J. T. Pedersen » Leadership

Are You a Leader or Manager?

JT — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:12:07 +0000

It is interesting to see how it seems most people treat the words ‘leader’ and ‘manager’ interchangeably. You have seen this, haven’t you?

My definitions:

Manager
Person who (through positional authority) controls and/or directs the actions of others. The goals or objectives of those in question is defined by ‘others.’
Leader
Person who (often without any positional authority) motivates, encourages, and inspires the actions of others. Leaders often create goals or objectives for those who follow them.

Quite often, organizations have a lot of ‘managers’ and very few ‘leaders.’ How many of the ‘leaders’, uh ‘AKA’ ‘managers’, have you seen lack at least one very fundamental component of leadership: Trust? (I expand on the topic here.)

A leader has to trust his or her team members. Trust them to play their role, do their part. A customer sales call is one of the clearest examples where managers distinguish themselves as not being a leader. Consider, as a sales manager…

You attend client meetings; dominate your team’s side of the discussion; and, do not trust your salesperson to continue their relationship building/sales process in your presence without meddling. If you do, you’re not only a ‘manager,’ but a weak one.

One of the greatest signs of respect, can be allowing your sales team to—do their job—without feeling the need to take center stage. Your team will appreciate it and think more highly of you. And, the customer will think more of you both.

Have you any of your own examples to share?

(photo credit: George Georgiades)

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Leading to Where You Have Never Been

JT — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:46:56 +0000

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

— Henry Kissinger*

This is a great quote, one of many that speaks to a simple aspect of Leadership. It is hardest for leaders who must lead themselves to a place they’ve never been, as well as those who follow.

Consider two basic circumstances. As a new manager, hired from outside the organization, it can be easier to see ‘where’ their new team(s) should head. A view from outside brings new perspective to an organization. Those new, unexplored ideas can often be the new injection of life a team or organization may need to get moving again.

The challenge for the new manager is to build relationships, develop trusts, and describe a new path. Only with solid relationships, albeit new, in place can the leader hope to lead an organization forward. Carrot and Stick approaches, regardless of positional authority, can last only for very short periods.

For an existing manager, leading people from where they are, to where they have not been, is hardest. Institutional knowledge sets in. Everyday ‘facts’ become rigidly defined by ‘what is,’ within the organization. Without care, views of the world outside an organization are increasingly cloudy, obscured.

We all face some amount of calcification in our views. The longer we stay in one place, the more rigid we become, whether we are aware of it or not. Partly because of this realization, leaders are often paranoid, eagerly looking outward to the world beyond themselves. It is not what you know that gets you—it’s what you don’t know.

For the ‘institutionalized’ leader whose been in place for a while, he or she not only needs to lead their team, they need to visualize, to self-create, the place they have not yet been. Then, they need to convince their team to follow them.

Developing the ‘dream,’ can only come from a constant stream of fresh input. Perhaps the inputs come from networking, trade events, reading, discussions over coffee, experimentation, or contemplation. One thing is for certain, if you’re not infusing yourself with new—external—stimulus you will not be able to dream new dreams. Leaders must dream of where they have not been if they ever hope to arrive.

(photo credit: Paul Bodea)

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What I’ve Read Lately: Open Leadership

JT — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:34:45 +0000

“Open Leadership”
by: Charlene Li
ISBN: 978-0-470-59726-2

Every once in a while you come across a new book that just knocks the ball out of the park. And, so it is with Charlene Li’s Open Leadership. As an active proponent of social media I’ve read a number of books on the topic. Yet Open Leadership is the first that has a presented a practical, pragmatic, and far-reaching discussion about how to integrate it into the fabric of existing companies. Not only how, but why, and why now!

Someone looking to do a ‘power-reading’ of the book might tend to dismiss it as a social media ‘how-to’ manual after the first couple chapters. There’s much more to it though.

Social media is the book’s consistent thread and is pervasive throughout. Yet it’s not about social media itself. Social media is the contemporary reference to a broad sea change involving how we communicate. This communication has made it as easy for the CEO to interact directly with customers as it is for the individual employee, and that employee with the CEO his or herself. When it seems everyone can communicate with everyone else, how can you effectively lead anything? This is the crux of Open Leadership.

In a world where communication drives ever higher levels of transparency, mistakes are on a public plateau, and leaders are encouraged to let go. Things move too quick for one, or even a select few, to respond quickly enough. Imagine, developing a way to trust everyone in the organization to do what is right.

Lest this seem to utopian, Charlene provides a series of guidelines for how to introduce more openness to an organization. For cases where the all-important ROI must be addressed, she provides some reasonable mechanisms for doing so.

At the same time, she provides structure for how to control, provide guidance for, increased openness. Senior managers may be afraid to let everyone ‘go wild.’ To this, she provides the notion of sandbox covenants. Provide employees, managers, even customers, guidance with how to interact…what the rules of the road are.

Once she completed the ‘essence’ of how to constructively introduce the openness of social media to the organization, the book seemed to get into second gear.

Open Leadership is about the need to be more collaborative, more open, more transparent, and evolving the relationships needed to make it work. One note on transparency, openness, and ‘authenticity,’ Ms. Li actively talks about what these mean. They’re not just buzzwords dropped about. Just ‘what’ does transparency mean? Do you need to be ‘open’ about ‘everything?’

Most important, the 3rd segment of the book, is primarily about relationships. Mind-sets. Traits. Trust. And how each of these need to be considered as you look to evolve your organization.

We all know (or we all should) that the world’s pace has picked up a couple notches. Everything is happening faster, more visibly, and involving more people. You can fight it (and you will lose). Or you can figure out how to thrive and take advantage of evolutions in communication, openness, and lead your organizations (regardless of your role) forward.

Toward the very end, she provides a number of good case studies, including the U.S. State Department, Dell, Proctor & Gamble, Best Buy, and the State Bank of India.

Fortunately, Charlene’s give us an excellent, constructive, guide to start working with. If you’re even remotely worried, or perhaps just curious, about how social media really can work within your space, you need to get a copy to read.

In the interest of full disclosure, the publisher sent me an advance copy for review. No other monetary consideration exists.

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100 Blog Posts That Will Make You a Better Leader

JT — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:46:51 +0000

Anna Miller maintains a post over at www.onlinedegree.net. Of particular note, is her blog post, 100 Blog Posts That Will Make You a Better Leader. Anna’s taken the time to gather together 100 articles on the topic of Leadership. And, I’ll admit, I’m very flattered to have been included in the list. You’ll find my own article highlighted, “2 Keys for Moving into an Executive Role.”

Even if you don’t make it down to my article (somebody has to take the 92nd position), I encourage you to take a look at the list. I find it very convenient myself when someone takes the time to put together a useful collection like Anna has.

Thank you, Anna!

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Boldly. Brightly. Clearly State: I believe…

JT — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:02:40 +0000

Recently I came across a fellow, Simon Sinek, whose mission in life is to find, nurture, and inspire leaders. What I came across, was his presentation at TED. In this particular discussion, he highlights why some companies, some leaders, are so much more effective than others in building loyalty, drive, motivation.

To borrow from some of his thunder, he posits that most organizations—most people for that matter—know what they do, they know how they do it, but never even stop to think about Why they do it.

I have spoken on the topic of Why, The Power of Why!, before. In some ways, while the focus is different, the value of asking (or being able to answer) ‘why’ is important.

The The Power of Why!, I take a look at Mr. Ohno’s drive toward asking the question Why to drive toward true understanding. After all, we can discuss the symptomatic issues surrounding an oil pump’s failure. But not until you drill into the matter might you find true reasoning.

And, like layers of an onion, this is the same concept Simon’s talking to. At the end of the day, why we join hands with someone is very closely tied to why they are doing something.

What Simon is highlighting, without so directly stating it, is that to be an effective leader you must be willing to bare your soul. If you really want people to follow you, to adopt your beliefs, to go the extra mile, you must be willing to boldly, brightly, clearly state: I believe…

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Leading Through Social Media?

JT — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:27:23 +0000

If you’re aspiring to move beyond your current role, you’re likely looking for ways to be seen as innovative, progressive, and ‘fresh.’ Which means, odds are, if you’re a business leader, event planner, meeting facilitator, or similar, you’re always watching for new ways to make them better.

If your life revolves around using PowerPoint or Keynote, how can you do better? Yes, you can add snazzy graphics, spinning tops, and whiz-bang animation. And if you do, you’ll likely just come across as someone using distracting, confusing, dizzying images. One way to avoid this latter problem, is to take a look at Garr Reynold’s book, Presentation Zen.

You’ve likely heard of this thing called social media. You’ve also likely noticed it’s just about ‘everywhere.’ Even if the majority of the country still doesn’t understand it (Fast Company found, ’…69% of U.S. adults still have no idea what it is.’), they’ve likely been exposed.

And, therein lies the opportunity—to begin showing the relevance to your audience, to your organization. Demonstrate the value.

Here’s one way to do it—and have some fun at the same time: Use Twitter during your presentation for dynamic feedback and for soliciting audience questions.

There are a number of solutions available. Just search on the string, “how to use twitter with powerpoint” in Bing or Google. Many of the results show solutions with a specific focus, such as how to do a live poll of your audience and display it in PowerPoint or Keynote.

The easiest solution I’ve seen so far, simply uses TweetDeck and a dual-monitor set up. Set up PowerPoint so it is using Presenter View on your primary screen (e.g. laptop display), and the audience display on the second screen. Next, narrow the TweetDeck window so only a single column is displayed visible and set it off to one side on the audience screen (see image below).

Here’s why you need to operate PowerPoint in Presenter View mode: If you advance slides by clicking on the audience screen, the presentation (like any application) will become the ‘active’ window, be brought to the front of the display list (on top of all applications), and hide TweetDeck. However, if you launch the presentation, then put TweetDeck on top of the slideshow, you can run the presentation via the Presenter View and it will leave TweetDeck displayed as in the image.

(If you don’t want tweets scrolling while you talk, then simply move TweetDeck to the primary screen, out of view. You’ll still be able to skim comments).

What else do you know for this to be successful? Create a hashtag specific to your discussion and let attendees know it exists. Then, using the #hashtag in their tweets, you can have your TweetDeck column set to filter out everything except tweets using your hashtag. Now you have a semi-exclusive discussion forum for your attendees. (Ideally, you’ll let them know the hashtag exists as soon as possible, but you can always do it right at the start of your presentation. Some conferences do this ahead of time enabling discussions to start even before the event itself is underway.)

This is just one approach toward more directly engaging your audience and building a stronger sense of community. Certainly, you need to practice, and you can only do it live. But you’ll be learning together with your participants.

What other examples, tying social media into presentations, have you seen (successful or not). Interested in hearing.

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Value of Imagery

JT — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:36:29 +0000

So much of what we consume today is fast-paced, hectic, sketchy, even frantically created information. Worse, much of the information is simply thrown together requiring the consumer, perhaps with a bit of narration, to figure its meaning out for themselves.

Sound like some of the corporate presentations you’ve received? How about the general nature of communication between you, your boss, colleagues, and customers? Like many of you, I’ve been there too. Corporate cultures, as they grow bigger and less personal, seem drawn toward impersonal tools supporting bulk interaction.

In recent years, certainly accelerating in the past 24 months, I’ve become ever-more appreciative of using (relatively speaking) simple imagery to convey meaning. One of the recent presentations I’ve given reflect this change.

Garry Reynolds, www.presentationzen.com, was particularly motivational for me when I first read his book, Presentation Zen, last year. Since then, my drive toward visualization over bullet points has only accelerated. Death to bullet points!

What if, imagine, we simply tried to improve our communication, with anyone we interact with, by moving more toward a medium that helps communicate our intent better; that helps break down barriers; that feels better, than death by bullet point (or email, or take your pick…).

You’ve likely attended a presentation (or two), or read an email full of ‘motivational’ text, that tried to convince you now was the time your organization needed to drive forward. Odds are, you were overloaded, or bored, or otherwise disconnected. You’d rather pull your hair out than spend another moment in the room.

As a leader, as the head of a meeting, perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words.

Maybe you can get the ‘timing message’ across by saying:

Pay attention

Be alert

Be ready to POUNCE!

In the past two weeks, I have come across two individuals who have impactfully spoken to the value of imagery. One is Janice Milhem of Milhem Images. Jan gave a presentation at LA2M. “Visual Storytelling has always been a part of the human experience – from cave paintings and comic strips to training films and documentaries, visual narratives are an extremely effective way to engage participants in a virtual experience and establish a point of view that is truly unique.”

The second person, very graphically showing us the value of imagery, of still pictures in particular, is Renée Byer, documentary photographer. Her 13 minute presentation at TEDx in Tokyo, describing the power of the still picture from her perspective, follows:

(photo credit (1): Screaming)
(photo credit (2): Pounce)

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Businesses Fail Because of Two Variables

JT — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:03:27 +0000

Had the opportunity to attend the April CEO Connect meeting, here in Ann Arbor. The guest speaker was Ted Dacko, former CEO of Healthmedia. A serial entrepreneur, he has led five start ups. As he describes it, 3 had good exits, one so-so, and one…. Healthmedia was most recent, and quite successful. Ted provided a very enjoyable, engaging discussion on his entrepreneurial experiences, preferring to live in the ‘launch’ phase of a new business.

One of the key points he made, which I wanted to share, is that businesses fail because of only two reasons. They are opportunity pool and win rate.

Too many businesses focus on the product, on it’s features, and trying to demonstrate them to you, in maniacal fashion. Ask them about who the customer is, what their problems are, and as he say’s, “…they look at you like you’ve grown three heads.”

I’ve experienced the 3-head syndrome myself. Smaller companies often focus toward areas they’re comfortable in to the neglect of other key areas. Try to take them outside their comfort zone, to think about the bigger picture, and they struggle to understand what you’re asking. The fall back, he points out, is for them to want to do another demo. Demo. Demo. Demo. In the past, my partner and I closed significant business (software) without ever doing a demo. Our peers would ask afterward, ‘…what were your demos like?’ The fact you could sell without ever even doing demo was beyond them.

Getting past demos, Ted posited there are only three variables in business success:

Opportunity pool
Win rate
Price

Too often, with a maniacal product (or other) focus, companies focus too narrowly and do not have large enough pools of opportunity. They need to increase the number of customers, the size of the pool, to which they’re marketing their company and its offerings. This is a key function of Marketing—increase the size of the playing field.

Win rate, is the percentage of opportunities being converted to paid/paying customers. Clearly, the higher your percentage of closed deals, the lower your cost per customer, the better your chances of success with any size opportunity pool.

No time was spent discussing pricing. The key message in this segment was to focus on opportunities and win rates. If your opportunity pool’s too small, 100% win rate may still provide insufficient revenue. Flipping the coin over, even with a huge opportunity pool, if you’re not closing enough deals, you’re still left with a poor revenue situation.

Clearly there are many more variables driving a successful business. But assuming the business is functioning properly (e.g. good product, trustworthy delivery, well executed…), you can certainly appreciate from a CEO’s perspective how these can be two very key variables.

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Even a Piece of String Will Do

JT — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:28:34 +0000

Two thumbtacks and a piece of string are all you need to do basic planning.

On a regular basis, I have the opportunity to speak with new entrepreneurs thinking of starting their own businesses. One of my key topics is how to successfully evolve an ‘idea’ into an actual deliverable, regardless of whether it is a tangible product or a service.

A basic product plan needs to clearly define your offering:

What must it do?
How must it do it?
Where is it done?
When is it done?
Why?

Just as important, arguably more so, is what it is not:

What must it not do (if only for now)?
How should it not be done?
Why not?

How you will get there:

What resources are needed?
How long will it take?

In my experience, when most people are confronted with the notion of doing a business plan, the natural reaction seems to be one of dread, reluctance, or denying there’s value in doing so. What I have learned, for anything more than the most basic of plans*, the only effective way to stay on your original course is to have documented what that course may be in the first place.

*As the psychologist George Miller demonstrated in his famous essay, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” the conscious brain can only handle about seven pieces of data at any one moment. [How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer, ISBN 978-0-618-62011-1]

Even if your basic product plan only consists of 7 basic components, you will invariably be required to evaluate new inputs along the way, forcing 1 or more of your thoughts to be swapped out. More often than not, you never return to the original process in quite the same way.

The person gaining the most value out of a plan is you. There is no requirement that the plan be 46 pages long, with a table of contents, index, and executive briefing. Sure, if you’re going to seek venture capital, you will need to provide a more-developed document—but not at the outset.

At a minimum, your plan might only be 2 or 3 pages long. The intent is to address the key points outlined above as well as others that might be important for your particular interests.

Now, we can start talking about the conceptual use of thumbtacks and string:).

At a very minimum, you need to define the Idea, your left thumbtack. Second, you need to define the finished deliverable, your right thumbtack. Between them, tie a string. Here you have your most basic plan.

As you develop your product, you are going to be faced with innumerable inputs. Many will be well-intentioned. For instance, Mom, who will likely never buy one of your widgets, will strongly suggest the color is all wrong.

Or, perhaps your sales people (including you) may come back from customer meetings with yet more declarations of ‘must haves’ for the new product you’re working on.

All seem good ideas, so you pin them on the board (blue thumbtacks). As long as these new ideas fit within your plan’s scope (within the string’s bounds of movement), they may be worth consideration.

Here’s where the ‘string’ comes in handy. You will continue to receive all manner of ‘all important ideas’ regarding how to improve your product. Some come from others, some from you (at 3am). Your plan (the thumbtacks and the string, together) lets you evaluate whether they’re able to be considered at this time or not.

Ideas that fall outside your plan’s constraints (red thumbtack) may be very good ideas. But they simply out too significant: they may take too much time; too many resources; or, require other building blocks come first. Red thumbtacks can be safely ignored, because they have been evaluated, and deemed inappropriate at this time.

Another interesting thing that happens as you develop your product. It begins to develop a legacy. In other words, as you move forward, your past decisions begin to constrain future decisions.

We can illustrate legacy as the passage of time (yellow thumbtacks). As we make decisions, as time passes and our plan progresses, the amount of flexibility is rapidly reduced. Ideas that might have once been readily accepted (blue) are rejected because (now) they fall outside the plan’s scope.

As your product (or service) reaches planned completion, the introduction of new changes or requests rapidly becomes untenable.

All of a sudden, it can seem that almost ‘everything’ gets pegged as a ‘red’ thumbtack.

Hopefully, if you didn’t before, you now agree that having a product plan is important. Not only can its use help keep you on track, it can help you sleep easier at night, knowing your decisions were well-founded and not based on a whim of the moment.

So, go buy a $1 box of thumbtacks, a $15 cork board, and a piece of string. Then, build you product plan.

Of course, this is closer to what reality will look like:)

(photo credits: JT Pedersen)

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Infighting Isn’t Where It’s At Any More

JT — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:49:52 +0000

Here in the U.S. we’re a competitive, creative people. Not claiming that we have the corner on the market, but it is core to who we are. Unfortunately that also comes across as arrogance (ask folks internationally). Generally, being competitive is a good thing. In some regards though, how we compete needs to change ASAP.

For a very long time, here in the U.S., we spent a lot of time competing amongst ourselves. There is the State level:

And then, within a State, we have counties.

And, if that weren’t enough, we can add on a stack of other, lesser, but no-less-self-important municipalities at the City, Town, Township, Village, or other levels.

Before you know it, you have hundreds, thousands, of individual governmental and societal entities that feel it is in their best interest to compete directly with their adjacent neighbor(s) on everything from who has the best high school football team, to economic concerns.

Within the United States, and certainly within smaller economic regions, the traditional ‘in fighting’, fighting amongst each other, simply has to change. We compete on a global platform now. No longer do we simply compete with our neighbor next door, we compete with the fine folks on six other continents!

This morning I was pleased to attend the Livingston County Economic Development Summit. It was refreshing to see proactive leadership at a larger scale, encouraging cooperation among local competitors (co-opetition), driving for strategic focus with an eye toward the bigger picture.

Michigan needs to reinvent itself in a big way if it is to have any meaningful clout into the future. Today, Michigan is a state the rest of the nation would like to forget about. It is up to Michigan, and all the bodies within, to make sure the rest of the world doesn’t simply slough it off, worthless and forgotten.

As a resident of Livingston County, of Michigan, it is encouraging to see these activities happen. Hopefully your own regions have seen the light and are doing the same—stopping the infighting and working together!

(image credits: www.free-printable-maps.com, www.findcountyrecords.com, www.migenweb.net)