Don't Be a Bonsai Leader

“So then, we must pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another.”

(Paul’s Letter to the Romans 14:19, HCSB)

I once saw a demonstration of how to grow a bonsai tree. I was horrified to watch the professional horticulturist brutally hack away at a tree branch as he told how the tree, if left to its own nature, would grow to an unpredictable shape, large and reproductive. The goal of bonsai gardening, he explained, is to force the tree to grow small and remain small in a shape that is pleasing to the gardener and that will fit into the pot where the tree is intended to live. Bonsai trees do not reproduce. Later, I came across a website for “Bonsai Leadership” and I thought, “this must be a joke!” When I think of a “bonsai leader” I can only imagine someone who hacks away at people to force them into a cookie-cutter mold that can be controlled and micro-managed. Why would anyone want to be a bonsai leader?  (I honestly do not intend to offend anyone who might be associated with that group or with bonsai gardening.)

Wikipedia describes bonsai:

“Bonsai can be created from nearly any… tree or shrub species… its growth is restricted by the pot environment. Several times a year, the bonsai is shaped to limit growth… and meet the artist's detailed design…. Bonsai does not require genetically dwarfed trees, but rather depends on growing small trees from regular stock and seeds. Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like pruning, root reduction, potting, defoliation, and grafting to produce small trees that mimic the shape and style of mature, full-sized trees.”

Bonsai leaders achieve conformity, uniformity and deformity

While bonsai leadership might achieve conformity and uniformity, its ultimate result is controlled deformity. The bonsai tree was not originally intended by its creator to be small and sterile. By forcing the plant to grow small, it becomes a deformed imitation of its original intended purpose. In the same way, individuals respond to bonsai leadership by becoming small imitations of what they were meant to be.  By hacking away at any attempts to grow outside the box, the bonsai leader trains individuals, like a bonsai tree, to be ornamental instead of allowing them to grow to their maximum potential and multiplying their contribution to the organization’s purpose. “My way or the highway” is often the theme of such a leader.

Leader-builders achieve diversity, variety and purpose

The best leaders are not threatened by the leadership potential in the people they lead. To the contrary, they actually work at building up others and multiplying their own effectiveness as they celebrate the diverse gifts and abilities of others. The best leaders recognize that it is precisely this diversity that contributes to the organization fulfilling its purpose and reaching its objectives. While uniformity might be easier to control, it is variety that builds strength in the team.

Hint to the Leader

Consider whether your leadership style is characterized by building up or tearing down. You could be doing a bonsai on your workers without realizing it. What can you do to encourage the people you lead to grow to their potential and use their unique gifts, talents and experience to contribute positively to the company’s goals and objectives?

           

Hint to the Follower

If you feel like you are the bonsai, hang in there! Never forget that your were meant to grow and be productive. Start looking for ways to reproduce and multiply yourself by mentoring others. Learn from the mistakes of others. Determine now that you will not be a bonsai leader.

[See also “Stress and Job Dissatisfaction”, April 4, 2010]

© Copyright Dr. Larry Gay, April 2011

"Lessons on Leadership and Followership"

http://mylead360.blogspot.com/

Spring Cleaning for Business

            Spring cleaning is a time to clean out and throw away any old stuff that is no longer useful to make room for new stuff. Your business or organization needs a regular “spring cleaning.”  Every department should look for things not to do. Ask yourselves, “What are we currently doing that we should stop doing?”  You cannot keep adding new processes, procedures, or practices and also keep the status quo of old processes, procedures and practices going at their same rate… UNLESS, of course, you also add new personnel along with the new products or services you want to offer. Most managers will say, “This is all we have to work with. Make it work.”

Make the best use of what you have

            I love a scene from the movie Apollo 13.  The crew is in a critical situation with a damaged spacecraft trying to return to earth and needs to connect the air purification system from the Lunar Landing Module to the Command Module. The problem is, the ventilation hardware of the two systems does not match up. [Several technicians come onto a conference room at ground control and dump boxes containing the same equipment and tools that the astronauts have with them onto a table.] The technician then says to the engineering team, “OK, Listen up folks! We've got to find a way to make this [square CSM LiOH canister] fit into the hole for this [round LEM canister]  ... using nothing but that. Now let’s get to work!” 
            Somehow, they figured out a way to make it work using only what the crew had on board and they brought the crew safely back to earth.

Aim for higher performance

            The leadership team was sitting around the table looking at our job responsibilities and wondering how we could get to the next level of leadership and productivity. At one point, I asked the team, “What is your dream job?” As we went around the room, each team member affirmed that he had the best job in the region. “Alright,” I said. “But surely each of you has something in your list of responsibilities that you would rather not have to do—something that drags you down or you dread having to do, but is necessary because of the job. How could your job be even better?”

            One teammate said, “Yeah. I absolutely hate having to write new job requests and job descriptions. I hate having to write all this stuff in the second person to someone I have never met and in such a way as to make the job appealing and with good grammar and good form.”

            Immediately, another teammate said, “Really? Oh, I just love doing that!”

            To which the first guy said, “Well, here then. You can have ‘em!” He reached down and grabbed a stack of requests that he flopped on the table in front of his teammate.

            His teammate responded, “Great! Now I won’t have to spend nearly as much time rewriting and correcting your requests. Just tell me what you want and I’ll write the request from scratch.” 

            Both of them said something like, “Oh, what a relief it is!” That afternoon we shifted a few more responsibilities around the room until everyone felt we had gotten to our maximum potential, given the tasks we had to perform as a team. That day we began to be a high performance team.

Look for things not to do

            Consider the stated values of the organization. What do we say is most important to us? Is there anything we currently do that might actually be contrary to these values? Next, look at all the processes, procedures, policies and practices in every department to see how these effectively contribute to the company’s objectives and support the company’s values. Some of these might have served a very good purpose in the past, but have now outlasted their benefit.  Evaluate your products and consider if any of these has become less than productive. An unproductive product is not just oxymoronic—it is a drain on valuable resources that could be applied to more productive ones.

Consider the best use of personnel

            After completing your spring cleaning of products, processes, procedures, policies and practices, now consider the personnel. Ask yourself, “Do we have the right people in the right places doing the right things?” The “right things” includes what is right to contribute to the company’s success and it also includes what this individual is best suited to do. Often you will have exactly the right combination of people working together, but at less than their maximum effectiveness because some of them are not doing the right jobs to maximize their contribution. So what if their job description says they ought to be doing _____? Yeah, so what?! Don’t let a job description handcuff you and the organization and keep you from reaching your maximum productivity. Job descriptions are merely guidelines on paper and paper can be wadded up and recycled. SO WHAT  if one person in a job has a different job description from another person in a similar role? SO WHAT! Your goal is not to serve a job description. Your goal is to be successful. Eliminate barriers and facilitate people being all they are meant to be. The result will be increased productivity.

Think outside the box

            Spring cleaning also means rearranging, moving things around and getting a new look. Every time a team member leaves or a new team member comes on board, you need to consider if some responsibilities need to shift around the team. THEN, come back and write appropriate job descriptions that actually describe what the individual is supposed to be doing. Think outside the box. Again, don’t let antiquated job descriptions force your personnel into boxes of lower productivity.

Hint to the Leader

            So… are you ready to do some spring cleaning?

Products

Processes

Procedures

Policies

Practices

Personnel

Hint to the Follower

            Don’t be afraid of change. Spring cleaning can be hard work, but it has the potential of actually making things better.

© Copyright Dr. Larry Gay, April 2011

"Lessons on Leadership and Followership"

http://mylead360.blogspot.com/

Three New "R's" for Success

This past week I caught a portion of a radio interview with Arthur Alexander, an economist at Georgetown University, who stated that Japan will recover quickly from the recent devastating earthquake and tsunami. The reason, he said, is because Japan has three things that are built into advanced modern economies: Redundancy, Resilience, and Robustness.  As Susan and I rode down the highway, we reflected on how important these three R’s are for success in any organization.

Redundancy

We usually think of a redundancy as something that is superfluous or unnecessary. In fact, the first definition in Dictionary.com supports that concept: “superfluous repetition or overlapping.” Look farther down, however, and see another meaning: “the provision of additional or duplicate systems, equipment, etc., that function in case an operating part or system fails, as in a spacecraft.” Redundancy, in this light, is preparing for an emergency to ensure the seamless continuation of production even if essential parts or players are unexpectedly removed.

Many businesses do themselves a huge disfavor by trying to avoid redundancies in an effort to reduce operating costs and increase profit margins. Whenever a major merger takes place, for example, redundant jobs are eliminated in an effort to streamline personnel costs. In difficult economic times, tenured workers (who, admittedly, usually have higher salaries and benefits) are offered early retirement incentives without taking into consideration the brain trust of experience they represent and without making sure someone else knows everything they knew before they leave. When the only person who knows how to do the job is suddenly unavailable, momentum is lost or production in that area comes to a screeching halt until the person returns or someone new learns to do the job.

Redundancy in your business or organization is not just a matter of having two people who do the same job. It is more a matter of contingency preparation. Redundancy might include such things as mentoring and preparing young leaders for succession. It could also be something as simple as keeping good backups of your essential files and correspondence. Redundancy, as Dr. Alexander pointed out, can be a good thing.

Resilience

Again, Dictionary.com comes to our aid in defining resilience:

“1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.”

The opposite of resilience is resistance or rigidity. When managers take an attitude of “ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die,” they usually lead people on  a destructive path of resistance or resignation. (These are two R’s you probably would want to avoid!)

Resilience is the ability to deal with unexpected change and adapt to the new reality.  You build resilience by introducing change in increments and developing an ethos of embracing change for the better. In resilient organizations, frontline workers actually will introduce needed change.

Robustness

Robustness is associated with good health. Dictionary.com, what do you say? “Strong and healthy; hardy; vigorous.”

A robust organization will not suffer from a prolonged depressed morale. Even robust organizations will have setbacks when crises hit. The difference is, a robust organization will have built the resilience needed to recover and bounce back quickly. A sick organization, on the other hand, will have built up more resistance and rigidity that ultimately leads to another “R”: Rigor mortis.

To have a healthy and hardy organization, you need healthy and hardy personnel. Robustness is not only related to physical well-being. It also assumes emotional, spiritual, and psychological health. To be robust, the organization needs to build an ethos of its members caring for each other. That means coworkers looking out for each other. It also means supervisors taking a genuine interest in the welfare of their personnel. People throughout a robust organization will demonstrate their confidence that they are regarded as more than just expendable resources.

Hint to the Leader

Regardless of your position, you can help develop redundancy, resilience and robustness in the people who look to you for leadership. What can you do right now to start building the three R’s into your organization?

Hint to the Follower

The difference between building resistance or resilience starts with a personal decision. Decide right now to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Look for ways to make things better and find an appropriate way to share your thoughts with others.  

© Copyright Dr. Larry Gay, March 2011

"Lessons on Leadership and Followership"

http://mylead360.blogspot.com/

How do you spell "Success?"

"I want that guy out of here in 60 days!" The angry CEO made it clear he did not like the lower level manager, not necessarily because of poor job performance, he simply did not like the guy.

A major part of the problem, however, was the fact that from the beginning there was no standard of performance or clear expectation of how the manager would do his job. So he had rocked along for several months doing what he thought was a pretty good job. Then, "Wham!" Out of the blue he was blindsided with the fact that he had not been meeting the CE0's expectations and there was no opportunity to rectify the problem.

Sometimes even following a clearly written job description is not enough to guarantee successful job performance. Job descriptions often describe typical tasks that are to be performed while failing to define the most important item of all, which is how will success be defined?

Remember the old antacid commercial: "How do you spell relief?" Smiling men and women declared, "I spell relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S." They knew exactly what to do to get the desired outcome of relief from the pain of heartburn.

So how do you spell SUCCESS? A team can get along fabulously well, with no conflicts, everyone respecting each other and enjoying working together while they are effectively accomplishing absolutely NOTHING for the company. They might rate themselves an A+ team in spite of the fact that they have zero tangible results. They can even come up with a score card rating themselves on their performance while measuring the wrong things.

To head off this train wreck before it leaves the track, be sure the train is on the right track! Make sure you both spell SUCCESS the same way!

Hint to both the Leader and the Follower:
Make sure the job description not only includes tasks to be completed, but also the main objective to be accomplished through this position.

Make sure you both know how you will measure success and agree on how and when success will be evaluated.

Hint to the Leader:
Clarify what steps will be taken if success is not acheived. The first corrrective action should be to help the follower improve performance, increase their effectiveness and contribute more positively to the company's objectives. Don't just fire under-performers without first investing in them to help them become peak-performers.

Hint to the Follower:
Ask how you are doing and if you are making a positive contribution to the company's objectives. If you have not received a performance review in over a year, ask for one. Let your boss know you want honest feedback so you can give the job your best effort. Show that you care for the company and want to help it be successful. To do that, you need to know how to spell SUCCESS.

(c) 2011 Dr. LarryN. Gay http://mylead360.blogspot.com/

     "Lessons on Leadership and Follwership"