Who is culpable, for instance, for extraordinarily high CEO wages?   Considerable finger wagging has been going on in the press at CEOs about this.  It isn’t the CEO who sets his or her own salary; it is the board of directors.  Yet boards of directors were invisible to the press in these stories.  Often our assumptions may lead us to conclusions that malign others without full consideration for the facts.  This disturbs me greatly but I know I have done it, too.  Why is that?

Walking with a friend, I mentioned a situation that was just this kind of wrongful maligning, and she asked me, “How long does it take to find a witch?”  She was referencing the days in Europe from 1480 to 1700 when legally sanctioned and official witchcraft trials resulted in from 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It was decided someone was a witch, and that person was immediately burned at the stake.  Perhaps it is popular to not trust CEOs because the media are on a CEO witch-hunt.

While we’ve moved beyond flagrantly burning people at the stake, we still do character assassinations every day in the form of judgment and gossip.   Some of this finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting is projection — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible.  So I ask myself, is my promise about business leaders leading with integrity and love and listening for people’s greatness about convincing leaders to be that?  Or is there some culpability in how I, and others listen for a leader to be great?

I believe there’s a pandemic malaise that creates its own dissonance and a noise within which leaders are trying to lead.  The expectation that leaders should be responsible for all wrongs is abdication of personal responsibility, and in the United States anyway (where I live), it is a serious problem.

I would like for EVERY individual in an organization, be it government, non-profit or for-profit, to SEEK OUT and TAKE UP their part in building successful entity, using the energy they spend criticizing leadership and putting it into taking personal responsibility to own their own accountability for results.

For more on this topic you can request on this website, www.accountabilitypays.com, the larger thesis from which this excerpt was taken.

Seeing into the future is rather like running in heavy fog eyes wide open.  I was recently invited to participate in a strategic planning session for a not-for-profit organization where the CEO wants to see 30 years out into the future.

I proposed a people analysis as part of this process because there is an assumption that some of those folks who are currently in the organization will still be there to carry out this vision.  Some will not, the math doesn’t work.   Age is not your friend in this exercise.  Or in Steve Jobs’ case, illness was not his friend nor was his illness our friend.  I don’t know about you but I miss him!

In the fuzzy environment of the global financial crisis, technology advancements, and unpredictability of the environmental issues, there is something exciting about skipping all of those considerations and saying “this is where we WANT to be.”

Our favorite recent runaway successful leader Steve Jobs said, “ A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them.  Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” That is vision in the face of a crumbling economy, yes? At Accountability Pays we use all Apple products.

Vision is an inside job that belongs to the leader. Moreover, it differentiates a successful leader from an also-ran leader.   But it isn’t enough to just envision the future, without giving it legs.  Warren Bennis said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Jobs could have believed in putting quality products into the market and flopped but general consensus says he tenaciously adhered to a winning combination of innovation AND a veracity about quality AND an incredible sensibility for design to differentiate those products from ANY competitor.  He had the capacity and the drive to translate his vision into more market share than any company anywhere in any industry.

Here is a teaser quote to send you on your way to visioning.  Who said this?  “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?”

Your comments are welcome and invited.  Feel free to give your examples, your stories.

Why do I say all hell breaks loose?  Because any organization cannot move together in syncopation without clarity of a common future view, and people cannot do their jobs if there isn’t clarity of their required contribution.

When clarity is present, people have the freedom that is created by clear boundaries.  Employees are freed up to do their work, not protect themselves from attacks by others with different expectations.

Clarity is influenced by the amount of confidence one has in one’s opinion, which is all we really have regarding our view of the world.  Research into successful people in the workplace by Dr. Dan Harrison* showed a paradoxical relationship between two independent variables:  confidence in one’s opinions (certainty), and the tendency to reflect on many different viewpoints (open/reflective).

As a leader desiring to provide a clear vision of the future, or clear boundaries around the responsibilities of a particular role you would want enough certainty to have clarity.  Caveat:  an excess of certainty is dogmatic, when others hear the underlying message, “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right, and I am not changing my opinion.  Ever.”

Conversely, too much open/reflective is inconclusive.  The line outside the door of an inconclusive decision maker who is taking input on a decision favors the last guy in line!  Those in between will hear, “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea too!”

The optimal relationship between these paradoxical positions is high certainty AND high open/reflective; the tendency to explore different viewpoints and formulate conclusions without becoming fixed in one’s opinions.

My friend Mary Lore wrote a book called Managing Thought.  In addition to selling the book, she delivers it for free one page a day.  http://www.managingthought.com.

Managing our thoughts and clarity go hand in hand.  Can you see this connection?  Your thinking clearly precedes providing clarity for anyone else?  Clear thinking comes from managing thoughts by asking the right questions, by engaging in thinking deeply and long-term about the impact of your words, your actions, and the potential responses from others.  For instance, being reactive (what Mary calls the “faithful-dog brain” and our reticular activation system) will focus on making us right.  The problem is, when stuck in that thinking, you risk becoming dogmatic.

*Evaluation of the impact of paradoxical relationships is unique to the Harrison Assessment which is a hiring assessment.  Dr. Harrison is coming to San Diego June 29th and will present a workshop in the morning on this topic.

Look further and you will find many companies distinguishing themselves by pursuing the triple bottom line; Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Panera Bread, The Container Store, Whole Foods — being purposeful in a larger sense while pursuing self-interest.  The proof of effectiveness is in the financial, social, and environmental effects and is often associated with the monikers “sustainable” organization, or corporate citizenship, or conscious capitalism.  For more examples,  http://www.forbes.com/impact-30/lander.html.

Besides being the conscious thing to do, the triple bottom line has appeal for ‘A’ players — people who want to work for a purpose greater than themselves, who will work harder for the privilege of making a difference.

Breakaway Success is accomplishment beyond measure.  And yes, to get there, measure, measure, measure!  But only measure what is meaningful.

What is meaningful?  Most accountants measure what has already passed, and that has to be measured — sales, profits, ROI, G&A, etc.  Nothing new here and not necessarily meaningful to top performers, particularly younger workers who decide where to work based on the green/social capital of the organization.

And yes, financials are important. The Harvard Business Review, January 2010 issue’s presentation of The Best-Performing CEOs in the World said their objective was to present a long-term measure to assess CEOs and to inform CEO searches and succession planning, looking at stock returns, the fundamental scorecard for CEOs of public companies.  They looked at three measures:  country-adjusted return, industry-adjusted return and change in market capitalization during their tenure.

The following are words and phrases emanating from the 2011 CEO Summit on Conscious Capitalism. http://vimeo.com/33738729. Well-being of the people, the world.  Value for stakeholders.  I win, you win, the world wins.  Businesses operating from higher ideals that animate business. Profit is the byproduct, and purpose underlies that.  If you make a difference, often the money will take care of itself.

Paradoxically, NOT focusing wholly on profit will provide more profitability because the focus is on win-win.

How is your organization measuring its success?  I am eager to hear your stories.

Different teams require different structures, so for example sales teams require CRM.  That should be obvious, but for some organization it isn’t.  They probably aren’t reading this blog, because they have fallen behind in their technology savvy.

Today there is no excuse for not capturing sales data.  If you experience resistance from your sales management or a sales team member, you may be getting feedback from someone who doesn’t want to be measured, which suggests that person isn’t an ‘A’ player.  Look more deeply.

Senior executive teams need meetings with one another on a regular basis, and I do not mean meetings that get put off when there’s an emergency.  Consider that there are emergencies because you aren’t strategically thinking together regularly.

‘A’ teams need a leader who challenges them to think their best thoughts, be on their best behavior as a leader.  Challenging conversations are a structure.  They need report cards, theirs from you and theirs to you the CEO/President/Founder/Grand Poo-Bah of any title.  They need off-sites for strategic thinking and planning.  Those are structures.

What else do they need as a structure?  Executives need to be able to count on having conversations that matter deeply, whether they ask for them or not, in part because they need to learn how to hold those conversations with those who report to them.  I recently was asked to help a CEO hire a senior executive.  We used the Harrison Assessment to profile the candidate against the expectations of the position.  His results scared the potential employee off.  The CEO’s executive coach said to me, “Probably a good thing.  If the candidate doesn’t want to delve more transparently into himself then he won’t be a good fit for this team.”

If you need support for generating conversations that matter, on this website you can order senior executive team conversation starters.   And if you want to keep and inspire ‘A’ teams with structures, you will look beyond the obvious ones, which you know with your eyes closed.

What is Employee Engagement? 

Here’s what I see.  Employee engagement is employees working in an organization in a way that an owner would work, with something at stake in the future success of the organization and a sense of worth that comes from contributing to something greater than their own self-interest.

So when managing the philosophy of human resources in your organization, what are the principles that would garner either engagement or optimally passion for people doing their job?

We are currently putting in new flooring, and two guys are downstairs as I write this blog chatting away in another language as they set the tiles that we will live with for many years to come.  Are they artisans designing my future environment, attending to whether the tiles look good in that configuration?  Or are they talking about their evening, a good steak, their children and just making a dollar?

If you are working from the triple bottom line — profits, people, and planet — your employees’ attitudes matter.  If you want employees to be responsible for the bottom line then they have to have a stake in the results the company produces, and that does not mean your job is to make them HAPPY.  Rick Tate of Impact Achievement Group recently wrote an article pointing out that it is productive employees who have great morale, yet many performance reviews reflect a belief that great morale leads to productivity.   Happy is a result of productivity, not an access to it.

You are responsible for their experience of productivity in many ways, one of them is what you measure.  “A” players like to be measured, and “A” teams like to be measured.  If you are measuring what matters they know it, you know it, and you will have engaged employees.

How do you measure employee engagement (or better yet, passion)?  I welcome your stories!

I have a dream that leadership opportunities come only to those who demonstrate that their decisions are informed by deeply held core values. Lee Thayer, author of Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing and I are on the same page about that.

Lee says, “The right values and beliefs are the “right stuff.” If you don’t have “the right stuff,” then you are not going to accomplish anything extraordinary, either individually or as a leader of others. And if those key others are not right-minded, right-hearted, and right-spirited (if they don’t have “the right stuff”), then your mission will likely fail. The right values and beliefs are critical because values and beliefs do not take us where we want to go. They take us in the direction they go. Their direction and their ends are inherent in them. They are blind to everything but their own ends. Get them right, and they will carry you along to where you want to go. Get them wrong, and they will carry you along to wherever they are headed.”

In your organization haven’t you observed someone with a title who has position power, but someone else has credibility and whose decisions people would choose to follow? I certainly have. If hiring choices have been good optimally the person with position power also is someone people would choose to follow. That scenario is least stressful on all systems and the people in them. It is also the path to extraordinary success.

Yet when was the last time you had a conversation with someone in leadership about their character as evidenced by the values that underlie their decisions?

Maybe it’s time to bring that background issue to the foreground at an executive session. Your employees know who you are, really.

I invite your comments, questions, and thoughts.

So what is transparency?  Transparency is a choice, a value in an organization that optimizes candor (telling the truth regardless of the impact of that truth, fast and forward).  These authors assert that candor maximizes the probability of success.

Transparency has to be lived as a value from the top of the organization down through its toes, where it does the walking.  And it either walks its talk or it doesn’t.  Like pregnancy, there is no such thing as being partly transparent.  What would that be?  We’ll tell you the truth part of the time but not all of the time?  It’s up to you to guess which part is true, though.

Like humanity, this is a complex subject in application.  We have seen the absence of transparency in highly visible cases where leaders did not intend to dupe their stakeholders, reality just got away from them at Enron, British Petroleum (BP) and most of the global organizational financial failures that created our drop in economic safety in the world.   Reality was known in these cases, it was not transparent to those who could make a difference before the crisis.

Does transparency occur differently inside an organization with the lightening speed of the digital era, where things said cannot be retracted?  The magnitude of emails and sometimes-careless comments and thought, can complicate discerning transparency for actionable matters.

These authors assert that transparency begins at home, in your own organization, where you will build a muscle around being transparent so that when called for in the world at large, you won’t be left without capacity for it like BP’s ex-CEO Tony Hayward, who eventually got around to admitting BP was not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.”    They also call for leaders to empower transparency in both directions — enabling others to “speak truth to power.”

You do know what I mean.  And if you have built a muscle around screwing your courage to the sticking point to look into the mirror, and if you enable your people to show you a mirror, good for you!  If you have not, there is no time like the present.

Tell me your stories, your questions, your thoughts.

But I am not attached to what that looks like.  In other words your version of the triple bottom line is up to you.

That I am committed to accountability paying off and increasing vitality gives me freedom to listen carefully for what is important to you.  It is the access to something.  It feeds my interest in you.  I don’t have to be right about how you get to the triple bottom line.  My ego is not in the conversation.

So what is attachment? Being attached may lead to doing things YOUR way, which might not be the most effective way, or the way with the highest ROI, or the way that works for the most number of people. Donald Trump’s leadership’s style is a good example of attachment.  You will do it MY way or hit the highway.   Emotions usually ride high with attachment .  Ego is very present.

Being committed or being attached are places you come from when moving a project forward or moving toward a goal.  Profit is a goal.  People and the planet are not goals, they are stakeholders in how you reach that goal. As a leader, one of the most difficult dynamics to manage are people’s unmet expectations about how other people should behave on the way to a common goal.

If you have been leading organizations for a while you are probably smiling that little recognition smile.   This means you have to bring people together sometimes to remind them of the value of civility, because each is attached to his or her own opinion of how something should be done.

When attachment is present, listening stops.  Progress is impeded when this happens.  What there is to do is take the conversation back to the commitment that is shared, and see what opens up.

Where are you attached?  Where are you committed?  Can you feel the difference?  I would enjoy hearing your stories.

So you are a leader.  If you are successful by financial standards you could fall into that trap.  As leaders, it can be tempting to read our own press and believe it.

Power is a reflection of effectiveness.   You could be the best at your profession — you might be the expert in your field. I have met leaders who, when they walk into a room all eyes turn.  If you have that power, you have a responsibility.  The more reference power, the more personal power, or the more expert power you have, the more responsibility is called for.

Consider that some people may have stopped telling you the truth, truth that could be useful.  They may have trouble being themselves around you.  If your presence is so overwhelming that others have to shade their eyes not to get sunburn, then you have missed an opportunity to be contributed to and frankly, to contribute.  The separation of inequality is a barrier to communication.

Bottom line is, being bigger than your britches creates a barrier to hearing the thoughts, observations, or desires of others.   Communication is lessened, altered, missed.

I was once advised, “Take advice from a rock.” Everyone has a contribution to make if you will allow it, even listen for it.  A little humility goes a long way to making others comfortable in your presence, giving you access to them and them access to you.

Do you have the experience of being powerful?  When do you tend to listen, and to whom?  When do you not?   Dialog is healthy.  I welcome yours here.