Holiday Traditions

As we close out 2023, I wanted to pause and reflect on the holiday season.  Our family holidays begin with Thanksgiving, continue with Christmas, and end with New Year’s Day.  While the Christmas season is one of our favorite times of year, we have a number of wonderful holiday traditions in our family throughout the holiday season.  First, for the last 20 plus years, we have celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife’s side of the family.  She comes from a large family, so every year we alternate who hosts Thanksgiving.  It’s a great time to gather together, and it’s always a lot of fun.  For the past several years, our family has celebrated Christmas Eve with Mass and a dinner at a local restaurant.  Prior to our move to Chicago, we always dropped off Christmas cookies for the PICU staff at the children’s hospital where I work.  We end Christmas Eve by letting our children open only one present u dear our Christmas tree, and it’s always the same gift - a new pair of PJ’s for Christmas morning (incidentally, this particular tradition is one I carried with me from my own childhood).   We open Christmas presents on Christmas morning, followed by a large brunch meal at home.  We tend not to do much on New Year’s Eve - early on I used to be on call in the PICU that night, but later we’ve typically been on vacation.  And of course, we watch a lot of college football on New Year’s Day.

My point here is not to share all of our family’s holiday transitions.  Rather, I want to emphasize the fact that over the years, we’ve often changed our traditions.  For example, we didn’t always go out for dinner on Christmas Eve - that tradition started once our kids reached high school.  I also used to read the holiday classic, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”  to our kids every Christmas Eve before they went to bed, but that ended a few years ago, once all of our kids reached adulthood.  For the last several years, we’ve held a “white elephant” gift exchange on Thanksgiving, but I think everyone is ready for that tradition to fall by the wayside.

As I wrote in a post a few years ago called “Traditions”, “Traditions are important - they help form who we are, both as individuals and as groups.  They are a unique part of our culture that collectively bridge the gap between the past and the present, as well as the present and the future.”

Traditions can and do change.  And that’s okay. It’s great to be able to celebrate and remember the past, but there comes a time when traditions should change or be replaced with new ones.  I am sure our kids will always remember listening to “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve.  And there’s a part of me that will miss it.  But we have new traditions instead, and they are just as important to what it is that makes us a family.  

The same is true for organizations.  Traditions are a wonderful way to cherish the past.  They keep an organization connected to its past.  But just like with family traditions, there comes a time when an organization’s traditions needs to change too.  It doesn’t mean that those in the organization no longer respect the past or even forget it.  It’s just a normal evolution of the organization’s culture that makes it the organization that it is today.

Remember that as you are honoring some of your holiday traditions this New Year’s Eve night.  See you in 2024,

The Top Ten Leadership Reverie Posts from 2023

 As we are just about to close out another year, I wanted to share the top ten Leadership Reverie blog posts for 2023:

1.  What makes you stay?  (April 28, 2023)

2.  "Why your critics aren't the ones who count" (March 10, 2023)

3.  The Accountability-Authority Matrix (January 5, 2023)

4.  "The longer you stay, the longer you stay" (October 16, 2023)

5.  The two most important words... (May 3, 2023)

6.  Why Ted Lasso is the perfect HRO leader (May 22, 2023)

7.  Annual Gallup survey on honesty and ethics among professionals (January 15, 2023)

8.  Mandatory Education (March 26, 2023)

9.  Word of the Year (March 13, 2023)

10. "I just want my kids to be happy" (June 13, 2023)

I continue to learn a lot from researching and writing these posts.  Someone recently asked how I found the time in my busy schedule to continue to write for a blog.  Of course, I referred that individual back to my very first blog post ("First blog post!") written on January 2, 2016, in which I listed a couple of reasons why I created "Leadership Reverie" in the first place.  I also told that individual that I've always remembered things and understood them better when I wrote them down or explained a concept in my own words.  By writing about the leadership concepts and stories I've read, I tend to remember them and understand them better.   I do not claim to be an expert on leadership, but I do consider myself a student of leadership.  The word "student" comes from the Middle English word studient, meaning "one who pursues knowledge" which itself comes from the Latin word studiens, meaning "to strive toward, devote oneself to, or cultivate."  With this blog, I am trying to cultivate my own knowledge on the fascinating discipline of leadership.  The fact that at least a few of you have spent the time reading (and some of you have even commented) my work provides even more motivation and inspiration to continue.

What's good for the hive is good for the bee

The Roman philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius is often quoted as saying, "That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees."  In other words, what is detrimental or harmful to the overall wellbeing of a collective group or community will ultimately have negative consequences for the individuals within that group.  Marcus Aurelius uses the analogy of a beehive to illustrate this concept - bees are one of the best-known examples of group behavior.  In order for the bee colony to thrive and survive, the individual bees must work together for the collective good of the whole.

We can learn a lot from bees.  The research scientist and author Mark Winston writes, "Bees teach us that leaders best serve society when they promote core ideals that unite rather than divide."  But what's particularly interesting is that even though a typical bee colony appears to be relatively homogenous at first glance, they are incredibly diverse.  The population of a honey bee colony may reach 50,000 individual bees.  These colonies are comprised of stepsister worker bees who all share the same queen mother but with different (15-20) drone fathers.  If you spend the time looking at the individual bees in the colony (NOT an easy task!), you will note the incredible diversity.  Some of the bees are jet black, while others may be yellow or even brown.  All of the bees play different roles too, whether it's foraging for nectar or pollen, helping to rear the larvae, or defending the hive.  

The temperature inside a bee hive is closely regulated between 32 to 36 degrees Celsius.  If it's too cold or too hot in the hive, the young larvae do not survive.  Bees regulate the temperature inside the hive by huddling together (to increase the temperature) or fanning their wings at the entrance (to decrease the temperature).  What's striking is that scientists have found that hives with greater genetic diversity (more drone fathers) are better at maintaining the temperature within a constant range compared to hives with less diversity (few drone fathers).  In other words, greater diversity actually produces more stability!  

Similarly, even though greater diversity allows the hive to thrive, the bees still need to work together and collaborate for the greater good of the collective group.  Winston writes, "Honey bee workers spend considerable time in the hive listening to each other, picking up information about what needs to be done within the colony and what might be happening outside that requires their attention."  It is a beautiful, even if paradoxical metaphor for how individuals work together in a group.  Greater diversity leads to greater stability and allows the group to thrive.  Yet, greater diversity requires more collaboration and work for the collective good.

Win today, pay for it tomorrow...

As many of you probably have guessed by now, I am a huge sports fan.  While I've never played organized baseball, it's probably one of my favorite sports to watch.  And like many baseball fans, I was excited about the possibility that my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, would sign free agent phenom Shohei Ohtani (there were rumors, but unfortunately I don't think the Cubs were ever in serious competition to sign Ohtani).  Ohtani is a once in a lifetime talent - not only is he a dominant starting pitcher, he's also a dominant hitter.  Despite the fact that he is not likely to pitch for at least one season due to Tommy John surgery, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed him over the weekend on a record contract of $700 million over 10 years.  What's even more incredible about this contract is that Ohtani himself requested that most of the money would be paid long after he was done playing baseball!

Ohtani will make $2 million per year over the next 10 years ($20 million in total), while the remaining $680 million will be paid starting in 2034, when he will be paid $68 million per year until 2043!  The deferred money will be paid without interest.  What' surprising to me about this deal is that it was Ohtani's choice!  I don't know his motivation for sure, but I suspect he's figured out that by being paid less now, the Dodgers will have the opportunity to pay other superstars on their roster so that the team can win championships now.  In other words, it's a "win today, pay for it tomorrow" strategy!

This is not like the infamous Bobby Bonilla Day, when former New York Mets slugger Bobby Bonilla gets paid just over $1.19 million on every July 1st from 2011 to 2035.  Bonilla signed what was at the time a record-setting contract ($29 million spread out over 5 years) in 1991.  He played for three and a half seasons with the Mets before being traded to the Florida Marlins, who traded him back to the Mets in 1997.   Rather than paying the remaining $5.9 million owed to Bonilla, the Mets chose to defer the remaining money with interest in order to release Bonilla in 2000.  At the time, the Mets owners were expecting a huge pay-out from an investment with Bernie Madoff, an American financier and criminal mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history.  Unfortunately, that investment didn't work out for the Mets, so now they are paying for it over time. 

It's not that unusual for teams to defer large contracts over several years.  What's unusual is for an athlete to request it.  Only time will tell whether Ohtani's gamble (if a deferred payment scheme can be called that) on winning now will actually pay-off.  For now, I will continue to watch to see if there are more contracts like this one in the future.  

"Chop wood, carry water"

I've been traveling for the past week, so I haven't been doing much writing, but I have been doing a lot of reading (long flights are good for that).  I just finished the book Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty.  In many ways, this book is similar to Sacred Hoops, which I recently posted about as well.  However, rather than covering just the first of three of his eleven NBA championships as a head coach, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success covers all of them, from his six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls to his five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers.  There are many, many leadership nuggets in this book as well, which I hope to return to in future posts.

If you anything about Phil Jackson, you will know that he really likes Eastern philosophy, and he is often referred to as the "Zen Master" (see his book Sacred Hoops).  In the book on his eleven NBA championships, Jackson mentions a famous Zen Buddhist dictum that states, "Before enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water.  After enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water."  Enlightenment is the ultimate goal of the Buddhist religion - it is a state of perfect peace where there is no suffering (it's also known as "Nirvana").  "Nirvana" represents the highest attainment that a Buddhist can achieve.  "Chop wood, carry water" means that no matter how accomplished we are, how wise we have become, or what heights of ultimate success we have attained, there will always be mundane things that we have to do, because, well, that's life.  Even the famous celebrities and superstars put their pants on one leg at a time.  Remembering the phrase will help keep you grounded.  And no matter what your profession is - whether it's sports or medicine or business - there are always going to be basic fundamentals that you have to master and practice, over and over and over again.  Chop wood, carry water.

Practice makes perfect

I am a huge college football fan!  Our family can legitimately claim allegiance to some of the most storied college football programs in history (as well as some of the not so storied ones).  One of our daughters attended the University of Alabama during an incredibly successful run (they won the national championship twice and appeared in the national championship title game all four years).  I've posted several times about the Crimson Tide football team and, in particular, their head coach Nick Saban (see "Chemistry is Culture", "Roll Tide!", "The Process", and "The half-time rally").  Saban has won seven national championships as a head coach (including his first when he coached at LSU), the most in college football history.  He has been the focus of at least one Harvard Business School case study (see "Embracing the Process"), as well as at least two books on leadership (see The Management Ideas of Nick Saban and Nick Saban and The Process).  Whether you like him or not, he will go down in history as one of the greatest college football coaches ever, due to his unprecedented success in arguably one of the most difficult and competitive periods in which to be successful as a college football head coach.

What is the secret to Coach Saban's success?  He calls it "The Process" and describes it as follows, "The process is really what you have to do day in and day out to be successful.  We try to define the standard that we want everybody to sort of work toward, adhere to, and do it on a consistent basis.  And the things that I talked about before, being responsible for your own self-determination, having a positive attitude, having great work ethic, having discipline to be able to execute on a consistent basis, whatever it is you're trying to do, those are the things that we try to focus on, and we don't try to focus as much on the outcomes as we do on being all that you can be."

The process boils down to these simple rules (as listed by Patrick Zeis ):

1. Focus all of your energy on the present moment.
2. Remember that everything matters ("attention to detail")
3. Eliminate distractions and outside noise.
4. Relinquish your attachment to outcomes
5. Develop toughness and discipline to face adversity
6. Compete against yourself while being accountable to others
7. Refuse to get comfortable

Today I want to focus on rule #2 above - "Remember that everything matters" or "Attention to detail."  I see a lot of parallels to the High Reliability Organization principles of "Preoccupation with Failure", "Reluctance to Simplify", and "Sensitivity to Operations" here.  Simply stated, Coach Saban prepares his team for any and all contingencies ahead of time so that when they encounter a difficult situation, they know exactly what to do.  Case in point - watch the play in the final seconds of this year's Iron Bowl match-up against their in-state rival Auburn University (see video clip here).  With his team losing 24-17 on a fourth down and forever (actually, it was fourth down and goal from the 31 yard line due to a couple of really awful plays on 2nd and 3rd downs), Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe somehow found wide receiver Isaiah Bond in the end zone to put Alabama up 27-24 (after the extra point)!  During the post-game interview, Saban said, "Believe it or not, we actually practice that play every Friday."  He went on further to say, "When we do walk-through, when we do special-situations. We get in that formation, everybody runs down the field and runs pairing routes in the end zone. Jalen made a great throw, but IB really kind of got himself into position where there was some room to throw it. He pushed inside, the DB was inside of him and then he came back out and Jalen threw it back out to him. It was a great catch, and a great throw, but that is a play that we actually work on."

In other words - an important, perhaps even critical, part of "The Process" is practice.  High Reliability Organizations understand that you cannot simulate every possible contingency, but they also recognize that practicing and simulating for specific situations that may be encountered is critical to successfully navigating a world filled with complexity and chaos.  It is that "attention to detail" that helped prepare Alabama's offense for executing that play under the most difficult of circumstances with the clock winding down.  Even Coach Saban recognizes that there is always a little bit of luck involved, but the best organizations create their own luck by preparing for as many possible scenarios as possible.

My car is allergic to vanilla ice cream...

Once again, I will credit my Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt Certification course for the inspiration for today's post.  I don't know if the following story is true or not, but I thought the lesson at the end was important.  I hope you think so too!

Apparently, the Pontiac Division of General Motors (note that the Pontiac brand was discontinued in 2010) once received the following customer complaint:

This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not replying to me because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of ice cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies.  I noticed that whenever I buy a vanilla ice cream when I return from the store, my car won't start.  If I get any other flavor of ice cream, the car starts just fine.  I want you to know I'm serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds.  I recently purchased a brand new Pontiac, and since then, my trips to the store have created a problem.

The customer admitted that he understood why the Customer Service Department didn't believe his story, but that he himself believed that his new car was allergic to vanilla ice cream or something like that.  The Customer Service Department ignored the first complaint, but decided to investigate further after the second complaint.  They sent an engineer to interview the family and check the car out further.  The engineer thought that the whole story was nonsense, but he decided that he better do as he was told.

The engineer was surprised after meeting the customer, because he seemed like a well educated individual.  She checked out the car and couldn't find anything wrong with it.  However, because the man continued to plead with her, the engineer decided that she would approach the problem systematically, as she had been taught.  She drove with the customer to the ice cream store and ordered vanilla ice cream.  When they came out to the car, the car wouldn't start.

Now the engineer was intrigued!  The man had been right after all.  They returned at the same time on the next three nights, each time ordering a different flavor of ice cream.  The car started fine when they ordered chocolate, strawberry, and even pistachio ice cream.  However, on the fourth night, they again ordered vanilla ice cream and the car wouldn't start.  

The engineer refused to believe that the car was allergic to vanilla ice cream.  She had recorded every detail of the interaction over the course of the preceding five nights (vanilla-chocolate-strawberry-pistachio-vanilla), including the time of day, the amount of gas in the tank, the time it took to drive to and from the ice cream store (which included the time spent in the ice cream store).  After analyzing her results further, she noticed an important clue!  The man took significantly less time in the store when he purchased vanilla ice cream compared to the other flavors.  

When the engineer investigated further, she learned that vanilla was the most popular flavor sold at that ice cream store, and the owner had placed all of the vanilla ice cream at the front of the store.  All of the other flavors were sold at a separate counter at the back of the store.  Also, the owner was trying to hire more ice cream servers, and because his shop was understaffed, it took more time to purchase all of the other flavors (the customers had to wait longer in line).

So, whenever the man bought vanilla ice cream, he spent only a few minutes in the store.  Whenever he bought another flavor of ice cream, he spent about 5-10 minutes in the store.  Knowing cars as well as she did, the engineer knew the answer to the problem.  The car wasn't allergic to vanilla ice cream, the car was suffering from a problem known as "Vapor Lock".  

Now I don't know anything about cars, but apparently "Vapor Lock" used to occur with older cars and was a problem caused by liquid fuel changing to a gaseous state while still in the fuel delivery system. This disrupted the operation of the fuel pump, causing loss of feed pressure to the carburetor or fuel injection system, resulting in transient loss of power or complete stalling (most newer engines have been designed to avoid this problem).  The problem was more common in warmer temperatures and with newer cars.  

When the man purchased vanilla ice cream for his family, his car developed "Vapor Lock".  The car was still warm, and hence still susceptible to vapor lock.  However, when he took longer to purchase the other flavors, there was sufficient time for the vapor lock to dissipate, so the engine would start normally.

Apparently this story was also told on the NPR talk show, "Car Talk".  The lessons here for us are to (1) take all customer complaints seriously, no matter how weird they sound; (2) follow what High Reliability Organizations do by not oversimplifying a complex problem ("Reluctance to Simplify"); and (3) follow an analytic approach to solve complex problems.

"Sacred Hoops"

I recently finished Sacred Hoops by the Hall of Fame basketball coach Phil Jackson.  Jackson's Hall of Fame biography starts with, "Intellectual, spiritualist, maverick, athlete, coach - Phil Jackson is equal parts all five. But while Jackson was a modestly successful player in the NBA, it is as a coach that he leaves his footprint on the history of the game. Installing the complex triangle offense and employing a coaching philosophy heavily influenced by Native American and Eastern philosophy, Jackson has been at the helm of not one, but two of the greatest dynasties in NBA history."  Coach Jackson wrote Sacred Hoops shortly after Michael Jordan returned from his first retirement (which incidentally occurred just over 30 years ago this past month) to play again for the Chicago Bulls in 1995.  It is in part an autobiographical sketch of his early life and 12 -year playing career with the New York Knicks (in which he won two NBA Championships), as well as his early coaching career with the Continental Basketball Association (he coached the Albany Patroons to the 1984 CBA Championship) and Chicago Bulls (first as an Assistant under Doug Collins and later as the Head Coach, during which time the Bulls won the first of three NBA Championships).

Sacred Hoops was an interesting read and brought me back to some childhood and early adulthood memories.  I also appreciated Coach Jackson's philosophical lessons describing his approach to coaching (and really, life).  I've posted a couple of these lessons in the past, which came up in the book (see "The strength of the wolf is the pack..." and "White elephants and Wheelwrights").  Coach Jackson references an article by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne that appeared in the July-August 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review entitled "Parables of Leadership" (the story I mentioned in my post "White elephants and Wheelwrights" appears in this article).  The parables mentioned in this article are certainly very interesting, but I was particularly impressed by the authors' definition of leadership, which is perhaps one of the best definitions that I've ever seen.  

First, Kim and Mauborgne argue that perhaps leadership can't be defined.  They write, "The essence of leadership cannot be reduced to a series of personal attributes nor confined to a set of particular roles and activities. It is like the challenge of describing a bowl: we can describe a bowl in terms of the clay from which it is made. But a true picture must include the hollow that is carved into the clay—the unseen space that defines the bowl’s shape and capacity."

Second, Kim and Mauborgne argue that the parables mentioned in the article suggest that there are certain "essential qualities of leadership that define a leader: the ability to hear what is left unspoken, humility, commitment, the value of looking at reality from many vantage points, the ability to create an organization that draws out the unique strengths of every member."  

Third and ultimately, Kim and Mauborgne do provide a definition for leadership, writing that leadership is "the ability to inspire confidence and support among the men and women on whose competence and commitment performance depends."  I am reminded of a quote by the late Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, former President of the University of Notre Dame ("Father Ted").  He said, "The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet."  Leadership involves inspiring others to believe in that vision with all of their heart, mind, and soul.  

Early morning brain teasers?!?!

My morning routine is fairly regimented, as I have discussed in several previous posts (see "Feierabend", and "What is your morning cup of Joe?").  I've slightly adjusted my usual morning routine over the years, but certainly nothing drastic.  I've learned the hard way what happens when you try to drastically disrupt your normal morning routine (see "Today, I was a doofus...maybe I should use a checklist?").  

Starting the day off right is really important.  I've previously posted about the importance of getting a good start to the day by tackling the most difficult problems first (see "Eat that frog!").  If you've read retired U.S. Navy Admiral William H. McRaven's book Make Your Bed (or watched his 2014 commencement speech at the University of Texas), you will know that he recommends starting off every day with an easy win, i.e. making your bed.  I recently came across a blog post by Keith McNulty on Medium that recommends starting every day off with a math brain teaser ("Start Your Day with Math") - more on this in a minute.

Over the course of the past couple of years, I've added a few puzzles to my usual daily routine.  While I may vary the time (before or after breakfast, during the train ride to or from work, etc), I try to complete the New York Times Wordle, the New York Times Mini-Crossword Puzzle, and the daily Woodoku puzzle every day.  I've also been trying to complete a few lessons in German on the Duolingo foreign language app.  While these puzzles are not too hard, I do feel a sense of accomplishment whenever I successfully solve them.  

Keith McNulty recommends a similar approach, but rather than word puzzles, he recommends attempting to solve a difficult math problem every morning.  McNulty writes, "Every morning before I start work I tackle a math problem. I schedule 30 minutes to solve this problem, and if I don’t succeed I stick with it the next morning and subsequent mornings until I have solved it and I am ready to move on to the next."  He claims that solving (or attempting to solve) a math problem (1) trains your brain to be organized, logical and systematic, (2) exercises a muscle in your brain where you can relate seemingly separate concepts and see important connections between them, (3) helps you learn math (personally I'm not so sure about this one), and perhaps most importantly, (4) solving a problem generates an endorphin hit and provides you with a confidence to start your day.  On this last point, McNulty claims, "The impact of this on your daily performance should not be underestimated. Think about it as a sparring session before the real deal."

Interestingly enough, I seem to recall that my favorite math teacher (my wife!) starts off every class with what she calls a "warm-up", a semi-difficult math problem.  Perhaps I will add (pun intended) a math problem to my daily routine.  Or maybe not.

Thanksgiving and Gratitude

Today, November 23, 2023, many of us here in the United States will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends.  There are many traditions associated with this holiday, but there's one that I am particularly fond of - the simple act of expressing gratitude for everything that we have and to all of the individuals in our lives.  You can say "Thank you" to your family, friends, and co-workers.  You can be thankful for your happiness, health, or good fortune.  It doesn't matter as much - just being thankful and appreciative and showing your gratitude is important.

What's often lost, however, is the importance of taking the time to give thanks and express your gratitude and appreciation throughout the year, not just on the Thanksgiving holiday.  I've posted about why leaders need to say "Thank you" several times in the past (see "Real leaders say thank you a lot...", "Gratitude" from 2017, "Gratitude" from 2023, and "The two most important words...").  Michael Timms, writing for Fortune magazine ("Great leaders show gratitude beyond Thanksgiving") suggests making gratitude a leadership strategy.  Timms suggests that expressing gratitude not only improves your own physical and mental health and wellbeing, it also encourages those who work with you and for you to be more effective and productive.  Employees that regularly receive praise and gratitude are more likely to stay at their jobs.  Timms writes, "Effective leaders know that if they want their people to continue working and producing results, they must recognize good behavior whenever they see it and express their appreciation.  If you don't thank people for their contributions, you'll breed resentment, and they'll stop contributing."

Erica Ariel Fox, a contributor for Forbes magazine ("Thanksgiving is more than a day.  It's a core leadership practice") agrees completely, writing that  "Having a designated day to do something calls our attention to it.  That's good.  The flipside is that observing such a day gives us the sense that we're done with it.  For leaders, Thanksgiving shouldn't be one of them."  She goes on, "Expressing gratitude requires slowing down, putting down our devices, shifting gears out of troubleshooting and feeling our emotions. We are conditioned to solve problems, deliver results and keep our emotions in check at work. We’re not taught to pause and connect to how we feel. It’s shocking to many leaders to learn that acknowledging the sincere thanks they feel toward their teams and then sharing it is a meaningful form of value creation. Far from a waste of time, your team’s performance over time may depend precisely on this."

Michael Timms provides several recommendations for how leaders can "make gratitude a leadership strategy" (aside from it just being the right thing to do) - he calls it the "10 commandments of grateful leadership":

1.  Leaders should be specific about what they are praising.  Leaders who simply tell someone "Good Job" may actually do more harm than good, as general as opposed to specific recognition will lead the individual being praised to feel that the leader really doesn't know what he or she did to deserve the recognition.

2.  Leaders should recognize and praise both the behavior and the impact.  After providing specific praise and gratitude for the behavior, leaders should highlight the positive impact that the behavior made on other individuals on the team or the organization as a whole.

3.  Leaders should recognize individual accomplishments as well as team accomplishments in order to reduce internal rivalries and improve collaboration between different groups.

4.  Leaders should link tie the recognition back to the organization's mission, vision, and values.

5.  According to a Gallup poll, the most meaningful recognition comes from an employee's direct manager, followed closely by praise from the CEO.  The CEO in any organization should be the Chief Gratitude Officer!

6.  Recognition in the form of monetary rewards is actually less effective (see several of my previous posts on the "crowding out effect" and intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation).  Leaders should make expressing gratitude about appreciating effort and contributions to the organization, not a transaction.

7.  Handwritten notes have been shown to be extremely effective, and they are often the most meaningful and memorable gestures of gratitude.

8.  Leaders should be genuine, authentic, and honest.  Don't force gratitude.  

9.  Leaders should thank their teams often.  Timms writes, "Praise has a short half life."  Leaders may find it helpful to actually schedule gratitude.

10. Leaders should always remember that "employees' performance isn't suffering from receiving too much gratitude from their employers, but it certainly is from receiving too little."

With all of this in mind, I would like to take this time out to say "Thank you" for all of you who have read my blog and have either provided me with feedback directly or indirectly in the comments you've sent me.  I continue to find value in putting my thoughts down on this "virtual paper" and I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute to the profession of leadership, even if in a small way.  I will leave today's post, as I often do, with a quote.  G.K. Chesterton said, "I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."  Happy Thanksgiving!

"You should only go to the refrigerator once..."

Okay.  Apparently I watched one or two video clips of The Brady Bunch on Facebook, because now my feed is full of old clips and recent updates on what the cast is doing now.  There's an episode during the first season (episode #24 to be exact, which first aired on television on March 13, 1970) where Mike and Carol Brady decide to change roles - Mike will help Marcia with her cooking merit badge, while Carol will help teach Greg and the boys how to bunt a baseball.  They both learn a very important lesson ("the grass isn't always greener on the other side" which incidentally is the title of the episode), but I wanted to focus on the scene where Mike is telling Marcia how to be more efficient in the kitchen.  He starts watching her go back and forth between the refrigerator and the counter and says, "Hold it.  No organization.  You should only go to the refrigerator once and take out everything you need, see?"  I won't tell you what happens next, so you will just have to watch the scene and see for yourself.

What's my point?  One of my goals this year was to finally take the step and obtain my Green Belt certification in Lean/Six Sigma (hopefully to prepare for my eventual Black Belt certification, but let's not get too far ahead).  As I am learning more about spaghetti diagrams, I can't help but think of Mike Brady in the kitchen.  Briefly, a spaghetti diagram is a pictorial representation that uses a continuous line to trace the path of an item or activity through a process.  It allows teams to identify redundant steps in the work flow, so that they can make reduce the number of steps and improve efficiency.  Here's an example:

It's amazing to see the number of steps (literally in this case) in the process before and after the improvement project.  Similarly, a value stream map is a flowchart that outlines the different steps in a process, again as a way of identifying any opportunities to make the process more efficient.  Again, in the example below, there is a significant difference between the "before" and "after" in the process itself.

During my online class, the instructor mentioned a scene from the 2016 movie "The Founder", starring Michael Keaton, Laura Dern, Nick Offerman, and John Carroll Lynch.  The movie tells the story about how Ray Kroc (played by Keaton) turned the two McDonald brothers' (played by Offerman and Lynch) fast food restaurant into the biggest restaurant business in the world.  Kroc was a traveling milkshake machine salesman and wanted to learn why a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California was ordering so many milkshake machines.  While there, he meets the McDonald brothers (Mac and Dick) who give him a tour of their restaurant McDonald's, a popular family-friendly, walk-up restaurant with fast service, high quality food, and disposable packaging.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Apparently (and according to my sources, this is exactly how it happened), the McDonald brothers actually drew a mock-up of their restaurant using chalk on a tennis court.  They would then bring their employees to the tennis court and simulate the restaurant's operations, identifying where they could make the operations more efficient.  In other words, they developed a large-scale spaghetti map!  It's really a great scene that perfectly illustrates the utility of spaghetti diagrams and Lean/Six Sigma (and it's a lot better example than the scene from The Brady Bunch!).

"These aren't the droids you're looking for..."

I remember going to a local movie theater (it was called the Eastwood) in 1977 to see the movie Star Wars for the first time. Believe it or not, nobody (except George Lucas) thought that the movie would be successful, so only a few theaters showed it.  As a matter of fact, the movie was shown at only 42 theaters nationwide during its opening over Memorial Day weekend!  There was really only one theater on the east side of Indianapolis that showed it - their investment paid off in the end because they were the only theater that was licensed to show the next two sequels.  I absolutely loved the movie, and I went back several times to see it again.  One of the coolest lines ever was the scene where Obi Wan Kenobi uses the "Jedi mind trick" on a couple of Imperial Stormtroopers (here's the clip).

Oh, how I wished at many times in my professional life that I could perform a "Jedi mind trick".  I've often said that one of the most difficult aspects of leadership is managing change, or at least convincing the individuals in an organization that change is necessary.  Wouldn't it be great if we could use the "Jedi mind trick" to convince the most resistant individuals to change?  I suppose it's for the best that we cannot, so we will just have to come up with a more suitable alternative when dealing with individuals who are resistant to change.  

Change is hard - for all of us.  Leading change is even harder.  Perhaps that's why there have been so many books, blog posts, articles, and even TED talks about how to effectively lead a group, team, or organization through change.  I've read about (and used) a number of different change models during my career, and while all of these models are similar, there's pro's and con's to each one.  I particularly like John Kotter's 8-step model (see a couple of my older posts: "Never let a good crisis go to waste" and "And the times, they are a changing..."):

Regardless of which model you prefer to use, I've found that successful change leadership requires three things (I call them the "Three P's of Change Leadership") - Passion, Patience, and Perseverance.

The first P stands for Passion.  Of interest, the word passion derives from a Latin word that literally means to suffer.  In other words, passion is the emotional characteristic that allows us to push beyond our comfort level, even pain, to achieve our goal.  I'm not saying that change has to be painful (even though it often can be emotionally painful), but without a certain requisite degree of passion for the change, a leader - and the organization - will give up at the first sign of trouble or difficulty.  

As Marko van Kalleveen writes in Forbes magazine, "Passion for the vision on the other side of a transformation allows stakeholders to hold fast, maintain morale, and see things through to the end. When widespread in an organization, it fosters the unity, conviction, and resolve it takes to move the needle."  He goes on to say, "As a leader, it’s important for you to exhibit the passion you wish to see in all your stakeholders. Even on days you’re not feeling very enthusiastic, fake it. I’ve found that when I put on the guise of passion, I often end up feeling more exuberant than before."  Passion is the emotional fuel that drives the commitment and dedication that is necessary to lead an organization through change.  Passion is fundamental to creating a climate for change (Steps #1-3 in Kotter's Change Model above).

The second P stands for Patience.  Don't expect to be successful as a change leader if you aren't patient.  Stephen Doiron, President of Change Management Professionals, Inc. believes that one of the greatest challenges for leaders is dealing with resistance to change.  Most of us don't like change, because it creates uncertainty and anxiety.  But that's not really the full story.  Doiron says that 70-80% of the people in an organization aren't resistant to change, but rather they are just "reluctant" because they are uncertain and anxious about the future state after the change (the original reference comes from a book by Douglas K. Smith Taking Charge of Change - 10 Principles for Managing People and Performance).  Change is a process, and change takes time.  As leaders of change, we have to bring others along with us - we do that by engaging and enabling the organization (see Steps #4-6 in Kotter's Change Model above).

The third P stands for Perseverance.  Perseverance and persistence are often used interchangeably.  President Calvin Coolidge once said, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan “press on” has solved—and always will solve—the problems of the human race."

Perseverance is not giving up.  It is that firm and almost obstinate commitment to stay with a course of action regardless of how difficult it is or how much it is opposed.  When I think of perseverance, I think of tenacity, grit, endurance, and resolve.  Perseverance is the key to lasting change - to making it stick (see Steps #7 and #8 in Kotter's Change Model above).

President John F. Kennedy once said, "Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."  What I stated earlier bears repeating here: Change is hard.  Leading change is even harder.  But it's a lot harder to learn how to perform the "Jedi mind trick".  Successfully leading an organization through change requires passion, patience, and perseverance.

Are you building or destroying value for your organization?

The McKinsey Quarterly just published (see "Some employees are destroying value. Others are building it. Do you know the difference?") the results of a thought-provoking study that I would like touch upon in today's post.  McKinsey surveyed 15,366 workers in seven countries from November 2022 to January 2023 about their job satisfaction, well-being, and self-reported performance, sorting them into different groups based upon their post-pandemic working model (mostly in-person, hybrid, or mostly remote).  Recognizing that self-reported performance data isn't always 100% accurate, the McKinsey investigators (Aaron De Smet, Marinbo Mugayar-Baldocchi, Angelika Reich, and Bill Schaninger) found that there are six distinct employee groups or archetypes across a spectrum of satisfaction, engagement, well-being, and performance.  These workers range from the highly dissatisfied and actively engaged on one end of the spectrum to the super-engaged and highly satisfied employees on the other end.  

These same investigators also estimated that employee disengagement and attrition cost a median-sized S&P 500 company between $228 million and $355 million a year in lost productivity, so now more than ever, focusing on employee engagement, well-being, satisfaction, and performance seems critical to the success of any organization.  The central challenge for leaders in an organization then is to figure out how best to move as many employees from the highly dissatisfied group as possible towards greater levels of engagement and commitment to the organization.  Importantly, the survey also found that the higher the level of satisfaction and commitment, the higher the well-being and self-reported performance (the converse is also true).    

So what are the six archetypes and what can leaders do to have an impact on them?  The first archetype, representing about 10% of the workforce are called "Quitters" (these are the individuals who may not necessarily be the lowest performers in the organization, but they are certainly the least satisfied and committed and may already be contemplating leaving the organization).  "Disruptors" comprise about 11% of the workforce and represent those actively disengaged employees who are staying in the organization byt either "quiet quitting" or "loud quitting" (i.e., openly expressing their negativity about the organization).  The "Disruptors" are "productivity and energy vampires" literally decreasing the motivation, drive, and engagement of everyone around them.  They also tend to create additional work due to their lack of productivity and impact on everyone else's morale.  The "Mildy Disengaged" comprise about 32% of the workforce and represent those employees who report below-average commitment and performance.  These employees are neither satisfied nor actively disengaged and disruptive.  However, they do the bare minimum required of their jobs.  

Taken together, the bottom three archetypes account for nearly half of an organization's workforce!  The good news is that with the right approach, most of these employees can be re-energized and re-engaged to improve their level of commitment to the organization.  And as mentioned earlier, the higher the level of engagement and commitment, the higher the performance.

The "Double-dippers" comprise about 5% of the workforce and are individuals who likely hold two or more jobs without the employer's knowledge.  This category has become more common with the change to remote work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.  These employees are evenly split between those who are engaged and contributing to the organization's success and those who are disengaged and are not contributing.  The "Reliable and Committed" comprise about 38% of the workforce and are those satisfied and committed employees who are reliable performers that often go above and beyond for their organization.  The last archetype are the "Thriving Stars" who comprise about 4% of the organization's workforce.  These rare employees are highly committed and engaged and bring disproportionate value to the organization as a result.  The most important consideration for this archetype is that they are at the highest risk of burn-out.

So what should leaders focus on to re-engage their employees?  After looking at 12 factors that affect employees' satisfaction and commitment levels, the investigators found that nearly two-thirds of the total cost of disengagement could be explained by the top six factors, in terms of relative contribution to disengagement costs:

1. Inadequate total compensation

2. Lack of meaningful work

3. Lack of workplace flexibility

4. Lack of career development and advancement

5. Unreliable and unsupportive people at work

6. Unsafe workplace environment

Prioritizing these six factors could recoup a significant proportion of the money lost to disengagement, which will create value to the organization in the end.    

The Power of Empowerment

I often talk about High Reliability Organizations (HRO) and the concept of "Deference to Expertise".  Retired Navy Captain David Marquet wrote about a similar concept in his book, Turn the Ship Around!  He calls it "pushing authority to information".  

Many traditional organizations are based upon hierarchy, where the individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy have the information but not the authority to make decisions.  The solution to this mismatch between authority and information is to push information to authority, i.e. develop ways for information on the frontlines to be shared with those individuals at the top of the hierarchy who have the authority to make decisions.  Marquet argues that this is the wrong way to think about it.  The correct way, consistent with the HRO principle of  "Deference to Expertise" is to take the authority for making decisions and push it down to the individuals who have the information!  These organizations are more responsive, agile, and resilient.  More importantly, the individuals working in these organizations are more engaged and satisfied with the work they do every day.  It's the power of empowerment!

HRO leaders empower the members on their team by delegating authority and decision-making, sharing information, and asking for their input.  Allan Lee, Sara Willis, and Amy Wei Tan wrote about empowerment in a Harvard Business Review article ("When empowering employees works, and when it doesn't"), based partly on a meta-analysis they published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.  Their meta-analysis included the results of 105 studies with data from more than 30,000 employees in 30 different countries.  They found that:

1. Empowering leaders (i.e. those who "defer to expertise" or "push authority to information") are much more effective at influencing their team member's creativity and citizenship behavior (those activities that are not formally recognized or rewarded, such as helping co-workers or attending work functions that aren't mandatory).

2. Empowering leaders are more likely to be trusted by their team members (compared to leaders who don't empower their teams).

I talked about the psychological need for autonomy and its effect on motivation in two recent posts (see "Optimal Motivation" and "Junk food satisfies you for a minute...healthy food satisfies you for life!").  Autonomy and empowerment are pretty much one in the same here.  As the saying goes, "Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others."

Out of the hole, around the tree, and back in the hole!

Managing change is hard.  But do you know what else is hard?  Tying a bowline knot.  I learned how to tie a bowline when I was a Boy Scout (I seem to remember that you had to be able to successfully tie a bowline before achieving the rank of First Class, but I could be wrong).  It is an ancient knot that is used to form a fixed loop at the end of a rope, and it is sometimes referred to as the "King of Knots" because it is so useful.  Here are the steps for tying a bowline and what it looks like at the end:

I was taught to remember the following phrase when tying a bowline: The rabbit comes out of the hole (see step 3 in the figure above), goes around the tree (see step 4), and goes back in the hole (see step 5).  I suspect that this is one of the more common ways that individuals are taught how to tie the bowline, but I also learned a quick method to tie a bowline using only one hand (see the video link here).  I could probably still figure out the one-handed method if I sat and thought about it, but if you asked me to tie a bowline quickly and without thinking about it, I would definitely go with the more common "rabbit method" used in the figure above.  That's the way I was first taught, and it's fairly fool-proof (as long as you make the first loop - the "hole" - correctly in step 2).

As it turns out, there's a good reason that I go back to the "rabbit method".  Whenever individuals are under stress, they often go back to their earliest learned behavior.  There's a famous study from the 1950's that proves it ("Regression under stress to the first learned behavior").  Richard Barthol and Nani Ku randomly assigned 18 college students to one of two groups.  Both groups were taught how to tie the bowline knot using the two methods above.  The first group learned the "rabbit method" first, while the second group learned the quicker one-handed method first.  After successfully tying a bowline several times, the students were taught the second method about four days later.  

Here is where things get interesting.  The students were brought to a classroom in the early morning hours (1:00 AM) after being up all night at a dance party or after finishing a final exam for one of their classes.  They were all physically tired, mentally exhausted, and ready to go to bed.  The students were next administered a fairly difficult standardized intelligence test.  The test has 16 different sections and normally takes about 40-60 minutes to complete.  However, the investigators made the students complete each section separately over the course of 3 1/2 hours.  They weren't allowed to talk, leave the room, or engage in any other activities during this time.  At the conclusion of the test, they were called out individually out of the room and asked to tie a bowline as quickly as possible.

Sixteen of the students (i.e. all but two) tied a bowline using the method that they first learned above.  In other words, if they were taught the "rabbit method" first, they used the "rabbit method".  If they were taught the one-handed method first, they used the one-handed method.  Barthol and Ku concluded that "if a person has learned two alternate responses to a stimulus and is placed under stress unrelated to the behavior being observed, he or she responds to the stimulus with the earlier learned behavior pattern."  

What's the take-home message here for leaders?  Hopefully my prompt about change management being hard at the beginning of this post will help you figure that out.  The lesson is that whenever individuals are stressed, due to fatigue, time constraints, or any combination thereof, they will invariably regress to their first learned behavior.  Think about what we do to minimize the risk of a central line infection - we teach clinicians to follow a specific sequence of behaviors whenever they access the line or change the dressing on the line.  Now suppose that new evidence comes out suggesting that a different method is more effective.  You can certainly teach the clinical teams the new method and reinforce it as much as possible.  However, as they go back to their normal daily routine, particularly if they are busy, the clinical team will revert back to the first way that they were taught to care for the central line!  As John Moran and Baird Brightman write in their article "Leading Organizational Change", "The old ways of doing things have a way of creeping back into practice..."

Change is hard, because new ways of doing things only work after we establish them as habit.  Unfortunately, whenever we are under stress (due to anxiety, fatigue, or time pressure, for example), we will revert back to the old way of doing things every time!

Happy Veterans Day 2023!

I know that today is not the 11th day of the 11th month, at least not yet.  But my iPhone calendar app tells me that today is when most of the U.S. is celebrating Veterans Day, a day in which we celebrate all the men and women who served in the United States Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Space Force. 

Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice Day to mark the end of World War I (remember being taught that World War I ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month?). President Woodrow Wilson issued a message to the people of the United States on the very first Armistice Day, in which he expressed what he felt the day meant to Americans:

“To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the council of nations.”

Congress passed a law on May 13, 1938 which officially made November 11th a legal holiday, “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

Unfortunately, World War I wasn’t the “war to end all wars” as everyone had believed. World War II veteran Raymond Weeks had the idea to celebrate all veterans on Armistice Day, not just those who died in World War I. Weeks led the first celebration in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, a tradition that he continued until his death in 1985. It was President Dwight Eisenhower who signed a bill on May 26, 1954 to recognize November 11th as Veterans Day, a national holiday. President Ronald Reagan awarded Weeks the Presidential Citizenship Medal in 1982 as the driving force for the national holiday.

Importantly, while the holiday is commonly printed as “Veteran’s Day” (with an apostrophe before the letter ‘s’), the official spelling is “Veterans Day” (without the apostrophe), as the holiday is not a day that belongs to veterans, but rather a day to honor all veterans. Also, the term “veteran” is defined as “a person who served in the active military, naval, or air service and who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable.” In other words, even if you only served in peace time and never war time, you are still a veteran.

For those of you who’ve followed my posts in the past, you know that I like quotes.  Here is one of my favorites, from the 2005 movie “Coach Carter” starring Samuel L. Jackson (check out the scene here).  I think the original quote comes from a poem by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

If you are a veteran, or if you just know someone who is a veteran, let your light shine.  

For all of you who served, thank you.  Happy Veterans Day!

Junk food satisfies you for a minute...healthy food satisfies you for life!

Last time I wrote about a concept called "Optimal Motivation" and Susan Fowler's book, Why Motivating People Doesn't Work...And What Does.  Fowler writes, "As a leader, you cannot motivate anyone. What you can do is cultivate a workplace where it is more likely for someone to experience optimal motivation."  As Fowler defines it, optimal motivation is the result of satisfying three universal psychologic needs - autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  On a high level:

Autonomy is the motivation that comes from choosing to do something as opposed to the motivation that comes from having to do it.

Relatedness is the motivation that is generated from values, love, joy, or compassion as opposed to the motivation that generated by power, ego, status, or a desire for external awards.

Competence is the motivation that comes from a desire to excel, learn, and grow as opposed to the motivation that comes from seeking to be better than someone else, impress, or gain favors.

I wanted to briefly talk about one more concept that I learned from reading Fowler's book, something that she calls the "Spectrum of Motivation".  I've talked about the principal differences between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation in the past (see "Holes", "Lessons from Gross Anatomy", and "Knights, Knaves, and Pawns").  Extrinsic motivation is the kind of motivation that is driven by external rewards (usually tangible rewards, such as money or grades but also intangible rewards such as praise or status).  Conversely, intrinsic motivation is the kind of motivation that is driven by the inherent satisfaction of performing a job well done.  Most studies suggest that intrinsic motivation is far more effective than extrinsic motivation, and while Susan Fowler agrees, she suggests that its not quite that as simple as intrinsic versus extrinsic.  Rather, there is a spectrum of motivation.  Importantly, this is not necessarily a continuum, as people can jump around from one bubble to the next in the Figure below.

As Fowler explains, there are five main reasons why individuals are motivated to perform a task or demonstrate a certain behavior.  The more an individuals basic psychological needs (ARC above) are met, the more positive their level of motivation.  There are six outlooks below, one of which is basically zero motivation to do something (hence the reference to five reasons why individuals are motivated, not six):

1. Disinterested Motivational Outlook - You do not find the value in it. 

2. External Motivational Outlook - There is an external reason, such as increasing position, power, status or money.

3. Imposed Motivational Outlook - You feel pressure or wish to avoid the feeling of guilt.

4. Aligned Motivational Outlook - You were able to link the task to a significant value.

5. Integrated Motivational Outlook - You were able to link the task to a purpose. 

6. Inherent Motivational Outlook - You simply enjoy performing the task.

Referring again to the Figure, three of these outlooks are labeled as suboptimal (disinterested, external, and imposed).  Fowler calls these three outlooks motivational junk food, in that they reflect low-quality motivation (junk food may satisfy our hunger, but it's not very healthy for us).  There are also three outlooks labeled optimal (aligned, integrated, and inherent).  Fowler calls these three outlooks motivational health food, since they reflect high-quality motivation.  The goal for leaders is to focus on developing optimal motivation!

I like that Fowler chooses not to describe motivation as a single dichotomous variable (extrinsic versus intrinsic), and I believe her model is more realistic.  As the old saying goes, "Junk food satisfies you for a minute.  Healthy food satisfies you for life."

Optimal Motivation

I recently read Why Motivating People Doesn't Work...And What Does by Susan Fowler.  She also wrote an excellent article in Harvard Business Review "What Maslow's Hierarchy Won't Tell You About Motivation", which provides a nice, concise summary of some of the concepts that she discusses in her book.  Fowler's main points can be best summarized with the statement, "The reason why motivating people doesn't work is because people are always motivated. The question is not if they are motivated but why they are motivated."  She goes to talk about the relatively new science of motivation, and I wanted to highlight some of her points in today's post.

Most leaders and managers have probably heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a concept that the psychologist Abraham Maslow first proposed in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the journal Psychological Review.  His idea was that people are motivated by satisfying their lowest level needs, such as food, water, shelter first before they can move on to being motivated by higher-level needs such as self-actualization.  Maslow's theory is frequently displayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization and transcendence at the top.  Incidentally, the famous pyramid does not exist anywhere in either Maslow's original work or follow-up publications.  Just as important, despite its popularity, there is not much recent data to support Maslow's hierarchy.

As Fowler discusses in both her HBR article and book, most of the recent research (see in particular the research by Edward Deci) point to three universal psychological needs - autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  These three basic psychological needs are the key drivers of motivation and engagement.  Let's take a close look at these three universal human needs.  It's interesting, a found an online post by Fowler in which she listed the three basic universal needs as choice, connection, and competence.  These are different terms for the same concepts, and the fact that they all begin with the letter "c" makes them easy to remember ("the three C's of motivation").  Those of you who have read Daniel Pink’s book Drive will recognize the similarity to the factors he promotes (autonomy, mastery, and purpose).  Relatedness is human connection, versus Pink’s promotion of a higher purpose, otherwise the ideas are similar.  Regardless of which terms you decide to use, the concepts are similar and are critically important for helping create the optimal environment for motivation.  

Autonomy is frequently defined as an individual's need to perceive that he or she has choices in both what they are doing and how they are doing it.  Fowler writes in her book, "Diverse studies over the past twenty years indicate that adults never lose their psychological need for autonomy.  For example, productivity increases significantly for blue-collar workers in manufacturing plants when they are given the ability to stop the line.  So does the productivity of white-collar workers in major investment banking firms who report a high sense of autonomy.  Employees experience autonomy when they feel some control and choice about the work they do."  

Relatedness has to do with an individual feeling as though he or she is connected to others and the work that they are performing together.  All of us want our work to have purpose and meaning.  It's often said, "The purpose of business is to make money."  Fowler counters, "Yes, a business must make a profit to sustain itself.  But it is an illogical leap to conclude that profit is therefore the purpose of business.  You need air to live, plus water, and food.  But the purpose of your life is not to just breathe, drink, and eat.  Your purpose is richer and more profound than basic survival.  The more noble your purpose and developed your values are, the more they influence how you live day to day.  The nature of human motivation is not about making money.  The nature of human motivation is in making meaning."

When I think of competence, I think of knowledge, skills, and expertise.  Here in this context though, competence refers more to an individual's need to feel effective at meeting the every-day challenges of his or her work and to feel as though he or she is growing and developing in that work.  Fowler suggests that the best way to help people develop competence is to ask one simple question at the end of each day.  She says, "Instead of asking, What did you achieve today?, ask What did you learn today?  How did you grow today in ways that will help you and others tomorrow?"

Fowler's key message is clearly stated, "As a leader, you cannot motivate anyone. What you can do is cultivate a workplace where it is more likely for someone to experience optimal motivation...Optimal motivation is the result of satisfying three basic psychological needs that lie at the heart of every human being's ability to thrive: autonomy, relatedness, and competence."  Importantly, "optimal motivation fuels employee work passion. Actively engaged employees have positive intentions to stay and endorse your organization, use discretionary effort and organizational citizenship behaviors on behalf of the organization, and perform above expected standards."

White Elephants and Wheelwrights

I recently read an interesting article that appeared in the Ivey Business Journal written by Keith Grint.  It's an older article, but the concepts that Grint discussed really resonated with me.  I've posted several times about Grint's leadership framework involving wicked versus tame problems (see "Tame the Chaos?" for the most recent post on this framework).  The article ("Leadership Ltd: White Elephant to Wheelwright") starts with what I think is a profound concept, "Business history tells us that leaders don't have to be perfect.  But they must recognize that their imperfections, their limitations, for example, will doom them to failure unless they rely on their subordinates and followers to fill in the gaps."

Unfortunately, at least according to Grint, we often assume (or at least expect) that our leaders are going to be perfect - they are always going to make the right decisions and they always know the right thing to say or do.  Given this pedestal that we tend to place leaders upon, there is no problem that can't be solved with strong leadership.  The ancient Greek philosopher Plato believed in the concept that all leaders should be philosophers ("philosoper-kings"), writing in The Republic, "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils."  In other words, our leaders should be the wisest individuals with the greatest knowledge, skills, and morals.  

Grint talks about "white elephants" in this context.  White elephants were considered sacred in the ancient countries of Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia in particular).  To possess a white elephant was regarded as a sign that the monarch ruled with justice and power and that the kingdom would be blessed with peace and prosperity.  Because they were considered sacred, white elephants were not used for labor (and were therefore expensive to care for), so a gift of a white elephant was also considered to be both a blessing and a curse.  The gift was a blessing because the white elephant was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favor and a curse because the recipient now had an expensive-to-maintain animal that could not be given away and put to practical use doing work (this is where our modern usage of the term "white elephant" as a gift that is of little practical use and can't be easily given away).  Here, Grint refers to leaders who are assumed to have sacred, perhaps even mythical powers to solve problems, yet are unable to do so, as white elephants.

Grint goes on with a classic 2x2 matrix, with the degree of independence and autonomy (with respect to the leader's followers) on the horizontal axis and commitment to a shared goal (again, with respect to the leader's followers) on the vertical axis:

The top left quadrant describes "White elephants" (similar to Plato's philosopher-kings), who have an almost mythical or divine hold over their followers (high commitment, low autonomy).  Grint refers to the followers in this quadrant as "Disciple Followers".  The main problem here, as alluded to above, is that leaders are rarely, if ever, perfect.  In other words, the "Disciple Followers" provide "Constructive Consent" to follow their leaders, even when the leader is not perfect and what may be detrimental to the group or organization.

The bottom left quadrant describes "Emperors" (low commitment, low autonomy), the hierarchical, usually authoritarian leaders who rule with the proverbial iron fist.  Importantly, the leader doesn't have to be authoritarian here - for example, if the leader's subordinates (what Grint calls "Irresponsible Followers") blindly follow their leaders, they are providing what Grint refers to as "Destructive Consent".  For example, the followers may know that their leader is making the wrong decision, and yet they provide their consent by not speaking up or refusing to go along.  Whenever individuals blindly follow their leaders, we create conditions that are ripe for the phenomenon of groupthink, defined as the tendency for individuals who set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group in order to reach consensus (even when the group consensus is actually the wrong decision or approach).

The bottom right quadrant describes "Cat Herders" (low commitment, high autonomy).  Here, there is really no leadership at all and the fully "Independent Individuals" (note that they are no longer called "Followers" as there is no leader to follow) provide "Destructive Dissent" by virtue of the fact that they are just doing what they want to do without commiting to the goals of the group or organization.

The top right quadrant describes "Wheelwrights" (high commitment, high autonomy).  Here are the "Responsible Followers" who provide their "Constructive Dissent".  They recognize that nobody is omniscient and omnipotent, and when the leader is making the wrong decision they speak up and redirect the leader to move in the right direction.  The "Wheelwrights" create a psychologically safe environment where followers can feel comfortable raising their concerns.  Just as important, Grint suggests that "Wheelwright" leaders utilize a distributed leadership model ("Deference to Expertise"), depending upon the problem at hand, similar to a rowing team in which the leadership often switched between the coxswain, the captain, the stroke, and the coach, depending upon the needs of the situation at hand.

Grint further talks about the Prussian military general, Helmut von Moltke (von Moltke was Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army for 30 years from 1857-1888), who believed in a decentralized model of leadership.  As Grint writes, "..a central commander in Berlin, or even a few kilometers behind the battle, had no way of understanding, let alone controlling, what was happening in each and every sector of the battle.  The result was a system of leadership rooted in general directives, not specific orders; strategic aims, not operational requirements."  Note that this is the same philosophy that underlies the World War II era German Wehrmacht military doctrine of "auftragstaktik" and the modern U.S. military doctrine of "commander's intent", as well as the High Reliability Organization principle of "Deference to Expertise".  The concept here is that frontline leaders are provided with a set of overarching goals and objectives, as well as guardrails in which they have free reign to exercise their judgement and seize the initiative rather than waiting for approval from their superiors.

Grint ends the article with a story once re-told by legendary NBA basketball coach Phil Jackson about the 3rd century BC Chinese emperor Liu Bang.  Jackson apparently used the example in his book, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success (I just placed it on hold at our local public library). Liu Bang rose up from humble origins to become emperor - he was neither noble by birth or an expert in military affairs.  Once, at a state dinner, someone asked a military general named Chen Cen why Liu Bang was the emperor.  Chen Cen replied with a question, "What determines the strength of a wheel?"  The guest replied, "Is it not the sturdiness of the spokes?"  Chen Cen responded, "Then why is it that two wheels made of identical spokes differ in strength?  See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes, but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between them. The essence of wheel-making lies in the craftman’s ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?" 

Grint explains the "spaces between spokes" analogy further, "While the spokes represent the collective resources necessary to an organization’s success and the resources that the leader lacks, the spaces represent the autonomy for followers to grow into leaders themselves. In sum, holding together the diversity of talents necessary for organizational success is what distinguishes a successful leader from an unsuccessful one.  Leaders don’t need to be perfect, but they do have to recognize that their own limitations will ultimately doom them to failure unless they rely upon their subordinate leaders and followers to fill in the gaps."  The lesson here, be a wheelwright.