A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. A boss is interested in himself or herself, a leader is interested in the group.
(Russell H. Ewing)

In the OfficeTeam survey, 150 executives were asked “How would employee productivity be affected if your company banned meetings one day a week?” The results:

• No change: 46% (blue)
• More productive: 45% (green)
• Less productive: 7% (yellow)
• Don’t know: 2% (red)

My subsequent question would be: “So, why do you think those meetings don’t add value, and what are you going to do about it?”

Meetings have the purpose of fostering efficient communication. But just coming together in a room to talk doesn’t cut it. That’s the time, money and drive sink we all dread. As always, you have to do things right to reap the benefits.

Brian lists the most important things you should take care of to stop the waste by ineffective meetings:

• Have clear desired outcomes for every meeting that are communicated before hand.
• Use, and follow an agenda (that is focused on those desired outcomes).
• Hold people accountable for the action items.

So, there are two documents that are crucial for effective meetings: an agenda, sent to everyone in advance, and the meeting minutes (complete with action items and deadlines), sent to everyone after the meeting.

And hey, if you make your meetings really effective, you can have that no-meeting day anyway!

How should you deal with that need? The request “Excuse me, but could you please leave me alone and let me do my work?” doesn’t seem very effective.

Gitte Härter over at unternehmenskick.de gave that situation a second look and switched to another perspective: that of the customer. She found out that often a heightened need of communication comes from insecurity. In detail, she lists the following causes for insecurity in a professional relationship:

• The customer doesn’t yet know you.
• The customer made some bad experiences.
• The customer himself is insecure.
• The customer likes to chat.
• The customer wants to dominate you.
• You invoke the feeling, that you’re insecure or maybe understood something wrong.
• You failed in posing enough of the right questions, maybe even regarding the core issues that you need to understand to deliver the right solution.
• You seem to walk in another (your own?) direction.
• You failed another time in the past.
• You don’t respond promptly to phone calls or emails.
• You’re generally too silent.
• You communicate too vaguely.

Over the years, I learned that customers abhore a communication vacuum. So, if you don’t communicate the customer expects you to, oftentimes they will take the lead and make you communicate. Unfortunately, this will never be as effective as if you established a steady and controled information flow in the first place.

Gitte has the following suggestions on how you can take the lead and position yourself as a professional partner:

1. Create trust. — Be present, pose the right questions, show genuine interest in your counterpart. Get all the information necessary to deliver a good job. Also, dare to give honest feedback; for example, explain the customer if his ideas don’t hit the spot.

2. Make clear that you’ll get in touch when it’s time. — You’ll rid yourself of control calls as soon as your customer can trust that you work on their issue and will get back to them when questions, showstoppers or delays occur. Make sure you do! Send short receipt acknowledgements, deliver status reports or give a perspective on when you’ll follow up.

3. Be the boss in your area. — Your customer gives the order and has the say on goal and conditions, but he isn’t supposed to interfere on your area of expertise. Stand your ground.

4. Lead the conversation. — Never be passive in a conversation. Lead the dialogue, show you’re efficient. Get to the point. Don’t get lost in endless discussions or waste your time in useless chitchat.

5. Summarize what you agreed upon. — Everytime you talked (or emailed) about something, at the end summarize the relevant points and what each will do until when.

6. Acknowledge “good” behaviour. — A customer delivers all information in time and doesn’t question everything? He leaves you especially much freedom? Tell him about your happiness about his behaviour: “Working with you is great: you send everything so quickly and you’re open to my suggestions — thank you!”

7. Always meet deadlines. — Always. Meet them without exception. So make them realistic. If there’s a rare emergency, inform the customer immediately.

So the summary is: Oftentimes, it’s not the customer, it’s you. Drive or be driven.

Jon Ferguson made an insightful list in his blog article

You know you are not leading when…:

• You wait for someone to tell you what to do rather than taking the initiative yourself
• You spend too much time talking about how things should be different
• You blame the context, surroundings, or other people for your current situation
• You choose not to speak the truth in love
• You are more concerned about being cool or accepted than doing the right thing
• You seek consensus, rather than casting vision for a preferable future
• You aren’t taking any significant risks
• You accept status quo as the way it’s always been and always will be
• You start protecting your reputation instead of opening yourself up to opposition
• You sleep a little too sound
• You procrastinate to avoid making a tough call
• You talk to others about the problem rather than taking it to the person responsible
• You don’t feel like your butt is on the line for anything significant
• You think what you say doesn’t matter
• You ask for way too many opinions before taking action

In short: You’re appointed the leader, so act like one. You’ll not be judged on your preparations but on your results.

1. Know your goals and their nature, for your job as well as your private life. (= Define your goals.)
2. Have a map and learn to read it right. (= Have a vision.)
3. Have a compass. (= Have reliable orientation points.)
4. Make sure to start at the right time to avoid time-dependend dangers. (= Have good timing.)
5. Expect the worst and be ready to handle it.
6. Be prepared regarding your shape, food, clothing and equipment. (= Have everything ready you may need.)
7. Know your skills and with how much of the impossible you can cope. (= Know your limits.)
8. If there are problems ahead, you maybe have to resort to teamwork. (= Have a supporting team.)
9. When problems arise, you depend on your equipment. (= Have reliable tools and know how to use them.)
10. You should know when to turn your back on the mountain and postpone summit victory. (Admit defeat in time, try again later.)

Thanks for the great analogy, Rainer!

He recommends:

1. Have a vision for change
2. Fight the fear of change
3. Think like a venture capitalist
4. Have a dynamic suggestion scheme
5. Break the rules
6. Give everyone two jobs
7. Collaborate
8. Welcome failure
9. Build prototypes
10. Be passionate

Many of his tips remind me of the concepts explained in “First, Break All the Rules“, a great leadership book I read recently (and have to review here ASAP). And looking at the fifth point, this doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

Especially the first two points resonate with me at the moment because I’m going to undertake a big change effort myself with my department.

Thanks to Paul for his great summary of important leadership qualities and practices!

I’ve read chapter 1, “Transforming organizations: Why firms fail”, and I’m hooked. Kotter explains what errors are common causes of failing change efforts:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000)
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

Looking at some of the organizational changes I was in some way part of, I can see instances where most or even all eight of those errors were made — with the appropriate results. I want the changes I’m about to undertake to be a better success, so I’m curious what Kotter has in store in the following chapters.

• Never assume that anyone knows anything.
• The larger the group, the more attention needs to be given to communicating.
• When left in the dark, people will fantasize their own reality. Do you want their fantasy to trump your reality?
• Effective leaders are obsessed with accurate, frequent communication.

So you don’t want to actively engage with the yuck. But you should, says Allison O’Neill over on Slow Leadership!

The best leaders constantly seek out the weakest parts of the business so something can be done about them. Yuck isn’t scary and yuck isn’t terrible. It is powerful and wonderful. It is the kind of stuff that once addressed can totally overhaul workplaces, people and profits.

Improvement and innovation comes from people that address the yuck despite all the people admiring the emperor’s new clothes.

That’s what we did today when we talked about how we can provide 24/7 IT services in a team that suffers from a very unhealthy responsibility-to-headcount ratio. To be honest, I was unsure how much the team was willing to productively work towards a solution instead of just venting frustration and anger about missing growth. But we found some very interesting approaches towards meeting the relevant demands. I’m glad that I decided to tackle the topic once and for all and gained hope that we’ll find a solution as a team.

I’ll keep trying not to hesitate to address the yuck in my job. But I wonder if the ’stupidest thing we do around here’ competition Allison talks about wouldn’t take us weeks to decide upon a winner.

I like this Hondy documentary video very much:

To make mistakes isn’t failure. Not to learn from your mistakes is failure.