Leadership Limerick: Values into Action

Every Monday, I offer a leadership limerick, highlighting an idea or strategy about effective leadership in limerick form. Searching for leadership limerick will identify previous posts.

Identifying the values at your core
Can often seems like quite a chore

But it’s not the words that most matter

Without action, they are just chatter

Driving behavior is what they are for

It's not unusual to see eyes roll when talk turns to mission or core values during a strategy retreat or staff workshop.  Unfortunately, in many organizations, conversation around core values is primarily associated with painful wordsmithing.

In the seminal work Built to Last, co-authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras assert that 80-90% of a leader's time should be focused on ensuring alignment between core ideology (mission or purpose and values) and the envisioned future.  If what you stand for and why you exist isn't understood and embodied in the thinking and actions of every individual throughout your organization, much of the activity that occurs each day will lack the appropriate level of intention, meaning, and impact.

To ensure the integrity of the experience they offer their customers and stakeholders, smart organizations craft brief narratives that expand on the values selected.  They should be prescriptive enough to bring a value to life, yet open to enough interpretation so that individuals can own them authentically.

Here's a sample core values statement from my last consulting practice (like minded people) where I was a co-founder, the alignment mechanisms for one of the values, and some tips on crafting your own core values statement.  And check out the June 2011 issue of Inc. magazine for some great examples of how small businesses put their core values into action.  Finally, here is an earlier post about core values.

Leadership Limerick: Staying Curious

Every Monday, I offer a leadership limerick, highlighting an idea or strategy about effective leadership in limerick form.

Curiosity may have killed the cat
But we're not even sure about that

You must interrupt your routine

And make sure new things are seen

To keep your thinking from going flat

Routines are valuable because they are orderly and make more efficient use of time.   But routinely offering the same programs and services can quickly become a rut.  You can help prevent this by not letting your own experiences fall into rigid and inflexible patterns.  

Breaking up your routines, trying new paths, and exposing yourself widely to different perspectives will keep your thinking fresher and cause new connections and possibilities to be imagined.

So one of the new routines worth adopting is regularly interrupting your routines.  Which "but this is the way I've always done it" are you going to interrupt today?

Time to Consider a Capital (Human) Campaign

Almost every major nonprofit institution will embark on at least one capital campaign during its lifetime, soliciting significant financial contributions for new buildings, programs, or their endowment.

It's time for any organization that solicits volunteers' time and talent to do the same.  Except instead of raising money,ask for pledges and commitments of time, talent, and leadership.

First, create a compelling vision of the meaningful and bold accomplishments that will be achieved if the goal for volunteer contributions is met.  Make the case compelling, crafting a vivid story bringing to life what this massive influx of time and talent will make possible.  Think like the renowned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham who famously said:

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big."

Second, just as with a major fund-raising campaign, have a quiet phase in which you solicit major contributions and matching challenge grants from lead donors and prominent individuals to model the way for the masses.

Third, recruit individuals to serve as team captains, each pledging to reach out those in their circles of influence and to obtain a certain level of commitments and contributions.

Finally, go public with the campaign, sharing your goal for the results you want to achieve and inviting individuals to pledge their commitment to help make the vision a reality.

Too many organizations fail to fully imagine what might be possible from a broader and deeper contribution of time and talent from those who care about their purpose or cause.  And if we never make the ask, individuals can never make the gift of their ideas, insights, and labor to making major achievements possible.

The community is always resource-full.  We just need to be more resourceful in engaging it.

Leadership Limerick: Good Discussions

Every Monday, I offer a leadership limerick, highlighting an idea or strategy about effective leadership in limerick form.

Conversations can often get tense
When others' reasoning doesn't make sense

If you can keep an open mind
You very often will then find

There's no need to go on the offense

It's tempting when you disagree strongly with another person's opinion to go on the attack, to try and win the discussion and get others to adopt your position.  While that may indeed be an appropriate choice at some point, it's not a helpful default position.

You're better served by first learning more about others' positions, listening non-judgmentally in an effort to gather more information.  In doing so you often gain not only a better sense of what they believe to be important, but often discover some common ground where you both agree.  That's almost always a more productive place to begin resolving your differences.

Effective Facilitation: A Six-Pack of Favorite Resources

Whether you are doing the work of a meeting, process, or workshop facilitator or just looking to incorporate more of a facilitative approach in your work as a manager or leader, these are five resources I find invaluable.  

Gamestorming and The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making are essential toolkit books filled with activities and techniques applicable for facilitators of all skill levels.  The remaining four texts explore the values, principles, and processes intrinsic in facilitation work and are probably most appropriate for intermediate to advanced learners.  If you are looking for a book that covers facilitation fundamentals at a more basic-intermediate level, I would recommend The Facilitator Excellence Handbook by Fran Rees.

Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together

by William Isaacs

Isaacs is founder of the Dialogos Institute at MIT and at times writes with the headiness of brainpower of someone you would envision in that position.  But overall, this is an accessible book filled with insights about how individuals can collectively think better together by changing the patterns of how they listen and speak to each other:


"You have a dialogue when you explore the uncertainties and questions that no one has answers to.  In this way you begin to think together—not simply report out old thoughts no one has answers to.  In dialogue people learn to use the energy of their differences to enhance their collective wisdom."

Four key aspects of dialogic leadership are: (1) speaking your true voice and encouraging others to do the same; (2) listening as a participant to the meaning emerging in the larger whole; (3) respecting the coherence of others' views even if we do not share them; and (4) suspending our certainties so that we not only advocate our perspectives, but inquire into those that others hold.

Facilitation: Providing Opportunities for Learning

by Trevor Bentley


An incredibly unique resource that is now out of print (but can still be bought used on Amazon.com), Bentley's book moves between description of an actual facilitation with a group and narrative about the facilitation approach and choices he adopts.  It's about as close to fishbowling an actual facilitation as you can get in printed form.

Bentley deeply believes that facilitators should generally operate from a position of restraint, not overly managing a group, and one of the many useful models he offers is a Facilitation Spectrum that illustrates the myriad of choices a facilitator has available to select form when contemplating intervening with a group.  His philosophy, approach, and technique indeed show us how we can make groups and conversations a safe place for individual and collective growth.

Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making

by Sam Kaner, et al


Simply put, this is one of the most invaluable resources you can have to guide you through how to work with groups to help them reach a decision, in terms of both content and a process.  Most importantly the values, tools, and techniques explored will help groups achieve sustainable agreements, not just make a decision in the moment that will unlikely be implemented after the conversation.


Kaner and his colleagues describe the dynamics associated with group decision-making, highlighting the important shift from divergent to convergent thinking and the "groan zone" that has to be traveled between the two, one of the most challenging spaces for a facilitator to help a group navigate.  The book is chock-full with insightful narrative of facilitation values and beliefs complemented by very useful sections outlining common facilitation techniques and even case studies of group decision-making in action.  Check out a preview of the much of book's content via Google Books.

Gamestorming

by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo


Gray is the founder of Xplane, the visual thinking company, one of the first firms to create infographics for complex concepts and stories.  His work fits nicely with Dan Roam's writing in The Back of the Napkin.  Subtitled as "A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers," the book defines gamestorming as "about creating game worlds specifically to explore and examine business challenges, to improve collaboration, and to generate novel insights about the way the world works and what kids of possibilities we might find there."


While some of the more than 80 activities outlined in the book are definitely games, I'd suggest more of them could be described as exercises or activities, an important distinction given the potentially negative connotation (unjustified in my opinion) some associate with the game label.  Some of the activities have been excerpted on the Go Gamestorming website.

The 9 Disciplines of a Facilitator: 

Leading Groups by Transforming Yourself

by Jon C. Jenkins and Maureen R. Jenkins

"Facilitative leadership enables all of the relevant ideas to get onto the table and creates an environment in which constructive dialogue can lead to innovative breakthroughs."  This assertion is at the core of this book which focuses on the facilitative leader's three developmental paths and the three disciplines they associate with each:

• Regarding others (detachment, focus, engagement)
• Regarding myself (interior council, sense of wonder, intentionality)
• Regarding life (awareness, presence, action)

This is a "make you think" book, one that causes you to reexamine some of your general assumptions about leadership and about leading groups in particular.

The Skilled Facilitator
by Roger Schwarz


Schwarz is perhaps one of the better known facilitation trainers, and this new and revised book is an excellent guidebook not only for facilitators, but also trainers and consultants.  What I particularly appreciate about this book is that it takes a systems perspective for the work of facilitation, acknowledging that any action a facilitator takes can affect a group in multiple ways that have multiple consequences.


His method, the Skilled Facilitator Approach, is anchored in four core values: valid information, free and informed choice, internal commitment, and compassion.  The behaviors, techniques, and tools offered in the book reflect these values.  Schwarz is particularly effective in dissecting the considerations involved in diagnosing a group's needs and determining if, when, and how to intervene as a result.

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Join me and what promises to be a great community of learners for a one-day facilitation intensive I am presenting for the American Society of Association Executives on July 19 in Washington, DC.  It will be a very hands-on learning experiences covering the core principles of effective facilitation, a variety of tools and techniques, and providing ample opportunity to apply them to the common situations we encounter in meetings, workshops, and our everyday interactions. Learn more here.

Leadership Limerick: Keep Moving Forward

Every Monday, I offer a leadership limerick, highlighting an idea or strategy about effective leadership in limerick form.

Some days it is all you can do
To simply plow on, to get through

Put left foot after right
And day soon becomes night

Let's hope such times are very few.

We all have them.  Days when either nothing seems to go right, or days when we just aren't making progress on the bigger creative challenges that confront us.

Staying in motion, chipping away wherever we feel we can, often will help us get to a better space, one where we will finally achieve the progress that seems to allude us.  So when you have one of these days, act on things that are definitely doable.  Engage with what you know you can complete, and then experience the satisfaction of crossing them off your list. 

A sense of accomplishment, even of things minor and less significant, almost always feels better than a sense of being stalled and going nowhere.

Influential Reading: Six Books I Return to Regularly

A meeting I recently attended has participants introduce themselves by sharing a book that has influenced our thinking about leadership and organizations.  Just one we all cried?

It was a great question though, and I immediately jotted down six of the dozens of titles I might have used as my answer.  Here are six of the books I find myself returning to and re-reading regularly (in alphabetical order).  These are books that have influenced and contributed my overall world view.  The takeaways I have gleaned are incorporated into my overall DNA of how I think and feel about whatever I encounter.

I'll be offering similar lists in the future, but each one will focus on a particular topic; i.e. innovation.

a simpler way
by Margaret A. Wheatley and Myron-Kellner Rogers

I actually own two copies because my first is so highlighted.  It is well-designed both in content and form, offering beautiful poems that complement kernels of insight about life and organizational dynamics:

"We encourage others to change only if we honor who they are now. We ourselves engage in change only as we discover that we might be more of who we are be becoming something different" (p. 50).

Built to Last
by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras

Generally regarded as a seminal work in the business and management genre and included on a myriad of "best of" lists, Built to Last has influenced many in management and leadership, as has the subsequent writing of Jim Collins in Good to Great, Good to Great and the Social Sectors, and How the Mighty Fall.  Their simple yin-yang framework of "preserve the core (values and purpose) and stimulate progress in all else (culture, operating practices, goals, and strategies)" is a critical part of how I approach strategy development.
 

The Leadership Challenge
by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

A well-researched, repeatedly valid, and easy-to-understand leadership framework tied to individual behaviors as opposed to personality or charisma … what's not to like?  Very little when it comes to this book and the Leadership Practices Inventory that assesses how frequently you engage in the leadership behaviors associated with the 5 practices and 10 commitments in the model Kouzes and Posner created.  It's also one of the few models that has been validated for students as well.

Their definition of leadership alone is packed with leaning and insight: "Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations."  That's good stuff.

Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest
by Peter Block

Block's definition of stewardship helps shape how I contribute to the communities and causes I care about, as well as how I approach my consulting and facilitating:  "Stewardship asks us to be deeply accountable for the outcomes of an institution, without acting to define purpose for others, control others or take care of others" (p. 18).

Block is anti management suggesting those that do the work should manage it and that organizations should not compensate individuals who do nothing but "watch, measure or define what is best for other human beings."

Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work
by Debra E. Meyerson

While I often feel a bit revolutionary in my thinking or aspirations, when it comes to getting this done I see more of myself in the language and framework of tempered radicals as defined by Meyerson.  While many draw on the book's diversity and inclusion implications in terms of ethnic and cultural differences, the basic principles are more far-reaching.  Meyerson explores what it means to have to function as an insider when you feel like an outsider.  In doing so she illustrates how individual acts of deviance from the norm or dominant culture can ripple throughout the enterprise and be amplified into significant change.  Money quote: “Whenever people refuse to participate in their own subordination, they resist the way power asserts itself in organizations and society.”  This Fast Company article gives you a nice preview of the book's thinking.

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change
by William Bridges

All our lives undergo numerous transformations and transitions.  Bridges' book is one of the most popular resources for thinking about how to navigate them, as well as support others in doing so.  His three-part transition process (endings, the neutral zone, and the new beginnings) offers great insight for how to manage personal or organizational change.  Too many people get stuck (either because of their own mindsets or because of ill-structured organizational change efforts) in neutral and fail to move forward.

What book (s) would you add to this list based on what you return to re-read regularly?

Creating Service Expectations

I recently experienced some difficulty trying to use the online check-in feature at Hyatt's website.  This has happened to me before.

So I did what anyone smartphone-enabled customer does in this day and age: I Tweeted a message to Hyatt telling them of the problem and noting my disappointing with the recurring inconsistency of the function.  It wasn't a really big deal to me, but I wanted to let them know it wasn't working so the problem could be fixed.

Within a very short period of time, I received a series of Tweets back from Hyatt acknowledging the problem and my concern.  That's all I needed.

Then came the final tweet: And we've upgraded you to one of our suites for your stay. Really?  A minor problem on the website gets me upgraded to a suite?  Hmm.

Now perhaps this was done because I've been a Hyatt Diamond member for some time, but the response seems a bit over-the-top.  It's out of proportion to the problem I experienced.  And worse yet, it doesn't leave much room for the hotel to make up for any really significant hiccups that I might encounter as a guest.  What else could they do for me?  Comp my stay?  Give me a new car?  Rename the hotel after me?

When responding to service situations, we must be careful about the expectations we might create for the future.  If you constantly respond to email almost immediately, you will over time create an expectation for an instant response.  Give suite upgrades for a minor complaint?  Guess what?  I'd like my upgrade every time something goes wrong thank you very much.

By all means, we must thoughtfully address any service shortcomings.  But not every problem merits compensation beyond acknowledging the concern and fixing the problem.  We don't want to create a mindset in which sharing feedback automatically leads to getting a prize.

The real prize with customer service is when extra benefits are offered unexpectedly, not when they are used as compensation.

So thanks for the suite upgrade, but it wasn't necessary and really shouldn't be done.  Give it next time to the family who is staying for the first time at your property, to the couple celebrating a special anniversary, or to a traveler who arrives after a ridiculous series of flight delays.  It's likely to generate more goodwill in any of those situations, yet not create an expectation that the same thing will happen again in the future.

Leadership Limerick: Managing the Metrics

Every Monday, I offer a leadership limerick, highlighting an idea or strategy about effective leadership in limerick form.

Results are important to track
So you can tweak your plan of attack

Determine what counts
And in what amounts

To move forward you must also look back

We send messages about what matters by the things we measure and attend to on an ongoing basis.  When developing individual or organizational goals and objectives, it is critical to have a clear understanding of what success looks like.  Too often a worthwhile strategic direction (to improve customer service) is established without specifying how we will know whether or not we are being successful.

Having a conversation to determine the timeframe in which we expect to begin seeing results and creating quantitative or qualitative milestones for measuring progress is required.  You can't just say you want to increase membership 15% by August 2012 without having some interim checkpoints for determining if you are on the path to achieving that overall result.

And when external conditions seem to change more rapidly, it often is beneficial to have more frequent assessments of how we are doing and what adjustments to our strategies may be necessary.  Building in these "stop, look, listen" moments becomes an important responsibility of leadership.

Thanks to Carol Hook for suggesting the topic for today's limerick.  Have a topic you'd like to see addressed in limerick form?  Tweet it to me @jcufaude or put it in the comments section for this post.