253: Mary Lippitt: Target what matters when it matters

Mary Lippitt Show Notes Page

Mary Lippitt was trying to influence her bosses and was rejected. When she was able to finally meet with the top executive, she realized she needed to open her mind and to recognize that her facts contained many gaps and she needed to adjust her thinking.

Dr. Mary Lippitt’s early years were spent in New Haven, CT; Lincoln, NE; Schenectady NY; Arlington VA; Paris, France; and Bethesda MD. As the daughter of a minister, she moved frequently. These experiences showed her that despite outward differences, we share many commonalities. She formed a deep commitment to finding ways to bring people together and reduce the proclivity to stereotype or dismiss others since she did not like being labeled or pigeonholed.

As an adult, Mary has lived in Buffalo, NY, Bartlesville, OK, Miami Fl, Bethesda MD (again), and now in Tampa Bay, Fl. And over the years, she worked for county government, an international electronics firm, and as director of a university’s master of human resources program.

These divergent experiences helped her recognize there is a missing element in the way we develop our leaders. We traditionally focus on the internal aspects of an individual; their personal style, traits, and competencies. The context or outer realities are largely being overlooked. Her distinctive work fills this gap by helping leaders critically analyze and address their complex and challenging issues. In Mary’s book, Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters, she offers a framework to build effectiveness, engagement, collaboration, that produce results.

Mary founded Enterprise Management Limited in 1984 and has served public, private, and non-profit clients interested in boosting critical thinking, the bottom line, and engagement. In the US, she has partnered with Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, SAIC, the US Department of Energy, and the US Marine Corps. She has also worked in Japan, Turkey, France, and Kuwait.

The role Mary enjoys the most is being a grandmother to her two grandsons, and she apologies to her daughter for making this statement. But grandparenthood has all the pleasures without any of the hassles of being a parent.

Mary currently lives in Tampa, Florida between her many travel adventures.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @marylippitt to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“You could deliver results and still care about people.” – Click to Tweet

“Kindness and results are not exclusive to each other; you could do both.” – Click to Tweet

“The success rate of change is dismal because the change agents don’t listen.” – Click to Tweet

“A mindset is a temporary point of view; it is not genetic or a personal style.” – Click to Tweet

“When I focus, I can achieve something.” – Click to Tweet

“If I keep trying to juggle six things, I’ll make very poor decisions.” – Click to Tweet

“Change is probable, pervasive, problematic, and promising.” – Click to Tweet

“Change is where we’re going to have new opportunities, but we may not like the process of having to go through that change.” – Click to Tweet

“By the time I’m being forced I have fewer options. As long as I’m proactive I have more to choose from.” – Click to Tweet

“Leadership today is about asking the right questions, it’s not about having all the right answers.” – Click to Tweet

“No one has all the right answers, the world is too complex.” – Click to Tweet

“The focal point is important because that creates the common ground.” – Click to Tweet

“I realized, when you think differently from me you help me.” – Click to Tweet

“Instead of labeling somebody right or wrong, what can I learn.” – Click to Tweet

“I’m realizing I don’t have all the information, but I also realize no one does.” – Click to Tweet

“Our focal point of leadership has become a little too narrow.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Learn to be able to say you do not know.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

I like to follow new ideas that sometimes I forget the priority of following through with my immediate goals.

Best Leadership Advice

Listen, persevere, and respect others.

Secret to Success

I’ve developed the ability to ask good questions.

Best tools in business or life

I use a situational mindset checklist.

Contacting Mary Lippitt

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marylippitt/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/marylippitt

Website: https://enterprisemgt.com/

Resources and Show Mentions

Call Center Coach

An Even Better Place to Work

Show Transcript:

Click to access edited transcript

253 Mary Lippitt episode

Jim Rembach: (00:00)

Okay. Fast leader Legion today. I’m excited because we have somebody on the show who is really going to give us some greater understandings and frameworks on how to be significantly more effective. Dr Mary lipids early years were spent in new Haven, Connecticut, Lincoln, Nebraska, Schenectady, New York, Arlington, Virginia, Paris, France in Bethesda, Maryland as the daughter of a minister. She moved frequently. These experiences showed her that despite outward differences, we share many commonalities. She formed a deep commitment to finding ways to bring people together and reduce the proclivity to stereotype or dismiss others since she did not like being labeled or pigeonholed herself as an adult. Mary has lived in Buffalo, New York, Bartletts bill, Oklahoma, Miami, Florida, Bethesda, Maryland, and now in Tampa, Florida. And over the years she worked for County government and international electronics firm and as a director of a university’s master of human resources program, these divergent experiences helped her recognize there is a missing element in the way that we develop our leaders.

Jim Rembach: (00:00)

nd as the daughter of a minister. She moved frequently. These experiences showed her that despite outward differences, we share many commonalities. She formed a deep commitment to finding ways to bring people together and reduce the proclivity to stereotype or dismiss others since she did not like being labeled or pigeonholed herself as an adult. Mary has lived in Buffalo, New York, Bartletts bill, Oklahoma, Miami, Florida, Bethesda, Maryland, and now in Tampa, Florida. And over the years she worked for County government and international electronics firm and as a director of a university’s master of human resources program, these divergent experiences helped her recognize there is a missing element in the way that we develop our leaders.

Jim Rembach: (01:07)

We traditionally focus on the internal aspects of an individual, their personal style or their traits and their competencies. The context or outer realities are largely being overlooked. Her distinctive work fills this gap by helping leaders critically analyze and address their complex and challenging issues in Mary’s book, situational mindsets targeting what matters when it matters. She offers a framework to build effectiveness, engagement, collaboration that produces results. Mary founded enterprise management limited in 1984 and has served public, private and nonprofit clients interested in boosting critical thinking and bottom line and engagement in the U S she has partnered with bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, S a I see the us department of energy and the U S Marine Corps. She has also worked in Japan, Turkey, France and Kuwait. The role Mary enjoys the most is bringing a grandmother to her grandsons and she apologizes to her daughter for making the statement, but grand Parenthood has all the pleasures without any of the hassles of being a parent. Mary currently lives in Tampa, Florida between her travel excursions, Mary lipid. Are you ready to help us get over the hump? Thank you. I’m really glad you’re here and I’m really excited to talk about this particular topic. But I think before we get into that, I think it’s extremely important for you to explain who is Kate Hollander?

Mary Lippitt: (02:33)

Kate Hollander is the new head of sales at a printing company in Denver. And she walks into a situation where her staff really would prefer that she would not be there because they would wanted her job. The sales are declining rapidly. There are silos between the organizations in the, uh, between, uh, sales production and she, the owner is a micromanager. So she has a lot or plate from the get go. And the story talks about how she’s resolves this by delivering results, but also at the same time by making sure that people are engaged and respect it. What I’m trying to show in this story of Kate is that you could deliver results and still care about people. You know, kindness and results are not exclusive to each other. You can do both. And that this is what Kate shows people how to deliver results, but to work well together

Jim Rembach: (03:38)

well, and to give this even more justice. What you did is really set a very important setting and how Kate actually goes about her work when you talk about her being a medic. So if you could explain that a little bit, I think that’s a really good foundational elements to kind of help give people some understanding and context when we get into this discussion about these situational mindsets.

Mary Lippitt: (04:02)

Okay. Kate had been in sales before for a medical device manufacturer, but after nine 11, she chose to serve in the military and serve as a medic. So she’s coming off of tours in the middle East and she’s accepted a job in an industry that she is not familiar with. And so she knows about sales, but her recent experience is really in middle East and being a medic rather than a sales person. So there’s a lot of discounting her, uh, stereotypes about, you know, what can she do for us and you know, she’s younger than we are and all sorts of other aspects. Cloud, uh, the initial impression of her, uh, what really happens is that there is actually the restaurant next to her, the printing business, there’s an explosion. And then they see her in action and they realize a couple of things. Not only is she very decisive, but she also, no one knows when to step back.

Mary Lippitt: (05:08)

She handles the triage effectively. She directs people clearly and with respect, no panic. But when the emergency medical people arrive, she knows to step back. So this is not someone who is really out to, to, to, to look like on the hero. Uh, she works well with others and people realize, well she goes have some skills, maybe she doesn’t know a lot about printing yet. And the, she has to balance a reality that the owner of the business is pushing her go, go, go, go. And she recognizes that the sales have been going down for a while. So it isn’t just a motivational thing. There really are some other aspects. So she uses her honeymoon period just to sit back and do some analysis of what it is that’s really happening. And in that process she recognizes that, that her staff is using a transactional approach, just get the sale and move on.

Mary Lippitt: (06:11)

And she knows that customer service, uh, as you would know, well, requires a lot more than that. And she talks to the team and helps them come up with a ability to tailor their interactions with their potential clients to make sure that they have a solid sale and one that survives the actual first, um, order to deliver additional orders. And, and this is really resisted at first because after all, she doesn’t know the printing business and, you know, why should we change? We would be doing it this way for so long. And so she actually takes a step back and instead of trying to, um, demand, um, compliance, she actually works with her staff. She goes on sales calls with them, she doesn’t try to upstage them and she shows very early, they sh that she is trying to help them because she’s identified what their major problems are within the organization and she tackles those right away to gain some early wins to build the confidence that she really is going to be someone that helps them.

Mary Lippitt: (07:21)

So there’s a lot going on that she’s trying to juggle. And I should mention that she got this job because the vice-president charge of operations for title’s vice president of sales was someone she worked with in the military. So he was her advocate and the owner was a little reluctant to hire. She didn’t have the Printy experience. And again, he was hit the deck running nose down to the grindstone kind of guy. And, and so this, um, strong recommendation is, is the reason that she got the job, but the welcome was a little bit lukewarm.

Jim Rembach: (07:56)

Well, but you also talk about that and everything that you described there and the competing forces associated with this. So there’s, you know, the situations of threat from outside, um, you know, all the marketplace, you know, pressures, you talk about the internal culture, uh, you talk about, you know, uh, people trying to silo, you know, uh, protect, I mean, all of these different factors that I think everybody can relate to in so many different ways. And, and so then you start explaining this whole really how you navigate all of this and how Kate navigates all this. And that is in the situational mindset model. So if you could talk about the, the six components or elements of the situational mindset model because of if you just take them by word, um, you could potentially be misled and I think you need to explain them a little bit.

Mary Lippitt: (08:43)

Okay. There, there are six mindsets. Let me just preface my comments by people say, Oh, there’s gotta be more than that. I will remind people that there are three primary colors and we get lots cubes. There are seven musical notes, so we get lots of melodies. So having six is not as outrageous as it may seem. So let me identify the six. The first is I call inventing. It is a focus on what are the new products we should consider, uh, what are the new technologies that we can apply? What are the synergies that we can create internally or externally? So this is a focus on making sure that you are offering the products that are state of the art. And we do know that, you know, certain companies really go out of their way to make sure that they are state of the art, you know, whether it’s an Apple or or whatever organization it is.

Mary Lippitt: (09:38)

Having that reputation really is a discriminating factor for many customers. So that’s the first one. The second one is very customer oriented, calling it the catalyzing mindset. And in this mindset we’re looking at who our key customers, how can we increase our customer base, how can retain our customers, how can we provide them with customer service? What are the emerging customer needs? So both the first two are very external to the organization. They’re looking at technology and new ideas. They’re looking at the customer, which is obviously external. And those are really what I would call the entrepreneurial stages, the small business getting started. And then there’s a shift from the external point of view to looking at the organization. And I know you’re very familiar with the fact that organizations can grow rapidly, but sometimes there’s a lot of chaos in that growth. And so the third mindset is called the developing mindset.

Mary Lippitt: (10:41)

And it takes a look at how should we be organized? Should we be functional matrix, geographic product, whatever. But it’s also establishing, you know, what are our policies? What’s our pay policy, what’s our, uh, our policy on promotions. It’s taking a look at what are the systems that we need? How is information going to flow? What are the decision making practices we have? So it’s what I’ll call a macro orientation to how we function. And this is the orientation that says let’s take a look at our goals and make sure that we’re doing the right thing rather than just doing things right. So that’s the third one. The fourth one is also internal look, but it’s more of a micro look. Then the infrastructure develop a mindset. We call that the performing mindset. And in this mindset, what we take a look at are things like process improvement, a quality improvement, workflow analysis, facility layout improvement, um, return on investment, meeting the budget, uh, vendor management, supply chain management, all of the, the, the adjustments, the tweaking, the polishing of a work flow.

Mary Lippitt: (11:57)

And of course, you know, that is where we get the efficiency. So this is a very efficiency but quality oriented mindset. So the, the fifth mindset is still internal, but it’s taking look at the people is taking a look. What is a talent we have? Do they have the right competencies? How do we retain them? Do we have good collaboration? Do we have engagement? Do we have a succession plan? Do we have an agile culture? Are we change ready? Uh, are we proud of ourselves or do we set, have a sense of commitment and loyalty. All of the without broadly call the people and culture aspects. And, and again, some people tend to discount this area and I would just like to remind people that Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. So this although may not have the pazazz of a customer sale, uh, if you don’t keep your sales people, if you don’t have the right compensation system for them, if they’re not proud of your product, they will stay with you.

Mary Lippitt: (13:03)

And you call that the protecting mindset. Why protecting? Because it’s protecting what we’ve achieved in terms of our product, our customers, our infrastructure and our processes. So it’s protecting all that we’ve built so far. And this is a very proud, you know, stage. And in that every one of these stages has many advantages, but many also disadvantages. And what can happen with protecting is that I’m so proud of what I’ve got. I won’t change. You know, we’ve, we’ve perfected everything, don’t mess with success. And the sixth and final mindset is taking a look at the trends that we need to adjust to. It’s called the challenging mindset because it’s challenging what we’ve already established. And this is taking a look at new initiatives, new business opportunities that we may have. It takes a look at maybe new business models. And again, just talking about the printing industry for a second.

Mary Lippitt: (14:04)

You know, there was a time when people would say, no one, no one will ever buy a book without being able to go to a store, open the book and look at, you know, but nobody will buy the book. Um, and I will say that Amazon has such, uh, show them how false that assumption was. So the challenging mindset looks at business models changing the strategy, adapting the strategy. It also takes a look at what of some potential new partnerships that we should go after. What are the kinds of alliances we should make? You know, it’s taking a look at positioning the organization for the future. There’s a lovely quote from Mark Twain that, you know, if you’re on the right track, that’s great, but you just stay there, you’re going to get run over. And the challenging mindset is going to tell you this is, you know, an opportunity to continue to grow.

Mary Lippitt: (14:56)

We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water. What we really can do is take what we’ve done well expanded, prepare us. We have to be an organization that sustains itself. So those are the six. And again, three of them are internally focused. The developing, the performing and the protecting. And three of them are really externally focused. The challenging, which is looking at the trends, you know, what does the demographic difference mean for us? Uh, what does it mean? You know, that the interest rates are lower than we had anticipated. All those things have to be considered. So the challenging, the inventing and the catalyzing mindset look more externally. And what’s really interesting is most change agents are looking at challenging, inventing and catalyzing. And we know that the success rate of change is dismal. And that’s because the change agents get so excited about their idea that they don’t listen to the other mindsets that people have. And again, a mindset is a temporary point of view. It is not genetic, it is not a personal style. It say I’m going to do what I think is most important. And um, historically we had something called faster, cheaper and better and we would say, you know, do it faster and then it will obviously be cheaper. No, not necessarily. So this framework in the largest, that faster, cheaper, better into a more comprehensive analysis.

Jim Rembach: (16:25)

No, but I think you bring up a really interesting point, right? So it’s, I have these six elements and as you were explaining them, I started thinking about all these different subsets. So I’m like, okay, I’m an organization and it was all as you, if you, if you still even thinking about that from a champion perspective, they can’t focus on everything. It’s just not possible. The whole, you know, multitasking myth is, is quite true. While we have to do a lot of things, uh, it doesn’t mean that we can focus on a lot of things. So when you start talking about choosing and choosing, which mindset, how do you go about doing that?

Mary Lippitt: (16:57)

Well, the first thing is you have to do a comprehensive analysis of your situation. And the term, the title of the book is talking about mindset, which is a present orientation. What’s, what am I facing now? But instead of having it be your mindset about myself and my own capabilities, it’s doing an awareness of the actual situation that I’m confronting. And so I would love to do six things simultaneously, but, but I know that I can’t text and drive, so I have to become aware of my limitations. And that’s not a bad thing because when I focus, I can achieve something. If I keep trying to juggle six things, I’ll make very poor decisions. I haven’t really analyzed everything and I’ll come across as someone who is a chameleon. First she wants this, then she wants that kind of thing. So we have to make choices.

Mary Lippitt: (17:50)

But those choices are not permanent. I think people resisted a choice because they thought, okay, this is gonna be a five year plan or a 10 year plan and what we have now is the speed of change is coming so fast that we could do one priority to time complete it and move on to another. There was a lovely story about the fact that if you’re driving a car, you adjust your position, your hands, your eyes, every nine seconds and you know, this is the rate of change and change is probable, pervasive, problematic and promising. So you know, the change is where we’re going to have new opportunities that we may not like the process of having to go through that change, but we’re going to have to to be successful.

Jim Rembach: (18:40)

Well, and I think as you said that there’s one thing for me that I think is kind of stands out as that I would rather be proactive and rather it be voluntary than be forced.

Mary Lippitt: (18:49)

Yes. Because by the time I’m being forced, I have fewer options as long as I’m proactive, I have more to choose from.

Jim Rembach: (18:57)

Yeah. That’s funny that you say that. My daughter right now is a, uh, in high school and she’s a junior and I’m like, you need to start looking at schools. I said, because if you don’t do that, because she’s also an athlete, I said, you know, you have to start creating relationships that you surely should have already been building. If you want a roster spot, you know that it’s all about relationships these days. I mean, they, yes, they look at the athleticism and you know, athletic abilities, but they also want to make sure they’re finding the right cultural fit. It’s become so darn important. You’re, you’re going to be left with whatever the scraps are if you don’t get moving.

Mary Lippitt: (19:31)

And one of the things she should be considering is getting tapes of her in action. I mean, there are things that she could do now to help her, you know, identify the coaches that she might want to send information to, you know, and maybe even look at those where she can get on the roster and maybe also look at those where she could get a scholarship. So, I mean it looks like it’s far off to just somebody, but, but there are things we can do now to position ourselves well for the future.

Jim Rembach: (19:58)

That’s right. And that’s just exactly what we’re talking about as far as, you know, really being able to, okay, now I understand this framework, uh, and then I need to go about the choosing process, but I need to master this. I mean, because I need to be proactive with it. I cannot be reactive. I’m going to lose choices and options. I’m going to be the one being disrupted instead of being the disruptor. And so I have to master it. So now it’s a master. You talk about really two key key elements. There’s probably more if they are, please explain them. But you talk about focal points and guiding questions. Explain them.

Mary Lippitt: (20:30)

Well, I think I w w I would say is the guided questions are helping us identify all the information first. Because what happens is the, sometimes we have an idea but we don’t really test it out. Is this really the best option I have? So the questions become a checklist to make sure I’ve collected the data from everyone. And again, one of my assumptions is that leadership today is about asking the right questions. It’s not about having all the right answers cause no one has all the right answers. The world is too complex. So getting the questions surfaces the data so then I can evaluate it and set my priority or the focal point. But then I can also communicate that focal point by explaining exactly why this is the most important thing to tackle at this point in time.

Jim Rembach: (21:21)

Well I think the importance here too is that, okay, so I need to learn this framework. I need to have stir start working on mastering this framework because I do have to decide faster and I can’t just decide based off of what I’ve known or even what others are doing. Because if I look at these situations, um, there, there’s that unique DNA that starts actually revealing itself and that’s what I have to work with.

Mary Lippitt: (21:45)

Correct. I think the only thing I would say is that the, I have to keep reminding people that a mindset is a very temporary thing. So just to say it, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s fun following what the current priority or issue is, but it isn’t a permanent label of what I will always choose. Uh, you mentioned that I lived in Buffalo, New York and it’s in a, in a hurricane over in Florida or blizzard in Buffalo, New York. You don’t care what the background, whether somebody graduated from, uh, you know, in engineering or someone graduated in art. If they can help you get out of the storm, you say, thank you. So the focal point is important because that creates the common ground that creates the teamwork that makes things happen. And it could be a very temporary thing. I mean I can, if I’m in a blizzard and I, I can’t even open my car door cause it’s frozen and somebody tells me how to do it, you know, I’m thankful but I’ve learned it, I’ll move on. So I’m talking about a mindset is a very, very temporary assessment of what is most important to do. But that temporary assessment is going to help me set the priority, which means I can focus and achieve the results.

Jim Rembach: (23:05)

Yeah. We have to have that built in agility. Right. Okay. So you all off, you know, through our, our discussion here, um, used many different co quotes and those are absolutely focal points. You know, they point us in the right direction and we really, you know, look at those on the fast leader show and share them a lot. So is there one or two they’re all riddled throughout your book? You’ve mentioned a few, but it’s are kind of one or two that stand out for you as focal points.

Mary Lippitt: (23:31)

Well, I think there’s one from Ben Franklin. I like that. Just something like, Oh, if you stop, if you don’t think creatively you, it’s like giving up your, your, your future, your life. I it thinking is critical to our life and it gets a bad name, particularly the term critical thinking. Cause it sounds like I have to be a cynic or I have to be, you know, poking somebody in, putting up shortfalls. But really critical thinking, you know, it could be as subtle as, would you want me to investigate this aspect of this? You know, and people say yes. So you can be very comprehensive in your analysis without being, you know, a naysayer or a problem child kind of thing.

Jim Rembach: (24:19)

Now it’s interesting that you say that. I mean a lot of people may say, well it’s just semantics but it’s semantics are critically important. I’m sorry. I think give us context and they give us understanding. It’s like we’ve built a fide so many different words in our society that, you know, if we would have used them just a hundred years ago would have had a totally different, you know, context. I mean, I often refer to the one of ignorant and if you look it up, it just says innocent, unknowing. But yet if anything is labeled as ignorant, it is vilified. And that’s just, that’s just unfortunate. Now when we start talking about these, these transformations, these transitions, these learnings and all that stuff, I mean we talk about getting over the hump on the show. Um, and those personal stories of when we had those experiences can be so helpful for others. I just was telling my daughter the other day, I said, even though you may not want to hear my stories, you know, if you actually work to listen, seeing that we’re very similar in the way that we go about thinking, maybe you’ll gain some insight for yourself, you know, choose a better path. Of course she doesn’t want to hear that from dad. But, um, is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share?

Mary Lippitt: (25:26)

Yes. Um, early in my career I thought rational analysis would always win the day. And I was trying to influence up, uh, the chain of command and I got rejected and I couldn’t believe it. I was dumbfounded. And it wasn’t until I got a task I was, we had a, this was a large organization, we had about 30,000 employees and I got tasked with writing the head executives monthly column to the employees. So I got to sit down and talk with him. And we saw things very differently as what was a priority and how we analyzed it was very different. Now if you’re writing the top executive, you got to adjust your thinking to his point of view. Obviously extra. I write something, he’s going to review it, he’s going to edit it. He would rather not have to edit it heavily. So I hadn’t, I had to start opening my own mind.

Mary Lippitt: (26:32)

I have to tell you, I was convinced sometimes that I had more answers than I really had and I thought I saw things more clearly than I really did. Um, there’s, there’s a comment, you know, what you see is not all there is. And I, that was my opening to begin to recognize I didn’t see everything and all the facts that I thought I had had many gaps but I’d never had collected them. So that exercise of writing for him really showed me how differently people fought. And again, we tend in our society to say, if you think differently from me, you’re wrong. And, um, what I realized was when you think differently from me, you helped me. You helped me, I benefit from these differences. And so instead of labeling somebody right or wrong, you know, what can I learn? How do they see reality?

Mary Lippitt: (27:31)

What am I missing? And you know, there’s lots of stories about, you know, witnesses to car accidents and you know, everybody saw the same accident but they recall different things. That’s what we have to recognize in our organizations. People are going to focus on different things. Some will get the right, so we’ll get the wrong, but we’ve got at least collect them before we can evaluate them. And that was how I started to realize there really was, um, great wisdom that I was missing. And so I really learned the importance of asking more questions rather than asking just a couple of, you know, jumping into my conclusions, which I was fairly sure I was right. Um, I mean this is basically the confirmation bias. I collected the information that supported my point of view. And sometimes I remind people that at one point in time bankers said you could give a 95% mortgage because home prices never go down more than 5%. That was a false assumption. And so I’m beginning to become maybe is more humble because I’m realizing I don’t have all the information, but I also realized that no one does. And so this is why we need to work together. And so I think we could work together to produce results. But we also, when we work together, we show respect for another person. We showed that we value them and we therefore engage them and we get the kind of collaboration and teamwork that makes our jobs very satisfying.

Jim Rembach: (29:03)

Well, the only way that it does that though, Mary, is because if we have, you know, very useful frameworks because otherwise all of that diversity and different perspectives are going to not enable us to move forward. And that’s why I’m really glad that you’ve actually shared these situational mindset models and everything else that goes with it. So when I start looking at that and looking at the, you know, where you’ve been in the work that you’ve done in the work that you’re still yet to do, when I start thinking about some of the goals you have, um, I’d like to hear one, what is one goal that you have?

Mary Lippitt: (29:37)

I would like to expand our definition of leadership to include making sure that we balance the short and the longterm and the ability to gain active support from others. I think that our focal point of leadership has become a little too narrow and I value everything we’ve done in the past. Um, just it, my uncle Ronald lipid with Kurt Loland did the very first leadership study in 1938 it was called the Lou and liquid white study and they came up with laissez Faire leadership and all that. And I really think everything that we’ve done in leadership has been fantastic, uh, whether it’s group dynamics, whether it’s emotional intelligence, whether it’s style, whatever else. But I think we’ve left out our situational ability to, to deliver, uh, the best for the organization. So I really would like to expand how we look at leadership

Jim Rembach: (30:43)

and this world of customer centric transformation. And you know, I’m a digital transformation and all of that. This type of leadership is really bottled to not just the success of an organization, but the existence of an organization and the fast leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. And even better place to work is an easy to use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone using this award. Winning solutions, guaranteed to create motivated, productive, and loyal employees who have great work relationships with our colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work, visit [inaudible] dot com for slash better. All right, here we go. Fast leader Legion. It’s time for the home. Oh now, okay Mary, the hump day. Hold on as a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to be as give us robust yet rapid responses are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Mary rib lipid. Are you ready to hoedown all right, so what is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Mary Lippitt: (31:55)

I like to so much to look at new ideas, but sometimes I forget the priority of following through with my immediate goal so I can become distracted and I need to re remember it again. What is my priority today?

Jim Rembach: (32:14)

What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Mary Lippitt: (32:18)

Listen, persevere and respect others.

Jim Rembach: (32:24)

What do you believe is one of your secrets that helps you contribute to your success?

Mary Lippitt: (32:29)

I think I’ve developed the ability to ask good questions.

Jim Rembach: (32:33)

And what is one of your tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Mary Lippitt: (32:38)

I a situational mindset checklist. It’s a basically reminding me what questions I need to ask and those questions can be tailored to the level of the organization or the type of industry. So that really helps me. And I know that some people discount the, the, the importance of a checklist, but I’ll say lawyers, doctors, pilots and Santa Claus. You checklist

Jim Rembach: (33:04)

and what would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion? And it could be from any genre. Of course, we’re going to put a link to situational mindsets on your show notes page as well.

Mary Lippitt: (33:14)

Well, I think the Daniel Kahneman’s thinking fast and slow is absolutely fantastic book. And I also will give a shout out to the art of war, my son zoo many, many years ago, which again talked about the importance of learning the lay of the ground. And that’s what I’m talking about with situationals concepts.

Jim Rembach: (33:34)

Okay. Fast, literally. And you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fast leader.net/mary lipid. Okay, Mary, this is my last Humpday hold on question. Imagine you’ve been given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have no back with you, but you can’t take it all. You can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Mary Lippitt: (33:57)

I would take back the ability to say I do not know. And the that leads to my willingness, um, to ask the questions and again, engage people and make a better decision. I really, I think for a while thought I do not know, was demeaning of me when I now realize it is showing the fact that I understand the complexity of this world.

Jim Rembach: (34:24)

Mary, I had fun with you today. Can you please share with the fast leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Mary Lippitt: (34:30)

Uh, they can connect with me at Mary, at situational mindsets.com or www, situational mindsets.com

Jim Rembach: (34:39)

Mary lipid, thank you for sharing and knowledge and wisdom. Fast leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.

Charles Conn | Bulletproof Problem Solving | Future Skills

246: Charles Conn: You can easily take apart almost any problem

Charles Conn Show Notes Page Charles Conn used a really simple tool to solve the problems for a company with thousands of employees. It was this humble beginning which now finds Charles on a quest to solve the problems of the world. Charles Conn was born in Phoenix Arizona to half Canadian, half American parents, …

Access Now

245: Risto Siilasmaa: I realized I was practicing Paranoid Optimism

Risto Siilasmaa Show Notes Page

Risto Siilasmaa led Nokia in one of the most successful and largest corporate transformations ever. He creates Paranoid Optimism in keeping the organization out of bankruptcy to thriving in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Risto was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. He had a younger sister, who taught him to manage stress by constantly giving him a hard time.

He got acquainted with the first personal computers at school and soon determined that he needed one himself. After working odd jobs he managed to buy a Commodore 64, learned how to code and became a teenage freelance journalist in the field of IT.

He is a founder of F‐Secure Corporation, a Finnish cybersecurity company and served as the President and CEO of the company between 1988‐2006. Since then he has held the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nokia Corporation. He joined the Nokia Board in 2008 and became Chairman of the Board in May, 2012. Under his tenure Nokia has successfully transformed from a mobile phone manufacturer to a leading communication technology company.

He is also well known as a business angel investing in several technology startups.

He is an active contributor in many European and Asian industry associations and public debate

and a distinguished speaker. His preferred topics are entrepreneurship, leadership and AI.

He is also the author of Transforming Nokia: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead Through Colossal Change. The book has been translated to several languages.

His hobbies include crossfit, coding and studying Chinese. He aims to instill a spirit of entrepreneurship, accountability, openness for change and an appreciation for experimentation into both the society at large as well as to the companies he works for.

Risto currently lives in Helsinki, Finland with his wife and 3 children.

Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @rsiilasmaa chairman of @nokia to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“Often times leaders lose their ability to go back to school.” – Click to Tweet

“For the chairman to do something that chairman usually don’t do, it wakes people up.”

“When the chairman does something that chairmen usually don’t do, it wakes people up.” – Click to Tweet

“Toxicity of success is every time you feel that you are successful, it changes you.” – Click to Tweet

“Many powerful leaders have failed because of the toxicity of their own success.” – Click to Tweet

“You don’t need to change the people because they are bad, you just need to wake them up.” – Click to Tweet

“When you think about what could go wrong you can take action to prevent it.” – Click to Tweet

“Paranoid Optimism automatically leads to scenario planning.” – Click to Tweet

“When things are unpredictable you just can not have a single plan.” – Click to Tweet

“Almost anything you think about could be dressed up in scenarios.” – Click to Tweet

“Are we just optimists and not at all paranoid?” – Click to Tweet

“You can get that feeling of ownership and accountability regardless of the job you hold.” – Click to Tweet

“I have to believe that you can be more successful if you take good care of your people.” – Click to Tweet

“You need to always have respect for your people in order to create trust.” – Click to Tweet

“Be a good human being.” – Click to Tweet

“My life is a long search for great people and a never-ending struggle to keep them really close to me.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Learn who you are and don’t pretend.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Himself

Best Leadership Advice

Be openly who you are with your failures and weaknesses.

Secret to Success

I love learning.

Best tools in business or life

Scenario planning

Contacting Risto Siilasmaa

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siilasmaa/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rsiilasmaa

Website: https://www.paranoid-optimist.com/

Resources and Show Mentions

Douglas Gerber: How you create high-performance teams

Call Center Coach

An Even Better Place to Work

Show Transcript:

Click to access edited transcript

245: Risto Siilasmaa: I realized I was practicing Paranoid Optimism

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast where we uncover the leadership life hacks that help you to experience, breakout performance faster and rocket to success and now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Call Center coach develops and unites the next generation of call center leaders. Through our e-learning and community individuals gain knowledge and skills and the six core competencies that is the blueprint that develops high-performing call center leaders. Successful supervisors do not just happen. So go to callcentercoach.com to learn more about enrollment and download your copy of the Supervisor Success Path e-book now.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader legion, today I am thrilled because I have somebody on the show today who’s going to talk about something that I think we all can learn from at all levels of an organization from the very top of the largest and even small organization all the way down to the frontline. Risto Siilasma was born and in Helsinki, Finland. He had a younger sister who taught him to manage stress by constantly giving him a hard time. He got acquainted with the first personal computers at school and soon determined that he needed one himself. After working odd jobs he managed to buy a Commodore 64 and learned how to code and become a teenage freelance journalist in the field of IT. He is a founder of F‐Secure Corporation, a Finnish cybersecurity company and served as the President and CEO of the company between 1988‐2006. Since then he has held the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors. He is chairman of the board of directors at Nokia Corporation. He joined the Nokia board in 2008 and became chairman of the board in 2012. Under his tenure Nokia has successfully transformed from the mobile phone manufacturer to a leading communication technology company.

He is also well known as a business angel investing in several technology startups. He is an active contributor in many European and Asian industry associations and public debate and distinguished speaker. His preferred topics are entrepreneurship, leadership and AI or artificial intelligence. He’s also the author of Transforming Nokia: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead through Colossal Change. The book has been translated into several languages. His hobbies include CrossFit coding and studying Chinese. He aims to instill a spirit of entrepreneurship, accountability, openness for change and an appreciation for experimentation into both the society at large as well the companies he works for. He currently lives in Helsinki Finland and is married and has three children. Risto Siilasmaa, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Risto Siilasmaa: I’d love to do that.

Jim Rembach: I’m glad you’re here. Now given my Legion a little about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

Risto Siilasmaa: Well, my current passion is machine learning because I have experienced myself that as a leader you get to stand in front of an audience and talk about various topics to communicate the company message and oftentimes the topic that I’m talking about is not something I truly understand myself. I’m just like a parrot somebody has created a presentation for me I learn it by heart and I’m fairly convincing in repeating those statements I don’t even know if they are true especially if we talk about something complicated. Oftentimes leaders lose the ability to go back to school. And we don’t only lose the ability we lose the desire either because we feel that we are so high on the value chain and we don’t need to anymore so we delegate learning to others. Or we are afraid that will reveal how stupid we are. We’ll, reveal that we don’t know things that people assume we do so we lose the ability to learn. And I was doing that for machine learning is such an important transformational technology. So I was trying to encourage others to learn it and to use it for the company’s benefit without understanding.

So then I woke up I had this entrepreneurial awakening and realized that I don’t need to have others do it I can do it myself. I started coding again after a break of 30 years and started doing different machine learning models and that has been so much fun. Maybe that’s the number one passion that I have at the moment.

Jim Rembach: Well, as you’re explaining and talking about the passion and I start thinking about what you wrote about and really what you lived with Nokia as well as going back to you starting F-secure, which is a cybersecurity company that you’re chairman of as well, is that you have the ability to really focus in on doing what is necessary. Even in the book you talk about F-secure having to clean the restrooms whenever you need it to and you’re not afraid to do that. Also when you start thinking about bringing that to a larger organization you weren’t necessarily caught up in something that you talked about which is a toxicity of success. I think all of us at all different levels of an organization can really fall into the trap of that toxicity of success. I think it’s important that we talk about, what is that?

Risto Siilasmaa: Well, first of all I’m poisoned by as well and I don’t always realize what I’m doing wrong but I try to stop and sort of think about the wider picture, am I doing the right things? Am I thinking about the right topics? Am I thinking about those in the right way? And sometimes I see the light sometimes I don’t and with machine learning I’m very happy about going back to school. Actually encouraging a lot of our employees to start studying I’ve had so many conversations where people come to me, engineers, they are ashamed that their chairman knows more about their profession than they do and then they tell me that they’re spending nights and weekends study and that’s really music to my ears because that’s a cultural change. For the chairman to do something the chairman usually don’t do it wakes people up. And that’s a very powerful leadership action to do something that you’re not supposed to do.

Toxicity of success means every time you feel that you are successful you have accomplished something especially if others tell you that it changes you. And that changes an insidious incremental change it’s like boiling frogs they don’t realize that the water is getting hotter and we don’t realize that we are being changed by the success that is attributed to us. Maybe deep inside we realize that it’s not you do my actions that we are successful but typically the face of the company, the CEO, is always given all the credit. Oftentimes it’s the predecessor who started things going in the right direction. Therefore the praise that you get the feeling that I’m not worthy but still I want to believe that leads you do you become afraid that you’ll be revealed so you may become less prone to taking risks less prone to experimentation more set on your ways because what used to work should still work. And I don’t know any other way and I don’t dare experiment because I might reveal that I’m not certain of what we do. So many powerful leaders have failed because of the toxicity of their own success. Many others are afraid of the change or they are aware of the change and therefore they can resist it and they can retain their desire to learn an experiment. The flexibility that is such an essential part of all leaders.

Jim Rembach: Well, as you’re talking I start thinking about going through some of the transformations that was required and in the book you talk about just the history at the time and what was happening, there’s launches of competitors when you start talking about the device of business that Nokia was in at the time you start referring to also the economic climate, we’re talking about back in 2008 and how that was just had some global impacts, there was some significant changes. You had even said, I heard you mentioned before is that when you have a culture that doesn’t have some of the things that you’re talking about that are so critically important you either have to change the organization or you’re changing the people within the organization. When you start talking about the legacy aspects of that toxicity of success how many of those people do you have to get rid of you might ask and I think it’s important to talk about where you are now in Nokia in regards to how many employees are badged as Nokia employees versus what it used to be?

Risto Siilasmaa: Well, you don’t need to change the people because the people are bad. You just need to wake them up. And you can wake them up in many different ways. Typically explain to them what the problem is, what are we doing wrong? What will happen if we don’t change? And you need to tell them, in what way do we need to change? What would be good behavior? And then you need to start taking action. You need to lead from the front you need to show symbols of changing yourself and doing your part.

I remember a story about a new CEO coming to a company that had an actual physical rule book and everybody in the company hated that book. They hated it from the bottom of their hearts. And this CEO learnt about that hatred and he wanted to change the way the company operated. So he took the book went into the parking lot where he had a big barrel, sort of named the old barrel, and he burnt the book in that barrel and it was videoed and translated to all the employees. It was such a powerful symbol to everybody, see I wanted to change the old behavior and there was no book anymore. But of course the leadership often is fairly ingrained in their old ways and you may need to change at least individuals at the top you ought to send a message that we are serious as well as to get people in who naturally believe in the new way of operating who leave that culture automatically they don’t have to learn it they leave it already.

Jim Rembach: To me and I think what you’re talking about going back and connecting it with the book and it’s part of the subtitle is you’re talking about really implementing a framework that you call paranoid optimism. Now, for me when I first saw paranoid optimism and I just really focusing in on the first word which means paranoid for most people they freaked out or freeze but that’s not what you’re talking about. Can you explain a little bit about what paranoid optimism means because I think all of us going back to what I had said previously is that we can learn that at all levels.

Risto Siilasmaa: Yeah, having been an entrepreneur for well since I was 22 and I of course faced a lot of challenges and made a lot of mistakes and failed time after time. After about 15 years of being a CEO and growing up to be a CEO I finally realized that actually need to stop and think about how do I lead and how do I want to lead? What has worked for me and what hasn’t worked for me? And I realized that the way I had somehow learned to think is best expressed by those words paranoid optimism. I believe that that’s part of entrepreneurship it’s part of the feeling of ownership and accountability for everything the company does. The founder of a company can never hide we cannot run away because we are accountable. If we didn’t decide something ourselves at least we recruited the people who decided that or we recruited the people who recruited the people who decided that, we are accountable. Therefore we can when we see a problem somewhere anywhere we can tackle that we feel that it’s our responsibility. And in order to preempt these challenges you need to think, what can go wrong? And when you think about what can go wrong you can take action to prevent it. And that actually leads you to be optimistic. I have seen the width of the different alternatives that face to come and I’m prepared we are prepared we know what to do to prevent the bad ones and execute the ones that we want to happen. So basically, what I’m talking about is scenario planning paranoid optimism is automatically leads to scenario planning.

In the kind of marketplace where most companies are at the moment it’s a combination of complexity something that is unpredictable and very, very complicated. When things are unpredictable you just cannot have a single plan you have to have multiple plans because you don’t know what will happen and because it’s complicated you need to plan ahead. So somehow you need to combine the stability to plan because you don’t know and the fact that if it’s sufficiently complicated and you don’t have a plan you will not succeed, therefore, scenario planning and that’s paranoid optimism for me. It starts from the sense of ownership which leads you to think about what bad can happen. You preempt those you think, what do I want to happen? You work to make that happen. And therefore you sort of have a map in front of you where you have different paths through the future. Some of those paths are not great some of them lead to a disaster some of them are really, really good. And every day you can look at you forward-looking indicators and try to figure out on which path are you. When you feel that there’s sort of a probability cloud which you can shape because every action you take will have an impact on those probabilities and you want to shift them as much as possible towards the good paths and as much as possible away from the negative paths.

Jim Rembach: One of the core elements and characteristics in emotional intelligence is called perspective-taking and I think that’s what you’re talking about is taking a different perspectives that aren’t the most ideal because we have to deal with them and people call it a VUCA world with a lot of uncertainty and all of that, volatility. But when I start thinking about that whole particular process because I’ve been involved with some of that sometimes in certain people they’ll just continue to scenario base and do what ifs what ifs what ifs what ifs what ifs and it’s like it never ends. It’s like, okay, we kind of have to start stop this creative thinking process because it’s just going way on too long and we have to start actually executing because one of the biggest problems in organizations is really execution getting things done. So how do you actually put some parameters on that whole scenario-based component so that you’re just not doing that and never taking action?

Risto Siilasmaa: Well, the idea is that you take action every day. If there’s a scenario at that to which you cannot come up with good actions and it’s not a good scenario it’s not a real scenario. Let’s take an example, back in the days when the iPhone was new and Android was just coming to the market and Nokia Symbian ecosystem was going down the drain under the pressure of the iPhone mostly but also Android devices and we were wondering what can we do and we had partnered with Microsoft on the Windows phone in an exclusive relationship our market share remained very, very low and we couldn’t really see Windows phone winning against Android and iPhone. So what are the scenarios that could happen? Microsoft had announced that they want to become a devices and services company. So maybe they wanted to start making their own smartphones that was a scenario a disastrous scenario for Nokia because we had an exclusive relationship with Microsoft and if they become our competitor we would still have an exclusive relationship with them and we couldn’t get out of that relationship. So how could Microsoft start making mobile phones or smartphones? They could acquire somebody. Okay, who could they acquire? They could acquire HTC. So how do we know if they are in the process of acquiring? What can we do? We can talk to the investment bankers who often slip something by. We can go and meet with the HTC CEO not asking him whether he is in discussions with Microsoft but exploring strategic partnerships exploring if there’s some way we can do more with them and we can sense if there’s something going on. Just as an example down a tree of multiple scenarios we end up at a sort of a leaf in that tree which is HTC and Microsoft.

What actions can we take? Well we can go and meet the CEO. We can talk to investment bankers. We can put our feelers out at least something we can do. And then of course we can plan ahead if they would decide to announce such an acquisition, what would we do? We would sue Microsoft so let’s do a study in advance based on what could we sue them. And maybe we can even do some preparatory work in order to sue them the same day they announce we are not caught by surprise. It’s not under our control where the Microsoft buys HTC or not we can try to influence it but in the end those two companies will make their own decisions. So almost anything you think about you can dress up in scenarios and it soon becomes a tree but you don’t want it to become a hedge cause then it’s just too much work to do and you get buried under the different scenarios. And that’s of course the typical challenge where you have to find the balance and there’s no one way of doing that you just have to figure out your own way in your own situation how many scenarios is reasonable.

Jim Rembach: Talking about the whole scenario components and I think it’s a tactic that I think is critically important that again all of us at all levels could really focus in on. You talked about three questions that reveal the right facts, are we discussing the right things? Because when we start looking at the scenario components, thinking about just own internal meetings I think we can always start asking these questions. And they are, are we discussing the right things? Are we discussing the right things in the right way? And are we comfortable challenging the leaders opinions? There’s several components in the book and you finally start talking about it is this trust element and having that freedom and security and not feeling like there’s going to be repercussions when you actually do all of that challenging and so some of those values and components have to be there. And you talk about that in entrepreneurial leadership and there’s 10 things that you talk about, we’ll get to that in a second, but when you start talking about these three questions to me it’s not just that you’re asking them internally I think you’re also kind of taking that outside the organization and starting getting to the customer start getting to maybe suppliers and you’re continually asking those types of questions to see if you’re focusing on the right things which will feed the scenario based planning. So when you start looking at those three questions would you do something different when I start thinking about those forward thinking indicators and where we’re going? And how would that particularly change or it still be the same thing for everyone?

Risto Siilasmaa: I think those three questions work really well if you’re a new leader in a new situation. I’d say you’re hired as the CEO you’re hired as a project manager in a company you haven’t worked for before. And you get to your team and you want to know whether the team culture is a good one. So you observe in your own team also in your manager’s team as part of a department leadership team or the company leadership team. And you want to ask yourself those three questions, are we talking about the right topics? Is there something that we are missing? Are we only talking about a single plan without any alternatives? Are we at all thinking about how things could go wrong? Are we just optimists and not at all paranoid? And then you want to think about are we talking about things in the right way? Therefore is it okay to challenge others with respect? Is it okay to voice concerns? Is it okay to for example ask the team, hey, what’s the big thing we will miss next? Most technology companies have missed a big generational shift at some time. Nokia definitely has and it almost killed the company.

Just half a year ago our new head of mobile networks sent not an email but a social media message in the company social media platform to all employees asking them, what’s the next big thing we will miss? And I think asking such a question is a great cultural message it means that the leaders can ask questions about failing of course, in order to prevent that failure.

The third one can we challenge the leader? If we can’t then we have an Emperor without clothes at this possibly because when the leader starts failing we will not be able to challenge the leader. It’s better to start challenging the leader under good times because then it will not be such a surprise when the leader is challenged during bad times, we will learn how to do that with respect and probably we prevent from those bad times from happening.

Jim Rembach: What you’re talking about there as you mentioned in the book something about the shattering complacency and that is we always have to be unsettled to a certain degree. I think ultimately from a cultural perspective and you’ve kind of said this yourself is it you’re creating a culture of continuous learning it never ends it’s a daily element. For you when you even start talking about going back and learning into code oftentimes when you start even thinking about like for example the differences between machine learning and AI those are two different things but oftentimes they get lumped together if you don’t know that and you’re talking about that in a modern business environment like you said you could have a whole lot of trust issues that result because you don’t quite know. So that learning component and humility are critical core values that today’s organization must have otherwise they fall into that same toxicity of success and comes a never ending cycle and downward spiral. And in the book you even mentioned and you talked about rim and all of them that essentially just went away because they could not break the cycle, the downward spiral. But again I think we’re talking about—and in the book I see it over and over that you’re really talking about building high-performing teams and I had the opportunity to have Douglas Gerber on the show, he’s episode 223, talks about measuring your opportunities to be able to build that high-performing team. If I’m talking about building the high-performing teams I think it goes into what you had talked about is that entrepreneurial leadership and that’s why I said I wanted to get to and hit those 10 points because again I think all of us can leverage these things. Now I’m not going to put you on the spot and say name all 10 but I would like to kind of hit on a couple of these. I’m going to read them real quick because I want you to talk about some that are critically important that without fail we have to make sure that we’re executing upon.

You talk about holding yourself accountable, facing facts, being persistent, managing risks, be a learning addict, maintain an unwavering focus, look to the horizon, build a team of people you like in respect, ask why and never stop dreaming. Now obviously they’re all important but when you start looking at some that are without fail we must have in your opinion what are they?

Risto Siilasmaa: At the core of entrepreneurship as I mentioned before is the idea that you are accountable and you can get that feeling of ownership and accountability regardless of the job you hold. As a young teenager while I was coding during the night in the evenings I worked in a butcher’s shop and the team that worked there selling meat to customers and such pride in what they did they wanted to be the best in that. When there was a dirty spot somewhere the first person who saw that clean it up. It was not that I’m here to sell it’s not my job to clean that it’s all hands on deck all the time so that we can have pride in what we do. So that sense of ownership how do you beat that to others? How do you help others to feel that? I’ve often said that in a way a job could be compared to a car.

Most people don’t wash their rental cars. Why don’t they wash it? Even if they had rented it for two weeks they typically never wash it even if it’s good it’s really dirty because they don’t have that sense of ownership. If it’s your own car you have more of a sense of pride for the car and you take good care of that. For people who think of their job as a rental car I think it is an unfair situation they deserve better the company deserves better and the people deserve better. If you feel that way find a new job something that you feel that pride for and then you can have that sense of ownership and that’s accountability. And the company as well they need to take action in order for as many as possible of their people to feel that sense of ownership. So that’s at the core of everything. Maybe I’ll mention another one from your list which is giving me a lot of trouble and that’s partially about the trust that permeate and that has to permeate everything but it’s about hiring a team that you genuinely like and respect.

There are so many very, very successful tech companies where the top leader is not a nice person we all know many examples and some of our most respected tech leaders exhibit this behavior and it bothers me deeply. I sort of have to believe that you can be more successful if you take good care of your people. If you are not prone to getting really angry really quickly without reason without cause if you treat people with respect you need to always have respect for your people in order to create trust and that sense of camaraderie. I struggle with what’s going on in this industry and maybe you have some consolation for me maybe you can explain how come? But I have to believe that being a good leader in the way that I define good leadership actually increases the probability for your business to be truly successful.

Jim Rembach: For me I think what you had said a while back in this interview is critically important then you talked about leading and modeling from up front. I think if you start looking at people who are in positions of power that you know aren’t really focusing in on the employee experience and the human experience internally ultimately are going to pay the price because it’s going to affect the external experience that’s one of the things that we talk about a lot. Things take care of themselves in the world ultimately rights itself. Sometimes it just takes a little while but those companies will have the same downward spiral because they do have that toxic environment and nature just kind of weeds those out after a while because they become less agile, less adaptable and it’s what you even talk about in the book to me it was all. Like you said sometimes it was the environment I was in I’m not really that type of person but I’m stuck in it and really when they get the opportunity those people they become your champions in the transformation.

Risto Siilasmaa: They sort of become your environment.

Jim Rembach: Absolutely. I know I’m a victim that I tell my kids that all the time and so that’s why I said, am I going to essentially tell you who your friends or supposed to be? Yes I will because I know it’s going to impact your behavior. You’ve actually shared a lot of your stories, and on the show we talked about getting over the hump and you actually get three or more and so I appreciate you telling those stories. The book is actually loaded with a lot of situations that you came across that you had to do things differently and you therefore got over the hump and obviously it became a positive outcome as a whole because now Nokia is really leading the way in in 5G infrastructure and what we’re going to be seeing as a huge impact and effect to our lives with the Internet and things and all of that. I know that you’re going to continue to have significant amounts of success. But when we start going through all of this one of the things that we need is that inspiration in order to have some of the resilience and transformation. One the show one of the things that we like to focus in on are quotes. So is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Risto Siilasmaa: One of my favorite quotes in my opinion defines entrepreneurship in a perfect way and the quote goes something like this, there are those among us who see things as they are and they ask why and there are those that dream of things that never where and ask why not. In that first part people who observe the environment they ask why they are curious they’re like scientists they want to understand how things work. But then people who dream of things that never where and ask, hey, why not? They are entrepreneurs they change things they build things that never where. I think that’s a beautifully said and a great definition for entrepreneurship even if it was not originally meant that way.

Jim Rembach: I think that’s a great and really value statement when you start thinking about it. Also when I start looking at where you are and things that you’re doing with coding you talked about machine learning, I know artificial intelligence is also important to you, being able to create a culture of high performing teams you talked about a lot of different things associated with transformation all of that but when I start thinking about goals I’m sure you have several but I’d like you to focus in on one, so could you share with us what is one goal that you have?

Risto Siilasmaa: Be a good human being. Because in the end when we think back about our lives I don’t think we will be thinking about money or titles or medals or we think about our family we think about our friends we think about our colleagues who hopefully are also friends. And with all these people we want to feel a sense of trust they trust me I’m trustworthy I can trust them because they want to do right by me and we respect each other. I believe that my life is a long search for people that I really like to have close to me. There aren’t that many people who really you can trust unfortunately. But when you find one grab on to him or her do what you can spare no effort in keeping that person close to you because it’s rare to find these people.

Jim Rembach: And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you their very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

An even better place to work is an easy to use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solution is guaranteed to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better.

Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Risto, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster.

Risto Siilasmaa: I’m a thin. I’m usually not fast because I like to think things through.

Jim Rembach: Oh, that’s just find but are you ready to hoedown?

Risto Siilasmaa: Yeah.

Jim Rembach: Alright. What is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Risto Siilasmaa: I am.

Jim Rembach: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Risto Siilasmaa: As you can see ‘m not really quick here because I want to find the absolute best advice that I have received. Probably be openly who you are with your failures and weaknesses don’t try to hide.

Jim Rembach: What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Risto Siilasmaa: I really love learning.

Jim Rembach: What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Risto Siilasmaa: Scenario planning.

Jim Rembach: What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion it could be from any genre and of course we’re going to put a link to Transforming Nokia, on your show notes page as well.

Risto Siilasmaa: Probably the book, There’s a Strategy for your Strategy. Because I’m intellectually drawn to that concept. It asks you to think about things at a higher abstraction level. Don’t just work on your strategy but actually realize that you have to have a strategy for creating your strategy.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Risto Siilasmaa. Okay, Risto, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you can take all the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take every single thing you can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Risto Siilasmaa: I would probably take the self-knowledge because that would have helped me be open to who I am without trying to pretend that I know more or I’m better than I actually were. That would have helped me learning faster and it’s the core piece of self-confidence. Because if you really can be who you are you are self-confident enough to be weak and not know things and that helps you learn.

Jim Rembach: Risto, it’s an honor to spend time with you today can you please share the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Risto Siilasmaa: I’m very active on Linkedin, very active on Twitter and I can be easily reach through both.

Jim Rembach: Risto Siilasmaa, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. Tor recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

END OF AUDIO

Claudette Rowley | Cultural Brilliance | Organizational Excellence

234: Claudette Rowley: I was born believing in potential

Claudette Rowley Show Notes Page

Claudette Rowley was in a toxic workplace that caused her to undergo a lot of soul searching and a career change. She was so impacted by her experience that she now coaches organizations to create their own cultural brilliance.

Claudette was born in Indiana and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. She grew up with two younger sisters and attended the University of Michigan.

Growing up, she was a keen observer of human dynamics and how those dynamics influenced people. In her 20’s, she had two jobs that set the stage for much of her career. The first organization had a great culture and she noticed how her creativity, innovation, and confidence increased in this culture.

Then she moved to another organization with a toxic culture. There she noticed how her confidence dipped and how much time she spent handling office politics.

Claudette’s background includes experience working with technology companies such as Medtronic, Cell Signaling Technology, and Reveal Imaging, educational institutions such as Boston University School of Law and MIT, as well as non-profit organizations, and small businesses.

For the almost 20 years, she has consulted, trained and coached executive leaders and teams at Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, higher education, and start-ups to create a pro-active and innovative workplace culture that delivers outstanding results throughout all areas of an organization.

Claudette is the creator of the Cultural Brilliance System™ and hosts a globally syndicated radio show. She also teaches a course on culture and communication at Northeastern University and is the author of the Amazon best-selling book Cultural Brilliance: The DNA of Organizational Excellence.

She lives in the Greater Boston area and is married with a 16 year-old son, 17 year-old step daughter, and 21 year-old step son.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @RowleyClaudette to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“There is a way to actually observe your own culture.” – Click to Tweet

“Most of us need positive feedback to feel motivated and appreciated.” – Click to Tweet

“A lot of organizations make a mistake of only giving critical feedback.” – Click to Tweet

“Leaders that say they are going to move forward on a problem but don’t, disengaged a group of people.” – Click to Tweet

“We all do have blind spots, when you hear it, consider it.” – Click to Tweet

“There’s so much value in creating a relationship where people could give you feedback.” – Click to Tweet

“What kind of culture do you have and how does it really operate?” – Click to Tweet

“Almost all cultures in organizations have brilliance.” – Click to Tweet

“We need to pull together all these threads of what’s going well and harness them.” – Click to Tweet

“To get to brilliance it may require that people be more accountable.” – Click to Tweet

“There’s no circumstance where I’ve seen gossip be a good thing.” – Click to Tweet

“Culture will not allow a strategy that’s not aligned.” – Click to Tweet

“If we change the culture of business we can make a huge impact on the world.” – Click to Tweet

“If you trust yourself you can do almost anything.” – Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Trust yourself.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

I’m spread a bit too thin.

Best Leadership Advice

Rest yourself.

Secret to Success

Listening very carefully and closely

Best tools in business or life

Telling the truth.

Contacting Claudette Rowley

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudette-rowley-1ba268/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RowleyClaudette

Website: https://culturalbrilliance.com/

email: claudette [at] culturalbrilliance.com

Resources and Show Mentions

Call Center Coach

An Even Better Place to Work

Show Transcript:

Click to access edited transcript

234: Claudette Rowley: I was born believing in potential

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast where we uncover the leadership life hacks that help you to experience breakout performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who’s finally going to give us some clarity in a system to creating a culture that is brilliant. Claudette Rowley was born in Indiana and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. She grew up with two younger sisters and attended the University of Michigan. Growing up she was a keen observer of human dynamics and how those dynamics influenced people. In her 20s she had two jobs that set the stage for much of her career. The first organization had a great culture and she noticed how her creativity, innovation and competence increased in this culture. Then she moved to another organization with a toxic culture there she noticed how her confidence dipped and how much time she spent handling office politics. Claudette’s background includes experience working with technology companies such as Medtronic, cell signaling technology Reveal Imaging and educational institution such as Boston University School of Law and MIT as well as nonprofit organizations and small businesses.

For almost 20 years she has consulted trained and coached executive leaders and teams at Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, higher education and startups to create a proactive and innovative workplace culture that delivers outstanding results throughout all areas of an organization. Claudette is the creator of the cultural brilliance system and hosts a globally syndicated radio show. She also teaches a course on culture and communication at Northeastern University and is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, Cultural Brilliance–The DNA of Organizational Excellence. She lives in the Greater Boston area and is married with a 16 year old son, 17 year old stepdaughter and 21 year old stepson. Claudette Rowley are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Claudette Rowley: Absolutely, absolutely Jim.

Jim Rembach: I’m glad you’re here.

Claudette Rowley: Thanks.

Jim Rembach: I’m given my Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Claudette Rowley: My current passion is culture. My book, Cultural Brilliance, the love I have for putting that—those ideas out into the world sharing them with listeners sharing them with organizations and leaders and talking about culture. I get to be in that sweet spot of loving what I do.

Jim Rembach: Well, okay that is a sweet spot. Culture for me oftentimes that isn’t a sweet spot because there’s just so much ambiguity there’s so much—and you and I were talking off mic I said it’s kind of like describing smoke. What do mean by that? A lot of people really just don’t know how to define it to understand it, we’ll talk about that in a second but I think it’s really most important to say how people are actually experiencing the symptoms when they don’t have a brilliant culture. What are some of the symptoms?

Claudette Rowley: It’s a great question. Culture is interesting because it’s really—when you start to be able to observe your own culture you can start to see the symptoms and you start seeing how there’s a whole set of beliefs that are driving behaviors and results. There is a way to actually observe your own culture, we’ll talk about later. Symptoms are things like you have really low trust. It usually takes the form of blaming, gossip, those are pretty easy things to spot because that will come up in communication. You’ll notice things like it’s hard to move projects forward, low productivity, if you’re in an environment where you’re building and shipping a product for example, your shipments are late, delayed customers are getting upset anything like that. There’s an aspect to the organization that’s just not working that well you could have a cultural issue, so those are early symptoms. Of course, if you have bullying or people are being belittled or put down in some way that’s a clear sign you’re having a cultural issue for sure, yeah that one’s clear.

Jim Rembach: In addition, a couple other things you mentioned in the book are feedback, so what about feedback?

Claudette Rowley: Yeah, feedback. If you’re in a culture words it’s not safe to give feedback no one gets feedback its feedback free. Which isn’t good because you’re not getting positive feedback which most of us need to feel motivated and appreciated. If we’re not getting feedback on how we can improve you’re missing out. The other thing about feedback I think it’s important is a lot of companies and any organization makes a mistake of only giving critical feedback and they miss out on actually appreciating people. When people are surveyed when we talk to people in organizations they almost always will say to me, we don’t feel valued and appreciated. And here we are killing ourselves to get something done and all we hear is what we didn’t do well, so that’s another symptom.

Jim Rembach: I think that’s a really important point. If you don’t give any feedback more than likely if you give if it’s not in a distant manner more than likely it’s going to be the negative.

Claudette Rowley: It’s going to be the negative.

Jim Rembach: You also talked about the different types of leadership tactics or methods. When you start talking about a culture that isn’t so brilliant, what kind of management tactics would you see present?

Claudette Rowley: When leaders aren’t doing a great job or impacting their culture in ways that aren’t really helpful we’re going to see that they’re not listening very well, that’s a key thing. People don’t feel heard maybe they feel shut down or there’s an interesting behavior. I see a lot of leaders I work with engaging where they say they’re going to move forward on solving a problem but they don’t. So people got really frustrated, they get very disengaged. Someone coming to a leader and having enough courage to say, we have an issue here we can’t solve it because we don’t have the authority or resources or we don’t know maybe we tried but we can’t do it we really need help. The leader doesn’t listen and the leader doesn’t do anything or get somebody else to do something you’ve just disengaged a group of people there’s no way around that. And that’s really common, unfortunately, and it’s so avoidable it’s a really avoidable thing.

The other behavior I’ve seen as a leader who just really—we all have blind spots as people. We all have blind spots to cultures because no one can see everything including leaders. And so see organizations thru the leader really is blind to parts of the culture and no one feels they can say anything and that leader continues to be blind to it and it wreaks a lot of havoc. Those are some of the things we would be seeing in a culture where things aren’t working that well.

Jim Rembach: Okay, so in the book you talk about that culture blindness. To me though as you were explaining it almost seems like—and you might find there’s more than just two flavors but it seems like there’s two flavors of this cultural blindness. Some of it is intentional, I just choose not to look. The other is I just don’t recognize it. That could fall from a potentially a competency issue a competence issue or an experience issue. So what other facets of that blindness do you see?

Claudette Rowley: Sometimes there are leaders that I’ve worked with who, or potentially worked with I went in and talked to them initially and we didn’t work together, and that’s usually because their ego of a nature that prevents them from actually seeing which would mean they’d have to admit that there’s something they should maybe improve. And so sometimes it’s really that sense of—this person does not want to go there they do not want to look at this they do not want to admit it they would view it as a sign of weakness and they need to keep their perception of themselves intact. That’s actually a big one. If I’m giving some, even gentle feedback—this is what I’ve observed kind of feedback and that person really can’t hear it then we’re not going to be working together that’s definitely an area of blindness.

We all do have blind spots so what we want leaders to be modeling is when someone brings it to their attention they’re willing to hear it and consider it. We ask people to consider. Could you consider that this might be an issue? Can you observe yourself over the next week and see what you notice? It could be something like somebody cuts—leaders cutting people off in meetings and you bring it to that person’s attention, no I don’t. Real example, no I don’t, they’re unconscious about it they’re just unaware of it. Okay, what about in every meeting over the next week you just notice if you are doing this, you’re engaging this behavior. Oh, my gosh, wow I really cut people off, no idea.

I sometimes really feel for leaders from that perspective because sometimes everybody in the organization knows this about them and talks about it, they don’t know and we assume that they do know, we assumed. This women is cutting people off in meetings and the person has no idea. There’s so much value in creating a relationship as a leader where people can give you feedback just in case.

Jim Rembach: That’s one of the things that you do you’re constantly about people in certain positions of powers that they don’t have anybody who could actually give them that feedback. So the peer issue and so many different other aspects that go along with that. When you’re talking though I started thinking about one other way that there may be a selected cultural blindness. When you start thinking about the workplaces of today, and let’s be frank the effort to create a brilliant culture if you don’t have one and in fact is that most don’t, it’s a big undertaking this is no small feat. Going through it the returns are pretty significant. Do you also run into a situation that I call tomorrow guys problem? In other words somebody starts looking at and said, oh, this is going to take a lot longer and I only have like 18 months left here I’m not touching this.

Claudette Rowley: Yeah. I’ve definitely seen that. This is going to be so much more work than we thought. I’m very with companies in saying, here’s the reality of this road map. There will be great rewards or we wouldn’t bother putting all this effort into it but there’ll be great changes and rewards. We’re talking about changing an organizational system which means we’re helping people change individually and we know that that is never fast. Unless you’re just looking at one aspect of a culture. Companies sometimes can have something going on but they just need a tweak and that could be—that would not take you long. But I have had people back off of it, we’ve done the assessment work. And even though I’ve told them we’re looking at X number of months for each phase, this is what I think is going to happen, implementation is often the most challenging, this is what you need to be looking at, it’s really when the rubber hits the road. I don’t know, I’m afraid when I do this.

Jim Rembach: The realistic smack in the face.

Claudette Rowley: Yeah, this is hard or I might have to look at myself.

Jim Rembach: Exactly, I have to bare my realities. Okay, so when you start talking about the actual system in the process there are like you said—and in the book you create that roadmap, you lay it all out. Of course, the finer details and all that, you just can’t put in here, because I think a lot of those things become unique to the organization.

Claudette Rowley: Definitely, yeah.

Jim Rembach: I would dare to say, just kind of a percentage perspective, that may be 60 to 70 percent you can kind of follow a framework but then the rest is your uniqueness, would that be about it, right?

Claudette Rowley: It’s an excellent point ‘cuz sometimes what happens is that people in an organization or set of leaders reads a book, like mine or any sort of road map, and they think—oh, we can just apply this but there isn’t necessarily the recognition that you just brought up that they’re going to be, especially something like a culture. Culture is like a fingerprint every culture is unique. And so what works for Google or what works for Apple or whatever probably won’t work for your company so there may be some elements of it, facets of it so it will be unique to you and that’s part of the discovery process, absolutely.

Jim Rembach: Talking about the process, I guess six core phases process and needless to say they all interrelate and overlapping and there’s some synergistic benefits to all of it. But if you could just kind of walk through the cultural brilliance system.

Claudette Rowley: Hmm-hmm, yeah, I’m happy to. So, the cultural blade system itself is the road map for understanding—can your culture where it is now to where you’d like it to be essentially? And the first just at a very high level, we start with understanding it’s called authenticity it’s the assessment piece. What kind of culture do you have now and how does it really operate? It’s amazing to me how many organizations try to make changes without understanding their baseline and of course they don’t work. Sometimes massive failures because they didn’t understand what they had to begin with. So you have to understand what you’re working with. The second piece of it is really saying, okay, now that we know what we’re working with what kind of culture do we really need? What’s our profile look like? And what’s the profile we need to have? Which is called contextual emergence which just means, what’s the context for what’s emerging? That’s your profile.

And then we move into this design phase. Where we’re really working with people, and I try to work with as many people in a company as possible. I’m not just working with leaders or kind of people and all folks of all levels all different teams and departments, if it’s a bigger organization. We want people to buy in and we also want people to share their viewpoints and feedback. Because we know that the best people to tell you about their part of the culture is the people that work in it. It’s actually really fun and so we do a design process where we’re helping an organization is designing its own change from point A where they are now to point B where they want to be. And then we move into something called design integrity which is simply prototyping. Now that you have a design you have a plan let’s try it out with one department or a couple of teams let’s make sure this actually works we know just because somebody’s on paper it doesn’t mean it’s going to work in reality so we do that prototyping.

And then we move into what I call integration, which is about the implementation piece. That’s often one of the longest pieces of course because we’re making it real. We need to have a plan we need to decide how the plan is going to be integrated how the changes are going to take place. One of the really important points in this integration process is that we have to have identified the new mindsets or beliefs and behaviors that will be part of the new culture. People themselves in the organization will have—I won’t be deciding this they’ll have decided this. And then when we’re starting this implementation integration phase we need to do it from the perspective of new behaviors and beliefs new mindsets. And I bring this up because I’ve seen so many organizations start to get integrated change that like if they’re improving communication they’ll start implementing a communication change plan using all the old ways of communicating, that doesn’t make sense that won’t work that’s a blind spot so we point that out. You need to use your new ways of communicating to implement the plan. And then at the end we do some—it’s called social capital. We’re essentially saying, what changed in the organization? What did you learn? How did your business improve? What do you take from this entire process that you’ve been through?

Jim Rembach: There’s one thing that I think is important to point out, you talk about it in the book, you talk about having some of that blindness and not knowing what you have. You also talk about the people really focusing in sometimes on the negative things and things they need to fix but you really put an emphasis on a lot of the positives. Tell us a little bit about that.

Claudette Rowley: I think almost all cultures and organizations have brilliance. So when I talk about brilliance I’m talking about potential. Really understanding the potential in your culture understanding what’s working what’s brilliant about it now what works really well. Usually what I find is that in organizations, I’m not brought into an organization that’s working really well, so I’m speaking to the cultures I’m going into that are ones that decided they need to change. Usually you see—it could be in the form of innovation it could be in the form of people engagement it could be in the form of ideas or whatever. But you’ll see all of a sudden seemingly all these this potential start to pop up that’s been kind of repressed or hidden by dysfunction by people not feeling safe or whatever as trust starts to build you see that brilliance or potentials surface and so I’m harnessing that.

Of course we’re fixing problems because we have to we have to address the reality but you want to harness what’s going well. I’m the person running around looking for the initial seemingly small success what’s changing positively even if it’s minor. I’m usually having to convince leaders because sometimes they’re like, (18:10 inaudible) that little thing—just got someone spoke up in a meeting that doesn’t mean anything. What are you talking about? No, no, no this person never speaks up and they did and they had a really great comment and a great idea. So we need to we need to pull together all these threads of what’s going well and harness them because that’s how the change starts.

Jim Rembach: Okay, you talk about the potential piece. You talk about many of the aspects from a framework, a roadmap, a timeline, I started thinking about cultural brilliance for me and also from a customer experience perspective. When you start talking about a lot of the work that you’re doing with organizations, how much of it actually involves the customer?

Claudette Rowley: Hmm-hmm. I think the customer’s very much impacted by the positive changes. We may reach out to customers for feedback and things like that that could be part of it we may not it just depends on the company. But what I see is that, I’m thinking of a company I’m working with now and I’ve been helping with implementation because they didn’t have a lot of infrastructure to do that on their own, I’m more involved than I have—that sometimes am but it’s actually really fun to have boots on the ground and really be in there see what’s happening. What we’ve been doing culturally has very much impacted their customers. Interestingly, at times usually not for too long a little bit negatively, because as change happens people start to change they don’t do certain things as well temporarily and then they build back up, so we’ve seen a little bit of that. But ultimately the customers are going to be much better served overall.

Jim Rembach: Okay, so you’ve mentioned something really interesting that I’ve seen as something that comes out as a result of change of any type that you have fall out. We have certain people that realize that, hey, this is no longer a place where I want to be I started thinking about going through a cultural brilliance change, do you much follow up? Because to me I’m seeing like, okay, we went from a place that was kind of lackluster something that’s a little bit brilliant, really fall out?

Claudette Rowley: There can be fallout, yeah, it’s interesting because there are people who don’t—or to get to the brilliance you have to as we know you’re making some changes. It may require people to be more accountable it may require more ownership. You may not, if you’ve been gossiping at a company for 20 years. Gossips not going to be part of this culture there’s no circumstance in which I’ve ever seen gossip is a good thing. I have a lot of empathy for them because you’re asking them to change their behavior and their mindset and they simply may not want to and that’s their choice and so that can be the fallout. I’ve never had a situation where droves of people have left but you would expect there’s going to be a few folks that would leave and that’s usually really a good thing for them and for the company.

Jim Rembach: When you start talking about change, is I’ve seen some studies associated with the different viewpoints and aspects of change that you have side out change and outside-in change the inside-out is changing and helping the individual to change their behaviors. And the outside in is the organization changing some of their behaviors so that ultimately it will also affects the individuals. So, when you start talking about cultural brilliance, does it affect one more than the other or is it really a hybrid and does both?

Claudette Rowley: I think it’s a hybrid. I think it presents as more of an outside-in because we’re talking about changing a system we’re talking of culture assist them. We’re talking about that we’re talking about changing certainly behaviors and mindsets and structures in the organization but we know that that does require an internal change individuals have to make in some cases. In most cases somebody realizes that the mindset they have about something isn’t working anymore they need to change it. So they’re either consciously making that decision or they kind of go along with the crowd and change their behaviors and the behavior changes their mindset. Sometimes even something as simple as reconfiguring a meeting can change people to the positive. It doesn’t always have to be that they have to drill this hard internal work I view it as very symbiotic. The outside pushes on the end the some people have to change they may not want to they may leave they may be asked to leave and that impacts what we’re doing in the system.

Jim Rembach: When I started thinking about really just change and going through this cultural brilliance focusing positive and all that I started thinking about something that we really like at the show are quotes. So is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Claudette Rowley: Oh, yeah, of course the one that’s coming to mind is the very famous one is—culture eats strategy for breakfast. Because I think it used a ton it’s so true it is so true and it’s one thing I talked to companies about you have to have your strategy and culture aligned the culture will not allow a strategy that’s not aligned it won’t happen it’s going to fail. So I think that is a hugely important one, hugely important concept.

Jim Rembach: Well, and I would dare to say that also probably for you talking about your work and all of that is really come out to play talking about those two different organizations that you explain within your bio. Sometimes there’s humps and things that we have to get over in order for us to come to these brilliant conclusions. Is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump that happened to you that you can share?

Claudette Rowley: The second company that I talked about working for, this was a long time ago 20 years ago, it actually led me to a career transition I made that led me to what I do now. Because it was so toxic there and they also didn’t really like what I was doing either professionally. It actually led to a lot of soul-searching. I hired a coach I went through a career transition I went to all of this and that’s how I got over the hump, I became a coach and open the coaching business. That is the beginning of what is now Cultural Brilliance/

Jim Rembach: One of the things that we talk about a lot and keeps kept coming over and over, I have the Call Center Coach Leader Academy that really focuses in on developing the skills of frontline supervisors in contact centers is that frontline leader is so critical. I was talking to a leadership expert the other day and he said, yeah, that’s kind of like we have to be able to connect the head and the feet. So fit’s the frontline leaders that are helping the organization walk and the top are helping from the intellectual perspective from a business. But when you start talking about being able to move an organization forward how often does the different levels of leadership come into play to impacting these cultural brilliance?

Claudette Rowley: The different levels of leadership—I think it’s hugely important. You need the commitment and the buy-in of the top level leaders. My initial main clients is the CEO because if the CEO’s not on board this isn’t happening that’s just a basic bottom line of all this. But then it’s the folks, the middle, if it’s a hierarchy with the traditional middle managers etc. whatever the organizational design is but the folks in the middle of the folks in the front line they’re the implementers of this. I’m coaching the leaders, the senior leadership team to be role modeling whatever the behaviors are. For the change have the messaging the communication really leading through that through their communication and through their behavior but the rest of the people in the organization are the ones actually implementing a lot of the changes. I think people at all levels are incredibly important and you can’t skip a part of the organization in this process.

Jim Rembach: For you actually got a coach in order to help you get where you are now. When we start talking about all aspects of the organization is that everybody needs a coach.

Claudette Rowley: Yeah, people do. Sometimes it can be an informal coach, a co-worker where people are just kind of naturally skilled at coaching you don’t need to be trained. I agree people do need—they need someone to reflect back and be a sounding board and have those kinds of conversations with them so I do a lot of yes I would say in a formal coaching.

Jim Rembach: So when you start talking about with the system that you’ve created that you’re working on we talked about, of course these being your passion, but when you think about one of your goals, what would it be?

Claudette Rowley: My vision for the book in the body of work, right in the book it’s not just a book, it’s really this idea that if we can change the culture of business we can make a huge impact on the world. And I think that—I used to be a social worker so I’m going to change the world kind of person, and this is for me about looking at business—business has so much potential business has a lot of responsibility and it can make, while it’s still making plenty of money and having good profit, it can still positively impact the world. And my vision is to continue to take that message out.

Jim Rembach: And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor:

An even better place to work is an easy-to-use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award winning solutions guaranteed to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better.

Okay Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Claudette, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster Claudette Rowley, are you ready to hoedown?

Claudette Rowley: Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Rembach: Alright. What is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Claudette Rowley: I am spread a bit too thin, definitely spread a bit too thin.

Claudette Rowley: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Claudette Rowley: Trust yourself.

Jim Rembach: What is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Claudette Rowley: Listening very carefully and closely.

Jim Rembach: What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Claudette Rowley: Tell the truth.

Jim Rembach: What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion, it could be from any genre of course we’re going to put a link to Cultural Brilliance, on your show notes page as well.

Claudette Rowley: A book that was really transformational for me about 15 years ago is called, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life. That is an amazing book for anybody going through a transition by someone named Greg Lavoie.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader Legion, you can find links to that and other notes and bonuses on our show notes page at fastleader.net/Claudette Rowley. Okay, Claudette, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you’ve given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take it all back you can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Claudette Rowley: Trusting myself, really, really trusting myself. Because if you trust yourself you can do almost anything that’s the key to confidence it’s the key to a lot of different things so I’d say trusting myself.

Jim Rembach: Claudette, it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Claudette Rowley: Absolutely, it was it was really fun thanks so much Jim. My website is culturalbrilliance.com. You can find everything about me my services and my book right on the website.

Jim Rembach: Claudette Rowley, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Claudette Rowley: Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

END OF AUDIO

Andy Molinsky Reach outside your comfort zone

142: Andy Molinsky: I have so many situations outside my comfort zone

Andy Molinsky Show Notes Page Andy Molinsky really believes in the stuff that he does. He sees that it really helps people. But not steeping outside of his comfort zone was keeping him from making a difference. Listen how he had to learn how to be his own advocate to get over the hump. Andy …

Access Now

139: Kendall Lyman: What is your change process

Kendall Lyman Show Notes Page

Kendall Lyman was a new consultant working in the oil industry. He was a strategist working with executives looking at the market and competitive analysis. As Kendall worked to implement change, he continually ran into problems at the individual level. That’s when Kendall analyzed something different that helped him get over the hump.

All of Kendall’s siblings were required to learn a musical instrument including playing for a time in the family bluegrass band. Kendall only plays the piano occasionally anymore, but still loves playing a little ragtime. Kendall’s passion for baseball has put him on a quest to see his New York Yankees play in as many cities as possible including Spring Training trips with his oldest daughter (who is a diehard Boston Red Sox fan—yes, there is rivalry in the family!)

Kendall has lived in different areas of the world: London, England; Kobe, Japan; and Santiago, Chile. And he speaks fluent Spanish. Being exposed to different situations and cultures, Kendall became fascinated in how to work with people and how to solve problems. He has an ability to see the big picture and figure out how to get things to work.

Thinking that this skill would serve him in engineering or computers, he started his undergraduate degree in computer science. But Kendall quickly learned that his skills and interests were better suited to the business world, and he consequently majored in International Marketing. After working at IBM for several years, Kendall became interested in how organizations work. So, he earned an MBA from Brigham Young University focusing on strategy, operations, and human behavior.

Kendall spends time serving in leadership roles in his community. He is an Eagle Scout and is passionate about helping young people learn life skills, develop character, and navigate the sometimes-difficult teenage years.

Kendall lives with his wife Donna and their three children Nicole, Natalie, and Josh in Lehi, Utah.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @Lyman_Daloisio to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“We are pathetic at change.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“We need to reverse the average success rate of change initiatives.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Only 30% of change initiatives are successful” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“We have an incomplete view of change.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“If we take a lean approach to designing an organization for effectiveness, we get our measures wrong.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Typically, an efficiency or an effectiveness compete with each other.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“There’s a paradigm that leaders own the engagement of their employees.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Employees have to own their own engagement.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Individually, we deal with change differently than other people.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“We have to help people through the cycle of change.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Too many times we’re communicating for understanding.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“If the leader is not willing to look at her behavior and impact, the strategy work is insignificant.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“How can we ease the transition of trauma of individuals and teams though change?” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Leaders want to go fast in change, but not pay the price.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“How do I manage my own emotions to keep me as upbeat as I can be?” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“We think that everything we are juggling are plates.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

“Listen more, ask questions first, don’t assume you have an answer.” -Kendall Lyman Click to Tweet

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Talk the least. Listen more. Ask questions first. Don’t assume you have an answer or know what the other person is thinking, and dialogue about it.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

I’m more reactive than proactive in managing my own emotions to stay upbeat and as positive as I can be.

Best Leadership Advice

What’s your framework for how an organization operates.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Time management and prioritizing.

Contacting Kendall Lyman

Website: http://changethewayyouchange.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendall-lyman-02ba431/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lyman_Daloisio

Resources and Show Mentions

Developing a Better Place to Work

Increase Employee Engagement and Workplace Culture

Empathy Mapping

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript:

Click to access edited transcript

139: Kendall Lyman: What is your change process

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hook now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader legion, I’m excited because about the show that we have today because we have a guest that is going to help us with something that quite frankly every single one of us needs helps with.

Kendall was born in Utah, and grew up in the Salt Lake City area with his three older sisters. His father was both a gentleman farmer and computer programmer. Consequently, his parents raised him to appreciate hard work on the farm as well as cultural events such as the orchestra and theatre. All of Kendall’s siblings were required to learn a musical instrument including playing for a time in the family bluegrass band. Kendall only plays the piano occasionally anymore, but still loves playing a little ragtime. Kendall’s passion for baseball has put him on a quest to see his New York Yankees play in as many cities as possible including Spring Training trips with his oldest daughter (who is a diehard Boston Red Sox fan. Kendall has lived in different areas of the world: London, England; Kobe, Japan; and Santiago, Chile. And he speaks fluent Spanish. Being exposed to different situations and cultures, Kendall became fascinated in how to work with people and how to solve problems. He has an ability to see the big picture and figure out how to get things to work.

Early in his career, Kendall had the opportunity to work in a strategy consulting firm. While that was great experience, he felt that if he wasn’t careful he would end up thinking that all organizational problems could be solved with a strategy. Forcing a career change, he went to an organizational design firm and later to a leadership firm before starting The Highlands Group—a consulting firm specializing in strategy, organizational change, and leadership development. Kendall spends time serving in leadership roles in his community. He is an Eagle Scout and is passionate about helping young people learn life skills, develop character, and navigate the sometimes-difficult teenage years. Kendall lives with his wife Donna and their three children Nicole, Natalie, and Josh in Lehi, Utah. Kendall Lyman are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Kendall Lyman: I’m ready, thanks Jim.

Jim Rembach: Thanks for being here. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Kendall Lyman: Absolutely. As you talked about change, one of the things that I have noticed over 20-25 years of consulting is that we are pathetic at change. We need to reverse the average success rate of change initiatives. Research shows over and over again that only 30% are successful. If that’s the case and we’re shown that it is multiple times we’ve got to reverse that trend and help leaders get better at change. We’ve got to get this on leader’s agenda and we have to help employees who are struggling with change get better at it.

Jim Rembach: The reason I wanted to have you on the show is because, I mean, change is it’s beyond the new normal it is like the new DNA if you’re not able to do it, it is a whole extinction issue, it’s the modern-day Darwinism. And so when you start thinking about change—okay, so you have outside in inside out you have all these different techniques and things like that but is it a situation where people just aren’t choosing the right one? Or is a situation where they’re not dedicating themselves to it? Really, we’re have you fallen down?

Kendall Lyman: Well, I think the approach that we have today is incomplete. What I read over and over I get to read a lot of change books is that every author or consultant says that change happens one of two ways, it either happens with the individual we call that inside out the individual changes and then they get a chance to change their environment, teach a man to fish so to speak or management consultants say it, starts outside in. Change the strategy, change the organization design and hopefully it makes its way to the individual. But after doing that for 15 years we discovered, why does it have to be either/or? Because our changes weren’t successful I did inside-out change where I put people through workshops and help them individually learn the skills of change but they get back to the organization or get back to the family or get back to the team and they’re not changing and so their motivation runs out. Or I’ve done strategy work and I’ve done execution work and I’ve done lean manufacturing never quite makes it to the desktop of the employee and then leaders get frustrated that employees aren’t changing behaviors and so it can’t be either/or it’s got to be both. I think part of the problem Jim is that we have an incomplete view of change number, number one. Number two to do what I just said takes a lot of work it’s got to be more it’s not just rearranging the roles and responsibilities or the boxes in the in the structure charts and the org charts it’s got to be both it’s got to be a complete view of how change happens.

Jim Rembach: Reading through the book there was one of the things that kind of stood out to me and it was some research that you had actually cited or a statement from a best-selling management author Gary Hamel and he says that, change efforts fail because organizations are designed for efficiency and change is disruptive to that end. For me it got me to thinking is that is what we’re seeing right now and our difficulty to change really an issue of the whole doing more with less the whole multitasking and the entire lean concept? For stiffer so lean we’re too know we’re too busy just doing stuff, can we really actually focus in on change?

Kendall Lyman: The two things come to mind Jim, one, we are asked to do more and more with less and less and one research study that I read said that most of us can only do up to a hundred and twenty percent of our day job. Someplace between one 150 and 120 percent we kind of check out and say enough is enough. And if we are so focused as leaders on leaning and organization on making it more efficient then we’re putting more and more on our people and pretty soon they check out. The second thing that came to mind as you were talking about lean manufacturing what Gary Hamel said is lean is one approach to designing an organization and it’s an efficiency-based approach.

Strategy however, is all about effectiveness it’s how we beat the competition, how do we get better than the next brand, how are we—the next Apple or the next IBM kind of thing. If we take a lean approach to designing an organization for effectiveness we get our measures wrong. And so as you think about setting up an organization and changing the organization you’ve got to be really clear about which stakeholder needs you are going to meet. Is it about efficiency? Is it about effectiveness? Which measures are we going to hit and then you design the organization and employee behaviors in the culture based on that but typically an efficiency or an effectiveness compete with each other and confuses employees and your processes and structure and systems aren’t set up to do both.

Jim Rembach: Well that makes so much sense to me because I know I’ve been part of organizations where you look at what you’re just talking about and you’re like, hey man there’s no congruence here, there’s no there’s no alignment here> You’re telling me one thing but then from an operational perspective I have to do something quite different there’s no way it’s going to come together. And of course many times I got me in some deep trouble, however, I had to point out that obvious things sometimes but that just made so much sense. Now another thing that you had said which was quite interesting—so me having a background in customer care operations and people who in the frontline, I consider myself a frontline person, is that when you start talking about work and occupancy in a customer care environment. Occupancy meaning that I’m signed in I’m ready to take a customer’s requests, support, phone call or chat or session, whatever it is (8:59)** one so I’m either doing work or I’m waiting for work. Once people start getting past an occupancy rate of like then say 84-85 percent they start getting into a huge burnout problem. Because I’m working all the time I don’t get a chance to rest, pause, it’s just like boom, boom, boom, boom. How can people work at 120%?

Kendall Lyman: It’s not sustainable that’s for sure. And so that study that I was citing was saying you can do that for a short period of time. But if you’re not building the organization to support them at an even keel at a hundred percent level, they will burn out they will leave and that’s why you have high turnover rates in organizations that you’re describing. Another thing that we’ve discovered is why we have high turnover. Turnover rates is around employee engagement that used to be that we talked about employee satisfaction and so you see a lot of things in magazines and on the news about we’re stocking lunchrooms and we have pool tables and we have concierge all of those things are about satisfaction but there’s not equal research that says that employees are engaged with those things.

What I mean by that is are you willing to go above and beyond? Are you willing to give it your all? Or are you kind of coasting on the job? One of the things that we discovered is that there’s a paradigm that leaders own the engagement of their employees and I think that’s partially right, I think that’s fifty percent of the equation. It’s not that employees leave companies they leave bosses. So, if a boss hasn’t created an environment or a culture or a climate that fosters engagement and high activity and fun all those things that employees want then employees are going to look for a different job but that’s only fifty percent of the equation. The other piece that we don’t talk about a lot is what we nicknamed OYOE, Own Your Own Engagement is employees have to own their own engagement as well. And with the current workforce with four generations working side by side it is hard for a leader to say what works for a baby boomer works for millennial. Instead what a leader needs to do is engage in conversations that what engages a millennial might be significantly different than a baby boomer or Generation X and that’s okay. Let’s create the conditions that will engage both.

Well that’s one reason why I just love the work of Dr. Shama Kahn when he talks about difference management and this is the whole thing that I have in regards to people getting what I refer to this diversity misconstrued and that is that when you start talking about difference management, I talked about, hey you can have four white guys sitting there in front of you and you know what? They’re diverse because you have one guy maybe just starting his career one guy who’s ending his career and another guy who’s dealing with taking care of older parents and another one who’s a new father, all of those differences mean different things from how they’re actually going to show up at work and what they need. So, I totally agree with that. And all of this that we’re talking about is wrapped in emotion and even when the change process we’re talking about there’s emotion and one of the things in the book that you actually talked about to me which I started applying it and seeing that it could be used in a lot of different ways and that is the emotional cycle of change, tell us about that?

The emotional cycle of change was a model that came from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross based on her research in a book called Death and Dying. And what she discovered were the individually we deal with the loss of a loved one or a change differently than other people. There are cycles we go through anywhere from denial to fear to depression ultimately come out the other side of hope and acceptance but change leaders discovered that that cycle was very similar to a change process. So, for example you’re working in customer service and let’s say that a leader has the goal to lean your organization and cut it by 25%. Some in your team are going to say things like, finally this is awesome let’s get going and make the change. Others on your team are going to mourn the loss of those who left they’re going to be upset about why do we have to do it differently they’re going to wonder where leaders got this vision or this new goal. And so the tricky part for leaders is to understand, like you were just talking about, that individually we deal with that change completely differently. And so we have to help manage people through that cycle of change. The way that we’ve found to do that is a simple idea about head hand and heart.

The idea of head is that some of us respond better to the facts and the logic and the rationale to the change. So, a leader, a loved one can share all the facts and reasoning others respond more to the heart the emotional side of change and the vision side of change and what’s in it for me. And other groups of us respond more to what we call hands or letting us try it on and letting us experiment with it and see. Really this isn’t so bad, the new software is as easy as the old software it’s going to be just fine. And so what we do is try to apply different drivers there of head, hand and heart to each of those emotional cycles of change just because we don’t know exactly is Jim going to respond differently than Kendal and is he going to respond more to head or more heart activities and Kendall’s more hand activities that way we kind of cover the gamut and enable people that transition through that emotional cycle of change.

Jim Rembach: Well thanks for sharing that model. For me I started thinking about as you were talking that that it has to go in your communications about the change as well. You have to communicate to all of those different folks because if you don’t you’re going to have problem having them fill in the blanks and then maybe not moving in a direction that you want them to move. To me that’s just like an overall strategy and framework I think you can apply in a lot of different ways.

Kendall Lyman: And I think that’s a tricky part for leaders. I run up against a lot of leaders who say, I can’t communicate until we’re ready to tell them everything. And it’s such a poor paradigm because I want to say to them, look you’re just choosing whether to be part of the conversation or not because the conversations happening around you already. And so, what you have to do is figure out how to engage in the conversation in a simple way that we talk about it is how do you move in your communication an employee from understanding to acceptance to commitment? Too many times we’re communicating for understanding so we’re sharing the plan or sharing the goal or sharing the vision that’s a long ways away from commitment and that middle phase of acceptance. I’ve got to believe and I’ve got to trust that it’s right. I have to say, okay, yeah it is time for change and I still have to make the commitment to say, okay I’m in. I still have to jump in and give you my all my hundred percent instead of kind of waiting and seeing and waiting leaders out or rusting out on the job.

Jim Rembach: Without a doubt change is swirling around us and it’s not going to end it’s just going to continue to be the way that it is and we have to learn how to be able to live within it and so when you start talking about that we need these systems and these frameworks. And one of the things we look at on the show is quotes to kind of help get us focused and point in the right direction. Is there a quote or two that you can share?

Kendall Lyman: Yeah, absolutely. One of them that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as it relates to leadership is that organization, this is by Tim Clark who wrote a great book around change, one of our colleagues he said organizations don’t outperform their leaders they reflect them. An organization’s ability to adapt and adjust to shifting demands is really a function of a leader’s ability to change. When I was a young consultant I started as a strategist and then I went to an org design firm and I used to think that I could design really good strategy or really good organizational systems and processes and almost surround the leader to enable her to change, I don’t believe that anymore. If the leaders not willing to look at her behavior and her impact and develop those around her all the fun strategy work and the lean manufacturing design work I do is interesting but it’s going to be insignificant really.

Some research that I’ve been reading lately by Bill Adams and Bob Anderson in a great book called, Mastering Leadership, they’re talking about not only is the individual effectiveness of a leader but it’s the collective capacity of those leaders around her. So when I think about change I think we got to start at the top we got to start with modeling, walking the talk modeling what we want to see happen and when rest of us see that you as a leader are going to make a difference in your behavior then I’ll start doing the same for me. So that’s one of the quotes that I’ve been sharing a lot with my clients.

Jim Rembach: And I’ve actually had Bob Anderson on the show he’s out he was episode 78 on the Fast Leader Show, and that book that you referred to it’s a masterpiece.]

Kendall Lyman: It really is. Everybody ought to read that book it’ll change how you think about leadership.

Jim Rembach: Absolutely. When you started talking about—your learnings and you talked a lot about how you’ve gained more insight and it’s caused you to go for what you feel as the better direction but those are humps that we have to get over. And you know you talked about some changes in being with—or designed firm being with a leadership firm all of those humps and getting over those humps made us who we are, made you who you are. Is there a time where you can share one of those stories with us?

Kendall Lyman: Yeah, absolutely. As a new consultant, maybe 25 years ago, I was working in the oil industry and we were doing some really neat work about some international opportunities to expand into some areas in the oilfield that others hadn’t been to and change how we explore and extract oil. At that time there was a few leaders in the oil industry that if they made a move everybody else made a move. And we nicknamed it a little bit the sheep herd mentality you get the herd going in one direction and the rest of the sheep follow. But we were trying to make a change that was different than the pack and we ran up against the change of behavior at the individual level that that I didn’t know how to deal with. I was a strategist I was working in the c-suite working in the boardroom looking at markets looking at how competitors were reacting to our shifts and change in strategy and what I kept running up against is that I was trying to work at the organizational level but the individual level was where I was running into problems.

And so I started watching a couple of those other firms that were doing it right and started to explore. And what I discovered and what ultimately became why we’ve done the research we have and how we’ve changed our approach is that you can’t work at just one level in an organization. What I mean by that is that generally there’s three levels in an organization there’s the organizational level that includes the strategy and the mission vision and values and the process structure systems. There’s also a team level where most of us are in teams we have a team leader and we’re working together and then we have those relationships and how well we’re emotionally intelligent helps us in working with those teams and then there’s an individual level meaning each of us individually. Till I figured out how to work at all three levels I kept having the same success that we quoted earlier in the show, 30 40 50 percent success rate and since we’ve changed that and gotten over that hump so to speak, that’s been the difference maker for us because we’re able to help change not only how the organization works but the emotions and the behaviors of individuals and marry those together that’s for real synergy, real effectiveness and that’s where performance is accelerated.

Jim Rembach: Thanks for sharing that story. So when you start thinking about some of those interventions, interactions, conflicts that you had with the frontline is there one that stands out to you?

Kendall Lyman: Yeah, I remember getting a call I’ll change industries, I remember getting a call from pharmaceutical company. I’m thinking about this because you talked about lean manufacturing and they called me up and said, do you do that change thing? And I thought, oh uh, what are we talking about? And they were leaning their manufacturing process. There were 15 plants in that process, five were significantly going to be changed or eliminated, five had no impact and five were someplace in the middle. As I got into what they were doing I asked them, what is your change process? They were really, really excited. And they said, have you been to the lunchroom? I said, yeah, I’ve been to the lunchroom. And they said, we have a video about change. I said that’s great. And they said, it’s in two languages because we’re international firm. And I said, great, what else have you done?

And they looked at me and said, what else should we do? And I thought that was so impactful for me that the only way they could think about change was telling, mandating, sending a video to everybody that half the people were there to get their salad or burgers weren’t even watching the video or it had run so many times that it was just droning on. They had no concept about how the work was going to change, how it was going to impact teams, what individuals needed to do differently. From that point on I really set a quest to figuring that out which is a lot of what we write about to say how can we ease the transition of trauma, so to speak, of individuals and teams through this process so that they will buy in and we can reverse this trend of only 30 percent success rate.

Jim Rembach: Well thanks for sharing that. When I start thinking about all the things that go into change after reviewing this book, I’m like, of course it makes sense but definitely we need to make it more common. I know you got a lot of things going on, you have the book you’re promoting the book I’m sure there’s probably another one that’s in your head, if you’re not already working on it, you have the consulting work, family, a lot of things but what’s one of your goals?

Kendall Lyman: You mentioned there’s another book we’re thinking about. This has led us into more research and another area that we keep seeing which leaders want to go fast and change. They want to mandate it or they just want to tell people how to do it quickly but they don’t want to pay the price so to speak. And so that’s one of our goals in the next couple of years to figure out how to describe that dilemma and help leaders through that. But from an individual perspective what I’m one of my own goals is to figure out how to make this easier for leaders.

I don’t think, Jim, that leaders if you look at how we’re educated—I got an MBA and I look at the things that I read now they were never discussed during my graduate program> it wasn’t discussed about the relationships between people it wasn’t discussed about how I have to have emotional intelligence and that’s actually probably more important than overall intelligence at the level that we’re working at now. We don’t talk to leaders about how they manage a transformation instead we talk about functional things finance, operations, marketing, customer support, sales. One of my personal goals is to say how do I package this or how do I describe it in a way that makes it easy for leaders that they can say, well that makes sense like you did and I now know how to do it. I think we’re still a few steps away from that but that’s a goal of mine.

Jim Rembach: And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. An even better place to work is an easy-to-use solution that improves the empathy and emotional intelligence skills and everyone. It provides a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement and provides integrated activities that will improve the leadership and collaboration skills in everyone. This award-winning solution is guaranteed to create motivated, productive and higher performing employees that have great working relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. Alright here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kendall, the Hump Day the hump day hold on is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us some robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Kendall Lyman, are you ready to hoedown?

Kendall Lyman: Absolutely.

Jim Rembach: Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Kendall Lyman: I think sometimes we’re more reactive. Personally I’m more reactive than proactive. Reacting to people’s emotions their schedules instead of proactively saying, wait a minute what’s on my agenda? What are my priorities? And how do I manage my own emotions to keep me as positive and upbeat as I can be.

Jim Rembach: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Kendall Lyman: I was taught early in my career that I needed to have a—it was called meat hooks as what he said but is what it’s really saying is what’s your framework for how things operate? What’s your framework for how an organization operates? And so now in my brain I have a framework and when I run up against a problem that I can’t solve I have a bucket to put it in a hook to put it on until I can solve it. I think that keeps us from being too micro it helps us look macro at problems but then gives us time later to dig deep into the micro issues that are affecting it.

Jim Rembach: What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Kendall Lyman: I would probably say time management and prioritizing. I read a great quote that was talking about “we are juggling objects” and we get the prioritization of those objects different and we think that everything we’re juggling our plates the reality is that our work is actually a rubber ball and if it dropped once in a while it would be fine but you can’t let the plates of relationships, values, integrity, health fall. And so I think about that as I’m starting my week and prioritizing what are those big rocks that I would need to put in my calendar this week and let everything else fall around those.

Jim Rembach: What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, and of course we’re going to put a link to Change the Way you Change on our show notes page.

Kendall Lyman: One of the books that I read recently that has affected me probably the most is called How to Hug a Porcupine, it was such a great book around owning your own issues owning your own emotions and not reacting to the world around you. Of course we have to be charitable and kind to those around us but it was a great way to say, no this is this is healthy this is unhealthy and I’m going to take emotional I’m going to take charge of my own emotional health.

Jim Rembach: Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/KendallLyman. Okay Kendall, this is my last hump day hold on question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or a piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Kendall Lyman: I love that question. I think one of the things that I’ve learned the most is that I need to talk the least. What I take back is listen more, ask questions first don’t assume that I have an answer or even know what the other person’s thinking and then really dialogue about it that would have gotten me out of a lot of traps that would have helped me understand people better. I think that would have been wonderful to take back to age of 25.

Jim Rembach: Kendall it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Kendall Lyman: Jim, it’s been an honor, thanks for the time. They can connect with us at changethewayouchange.com and see what we’re doing there as well as our contact information.

Jim Rembach: Kendall Lyman, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

END OF AUDIO

change management

Mary Lippitt Show Notes Page

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Best Leadership Advice

Secret to Success

Best tools in business or life

Recommended Reading

Contacting Mary Lippitt

Resources and Show Mentions

Risto Siilasmaa Show Notes Page

Quotes and Mentions

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Best Leadership Advice

Secret to Success

Best tools in business or life

Recommended Reading

Contacting Risto Siilasmaa

Resources and Show Mentions

Claudette Rowley Show Notes Page

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Best Leadership Advice

Secret to Success

Best tools in business or life

Recommended Reading

Contacting Claudette Rowley

Resources and Show Mentions

Kendall Lyman Show Notes Page

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Hump to Get Over

Advice for others

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Best Leadership Advice

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Recommended Reading

Contacting Kendall Lyman

Resources and Show Mentions