Phil's Leadership blog

Just to prove competition really can come from anywhere:

“This week Tesco launched its own-brand computer software, taking it head-to-head with Microsoft, the world’s largest software company.

An initial range of six titles, which will include office software and security suites, will sell for less than £20 each.”

About time someone broke the illusion that the mass of Microsoft office products are anything more than commodity stuff now. Who’d have thought it would be Tesco?

I love how daring and unexpected they are under the leadership of Sir Terry Leahy. More please.

When it comes to leader communication, three is a magic number.

Our brains are hardwired to remember information more easily when it is grouped into three. Yet the Powerpoint default slideset always gives you four bullet points to fill. Say no more. The power of three: as easy as A, B, C; as clear as 1, 2, 3.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, tells us there are three keys to leadership:

1. If you are going to lead be optimistic. If you’re not, you’re followers can hardly be expected to be.
2. If you don’t love people, do something else.
3. Be absolutely clear on what you stand for.

The substantive points in Giuliani’s threesome are powerful enough. But, the fact that he groups them into three makes them even more memorable. The Power of Three: It’s a useful communications tool to keep in your leader’s toolkit.

“The thing about great leaders is that they are very good with other people’s time”

– Bill Jensen, in his book Simplicity

(It’s not a simple book, by the way, ironically. Jensen now admits it was too complicated and says that his follow-up book is better/simpler. There is some very useful stuff in it, however.)

Kirsty Wark: I understand one of the first things you did at GE was blow up the plant you were working in and that it had a profound effect on you. Can you explain?

Jack Welch: I did accidentally blow up the plant, yes. I was about 25 and had been experimenting with a different mixture. There was an explosion. I was scared stiff when I went to the manager. But, he was mainly curious as to why I had done what I had done and what I had learnt from it. ‘Would the process I was trying have worked’ is what interested him! That real encouragement to get it right rather than a punishment did have a profound effect on me, yes. (1)

Admit it: you would have fired him, wouldn’t you 😉 .

(1) My notes from the European Conference on Customer Management, London, where Welch was interviewed. Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric for twenty years and is probably the world’s most-admired CEO.

I was struck by something I heard Mike Harris say once. He’s a leader I admire greatly (founding CEO of First Direct bank, among other things). Mike said a leader shouldn’t be too attached to his or her own opinions.

This runs counter to how ‘strong’ leadership is usually interpreted, doesn’t it.

I was delighted to find a post on Bob Sutton’s website titled ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ which backs up what Mike Harris was saying.

Bob draws on the thinking of the Palo Alto Institute For The Future to say that strong leadership today is fundamentally different from what it used to be seen as – successful leaders today hold firm, clear opinions but are ready to let go of them if someone else offers a better one or the market changes direction suddenly.

Head over to Bob’s website to read about it. The link is in the ‘must read’ section in the margin over there —>

And since Seth Godin stole* my phrase “Small is the new Big” as the title for his new book, I at least get the chance to use the variant “Weak is the new Strong” as the title of this post 😉

* (OK, that’s not true. He and I did exchange emails a year ago and I pointed him to the Inspired Leaders Network website where I’d used that heading…that did happen…but I don’t believe at all that it influenced him or that he even saw it: it’s just the zeitgeist; a phrase that was in the ether and right for the time)

Leadership today is largely about embracing paradox and being comfortable with contradiction: that’s what underlies my liking for headlines that pose opposites as similars.

ARNIE ON FAILURE

‘If you fail, try, try again.
Then bring in the stunt double.’

SOURCE: Arnold Schwarzenegger, quoted in Vanity Fair

I’ve been reading a book on Walt Disney and it reminded me of this: Great leaders have faith in us even when we don’t in ourselves. They make us believe we can do more than we think. Walt, it turns out, was brilliant at this.

I’ll post some quotes from the book later. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with Christopher Isherwood.

This is usually attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire, but it was actually Isherwood writing a poem in tribute to Apollinaire.

And it’s a perfect summing up of how leaders inspire people to achieve more than they think they can:

Come to the edge
“Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them
…and they flew.”

I recently finished ‘How To Be Like Walt’ by Pat Williams, ‘with’ Jim Denney. I know you’re busy, so I’ve pulled out the eight main leader learning points from it. Number 2. in the list – believe people are capable of more than they think they are and inspire them to go beyond their comfort zone – is the one that countless interviewees in the book say Walt was supreme at.

1. GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY

Don’t be afraid to roll your sleeves up and get out there where the customers are.

Journalist Art Linkletter turned up for a screening of Disney’s new movie Fantasia. He arrived early for the press conference and “found the place empty except for one fellow who was busily arranging chairs.

I said, “When is Walt Disney supposed to arrive?”
He grinned and said, “I’m Walt Disney.”
I said, “You are? Why are you arranging chairs?”
“Well,” he said, “I like to have things just-so.”

* * *

2. BELIEVE PEOPLE CAN DO MORE THAN THEY THINK

“Walt had more confidence in us as artists than we had in ourselves. I’m a sculptor now, but I used to be an animator, and I loved it. I didn’t want to leave animation and go work in the theme parks. But Walt saw me as a sculptor and he sold me on it. He made me believe I could do it. He gave us the confidence to do things we never imagined were possible.”

– Blaine Gibson, Disney sculptor

* * *

3. THERE IS NO BOX

“Today you hear people talk about ‘thinking outside the box’. But Walt would say, ‘No! Don’t think outside the box! Once you say that, you’ve established that there is a box.’ Walt would refuse to accept the existence of the box.”

– Disney historian Jim Korkis

* * *

4. HAVE VISION

Walt Disney died before Disney World in Florida could be completed. On opening day in 1971, almost five years after his death, someone commented to Mike Vance, creative director of Walt Disney Studios, “Isn’t it too bad Walt Disney didn’t live to see this?” “He did see it,” Vance replied simply. “That’s why it’s here.”

* * *

5. INSPIRE PEOPLE THEN LET THEM GET ON WITH IT

“Walt challenged and inspired you by talking to you. He wouldn’t give you detailed instructions about what he wanted you to do. Instead, he would simply point you in the direction he wanted you to go, then leave the rest up to you. He would get you started on the creative process and inspire you with confidence. As a result, you would go far beyond what you thought you were capable of doing.”

– Band leader Tutti Camarata, whom Disney recruited to set up Disneyland Records (now called Walt Disney Records).

* * *

6. CONNECT WITH PEOPLE ON A PERSONAL LEVEL

“Whenever anyone called him ‘Mr. Disney’ he got upset. It was always Walt. And he always knew your name. In the early days, we didn’t wear name tags, but Walt still called you by your first name. Once he knew your name, he never forgot it.”

– Gary Carlson, Disney Sound Engineer

* * *

7. ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO LEARN

“Walt ran the studio like a university. We were learning all the time and a few of us were going to art school at night. Walt would drive us there and pick us up later.”

– Les Clark, Disney animator

* * *

8. STOP BEING AFRAID

“The rest of us live in fear. Walt had no fear.”

– Jim Korkis, Disney historian

Hamlet got it wrong. John Boyd got it right.

Boyd is the creator of the OODA loop fast decision matrix. I thought
OODA loop was one of Willy Wonka’s midgets, but my son says that’s an OOMPA loompa. What a difference a couple of letters make.

I’ve been researching Boyd for a chapter on intuition and fast decision-making (‘thin slicing’ Malcolm Gladwell calls it) for the leadership book I’m writing, and have just discovered this insight from him:

People become leaders for one of two reasons – either to DO something or to BE somebody. We all know too many bosses who became ‘leaders’ to BE someone. They are usually bad leaders. Boyd defined them as people who give up some of their integrity to achieve advancement in an organization.

Boyd said it’s the fundamental choice facing us all in life: to do or to be.

Cool, as my kids would say. Makes a lot of sense.

OODA loop stands for Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act. You probably knew that. But, did you know that as a trainer of fighter pilots, Boyd accepted challenges from any fellow pilot to go one on one in a dogfight training exercise?

He was never beaten. There were many challengers, but he always defeated them in less than forty seconds using his OODA loop system. All sounds a bit Ninja-ish to me.

The US Airforce rejected the system when he explained it to them. But the Marines and other land forces took it up enthusiastically and it became the core military rationale behind the Desert Storm invasion strategy in the first Iraq War.

All very impressive if you’re into military strategy and leadership. But not as impressive to me as that fundamental question of leadership: Did you become a leader to DO or to BE? Good question. I like it a lot…

So, if 19 million people* were moved by a piece of viral communication to talk like a pirate yesterday (see post below), how come only 150,000 people a day regularly click on www.thehungersite.com ?

I remember when the hunger site started up in the heady dotcom days and some naive optimists (yep, that was me) saw an inkling of a possibility of this one initiative making a real difference to world hunger. My God, we thought, look what the internet might achieve in channeling goodwill and, more importantly, food, to hungry people while delivering millions of eyeballs to advertisers for a few seconds at a time to pay for it?

After all, who wouldn’t want to spend five seconds a day clicking on a button to give a cup of free food to people who have none? And at no cost to themselves?

When the site first launched, I received half a dozen viral emails in several different languages telling me to go visit the hunger site and help cure world hunger.

So, I assume millions of other people were part of this wave of awareness, too. Yet the hunger site went bust a few years ago and had to be rescued by The Common Good, an American charity that got it up and running again.

Now there’s a steady state of about 150,000 people who click per day, dropping by a third or more at weekends (what? too difficult to click from home?) Why isn’t this the ultimate viral communication that ends world hunger?

I guess we are all too busy talking like pirates.

*Discount by, say, 75% for hype and that’s still a guesstimate of 5 million people.