c o s h r i n k

Acceptance — I used to hate that word. For me it seemed to mean being a passive victim, letting life happen TO you. That is one of the reasons I was drawn to work with start ups — those were people who were willing to take on the hard challenges, to fight for what they wanted, to do the things others thought were impossible.

In recent years I personally have had cause to look back at all the times I “fought” and wonder — was I really just prolonging the pain? Was there a clear, easier path to getting what I wanted but it required me to do or face something I wasn’t ready to? Did getting what I want actually take LONGER because I fought to do it “my way”?

I have begun to see the same issue with my clients. These are really smart people, and most of the time at least someone in the organization has seen what I see when I come in to help. It seems like it should be an easy fix — share the observations, suggest some actions, fix the problem, move on.

But it is seldom that easy. Usually I have to fight first the CEO’s tendency to deny what I see. Especially in most cases where the CEO (and the VP’s and the Board members) are high Dominance, they are very used to moving into a right/wrong battle — and they need to be the one that is right. If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny to think they really believe I stayed up all night trying to think of the problem that would most piss them off (and that there was no evidence of). We have to argue about what the problem is, what the root cause really is, why the fix I suggest won’t work….etc.

When I probe below the initial resistance I find…fear. That someone will think the CEO was wrong, or doesn’t know what he is doing, or that he made a mistake. Or he (or she) is worried about looking weak or unfit for the job. Or maybe my “fix” requires the CEO to do something uncomfortable, or scary. So it is easier to think I am wrong than to face any of these deeper fears…even if that means the company continues to struggle.

That’s what I mean about acceptance. Jon Kabat Zinn says ” We so often attempt to force things to be a certain way, “my way”, without regard for the ‘violence’ that such a break in the rhythm of things carries with it”. Ignoring a problem, calling it something else, doesn’t make it go away. Usually to any outside observer, the problem is common, no big deal, nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that will kill the company…unless it is ignored.

So I am trying to practice an acceptance than means “seeing what IS”, recognizing the true state of things and moving through my reaction to focus on what can be done to solve it. And trying to teach my clients that acceptance can be a strength.

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become”
Charles du Bois

I have always loved this quote — and never does it mean more to me than it does this week. It seems, as usual, my clients are giving me a gift — making me look at my own mental state so that I can help them.

It has been a long, hard 18 months. Seems like so many of us are craving safety, security, the restoration of what we had in the past. But perhaps this is getting in the way of us being willing to take the risks to become what we need to be for the future…

One of my new clients is a large foundation that has done ground-breaking work for the first 10 years of it’s life. However, the area of need it is addressing has changed and other agencies now offer the same programs. In order to continue to be a leader, the foundation needs to perhaps give up the established programs (and their guaranteed funding) and help the world press forward into new service areas…

Another potential new client in a founding CEO. He has taken his company through the first 5 years of its life, taking a very hands on role in establishing and implementing technology direction, However, he has now hired in very experienced VP’s — and perhaps he now needs to define a more strategic, less hands on role for himself…

And finally, a personal friend is finding less and less joy in the job he has done for the last 25 years. However, he is good at it and doesn’t have to work very hard and makes good money. But every day it takes a little more effort to get up and go to work…and every day he finds more reason to take long lunches. What he really wants to do is consult…but is it really the time in his life (and the economy) to take that kind of risk?

It can be difficult to put your organization, and yourself, through more stress and uncertainty and challenge when you have all just endured the hard times of the last 2 years. It can be tempting to believe that all we have to do is wait until the economy improves and then we can all go back to the happy days from before. But maybe not. Maybe the old days are gone and our best chance to shine, to succeed, is to risk what we were…for what we can become.

Ok, it’s Spring, which may be why the image of a tree came up when I was working with a client last week. The presenting problem was that they weren’t seeing the growth they had hoped would result from some recent activities.

I asked them to imagine their company as a tree
- look at the roots — were they drawing enough nutrients from the soil to fuel growth?
- examine the truck — was it supporting the weight of the branches/efforts?
- reflect on the branches — were they all healthy and growing, or were some blocked or no longer healthy?
- look at the leaves — were they growing equally across all the branches?

Ok, I can see some of you gagging, but the results of this reflection were actually quite helpful. It became clear that one of the partners was responsible for all the “grounding” and the “soul” of the organization — and she wasn’t having enough time to reflect and nurture herself to come up with new ideas. Meanwhile, the other partner had no roots and was madly loading more “leaves/activities” on the tree and then wondering why they weren’t sticking (and why the effort was feeling heavy).

The plan going forward required them both to look at how to reinforce the root structure to both be able to bring depth to the work, to clean up some of the “deadwood” that had developed in the “trunk” of their relationship, to evaluate and focus on fewer “branches” so that their effort went in to 2-3 focused initiatives…and to let the leaves sprout rather than frantically throw effort at a million different “projects”. Although this last point was tough to get agreement around (we so often confuse effort and activity with results) but seemed key to “lightening up” the work so that more organic growth could occur.

Might this kind of reflection inform your thinking about the health — and the direction for growth — of your organization?

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.