On Executive Thinking

I recently finished reading Executive Thinking by Leslie L. Kossoff.

Below are thirteen key lessons, in the form of excerpts form the book, that I found particularly insightful:

1) “The executive must be able to speak to his vision clearly and charismatically in order for others to know where it is that he sees the organization going and why. That clear, exciting picture is the one that must be communicated, translated, and demonstrated to the rest of the organization through the actions and words of the executive and his executive and management staff.”

2) “Executive Thinking is not conventional thinking, nor is it a conventional organizational process. It is one in which, based on the dream of the executive, everyone becomes involved as an active participant in the shared dream. It is both tangible and amorphous. It is both process and result. It is the life and breath of the organization.”

3) “The executive must realize that, because his dream is iterative and evolutionary, there will never be a time when it is finished.”

4) “Knowingly or not, executives form their organization in their own image. The importance for the executive is to realize that the organization adopts what it believes to be that image. This puts a particular onus on the executive to be aware of the image he is projecting and to understand that the members of the organization are looking to him to determine the image and actions they must project.”

5) “It is useful for the executive to think of the dynamics within the organization not as competitive or adversarial activities, but as a dance. In so doing, the previously competitive and adversarial actions become part of a larger choreography wherein each person performs his steps while always knowing that his part is a part of the larger dance. That choreography is designed and determined by the executive.”

6) “As humans we are not limited to seeing things in one particular way. We choose to see things in a way that is most familiar to us. We develop thinking processes that keep us from seeing all that there is to see. We limit ourselves by not looking for or accepting the potential that is presented to us. But, just as thinking is a skill, our thinking paths can be altered and added to.”

7) “There are five trust-building behaviors that must be demonstrated. They are respect, reciprocity, consistency, integrity and involvement. Each is equally important. Unless each behavior is manifest, the model will not work. It may have some success, but ultimately it will falter and possibly fail.”

8) “Executive Thinking makes it worthwhile for individuals to challenge their previously held beliefs. Each individual sees that her participation in the system works not only to the benefit of the organization but to her own benefit as well.”

9) “The dream must be positioned so that its intent is clear and its outcome are of benefit to everyone. In this way, it becomes more than just the dream of the executive. It becomes the dream of each and every associate throughout the organization. The paradox of empowerment is that the stronger the executive and his direction and management of the organization, the more empowered the associates can be.”

10) “One of the problems that might well be encountered is the mistaken impression that a participative organization is a tolerant organization. This is and must be patently untrue. There can be no tolerance for behaviors that are not in keeping with the goals, expectations, and commitments of the organization to its associates and to its stakeholders.”

11) “Executive Thinking is a balance between action and results. Problems occur only when and if the process is wholly biased toward one or the other. Action must occur in the form of thinking and the actions that ensue as a result of that thinking. Results occur based on thinking and actions taken.”

12) “Decisions are made using the dream as the context. Actions taken are assessed both while in progress and after the fact to determine whether all the factors were adequately considered. Analyzing and applying lessons learned becomes an operating norm for the organization, both for those decisions that worked and for those decisions that did not work as expected.”

13) “Executive Thinking, however, is the greatest legacy that the executive can leave the enterprise. Through his commitment and actions he will have taught the organization how to dream…Thinking will have become a norm.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Executive Thinking

On Leading Change

I recently finished reading Leading Change – Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom by James O”Toole.

The aim of this book, as summarized best by the author, is to address three related questions: “1) What are the causes of resistance to change? 2) How can leaders effectively and morally overcome that resistance? 3) Why is the dominant philosophy of leadership, based on contingency theory neither an effective nor a moral guide for people who wish to lead change?”. The book addresses these questions through two parts. The first one focuses on the leaders, particularly on values-based leadership (so-called Rushmorean leadership). The second, on the followers with a focus on why people tend to resist change, and strategies to overcome that resistance.

What I particularly enjoyed about this book are the numerous reviews of other classics within these subject areas, which helps the reader further anchor the thoughts being introduced and how they are supported and/or are different from those introduced by the author. A recommended read in the areas of leadership and change!

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “In complex, democratic settings, effective leadership will entail the factors and dimensions of vision, trust, listening, authenticity, integrity, hope, and, especially, addressing the true needs of followers.”

2- “As Nelson Mandela understood, people will follow only leaders who take them where they want to go. Leaders thus beget followers, and they do so by allowing the followers to take the leader’s dream as their own. This can occur only when leaders acknowledge the legitimacy of followers’ competing beliefs and diverse values. Hence the overall conclusion from our inquiry: for leadership to be effective, it must be moral, and the sine qua non of morality is respect for people. (This is the concept of leadership we are calling Rushmorean).”

3- “In sum, Rushmorean leadership is not about voting; it is about the democratic value of inclusion. There is nothing oxymoronic, chaotic, or ineffective about leadership based on that moral principle.”

4- “What we will find is that people in organizations resist change advocated by their leaders for exactly the same reasons that the leaders of organizations resist change advocated by outsiders.”

5- “In general, the successful processes of change initiated…had the following things in common: 1) Change had top-management support. 2) Change built on the unique strengths and values of the corporation. 3) The specifics of change were not imposed from the top. 4) Change was holistic. 5) Change was planned. 6) Changes were made in the guts of the organization. 7) Change was approached from a stakeholder viewpoint. 8) Change became ongoing.”

6- “Here’s a sample of some of the most popular hypotheses: 1) Homeostasis, 2) Stare decisis. 3) Inertia. 4) Satisfaction. 5) Lack of ripeness. 6) Fear. 7) Self-interest. 8) Lack of self-confidence. 9) Future shock. 10) Futility. 11) Lack of knowledge. 12) Human nature. 13) Cynicism. 14) Perversity. 15) Individual genius versus group mediocrity. 16) Ego. 17) Short-term thinking. 18) Myopia. 19) Sleepwalking. 20) Snow blindness. 21) Collective fantasy. 22) Chauvnistic conditioning. 23) Fallacy of exception. 24) Ideology. 25) Institutionalism. 26) Natura non facit saltum. 27) The rectitude of the powerful. 28) “Change has no constituency.”. 29) Determinism. 30) Scientism. 31) Habit. 32) The despotism of custom. 33) Human mindlessness.”

7- “…The possession of the skill of overcoming resistance to change is what separates the mass of individuals with good ideas from the few leaders who are able to implement them.”

8- “Thus even though progressives may argue that change will not affect the power, prestige, and positions of the haves, the haves understand intuitively that in fact change must undermine their ideology, upset their belief system, and discomfit them greatly.”

9- “The current focus of leadership studies in business has a misplaced emphasis on helping haves (corporate leaders) overcome resistance among the have-lesses and have-nots in their organizations. As we see from the foregoing analysis…the far greater problem in overcoming resistance among the haves. In fact, it is progressives inside and outside corporations who face resistance from the people who have the most power to resist: the established leaders.”

10- “Conflict, tension, and turmoil are the order of the day – today and tomorrow. Thus, great leaders recognize that there is a never-ending struggle to balance the constant and never-abating demands of those with different objectives…Because it is not possible to ignore, nor to completely satisfy, the conflicting demands of all constituencies, leaders live in a state of perpetual tension. Poor leaders cannot tolerate this discomfiting posture, and they attempt to resolve the tension by either giving in to the demands of those who are most powerful, or by issuing a command that represents their own will. There is another way: the values-based leadership described in this book. At its core, the process of values-based leadership is the creation of moral symmetry among those competing values…Hence, the task is to lead through the process of design, composition, tension, balance, and harmony.”

11- “If one wishes to learn this particular art, the first piece that must be put into place is personal acknowledgment that no other form of leadership can be both moral and effective. Once a leader makes that difficult commitment, all the other pieces will eventually fall into place, bit by bit.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

On Leading Change

On Only The Paranoid Survive

I recently finished reading Only The Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove.

Below are excerpts from the book that summarize the key points presented by the author:

1- “Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people’s attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management.”

2- “We all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change. We need to expose ourselves to our customers, both the ones who are staying with us as well as those that we may lose by sticking to the past. We need to expose ourselves to lower-level employees, who, when encouraged, will tell us a lot that we need to know. We must invite comments even from people whose job it is to constantly evaluate us and critique us, such as journalist and members of the financial community. Turn the tables and ask them some questions: about competitors, trends in the industry and what they think we should be most concerned with. As we throw ourselves into raw action, our senses and instincts will rapidly be honed again.”

3- “A strategic inflection point is when the balance of forces shifts from the old structure, from the old ways of doing business and the old ways of competing, to the new. Before the strategic inflection point, the industry simply was more like the old. After it, it is more like the new. It is a point where the curve has subtly but profoundly changed, never to change back again.”

4- “Of all the changes in the forces of competition, the most difficult one to deal with is when one of the forces become so strong that it transforms the very essence of how business is conducted in an industry.”

5- “When an industry goes through a strategic inflection point, the practitioners of the old art may have trouble. On the other hand, the new landscape provides an opportunity for people, some of whom may not even be participants in the industry in question, to join and become part of the action.”

6- “When a strategic infection point sweeps through the industry, the more successful a participant was in the old industry structure, the more threatened it is by change and the more reluctant it is to adapt to it. Second, whereas the cost to enter a given industry in the face of well-entrenched participants can be very high, when the structure breaks, the cost to enter may become trivially small.”

7- “I suspect that the people coming in are probably no better managers or leaders than the people they are replacing. they have only one advantage…the new managers come unencumbered by such emotional involvement and therefore are capable of applying an impersonal logic to the situation.”

8- “As these questions to attempt to distinguish signal from noise: 1) Is your key competitor about to change? 2) Is your key complementor about to change? 3) Do people seem to be “losing it” around you?”

9- “I call the divergence between actions and statements strategic dissonance. It is one of the surest indications that a company is struggling with a strategic inflection point.”

10- “Ideally, the fear of a new environment sneaking up on us should keep us on our toes. Our sense of urgency should be aided by our judgement, instincts and observations that have been honed by decades spent in the business world. The fact is, because of our experience, very often we managers know that we need to do something. We even know what we should be doing. But we don’t trust our instincts or don’t act on them early enough to take advantage of the benign business bubble. We must discipline ourselves to overcome our tendency to do too little too late.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Only The Paranoid Survive

On My Years With General Motors

I recently finished reading My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan.

This is a true business classic. In this book Alfred Sloan shares his years of wisdom – while heading General Motors – in a variety of areas including planning, strategy, finance, leadership, innovation and management. Alfred was a true pioneer of his time in building the discipline of management and his approach is just as applicable now as it was in the early 1900s.

Below are key lessons in the form of excerpts that I found particularly insightful from this must read classic.

1- “I feel that a proper balance can and must necessarily be established in the course of time between the activities of any particular Operation and that of all our Operations together and as I see the picture at the moment no better way or even as good a way has yet been advanced as to ask those members of each organization who have the same functional relationship to get together and decide for themselves what should be done where coordination is necessary, giving such a group the power to deal with the problem where it is felt that the power can be constructively applied. I believe that such a plan properly developed gives the necessary balance between each Operation and the Corporation itself and will result in all the advantages of co-ordinated action where such action is of benefit in a broader way without in any sense limiting the initiative of independence of action of any component part of the group.”

2- “I am not going to say that rate of return is a magic want for every occasion in business. There are times when you have to spend money just to stay in business, regardless of the visible rate of return…Nevertheless, no other financial principle with which I am acquainted serves better than rate of return as an objective aid to business judgment.”

3- “The growth in the capital employed in General Motors reflects the progress of the corporation. In an economy based on competition, we have operated as rational businessmen, a fact I have tried to demonstrate with  close description of the development of our approach to management. The result has been an efficient enterprise. It should be noted that a rising successful economy like that of the United States is not only an opportunity, it is also very demanding on those whose ambition is to excel in it. “

4- “I believe that the franchise system (dealerships), which has long prevailed in the automobile industry, is the best one for manufacturers, dealers, and consumers.”

5- “The potential rewards of the Bonus Plan to ego satisfaction generate a tremendous driving force within the Corporation…To the recipient it is also an evaluation of his personal contribution to the success of the business. It is a means of conveying to the executive a form of recognition which he prizes independently of his monetary compensation.”

6- “It has been a thesis of this book that good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization, or “decentralization with coordinated  control.” Each of the conflicting elements brought together in this concept has its unique results in the operation of a business. From decentralization we get initiative,  responsibility,  development of personnel, decisions close to the facts, flexibility – in short, all the qualities necessary for an organization to adapt to new conditions. From coordination we get efficiencies and economies It must be apparent that c-oordinated decentralization is not an easy concept to apply.”

7- “…To meet the challenge of the market place, we must recognize changes in customer needs and desires far enough ahead to have the right products in the rights places at the right time and in the right quantity. We must balance trends in preference against the many compromises that are necessary volume. We must design, not just the cars we would like to build, but more importantly, the cars that our customers want to buy.”

8- “I also hope I have not left an impression that the organization runs itself automatically. An organization does not make decisions; its function is to provide a framework, based upon established criteria, within which decisions can be fashioned in an orderly manner. Individuals make decisions and take the responsibility for them.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

My Years with General Motors

On Workarounds that Work

I recently read Workarounds That Work – How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work – by Russell Bishop.

The author defines workaround as follows: “For our purposes, we will define it (workaround) as a method for accomplishing a task or goal when the normal process or method isn’t producing the desired results…Once a problem is fixed. the workaround is usually abandoned when subsequent releases come out addressing the bug that created the problem in the first place.” The purpose of the book is best summarized by Russell: ”In Workarounds That Work, you will learn tools, systems, practices, and processes that make important initiatives easier to accomplish. Sometimes these workarounds will require additional effort, but not because the task or desired result takes superhuman skill. The additional effort comes because in order to effect the workaround, you may have to do some extra work, or even someone else’s work, so as to get yours moving.”

The book then goes on to present seventeen workarounds ranging from vision, to communication, accountability and culture to name a few. Each workaround has three basics. The first being the intention, the second is around assuming control of what you can, and last but not least influencing the remaining elements. The questions included at the end of each workaround/chapter, guide the reader to the application of the material presented. This makes this work very pragmatic and applicable. A quick and educative read in the productivity space.

Below are key excerpts from the book, that I found particularly insightful:

1- “This is where three workaround basics become operative. The first and most important issue: what is your intention? The second critical aspect is your willingness to assume control of whatever you can that will move you forward. Once you are clear on your intention and have taken control of what you can, you then face the third element: how to influence others to go along.”

2- “If you need to get someone on your side, working with you rather than against you, start by considering what the other party is charged with doing in his or her job, and then begin imagining how that person can win with helping you.”

3- “Workarounds can vary from the rudimentary and tactical to the complex and strategic. Even at the most basic levels, it’s important to keep in mind what your intention is in coming up with the workaround. Determining what the issue is and why it matters needs to come before charting what you can do and how you make it happen.”

4- “Start any “communication” with a discussion about your individual perceptions of the intended purpose, outcome, and goal. Make certain that both of you can explain the desired outcome in terms that the other can both repeat and visualize.”

5- “Once you have asked yourself the basic starting question – “What can I do that will make a difference?” – and asked the other party if there’s anything else you can do, you can then turn the question toward what the other party could conceive of doing to make the situation even better.”

6- “Rather than treating the other person, team, or group as your enemy combatant, you will gain better purchase by following Larry Senn’s advice and assuming innocence. In all likelihood, these parties are making choices based on differences in understanding owning to causes such as different goals or differences in how they are being measured.”

7- “Rather than assume that some other group will behave the way your group behaves, you should assume that there may be differences and plan accordingly.”

8- “The real goal of decision making, what we are calling “choice” here, is not about being right; it’s about being effective. If you can choose toward a desired outcome rather than kill off all other possibilities, you may then have the freedom to learn, to course correct, and to keep making progress as new data and experience are acquired.”

9- “Remember: it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission. If you keep asking for permission and seeking buy-in, you may merely be giving people reasons to object.”

10- “Keep in mind that your primary response-ability comes down to your willingness to control what you can, seek to influence from there, and then simply respond as best as you can to everything else. People routinely lose sight of where they are headed, of what their true intentions are.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Workarounds That Work

On The Human Side of Enterprise

I recently finished reading the classic The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor. Below are selected excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “It seems clear to me that the making of managers, in so far as they are made, is only to a rather small degree the result of management’s formal efforts in management development. It is to a much greater degree the result of management’s conception of the nature of its task and of all the policies and practices which are constructed to implement this conception. The way a business is managed determines to a very large extent what people are perceived to have “potential” and how they develop. We go off on the wrong track when we seek to study management development in terms of the formal machinery of programs carrying this label.”

2- “All managerial decisions and actions rest on assumptions about behavior…We can improve our ability to control only if we recognize that control consists in selective adaptation to human nature rather than in attempting to make human nature conform to our wishes.”

3- “The desirable end of the growth process is an ability to strike a balance – to tolerate certain forms of dependence without being unduly frustrated, and at the same time to stand alone in some respects without undue anxiety.”

4- “The power to influence others is not a function of the amount of authority one can exert. It is, rather, a function of the appropriate selection of the means of influence which the particular circumstances require. Conventional organization theory teaches us that power and authority are coextensive. Consequently, relinquishing authority is seen as losing the power to control. This is a completely misleading conception.”

5- “The central principle of organization which derives from Theory X is that of direction and control through the exercise of authority – what has been called “the scalar principle.” The central principle which derives from Theory Y is that of integration: the creation of conditions such that the members of the organization can achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts toward the success of the enterprise.”

6- “Confidence thus rests heavily on the subordinate’s belied in the integrity of the superior, When one is dependent, any suspicion that the superior cannot be fully trusted arouses anxiety.”

7- “To be sure, some people are dishonest. The question, however, is whether it is cheaper to setup procedures for dealing with the bulk to honest people or to build procedure for dealing with the dishonest few. In this field (retailing) at least, the data are clear: the former strategy is economically superior.”

8- “There are at least four major variables now known to be involved in leadership: (1) the characteristics of the leader; (2) the attitudes, needs, and other personal characteristics of the followers; (3) characteristics of the organization, such as its purpose, its structure, the nature of the tasks to be performed; and (4) the social, economic, and political milieu…This is an important research finding. It means that leadership is not a property of the individual, but a complex relationship among these variables.”

9- “Let us consider some of the important environmental conditions which affect the growth of managers…(1) economic and technological characteristics of the industry and the firm, (2) policies and practices of the company, and (3) the behavior of the immediate superior.”

10- “If a climate and soil conditions conducive to growth are created by the way management manages, the cream will rise to the top, in the sense that individual managers throughout the whole organization will be involved in a process of self-development leading to the realization of their full potentialities.”

11- “In view of the complexities and difficulties involved in improving managerial competence through classroom learning, our expectation should be modest. This is not to undervalue the contributions of classroom education, but to suggest that managers sometimes expect formal education to relieve them of responsibility for the growth on the job of their subordinates.”

12- “What distinguishes such groups (really good top management team or series of staff meetings or committee)? … (1) The atmosphere…tends to be informal, comfortable, relaxed…(2) There is a lot of discussion in which everyone participates…(3) The task or the objective of the group is well understood and accepted by the members…(4) The members listen to each other!…(5) There is disagreement…(6) Mist decisions are reached by a kind of consensus in which it is clear that everybody is in general agreement.”

13- “Management is severely hampered today in its attempts to innovate with respect to the human side of enterprise by the inadequacy of conventional organization theory…It is not important that management accept the assumptions of Theory Y. These are one man’s interpretations of current social science knowledge, and they will be modified…It is important that management abandon limiting assumptions like those of Theory X, so that future interventions with respect to the human side of enterprise will be more than minor changes in already obsolescent conceptions of organized human effort.”

14- “The purpose of this volume is not to entice management to choose sides over Theory X and Theory Y. It is rather, to encourage the realization that theory is important, to urge management to examine its assumptions and make them explicit. In doing so, it will open a door to the future.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Human Side of Enterprise

On The Halo Effect

I recently finished reading The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers by Phil Rosenzweig.

As best summarized by the author: “The central idea in this book is that our thinking about business is shaped by a number of delusions…More recently, cognitive psychologists have identified biases that affect the way individuals make decisions under uncertainty. this book is about a different set of delusions, the ones that distort our understanding of company performance, that make it difficult to know why one company succeeds and another fails. These errors of thinking pervade much that we read about business, whether in leading magazines or scholarly journals or management bestsellers. They cloud our ability to think clearly and critically about the nature of success in business.”

The book then goes on to present the nine delusions excerpted below:

“Delusion One: The Halo Effect – The tendency to look at a company’s overall performance and make attributions about its culture, leadership, values, and more. In fact, many things we commonly claim drive performance are simply attributions based on prior performance.

Delusion Two: The Delusion of Correlation and Causality – Two things may be correlated, but we may not know which one causes which. Does employee satisfaction lead to high performance? The evidence suggests it’s mainly the other way around – company success has a stronger impact on employee satisfaction.

Delusion Three: The Delusion of Single Explanation – Many studies show that a particular factor  - strong company culture of customer focus or great leadership – leads to improved performance. But since many of these factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is usually less than suggested.

Delusion Four: The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots – If we pick a number of successful companies and search for what they have in common, we’ll never isolate the reasons for their success, because we have no way of comparing them with less successful companies.

Delusion Five: The Delusion of Rigorous Research – If the data aren’t good quality, it doesn’t matter how much we have gathered or how sophisticated our research methods appears to be.

Delusion Six: The Delusion of Lasting Success – Almost all high performing companies regress over time. The promise of a blueprint for lasting success is attractive but not realistic.

Delusion Seven: The Delusion of Absolute Performance – Company performance is relative, not absolute. A company can improve and fall further behind its rivals at the same time.

Delusion Eight: The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick – It may be true that successful companies often pursued a highly focused strategy, but that doesn’t mean highly focused strategies often lead to success.

Delusion Nine: The Delusion of Organizational Physics – Company performance doesn’t obey immutable laws of nature and can’t be predicted with the accuracy of science – despite our desire for certainty and order.”

Every now and then one comes across a book, that makes its reader take a step back and re-assess his views, experiences and readings. The Halo Effect is one of these books. It delivers both on account of the content and also of the numerous corporate examples and references to leading work in the leadership/management space to illustrate the concepts presented. A very refreshing and highly recommended read!

Below are excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “In fact, for all the secrets and formulas, for all the self-proclaimed thought leadership, success in business is as elusive as ever.”

2- “…There was talk, over and over, about customer orientation and leadership and organizational efficiency, but these things are hard to measure objectively, so we tend to make attributions about them based on things we do feel certain about – revenues and profits and share price. We may not really know what leads to high performance, so we reach for simple phrases to make sense of what happened.”

3- “If we start with the full data set and look objectively at many years of company performance, we find the dominant pattern is not one of enduring performance at all, but one of rise and fall, of growth and decline. Foster and Kaplan conclude: “…Managing for survival, even among the best and most revered corporations does not guarantee strong long term performance for shareholders. In fact, just the opposite is true. In the long run, the markets always win”.”

4- “March and Sutton explain: “In its efforts to satisfy these often conflicting demands, the organizational research community sometimes responds by saying that inferences about the causes of performance cannot be made from the data available, and simultaneously goes ahead to make such inference.”"

5- “We can’t turn back the clock, change one variable, and then run the experiment again…It’s easy to blame one man for a company woe’s, but these sorts of attributions, while appealing for their simplicity, may not provide the best basis on which to manage a company.”

6- “…An organization isn’t a system of mechanical parts, interchangeable and replaceable. It’s better understood as a sociotechnical system, a combination of mean and machines, of people and things, of hardware and software, but also of ideas and attitudes. Some technical elements can often be copied and applied with predictable results…but when we begin to examine how those technical systems interact with social systems, with people and values and attitudes and expectations, the results are harder to predict.”

7- “Managers quite naturally find it easier to keep the attention on execution, which everyone will always agree can be done better.”

8- “What leads to high performance?…we’re left with two broad categories: strategic choice and execution…In spite of our desire for simple steps, the reality of management is much more uncertain that we would often like to admit – and much more so that our comforting stories would have us believe.”

9- “As Tom Peters observed: “To be excellent, you have to be consistent. When you’re consistent, you’re vulnerable to attach. Yes, it’s a paradox. Now deal with it.”"

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Halo Effect

Servant Leadership

I recently finished reading Why Leadership Sucks – The Fundamentals of Level 5 Leadership and Servant Leadership by Miles Anthony Smith. A copy of the book was offered to me by the author, to whom I am very grateful.

As the title indicates, this book focuses on discussing authentic servant leadership, which as esteemed author Jim Collins designates as Level 5 leadership. The book is composed of four parts. Part 1 and 2, discuss servant leadership. Part 3 discussed humility, which is a key value for authentic leadership. Finally, the last part, part 4 includes common situations through which the previous learnings are applied.

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “ Jim Collins describes Level 5 leadership in his book Good to Great as a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will (fierce resolve). He goes on to write of the five attributes Level 5 leaders possess: They are self-confident enough to set up their successors for success. They are humble and modest. They have “unwavering resolve.” They display a “workmanlike diligence— more plow horse than show horse.” They give credit to others for their success and take full responsibility for poor results. They “attribute much of their success to ‘good luck’ rather than personal greatness.”

2- “Servant leadership is about caring for others more than for ourselves. It is about compassion for everyone who serves the group. It enriches everyone, not just those at the top. Servant leadership requires us to sit and weep with those who weep within our organizations. It requires getting down and dirty when hard work has to be done. There is nothing in my organization that anyone does that I should not be willing to do myself if it promotes the good of us all. HANS FINZEL, THE TOP TEN MISTAKES LEADERS MAKE”

3- “Great leaders ask great, thoughtful questions. We all have a strong desire to be understood, but we have a responsibility to our team to listen first.”

4- “When making decisions, stop and ask yourself whether you are trading short-term gain for long-term pain. Also think of how this affects others, not just yourself. And when you choose to delegate, don’t reverse course. It does more damage than not delegating in the first place.”

5- “We are either ignorant of the need for us to actively participate in empowerment, or we choose to be lazy, since true empowerment takes a lot of work. In order to empower others, we must define the power and authority they have in decision making. I liken this to setting guardrails on a task or project being delegated; it is our job as a leader to define what we want them to do— and more importantly, what we don’t want them to do. Then we must define what types of choices they can make without our involvement and what decisions they must bring to us for input. Then they have been genuinely empowered, since we have properly equipped and invested in them first.”

6- “In the vacuum created by a lack of communication, people tend to dream up and believe in the wildest explanations of fact.”

7- “We need to leave situations better than we found them. One of my goals in my career is to leave the organization better after my stewardship tenure than it was when I began. We should have the same goal in any relationship.”

8- “Mutual responsibility is at the core of accountability; the onus is not solely on the manager to provide direction. It is equally the duty of the leader and team member to hold each other accountable.”

9- “After we have done our part as leaders by coaching, we must step back and allow others the opportunity to make mistakes, even if it costs us or the company something of value in the short term.”

10- “It is quite risky to let our guard down and make ourselves vulnerable with others by giving them the right— no, the duty— to call us out on our faults. But doing so allows us to prove our true leadership in the sense that we are comfortable in who we are, despite our shortcomings and insecurity. This leads to others recognizing and choosing to follow our trustworthy, genuine authority.”

11- “But I learned a valuable lesson not to put absolute faith in any one person. It simply sets them up for failure and sets us up for disappointment when they make a mistake. Having said that, we do need leaders who will stand up and choose to do what is right, but leaders are human and all of them will make poor choices. Some of them will fail spectacularly. And even though leaders have failed me, I won’t stop trusting all leaders, just the ones who prove untrustworthy.”

12- “Much as the wisdom of Solomon admonishes us that “there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven,” 14 there is a time to display emotion (sorrow, anger, etc.) and a time for a lack of emotional display.”

13- “The best managers/ leaders can both inspire people (leadership) and hold them accountable for work that needs to be done (management).”

14- “Organizations who think they are maintaining/ holding ground are mistaken. You are either growing or dying. JIM COLLINS”

15- “Chris Zook and James Allen point to four key rules that companies should follow to increase shareholder value. Build intolerance for excess complexity. Compete for the long term. Focus on your greatest strengths. Make strategy a search for a repeatable model that can replicate and adapt your greatest successes again and again.”

16- “All Level 5 leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea— the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions.”

17- “The company that quickly builds on the failures of the first-to-market company, learning from their mistakes and improving on their initial efforts, is likely to reap a majority of the market without having to invest the same R& D money.”

A very light and educative read. The author’s examples are on point to illustrate the concepts presented. Finally, the numerous references embedded within this book on leadership (servant and authentic) makes it a great starter within this field.

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Why Leadership Sucks

Out of the Crisis

I just finished reading Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming.

Dr. Deming best summarizes the purpose of the book: “This book teaches the transformation that is required for survival, a transformation that can only be accomplished by man. A company can not buy its way into quality – it must be led into quality by top management. A theory of management now exists. Never again may anyone say that there is nothing new in management to teach.”

He then proceeds with outlining and subsequently detailing his “14 points for management”. These fourteen points, he argues, form the basis of the required transformation of the American industry:

“

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.

2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.

3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.

5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.

8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.

11b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

12a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.

12b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating of management by objective.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

“

While the book may seem dry at points, particularly if being read from cover to cover, it encompasses numerous gems in management. Particularly as it relates to the overall management of and leadership in quality and its importance to re-gain competitive edge.

Below are key excerpts from the book, that I found particularly insightful:

1- “This increase in production led to a new goal. The new goal will create questions and resentment among production workers. Their first thought is that the management is never satisfied. Whatever we do, they ask for more. Here are the fruits of exhortations: 1) Failure to accomplish the goal 2) Increase in variability 3) Increase in proportion defective 4) Increase in costs 5) Demoralization of the work force 6) Disrespect for the management”

2- “The job of management is to replace work standards by knowledgeable and intelligent leadership…Wherever work standards have been thrown out and replaced by leadership, quality and productivity have gone up substantially, and people are happier on the job.”

3- “Incidentally, computation of savings from use of a gadget (automation or robotic machinery) ought to take account of total cost, as an economist would define it. In my experience,  people are seldom able to come through with figures on total cost.”

4- “Quality must be measured by the interaction between three participants: (1) the product itself; (2) the user and how he uses the product, how he installs it, how he takes care of it, what he was led to expect; 3) instructions for use, training of customer and training of repairman, service provided for repairs, availability of parts. The top vertex of the triangle does not by itself determine quality.”

5- “There are two types of quality in any system, whether it be banking or manufacturing. The first is quality of design. These are the specific programs and procedures that promise to produce a saleable service or product: in other words, what the customer requires. The second type is quality of production, achievement of results with the quality promised. Quality control works both with the product and with the design of the product. And it is at this point that quality control begins to differ from the traditional system. To find the mistake is not enough. It is necessary to find the cause behind the mistake, and to build a system that minimizes future mistakes.”

6- “…Good agreement between independent results of two men would only mean they have a system. It would not mean they are both right. There is no right answer except by methods agreed upon by experts.”

7- “Figures on accidents do nothing to reduce the frequency of accidents. The first step in reduction of the frequency of accidents is to determine whether the cause of an accident belongs to the system or to some specific person or set of conditions. Statistical methods provide the only of analysis to serve as a guide to the understanding of accidents and to their reduction.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Out of the Crisis

The Pyramid of Success

I recently finished reading Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden and Steve Jamison.

In this book, coach John Wooden – one of the most successful basketball coaches of all times – shares with his readers the leadership framework that he has developed and used through the years. The books is divided intro three sections, the first presents and explains John’s foundation of leadership, the pyramid of success. The framework, illustrated below, is composed of a number of qualities that build on each other and serve as reinforcement to achieve “competitive greatness”. These include as a first tier: industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and enthusiasm. The second tier, consists of self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness. The third tier: condition, skill, and team spirit. The fourth tier: poise and confidence. Finally at the top of the pyramid, the culmination: competitive greatness.

In the second section, John shares a number of personal lessons in leadership, that tie into the framework and help bring it to life. These include: Good values attract good people, call yourself a teacher, and seek significant change, to name a few. The last section is composed of extracts from John’s personal notebook and ensuing lessons.

What sets Coach Wooden’s philosophy and books apart is best highlighted in the book’s preface: “Dr. Albert Einstein and Coach Wooden share a similar brilliance; specifically, both mastered the complicated art of keeping it simple. ” In addition, the numerous stories shared, help the reader understand how to apply the framework and the impact it can have.

I highly recommend John’s books to anyone looking at developing their personal leadership skills, at all levels.

Below are excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “The joy and great satisfaction I derived from leadership – working with and teaching others, helping them reach their full potential in contributing to the team’s common goals – ultimately surpassed outscoring an opponent, the standings, even championships.”

2- “I believe leadership itself is largely learned…Whatever coaching and leadership skills I possess were learned through listening, observation, study, then trial and error along the way.”

3- “It’s like character and reputation. Reputation is what others perceive you as being, and their opinion may be right or wrong. Character, however, is what you really are, and nobody truly knows that but you. But you are what matters most.”

4- “Rules to lead by…Before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself…Don’t hastily replace the old fashioned with the new fangled…Learn to master the four P’s (planning, preparation, practice, and performance…Write down the tasks, initiatives, and actions that each member of your team needs to do to perform at his or her peak level.”

5- “…Poise can be a most elusive quality in challenging times…Poise means holding fast to your beliefs and acting in accordance with them, regardless of how bad or good the situation may be. Poise means avoiding pose or pretense, comparing yourself to others, and acting like someone you’re not. Poise means having a brave heart in all circumstances.”

6- “Good values are like a magnet – they attract good people.”

7- “A good leader creates belief – in the leader’s philosophy, in the organization  in the mission. Creating belief is difficult to do where a vacuum of values exists, where the only thing that matters is the end result, whether it’s beating the competition on the court or increasing the profit margins in the books.”

8- “…and while all these will make you a good leader, they will not make you a great leader. For that, one additional quality – perhaps the most important of all – is necessary. Although it may sound out of place in the rough-and-tumble context of sports or corporate competition, I believe you must have love in your heart for the people under your leadership…love is so important because it moves you to do the right things in all areas of life, including leadership.”

9- “The coach must never forget that he is, first of all, a teacher. He must come (be present), see (diagnose), and conquer (correct). He must continuously be exploring for ways to improve himself in order that he may improve others and welcome every person and everything that maybe helpful to him. As has been said, he must remember, “Others, too, have brains.”

10- “In business and other organizations, the “ball” that must be shared is knowledge, experience, information, contacts, new ideas, and much more. All these things must be freely exchanged with others throughout the organization if it is going to succeed – prevail – in these extremely competitive times.”

11- “While the specifics may be small, it is no small task. Success, not the devil, is in the details.”

12- “I came to the conclusion that when choosing between the carrot and the stick as a motivational tool, the well chosen carrot was almost always more powerful and longer lasting than the stick. In fact, simply withholding a properly selected carrot can become a most forceful punishment and powerful motivator. Its denial creates desire; the carrot becomes a stick.”

13- “Make it clear to all that “promotions” depend on mastery of current roles and assignments. Never discourage ambition, but do let people know that they need to keep their eye on the ball in their current jobs. Their time may come, but only if they exercise patience and demonstrate continuous improvement.”

14- “Getting off to a good start is important. It sets the tone for your team in many ways – expectations, values, attitude, behavior, rules, and much more. This is especially true with individuals who are new to your organization, but it also applies to the others under your leadership who may need a reminder from time to time of how you expect things to be done.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Pyramid of Success