Category Archives: Accountability

Accountability, Achievement, Analysis, Efficiency, Leadership

Getting Better

One of the things that I have learned as I have gotten older is that age doesn’t make you any smarter. It just provides you the experience to recognize the things you didn’t know the first time you saw them. It was Randy Pausch, the author of “The Last Lecture” who said:

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted”

I have wanted many things that I have not gotten, so needless to say, I think I have probably gained a lot of experience. Some of this experience I think I probably could have done without, but I gained it anyway. What I think I now recognize is that sometimes solving some issues or fixing some problems may be beyond our individual or collective reach. The key to situations like this is to recognize them, and instead of trying to make the quantum leap from thoroughly screwed up to pristinely perfect, just try to make them better.

One of the other things that I have experienced is that just about every situation that I have been in falls into this category.

It’s now election season and the number of talking heads earnestly speaking directly to us through our collective big screen televisions is growing. The various media outlets are lining up behind their favorites, and the various positions on the issues are being identified. In short it is the same thing all over again.

People are searching for the best thirteen second sound bite regarding their personal favorite unsolvable problem. Whether it’s the national debt, immigration, unemployment, or any other issue, it seems everyone is jockeying to position their glib and simple solutions to the Gordian knot style problems that are besetting us.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Gordian knot, in ancient times there was a knot that was thought to be unsolvable or intractable. When the knot was presented to Alexander the Great, who at the time was the acknowledged leader of the known world as a challenge, instead of trying to untie or solve the knot, he simply took out his sword and cut it. Believe it or knot (pun intended) this is thought to be the genesis of phrase and concept of “outside the box” thinking (True!).

When I look at today’s slate of candidates I am concerned that any of them that may in the remotest of possibilities be mentioned with or the even more remote possibility be positively compared with Alexander the Great. However there they are, swinging away with their metaphorical swords on television.

I think we have all see the business equivalents of these would be world beaters and problem solvers. They are the ones that have the “simple” answers to declining sales (‘just sell more”) or low margins (“just spend less”), or any other intractable long term problem that the business may be facing.

Unfortunately with all that is plaguing leaders in business today it is easy to see how they may fall victim to the siren song of the “simple solution” providers.

Please do not misunderstand me. I truly believe the basic premises of business are pretty simple. I have said this many times in the past. It is usually the business itself that adds complexity to its organization and operations in search of ever better and more eloquent was of completing the simple tasks required for it to run.

If a simple process adequately handles eighty percent of the situations then with only a little tweaking it might handle close to eighty five percent of the situations. A little more tweaking might get it to ninety percent. Still more might enable it to be implemented globally instead of specifically for the region in which is currently working. Still more might enable the creation and publishing of fancy metrics charts detailing various aspects of the process and the state of its implementation.

Eventually a process is created that works everywhere in all situations, but takes more effort and resource from the business to work for the entire business than the original eighty-twenty rule process that was the starting point.

It can be argued that the “getting better” approach to business could in fact be responsible for the evolution of both business and process into the complex systems that they are today. This would be akin to the example of taking several small logical steps one after the other to eventually arrive at an illogical conclusion or solution.

I think part of the issue we see in situations like this is the lack of rigor that is applied to defining the problem, setting a baseline and then measuring against the improvement on the baseline. If we all know that we need to improve then we just accept the premise. If we state that the plan is to take the solution global then why would we need to measure if there is in fact a global improvement? The goal is no longer improvement of the business but instead is now the global dispersion of the solution.

Getting better does not mean making breakthrough advancements, although these are always exciting and welcome. Rather it means actually trying to use the primary building blocks of the Continuous Improvement Process that J. Edwards Deming envisioned where Feedback drove Efficiency drove Evolution which in turn drove further feedback, and so on.

The key step in this cycle that seems to be missing in both politics and business today is the Efficiency review. Efficiency by its very nature requires the identification, reduction or elimination of sub-optimal structures and behaviors. The definition of efficiency is:

1. The ability to accomplish something with the least waste of time and effort; competency in performance.
2. The ratio of the work done or energy developed …. to the energy supplied…

Many thanks again to Webster’s Dictionary. One of my favorite books.

The idea of efficiency, and getting better means that we need to continuously look at what we are getting out of systems, processes and businesses as compared to the work that we are putting into them. Efficiency is not just the output, but the output as compared to the input required to get it. Too many times it seems that it is taken for granted that just because there is some new way of doing things, or a new process is being implemented that it is better (read more efficient) than what currently exists.

Almost everything that I read these days in books and periodicals regarding business performance seems to bemoan the loss of speed in business, or the lack or loss of decision making abilities in business, or the complexity that is now being faced in business. These seem to be issues that are now inherent in the business system. The simple command to “sell more” or “spend less” won’t solve them.

I guess the same goes for politics in that the system seems to have evolved to reward those that “sound” the best but in reality only kick the problem down the road for the next generation to deal with. Their simple solutions fit nicely into the thirteen second sound bites provided by the media for public consumption. Perhaps that is why it seems that in this iteration of the political campaigning those that are viewed as being outside the normal political process seem to be preferred more than the established politicians by the general populace.

At its most basic getting better, as well as efficiency means doing more business with less resource. That means that being efficient requires the removal of some functions, effort and work from the business as compared to the set baseline while still accomplishing the set goals. It doesn’t need to be a lot. It just has to be measurable in some fundamental way.

Getting better means making sure that attaining your goals actually, measurably improves the business. The simplest definition of getting better that I can think of is showing some measureable improvement in efficiency. If you can’t directly relate and measure the business activity to somehow improving the business efficiency (mathematically identifying work being done to work being saved or improved), then there is probably a pretty good chance that it is not associated with the business getting better.

Accountability, Achievement, consensus building, Leadership, Teamwork

Do We Still Want Teams

It seems that throughout our lives we have been indoctrinated into the idea and benefits of teamwork. I think it starts off when we are children and our parents sign us up for the various team sports that are available. Whether it is little league soccer (or football to my European friends), or little league baseball or youth football (American football, again for my European friends), many of us have been conditioned to want to be part of the team. While this may in fact be a good socializing activity for children, I am beginning to wonder if the current idea of teams and what they have evolved to in business, may have outlived its usefulness in the business game.

Those that know me probably can try to understand how I can possibly question such a basic and heartfelt tenet of business. Everybody else is probably wondering what planet I am actually from. Please bear with me as I go through some of the observations and thinking (or lack of thinking as the case may be) that are going into these questions regarding business teams.

A little background first. I actually played little league baseball as a kid. I wasn’t real good, but I wasn’t bad either. I played third base. As I recall, I didn’t enjoy it all that much. You only really get to play when a ball is hit to you, or it’s your turn to bat. The rest of the time it seemed to go pretty slow.

I moved on. I took up tennis. It was more active, more involved, more of an individual sport. By this I mean that there were usually only me and my opponent on the court at any one time. Oddly enough I was also part of the tennis team. However the difference here was that whether I won or lost was not the result of how the rest of the tennis team played. No one could “pinch hit” for me. I could win and the team could lose. I could lose and the team could win. The success of the tennis team was the result of the sum of the successes of each of the individuals on the team.

It was interesting in that no one individual could win a baseball game, but I guess it could be construed that an individual could lose one. An example would be the baseball player that commits the error that allows the winning run to score. It was also interesting that no team could win a tennis match. It was solely up to the individual performance as to who won or lost.

It was also interesting to note that whether you won or lost was the key. That was the reason you kept score. Unlike today, there were no “participation” trophies. I’ll leave that rant for another time.

As another aside, I think there have been several attempts to create a “Team Tennis” league or format over the years. I don’t think any of them have been successful. It seems the public is not buying into the idea that you can turn what is viewed as in individual contest into a team sport.

When you look at great advancements and successes in business you rarely have them associated with a “team”. You have Bill Gates, and to a much lesser extent Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen at Microsoft. You have Steve Jobs and again to a lesser extent and Steve Wozniak at Apple. If you want to look at historical game changers look at Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. You don’t hear about their teams. You hear about them, and how they led the way and what they did to succeed.

Teams seem to only be good if a leader steps up and provides the vision and direction and an unwillingness to accept anything other than the attainment of the goal. At that point “the” team actually seems to become “their” team. I am sure that there were many others involved with the successes attributed to the men I listed above, but it was the leadership and the force of will associated with the names listed that actually carried the day. The teams may have been good, but it seems that in many instances it was the individuals that were better.

I have written in the past that I believe the consensus environment present in business these days is the evolution of a defensive mindset. The appreciation and value associated with success seems to be overshadowed by the fear and avoidance of making a mistake. The consensus environment has evolved as a way to homogenize the business decision making process. If consensus is achieved there is a security in knowing that if the wrong decision was made, everyone else made it too and the blame will be equally spread.

More and more it seems that teams are created not to achieve a goal, but to achieve a consensus.

If we look at Gates, Jobs, Ford, Edison and Tesla, it is apparent that there were in fact teams associated with their achievements. But they were not the teams of today. They were teams that were organized and structured specifically to realize the vision of the individual. There are many stories associated with each individual where they would not accept less than their vision or compromise their goals based on the input of the rest of the team. There are also stories associated with what the teams went through in order to achieve the visions and goals of the leader.

There was never a question about a consensus or who would be responsible for any failures associated with the team.

They understood that if there was a failure, it was their failure, not the teams. Their team was an extension of their drive and direction. They also seemed to have a different definition or approach to failure. Thomas Edison had this to say about failure:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 1,000 ways that won’t work.”

Bill Gates had this to say about failure:

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

And finally, Steve Jobs said:

“Embrace every failure. Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.”

These were leaders that failed and were not afraid to fail again. They didn’t like failure. They hated it. They didn’t accept failure as the final decision. If they failed, they viewed it as temporary and something to learn from. They moved on and found another way to succeed. They didn’t stop until they succeeded.

In the team built, consensus oriented business environments of today it appears that company and organizational teams are more afraid of the perception of failure, no matter how transitory than they are driven by the need for success. These leaders understood that success had to be driven, that failure was to be learned from, and that mitigating responsibility for it was not part of the plan.

The team that was once organized to fulfill the vision of the leader seems now to be structured to protect the team members from the stain of possible failure. The avoidance of the responsibility for failure seems to have limited the team’s value as well as its ability to succeed. If everyone on the team must agree on a direction if the team is to move forward, then the team only moves forward very slowing.

If the structure and value of a team has indeed been reduced to furthering the consensus approach to doing business, is it time to step away from it? Gates and Jobs and all the others were very successful without it. Or rather, they built their teams to specifically follow their vision. The fear of failure didn’t paralyze them. They weren’t really all that interested in a consensus. They all knew failure for what it was and used it as the springboard for their next attempt.

Perhaps it is time to get back to vesting the responsibility for performance and success with the individual, instead of the team. If the individual has responsibility then there will be an entirely different dynamic in the team’s work process. It will no longer be so focused on getting everyone to “buy in” or agree on the direction to be taken. It will be more about each individual member of the team delivering on their responsibilities in alignment with the leader’s vision. As noted, those leaders never accepted failure as the final outcome and found a way.

It seemed to work pretty well for some pretty successful individuals.

Accountability, Achievement, Alignment, Efficiency, Execution, Simplification, Time Management

The Optimal Meeting Length

I think that the new business reality is that it is the rare event when something actually gets done without first having a meeting. We need to know who will be Responsible for the action to be taken, and who will be Accountable for taking it, and who will need to be Consulted before it is taken and who will be Informed of its being taken. We will spend hours in meetings in this type of analysis before we actually do anything. We seem to have evolved the business approach that having a meeting about something is the same thing as taking action.

With all this time being spent in meetings trying to decide how to split the accountability and responsibility for doing anything, it got me to thinking: What would be the optimal length for a meeting, not just one of these deciding how to take action meetings, but any meeting?

I looked. There is any number of books available on line purporting to help people run efficient and effective meetings. I was in a meeting when I Googled that so I really didn’t have the time to read any of them. Who knows some of them might actually hold the key. But since we are in the here and now I will take my kick at the can (and utilize some of my own web sleuthing) to come up with what I think is the optimal length for any meeting.

There will be a few meeting ground rules.

• For it to officially be considered a meeting it must be visual in nature. That means that you either have to be there in person, or attend via video. Audio attendance at a meeting only is a phone call / conversation regardless of how you want to describe it, and it enables everyone associated with the call to multi-task doing email, play solitaire, or any other distraction they may so choose.

• If it is a real meeting it will have an agenda. If you don’t have set topics, speakers and time frames it is not a meeting. It is an unstructured discussion, or lunch. Without an agenda you should not expect to get anything done.

• The only computer that is to be open during the meeting is that of the person presenting. Open computers enable everyone to multi-task (see the first bullet above) instead of paying attention to the topic of the meeting. It’s also discourteous to the presenter.

• There should be no refreshments of any kind at the meeting. No bagels or muffins for a morning meeting. No coffee or soft drinks. The object of the meeting participants should be to get something done, not get fed and watered. If you really have to bribe people with food to get them to come to your meeting, maybe you don’t really need to have a meeting.

• Finally, there will be no leaving the meeting and coming back for any reason. No taking phone calls. No smoking breaks. And lastly, no bathroom breaks. Get that done before or after the meeting. Don’t disrupt it by having to go.

I understand that these rules will take a lot of the fun out of meetings. People will actually have to show up and pay attention. I know this is a lot to ask, but I do think it is critical that we get back to the old outdated ways of actually getting things done. Show up. Do your work. Then go do something else.

Now when we are talking about meetings, we are talking about the internal gathering of company employees. They can be called reviews, or updates, or deep dives or just about any other euphemism that you can come up with for having people get together for a business purpose. I will refer generically to all these events as “meetings”.

I am also going to specifically exclude meetings with customers from this discussion for the time being, since those types of meetings are held only with the consent of the customer and at their discretion. Many of the ground rules I have laid out would and should apply, but some (such as food and refreshments) may not.

With the ground rules in place and the meeting defined as not including customers we can get started on how long a meeting should take, or should last, depending on how you want to look at it.

Research (Google) shows that the average person goes to the bathroom about six times a day. That same research also shows that the average person stays awake about seventeen hours a day. Using simple math that means that the average person goes to the bathroom on average once every three hours or so (actually a little less than that). I think this is a good upper bound for a meeting’s length.

Now if we use a little probability theory, because not everyone goes to the bathroom at the same time, we will find that on average for any meeting of two or more people someone will have to go within half the average time frame. That means that our maximum meeting length is now slightly less than an hour and a half.

Even better.

Now on to other research (Google) topics. Estimates for the length of human attention span are highly variable and depend on the precise definition of attention being used.

• Transient attention is a short-term response to a stimulus that temporarily attracts/distracts attention. Researchers disagree on the exact amount of human transient attention span; some say it may be as short as 8 seconds.

I think it is safe to assume that senior management is more Transient Attention oriented.

• Selective sustained attention, also known as focused attention, is the level of attention that produces the consistent results on a task over time. Some state that the average human attention span is approximately 5 minutes; others state that most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 20 minutes at a time, although they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing. This ability to renew attention permits people to “pay attention” to things that last for more than a few minutes, such as long movies.

Attention span, as measured by sustained attention, or the time spent continuously on task, varies with age. Older children are capable of longer periods of attention than younger children.

It doesn’t say anything about executives or managers. Insert your own experience based limit here, however my experience has taught me that they tend to align with younger children.

I have been writing this for an hour or two and I think I need to take a break. I’ll be right back….

Okay, if we accept that people can pay attention to a single topic for up to twenty minutes, but that they can continue to “refocus” on interesting topics in order to stay engaged for longer periods of time, the question now becomes; how many times can they refocus? This is where true science comes into play.

In baseball its three strikes and you’re out.

Asking people to maintain their attention, and refocus multiple times while limiting the number of bathroom breaks is a lot to ask. Asking people to refocus their attention three times for a total of sixty minutes seems to be about the limit of reasonable expectation.

There you have it. A scientific explanation. No meeting should be more than one hour long. If you can’t get it done in an hour then you probably need to re-look at what it is that you are trying to accomplish in the meeting.

I think we all knew this is where I was going with this topic. We seem to have broken our lives down into hour intervals starting with our classes in school. If you can teach Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to twenty five disinterested teenagers within a one hour class, you should be able to have far less than twenty five adult business people come to conclusion on just about any topic within the same interval.

By the way, time does indeed slow down, the closer you get to the speed of light.

This interval sits comfortably within the average need for a bathroom break, and it is short enough that it doesn’t require too many refocusing events. It is the optimal length for a meeting where the objective is to actually get something done. It enables the meeting attendees to get in, get out and move on to the next topic. By limiting the time one would expect (hope) to drive the attendees to come to a conclusion within that time.

If there are more topics to be covered they need to be broken down into other multiple one hour meetings.

Of course, none of this one hour meeting logic applies to how long a luncheon meeting should last.

Accountability, Decision Making, Questions

Their Answer

Most of us in the business world these days would be classified as “knowledge workers”. We all have some members on our respective teams that may challenge this point, but for the most part this means that we make our livings and do our jobs predominantly by using our brain power as opposed to our muscle power. It doesn’t take a great deal of effort to sit behind a desk, but it does take a reasonable amount of knowledge to read, understand and appropriately act upon the information contained in a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement. When you think about it, this is interesting on several levels. This would mean that those with the most knowledge, and presumably the most experience would be the most valued employees. It would also mean that when someone asks a question that they would want the answer that is the result of utilizing the best brain power, knowledge and experience available.

Most people would think that this is obviously the case in business. The right answer is usually the best answer. Experience (as opposed to Knowledge) will teach that this is not always the case.

Answers are somewhat like ideas in that everybody has them in one form or another, and they are invariably proud of them. I have also heard that ideas are like children and that your own are always beautiful, whereas those of others are usually judged with a little more skeptical eye. Such is also the case with answers.

We are all usually very proud of the answers that we create (and will hence defend them vigorously from anyone that would have the temerity to posit a different answer), and we are all usually somewhat skeptical of the answers that others create (who will also vigorously defend them from any positions and questions that we have).

It’s funny how that works. We expect everyone to see and accept the beauty in the answers we have created, and we also expect everyone to accept and acknowledge any flaws we may identify in the beauty of the answers that others have created.

This brings me to the topic of “their answers”.

Whenever any question is posed, it is always best to “reflect” as Mark Twain would say, before answering. Is the person asking the question looking for the best, most knowledgeable answer to the question, or are they looking for a ratification of their answer to the question. Are they looking for a solution or are they looking confirmation of their solution.

It is possible that their answer and the best answer are one in the same, but that is probably not probable since after all, it is their answer at this point and not yours.

Another item to be aware of in the “answering the question” scenario is the forum in which the question is asked. This can provide a significant clue as to if a true answer is being sought as opposed to the confirmation of an answer already divined. It is a good bet to assume there is an inverse relationship between the desire for a genuine answer and the size of the audience in which the question is posed.

That means that if someone calls you on the phone and privately asks you a question or your opinion on a topic, they are probably looking for you to provide them your answer. If they send out an email with a wide distribution, or pose the question in some sort of a group or public forum, they are probably looking for you (and possibly others) to provide them “their answer”.

People who provide the desired answer in the group forum will have a tendency to see their response reinforced and those that don’t will usually be challenged to provide supporting logic.

It took me a while to learn this as a new hire directly out of graduate school. In school when you are asked a question you are relatively sure that there is usually a “correct” or “best” answer. It can be open to some opinion, but this is usually the basis of our advanced educational system. We are in essence trained to provide our view of the best answer.

What we miss here is that not everyone provides the same, best or correct answer, even in school. In business there is usually no predefined correct answer that is the accepted response by which all others are measured against. So there is no way to determine who actually had the right answer until the topic under discussion has actually come to pass and the proposed answers can be measured against the reality that has occurred.

This is where experience can come in to play. People who have matriculated up into leadership positions where they are enabled to ask questions have usually gotten to those positions by answering the past questions posed of them correctly more often than not. This past positive reinforcement of their answers is one of the key ingredients associated with the potential defensive reaction to other answers that are not entirely aligned with their own.

Put simply, people who have been right in the past have a tendency to think they will continue to be right in the future. They like trust and support their answers.

Herein lays one of the dichotomies of leadership: sometimes leaders have to temper some of the very traits that enabled them to attain the leadership position. What leaders must recognize is that as they have risen in the management ranks by their very success they have both moved further away from the issues that demand answers, and they have become responsible for a greater breadth of issues that need and demand answers. Most leaders no longer have that direct and intimate interaction with the issues that affect their businesses. They need to learn to rely on those members of their teams that do.

Very few of us get to be right all the time. A leader has to have faith in the answers that they generate, but the leader must also encourage the team to generate the best answers, not their answers. Moreover, the leader needs to know when someone else has generated a better answer. The leader has to learn to step away from generating all the answers (the very process that got them to the leadership position) and learn to trust others (the future leaders) to start generating the answers.

Leaders will always generate their answers. The key is for that leader to accept and expect their teams to potentially generate something other than their answers. It takes a strong leader to ask questions and accept something other than their answers. Letting go of their answers and listening to their team’s answers is the way things can get changed. It is also the way that an organization continues to find the best answers to its questions.

Accountability, Achievement, Commissions, Compensation, Performance

It’s Not a Tip

It’s that time of year again. Spring is in the air. Birds are beginning to sing. Bees are beginning to buzz. It’s that time of the year when everyone’s thoughts turn to their favorite topic. It is the topic that they have actually been thinking about all winter. Yes, you are correct. It is time for the annual bonuses to be calculated.

People who are not fortunate enough to be sales people and on a direct sales commission plan, are usually on some sort of an annual management bonus plan. This plan can be complex or simple. It can have multiple factors associated with it, or possibly just a few. It is in essence a methodology for those that are not associated with direct sales to be able to either positively or negatively participate in the performance of the business or organization.

I have seen many different sales commission plans and many different performance incentive plans. One of the conclusions that all of this performance based compensation experience has led me to is this:

The simpler the compensation plan the better, for all involved.

It doesn’t matter if it is a commission plan based on orders for a direct sales person, or a management performance bonus based on the attainment of specific goals. The simpler the better. We need to remember that simple does not mean “easy”. Simple means that there are specific defined objectives and directly correlated rewards associated with obtaining those objectives. It has been my experience that selecting the appropriate goals and objectives that drive the desired behaviors and performance is not an easy task.

Sales commission plans are in general a little bit easier to figure out than are management incentive plans. There are usually some very specific and well defined numbers associated with the desired goals. These can include items such as orders, revenues and margins. The numbers achieved are divided by the goals and the performance percentage is hard to argue with and is well understood.

Management performance goals are a little bit trickier. The further into the organization away from senior management that you go, the smaller that individual’s ability to affect corporate performance. Based on this fact you would think that actual corporate performance should not have a great deal of affect on the majority of management incentive receivers. On the other hand everyone is contributing to the organizations performance. If the overall organization does not achieve its objectives and goals, it is difficult if not problematic to provide a management bonus to the individual team members.

However, it should also be noted that most sales people do in fact receive some portion of their commission structure rewards at performance levels that are less than one hundred percent achievement of their targets. It would not be difficult to accept the need to provide some sort of similar type management reward for partial goal attainment that works along those same lines.

The point behind all this stage setting is pretty simple. Notice how everything I have discussed up to now is based on the measured attainment of specific defined objectives. When you attain them you get paid and when you don’t attain them you don’t get paid. It should be a well understood arrangement for all involved.

As an example I will hearken back to a simpler time. A time when we were in school. A time when we did our school work and we got grades. We should all remember that time. Depending on where you went to school, a passing grade could either be a “D” or a “C”. I will note as an aside that neither of these letters were acceptable when it came time for my parents to review my report card. There were no acceptable excuses. It’s funny, but I sometimes hear the same words when speaking to my children regarding their scholastic performance. I wonder where they are coming from.

In any event, a certain numeric percentage of the available one hundred percent were assigned to these grades. That meant that regardless of how hard you may have worked, if you didn’t achieve the sixty or seventy percent threshold, you failed to achieve your objective and received no credit for the course. This was a given.

It is not unreasonable to expect any commission or bonus plan to also employ certain threshold before any compensation occurs.

Just to be clear, if commissions and bonuses are based on the achieving of specific goals, it should be expected that a certain threshold will need to be attained before any commission or bonus is paid. Below the threshold, regardless of how hard the individual works, nothing will be paid.

Many organizations follow this policy. There are also those that do not. It is best to be aware of the policy when either setting or participating in a compensation structure.

I have been in several organizations in the past where individuals have commented that they worked incredibly hard in the previous year, and that they were hoping for a good compensation check.

I couldn’t help but look at these people with awe.

I would always ask if they were aware of the specifics regarding the commission plan or the management bonus plan. They would say “yes”. I would ask if there was anything so qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) about their percentage attainment of their goals that would make it difficult for them to measure how they performed against their goals. They would say “no”. I would then ask how they could expect anything but the correctly calculated amount. They would then again reiterate how hard they worked.

I would then inform them that what they were expecting was not a calculated performance bonus, but a “tip” similar to that which is provided to someone who provides a personal service. Much like the wait-person that brings the food, but must suffer due to the poor performance of the kitchen, or the cab driver that must deal with unexpected traffic when the ride is in a hurry. They performed their work as well as could be hoped for, and even though the objectives of a hot and timely meal, or arriving in time to catch a flight were not achieved, quite possibly to factors outside of their control, they would still expect a tip for the service they rendered, especially if they worked hard.

I would then inform these people that to my knowledge most organizations do not participate in the practice of “tipping”. They pay for achievement. People need to know that going in. I think that for all of us hard work is a given and is expected. A bonus is just that. Something extra that is predicated on the measurable performance and achievement against defined goals and objectives.

It may take hard work to achieve the goals and earn a bonus. But in business if you don’t achieve your objectives you usually won’t get a “tip” just because you worked hard.

Accountability, Analysis, Data, Expectations

Forecasting

No discussion of forecasting would be complete without some back handed comparisons to those people who actually make their living by forecasting, namely weather forecasters. There are others that also can be said to make their livings this way. People who are in the stock or commodity markets are in effect forecasting the upward or downward movements of prices in the markets based on whether they buy or sell at any specific time. But when it comes to forecasters, it is the weatherman that everyone immediately thinks of. Believe it or not this idea fits into my general business and sales approach to topics. I think it is pretty apparent that if you forecast in business as accurately as weather-people (need to be politically correct here) forecast the weather, you won’t be in business very long.

I heard a great weather-person related joke the other day. It goes:

When I die I want the television weather-person to be the one that lowers my casket into the grave. That way they can let me down one last time.

To be honest it has been a challenging period for weather forecasters here in Texas. Probably not so much in the other parts of the country. Elsewhere in the country it seems that any forecast that contains the words “cold” and “snow” has at least a reasonable chance of being correct. Here in the last week we have had sunny warm spring like days, rain, sleet, ice (yes ice, they immediately shut the entire state down when anyone anywhere in the state gets ice) and snow. Sometimes we have had multiple selections on the same day. We have had almost fifty degree temperature swings between the sunny warm highs and the snowy cold lows in just two days. Still, you would think that based on either the officially certified coin flipping or dart throwing weather predicting process that appears to be used, that the laws of probability and statistics would have to take over at some point and they would get at least one forecast right.

It is against this publicly recognized futility in forecast accuracy that we need to look at forecasting within the business environment.

Successful business is predicated on properly setting expectations. If you set your customer’s expectations properly, and then meet them, they will be satisfied. We all know that a satisfied customer is a good thing. If you set the stock analysts’ and business press’ expectations about how the business will perform, and then meet them, the price of your stock will probably go up. We all know that an increasing stock price is also a good thing. If you set the expectation with management regarding the performance of your business, and then you meet it, you will probably get to keep your job and may even be asked to take on more responsibility. Keeping your job is also a pretty good thing.

Setting expectations is also known as forecasting. It leads to a thing called “predictability”. Predictability is usually a desirable thing in business.

Good business forecasting is all about breaking down the complex (in this instance, “the business”) into its component pieces (such as “revenue”, and “costs” and things like that) and working the individual forecast for each one. You can then combine these individual forecasts into the overall business forecasts.

It also provides you an excellent insight into which specific components may need to be looked at for potential adjustments should the total forecast not meet what may be considered acceptable levels of expectation by management.

Expectations are funny things. They can cut both ways. Businesses usually want to set expectations that are difficult but achievable with senior management. Senior management usually wants to set the expectation that it requires more from the business than the obviously easily obtainable expectations that they are currently being provided. Senior management will then in turn try to set expectations for the overall business performance with the analysts and market that are believable, and the analysts and market will decided whether or not they will believe them.

This all takes us back to forecasting. Expectations are set with management through the use of forecasts. There are forecasts for revenue. There are forecasts for costs. And then there are the resulting forecasts for margin or earnings. Hopefully there is a relationship between the revenue and the cost forecasts so that margin and earnings can in fact be realized.

As an example of forecasting, in Texas you know that in May it is going to start getting hot. By June it will be hot. It will probably stay hot until September and that by October it might start to not be so hot. This is known as “Climate”. In general you can expect this. You can look at historical averages and trends and see what the various highs, lows and precipitation were for specific days, but you don’t know what they will be this year. That specificity is known as the weather.

The closer you get to any specific date, the more accurate your forecast can and should be for that dates weather.

The same should apply for businesses. At the beginning of the year there is a general expectation of what the “climate” should be for any specific business. This is based on past performance and the desires for growth (or contraction) in the component markets and businesses. As data comes in and performance evolves the forecast for any specific piece of the business will begin to come more and more into better focus. Unexpected events and unforeseen issues can always occur and cause the accuracy of the forecast to change, but in general, the closer you get to a specific date, or target, the more accurate you should expect the forecast to be.

The key here is that the forecasts should always be based on the factual data. If it has been cold and snowy in the northeast for the last few weeks, and there are still several feet of snow on the ground, then no matter how badly senior management would like to see sunny, spring like temperatures it is probably best to stay with reality. Understanding the business equivalent of “in the summer it’s hot and in the winter its cold”, regardless of the specific day to day variations, is an important aspect of accurate forecasting.

Forecasts are designed to inform people of what they need to know and hear, not what they want to know and hear. They are keys to setting expectations of the business’ performance and targeting areas for attention when expected performance does not meet the business needs. When a forecast is missed it will have a ripple effect throughout the business.
When a weather forecaster misses a forecast there is a possibility that someone may get wet when they thought they would be dry, or they may be cold when they dressed for warmer weather. When a business misses a forecast the financial performance of the entire organization can be brought into doubt. This usually results in actions that must be taken to bring the financial performance back in line with expectations. These actions can usually be distilled down to one of two things: increasing revenue or decreasing costs.

The need for decreasing costs is never a fun forecast for the people in a business.

Accountability, Adversity, Change, Conflict Management

Kung Fu and the Laws of Change

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It seems that I do have a tendency to talk about change in business, a lot. I think one of the main reasons for this is that some of my initial leadership roles involved being charged with either changing and transforming some underperforming organizations, or shutting them down. No one likes or wants to shut an organization down. It doesn’t matter that it was not your leadership that caused the performance issue. Shutting down an organization is an event that will stay with you for a while.

This is what has led me to coin what I humbly position as “Gobeli’s First Law of Change Management”. It goes something like this:

No matter how many businesses you grow, expand and improve in your career, shut down just one business because you could not get it to change in order for it to survive and you will always and forever be known as a “hatchet man”.

A hatchet man is a person who is recognized in the organization as someone who causes people either voluntarily or involuntarily to leave the company. They lay off. They fire. They close. When they walk into a room or meeting, all conversation momentarily stops. Other people keep track of them and never turn their backs on them. Once given the label, it is almost impossible to shake it.

This fact has led me to coin what I humbly position as “Gobeli’s Second Law of Change Management”. It goes something like this:

A “Change Agent” is someone who when faced with the option, will almost always do whatever it takes so as to not be labeled a hatchet man.

When faced with the down side prospect of being labeled a hatchet man as opposed to the upside opportunity of changing a poorly performing business into a more profitable one, I think it is easy to see why I usually chose to be a change agent. It really isn’t so bad once you understand some if the realities associated with being a change agent. You need to understand that even though you are avoiding the down side of shutting down a business there are still many obstacles that will need to be overcome.

This is what has led me to coin what I humbly position as “Gobeli’s Third Law of Change Management”. It goes something like this:

No matter how necessary the change is that you are leading, no matter how much it will improve profitability, efficiency or customer satisfaction, there will be people who will feel that they have something to lose as a result of the change, and they will resist the change at every opportunity.

Everybody understands in some esoteric way that change must occur. They just don’t want it to happen to them. They want someone else to have to change. They may already have plans and strategies that conflict with your change. They may have organizations that are dependent on the change not happening. (I am sure that there were buggy whip product or service or maintenance groups that were not happy with the change in corporate direction when the automobile came about). They in short have a vested interest in the status quo.

The point is that they will take the short sighted approach and fight change. The fact that the alternative would eventually be the emergence of a hatchet man on the situation does not seem to matter. That will be then and this is now.

In my rather arcane way this change resistant conflict has reminded me of an episode of the old television show Kung Fu that I saw as a kid. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it had David Carradine as a Kung Fu master monk wandering around the old west looking for his brother. That was the extent of the show’s entire plot. There would be a requisite martial arts action sequence and there would also be a requisite eastern philosophy lesson in each episode. As a kid I loved it.

I am sure that it must have had some influence on me and my resulting studies of martial arts and readings of eastern philosophies. Although I have been talking about conflict and resistance to change, I am going to use one of the show’s eastern philosophy lessons here.

The lesson that I am going to refer to dealt with attackers and defenders. The following is a paraphrase of the lesson. Please read it with something of an Asian accent in your mind to get the full value and effect since that is the way the Kung Fu master sounded when he intoned it to the then monk – student David Carradine:

Attackers must win to be considered a success. Defenders need only survive to be considered a success.

The question that must first be answered when making sense of this quote is to understand if you are the attacker or the defender. The answer is that as a change agent you are a little of both. You are attacking the current status quo that you are wanting to change, and defending your proposed change plan. However when you look at the bigger picture, change agents are attacking and those that are resisting the change are defending.

With this in mind, and knowing that you must “win” the change related contention points in order to implement change, I will now coin what I humbly position as “Gobeli’s Fourth Law of Change Management”. It goes something like this:

Before engaging in a change management battle, get the data. Get all the data. The data will be your friend. It is much more difficult for people to argue with and resist numbers than it is to argue with and resist opinion.

Now a certain amount of attribution for this law needs to be given to Robert McNamara. He was one of the first automotive industry “whiz kids” and a member of President John F. Kennedy’s cabinet in the 1960’s. He was a great proponent of data acquisition and analysis. He was called a “whiz kid” because he seemed to be right quite often. This is probably because he had acquired the data and analyzed it better than everyone else at the time. Go figure.

Now if you have acquired the data and properly analyzed it, this will force those that are resisting your change to rely on something other than data for their resistance. They will call in other topics and non sequiturs as reasons for their resistance and defenses for their positions. These reasons and defenses can be quite vociferous and colorful, but data usually wins. They will resist the change with an appeal to the “greater good” argument for the company. They will counter with their own incremental improvement. They will talk about the non-monetary effects of the change.

In general there will be great keening, rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth.

As an aside, I once had a group try to argue that there were more hours in a man year in one country as opposed to another as one of the reasons to resist the pending change. Desperation when it comes to resisting change knows no limits.

In the final analysis, if you have followed these simple laws for effecting change you should be successful. The one note of caution to post here is to understand when you are dealing with a business that does not want to change. Sometimes despite what may be some of your best work, the decision to change will just not get made.

We all need to understand that we may not be acting with all the data that those who must make the final change decisions have. There can be other plans. There can be other strategies that you may not be party to. On the other hand, they may just like the way things are done now.

You need to takes these pieces of information into account when trying to be a change agent as opposed to a hatchet man. It is also a good idea to remember that doing nothing can eventually be an invitation for a visit by those that swing not a hatchet but an ax.

Accountability, Achievement, Example, Leadership

Criticism

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One of the immutable laws of leadership is that leaders get criticized. Throughout recorded history, when a leader has emerged, so has the criticism of what they are doing. This has been shown to be true in this country all the way back to George Washington, the man who is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of our country, and the first president of the United States. With the myth that has evolved around Washington and his leadership, it is difficult to believe that anyone would have, or even could have criticized him. They did. And many of them were actually thrown in jail for doing so. I guess they knew better how to deal with critics and criticism back then.

Can you imagine the prison issues that would occur today if they could still throw everyone who criticized the president in jail?

The point here is that Washington took a stand. Because of the stand he took, he was asked to lead. He had an opinion and a position, and actually had the temerity to act upon them. Washington was a Federalist. He supported a strong federal government. His critics were Republicans (who should not be confused with today’s republicans) who believed that the majority of governmental authority should be vested with the states.

Washington acted upon his beliefs and the criticism raged. There were editorials in several newspapers of the time literally calling for the hand of God to intervene in the activities. This was pretty scathing stuff for the time. You didn’t just call upon God for any old issue. If you were going to call upon Him you apparently really had to mean it.

But this was George Washington; the man who threw a dollar across the Potomac River; the man who chopped down the cherry tree and couldn’t tell a lie; the man who led the armies of the American Revolution and won. Here he was being criticized, more than just a little vigorously, for doing what he had been called upon and put in the position to do.

Fast forward about sixty years to another one of the great leaders of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Half of the then country was so critical of his activities and policies that tried to secede from the union. This plan obviously did not go over well and the result was one of the bloodiest conflicts in our nation’s history. It also ultimately cost him his life at the hands of an assassin who also did not agree with his policies.

So, enough of the history lesson. What is the point, you may ask.
The point that I choose to make here is that if you choose to be a leader, you are going to be criticized. Opinions and positions are polarizing. There will always be those that immediately agree with you, and those that immediately, and sometimes irrevocably disagree with you. There are going to be people that regardless of the obviousness, intelligence or palatability of the position that you are taking are just not going to agree with you. They are going to criticize you.

Once the criticism starts, how you handle it will tell much about your leadership character and capabilities. After many years of both dizzying success and abysmal failure at handling criticism, I will share some of the things I have learned in how to handle criticism. A sort of leadership behavioral Dos and Don’ts for handling critics and their associated criticism:

Do: Understand that it is easier to oppose an idea that it is to generate an idea. You may have spent a significant amount of time taking multiple factors into account in presenting or proposing something. You have created something where before your idea there was nothing. Not everyone can do this.

Understand that it does not take near that amount of effort to create any criticism to your proposal or idea. In fact, in many instances you may notice the criticism is almost instantaneous, especially if you present your plan in person in front of multiple people. Picture the image of pouring blood into piranha filled waters.

Don’t: Don’t question the intellect behind any criticism. As I just noted, it is much easier to provide criticism of an idea than it is to provide an idea. You may infer that I think that critics are only those people of lower intellect. This may or may not actually be the case. Now critics may defend their position in this intellectual argument by noting that by conserving their precious few available brain cells by only creating critiques instead of creating ideas, that they may actually be truly benefitting the company. They can state that you can never tell when you may actually have to rely on a critic to create a new idea, and they want those limited number of brain cells in reserve for when or if they are ever called upon for independent thought.

Personally when I need new ideas generated I prefer to call on people who have demonstrated the ability to think independently and generate ideas.

Perhaps you have heard how some people try to generalize society into the “haves” and the “have nots”. This may be incorrect on so many levels but I am not here to argue that point. I only use it as an illustration of how we like to categorize people. I think the equivalent bifurcation of people in business would be the “idea generators” and the “critics”, or maybe more accurately the “thinks” and the “think nots”.

Do: When criticized focus on the idea not the person. It is very easy to get defensive about our creations. Any criticism of them is almost too easy to take as a personal attack or direct insult on us. Whether this is the actual case or not is not important. Focus on the idea and content being supplied. Do not get wrapped up in the person providing or the method they are providing it.

Remember the old adage: Even a blind pig will occasionally root up an acorn. So it is with critics. Occasionally they can and even do provide valuable input. It is possible that one of their critiques will have merit. I personally have never seen this, but I have heard the business legends, myths and stories of it actually occurring.

Don’t: Don’t refer to your critic as a “blind pig” or any other name should their criticism eventually prove fruitless or unfounded. Take the high road. And remember “myopic swine” is not the high road either.

Remember that invariably facts will be your friends. Get the data. Do the research. Deal with the idea not the person. Reduce the criticism to a provable or disprovable point and work on it from that point of view. Leadership is about assimilating input, even inaccurate critical input. Leadership is not about getting those people who agree with you to align. It is about getting those that do not agree, the critics, to align.

Notice I didn’t say accept. I said align. It is possible that some critics will never accept your proposal or idea. After all, their criticism is as dear to them as your idea is to you.

When you look back at Washington and Lincoln, one of the traits that made them great leaders was the way they responded to criticism. Regardless of how harsh or personal or unfounded the attacks were, they dealt specifically with the issues or business at hand. They did not respond in kind to spurious criticism. They focused on the idea and the objective they needed to achieve.

Most importantly they as leaders moved forward with their ideas and plans. They acted. They got things done regardless of and in some instances in spite of their critics and criticism. They didn’t let the criticism get them down nor slow them down.

In business there will always be those that for whatever reason will tell you that your ideas or plans will not work. It is okay to listen to them, but it cannot be allowed to become the reason for not moving forward, nor can the fear of such criticism be the reason that you did not bring forward a new idea.

Accountability, Experience, Fear, Humor, Training

Business Lessons I Learned (or Re-Learned) When My Son Started to Drive.

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I am now entering one of the most difficult stages of my life. My teenage son is starting to learn to drive. This is not a process, or a stage of life for the faint of heart. There is really nothing in life that can prepare you for this eventuality. All children do grow older, and eventually ask you for the keys to the car. It is a rite of passage for you both. Them the asking for the keys and the stepping across a metaphorical threshold into a new freedom and you granting the keys and then being cast down into a previously unknown dark world of fear and discomfort.

With all that being said I have searched for methods and experiences that I can use to help him and me cope with this situation. I think it might be better said that he does not really see a need to cope with this situation. It is obviously I who must cope with the fact that he does not see the need to cope with the situation. I think I may have come up with a few corollaries.

I am choosing to treat his beginning to drive in much the same way that you treat a new employee when they first come on the job. New employees have such high hopes of what they can achieve. Hiring businesses have such high expectations of what the new employees will accomplish. The reality of the situation is somewhat different for both of them.

Now my son has never had a job. He much prefers playing video games to working. However, I have had several jobs and have brought on many new hires into their first jobs and I do see some parallels. If a company ever adds a CVGO – Chief Video Game Officer to their executive suite of CEO’s, COO’s and CFO’s, it is possible that my son could conceivably be considered over qualified. Until then, we’ll go with the new hire analogy.

My son and I were driving along in my car when he started the conversation about which type of car he would like when he gets his driver’s license. I drive a rather non-descript car that is just large enough for me to transport my upright bass to Jazz gigs when I am asked to play. It was the deciding factor in my car selection decision. Car options and coolness factor really didn’t come into play for me. It does for him.

He on the other hand is more interested in how he will be perceived in his car by his female peer group and how fast the car will go. This is where the setting of new hire expectations comes into play. Most new hires are looking for positions and work that is commensurate with their opinion and vision of their own capabilities. They in effect want to go fast and look good.

We all think that we are capable of trading paint with any of the Sunday afternoon NASCAR drivers, but in reality we know we can’t. The same goes with my son, and new hires. I needed to tell my son where the light and windshield wiper switches were in the car. Aside from this he is ready to go. NASCAR here he comes. Step on the gas and turn left.

However it has been shown that new drivers and new employees need to learn how to handle their cars and responsibilities before they get to go fast. My son will get a “learner’s” car that will be able to absorb some abuse as he works to perfect his capabilities. This is also usually the way that new hires gain experience in an organization as well.

My son has told me a few times that he has observed me while I drive and that in fact it looks like a relatively simple operation. I told him that I once observed a juggler while he juggled running chainsaws. The juggler was very adept at juggling and it appeared as though anyone should be able to juggle chainsaws. However, I chose not to try. The same thing goes for driving if you haven’t done it before. The same thing goes for business as a new hire.

This is why there are such a large number of Driver’s Educational institutions in our area. The law here (Texas) states that there will be a specific number of class hours (training) and a specific number of supervised driving hours (practice) before a driver’s license will be issued. Who would have thought that both training and practice would be required in order to successfully obtain a goal, be it the proper and safe operation of a car on the public streets, are the successful integration of a new hire employee into the proper conduct of a business?

Newly minted drivers, like newly minted employees feel like they are ready for anything. After all, they are fully licensed. New drivers have a driver’s license; newly hired employees usually have a diploma. Both documents are designed to confer and bestow privileges and capabilities upon the owners of them. The truth is that these documents confer the capability; they do not provide any assurance of success.

This is why there is insurance. For those of you that have already bought insurance for a new driver, you already know what I am about to say. For those of you with future new drivers, please take note.

Insurance for new drivers is unequivocally expensive. Start saving for it now, regardless of how old your children are. Like college tuitions, chances are that whatever you save for new driver insurance will not be enough.

The reason that new driver insurance is so expensive is because the chances are very good that despite all the training and practice, the new driver is going to make a mistake and have an accident. Again, I think the same goes for new hire employees, and just about anyone else trying something new for the first few times. There is nothing like the first few live fire business events. This is where they gain experience, and as I have noted before, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.

Unfortunately there is no insurance that can be bought for new hires in business. It can be provided however in the form of oversight and supervision. Spending a little extra time with new hires on a regular basis is probably the best insurance policy available in business. It’s like riding along in the passenger seat while my son is driving. I don’t have my hand on the wheel, or my foot on the brake, but there is another set of eyes watching the road and looking out for potential issues on the road.

Also, my son learning to drive has (re)taught me patience. He does not have the same experience driving that I do. He hasn’t learned to anticipate what he may face. This is much like the new hires in the office. They too want to be successful, and while they may have many of the capabilities for success, they still need to learn, or be shown how to succeed.

New drivers and new employees in general understand the theories of driving and business, and they may actually have some experience in real life applications, but that doesn’t mean that they can just be turned loose to fend for themselves, either on the road or in the business environment, especially if your goal for them is long term success. Active mentoring and a measured introduction into more complex / higher speed environments will help minimize the dents and bruises to egos, careers and cars. It takes a little more effort, but the dividends do pay off.

Finally, this new world of my son driving has also taught me the value of antacid tablets. That is something I have never needed at office.

Accountability, Differentiators, Leadership. Communication

Standing Out

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I need to again give attribution to my Austrian friend. He made a comment about standing out in the crowd that rolled around in my head for a while and resulted in the following.

Standing out does not necessarily mean that you are outstanding. It will be wise to remember this. Write it on the inside of your notebook. Possibly even tattoo it on the palm of your hand in the spot where you once wrote your crib notes for tests in school. You will need to continually remind yourself of this fact as you go through your business career. That being said, while being outstanding is always nice, there is really only one way to make progress in the leadership ranks, and that is to stand out.

Standing out requires you to separate yourself from the rest of the office herd. This in itself is something of a risk. It is easy to stay quiet and do as you are told. This is also the way to be part of the crowd. The crowd is safe. If you really want to be safe you can stop reading here, and get up and go close your door, and lock it. You could also possibly put a desk or cabinet in front of it for further safety. This will assure that your door cannot be opened, from either side.

Also notice how I phrased it that you needed to stand out from the crowd and not necessarily be outstanding in the crowd. Being outstanding is always a good way to stand out, but not everyone is or even can be outstanding. As an example, let’s look at a few of the most significant military leaders for the United States in the twentieth century.

General George Patton commanded the US forces in the European theater during World War II. He graduated forty sixth out of one hundred three from the West Point Military Academy. He obviously was not outstanding at school. General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander (and future president of the US) similarly graduated in the middle of his class at West Point. Similarly not outstanding at school. General Norman Schwarzkopf, the most recent of the leaders being discussed and commander of the Desert Storm operation in the 1990’s, is the only one who graduated in the top ten percent of his class at West Point.

My point here is that only one out of arguable three of the most famous military leaders of our recent times was even remotely regarded as being outstanding during their formative years in their chosen profession. To further this point (I really don’t know how I got started on this military bent other than it brings forward historical figures that we should all be familiar with), General George Custer (yes, that one of Little Big Horn fame) graduated last in his class at West Point. Yes, Last. I bring this up because it should also be noted that at the age of twenty three Custer became the youngest general in the Union army during the Civil War and was regarded as one of the Union’s bravest and best leaders. Go figure.

With all that being said, how does one stand out in business? How does one become recognized as a leader? There are many different and various paths that can be taken in order to stand out, but I think they were in general reduced down to variations of the following three by my Austrian friend; be brilliant, be vocal, or be a pain in the ass. My addition to his analysis is that it may not be just any one of these paths that can lead to success. In some instances it may require someone to be a brilliant, vocal pain in the ass.

I would like to think of myself as nominally the brilliant leader of my family’s household, but I am pretty sure that my wife just considers me to be more of just a vocal pain in the ass.

Of the four leaders previously noted, only one, Schwarzkopf was considered to be brilliant. He was outstanding at West Point and was someone who was widely considered to be very intelligent and his class rank reflected that. But here as in business (as apparently in the military) brilliance will not be enough. There were plenty of cadets who graduated ahead of both Patton and Eisenhower who were probably likewise considered to be brilliant, but for some reason did not reach the heights that Patton and Eisenhower did.

This means that it is probably not just the brilliance that is important, but more so the application of that knowledge. You would assume that all the graduates from West Point accumulated roughly the same type and level of knowledge from that intnstitution, but it was not always the “brilliant” ones that advanced. Brilliance seems to be able to provide an edge or an advantage but in and of itself probably will not carry the day. I find this point to be somewhat heartening since I did not graduate at the top of my class nor can I claim to be particularly brilliant either.

That must mean that it is the being vocal, and / or the being a pain in the ass that will have a major effect on standing out and success. When you think about it, it only makes sense. Being vocal, or the being a pain in the ass means you are communicating, and it is the communicating of your ideas, positions or solutions that will enable you to stand out.

Please don’t get me wrong. I think being smart is better than not being smart. No one likes a vocal idiot, and an ignorant pain in the ass has all the attributes that Darwin’s theory of evolution would indicate nature would select against.

Custer performed the worst at West Point, but also achieved the general’s rank far faster than any of the others we are discussing. He is also probably best remembered for his reported folly in taking a contingent of approximately 500 soldiers into battle against a force close to 2,500 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Chief Sitting Bull. However before that event, during the Civil War, Custer was acknowledged as a military strategist, tactician and leader who clearly proposed his goals and then would lead every one of his campaigns from the front of his column, and achieve his objective. He may have had many failings, some of which obviously may have led to his demise, but it seems that it was his ability to set and communicate his objectives (be vocal) to both his men and his superiors, and then to lead (successfully) from the front (taking the risk himself) that made him stand out from so many of the others in the military at that time.

With all that being said about Custer, it is also always a good idea to have much better information than he did when it comes to understanding any potential opposition that may be standing between you to your stated goals.

I guess you are considered vocal when your opinions, beliefs and actions are in alignment with those of your superior’s. If this is the case then it would seem that the equivalent definition of a pain in the ass would be when your opinions, beliefs and actions are not in alignment with those of your superior’s. If this is the case then it seems to me that I may have made a career out of being a pain in the ass (and not just according to my wife).

This does not mean that you should avoid being considered a pain in the ass. Most leaders that I know search out those people who have a considered different opinion from their own. As a leader I already have an opinion. I hope that it is considered and well thought out (however my wife usually doesn’t think so). I need other, different opinions to help me ascertain whether my opinion is the best one or if there are better ones out there. I can only do this when those other opinions are communicated to me.

Whether or not those communicated opinions come from people that agree with me (the vocal ones) or those that don’t (the pains in the ass), I have to figure out which are generated by the brilliant and which are not so much. Either way it is those that take a stand and put forth an opinion that get noticed. And of those it is usually the ones that have put in the effort, time and thought to intelligently support their opinion that truly stand out.

Now the last question left to resolve will be:
If I have an opinion that is different from my wife’s by logic it means that she has a different opinion from me. Does that make me a pain in her ass, or is she a pain in mine? I guess it depends on who is nominally in charge at our house.

Ouch. I think I may have to rethink that last little bit.