LEADERSHOCK, RULE 5: REPLACE PLANS WITH POSSIBILITIES

Rule 5 can best be illustrated by two equations:

Rigidity = LeaderShock

and

Flexibility = Leadership

In terms of their immediate impact on you, consider two more equations:

Rigidity = Disappointment

and

Flexibility = Exhilaration

In this era of widespread LeaderShock, the Rigidity Trap is everywhere. Why do we become unbending in our beliefs and why are our plans seemingly etched in stone? The causes are threefold.

First, the business environment is Process Mapped, Palm-Piloted, and Day-Planned to death. Our every move is prescheduled, preapproved, systematized, and routinized. Second, there’s the insecurity of our topsy-turvy economic climate, which makes us long for the comfort and security of the time-honored ways of doing things. And finally, we tend to look for one, simple answer to solve major struggles: “If I just visit each client more than once a month our business will grow.” “If I can just hire two more people we’ll reach our goals.” “If I just had a better boss, I’d be happy at work.” Unfortunately, by locking into rigid assumptions like these we rarely achieve what we want.

In striking contrast to this locked-down world, the most effective, invigorated leaders have an uncanny capacity to break out of the airtight container of formulaic business practices. They rebel against the urge to find simple, one-way solutions and instead open themselves to multiple possibilities for getting where they want to go. Their comfort and security come not from subscribing to a hard and fast plan but from relying on innovation and creativity as the natural tool for adapting and responding to the realities of the ever changing world in which they work.

Chances are you’ve been in this invigorating place, too. If you look back on your own life to a time when you did something that was not merely good, but genuinely great, you’ll find invaluable information. It’s likely you didn’t know at the start how wonderfully things would unfold. Rather, those instances of greatness were generated by characteristics you brought to the event: inspired spontaneity, personal energy, and a willingness to adjust, create, and reshape along the way. You can bring these same flexible characteristics to your work life, with the same thrilling results.

TWO TYPES OF THINKING

Let’s use a fishing trip as an analogy to understand how a leader might achieve productivity in the uncharted and ever-changing waters of business. In approaching any decision, you can use two types of thinking. The first is convergent thinking, which quickly homes in, or converges, on just one way to get to a solution. If you use convergent thinking on your fishing trip, you plop yourself down on your favorite end of the pier and, (1) identify the specific fish you want to catch, (2) drop a single line into the water, (3) determine precisely the proper depth, and (4) sit back and wait to hook the big one. You might have to wait a long time and you might not succeed at all. Because you strictly adhere to your plan, the one specific fish that has to come along at the predetermined depth might never arrive. You might know exactly what you want but your approach has limited in advance the possibility of success. Unfortunately, you fail to optimize the marine circus swimming just out of reach of your single hook.

The second approach offers far more potential. It uses divergent thinking, a technique that shoots for many prospects. Fishing divergently, you toss out a net without a specific fish in mind. With such vast coverage, you’re bound to land something that meets your needs. Sorting through the resulting catch, you choose which fish to keep and which to toss back. The considerable catch gives you a lot of material to work with. Now that you’ve first diverged, you can begin the process of elimination, until you arrive at a set of elements that offers the richest business outcome.

The wisdom of divergent thinking is the choice of thriving leaders. They strive to generate a host of novel and productive options, and then converge on the best final result. Thriving leaders know that by failing to review a wide enough range of options before making their decision they risk two unfortunate outcomes:

• They choose too quickly and then hang rigidly onto what proves to be a poor decision, or

• As things continue to go awry they panic, begin to bounce from one rushed solution to another, and time after time lock into another new plan. The all too common LeaderShock cry, “Forget what I said before, now we’re going to do it this way” is the hallmark of a leader trapped in the “game plan du jour syndrome.” This unnecessary behavior is a source of great consternation for the employees who become the rigid leader’s unwitting victims.

Leaders with the drive and energy to explore many options begin with a far better, well thought out decision, then stay open as they implement it, modifying and adapting it as new information becomes available. Maria learned how to become just such a manager. She saved both her career and her sanity by metamorphosing from a perennially convergent thinker to a productively divergent one.

COMING UP FOR AIR

Maria had been one of her company’s best employees smart, effective, a can do person, well liked by managers and colleagues. Promoted to the head of her four-person department, she was responsible for meeting aggressive departmental goals. She conscientiously tried to stay on top of things, as she once had when she was an individual contributor. And, Maria was sure she knew best. But while she was rigidly adhering to time-tested ways of doing things and monitoring her staff to make sure they were doing things right, the department fell further and further behind. Her most frequent statement to staff was “We have no time to explore new ways of working.” Once viewed as positive and dynamic, Maria was now seen as callous and she was universally disliked.

By the time I met Maria, she was distraught and ready to quit, as was everyone else on her frustrated team. I’m happy to say she’s now back on track more than anything else, because she realized she’d fallen into the rigidity trap.

Following her graduation from the LeaderShock program, she held a bold and unorthodox meeting with both employees and peers. When all had gathered in the conference room, Maria made a heartfelt Intention statement. “I’ve had an epiphany. As a new manager, I’ve been overly controlling and unyielding with all of you when I needed to be inclusive and creative. I apologize. I need your support in helping me take a more collaborative approach.”

Since all four members of Maria’s department were twenty-somethings, she felt that their educational backgrounds and natural acceptance of flexible team assignments would make them enthusiastic. But as hungry as they were to use their creativity, Maria’s announcement was initially met with skepticism. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” was their attitude. So to positively and aggressively live up to her declaration, Maria implemented a number of changes to build a more inclusive, playful environment. Rather than checking up on people to ensure they were doing it her way, she led staff Recasting sessions. She listened more and engaged individuals in lively brainstorming interchanges that were full of ideas and suggestions. In meetings they played the “what if” game (for example, “What if we measured sales by customer, not by department”).

The group was beginning to believe that Maria really was able to change. Meanwhile, Maria, an orderly, tidy person by nature, still needed structure and constantly fought a battle with the rigidity demons. But she found that the more she engaged her people in creative thinking, the harder they seemed to work. And everybody was having so much more fun, especially Maria. As time went on there was no question that the department had not only regained productivity, it had surpassed its previous performance.

A NEW KIND OF STRATEGY

Historically, leaders have been told, “The key to success is having a solid strategic plan supported by specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic action plans.” In today’s world, this thinking is pure folly. Measurable strategies are actually tactical plans. These metrics-driven, ritualistic documents emphasize benchmarks, focus on predetermined numbers and prescribe fixed actions that we believe will deliver desired outcomes. Because they rely on what we already know as a way to predict what needs to be done in the future, they limit us before we’ve even begun. Although the plan might have made perfect sense when we established it, things are changing almost before the ink is dry: there’s a different market, different customers, and different resources. It’s no wonder that such a tiny proportion of these expensive and laboriously designed strategic plans are actually fully implemented.

What’s the answer? Whether we’re dealing with an entire company or an individual department, we need to be sure we’re really talking about strategy, not tactics. Strategies are inherently flexible, long term, multifaceted, and big picture. They focus on outcomes like growth and profit rather than specifically measurable goals, and encourage directionality rather than prescribing a single path to success. To be a thriving leader we fundamentally change ourselves into strategic thinkers, rather than tactical planners. And we don’t lock into any kind of process document. Our motto becomes: Focused, but flexible. We embark on a process of discovery. Every minute of every day we open up possibilities that will help us achieve our long-term goals. We don’t just commit to three ways to get there, or five, or seven; we prospect for profitable opportunities all the time during discussions with clients, conversations with competitors and in brainstorming sessions with the staff.

To stay out of LeaderShock you’re constantly creating new strategies and adjusting old ones. You’re responding to the day-to-day changes in your business environment and at the same time tweaking the long-term big picture as your situation changes. In this way you stay flexible in the short term and have a long-term notion of your desired outcomes that is resilient and based in the immediate realities of your economic world. As the old strategic plan collects dust on the bookshelf, you and your team feel energized and full of hope as you move in sync with the living and breathing organization in which you work.

OFFERING HOPE

I believe all leaders have an obligation to offer hope, not just to themselves but to their people as well. If you think about a time in your own life when you felt hopeless, it was probably because you felt cornered and believed you didn’t have options. You were trapped, resigned, with no way out. There’s only one formula for overcoming hopelessness.

It demands steadfastly creating a multitude of scenarios to move through roadblocks. Put simply, hope is born from believing there are options. Thriving leaders have scenarios to deal with specific business impediments, dynamic plans to create new markets, back pocket schemes for emergencies, blueprints for creating career paths for themselves and their employees. And when things reach rock bottom and seem intractable, they’re like a wrestler pinned into a scissor lock by the opponent’s brute force. With ingenuity, physical fluidity, and creative intelligence they finesse an opening and escape.

They find a way out of a “no way” situation.

NEVER SAY DIE

A former Human Resources manager, Erin had to find a way out of “no way!” She’d been transferred from her beloved New York to assume the role of marketing manager in the Los Angeles branch of her property and casualty insurance company. Knowing no one in L.A. and little about marketing, she was ready for the adventure of her life when she eagerly faced her new boss.

Eugene was a LeaderShocked branch manager if ever there was one. Rigid as steel, he commanded, “There’s only one way to do this job. Hit the road and visit our brokers. I want you in their offices 95 percent of the time. The rest of the time be on the freeway. That’s your only role, educating them about our products.”

Erin’s hopes for developing a dynamic new career were dashed. She’d pictured an exciting opportunity to parlay her human relations skills into branch marketing. But Eugene’s decree would have her driving to remote parts of L.A. and battling bumper-to-bumper Southern California traffic all to perform a single function. It felt like a jail sentence.

As a strong extrovert she felt deadened at the thought of engaging in an endless series of one-onone meetings. Hopelessness set in. Superb at multitasking and developing training programs, she had always enjoyed a flair for design and loved being in the spotlight. In desperation she thought, “There’s got to be a better way to do this job. I’ve got to figure out how to gain credibility by capitalizing on who I am, and not be forced to be someone I’m not.” To find that opportunity Erin began interviewing clients to discover how brokers think, what they need, and what motivates them to strike a deal. Her research became a far-reaching brainstorming marathon that ultimately uncovered scores of creative and stimulating ideas. Finally, she landed on an idea that fully resonated, a Products Fair for the brokers held right in the branch office. This wouldn’t be a tired dog and pony show marred by stale presentations and the customary cheese and crackers, but an elegant extravaganza with fine wines, gourmet foods, professional displays, experts on hand to talk about each of the company’s specialized insurance coverages, and exquisite giveaways.

This event would both enlighten and motivate the branch’s brokers, and could help them keep customers and attract new ones by learning about the full array of available services. Erin knew it would work, and best of all, this event would tap into every one of her talents.

All the research and planning prepared her to talk with the boss. Setting an Intention to be truthful, but to check her ego at the door, Erin began.“I’ve been thinking about what you said, Eugene that my job is to educate our brokers. And I think I’ve come up with a fresh approach.” Showing the boss that she could resourcefully reallocate money previously budgeted for travel, entertainment expenses, and marketing brochures, Erin was able to demonstrate that the event could be funded without draining an already tight expense plan. She got the OK.

Attended by the top brass from the home office, Erin’s Products Fair was a glittering occasion that became a model for other branches in the company. Erin glowed with secret pride as attending agents congratulated Eugene on the success of the fair.

This is flexible thinking at work. When we begin with assumptions like “I’ll never change my boss’s mind,” or, “There’s only one way to do this,” or, “It’s not worth asking,” we get lost in the rigid thought processes of LeaderShock. As Erin’s story demonstrates, an investment of creativity upfront can save endless hours of toil, frustration, and unhappiness.

As we conclude this chapter, I want to offer a cautionary note. Some leaders are so aware of their problems with rigidity that they’ve made the mistake of swinging to another extreme. Believing that a complete lack of preconceived notions, a blank slate, lets them respond faster to upcoming changes, they invite chaos, which only intensifies LeaderShock.These leaders’ people end up feeling scattered and frustrated. There’s nothing sustainable to latch onto.

Chaos is not the opposite of rigidity. Healthy flexibility is where you want to be, inviting unexpected options and discovering new possibilities before making any final decisions. If life is indeed a journey, we as leaders would be wise to pay more attention to the odyssey and less to the final destination toward which we’re headed.

SUMMARY OF RULE FIVE LeaderShock Trap No. 5: The Rigid Controller In our desire for security we lock into either the time honored ways of doing things or a single outcome plan to get what we want. This rigidity can lead only to disappointment and ineffectiveness in an ever changing world. New Intentions • I’m a divergent thinker. I open up a multitude of options before I converge on a well thought out decision that I continually modify and adapt as I uncover new information. • I’m a strategic thinker, not a tactical planner. I establish a clear, focused direction or strategy for my department but then do not limit myself with highly measured action plans. Rather, I embark on a process of discovery, continually searching for every possibility to realize my strategy. • I offer hope when things seem hopeless. My Intention is to get beyond either company or self-imposed boundaries and provide my people with new options. I resolutely find a way out of “no way.”