Month: August 2021

Leaders at every level are vulnerable to chronic stress.  We’re sincere in our desire to burn energy to accomplish our goals and help people.  However, over time, depleted “batteries” mean our decisions are less effective, our creativity drops, our emotional resilience fades, and our endurance becomes pitiful.

Leaders need to recharge.  Your organization and the people you serve need you at your best.  Here are three suggested ways to recharge:

1. Extend your sleep by 30 minutes a night

Many leaders get into seasons of chronic sleep deprivation – not all-nighters, but just a little short each day.  You’ll know this is true for you if you need to sleep more on the weekends to “catch up.”  A typical sleep phase is 20 minutes.  Set your alarm to give yourself an additional 30 minutes of sleep time, which is enough to carry you through another sleep phase.  It only takes a little more discipline to find 30 minutes in your day, and the payoff is enormous. 

2. Breathe deeply for two minutes

When problems are coming in high and hot, or you’ve been switching between many small tasks and conversations, take two minutes and focus on breathing deeply.  Breath in slowly, breathe out slowly.  You don’t need any special program or ritual to do this.  Just focus on your breathing.  Tell your busy, anxious mind that you’ll start on a new problem in only two minutes. Your heart rate will slow down.  You’ll find it easier to concentrate.  Getting more oxygen in your brain will help you make better decisions.  [Bonus: do this two-minute breathing ritual before you go into a difficult meeting or important presentation.]

3 Walk in natural surroundings

There is something – difficult to describe but commonly experienced – uniquely refreshing about walking in a natural setting.  Strolling in a garden and focusing on the sounds, smells, and sights.  Listening to the wind in the leaves of trees.  Relishing the gurgle of a small creek, or the sound of waves lapping on the shoreline.  These do more to recharge you than hours working on gym equipment indoors.  Get outside, no matter the weather, for a few minutes each day. 

There are other ways to recharge, too.  Become a student of yourself, so you develop greater sensitivity to when your energy levels are low.  Try these approaches, and develop others which help you in particular.  (I know one talented leader who gets recharged by sitting in a quiet area and knitting.)

Finally, remember that the reason to recharge is to unselfishly invest that energy in serving others.

Your project went off the rails, and your boss – who doesn’t care about the complexities of the project and only wants to not be embarrassed in front of her boss – is chewing your butt because it looks like lousy planning and execution.  She wants to see the detailed project plan in two days. You know the team had a detailed project plan but it fell apart two weeks after the start.

For the umpteenth time you wonder about how useful planning really is.

Experienced project managers agree with these statements:

• Planning is helpful and important.
• Planning without execution is wasteful of time, energy, and attention.
• Execution without planning can go awry.
• “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” (Helmuth von Moltke)  Also known as “Stuff happens.”

The key question becomes: “What’s the right amount of planning?”

[Note: I am assuming that you have a clear idea of the objective.  You know what success looks like.  You understand the priority outcome. If you don’t know this, no amount of planning helps.] 

If you’re willing to learn from data and experience during the execution phase, you need direction and some way to evaluate “success,” but you need only plan for allocating people and the first set of tasks.   This is what’s behind the maneuver warfare strategy of “Commander’s Intent.”  The objective is clear, but the details evolve. 

Effective project leaders “play chess” and think out possible second and third moves.  The dialogue in your head sounds like this: “We do X and the two most likely responses are Y and Z.  If Y, then we have these options, but if Z we have a different set of options.  And the most unexpected responses are….”

The key is to develop some flexible planning scenarios with contingency plans, coupled with a healthy dose of paying attention.  Leaders must recognize the world is complex and you have imperfect information.  Invest time and energy into “sensing” what is going on with your project or initiative. 

One of the most significant things to anticipate are delays and extensions of work.  A large percentage of project failures happen because some activity on the critical path became significantly delayed.  How will you respond when (not if, when) this happens?  What new options come into play?

If you’re unwilling to learn from data and experience during the execution phase, you’ll need substantial planning coupled with extraordinary luck that your plan will work out exactly as planned.  The consistent failure of 5 year, 3 year, and even 6 month plans should make us sober. 

The Agile Manifesto recommends favoring:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Avoid these two rookie mistakes:

1. Building the perfect plan, and assuming everything works out exactly like you expect.  
   
2. Saying “We don’t plan.”  Don’t pay that stupidity tax.  Knowing your objective, develop a starting plan, and work through scenarios of how the next steps could unfold.

Bonus leadership tip: Notice how people react to more planning and less planning scenarios for clues about their risk orientation.  Some people are simpler happier staying in the planning phase than taking the risks of action.  Other people are too impatient to do more than cursory planning. Most of us recognize that in a VUCA world we need to be in observe/learn/adapt cycles much more than we need to be in detailed planning for massive projects. But you’ll find that not everyone agrees with that statement.   

A reader asked how to overcome writer’s block. I told her there is no such thing as writer’s block. When we feel like we can’t write anything, the truth is that we don’t think we can write anything good. You don’t have a “writing poorly block,” do you? 

Just write. Get it moving. Expect that as you write you’ll start producing something more worthwhile.

Don’t score yourself on the % of your writing which you like. Score yourself for writing as a process, expecting that a fraction of what you produce is schlock.

(This understanding is not original to me.  C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Seth Godin have all described this.)

This is true for every creative venture, not only writing.

For several years I managed the global DuPont IT infrastructure team – data centers, servers, networks, security, phone systems, databases, PCs, printers, help desks.  As you can imagine, every day was a firefighting day.  Somewhere, some system or some process wasn’t working correctly, for someone, for at least some time. We had a great team. We did a good job dealing with many issues and struggled badly with others. 

Our performance rating system required a fixed distribution of “Exceeds Expectations,” “Meets Expectations,” and “Does Not Meet Expectations” ratings.  No more than 2 of my 17 direct reports could receive an Exceeds rating, and at least 1 had to receive a Does Not Meet rating.    

One of my steady-eddy managers approached me shortly after he told me he was planning to retire in a year.  In the course of a very open conversation he mentioned this observation:  

“You have a tendency to reward heroics to fix what’s broken over the well-planned, well-designed system work that doesn’t require heroics.” 

There will be crises and emergencies and unplanned work when you’re leading an organization, or managing a working team.  People who step up and go the extra mile to help should be recognized and appropriately rewarded.  [Be sure to arrange for a review of what happened and what’s needed to ensure that won’t happen again, or at least reduce the consequences if it does occur.] 

Good leadership means looking deeply at the quiet, steady work which prevents problems, including good design.  Find ways to celebrate proactive work which prevents emergencies.  Give it equal weight as firefighting when it is time to recognize people.  Build a culture which honors risk assessment and appropriate mitigation.   

Related tip: It’s easy to brag to your management about the firefighting event and recognize the people who took care of the problem.  Be the kind of manager who highlights the preventative work to your management.   

Remember, you will always get more of what you reward.  

Anger has been a lifelong companion, and constantly seeks to rule me. This is a prayer I have used in recent years:

-=-=-=-=-

Precious God, thank you for making me in Your image — slow to anger, seeking justice, and full of self-control.

I trust You because You have sovereign power over all the universe.

Thanks for giving me the emotion of anger so that I can be alert to what is not right, and respond rightly.

Thanks for saving me from slavery to anger, which always seeks to rule me. You and you alone are my ruler.

I rejoice that You have already brought me far and kept me safe. I’m not yet what I will be by Your grace and power, so please continue to shape me into Christ-likeness. Thanks for keeping Your promise to complete the work You began in me.

Thanks for the opportunities You give me today to practice discernment and self-control.  Help me to see the gaps between what is and what should be the way that YOU see them.

Thanks for giving me a spirit of self-control and freedom from sin, so that my responses will be pleasing to You. Help me to repent quickly when I fail. I remain confident in Your sustaining power working in me and through me.

May I be a large, clean conduit of Your love and grace today to a world that struggles with anger.

In the beautiful name of Jesus, who was angry but did not sin,

Amen.

I wrote this six years ago, and it’s still true.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Frustrated?  Angry?  Read this.

Not long ago I left the office, fuming with frustration, and headed home.   I could feel the blood pounding in my ears.  I got a glass of ice water and sat down with my journal, took a deep breath, took another one, and then wrote this out.  I’m sharing because I hope this helps some others, too.

I want to acknowledge how ungrateful I am. I leave my office most days tired, frustrated, unsatisfied. I selfishly want so much more, most of the time, that I fail to remember how good I have it.

I am extraordinarily blessed with wife, children, and extended family. I have handfuls of deep friendships.

Spiritually I am filthy rich in Christ Jesus, a citizen of heaven by grace, and able to rely upon the strength of the gospel day by day. I have nothing to fear because “the God of angel armies is by my side.”

 I live a comfortable, affluent life. Kings of old could not imagine the conveniences we take for granted. I use more technology daily than sci-fi writers in 1950 wrote about. I’m in a generation that is living longer and healthier at older ages than any previous generation. I live in one of the freest safest countries on earth.

Our travel options are so grand I could get to almost anywhere on the planet within 3 days of starting out. People the world over speak (or want to speak) my native language.

Intellectually I get to live in an idea-rich world, practically unlimited access to data, and I’ve benefited from 21 years of formal schooling and post-doctoral studies. I have the tools to capture and share my writing with others.  I have meaningful work with smart, savvy, hard-working colleagues. We’re contributing to our company’s efforts to tackle a handful of the most important problems in the world, including feeding a growing world population.  

I have abundant opportunities to serve others.

I have no reasons for complaints, none. I should have only room and energy for gratitude. Perhaps the most significant battle I get to fight (not need to, but get to) is the fight for joy and gratitude.

Many conversations these days are loaded with concerns about the future and the state of societies. How we view the future strongly affects our ability to perform well today. Believing “the view out the windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror” is right and proper.  

Make this your mental model:

• I’m going to live a long time, therefore I care for my body, and discipline it to be effective.
• Every day is precious for contribution, celebration, relationships, recovery, and worship.
• It is right to fear God, and needless to fear men.
• I must use my agency and gifts well.
• I can trust that God will put what and whom I need within reach.

Avoid mindset traps like these:

• I will die soon.
• My best days are behind me.
• I deserve to coast or quit.
• There is nothing more for me to do.
• I can do this alone.

It’s true that we could die today. In the sovereignty of God, you’re effectively immortal until He calls you home. (Sidebar: You should still wear your seatbelt and avoid stupid decisions!) Our ignorance of the details of our future is a great gift to us because we could not handle the knowledge and live well.

Many intrapreneurial projects — the little initiatives started by someone and carefully cultivated through a first test and promising success — get crushed by the “immune response” of a big organization.   Relatively few big organizations do more than tolerate innovation arising outside of the groups that are “supposed” to do innovation.  

Today I want to clarify another way that intrapreneurial projects fail.  Well-intentioned leaders get excited about an early success and think that the best way to help is to load them up with steering teams, elaborate project management, dedicated KPI tracking, frequent project reviews, and so on.  These sincere attempts to help can instead smother a project and keep it from being successful.  It takes some wisdom to know how best to help, and when. 

An analogy:  When you’re starting a fire in damp conditions and have the first flames going with the smallest and driest tinder, don’t heap on a large pile of damp wood right away.  You’ll only smother the initial flame.  Instead, gradually feed a small fire with a few other pieces of wood until you have a strong flame and the first few coals.  Then you can heap on damp wood with less risk of smothering the fire.

Each choice has a consequence, so make choices that lead to good consequences.

Tips on making a good choice:

• Act in congruence with your highest, best identity
• Which choice has the highest expected value (EV) over the long term?
• If you’re hesitant about a decision, choose the harder path.  If the right thing were easier you wouldn’t hesitate.
• Remember that cause and effect are rarely close in time or space.
• Even small deviations from the proper course take you to the wrong place.
• Momentum matters, for good and for evil.
• There is nothing anonymous in this universe.