May 14th, 2009
Superman and Wonder Woman Need Not Apply: Make Your Organization Easier to Lead
By William Seidman
What makes a leader great? Do organizations unwittingly reinforce stereotypes (gender, age, or other) when they insist on a superhero at the top?
Can organizations excel at what they do without a “charismatic” leader?
I’ve been reading Transformational Leadership by the late Bernard Bass and organizational psychologist Ronald Riggio, and I’ve had some great conversations recently with Patti Dragland of Strategic Sense and Lynn Miller from The Center for Creative Leadership.
Patti and Lynn have great ideas and programs on how to be a leader, including expectations for what it takes to be an extraordinary leader — very much the charismatic superhero.
The consensus is that leaders have to create vision, engage people, build teams, inspire, and set by example.
But people can’t be all of these things, even with the best training and coaching. The charismatic, “superhero” model can be as limiting as any stereotype. There are people out there who are smart, creative and inspirational, but may not fit the superhero mold.
Suppose that we could lower the threshold of leadership by focusing on making the organization more agile and responsive? This is what is meant by “Be the Change,” and it’s a challenging idea that can lead to good organizations becoming great.
Leaders would not have to be superheroes if their organizations were easier to lead.
This what Cerebyte does: it helps organizations to become more agile and responsive so that leaders can be great, whether or not they’re superheroes.
May 13th, 2009
What Does it Take to Outperform Your Peers? Positive Deviance (and Detective Work)
By William Seidman
Recently, I had the good fortune to work again with writer and sales expert (at Portfolio Decisionware) Karen Stevens and ShadeTree Technology’s founder and CEO, Jim Banks. These are two great sales people. They are true positive deviants: they’re unusually successful at what they do, consistently outperform, and think freshly and creatively.
It is amazing to me how complete and conscious their mental models of the sales process are. I was talking with Jim while he showed me features of his technology on his website. I couldn’t follow him because he was thinking so fast and he was showing me only the surface aspects of his approach. There’s a lot to learn!
I did some Cerebyte-style Wisdom Discovery - a piece-by-piece analysis of what she does and how she does it - with Karen, and she revealed a completely different model of sales: a model based on being a detective. Turns out that detective work greatly enhances results…
Positive deviants are just incredible-they think in such different ways. Getting their mental models is not really the issue; getting others to pay attention to their thinking is the real challenge.
May 12th, 2009
Positive Thinking and The Neuroscience of Attention and Attentiveness
By William Seidman
Last week, the New York Times ran an interesting article on attention, specifically on Winfred Gallagher’s book Rapt: Attention on the Focused Life. Some conversations I subsequently had got me thinking about attention. One discussion I had was about a teaching technique that spends a lot of time focusing on what people are doing wrong. A reasonable challenge to that theory of learning is, “If you’re focussing on what you’re doing wrong, how will you learn to do it right?” A more complex and complete response has to do with the neuroscience of attention - which magicians/performance artists Penn and Teller know quite a bit about.
Are any of you golfers? Have you ever gone to the tee and said to yourself, “Don’t slice, don’t slice!” What do you immediately do? You slice. It is the same idea for a well-known expression: “Playing the game not to lose.” In sports, and, it turns out, in inherited wealth (check out Lee Brower’s work), when you play a game defensively, you usually lose.
Why is this? When you spend most of your mental resources on what’s wrong, you are getting better at the wrong thing. Instead, we need to focus on the positive - or, how to do the job right.
May 5th, 2009
New Technologies for Training: Exciting Tools and Possibilities
By William Seidman
This is an exciting time for the development of new technology for training. During the ISPI conference that I recently attended, some of the most interesting work was on that and an analysis of the future of technology for training versus traditional classroom training. Educators and learning specialists Julia Bulkowski and Erika Grouell from Google gave a presentation on Web 2.0 , highlighting a variety of exciting tools and apps. We learned more about wikis, blogging, Google Moderator, Google Forms and the use of online videos for training.
One participant asked if this was interfering with “work,” at least as we currently define it. The response was that this is a different notion of work, where group collaboration drives the process. All of this was very cool, and it demonstrated that the way in which people work is evolving and will be different in the future.
Dr. Allison Rossett from San Diego State University gave a great presentation on technology, comparing the use of new technologies to classroom training. Her conclusion was that classroom training is going to be largely replaced by other media, including the media described in the Web 2.0 presentation. These media are more able to give users exactly what they need, exactly when they need it. I was encouraged to see that Cerebyte’s persuasive technology is absolutely consistent with these trends.
April 29th, 2009
Tribal Knowledge and the Use of Stories in Training Managers
By William Seidman
Tribal knowledge is important, and important to the work of training managers. Seth Godin explains it here (the video is 12 minutes long). The transmittal of tribal knowledge was on our minds at the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)’s annual meeting earlier this month in Orlando, Florida. I attended a presentation by Jon Revelos . The focus of the training was the use of stories in training. There was a great discussion about the value of story-based learning when holding and delivering critical tribal knowledge. In the presentation, we talked about ways to show the value of a narrative to management by emphasizing positive deviant stories. Positive deviance stories proved increasingly valuable because they are richer in content and have a more direct connection to performance. We also talked about the use of stories when motivating and sustaining responses, which effectively connects stories to impact.
Jon is now driving a compliance training program — these can be pretty dry. He is looking for ways to bring stories into compliance training. Again, positive deviants are an opportunity because they treat compliance as a fundamental tool to achieving a greater social good. All of this is consistent with our work with positive deviance, and it was an altogether interesting and exciting presentation.
April 28th, 2009
Terrific Multinational, Multicultural Session at the ISPI Annual Meeting
By William Seidman
More on the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)’s annual meeting earlier this month in Orlando, Florida: discussion in the multinational, multicultural session was particularly interesting because of the presenters’ culturally varied experiences. Paul Nieminen is responsible for United Parcel Service’s change programs in Europe and Asia, Al Pacheco is a consultant for IBM doing a cultural diversity program for the major accounts teams, and Karen Waterlander works in Finland for Kone, the fourth-largest manufacturer of - and service provider for - elevators in the world. There were many others — too many to mention. What a great group!
What was amazing was how many things we had in common. Everyone had encountered resistance from each country because of their perceived uniqueness and everyone struggled with having to engage people and sustain change over great distances. Our program seemed to interest many of them, particularly Cerebyte’s international work with Intel, because it solved these problems.
April 27th, 2009
Fresh Thinking at the ISPI (International Society for Performance Improvement) Meeting
By William Seidman
This year’s International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) annual meeting in Orlando was great.
No doubt due to the downturn, it was smaller than in the past — 500-600 people, but the energy level was high and my impression was that everyone who was there really wanted to be there.
Some of the highlights were the opening presentation by Don Peppers on leadership, particularly the need for leadership in these hard times. There were great presentations on Web 2.0 by Julia Bulkowski and Erika Grouell, both from Google, use of stories in training by Jon Revelos (Bank of America), and about the transition from classroom training to e-training - web-based training - by Allison Rossett (UCSD).
I presented on :Transcending Cultures: Change in Multi-Cultural, Multi-National Organizations and The Science of Cultural Change.
Were you there, or wish you were? Let me know what your thoughts.
April 19th, 2009
Cerebyte Goes to the Transformational Leadership Gala
By William Seidman
I’m back from the Transformational Leadership Gala in Chicago, sponsored in part by the Wright Institute for the Realization of Human Potential.
Judith Wright, Ed. D. and Bob Wright, Ed. D. did an amazing job organizing this for 350 participants.
I joined a discussion on leadership that transforms society for the better. At dinner I sat next to Ronald Riggio, author of Transformational Leadership and a great guy. His work examines the characteristics of what makes someone a transformational leader.
Our work was about how such a leader can touch hundreds or thousands at once, and we had much to talk about.
The keynote speaker was Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, who gave a great speech about how he went from a “fat, long-haired hippy” managing a three-person video store to building Best Buy into a multi-billion-dollar company.
Anderson stressed that a key idea is to empower others to be creative, and to not overly-centralize decision-making.
It was clear in listening to him that he was simultaneously pretty humble and damn tough. He could be supportive and demanding at the same time - good combination!
April 16th, 2009
Upcoming Leadership and Performance Improvement Conferences
By William Seidman
Several interesting conferences are coming up, and I’m going:
My first stop is Friday, April 17th in Chicago for the Transformational Leadership Gala sponsored by the good folks at the Wright Institute for Transformational Leadership.
The main speaker will be Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy.
Should be very interesting. 300 people are expected - all involved with leadership.
My next stop is the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Annual Meeting in Orlando.
I am presenting Monday, April 20th on Organizational Change in Multi-National, Multi-Cultural Organizations, and on Wednesday April 22nd on The Science of Organizational Change.
ISPI is mostly for people responsible for changing organizations, and there are always lots of good conversations there.
It should be a great week and weekend!
April 15th, 2009
The Obama Administration and the Science of Change
By Michael McCauley
I read a fascinating article recently by Michael Grunwald in Time magazine. It details how the Obama administration is using the science of change and behavioral economics to move the country in the desired direction. They base their approach on the latest behavioral research, including the findings behind recent best sellers Influence by psychologist Robert Cialdini, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and Nudge by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. The approach can be summarized in 4 steps:
Step 1: Make it Clear. Recent studies suggest that better information - in this case information about energy use, diet, our mortgages and credit card rates - helps people make better choices. For example, what if every public company was required to provide a standardized one-page summary of financial information, rather than the voluminous annual reports they provide now? Average people would then be able to compare one company against another and make informed investment choices.
Step 2: Make it Easy. Life is complicated and, given the opportunity, most people tend to take the easy path. For example, in one study, only 36% of women joined a 401(k) plan when they had to sign up for it, but when they were automatically enrolled and had to specifically opt out in order to decline, 86% participated.
Step 3: Make it Popular. Behavioral studies show that nothing drives personal choice quite like the power of conformity. Research shows that homeowners are most likely to save energy and recycle when they think everyone else is doing it, too. The Obama campaign’s ”Get Out The Vote” drive last summer was able to mobilize millions of people with a simple message - “a record turnout is expected.”
Step 4: Make it Mandatory. If all else fails, pass laws that mandate the desired behavior. Laws requiring efficient appliances, health insurance or limits on carbon emissions are examples. Notice that this is seen as a last resort, not the first line of defense. Numerous studies show that mandatory “command and control systems” that require certain behaviors are often vigorously resisted. It is useful only when the all other options (i.e., steps 1-3) fail to result in the desired transformation.
This behavioral approach to change is significantly different from the approaches taken by previous administrations. It will be interesting to watch the results.