Mandate or Mistake?

Why do I suspect that I was not the only person to be surprised by President Obama's selection as the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace prize? I have to admit I am still processing my reaction.

The reaction from the "right" is pretty typical, the award indicates how shallow the world is, recognizes Obama's "star" power, but little else etc. Are we in the U.S missing something that the rest of the world sees? Did we miss and continue to miss how polarizing the actions of the last administration were in how the world saw us?

From my own personal context I do see this award as a bit "proactive" if not premature, but at the same time I have often heard that "good" managers use recognition reactively, while great managers use it proactively to create an environment for even greater performance.

What a change to see the U.S seen as a beacon again. We can ask ourselves whether or not given some of our domestic issues that this is where we should concentrate, but is there room on the agenda for both? To those that are critical have we given this President a reasonable time to create meaningful change, he has been in office nine months. In that nine months he has definitely created a profound effect in how the world sees the United States. Maybe not a bad start.

Barrack Obama may be the most polarizing President since Lincoln. When I read some of the diatribes about him I wonder how it is that he has created such fear and agitation in such a short time. We still have leadership of the other party claiming or a least condoning claims that he isn't an American citizen and is a secret Muslim. Are they that afraid of the potential change he represents? I don't have any issue with disagreeing with a candidate or even voting for the other "guy", but do we have to demonize?

Perhaps this award represents the "audacity of hope", not only for the United States, but for the world. To me it speaks of the yearning of a lot of people for a different way of interacting together in a collaborative fashion.

There are a lot of scary things going on right now. The situation in the Middle East is far from resolved and we still have miles to go before we have repaired the fundamental infrastructure of own society on issues including health care and employment. In our President's defense, he didn't create any of those issues he inherited them.

I am an optimist by nature. I am going to interpret the award as a mandate and a sign of hope that the President will continue to grow into his role as both a domestic and world leader and will contribute to leaving the country and the world a better place when he leaves office then when he found it. I do not and will not always agree with everything he does, but as is my nature and my imperative I will withhold judgment and try to evaluate the "whole person" that he represents.

To those that want to reject the award I caution that is what has characterized us in the world for a long time, incapable of recognizing and accepting others right to see things from a different perspective. We don't have to agree, but do we need to impose our viewpoint or ridicule that of others we disagree with?

I would be curious to hear your reactions, especially those from the international community.

So You Want To Be A Leader?

This is actually the topic of a presentation that I used to do for our local Chamber of Commerce leadership development program as the last chapter of an eight month development program. Our intent was to send them out with both a sense of empowerment and accountability to something larger than themselves and their companies.

I among others have had the opportunity to discuss and debate what differentiates leadership and management on the "pages" of this blog, linkedin, and a number of other venues as have thousands of others smarter than me.

I ran across a summary of an interview with Robert Dolan, Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, on BNET that I think summarized it it more succinctly than I have ever seen or heard before. He stated, "a manager maintains the status quo and delivers profitability, a leader performs three essential functions-

• they develop and encourage great talent merely with their presence
• they see new opportunities and innovations and push the organization to pursue them
• they act as a moral compass for the organization and role model the appropriate adoption of the organizational values and principles."

We can argue for decades about all of the other characteristics and attributes, but what I really like about Dolan's point is that they describe action and doing rather than passivity.

I found this summary especially timely because I hear the media and others starting to declare that the recession is "over". It is over because the stock market is moving up and large corporations are starting to declare profits again. I guess the fact that they expect unemployment to remain in double digits for the foreseeable future and that we have a health care crisis represents a rounding error. Not to me.

I like to think of myself as a realistic optimist. I was hoping that the recession would serve as kind of a national wake up call on a number of key societal issues. As anyone who has read my blog, my book, or other publications knows I am a big fan of engagement, true engagement. That is a system where stakeholders align in a common purpose. Studies show that organizations who adopt and maintain engagement strategies outperform their competitors in every key dimension. I was hoping the recession would cause more organizations to recognize that engagement is not only necessary, it is good for business.

I still remain hopeful that the "end" of the recession doesn't mean we think we have solved the health care issue. We have a very expensive system that delivers health care inefficiently and with pretty poor outcomes.

I am also a fan of personal competency. Getting away from the corporate and governmental codependency that has dominated our economic model for the last several generations. Employees need to be given an opportunity to engage and in return they need to be educated and expected to play a role in decisions about their health, their long term economic security, and generally be financially literate.

Much of the debate around leadership is whether leaders are born or "taught". Is it a series of characteristics or traits or is it behavior? I kind of like the behavior model. If you have capacity and you don't do anything with it are you really a leader? I think that is similar to the point Malcolm Gladwell made in Outliers, a high IQ in and of itself is no guarantee of spectacular success either personally or professionally, you must apply it.

When I look at where we got to and how we got there I have to tell you I see a lot more people in business and government who are managers- protecting the status quo and profitability; than leaders, individuals who develop deep talent, challenge their organizations to innovate, and act as moral compasses and role models not only internally, but externally.

Even the debate over health care represents an interesting model; we recognize it is compromised, but we seem (at least our "leadership") to embrace significant change in a model that doesn't work in delivering against key performance measurements.

I heard earlier this week that the performance bonuses paid out by the major financial institutions exceeded their recorded profits. Am I the only one who missed the logic of that decision?

How can we declare the recession is ending with record unemployment?

So for me I like Professor Dolan's definition of leadership. To his three characteristics I would add two more of my own:

• Come to work every day prepared to be fired for doing the right thing.
• Think about your "legacy", what you leave behind more than your "career", what you take with you.

It would appear to me that if you choose leadership rather than management as defined by Dr. Dolan you might not find the field nearly as crowded. What do you think?

Creating A Community

In my last "corporate" job I think one of the things that I was proudest of was the relationship we had with the communities that we served and the fact as as member based organization we represented a "community" of our own.

I was reading an article on BNET- which I highly recommend by the way, and there was an article describing a farming tribe in what we would probably describe as a third world country. They were describing a conversation that they had with an elder of the tribe and his intrigue or perhaps disdain is a better word, for our obsession with individualism. While I believe strongly in respect for the individual, the elder was concerned that our obsession with the individual could have negative consequences like politics, dissension, and strife. He pointed out that without community the individual is finished. As I have pointed out somewhat facetiously before - Simon and Garfunkle may be a rock or an island, but the rest of us need other people.

If you think about it organizations that have a strong sense of community or mission have very high performance cultures. That is the basis of my concept of Compliance to Commitment(TM).

We talk about that concept today in somewhat different terms when we talk about engagement. Mutual trust and respect, shared values, a clear vision that we all support. That sounds a lot like a community doesn't it?

As we look at the days ahead I think that employees and consumers will be looking for a sense of community as well. Our trust in many of our institutions has been deeply shaken. We are looking for something to believe in. I have seen a lot of posting on LinkedIn and other places about what management and leadership should be doing in this time to create some sense of security for their employees. Perhaps building a sense of community and trust is a good start.

In my previous organization we took the idea of community very seriously. We felt strongly that we had a purpose of serving both our members and the community. We encouraged our employees to get involved in a variety of activities and causes. The results were overwhelming. Our employees volunteered at over double the national average. It showed up in our business as well. Our members saw us as part of their community and were proud of their association with us. That was reflected in our business numbers.

For those of you that are running businesses you might want to ask yourself- Have I created a community in my organization? You might ask even further am I connecting with the community at large?

The latest research from BlessingWhite would tell you that the highest level of engagement is pride of association. It would appear that building a community isn't just good citizenship- it is good business!