "mergers of equals."

The result?

They are actually turning out to be acquisitions, and not mergers.

Lest anyone think that this is a strange occurrence, history is littered with examples of announced mergers that turned out to actually be acquisitions, including AOL-TimeWarner, Daimler-Chrysler, HewlettPackard/Compaq and Sports Authority/Gart.

The fact is that executives almost always start out using merger language in public, unless the takeover is hostile. In fact, they are undergoing acquisitions, especially with respect to the corporate cultures.

It is not too hard to tell who the cultural winner is -- the executives of the company being acquired usually don't last very long.

In a Framework article entitled "Merger of Equals? Equal Shmequal!" by Amie Devero, she argued that a merger is not possible, in cultural terms. (The article can be downloaded by sending email to fwc-equals@aweber.com.) Also, the recent April 2007 Harvard Business Review article entitled Human Due Diligence makes the point that companies often fail to recognize the "cultural acquirer" when undertaking these activities, to their detriment.

While these questions are certainly of issue to shareholders, it is the employees that bear the brunt of initial miscommunication.

They hear talk of "a merger of equals" "nothing will change," "no layoffs, " "business as usual" and "the same management will continue." Given the public track record of mergers to date, they have every reason to be concerned.

Why?

When senior management insists that a merger of equals is underway it may be good for shareholders to hear and believe that the executives between the two companies are planning to harmoniously co-exist in some way. However, it is often a misleading statement for employees.

History shows that employees are much safer believing that a merger actually means that

• each and every job function will be examined for possible overlaps, and that it is likely that at least some jobs will disappear
• one company will be culturally dominant over the other
• one set of executives will remain, while the other will depart
• there will be major changes and new order will make itself known over time (after all, isn't that the point of the exercise?)

This is not to say that these are bad outcomes -- often they are the best things that can happen to the new, combined company. In the free market of management styles and approaches, let the best company and management team prevail.

However, the problem stems from the fact that most executives in both companies start out by mis-leading their people.

In the very way they announce the "merger" their own people can detect the lie.

It's a little like a bad version of the Brady Bunch -- each parent tell their children that a marriage is about to happen to join two families together, and... "by the way... in case you kids were wondering... nothing will change."

Executives the world over leading acquisitions persist in painting an ultra-rosy picture of the future for their employees. Their inauthenticity is palpable.

It seems that often, they buy into their own "story," an even in the colossal failures like AOL-TimeWarner and Daimler-Chrysler, they seem to be able to maintain a scary insistence that all is well, even when everyone in the real world knows that it is not.

What can executives do differently?

In a prior blog I wrote about what I called "High Tone Managers." These managers focus on being relentlessly positive, to the point that their employees come to distrust everything they say because they are the ones saying it.

An executive leading an acquisition would do much better by being authentic and saying some version of the following, if true:

• we are about to undergo a very difficult change
• this is a friendly acquisition (if it is)
• the odds are against us being successful
• we think the risk is worth it
• the culture that we intend to create will hopefully take the best of both companies
• some jobs will be retrenched, but we are hoping that no people will be forced to leave the company
• the reasons we are doing this is ....
• it will take all of us working together to pull it off

The point here is that an acquisition is a shock, and that people will go through the changes they need to go through in order to adapt to it. It is not unlike the 5 phases of grief a survivor journeys through upon the death of a loved one, as defined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Employees need to be helped to go through these stages as quickly as possible, en masse. Their feelings at each point must be validated, acknowledged and given room to live, if even for an instant.

If executives do their job well, employees can be like soldiers rallying to a cause that is greater than themselves.

However, if the job is done poorly, as it usually is, the result is that employees feel like victims who need to protect themselves from something terrible, that their own parents are inflicting upon them for their own benefit.

In Caribbean companies, the employee mood doesn't get much worse than this.

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Taking the Hard Road

Managers (and parents) have the very difficult job of leading others, but are often amazed when others do not take their advice.

The obvious and most frequent response is to blame those who refuse to take the coaching for their attitude, laziness and lack of discipline.

Yet, it is the rare manager who takes Gandhi seriously: "If you want to change the world, become the first change."

In a culture change initiative, for example, mangers come up with a list of new "values" that they continually exhort their employees to follow. They repeat them in speeches, create colorful posters and pass out lists of values to be displayed prominently in each cubicle.

When the lackadaisical results are realized, it is the brave manager who is willing to discover what was wrong in their approach, rather than to seek fault in others.

The good news is that the brave manager who sincerely asks these questions and shares the process they are engaged in openly with their employees is demonstrating some powerful behaviours.

1. They are showing the importance of being willing to struggle openly in living the values
2. They are teaching the process of living the values, rather than the process of "talking about" the values
3. They are demonstrating courage by showing their weaknesses, rather than demonstrating arrogance by showing their "strength" in living the values.

If authenticity is the currency used to build trust, then the managers who demonstrate these behaviours are more likely to be followed by their employees, and are more likely to engage in the challenge of living by a new set of values. This is a powerful place to start, albeit infrequently observed.

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Getting Rid of the Perfect Executive

Getting Rid of the Perfect Executive?

Well, maybe that would be unwise.

It is probably a better idea to get rid of the executive who somehow thinks or acts like he is perfect, because of the damage he does to those around him.

So goes the thinking I happened upon in two separate Harvard Business Review articles (I am wading through a pile of my unread back issues.)

One article is entitled "In Praise of the Incomplete Leader" and was written in February 2007 and was co-authored by Peter Senge. The other is called Wanted: Chief Ignorance Officer and was written back in November of 2003.

The basic idea I took away is that the executive's job is too complex to pretend that any one person can figure it all out. Also, the more an executive defends the idea that they have figured it all out, the more difficult they make it for the people around them to be authentic, and therefore effective.

As the author the second article, David Gray, puts it, "... few of us would dare to cultivate a healthy ignorance, or nescience, within our own fields of endeavor, where we often take pride in what we purport to know."

Here in the Caribbean region, we have been steeped in the school of all-knowing leadership, from Backra (the all-powerful slave-owner) to modern day CEO's, parents, principals, priests, dons and politicians. Those in power like it that way. So do those who are not.

That is, until the person in power fails spectacularly (like the majority of our politicians) and it starts to become painfully obvious that the messiah's manifesto and message aren't enough to make a drop of difference.

This very old, colonial, British style is long outdated in Britain, but it lives on in the colonies, and especially those in management in our institutions. It is stale, stiff and dull, but it still gives some vague psychological comfort... kind of what it's like to hang out with your grandfather.

The only thing is that at some point you must grow up, because your grandfather probably did not move with the times (mine had trouble believing that man had actually landed on the moon.)

Managers and executives must reach for a style that is authentic. With respect to publicly expressing feelings and emotions, this is a tall order for most of our region's executives who probably aren't too used to "sharing" in private, let alone before strangers.

However, the pace at which human information is growing might allow most executives to be authentic about their growing inability to know everything.

That would be a start.

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"Being Positive" -- A recipe for failure

It used to be that the advice given to a new manager to "be positive" was good advice.

In fact, there was a time when movies used to be all about good things, and rarely attempted to get into the nitty-gritty underside of everyday life.

However, times have changed, and someone who attempts to "focus on the positive" is regarded with a well-earned sense of suspicion. This suspicion deepens, and eventually hardens into cynicism when times get difficult. Why is this?

Well, when the chips are down people who try to focus on the positive exclusively, eventually come to be seen as dangerous, because they tend to ignore reality in their attempt to be upbeat. And today's followers, whether it be in politics, corporations or sports are more tuned in than ever into the nitty-gritty reality of life.

Blame television, the movies, video games, the news media... whatever. I prefer to think that there is an unwillingness to overlook the raw unvarnished truth, and that that is a sign of maturity and growing consciousness that I can see at work here in the Caribbean.

The message that is hard to swallow here is that the truth that people hunger to hear the most from leaders is not how a situation is a mess (although that may be true). Instead, they want to hear from the leader where they realize that they have contributed to the mess themselves, and have now had some kind of insight from which they can glean some hope.

This degree of authenticity is fast becoming the new currency of leadership.

Some are seemingly rich in it -- Oprah's apology after defending the author James Frey's lies comes to mind.

Others are poor -- George Bush's inability to be able to remember any mistakes he has made on several public occasions comes to mind. PJ Patterson's insistence on "solid achievements" in areas of minor interest, and inability to take responsibility for failures also comes to mind.

The psychologist Carl Jung said "Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."

I would add to that and say that the harder a public figure tries to look good, the worse they look. Why? The tactic that most use is to try to find ways emphasize their good sides and play down their bad (i.e. shadow).

However, a leader that plays down his bad size as bluntly as Bush and PJ do only seem to drive up the suspicion of those listening that they are either

1. hiding the fact that they know they have major failures
2. are unaware of the fact that they have major failures

As we enter 2006, and as people increasingly insist on "Keeping it Real" this style of leadership is sounding more and more hollow.

The leaders of the future will not only know that they have a shadow, but they will have the courage to openly talk about it. The more they talk about it, the more people will recognize themselves and be able to relate to the leader, and if the leader can show that they have found a way beyond their shadow, that will inspire people more than any "positive talk" can.

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Business Week published an interesting article related to this topic available here.

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Management, Caribbean Style

Working here in the Caribbean sometimes has an "Alice in Wonderland" feel to it.

That feeling returned when I read the recent reports of two SuperPlus employees being beaten by their managers.

Here are the relevant links to the story:

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/1
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/3
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/4

Apparently, two employees were caught stealing liquor from the store in Mandeville. They were taken by a group of managers (and including at least one senior manager) to the home of one of the managers. They were bound up, and brutally beaten with a pickaxe and even bitten by a dog.

A demonstration ensued, during which placards were displayed calling for "justice."

In response, the CEO of SuperPlus, Wayne Chen, (whose younger brother's home is alleged to be the scene of the crime) responded with the following, from the Gleaner:

Yesterday, Wayne Chen, CEO of Super Plus Food Stores, described the alleged beatings as "unfortunate and regrettable". In a statement, he said: "Super Plus Food Stores, as standard policy, treats with utmost importance, the welfare and well-being of its employees. The organisation does not condone, encourage or engage in any form of abuse of its employees."

Mr. Chen promised that Super Plus would cooperate fully with the police to ensure the swift resolution of the matter. He added: "Super Plus Food Stores has a long history of excellent employee/management relations. Depending on the outcome of these investigations, Super Plus Food Stores will do what is necessary to ensure that its substantial record of employee development and welfare is maintained."

As of today, the SuperPlus website: www.superplusfoods.com has no mention of the incident, and nothing has been said publicly of the incident by the CEO (that I can find). This chain is the largest of its kind in Jamaica with almost 40 branches.

There is a lot that can be said about this, including the non-reaction of the company's owners, and how best to respond to crises such as this. The text-book answer given by the CEO was as insensitive and remote as those given by other CEO's in a similar position at Enron, Ford or Arthur Andersen. The lack of further public communication speaks volumes.

One can only imagine the impact on the workers, who in true Jamaican style, have taken to the streets in protest. While this may not ever have happened in Trinidad or Barbados, the response was predictably quick, and angry and featured a call for justice.

There is nothing like a perceived injustice to get Jamaicans riled up, and into the streets with placards, taking industrial action and forming unions. A few years ago, a well-liked Vice President at Cable and Wireless was fired and this was quickly followed by a demonstration and the usual placards. He was not unionized, but the feeling to right an injustice is a strong one.

In the case of SuperPlus, I imagine that the CEO is scrambling to find a suitable way to respond. Unfortunately, in our Caribbean society, inertia can cause us to return to business as usual in an instant, just because it is the path of least resistance. After all, what does produce have to do with an employee beating?

In fact, the prevalence of vigilante justice and mob-beating in Jamaica makes me think that there may be many who are sympathetic to the "managerial beaters" and support what they did. Down the street on Constant Spring Road, I can just make out a spot where a man was killed by a mob after throwing acid on a female worker at the Tax Office one morning. It all happened about 50 yards from the police station up the road, and several of her co-workers apparently were involved.

On the other hand, we have the employees of SuperPlus, who I imagine are traumatized. I don't know what kind of management intervention to make in a case like this, but I am sure that working at SuperPlus will never be the same again.

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On Winning Hearts and Minds

A while back, a client asked me what it took to win the hearts and minds of the people in his corporation. This was no theoretical conversation. As a senior manager, he had seen declining morale reflected in internal surveys. While profits were up, the company was seen as an "also ran" in its industry, and had an uncaring, unfeeling image.

Without answering, I said “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

When I said it, it actually surprised me a bit.

While it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for many years, it struck me that until he asked me, I would not have answered that way before, even to myself. The statement makes no sense, in the normal way of thinking.

Yet, it applied perfectly.

Between the employees and its senior managers there was significant distrust. There were promises made that were broken. Outright lies told. Projects were started with great fanfare and then dropped.

While this kind of things happens in companies all day long, when they happen in public they have a particularly corrosive effect on culture and morale. People refer to them over and over, as the upset that occurred lingers without being addressed or resolved.

The weakest managers try their best to “keep things positive.” They skip over bad news, and focus on the good. Their public utterances are all about how great things are, as they try to look good and make everyone around them feel better.

Unfortunately, relentless optimism only irritates the original upset and deepens mistrust.

The only effective response is to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

And here, I’m not talking about the fake, no-apology that politicians and CEO’s are so fond of: “We need to find better ways to get the word out about the good things that are happening in the country / company.” This involves nothing new.

The “something new” could even be a success that has been unacknowledged, but usually leaders have no problem with this kind of communication. It is the failures that are much harder to acknowledge, but these are the ones that employees are the most willing to hear, when they have been fed a steady diet of good news.

The funny thing is, winning hearts and minds involves little more than an ability to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.” It unfailingly gets the attention of even the most ardent critic. An honest good faith effort to make things right is supremely powerful, especially to those who want things to be right, and are even cynical that that will never happen.

Recently, South Africa underwent such a process on a massive scale, involving millions of people. Politicians, soldiers, policemen, “freedom fighters” -- they all involved themselves in the process that brought an end to the psychic suffering of all the people of that country.

My sister, who lives in Johannesburg, reports that the mood in the country is one of deep optimism, and she recently moved back to live in South Africa after living for several years in Ghana.

This optimism is to be expected. After all, that’s what happens when anyone takes steps to regenerate a relationship, and this is what it takes to win hearts and minds.

It is ironic – winning hearts and minds has nothing to do with being tough, and everything to do with working to “find something new to be responsible for, and bring closure to it by apologizing for it.”

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On Authentic Leadership

In a prior article I addressed the particular corporate creature I had “discovered” called the “High Tone Manager.”

On further reflection, I thought it would be useful if You, Dear Reader, happened to be a High Tone Manager and began to realize it after reading that particular blog. I imagined that you might have been stumped as to what to do about it, and without a clear course of action.

I thought I had found a solution when I found a book at Borders in Miami called “Authentic Leadership.” I quickly scanned through the book and was disappointed as it had none of what I wanted it to have. After “chewpsing” my teeth, I decided that I really needed to write about it, rather than just… “chewps.” (“Chewpsing one’s teeth” is the same as kissing one’s teeth.)

What was I looking for?

There was a particular young, hot-shot senior manager who I met and worked with for a while, who was an outgoing, friendly, gregarious high-flier. He had been promoted rapidly, and in his early thirties had about half of the company reporting to him.

He was a relentless self-promoter, who was deeply invested in looking good, and in his organization looking good, the better for him.

However, after a meeting with him I made this remark: “he needs to have his first big failure.”

Now, lest you accuse me of having “goat mout’,” my intention was not to cause him to fail or to wish him badly. On the contrary, I want him to succeed fabulously, but the kind of learning that he needed to do can only come from failure, and the humility and insight that comes from having to deal with public embarrassment.

This I know from personal experience.

A few years ago I was divorced from my wife of 15 years, and it came as a shock to everyone except our closest 5 or so friends.

Part of what kept me in the marriage for that long, and kept me trying to work things out, and would not allow me to consider the possibility of divorce (while keeping all this hidden from as many people as possible) was shame. I could not bear the public embarrassment about a failure that should not happen to us, or more accurately, to me.

In many ways I was a poster-boy for marriage, and led public personal development programs in Florida for a large company, and in the Caribbean within corporations in which my “testimonial” was largely about how the techniques I was sharing had made a big difference for me in my marriage, first and foremost. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of people had heard how I had worked to turn my marriage around, and many had thanked me for bringing some light into their situation.

A failure of the marriage would bring an end to the heroic story of a couple who had overcome adversity – to my mind.

Now, years later, and now re-married, I can see how much I learned from the experience and how much I’ve grown. It was humbling, and also freeing, to be able to end the pretending and to bring the truth into the open where it could be accepted as fact. In many cases I had to apologize for keeping friends and family in the dark for so long.

In a real sense, I was a “high-tone husband” with respect to my marriage.

Powerful leadership has many of the same traits.

• Telling the truth.
  
• Being authentic.
  
• Making things right.
  
• Causing reconciliation.
  
• Apologizing.
  
• Taking responsibility.

But these only make sense when there is a recognized failure that is completely embraced, and completely owned.

Without it, the manager or leader is left like I was – on a high wire act, waiting for the moment of failure to come to expose us in the way we most fear.

The high-tone manager (or politician) is always running hard – trying to pile up enough accomplishments to stay ahead of the public failure that MUST come. Because the failure is seen as catastrophic, he or she must work harder and harder to prevent it, even as it seems to be coming closer and closer. The smile gets wider, the mood gets more upbeat, the jokes get louder, the laughing gets more raucous.

But the hollow feeling only expands in depth.

Until, the truth gets told. Then, the suffering stops. The high wire disappears. The ground is found to be solid. Confidence returns, but instead of the weak confidence that comes from successive positive results, it is a deep confidence that comes when one has weathered failure with character and conviction.

So, my wish for that high-tone manager is something like “many happy failures” because they can be for him, an opportunity to expand who he is for himself and others immensely.

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High-Tone Managers

High-Tone Managers

I’ve met a few of them in my time, and one or two of them lately.

What are high-tone managers? They are the relentlessly upbeat, cheerful and smiling managers that perpetually tell a good story, and emphasize the good things that are happening in their business.

They are not unlike those people who in interviews, have trained themselves to respond to questions like “What is your greatest weakness?” with answers like “I work too hard” (without a drop of irony).

Well, OK, Francis, what’s wrong with that? It beats being the opposite, doesn’t it?

At a certain level, we all aspire to be this way – in good spirits in spite of whatever circumstances may surround us. This is a particularly enlightened way to be in life.

My suspicion goes through the roof, however, when the time comes for someone who is “high-tone” to take responsibility for a failure. That’s when it doesn’t seem to be about enlightenment, but about something else.

Once, I observed a manager starting a workshop by defending a programme that had failed miserably. I had trained him to open with an acknowledgment that the program had failed, and that he had played a part in its failure, and that he was sorry about that, and wanted to take responsibility for it.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was a defense of the failed program. He seemed unable to admit to a failure publicly and instead gave his version of “I work too hard.” He was speaking to the issue, but he was taking no responsibility.

This experience has made me think more deeply about these “high-tone managers” who spend a great deal of time and energy trying to look good, and admitting to as few faults and failures as possible. It’s as if faults and failures are forbidden as topics on which to dwell, and both faults and failures must be either turned into positives by quick thinking and talking, or ignored altogether.

High-tone managers are the easiest to promote. They quickly determine what their boss wants to hear, and they thrive on repeating it. They learn just as quickly which topics to avoid, and they make sure to stay away from those, especially if they involve any threat of them looking bad. They are the consummate corporate animals, and get promoted quickly, especially by bosses that welcome their cheerful outlook and hopeful nature.

Unfortunately, the hot-air balloon eventually runs out of gas.

If promoted quickly, there comes a point when the large number of people the high-tone manager has directly or indirectly reporting to him/her her eventually catch on.

In the book “The Wisdom of Crowds” the author, Joseph Surowiecki, describes how groups of people are able to generate a kind of intelligence that a single person or small group is unable to attain.

I think that the same thing happens with managers. Their weaknesses are only amplified when they are promoted, and more people report to them. Over time their employees are able to fit together bits and pieces of their individual understanding, so that a composite is developed that is quite accurate.

For the high-tone manager, it can happen quite quickly. A once friendly crowd turns hostile. A favorite employee turns a cold shoulder. Morale takes a dip.

The high-tone manager responds by turning up the volume, and becoming more upbeat, more positive and more cheerful. The result is a further separation between the manager and his or her people, as they increasingly complain that the manager is “full of bull-shit,” “smoking dope / drinking their own Kool Aid” or “much too in love with themselves.”

If the cycle is not broken, cynicism deepens and every word that is uttered by the managers is met with suspicion. People work to protect themselves from an over-optimism that they fear might leave them dealing with some failure that their boss refused to face. This lack of trust manifests itself most openly when the high-tone manager attempts to “rally the troops,” leaving only one person rallied: themselves.

The cycle only breaks when the high-tone manager starts to demonstrate some recognition of his/her faults and failures, and does so in a way that lets other people know (and not just hear) that there is normal blood flowing through their veins, “just like the rest of us”. This authenticity has a refreshing tone to it that is inspiring and compelling, and can convert even the most hardened cynics. For the high-tone manager, it takes courage and strength of character to give up their natural inclination to do whatever they can to look good. The upside of doing so is that when they return to their natural upbeat selves they can do so knowing that being cheerful and positive is a choice, rather than a habit.

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Afterthought: For the Caribbean business-place, the high-tone manager has a unique challenge. During slavery, the worker that was high-toned was rewarded in physical ways: with better food, lodgings, jobs, treatment from Backra Massah and so forth. They usually would be found working as house-slaves, rather than field-slaves. At times, they would experience hostility from the other slaves as they curried Massah’s favor.

The high-tone manager is working with, and against, this historical legacy and tendency.

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Inspiring Action as a Manager

In thinking of what kind of communication or dialog a manager could have with his staff that would motivate and inspire, we have come up with the following:

1. The manager must be speaking about something that is different (otherwise, why speak at all?)
2. The change is best expressed as a change in thinking
3. The kind of thinking before the change should be spoken in the first person
4. The kind of thinking that is being done after the change should be spoken in the first person
5. The content must reflect some new "zone of responsibility" that the manager is claiming

For example:

Manager speaking:

"I want to tell you about a new realization that I've had. We've been working hard on project A, but all the while I've been thinking to myself that it's truly a waste of time. I finally decided to share my thoughts with my own boss, and he said that he felt the same way.

We talked for awhile and have decided not to kill the project, but to make some substantial changes with your help ."

Another example:

"For the past few years we have been talking and talking about the importance of customer service. Yesterday, in a conversation with a consultant, I saw that while I'd been talking up a storm, I had not been leading the company in way that would allow you to get the training that was needed to positively impact the customer's experience. Well, now that I've realized this, I've decide that this must change, and I'd like to launch a new program..."

A contra-example in response to a Senior Management Approval rating of only 36%:

"I recently read the employee feedback survey, and I think that we have done some very good work that has gone unrecognized. We should not be so down on ourselves, and criticise ourseves so much. In fact, we need to focus on the positives and I'd like us to focus on some of the good things that have happened in the past year."

The last comment is the most telling. A manager seeks to deflect criticism by using his position to add good things on top of bad,without telling the truth about his/her real thinking or emotions. The result is a communication that leaves people flat.

A manager's job in any communication is not to seek praise, even if it is shared with others. A manger's job is to give praise, and take responsibility.

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