John TV: Episode #66 TRUTH MOMENTS

Honesty is about telling the truth in every moment … just as important for leaders is about showing-up for every moment of truth!

Talk is Cheap … But

Today’s post is the featured article from the April 2012 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

It is often said that talk is cheap. That can be true … but I will also suggest it is critically important. In corporations and organizations across America, what we talk about and what we think about have a lot to do with what we act on.

When it comes to core values, talk is an important element of sustainability. Leaders can’t just slip away to the mountain top and come back from some on-high retreat and post the core values and assume all will follow. They must talk about them and think about them again and again.

Core values don’t speak for themselves.

They demand our attention … and need our voice. Imagine a financial budget that is issued at the beginning of the fiscal year and never mentioned again. That just isn’t going to happen in most organizations. Imagine a leader setting an array of metrics and measurements for her department and never mentioning them again. That’s not going to happen either.

We establish and come back to what is important. When budgets, metrics and other measurements are established, we come back to them over and over. Leaders expect people to continue to think about them, talk about them and take action because of them. It’s called accountability. Leaders should expect it. It’s called responsibility.

Leaders continue to think and talk about them.

Bill Hybels, Lead Pastor for Willowcreek Community Church in South Barrington IL, often uses the analogy of a bucket with a hole in it. I first heard him use it in connection with organizational vision. He said the vision of an organization is like a bucket with a hole in it. When you fill a bucket with a hole in it with water, the bucket eventually becomes empty again. He says the same is true with vision. You have to continue to fill the bucket with water over and over again.

The same is true with your bucket of core values. You have to continue to fill the core value bucket over and over and over again. Once organizational core values are established, you have to continue to think about them and talk about them.

This kind of talk is not cheap. It is necessary.

Look at the agendas of your important meetings over the last several months. What percent of the meeting was devoted to financial results or achieving key metrics? What percentage was related to hiring, firing or layoffs? What percent percentage was related to social events?

What percent was specifically related to core values?

I am not suggesting that just because we talk about them insures organizational core values will come alive and everyone will live them. But I am suggesting, no matter how core values are “rolled-out” and displayed, if leaders don’t think about them and talk about them on a regular basis, then they are not likely to be lived.

I was recently in a meeting of top leaders. A lot was talked about. Core values wasn’t one of them. And my sense was that this was normally the case. Talk is cheap when leaders don’t believe in or live what they talk about. But I do believe there are leaders that do believe in core values, but just assume they live on their own accord. Which makes me wonder if they really do believe in them at all.

We think about and talk about what is really important to us. Just watch and listen to any sports fanatic … you will see what I mean. Just watch any business executive who is trying to achieve a year-end forecast and you will no longer doubt.

I have no doubt that talk about core values is certainly not cheap. It is eventually quite valuable!

John TV: Episode #65 BEEN UP TO

It is a common question.  Is it time for an uncommon answer?

John TV: Episode #64 RIGHT-SIZED

Don’t you think all decisions need to be right-sized?

Squeeze-ably Soft

Today’s post is the featured article from the March 2012 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

It was one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever … and it was about toilet paper! Mr. George Whipple became one of the most recognizable faces in America as this campaign ran on TV and in-print from 1964 to 1985 for Procter & Gamble’s Charmin Tissue. It was a great play on reverse psychology forbidding you to squeeze the irresistibly soft Charmin toilet tissue. In the end (so to speak) it did a great job of selling softness.

It worked well because, in selling the softness, it was selling the truth. Charmin was in fact squeeze-ably soft. And we have bought it. Unfortunately, over the last 60 years we have also seemed to have bought-in to the idea that core values are squeeze-ably soft. You know … soft touchy-feely Human Resource kind of stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Establishing and upholding core values is the first and most important business strategy of a leader. Both personally and organizationally.

As an organization becomes bigger and more complex it becomes more important … not less. It is not soft. And it is not easy. It takes meaningful cognitive and emotional soul-searching to not only establish the non-negotiable, but to also establish the foundation that propels behavior, performance, internal and external relationships , creativity, purpose, fulfillment and all else that drives a healthy culture.

Unfortunately, many organizations have solely become economic engines. And within them there is little room for soul. It doesn’t happen overnight … and not necessarily on purpose. Over the last 60 years, developments in technology have propelled the ability to measure performance and results that drive the economic engine. Typically, there has not been a paralleled emphasis on the measurement of core values. This, in itself, is a set-up for a trajectory that initially leads to life simply becoming a transaction and ultimately to self-destruction.

I won’t argue that core values are the soft stuff. But who decided that soft wasn’t critically and strategically important?

Soft sure seemed important when it came to something as critically and strategically important as toilet paper!

I also won’t argue that core values are one of those Human Resource things. Every single Human Resource professional should seriously question their own value-add if they are not on a mission to drive and support every leader in establishing and upholding an intentional set of core values. It is precisely a Human Resource issue.

Any leader who isn’t hiring and demanding their Human Resource professionals to push them on the issue of core values is naïve at best and reckless at worst. Soft isn’t the issue. Pushing hard on the soft stuff is.

Leaders and Human Resource professionals, alike, may both be rightfully asking the question … so when would there ever be time to seriously work on all of that? Ironically, most leaders and Human Resource professionals could eliminate a third of what they do if they became dead serious about establishing business cultures where core values were personally and organizationally demanded.

Last, but certainly not least, are the shareholders. Ideally, they should be the drivers, demanding leaders to lead on a foundation of well-established core values. In a fast-moving capital market and in a world of mutual funds, this is a much harder group to isolate as individuals. And yes, there-in sits part of the problem … and ultimately a potential solution. The solution, initially, may have to be modeled in organizations where there are isolated and limited numbers of stockholders, individual owners or partnerships.

Core values are the soft stuff. They have to be squeeze-ably soft so they can be fully embraced.

It is refreshing to see how a few courageous organizational leaders and Human Resources professionals, who choose to truly lead, have embraced the concept of building real value with core values. Mr Whipple ultimately couldn’t resist and nor can these incredible leaders.

For all the rest … I am sure Procter & Gamble would be more than glad to sell you plenty of rolls of Charmin to clean-up the eventual mess.

John TV: Episode #63 Day Trader

Today is all you currently have to work with.  Is is just another day … or a day made valuable by what you have trading it for?

John TV: Episode #62 What Really Matters

I love the bottom-line nature of the quote we used, by Johann Von Goethe, on the back cover of GOOD to the CORE … Things that matter most should never be at the mercy of things that matter least.  How much of your schedule could be freed-up if you eliminated what matters least?

It’s Not About You

Today’s post is the featured article from the February 2012 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

It may be the most important lesson of leadership. In fact, it may be the only lesson a leader needs to learn. With this lesson mastered, it opens the door to the leader’s true potential. This lesson is nothing short of the welcome mat to leaving a meaningful legacy.

Unfortunately, this lesson is not likely to be a stretch goal of many leaders.

For many, in leadership roles, it wouldn’t be on their list of goals at all. I believe it is the painful truth why most leaders will never meet their full potential … and more sadly, they will never be the catalyst for helping others meet their potential either.

There may be a reason as to why so few leaders have “mastered” this lesson. It is not a “lesson” at all within the content of many, if any, highly sophisticated, deeply intellectual and very expensive leadership courses. It’s too simple to be in the company of sophisticated models and metrics.

Yet it was the powerful, and possibly risky, opening sentence of Rick Warren’s blockbuster book, The Purpose Driven Life. It set the stage for every word that was to follow. And it sets the stage for every leadership lesson there is to learn.

“It’s Not About You” sets a leader’s mindset and motives.

It also begs the question, “if it is not about me … then who is it about?” It immediately forces an outward glance that turns a leader’s attention to the blank canvas of greater possibilities. Greater potential. More meaning. It establishes an arena in which to truly lead.

It may very well be a leader’s best insurance policy as well. What are the odds that there is a high statistical correlation between leaders who were in “it” for themselves and leaders who have fallen? It would be interesting to do the math. On the other hand, there may be another brand of leaders who have “failed” but have made an amazing impact leading within their failure. They made an impact because they never believed their leadership was about them.

There is a major difference between leaders who fail and leaders who fall.

It may be the lesson of “INAY” that defines this very difference. I am afraid we have undermined the potential and fulfillment of many a leader by fertilizing the egos of truly gifted people. Even if they didn’t believe it was about them, we have convinced them that it really is … and they have fallen for it. Some literally.

It takes a leader of great strength, depth and skill to embrace the reality that it is not about them. You see, great leaders don’t need it to be about them. It is a weak leader who needs to draw something from their leadership role.

I am not talking about a superficial veneer of humility. I am talking about every aspect and every action of their leadership persona. It is how a leader walks into a room. How a leader crafts a message. How a leader shows up in the relationship with everyone they meet. And even how they dis-assemble the outward symbols of privilege.

A few years back, I was hired to speak to the faculty and staff of a community college on creating a meaningful culture of service. As I walked, from the large parking lot into a planning meeting, I noticed the prime parking spot had been reserved for the college president. As we brainstormed throughout our planning meeting, I suggested the reserved parking spot for the college president be relocated in the parking lot to the spot furthest from the building. They thought I was joking.

I was dead serious.

The problem was that they weren’t really dead serious about truly creating a meaningful culture of service. As is often the case, we don’t want to give-up the insignificant so we can embrace what really is significant. Relocating the parking spot would have certainly made a statement to every faculty and staff. But more importantly, I figured the few extra hundred feet the president would have to walk each day would give him a great opportunity to reflect along the way the greatest lesson of leadership … INAY. The problem is he never got a chance to make that decision. Those around him made it for him. They protected him from ever learning the lesson.

That is why true leaders must learn for themselves. The irony, and possibly the paradox, is that the lesson of INAY (It’s Not About You!) can only be learned by working on … YOU! It is really not that hard. It just takes a lot of character and the desire to really want to lead for someone other than yourself.

It is there you find the real call and joy of leadership.

John TV: Episode #61 Veneer

Are you polishing or developing?

John TV: Episode #60 Vulnerable

The leader’s real strength and influence begins when they drop their veneer.
Reference to video by Brene’ Brown can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoMXF73j0c