The Slippery Slope of Not Asking Why

Guest post at Switch and Shift - 

Thank you Shawn Murphy & Ted Coine for the opportunity

I’d like to think I’m good at challenging the status quo.  To get regular reality checks, I spend time with college kids creating for-profit and not-for-profit businesses aimed at solving wicked problems.  They truly challenge the status quo and it is, fortunately, invigoratingly contagious.

Sometimes (most of the time?), the status quo is so deeply engrained we don’t realize it – so deeply inherent in our worldview that when confronted with it, we view questioning it as heretical.  This hit home in the span of less than a week when 4 separate ‘events’ screamed Status Quo Alert at me:

1. In finishing Raj Patel’s, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, one of our society and economy’s basic assumptions, the concept of private property, is challenged. Raj’s thesis is that the privatizing/enclosing of public/open spaces turned labor from being production for oneself to being an asset (human capital) for someone else. So, Why don’t we question if this concept still works in its current form, if it couldn’t be adapted to a new model, and what the consequences have been?
2. The fledgling entrepreneurs, social and ‘regular’ (for lack of a better word; I actually think it’s all social), I met during my “office hours” were trying to truly understand customers’ needs from the customers’ worldview – with their constraints, incomes, barriers and opportunities – instead of from the students’ perspective of ‘what’ these people might need.  So, Why do we assume that we know what’s best, that the way we view the world is either the ‘right’ way or the ‘best’ way?
3. My weekly article ‘catch-up’ included several on corporate culture and leadership that were all just common sense and the Golden Rule.  So, Why do we have to elevate basic decency in how we treat one another to great rules for leadership?  Has it gotten so bad that widely respected journals publish posts telling us to say thank you to employees, to behave consistently, to smile because it’s contagious? Where was I when these fundamentals of human kindness became leadership virtues?
4. The ECB (European Central Bank) released its study of Bitcoin, a virtual currency and actually said, “The theoretical roots of Bitcoin can be found in the Austrian [sic] (Menger, Mises, Hayek) school of economics,” (pg. 22)!  Then they proceeded to say why Bitcoin, and its ilk, would never work

My husband tells me I ask Why too often.  Why is how we learn, discover, and challenge the Status Quo.  In one of my first projects at Bell Labs, I was the system engineer on three different messaging services. Why did I have to create three different architectures for three different messaging services?  Ok, the media were different (voice, text, image) but simply tagging the media type in a header all the services understood meant one architecture, shared messages, and media conversion as necessary! Voila! Done and on to the next project! Result? Big revenues for AT&T and my patent on a plaque for me.

Kids ask Why all the time and we expect that from them.  At some point, it seems we stop questioning and expecting Whys. When we stop asking Why, we risk the Status Quo becoming so entrenched that we accept it as the way it Has to be and can Only be.  So, this next week, try to ask Why just two times a day – give it a whirl and see what happens.  Next week, ask your team to ask Why twice a day and see what happens.  And the week after? You know the drill!

Tiptoe Through the Tulips No More

Well, last week’s post got some great responses.  I find it very providential that Jessica Esch has been reading myJessica Esch "#58 At Last" mind as she’s creating her book ;-).  The horrors of last Friday are very fresh for all of us, and sorrowfully, will be permanently fresh for many families in Newtown.  I can’t even fathom their pain and anguish.  It truly is beyond comprehension.

This is the season of merriment, peace and goodwill where we are all smiles and happiness.  Perhaps this should also be the season of taking a stand.  And this is not a paradox!  If we are to truly lead a meaningful, bountiful life that wonderfully makes a difference in the lives of others, then we cannot be the silent majority.  We need to look political correctness in the face and tell it where to go.

We’ve blurred the lines between freedom and license, between having the right and it being right, and between output (a vehement disagreement) and outcome (a solution achieved through work, compromise and promise). Our fear of offending others can have a very high price – life itself. 

So, in this season of joy and blessings, as you prepare for time with family and friends, as you put on your smiles, real and manufactured, find time for a little reflection on what you will stand for in 2013.  What will you refuse to tiptoe around and finally address – with wisdom, firmness, and compassion?  When you look in the mirror, who will you see? I pray it will be someone who has made a significant and powerful impact on and for others…by not staying silent.  Tiptoe no more! Let 2013 be a year of making a difference!

It's not High School Anymore Guys!

It seems I’m spending more and more time in high school these days.  No, not my kids’ school, the business 21 - Sheesh! by Jess Esch world.  Perhaps the economy has increased insecurity, doubt and lack of trust in business; perhaps adolescence’s creeping into the 30’s is why its taking longer to grow up and be professional; or perhaps we’re so politically correct, or conflict avoiding, that we are sacrificing accountability and productivity for fear of offending.  

There are times I feel so “old-school” with my kids’ friends and and in the corporate world.  I see behavior that wasn’t tolerated in ‘my day’ and I’d never tolerate…from my kids let alone colleagues, including the C-suite.  The Harvard Business Review even ran an article “Rudeness at Work: What’s Your Story?” What the heck is going on? Are permissiveness and indulgence endemic everywhere?

Increasingly, the virtue I see that is most needed, aside from Courage, is Temperance.  I love that word.  It comes from Greek sophrosyne (moderation), which Cicero translated into the Latin temperantia.  By the mid-14^th C, it evolved from the Anglo-French temperaunce to mean “self-restraint, self-control, moderation.”[*]  I think we need a heavy heavy dose of Temperance today – in any business, be it for/not-for profit, ‘social’, entrepreneurial, etc.   We need to balance protecting wealth with creating wealth, efficiency with effectiveness, and yes, compassion with responsibility. 

Many workplaces are enclaves of aiding and abetting immature, disrespectful, even harmful behavior.  People end up spending more time working around or with these people instead of doing the jobs at hand. Physical and emotional energy is sapped; time is spent in the weeds providing unnecessary levels of detail and hand-holding because people want to be told exactly what to do instead of taking the initiative; and employees are not asked to step up their game, limiting their professional growth and burdening the entire organization culturally and productively.  Trust declines, morale declines, and the company’s ability to attract and retain talent erodes.

What is the outcome? Increasing risk in delighting the customer.  Plain and simple.  At the end of the day, that’s what matters, because otherwise there is no business.  While it may be ‘easier’ in the short term to aid and abet, it will destroy your organization in the long term.  At some point, it’s very difficult to prevent this behavior from affecting your customers in some shape or form.  And let’s face it, we’re not helping anyone by avoiding the issue…we’re kicking the can down the road. 

So, please think about how you can apply Temperance in 2013.  Apply to yourself first, your team, and your organization. As the leader, you set the tone. This may not be easy, but it is so important to create and sustain a culture that continually delights it customers…because of it’s people, it’s culture.

A special Thank You to my friend, Jess Esch, for letting me use her fabulous sketches in my posts! 

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[*] temperance. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved December 11, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/temperance

How To Know You're Having an Impact

My great friend, Jess Esch, designed and drew my e-Christmas & Chanukah greeting this year.  Shortly after sending it out, I was chatting with one the entrepreneurs I'm mentoring, Wyatt Hayman. He asked about the 'd' signature of mine - was it 3/4 of a heart? was it my signature? He told me what he saw in the 'd' and drew it. This simple, elegant e-card has touched me in two powerful unexpected ways: first, that Jess would do this for me, would share her incredible gifts with me to share with all of you;  second, that Wyatt's first thoughts were of innovation, creation, solving problems, making things better.  Doesn't get much better than that! Thank you all for being my inspiration!

True Leadership is Social

Every once in a while, you are privileged to witness the embodiment of what has become a buzzword, Servant Leadership - someone who is innately wired as a servant leader – authentic, genuine and sincere.  I’m privileged to have met a few of these people in my career – in fact, five “someones” recently at a warm, welcoming, generous visit to Enterasys’s headquarters in Andover, MA.  Two of the five, Vala Afshar and Brad Martin, have just written a 2012 & 2013’s Must Read book, The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence.  To understand the power of this book, I need to tell you a story…of how I met them.

Last spring, I started noticing Vala’s insightful, kind, wise, and very human tweets.  I reached out and he invited me to visit him on my way up to Maine this past September.  I arrived and was greeted like a queen! To my incredible surprise, because Vala remembered our tweets about lobster, Brian Townsend, Director of Global Services and Ops, had prepared a feast of lobster tails with a risotto and an unimaginable dessert.  How did Vala remember that I loved lobster? Because that’s how Vala, and Brad, and the rest of the team, are wired (no pun intended) – to be social, to care, to make sure others matter.

Brad and Vala don’t preach about why businesses must be social – they live it, everyday.  Theirs is a real, living, breathing, continuous narrative about how a mid-market company refocused their culture to delight their customers by respecting and trusting their employees to focus on providing meaningful outcomes for their customers.  They detail the why, how, when, and what in transforming the culture and flattening the organization.  Vala and Brad share the culture’s benefits to their top line, bottom line and most importantly, human line.  If you’ve read Steve Denning’s book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management, you’d think he was writing about Enterasys – and he was!

When you read this book, as you should, don’t start making excuses as to why it doesn’t “really” apply to.  You’d be lying to yourself and closing the door to creating an excellent company.  The pursuit of social business excellence applies to any company making any thing that touches any one in any form, not just technology companies. The fundamental building block of Enterasys’ success is not technology – they make that loud and clear – it’s people.  Technology can make being a social business easier, but it can’t make it happen.  People do.

Please read The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence.  Think about how you can adapt some of these ideas for your own organization.  It may seem scary – you may lose the perception of the control you never really had; you may realize you’ve made some bad hires and constrained some great ones; your customers may see behind the curtain.  Yet, overcome the fears, because the rewards are so great, on so many levels.

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