c o s h r i n k

Some days I feel like I have the same conversation with client after client — today it was about focus. All came to me with a variation on the story “I/my team/my organization are exhausted — we have been keeping up an extraordinary effort and feeling like we are making no progress”. As they described to me all the priorities and activities and programs they were trying to implement my head hurt — and much of what they described had no “life” to it.

I began to explore with each why they were doing so much. Each activity seemed to be justified by one of the following criteria
- we are funded to do it
- we have always done it
- I have hired people to do it
- our managers expect us to do it
- people have become used to getting it from us
- it might look bad if we stopped doing it
Unfortunately, very few of the explanations involved excitement or passion or because the effort was critical to the mission of the organization. More it seemed like people were just too afraid to deal with the consequences of stopping.

This is not a recipe for success!

I encouraged each of them to undergo some variation of the following process:
1) List everything you (your organization) is doing. Then “editorialize” for each, describing why you started doing it, why you are now doing it, how you feel about doing it, etc.)
2) Put your list away.
3) Describe, with as much detail as you can, your “desired future” — what you would like to be doing, feeling, what impact you would like to have — in 3-5 years.
4) Now look back at the list of current activities. Which, if any of these, will directly make a strong (4 or 5 on a 1-5 scale) contribution to your desired future? Why? Don’t choose more than 5 items.
5) What gaps does that leave? what major areas need to be addressed (in addition to the activities listed in #4) to attain your desired future?
6) Combine your answers to #4 and 5 into a list of “key initiatives”. These should be the activities you (or your organization) put the most energy into to ensure you make progress toward.

Now look at everything else on your list of current activities. Force yourself to classify each as
- an activity I should discontinue
- an activity I should hand off or outsource
- an activity I should do differently so that it doesn’t take much of my energy

Look at your new list of focus areas. How do you feel about spending your time here? Don’t be surprised if there is some anxiety — part of the reason you are still doing those things is because they are “comfortable”, familiar, easy…they represent the path of least resistance. But your new list represents the path to success.

2009 was a hard year. Many of the companies I worked with had to take headcount cuts, slow growth, focus on surviving “until times got better”. So now we see the initial signs that things are improving…but I don’t seem to see the flare of new energy and enthusiasm. Why?

One of my clients put his finger on it when he asked his management team the question “are we playing to win, or are we just playing not to lose”. I’m afraid many of us are still playing not to lose. The downturn hit us all so hard, and we felt so powerless to impact our own environment that we all went into survival mode, minimizing risks, focusing on the “tried and true”, stifling any creative ideas we had.

And now it is as if we have all petrified into that way of working. I attend management team meetings, even of companies who are doing relatively well, and I don’t see the energy and optimism and excitement I was used to. I talk to people about the huge opportunities I see for them and they are excited for a minute…and then begin to tell me why those ideas are too risky for them to pursue right now. Even the venture capitalists I work with still seem inclined to “minimize the risk”, continuing to counsel their teams to take it slow, survive on inside money, wait until we are sure things are getting better.

Maybe it’s time we remember how to dream. Companies get started because someone has a crazy idea and decides to “go for it”, and then gets other people excited enough to go along for the ride. If you talk to those people, they aren’t worried about failure, about “not losing” — they just want to know they took a shot!

Those dreams didn’t die…they just went into the freezer for awhile. It is up to courageous leaders — CEO’s, Board members, or just an employee with guts — to help people remember the dream. Tell the stories, highlight the progress, re-visit the victories…help people remember why you started this company in the first place! Perhaps the dream will be stronger for the learning, the mistakes, the frustrations, the time of doubt.

And perhaps once we have re-energized the dream, we can chart a path that takes advantage of all the hard lessons we have learned. Perhaps we can use wiser eyes to assess whether we have all the skills and have developed the ways of working that will help us chart the best path for our journey. There is something about fear that makes us reluctant to take a hard look at what it will take to be successful — perhaps with re-energized optimism (or perhaps the help of a “fresh set of eyes” from an outsider) you will be able to more accurately assess what challenges remain, and what strategies you can employ to meet them.

And then maybe with the dream restored, the faith recaptured, and a wiser path charted, maybe then we can get back to “playing to win”.

Cruising through Twitter I saw a references from a piece by Rajesh Setty on “Why Don’t Smart People Share?” It seemed to be a continuation of my own frequent question — why won’t smart people listen? My conclusion is that we in the high tech world have made being smart a trap.

I can hear the moaning….But I have seen this issue play out over and over. First of all, ask anyone in high tech for their impressions of someone else — they always start with “he (or she) is really smart…” So if “being smart” is the most critical criteria for being well thought of, the perception must be protected at all costs!

But somehow we have started defining “smart” as “knows all the answers”. And so showing how smart you are entails always being the one who is right, who is the smartest. This means that you can never listen, or learn from someone else, or change your mind once you have declared yourself, or follow someone’s else’s idea, or say “I was wrong”. As a friend of mine once said “I HAVE to have the answer, so I will say something even if I know it is wrong. And once I have said it, I have to defend it to the death so I don’t have to admit I didn’t know”.

Now, what happens when you put all those smart people together in a company? First of all, it gets really hard to have an open discussion if everyone has to be right. It is even harder to make a decision if going with someone else’s idea means conceding that they are smarter than you. It means people hiding the fact that they are overwhelmed in their jobs because they don’t know everything and are afraid it is showing weakness if they ask for help. (This seems to be especially true of CEO’s, who feel like they have to keep up this facade of all-knowingness even with the Board…and Board members who think they have to prove their value as venture capitalists by always knowing what the company SHOULD do.)

So we have a company where energy that should go into cooperatively solving the hard problem the company has taken on instead goes into trying to maintain the impression of smartness.

How much better would it be if we just acknowledged that the smartest people are those who are confident in what they know — and acknowledge that no one can know everything about everything. These people who accept they are “smart enough” know to bring in other people who have different strengths, to ask those people to share their honest opinions…and then to listen!

The Buddhist’s have a tradition of the kalyana-mitra, or Noble Friend. This concept is based on the belief that every organism (and an organization is an organism) has blind spots. The Nobel Friend is someone who “will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness”.

Doesn’t every person need at least one Noble Friend? Wouldn’t you rather hear the truth from someone who cares about you, someone whose desire is to help you succeed, someone who has no agenda other than to help you be the best you can be?

So as we begin 2010 I wish for all of you — CEOs, Board members, VPs — that you will seek out at least one Noble Friend. I hope that you will trust what you know, and trust your own capability to keep learning, to keep growing. And I hope you will not let the need to prove you are smart keep you from being successful.

Just saw Invictus — there were many wonderful lines from Nelson Mandela, but the one that stuck in my mind as I drove home was “how do we inspire others to greatness?”

I think this is the single most difficult task the CEO’s I work with face. Maybe because really trying, putting all your effort into a dream, not leaving yourself an excuse or a way out, is one of the most courageous acts we can engage in.

Sure, this is Silicon Valley — we all chase our dreams! Really? How many companies, how many CEO’s, how many employees can actually say they committed completely to the dream, to expending every ounce of energy and money and self respect to the achievement of their dream? How many never took the easy way out, or blamed someone else, or decided to cut their losses and do something not quite so wonderful but more likely to be safe?

We as humans don’t like to fail. And those extremely smart people who go to start ups aren’t used to failing. And at some point it seems we all get afraid of failure start thinking about how not to lose (or at least how not to be seen as losing). Instead of being creative and courageous and honest and committed we find ourselves criticizing and controlling and making excuses…

So…how does a CEO inspire greatness? First the CEO must find the way to stay in touch with his or her “greatness” — the part of them that is connected to that special knowledge and faith that gave them the great idea in the first place. Whatever it takes — exercise, time off, connection with other people who dream big — the CEO’s job is to make sure to prioritize those activities so he or she can stay connected to that faith.

Next, the CEO must establish and protect a culture where true greatness is modeled, where failure is less shameful than not trying, where excuses are net tolerated, where an honest effort is what is asked for (and rewarded) from each employee. Of course, the best way the CEO can promote that culture is by demonstrating that behavior…even when it is hard.

Finally, the job of the CEO is to help other people find their greatness. The truly great CEO’s are the ones that know how to watch for and find the bright spark that each employee brings, to protect that spark above all…and to remind the employee of that spark of greatness when they have lost their own ability to find it.

Ken Auletta is his book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It”, quotes Elliott Schrage “One can make the argument that the genes of technological Innovation are frequently in conflict with emotional intelligence. Successful technological innovation is all about disruption. Effective emotional intelligence is all about collaboration…”

Perhaps I would add a third realm of expertise – Strategic Business Awareness. And perhaps I would say that in order to succeed over time an organization needs to attract and value and learn to integrate and balance all three of these aspects.

All of us know and have seen the awesome power of Technological Innovators who see and know how to build a product that addresses a market gap or shift. We fund those guys! But we also know that their success comes in part from “brute force” and the refusal to quit while they “iterate” successive implementations of their idea until they reach the one that will sell.

Even at the beginning, the creative entrepreneur needs to work with someone who can add the Strategic Business Awareness to craft a business model around the technology idea. Sometimes the business mind is resident in the company – other times it comes in the form of a venture capitalist or industry expert on the Board who can work with the entrepreneur. Over time, this “voice of reason” may carry more weight and take on more of the “operational” responsibilities of running the company in a CEO or COO role.

Unfortunately, these two skills are seldom resident in the same mind – not because they can’t be, but because one does rise from the act of challenging the current state, from the need to birth something that exists only in the mind of the entrepreneur. The other comes from an ability to abstract and “tweak” proven dynamics of the market. The challenge for the organization, then, is to make sure that the need for both areas of expertise is acknowledged and valued from the beginning.

Hence the need for the third realm – the Emotional Intelligence. Over time, any successful organization needs to learn to solve problems by unraveling the emotional context that keeps people from joining behind a common plan, then by clearly articulating and reinforcing a common path. These activities require someone who understands and is comfortable working the “squishy” dynamics that occur whenever humans come together.

Perhaps this skill co-exists with either the Technological Innovator or the Strategic Business mind. Sometimes it has to be cultivated first from either an internal or external party who can help the team learn how to recognize and manage their dynamics. But either way, this ability is critical to knitting a team together over the long term and teaching them to maximize the contributions of each.

So rather than seeing these factors – Technological Innovation, Strategic Business Awareness and Emotional Intelligence — as mutually exclusive, I see them as all three critical to the success of a technology company over time. The challenge is to find and bring together all three – and teach them to acknowledge and cultivate their interdependence.

Universally, one of the first issues I will be asked to address at a new client is “how do we increase accountability?” In some ways this question ranks up there with “how do we create a culture” or “can we do a teambuilding to create trust” in the list of phrases most likely to make me shudder — NOT because increasing accountability isn’t a worthwhile goal (in fact, usually I too believe we need to increase accountability) but more because people use it as code for “can you make everyone do what I tell them to?”

To me, the process of creating accountability is simple…but if that were true, why do so many smart people seem to struggle with it? Not being the type of person who believes I know everything, I did a search on what other people see as the path to accountability. I found two answers — hire people who are accountable as part of their character, or take this wonderful workshop and magically become accountable. Since I can’t really see myself saying this to my clients (or I can’t see them feeling very good about my services if that is what I said) I guess I will go ahead and state my “formula for creating accountability”.

The first step in creating accountability in a group is to make sure that everyone is ALIGNED on what you are trying to accomplish. I am not a fan of elegant vision statements, but I do believe it is important that everyone in the group that will work together is clear and aligned on where they are trying to go — on what “done” looks like and how it will be different/better than today. This can be a challenging process — some groups avoid achieving that level of clarity or forcing that level of alignment because they are afraid of losing people who don’t truly buy into the goal. But the loss of effectiveness that comes from people pulling in different directions is deadly — and in reality people are ok as long as they see a way that they can achieve what they need to feel “successful” if the company achieves the vision.

Once everyone is in agreement about the goal of the process, the next step is to achieve CLARITY on actions and priorities. Inevitably when I sit in on a meeting with a group who is struggling with accountability, I find that
- no one is taking (and then distributing) notes
- the leader is not driving to a level of specificity on “who will do what by when”
- the team does not review and affirm “next steps” at the end of the meeting
Even in the best of groups, people can leave a meeting with different understandings of who is going to do what unless the group documents and affirms their agreements in writing.

Of course, a key element of ensuring accountability is establishing OWNERSHIP. I do not define ownership as “I get to do it my way”, but rather as “I assume responsibility for actively managing the designating stakeholders to get the result desired”. This goes beyond putting your name on a chart and sending out a few emails — it involved continuing to shepherd the process along, identifying and resolving issues that might impede delivery. In general, placing ownership of a task in the hands of one individual is best, as it avoids the “finger-pointing” phenomenon.

Most of the organizations I work with cringe whenever I suggest they set up a STRUCTURE of regularly occurring meetings, saying the LAST thing they need is more meetings to clutter up their calendar and keep them from doing meaningful work. However, when it comes to a group project, the meetings ARE the work. I find it is better for teams to set up a structure of regular meetings, then to use these meetings as the places where they visit progress against the key projects, rather than try to set up ad hoc meetings to move the projects along. It is just too hard to find a time on the calendars of multiple people, so teams either end up taking too long to move the project along or trying to make progress without key decision-makers.

Finally, creating accountability depends on engaging in active, direct COMMUNICATION. Accountability does not come from every single person getting every single action item done on time — it arises as groups actively manage the process of “making progress”, raising and resolving issues, actively negotiating commitments, providing direct feedback to team members whose behavior is impeding the team.

Ultimately, this process provides a framework for increasing accountability, but ultimate success does come from each person being willing to honestly engage in the process, believing that the improved probability of success outweighs any momentary discomfort from occasionally having to admit to not having gotten something done.

In the last few months I have heard these words out of the mouths of several of my venture capitalist clients. I always know they mean
- at least one person thinks they don’t
- probably no one has told the CEO
- they’ve never had a direct conversation about what the “right” CEO would be like in terms of skills, activities, results or where this CEO is falling short
- someone wants to just fire the guy now
- no one really wants to engage in an honest process to find out

The challenge is, the questions and discussions should have started at the very beginning, before the company was funded and/or the CEO was hired. Inevitably when I get involved in a situation like this, I discover that the Board members have very different ideas of what the “right” CEO would look like — mostly based on where that particular Board member has been burned before. I guess venture capitalists are human, so they tend to try to avoid being burned in the same ways — but all too frequently that means they try to apply a “formula” to managing the CEO. This means they come in with ideas such as “the founding CEO can never manage the company long term” or “you need a CEO with sales experience once the company is selling product” or “at the first sign of trouble you should act to remove the CEO”.

I strongly recommend that the Board members specify and align on the skills the CEO needs to have for success, based on the business model, the skills and experience of the other team members, and the stage of development of the company. This “role/responsibility description” then forms the framework for hiring, giving feedback, and measuring effectiveness over time. (Attached is the generic CEO skills framework I start with in working with a CEO)
.CEO Comprev

At the same time that the Board and CEO are aligning on expectations, they should agree how and how often they will be evaluating performance. At least at the beginning of a relationship, I suggest checking in quarterly. We all know it is easier to receive feedback in a timely manner, while you still have a chance to address it. On an annual basis, perhaps in conjunction with the CEO’s review, Board members might want to encourage a 360, where data is solicited from the Board, the CEO’s direct reports, and key partners. Often it is helpful to have that 360 facilitated by an external party, to ensure both objectivity and confidentiality.

If you follow the process described above, it should be evident to all if there is a mismatch or performance issue. In my experience, most CEO’s who are in a role that doesn’t fit know it — the problem comes if they don’t understand or get a chance to address the issues. Agreeing up front on the criteria and following a logical process can greatly ease the angst of having to have the conversation on whether it is time for a transition.

It’s fall so I am pruning my garden. It’s amazing to look underneath the nice healthy leaves and branches on top and see just how much dead stuff is underneath. It satisfies me to cut away the parts of each plant that are no longer healthy, to know that I am improving the flow of energy in the plant so that all the energy can go into the healthy new growth come spring.

It strikes me that what I try to do in organizations can also be considered “pruning”. When I come into an organization, chances are that relationships and communication channels and ways of doing things have already been established…but they aren’t working the way the organization needs them to work. Less of the energy and momentum of the organization is getting to the parts of the organization that need it, that will provide the growth for the business going forward. It’s easy for me, as an outsider, to sense where the “flow” is getting blocked.

The big difference is that my plants don’t argue when I suggest they might be healthier if I take that old dead limb off. My clients do. It seems people are reluctant to re-look at the decisions they have made and the processes they have set up to see if they are still working. They seem reluctant to “cut away” the protective layers they have built between people or parts of the organization, layers that were built because of tensions or an inability for the parties to work together well.They seem to see it as failure or a waste of time to dismantle a piece of the business that is no longer healthy.

I find this is particularly true now, when people are facing so much loss or threat of loss. They seem to cling to the things they still have, the structures and processes and habits they are used to…without looking honestly about whether those “old” structures are providing the outcome they want.

As a leader, you may need to model that “trimming” is a positive move. By this I don’t mean cutting people, though I admit there are plenty of places where it seems people are reluctant to admit there are employees in roles that don’t match their strengths. I am referring to taking the risk to ask “does this meeting work?” or “do we really want to deal with each other this way?” or even “am I still the right leader for the company?”

A friend of mine once said “remember, in order for new things to grow, old things need to be taken apart”. Take a look around and see where the life had been blocked in your life or relationship or organization — and have the courage to “trim” those places and rebuild.