“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

To see people who were once labeled as ’sheep’ taking initiatives and putting their ass on the line is the greatest gift of all. Finding out that I am the one now needing to stretch in order to keep up with my Oompa Loompas – instead of the other way around – is a great experience.

When I was appointed as the CIO of our organization I was completely new to this business. I have a background of engineering and until then I had been managing global projects in a multinational environment of product launches, markets and affiliates. All of a sudden I was propelled into the local niche of an HR service provider. Needless to say that my background no longer needed to be at the top of my mind. But then,… what else needed to be at the top of my mind instead?

Foreign Element

From the beginning I made it clear to my department that I had very little knowledge of the sector and that I would need all of their involvement to make the turnaround we much needed. In the beginning that seemed to be radical idea; and I was featuring as the foreign element.

In the beginning the response was quite poor and I remember the skepticism in our department. Soon enough I discovered what people had warned me for: “they are a bunch of sheep”; “dedicated followers with zero sense of initiative”. On top of that, most of the knowledge was trapped in people’s heads and within a growing organization this became more and more a continuity risk.

So there I was with my newly declared Charlie Bucket Approach. First I would learn about the current set-up. Next, I would get as much information as possible. And then – and only then – I would determine a strategy. The only certainty I had at that time: I was not going to pull it off without the Oompa Loompas.

Loompaland

In Roald Dahl’s story, Wonka’s workforce – the Oompa Loompas – come from Loompaland, a small and isolated island in the Pacific Ocean. They are funny-looking characters with strange habits. No use in explaining that my IT department was also being looked at as if they were Oompa Loompas.

Apart from being very busy at all times, nobody really knew what the IT-people where up to, what they were working on, which priorities they followed or whether it was what the business most needed.

Reengineering the Chocolate Factory

With the Charlie Bucket approach in mind, I choose to take on one challenge at a time. For us, the starting point was going to be IT governance and transparency. But it turned out that the Oompa Loompas were not so keen on it.

I remember the discussions we had on serving the internal customer. When I arrived, the Oompa Loompas were providing enhancements and fixes every day. The customer said ‘jump’ – and they said ‘how high’? No thinking, just jumping on whatever they were asked to do.

As an outsider I could easily see that we would definitely benefit from redefining ’service’. And this included saying ‘no’ from time to time and bringing structure to the work.

In the beginning the Oompa Loompas resisted this change, arguing that this would slow down the service to our customers. And eventually it would. Their argument was a valid one. But when we sat down with the customers, we discovered that they did not really need daily enhancements and fixes in their systems. Rather, they prefered transparency, focus and guidance.

This was a surprise to the Oompa Loompas and ever since that moment, they have taken the habit to ask ‘why’ more often and to challenge the things we have taken for granted.

Their Factory

I was lucky to draw Charlie’s golden ticket because I have spent half of my career in Loompaland. I can decode their language and respond in a way they understand. The one thing I learned in Loompaland is never to underestimate what these weird creatures are capable of.  And by now I can say with confidence that I would never have been able to reach this level of change in our department without their involvement.

But challenging their status quo is one thing; gaining their trust is another. Because to the same extent as I was rocking the boat, I needed to provide the psychological safety for people to grow. That’s when I found out that there is a direct relationship between the trust you gain and how vulnerable you allow yourself to be.

In our particular case I decided not to pre-fill the 15 new positions in our department ourselves. Filling the positions myself by appointing people directly would have been the safe-game. Instead we carefully crafted an internal labor market where everybody could apply. My biggest fears at that time: to have a zero response or the complete opposite – a tsunami-response.

Luckily none of that happened. What’s more, people really opened up, as if they had turned a switch in their head. The most touching proof is the one Oompa Loompa in his fifties, who made a complete career-shift. This is a guy who could easily settle for inertia and dozing-off-until-retirement. But he didn’t. To my surprise, he abandoned his burned-out past and is now a dynamic learner and a responsible initiative taker.

Managing Oompa Loompas

I am sure that other organization also have their Oompa Loompas. And I am convinced that – there too – these people are undervalued. So consider the following two points whenever you are in charge of the Oompa Loompas of your organization.

1. How to recognize them
Oompa Loompas are always busy, dedicated and hard working. However, nobody really knows what they are doing and most of the times they look a little distant and weird. This is not good for their reputation and that’s a shame because they are valuable to your organization. Don’t mistake their distant looks for disloyalty towards the organization, and don’t assume that you can put them all in one and the same category. They are a colorful subculture.

2. How to coach them
You have to know that Oompa Loompas have the capacity to engage into the most complex problems of your organization and solve them. However, sometimes they too can get lost in this complexity.

Albert Einstein once said ‘You cannot solve a problem from the same  consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.’ Therefore there are three rules I always apply in Oompa Loompaland:
- I keep it simple and I tell them “If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, forget it”;
- I tell them to make sure to tell their customer what they are working on and what the customer can expect next;
- I use metaphors to explain where we are heading and what we are trying to achieve; this gets us all on the same wavelenght.

As for this metaphor of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, it is probably the one that makes most sense for myself. Because thanks to this metaphor I realized that I was just the Charlie who made the change possible. They were the Oompa Loompas who actually fueled it, completed it and sustained to the present day.

Behind every successful Charlie there is a dedicated team of Oompa Loompas.

It is not the first time I got carried away by music into insights and aha’s on leadership. Last week I was fortunate enough to sneak into another rehearsal of the B’Rock orchestra. A strange thought crossed my mind: ‘What Would Google Do?’

B’Rock is a project based ensemble that is organized in a particular way.

Like my previous visit to the B’Rock rehearsal, this was another immersion into music as a metaphor of leadership.  Like last time I was scouting learning methods in this exclusive and (until now) closed setting. A bizar experience … that’s why it is called BizzArts.

The way the B’Rock ensemble is organized is a great source of inspiration for anyone with a knack for management and leadership. B’Rock is a ‘democratic’ orchestra. And this has far reaching consequences on how each of B’Rock’s projects are organized.

If Google Were a Baroque Orchestra

With his 2009 bestseller What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis described a turning point in our economy by explaining in great detail how the internet is totally changing the rules of the game in our economy. Jarvis describes the disruptions on all levels of management when ‘online-real-time’ and ‘access to information by default’ enter the stage. The factory model of the industrial revolution has brought us prosperity and wealth, but in this information economy the command-and-control management needs to make place for new dynamics.

Let’s not get hooked on what the internet and baroque music have in common (because the answer is plain and simple: ‘nothing’). The point is that this orchestra incorporates a leadership style beyond command-and-control.

First: Draw a Line

Frank Agsteribbe – the leader of B’Rock – does not like to be addressed as the conductor. Rather, he sees himself as the ‘musical leader’. You may think this is just a small difference, but it shapes all of his decisions and actions as a leader.

‘Democratic’ does not mean ‘anarchy’, because there area few non-negotiables where the musical leader draws the line: choosing the program, setting the calendar and shaping the context. In an organization this is comparable to defining the strategy, defining the projects and communicating the vision. Frank makes it clear that this is the task of the leader and unlike sloppy organizations he takes full responsibility of these aspects.

He marks the playing field before the games begin. Do you put yourself on the line to mark the playing field before you kick off the game?

Second: Be a Platform

Unlike other orchestras who see themselves as a destination (and attract mostly mediocre musicians who are in search for a safe place to hide) B’Rock functions as a beehive: musicians are attracted and form a project based team.

The form of the beehive stays the same (the playing field), but the project at hand determines the pattern that the bees will follow and the dance they will perform.

B’Rock is the platform for awesome musical projects such as ‘On the Road to Mozarts Harem‘ or ‘Adieu to the Pleasures‘, thereby attracting better than average musicians.

Google is a platform, and if it were an orchestra it would be a project-based beehive. How about your organization? What are you being a platform for?

Third: Get Out Of The Way

This is where we got to observe that the musical leader walks his talk. As he explained right before the rehearsal: “I only have one pair of eyes and one pair of ears and when I focus on a singer or an instrument my attention is distracted from other elements. In that case it is good to have other musicians pointing out to me those other elements. By allowing them to do so, I widen the scope of what I can hear and what I can see.”

The problem with most orchestra’s is that of the dominant leader, the conductor who gets tempted to think that he is the centre of the orchestra (a moral that I mentioned in the previous post on music and leadership).

Agsteribbe continues: “Dominant leaders miss out on a lot of opportunities to improve because most musicians with a simple or creative idea will not bother to stand up and suggest it to the conductor.”

Right. They don’t want to get in trouble.

Although what looks like a chaotic organization at first, is actually an organic organization: in each section of the orchestra there is a spokesperson and often this role is a rotating role.

Actually, these are the lead players of each section who set the milestones and accents. In the beginning of each project they even have separate ‘leaders rehearsals’. This is an interesting concept.

When did you have a leader rehearsal prior to kicking off another million dollar project?

If you would ask me to summarize our field of expertise in 20 points, this e-book would be my answer. It contains my personal view on the basics of Organizational Change Management.

I use it as a companion to my trainings on Change Management because I don’t do PowerPoint. I do People instead.

You will note that the pages of this e-book can be used separately – that is: one shortcut per page.

You will find out about my heroes, big and small. Thinkers and doers. Hard and soft. Rational and off the charts. So in a sense this e-book tells a little bit of who I am.

Please use it for your own learning and teaching and pass it on in your emails, blogs and tweets.

Spotting Digital Natives like an anthropologist. Catching the first sun after a long winter in Leuven we find students scattered in the park. To me – in my blossoming thirties – a strange sight and a blunt proof of the fact that I have slipped into another generation. Could I be a Digital Immigrant?

The fascinating part of being aged thirty-odd is the realization that you don’t really  belong to the Digital Natives and you can even less identify with the older generation that is often nicknamed Digital Immigrants. We are the lost generation: opinionlesly born in the middle of the chasm; endlesly contemplating on whether to commit to social media or to deny instead; constantly feeling unconfortable. Too much confusion. Time for a second SOS VideoClass.

Again, the video is in Dutch (with my own Flemish accent ) and you will find the English transcript below.

Native Spotting

We are here in Leuven and behind me you can see the next generation. The generation we could refer to as the Digital Natives. They are enjoying the afternoon in the park.

One thing that amazes me – and it may amaze you too – is the ease with which they handle things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. To them it’s like a second nature, whereas for us it is sometimes a bit frightening.

FaceCrime

What we often see is that we trust adult people of our age – the working generation – to go to the bank, to obtain a loan, to buy a house or to raise a family. However, once we come to work, we are treated like children. No LinkedIn, No Twitter, No blogs. And no Social Media. They are building a safe firewall around us.

This makes me think of the book 1984, written by George Orwell in 1949 and mandatory reading when I was at school. In chapter 5 Orwell introduces the concept of FaceCrime – a term that sounds a little like Facebook. It is a crime you commit by demonstrating too much of your personality, by displaying too much emotion and by giving away too much of your authenticity.

Today we can observe that social media has penetrated 76% of the population. For the people behind me this percentage will probably be way higher than that. Just imagine: 76% of your customers, your suppliers and foremost: your workforce is using social media.

Nuts

To me this means that you have to be nuts as a company not to be present on that market. That you have to be out of your mind to lock your workforce out of that space. Particularly if you take note of the fact that we operate in a knowledge economy here in Belgium: We have no natural resources; We cannot produce something with added value faster or cheaper than the countries surrounding us – let alone the countries that are further away. Our raw material is knowledge; we’re smart – and that’s what we need to take advantage of.

Changing the way we look at things

The added value of knowledge increases the more it is shared and the more it is exchanged. What our economy needs at this very moment is more knowledge that evolves faster. And that is the reason why we have placed the lifebuoy right here, in the safe and protected kindergarten: it is time to stop overprotecting people. It is time to take both feet off the breaks. It is time to see social media no longer as a threat but as an opportunity.

Organizations don’t fall by threats they noticed in time but by threats they didn’t see coming. The low innovative power of organizations is caused by 2D-managers and 2D-HRM who didn’t or wouldn’t see the harmful impact of job descriptions and competence management on creative entrepreneurship. Unconsciously they were successful in changing a whole generation of talented people into sheep.

Job Descriptions: Sheep are Born

If we look at 2D-management we see a manager who manages his team by tasks or job descriptions. Job descriptions and the related competence management are the best practice examples of today’s 2D-management generation.

However, something doesn’t feel right with these best practices. Take away all the window dressing and the only thing remaining is a list of tasks of what a team member has to do. We always try to find the right person for a job but still, there will always remain tasks in his job description for which he doesn’t have the talent or passion. In 2D-management thinking it is generally accepted that it is impossible to organize work in such a way that everyone has a job with only tasks for which he has the passion and the talents. Everyone is expected to take up tasks one doesn’t like to do.

Job descriptions and departments have become tangible fences that box in people in their 2D-organizations. People are required to stay within these fences, to perform tasks that do not fully meet their passions and talents, and undergo training that attempts to make them do better what they do not like to do in the first place. The latter is the result of the much praised 2D-competence management.

To me it’s pretty clear: put a fence around people and they become sheep … and that is the reason why creative entrepreneurship in our regions has almost ‘totally’ disappeared. We have built organizations that turn people into sheep rather than developing and using what makes us unique as human beings: passion and talent.

From Jobs to Roles: Ending the Sheep Drama

In the fast-moving 3D-era, it is impossible to survive if we do not better manage and use the natural talent and passion of people. We need creative and entrepreneurial team players. In order to succeed we must replace ‘job descriptions’ with ‘role descriptions’.

This seems to be a simple operation, but the consequences are huge. A 3D-manager breaks with job descriptions and competence management. He makes a cast list with all the necessary roles needed to move in the direction of his vision and then he begins the search for passionate talents that fill in the roles.

In a 3D-organization HR becomes a switchboard for casting passion and talents. The throughput of people working for various managers, business units, and even organizations will be the success indicator for the switch from jobs to roles.

This proposal, however, is a tragedy for 2D-managers who cannot imagine how they need to prepare for this. For 2D-HRM services is blasphemy because they have so much invested in static 2D-job descriptions and competence management that they can’t admit having invested in the wrong processes.

For 2D-trade unions this is hell because the entire job classification system and “working for one employer” belongs to the past.

For 3D-managers, -workers and -trade unions on the other hand, this movement is an opportunity because it will enable creative entrepreneurship by deploying the right talents in the right place.

So what do you want? Sheep or creative entrepreneurs? It is not a question of money, but one of courage. The courage to change.

You should never be implementing SAP for the sake of SAP. The investment should be directly linked to the realization of business benefits over the course of a payback period. Without benefits, SAP is just a stopgap. An expensive stopgap.

Stop-gap / stäp.gap/
noun. a temporary way of dealing with a problem instead of satisfying the real need.

More often than not, project managers find themselves in the situation that their organization ‘is going wall-to-wall SAP,’ and they are then left to implement the chosen application without a clear understanding of the expected benefits and the organizational changes that will be required.

The Formula

Here is what happens next as the project managers work their way out: NT + OO = EOO (New Technology + Old Organization = Expensive Old Organization)

Any SAP implementation should be embedded in a fundamental business initiative to transform the business. You are not implementing SAP for the sake of SAP or because of its features like multi- currency, the ability to define sales organizations, reporting, etc.  Good old Michael Hammer knew this as no other.

You are doing so because you want to gain benefits that are essential for the survival of the organization. Technology is an enabler on that path. But if you fail to paint a clear picture of the destination it is a stopgap. The technology is rolled out, there is a successful go-live; pizza, party and then everybody goes home.

It ain’t over ’till it’s over

Benefits formulate the goal of a program in terms of the success of your organization. These are the beacons, guiding the program to develop in the right direction. Benefits are the basis of the business case to justify the cost of the SAP implementation. They make outcomes concrete, measurable and above all: actionable.

The point is that the project ain’t over till the benefits are realized! Implementing SAP is just a step on the path towards realizing the benefits.

Destination Postcard

In an ideal world, the decision to implement SAP fits in an overall business strategic program derived from the company’s business vision. In many cases, however, the decision to implement SAP is based upon a combination of less compelling operational features, listed below:
- Legacy systems need to be replaced;
- More integration of information is required;
- Better integration of the IT landscape is needed;
- The current version of SAP will no longer be supported;
- Common ways of working need to be implemented;
- The supplier of current systems doesn’t provide proper support, or worse, is no longer financially stable;
- Data integrity;
- Improved continuity and enhanced disaster-recovery planning

Yawn

Yawn-provoking indeed. But here’s the thing: unless you are able to convert the above mentioned reasons into benefits that serve the organizations strategy, you will not be able to win the hearts of your stakeholders. This means: a compelling vision AND actionable benefits that will prevent to see the SAP implementation as an end in itself.

In short: If you are unable to come up with quantifiable benefits, you should consider not moving forward with the SAP implementation. If you do, you risk getting lost in the fog without a beacon to steer for.

Outcomes are the destination postcard (you can see the picture and you want to go there), and benefits are the black-and-white writing on the back of the postcard (the exact coordinates). SAP is a fuel station on the way to the destination. If SAP is figuring either on the front or the back of your postcard you’d better cancel your travel plans. It’s not about stopgaping symptoms with SAP, it’s about treating the real causes with benefits realization!

Strange things happen when you look at leadership through the lens of music. Basic assumptions flip over and stay like that forever after. You untie knots that you took for granted. Like the idea that a leader is the most important person of a team.

Ask Google

When you lead a team – big or small – you feel responsible for the outcomes and sure as hell you want those outcomes to be successful by all possible measures. Maybe you got elected into this position, maybe you fought your way up or you started from scratch and built your own team step by step. It doesn’t matter, because sooner or later you will be looking for tips and tricks to increase your performance as a leader. How To’s, Cookbooks, do’s and don’ts, MBA courses and leadership master classes.

Have a look at Google as you type the word ‘leadership’ and the system returns the most popular searches that people have done before you. Turns out that you are not the only one eager to find out HOW to lead.

Unfortunately all these sources turn out to be a disappointment when I look at the return on knowledge I have gotten out of them:

- An increased sense of control that turns out to be an illusion

- A clever and witty language to explain and hide my faults

- A whole range of case studies to prove the leadership models IN HINDSIGHT

Duh. Not really getting any closer to the secret of leadership.

Surf TED Talks

Guess I’d better listen to some music or watch some TED video’s instead. And that’s what I did. (Note: If you don’t know the TED talks, this is a good time to dive in) As a starter, have a look at the below talk of Itay Talgam on leadership of the great conductors and prepare for some flipping insights on leadership.

Not About You

Talgam hits the nail on the head when he talks about the small gesture of the conductor. He continues: ‘And suddenly, out of the chaos, order. Noise becomes music. And this is fantastic. And it’s so tempting to think that it’s all about me.’

He then analyzes different leadership styles and immediately you can see the difference between a Muti style (talented, clear, controlling and commanding), a Strauss style (pure execution), a von Karajan style (…), a Kleiber style (creating the conditions for people to co-create) and finally a Bernstein style (doing without doing).

Leadership Redefined

This video definitely flipped my beliefs on the job of a leader and made it less tangible and controllable at the same time. Turns out that it’s all about enabling instead of controlling.

And if that is so we desparately need an alternative to the long checklists and cookbooks on leadership. To begin I propose a two step remedy:

Step 1: There is nothing to fix and it’s OK to be happy. So leave Mr. Grumpy home.

Step 2: Your leadership is about enabling other people’s stories to be heard at the same time. So: be the space instead of the hero. Create the conditions instead of controlling the outcome. As Talgam states: ‘You have the story of the orchestra as a professional body. You have the story of the audience as a community. You have the stories of the individuals in the orchestra and in the audience. And then you have other stories, unseen. People who build this wonderful concert hall. People who made those Stradivarius, Amati, all those beautiful instruments. And all those stories are being heard at the same time. This is the true experience of a live concert.‘

The Moral

Once you replace controlling the outcome by creating the conditions you will be amazed by the power and the passion that you light up in people. The only thing you need to do is ask yourself the question: “who am I being that their eyes aren’t shining?” as the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of your leadership.

So who are you being and what has to become of your job as a leader? You are the holder of a space that enables things that are fare greater than you. Trying to control the outcomes will only reduce the performance (and make you more tired).

Instead your real power lies in the being moved and passionate about the scores of your organization and this determines the strength of the space you create for your people. Passion, not power. In the below video Bernstein explains his passion through the expressivity of music and the ability of people to respond to that.

As a finishing note, Bernstein says: ‘It is metaphor that most produces knowledge.‘ He talks about music as a sense-making language, a compelling story that communicates things that are beyond your reach.

No place for Ego there. That may be exactly why we get more ‘how to lead‘ cues from observing conductors and indulging in their music than from any other book or professor.

____________
Related articles:
- Music and Leadership (part 2) – January 18th, 2010
- Music and Leadership – July 20th, 2008
- Music and Management Consulting – September 27th, 2008

“Communication is not the message sent, but the message received.” You knew that. Because like me, you are smart. Like me, you may have used it to outsmart other people when it comes to criticizing their message. But can you make a better message?

Ehhhmmmm… while the statement “It’s not what you say – it’s what they hear, stupid!” is a direct way to demonstrate the flaws of a communication, coming up with a better alternative requires different ammunition. And that’s exactly the word to cover this article. Did you know that military operations and military field manuals can help us a great deal in achieving better communication?

Uncle Sam

In their 2007 bestseller Made To Stick the Heath brothers (Chip and Dan) are setting a new standard for SUCCESful communication. The SUCCESs acronym is a communication stickiness checklist and stands for: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion, Story. For the first part of the checklist – Simple – they draw heavily on the US Army Combat Maneuver Training Center in order to get to the core of the idea.

Like no other, the US Army knows that the distance between the intent and the operation should be kept as short and as straight as possible. Else they risk inadequate mission accomplishment. The way they do it is through Commander’s Intent.

The commander’s intent describes the desired end state. It is a concise expression of the purpose of the operation and must be understood two echelons below the issuing commander. . . It is the single unifying focus for all subordinate elements. It is not a summary of the concept of the operation. Its purpose is to focus subordinates on the desired end state. Its utility is to focus subordinates on what has to be accomplished in order to achieve success, even when the plan and concept of operations no longer apply, and to discipline their efforts toward that end.

What’s in it for you: Focus

I never thought that Uncle Sam would be of any help for explaining things to my grandmother – which is my ultimate bottom line. Commander’s Intent helps you to achieve focus, because when all plans fail you better not freeze and grind to a halt. In case you’re not convinced, consider the quote of Mike Tyson below:

CI is the military version of “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Urging their leaders not to make the battlefield planning too complicated because in the heat of battle, innumerable variables will dictate the proper course of action.

The CI technique

The US Army teaches their leaders in all echelons the following technique:

=> Complete the following sentences:

1.)  If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission, we must ________________________.
2.) The single, most-important thing that we must do tomorrow is _____________________.

=> By answering these questions, you have basically written your intent.

=> Remember, your intent statement provides a framework for the operation. It does not tell your soldiers what to do. It does give them the overall picture of what you say the company needs to accomplish to be successful.

=> By making your intent a clear, concise, and focused statement, you greatly increase the chances that your soldiers will continue the mission, even when the operation doesn’t go as planned.

Your Mission Statement

Here is a great video by Dan Heath explaining why the US Army had better invaded our business schools and most of the corporate off-site strategy workshops. In this video he explains how to write a mission statement that doesn’t suck. The moral of his story for corporate mission statements:

1. Use concrete language

2. Talk about the WHY

My Granny flies Southwest

Southwest Airlines is a company that discovered the secret behind a Commander’s Intent to get to the core of their success, as their CEO Herb Kelleher asserts:

“I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low cost airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.”

In short: next time I outwit my colleagues by telling them: ‘If you can’t explain it to your grandmother, forget it’ – I can rely on Uncle Sam to complete the action.

I always associated SMART goals with positive things, such as sound corporate governance. Never in my life I would have thought that SMART would be threat to the people I work with. But things have changed and they continue to change.

When my team has to reach a certain goal, I chunk that goal into manageable parts and plans. Next, individuals commit to the plan. Eventually – if I want them to perform well against the plan – I assign them SMART goals.

SMART is one of those management acronyms that are taken for granted by everyone. It stands for:
S   – Specific, meaning: unambiguous, clear goals
M   – Measurable, meaning: ’if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’
A   – Attainable, meaning: a little stretch is OK
R   – Relevant, meaning: ’important to me’
T   – Traceable by setting a journey of interim goals

Table Soccer

That is what managers and consultants learn at business schools and it is what I have been proclaiming ever since graduating. No need to shoot holes in a concept that works, is there? Everyone understands it, shepherds love it and sheep flock eagerly on SMART meadows.

Hmmm… and that’s exactly where the problem is: rather than fueling or accelerating their performance, SMART goals are numbing very bit of initiative and creativity out of people. Rather than empowering people, with SMART goals I am putting a fence around them. I’m domesticating them with function descriptions and herding them within the fences of the status quo. As you can guess: that fence an illusion of security that makes people stop thinking.

A few weeks ago Jef Staes told me that it is better to start looking at SMART goals as the worst symptom of atrophy. Once you consistently need SMART goals for your organization to perform this means that your people have lost all of their self-propelling capacity. People have become sheep and the organization has lost all of its agility. You are playing table soccer with your people.

Houston

Why are SMART top-down controlled organizations with diligent employees in trouble? They’ve worked splendid in an environment where the amount of information was fixed. The manager receives the information, interprets and processes it and then hands out the instructions. In fact, this has been the secret of growth in our economy over the past decades.

But now a shift is happening: the amount of information is overwhelming and most people, teams and companies are paralyzed by the flood of information. Information has become the new element. We are overwhelmed by something we can’t get enough of. The result for SMART corporate decision-making is painstaking: as a central commander you need to process even more information faster. No matter how hard you try, you will always be too late in this new information-driven economy.

Go Dumb or stay Numb?

If you are a leader, the key to staying on top is to stop trying to stay on top. That’s right, the advice for decision makers is to get dumber by empowering their people. That way they stop being the single information processing bottleneck. By the way, isn’t it a coincidence that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle?

Getting dumber will reduce the bottleneck in two ways:

1. Distributing the intelligence across their organization; turning the sheep into passionate knowledge hunters. And it’s still Ok to stay on top of decision-making. But continuing to be the single information-processing hub is paralyzing your organization.

2. Redefining intelligence. In reality intelligence is the social skill to work together in a network of experts. Joseph Chilton Pearce defines intelligence as the ability to interact. Knowledge is a social thing. Take the people away and you end up on ground zero.

The New SMART

In the old days looking forward was a good way to plan ahead. There was no ambiguous fog of information. Now the challenge is to look through the information clutter, visualizing a goal that is not yet visible. Some call it intuition, others call it gut-feeling. I call it the single most needed competence of today’s leaders: the skill to get out of their minds and into their senses.

For employees the transformation from a sheep to knowledge hunters will come as an electro-shock. After all, empowerment means taking responsibility above and beyond any fence that has been set up by them or their boss.

There are no fences. And soccer is no longer a table game.

How can we un-learn management science and get back to the common-sense of teamwork? Switch-off all the rules, check-lists and scorecards we have been spoon-fed in our management education? A scenario for disaster you may think? Quite the opposite as I witnessed yesterday.

Dull libraries on leadership, knowledge management and communication came to action right in front of me.  It all happened as the musicians performed their scores at the rehearsal of the prestigious B’rock ensemble.

So…?

In this rehearsal B’rock gathered for the forthcoming ‘Adieu to the pleasures’ performance. Nothing spectacular about this rehearsal you may think, except from a management point-of-view.

As a management consultant I spend most of my time between shopfloor, project cockpit and boardroom. When you travel that path long enough you will find that management speak and lengthy checklists melt down to their essence.  For example: ‘always remember the 3 C’s: communication, communication, communication‘. Damned if you do – damned if you don’t.

I was curious to find out how the musicians were going to pull it off, given their limited time, budget and different nationalities involved (sounds like a real project, doesn’t it?). Almost immediately I was struck by their effortless communication. So I took my camera and captured what the 3 C’s look like from a B’rock perspective. Have a look…

1. Tuning

This is the first part of any teamwork of musicians – be it a rehearsal or a real concert. They tune their instruments and make sure everyone is on the same wavelength BEFORE they start playing. Have a look at the video below. These musicians are saying: hey this is my bottom line – what is yours?

In management speak: they are setting up a service level agreement (SLA). And they do it BEFORE they start to play. There is a lesson in there: an SLA is negotiated upfront to create a common understanding about services, priorities and responsibilities.

Tuning is not a quick-fix for a troubled relationship in the middle of the play: the relationship is tuned upfront. And yes: that makes an awkward and unusual sound.

2. Feedback

Once the instruments are tuned, the ensemble is ready to kick off. For the first time they play the scores that each musician has carefully prepared at home. For the first time they hear how they sound within the group. Have a look at the fragment below to see how that works.

You will note that the ‘project leader’ behind the harpsichord defines the context and shapes the meaning of the piece they are performing (at 00′:30"). Although every musician knows the scores and plays outstanding as an individual, they now feed-back to one another how they can make teamwork happen (as of 01′:30"). Note that during the break one of the musicians revealed to me that the most important instrument during a rehearsal is actually a musician’s pencil!

There you are: outstanding performers rely on each other in order to adapt their scores for the benefit of team performance. In this setting it would be absurd if they didn’t. Yet, where I come from I see most of the good performers touting their horn so loud that the team performance suffers.

The musician later added: ‘you feel when it’s your turn to say something‘. And that’s exactly what it felt like: this was no feedback as we know it; what I witnessed was feed-forward. Not as a task or an obligation, but rather as a game bringing the performance forward.

3. Performing

This is when the communication rubber meets the road. After individual preparation, tuning of the instruments and adapting the scores for team performance it is time to give it a go. I invite you to look at the below fragment twice: once with the sound on and once with the sound off.

There are two things that you can see clearer when the sound is off. First, the musicians don’t stop communicating when they perform. Continuously they look up from their scores to exchange cues. Second, as a result of this exchange you can actually see the resonance among the musicians.

Although they are all playing their individual score you can see that they are in resonance. One of the musicians saw this resonance as a growing process as he reported: ‘during the intense days of rehearsing you kind of grow into the performance’.

The Moral

Preparation, tuning, adaptation and continuous exchange of cues results in good performance. The moral of this story isn’t hard to fetch – but it may be hard to swallow for those of us who have their MBA education tattooed all over. This rehearsal reframes the question: why does management education exist? None of these musicians has ever studied, examined or attended a course in communication, teamwork or feedback.

Think of what we said last week about barefoot running: your company is not broken by default – just like your feet are just fine the way they are. Once you go barefoot your body automatically adjusts. Effortless.  In terms of management education B’rock musicians go barefoot. And they go a long way.

By the way …

This goes without saying that B’rock is a project-based organization (in management speak): the performance at hand determines the staffing, their level of commitment and … their leadership style.

In case you wonder how I got into that setting in the first place… well … together with B’rock and other top-notch musical ensembles we are discovering Arts-based Learning. I’m quite proud to be scouting learning methods and workshop possibilities in this exclusive and (until now) closed setting. A bizar experience … that’s why the initiative is called BizzArts.

Below you can see B’rock performing Vivaldi ‘for real’.

No doubt about it: Belgian finest Baroque can only be performed when excellence & passion are mixed with barefoot empowerment. And now you have a witness.
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Related articles:
- Music and Leadership – July 20th, 2008
- Music and Management Consulting – September 27th, 2008