Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Great Manager

Tokenism Isn’t Inclusion

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This BBC article notes that diversity in many companies can be tokenistic—mere window dressing in fact. Sadly, even after decades of diversity initiatives, inclusion continues to be about numerical requirements and box-checking.

Within a few weeks at her job at a New York salon, hairstylist Cheyenne began to feel like a prop. When wealthy, diverse clients would enter, staff would go out of their way to introduce her and include her in conversations. “I realized the only other black women in the salon were always placed in areas where you could see them from the front. It was almost like they were being showcased. I don’t think the salon owners were trying to be diverse. I think they were trying to seem diverse.” Cheyenne was left feeling like a token: a member of a previously excluded group often hired or promoted as a symbolic gesture toward inclusivity.

Idea for Impact: Stop paying lip service to inclusion. Let’s broaden our understanding of diversity beyond identity-based differences. Let’s thoughtfully and purposefully draw on the unique and varied expertise and experiences that, when integrated, can expand our collective creative potential.

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Employee Engagement: Show Them How They Make a Difference

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The sure-fire way to assist employees find meaning and fulfillment at work is to get them to have even a small interaction with people who directly benefit from the work they’re doing.

One research showed that radiologists developed a stronger sense of the significance of their work if a photo of the patient were attached to an X-ray. “It enhanced their effort and accuracy, yielding 12% increases in the length of their reports and 46% improvement in diagnostic findings.” Radiologists typically don’t interact with patients directly—they work in the background providing interpretation services to other doctors.

Idea for Impact: People are inspired less by what they do and more by WHY

How people see themselves and their meaning and purpose in this world may be the most significant incentive of all.

Empower your employees, especially those that aren’t on the frontlines, with direct reminders of task significance. Invite next-down-the-line customers (virtually or in-person) to share meaningful insights, give appreciation, and share feedback. Promote regular dialogue with customers to help stay relevant and become responsive to customer issues as they arise.

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How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

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As the pandemic subsides (at least for now,) many companies are summoning employees back to the office. Some companies are giving workers a combination of remote and co-located work.

To initiate a hybrid-remote model for your workplace, first reconstruct how your team gets its job done. Ask, “What activities can be remote?” instead of “what roles can be remote?”

Not every activity can be equally performed in a remote setting. Take into account the level of human and physical interaction needed for every task.

Consider breaking down business activities that were formerly bundled into a single job. Mix and match responsibilities and tasks in keeping with employee competencies and individual needs.

Every employee responds to work circumstances differently. Some employees are eager to return to work—especially if they’ve struggled with blurring home and office during the pandemic, or if they fear disadvantages such as a lack of visibility for promotions.

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Never Hire a Warm Body

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If you have a position open and you’re having a hard time filling it, don’t compromise and hire a warm body. Certainly not to fill an open spot within a specific time frame so as to not risk losing your team’s headcount.

Alas, many warm-body hires do not last very long. So, until you have a candidate who fully meets the job’s requirements, don’t fill the position.

Rather than jumping at every job seeker to cross your path, be methodical and follow a clear and consistent approach.

Take your time during the hiring process. Needing to fill the position yesterday is not an excuse for shortchanging the process.

Idea for Impact: Don’t hire quickly and, thus, poorly because you need a warm body. You and your team are better off working overtime than cleaning up the messes generated by someone who didn’t meet your requirements fully.

Hire wisely; nothing is more important.

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Create a Diversity and Inclusion Policy

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The moral and business cases for diversity are well known—a diverse and inclusive workplace earns deeper trust and more commitment from their employees.

Having a diversity and inclusion policy is simply the right thing to do—leaders have to make their values and intentions clear.

As a company, you’re not legally required to have a written diversity and inclusion policy. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to create and actively use one.

Diversity and inclusion are ongoing initiatives—not one-off training. (Sadly, diversity classes are sometimes just a tactic for reducing employee lawsuits.) A policy encourages your employees to treat others equally with civility and decency and helps managers value employees for their strengths.

In many discrimination claims, employers may have a defense if they can show that they took all reasonable steps to deter discrimination. A comprehensive policy and recent appropriate training can help employers distance themselves from liability for acts such as harassment by an individual perpetrator employed by your company.

A policy also demonstrates that your company takes its legal and moral responsibilities towards being a diverse and inclusive employer earnestly.

Idea for Impact: A strong diversity and inclusion policy can help your company embed good practices—not only across your organization but also throughout your supply chains, including the customers and the communities your company serves.

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Five Rules for Leadership Success // Summary of Dave Ulrich’s ‘The Leadership Code’

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The key to success in any discipline is to figure out the few things that must be done really well and to get those basics right. But so many leaders fail on the fundamentals—and don’t even realize it.

The real implication of leadership has been buried deep over the years: leadership isn’t about the position but about who you are and the responsibility you can undertake. Leadership consultants Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman’s The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By (2009) argues that everything you ever need to know about leadership comes down to five straightforward rules.

If you understand these rules and put them into practice, you can’t fail to spur others and enrich teams, organizations, or communities.

Rule 1: Be A Strategist. Deliberate leaders answer the question “Where are we going?” and mull over multiple time frames. They institute a great enough sense of urgency and remove impediments to the new vision. They anticipate the future and work with others to determine how to advance from the present to the desired future. Shape the future.

Rule 2: Be an Executor. The “executor” aspect of leadership focuses on the question, “How will we make sure we get to where we are going?” Effective leaders understand how to make change happen, assign accountability, assess plans, coordinate efforts, and share information that should be incorporated into strategies. Make things happen.

Rule 3: Be a Talent Manager. Leaders who engage talent now answer the question, “Who goes with us on our business journey?” They select the right people for the right job and ensure that people have the right tools and autonomy to succeed. Leaders foster an inviting organization, create a high level of performance and passion, and continuously monitor problems that need to be fixed. Engage today’s talent.

Rule 4: Be a Human Capital Developer. Leaders who are talent developers answer the question, “Who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?” Leaders take the time to become aware of how future trends could affect their organizations. They position their teams to win by bearing in mind the longer-term competencies required for future strategic success. Build the next generation.

Rule 5: Be Proficient. Leadership demands are more daunting than ever, and the pressure to perform is relentless. Create regular timeouts to review where you invest your time and energy to ensure that you remain capable of self-managing your personal strengths and weaknesses and generating new behaviors to deal with new challenges. Invest in yourself.

As with most “rules-for-success” books, the authors tout their assessment of “hundreds of studies, frameworks, and tools.” But their work is no more than a distillation of notable leadership thinkers’ experiences. Nonetheless, the rules sound right. The five rules are simple, but they aren’t easy. They are sensible and practicable. They’re what you can focus your effort on for maximum return.

Recommendation: Quick read The Leadership Code. It makes a great early book choice for new leaders. It provides a grounded approach to the fundamentals.

Never underestimate the power of key leadership principles that can be well executed. Complement The Leadership Code with Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954; my summary) and Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager (2019; my summary.)

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Micro-Meetings Can Be Very Effective

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Discussions expand to fill the time allotted (per Parkinson’s Law,) especially when people haven’t prepared for them well.

If your meetings tend to run long and aren’t producing tangible results, consider micro-meetings.

Focus on discussing and deciding on a single problem within, say, 15 minutes. Ask people to do their homework and come thoroughly prepared.

Let the critical decision-makers pre-wire one another before the meeting—they can discuss one-on-one the main points and settle any differences of opinion.

  • Clarify the meeting’s purpose before starting the session. Even if you think everyone knows it, it helps restate the meeting’s objective and sharpen the group’s focus.
  • Allow people brief statements about their positions and clarifying questions. Take full-fledged discussions offline.
  • Not every exchange of ideas needs to happen in a meeting. Use shared documents that can be revised and tracked by several people in real-time.
  • Keep everyone standing. The discomfort of standing for long, especially before lunchtime or at the end of the day, can keep the meetings short and to-the-point.
  • End well. Conclude the meeting with an action plan and an exact timeframe. State the decisions the group has made and who owns what.

Yes, micro-meetings will seem brusque and hasty. But setting a focused agenda and staying on-topic will keep people paying attention and steer meetings to conclusive decisions.

Many teams use micro-meetings for daily huddles, check-ins, or “scrum meetings.” There’s no good reason why this type of meeting should be availed exclusively for such occurrences.

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Making It Happen: Book Summary of Bossidy’s ‘Execution’

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It’s back-to-basics in Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002.) Bossidy is a retired business executive (General Electric, AlliedSignal/Honeywell,) and Charan is a distinguished business consultant.

Execution was the best-seller that defined the corporate zeitgeist in America after the dot-com meltdown and the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Catchphrases such as “execution,” “shaping the broad picture,” “straight talk,” and “robust action” became caricatures of how American companies got things done.

Here’s a distillation of the main ideas in Execution.

  • Ideas are well and good, but how thoroughly you implement them is what “determines success in today’s business world.” Companies are hindered by the gap between what the company’s leaders want to achieve and their ability to achieve it. “The real problem is that execution just doesn’t sound very sexy. It’s the stuff a leader delegates.”
  • There’s no room for fluffiness if you want to get things done. Straight talk is “live ammo.” “You need robust dialogue to surface the realities of business the kind that can leave people feeling bruised if they take it personally.”
  • The leader sets the tone and leads the change. A good motto to follow is, “Truth over harmony.” Focus on “raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions.” Avoid discourses that are “stilted, politicized, fragmented, and butt-covering.” “Candor helps wipe out the silent lies and pocket vetoes, and it prevents the stalled initiatives and rework that drain energy.”
  • Informality is critical to candor. Formal and ceremonial conversations and presentations leave little room for debate. Too often, communication is scripted and predetermined. Informality encourages questions and is more likely to promote intuitive and critical thinking.
  • Strategic, people, and operational processes are the building blocks for execution—and they’re interrelated. “The foundation of changing behavior is linking rewards to performance and making the linkages transparent.”

Recommendation: Skim Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002.) Most of the book is about setting expectations, holding people accountable, and following through. There’re no instructive case studies. There’re no new magic pills. The substance is genuinely elementary, and the tone self-righteous. You don’t need a book for exhortations like “put the right person in the right job,” “know your people and your business,” “test critical assumptions,” “follow-through,” “deal with non-performers,” and “expand people’s capabilities through coaching.”

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Taking Responsibility Means Understanding That Your Actions Can Make a Difference

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When problems unfold, leaders often look for ways to absolve themselves of responsibility—especially if they stand to lose face, favor, standing or will incur someone’s wrath.

Problems don’t simply just go away if un-addressed. They fester. They get worse. Then they blow up.

Taking responsibility means being there and facing the consequences, rejection, or revelation of ineptitude or weakness.

Leading authentically starts with being in charge. It refers to taking responsibility for the plans and actions that occur under your watch. (If you want to split hairs, glance at my explanation of accountability v responsibility.) Consider Captain Sullenberger, pilot of the Flight 1549 that crashed into New York City’s Hudson River. Even after he realized that the plane was in one piece after hitting the water, he worried about the difficulties that still lay ahead. The aircraft was sinking: everyone had to be evacuated quickly.

The Buck Stops with Leaders

As entrepreneur and venture capitalist Brad Feld emphasizes here, being responsible is one of the most admirable traits of an effective leader:

Many of the strong CEOs I work with owned whatever was going on at their company. There was simplicity in this—no blame, no excuses, no justification. They just took ownership.

When I step back and ponder this, the CEOs I respect the most are the ones who take responsibility for the actions of their company. Good or bad, successful or not, they don’t shirk any responsibility, blame anyone, or try to make excuses. They just own things, and if they need to be fixed, they fix them.

Idea for Impact: Taking Responsibility is Empowering

Ignoring a problem and passing blame is negligent.

The most effective leaders I’ve known have the humility and the courage to acknowledge when there’s been a mistake under their watch, avoid blaming others or the circumstances, and aspire to make amends or learn from their failures.

Often, individual action is the only real way to recognize and solve problems. Take ownership now.

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Don’t Be Friends with Your Boss

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Develop a cordial, constructive, and trusting relationship with your boss. But don’t extend that connection into a chummy friendship.

A boss-employee friendship comes with complications and tensions that don’t exist in other relationships. The boundaries in friendships are softer and more diffuse. In a boss-employee relationship, the boundaries are more pronounced, and rightly so.

When you’ve got a great rapport that comes with a friendship, it’s easy to start expecting to be treated a bit better than everyone else on your team. You’ll be disappointed when some special consideration—a plump assignment or a flexible vacation schedule—doesn’t come your way. Your boss will expect you to abide by the same standards and rules as everyone else.

You also have to be more vigilant about how your friendship appears to other people.

Idea for Impact: Boss first, friend second. Don’t mix the two. Sure, be friendly with your boss, but don’t expect to be treated as a friend.

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