Proper Connection

“If you stack in a single stainless steel nut, the resistance is enough to potentially start a fire.” I was discussing a 12v electrical connection with a knowledgeable friend. When we unpacked it, what he said made sense, but it really isn’t obvious unless you know. It would be a simple and understandable mistake to make. 

It reminded me of two recent situations involving human connection and similar heat. 

“He doesn’t seem to listen, or respect our experience” - Executive Leaders talking about a peer. The ‘evidence’ was he sat looking down with his arms folded. On discussion, it turns out that in his culture of origin ‘looking down, arms folded’ is how you listen with respect. Poor quality connection, unnecessary heat. Burning time, energy and resources in an environment where everyone is already busy.

“Sales, Warehousing and Delivery just will not cooperate” - Classic silos. They all needed each other but were getting in each other's way. Delivery felt sales were overpromising. Warehousing reckons no one allows enough lead time. Again, poor connection with the various people not understanding the strengths and limitations of the other people in the organisation.

It crops up all over the place and it’s costly by any metric you care to examine. If things could be working better, great questions to ask are “what is the quality of the connections and how could they be improved?”

Back and Beyond

This week is a short fictional piece reflecting on a pattern that seems as old as time. What do you long for in the past and dream of in the future? How can you make more of that part of your today?

Back and Beyond (by Mike House, who is considerably older than a digital native)

They called us digital natives. Born into a connected world. Now  old, I gaze on youth around me, and lament. In my day we wrote our own messages. Connected instantly with the world. Did our own research. These kids barely think! Pushed, prodded and prompted by the latest machine. No original ideas. Surely we regress.

Worried, I  join the ancestral line dwelling on better days and better ways. Wish we could go back. Back before touch screens, before mobile, before internet and email. Back before flight, before steam. Back to the days before the wheel, before fire. It was surely better then. Yearning for a past that never truly was, do we sacrifice the future? One foot back, one beyond, never really here. But beyond fire and wheel and all our ingenuity, each lamented generation has found a way to bring something new, seeking ease, solutions and comfort for those they care about.

Maybe this unthinking generation will find yet another evolution.  Maybe this time the doom tellers will be right. I guess they must be some time.

What is High Performance?

I'm reading a great book called “The Fourth Pillar - Modern Stoicism and the Philosophy of High Performance” by Harry Moffitt. Harry is a former special forces soldier and corporate psychologist. He’s worked with all manner of high performance individuals and cultures. He poses a fascinating question - What is high performance?

There are some obvious examples like Serena Williams or Michael Jordan (and their equivalents outside sport). But it gets murky when you consider people who excel in one area of life but are far from exemplary elsewhere (OJ Simpson, Keith Richards were examples he gave). And what of examples that are normally not even considered like the parent who never misses a game or performance involving their kids, or the addict who finds a way out, or the low profile person that delivers the detail on someone else's high profile vision. How about the farmer who slowly restores the salt affected land on his farm, or the Aboriginal Elder holding culture in a particular place, maybe the kid who scored below average but shifted their own personal best by a monumental amount, or the couple who maintain the passion in their relationship.

I agree with his premise - I reckon the things we note as high performance are too narrow. It’s made me think about the people I know and observe in a different light. Some of the examples above are Moffitt’s, the rest are mine. They are all real people.

What does high performance look like to you? What does recognising it do for the ‘performer’ and the observer?

Extreme Rehearsal

Once upon a time I used to run tours into caves. We’d abseil groups into caves via tight vertical holes in the limestone. I don’t believe in monsters, but if I did, those holes are where they would live. We’d explore underground before climbing back out.

The activity was low risk if well managed, but also very unforgiving of mistakes or accidents. We would rehearse rescue scenarios in extreme. The logic was if we could train for almost inconceivable rescue scenarios, then anything we actually encountered would be comparatively easy. It also meant people understood their equipment really well, and could adapt its use under pressure.

We never had to deploy those skills for real, but the practice was worthwhile all the same, even if it just made us very conscious of the challenging environment we were in.

I recently watched an Australian Story’s account of a dramatic rescue on the Franklin river in Tassie. It highlights some of the challenges rescue teams can face, and just how extreme the situation can become.

The rehearsals we did were the practical outworking of forecasting - taking the scenarios we could envisage and then working out how we would actually respond. It’s not as easy to do in a less tangible environment, however the practice is still good.

Whether it's a desktop exercise, a brainstorming session, or a physical rehearsal of some kind - like the annual fire drill, it’s well worth doing. How could you consider and practice for the extremes you might encounter in business or life?

Two forecasting fails

Fail One

Only envisaging one potential outcome. As a realist with an optimistic bias, I catch myself with this one more often than I would like. I only picture the successful outcome. The positivity sometimes serves me well, but it also makes for a bigger/slower adjustment if things don't go as anticipated. ‘Foreseeing’ only a good outcome can be like “she’ll be right” - it works well if it goes well. A better version is to forecast 3 versions. Ideal, Worst Case, Something in between. Considering each version gives a more robust ‘Plan A’ that will handle a broader range of possibilities.

Fail Two

Over-thinking it. Some people go down a rabbit hole of trying to envisage every possible outcome. The endless “what if” leads to second guessing your chosen path of action. There's lots of research highlighting the many negative aspects of too many options - over forecasting has the same effect. Forecasting is about considering what might be possible or at risk. It’s not about trying to accurately catalogue all eventualities.

Bonus Fail

Freaking ourselves out. Some leaders ask me what the most dire forecast is that we should consider. I reckon it depends on what you can handle as an individual or a team. If you can discuss a really dire, worst case scenario, and treat it as just a thought experiment, that’s useful. But if going there will cause sleepless nights and endless tilting at windmills (origins) (epic sounds), don’t go. That’s exactly the opposite of what the exercise intends. Go as far down the rabbit hole as is useful, but don’t get stuck down there with an overdue rabbit.

Fear of Forecasting?

Breakfast. A leader I admire. Deep conversation about the state of the world. Great way to start the day. The best leaders I know are unafraid to forecast. They are not trying to predict the future, instead thinking about various possibilities and how they might respond in the face of them. Last week, one such conversation turned to how Western Australia has been relatively immune to several large global crises.

GFC - Mining economy shielded us

COVID - distance and sparse population shielded us

Energy Crisis - Abundant natural resources shielded us

Each of these, and other crises have had an impact here, but not like elsewhere. Sometimes we seem to think we are a bit bombproof. The conversation over breakfast explored a number of current global and local factors that could impact us in bigger ways.

Solid leaders play out many eventualities. Not as a glass half empty. Not as fear mongering. As a way of being prepared for more than one possibility.

Forecasts are rarely 100% (just watch the weather) but that’s not the point. Pre-thinking about many possibilities makes it more likely you’ll handle the ones that arise.

Same Risk - Softer Landing

Lily Rice is inspiring and disruptive. She actively defies boundaries. Women in wheelchairs are not expected to be at the skate ramp nailing backflips. But that’s where Lily can be found.

Image copyright Spencer Murphy, sourced at .redbull.com

The risks that extreme athletes take are obvious - a slip or miscalculation can easily break bones or steal life. So how the heck do you practice for something that risky? Hard surface practice would make for a very short career.

Lily nailed her first backflip after a 6 hour session flipping into a foam pit. It’s the tool of choice for extreme athletes pushing extreme boundaries. The risk of stuffing the flip up is exactly the same, but the landing is safe enough to practice over and over again, until the skill is polished enough to stick it on a concrete ramp.

There’s something we can learn from the foam pit. Athletes like Lily are practising the actual skill they need. It’s not modified. It’s not a simulation. It's a well thought out progression of skill - the real deal without the bone busting crash.

When we are practicing something new, especially if it is high consequence, it’s worth finding a foam pit equivalent.

How did it go?

We sat around a small intimate campfire deep in the desert. The end of another long day of challenging driving and epic scenery. We shared food and talked while a billion stars broke out in the growing darkness - the air so clear it felt the stars were pressing down on us as the last of the sunset faded to inky blue black. 

As we had done every day on this extended journey, we asked each other “How did today go compared to your expectations?” and then we listened to each other. Some longed for more time out of the car and exploring on foot. Others were keen to pause for longer when there was a view. Each day we refined and modified what we were doing to bring our reality closer to what people had pictured before we left. 

Those expectations we have of each other, of the experience and environment seem so obvious and tangible to us - so much so that it seems reasonable to expect that everyone around us shares them. Because they are ‘obvious’ it’s easy to charge forward and then wonder why there’s a mismatch or simmering tension. 

I’ve do the same thing with teams working purposefully on something together. “How did today go compared to your expectations? How could we do better?”. It doesn’t take long. People feel seen, heard, engaged. Shared understanding and increased effectiveness blooms. That means more progress, better decisions, less frustration and do overs. 

Because our expectations seem obvious we sometimes forget to make them visible until things are not working well. Sometimes that's far too late.

When and where would a shared conversation about expectations be useful to you?

It Should Be Obvious!

We discussed what needed to be done and then left the meeting. Our fruitful conversation had reached a detailed and shared understanding of what needed to happen next. We agreed to meet in a week and discuss progress, then parted ways to get to work. A week later, we had both been working from a very different understanding of what we ‘agreed’. How had that happened? Frustratingly, we both had some ‘do over’ to sort it out, and a need to revisit our conversion from a week ago.

As we got into it, we both had some expectations of each other and the work we were doing which had not been well articulated. They seemed obvious! So we’d agreed fervently with each other, without really understanding what we were agreeing to.

When we revisited the conversation, we explored the apparently ‘obvious’ parts in much more detail and reached a better understanding to work from. That was positive, but we could have saved ourselves some time and frustration by exploring our expectations and assumptions in more detail to begin with. The challenge is, that often feels too slow.

Lots of the work I do with leaders is helping them articulate things that ‘should be obvious’ and/or sorting the challenges when progress doesn’t match unspoken expectations.

In a world drowning in information, one of the greatest things a leader can give their team is clarity and the environment to seek it.

No Match!

My legs burned as I slogged through the dusty, energy-sucking sand. All we had seen for hours were the straight depressing rows of plantation pine. Monotonous and hard! It’s never an appealing combination.

The problem was not the walk itself, it was a mismatch between expectations and reality. My friend had told me it was mostly single lane walking through unspoilt banksia forest with magnificent sweeping views. There were short sections that matched his description and then more grinding through plantations.

Expectations are the thief of joy. I’ve heard the statement attributed to Theodore Roosevelt or Buddhism. Whoever said it, it has a ring of truth. When we expect something different from reality, the mismatch causes disappointment. The problem is, our expectations are often not even clear to us. We experience disappointment, but usually take aim at the situation we are in, not the expectations we hold. And it shows up in traffic, in teams, in delegation, in customer service, in relationships. Kinda everywhere!

We could guard against disappointment by never having expectations. But there’s a human superpower in expectations.

George Bernard Shaw said “The reasonable person adapts themselves to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person.”

When have you been disappointed by expectation?

Cascading Priorities

Clinging to an overturned boat, surrounded by sharks, drifting along a remote piece of coast with 60 minutes to sunset. The timing was fortuitous. If we weren't at that spot and at that time, there's a high probability that the 3 people clinging to the boat would have perished overnight. The only reason we heard their broken mayday call was the radio antenna at the top of our yacht's mast gave better range and clarity. Several other boats nearby could not hear them at all. 

We were not able to rescue them directly, our boat was too slow and constrained by depth. For the next hour we relayed messages between the vessel in distress, rescue services and other boats. In the end it was a successful outcome with all 3 picked up safely. 

But we almost added ourselves to the problem. While I was distracted on the radio, I stopped relaying navigation info to my crew. They took a wrong turn into one of two channels available. Only one was deep and wide enough for our yacht to safely pass. Fortunately we sorted it out before we ran out of room to manoeuvre. 

There's a clear set of priorities in such a situation. 

1. Control the boat

2. Know where you are (navigate)

3. Communicate

They are in that order for a reason. Emergency communications are useless, if while making them you lose control or get lost. Both make the problem worse. I had put communication at the top of the list for a while and it almost led us into danger.

The priorities are there to aid decision making when there's a high workload and high consequence. If you follow them you remain aware of the full picture rather than getting fixated on one part.

The best leaders are able to describe a clear set of priorities for their team regardless of the context. Ideally, they’ll ensure people stay focussed on what's important regardless of circumstances. It's a great way to increase capacity under pressure.

What are your highest priorities? Is there a logical order? What's at risk if you lose sight of them?

Grumpy Coffee

“You come in 3 to 5 minutes late to every meeting. You bring a fresh coffee. You sit down without saying a word to anyone. What message do you think that sends?”

A talented leader, new to a team that had been neglected and poorly led for years was having significant challenges with one of her senior staff. He didn’t seem to be on side, but also wasn’t contributing to decisions and discussions. The new leader has injected a bunch of care and support into the team, but she’s also brought a much higher standard of accountability. It’s better and it’s confronting.

When the new leader started the conversation above (in private) the initial reaction was defensive. But after a while it got around to exploring the impact of the senior staff's seemingly inconsequential actions. Ultimately, they explored shared responsibility for creating a more cohesive and effective environment for the team.

Notice how specific her feedback is. 100% clarity. What’s less evident in print is how the question was asked. It was asked in a genuinely curious way - no accusation, no blame. 

Since then, she's backed it up with several observations about changed behaviour and positive team impact that the other leader is now having. He’d never thought about his role in that way before. That short conversation has a massive, enduring, positive impact. I’m imagining he’s enjoying his work more, and his team will certainly be enjoying his presence more.

Better feedback makes better teams. How could you improve your ability to ask for and give great feedback? 

Time - A False Economy

“Thanks for the Crafting Space article. Our workplace is so busy we dont have time to craft space.” 

“Your message was too late. I didn't craft space and it ended horribly. It's hard to find the time to do it well”

I got several messages like this after last week's blog.  It clearly hit a spot. They are right - Crafting Space takes time. And time is tight. Life is so jam packed, that we get fixated on the next action and it's hard to look ahead.

But how much time does it take to fix it when it goes wrong? 

Often when I'm coaching leaders, around 20% of their time is spent reacting to situations that could easily have been avoided with a little more upfront thinking and effort combined with more timely action. For around 5% more time invested up front, they get that 20% back. Net 15% gain. Investing the time up front is worth it.

The challenge is working out where those gains can be made. Sometimes we are too close to our own workload to see it clearly.

Crafting Space

Facilitation and feedback both share an important ingredient - the 'space' in which they happen. In my experience, the space is a precursor to quality moments where the right conversations can emerge. In these spaces, cohesion and results flourish. String enough moments together and culture propagates and flourishes.

Each time we create space some of its conditions preexist from spaces past, allowing more direct paths to where we want to be.

As leaders, we can be forgiven for thinking we need to focus solely on content ‐ What needs to be said, to who and for what outcome. If we neglect the space, content falls like seeds on concrete.

When we try to give feedback (especially if it’s corrective) it’s much more likely to ‘land’ in a well intentioned space. It’s a natural human response to feel confronted by feedback. For many, that is compounded by a string of past negative experiences of feedback. Craft a good space, get better results - it’s not just about what you say.

What are the feedback spaces like in your work place? How effective are they? Do people relish feedback and actively seek it? What could you change?

Flip the Risk

What do you do when faced with a big decision? Do you consider the risks? How does perceived risk factor into deciding for or against?

During the past week I've worked with people contemplating large and small decisions. Some are strategic, some opportunistic, others reactive. Risk has been a core part of every conversation. Many of us seem to be pretty good at considering what could go wrong and reasons not to act. Sometimes that holds us back from deciding yes to something worthwhile.

Flipping risk is a useful way to level up the thinking. Asking ‘what's at risk if we don't?’ immediately shifts your thinking to the potential downside if you pass something up. This week, flipping risk has led to a company more assertively owning its space, a difficult but necessary HR decision, a bold adventure, creation of a new entity to explore a bold collaboration, a challenging but wise personal decision. In each case, the decision would have been ‘No’ before flipping the risk.

Flipping risk won't change every decision, but it will help you see it more clearly. There are a lot of great opportunities just waiting for a different perspective. What's at risk if you let them pass you by?

Bringing your best self

Bringing your 'best self' to situations is not always easy. When I'm tired, wired or uninspired, my best self sometimes takes a hike. But practice under pressure improves our ability to show up well

I was recently on The Real Biz Life Chronicles  podcast with Tracy Fryer. This is what she said about our conversation, “How do you become your best self in a world that won’t stop shifting?

Mike House has spent over two decades pushing high-powered leaders beyond their perceived limits, guiding them through discomfort, uncertainty, and pressure until they reach the most elevated version of themselves.

His secret? Teaching people to face hardship with a clear mind and to find the silver lining in any situation, not by accident, but by design.

This episode teaches you how to lead through the chaos with clarity.”

Watch full episode on You Tube

Or listen on Spotify

Low Tech Large Language Models (LLM’s)

Image Credit: WIll MCTighe

The working world is abuzz at the moment with discussion about LLM’s like ChatGPT. What are they good for? How should we use them? What about job security? Etc.

Long before LLM’s became high tech, they were low tech. Low tech but immensely powerful. And they are still at our disposal.

In simple terms, an LLM is a computer program that has been fed enough examples to be able to recognize and interpret human language or other types of complex data.

The low tech version is culture. Culture is built via language, images and symbology. Now more than ever, what we say and how we say it has a direct impact on our experience together. The reference from Will McTighe has great examples of why to choose some words over others.

The low tech LLM of a work culture is just this - what we say to each other. It sets the tone for future interactions and allows people to make decisions and form responses in new situations. What Will doesn't mention is that how we say it is just as important. The green ticked words are great choices, but if they are not backed with genuine intent to listen they’ll be less than useless. The combination of actual words, plus intent creates the message.

What does your cultural LLM look and feel like? What are you doing as a leader to enhance it?

Trust - Stopping Erosion

I love visiting gorges. The carvings made by water, etched into the landscape over millions of years, are breathtaking. Water doesn’t seem significant enough to work its way through hundreds of metres of solid rock, but over time it has its way. Observing a given moment, the erosion is imperceptible. Once you understand the mechanism, it’s obvious.

There’s a similar pattern with trust in workplaces. Like water, there are forces that erode trust. Viewed in a moment, they seem insignificant. Over time they wear trust down. They multiply and the erosion gets deeper and harder to fix.

Here are three and what to do about them:

1. Open loops. When people make suggestions, ask about progress or for a decision, they often don’t hear anything back. Even if they ask many times, there's still no reply. It doesn’t mean nothing is happening. I talk to many busy leaders who are working hard, with good intent to make stuff happen. But in the busyness, it’s easy to forget to update people. It erodes trust, because it seems like there's neither care nor action. Close those loops.

2. Talking behind people’s backs. Even if we don’t consciously notice it, someone bad-mouths someone else, we wonder what they are saying about us when we are not around. We become more guarded. Address issues early and often.

3. Agreement without agreement. In a meeting everyone agrees, but then agreement is undermined in practice. Have robust conversations to reach agreement, and then back the agreement. Sometimes this means living with something that is different from the choice I personally would have made. That's OK.

In places where there are already deep gorges worn into the landscape of trust, it takes time and intentional effort to rebuild. It is possible, and can be surprisingly rapid if there’s willingness to do the work.

What does the trust landscape look like where you work? Is it effective or ineffective?

Making the Shift

A few people asked how to make the shift from a policing mentality to a mentoring one. One of the main reasons people have for ‘policing’ something is that they care about the outcome. We have different reasons for caring. Some of us care because we are deeply passionate about the work. Others because it’s part of a bigger vision. Perhaps for work ethic, or a future dream. There are as many motivations as there are people.

To shift from policing to mentoring, you’ve got to find out why others care, and make that connection stronger. If they don’t care, help them discover why that works for them. 

Ripping a new one!

How do you respond when someone acts like they are policing the workplace? They pull people up using policy, procedure or previous communication and let them know why and how what they are doing is wrong. More often than not, the response is defensive, aggressive or dismissive. I know that’s how I respond. How about you?

But I’ve been on both sides of that coin. As a leader, we are often accountable for significant regulatory and compliance issues in our area. Sometimes, the consequence of getting that stuff wrong is career or organisation damaging (And possibly ending). Lack of knowledge, or attention to detail from other members of a team adds risk and stress to the leader's shoulders.

A heavy handed policing approach rarely gets people on the same page - we humans avoid that stuff like the plague. Most of us get a heart rate spike if we see a police car on the road, even if we are doing nothing wrong. It's the same in the work place. 

Leading that way causes push back, excuses, blame, and clumsy work arounds. They make you feel as if more policing is needed, which causes more defensive reactions - and around it goes. 

A better approach is to act like a teacher or mentor. Help people discover and understand why those pieces of compliance are so important. Even better if you can help them see a connection to their own work priorities. Share your knowledge and experience. 

Where do you act like police at work? How could you change that this week?