On being right

‘What we are doing carries substantial risks. I’ve got the data to prove it. I’ve been trying to get the decision makers to see it, but the conversations are going nowhere.’

This was the essence of 3 recent coaching conversations with leaders who have significant influence, but they are not the decision makers. All three had been working hard to prove their point and galvanise a decision or action. It’s not going well for any of them. 

Going in hard seldom works - even if you are right and can prove it. It’s inherently adversarial and tends to get various parties digging in on their perspective. When we try to influence like that, we can argue until well after the cows come home. 

Going in hard forgets:

• There may be other factors I can’t see from my position.

• Other parties may have investment (time, money, resources, ideas) in the way things are. If they feel personally attacked, they are likely to dig in.

• Even if I have the problem right, I may not have the solution right.

• Even if I have both the problem and the solution right, I’ll need others to fix it. I need agreement or at least alignment.

• If the perfect solution gets no buy-in, it’s no solution at all. A partial solution with solid buy-in will beat it hands down. 

• There may be an even bigger problem that is the cause of what I can see.

• What else might be missing?

Instead of going in hard, get curious about what constraints might be present for others. Are there ways to work with them to remove those obstacles? Explore for understanding, not for ‘right’. You’ll likely expand your influence.

Faster than before

Once a team gets clear about what's important, both culturally and transactionally, they can start to build speed. Clarity brings the possibility of mantras… pieces of language that are packed with shared meaning.  

For example Atlassian, a global company founded and headquartered in Australia, has several mantras. One of them is “Be the change you seek”. For them, it means:

• Take initiative rather than seeking/waiting for permission. 

• If there’s a problem, find a way to get involved in the fix.

• If there’s a gap in the market, fill it.

• If the product is not up to standard, change it. 

Smart leaders build mantras with the people around them. Then they find clear examples to reinforce their meaning. Mantras and clarity go hand in hand. Once you have them, you can remind people of what is important and set direction with a few words dense with shared meaning. It takes effort to get to that place, but on the other side of it is speed.

Do you have any mantras? If not, what might they be?

Dig Deeper

The Dig Deeper Podcast is a great resource for leaders who want to create lasting impact. Digby Scott hosts a great conversation, and it was a pleasure to be a guest on the show. You can listen to the episode here.

If you enjoy this conversation, keep an eye out for a joint event Digby and I will be running in Perth next month. We'll be inviting leaders to a session on proactive and impactful leadership in a rapidly changing environment. Event details coming soon - if you'd like to be directly updated, send me an email, and I’ll put you on the list.

Making the Leap

There’s a paradox happening among the Not for Profit organisations I work with. On the one hand, they are dealing with the slimmest operational margins ever. On the other, many are experiencing radical growth. Dealing with the duality of that is challenging.

Some of my clients have grown by more than 3X over a 12 - 24 month period. It’s taken them from less than 50 employees to over 150, which represents a radical transformation and an epic challenge for leaders.

When a whole organisation is less than 50 people, culture, purpose, values and standards are easy to lead. Everyone knows enough about each other and the various parts of the business to feel connected to the core purpose. Culture happens in conversations where significant portions of the staff are present. A meeting between 5 people is 10% of all staff. If 20 people get together it's almost half.

At 150, everything changes. Organisations become more reliant on systems to make it work. People know less about the whole. They know less of their colleagues well. And that meeting of 5 is now around 3% of your staff. Leaders who ‘lead by walking around’ no longer have time to meet and greet everyone. Recruitment is more diversified. People get more focussed on the work they are tasked with and have less visibility of the whole.

If leaders don’t make an intentional shift in how they lead, strong culture erodes due to less connection back to purpose. It’s been a great pleasure to work with organisations making the leap. There are some easy shifts leaders can make to continue building a strong and purposeful organisation. It’s definitely challenging with rapid growth, but it can be done.

Going Potty

A leader was telling me about challenges with their team not producing work to a high enough standard. Everyone's a bit frustrated. This seems to be a trend - expecting great results on the first effort.

There’s a leadership legend passed around about a pottery class where students were given the choice of submitting one perfect piece for assessment, or producing as many pots as they could and submit them all for assessment. The best quality pots came from the quantity group, not the quality group. Turns out this never happened in pots, but it did in a photography class. It was written about in a book called Art and Fear, where there were already too many photography examples, so they changed it to pots. The pottery story has since spread like wildfire, and keeps popping up refreshed. Why? Because the principle makes sense.

For many (maybe most) things, we need reps to get good. This is challenging, especially when there are significant consequences that go with getting something wrong - Pilots, Lawyers, Accountants, Soldiers and Surgeons spring to mind. Note - all these professions create opportunities for practice alongside someone who is already accomplished.

How and where could you/your team benefit from reps? How could you set that up for maximum experience/exposure with minimum risk?

Don’t expect awesome if there’s been no practice.

Ferocious Heart

Some of the high performance environments I have been exposed to burn people at the altar of success. It’s always felt unnecessarily harsh to me - that performance often costs humanity, humility and health. People pushing for a result at the cost and exclusion of all else. Some heavy hitters claim it’s the only way. Musk has achieved more than many and asserts that, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy”. As if care prevents success and progress.

So it’s been great reading Gilbert Enoka’s book “Become Unstoppable”. Gilbert was the mindset coach for the New Zealand All Blacks during their most dominant era. High performance. Highly competitive with people head-to-head on a weekly basis for selection. Ferocious on the field. Unyielding standards. Enoka clearly lays out a recipe for success which has at its heart Care, Belonging and Vulnerability. Not words that immediately spring to mind in elite sport. But essential to building the culture the All Blacks are famous for, on and off the field.

The book is rich with insights that can be applied to many endeavours. And if you happen to be a rugby or sport fan it’s an intimate look into the detail behind one of the most successful teams of all time. Well worth a read.

Can I trust them?

“Can I trust them?” is one of the most asked questions when I am coaching leaders about delegation. When we delegate stuff, often it remains our responsibility - If it doesn’t work out we may be the person who will be held responsible.

In many environments there is a regulatory responsibility too - if something you delegate goes wrong, your ‘licence to operate’ may be on the line. Potentially you’ll face regulatory penalties of some kind. This is true whether you are a board delegating to a CEO, or a frontline nurse manager, delegating to a team of nurses. It applies in many settings and at many levels.

So how can you trust someone to do what you have delegated properly - trust them enough to not be constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure it's OK? Especially if what they are doing is complex and/or complicated.

It takes time. How much time will depend on the person's prior experience, their confidence and their skill. It’s useful to have a system for handing skill sets on (We’ll talk about that next time). It’s also useful to consider what you will need to see from them to be satisfied that they know what they are doing.

Be transparent about how long you will be watching and what you are watching for. Explain the risks/consequences if it goes wrong and the incentives for getting it right. By doing so you are creating an environment where trust can develop and delegation will be successful.

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.

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?

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. 

Do you ever lament the gap?

You know the one... it exists in many  “betweens”:

Decision - Action

Learning - Wisdom

Problem - Solution

Seeking - Answers

Plan - Outcome

People - Team

Idea - Product

Head - Heart - Hands

When I decided to do my solo survival walk, the gap before I could start seemed unreasonable. There was no short cut. There were skills to learn, planning to do and logistics to organise. 

The gap was filled with mundane work less appealing than the challenge. Part of me wanted to rush to the start line.

I was coaching a leader this week who was lamenting the gap between her heart knowing it was time to move on from her role and how long it took for her head and hands to catch up. There was pain in the gap, but also growth and value. 

Our world of instant everything downplays and devalues the gap. The gap is precious. Lean in.

Where are you finding a gap? What value is it creating?

Skippering a Yacht - 5 Lessons from the Water

Last week, I refrained from drawing leadership parallels from my week long yacht skippers course over the summer, but several of you asked me to share them.

• Solo is challenging. While possible, single-handedly managing a yacht requires exceptional preparation and places the entire burden on one person. Fatigue and workload become critical factors, as does the need to oversee every system onboard. There's immense value in having a skilled crew.

• Clarity is Key. Success hinges on a well-defined plan, along with clear communication of roles and expectations. Ambiguity breeds errors which bend boats and people.

• Preparation Prevents Panic. When things happen on a yacht, they need fast, precise and coordinated action, often on several parts of the boat simultaneously. Preparing people and equipment ahead of time reduces pressure in the moment. Checking that the team is ready to go before a manoeuvre is executed makes it more likely to go smoothly.

• Trust Your Team. During critical moments, the skipper's job is to drive the boat smoothly and accurately. Focus on that. Let the crew do their work. Most of the time you are too far away and too occupied to physically help. Often you can’t even see clearly what they are doing. Second guessing their actions or making suggestions rarely helps at that point. Trust the crew and keep communication short, minimal and clear until the pressure has passed.

• Reflect and Improve. Once the action is complete, there's a period of relative calm to tidy up and discuss how things went. Reviewing the action, reflecting on effectiveness and extracting lessons for next time is a great way to build experience and confidence. Ask for feedback too.

These lessons are universally applicable to leadership, regardless of the context. The beauty of learning in a physical environment like a boat is that everything can be seen, cycles are short and there are clear start and end points. For most of our leadership work it's more opaque and ambiguous. The time frames can be epic. That makes it harder. Throughout my mentoring experience, these five themes consistently emerge as pivotal factors in team dynamics, cohesion, and overall effectiveness. Which of them could you work on with your team? How will you do that?