Month: June 2021

Questions you ask when being interviewed should be focused on what you will contribute to make the role and the team successful.   Even for an internal interview don’t ask about salary, promotion, benefits – save those until you have an offer.  Suggested questions you can ask:

• What is the ultimate success picture for the team? 

• What do you want the department to have achieved in 6 months and how will I have contributed to that?

• Can you give me an example of the high-performing behavior of someone successful in this role?

• What would you expect of me in Project X which is currently underway?

• Who are the stakeholders who need regular communication?

And it’s fair to ask “What’s the next step in this process?”

I’m going to assume you’ll hear about the team members, structure, and projects, so there might be room for asking clarification questions.   Ask questions about how you will best deliver value for the team.

It’s wise to think through questions you are likely to be asked.

You can practice succinct answers to expected questions about

Your interests and technical skills

Your strengths and weaknesses

Your approach for managing projects

Your career ambitions 

The best advice I’ve ever seen on the “Tell me about yourself” question is from Manager Tools (yeah, I’m a fan).  The important point is to weave in specific ways you brought your strengths forward and created value. 

A good interviewer is going to ask behavioral questions.  They’re looking for you to explain how your past experiences (and especially what you may have learned from things which didn’t go smoothly) apply to this new role.  Therefore, think about projects, events, individual people interactions, etc. which showcase your growth and your ability to perform. 

In the past I hired many people during the fast-growth phases of informatics at Pioneer and DuPont Pioneer, so I developed a useful set of questions to ask (and knowing what I wanted to learn by asking them).  I eventually published this list.  You might use them as a means of preparing.

Finally, I would be suspicious about much of the advice on interviewing you find on YouTube and public media.  Some of it is schlock, and much is extrapolating from a couple of anecdotes. Give more credence to what recruiters say– they only make money by doing a good job of finding the right people for a role, and know how to interview well.

An open position in your team is always an opportunity.  Leaders know that the fastest way to transform an organization is to bring in new people, or move people into new roles.  New hires are also inherently risky. Think strategically!

First, never assume the best response is to fill the position just as it was before.  The world changes, your business changes, and your team changes.  What’s the best way to use an open position?  You could find a good hire to replace the existing role.  It’s more likely you can adjust the role responsibilities and scope before filling it.  Perhaps your organization needs a person in a completely different role.  Give serious thought to closing the position and managing the workload other ways.  In large companies open positions are strategic assets in budget and priority conversations.

Then consider the attributes of the person you need in the role.  Do you need a disruptor or change leader who can take the organization through discomfort to a better place?  Or do you really need a maintainer to manage the status quo (e.g., for a process crucial to your business success)?  Is this your opportunity to hire someone who fits in a succession plan?  Perhaps you hire the position at a lower level expecting that top talent will be promotable. 

Next consider the pros and cons of an internal hire vs. an external hire.  I suggest you do this before you create a job description:

Internal candidates are generally known quantities (for better and worse).  If this is a promotion situation, I recommend the 150% guideline – can the candidate do 100% of their current role and 50% of this new role?  If not, it might be too great a stretch.   Internal hires can be better for continuity and team morale, rather than bringing in a relatively unknown person from the ‘outside.’  Counterpoint: it can be difficult for an internal candidate to lead a change effort if they’re already in the group which needs to change the way it works.

External candidates should be considered when you need new skills, new perspectives, and/or a big change.  An external hire doesn’t ‘own’ any of the existing processes and workflows which might need to be changed.  Use your hiring process to carefully vet candidates – check references, ask them to execute a small project for you to demonstrate their ability, and don’t be fooled by people are better at interviewing than delivering results.

It’s problematic to craft a job description around a person.  It’s better to craft the job description and then find the person who best fits that role.  There are many sources for help on creating job descriptions; I recommend the Manager Tools process.

Follow the good advice available about interviewing candidates.  I published my list of interview questions (and crucially, why I ask them). 

Finally, invest in a startup plan for your new hire. Introduce them to key stakeholders.  Make sure they have early small wins.  Provide coaching and advice about how your organizational culture works.  Communicate frequently, and be available to them.  The investment early greatly reduces the risks of a failed employee, and will pay large dividends in the future. 

Resilience has a very specific definition in physics:  The degree to which material returns to its original state after it is deformed.  A rubber ball has high resilience – it bounces!  You’ve probably seen the slow-mo videos of a golf ball coming off the driver.  One side temporarily becomes flat and then returns to its original shape as it flies away.  By contrast, a ball of wax has low resilience.  If you press on a wax ball it stays smooshed and doesn’t return to its original shape.

Resilience is a hot topic in leadership circles these days.  We like the idea of resilient people who can come through stresses and setbacks and remain strong. 

Let’s be clear: people are not rubber balls.  When we experience an impact it changes us.  We don’t go back to what we were before.  It’s the wisdom of Heraclitus: “You can’t step twice into the same river” because both you and the river change.

Resilience is a function of your physical well-being and especially your mental toughness.  You can’t buy resilience or inherit it.  Resilience must be developed at the individual level.  Where organizations exhibit resilience, it is an emergent property of individuals in the organization.

There are two keys to developing your personal resilience:

1. Willingness to get up every time you are knocked down.  Grit, determination, ability to push through resistance, and moving forward towards goals on the far side of discomfort and disappointment.
2. Ability to embrace transformation through experiences and resist the desire to return to what you were before.

You can find plenty of counsel for the first key.  Learn from biographies and people you observe.  Spend time imagining yourself moving forward through difficulties, rather than being stymied.

There is less advice available on the second key, embracing your transformation.  My counsel here:

• Scars from difficult experiences are real but must be put in proper context.  Healing is possible.  Scars do not need to force us into an endless holding pattern.
• It’s a mistake to beat yourself up because you can’t go back to what you were.  Growth means you’re different.  Growth is always uncomfortable, and rarely happens as quickly as we’d prefer.
• You are not a victim. Make decisions which move you in the right direction.  Be willing to pay the price to move forward.
• Expect that others will misunderstand what you’re going through. 

Finally, I encourage you to give thanks that you are not a rubber ball.  Growth potential is your birthright!

What was the motivation for the people to build the Tower of Babel on the plain of Shinar? “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”

Making a name for yourself is a big theme in our modern culture.  We say things like “I want to make a dent in the universe” and “I want to make society work as it should” and “I want to do great things and be famous” and “I want to be a star.” We crave the freedom to do what I want, and to get glory. 

Many of us have spent years aching for this.

God has a different approach for us, which allows us to flourish in cooperation with Him.  In His universe (and be clear, it’s His universe), God will not share his glory with others (Isaiah 42:8).  He is the light at best we reflect that light.  It’s His power working through us that both sustains us and can change the world:

He set us free to serve others out of our fellowship with Him. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)  We experience the deepest joy we long for when we serve out of this freedom.  

Instead of rescuing ourselves we surrender to being rescued. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus said. (John 15:5)

And what about our name?  Instead of building towers to make a name for ourselves, we take on our adopted name as members of the household of God.  We look forward to our citizenship in the new heavens and new earth: “I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name.” (Revelation 3:12)

Stop wearying yourself with creating a name for yourself. 

Here’s my advice when (not if) you hit a rough patch:

Talk to yourself more than you listen your inner committee chatter. Feed your mind with what you need to hear, rather than dialing up the volume on doubts and fears.

Own everything within 3 feet of you. Consistently focus on what you can control.  Decide on the vector that is mostly likely to take you to your desired future – then commit to paying the price required.  [This is where many people plateau or get mired for long times – they aren’t willing to consistently pay the price because they’re constantly renegotiating with the world.]

Accept that the outcomes you desire are only partially in your control. However, do not buy into the narrative that you are a victim of circumstances (or class, race, gender, age, etc.). You have agency, so use it.

Note: A rough patch is different than depression.

Persuading people is leadership work.

Changing people’s minds is very difficult. Consider the millions of Facebook posts and Tweets demonstrating the superior logic and rationale for one political party vs. another, one religion vs. another (or vs. atheism), one diet vs. another, etc. Very few people are persuaded to change their minds; most people instead find reinforcement for their preferred way of thinking.

Here is some excellent wisdom shared from an experienced man to a younger man:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,correcting his opponents with gentleness. (2 Timothy 2:24-25)

One of my former bosses, Bob Merrill, used to say “Data beats no data 98% of the time.” You will run into situations where seemingly irrational conviction trumps any presentation of data. Welcome to working with human beings who overflow with sincere stupidity.

Perfectly reasonable people draw completely different conclusions from the same data. Here’s one of my favorite examples:

A psychiatrist engaged with a patient who was convinced he was a corpse. For several weeks the psychiatrist tried to convince the man that he was alive, without success. One week the psychiatrist asked his patient, “Do corpses bleed?”

“No,” said the man, “corpses do not bleed.”

The doctor produced a pin, poked the patient’s finger and squeezed out a drop of blood.

The patient saw the blood and said, “I guess corpses do bleed.”

You’ll experience at least a few examples in your leadership journey where seeing blood is not enough.

How to be more persuasive: 

Choose to be kind and patient. Snarkiness and mocking has its place, but should most often be reserved for situations of confronting evil. Egotistical leaders, dictators, and emperors without clothing loathe being made fun of because it’s very effective. But you have created a rift that probably can’t be healed. Therefore, if you’re trying to persuade people you intend to be with, work with, live with — drop the snarky one-liners and jokes.

Focus on facts, not feelings. Strong emotions reinforce a point of view. Persuasive people are able to focus on facts and data, while acknowledging a whole range of emotions that might be in play. (By contrast, manipulative people focus on your feelings.) You can respectfully correct incorrect facts, but you have zero control how they feel. “How you feel is your fault” is an important truth for leaders. Build your persuasive case on facts.

Accept that not everyone will be persuaded, at least not soon. Education is by definition inefficient and time-consuming. In any sizable group there are people who are with you, some who will remain opposed to an idea, and usually the largest group is in the middle somewhere. This is not a reflection of the quality of your persuasion skills.

You do not need 100% agreement to proceed. You do need the right critical people (e.g., probably your boss, or an oversight board).

You’ll be more persuasive if you accept responsibility for the outcome. People back-pedal from situations where they think it is going to fail and they’ll be held accountable. Match your convictions with the courage to accept responsibility. Most people are more likely to accept your idea.

(Note: This was originally posted on asmithblog.com in 2015)

Those of working in complex organizations have some things to learn from lichens. Let me first give you the biology lesson, then talk about how to apply this in organizational life.

Lichens are a composite organism of both fungal and algae (or cyanobacteria).  The algae cells are completely enclosed in the fungus layer like this:

They’re symbiotic; each part helps the whole organism.  The algae layer is photosynthetic, using the energy of sunlight to convert atmospheric carbon into useful sugars.  The fungus provides protection from dehydration, and more surface area to collect moisture and minerals.  Lichens have enormous variety and are found in every land environment on the planet – including some of the harshest environments where no other plant species survives.  Lichens thrive where neither algae nor fungus alone could survive. 

New species of lichens appear in nature regularly. Scientists have created lichen species in the lab.  The first in-lab creation of a lichen was done by Eugen Thomas in 1939. 

(Want to learn more? There’s a nice article on lichens available on Wikipedia.)

So what organizational lessons can we learn from lichens?

·         There is power and elegance in combining two things into an entirely new solution – a software service, a human process, a new market, even a new business model.

·         Lichens are successful because both entities contribute to success. 

·         “Lichen”-generating organizations can move into new (and often harsh) environmental niches that would not support either parent.

·         A symbiosis is a step-change opportunity, not an incremental improvement.

·         The diversity of lichens is astounding. 

·         “Lichen” opportunities can be engineered.

·         If one component (e.g., one software package) is not a full solution, perhaps it can be “lichen-ized” with another component to create a more successful solution.

Some years ago I listened to an Army Ranger commander speaking at our men’s group.  During the Q&A he was asked what one thing he would always take into a battle with the enemy.  He instantly responded, “My Ranger buddy who can carry me out when I get hit.”

I think the person asking the question was expecting the answer to be a weapon or tool, not a person.  I turned to my dad next to me and said, “When, not if.”  My dad nodded back.

No matter what your leadership role, you need trusted partners for your journey.  (Yes, there are necessary lonely moments in leadership.)  Develop relationships which matter by investing in people and sharing experiences. 

If you’ve been burned by trusting people, I encourage you to trust again.  The upside potential of generously trusting people is far larger than the downside risks.