Setting goals - lots of them

I have always been a keen, if not terribly gifted, long distance runner. Of course one of the ultimate challenges for any runner is to complete a marathon. But, ask some runners and you soon learn that just completing a marathon isn’t enough.

12 years ago, I was told that the difference between a runner and a jogger was that a runner had broken the magical three hour mark for the marathon.

So 12 years ago I began my quest to become a real runner. There I was, in my prime of life in my late 20s, it shouldn’t be too difficult ...

I was running four or five days a week, playing and coaching in a soccer team, working on the personal staff of the Admiral in charge of our Navy, and participating in a pretty active social life. My previous best marathon time had been 3 hours 18 minutes or so run just a couple of years before. I now had my three hour goal. So I just had to go out and achieve it.

Does this sound familiar? Well, maybe not the marathoning bit, but what what about having a goal set and then achieving it?

I got close, don’t get me wrong - within four minutes of my goal in Sydney in 1996. That’s nearly good enough isn’t it? But the bloke that told me about the runner/jogger diarchy, simply raised one eyebrow, told me I’d done okay, but that I was still a jogger.

So what has my jogging (yep, still haven’t broken the three hour mark) got to do with leading, managing or teamwork?

My view is that goal-setting and management by objective are immensely powerful ways to lead teams, organisations and businesses - but, like lots of other things, it needs to be done properly.

There’s been plenty written and said about goal-setting, and of course the SMART acronym is a useful way to approach the setting of any goals. They must be (or have):

* Specific
* Measurable
* Attractive
* Realistic
* Timeframe

My three hour marathon goal met all those requirements, but I still fell agonisingly short. So what went wrong?

It took me a few years to realise it, and it wasn’t until I was the Commanding Officer of a large military unit and preparing some background information for my team for a discussion we were having during an annual planning session. In this context, many of our goals had been set by the General we all worked for back in Melbourne, but we obviously also had some other goals that we were setting ourselves. Some of the goals were very ambitious, and some were really quite long-term. How could I clearly articulate what we needed to do today to help achieve a goal that perhaps wouldn’t be realised for five or ten years?

Of course, part of the solution was to break each of the bigger, more ambitious or long term goals down into sub-goals or objectives that could be comprehended (and achieved) much more easily and in a more timely fashion.

Interestingly enough, just two weeks ago I bumped into one of my team from those days, and one of the first things he mentioned was how I had used a story about Tatiana Grigorieva (a very talented and glamorous Australian pole vaulter {http://www.tatiana.com.au/}) to explain how our Unit might structure our goals.

Back then I had suggested that it wasn't enough that Tatiana knew what the world pole vault record was. Breaking the world record might be her ultimate goal, but what were all the interim steps she needed to take? What were all the targets along the way she needed to hit? Perhaps some of them had to do with her weight training, her diet, what lead up competitions she would enter, etc.

This then became a very productive discussion on what our immediate goals (monthly) would be, what the 1, 2 and 5 year targets were, and most productively of all, it led us into developing a series of actions that we needed to take or develop in order to meet the ultimate goal.

So goal setting by itself is not enough. We need to develop a series of interim goals - signposts that mark the pathway we need to follow to reach our destination.

Oh, and I'm still chasing that elusive three hour marathon time. But my training plan for this year has a bunch of lead-up races, and training sessions that I am following. As of 20 May 2007 I'm on track after running 1 hour 26 minutes for the half marathon on the Great Ocean Road. Bring on the Gold Coast Marathon on 1 July 2007!

Made from Beer?

Catchy title huh? It's actually one of the advertising slogans for an Australian beer - Carlton Draught. (More about Carlton Draught?) And if you haven't seen the commercial based around Flashdance's signature tune, then check that out too.

But what has made from beer got to do with leadership or teambuilding?

As my bus trundled past a billboard with this slogan on it the other day, it got me to thinking about how many organisations could really describe themselves as being made from people. Yeah, I know; not as catchy as made from beer, but the same message is implied.

There's lots of fancy marketing and other gimmicks to promote the fermented amber liquid yeast product that is so popular here in Australia. And of course, the angle that the cunning Carlton marketers are taking is: fundamentally all we want is a beer that's ... made from beer. Everything else is secondary.

The same can be said for many organisations. Lots of fancy marketing to suggest that they're innovative, have super cool IT systems, bleeding edge architect-designed corporate headquarters, high-end manufacturing technologies and whatever. But fundamentally, they're made from people.

A few years ago I was giving a talk to a bunch of junior naval officers on what my expectations were of them out in the Fleet. Our Navy takes a great deal of pride in its ships, aircraft and other technology, and a lot of the questions I had got leading up to this talk were what were we doing about some new project, some new process or whatever? I used the title of the American cyclist Lance Armstrong's biography to emphasise my message. (More about Lance?)

Lance's biography is, of course, entitled It's not about the bike. This to me encapsulates a lot of what I was trying to say. Without doubt, Lance was the preeminent road racing cyclist of the last decade - perhaps ever. Yep, he had some amazing technology to ride, a terrific team around him. But those things were available to other riders, but they didn't have the same success. So there must have been something else.

To my audience of junior naval officers the point was, don't just concern yourselves with the technology, the tactics, the qualifications, etc. It's not just about that. It's about the poeople. It's about leading them. It's about working with them in teams - and everything that leading them and working with these teams entails. Everything starts with the people - for all organisations. It's not about bikes. Organisations are made from people.

Leadership and the X Factor

For as long as people have been studying and writing about leadership, the debate about whether leaders are born or made has existed. The adherents of the born leaders school often like to talk about some magical ingredient - some X Factor - that leaders have, and that the rest of us mere mortals simply don’t possess.

My view is that both sides of the debate are true. And I don’t find sitting on this fence too uncomfortable!

If you subscribe to the school of innate leadership, then it becomes just too easy to accept that you and others can do nothing about becoming a better leader. Sure, not all of us can become a truly great leader in the mold of [insert your favourite great leader here]. But I don’t look like Daniel Craig, play golf like Tiger Woods or sing like Luciano Pavarotti either! That element of greatness - the X Factor - if you like, does separate the great from the excellent and the good.

But the school of learned leadership also has its advocates, for the obvious reason that leadership can be taught. But here’s the critical thing - it must be learned, practiced and constantly developed too. I can’t imagine that Tiger Woods simply relies on his innate golfing abilities to be one of the world’s most successful golfers. Obviously he practices, and I bet that he also regularly works on something new in his game as well.

How are you going at working on your leadership skills?

I often begin a leadership workshop or training session by asking the attendees to give me a list of the top leadership traits. Every single time in these sessions, the people there get 95% or more of the most common leadership traits in about ten seconds flat.

So what? Does that make all them good leaders?

That’s the point isn’t it. It’s not the knowing, it’s the doing that’s important.

It’s not just having the theoretical knowledge of what leadership is all about, it’s doing something with that knowledge by practicing it.

Truman Capote, the great American author and creator of the so-called “non-fiction novel” made a very interesting comment to his biographer, Gerald Clarke, (Capote: A Biography http://www.geraldclarke.com/capote.htm) about what it takes to become a good writer.

You might want to think about Capote’s comment as it relates to being a good leader. Capote said:

To be a good writer and to stay on top is one of the most difficult balancing acts ever. Talent isn’t enough ... There has to be some extra X factor, some extra dimension, that has kept us [writers] going. Really successful people are like vampires: you can’t kill them unless you drive a stake through their hearts.

Talent isn’t enough!

Your knowledge, your boss’s knowledge, your teammate’s knowledge of leadership will never be enough. It probably never has been, and it certainly won’t be in the future. True success will come only to those who don’t just know it, they don’t just think it, they definitely don’t just talk about it ... they just do it.

Capote actually finished his comment about success as a writer by saying:

... the only one who can destroy a really strong and talented writer is himself.

If you aren’t refreshing, practicing or learning new leadership skills, are you destroying your own potential to be a strong and talented leader?

Change Symbols

A few weeks ago I was speaking with a potential client company about running some seminars for them on culture change. One of the things they asked me to think about was - what would be an appropriate symbol for their change program?

And this did get me to thinking ...

Why? Simply because dry logic only gets you so far with your prime change audience - the people. Logic and reason and facts and data are all important, of course, but not so inspiring or exciting.

So what would be an appropriate change symbol?

Lots of recent research internationally, and also in Australia, points to the importance of having a dedicated, and even a named change program. The Woolworth's Supermarket chain in Australia have 'Project Refresh' for example. (http://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/aboutus/ourhistory/index.asp)

We also often see new logos appear as part of a rebranding strategy - a frequent component of a change program. Think of any of the major Australian banks ... National Australia Bank is now "NAB", etc.

So, we might have a named change program. We might even have spent lots of dollars on a new logo. But how effective will they be in grabbing the attention of the various stakeholders during the change?

So what would work better? What would really grab someone's attention, inspire them, excite them?

My view is that this where the arts really come to the fore. Without doubt the detailed analysis, planning, decision-making, etc all needs to be done, but to capture our attention and excite us, there's nothing like a striking image, or a funky or uplifting tune. I'm not a big Rolling Stones fan, but how good was the Microsoft launch of Windows 95 with 'Start me Up'? And they made US$8million as well! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VPFKnBYOSI)

But you don't have millions of dollars sitting around to spend on a change symbol right? What might work for you?

You've done a lot of the analysis and planning right? Somewhere, somebody has been able to outline the vision - what it's going to look like, feel like, be like if the change program is successful. If someone in your team can put that into words, can the team also think of a picture, an image, a scene from a movie or a song that sums up the journey or the destination? If they can, your team has uncovered a powerful tool that has the potential to excite and inspire your stakeholders. That image or that song will grab the stakeholders in the gut, as surely as the analysis will grab their heads.

So that gets us back to the photos at the start of the blog and below. They are images that I love. It's the Duomo (cathedral) of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. (Thanks to http://www.freefoto.com)

Sure, there are lots of old churches that are beautiful across the world. But what is special to me about this Duomo is that it symbolises change so well.

While I was in Italy in September last year, I learnt a little about the restoration of their numerous monuments. Interestingly to me, there is constant debate about the validity of restoration work. Are the changes that are necessitated by the passing of time what the artists originally intended, etc?

This is why Florence's Duomo is so interesting. Because it was constructed over a long period of time, various artists, builders, supporters and labourers were involved with a constantly morphing vision of what the completed Duomo should be. Does that sound familiar to your organisation?

Construction was begun by the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296. Numerous local artists continued to work on it during the following century and a half. But, the massive octagonal cupola that truly dominates both the church and the city was the proud achievement of Filippo Brunelleschi, master architect and sculptor and it wasn't started until 1420.

The cathedral of Florence itself had been begun in the Gothic style. But in 1366 the City of Florence, following the advice of certain painters and sculptors, decided that the Gothic should no longer be used and that all new work should follow Roman forms, including the now famous dome built at the east end of the nave.

A modern façade of the cathedral, executed by Emilio de Fabris in 1867-87 in the style of the Gothic Revival, has taken the place of one which was destroyed at the end of the 16th century.

When you see the Duomo today, you can see its Gothic nature, the towering Roman style dome, and the most recent neo Gothic facade.

What a wonderful symbol of change. Evolution not revolution. The engagement of many many workers in its construction and upkeep over centuries. And most importantly, the inspiration of countless visitors over time.

Your organisation could do worse than picking the Duomo as its change symbol.

Bad Bosses

Here's a headline ... there's a lot of bad bosses, managers and leaders in businesses and organisations worldwide.

Well, it's probably not such a headline. It doesn't surprise many of us really, does it?

Does it matter? Bad bosses can still get good results can't they?

It depends ...

Certainly it depends on what and how you measure good results. A bad boss may indeed be able to get some good business results - but not over time, and certainly not in the same organisation.

But the bottom line question is probably, will having good bosses in the business or organisation get better results?

Now, defining what a boss, a manager and a leader needs to do in a short blog is another challenge of brevity. But let's condense the role of a boss into two perhaps overly simplistic generalisations. For this blog's sake, let's assume that the role of a boss involves:

* managing tasks (the "technical" management skills: setting objectives, planning, implementing, controlling); and,
* managing people (the "relationship" management skills).

And let's make another assumption, that the business schools, universities and vocational training providers can do a reasonable job in training bosses in the first of these two roles - technical management.

So my question becomes, if a boss is good at managing people, does that mean that business results will improve?

An article in the Australian Financial Review on Friday 20 April 2007 (page 68) provides part of the answer. The title of the article? 'Staff flee bad bosses, not companies'. (http://www.afr.com/home/)

The article opens by stating:

The historically low unemployment rate that is making it difficult for all sectors to find quality candidates, especially among the small pool of accounting and finance professionals, should encourage organisations to focus on their internal culture'.

In an Australian context, not only is the labour market tight - particularly for young professionals, knowledge workers and specific trade qualified workers - demographics point to the fact that the labour market is only going to become even tighter. The implications should be obvious. Attracting talented workers will be challenging enough, retaining them in a work culture of bad bosses will be impossible.

The executive general manager of Chandler Macleod's Recruitment Solutions (http://www.chandlermacleod.com.au) discussed a recent survey in the Australian Financial Review article that found that a whopping 82% of workers resigned from their jobs because of bad bosses!

How do we get good bosses from bad bosses?

My perspective is that many organisations spend a lot of time either providing in-house training on the technical management and job requirements - or focusing on these skills at the recruitment stage. But, very little time is spent on developing or selecting for the relationship management skills.

To me it's clear. Leadership, team and emotional intelligence skills are critical if an organisation is going to develop its bosses. If the business chooses not to, then its increasingly valuable team members will almost certainly choose to work somewhere else.

What's your organisation choosing to do?

Learned Helplessness

I was watching my beloved football team (Richmond in the Australian Football League if you haven't seen an earlier blog on "Leaderful" Teams) last Friday night.

Well ... they remain beloved, but they are less than successful just at the moment ... but that's not so relevant.

While I was having my football supporter's heart broken again, I was really struck by the reactions of some of the opposition team (Collingwood) supporters sitting around me.

Remarkably enough, up to half time Richmond were leading comfortably. The reaction from the other team's supporters I found fascinating. Why? Largely because so many of them were young children or teenagers.

As their team slipped further behind in the game, their support turned rapidly into condemnation for ... yes, you might have guessed - the umpires.

Most sports fans hate getting beaten, but there can be a number of reasons why your team does get defeated. Here's just some:

* Your team's simply not good enough.
* The opposition are playing better than your team.
* The playing conditions (heat, rain, snow or whatever) don't suit your team.

Of course bad umpiring and refereeing do impact game day results. But, and it's a huge BUT ... it's pretty unlikely bad umpiring is the sole reason a team is being outplayed. Particularly in AFL where there are three field umpires, two goal umpires, two boundary umpires and a match referee. You'd have to be a real conspiracy theorist to believe in collusion to that extent!

So what?

What does yelling frustrations at the umpires at a sporting contest have to do with your business or organisation?

It seems to me that blaming the umpire has become far too convenient an excuse to avoid looking at the real reasons for underperformance. And this is a real danger for any organisation. If we can't honestly appraise our own performance and that of our business team, then we have a real problem.

And unfortunately, it seems that this is far more common than it ought to be.

Let's put it into the context of "learned helplessness". Wikipedia provides a useful definition of learned helplessness being:

... a psychological condition in which a human or animal has learned to believe that it is helpless. It thinks that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result it will stay passive when the situation is unpleasant or harmful and damaging.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)

Some of those Collingwood fans were seemingly approaching their team's (sadly for me - temporary) poor on-field performance from the perspective that they, and by inference, their team, were helpless to the fate of the umpires. There was no point doing anything.

Learned helplessness in organisations and businesses is even more dangerous. if this type of behaviour continues to be reinforced and is not actively addressed, it can become a dangerous part of the organisational culture.

Here's some common ways that learned helplessness can manifest itself in an organisation:

* Teams sit back and wait for the leaders or the executives to take action.
* Businesses blame regulators, governments, business cycles (or whatever) . They ignore the causes without taking action, instead whining about the symptoms.
* You hear workers saying things like "it's always been like this ... it's impossible to change ... our company is hopeless ... it will never change."

So what can we do about learned helplessness in organisations?

It's as simple and as challenging as having to unlearn that helplessness and relearn the ability to ask the tough questions and be optimistic.

Perhaps most importantly, it's getting the key leaders at all levels in an organisation to realise and communicate the truth of "We are the They". When some form of responsibility and accountability is reinstated, then the helplessness can be banished by focused action.

Luckily for the Collingwood supporters last Friday night, this is what their team and the coaching staff did. The players didn't blame the umpires. They worked out what needed to be done, took action, and unfortunately for the Richmond supporters, they succeeded!

"Leaderful" Teams

This weekend is the start of the Australian Football League (AFL) competition. In a couple of hours I am heading off to see my team the Richmond Tigers play (http://www.richmondfc.com.au/).

The start of the season is always a wonderful time. At that stage it seems that your team is potentially capable of anything. Every supporter of every team is convinced that this is “their year”. No one has won, and no one has lost. Ah ... the possibilities.

But from a leadership perspective, what I have found increasingly interesting over the past couple of years, is that clubs and coaches are no longer appointing just one captain and a vice-captain. Instead, they talk about the “leadership group” or “co-captains”.

Of course, leadership groups have always existed in all sporting teams, in businesses and in organisations. What’s interesting to me now is that this being formally acknowledged. I wonder why?

A well-known Australian - Ric Charlesworth (http://www.riccharlesworth.com/) (Australian representative hockey player, former Federal politician and coach of the Australian women’s hockey team that won the Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympics) wrote about creating “leaderful teams” in his book The Coach: Managing for Success. What did he mean by this?

Charlesworth’s theory, that he implemented in the undeniably successful women’s hockey team, is that there are a number of downsides of appointing a single team captain - just one leader. Not only does it put a lot of pressure on that one individual, but perhaps more importantly, it often means that the rest of the team tend to sit back and wait for the leader to tell them/show them what to do.

His alternative is to create a team atmosphere where everyone is a team leader - the so-called “leaderful team”. But Charlesworth doesn’t mean some anarcho-syndicalist commune! Instead, he argues that at different points in a game or in the life of a team, different team members with different strengths will assume the role of leader.

And that’s the evolution that we are seeing in AFL teams at the moment. There’s no longer one leader, there are many.

How does your work or sporting team do it? Does this approach make sense to you?