One of my coaching clients recently recommended that I read the 1987 classic Odessey, by John Sculley – who is famous for succeeding Steve Jobs during the first Apple turnaround. Back in 1987 Sculley implemented ideas that we’re still waking up to today. His pretext for what I call Leading from the Future (I used to have a blog by that title, and it’s also a subtext of Theory U by Otto Scharmer) is that, because the future is increasingly unpredictable, traditional ‘planning’ can turn out to be a crap shoot. Once again, the ideas on Leading from the Future are resurfacing in a new book by Douglas Rushkoff called Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now published just this year. The point of it all is (as Rushkoff’s title hints) that focus on the current moment is the best indicator we have for not only predicting the future – more important, focus on the current moment informs us of what’s possible, where we’re heading, and how to create the future we want.
Here’s a place to start NOW
Sculley is hip to the coaching mantra: Solutions are often obvious once you get the questions right.
He details how part of Apple’s strategic planning process was to ‘project ourselves out into the future and then work backwards to the present’. I’ve personally been using this same technique, in a variation called A Walk Through Time – based on NLP, since 1999 to help teams to start with the future they envision and work their way backwards in time to knit together the pieces of a more cohesive present. Since 2005, with my partner Liz Dallas, we’ve used her Visionary A to B Leadership Model to help leaders and teams work from their Now to future possibility to cohesive strategies. The trick is to shift your attention from Planning for the Future to Leading from the Future. This shift creates the opportunity for insight and the new, more relevant actions that spawn from there. Insight into now is key.
And that’s why I’m such a champion of coaching. The inquiry process that seeks to get the right questions is the mother of all inventions. We no longer have time to invest in scenario and strategic planning that looks forward. Instead, let’s invest in what we do know, our NOW, and ask the right questions…maybe even with the help of a coach?
What’s the coach approach to this state of the art training tool?
Just getting ready to deliver another ChangeCycle(tm) training, and I’m reminded how important it is to use your change tools early and often if you want to have an organization or team that is resilient in change. People usually nod their head enthusiastically when they hear that the most important part of change is to make it feel safe – but they rarely take action on that knowledge early in the process. Good example: President Obama defaulted to using the word ‘safe’ repeatedly by the time he got to the third presidential debate, and Governor Romney defaulted to playing it safe. But I digress.
The most important thing I learned, when studying to become a facilitator for the ChangeCycle(tm) training is that no matter whether a change is good or bad, the mind reacts the same way…in neuroscience layman’s terms, your lizard (primitive) brain takes over and yells STOP! In order to get to the part where you can use your reasoning skills, you first have to overcome this instinctual response. And the next most important thing I’ve learned about the process is you can’t do it too soon or too often.
So when we work with groups using this training tool, the primary thing we do is to establish rapport = real rapport, meaning trust, no matter how long it takes – maybe even half the training day! Because learning about change and practicing new change tools can be darn irritating. You can’t do it too early or too often. And seeing safety in change modeled is the best training there is to make change easier.
In a recent article, “The Magic Eyes(R) of Innovation: Ontological implications 1″, author Bruce Vojak makes a case for innovation as the discovery of a hidden/underlying reality vs. an imposition of will. As a member of the Chaordic Solutions forum on LinkedIn, I get access to a series of articles like this and the innovators who study change and post. I thought you might enjoy reading my response to Mr. Vojak’s article, which also received some feedback skeptical to his proposition.
On August 16, Lea Belair wrote…
An interesting connection to your excellent essay:
In The Power of Habit, Duhigg writes that in order to cause widespread shifts (read innovate) “Identifying keystone habits [is key to] creating new structures”. He shares several provocative stories of how innovators used their magic eyes (to use your term), to set off a chain of events that led to massive innovation. Example: Paul O’Neill, in taking charge of Alcoa (1987), identified ‘safety’ as a keystone habit around which other habits could change – thus changing the entire culture of Alcoa. The key to innovating and spreading the innovation was: “…leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.”
And yes, of course, the real key to the innovation is having the ‘magic eyes’ to be able to see the pattern/keystone habit.
As someone who has studied meditation and advait vedant for almost 30 years, I know that developing the ability to see through ‘magic eyes’ is a skill that can be learned. There is definitely an underlying reality and one can learn how to discern it.
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I have been using the technique that Vojak describes as ‘magic eyes’ in coaching and teaching others how to do it since 1995. Not coincidentally, this skill was identified by Thomas Leonard and labelled Hones in on what’s most important, as well as by Michael Bungay Stanier who refers to it as Blue Card Coaching. The point is, similar to the example in Mr. Vojak’s article – that Michelangelo was able to see the sculpture/form that wanted to emerge from a blank piece of marble/formless. And, also not coincidentally, I specifically remember reading about that in The Agony and the Ecstasy, when it came out in 1961 (before I ever heard of meditation and advait vedant, and before coaching became a profession). You can learn how to do it, and you can learn how to use it to innovate your work and your life.
If your succession plan is just a ‘replacement’ regime vs. a result of building your leadership pool, you’re not prepared for the massive change and increasing complexity of future growth. So how can you build your company culture and team capacity to leverage the kind of leadership that is embedded and self-sustaining?
We have a model we use at the Coaching Center, developed by Liz Dallas – founder and Executive Director, that we are currently calling the A to B model. We have been using this model at Vital Business since 2005, because it works. A simple explanation of the basis of this model is available in Liz’s chapter in the book Roadmap to Success. What’s germane here, is that the A to B model intentionally creates space for the question mark, “?”, a place holder for the unknown – for the sake of building employee engagement and a strong leadership culture. The ? is a place where your talent* has the ability to leverage its strengths, be flexible in change, and lead.
Read Liz Dallas’ chapter on Creative Visualization: Disciplined Thinking for Leadership Success
Here are a couple of quick tips on building a strong leadership plan:
1. Embed a language that attracts and reflects talent
Now that most people are familiar with the drawbacks of top-down leadership they are ready for something else, but many are not sure what that something else looks like, sounds like, and feels like. At Vital Business we have seen the benefit of inspiring and engaging as the modus operandi for creating a talent driven leadership culture. The old operational and strategic models are not enough. There needs to be a more flexible underpinning that pulls your talent forward, into leadership vs. pushing them into overwhelm and burnout. Language can go a long way to making that real/demonstrative so that your leadership initiative won’t come off as another ‘flavor of the week’ new idea.
2. Have a talent plan
In addition to valuing and leaving a place holder for the unknown, another key to succeeding in growing your leadership is a company culture that has a clear vision of success, beyond strategy. When you have that, the vision is one that is energized, “caught” and “carried” like a virus, and it naturally spreads throughout the organization. It’s tricky to identify what is ‘strategy’ and what is ‘pull’ vision. You’ll know you are successful when your leadership has both a natural path forward in strategy and the emotional intelligence and communication skills they need for succession that is inspired and talent driven.
*There has been debate on the difference between talent and strengths. I like the definition given by the Gallup organization: “talents are innate and cannot be acquired, unlike skills and knowledge”.
As I am attending a variety of conferences lately, this time the Vermont Employee Ownership Conference (VEOC), this time as a speaker on coaching and mentoring at PC Construction, I gleaned some insights on what works (and doesn’t) in Employee Stock Ownership Plan companies.
Here are a few I think are worth sharing:
1. There is no power where there is no collaboration
Actually, I knew this one already. But it struck me as bold to say it in this way. Usually power and collaboration aren’t used in the same sentence. There’s maybe power ‘over’, or power ‘to’, but here it was: power ‘with’.
In a company, just like in any ecosystem, collaboration bridges boundaries so that decisions and actions can be more informed and effective. If your system has no bridges the power gets interrupted.
2. Be in the bigger conversation vs. the subsets
In ESOPs the bigger conversation is how to educate, inspire and engage employees so that they think and act like owners. Why limit this to ESOPs? What if we all thought and acted like owners at work? When employees feel like they are at the mercy of the owners they actually subvert the goals of the organization.
3. ESOPs are part of the move from the extractive economy to the generative economy – or can be… The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) says on its website:
“ESOPs are most commonly used to provide a market for the shares of departing owners of successful closely held companies, to motivate and reward employees, or to take advantage of incentives to borrow money for acquiring new assets in pretax dollars. In almost every case, ESOPs are a contribution to the employee, not an employee purchase.”
And, let’s face it, a lot of ESOPs are still run like old fashioned top down organizations (power over) with updated retirement plans.
The VEOC was a great place to be in conversation about what all of us in business need to be talking abut…what goods and services will be important in the NEXT economy as we move from the “me” society to the “we” society.
PS During lunch we were treated to a fiery speech by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – a long time supporter of ESOPs.
Bernie Sanders speaks about how Employee Ownership is important to the state of Vermont
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of meeting and mingling with members of the OIWC (Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition), as one of their speakers in their year long series on Change – an event hosted by REI in Berkeley CA. I was struck by how much fun it is to be with a group of aspiring and inspiring women leaders.
Last night, I had the added pleasure of attending their Burlington event, hosted by Terry Bicycles, full of more inspiring and aspiring women leaders, our treasures in Northern Vermont. Liz Robert, CEO of Terry Bicycles, was the speaker for this event, and a big draw that got me in my car in the midst of the drumbeat of business. Liz’s message of paying attention to opportunity – no matter how it presents itself, is one every leader and aspiring leader needs to keep top of mind in these times of change.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, we shared some common themes in both our talks. One of which, and I’ll steal a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt to capture it, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do”, is key to seeing and taking the opportunities that open unexpected doors for women who aspire to inspire. As a leadership and change coach, I’m often asked to share tips and techniques in achieving success in change. Here’s the one that goes along with Eleanor’s quote, and which Liz described as ‘taking the quantum leap’ – Pay attention to what you want, without knowing how you are going to get there. It’s about taking action, one action, and then – of course – it leads what’s next.
This way of focusing and taking action is especially important for women because often women have a less direct path to walk through life and work. We’re more apt to have our attention and energy diverted by childbearing, family, and a different set of expectations as we set out to navigate life’s changes. You must do the thing you cannot do to take the quantum leap.
Both Liz and I shared stories at OIWC of taking jobs for which we weren’t sure we had the right experience, without clear expectations of what they would entail – whether it’s the risk taking of the entrepreneur or working within the biz/corporation.
Doing the thing you think you cannot do, taking the quantum leap, means being open to what is needed/offered and knowing you can provide value – even though you’re not sure how it will play out.
Many of life’s greatest gifts are surprises. If you navigate change like riding a bike, you’ll make the most of the opportunities along the way!
What’s the most important characteristic for success in a company that is in a high growth phase?
Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power – and a personal leadership role model of mine, talks about her company’s journey from a traditional utility to a cost effective and innovative growth company with the help of the Coaching Center of Vermont in this video clip (one of a series to come).
Following up on my last post about ‘taking the leap’, Mary focuses on the value of creating a high growth team. She defines that team as one where everyone is aligned and team effort and success trumps individual contribution. Learn more and get inspired. Watch the video!
Recently I have come across a few firms that were busily creating their shiny new 5 Year Strategic Plan. Having done strategic plan consulting in the 90′s, I am familiar with the theory behind this and some of the processes used. So, one of the first things I want to clean the slate on in the new year is the whole concept of the 5 Year Strategic Plan.
Let us lay it to rest.
The purpose of the 5 Year Strategic Plan is to see and plan for the future.
That’s all well and good.
However, who can accurately predict where their company will be in 5 years in the face of the exponential growth patterns of change and complexity we now face?
There are futurists out there making a good living doing all kinds of scenario planning based on multiple possible futures. If we are really serious about thriving in change, it’s time to re-direct our energy to strategies based on real time adaptive capabilities. The nub of the problem with the 5 Year Strategic Plan is that we cannot possibly see and plan that far out in one comprehensive plan.
So, if you are thinking of hiring a good consultant to help you with your 5 Year Strategic Plan, save your money.
Invest instead in equipping your leaders to be able to run their organization like riding a bike.
Put the 5 Year Plan to rest and ride your bike instead
In order to ride a bike you do the following:
1. You pack what you think (best guess) you will need for your bike ride.
2. You know your destination – or at least what you want to see when you get there.
3. You start pedaling in that direction.
4. Most important…You have a short window of time to make a decision on how to successfully navigate what comes in front of you. Especially the surprises. And surprises are one thing we can count on in ever increasing number. Whether it is a child running in front of your bike, or a turn in the road that you didn’t expect, or an oncoming biker. Only at the time when you see the actual change can you make the best decision as to how to navigate your bike.
Let us learn what we can about the future (and pack our bags well). And, if your rider – manager or executive, has the awareness and skills necessary to be able to make those quick navigation decisions with agility and flexibility, your company will wind up at its destination… no matter what changes and surprises happen along the way. To do this, managers and execs need to hone their visionary and leadership skills.
Whether you call it Minimalism or Emergent Design or Negative Space or ?….the idea is that in our complex world the best structure is the one that provides for the most space. Space as in room to move, room to innovate, room to harness our innate individual and collective intelligence. That’s because things change and no matter how good we are at predicting and preparing for the change there is always the unknown – what we didn’t or couldn’t predict or prepare for.
Susan Szpakowski talks about it in terms of the architecture of Emergent Design in her excellent article Making Sense of Strategy in an Uncertain World. In the article she mentions Christopher Alexander (I’ve been a big fan of Christopher Alexander for years now) for his strategy of “pattern language” which is another way of defining the space so that it continues to make sense within change. One of my favorite ideas from his book A Timeless Way of Building is that of constructing a building one room at a time…that way the structure of the building emerges from its actual use.
In his provocative and entertaining TED video Grant Blakeman shows us his visual representation of our typical day and makes the case for space as an essential element of thriving in increased change and complexity.
At Vital Business, we use our proprietary A to B model, developed by Liz Dallas, where uncertainty actually holds a place in the design that takes you from where you are now to where you want to be. We not only use the “?” – we help our clients to love the “?”.
It’s the mantra I’ve been using with my corporate coaching clients for some time now – “Welcome to the end of Normal”. That mantra kicks off an excellent research paper on wisdom, chaos theory and organizational change – which I just read, courtesy of my membership in the Chaordic Solutions LinkedIn Group: Inspirational Chaos: Executive Coaching and Tolerance of Complexity
My one-on-one coaching clients as well as the companies we work with as part of their organizational change initiatives have been reeling in the face of the increasing speed of change and the exponential growth of complexity. Instead of complaining, scrambling, burning out, or simply winging it, those of us in the throes of that change will benefit from being the early adopters of a new strategic vision that will equip us to innovate and thrive in change – what this research paper terms as the new definition and application of Wisdom.
It’s a great explanation of what Vital Business stands for in approaching change beyond the behavioral framework of the past by adopting a wisdom framework and a leadership coaching strategy.
His pretext for what I call Leading from the Future (I used to have a blog by that title, and it’s also a subtext of Theory U by Otto Scharmer) is that, because the future is increasingly unpredictable, traditional ‘planning’ can turn out to be a crap shoot.
Once again, the ideas on Leading from the Future are resurfacing in a new book by Douglas Rushkoff called Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now published just this year.
The point of it all is (as Rushkoff’s title hints) that focus on the current moment is the best indicator we have for not only predicting the future – more important, focus on the current moment informs us of what’s possible, where we’re heading, and how to create the future we want.
Posted on May 13th, 2013 by leab | Tags: 
