Month: July 2024

Note: I originally wrote this about 2012 — still stand by it!

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.

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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.

There is “just in time” learning and “just in case” learning. 

You can rely upon just in time learning for specific skills.  Internet search works well, and there are good books on specific skills in your business or for common situations.  Frankly speaking, if you’re a senior leader, you can delegate much of that type of work.  

Just in case learning can be a trap.  You don’t need to know everything in advance.   I advise people going out alone in the woods to know good information, and practice certain skills, in case of emergency.  But you don’t need a medical certification.  One of my neighbors growing up in West Virginia would say, “Ya canna learn nothing useless.”  Pursuing what interests and intrigues you is always worthwhile as a human being.  Lifelong curiosity should be cultivated.  But there is limited time.

The key question for leaders:  How to learn what will be helpful in new situations where there aren’t straightforward answers?   This is where studying biographies, history, moral and religious teaching, art, and great literature come in.  Studying these fields builds up a treasure trove of insights that will help you analyze and navigate forward.

The global financial situation means that for the next few years:

Inflation will continue to be a challenge

Prices generally will remain high (a few exceptions)

Wages are generally going to increase (a few exceptions)

That means increased requirements for employee productivity to justify labor costs as part of organizational budgets.   What was good enough 2 years ago is not good enough in the next 12 months, and expectations will ratchet up.

Practical management opportunities:

1. Review the work portfolio – is everyone working on the highest value deliverables?  What could be automated or eliminated?
2. Create time/energy for new initiatives by ‘squeezing the regular work.’ Apply time pressure to complete work in 80% or 90% of the ‘scheduled’ time. 
3. Ensure meetings are worth the expense. 
4. Use tools as levers to improve efficiencies. 
5. Cross-train employees to improve resilience.
6. Focus on fewer, better things.  You have all the time you need, but you may not have the needed focus.

Reminder to self, you’re welcome to listen:  Productivity is not measured by value of deliverables, not by busyness.

I wrote recently about the building blocks of what lasts.  Institutions last, sometimes many generations.  Trust in institutions has eroded in cities and countries all over the world.  People can’t thrive in a world without reliable institutions, no matter what the modern anarchists say.  Therefore you and I should care deeply about and for institutions.

It’s helpful to distinguish institutions from organizations and movements.

Organizations exist in many forms, from extended families to massive corporations.  People come together and work together in a formal structure.  Organizations can replicate processes and improve processes.  They can evolve and adapt to change, sometimes reinventing themselves.  Organizations have a spotty record of developing future generations of workers; some create their own leadership pipelines but most count on hiring new generations of workers and leaders.  

It’s crucial to understand that corporations are legal entities without a soul.  They were invented.  A corporation can act like a person does (e.g., own property, create binding contracts) but does not have the same accountability as an individual. A corporation’s power is its lack of soul, despite transparent efforts to infuse soul-like qualities into corporations to induce employee ‘engagement’ and social attractiveness.  Corporations have no moral limits apart from legal and regulatory constraints, which were created by people with moral frameworks.

Movements are people coming together with common ideas and energy, usually with less structure than an organization.  They can be tremendously powerful and influential.  (Violence is the characteristic of a movement that becomes a mob.)  I’m sure you can think of multiple movements in recent years.  There will be more.  Movements are a natural feature of human populations.

It’s difficult to engineer or control a movement; the energy is more channeled than designed.  Movements are like being carried along by a wave in the ocean.  We’re not sure where the wave began, now it’s moving us, and then suddenly the wave is gone. Movements tend to dissipate faster than they began.  Movements cannot reproduce themselves; movements can inspire counter-movements.  No movement lasts for multiple generations.  Participate in movements that resonate with you, yet be sober about their time-span.

An institution is an organization which has developed self-reproducing capabilities while retaining a consistent purpose.  We live among and participate in many institutions:  sports groups, religious communities, schools, a subset of social clubs like the Rotary, military, government.  Institutions are generally oriented toward maintaining order and stability within a society, providing frameworks for social behavior, and supporting societal functions.  Marriage is a special-case institution.

Institutions can have long, multigenerational histories.  Their reproduction is not pure replication or cloning.  Just as a child has common DNA with her parents and is unique, the subsequent generations of people in an institution have both common ancestry and uniqueness.  Commonness is from codes and creeds.  I remember when my Scoutmaster first quizzed me on the Boy Scout oath he said, “Millions of boys spoke these words and became men.”  That stuck with me. 

Institutions, like all human organizations, tend to ossify.  Therefore, there must be mechanisms for evolution and adaptation without sacrificing purpose and principles.  We can’t be like those who say, “If the King James English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me!” (Forgive me, but I’m only partially hyperbolic in writing that.)  What Kent Wagner said about marriages is true for all institutions: “There are only two kinds of marriages, those being worked on and those which aren’t.”

Institutions, like all human organizations, can engender trust or destroy it by their behaviors.  Trust is always gained in many small drops and lost in a flood.  There was a story told where I grew up about a boy who lied often. His father set up a post by the road where passersby could see it.  He pounded a nail into the post every time he caught his son in a lie.  When the boy did some manly action he pulled a nail from the post – but the passerby could still see the hole.

I’m particularly intrigued about what’s needed for honorable and sustainable reproduction within an institution.  What does it take for one generation to develop the next, and so on, many times?  How does this process continue in the face of collapsed trust?  How do we foster reproduction of people who can in turn reproduce others?  (In biblical language, how do we make disciples who can make disciples who make disciples?)  How can institutions do this amidst even cascading crises?

Successful institutions know their mission and have clear ideas of what they are NOT.  They have internalizable codes and creeds.  They honor their ancestry and history. They keep promises about honoring their legacy. 

Institutions require an investment mentality – sow now, reap later.  There is a considerable gap between investment and payoff.  I reflect on all the institutions which invested in me as a child and younger person.  I probably wasn’t a net positive contributor until I was 40 years old! 

Reproduction is about education, not indoctrination.  Indoctrinated students are never permitted to deviate from or go beyond the approved ‘curriculum.’  Educated students are expected to honor what they’ve been taught as preparation for going beyond a finite set of knowledge.  Pure indoctrination cannot evolve and adapt. It will only change when the institution breaks.

Institutions must have a well-seasoned playbook for teaching the fundamentals.  It’s not just knowledge.  Institutional reproduction is the apprenticeship model:  There is instruction, practice with abundant feedback, and association with other practitioners of the craft.  There are clear standards of mastery of the fundamentals.

What conditions favor a reproduction model?  There must be incentives for the teacher/coach/leader to develop others.  The US Army does this well. An officer is rated in large part by how well they have trained those in their command.   It’s difficult for an officer to be promoted if he cannot point to two or three soldiers ready to take over.  Institutions must normalize the expectation of developing the next generation.   They must demand development; it’s part of the role responsibility, not an add-on. Likewise, the student/apprentice must have incentives to learn, to grow, to achieve new levels of mastery.  There are recognized advancement points.  There are rewards for demonstrated progress and new skills.

Curiously, an institution must have skin in the game to be successful.  The ongoing purpose must be large and significant. There is something serious to lose when we fail.  West Point cadets are taught that when a business fails, jobs and money are lost, but when they fail, people die and nations fall.

Maintaining a standard of excellence is the common way institutions forestall a passive slide into obsolescence.  No coasting – true for a football coach, a pastor, a government official, a school teacher, or the Rotary Club president.  Bustle and posturing are not the same as productive industry.  The most successful institutions set high expectations and create environments where people want to exceed them.  I’ve told many people about military recruiters coming to my high school in 1979.  The Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiters pitched all the benefits.  The Marine recruiter looked at each of us in the auditorium and said only “There might be two of you good enough to be United States Marines.”  You can guess which recruiter was most successful that day. 

Subtract any of these things – mission clarity, trust, education/apprenticeship with incentives for all, skin in the game, excellence – and institutions flail and fail.  Institution from healthy families to government agencies need deep people and breed deep people.  I hope you’ll consider how you can help institutions succeed in the future. 

I notice that when I pray for peace, I will be given more opportunities to be a peace-maker.  When I pray for blessing of healing for my mother’s physical ailments, I have more opportunities to be a comforter to her.  When I pray for courage to speak wisely into a difficult conversation, I’m handed additional opportunities to be courageous.  (I see remarkably things I cannot explain apart from a divine act, but they always come with opportunities.)

A significant part of growing as a person is the willingness to step into opportunities for leadership, rather than turning aside.  Don’t go to the brink of experience and shuffle away.

Ancient observation: The reward for doing a hard thing well is the opportunity to do more and harder things. 

I wish someone had explained this to me very early in the work life: The more successful you are, the bigger your range of responsibilities become, the more negative feedback and criticism you will receive.  Yes, you’ll get positive feedback, too, but realistically the number of critics around you will increase. 

This can mess with your head, which hinders your ability to lead well. Therefore, you need to engineer a regular ‘cleansing ritual’ for this. It can be meditation, prayer, whatever helps you process and release the negative.  Your critics often have a point, and one of the best ‘cleansing’ strategies is to convert their criticism into energizing action going forward. 

Remember: The goal is being respected as you deliver results.  The goal is not being liked above all else, by everyone.

We live in an age of exponential change.  It’s impossible to time these well – jump in too early, and you’ll burn energy/money/time that could have been spent other ways, and jump aboard too late and you’ll miss some early-mover/adopter advantages. 

I recommend you as a leader focus on two key principles:

1. Distinguish a trendline that evolves but goes forward from temporary (however popular) buzz.  AI and machine learning are the former, fidget spinners and the latest social media techno-trick the latter.  You can build with trendlines that evolve; at best you can extract some temporary cash from buzzy stuff.
   
2. If something will be out of date within 5 months or maybe even 5 years, delegate that to others.  The top leaders relentlessly focus on the larger picture and things which will endure.

There is so much excitement and change that it’s practically impossible for a leader to keep up with all of it, in depth, all the time.  And you shouldn’t.  Yet you must be broadly informed, with antenna positioned to catch important signals.

Use this strategy:

1. Pick one or two areas which interest you and where you’ll personally go deep.  Read all about it.  Set up alerts so new online information is brought to your attention.  Aim to be a solid expert who can talk in depth for 20 minutes without preparation.
   
2. Develop a network of people who individually are going deep in other topics and subjects.  Speak with them occasionally, asking them to tell you what’s going on, what they think is significant, and identify key trends or people.  Always say thank you for their insights!

“The A Team” was a hit TV show in the 1970’s.  Every week our heroes would execute an elaborate plan to save somebody and beat the bad guys. Hannibal Smith, the leader, would say “I love it when a plan comes together” while chomping on his cigar.  Plans always work out on TV.

The British and the French military leaders anticipated war with Germany in the decade before (what we call) WW1.  They developed elaborate plans, covering every logistical angle. They had train time tables for moving troops, how many shells were needed at which artillery locations, the food for the horses used to pull equipment – all of it.  In detail. They had gorgeous charts. They were superbly confident that the war would last no more than 30 days.  Six months later they were still furiously updating the foundational ideas of their original plans.

Planning is important.  Planning is crucial.  Don’t fall in love with your plans.  Don’t build detailed plans for anything more than two weeks ahead. Know what you want to achieve, move aggressively – squeeze out the chronological delays where you can – for results, and adjust, adjust, adjust.  Pivot when reality intrudes.