Engine For Change

A while back I posted the link to a free audio copy of Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright’s book, Tribal Leadership.  They describe the book as:

Every company, indeed, every organization, is a tribe, or if it’s large enough, a network of tribes—groups of twenty to 150 people in which everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows of everyone else. Tribes are more powerful than teams, companies, or even CEOs, and yet their key leverage points have not been mapped—until now. In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright show leaders how to assess their organization’s tribal culture on a scale from one to five and then implement specific tools to elevate the stage to the next. The result is unprecedented success.

I enjoyed listening to the book quite a bit because I’ve worked with teams at all of the tribal stages.

• Stage 1 = People say, “Life sucks.”
• Stage 2 = People say, “My life sucks.”
• Stage 3 = People say, “I’m great (and you’re not).”
• Stage 4 = People say, “We’re great (and they’re not).”
• Stage 5 = People say, “Life is great.”

The authors claim less than two percent of the organization they studied ever had a tribe at Stage 5.   In early February, listening to the description of a Stage 5 tribe, I thought, “I’m pretty lucky then to work with a Guiding Coalition team that lives at Stage 5.”

Now, I’ll admit to thinking back then that maybe I was overstating the case.  Could we really be in the top two percent?  Then Professor Kotter visited in March and he put our Guiding Coalition in the top one percent of organizations embracing change. After that, I felt much more confident in my “tribal assessment skills,” such as they are.

For me, the fascinating part of Stage 5 is that a personified competitor drops away.  At Stage 5 you’re not battling anyone anymore; the fight is larger.  According to the authors, when Amgen, a drug company, was at Stage 5, they weren’t a drug company battling not another drug company but instead they saw themselves pitched in battle against inflammatory disease and cancer.

For our Guiding Coalition teams at Stage 5, the teams aren’t competing against someone else’s rate of change, but are instead pushing themselves to see how much new progress they can make with each passing day; they’re battling time.  Pulling the future into the present is their noble cause, and they are working at it with passion and joy.  It’s quite a thing to witness.  I feel lucky to see it.

But, I can remember working on and with teams at Stages 1 through 4, and I don’t kid myself into thinking that today everyone is at Stage 5 with us.  Often surrounded by tribes embedded at the lower tribal stages, I take to heart the author’s caution: only talk a tribe to one level above where they are.  Why? Because someone who believes that life is unfair, or “sucks,” will not be able to move from that state of mind to believing they can challenge the passing of time and win.  It’s too big of a leap; too big all at once at least.  To reach them you’ll have to provide them opportunities to step up into the next stage.  It might not be quick, but I’m grateful the authors have given me a path to reach the other tribes.

I’m guessing, since you’re reading this blog (and this already long post) that you’re not living in a  Stage 1 “Life sucks” or even Stage 2 “My life sucks” tribe.  You aren’t at Stages 1 or 2 because if you believed such things you wouldn’t be interested in driving change.

So I’m guessing many of you live in some form of Stage 3 “I’m great and you’re not” tribe.  Maybe you’re the great one, frequently discussing how if only “they” (the dreaded “they”) would figure out how to change then all would be well.  Or maybe your boss is the I in “I’m great” and you can’t get to a Stage 4 “we’re great,” without him.  Or maybe you can.

If you’ve personally given up on Stage 3 (regardless of the tribe around you) and have willfully moved yourself on to Stage 4 “We’re great” you’re probably quite happy driving change.  By freely allowing others to select your change for themselves (refusing to resort to threats or enticements), you’re allowing them to become a “we” with you as they accept the change you’ve created and ask to go with you on your journey.  At Stage 4 you’ll have achieved with these new tribal members what Seth Godin calls, “permission marketing,” (i.e., when others allow you to speak directly to them and they choose to listen).  Speaking from experience, Stage 4 is fun.

But, the authors of Tribal Leadership claim Stage 4 is often fleeting.  The “we” in “we’re great” can quickly disintegrate into competing “I” statements without a strong tribal leader.  And, you can never get to Stage 5 (the really fun part) without holding on to Stage 4.  If you’re looking for a tribal leader to keep you at Stage 4, consider the authors’ three types of tribal leader. [Bonus question: Try to guest which one my friend claims I am.]

Tribal Leader Type 1: Starts with a group of Stage 4 people (content to be a “we” not an “I”) then forms a tribal seed with them.  Gives them a noble cause and helps them rally around it.  The most recent example of this in my small world would be a local Engineers Without Borders chapter.  From my observations, it seems it formed from Stage 4 people committed to the seed of providing clean drinking water to a small Guatemalan town (Chelsea can correct me if I got the town or story slightly wrong).

Tribal Leader Type 2: [I call this type the Tribal Sheriff, or the Chelsea]  This tribal leader looks for people eager to play by different rules.  She collects and nurtures them.  They are a tribe based on values and aspirations.  They quickly become unusually successful and though others try to mimic their success, they other groups usually fail.  The leader speaks of collaboration and the untapped potential available to them if they work together.  And, the leader is quite happy to kick out of town anyone who violates the tribal values.  It’s fun to watch.  My favorite examples are a few teams my friend Chelsea has helped start: a Professional Women’s Networking Group and a Green Team.  Both are filled with people eager to play by different rules and rallying around their common cause to generate the biggest and best changes they can.  And, they’re doing phenomenal work!

Tribal Leader Type 3: Ignores organizational boundaries and forges out on her own.  She seems to have tribal antennae, an intuitive ability to identify people who can contribute to the global success.  They value her help and she values them.  From the outside, the authors claim this looks like networking gone wild.  The tribal leader is constantly reaching out to more and more people.  Some people say she needs to learn to focus; but she is focused. She’s acting in a systematic fashion, shopping always for tribal members.  As she finds people who fit, she networks them into the group and can often rapidly change the tribe.  I like this lady, whomever she is.

With a firm core of people at Stage 4 and a strong tribal leader, the authors claim some groups pop through to Stage 5.  I claim I’ve been living at Stage 5 with a small tribe for about six months.  I don’t know how long Stage 5 will last, but it’s amazing right now.  Watching from the inside, but armed with the tools (Tribal Leaderhip‘s framework) to observe from the outside, I’m enjoying every minute of the journey.  Why else would I spend all day working on this stuff only to come home and write detailed blog posts about how excited I am to be having this much fun?

If you haven’t listened to Tribal Leadership, maybe this post has encouraged you to check it out.

If you haven’t been part of a Stage 4 or Stage 5 (or even a Stage 3) tribe before, maybe this post has encouraged you to find one or make one of your own.   Speaking from my own experience and drawing on the stories of those around me, I’d say it is worth it to try to grow through Stage 4 to Stage 5, even just to say you’ve been there.  The change you’ll drive will be amazing.

Let me know if you need anyone to go with you.

Now keep driving.  <wind blowing in hair as she departs the blog.>

Seth Godin says, It’s easier to teach compliance than initiative.

Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat.

Initiative is very difficult to teach to 28 students in a quiet classroom. It’s difficult to brag about in a school board meeting. And it’s a huge pain in the neck to do reliably.

Schools like teaching compliance. They’re pretty good at it.

To top it off, until recently the customers of a school or training program (the companies that hire workers) were buying compliance by the bushel. Initiative was a red flag, not an asset.

Of course, now that’s all changed. The economy has rewritten the rules, and smart organizations seek out intelligent problem solvers. Everything is different now. Except the part about how much easier it is to teach compliance.

How right he is.  Compliance training is all around us.  Driving change is not about teaching compliance.  But, how can you do the opposite and teach initiative?

I struggle with whether you can teach initiative because we’ve reduced the term teaching to only mean one person forcibly giving something to another, often unwilling person for them to accept and use as directed, or else.  Snore!

In practice, the act of giving someone initiative proves foolish.  I can’t give you something that is already inside you.  And, I can’t make you use your initiative if you refuse.  Ever try to get a teenager to do something they are capable of but patently refuse to do?  You’ve seen the struggles of forcing initiative in others.

But, I can show you how to use your own initiative by using mine.

I’d call that demonstrating initiative and everyone can demonstrate initiative.  How?

Though not limited to the formal classroom, my favorite demonstrations of initiative are classes where the teacher doesn’t give you something, but instead entices you to choose to do something; do something more because you can.

If you asked me for two examples of a course like that, I’d give you Edward Tufte’s one day course or Andrea Shapiro’s Tipping Point Workshop.

Professor Tufte and Dr. Shapiro don’t tell you, “When you leave here you must…” but instead leave you with, “Now what will you do with what you’ve seen?” And they’ve given you powerful images of what you could do, if you choose to engage your own initiative.

Embracing, then acting on, “Now what will you do with what you’ve seen?” is what you must do when driving change, when you’re demonstrating initiative.

Are you demonstrating initiative to those around you?

Are you choosing to do something with what you’ve seen?

Why not?

Whether you read the Air Force Academy or Naval Academy versions of the speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is asking cadets and midshipmen to drive change.

In his remarks, Secretary Gates encouraged our future military leaders to:

• Learn from the experiences and the setbacks of the past;
• Be open to ideas and inspiration from wherever they come;
• Overcome conventional wisdom and the bureaucratic obstacles thrown in your path; and
• Be candid and speak truth to power.

I’m cheered by the presence of both speeches because they let me highlight two of my favorite change drivers, Admiral Rickover and Colonel Boyd.  Let’s turn to Secretary Gates’ comments on each.

Few graduates of this institution were as brilliant, iconoclastic, and as, difficult as Hyman Rickover. He demanded efficiency and he hated waste in all forms, he was a person who first pilfered and then horded the little bars of soap from airline and hotel bathrooms. When interviewing young officers, he used to cut the legs of chairs short to see whether or not the interviewee could remain seated – not a technique that will endear you to your future subordinates.

In the 1950s the conventional wisdom was the nuclear reactors were too bulky and dangerous to put on submarines – diesel would have to do. It was through Rickover’s genius and tenacity that these objections were overcome, producing a submarine fleet that included the most stealthy and feared leg of America’s nuclear triad. Rickover was a stickler for safety in all phases of submarine production and operations – and because of that he was even accused letting us fall behind the Soviets. But he had the vision to see that even one nuclear disaster might well kill the program altogether. And his legacy is that to this day, there has never been a nuclear failure in an American submarine.

There is also the story of John Boyd – a brilliant, eccentric, stubborn, and frequently profane character who was the bane of the Air Force establishment for decades.  As with Mitchell, tact wasn’t Boyd’s strong suit – and he certainly shouldn’t be used as a model for military bearing or courtesy. After all, this is a guy who once lit a general on fire with his cigar.

As a 30-year-old captain, he rewrote the manual for air-to-air combat and earned the nickname “40-second” Boyd for the time it took him to win a dogfight. Boyd and the reformers he inspired would later go on to design and advocate for the F-16 and the A-10.  After retiring, he developed the principals of maneuver warfare that were credited by a former Marine Corps commandant and a secretary of defense for the lightning victory of the first Gulf War…

Whether in those moments where you must make that split-second, singular decision, or over the longer-term as you build your career, I’d return to something John Boyd used said to his colleagues and subordinates that is worth sharing with you.  He said that one day you will come to a fork in the road.  “You’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.  If you go one way, you can be somebody.  You’ll have to make compromises and you’ll have to turn your back on your friends.  But you’ll be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments.  Or you can go the other way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself . . . If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get good assignments and you certainly won’t be a favorite of your superiors.  But you won’t have to compromise yourself . . . To be somebody or to do something.  In life there is often a roll call.  That’s when you have to make a decision.  To be or to do?”

Here at the Air Force Academy, as with every university and company in America, there’s a focus on teamwork, consensus-building, and collaboration. Yet make no mistake, the time will come for each of you when you must stand alone in making a difficult, unpopular decision; when you must challenge the opinion of superiors or tell them that you can’t get the job done with the time and resources available; or when you will know that what superiors are telling the press or the Congress or the American people is inaccurate. There will be moments when your entire career is at risk – where you will face Boyd’s proverbial fork in the road. To be or to do.
To be ready for that moment, you must have the discipline to cultivate integrity and moral courage from here at the Academy, and then from your earliest days as a commissioned officer. Those qualities do not suddenly emerge fully developed overnight or as a revelation after you have assumed important responsibilities. These qualities have their roots in the small decisions you will make here and early in your career and must be strengthened all along the way to allow you to resist the temptation of self before service. And you must always ensure that your moral courage serves the greater good: that it serves what is best for the nation and our highest values – not a particular program nor pride nor parochialism.
For the good of the Air Force, for the good of the armed services, and for the good of our country, I urge you to reject convention and careerism.  I urge you instead to be principled, creative, and reform-minded – to be leaders of integrity who, as Boyd put it, want to do something, not be somebody.

But for my childhood asthma I’d be an Air Force Academy grad.  If not for a whim of fate–and the keen eye of Dave Doerr selecting me out of a pile of resumes–I’d not have worked in Admiral Rickover’s program.

Admiral Rickover and Colonel Boyd have taught me to choose to do something.

I choose to drive change.

How about you?

Are you up for doing something?

In the 1956 preface to his 1944 class, Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek made this comment:

But there are many ways in which we can work toward the same goal, and in the present state of opinion there is some danger that our impatience for quick results may lead us to choose instruments which, though perhaps more efficient for achieving the particular ends, are not compatible with the preservation of a free society.

I enjoy Hayek’s words because they ring so true in my experience with driving change. It seems often I am discussing–okay, defending–the perceived inefficiency and prolonged delays caused when driving change.

“We need this result now.  We don’t have time to ask them to participate.  I’m going to tell them what to do!”

Yep.

“Everyone on your team isn’t a star performer.  You could be more efficient if you refused to let that person participate.”

Okay.

How about this:

You can’t make the change now, even with your orders because you’ve dulled the ability in your people to watch for these problems for you and solve them before you find them.  You’ve taught them to wait for orders and they wait.  Now your problem is that the organization only changes as fast as your brain can comprehend a problem, turn it into detailed instructions, and follow around all your employees checking on their compliance.  That might work well in a an organization of five, but how does it scale to 50, 500 or 5,000?

And, you don’t have a team of “star performers” even when you pick the team, because while past results may be a good indicator of future performance, they aren’t the only indicators.  I’d warn you especially if you look at past performance in a follow-all-orders culture as how you determine who is the likely “star performer” on a new sort of team.  Often you’ll find your future stars amongst the people (if any haven’t already left your organization) who bristle at your controls and figure out a way to just-barely-comply with your orders so they can deliver you not the one magnitude outcome you wanted but the ten others you’d never have seen coming.

Hayek wrote of the guiles of–and ultimate destruction in–man’s belief that he could, through any kind of planning, dictate and direct the independent actions of other men.  Though Hayek wrote his book in 1944, few have learned the lessons he taught.

For my engineering friends, consider Hayek’s lesson a simple inverse rule:

The amount of power you give up over others…is inversely proportional to…the amount of return you’ll get from those freed peoples.

Less control = greater success.

More freedom = great outcomes (for the organization and the individuals).

Many people have lived in countries and organizations that believed in driving people to change.  And, many have been freed from them, learning to live lives where they drive change.

Why not choose the free life for yourself, and for those around you?

Here’s my hypothesis:  Most people have never seen–let alone been a part of–driving change.

If that is true, then when you try to explain driving change only with words (instead of with pictures and vivid emotions) you’d be met with a sea of lost and confused looks.

Yep; the sea of lost looks is what I keep finding.

I’ve been pondering: What should I do?

I’ve tried very hard to put myself in the shoes of people who’ve never seen someone driving change.  What must it look like?

People don’t lead from the front; they order you from behind.

People don’t rally around something greater than themselves; they minimize their lives to the orders of others.

People don’t appeal to the sense of urgency that lives inside all of us; they take what they can get and leave us flat and spent.

What picture can I paint for these people when that’s all they’ve ever known?

I went looking for a painting that uses each brushstroke to signify the risks, the rewards, the heroism and the honor of driving change.

I went looking when I should have just looked up.  There’s a painting that hangs above my desk, every day reminding me of not to stop driving change: Mort Kunstler’s The Rough Riders.

The Rough Riders by Mort Kunstler

This excerpt from the National Guard page contains the driving change story [emphasis mine]:

With the declaration of war with Spain in April 1898, 164,932 National Guardsmen entered Federal service. The 1st New Mexico Cavalry entered Federal service as the 2nd Squadron, 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the “Rough Riders.” Theodore Roosevelt conceived the idea of raising a cavalry regiment recruited from businessmen, cowboys and outdoorsmen. Roosevelt, a former New York National Guardsman, helped to organize the regiment and was appointed its lieutenant colonel. After training in Texas and Florida, the Rough Riders landed in Cuba, without their horses, on June 22, 1898. It was during the Battle of San Juan Hill, on July 1, that the Rough Riders, under the command of Lt. Col. Roosevelt, made their mark in American military history. Ordered to seize Kettle Hill in support of the main attack, the Rough Riders fought their way to the top despite heavy enemy fire. New Mexico’s E and G Troops were among the first to reach the top of Kettle Hill. After taking the hill, the Rough Riders continued their attack, seizing the heights overlooking the city of Santiago. The American victory led to the Spanish surrender two weeks later. The gallant heritage of the 2nd Squadron of the Rough Riders is perpetuated by the 200th Air Defense Artillery, New Mexico Army National Guard.

Theodore Roosevelt created a unified team around a sense of urgency, provided them an opportunity to succeed, rallied them to overcome any obstacle, led from the front (if not on horseback as pictured, then as their leader first in their minds) and won the day (and soon after the war) from atop Kettle Hill.

Now I’ve told you how I see driving change.

What picture do you see?

A dear friend sent me this quote today:

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, and how you can still come out of it.

– Maya Angelou

Your thoughts?  Have you encountered a defeat that tested your limits?  If so, what did you learn from the defeat?

Want to see what this Guiding Coalition I’ve been mentioning is all about?

Check out the five-part video posted at this link on the PSNS & IMF On the Waterfront Facebook fan page.

Today at Seth Godin’s blog, under the title “Accepting Limits”:

It’s absurd to look at a three year old toddler and say, “this kid can’t read or do math or even string together a coherent paragraph. He’s a dolt and he’s never going to amount to anything.” No, we don’t say that because we know we can teach and motivate and cajole the typical kid to be able to do all of these things.

Why is it okay, then, to look at a teenager and say, “this kid will never be a leader, never run a significant organization, never save a life, never inspire or create…”

Just because it’s difficult to grade doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taught.

Never mind a teenager. I think it’s wrong to say that about someone who’s fifty.

Isn’t it absurd to focus so much energy on ‘practical’ skills that prep someone for a life of following instructions but relentlessly avoid the difficult work necessary to push someone to reinvent themselves into becoming someone who makes a difference?

And isn’t it even worse to write off a person or an organization merely because of what they are instead of what they might become?

My local friends and I  have been having this conversation over and over again, while training our combination of Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Marcus Buckingham’s Trombone Player Wanted.

The question: Can you really make yourself into something special, something more than you ever expected?

Our answer: Yes!

Of the more than 100 people we’ve trained we’ve have 20-year-old and 60-year-olds and everyone in between.  The 60-year-olds wish they’d had the training when they were 20 and the 20-year-olds wish they’d had it when they were 17. Why do they wish they’d had it before?  Because our message is Godin’s message: Know your strengths. Know other’s strengths.  Stop putting people into “only as good as X” boxes and let everyone achieve their best.

Why not try at least?

There are many people, organizations, you-name-it in the world that will happily continue to tell you that you, your organization, your you-name-it won’t ever be anything more than what you are today.  Stop listening to them!

If you like that comfortable, keep-at-it, self-limiting talk, you’re in the wrong place.  You’ll get none of that talk here.

My favorite Buckingham lines from Trombone Player Wanted are (and I’ll admit to paraphrasing):

You have real and powerful strengths.  No one has the exact strengths as you.  And you’ll make your biggest impact on the world when you find those strengths and train them and offer them repeatedly to the world.

According to StrengthsFinder 2.0 I’m a maximizer.  The Gallup Management Journal says, for maximizers:

Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling.

Yep.  That’s me.  I love it!  All of you are strong in something and deserve the time and attention to develop into something superb.  I’m overjoyed to be on the journey with you.

If you’re up for no limits, welcome to Engine for Change.

Feel free to invite your friends along for the ride.  The more the merrier.

Who doesn’t like a trip to someplace special, someplace superb?

When you’re driving change, you may be drawn into conversations about what progress you are making.  Whenever I’m discussing (or thinking about) progress I try to keep this C.S. Lewis quote swirling in my head:

But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.  And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

How can you know you’re making real progress?

For me, I get a feeling, a thought, an external indication that all I’m doing is making a bad thing work better; I know I’m not creating a real good.  When I get that thought, feeling or indication, it takes all my will to stop moving forward.

But, as I slow, stop and turn toward the right road, I start to feel, think, notice that the indications are back in my favor and I’m back on course to drive change toward the place I want to be.

Example: In an earlier post I mentioned the battle I waged between overtime and throughput.  Improving the application of overtime was progress down the wrong road.  Advocating for throughput goals (and the application of overtime only to enable the throughput goals) was the right road.  It took all my strength to slow, turn and restart that engine, but choosing the right road made the difference.

You can do it.  You can create real progress.  Are you willing to try?

When you’re driving change, you’ll want to remember this quote:

Improvement is doubly difficult when individual habit is reinforced by group inertia.

It comes from the Navy Correspondence Manual and it’s referring to writing official letters, memos and recommendations.  But, to me it means so much more.

Say you’re the first person in your work team, civic organization or company that chooses to drive change instead of drive people to change. Will it be easy to drive change?

No.

Will you feel pulled by the behavior of others around you to stop focusing on wins and removing obstacles and instead spend meeting after meeting blaming those “others” who won’t change?

Yes.

But, just because it is doubly difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Some days it’ll feel like a solo battle and others there will be an army (no Navy disrespect intended) with you.

Try instead this affirmation:

Improvement is doubly possible when individual habit shows the group where new inertia will lead them.

Be the new inertia.  Show the others around you what’s possible.

Write better if you like (Chapter 3 of the Correspondence Manual is a great place to start).

Drive change if you’re willing.

You’ll love both…I promise!