KSA Integration — Empowering the Warrior

The Marketplace of Ideas

Posted on June 23, 2015 by ksanew

The “marketplace of ideas” is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. The “marketplace of ideas” belief holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse.

The same is true in organizations. Leaders are the consumers of ideas in the business marketplace. In organizational behavior, a well functioning market place of ideas yields many benefits:

The best creative thinking of those closest to the customers, the employees, are put into action.
Assumptions are examined, checked for validity, and if needed, revised.
Competitive conditions and the company’s evolving operating environment is refreshed and can be used in strategy, planning, and daily execution.
Employees understand that what they think matters.
Customers understand that what they think matters.
Leadership horizons are broadened and perspectives deepened.
Risks are evaluated and opportunities seized.
Innovation and adaption can occur.

In the summer of 2003 I was the Deputy Commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), in Iraq. We had defeated the Iraqi Army and Air Force in our sector but were fighting small unit enemy forces in a huge geographic area of southern Iraq. Up to this point we had employed time tested combined arms and maneuver to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy. It worked well against conventional enemy forces. But as we defeated Iraqi units, very small elements and even individual terrorists continued the fight. Traditional combined arms and maneuver did not work very well against them. The fight had changed.

Thankfully, we realized this in relatively short order because the leaders of the MEF, including the 1st Marine Division, 3D Marine Aircraft Wing, 1st Force Service Support Group, and our principal Coalition Ally, the U.K., practiced within a healthy and energetic marketplace of ideas. The leaders of these organizations capitalized on initiative, open communications, and proactive implementation of insights and recommendations from the lowest levels of the MEF; those closest to the enemy and the civilian population, the latter which we were very much trying to help.

Not only did the MEF leaders recognize that the fight had changed, but we tapped this treasure trove of thinking to transition from primarily kinetic actions to counter insurgency operations. The MEF shifted to helping and protecting the civilian population as best we were able, putting Iraqi men to work with jobs, building hospitals, restoring electricity, providing clean water, and targeting the enemy in precise ways to avoid hazarding the civilian population. All of these activities came from the marketplace of ideas in I MEF. Later, other units all over the country recognized and adopted the same approach, a tribute to the power of the producers and consumers in I MEF’s marketplace of ideas.

Years later I worked at a very senior level in a different large organization. It was highly centralized in its decision making with staff functionaries wielding extraordinary influence, effectively suppressing initiative and creativity from those closest to the customers and the organization’s products. The effects of this environment on organizational performance and the ability to adapt and thrive were as negative as the I MEF model had been positive. It is a lesson I will never forget.

Every healthy organization needs a vibrant market place of ideas. If leaders consume its products, the producers will more than amaze with their ingenuity and effectiveness. But the key to success is having leaders who consume the products and help create even better ones.

Leaders have to look to the marketplace of ideas for new and better products every day.

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”

— John Lubbock

Keith Stalder, #50

Keith Stalder has over 40 years of leadership experience in organizations from the very large and established to small technology start ups and everything in between. With a broad and deep appreciation for, and understanding of, the fundamental challenges of organizations and businesses, both in government and the private sectors, his passion is to help all organizations become all that they aspire to. He is the founder of Keith Stalder and Associates, LLC, a company dedicated to advancing organizational visions and fundamentally transforming how businesses everywhere are run. Visit www.ksaintegration.com for more information.

Leaders and Innovation

Posted on May 21, 2015 by ksanew

“Creating a better future requires creativity in the present.” Matthew Goldfinger How do leaders understand and operationalize the business of adapting and innovating?

This is how:

Understand the difference between adaptation and innovation. In the business of smart phones, Apple innovated, Samsung adapted. The difference really matters.
Understand the forces acting on the organization’s domain, from now through the next five years; the external market and environmental forces and how they interact with the company’s mission and purpose. Given those external factors, what are the things the organization must do, should do, would like to do?
Develop an organizational strategy (ends, ways, and means) to accomplish the things that the company must do to thrive for the next five years. A strategy that makes choices of what not to do.
Create actionable organizational plans from the strategy.
Talk with customers, get their feedback and understand their needs.
Create an organizational culture that rewards innovation, adaptation, and change. Innovation can’t be “bolted on”, it has to be “built in”.
Nurture environments where employees’ ideas can connect. Focused meetings, discrete study projects, well thought out projects from employees.
Challenge authority and break rules, your own and others.
Be willing to stop doing something old in order to do something new.
Encourage genuine and informed debate through the company.
Listen to the voices of change. Act on those voices. Reward and tolerate those who are different and speak up. Make sure that everyone does too.
Challenge and check your organization’s assumptions. Are they (still) valid? If not, they represent risks to your planning and the company’s future.
Create a responsive process to identify, promote, and operationalize the most promising innovations and adaptations. Personally promote this process. Use it, and be seen to champion it.
Assess your innovation and adaptation against your strategy and planning. Did you do what you said you would? If not, why not? What do you need to do to get back on track? Then do that; or change your plan.

Innovation is the only insurance against eventual irrelevance and the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty and success. It requires:

the willingness and ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people
talking to customers
thought
imagination
hard work
friction
heat
change

“You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there. You have to be humble as you execute, but visionary and gigantic in terms of your aspiration. In the Internet industry, it’s not about grand innovation, it’s about a lot of little innovations: every day, every week, every month, making something a little bit better.” Jason Calacanis

Keith Stalder, #49

Organizations and Innovation

Posted on May 6, 2015 by ksanew

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”-Steve Jobs

Innovation is enormously important. It’s the only insurance against eventual irrelevance. It is our only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty and success.

The topic of innovation has been written, spoken, and thought about as much –or more than—any area of management and leadership. But, a great deal is aimed at innovation “per se”, not the organizational dynamics of innovation or how to lead innovation. In this post, I hope to impart some useful insights on the nature of innovation as it relates to how organizations really work and the role of leaders. My focus is on the relationship between organizational behaviors and innovation.

First, I’ll begin by making a distinction that is usually missed: adaptation and innovation. Adaptation is the altering, modifying, redesigning, remodeling, revamping, converting, and reconstructing of known or existing things and processes. Innovation is new, transformational, originally creative, novel, ingenious, and inventive. Both are admirable pursuits but there is an important difference in the desired outcomes that most leaders under-appreciate. True innovation takes hard work, the right organizational support, and inspired leadership. Adaptation does too, but not to the degree that innovation does. All leaders should ask themselves and their employees if the company is adapting or innovating? It really matters.

Once you’ve answered this question, it’s essential to appreciate how all organizations drive toward self-optimization in order to understand how to manage successful innovation. As I’ve previously written, all organizations work relentlessly to optimize the personal convenience, circumstances, and betterment of those in the organization and in doing so sub-optimize all other things, especially the aims of the organization and its customers. Organizational self-optimization eventually creates a transformed organization that exists entirely for its own self-promotion and the perfection of every aspect of the employees’ work environment. This applies to every organization no matter what size: one person to tens of thousands. It is simply human nature: We all want things on our own terms, and in our personal lives are constantly engaged in an effort to evolve our worlds to suit our deepest desires. We transmit that to our work places and subtly, but relentlessly, impose it on our organizations.

An organizational environment based on self-optimization is toxic for genuine adaptation and innovation. Most organizations are way too happy making their own circumstances more cozy, inviting, and free from newness of every type for innovation to survive–let alone thrive. In these types of environments, people who want to innovate are viewed as troublemakers and are punished or flatly ignored.

How do leaders create environments where innovation and adaptation thrive? It starts from creating a safe environment where employees’ ideas can connect; free from those that punish newness and preserve the status quo. To do so, leaders must cultivate an environment with the following critical elements:

Human interaction
Healthy conflict, even argument, and informed debates.
An ability to challenge authority and bend rules.
A willingness to stop doing something old in order to do something new.
Acceptance that bureaucracy destroys innovation and adaptation—Innovators must be given the authority to cut through bureaucratic red tape.
Direct access to end-users and customer

At the end of the day, innovation requires the willingness and ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, to talk with customers, get their feedback and understand their needs. Innovation and adaptation requires thought, imagination, hard work, friction, heat, and change.

“Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Keith Stalder, #48

Risky Business

Posted on March 9, 2015 by ksanew

“Let’s make a dent in the universe.”— Steve Jobs

Life rewards risk. Helen Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree and an inspiration to her own generation and several that followed. She is an example of someone who overcame enormous adversity to change the world she lived in for the better. She said that “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

The lives of organizations and businesses are no different. Leaders would do well to understand the nature of risk and develop a world view of it that serves their customers, workforce, and mission better than most that I encounter.

Risk is usually defined as the potential of losing something of value from a given action, decision or activity. But this view entirely misses the understanding that value can be gained from exposure to risk. It is in the potential to benefit from risk that sophisicated leaders can do their finest work. Risk requires the intentional interaction with uncertainty, a possibility that many leaders are not willing to entertain, unfortunately.

This equation is usually used to describe risk:

Risk = Threat x Vulnerability x Cost
Threat is the frequency of potentially adverse events
Vulnerability is the likelihood of success of a particular threat
Cost is the total cost of the impact of a particular threat

But, as commonly used, it virtually ignores the up side of risk, of deciding what not to do, and the duty of leaders to assess and accept strategic risks.

The most common mistakes that I see are:

Not understanding the up side of risk; that there is value to be gained from exposure to the consequences of uncertainty and risk,
Focusing completely on the down side of risk,
Not specifically defining the down side and the up side, detailing the possible specific effects and probabilities of a possible course of action,
Not comparing the down and up sides to assess the net organizational benefits of success,
Not separating tactical from strategic risks; the former should be easier to assess and accept,
Not identifying tactical risks that can have strategic benefits,
Not accepting strategic risk,
Being completely risk averse. This is very common in government.
Being unwilling to decide what not to do.

Leaders owe their people and businesses keen judgments and high quality decisions on risk and that doesn’t mean avoiding it altogether. This is what I recommend:

Understand that the province of enlightened leaders is in maximizing the realization of opportunities by accepting risks that pay off on the up side, not simply avoiding down side risks,
Define the up side benefits very specifically,
Define the possible down side consequences very specifically,
Assess the probability of both,
Compare benefits and consequences along with their probabilities,
Separate tactical from strategic risks,
Be willing to accept strategic risks,
Be willing to decide what not to do.

For leaders it’s riskier not to take informed risks. If you don’t, you guarantee that things will remain the same; certain death for any organization.

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” — T.S. Eliot

Keith Stalder, #47

Challenge and Complexity

Posted on March 7, 2015 by ksanew

“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.” ― René Descartes, Discourse on MethodOne of the most common mistakes that leaders of large organizations make is to mistake challenge for complexity. I describe challenging organizational issues as those that are laborious, arduous, requiring well considered decisions, solid planning, disciplined execution, assessment, refinement, and perseverance. Complex issues are those which require additional research, analysis, consideration, input from the workforce, collaboration with stakeholders, and insights that will lead to an understanding of the company’s course in the matter. A complex issue is one in which the solutions and path forward are not (yet) known. All too often senior leaders conflate the two definitions, mistaking the challenging or difficult for the complex.

In their minds, complexity is overwhelming, too much for them or the organization to resolve and understand. So they don’t. The issue is simply left to drift as a matter of too much complexity to deal with. In reality, it’s likely that it is not complex at all, it is only challenging, requiring hard work, planning, thought, communications with employees, time, persistence, relentless focus by leaders, and it can be resolved.

Transforming organizational culture is one such area that I see almost every day that applies. Enlightened leaders in a few organizations recognize that their culture needs to be changed, but they don’t understand how it is created or how to change it. For them organizational culture is an enigma, a mystery, a matter of great complexity, so it’s left unaddressed and the organization continues to under perform. Just as a person does not drown from falling into a body of water; she/he drowns by staying there, so it is with the organization. But the (mis)perceived complexity inhibits the solution.

In actuality, transforming organizational culture is not complex. Leaders need only to:

Define it,
Understand what creates it,
Decide how to change it, and
Get to work.

But that takes work. It is challenging but more than worth it in the end. It requires hard work, planning, thought, communications with employees, time, persistence, and relentless focus by leaders. But it’s not an enigma, a mystery, or a matter of great complexity.

The key for leaders is to:

Recognize that there is a difference between complex and challenging matters for their organization.
Distinguish between the two.
Reduce complex issues to actionable understandings. These will usually be challenging, but that’s good, at least the company knows what to do.
Separate challenging issues into the simple actionable components and steps.
Get to work.

The best analogy is one we all understand; losing weight. How does one lose weight? Consume fewer calories and exercise more. That’s it, that’s all we need to know. But we must do it. No kidding, eat less and burn more calories. Relentlessly over time. But this simple and challenging issue has been made enormously complex by the plethora of products, processes, literature, and distractions of the image and weight loss industry. It needn’t be so.

It’s the job of leaders to make complex and challenging things simple, then to do them.

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” ― Edsger W. Dijkstra

Keith Stalder, #46

Facts that Matter

Posted on March 5, 2015 by ksanew

“Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in public and private life, have been the consequences of action without thought.”— Bernard Baruch

In earlier posts I have written about making the best decisions and described it as matter of understanding and determining:

1. What are the facts that matter? Facts start out as data, through analysis becoming knowledge and insights, and are separated into those that bear on the problem and those that do not. Over time, patterns emerge. Wisdom develops as the ability to recognize complex and dynamic patterns hidden in data, even hidden in knowledge, to apply a broader perspective.

2. What do those facts mean, what are their implications? What will be their effects, the second and third order consequences, the choices, and results?

3. What do we do about it? What is the leader’s decision; the action directed? When, by whom, over what period of time, how, with whom, and to what ultimate end? What risks are we willing to take in order to achieve a greater purpose? What do we choose not to do?

Since so much of what matters to sound decision making starts with getting the facts that matter, this post is a discussion of that. I define the leader’s action continuum as a sequence of events along which the decision making process normally moves. It begins with data, through some refinement process to information, then knowledge, later on, and wisdom/judgment. All of this progression leads to a decision, then action, and finally assessment of the action and the process starts over.

It is noticeable that I didn’t mention supposition, presumption, belief, expectation, conjecture, speculation, surmises, guesses, premises, hypotheses, preconceived conclusions, deductions, inferences, notions or impressions. But unbelievably, many companies and organizations operate and guide themselves with these things more often than a well-founded and fact based decision making process. As the leader of many organizations large and small, I called many staff meetings “fact-free discussions” or “fact-lite discussions”.

The propensity of many staffs and organizational processes is to do exactly this; to substitute what should be facts, reality, truth, specifics, details, and “news you can use” for assumptions, and worse. It will eventually deal a major blow to any leader who does not:

Understand where she/he is on the continuum at the beginning of the issues.
Ask the right questions, the questions that place the issue in the larger context of the mission and organization. Start with “Why?”, “How?”, and “What?” (There is an excellent new book called “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek)
Demand the research and analysis that takes the matter at hand and organization from data through the entire continuum to information, wisdom/judgment, decision(s), action, and assessment.
Review the research and analysis in light of the outcome and ask “How can we do this better next time?”. That’s how organizations learn and improve.

What we see depends mostly on what we look for. Leaders need to constantly look for and demand all the right facts; the facts that matter.

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.” — Peter Drucker

“Erroneous assumptions can be disastrous.” — Peter Drucker

Keith Stalder, #45

Experts Advise, Leaders Decide

Posted on February 26, 2015 by ksanew

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. – Cicero In almost every business and organization there are specialized, and some would say, arcane subjects that require the insights of niche experts. In my experience these are usually in the areas of legal matters (most with sub specialties of their own), organizational financial planning and execution, information technology and cyber defense, medical issues and others. Leaders need and must use the expert counsel of individuals who are thoroughly versed in her/his area of specialization. It is essential that complex decisions be informed by the best knowledge of the choices and understanding of the consequences.

I’ll offer some advice on asking for, receiving, and acting on advice from my experiences in large organizations over the years. These are some of the common mistakes by senior leaders that I’ve encountered:

Deferring to the judgment of the subject matter expert (SME) rather than absorbing the knowledge and applying it to a decision in the context of the greater organizational benefit. Most SMEs have a relatively narrow view of the greater good and tend to be very risk averse. They will almost always suggest the path that has zero risk (and zero chance of reward).
Not asking the tough questions, relying unconditionally on the expert’s view, not challenging the premise or history, not truly understanding the details and root causes within the issues.
Looking for an accomplice instead of solid advice, trying to confirm one’s own pre-conceived path instead of getting a deep understanding that leads to the best course of action.
Avoiding risk, seeking the outcome with little or no exposure to misfortune or external scrutiny. This is especially true in government organizations of all kinds.

My advice:

Experts advise, leaders decide.
Ask the tough questions, understand the entire issue, have the SME show you the numbers, the law, the facts. This is the real role of experts; to provide the facts that matter and help leaders understand what those facts mean. To do that, leaders must demand all the facts first hand.
Leaders who seek an accomplice, someone chosen to validate a pre-conceived view, are disowning their fundamental responsibility for making the best decisions to advance the mission and organization. It does serious damage to the company and to the credibility of and confidence in the leader. Just don’t do it.
Informed risk taking is essential to effective leadership, there are few real rewards that don’t entail risk of some kind. It’s an egregious leadership failing to “play to not lose.” Leaders must “play to win”.

In earlier posts I wrote at length about decision making. Seeking, understanding and acting effectively on SME advice is a critical enabler to a leader’s basic job: making sound decisions and exercising exceptional judgment. This is how to do that.

In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend. -Solon

Keith Stalder, #44

Making Decisions

Posted on February 10, 2015 by ksanew

“We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.” ― Ken Levine

There is an expression in the Marine Corps: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.” It’s rich with not-so-subtle meaning. First, leading is best. Secondly, if you are not leading, then be part of the solution. If you can’t do either, then don’t obstruct others. It’s not a bad model for all organizations and it begins with deciding what your role is.

The leader’s role is to lead, of course. Fundamental to that role is making sound decisions. Leaders absolutely must make good decisions, forming the best judgments, it’s what leaders do and who they are; decision makers. From the decisions of leaders, all organizational actions should arise. But it’s not as easy as that. Organizational decision making can be very spotty, disjointed, and haphazard. I see it all the time in companies large and small.

Here are some of the common mistakes I encounter:

Avoiding tough decisions that eventually become “decisions by default”, generating their own actions or consequences that are worse than the orginal choices.
Failing to be inclusive in the process of defining and understanding the issue, the options, advantages, and disadvantages of courses of action.
No, or extremely poor, organizational processes and structures that refines and distills complex issues for easy understanding and consumption by senior leaders.
No strategy and planning process to drive deliberate, long term decision making.
The misuse of priorities to avoid making genuine decisions. No real decisions are made and everything is important.
A failure to decide what not to do.
Failing to communicate with stakeholders throughout the process.
“Fact free” and “fact light” discourses that influence the process and/or decision makers.
Personalities and politics displace a focus on the “greater good” that should be the goal of quality decisions.
Failure to assess the decision after it is made; how is the matter working out? Was the decision correct based on what we knew at the time? Do we know more now? What should we do differently? Or not?
Failure to adjust the directed actions after assessing them. A poor or bad decision gains inertia and momentum. They can live on forever in large companies, and do.

For a basic leadership function, the business of decision making has major problems in most large organizations in my experience. But it’s not that hard, or shouldn’t be. Good decision making is essentially a matter of understanding:

1. What are the facts that matter? Facts start out as data, through analysis becoming knowledge and insights, and are separated into those that bear on the problem and those that do not. Over time, patterns emerge. Wisdom develops as the ability to recognize complex and dynamic patterns hidden in data, even hidden in knowledge, to apply a broader perspective. Organizations need processes to take them from data to wisdom, and most do not have them. Leaders don’t need all the facts, that induces paralysis, but they do need enough of the right facts. During this process the stakeholders have to be included and informed. In the beginning, more is better.

2. What do those facts mean, what are their implications? Start this step by forming three notional choices, describe their implementation precisely, and identify what the consequences might be of each option. Is each option viable, what are the clear distinctions between them, and are they realistic choices to solve the problem(s). Then determine the advantages and disadvantages of each. Stakeholders are included and informed throughout and there are clear choices to not do certain things.

3. What do we do about it? From these choices, the leader picks the best one. Stakeholders are included and informed throughout, and the final decision is a clear one to not do certain other things; real choices have been made. Action begins. At a suitable point in the future, as assessment is made: “What did we say we would do? “Did it accomplish what we decided/wanted?” “If not, why not?” “What do we do about it to adjust now?” The assessment is repeated again after corrections and adjustments have had time to help.

What I’ve described is more a deliberate process than a reactive one, but the basics are the same for both. It’s a simple formula for dramatically improving what is one of the most serious challenges in all organizations today.

“There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.” – Simon Sinek

Keith Stalder, #43

Putting First Things First

Posted on February 8, 2015 by ksanew

“The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.” – Brandon Sanderson In my work with organizations of all sizes, but especially the large ones, I find that executive leaders and almost everyone in management roles misuses the term “priorities”. Typically, the misuse of the term occurs in ways that seriously and negatively affects the mission, the work force, and the company.

Some of the things that I see include:

Ever evolving “priorities” that change on an almost daily basis. Employees quickly lose track of them and cease to pay attention to them.
Priorities from executive leaders that have no relationship to long term goals, strategy, or broader organizational purposes.
Priorities become a substitute for real and difficult choices in the company; executive leaders use them to evade the responsibility to decide what not to do.
Leaders who declare their priorities then never use or mention them again.
Too many priorities. These are simply “laundry lists” of things to do with the number exceeding the organization’s ability to genuinely focus on them. There is an old saying that “when there are too many priorities, there are no priorities” and it’s true. More importantly, “when there are too many priorities, everyone gets to choose their own.”

Effective organizational priorities come from executive leaders who understand that priorities do several very important things:

They apportion and allocate the time, attention, and efforts of the work force.
They provide consistency and create organizational habits.
They focus everyone on common goals and objectives.
They define the vital choices the leaders have made, most importantly the choices of those things to not do.
They provide a sense of stability, assurance, and reliability for the employees.
They guide the company along a path to its future in a steady and predictable way.
They give partners, employees and customers confidence that the company knows where it is going and how it will get there.

How do effective executive leaders do this? By:

Creating a vision for the organization.
Crafting a strategy: ends, ways, and means from the intersection of the company’s mission and purpose with the forces of their business environment. From today to five years from now.
Building a planning process that takes the company from strategy to planning to resources and daily business execution.
Choosing what not to do.
Selecting the highest priority enabling actions and projects that will propel the organization to it’s end state in the strategy.
Choosing just a few priorities, no more than five.
Acting, asking, and directing these few priorities relentlessly, every day, in every interaction with the staff and throughout the organization.
Communicating the priorities up, down, and laterally within and externally at every opportunity.

There is a well known metaphor that describes vital priorities as crystal balls to be juggled with rubber balls. Every juggler drops a ball or two. The key is to not drop the crystal ones – the balls that will shatter into a thousand pieces and can’t be put together again. When the crystal balls drop, you’ll invariably drop the rubber ones too.

Meaningful organizational priorities are crystal balls.

“Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” – Stephen R Covey

Keith Stalder, #42

“Find Me a Rock!”

Posted on February 5, 2015 by ksanew

There is a widely shared expression among employees in most organizations that exemplifies the very worst in leader behavior. Specifically, the leader’s inability to provide clear guidance and direction to employees. It is “Find me a rock!” and it springs from numerous encounters with leaders who task their staffs and subordinates to accomplish some ill defined, loosely considered, indefinite, and ambiguous project with little or no understanding on the part of the leader or the employees as to what is needed. The employees dutifully go forward and do their best to provide a product, but inevitably they fall short after expending untold hours, days, and weeks in the process. Time, energy, and money are wasted and little or no progress is made. Armed with no clear intent, they do in fact produce something, but it’s the wrong thing. They did “find a rock”, but of course it’s the wrong rock (there are millions of rocks!), and the cycle starts all over, unless the leader understands what she/he really wants and conveys it with clarity and purpose. This dynamic is an enormous waster of time and utterly destructive to the morale of employees. There is a short humorous video called “Pentagon Song.wmv” that can be found on Bing search that’s an accurate depiction of its effects.

Providing clear, actionable, guidance is vital to effective leadership, especially executive leadership. This is how I do it:

Purpose: Tell employees and subordinates why they are doing this: How is this action or task used to achieve some goal or objective. To cause, enable, create, deny, deter, prevent, protect, etc.; something that advances the mission and organization.

Method: Link the purpose to the End State. Give guidance, but not too much, on how to go about it. How to organize it:

Tell them what you don’t want:
- By key events.
- By key tasks.
- By describing the authorities and working relationships of the collaborators who are involved.
- By near-, mid- and long-term progress or stages.
- Using an executive leadership’s focus/discourse appropriate for this level.
- With a whole of organization perspective.

End State: Give the set of conditions, that when achieved, satisfies the PURPOSE and effects.

Risk: Give the personal expression of the leader for his/her tolerance of potential ill-effects and negative consequences in one particular function, location, or activity in order to achieve success in another.

Be clear about risk:

Risk is not an expression of priorities.
Embodies the understanding that risk is more than exposure to misfortune.
Risk awareness requires an understanding of the positive effects to be achieved in exchange for exposure to negative consequences in others.

Giving clear guidance is really not difficult at all, but it does require that the leader spend her/his time in advance, thinking through the project, how it will be internalized by the team, and understanding what it is that’s desired in the end.

If leaders don’t know where they are going, any path will take them there. Leaders have to know where they are going and how to tell their employees, as well. This is a pretty good way.

Keith Stalder, #41