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CEOs’ Grapple With Time Choices

Over the New Year holiday, I was asked: “What is the one issue with which many CEOs grapple?” Several come to mind:

1. “What don’t I know that could “kill” me?”

2. (Corollary) “What wont anyone tell me?

3. “Am I pushing people too hard or not hard enough”

4. “Is the perception people take away from meetings with me the most effective one?”

In my twenty-plus years of coaching, these have always been the top issues. But in the past two or three years, a different one has become nearly universal:

5. Am I making the best choices for spending my time?

The reasons for this rising past the other issues in both frequency and importance are reasonably obvious:

- business (and academe) is more complex, more competitive and (recently) with survival as well as rank at stake

- organizations are operating with fewer people who are working harder, many at the limit of their capacity

-most organizations are flatter with more direct reports per leader

- the knowledge available to lead wisely is exploding, requiring more time to stay even

- there are relatively few decisions which can be taken at the pace you would like, many are event-driven

- all of the above are amplified for public companies and those highly regulated

- for those with young children, they are experiencing (and expecting) the same intensity of activities, learning and information access and satisfaction; and they grow early into demanding, interactive small people

My daughter-in-law — a former senior marketing executive, now stay at home mom — observes that this is not a problem to be solved, but a condition to be treated. It is how it is and will be.

So, what are the recommended treatments? Pretty obvious stuff (see below). The tipping point comes from (1) wanting badly enough to change and (2) knowing small steps to try (field experiments).

A partial list (more to follow in post later this month):

- Write down the top 6 roles and goals of the CEO for the next 90 days. What can only the CEO do or lead? Define key milestones and the few CEO actions or meetings needed to accomplish them (one client calls this a Done-By List). Keep this handy each day and ask: Am I spending time wisely?

- Review your calendar with family: what are the moments in the next 90 days when your presence will mean a lot to one of them? Make a 90 day family plan.

- Do you have reflective time in your day at all? Carve out white space each week for these three things: (1) kicking back and thinking (and jotting something down) (2) getting exercise and (3) working on one long-term goal (right now — last quarter of 2012).

For further reading, I highly recommend going back to some of Adam Bryant’s interviews with CEOs, reported in the NY Times:

Corner Office with Adam Bryant

For the record, adapting the above to any leadership position in an organization will improve focus, performance and possibly contentment (depends on what you believe are the consequences of failing to react quickly to all in-coming demands on your time).

That’s my view. Whats yours?

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CEO Take Home Value

As the year draws to a close, it seems useful to review the what my CEOs took home from our Group meetings and tried back at the office (see link below). Our group is one of more than 600 worldwide in the largest CEO membership organization.

Vistage Internatonal CEO Membership Organization

This year, as always, some of the techniques introduced into our group meetings by world class expert workshop leaders (and some that have been proven in other Vistage CEO groups) had “take home value.” In fact, individual “bosses” reported success within their organizations with four different exercises.

One of these is Tribal Leadership in which different approaches to leading segments of the workforce differentiated by their world view — levels of negativity or positivity about their own life, the lives of others and how the world works. We highly recommend reading the book by Dave Logan.

Tribal Leadership

Another is “issue processing” in which someone makes himself/herself vulnerable by presenting a real, important and sensitive issue. In round one, others ask questions of fact and clarification. In a second round, listeners provide feedback.  Finally, the facilitator asks the presenter to say and write down their take-aways and the actions to which they are committed. Using this tool focuses more on facts, incents people to prepare more concise issue statements and engage others in substantive discussion. CEOs who took this home found it took the level of meeting up several notches. If you want to know more about this Vistage tool, leave your comment and email address.

A third is the roundtable exercise conducted each meeting that binds us together and keeps continuity in each other’s lives. In our group, I call it “Being in Each Other’s Movie.” It is simply revealing something about themselves that others might not know (a recent event or action or experience)  plus an activity outside of work in which they engaged with another in the room. As my behavior professor in business school said: “You will get a lot more done if you know the motivations and expectations of others in the room And it is harder to demonize someone whom you actually know.”

Finally, some CEOs have taken home an exercise called “Stickman” which accomplished the same growth of understanding others as individual whole people rather than occupants of a job. They have found this applicable in breaking down barriers and building better teams in sales and operations.

Leaders understandably tend to focus on the task at hand and the results. But leadership is about getting others to do what needs to be done, doing it eagerly and doing it well. That means leading the togetherness and motivation as well as the tasks and outcomes. Hugh performing leaders continually look for new tools for doing this. Membership in Vistage involves experience with such tools.

That’s my view. What’s yours?

CEO Gaff Avoidance

CEO GAFF AVOIDANCE

Anyone watching the presidential campaign must wonder how the mind works just before a gaff. There certainly have been enough of them by both Republicans and Democrats. One hopes that a CEO has accumulated by experience far more knowledge than the politicians in their briefings (apparently their major source of learning).

 

What do CEOs think just before they make a remark to a large internal audience? an appearance on a tv show? How do they stave off most gaffs?

There are three approaches I have observed:

1. Make a positive response first (e.g., “That question is particularly relevant because…..”)

2. Ask a question before giving an answer (e.g., “Are you focusing particularly on _______?” or “Did you mean that narrowly the way you said it or more broadly?”; at a minimum, confirm your understanding of the question.

3. “I think about that question this way (re-define the question in a way that makes more sense to you)”

Such responses usually buy enough time for a thoughtful response. This also has good effect in business situations.

In public appearances, as a last resort, the politician’s response may be appropriate: provide a pre-defined answer to a similar question and move on.  Most CEOs have prepared for any such appearances, anticipating what will be asked and what they wish convey and staying on message.

That’s just my view. What’s yours?

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CEO Emotional Intelligence: Strain Management

CEO Emotional Intelligence — Strain Management

At what point is the best place to clean up wastewater? Upstream at the source. When is the best time to avoid a plant disease spreading? Nipping it in the bud. When is the best time to address a crisis? Before it is one.

So it is with stress management.  This valuable set of skills helps reduce stress from an event by:

-       working out the stress afterward (exercise, for example)

-       restoring equilibrium by attaining greater physical fitness beforehand  (exercise, nutrition, sleep)

-       building resilience to stress by attaining greater mental resilience (meditation)

But, as we know from physics, stress fractures in bridges and in people are the result of heavy strain. Effective CEOs deal with strain by:

-       Recognizing the people and situations that put strain on them (“triggers”), then taking steps to avoid or reduce the frequency of such situations (in some instances raising the issue with whoever generates such strain or establishing intermediaries to avoid direct contact)

-       Creating white spaces in the calendar to allow solo progress on important goals; this reduces the strain of an overscheduled life (from anxiety that such a schedule crowds out time for action on the real keys to success)

-       Thinking through important recurring choices and testing different approaches to root causes of strain

• How often and under what circumstances should time with family take precedence? Benefits of ,and ways of being more proactive and intentional?
• How often and under what circumstances are in-person meetings with direct reports, individual board members and customers/clients necessary and effective?
• What is really my job and my job alone? What am I spending time on that others (with guidance) could do a better job?
• These can prevent or reduce strain

As with many other insights gleaned from CEOs, these thoughts apply to any job as boss or supervisor.

That’s my view. What’s yours?

CEO Storytelling

CEO Storytelling

What story are you living? Sometimes hearing someone else’s story can change you.

In addition to being coach to business owners in the CEO membership organization known as Vistage, I have my own group of fellow Chairs who coach me and each other. Last Friday, we Chairs experienced a very timely workshop with a speaker named Dave Hibbard.

 

Dave asked: “What’s your  story?” Seems like a simple question. But as he dug deeper with us, we each were reminded that:

 

1. Each day we get out of bed, our thoughts and actions all day are governed by our story

2. Our story is the result of events and experiences long ago, which we interpreted as best we could at the time: good and evil in the world, our ability to control things and get what we want, how we want to be viewed

3. We then seek validation that our story is true (when in fact it is just a story)

4. Dave told us his story. He was raised in a poor and tough neighborhood in Chicago, living in rooms above a bar. At age 7, his father abandoned the family. That’s when he first wrote his story: don’t trust or love people — they will leave you. You are ultimately alone. His mother reinforced his story with hers, adding views about men. His girl friend in college slept with his best friend. Is there any surprise that his first marriage failed? Though he divorced her, he said “she left me emotionally.”

5. On returning to his old neighborhood with his soon to be second wife, he sought to show her his origins and why his story was true. She countered with: “You are a very lucky guy. This environment is what made you tough enough, driven enough to be who you are today..” Dave says it changed his story in an instant. And his new story now includes a wife of 26 years, a successful and more meaningful new career and sharing his learning with others.

In today’s awful and uncertain economy, with a failure of leadership at all levels of government, with so many instances of malfeasance, I have engaged my CEOs in revisiting their stories. I will elaborate on this in today’s conversation with the amazing Jim Blasingame of Smallbusinessadvocate.

Small Business Advocate

If you hear my voice today, if you read what I write, revisit your story and see how it is inhibiting your success in this environment. And change your story.

That’s just my view.  What’s yours?

 

Bulldog CEOs: Lessons Learned

Reflecting on several coaching sessions with A-type-persona leaders moves me to share these thoughts, which may be of value to a broader audience.

The formula for past success for these people has often included some or all of these traits:

- Think and speak sooner and faster than anyone in the room

- Win by sheer intensity and preparation

- Drive the conversation in the direction you want from the get-go

- Parry contrary views and behavior head- on — be a bulldog

- Push for total clarity at all times

- Pack as much as possible into each minute, hour, day and week

- Outwork everyone else (hours, level of detail)

- Make your solutions and wants known early and often

A preamble to what follows is essential: diminishing your goals or lowering your standards is off the table. But continuing the above beliefs and the behaviors that flow from them will limit your future success and often has a real “dark side” penalty in supporters at work, in marriages, with children and in friendships. So many stories support this assessment.

Instead, imagine that you are the boss, the CEO, the lead partner who must enlist an entire organization to achieve your goals and often to make personal sacrifices to succeed. As Gordon Bethune said as CEO of Continental Airlines: “That aircraft will get fixed a whole lot sooner if someone wants to fix it.”  The challenges now include:

- Teasing out and harvesting the best info and ideas of the best and brightest in your organization

- Enlisting advocates to carry the load with you

- Inspiring and engaging the group toward the same goal

- Making whatever progress is possible at this moment, re-grouping and leading again later

- Increasing others’ appetites for a stretch goal

- Setting the example for the most effective way to work together (creating the culture of both excellence and interpersonal behavior)

So how should we think about adapting to the challenges? Leaders must learn by experience these talents:

- Read the room, learn what others are thinking and feeling

- “Set your watch” to the right time interval for actions and results, the right moment to push hard and the right moment not to push

- Decide what is an appropriate outcome for this moment in time balancing results with motivation of your followership

- Vary tactics according to the above

- Replace the on off switch of your intensity with a rheostat

- Wear the button of leader even if you are not officially in that position (thought leadership, exemplary behavior)

The power of corporate cultures (and the leadership of the companies) is often measured by “engagement surveys.” To learn more, visit:

http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/employee-engagement.aspx

or click on

Gallup Engagement Survey

There is ample data to show that companies whose leaders inspire and engage perform better and for longer than those who drive by fear.

That’s just my view. What’s yours?

CEO Charter For Culture Change

A third party professional services team will help one of my CEO clients to enlist the minds and hearts of thousands of employees at all levels to what he believes will lead to better ways to work together: heightened collaboration across silos to win in the marketplace, focus on strengths, transition away from negative behaviors. How to charter a 3rd party which will conduct interviews and team-building activities?

We began with the CEOs top of mind view of the before and after on these topics:

1. Negative behaviors and root causes (including historical negative signal acts by prior leadership)

- example: silo unit leaders punish those who collaborate with or share information with other units; use personnel assessments to damage those by whom you feel threatened or whom you don’t like

2. Unwritten rules for success

- example: avoid being controversial in meetings (save substantive differences and personal animosity for back channels)

3. Signal Acts by the CEO and selected others

- examples: Promote someone known for helping others, give assignments that require people to work together with high visibility and significant stakes in joint outcome, re-structure/integrate units (under one leader) who most need to work together; celebrate and reward instances of positive behaviors that win in the marketplace

While this approach has worked in prior organizations, will post some time in the future as to how this goes.

That’s just my view. What’s yours?

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