But research clearly shows that being politically savvy and building a power base pay off. In “Power Is the Great Motivator,” a classic 2003 Harvard Business Review article, leadership consultants David McClelland and David Burnham examined managers’ primary motivations and success in achieving results.

Their studies reveal managers are primarily motivated by one of three drives:

1. Affiliation: a fundamental desire to be liked
2. Achievement: the motivation to attain goals and gain personal recognition
3. Power: the desire to influence others

The most effective managers, measured by results, were motivated by power.

Sources of Power

There are three sources of power in an organisation: positional, relational and personal:

1. Positional power: Your title and job status confer some level of formal power. You are authorised to act within a certain scope, but it’s seldom sufficient to get things done.
2. Relationships: Informal power stems from the relationships and alliances you form with others. If you do a favour for someone, the law of reciprocity impacts your relationship. Coalitions and alliances increase your relational power.
3. Personal: Some people generate power based on their knowledge, expertise, technical competencies and ability to articulate ideas or a vision that others will follow. Your communication skills, charisma and trustworthiness help determine your personal power.

Open to Influence

Executives and managers who are open to peers’ and subordinates’ input garner greater respect than those who resist others’ influence. An openness to influence demonstrates trust and respect, which become reciprocal and contagious.

In their 1989 book, Influence Without Authority, Allan Cohen and David Bradford introduced the term “currencies of exchange,” a metaphor that teaches businesspeople how to acquire and expand their organisational influence.

Essentially, you can offer goods and services to a potential ally in exchange for cooperation. Currencies may take the form of technical assistance, information, lease of space or equipment, a plum assignment and the like. The key to using currencies is to understand what others want or value.

Power without Authority

Effective use of power is becoming increasingly important, as many organisations are flatter, less hierarchical and cross-functional. This structural shift works best when leaders exert broad power and influence, without official authority.

While power skills are more important than ever, many executives shy away from developing them or fail to understand how they can expand and use them to full force.

Avoiding Power

No matter your position or title, you need power to push through any important agenda. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and author of Power: Why Some People Have It — And Others Don’t, cites three barriers that cause executives to shy away from using power to extend their influence.

1. The belief that the world is a just place: If you do a good job and behave appropriately, do you assume things will take care of themselves? When others make self-aggrandising, envelope-pushing power plays, do you dismiss them instead of watching to see if you can learn something?Believing in a just world makes you less powerful by:
   1. Limiting your willingness to learn from all situations and people — even those you don’t like or respect
   2. Anesthetising you to the need to proactively build a power base — an outcome that blinds you to potentially career-damaging landmines
2. Leadership literature and popular business books: Many successful authors will tout their careers as models of truthfulness, modesty and authenticity – but few also admit to the power plays they’ve used to get to the top.
3. Your delicate self-esteem: Strong self-esteem is driven by feeling good about yourself and your capabilities. By avoiding the experience of actively seeking and gaining power, you also avoid the risk of personally failing at this endeavour, and hence your self-esteem is more likely to remain intact.  

The Power of Power

Power is ultimately defined as the ability to have things your way. When you need others to give their best efforts in the face of differing ideas and opinions, you need leverage — and powerful people use several strategies to advance their agendas.

1.     Leverage Resources.

Whenever you have discretionary control over resources — money, equipment, space and/or information — you can use them to build a power base.

Helping people evokes reciprocity, a universal drive to want to repay a favour — even without making it explicit that there’s a quid pro quo.

Money is not the sole source of leverage. Access to information or key people can be even more valuable.

2.     Shape Behaviours with Rewards and Punishments.

In large companies and governments, leaders reward those who help them and punish those who stand in their way. Notwithstanding research that indicates such punitive measures tend to have a negative impact on long term productivity, the reward and punishment model remains an important tool for building a power base.

3.      Make the Vision Compelling.

It’s easier to exercise power when you’re aligned with a compelling, socially valuable objective. Similarly, power struggles inside companies seldom revolve around blatant self-interest. At the moment of crisis and decision, clever combatants typically invoke shareholders’ interests, company values and mission, and cite causes that are greater than short-term or personal interests.

Fair Play?

You won’t go far — and neither will your strategic plans — if you cannot build and use power.

Some of the people who compete for advancement or stand in the way of your agenda will bend the rules of fair play and, in some cases, ignore them entirely.

Don’t bother complaining about this or wishing things were different. Part of your job is to know how to prevail in the political battles you face. You’ll succeed if you understand the principles of power and are willing to use them.

Persuasion

Persuasion has four elements:

1. Credibility: Credibility is built on trust and expertise, and it must be earned. People will believe you have expertise and are worthy of their trust if you exercise sound judgement and demonstrate a history of success.
2. An understanding of the audience: Identify the decision makers and centres of influence. Determine their likely receptivity and personal agendas.
3. A solid argument: What is perfectly sensible to you may elude others — especially those who are already opposed to your ideas and prepared to resist.You can improve your chances of persuading them when your case:
   1. Is logical and consistent with facts and experience
   2. Strikes an emotional cord
   3. Favourably addresses the interests of the parties you hope to persuade
   4. Neutralises competing alternatives
   5. Recognises and deals with the politics of the situation
   6. Comes with endorsements from objective and authoritative third parties
4. Effective communication: Don’t mistakenly think that logic and rationality will win out and persuade people to your side.  Effective communication appeals to people’s emotions, tapping into universal human values and desires. Appeal to both hearts and minds if you want to build and sustain commitment to your strategic plans.

Office Politics

It’s naive to suggest that office politics are destructive and unethical. If you define politics in such a narrow way, you overlook the value of political awareness and skill. Political savvy, when combined with the right values, can be advantageous to you, your team and your organisation.

To become politically savvy and build your power base:

Map the political terrain. First, identify all stakeholders — anyone who has an interest in, or who would be affected by, your idea — and how they will react. Some resistance is inevitable. You must anticipate others’ reactions, identify allies and resisters, analyse their goals and understand their agendas.

When you face objections, don’t go to individuals’ bosses or peers to undercut their arguments. Instead, ask them questions to determine their goals. Stakeholders may:

• Share your goal, but not your implementation approach
• Disagree with your goal, but share your approach to change
• Share neither
• Share both

You can identify potential allies and resisters with direct questioning.

Get them on your side. Build your coalition — a politically mobilised group committed to implementing your idea because doing so will generate valued benefits.

Creating coalitions is the most critical step in exercising your political competence. How do you win support? You need to be credible. You communicate credibility by letting potential allies and resisters know about your expertise, demonstrating personal integrity, and showing that you have access to important people and information.

Make things happen through leverage. You must win others’ buy-in by making it clear there’s a payoff for supporting your efforts and drawbacks for refusing to join your coalition. Show how implementing your idea will ease stakeholders’ workload, increase their visibility within the organisation or help them cut departmental costs.

Once you’ve persuaded others to join your coalition, you’ve established a base that will legitimise your idea. Coalition members will then use their networks to evangelise for you.

Getting others to make changes and do things your way is risky and fraught with personal peril. Making your organisation a better place is often at odds with personal advancement.

You can’t do it without power. Just be sure to create power in and with others, as opposed to using power over others.

Ethical slips and traps are rampant, from telling white lies that protect a friend, to ignoring a gut feeling and following orders when we know better.

Not a month goes by without some highly publicised ethical scandal. Be it tax evasion, executive pay excesses, sexual dalliances and outright fraud, many individuals are simply unable to resist temptation. 

Does this make the perpetrators corrupt sociopaths?

Sometimes, but usually not. They’re often leaders and pillars of the community, and their actions leave us shaking our heads and wondering what were they thinking.

The sad truth? No one is immune. Cheating isn’t limited to those in positions of power. While power is certainly fraught with opportunities and temptations, each of us faces daily choices that involve doing the right—or wrong—thing. Only when a CEO, politician, celebrity or sports legend gets caught does the problem rise to front-page news. Just ask Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton or more recently, Mark McInnes, former CEO of Australian retail giant, David Jones.

But the same ethical traps lie in your path. Even the little guys transgress. Often, people feel an urge to cheat—a strange pull to try to get away with something. Sometimes it’s small; other times it’s scandalous. Sometimes it matters; other times it goes unnoticed.

What exactly happens inside our heads when we choose to violate our ethical standards? Do we lose sight of what’s right? Do we take the easy way out? Are we driven to win at any price? Are we attracted to our “dark side”?

Ethical Roots

Psychology and other social sciences offer a huge body of experimental studies that demonstrate the allure of cheating. In The Ethical Executive (Stanford University Press, 2008), Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey describe 45 ethical traps inherent in any organisational environment.

Many of these traps are psychological in nature, creating “webs of deception” that distort our perception of right and wrong. Such rationalisations lead us to believe our unethical behavior is normal and appropriate, and they have contributed to large-scale corporate disasters like the Enron and WorldCom affairs.

The Brain Science of Traps

At any given moment, we have impulses that motivate us to act. They are reactions to internal or external stimuli, which may be powerful enough to trigger automatic behavior. At this point, we may rationally ignore other (and better) options. 

Other times, we’re aware of several distinct choices, but the stimulus’ effect overrides these potential actions. We may desire a specific outcome so strongly that it propels us to move in an unsound direction. Anxiety and stress may also compel us to make choices that alleviate our short-term distress, yet lead to irrevocable long-term consequences.

Our ultimate behavior depends on a complex weave of situational factors, history and personality.

Four Basic Tribal Drives

Some experts believe we’re motivated by four basic human drives that have evolved from our primitive ancestors:

These drives are especially evident in western and other modern cultures. We work hard to provide for our families, far beyond our survival needs for food, clothing and shelter. Many of us are highly motivated to land the best job, home and/or salary possible. It’s human nature to want to acquire things that make our families comfortable and happy. Many of us are driven to be the smartest or most  prestigious person in the room.

Much of our energy goes toward protecting what we have and defending our territories, families, positions, rights and freedoms—a strong drive that explains why nations go to war.

Organisations are like theatres, where actors play out their desires to acquire, bond, learn and defend. There’s no better stage to demonstrate our tribal drives, and nowhere are there more daily opportunities to choose between right and wrong.

The Ethical Stage

As children, we were primed to obey our parents. Our very survival depended on it. Some families demanded strict obedience; others were lenient about opposition and rebellion; still others encouraged creativity and individual spirit.

But all families required obedience to authority. This conditioning continued in school. Consequently, as adults, when our boss orders us to do something, we quickly obey—often, without thinking.

If an authority figure orders us to do something unethical, our sense of obedience may be so powerful that we follow orders without acknowledging that we’re going against our ethical principles. The impulse to obey is so strong that it overrides rational judgement.

Root Causes of Traps

Obedience to authority is a “primary” trap, which means a strong external stimulus impels us to move in a certain direction, without regard for our ethical principles.

In business, people don’t abandon their ethics simply because they want to maximise profits. Rather, their drive to acquire and improve their status lures them into a social-psychological trap.

This often happens in small steps—yet another trap. If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out quickly. But if you place it in the pot and slowly increase the heat, it will remain there and be cooked.

Small steps and choices create minor ethical transgressions that do little harm, but they set the direction that eventually leads to major, irreversible violations.

Primary Traps

Hoyk and Hersey describe three types of social-psychological traps that occur in the workplace: primary, defensive and personality. They include:

1. Obedience to authority
2. Small steps
3. Indirect responsibility
4. Faceless victims
5. Lost in the group
6. Competition
7. Self-interest
8. Tyranny of goals
9. Money
10. Conformity
11. Power
12. Obligation
13. Time pressures

When we carefully review and understand these traps, we can prepare for—and avoid—them. Our choices become sound.

A Study of Business Ethics

Twelve years ago, Joseph Badaracco, an ethics professor at the Harvard Business School, interviewed 30 recent MBA graduates who had faced ethical dilemmas in the business world. All of them had taken an ethics class at Harvard. Half of them worked for companies that had official ethics programs.

As Badaracco notes:

“Corporate ethics programs, codes of conduct, mission statements, hot lines, and the like provided little help…the young managers resolved the dilemmas they faced largely on the basis of personal reflection and individual values, not through reliance on corporate credos, company loyalty, the exhortations of senior executives, philosophical principles or religious reflection.”

Most of the Harvard-educated managers had learned their personal values primarily from their family upbringing, not from ethics courses. Traditional ethics education based on philosophical principles does not always transfer to the workplace.

What does make for better choices in our jobs, however, is an understanding of the root causes of unethical behaviors: the psychological dynamics. If managers have a firm knowledge of how pervasive and compelling ethical traps can be, they can use this understanding to objectify what’s happening to them.

When you can think and talk about these traps with a trusted colleague, mentor or coach, then their allure and the possible distortions they evoke can be revealed. Some distance is created between the person, the choice and the trap. As a result, anxieties are reduced, improved clarity is achieved and more effective choices can be made.

Traditionally, business-ethics and MBA programs present vignettes of ethical dilemmas one may face, such as pollution, sexual harassment, product safety and discrimination. These problems have no clear right or wrong answers. To solve them, students are often provided with an outline of eight to 12 critical questions. A sample is provided here for your use.

Avoid the traps of bad business decisions with a breakthrough system in values and integrity-based decision-making at www.humanresourceschange.com.au/integrity-and-values-profile.html

According to Gallup research, what employees want most — along with competitive pay — is quality management. When they feel unappreciated and disapprove of their managers, they leave or join the growing ranks of the disengaged.

 3 Steps to Positive Leadership

In 2005, Jerry Krueger and Emily Killham shared the results of Gallup research that showed managers play a crucial role in employee well-being and engagement—but the research didn’t study what managers specifically did to elicit positive responses.

That’s why Margaret Greenberg, president of The Greenberg Group, and Dana Arakawa, a program associate at the John Templeton Foundation, put the theory of positive leadership to the test. They wanted to know if managers who apply positive leadership practices have teams with higher project performance and employee engagement.

As it turns out, positive managers practice three leadership behaviours:

1. Use a strengths-based approach.
2. Provide frequent recognition and encouragement.
3. Maintain a positive perspective when difficulties arise.

None is an innate behaviour, but all can be learned.

A Strengths-Based Approach

There’s a reason why managers’ focus on strengths and weaknesses is so important. Most organisations are obsessed with fixing weaknesses. They conduct performance reviews, 360-degree assessments and the like to evaluate how well employees and managers are measuring up to predefined goals and competencies.

Managers are instructed to look at an employee’s assessed gap and coach for greater performance in areas of weakness. But such assessments usually pay only cursory attention to an employee’s strengths. Performance reviews and subsequent remedial programs focus almost exclusively on weaknesses.

Focus on What Works

Too many managers assume that employees need to be good at many things, rather than excellent in the key areas.

Recent studies have firmly established that focusing on what works, followed by a program to scale it to greater levels, is a more practical and efficient approach to developing people and their performance.

Managers who take a strengths-based approach help employees identify strengths and align their talents with their work. These managers don’t ignore employee weaknesses, but fixing them isn’t their primary focus.

Greenberg and Arakawa found that managers who focused on strengths enjoyed superior team performance, as opposed to managers who focused on weaknesses.

The Problem-Seeking Mindset

It’s not enough to wait for performance reviews and project completion to deliver feedback. Praise must be frequent, ongoing and specific to current behaviours—not vague or general.

Sadly, we’re predisposed to look for the negative: in ourselves, in others and for external events. We rarely scan our environment and ask:

• “What’s working right now… and how can we do more of it?”
• Instead, we look around and ask: “What’s broken—and how can we fix it?”

The problem-seeking mindset is one of the brain’s shortcomings, while also serving as a protective device to spare us from danger and making mistakes.

In Switch (2010), Dan and Chip Heath write about “finding the bright spots” in our work and lives. After extensive research, the two business school professors have documented how we’re wired to focus on bad over good.

It’s no wonder performance reviews and feedback are usually aimed at what’s not working. Yet, some successful individuals can override this brain tendency and focus on the positive, at least enough to create successful relationships both at work and home.

John Gottman, a psychologist who studies marital conversations, finds that couples who sustain long-term marriages use language that reflects five times more positive statements than negative ones. In fact, he calls this “the magic ratio” and claims it will accurately predict if a marriage will last. He urges managers to use a ratio of 5:1 positive statements in conversations with employees.

When Things Go Wrong

Managing long-term, multimillion-dollar projects that involve dozens of people and several workgroups is a complex challenge, and things are bound to go wrong. How managers respond to problems has a direct and measurable impact on both the employees and the project.

Researchers Greenberg and Arakawa asked employees:

• “When a problem crops up on my project, is my project manager able to help me come up with solutions?”
• “What steps does your project manager take when such a problem arises?”

Here’s what they found:

• Managers who maintain a positive perspective don’t turn setbacks into catastrophes.
• They don’t fly off the handle; they control their emotions.
• They recognise what’s within their sphere of influence (and what’s not).
• They see and discuss the problem as an opportunity.
• They provide a solution-oriented perspective.

Greenberg and Arakawa also discovered that managers who maintained a positive perspective when things went awry experienced greater project performance. Managers who scored in the top quartile for positive perspective (as reported by their employees, not self-report) had significantly higher project performance than those in the bottom quartile.

Reflect on how you as a manager and leader can implement positive leadership by practicing these behaviours:

1.      Focus on and work with people’s strengths.

2.      Improve the frequency with which you give praise and recognition.

3.      Respond with a positive, solutions-orientation when the going gets rough.

In the year 2000 alone, 40 CEOs of the top 200 companies on Fortune’s 500 list were fired or made to resign. When 20 percent of the most powerful business leaders lose their jobs, something is clearly wrong.

Leaders make big promises … and then what their organisations actually deliver falls short. They have accountability problems—people aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do. Execution is a culture with a specific set of behaviours and techniques that companies must master in order to have competitive advantage. More than a tactic, it is a discipline and a system that must be built into a company’s strategy, goals, and culture, and the leader of the organisation must be deeply engaged in it.

“Many people regard execution as detail work that’s beneath the dignity of a business leader. That’s wrong … it’s a leader’s most important job.” ― Larry Bossidy, former chairman and CEO, Honeywell International

According to Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy in their book Execution (2002), a lack of focus on the discipline of execution is the main reason companies fall short on their promises. It explains the gap between what leaders want and what they deliver.

Execution should be a central part of a company’s strategy and goals and the priority of any leader. An execution and accountability culture links the three core processes of any business—the people process, the strategy, and the operating plan—together to accomplish things on time.

The execution phase forces leaders to translate the broad-brush conceptual understanding of the company’s strategy into an action plan for how it will manifest: who will do what in which sequence, how long those tasks will take, how much will they cost, and how they will affect subsequent activities. Fundamentally, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies do not face reality very well; hence, they can’t execute.

 Execution Questions 

• Who will do the job—and how will they be judged and held accountable?
• What human, technical, production, and financial resources are needed to execute the strategy?
• Will the organisation have the resources it needs two years out, when the strategy goes to the next level?
• Does the strategy deliver the earnings required for success?
• Can it be broken down into doable initiatives?

People engaged in the processes argue these questions, search out reality, and reach specific and practical conclusions. All agree on their responsibilities for getting things done and commit to those responsibilities.

3 Core Processes:  People, Strategy & Operations

The heart of execution lies in the three core processes (the people process, the strategy process, and the operations process), which every business uses in one form or another.

In a 10-year study of winning companies, professors William Joyce and Nitin Nohria found four primary management practices that directly correlate with superior corporate performance, as measured by total return to shareholders: execution, strategy, culture, and structure (What Really Works, 2003).

However, more often than not, these core processes stand apart from one another like silos. Typically, the CEO and his senior leadership team allot less than half a day each year to review the plans and, generally, the reviews are not particularly interactive. What is needed is:

• Robust dialogue to surface the realities of the business.
• Accountability for results discussed openly and agreed to by those responsible for getting things done.
• Rewards for the best performers.
• Follow-through to ensure that progress tracks to the plans.

Robust Dialogue

An execution  and accountability culture requires robust dialogue that brings reality to the surface through openness, candour, and informality. When mistakes are made, openness is preserved and blaming avoided. The information is used for course correction. Candour and honesty foster creativity and ultimately lead to competitive advantage and improved shareholder value.

Emotional Fortitude

Emotional fortitude is necessary to be open to whatever information you need, whether it is what you want to hear or not. It takes a special kind of confidence to encourage and accept challenges in group settings. It is necessary to accept and deal with your own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, to be firm with people who aren’t performing, and to handle the ambiguity inherent in fast-moving, complex organisations

The Core Qualities of Emotional Fortitude

Bossidy and Charan point out four core qualities that make up emotional fortitude:

1. Authenticity
2. Self-awareness
3. Self-mastery
4. Humility

Measuring the degree to which such qualities are present in leaders is a challenge. Fine-tuning these leadership qualities is an even greater challenge. The Australian firm IntegrityandValues.com has addressed this challenge, overseeing a body of research into five dimensions of emotional fortitude shown to have the greatest impact on leadership success. The result of this research is a leadership profile which supplies comprehensive and verifiable data on these five dimensions under the over-arching banner of “integrity” including:

1. Accountability
2. Responsibility
3. Truthfulness
4. Loyalty
5. Self Awareness

Clearly these qualities should be well developed in executives in top positions; however, often one or two of them are often underdeveloped. Leadership development at this level requires the services of a professionally trained executive coach to provide focus and guidance in enhancing these qualities.

Execution Is the Main Job

There’s an enormous difference between leading an organisation and presiding over it. The leader who boasts of a hands-off style is not dealing with the issues of the day, not confronting the people responsible for poor performance or searching for problems to solve and making sure they get solved. Putting the right people in the right jobs and ensuring that rewards and recognition reinforce performance are essential.

The Leader’s 7 Essential Behaviours

Accepting full personal responsibility for running the three core processes does not automatically suggest the leader is also micromanaging their business. Micromanaging is a big mistake; it diminishes people’s self-confidence, saps their initiative, and stifles their ability to think for themselves.

How does a leader in charge of execution avoid being a micromanager caught up in the details of running the business? Seven essential behaviours form the building blocks of execution:

1. Know your people and your business.
2. Insist on realism.
3. Set clear goals and priorities.
4. Follow through.
5. Reward the doers.
6. Expand people’s capabilities.
7. Know yourself.

Most executives and managers don’t understand the “discipline” of execution. Execution is not simply a matter of trying harder, paying more attention to details, or doing someone else’s job for them. Execution involves a specific set of core processes built on a foundation of leadership behaviours; it’s a culture unto itself in which accountability and responsibility thrive.

Recommended reading: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002) by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Crown Business, New York, NY.

Resources for Execution

Bossidy, L. & Charan, R. (2002). Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Crown Business.

Bruch, H. & Ghoshal, S. (2004). A Bias for Action. Harvard Business School Publishing.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. Harper Business.

Collins, J. & Porras, J. I. (1994). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Harper Collins.

Contrada, M. G. (2003). The Discipline of Execution. Harvard Business School Publishing.

Joyce, W., Nohria, N., & Roberson, B. (2003). What Really Works: The 4 + 2 Formula for Sustained Business Success. Harper Business.

Pfeffer, J. & Sutton, R. I. (2000). The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. Harvard Business School Press.

Raffoni, M. (2003, February). Three Keys to Effective Execution. Harvard Management Update, 8 (2), [page numbers].

Worrall, D (2009) A Climate for Change, Life Success Publishing.

Failure to Confront Problem Behaviour

            Leaders such as you want to be liked as much as anybody else does, so you’re likely to delegate the distasteful job of confronting people about their behaviour to other people or to business systems. Good leaders, after all, are supposed to delegate. The trouble is that although business systems can deliver for hard outcomes, they consistently fail to do so in regard to confronting behavioural shortcomings, teamwork problems, and sustained change.

            An expert in leadership coaching and development named Marshall Goldsmith discovered an interesting paradox. Although you may think that people will like you more if you avoid conflict situations with them, they actually respect you more when you face up and deliver the truth with compassion.

            Good leaders frequently engage external consultants and executive coaches to help make serious breakthroughs in such matters, as appropriately trained coaches can gather data and provide you with objective feedback honestly and confidentially. Executive coaches and consultants, furthermore, can also help successful leaders to improve their capacity to hold their direct reports accountable for delivering long-term, sustained behavioural change.

Over-Reliance on Outdated Performance Management Systems

            The traditional performance-management process is inherently problematic as a tool for sustained behavioural change and cultural alignment. The Taylorist school of management originally developed this process within industrial-age organisations in which organisational control was the norm and managers assumed the role of being judge, jury, and sometimes executioner. This disempowering model undermines the goals of those modern organisations for which competition and rapid change demand a culture that encourages employee discretion, responsiveness, and innovation, these being the factors that drive sustained positive change. 

Effective modern organisations have the capacity to respond to change with speed and agility. People who have a deep personal connection with their work and a sense of control drive such organisations. They’ve tapped into their own motivations and problem-solving skills and feel empowered to make a difference.

            External coaches can help you shape your organisation’s behaviour and culture so this can happen by providing objective leadership-performance feedback from multiple sources, helping you to understand and apply the latest techniques for promoting positive organisational cultures, and shifting the balance of your performance conversations from feedback about the past to the more empowering technique of feed-forward for the future.

Leaders Preaching Teamwork but Not Demonstrating It In Practice

            The senior leadership team’s behaviour is the ultimate model of any organisation’s values, culture, and teamwork. Although leaders can be adamant about their walking the talk, many are often unaware that other people see the situation differently.

            We can understand why this discrepancy exists between how leaders perceive themselves and how others see them exists by examining the career paths of many  senior leaders. Three things have probably played a role in most senior leaders achieving their present status. You’ve probably demonstrated significant specialist or generalist expertise, an ability to lead others within your area of expertise, and, more elusively, an ability to manage up, to understand the big picture, and to become noticed by being in the right place at the right time.

            When senior leaders arrive at the top, however a potential problem emerges. Open and honest collaboration with peers, who were also rivals, is unlikely to be a factor in such career-ladder climbs. This, then, becomes the final challenge for those on a senior team leading major organisational-cultural change. The qualities of self-reliance and achievement that had been invaluable for reaching the top can damage your effectiveness by reinforcing rivalries and operational silos between business areas, thereby undermining the ability to demonstrate cohesive teamwork, culture, and leadership.

            As a senior leader you can ill afford to dismiss your need to operate as part of a cohesive senior team and expect other teams within your organisation to operate cohesively within and across business units. Experienced consultants and coaches can introduce simple techniques to help senior teams confront the part that their own behaviour and language has played in undermining the culture and values they espouse – often with profound results.

            In order to achieve such results, exemplary organisations use executive coaching as the most powerful component of their leadership development and organisational-change toolkit. Organisations and senior leaders who seriously want to improve find that the benefits of focussed coaching programs for leadership teams are undeniable. Such programs help you to learn:

•              what conversations you aren’t having in your business and what that is costing you,
•              how your senior team can unlock its capacity to create a positive, high-performing organisational culture in which people want to work,
•              how to know if you’re walking the talk and what to do about it if  you’re not,
•              how to make change last without your having to be there all the time, and
•              how to feel more confident as a senior leader.

            For a confidential discussion about discovering whether an executive-leadership coaching program would make a difference for your organisation, call  02 9599 6791 now, or email me at di@humanresourceschange.com.au.

To Your Success

Di Worrall

Corporate Change Specialist, Executive Coach, Author

Nominee 2010 Telstra Business Women’s Awards

Principal Worrall & Associates

www.humanresourceschange.com.au 

“The insight I gained into myself from Di’s coaching was truly eye opening.  I gained clarity with regard to my strengths, and more importantly, discovered areas of potential improvement that I was previously unaware of.  Once identified, small changes was all it took to produce significant positive results.  I highly recommend Di’s coaching to people who are serious in exploring continuous self improvement.”

Mark Migallo, ANZ Channel Development Manager, Sun Microsystems

Moving forward, a new metric is proposed: the extent to which executives create organisations that are economically, ethically and socially sustainable.

The new metric is trust. Building a culture of transparency is a fundamental first step to achieving trust. Broadly defined, transparency refers to the degree to which information flows freely within an organisation, among managers and employees, and outward to stakeholders.

Trust in our leaders is alarmingly low. While exact figures and study results vary, no data compiled over the last 7 years has shown more than 50% trust for company leaders.

Easier Said Than Done

If transparency is such a vital component of trust, why wouldn’t companies promote openness and a free flow of information?

Several issues can stand in the way:

• People may be unable or unwilling to communicate upward and with honestly
• Teams may not yet have the capability of challenging their own assumptions
• Boards of Directors may be unable to clearly communicate important messages to company leadership

Further, the failure to promote transparency may stem from a leader who won’t listen to followers; as well as followers who won’t speak up.

Poor transparency also occurs when team members are ensconced in “groupthink,” usually without awareness. In this scenario, people on the same team don’t challenge each other. Sometimes, they like each other too much. Other times, they simply don’t know how to disagree with one another.

Knowledge Is Power

In all groups, leaders try to hoard and control information because they use it as a source of power and control. But the ability of a few powerful people to keep information secret is now vanishing, in part due to the Internet, as well as the facility of rapid communications.

Transitioning from a hoarding tendency to a transparency culture starts at the top when leaders:

• Share more information.
• Welcome challenge and counterarguments.
• Admit their own errors.
• Behave as they want others to behave

7 Steps to Transparency

Bennis and O’Toole offer seven steps for developing a culture of transparency:

1.  Tell the Truth

Each of us has the impulse to tell others what they want to hear. Instead, keep it simple, and be honest. Candid leaders tell everyone the same thing, and they have no need to revise their stories.

2. Encourage People to Speak Truth to Power

It’s never easy for us to be honest with our bosses. It takes courage to speak up.

But encouraging people to share their honest opinions is crucial if leaders want to build trust and open communication.  Of course, this sometimes means executives will hear unpleasant information.

3. Reward Contrarians

If you make it acceptable, are willing to listen to opposing points of view and promise to consider the merits of others’ arguments, you pave the way for a culture of transparency.

Find colleagues who tend to be oppositional, listen to them intently, and create conditions for thinking differently.

4. Practice Having Unpleasant Conversations

Few people excel at delivering negative feedback during performance appraisals. Offering negative feedback upward, to one’s boss, is even more challenging.

The best leaders learn how to deliver bad news kindly so people don’t get unnecessarily hurt. It’s certainly not easy, unless practice opportunities are provided.

5. Diversify Information Sources

Communicate regularly with different groups of colleagues, workers, customers and even competitors to gain a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of others’ perceptions.

6. Admit Mistakes

Candour is contagious. When you admit your shortcomings or errors, it paves the way for others to do the same. Simple admissions can disarm critics and encourage others to be transparent, as well.

7. Build Organisational Support for Transparency

Protect whistle-blowers—but don’t stop there. Other norms and sanctions should encourage truth-telling, including open-door policies, ethics training and internal blogs that give a voice to people lower down in the hierarchy.

Board Vigilance

Changing a system that encourages information-hoarding is the board of directors’ responsibility. Truly independent boards should provide a much-needed check on executives’ egos and truth-telling. If they fail to assess transparency at the uppermost levels, they’re not functioning appropriately.

“Boards are the last line of defence against ruinous self-deception and the suppression of vital truths,” write Bennis and O’Toole. “If they’re not vigilant in the pursuit of honesty, the organisations they serve are unlikely to have a free internal or external flow of information.”

Trust

As a species, we are hardwired to trust others, especially those who appear similar to ourselves and who have similar interests. But as recent financial scandals reveal, we sometimes trust too easily and trust the wrong people.

To trust wisely means starting with small acts that foster reciprocity. By communicating your willingness to trust, you give others the go-ahead to do the same. However, Jonar Nadar points out in How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People (2006), that communicating your willingness to trust employees is more than a simple statement or delegation of responsibility.  Deeply trusted leaders go the extra mile by removing obstructions to an employee’s capacity to communicate views and explore possibilities (Worrall, D., A Climate for Change, 2009).

Transparent Communications

Open and honest communications support the decision to trust. Lack of communication and transparency creates suspicion.

To increase the transparency of your communications:

• Increase the frequency and candour of your communications.
• Build a relationship beyond the constraints of your official role.
• Use the word “we” more often than “I.”
• Emphasise common values and goals.
• Be clear whose goals and interests you are promoting.
• Be sure your actions support your words.
• Demonstrate a clear concern for others.
• Under-promise and over-deliver.
• Ask more questions.
• Really listen to the answers.

D.Worrall (2010)

• “We never have a chance to really talk about the big picture of our work. We’re under so much pressure to deliver what is needed now. There’s little opportunity to understand how things tie in with larger goals; consequently, there’s no breathing space for creativity or innovation.“
• “I’d be able to grow and develop at work if I didn’t have to babysit around here…If my subordinates didn’t come to me for every little decision and if they would take more initiative, I’d be freer to do the same in my own job.”
• “There’s too much talking behind one’s back here. People talk about others, but rarely to others. I don’t feel people come to me directly; I find out about things from other people. If I knew and had a chance to talk to the person with a complaint, then we could confront the issues and work on solutions.”

Complaints may vary but griping is always in season at work. When things go from bad to worse the discussions end up in the manager’s office. When they don’t, they form an undercurrent of discontent and resentment that is counter-productive.

People spend vast amounts of time complaining. They invest amazingly creative energies coming up with clever ways of expressing their discontent. No matter how sophisticated, however, a complaint is unpleasant to listen to. It can instill an aura of negativity and un-productivity. It becomes contagious. At its worse, it poisons relationships and sabotages team efforts.

A review of journals and books yields little on the subject. That is, not until Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey wrote, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (Jossey-Bass 2001). Kegan is a Harvard psychologist best known for his work in developmental psychology. Lahey is a research director at a Harvard research centre. They term complaints in the office as “BMW” talk: bitching, moaning and whining.

Ask any group of people how they could be more supported at work and you’ll get prime examples of BMW. Sometimes the complaints are made with head-shaking amusement, sometimes resentment and resignation. They are made by people who love their jobs, hate their jobs; by those that are good at their jobs, not so good, new at work, and near retirement. Criticisms are levied at bosses, subordinates, peers, “them,” and occasionally at oneself.

We all complain, no matter what our position. No matter what the particular content of complaints, it turns out that most of us have an experience at work that we perceive as obstructing our own well-being, growth and development.

This conversation about what we can’t stand is so universal it goes unrecognised and accepted as normal. Obviously the use of this language form is more recognised in others than in ourselves. Complaining grows like a weed. The problem is that it does not usually lead to changing anything.

To be fair, complaining may help people let off steam. It can also create alliances and support when one realises they are not alone. But it rarely accomplishes more than this. It doesn’t transform anyone or anything. It often leaves people feeling worse by virtue of the negative feelings that flourish.

Why complaints are important

It is important to pay attention to complaints because they contain a seed of passion! For every statement of what a person can’t stand, there is an underlying reason, or statement about what they stand for.

Where there is passion there is possibility for transformation. There is energy and there is commitment. People do not complain about what they don’t care about. So underneath the complaint, there is a river of committed passion and a source of energy to be discovered and harnessed…if we look for it and ask about it!

Leaders and managers are faced with complaints all the time. Here are some typical ways leaders respond:

1. Acknowledge the person’s complaint and give them more information that would explain the situation and provide another perspective.
2. Acknowledge the person’s complaint by actively listening and empathising with them in order to help them to accept the situation.
3. Acknowledge their complaint and try to explore solutions using problem-solving methods. Depending on your leadership style, you will direct or coach them to take action, or you might take the monkey on yourself by agreeing to do something to fix the problem.

What if there were a different approach to handling complaints, one that actually encouraged people to stay with the problem in order to pursue meaningful transformation?

Kegan and Lahey suggest asking this important question:

What sorts of things, if they were to happen more frequently in your work setting, would you experience as being more supportive of your own ongoing development at work? In other word, what do you really need to thrive?

Transforming thet language of complaints to the language of commitments

What commitments or convictions do you hold that are implied in your complaint? What value do you hold that is not being honoured? What commitment do you have that is not being fully recognised by this situation?

In every complaint there is a value that is not being honoured and it is usually the absence of this personal value that is rubbing the person the wrong way. Hence there is passion in complaints.

What if leaders could feel comfortable enough to listen to a complaint without explaining, empathising and trying to solve the problem? What if they took the time to explore for the unfulfilled values and commitments inherent in the BMW talk?

Unlock the underlying value and there is productive conversation about what needs to be done in order to create meaningful change. The key to doing this is through the use of language.

Leadership and language communities

Work settings are language communities in that structure, boundaries, norms and culture are organised linguistically. The importance of language and the way groups speak about themselves and their work cannot be underemphasised. In that sense all leaders are leading language communities. Though every person, in any setting has some opportunity to influence the nature of the language, leaders have exponentially greater access and opportunity to establish and influence others through the use of language. The only question is what kind of language leaders will choose to use.

We are all leaders at one time or in one way. We are all challenged by being stuck and blocked from creating changes that we say are important to us. We are all seeking language through which we can communicate more effectively and influence the decisions that others make.

The fact is that all of us are confronted with challenges when it comes to development and change. While it may be that sometimes this is because we have difficulty learning something or we attach a loss to shifting to something new, in all cases it is because we are committed to something. There is something we value that we are protecting. In the world of business and organisations this protective behaviour often shows up as complaining and various forms of discontent. It depletes work energy, negatively impacts retention of talented people and at its extreme breeds anti-organisational behaviour such as sabotage.

 Leading change through changing the language we use

Kegan and Lahey present a methodology to provide new meaning to complaints and to elicit the underlying commitments that can provide passion and energy for changing behaviours. Through the use of this new methodology each of us can begin to shift our own behaviour and our relationships with others in the organisation from complaining to commitment and effective change.

A methodology for transforming complaints to commitments

Adapted from: How the Way We talk Can Change the Way We Work; Seven Languages for Transformationby Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Jossey-Bass, 2001) with permission from the authors.

Step One:

Write down your answers to the following question: “What sorts of things, if they were to happen more frequently in your work setting, would you experience as being more supportive of your own ongoing development at work?”

 e.g.” More involvement in decision making”

Step two:

Pick just one you feel strongly about and complete the following sentence…“I am committed to the value or the importance of…”

e.g. , “I am committed to the importance of participating in decisions that affect me.”

Step three:

Consider your own part in the situation, by answering this question: “What am I doing or not doing that prevents my commitment from being fully realised?” 

e.g. I sometimes hold back instead of standing up for myself and stating my opinion

Step four:

Consider that you may have other values that are competing with the value or commitment you stated in step 2: “I may also be committed to…” (This is usually something self-protective.)

e.g. “I am also committed to not looking stupid.”

Step five:

Look at the reasons for holding the competing value stated in step 4 by finishing the statement: “I assume that if…”

e.g. “ I assume that if I honour my commitment to state my opinion (in step 2), then this might mean I look stupid….”

To bring about actual change, we must do more than just become aware of our paradoxes. We must disturb the balance, not merely look at it. This methodology creates a more complete and comprehensive space in which to consider and experience a problem. Far from solving the problem, we expand it.

By expanding the initial problem to uncover its root cause, leaders and employees are spared from wasting time, energy and money on solutions that might be highly ineffective because the problems will just recur in differing forms.

Once the real cause of our complaints are revealed, we can look at them, reexamine them, and possible alter them. This is what leads to genuine transformation.

D. Worrall (2010)

Leaders are almost by definition people who change minds.  —Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds

There is a lack of trust in senior management, according to a survey by the human-resource firm Watson Wyatt: 

• Only 49 percent of employees have trust and confidence in their senior managers.
• Just 55 percent say senior leaders behave consistently with core values.
• Only 53 percent believe senior management has made the right changes to stay competitive.

Clearly, much is going wrong in the workplace. Some 40 percent of surveyed executives doubt their leaders have credible plans to address the uncertain economic outlook. Certainly, this lack of confidence harms an organisation’s ability to move forward.

In light of these problems, middle managers have unprecedented opportunities to become more proactive by stepping forward and offering course corrections — and they should act with deliberate speed. Good times allow organisations to ride out challenges, but today’s tough financial climate won’t permit a wait-and-see approach.

While senior executives don’t set out to fail, research shows they make several common mistakes:

• 80 percent fail because of ineffective communication skills and practices.
• 79 percent fail because of poor work relationships and interpersonal skills.
• 69 percent fail because of person/job mismatch.
• 61 percent fail because they didn’t clarify direction and performance expectations.
• 56 percent fail because of delegation and empowerment breakdowns.

When strong leadership doesn’t come from above, it’s up to the organisation itself — in particular, the people in the middle — to launch a rescue operation.

What’s Happening

You see a problem. There’s a clear need for action within a certain time frame. You’ve discussed the issues and possible solutions many times with your boss, and she has agreed with your way of thinking. For unexplained reasons, she hasn’t acted or given you the go-ahead. What do you do?

This could be a situation in which you take action and lead your boss. You develop a plan on your own, gather data (both pro and con), suggest a course of action and ask permission to move forward.

In doing so, you’re filling a leadership void through prompt decision-making and follow-through. You’re demonstrating what it takes to “manage upward,” or lead your boss. But you’ll soon discover that you need buy-in from more people, including peers and subordinates. You’ll have to become a leader without authority — an ambassador sans portfolio.

Emerging from the Middle

Those who succeed at leading from the middle are artful, skilled managers who:

• Establish goals
• Plan projects
• Organize people
• Execute projects on time and on budget

To accomplish this, you must rethink what you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. In essence, you’re not acting for yourself, but for the good of the organisation. This requires initiative, persuasion, influence, courage and persistence.

Perhaps the most crucial element is a large dose of passion. You must care deeply and want to make a difference because such efforts can carry big risks.

“Leading up requires great courage and determination,” says Michael Useem, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the seminal book Leading Up: Managing Your Boss So You Both Win. “We might fear how our superior will respond, we might doubt our right to lead up, but we all carry a responsibility to do what we can when it will make a difference.”

3 Questions to Ask

According to John Baldoni, author of Lead Your Boss, managers who lead up demonstrate they’re aware of the bigger picture. They’re ready, willing and able to do whatever it takes to strengthen the organisation and team.

Baldoni urges readers to ask themselves three questions:

1. What does the leader need? The boss is responsible for motivating her people to get things right. Take the time to shift your perspective from your own world view to the priorities and concerns weighing on the mind of your boss. What does she need to do her job better? To help her, you’ll need to think more strategically and act tactically.
2. What does the team need? Teams don’t always pull together because egos get in the way. The boss ends up spending valuable time soothing hurt feelings. What if a team member were to step up into the role of “coach” and help bring everyone together? This would free the boss to focus on bigger issues, and the team would be more productive. 
3. What can I do to help the leader and team succeed? Perhaps you can take on more responsibility or step back and let others rally. Maybe you can sacrifice a personal need that allows the team to conquer a challenge. What will it take to help everyone push ahead? 

When you can answer these questions and formulate an action plan, you’ll have a roadmap for leading your boss in ways that make her look good and the team succeed. You’ll  emerge as a team player who is adept at making the right things happen.

Your ability to lead up is an indication of your potential to become a senior leader. How you demonstrate initiative, overcome obstacles and promote resilience are critical measures of senior leadership. If you influence your boss and convince others to work together, you’ll open the door to future promotions and the chance to lead the entire organisation.

The View from Above

Developing managers who can lead from the middle is a sound management practice that won’t undermine a CEO’s authority. When middle managers take ownership of issues, make decisions and accept accountability for the results, their bosses have the freedom to think and act strategically, without getting bogged down in tactical matters.

This not only creates a stronger organisation in the short run, but it equips emerging leaders for greater challenges and advancement to senior leadership positions. And with flagging confidence in today’s senior leaders, there’s no better time for leadership to come from below.

What’s Needed to Lead Up?

To lead up, you must:

• Establish trust by following through on your commitments; be impeccable with your word; do what you say you’ll do.
• Connect with others authentically and honestly.
• Get out of the spotlight; share the credit with others.
• Demonstrate that you can think and act for the boss by taking initiative and following through.
• Use common sense; think before you act; listen to others.
• Do what’s practical to help the organisation achieve its goals.

You will also need to think and act strategically, which requires creativity and imagination:

• Think critically and strategically.
• Challenge the status quo and conventionality.
• Reframe opportunities.
• Get out of your office or your cubicle and be seen.
• Turn information into knowledge.
• Deal with ambiguity and uncertainty.

Assertive Diplomacy

Taking initiative requires assertiveness, confidence and decisiveness. Effective leaders radiate power and seem to be in total control.

But too much assertiveness (i.e., aggressiveness) drives people away, discourages collaboration and causes people to resist your influence.

Assertiveness, by definition, is the outcome of acting like a leader; that is, it gives people a reason to believe in your abilities to decide, act and lead others.

Managers on the way up want to ensure they’re seen as “assertive enough.” Those at or near the top are often advised to be “less assertive.” In truth, there’s a special kind of assertiveness that is just right — a quiet confidence and power that Baldoni calls “reflective assertiveness.” It emerges from experiences, including one’s trials and triumphs. It requires both humility and resilience.

To cultivate reflective assertiveness, you must:

1. Listen first. A leader’s ability to listen signals that she values others’ ideas and input.
2. Ask what people think.  Some employees can be reluctant to offer their input.   Di Worrall in A Climate for Change, asserts that by going out of her way to encourage employee views, a leader demonstrates the fine balance between humility and assertiveness that encourages collaboration and greatly enhances trust.  
3. Keep it low. People know where power lies. You don’t need to advertise it. If you model quiet power, you can remain calm when tempers fly.
4. Act decisively. The payoff to reflective assertiveness is decisiveness. You demonstrate strength by acting confidently. Even if you need some time to think before taking action, you can keep people informed about how the decision-making process is progressing.

Challenge Ideas, Not People

It takes gumption to challenge assumptions and the status quo. Middle managers must care enough to shake things up, and they’re in a perfect position to see what doesn’t work.

Those who resist your ideas will undoubtedly outnumber your supporters at first, but persistence pays off. Begin by challenging “the way we’ve always done it.” You must be willing to rethink options. Only then can you create new possibilities and solutions.

At the same time, you may find it uncomfortable to challenge those in authority. It’s a natural feeling. The trick is to challenge assumptions, not the individuals in positions of power. Focus on ideas, not personalities.

Push Back

Not all bosses want to be led. Some fear their authority will be undermined. Others are so insecure that leadership from below is a threat that must be stamped out at all cost.

These obstacles shouldn’t prevent you from trying to lead your boss, when appropriate. Observe the following guidelines:

• Stick with the facts. Management is rooted in valid data, so build your arguments with fact-based evidence. Make sure your research is on point, and dig to find other points of view so you can counter them.
• Ask others to challenge your premise. Before presenting your ideas to your boss, find people who can play devil’s advocate and explore your assumptions. They will either disprove your premise and prompt you to rethink your course of action, or they will validate your path and boost your confidence.
• Don’t confuse causation with correlation. Just because there’s a link between two issues doesn’t mean one provoked the other.

Dealing with a Jerk Boss

In some cases, all of the best data in the world won’t convince your boss that you’re right. If he’s a jerk, he’s probably insecure. He acts tough because he’s afraid of losing his job and control over others.

Jerk bosses cannot be reasoned with, so don’t even try. Remember that you always have a choice: You can roll over, fight back or leave. Choose wisely.

Bounce Back

Ultimately, what really matters is how we recover when things don’t go our way. Resilience gives you the strength you need when faced with rejection.

Review these points:

• What happened?
• What could I have done better?
• What did I learn?

The resilience to bounce back from a raw deal distinguishes those who succeed from those who become stuck, bitter and angry. It’s important for you to remain focused on goals and engaged in the process of fulfilling them.

True leaders will step up to the plate, regardless of where they fall on the organisational food chain. They see a need and are driven to find solutions. When they distrust their senior leaders, they spot opportunities to step in, lead up and prove their value.

Never give up on your dreams, and continue your pursuit of making a difference.

D Worrall (2010)

References:

Baldoni, J. (2009) Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up. AMACOM.

Gardner, H.E. (1996 ) Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership. Basic Books.

Useem, M (2003)  Leading Up: Managing Your Boss So You Both Win. Three Rivers Press.

Watson Wyatt WorkUSA® 2006/2007 Survey

Worrall, D (2009) A Climate for Change, Life Success Publishing.

For more articles like this to boost your confidence and skills to make change happen, subscribe to the free newsletter  for leaders of change at:   www.humanresourceschange.com.au/change-management.html

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So, why isn’t there enough time to juggle our work, home and health responsibilities? We have an enhanced quality of life, but we’re also adding to our stress levels by taking on more tasks than we have resources to handle.

 There’s a tremendous need for new methods, systems and, above all, habits to keep us on track.

Information Fatigue

You’ve probably already discovered that whichever system or calendar you’re using to track projects and priorities is important, but limited. As management guru Peter Drucker explains:

“In knowledge work…the task is not given; it has to be determined. ‘What are the expected results from this work?’…is the key question in making knowledge workers productive.”

We haven’t been taught to think deeply about our work before we undertake it. Thinking in a concentrated manner to define desired outcomes is something few people do. But outcome thinking is one of the most effective methods available for creating successful realities.

Brain Clutter

Many of us have experienced working in the “zone,” where creative processes flowed and we lost all sense of time. This happens when we use our right brain hemisphere. Right-brain thinking is essential for innovation. It functions like an artist, concerned only with the present moment.

In contrast, the left brain supplies logic and linear thinking; it’s concerned with time and numbers. It reminds us of tasks left undone, prior experiences we need to consider and future deadlines. It functions more like a banker.

Instead of allowing our minds to perform optimally, many of us fill our brains with daily life’s mundane details and rules. Worse, we spend endless hours repeating the tasks and projects we’re trying to juggle.

You need a functional system to hold these details until the appropriate time, when you can systematically tick off as many tasks as possible to clear your mind again. Writing things down on a to-do list is a good first step, but it’s not enough.

What’s Wrong With To-Do Lists?

As we struggle to multitask, we find there are too any things that are out of alignment with our current sense of reality. To cope, we put them on “the list,” which can grow to gargantuan proportions. Often, this list is nothing more than names of pressing projects written on numerous pieces of papers, often kept in several discrete places.

Here’s what’s missing from our lists:

• A clearly identified intended outcome
• A specific next-action step to be taken
• Reminders of outcomes and action steps in a reliable system

Some people keep multiple to-do lists of undone tasks. There are notes in their Day-Timers, computer calendars, PDAs, iPhones and all of the other common organising tools to which we cling. When we write something down and place it on a list, we assume we have a surefire way to remember it.

The Myth of Multitasking

Leading internet marketer, Alex Mandossian is all too familiar with the myth of multitasking in his complex industry. In his April 2009 blog post Why Multitasking Destroys Your Productivity, he observes that many people pride themselves of how they can manage the volume of their “to do” lists via “multitasking”. However, what they fail to realise is how much multitasking is actually eroding their productivity and undermining their results.

Wikipedia defines “human multitasking… (as) the performance by an individual of  “appearing” to handle more than one task at the same time”.  In this definition, the word “appearance” suggests that multitasking gives an illusion of producing tasks simultaneously. Author of The Myth of MultitaskingDave Crenshaw argues that multi-tasking is not so much about performing multiple activities simultaneously; but rather that we are switching between those tasks. It is that switching activity that reduces efficiency and effectiveness and increases the prevalence of errors, because mental focus is constantly interrupted.

Multi-tasking is a mis-guided habit pattern many of us have grown used to:

• Reading the paper while listening to the news
• Having a conversation while watching TV
• Checking voice mail, blackberries while speaking to someone
• Speaking on the telephone while drafting emails
• And a more controversial one: Driving while talking on a mobile phone!!

There is an alternative – Stacking.

Stacking is a like multi-tasking, except that only one of the “multiple activities” demands mental effort. Stacking does boost productivity and efficiency. For example:

• Reading while having a cup of coffee
• Exercising while listening to music
• Eating a meal while watching TV

Stacking boosts productivity; Multi-tasking doesn’t.

Open Loops

But the challenge of achieving productivity is more complex than the decision to stack or not to stack the items  on our multiple “to do”  lists. The left brain keeps its own list and tends to be untrusting. It will continually issue reminders and incessantly interrupt your most creative moments. In response, you will write down the task yet again, blocking your mind from thinking clearly.

All of the tasks for which you haven’t formulated desired outcomes and decisions remain active in what scientists call “open loops.” They will haunt you, sapping your energy and creative powers.

Manage the Mind to Manage Action

The answer lies in managing your actions: what you do with your time, your information, and your mind, body and focus. You must decide how to allocate your limited resources.

Most people haven’t adequately determined next actions in their commitments and projects. They leave key steps undecided and vague, or they try to tackle productivity from the top down:

1. Uncover personal and corporate missions.
2. Define critical objectives.
3. Focus on implementation details.

But productivity expert David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, believes otherwise:

“…The trouble is that most people are so embroiled in commitments on a day-to-day level that their ability to focus successfully on the larger horizon is seriously impaired. Consequently, a bottom-up approach is usually more effective.”

Start with the most mundane activities and commitments. Catch up by taking control of your in-basket and your mind—right now. You will unleash creative, buoyant energy that supports your attempt to reach new heights.

You will experience an immediate sense of freedom, release and inspiration. These rewards come naturally to those who roll up their sleeves, dig in and take care of the little things.

Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments

Here are some basic activities and behaviors you can implement to free up your mind and be more productive:

1. Empty your mind. Anything you consider unfinished must be captured in a trusted external system. This “collection bucket” must be reliable, and you must return to it regularly to sort through it.
2. Clarify exactly what your commitment entails, its desired outcome and what you have to do to make progress toward fulfilling it.
3. Once you’ve pinpointed all of the next-action steps you need to take, keep reminders of them organised in a system you can review regularly.

Employing next-action decision-making results in clarity, productivity, accountability and empowerment. When you hold yourself to the discipline of identifying the real results you want, you will obtain them.

Things that have your attention need your intention. Here are some questions to regularly ask as you go over your list:

• What does this mean to me?
• Why is it here?
• What do I want to be true about this?
• What’s the successful outcome?
• How do I make this happen?
• Which resources must I allocate to make it happen?
• What’s the next action?

When your newly adopted behaviors help you organise everything that comes your way, a deep alignment will occur. Wondrous things will emerge. You will become highly productive, achieving your desired outcomes with minimal stress and maximum results.

Di Worrall