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"Learning faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage in an environment of rapid change."
Arie deGues

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Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 210

Estimated reading time:  1:15 minutes

 

Good morning from a sunny Toronto where I am working with co-op and credit union leaders thinking about the future of the economy. I was reminded today of an interesting piece of etymology. The words ecology and economy are linked through the Greek. Both are rooted in the idea of household, the centre of Greek social structures. (Even their gods had a home on Mount Olympus). The word Oiko means household, and that is the root of “eco.” Nomia means management, and so the word economy is in this way about the management of the household. What is interesting is that the word Logos, means “thinking about” or l”earning about.” Ecology is then when we are thinking about or learning about the household.

 

I submit that as important as managing the household is, there is a vital earlier step and that is thinking about the household. Whatever your household, be that your department, your company, your social enterprise, your country, or the planet; it is vital that you think about it as a whole before you try to manage it.

 

 

I wonder what you think?

 

Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 343

Estimated reading time:  2:15 minutes

 

Greetings from a rainy Edmonton where I am working with the Alberta credit union system’s emerging leaders. Smart, curious and committed is how I would describe this group of young executives.

 

And I am learning as much from them as they might be learning from me. One moment today stood out as we were exploring ideas for the future. One of the group noted that they looked forward to the day when AI and big data would allow him to build relationships with his members, and not simply serve them. Another emerging leader spoke up, saying too much of her staff’s time is spent doing data entry, rather than building relationships. ‘What’, another suggested, ‘would it look like to have all of the member’s info stored already so that a retinal scan prompted gave all that information to the staff person right away.’

 

I love the way these emerging leaders are thinking. My inference is not that tech is replacing jobs, or turning member or customer experience into line-ups are automated checkouts. Rather, they are seeing the amazing possibility of real relationships between a credit union and its members, moving beyond “service” and towards relationship with individuals. Bringing the private banker experience reserved for the wealthy to the middle class. 

 

And yes, there are some creepy privacy issues that need to be addressed; retinal scans may not be the correct answer. And, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is clearly not working. It is one of the reasons I love working with emerging leaders; given an opportunity to challenge and provoke their own and other’s thinking they can identify fascinating ideas.

 

 

My invitation to you, from what ever industry or workplace you have responsibility in, what are you doing to create space for new ideas, from your own emerging leaders? What’s just one more idea to create more space for such conversations and ideas?

 

Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 231

Estimated reading time:  1:40 minutes

 

Hello from Oakville, where I am again working with a great team and a cool group of learners.

 

Early in the week, I was thinking about criticism. I wonder if there is a continuum of criticism that runs from one end that is nothing but complaining and projecting to the other end that is about hope and development.  I wonder if we default towards the complaining and projecting because that is so much easier for us, and it is where great drama and entertainment comes. Movies and books would be pretty boring if all people did was criticize in a supportive way. Instead of saying, “how dare you say that to me” protagonists would be saying, “hmmm, thank you I had not considered that.” Pretty low box office returns if that is the focus of the script!

 

But in real life, when we consciously choose to provide (when invited) criticism that is based on hope and development, we can make a real difference. And when we choose to take criticism from a place of hope and development, we can make a real difference for ourselves.

 

It comes down to choice for you and I. Do we want to make drama or do we want to make a difference?

Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 444

Estimated reading time:  3:00 minutes

 

I’ve been wondering how to respond to violence without resorting to violence. There are big issues of racism, misogyny  and homophobia, and swastikas appearing on our screens. And related, but not getting the same airtime recently is violence and bullying at work. How are we to behave in the face of employees and colleagues who are resorting to psychological violence,  if not physical violence. Our defaults can be fight (reacting with similar or increased levels), flight (walking away, making excuses for the other person’s behaviour), freeze (silence or pretending it doesn’t exist) or flock, (talking in small groups about the person’s behaviour). 

 

None of these will make a difference in the long term, and usually result in an ever increasing cycle of violence, or tacit complicity with the bully’s behaviour.

 

What is required is response, not a reaction.

 

And that is the key, in the end a culture of bullying thrives in the midst of reactions. It can be mitigated if not eliminated when leaders and colleagues work to respond to each other. And responses are all about you.  You are the only one who can make such choice for you. Nor can you make such a choice for anyone else. 

 

Here are three ways you can increase your own ability to respond, not react when it comes to bullying in your organization.

 

  1. Be a team player and collaborator yourself — model the behaviours you want to see in others.
  2. Always acknowledge and praise teamwork and collaboration, no person has ever achieved any kind of success on their own, they are always dependant on someone else.
  3. Work on your own self-awareness about triggers that make you angry, work on your own stuff to be better prepared when those triggers happen for you.
  1. One of the most effective ways of managing your triggers is an “If - Then Plan”. Once you identify the trigger, for example, ‘I get frustrated when I feel that someone cuts me off in a meeting.’ I can think about specifically how I might respond and that becomes my “then” plan. It looks like: “If someone cuts me off in a meeting, then, I will take three deep breaths and raise my hand until recognized by the chair of the meeting.” Note, my “If Then” plan is for me, it is not normative. First identify the trigger, second, what will you do when that happens. Tray and be as specific as possible. 

 

 

May we all live and work in places where we are all that much more self-aware.

Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 190

Estimated reading time:  1:30 minutes

 

Hello from Toronto where I am co-leading a 3 day leadership development workshop with a client. My co-facilitator and I came up with a new word I’d like to share with you today.

 

Aknowying 

 

It refers to someone who thinks s/he knows it all and is sharing that knowledge in a way that becomes annoying to the team. Here it is used in a sentence:

 

He was so sure of himself, he was aknowying.  

 

I’d like to suggest that leaders do not want to be seen to be aknowying.  It takes a certain level of humility and curiosity about other people to be a great leader. It takes a willingness to learn, and to be seen to be learning, to be a great leader. Our work in the current Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) times is about growing together, not knowing more than each other.

 

 

And so may each day this week be about learning, not knowing, and certainly not about being ‘aknowying’.

 

Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 374

Estimated reading time:  2:30 minutes

 

Hello from the Sunshine Coast of BC. There is a chill in the morning and evening air these days, and yes, I saw a leaf fall to the ground on my morning walk! 

 

There is an old Stephen King story called The Langoliers about creatures that eat the past, and are catching up to the present. In the TV miniseries of the same name, the sound crew created a most amazing sound that was somewhere between a crunch, a gnaw and a buzz to identify the rarely seen Langoliers. 

 

That sound has been the sound of the approaching busyness of Fall for me ever since. I’ve been doing my best here in Gibsons to find time for relaxation and rest (with varying degrees of success each day), as I work on preparing for the Fall’s schedule. I’ve been working with three principles to help me plan for the coming months, and I wonder if they might resonate with you.

 

  1. No one will die if I say “no”, or “not yet”. People might be frustrated or even angry that I am not able to respond to them as promptly as they’d like, but I have control only over my feelings, not theirs.
  2. My friend and colleague Peter Elliott has coined the phrase, “The Sacrament of First Commitmenthttps://thecathedral.ca/reflection-dean-peter-elliott-13/  He notes that if a commitment is in his calendar, then he will do all he can to keep that commitment, even if something more interesting or entertaining comes up. I have tried to live into that, even saying no to a more lucrative gig, because I had made a commitment to another client a month before.
  3. Sabbath time is vital; I need to build time in for re-creation (to use Stephen Covey’s emphasis on the syllables). It might be popcorn and TV show, reading an LR Wright murder mystery, or walking on the beach. Those times are as important as the gigs, because the re-juvinate, re-engage and re-fresh me.

 

 

I wonder what principles you use to prepare and live into busy times?