Escape From Excellence

I was just reading through the results of the 2010 IBM Global CEO study.  The study interviews roughly 1500 CEOs, section heads, and division leaders from around the globe.  Anyone who has worked with leaders over the past  decade will be familiar with the 3 of the 4 key results.

• Today’s complexity is only expected to rise and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it. Seventy-nine percent of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity ahead. However, one set of organisations we call them ‘Standouts’ has turned increased complexity into financial advantage over the past five years.
• Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organisations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.
• The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number one priority.
• Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners. They do so by simplifying operations and products, and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets around the world. Compared to other CEOs, dexterous leaders expect 20 percent more future revenue to come from new sources.

Discussions of increasing complexity, new product creation, and integrating customer needs have been happening for most of the last decade.  What struck me as new however was the recognition on part of business leaders that creativity may prove to be the most important leadership quality.   Leaders around the globe are recognizing that winners in a knowledge based economy will themselves think creatively, and more importantly, will be organizing their businesses to leverage creativity at all levels.

When Bill, Michelle and I started Archos Advisors, we decided very early on that part of business development process would be to seek out individuals and organizations with who we would like to work, and start some meaninful conversations.  At a minimum, we would meet some great people, and hopefully leave them with some useful insights that they could apply to their business right away.This past week, Bill and I embarked on what we hope to be the first of many, Archos Advisors’  World Tours.   This trip took us to the Cleveland/Akron area to share some of our thinking. And as is often the case, while our mission was to pitch new potential clients and share some of our thinking,  we also came away with some great learning around the issues that are keeping business leaders up at night.  Some consistent themse:- “How do we keep our organization focused around what is truly important?”- ” How do we refine and refresh our current approach to defining our own role in the marketplace?”- ” How do we navigate differences in culture, both externally and internally as we become global organizations?”- “Do we have a team in place that can thrive in ambiguity?”Needless to say, we are looking forward to advising our clients on utilizing Dynamic Essence to address these and other challenges.

This is my first post after a long hiatus, so let’s make it high value-added.

In tough economic times, like these, the stakes are high and the pressure is on leaders to make wise and sometimes tough decisions. Failure is both not an option, as well as a genuine possibility lurking in the doorway. The margin of error is diminished. We can’t afford to be wrong.

Ironically, for the big decisions, those with a straight path to the bottom line, the usual tools of management decision-making won’t suffice. Data, analysis, sophisticated models, and decision trees and matrixes will only get us so far. It’s kid’s stuff. These tools are not predictive. They are a cost of entry, never a differentiator or driver of sustainable competitive advantage (not even with the smartest consultants in tow). Moreover, these decisions never take place in a vacuum, and the complexities of real-time business life reduce our confidence in them. A leader trapped in mere excellence will typically over-rely upon these models, and then hope like hell that he or she is right. This undermines their own wellness and productivity, and that of everyone else working under the same conditions, which is to say their people.

There are two popular but unproductive and costly options that many leaders choose when confronting having to live with high stakes decisions:

1. Bluff/Spin/Blame. These managers have all the data and people lined up to take the blame if things go wrong.

2. Escape from Reality. These managers rely on force of will and ego in an attempt to sell themselves and the world on their vision and interpretation of events even when it is clear to any objective observer that they are simply full of it.

When the leader chooses it, the entire company lives with it. Please note: these two strategies are not limited to mediocre and failed managers; that’s too easy. Rather, we see them, almost daily, being practiced by excellent managers. That is to say, managers who have pursued and achieved excellence by practicing the Five Virtues of Excellence; people with a track record, senior leaders. This is what happens in the Excellence Trap.

There is a better way! Leaders in Mastery know that, after they have gathered and analyzed data and considered options, they simly choose a direction. Then they make it real. They bring the Five Pillars of Mastery (energy, expression, perspective, intention and wisdom), and that of every person in the entire organization to bear upon whatever path they choose, whatever context they are in; they engage, they flourish, they improvise and adapt, they inspire and align, they lead. It’s that simple, and that rare.

Try this: for every data point you consider when confronting a tough decision, spend as much time considering the Five Shifts of Mastery. Or let’s make it even easier: pick a direction and run with it. If you’re smart, capable, and have done a modicum of due diligance, you’ll succeed either way. Leadership Masters make their own reality, they don’t impose a fantasy on others. And to use the language of competition, a leader working to escape excellence and achieve mastery is already enjoying a powerful competitive advantage. Consider this: excellent managers try to  control the uncontrollable, and waste resources in the process. Masterful leaders create the future, establish the outcome, and gather resources as they go. It’s the leadership equivalent of creating opportunity while others panic (and let’s face it, most people, even excellent people, do panic. They’re panicing on Wall St as I write this).

That’s something you can stake your business on, particularly in tough times.