Green To Great

The cover story of the March issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) is Provoke Your Customers, by Lay, Hewlin and Moore.  For anyone who is wondering how to create customer value and stand out among your competition with customers in this down economy, it is worth a read for two reasons.

First, it delineates the difference between solution selling and “provoking” your clients into a whole new way of thinking about their business.  It talks about a strategy of helping clients put a name to a problem they already feel, but can’t quite articulate yet.  Provocation selling pushes the salesperson to first step much more deeply into the shoes of the customer – to strategically reflect on the road the customer is travelling, the mountains and sink holes ahead of him/her, and how an out-of-the-box solution could jump him/her ahead of the competition.  This approach is very different than assuming your customer has the same old issues/needs.  If your only approach is solution selling, then your only option in this economy is to push your product or service harder.  Which may not endear you to customers who are struggling, just like you, to do more with less.

The second reason I recommend this article is that it is a good reminder to leaders (who must sell their vision, priorities and solutions to their teams and other internal and external customers, every day) to remember to promote perspective shifting skills/activities on a regular basis.  Especially when the pressure in on and fear is running rampant, people tend to default to what worked in the past and what they believe to still be true.  As opposed to cultivating individual mindsets and organizational cultures that look at customers/the marketplace with new eyes and apply creative thinking find innovative solutions.

So here it is — my new blog on stress management, work/life balance and peak performance! A few postings and resources are up already, with more on the way. The topics I'll be covering will include both the latest/greatest and the tried & true in all three areas.

The way I think about on each topic (and how I teach these topics in my training programs), is that each area builds on the one below. Stress management is the base of the performance pyramid – your minimum investment in order to perform your job and live your life at an acceptable level. The next level is work/life balance, where you find a more fulfilling and productive rhythm in your life between time-on and time-off the clock. And at the peak of the performance pyramid is concept and practice of flow – finding "the zone" where what you are doing (including work) is effortless and compelling, and your creativity is fully unleashed, yet directed toward a goal or problem you deeply care about.

So why the name Making Whitespace? Come check out the new blog over the next few weeks and find out: http://www.makingwhitespace.com/.

One of the most important things I've learned in my now twenty years in the field of leadership development (I started when I was ten years old, by the way) is this: leadership success comes from a combination of competency and capacity.

While we can split a lot of hairs over what constitutes a competency vs. a capacity, for simplicity's sake, try this on. Competencies are the technical and leadership skills exercised by a leader to get the job done. Capacities are the resources (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) a leader calls upon to get the job done well, at any given moment and over time.

Despite well-intentioned efforts by corporate human resources to provide strategic, systematic leadership development programs, I've come to believe that the net result has been an over-focus on teaching leaders new competencies and under-focus on helping leaders better resource themselves (expand their capacities) to deliver results in a highly-stressful, hyper-competitive and intensely-dynamic marketplace. Having spent my early career in corporate human resources and being guilty of the same, I have shifted my work with leaders over the past 5-6 years to try to address this gap…with some really gratifying and exciting results for my clients and their companies.

So to better support as many leaders as I can through my writing, coaching and training, I am doing 2 things. First, I am re-dedicating my Green to Great blog to one primary purpose: helping you grow the key leadership competencies you need to succeed. If increasing your leadership skill set is what's on your mind, keep coming back to this blog. I'll be focusing on the topics my own high-potential & high-achieving clients are asking about, as well as what's hot from my on-going study of leadership challenges/trends/best practices in the 21^st century. (While you can take the girl out of sociology, you can't take the sociologist out of the girl.) If you have a particular topic you're interested in learning more about, send me an email at Julie@greentogreat.com.

And second, I am very excited to announce that I am launching a second blog, called Making Whitespace. This blog is dedicated to helping leaders like you better manage stress, increase work/life balance and sustain peak performance (body, heart, mind & spirit) in their work. And giving you resources, insights and practical tips you can use with your teams and your families as well. Stay tuned…more to come soon!

At the risk of stating the obvious, most folks are under a boat-load of stress these days. And coping with that stress the best they know how, probably with some combination of healthy and unhealthy approaches. (Just as a quick reminder, healthy ways include exercising a little more, getting enough sleep, spending time with friends and finding things to laugh about. Unhealthy ways are usually some variation on the "too much" theme, as in too much of a good thing, like: drinking alcohol, eating comfort food, using shopping therapy, surfing the Web or watching TV.) Regardless of the approach, most of us are reactively trying to either get rid of stress altogether, or if we really had our way, to simply avoid it entirely.

But you don't REALLY want to do either one, and let me tell you why. Stress in and of itself is not bad for you. Not only is stress an unavoidable fact of life, but also one of the most essential ingredients to personal and professional success. Psychologists and physicians have been researching the positive and negative effects of stress since early in the 20^th century and learning more every day. For example, check out Newsweek's cover article in mid January on positive side of stress, and this rather obviously titled article on the negative effects: Why Stress is Deadly). Yet far too many of us are none-the-wiser for how to work effectively with stress in our own lives.

So here's my bottom line: let's stop leading and living in a state of chronic overstress that clearly is not working for us. And take all the amazing learning we have out there about stress & health & peak performance and start using it. (I am brilliant at stating the obvious, aren't I?) My coming postings are directly targeted to helping you — both as human beings and especially as leaders – take a strategic approach to reducing overstress and engaging healthy stress, to move you more powerfully and easily toward your goals.

Today Barack Obama became the 44^th president of the United States. Leadership junkie that I am, I was up early with coffee in hand to watch this most magnificent and peaceful transfer of power.

Around 8:30 the President Elect and Mrs. Obama emerged from Blair House to begin what would be arguably the most important day of their lives. Then I heard TODAY host Matt Lauer, as he outlined the tightly-scheduled and pressure-filled agenda ahead, make the almost off-hand comment that the Mr. Obama still managed to get in his workout this morning.

That our new President plays basketball, and that both he and Michelle work out regularly, are already well known facts. And maybe we can only guess the precise impact of making time to exercise on this amazing success story. How Barack sustains his energy, focus and infamous calm ultimately only Barack can say. But the mind-body connection is well-researched and immensely powerful. More than just a way to proactively manage stress, regular exercise actually shifts the mind into a radically different gear – what Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, calls the relaxation response.

Put most simply, the relaxation response is an emotional and physiological
shift from what I call Crazy-Stress mode to Balanced-Ground mode. When we are on balanced ground, we experience a sense of well-being that increases our feeling of empathy and makes genuine connection with others possible. Even more, we release our psyche from the primal, fear-driven parts of our brain and we move into the upper echelons - our mental Oval Office - where visionary, creative and objective thinking reside.

Today is a day when once impossible dreams came true. So let me mark this occasion with my own pipe dream: if the busiest leader in the world wouldn’t start a day of his life without a little exercise and quiet time for himself, why can’t we all? Who might we become and what might we accomplish, individually and as a nation, if we did?

I normally adhere to the conventional wisdom to stay away from politics and religion when talking with two groups of people– business colleagues and customers, and family. (The Thanksgiving table with my family of origin can be a little like having Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh and Tina Fey over for dinner. Entertaining, yes, but also dangerous.)

So I’m going to bend my own rule here, in service of a greater good. Let me start with a short disclaimer. I didn’t start out as an Obama supporter, although I have been fascinated with him as a leader from the get-go. My business is to help companies grow the kind of leaders they need for the realities of the world now and for their dreams of the world they’ve yet to create. So I specialize in working with high potential and emerging leaders. Obama didn’t emerge so much as he exploded onto the world’s stage and into the private screens of our TVs, PCs, cell phones and BlackBerry’s.

Like most High Potentials, Obama’s career has been characterized by a tremendous inner drive, intelligence and talent above the average, and a series of rapid promotions with a short time spent in each role. Unlike most HIPOs, what I see in Obama is a man who knows that if he tries to go it alone – tries to be the sole hero of the job and the story – he will fail. He must develop the leadership of the people under him to even hope to have the capabilities, capacities and scale required to address challenges at the door. By far this is one of the hardest personal breakthroughs leaders must make as they climb the ladder to the corner office. And one of the biggest reasons so many promising executives eventually fail.

Obama has something else going for him. He also understands the power of a vision and how to unite people behind his cause. What makes him particularly brilliant is how he systematically leverages the technologies of our times (email, texting, and YouTube especially) to enroll literally millions of Americans into his dream of the country and people we could be. And move us to concrete, doable, meaningful and shared action. He is expanding the power of one man into the power of the many.

So if you happen not to be one of the millions on Obama’s email list, check out the link below before he takes the oath of office next Tuesday. Regardless of your politics, as a citizen I hope it moves you to one act of service for your community in the coming week. As a leader, I hope it inspires you to what is possible for you and the world you lead.

http://www.pic2009.org/yourinauguration

This is my last blog of 2008 and the final in my series on Getting Out Ahead: Stop Reacting, Start Leading. I timed this last entry to land the week of Christmas for a reason. Christmas is fundamentally the season of giving. In the coming year, my wish that you will give yourself the most precious gift of all: time. Time to think, time to dream, time to plan, time to relax, and most of all time to enjoy doing things you love and being with people you love the most.

When you get down to the absolute bottom line of life, the one thing none of us can build, buy or borrow more of is time. The average human lifespan is 27,375 days. That can sound like a lot until you do your own math. I’m 44 years old, so I’ve lived 16,060 days, give or take. That means I have roughly 11,315 days left, and counting. When we get caught up in our day-to-day life or challenges at work, it is so easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and just how incredibly valuable this one precious resource really is. In particular, when it comes to “spending” time, we need to reframe how we think about the time we “take” for ourselves.

I may not be able to give you more days on this earth, but I can help you cut back on the crappy kind of time that eats up your days. What would it be worth to you to enjoy more of more of the good kind of time (peaceful, productive, fulfilling, meaningful and fun)? If you do just one thing in 2009 — to help you be a better leader, to have more time to think and strategize, to be more creative in your problem solving, to reduce your stress and to increase your work/life balance – remember these five words: book it on your calendar.

By “it” I mean regular and consistent whitespace. This whitespace should include one or more of the 4 R’s I wrote about last week (relax, reflect, realize and/or refocus). You are investing in a little time off-line that is actually recharging you, upping your game and better resourcing you to head back into the fray. Just like with money, you can invest in big lump sums (a vacation or a sabbatical) or by dollar-cost averaging (a little at a time, as you go along). But you have to plant the seeds of the thing you want to grow. A redwood tree doesn’t grow from watermelon seeds, to make the point. So if you want more time, a little time is the thing to plant.

Pick up a new, 2009 calendar that inspires you or includes images of the very things you want more of in your life. Or turn to January in your day planner or open up your Outlook. Take a first pass through all 12 months and book your biggest chunks of whitespace, like vacations and holidays. (If you’re feeling crazy, book an annual or bi-annual retreat to reflect on your purpose and vision for your life and career. I’ve even challenged one of my clients to book a 30 day sabbatical!) Now go back again and add a hobby or exercise activity you will do weekly or monthly. Add a night out with friends or a date night with your significant other. And while you’re at it, why not try for a full day out of the office, once a week? Don’t limit yourself by going only for what you think is possible – go for what would be your ideal. If you had all the time you needed and wanted for you, what would it look like?

A word about reality, because I know many of y’all are already thinking of why this won’t work in your world. Yes, “reality” will set in. Your child will get sick when you’re supposed to go to yoga class. Your boss will ask for a huge report right before you leave for a long weekend. And you will be booked for a meeting when you were planning on meditating. But while you may not get 100% of what you’re shooting for, you’ll be amazed at just how much time you actually do keep sacred. In my own life and consistently in the lives of the busy execs I coach and train, I’ve learned that the more time you book, the more time you’ll actually get.

It’s not polite to turn down a gift. So try this — book your whitespace for the entire year of 2009. Make sure you include something every week, even if it is just 30 minutes of quiet time on a Friday afternoon. Try it for at least the first 3 months of 2009 – then step back and notice what happens. Merry Christmas!

Last week I cited the work of Gregory Burns, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroeconomist and the director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University. Neuroscience tells us that when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking get turned off, literally. When danger is imminent and immediate, that is a good thing that is deeply rooted in our DNA. Long ago a saber-tooth tiger looking for a meal might have set his sights on one our ancestors. We would not be here today if our forefather had decided to stop and smell the roses, versus run like hell.

Ironically, the reactive response that gets us out of a life-or-death situation is great in the short term but deadly in the long run. For one, on a purely individual level, chronic fear leads to chronic stress, which results in all kinds of physical disease (as much as 75% of illness today is stress-related). For another, the without engaging the exploratory, wondering, creative and risk-taking parts of our brain, there can be no innovation or vision. And without innovation or vision, we actually set up conditions that then become life-or-death. In other words, we set ourselves up to fail. The Big 3 automakers are an all-too-real example of this. Despite business results to the contrary (declining sales and market share for over a decade) they have clung to a business model that protected the status quo and shut down creativity, vision and risk-taking. Literally now all they can do is to fight for their lives.

Reacting out of fear can quickly become a vicious cycle that is hard to break. As Burns said last week, the first order of business then is to neutralize the fear system within your own brain. Only then can you see the bigger picture, explore alternative strategies, free up your more creative thinking and find the ray of hope for a brighter future. The easiest way to neutralize the fear and shift into a more powerful mindset is to give yourself some space – literally the room to catch your breath, lift your head and find the bigger picture.

This is why I teach leaders my technique for Making WhiteSpace^sm. At the most tactical level, “white space” is regular time on your calendar to clear your mind, reconnect to what is most important and to plot out strategies to deal with the challenges here now and anticipate the challenges to come. Making WhiteSpace^sm is all about the power of creating “meaningful me-time”. Again, it doesn’t require a lot of time (30-60 minutes, once a week can get you started) to see significant results. What is important is that on a regular basis you intentionally and strategically take yourself off-the-clock to apply what I call the 4 R’s:

• RELAX – take a break from thinking altogether. Quiet your mind through deep breathing, meditation, yoga, running or simply taking a walk. Or doing something you enjoy like reading or art. This is quiet time just for you; time to get lost in something other than work or worry.
  
  
• REFLECT – shift your mental focus away from issues you’re facing or your never-ending -to-list. Intentionally concentrate for awhile on what is going right in your life and your work. Make a list, or even better, keep a journal. What am I grateful for? What is going right, right now? No matter how small or random it may seem, write it down.
  
  
• REALIZE – no matter how few or small your successes seem right now, recognize that they ARE successes. And ask yourself what within you helped you make those successes happen. What talent, skill, experience, strength or choice got you here? What might you do even more of to increase your success going forward?
  
  
• REFOCUS – once a week revisit your “blueprint” for success, i.e. your career and life goals, your values and your purpose statement. At least twice a year, take a retreat and spend time reconnecting you’re your blueprint and updating it. Then use that blueprint to guide your plans and actions on a weekly basis.
  

If you think you don’t have the time to do this, the more you tell yourself that is “true”, the more it will become YOUR truth. But if you’re willing to give this a try, you can create a different reality. Next week, for Christmas, come back and I’ll give you the gift of time – more time for you, more time for your dreams and more time to get ahead, to lead more and react less.

This Sunday morning, in the business section of the New York Times, is a short but interesting article by Gregory Burns, M.D., Ph.D. He directs the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University (one of the great universities back in my hometown of Atlanta, GA). Burns is a neuroeconomist. Bet you didn’t know such a job existed, eh? Neither did I.

He defines neuroeconomy as the science of using brain-scanning technologies (like MRI) to decode the decision-making systems of the human mind. One of the goals of this discipline is to understand the fear system of the human brain and how to keep it from short-circuiting good decision-making. Burns goes on to write the following: When our brains sense pain, or anticipate loss, we tend to hold onto what we have. When everyone does this at once, the result is a downward economic spiral. The most concrete thing that neuroscience tells us is that when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off. The first order of business, then, is to neutralize that system.

This means not being a fear monger. It means avoiding people who are overly pessimistic about the economy. It means turning out media that fan emotional flames. And unless you are a day trader, it means closing the Web page with the market ticker. It does mean being prepared, but not being a hyper-vigilant, everyone-in-the-bunker type.

For you leaders out there, Burns words are really worth remembering and acting upon for two reasons. As the economy reels from the loss of more than 500,000 jobs in November alone, we’re seeing corporations and consumers alike battening down the hatches. There is solid reason for caution here, no doubt. And the reality is that many folks have fallen into extremely tough times. But, if you’re smart enough? lucky enough? to still have your home and a job these days, choosing to constructively manage your fear is one of the most important contributions you can make to help turn this craziness around.

Even stepping away from the macro picture, there is an immediate and personal return to you as well. I watched a client of mine, a very talented leader, do this just the other day. He had just come out of a very tough meeting with his boss and peers. This leader walked away knowing he had two choices – to react to the negativity that came out of that meeting or to refocus on what really matters. So he took a little time out, away from the business, to read and reflect on his purpose statement and his values, and to think about what the team might need from him to get things back on course. He quickly found that he could let go of the crap and shift back to a more positive state of mind. Then he took simple, direct action from that bigger perspective (versus from a small/closed/reactive place). He was able to communicate a way forward that helped the organization not get bogged down in dysfunction and fear. And was actually seen and thanked for his leadership in a very stressful time, as a result.

The impact of leaders in organizations is like a pebble being dropped into a pond – your state of mind and actions ripple out in progressively larger waves. Your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual state therefore MATTER. Too many leaders feel like they are being selfish, or that they are taking time from “real” work, if they step away for even a moment to decompress and get their heads on straight. As a result, they can’t help but end up feeding the fear and negativity running rampant all around them. Ironically, they could actually lower their own stress, find better solutions, and redirect their teams back to seeing the forest beyond the trees – simply by taking a little time off-line for themselves.

I call this Making White Space. At the most tactical level, “white space” is regular time on your calendar (even an hour a week) to clear your mind, reconnect to what is most important and to plot out strategies to deal with obstacles and continue progress toward your goals. White space is the “how” behind the “why” Burns wrote about today – a way to neutralize the impact of fear and to engage the exploratory, risk-taking, and creative thinking that our brains are so beautifully designed to do.

Come back next week and we’ll start to wrap up this series on Getting Out Ahead: Stop Reacting and Start Leading with some practical tips and best practices for making some white space in your world.

This morning in Ann Arbor winter is blowing in with the first real snowfall of the season. I am reminded of a saying we have here in Michigan: if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute. Michigan is notorious for continuously changing weather, including wide swings in temperature and rapid shifts between snow, sun, rain, and clouds, often in the course of a single day.

Thanks to the absurdly fast pace of our modern, technology-soaked society, we propel ourselves through our day on an invisible wave of quick decisions, rapid action and continual multi-tasking. As a result we live at an ever more frenetic pace and with a persistent, nagging feeling that there is never enough time in the day for everything on our list. So when a situation or problem arises, we are already fully primed to react. We just want to deal with it, get it off our plate, and move on to the “more important” things we have to do. So often our bias is to take immediate action, 99.9% of the time. Sometimes our action takes care of the problem; other times our action backfires and makes the situation even worse than before. Because we are rushing, we’ve forgotten that we have another option – to take a deep breath, wait a little and see what happens.

Waiting gets a bum rap in business today. “Common wisdom” is that successful leaders seize the day, nip the problem in bud, and meet the issues, head-on. I am not saying there isn’t a time and place for those strategies. But I am also saying that there is significant power in adding the ability to wait to your leadership toolbox. Why? Because a) the nature of life is change and b) to everything there is a season.

Whether you put your faith in the rigors of scientific study or in the teachings of wisdom traditions (e.g. the Christian Bible or the teachings of Buddhism), we humans know that one of the most fundamental principles of life is change. Change is SO important that when change stops, death is the result. Our world is hard wired to move, adapt, break apart, reform and recreate itself continuously into something new. On the one hand, this fact of life is sad and often painful to deal with, because it means that even good things come to an end. On the other, this prime directive is also a source of hope and the promise of evolution toward something bigger and better.

People often fear change, because it seems so unpredictable. While change is an extremely powerful force, it doesn’t happen completely randomly. There is usually a larger pattern or rhythm at work. The simplest example is nature and the seasons. From fall comes winter. From winter, spring. Spring leads to summer and summer back to fall. ALWAYS. When you think about it, it is a crazy-simple and a crazy-wonderful thing to remember.

The Byrds (one of my favorite rock bands from the 1960’s) created a wildly-popular tune that sums this up: To everything turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven. However ironic it may be that during the largest counter-culture movement in American history that a rock band had a hit song with words straight out of the book of Corinthians, I think the exception of this song proves the rule. Whoever you are and whatever you believe in, you can trust in the nature of change and the pattern of seasons.

So here’s a little experiment for you to try this week. Pick a particularly thorny situation you’re wrestling with, perhaps one you’ve reacted to in the past but still isn’t resolved or has come back around. What “season” are you in around this issue? What are the characteristics of this season? What can you trust about this season? And what would it look like for YOU, to experiment with slowing down and waiting for a day? Or a few? See what happens.

In seed time learn,

In harvest time teach,

In winter time enjoy.

–William Blake