Speaking of Leadership
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Dec
22
Regaining the Lightness of Leadership
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Friends,
This weekend we were in need of a little flight of fancy, so Jen and the girls and I went to see Jim Carrey in Yes Man. It wholly fulfilled our needs.
I wouldn’t make too much of a movie that lampoons the power of positive thought, but one thing I took away.
Creative leadership flows from a lightness of being.
I’ve seen such lightness at Google and at Quicken. I’ve seen imagination and chance-taking at – of all places, hospitals. I’ve seen an enlivening flairfulness in some moves of Pistons President Joe Dumars. Even though Joe can be serious as a heart attack, he’s out there looking and leaping (and even laughing a little about the leap off the cliff called Darko Milicic).
By this time of this year – with the pounding that so many have taken – even before the minus -10 degree wind chills blew in – the whole thing could get you tired, worn out, ossified, calcified, oxidized, rigidified, concretized, and otherwise heavy, slow, dark and cautious.
So my hope for you and me as we head into this break is that we come back lighter in our step, our outlook, and demeanor. Give freely. Breathe deeply. Laugh heartily. Jews lit the first light of Chanukah yesterday. Today the nights begin getting shorter. Christians welcome a new life and light. Let in the light. Get light.
And come back ready to lead
With your best self,
Dec
15
Can We Learn From the Big 3?
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Friends,
If you have heard me speak, or read my book (a great, well, a different Christmas gift for your favorite leader), you know that I believe that without vision and communication leadership is doomed. Boy have we seen that in the ongoing struggles of the Big 3 in Washington! What congressmen, journalists, and others have uttered as “obvious” and “well known,” and “everybody knows” about the Big 3’s weaknesses have often times been remarkably false.* “Gas-guzzling, shoddy cars that no one wants.”
Here’s the factual record from the past year:
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Consumers Report put Ford at the top of their list for the number of “top safety picks” – with sixteen models. Toyota and GM had eight. |
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JD Powers’ 2008 “survey of initial quality” ranked Porsche as the only 5-star. At 4-stars, Mercury was tied with Mercedes, Infiniti, Lexus, and Toyota. Next behind: Ford, Chevy, Pontiac, Lincoln all tied with Acura and Honda. What were the top 3 quality cars? Chevy Malibu, Mitsubishi Galant, and Ford Fusion. Is there really a huge quality gap? |
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The # 1 selling vehicle in America? Despite the truism that American automakers “don’t make products that consumers want,” The Ford F-150 remains the best-selling vehicle not just in America but in the world. |
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Motor Trend’s Car of the Year? Cadillac CTS. |
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While Toyota has 8 cars that average 30 mpg or more, Chevy has 7. The 2009 Malibu Hybrid gets nearly 40 MPG. While GM, Ford, Honda, and Toyota ALL introduced hybrids in California in the late ‘90s, it wasn’t just GM’s EV1 that was taken out of production: They all failed commercially and were retired. “What consumers want” – which congressmen and coastal journalists speak of as though it is as obvious as the faces on Mount Rushmore – remains mightily hard to name with any precise foresight. |
So, here’s the point: Perhaps the greatest failing of – and greatest challenge for – domestic automakers is their inability to articulate clear, factual and relevant messages. No wonder they’re in the trouble they’re in when people are still thinking they are building the cars of the 80s. Of course there’s plenty of room for improvement, but there is clearly a monster gap between perceptions and realities.
And, here’s the message for us “everyday leaders”: How do WE get our messages out in what someone called a “culture of permanent attention deficit disorder?” (my own ADD prevents me from quoting that person by name). For instance, what’s the central message you were trying to communicate to your kids and staff this year? What is the core message going forward? Can you say the central facts about your organization’s identity (e.g., the Michigan government is about excellence, integrity, teamwork, and inclusion)? Can you put it on a matchbook? Do you have a core message for your children or grandchildren about the value and meaning of these holidays? Or could they miss the point and miss the facts, just as the vast majority of this country has done when it comes to the last 15 years perceiving the domestic car business?
With all the noise out there, think: post-it, note card, matchbook. Keep it simple, repeat it a lot, and
Lead with your best self,
Dan
Dec
8
Friends,
As the New Year approaches, so does opportunity. It might be hard to see amidst the layoffs and foreclosures. Maybe you read as I did that newspapers are laying people off in big numbers. After criticizing so many others for not facing change, it seems the newspapers haven’t done so well with it either.
I was talking to an exec who recently took a buyout and I asked him, “Knowing what you know now, what do you think your paper should have done fifteen years ago?” He said, “R & D.” He said that putting out a new product – which is what a paper is – every 24 hours makes it very hard to look outside the immediate demands of the business. He said they would spend six months redesigning a section of the paper, but almost no comparable energy thinking about the new information technology. What a missed opportunity! Look what they had: Smart people; great writers, who had loyal followers; the ability to freely advertise and drive traffic to electronic sites; advertisers aplenty; yet they were stuck in their identity: we are newsPAPERS, after all. In internal conversations they frequently saw the internet as a threat to them instead of as an enormous opportunity, and now they’re desperately scrambling to catch up.
What if they had steered right into what they had long recognized as a threat? What if they set aside brainpower, time, and money to seize OPPORTUNITY outside their paper world? Imagine where they might be, if they had looked for what are sometimes called “disruptive technologies” – ideas or products that don’t fit the core business strategy but have real promise in another domain.
If you want to be an everyday leader: adopt the mindset that there ARE always opportunities. Yes things are tough now. But you can buy things – stocks (I bought 100 shares of Ford for my kids – and out of love for the company and my state – for $160 dollars last week); cars, inventory, brainpower, real estate are all at prices you could not have imagined even six months ago. I hear you say, “Mulhern, have you heard there’s a recession out there? Duh! Nice that you have money.” Well, if your brain went to that as quickly as I suspect it did, then you’re doing the natural, but not so helpful thing, of focusing on scarcity and not on opportunity and abundance. In every ebb and flow there is opportunity.
Consider these:
- The hearings in DC created an opportunity for the Big 3 to begin to get at the incredibly wrong-headed myths that so many Americans have about their vehicles.
- Opportunities exist that flow from our changing demographics, e.g., serving aging populations.
- There are new technologies every day that open whole new possibilities (for example, are you hating LinkedIn messages, or setting aside some time to understand what LinkedIn could do for you?).
- Via the internet, you can sell stuff to people around the world, e.g., through eBay or in your own backyard, through Craig’s list or those local papers.
- Even an adult child moving back in out of economic necessity creates opportunities: for family relationships, shared work burdens, the synergy that comes with diversity.
- Even our tight holiday budgets give us opportunities: to set priorities, to appreciate the priceless things at the heart of the holidays, or to turn our office holiday parties into parties of thanks, with donations to those in need. Tough times tighten human bonds.
As you look ahead, fight the doom and gloom, and seek for opportunities that lead to economic, social, and spiritual growth. Especially in seemingly terrible times . . .
Lead with your best self,
Dan
Dec
1
Friends,
About an hour before writing this on Sunday night, I had one of those parent – although it could have been boss – moments. Jennifer, Jack and I were driving back from Detroit and the weather was Michigan at its worst – a wet snow and dropping temperatures. The usual 70 minute ride took three hours, as we forsook the parking-lot-expressway for slow and slushy surface roads. My 18-year old daughter and a friend were planning to drive my 19-year daughter the seventy miles back to college – over the same freezing freeway Jen and I were avoiding. I texted, texted and called: “Are you sure you don’t want to wait ‘til I get home and let me drive?” I considered turning my query into a managerial command: “I am driving.” Instead, I deferred. They drove.
So, when do you assert control? When do you retain the decision and power, especially if things are complex, and they may not have your experience? When do you allow the chance of a mistake – that may cost you, the business, or even your own family’s well-being? As every parent knows, and as too many bosses forget: there is no right answer, no easily applicable rule to be applied to an infinite number of fact situations. That’s a little scary. It’s a little scary that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen is making a lot of these solutions up, experimenting with a situation no one’s ever seen before. More accurately, the President has delegated this policy to him (for which some feel relieved), and Paulsen in turn is undoubtedly seeking and following the advice of others who think he should try this or that. How much rope does he give them? Such questions of how to deal with complexity, and whether to let the Gen-Xers or Gen-Yers handle it, abound these days in the workplace. It’s a little scary to let those “kids” have the keys.
On a serious matter like this, I turn to Saturday Night Live for great wisdom that’s buried beneath a spoof about the “expert.” You’ll find it here, and you can slide the bar over to 2:00 minutes remaining if you only have 2 minutes. (I’d encourage you to do that now, and then come back for the exciting conclusion to this week’s RFL.) The SNL spoof is funny but like most humor it’s funny because of the underlying truth: In times of crisis, people desperately look to their managers – whether they are big or small, whether parental or presidential –to FIX IT. But in times like these – especially in times like these where the problems are huge and complex – we need everybody to fix some things.
I am trying to raise kids who can handle tough situations and complexity. I gave them advice: “DRIVE SLOWLY,” as persuasively as I could. But I want them out in that world, taking it on, making decisions, making mistakes sometimes (I hope not tonight!), and learning. And I want them knowing these things: I trust they can handle it, I’ll offer advice and I’ll be there for them. I might have made a mistake tonight. But there’s too many things in this world before them, where someone is going to holler at them “FIX IT,” and I hope that they are ready to fix it. Perhaps more importantly, I want them at those moments to have the confidence to give the work back to those who need to do it with them – offering them advice, support, and confidence.
You’ll never be sure you’re right, but sometimes you gotta let go to
Lead with your best self,
Dan
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