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]]>For years, I’ve preached the best practices for hosting a purposeful, successful meeting. My organization was often hired to help others structure their meetings for success. For us, that meant identifying the desired outcomes before beginning, eliminating any conversation that didn’t directly lead to one of those outcomes, and moving forward efficiently. Traditional advice said that non-value-added activity should be avoided.
Then our world was shaken by a global pandemic.
“Business as Usual” Doesn’t Exist
In March and April, business moved to online platforms for communication as employees began full-time remote work. At first, I continued on as usual. Meetings were on Zoom instead of in a conference room, but they were still strictly focused on business outcomes and measurable results. Then I realized what I was missing.
Prior to the pandemic, you could reasonably assume that your employees were in similar situations as members of the same organization. Under normal circumstances, you have isolated events like the loss of a loved one, marital problems, and illness that occasionally cause individuals to be in distinctly different mental places, but most people, most of the time, are functioning at their best. Now, we are all participating in the same COVID-19 phenomenon, but our circumstances are drastically different and individuals on the same team are experiencing the pandemic in unique ways. That context shapes our ability to function as a team.
Additionally, we face the loss of our shared physical workspace. In the past, I could check in on my employees as I walked through the kitchen, filled a cup at the water cooler, or took in some fresh air on the patio. We had countless daily opportunities to talk about how we were doing simply because we shared space for eight hours a day. Losing that shared space means that we must intentionally set aside the time to keep those same personal check-ins alive.
A Break from Tradition
Since I had that realization, I’ve set aside time to ask people how they’re doing in emails and during Zoom meetings. It goes against every action-oriented, engineering-trained bone in my body to veer from productiveness into social territory, but I’ve given myself permission to do it because it really matters.
For most people, it takes about five minutes to answer fully when asked, “How are you doing right now?” I get answers that range from sad to scared to coping to finding pleasure in the “new normal.” We’ve discussed not only the impact of the pandemic but also the state of unrest in our nation, as employees have had their doors smashed by protestors and faced upheaval in their neighborhoods. This is a complicated time for many of us, and talking about it helps.
You can make space for these important conversations in an email by simply saying, “We’ll get to the task in a moment, but first, I want to know how you are.” You can make space in a Zoom meeting by leaving time to open with a personal check-in for each employee. And you’ll be surprised by the rich and meaningful answers you receive as your team embraces the opportunity to share the big and small thoughts that would have previously come out during your day-to-day, face-to-face interactions.
It goes against everything we’ve been taught about meeting and email productivity, and it takes a mental shift to make it happen, but it is so worth the effort. How are you connecting with your teams now that the casual opportunities to share are gone?
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]]>Back in March, as I saw the COVID-19 pandemic developing around me, I experienced something similar. We all did. This experience of crisis reminds us that something can be done to us; it is global and beyond our control as individuals. As a result, we can’t concentrate. We face four of the hardest emotions: confusion, fear, helplessness, and hopelessness.
As peak performance leaders, we feel all these things as much as everyone else. But our job, during a crisis, is to take a back seat, listen to those around us, and speak to those emotions in a positive way.
Speaking to the Emotions of a Crisis
Confusion
The only way to combat the confusion that comes with crisis is to speak clear truths. This isn’t a time for learning out loud. It isn’t a time for discussion. Leaders must commit to speaking the truth clearly and without any excess words. People will begin to depend on that clarity, and even though you may not have answers, you can provide clear, helpful truths. This isn’t an easy thing to do when so many things remain unknown, but it can be done with mindful intent.
Fear
The only way to respond to fear is with acknowledgement. When an employee comes to you with fear on her mind, it can be tempting to try to relate by sharing your own fears. That could quickly make her feel as though you aren’t hearing what scares her. Similarly, don’t try to minimize or change her feelings; they are real and important. Instead, sit with her and sympathize with her. She is carrying a real burden.
Helplessness
Into the helplessness, we lead by issuing orders and providing direction. If you can get everyone engaged and working, you can create a sense of control and empowerment for them. In the funeral industry, this is called grief work, but it applies equally well in other times of crisis. Work gives us the energy we need to move forward.
Hopelessness
As two weeks of quarantine soon became two months and more, hopelessness became the new normal. Leaders often have a tendency to bunker up in times like these. Lacking the answers, they hide to avoid confronting so much uncertainty. That’s the wrong choice. Instead, be present. Your presence alone will inspire hope. Elon Musk sets a great example here, being physically close to his people on the line and creating a very real sense of togetherness during an uncertain time.
Despite the months that have passed since March, the emotions of crisis are still very much with us today. How are you leading your team through these difficult times?
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]]>Joel isn’t unique in his predicament. Leading requires the making of bold decisions in spite of imperfect information. In fact, people who are leading will always be more uncomfortable than the people who report to them. It’s unavoidable, but it’s also a good thing.
Qualities of People Who Are Leading
If you’re not crystal clear on the word leader and the worthlessness of leader as a noun, click here to read my last article. “Leader” is a title that can be given to anyone. Leading is the behavior that determines whether or not the title is deserved. I described six habits embraced by those who lead and ended up engaged in an interesting conversation with the CEO of a fast-growing company. Upon further consideration, I must add a seventh habit to my list: living with discomfort. You see, managers have the good fortune to make decisions with all the information on hand, but leaders understand that they must make decisions despite incomplete or imperfect information.
Leading Through Fog and Ambiguity
While leading, we daily encounter situations in which a bold decision must be made with only the imperfect information we have in the moment. Start-ups face ambiguity at every turn, but leaders in established organizations face similar situations every day. For example:
As a leader in action, you will find yourself uncomfortable on a regular basis. Despite this discomfort, you have a mandate to make decisions in the fog and ambiguity that surrounds you. Leading and discomfort are intrinsically linked.
Embracing Discomfort
Awhile back, I wrote about noble inauthenticity – times when leaders must be inauthentic or even dishonest for the good of their organizations. Facing discomfort is one of those times when authenticity serves no one. Instead, it’s important to put on a good face and hide that you are uncomfortable in order to protect your team and your company.
Instead of loathing your discomfort, try to welcome it. Living in a state of perpetual discomfort is a positive sign that you are not just a leader but that you are, in fact, leading. I would go so far as to say that if you find yourself feeling comfortable, you should take a step back and evaluate your position. You may have abdicated your leadership in exchange for momentary peace, but your organization needs you to be uncomfortable again.
Do you have any tips for coping with the discomfort of leading? How do you recognize when you’ve stopped leading and become too comfortable? Let’s talk.
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]]>The post What A Salad Chain Can Teach You About Corporate Culture appeared first on Chris McGoff | Business Leader | Author | Change Agent | Speaker.
]]>If you haven’t been to one of their restaurants, you walk into a minimally decorated space, with clear glass as the only thing standing between you and the ingredients. In the background, you can see staff members prepping ingredients for the next batch of salads and bowls. Next to their menu hangs a list of where each of their ingredients has come from. The staff is friendly and checkout is efficient — they don’t accept cash, only credit card or payments through their app, so the transactions are quick.
What do these things have to do with Sweetgreen’s success and what lessons can you take and apply to your business? In my work with leaders and groups, I’ve found three “ways of being” that are necessary for achieving peak performance in an organization, and I see examples of each at Sweetgreen.
Peak performance cultures embody integrity. What I mean by integrity is that when you say you’re going to do something, you do it. Peak performance teams can count on one another and trust that the things their team members commit to will get done. It also means that customers can count on you to do what you say.
Integrity lends itself to transparency, a key component of Sweetgreen’s mission. They tell customers where they source their ingredients, and they redesigned their restaurants so that customers could see food being prepared in the kitchen. This builds immense trust with your customers and creates loyalty.
If you want to get what you want, you have to be really clear on what that is, and everything you do has to be focused on that. You need to create what Dan Coyle calls in his book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups a “high-purpose environment.” Everyone in your organization should be an expert on your company’s purpose and values, and you should communicate them consistently to both employees and your customers.
At Sweetgreen, their mission, as dictated on their website, is to “inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.” Walk into one of their stores and you’ll probably see “passion x purpose” written on the wall or on employees’ t-shirts, or even in a mosaic on the floor, creating a visual reminder of their mission. They also post their five values in every location’s kitchen. They are sending a clear, continuous message to their employees and customers about what they stand for and what they’re trying to do.
Being persistent means sticking with your goal or vision until you achieve your outcome. This may mean changing course a few times, adopting initiatives or leaving ones behind that aren’t getting you where you need to go. But you need to maintain a relentless focus on your goal.
For Sweetgreen, this means leveraging the latest tech to keep their business growing. They launched an app in 2013, and by the end of the year, they expect that over half of their orders will be placed through it. It helped them remove cash from their checkout process, and the online ordering function provides them with valuable data about what ingredients customers love and what they can do without. They can use this information to continue to hone their offerings and focus on what their customers want. It also keeps the company on the cutting edge and constantly connected to their customers.
So if you’re looking for ways to learn from Sweetgreen’s success and reach peak performance in your own company, think about how you can introduce or strengthen each of these elements — living and working with integrity, being intentional, and always persisting. No matter your company’s vision or goals, your success depends on them.
First posted on Inc.com
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]]>The post Big Company Decisions Are Only An Empty Box Away appeared first on Chris McGoff | Business Leader | Author | Change Agent | Speaker.
]]>Here is a practical and effective way for you and your team to figure out how to get your company to perform at a higher level and grow fast. Write the name of your company in big letters across the side of one of those cardboard boxes Amazon uses to ship stuff. Set the box on a stool at the front of your meeting room and gather your team around.
For the next hour or so, pretend the box is your living, breathing company. Personify it. See it as independent of you and those gathered around. See it as the independent “system of systems” that it really is. See it like we see any living thing — as a collection of interconnected and interdependent parts. See it as interacting with its environment in taking things in and shipping things out. See it as having too much of some things and too little of others.
The next step is to get truly curious about how the box is doing. With your teammates, you wonder what it is like “being” the box — being your company. So you begin to ask the box questions like:
You can make up other questions along the way. It’s a simple game. You ask the questions one by one, and you try to answer the question from your company’s perspective, not yours. Here are some rules to make the game more compelling:
Operating from this perspective enables you and your team to probe deeply into the operational realities of your company. You and your teammates are giving your company that effective therapy session that it is craving. With everything out on the table, you have the answers you need to keep your company moving forward.
First published on Inc.com
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]]>The post Increase Your Emotional Intelligence and Become a Stronger Leader appeared first on Chris McGoff | Business Leader | Author | Change Agent | Speaker.
]]>It makes sense that a high EQ is critical for a leader to be effective. Effective leaders need to be able to identify and control their emotions so they can make the right decisions for their organizations. They need to be able to take calculated risks, communicate effectively, and build relationships. They need to be able to understand the emotions of their teams so they can inspire and drive them to success.
The importance of EQ, particularly the components focused on self-awareness and self-regulation, became especially clear to me while working with the Women Presidents’ Organization in 2010 at the height of the global financial meltdown. The executives who were part of the group had been leading their organizations through an incredibly chaotic time and were looking for ways to help manage the turbulence. An idea emerged — these leaders needed to focus on their “way of being” rather than the circumstances they found themselves in.
It’s a simple, intentional process that anyone can follow. Here’s how:
Think about the last time you were in a contentious meeting. Maybe you were trying to figure out the best way to allocate your limited resources in the midst of competing priorities. Maybe an initiative or product that you launched is in trouble and you and your team are trying to figure out what to do about it. This meeting probably made you tense, anxious, maybe even irritated. That’s completely normal and expected.
The challenge becomes when, as a leader, you let these “ways of being” cloud your judgment and negatively impact your behavior. When the leader of a group is anxious or tense, that energy can permeate the group and stall progress. It could also cause you to make a decision that alleviates your anxiety but may not be the best decision to address the challenge at hand.
Every moment of every day we’re all “being” some way. Angry, happy, loving, stressed, aggressive, etc. Take a minute to stop what you’re doing and notice how you’re being. Take stock of how you’re feeling in that moment. Are you happy? Irritated? Skeptical? There’s no judgment — there is no “right” or “wrong” way to be. Just identify the way you’re currently being.
This step of noticing your “way of being” helps to increase your self-awareness, a key component of emotional intelligence.
After you’ve noticed how you’re being, you then have the chance to decide how you want to be. Did you notice that you’re being assertive? Is being assertive working for you in this moment? If it is, then you may choose to continue. But if it’s not, figure out what would help.
Put yourself back in that contentious meeting. Notice your tension. While being tense isn’t “wrong,” it may not be helpful for the group. Maybe the group would benefit from a calming presence, allowing the team the space to see possibilities rather than becoming mired in any negativity associated with their conflict. Whatever you choose to be, acknowledge that it is your choice. This is a way to help manage your emotions and recognize the role your choice plays in increasing your emotional intelligence.
Channel the way of being you’ve chosen and become it. If you’ve chosen to be peaceful, calm your mind, slow your breathing, relax your muscles. Powerful? Stand up tall, uncross your arms, project your voice. This is the part where you implement the decision you made.
This process is a way to manage emotions and be a leader during difficult times. It’s a conscious way to exist that, while intuitive, doesn’t come naturally to many people. Take the time to practice it over and over again, and it will become second nature. When you choose to exist and behave in a peaceful way in the midst of chaos, screaming matches cease and people respond to the change. This process helps to empower leaders to recognize their emotions and then decide what action they can take for the benefit of their team.
First published on: Inc.com
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]]>The post Meetings Hack: The Ultimate Technology appeared first on Chris McGoff | Business Leader | Author | Change Agent | Speaker.
]]>And what if this valuable technology cost less than a dollar, was available everywhere, and was simple to use? Interested? The technology I am talking about is (drum roll please) butcher paper.
I’ll explain, but first a disclaimer. In the late 1980s, I was part of a team at IBM focused on developing technology to support meetings. I spent a lot of money and developed a few pretty cool products. I am not against PowerPoint, collaborative Google documents, Prezi, and some of the neat computer applications that support modern meetings. These applications can be used in some circumstances to enrich and enhance meetings. Much is also known now about how we misuse these technologies. But that is another article for another day.
Here I am narrowly focused on the awesome power of a 30′ piece of butcher paper hung on a wall with all meeting participants equipped with some fresh markers. Instead of looking across the table at each other, participants are looking at the same thing and creating something together. Think of the paper as a shared space for shared creation.
Here is the science. In the 1950s, cognitive psychologist George Miller put forward the idea that humans can only “hold” seven things (plus or minus two) in their short-term memory (STM) at one time. As a new thought or image comes in, an old item gets pushed out of your memory.
Think about when you’re in a meeting. You rely on your STM to process everything you’re experiencing. In a two-hour meeting, you and the other participants are considering literally hundreds of things. At any one point, each participant is processing between five and nine things, but they may not be the same things you or their peers are considering. This causes fragmentation in the group, and fragmentation erodes power and promotes non-value added arguments.
But when the group is huddled around a piece of butcher paper, the paper acts as the group’s “corporate memory.” Unlike with PowerPoint or other computer documents, there are no “next slide” or “scroll up and down” issues. As participants all draw and write their thoughts on the paper, their thinking becomes holistic, explicit, and persistent.
The paper itself becomes the STM for the group, and it is not bound by the “seven, plus or minus two” rule. A simple smartphone app like FaceTime can make these artifacts available to remote participants, and photographs of the butcher paper can make the thinking available anytime, anywhere.
So here is the hack. The next time you are running a meeting, any meeting, find a space with a flat wall and cover it with paper. Get some good markers. State the intended outcomes of the meeting clearly, and let the thinking begin. Encourage people to engage directly with the paper to let their thoughts be known in the form of words, diagrams, and pictures.
Don’t worry about the artistic quality of what is captured. Watch as the thinking blooms right in front of the group. See their joy in making something together. And at the end of every meeting, write down what outcomes were achieved together.
First published on: Inc.com
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]]>A few weeks ago, I was invited to do a Facebook Live session. Arriving at the studio I felt a bit intimidated with all the cameras and lights and action of a live set. The purpose of the session was to promote my new book called Match In The Root Cellar: How You Can Spark A Peak Performance Culture.
Then something really strange happened that affected me and the others on the set in a very deep way. About 15 minutes into the broadcast, the system froze. Our audience was stranded and the broadcast crew was stymied.
After a few minutes of frantic activity, the crew was able to re-establish the connection and we pressed forward. Minutes later a critical piece of gear failed. Once again, we left our audience stranded. Once again, through heroic actions, the crew re-established the connection, and we finished the session.
Both times things were falling apart I had this overarching sense that I was “looking bad.” I felt shame and embarrassment. I was upset that “wrong” things were happening. I was mentally assigning blame and holding members of the crew as wrong. My mind was filling with defensive and negative thoughts.
Then in a flash, I got the joke. Let me explain.
In an organization, culture rules. It powerfully determines which of our hopes, our visions, and our plans actually become reality. Culture determines whether what you want to happen actually does. You can roll the dice with a default culture or intentionally shape a peak performance culture that will drive success. An organization’s culture is created when the group agrees on which behaviors it tolerates and advocates for and which behaviors it does not tolerate. In a peak performance culture, the behaviors the group agrees to demand peak performance from each individual in service of delivering the most value possible to their customers. There are two key components to shaping a peak performance culture:
In a peak performance culture, the response to challenges, surprises, upsets, and failures isn’t “something is wrong.” Individuals don’t assign blame or dwell on unexpected outcomes. Instead, the default response is “what’s possible here?” When your company’s outreach campaign doesn’t deliver the results you were hoping for, instead of trying to find who or what is to blame, look for the opportunities. Is there a new or different customer group you could work with? Can you focus your services to deliver more value while also conserving resources? That simple change in attitude shifts the energy of the team to recognize setbacks for what they are — opportunities to learn how to do better next time.
Every person in a peak performance culture relentlessly pursues improvements to the organization to create value for their customers. They recognize that there is infinite room for improvement in the work they are doing because they are focused on their intention to serve their customers. It doesn’t mean they are doing anything wrong, but they are persistent and intentional about continuous improvement because they can see the possibilities.
Here I was pitching a book that explains how to shape a peak performance culture, and I was about to violate both of these components. I was stewing in my mind about not ever doing a Facebook Live session again, coming from “something is wrong,” and forgetting our intention to share the insights in the book with as many people as possible.
In short, I was about to create a toxic culture in the studio with the crew while I promoted the redeeming attributes of a peak performance culture. Thankfully, my toxic inner voice had not yet made it to the surface. There was still hope!
I reminded the crew that none of us had ever produced a Facebook Live session and acknowledged them for their courage and quick work. I re-stated our intention of sharing the insights in the book. And then I replaced my “something’s wrong” reflex with my “what’s possible” reflex. We committed to full mastery of the Facebook Live platform and harvested all the learnings from this session to make that next one flawless.
So, the next time you find yourself stewing over things going “wrong” or blaming others for a challenge you’re facing, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. Then imagine you are standing at a fork in the road. One path leads to making people and things “wrong,” dealing with a sense of embarrassment and shame, and making a decision to never put yourself in this circumstance again.
The other path leads to a sense of courage and taking a stand that things are as they are because they are as they are, and the real question is “what is possible now?” This second path will shift your energy from negative to positive and generative, and you can collect learnings to apply them forward. That simple shift will leave you feeling energized, with palpable momentum to seek possibility.
First published on Inc.com
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]]>The post Studies Show The Downfall of Any Merger or Acquisition appeared first on Chris McGoff | Business Leader | Author | Change Agent | Speaker.
]]>There is an industry of investment bankers and M&A attorneys that promise to guide us through this process. They have invaluable insight into the process and have mastered the devices and nuances, but often are not in a position to help with the most critical success factor of making the deal work — culture.
Most M&A transactions rationalize the relatively tame issues between two companies like:
Numerous studies have researched the cause of M&A failures. The University of Pennsylvania and Harvard cite that M&As have reached historically distressing levels of failure, with rates as high as 90 percent. A McKinsey survey found that 92 percent of business executives felt that past M&As would have “substantially benefited” from greater cultural understanding prior to the merger.
Executives who have managed M&As report “culture clash” as the number one reason for a deal’s failure to achieve promised value. Former CEO of IBM Louis Gerstner says, “Culture is everything.”
The good news is that your deal does not have to go this way. Here are five steps to stay on track through an M&A transition and see every action through a cultural perspective.
1. Create a management team of top performers to oversee the merger or acquisition.
This group should shift their full-time focus to getting the M&A right. Make sure to give the team clear direction on desired outcomes, appropriate incentives, and the leadership support to be successful.
2. Clearly define the desired culture.
Define the intent for the cultural alignment, making it clear what you want to see in terms of behaviors, values, and beliefs in the new organization.
3. Identify any significant differences in the landscape of the two companies and clarify new roles and responsibilities.
Identify and measure the organizational landscape in which you operate, shedding light on any cultural differences among people, units, or functions. This can be done through a range of tools including interviews, focus groups, employee surveys, process flow maps, and customer interviews.
When mergers occur, new agendas and structures must be established, and employees must obtain an understanding of their new roles and responsibilities. If this does not occur, there will be increased conflict — or even resistance — and organizational goals will not be achieved easily. Executives in mergers and acquisitions need to disseminate what each leader and group’s role will be and how each one complements other elements of the system.
4. Design and communicate the intended culture.
With staff input and an understanding of the organizational differences in the companies, you should have the foundational elements needed to design the intended culture of the new organization.
5. Develop an alignment plan with implementation procedures and progress checks.
Recognizing that cultural differences will not dissipate immediately following an M&A transaction, you should seek to minimize the impact these differences have on the company’s performance in the short and long-term while actively encouraging the formation of the new culture. These can be addressed through a plan that identifies easily addressable cultural issues and charts a path for long term changes.
Culture is a line a group of people draw that separates the behaviors they tolerate and advocate for and the behaviors the group does not tolerate. If you ask folks on both sides of the deal they can and will make their culture clear.
Perhaps it’s because those involved do not know how to rationalize two cultures. As part of the due diligence process, both groups are brought together to compare how they see their cultures and develop an integrated culture going forward.
These are amazing conversations and often result in a fusion of the best of both worlds. The groups have a chance to discuss integrity, intentionality, timeliness, feedback, customer interaction, interdependencies and interconnectedness, how trade-offs will be handled between long-term and short-term investments, and so much more.
Handled correctly, a prospective M&A can be a marvelous opportunity for the creation of a peak performance culture. Left unaddressed, fragmented cultures will eat your M&A for lunch.
First posted on Inc.com
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