We got really exciting news last week. We’ve been nominated for an award in VIATeC’s 2010 Technology Awards. These are like the oscars for our local technology companies. We’ve been nominated in the “Members Choice for Service Provider of the Year” category. We’re blown away by this recognition.
We’ve sponsored the Employer of the Year award since 2008. It’ll be wonderful to be at the awards ceremony as a nominee as well as a sponsor this year.
Here’s a short (5:32), inspiring (IMHO), video about Talent Managment at IDEO.
Big hat tip to Jay Cross for the video 
I had to watch it twice to “get it”.
Dave
Be The Best That You Can Be – Stage Three – Lighten Up
I’ve been working on this project for a little while and I feel it’s time to give it a little bit of an airing. For a few years I’ve used the phrase “helping you be the best that you can be” to describe my role, whether I’m coaching or facilitating leadership development. I thought it was time to figure out exactly what I meant when I said this. This led me to develop a five stage plan that I believe anyone can follow in order to be the best that they can be. A lofty goal I know, but it has been fun putting this together and I’d love to get some feedback.
The five stages of the plan are:
This blog post will briefly outline stage three of the plan. Future posts will explore the last two stages.
Laughter is the best medicine.
Being the best that you can be is too important to be taken (too) seriously!
Allow me to explain. Most of the really successful people that I’ve met always seem to be laughing a lot. They’re having a good time, they’re fit and well both physically and mentally. I don’t think we can ever be the best that we can be if we’re sick, stressed, or in some other way, not at the top of our game. We need balance and laughter in our lives, these lead to health and well being, which are of course precursors to being the best that you can be.
Lightening up isn’t something to do alone. We need to have good relationships with people around us. When we take ourselves too seriously we lose perspective. We begin to believe that our concerns are the only ones that matter. We lose sight of the fact that our success is more often than not dependent on the success of others. And vice versa.
Happy Holidays, enjoy this seasonal break, don’t take yourself too seriously and make sure you find time to laugh with friends.
Dave
Be The Best That You Can Be – Stage Two – Have Clear Goals
I’ve been working on this project for a little while and I feel it’s time to give it a little bit of an airing. For a few years I’ve used the phrase “helping you be the best that you can be” to describe my role, whether I’m coaching or facilitating leadership development. I thought it was time to figure out exactly what I meant when I said this. This led me to develop a five stage plan that I believe anyone can follow in order to be the best that they can be. A lofty goal I know, but it has been fun putting this together and I’d love to get some feedback.
The five stages of the plan are:
This blog post will explore stage two of the plan. Future posts will explore the last three stages. Here’s stage one – Know Yourself.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC – 65AD).
One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898).
Being clear about what you want out of life is clearly not a new idea. I could easily have filled this blog with great quotes about how important it is to have clear goals … but you all know how to use Google!
Given the age of this wisdom I’m surprised by how many people I come across who don’t have clear goals. My teenage son is clear, he wants to work at CERN as a particle physicist, but I’ve met many 20 somethings and 30 somethings who have no clear goal other than earning the next dollar. Perhaps as we grow up our big dreams and aspirations are somehow replaced by the day to day needs that occupy our attention.
I believe that if we are going to be the best that we can be then we need to continue to have dreams and aspirations that guide our choice of which road to go down. I don’t think it matters whether or not we achieve our goals, but to live a life with purpose, we must have them all the same.
Good goals will usually have a target date associated with them. For example, in 5 years time I plan to be a much better skier than I am now, and I’d also like to be able to skate. Setting 5 year goals that are more serious in nature can be tricky because it’s so difficult to predict where we’ll be so far in the future. It might help to have some 3 month or 6 month goals that are more concrete and work up to the setting of 5 year BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals – hat tip to Jim Collins for the acronym).
When it comes to dreams and aspirations being realistic isn’t helpful. It’s not helpful because it limits us and if our goals are limited then how can we possibly achieve the best that we can be. Tammy and I facilitate a workshop on creativity in which we discuss the negative impact on creativity of the internal and external critic.
The inner critic is our own self doubt that tells us our ideas are crazy and our goals unrealistic. Taming the inner critic is seriously hard work. Mine’s in overdrive right now, but I’ll press on with this blog. We’ll never quiet the inner critics but we can learn to ignore them when they’re not helping us.
The external critics are your friends, family and colleagues who, with the best of intents, keep you grounded and sensible. They’re also probably invested in maintaining the status quo. Ironically, the people closest to us are the very same who are most invested in not changing the nature of our relationships, and thus the most likely to discourage our growth and development. We quite rightly like to have our loved ones close to us, but we all have different paths to follow if we’re to be the best that we can be.
If we’re going to be the best that we can be then we need to allow ourselves to set bold goals and to have inspiring visions for our futures. My advice is simple, ignore the naysayers, be fearless and dream big.
I’ve been working on this project for a little while and I feel it’s time to give it a little bit of an airing. For a few years I’ve used the phrase “helping you be the best that you can be” to describe my role, whether I’m coaching or facilitating leadership development. I thought it was time to figure out exactly what I meant when I said this. This led me to develop a five stage plan that I believe anyone can follow in order to be the best that they can be. A lofty goal I know, but it has been fun putting this together and I’d love to get some feedback (getting feedback is of course a feature of the plan).
The five stages of the plan are:
This blog post will explore stage one of the plan. Future posts will explore the other four stages.
Knowing yourself seems pretty straightforward, but I think this is a life’s work. I know I’m still working on it. For the purposes of BTBTYCB (you knew I’d have to use the acronym sooner or later didn’t you) I’ve broken this stage into four facets. The first facet and the simplest to achieve, is to know your weaknesses. For most people this won’t be a challenge, we all know what we’re not good at. I’m not good at paying attention to details. I know that I have to write things down or else I forget them in seconds. I’m also not good at staying focused. I no longer fight this one. I have iTunes and my email running on my desktop while I write this blog! There are many ways we come to discover our weaknesses, but if we want to be the best that we can be, we need to know what our weaknesses are and how we’re going to manage them.
The second facet of knowing yourself is knowing your strengths. We usually focus less on our strengths than we do on our weaknesses. If we’re going to be the best that we can be then we have to play to our strengths, it just makes sense doesn’t it. However, most people I’ve met aren’t too clear about what their true strengths are. They usually know what they’re good at, but this isn’t necessarily a natural strength. I’m a half decent computer programmer (ten years ago I was anyway) but it’s not a strength, it’s just something I practiced a lot and got paid well for. Strengths Finder (by Tom Rath of Gallup) really helped me figure out my true strengths and now I’m much more conscious about how I play to them.
The third facet of knowing yourself is knowing your values. Values get talked about a lot. Barack Obama has highlighted the call for values-based leadership but the concept of values-based rather than rule-based leadership and decision making has been around for a long time. Many believe our current economic crisis is a result of a flawed reliance on rule-based systems. Clearly, you’ll be the best that you can be when you live a life that’s congruent with your values. To do this you first need to be absolutely clear about what your values are, and then start living them. If you’re not sure what it is in your life that you value then check your credit card statement and/or figure out how you spend your time. Both of these will give you clues into what you truly value.
I hinted earlier at the final facet of knowing yourself. Figuring out who you are can be a soul searching experience but introspection only goes so far before it becomes naval gazing. If you really want to know yourself then you need to know how others see you and you can only find that out by asking them for feedback. Good honest feedback is hard to come by. Friends and family can be too kind and strangers don’t know you well enough. Work-based 360 feedback can be really helpful but not everyone has access to this. Tools like rypple.com can help you gather honest feedback. The key to receiving feedback is to be open to hearing it. You’re only really listening to feedback if you’re willing to change your mind about the thing you’re asking about.
That’s a sneak peek at stage one. Clearly each facet is worthy of a book or two in its own right, but that wouldn’t make for a manageable BTBTYCB plan! What do you think? Watch this space for the rest of the BTBTYCB plan.
In May 2009 1251 Canadians identified their top ten personal values, their top ten values describing the current culture of Canada and their top ten values for a future desired Canadian culture. Last week (Nov 3rd 2009) the results were published (see www.royalroads.ca/tti). As a relative newcomer to Canada and as someone fascinated by values and organizational culture, I couldn’t let this pass without comment.
The results show a strong agreement between all regions and age ranges. This was somewhat surprising as I’d been led to believe that there would be a difference between Anglophone and Francophone cultures. I also thought there might be discrepancies between the generations. As far as values are concerned, Canadians seem to be more homogeneous than I’d expected.
Summary of Canadian Values May 2009
| Personal Values | Current Culture Values | Desired Culture Values |
|---|---|---|
|
|
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Personal value themes show what I have come to understand as a typically Canadian emphasis around honesty/respect, family/friendship along with humour/fun/positive attitude. No surprises for me here. This is one of the main reasons I love living in Canada!
Positive current culture themes around human rights and quality of life didn’t surprise me either. Having travelled widely, I really do believe that Canada is a great place to live. However there were also some strong negative themes around bureaucracy/corruption, wasted resources and unemployment/crime/violence. What is your personal perspective on this?
Overall the potentially limiting or dysfunctional values polled 32% of the selections. This figure of 32% is a measure for the dysfunction or cultural entropy in our current culture. Canada is the seventh nation to implement the National Values Assessment created by the Richard Barrett Values Centre (www.valuescentre.com). An entropy of 32% put us at a similar level to Sweden (31%), more dysfunctional than Denmark (21%), but in a much better position than the US (52%) and Argentina (60%). Don’t you just love these league tables!
The major emphasis in the desired culture is caring. From my perspective at least, 8 out of the top 10 values in a desired Canadian culture are about caring. From #2 to #8 we have caring for the elderly, homeless, sick, disadvantaged, future generations, poor and unemployed. Add human rights to the list and it’s clear to me that caring for others is enormously important. The final values in the top ten desired culture list are accountability and governmental effectiveness. These look to me like a clear reflection of some of the negative themes in the current culture.
I believe that there is a clear message here for business leaders who are building organizational cultures. If you want to build a culture that is aligned with the values of your employees then you absolutely have to show that you care. You have to show that you care about people, all people. You also have to demonstrate honesty and accountability. You have respect work life/balance. And you need to do all of this while having fun and maintaining a positive attitude. A tall order indeed, but one that I’m confidant is achievable.
I remember the words of my PhD advisor when it was getting down to the wire in terms of me finishing my dissertation, “You are forbidden to go to the library. There is nothing else out there you need to find out about. You just need to figure out what you think and write.” Great advice and it finally got me onto writing my dissertation instead of thinking about writing my dissertation. While I thought his advice was unique to the writing process (and more specifically a dissertation) I have recently come to the understanding that his advice is about much more.
It’s about information overload, procrastination and how that relates to my confidence and ability to create the sorts of things I want in my life. I have many ideas about the kinds of things I would like to be doing in our business and have occasionally felt frustrated when they don’t come to fruition. There are all sorts of theories I’ve come up with about why … but it was on a walk last week when I came to an epiphany moment for me.
When I get a great idea, I think I need to research it to death (I blame the academic world for this quite frankly!). This leads to information overload, which leads to procrastination on doing anything with the idea, and a chipping away of my own confidence. I start to think that everyone else has far better ideas than I do. It quickly becomes a downward spiral that kills the idea and sucks the energy and confidence out of me. The same thing happens to me on a daily basis when I spend too much time reading other people’s ideas on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Any insight I think I may have had gets lost in the voices of others. I think I’ve become so attuned to listening to others that I may have lost touch with what I really want or even think.
There’s a difference between doing one’s homework and succumbing to information overload. I have been doing the latter off and on for years, especially so in the last few years with the explosion of new technologies. So, here’s what I decided … when I have a project that I want to get off the ground, I am going to STOP doing all those things that lead to information overload. I am going to STOP analyzing my ideas when they are still babies and instead nurture, grow, protect and enjoy them. I am going to wait for them to be young adults before I subject them to the criticism of the “real world.”
I think this is a real leadership challenge. It seems to me that the great leaders have managed the tension between listening to others and acting on their own passions and ideas. What do you think?
Tammy
I was recently presenting at a high tech sector human resources conference and was asked a great question that really got me thinking. The question was something like “Isn’t it the senior management’s responsibility to define the organizations culture?”
What a great question. The short answer is probably “Yes.” An organization’s senior team has a big influence of the organization’s culture. After all, they call the shots and model the behaviours that set the tone for the organization. Unfortunately, from my perspective at least, there is a problem with this. The senior team, more often than not, put in long hours, focus on little else but work, and some of them take themselves way too seriously!
Thankfully, there’s a longer answer to the question. While the senior team have an undeniably strong influence over an organization’s culture, there are others in the organization that can have a powerful influence.
Imagine a programmer who is a keen soccer player. She takes the time to organize a team to play in a local league. She’s contributing to a culture that values teamwork, exercise and competitiveness. Imagine an office manager who knows when everybody’s birthday is. He brings in a birthday card and gets as many people as possible to sign it. Maybe there are also muffins? He’s developing a sense of belonging within the organizational culture. Imagine the small team of volunteers who organize the organization’s United Way fund raising efforts. They’re contributing to the organization’s sense of community involvement and service.
So my final answer to the question looks a bit like this. Organizational culture can’t be mandated from the top. For sure, the people at the top of the organization have a powerful influence over the organizational culture and they must be careful how they use that influence. We also have to recognize that anyone who chooses to step up to the challenge can have a profound influence over culture no matter where they stand on the organizational hierarchy. This is one reason why I believe true leadership isn’t a position but a way of being.
Strengths Based Leadership, ( C4UFXFKV2WPY BKSH2JUWWW75 )
by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, is a wonderful little book. We’ve used it with a few different clients and I think everyone has found it a useful framework for thinking about leadership. Each copy of the book provides access to an online strengths inventory assessment tool that reports back your top five strengths.
The idea of paying attention to and building on your strengths makes a lot of sense to me. Clearly we all still need to be aware of weaknesses, but we also need to build our strengths. Of course, this whole topic deserves a blog in its own right.
The book is based on the 34 strengths introduced in the Strengths Finder 2.0 inventory. Based on your strengths it provides suggestions for how to improve your leadership in four domains; Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. It’s well worth checking out. And no, we’re not on a commision
Tammy and I would love to hear from you if you’ve completed the inventory and have any questions.
Dave
As you know from following our blog, we just recently moved. What usually follows a move is painting and in the last six weeks I have painted (with some help from Dave!) 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and three bedrooms!
Those of you who know me might know that I am patience challenged. Dave would say I am downright impatient and he’s probably right. Even though my long years of study of adult education exposed me to the characteristics of a good learner (open mindedness, risk taking, patience, etc) and I was under the impression I was one … lo and behold that is not always the case.
Which I discovered in spades through my painting experience. I just hate prepping the room, taping and painting around the edges. I like the rolling of the walls as it’s fast and you can see instant progress. When you are prepping the room or taping baseboards or painting an edge along the ceiling, it’s slow and it looks like you’re not getting anything done. So true to my nature, I tried to rush that process … bad mistake as it then took me twice as long to wipe off the extra paint on the baseboard, and I ended up making a mess of things overall.
So how does this relate to leadership? Well, many of our coaching clients (high tech or otherwise) are fairly high achievers who like to get things done. Many of them are like me … patience challenged! Leadership is a lot like painting to me … if you spend careful time and patience laying out the boundaries of whatever you are doing (for yourself and others), you can really make progress when you get to the walls (walls are whatever task you want to accomplish). But if you try to hurry through those all important boundary and relationship building activities (like initiating change, bringing on new people, setting a new direction, etc), you will spend more time trying to “fix” the mistakes you made along the way.
So the next time you are trying to rush through relationship building, think painting and think patience. The walls will come later and you will see progress!
Tammy
