Do Try This At Home!

I know for years we have encouraged people to think global and act local, but I want to explore a different paradigm with you.

As you know I am extremely passionate about the concept of creating engaged environments and strong employment brands. Often what I hear from people is " that's great Mark, but I am a small business with a small work force and small budget". The other thing I hear is "how"?

I came across a couple of pieces earlier this week that I thought were nothing short of brilliant in explaining both why and how this is relevant to small business.

Paul Mitchell, the brilliant Australian social scientist www.thehumanenterprise.com.au, shared some things that both resonated with me and were immediately applicable to businesses without regard to their size.

• The first thing that Mitchell did was describe leadership in a simple, but very compelling way. A leader excites their followers to exceptional performance. This definition is especially relevant because performance and effort are what engagement is ultimately about. Not happiness, not "satisfaction", but performance. Those others factors maybe contributors, but at the end of the day we need results.

The next thing that Mitchell talked about were the four key elements that every business should build into their "value proposition":

• Great leaders focus on followers. Mitchell and I share the belief that relationships are the "glue" in organizations. Truly effective leaders do things with people, not to people. With their employees, with their customers, with their suppliers, with their community.
• Build a sense of community. Following that same theme leaders understand they are part of a community and they invest in it. They build and nurture relationships on a foundation of trust and respect. They exchange value and values not transactions.
• Be yourself, but with more skill. Mitchell calls this authenticity. Everyone has allowable weaknesses, his point is to focus on your strengths and core competencies. Seek out other relationships internally and externally that complement your skill sets and offering.
• Focus on what matters. Mitchell suggests that we look for significance in ourselves and others. Find what you and others do right and celebrate it whether they are an employee, a customer, a neighbor, or a stranger. Connect them to the larger community and the larger context. We are a village, not an island.
• Build the excitement. There is an old amusing expression "if you are excited, you might want to let your face know". This speaks precisely to Mitchell's earlier definition of leadership. Be excited and share excitement. If you are not excited and don't believe in "you", how can you expect others to?

Added to this wisdom from over the "pond" I had a chance to see some results from the national survey and initiative on engagement from the U.K. that showed similar things. The country wide study found that there are four elements that build and sustain the engaged environment:

• Listening
• Treatment
• Coaching
• Role and role modeling

Once again it comes down to relationship. Listening and treatment speaks to my guiding principle of respect. Coaching and role speak to the principle of the big picture and autonomy. Role modeling speaks to authenticity and values. The British study also found that when leadership commits to these behaviors they become "viral", they spread through the organization both formally and informally.

By the way they did examine compensation as well and what they found was again consistent. Money may initially attract, but the most important qualities of compensation are perceived equity and fairness. So the short story is if you do compensation well it is a break even, it won't detract from engagement. If you do it badly it will destroy your foundation. Once again we see the tie back to relationship that once we get past survival mode it is about fairness and equity, not dollars.

So when you think about building and reinforcing your brand, be sure you include these elements. The interesting thing is you don't need a big budget or large staff and yes, you can do this at home......

Cautious Optimism

I just read a post on MSN that causes me to be cautiously optimistic. In the post it describes President Obama's desire to reposition much of the bailout strategy to community banks and small businesses. I think that would represent an excellent move.

I run a small business and work with many others. While I have seen many of the large financial institutions benefit from the bailout and in fairness pay back much if not all of the bail out money I can't say I have seen enormous quantities of the money "trickle down" to small businesses or lenders loosen up and provide loans to help refuel a real recovery.

As a "little guy" while I am pleased to see the stock market creeping back up I am not quite ready to declare the recession over. I live in a world of intimacy. I deal with my clients one on one. I see them continue to struggle. The community I reside in still has high unemployment and relatively low affordability, the ability for people to buy a home relative to their income. There is no grand strategy to deal with this issue in our local economy that I have seen.

I am not going to blame all of where we are on the "big banks" and the Administration. I have felt and still feel that the recession represented and continues to provide an opportunity for community banks and credit unions to step up and play a bigger role in their communities and how people see them. I have been pretty underwhelmed by the innovation and risk taking I have seen to date.

I hope that if the President is successful in this new direction smaller banks and credit unions "invest" in their communities rather than follow the example of the mega banks. At least in theory we are part of these communities. I am a big believer in the concept of think globally, but act locally.

So I will be curious to see what happens. For those in the "community" banking world if these funds come through it will be our opportunity and responsibility to step up. It has been easy to hide behind the excuse that we didn't benefit from the first round, but what will we do with our turn at bat if we get it?

In Search of.....?

I have always found August to be kind of an interesting month. I am naturally restless so I struggle with it. I like the fact that it is summer, but the fact business seems to slow to a crawl drives me crazy sometimes. I have too much time to spend questioning myself and my purpose.

I read an interesting book this weekend, The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner. The author, who is a self professed "grump" charted his journey through a number of countries ranging from Bhutan to Moldova and the U.S. in search of what defines and creates happiness for people. It is a pretty interesting book that demonstrates that the correlation between standard of living, weather, and other factors is not nearly as absolute as we would think. It would seem that Maslow had it right.

The importance of relationships between people was a constant recurring theme. People and cultures with a strong relationship network are generally happier. When the author posed the question of whether or not there was a higher "state" of evolution than happiness to an Indian guru, the guru responded that love and relationships are indeed higher.

The other thing that was profound was the relationship between doing something you perceive as having a purpose you can personally align with had on happiness or contentment. I know it is critically important to me, is was interesting to have it "validated". It was also interesting that being able to share that purpose with others by talking about it or literally sharing the activity is very important as well. It would seem happiness is rarely solitary.

It was also interesting that happiness needs polarity. Happiness without sadness or emotional "pain" becomes vanilla or complacency. People who pursue things vigorously enjoy the benefits of both "poles" more than those who navigate only smooth waters.

Probably the most interesting place he visited to me was Iceland. It is dark and cold there a lot, it is a relatively small geographical area, but has a very high "happiness" index. I particularly liked the Icelandic perspective that experimenting with multiple careers and interests is encouraged, not based on your "talent", but rather your passion. Since I seem prone to reinventing myself perhaps that is why it resonates with me. Sounds like the Icelanders where embracing and celebrating "whole people" long before I began pursuing it.

So in the dog days of August I leave you with these reflections-

• Relationships really are important
• Doing what you love may bring you more happiness than doing what you excel at
• Sharing your passions and interests seems to multiply rather than diminish them
• Happiness without pain or sadness is like love without passion, a little bland

What do you think...?

Why We Build Lighthouses

I got the idea of building a "lighthouse" from a great quote that some employees shared with me when I worked at my last "corporate" role.

The idea is to create a vision or an idea that clarifies things for people.
I had a colleague on LinkedIn ask the question the other day - What Do You Do? I responded that I build virtual "lighthouses". She followed up with a question saying "Do you mean you turn people's thinking on?" My answer is I hope so.

I believe that people are the most important resource that any organizations possesses and that the foundation of all relationships is trust. I know some people would say that love makes the world go around, but I can love somebody and not want to do business with them. If I can't trust them there is no basis for the relationship to continue.

I had a discussion with one of my proteges the other day about a relationship she was discouraged about. She was questioning whether or not her time with the organization had come to an end. She felt that she didn't trust her supervisor, her supervisor didn't trust her, and she wasn't sure that she trusted the Executive Team.
I told her I couldn't and wouldn't make the decision for her, but for me that was a sign of time to depart.

Building a lighthouse is about what Marcus Buckingham calls clarity. He says that clarity is the most important quality of a leader- to be able to answer the questions-

• What do we do?
• Why does it matter?
• How do I fit in?

I think he is right, that's what we want from our leaders- clarity. Clarity leads to trust.

It is interesting to see how uncomfortable we remain with the concept of trust and relationships. When you look at organizations that "specialize" in change management they talk a lot about processes, and technology, and ERP and stuff like that. They don't talk very much about trust and relationships.

I talked about the fact that a national study showed that 40% of new managers fail in their first 18 months in the new role. The biggest reason- failure to build relationships and trust. I'm not very good with technology so I guess that I will just keep trying to build lighthouses and relationships.

I'll leave you with another quote from Margaret Wheatly-

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacity to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.

Why Aren't We Teaching This?

As an avid blog reader, writer, and teacher I see comments and questions about employee engagement, reducing turnover, keeping critical staff and reams about leadership. Whether leadership is born or taught, trying to define it, etc.
When you look at the syllabus of the typical MBA program that is very little in it about how to build and lead teams. There is plenty about finance, accounting, marketing, and even a little economics for texture, but very little about people.
Do we think the transition from doer to leader occurs by osmosis? Do we believe that it is "embedded" in the right candidates and it will emerge?
I read an article a while back that indicated that 40% of new managers fail within the first 18 months and the biggest reason they fail is that they don't know how to build and maintain effective relationships.
When I work with entrepreneurs one of the biggest obstacles they experience is moving from doer to leader and building successful transition and succession strategies.
Executive and personal coaching as businesses are booming. It has become the therapy of the new millennium. Why are companies and educational institutions not addressing this earlier on in peoples careers?
I know that there are books out there like Good to Great and the One Minute Manager, but as a recent B school grad asked- "So what is this bus that Jim Collins keeps talking about?"
At the end of the day everything boils down to effective relationships. Isn't about time we recognize and embrace that?