High Performance Leadership

Part of the appeal of video games is the ability to reset. All (or much) is forgiven, the table is cleared, and you're free to begin again. Fun. Forgiving. Fabulous. My favorite keyboard shortcut is control+alt+delete (or in my ever Apple world, Control Z. Make a mistake? Reset! Real life is sometimes not as forgiving. There is no real reset -- only change. High performance leaders embrace change to make it positive change. What was, is gone because you can't get it back. Reset? Change! -- doug smith  

Change agents don't always play by the rules. Expecting them to is the act of a fool. -- doug smith

Ever fall in love with a plan? We can plan so thoroughly that the plan feels invincible, but it's not. We can plan with such precision that we think we're ready for anything. We're not ready for anything. Things have a way of changing in ways we did not expect. If your plan was made before things hanged it's time to change your plans. We don't need to get upset. We need to get up and going. -- doug smith  

  We are driven to extremes. We whipsaw and swing wildly when little swings will do. We fail to compromise because we're so far in one direction that we can't even hear the sounds from the other direction. We solve, and in so solving create even more problems. What if the problem is extremes? -- doug smith

  Are you bumping up against tradition? As leaders we are often breaking barriers. We're constantly knocking down walls. Sometimes, we're stepping on toes. We change things because that's what leaders do but it does matter how we change. Are we graceful, or clumsy? Are we considerate, or brutal? Are we deliberate, or chaotic? Change is necessary because it's where growth happens. Doing that change we can forget about or even demolish tradition. "If it mattered we'd keep it," right? It matters. How we handle tradition tells our team how we will eventually handle each and every one of them. What has been placed there before us has been trusted to us. We can improve it, always. Must we ever destroy it? Seldom. As I write this, I can practically hear my friend and fraternity brother David Spiegel singing "Tradition!" from "Fiddler On The Roof." It has honor. It has value. It has multiple meanings. Ignore tradition and you'll lose stabil...

Of course we disagree. We're not even sure if we agree with ourselves. One of the many prices of constant change is the ambiguity, the uncertainty. That can create a kind of low-grade anxiety that keeps us stuck. Pull away from that. Keep moving. As my fire fighting friend Nick used to say, quoting a line from the TV Show "Taxi" whenever anyone asked him how he was doing: "Bobbin' and weaving, bobbin' and weaving." In other words, staying in motion. Finding that anyplace is a place to start, and the adjusting never ends. How are you doing today? -- doug smith

Are you keeping up with change? I find myself sobbing just a little every time my mobile phone wants to install an update. How do I know it'll be better? Can't I just wait a little while? What if I like things the way that they are? High performance leaders are in the business of change. We rock the boat for a living. As Tom Peters once said "if it ain't broke, break it." That quote is more than twenty years old and we've been rocking the boat constantly since then. What about the people who fall off of the boat? What about the details that are tried and true and tradition? Is there a place for tradition in today's rapidly changing world? Yes, there is. Tradition is more than the way things used-to-be. Tradition is more than old habits. Tradition is a topic worthy of a book, but for now here are a few things tradition means. Tradition is honoring the past and the people who built that past. That past got us to here, so they must have done someth...

Have you ever noticed that people tend to default toward rejection? A "no" comes quicker than a "yes." That's annoying to a sales person, but it's big trouble for a team leader who has a team stuck in the status quo. For teams, for leaders, there IS no status quo. A leader's job is to provoke change, to spark action, to get stuff done. High performance leaders provoke. Not to be bossy, but to be effective. When people aren't responding it's time to lead with more strength, more resilience, more persistence. It's time to provoke. How do you provoke? Keep asking questions. Keep communicating your expectations. Talk about it at length -- so much that if your team member is tired of hearing from you simply say that they will hear less when they have done more. High performance leaders provoke positive actions. And, they don't stop until those positive actions start. -- doug smith

Have you ever been stuck with goals that no longer work for you? Did someone else stick you with those goals, or did you do it to yourself? High performance leaders set lots of goals, but they don't get emotional about realizing that they can't possibly achieve all of them. Life brings complications, strategies change, better goals come along. Working on a project, working for a boss, working on change -- if the goal is big enough there is likely to be disagreement. That's OK. Talk about it. Negotiate. Find a goal you can agree on instead of grudgingly plunging forward on a loser. And then, stay calm. There's no need to take a disagreement personally. We can disagree on goals without becoming disagreeable. -- doug smith

Who likes change? At one time or another (and probably MOST of the time) we resist change. It's causing us to do something differently and that is an effort we probably did not ask for. If it's not your idea, change is an aggravation. I don't like it when my phone decides to upgrade. Every single new release for the past two years has been worse, not better than the previous one. And yet, I have no control over it other than to switch to another phone that will likely offer the same aggravation. My current choice is to get over it and move on. If I control something, I make the changes that I want (most of the time.) New car? That's up to me. New coffee cup? Ditto. New client? That's in an area of influence, but not control. That's why the flow chart I've created. Do you control it? Then do that. Can you influence the change? Then get busy and build more influence. If you cannot control OR influence a change you still have two choice. You can...

Do you ever get impatient with small improvements and crave one big leap to the next level? Big changes are great. Geometric revolutions out-excite evolutions every time. But they're not the only way to grow. In fact, it's the small, incremental improvements that prepare us for the big leaps. It's the small changes that facilitate the greater gains. Incremental improvement is just as hard as geometric improvement -- and just as necessary. -- doug smith

When was the last time your team changed? If you answered "today" or "about a minute ago" you are thinking the way that I'm thinking: your team is constantly changing. Every time you add someone to your team, it changes. Every time you say goodbye to someone from your team, it changes. Your team changes when you change a process, when you change a procedure, when you change a rule, when you change the schedule...on and on your team is a relentless mixture of change. The good news is that team leaders can influence that change. You have the opportunity to change in ways that makes your team better, faster, smarter. Your change is open to better change. Changing one person on a team could change the whole team. High performance leaders build constantly, change intentionally, grow patiently. They change on purpose, and so does their team. -- doug smith

High performance leaders are constantly leading new projects, asking people to change and MAKE changes. These are seldom easy tasks. Getting people to change requires their support. If you've ever been in charge of a project, you know that all too well. People resist. People dig in. People ignore your pleads to please pull in the opposite direction. That's because a new direction is hard. It's fraught with unseen obstacles and traps. It's unfamiliar. Change stinks. But change is necessary and it is fundamentally what high performance leaders do: drive change. Where do you start? Start with agreement. Get people to agree on as many things as you can leading to whatever change is necessary. Get them to agree to listen. Get them agree to talk. Get them to agree to the need and POSSIBILITY of change. Agreeing to possibilities smoothes the way, AND -- agreements lead to better possibilities. High performance don't have to come up with all the best ideas, they s...

How do you like change? Are you on-board every change that comes down the pike? Do you accept every new idea? Neither do your constituents. Neither does your team. Resistance isn't always right. But, it isn't always wrong, either. Someone who tells you their objections is doing you a favor: now you know. Now you can do something about it. Change the "thing" or change the way you deliver the "thing"...or dig deeper to figure out what's behind the resistance. Even the most brilliant projects need acceptance to succeed. Work on that while you work on your brilliant goal. -- Doug Smith

If you suddenly appeared to your much younger self, would your much younger self even recognize you? Despite maybe resembling your parent, you are a very different person. At least you should be. We grow. We change. Our points of view evolve. Sometimes in that change we can get lost and forget the heart of what is still most important to us. Our point of view can shift so gradually OR so suddenly that we do not even notice. We go on. We muddle thru.  We do things that at one time would surprise us. Right or wrong, do you know what you've changed in your values, your goals, your dreams? I've recalibrate some of my expectations formed from an evolving point of view. I've played roles that no longer suit me. I've left so much work on the field that the field of play has hidden completely some days. Enough of that. Enough of slipping into oblivion. I'm going kicking and singing! How about you? -- Doug Smith

Do you have all the answers? Probably not. Let me go out on a limb here -- neither you nor I have ALL the answers. Even when we think we do. High performance leaders DO have a lot of confidence. It's easy for us to assert our will and believe we know exactly what we're talking about. And, maybe we do. But even then -- even then -- we can learn. Even when we KNOW the answer for sure, guess what? There are other answers. Other people's views. Other perspectives. And they matter when it comes to leading people. And even when we think we do have all the answers, how permanent are those answers? What could possibly change that will change our views, our needs, our responses? We don't know what is going to change, but something is. Count on it. So let go of pretending that you know all the answers and I will, too. Get the views of others. Get the cool ideas into the mix. The possibilities will expand! -- Doug Smith

Set big goals. Set goals you don't have a clue how to achieve. They will stretch you. They will grow you. They will bring about change. And change is the direction you're headed whether you like it or not. As my friend Andrew Oxley once told me "nature only knows two directions - growth or decay. If I were you I'd choose growth." What's your biggest goal? If it's big enough, you likely don't even know how MUCH it will change you. But change you, it will. -- Doug Smith

What is the typical reaction to courage? Often, people respond to true courage with resistance. They push back. They run away. They refuse to change. That should not surprise us. We should expect it. I've worked on projects where the biggest part of the goal achievement involved working through the resistance. People didn't want to change software. People didn't want to print less. People didn't want to move from Chicago to Trevose, PA. But in each case the change was inevitable, and embracing that change was necessary. For those of us driving those projects, we had to maintain our courage and conviction even when people were unhappy and rebellious. Courage is more often resisted than appreciated. You won't always get an award. In fact, you will seldom get an award for your courage. But, your courage is still required. Of course it's not easy. It wouldn't take courage if it was. How courageous are you prepared to be to achieve your goals? -- Do...

Does change ever sneak up on you? Do you ever think that things have finally normalized, stabilized, settled-down, only to have something really big reveal itself as the Next Big Change? It happens. We can prepare for change, adapt to change, embrace change, even drive change and there will always be changes that surprise us. Big things. Life changing things. Out of nowhere, they surprise us and suddenly a huge part of our energy is spent in dealing with the change. Even high performance leaders must deal with surprise. I once owned a little green bungalow in Chicago. I loved that little house. I loved it even before I bought it. I would walk by it on my way to the bus, always going down 39th Place so that I could see that house. "Someday" I told myself, "someday I am going to buy that house..." When the for sale sign did come up on it, I bought it within a week. The house served our little family well, and even though the bedrooms were cold and the elec...

Are you still growing? Now is a great time to make sure that you are. We need to grow. The world is changing so quickly that those who keep growing can keep up and those who don't keep growing fall ever farther behind. It's not a race, it's an opportunity. We must keep pace. We must keep growing, we must grow faster than ever. To grow faster, never stop growing. Learn. Train. Practice. Read. Explore. Develop. Grow. Growing is essential. Growing continuously helps us grow faster. What are you doing to grow today? -- Doug Smith