Thanksgiving

Today, many of us here in the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving 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.

The first children's hospital that I worked at (as a medical student) was Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis, named after the Indiana poet, James Whitcomb Riley.  Known as the "Hoosier Poet", Riley's poems were often written in a folksy dialect (in fact, the majority of his nearly 1,000 poems were written in dialect).  He is perhaps best known for his poems Little Orphant Annie (which inspired both the comic strip and the Broadway musical) and The Raggedy Man (which inspired the Raggedy Ann doll).  Appropriate for today's post, Riley also wrote a poem entitled Thanksgiving which I think reflects a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for all of the simple things in life:

Let us be thankful—not only because

   Since last our universal thanks were told

We have grown greater in the world’s applause,

   And fortune’s newer smiles surpass the old—

But thankful for all things that come as alms

   From out the open hand of Providence:—

The winter clouds and storms—the summer calms—

   The sleepless dread—the drowse of indolence.

Let us be thankful—thankful for the prayers

   Whose gracious answers were long, long delayed,

That they might fall upon us unawares,

   And bless us, as in greater need we prayed.

Let us be thankful for the loyal hand

   That love held out in welcome to our own,

When love and only love could understand

   The need of touches we had never known.

Let us be thankful for the longing eyes

   That gave their secret to us as they wept,

Yet in return found, with a sweet surprise,

   Love’s touch upon their lids, and, smiling, slept.

And let us, too, be thankful that the tears

   Of sorrow have not all been drained away,

That through them still, for all the coming years,

   We may look on the dead face of To-day.

And this year perhaps most of all, let us be thankful for the simple blessings of life.  In a world that is often filled with strife, conflict, and discord, let us be reminded of the spirit of harmony and peace.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

"The Art of Action"

I recently finished an incredible book by the British historian, management consultant, leadership expert, and author Stephen Bungay called The Art of Action.  The title of his book comes from a quote by the 19th century Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder), who said "Strategy is a system of expedients.  It is more than a science, it is the application of knowledge to practical life, the evolution of an original guiding idea under constantly changing circumstances, the art of taking action under the pressure of the most difficult conditions" (I added the underline).

I talked about Bungay previously in my post "Friction and Leadership", in which I discussed Bungay's three gaps - the Knowledge Gap (i.e. the gap between what leaders would like to know about a particular situation versus what they actually know), the Alignment Gap (i.e. the gap between what leaders want their teams to do versus what they actually do), and the Effects Gap (i.e. the gap between what is intended versus what is desired, in terms of outcomes).  The typical leadership response to these gaps is to demand more detail.  We close the Knowledge Gap by asking for more detailed data.  We close the Alignment Gap by issuing more detailed instructions.  And we close the Effects Gap by exercising more detailed control.  Unfortunately, these approaches almost never work, because we operate in a VUCA world.

Bungay talks about the right way to address these three Gaps by applying lessons learned about strategy and tactics from the Prussian military.  Prussian Army generals such as Carl von Clausewitz (who wrote the classic treatise on strategy On War) and von Moltke addressed the Knowledge Gap by limiting instructions and directions to simply articulating the strategic intent, focusing on the overall mission and specific objectives.  They addressed the Alignment Gap by allowing front-line leaders to define how they would achieve the mission and objectives.  And they addressed the Effects Gap by empowering front-line leaders to adjust their actions in line with the mission and objectives.  

As the business leader Jack Welch said in 1981, "The Prussian General Staff, under the elder von Moltke...did not expect a plan of operations to survive beyond the first contact with the enemy.  They set only the broadest of objectives and emphasized seizing unforeseen opportunities as they arose...Strategy was not a lengthy action plan.  It was the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances."

The back cover of the book (at least the edition that I checked out from our local public library) summarizes the theme of the book into three points:

1. Most managers see the key problem of strategy execution as getting people to do what is in the plans.  Actually the problem is usually in the plans specifying the results and the actions, not in the people.

2. When we aren't getting the results we want, we tend to react by going into more detail and exercising tighter control.  This just makes things worse.  What we need is not more detail but more clarity, not tighter control but better direction.

3. To execute effectively we need to abandon multiple objectives and decide what we really want; get the message across by telling people what to achieve and why, and asking them what they are going to do as a result; and give them freedom of action within defined boundaries.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's because I've written about these concepts over and over again.  These leadership concepts can be called Auftragstaktik, mission command, and "deference to expertise", and they were first described by Prussian military leaders like Clausewitz and von Moltke.  Bungay extends these lessons to organizations outside of the military.

What I also found interesting about the book is that Bungay incorporates concepts from fields such as chaos theory and complexity theory (specifically, complex adaptive systems) to extend and complement his own particular theories on leadership, many of which were first articulated by the Prussian generals that he so clearly admires.  For example, during Clausewitz's day, scientists tried but were unsuccessful in explaining in mathematical terms the behavior of a pendulum.  Scientists as brilliant and as famous as Isaac Newton could not calculate the motion of the moon orbiting the Earth while the Earth orbited the Sun - the so-called "three body problem".   Bungay suggests that the reason scientists consistently failed is because the science of the day was linear, yet the behavior of pendulums and the three body problem were non-linear.  

Recall that a linear system has two defining characteristics.  First, it is proportional, in that a small input produces a small output, and a large input produces a large output.  Second, it is additive, in that the whole is the exact sum of the parts.  Non-linear systems behave very differently, in that they are neither proportional (e.g. a small input can produce a large output) nor additive (the whole is, in fact, greater than the sum of the parts).  We live in a non-linear world, so we shouldn't think in linear terms.  That lesson was true for leadership in war (since Clausewitz and von Moltke's era), and it is even truer for leadership in general today.  Clausewitz applied terms like friction, chance, and unpredictably, to his theories on military strategy, and these concepts are found in chaos theory and complexity theory today.

Overall, Bungay provides some fascinating insights on leadership and strategy.  I left several dog-leaf marks on my library's copy, and I will likely purchase a copy of the book for future use and reference.  It's great when you discover that your own theories and beliefs about leadership align with others, which is probably why I liked this book so much.  I hope to discuss the book again, or at least some more concepts from the book, in future posts!

"Unstoppable Dreams"

There's a great commercial out right now for Honda called "Unstoppable Dreams".  It's narrated by the American actor and former WWE wrestler John Cenna and features footage of former Formula 1 World Champion Ayrton Senna, current Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen (who just clinched his fourth consecutive world championship), and seven-time world champion professional motorcross rider Jett Lawrence.  Cenna narrates a short poem that when talks about how many people give up when they experience failure.  The video montage shows Senna, Verstappen, and Lawrence all experiencing setbacks in their career.  As Cenna then reverses the order of the poem, the video montage shows how champions like Senna, Verstappen, and Lawrence turn their failures into success.  It's absolutely brilliant!

Here's the poem as it is first read:

You won't remember my name.

This is the last time

You will see me at the top.

My doubts 

Will destroy 

My dreams.

The more I seem to learn, 

The more I seem to lose.

I want to carry on, 

But not today.

This is the point I give up.

But simply reversing the order of the poem completely changes its meaning.  Here is the poem in reverse:

This is the point I give up, 

But not today.

I want to carry on.

The more I seem to lose, 

The more I seem to learn.

My dreams

Will destroy

My doubts.

You will see me at the top, 

This is the last time

You won't remember my name.

Sometimes, just a change in perspective can completely change your attitude.  Changing your perspective can turn inadequacy into persistence.  Changing your perspective can turn a loss into a win.  Perspective, attitude, persistence.  This is the heart of a champion.

"Subtract first, then multiply"

I've talked about the Eisenhower Matrix, which was first described by the author Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) in a previous post ("What is important is seldom urgent...").  The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool to help individuals prioritize tasks in order to maximize their productivity and goal achievement.  It's based upon a comment made by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States and former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, who famously once said, "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important.  The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."  

Prioritizing is an important skill for leaders.  Here is what a few other noted management thinkers have said about prioritizing:

Warren Buffet: "The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say 'no' to almost everything."

Steve Jobs: "Focusing is about saying no."

Peter Drucker: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

Brian Tracy: "Think on paper. Only about 3% of adults have clear, written goals. These people accomplish five to ten times as much as people without written goals."

Jim Collins: "If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any."

The last quote is notable, because it suggests that the number of priorities we should have at any given time can be measured in single digits!  What's true for individuals is, as it turns out, also true for organizations!  Bryant University Business School Professor Michael Roberto recently wrote a blog post in which he suggested that organizations should have less than five priorities (see "Five priorities is probably too many").  He references an article in Forbes magazine by Willie Pietersen, retired CEO of businesses Lever Foods, Seagram USA, and Tropicana entitled, "You can't have 5 priorities - even Steve Jobs and Bob Iger couldn't".  Pietersen writes that in the history of business, one thing is both universally true and abundantly clear: "Focus energizes, while complexity paralyzes."  

During Pietersen's 20 years as CEO of various organizations, he followed this mantra by limiting the number of priorities within his organization to five and asked each business unit within the organization to follow suit.  Even with this level of discipline though, he encountered problems.  He writes, "At progress review meetings I saw that executives were often trudging through these priorities mechanically like a checklist, without connecting them to a central strategic thrust or inspiring story." In response, he changed his approach slightly.  He continued to identify five priorities for the organization, but his team would next simplify these priorities into a few key drivers that would help them achieve the organization's priorities - this list of drivers seldom exceeded three.

Not surprisingly, Pietersen's approach is consistent with the available research in the fields of neuroscience and management theory.  Neuroscience researcher Nelson Cowan finds that people generally can only keep about four things in their so-called "working memory" at once.  Management researchers Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and James Yoder surveyed 132 senior executives and middle managers at a U.S.-based technology company with over 10,000 employees.  The CEO at the company was confident that the management team were 100% aligned on the company's five strategic priorities, which had in fact not changed in two years and were regularly communicated in a variety of venues.  Only one-quarter of the managers surveyed could list three of the company's five strategic priorities, and one-third could not list even one!  These results are, unfortunately, fairly typical.  In a follow-up survey involving 124 organizations, these investigators found that only 51% of C-suite leaders could list three of their company’s strategic priorities!  Alignment drops off precipitously beyond the C-suite, with 22%, 18%, and 13% of senior leaders, middle managers, and front-line supervisors able to list their company's top priorities, respectively.  

Anecdotally, both Steve Jobs and Bob Iger achieved unprecedented success at Apple and Disney, respectively, by focusing on 3-5 strategic priorities at any one time.  Jobs co-founded Apple and was forced out as CEO in 1985.  Following his departure, the company added a large and diverse variety of products and services under different CEO's, and by 1996 Apple was on the verge of collapse.  Jobs returned in 1997 and reduced Apple's product line by 70% and focused on just four key products.  He famously would end each year's annual retreat by challenging his top executives to identify 10 things that the company should do next.  He would next delete seven, saying "We can only do three."

Similarly, before Bob Iger was appointed as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, the board had asked him to define his strategic priorities for the company.  He started to make a list, and when he got to five, he quickly realized, "I hadn't prioritized any of them" and "My overall vision lacked clarity and inspiration."  He subsequently narrowed his list of priorities to three (content, technology, and globalization), and during his tenure (first stint) as CEO from 2005 to 2020, the company increased their market capitalization from $48 billion to $257 billion.  

Pietersen ends his article by stating, "Brain science dictates the rules of human performance.  To galvanize the limited attention of employees on the three or four priorities that matter most, the formula for success is: Subtract first, then multiply."

How do we define "reliability"?

I wanted to build upon the theme from last month on High Reliability Organizations.  How do we know when an organization may be legitimately called "highly reliable"?  Is there an objective measure of performance that organizations must achieve to become classified as High Reliability Organizations?  By extension then, can these same organizations "lose" their classification as a High Reliability Organization if they experience a catastrophic accident?  Alternatively, does the term High Reliability Organization represent some theoretically possible but realistically unattainable performance that organizations can only aspire to achieve?  As the legendary Hall of Fame Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, once said "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."

It seems like a good time to quickly go back and re-visit the history of the concept of a highly reliable organization, which was first described by an eclectic group of interdisciplinary researchers from the University of California, Berkley in 1984.  Todd LaPorte (a political scientist), Gene Rochlin (a physicist-turned-political scientist), and Karlene Roberts (a business school professor with an expertise in organization management) analyzed three vastly different organizations - the US Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (in partnership with retired Rear Admiral Tom Mercer), the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Control system, and Pacific Gas and Electric's nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon.  Importantly, these three organizations were selected out of convenience, not because of any randomization or pre-defined criteria (basically, they used what is called a "convenience sample").  These investigators identified a number of key characteristics that the three prototypical HRO's shared, which included "engaging in considerable delegation of decision making and responsibility; structuring themselves to quickly move from completely centralized decision making and hierarchy during periods of relative calm, to completely decentralized and flat decision structures during 'hot times'; engaging in constant training and developing strong cultures of safety orientation and simultaneously embracing a complicated mix of very old and very new technologies according to what is most appropriate to the task at hand" (see "Learning how organizations mitigate risk" in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management).

Importantly, most descriptions of so-called High Reliability Organizations fail to provide a definition of reliability in exact terms, i.e. the degree of reliability that is required in order for an organization to be classified as highly reliable.  For example, one article suggested that High Reliability Organizations could be identified by asking the following question: "How many times could this organization have failed, resulting in catastrophic consequences, that it did not?"  If the answer to the question was on the order of tens of thousands of times, then that organization could be classified as highly reliable (see "Some characteristics of one type of high reliability organisation" in the journal Organization Science).  While that definition makes sense, it is far from satisfactory.  As a matter of fact, Gene Rochlin himself said in 1993 (see "Defining high reliability organisations in practice: A taxonomic prologue" in Karlene Roberts' book, New Challenges to Understanding Organisations) that "no truly objective measure is possible" and "what distinguishes reliability enhancing organizations is not their absolute error or accident rate, but their effective management of innately risky technologies..."  Again, not very satisfying.  In the end, we are left with definitions that are both highly subjective and mostly descriptive in nature (see a great article by Andrew Hopkins "The Problem of Defining High Reliability Organisations").  

While I hesitate to add to the confusion here, I do think that it's important to quickly review some of the commonly used definitions of reliability (importantly - not necessarily high reliability).  For example, an error (or defect) rate is calculated by the number of errors that occur in a certain number of opportunities, typically expressed as the number of errors in 1,000 opportunities (or in some cases, per 1,000,000 opportunities).  Error rates can also be expressed as a percentage.  Finally, one commonly used method is to express the error rate on a logarithmic scale (10 raised to the negative power of X, where X denotes the denominator of the equation for error rates), as shown in the Table below.

For example, central line infections in a hospital's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are often expressed as the number of infections per 1,000 central line days (where the denominator is the number of opportunities for infection due to the presence of a central line).  Most ICU's have central line infection rates less than 1 infection per 1,000 line days, which would equate to Level 3 reliability (10 raised to the -3 power).  Notably, most airlines operate at around this same level of reliability when it comes to baggage handling (i.e., they lose 1 bag per 1,000 opportunities).  

I recently came across the mathematician Terrence Tao's system of classifying reliability based upon a concept that he calls the "Nines of Safety".  For example, if a process is reliable 90% of the time, Tao would say that the process has "one nine of safety".  Similarly, if a process is 99.9% reliable, Tao would say that the process has "three nines of safety" (which equates to Level 3 Reliability discussed above).  It's an interesting way of expressing reliability.

Note that I am avoiding a discussion on Six Sigma reliability (a topic for another, future post), which is similar yet distinct to the methods described above.  I think that all of these ways to classify reliability can be helpful, and I suspect that most so-called High Reliability Organizations operate at a reliability level of 4 or greater (1 error per 10,000 - 1,000,000 opportunities).  David Ikkersheim and Marc Berg have suggested (see "How reliable is your hospital?" in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety) that most hospitals operate at a reliability level of 1 or 2, which is consistent with my own experience and observations.  In other words, most hospitals are not at a point where we would consider them to be High Reliability Organizations.  Regardless, high reliability is certainly an important and attainable goal, so the journey to become a High Reliability Organization continues.

The Swing Route

My wife and I watched the new Netflix movie Lonely Planet, starring Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth the other night.  Dern plays a novelist, Katherine, who is struggling to write her next book, so she travels overseas to Morocco to a writer's retreat to "get away" and move past her writer's block.  Hemsworth's character, Owen, happens to be attending with his girlfriend, who is an up and coming novelist in her own right.  Katherine and Owen end up spending a day together on a sightseeing tour, and they end up falling in love.  As my father-in-law used to say, "It's a classic love story.  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl fall in love.  Boy and girl break up.  Boy and girl fall back in love."

Katherine ends up with a new book and a new partner.  She names her book after something that Owen had related to her from his high school football days, which essentially describes their relationship.  He mentions the swing route in a conversation at the beach, stating that it is a route that football teams use when things aren't going their way.  He goes on to say that the play depends heavily upon the quarterback's ability to trust his instincts, make a quick decision, and follow through.  As Owen puts it, the swing route is all about "finding hope in a big mess" (which again, describes what the two have been going through in their personal lives).

Of course my wife noticed that I was looking up "swing route" on the Internet during the movie.  She asked, "Is this going to find it's way into an upcoming blog post?"  Yes it will and yes it has!  As luck would have it, someone else beat me to the punch (see Aval Sethi's LinkedIn post, "The swing route in football and leadership: Trusting your instincts amid chaos").

If you aren't familiar with it, the swing route is exactly as the character Owen described it in the movie.  It's one of the most effective ways to turn a broken play with a potential loss of yardage into a big gain.  During the swing route, the running back moves out of the backfield and toward the sideline, catches a short pass, and quickly turns upfield (check out a video describing the swing route here).  It's a great option for the quarterback when all the other potential receivers aren't open.

The swing route is a perfect analogy to describe the kind of leadership that is required to thrive in today's VUCA environment.  The leadership "swing route" is necessary when things aren't progressing according to plan, or even worse the carefully laid-out plan is falling apart.  Leaders can and should use the "swing route" when they need to pivot and re-establish momentum.  Going back to the football analogy, leaders use the "swing route" to make something out of nothing or generate small wins (i.e., turn a loss into a gain).  And just as in football, there are a couple of keys to achieving success with the "swing route".  First, leaders need to learn to trust their instinct and make quick decisions, even with imperfect information.  Second, leaders need to trust their teams (the football equivalent of trusting that the running back will be in the flat to catch the ball when it's thrown).  Third, and perhaps most importantly, the "swing route" requires flexibility, adaptability, and a little creativity.

No risk, no leadership

I read a great article by Darren Walker, who is soon to be the retired President of the Ford Foundation, in The New York Times, "There is no leadership without risk".  His opening statement is profound in both its truth and its implication: "There has never been a more difficult time to lead anything..."  As I have stated in a number of recent posts, we live in a world characterized by the acronym VUCA, i.e. one that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.  Walker suggests that at a time when leadership is needed the most, individuals are asking legitimate questions such as "Why would I even want to be a leader?"  He calls it a "gathering crisis of leadership" and further suggests that the societal and cultural norms today often "discourage the courage that is essential to effective leadership."

Walker further states that "courageous, moral leadership...challenges us to recognize that bringing light is often worth enduring the heat, especially in moments of profound challenge" like what exists today in our VUCA world.  We need leaders who are not afraid to embrace complexity, leaders who are not afraid to take risks.  Leadership in our VUCA world requires courage, and as Walker ends his article, "No courage? No leadership.  We cannot move forward, however unevenly, without courageous visionaries blazing new paths that illuminate the way for all of us to follow."