A Touch of Leadership Success

My partner is a renowned and recognized expert in consumer insight. She tells me that the key to successful marketing is to understand the often unspoken need, want, or desire among consumers, irrespective of whether it is obviously related to the product or service. It is the job of the promotion campaign to make the connection, essentially saying to the consumer, “You have this need? This want? This desire? Our brand can help you with that!” While working in the CPG (that’s Consumer Packaged Goods) industry, her ability to bring these deep, insightful understandings to the marketing team has ultimately led to brand turnarounds, immensely successful marketing campaigns, and occasionally, killing what might appear to be a delightfully (or not so delightfully) creative ad campaign because it doesn’t actually result in the intended effect on consumers, nor on business results. The best consumer insight directly links the intended effect on the consumer to their needs/wants/desires, to the action of the promotional campaign, to business results.

In my professional world that focuses on enabling great leadership and healthy, engaged organization culture, carefully noting the distinction between having a great piece of creative advertising or a fabulous campaign, and the actual effect the promotion has on the consumer – and the ultimate outcome of increasing sales – is a useful one. How often does it happen that specific objectives intended to accomplish aspects of an organization’s mission actually miss the mark with respect to creating the desired effect among the organization’s customers or indeed, internal members of the organization? There is an almost ubiquitous question on employee engagement surveys that asks about the degree to which an individual’s work contributes, in their opinion, to the overall intention of the organization. This direct and personal appreciation for the utility of each person’s work in contributing to the higher purpose of their organization is a key determinant of engagement, and from that, productivity, innovation, retention, and overall happiness in their life. In short, people want to feel that their work matters.

Many modern leaders believe that their organization is animated by its vision, that manifests as its mission, which sets the agenda for annual objectives, that are decomposed into individual goals… [deep inhalation] that are checked off in annual performance reviews (to which NO ONE looks forward!). Despite almost being a requirement for the thoroughly modern organization, vision and mission statements are completely useless if they do not inspire, animate, and directly inform day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year decision making. And even if the mission is a top-of-mind consideration among all staff – and that isn’t necessarily accomplished by reproducing it on a laminated poster in the reception area and having it printed on the stationary – there are few cues that enable managers and leaders to circle back to determine whether or not the actual effects of a decision or action serve the mission or detract from it.

Think of an ad campaign for some consumer good or service. The intended outcome of that ad for the business might be to entice new customers to become users. Or, it might be to encourage current customers to expand their usage. Those would be the business objectives. Why would a person decide to become a new user, or expand their usage? Marketing insight suggests unarticulated need, want, or desire to which the ad somehow appeals. This is the intended effect of that ad—how it touches the would-be consumer. Essentially, effects speak to motivating factors; goals or outcomes speak to what happens when someone is so motivated.

Similar things happen in organizations with respect to their various constituencies, both internal and external. When goals and outcomes are explicitly connected to the intended effects of decisions – those effects that are experienced by employees, customers, and the community at large – managers and workers alike can know whether initiatives are actually effective in furthering the organization’s cause. While initiatives are unfolding, managers can detect whether the effects that emerge are moving towards, or away from, those that were intended. It’s far easier to course correct sooner rather than waiting until all sorts of “unintended consequences” become apparent. And, best of all, one doesn’t have to hang around until the so-called post mortem to understand whether the original objectives and goals were appropriate, useful, and accomplish what was actually intended. Navigating for effects enables managers to understand in real time not only that initiatives are working, but that they are actually accomplishing what was intended, as opposed to an objective that might have originally seemed to be appropriate, but has since been surpassed by intervening events, new information, and the inevitably complex dynamics of the business and social worlds in which we now exist.

Tactility – explicitly understanding who we are going to touch and how we intend to touch them – augments vision in a way that is both appropriate and useful for contemporary times. If vision is what we see in the organization’s future, tactility is what happens along the way. A brand – especially the brand promise – implements tactility in the market. Appreciative management practices effect tactility among the organization’s members, thereby increasing motivation, engagement, and all the good things that come from highly engaged, high performing teams.

At the time of year when everyone’s thoughts – after holiday parties, ugly seasonal sweaters, and popping corks for 2016 – are beginning to focus on strategies and plans, performance reviews and annual objectives, perhaps a good place to start is with the question, who did we touch to great and beneficial effect in 2015? How did we touch them, and how, in turn, did that touch affect their success?

Then: Are those the types of effects we intend to sustain? How can we create more of those great effects, possibly among even more constituencies? What additional intention would be useful for those we touch? And one more: When we’re successful at touching someone with intended effect, what would that look like? Sound like? And most important since we’re talking about tactility, feel like?

And remember, I’m talking about effects for all concerned, since one cannot touch without being touched oneself. In a world that is constantly in connected relationship, that observation alone suggests Tactility is the new Vision, especially for the 21st century.

Deal with Humans? Deal with Resources? You need to understand the Connected Relationship Organization

What is Organization?

A simple question—with a not-so-simple answer. Many answers boil down to this: a group of people who come together to accomplish a common purpose, often articulated as the organization’s “mission.” “Purpose,” it seems, is the organization’s driving force, its primary consideration in both tactical and strategic decisions. Indeed, this conclusion is borne out in on-the-ground organizational practices among countless organizations. In particular, when it comes to resource deployment – especially human resource deployment,

If purpose is primary, then people necessarily become secondary.

A provocative conclusion, I realize. But consider the myriad “difficult decisions” management teams face as a matter of pragmatic fact, week in and week out. In the vast majority of modern organizations, when it becomes a choice between, say, what seems to be an economic imperative and people-related considerations, which inevitably wins? But is it necessary that this is almost always the case? Is there another way of looking at this tension between purpose and people—a tension that is, in actuality, a construct of modern management practice? Such questions become especially relevant in truly contemporary organizations, and among organizations with aspirations to transform themselves into 21st-century enterprises.

What if “purpose” is not the purpose of organization? What if “purpose” comes out of the organization’s people and their interactions? In other, more technical, words, what if “purpose” is an emergent property of the contemporary organization’s open system dynamics in the complex environment that is today’s world? To put it more simply: Bring people together. Have them interact among more than economic considerations and the purpose of that organization will emerge. If one considers the massive successes of both recently created organizations and those which have sustained multiple transitions over their history, irrespective of their size, it’s not difficult to see that this idea, in most cases, describes the history of contemporary success and the successful commercialization of disruptive ideas—those that create a quantum leap in user/consumer experience, often transforming markets and industries.

Back to the first question: What is Organization in this context of contemporary organizational design and behaviour? Of course, that raises a precursor question: What is the context that best captures the underlying dynamics of our contemporary world? Whether one describes the practical complexity of today as the “Pull Economy,” (beautifully described and elucidated by John Seely Brown & John Hagel III) or as VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) – a term that originated in the US military, since co-opted by American business which never met a militaristic metaphor it didn’t like – this ain’t your grandfather’s organizational environment.

I prefer to think of today’s conditions as being Ubiquitously Connected – always connected to everyone, everything, and everywhere, whether we realize it or explicitly choose to participate in it, or not – and therefore, Pervasively Proximate – always next to, or in relationship with, everyone, everything, and everywhere. Always connected, and always in relationship. Thus, our ideal model of organization in our contemporary context could be characterized as a Connected Relationship Organization.

I have described such an organization in terms of five Valence (connecting, combining, interacting, uniting) relationships, namely: Economic, Affective, Identity, Knowledge, and Ecological (there’s much more about Valence Theory, its derivation and application here). Defining organization in these terms has all sorts of interesting consequences that have the potential to transform the way we hire and manage people, the ways in which we enact organizational culture, how we create business models, form strategy, and enable innovation, and even understand the practice of leadership itself. Based on reconceiving Organization as an emergent entity arising from Valence-relationship interactions among people, our mindframe about all sorts of practical issues can shift. For example, in a Valence conception:

• Relationship & Effects—The purpose of organization is simply to bring people into relationship, specifically to express the effects of these five valence relationships among its various constituencies;
• "Purpose" & Mission—The “purpose” or mission of any particular organization is emergent from the members (whether they represent internal or external constituencies) and the unique organizational dynamics enabled and enacted; which means,
• Human Non-fungibility—People are not interchangeable based on skills, competencies, or prior experience (nominally) doing the same job for which you hired them; besides the implication that every new hire creates their job in their own image, so to speak, this principle of human non-fungibility suggests that,
• Hiring is a Transformational Act—Every new hire and every employee departure necessarily transforms the organization because the nature of the relationships among people and with the organization itself necessarily change as the people change; and finally,
• Leadership & An Alternate Future—Contemporary leadership is not about “leading” in the conventional conception of that word. Rather, the contemporary leader creates a conducive environment in which an organization’s members share experiences in effecting these valence relationships, and from these shared experiences an alternate future becomes possible.

“An alternate future becomes possible.”

A leader in a contemporary organization enables the possibility of an alternate future for the organization, its members, their relationships, and the ensuing effects. Enabling this possibility, as well as the reality that every new hire and each departure is a transformative act, creates new imperatives for all members, and particularly for the Human Resources function. Among them: Hire for the organization you want to become, not the organization you are today. As I suggested in my last post, the key hiring question in a contemporary organization is no longer, "what skills do we need to replace or fill?" but rather, "who, what, and how do we want to become as an organization?"

All of this is well and fine with respect to the new person who is, whether they realize it or not, an agent of change the moment they sign back the offer of employment. But what of those members who are there to welcome (aka, “onboard”) that new addition? What of those who remain after someone departs—or worse, after many someones depart, for instance, after a major restructuring? A focus on reconstituting the Valence relationships to enable intentional and desired transformation creates brand new, 21st-century opportunities for the HR function. Such intentionality when it comes to re-establishing key relationships can be augmented by specialists invited into the organization who can provide unique expertise in transformational coaching for individuals and teams, humanistic organization development interventions, and “inplacement” services (the complement of “outplacement”) in which individuals about to arrive in an organization receive specific coaching that will enable them to bring their best in their new assignment.

In a world that is now all about the transformative effects of connected relationship organizations, isn’t it a worthwhile investment to specifically focus on making those relationships the most effective they can be?

Transforming an Organization, Even When that Organization is a Country

As most of the world knows, Canada has a (hot) new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who was sworn in with his cabinet yesterday. Notable among his appointees to Her Majesty's Privy Council (that is, ministers of cabinet), is the fact that there is a 50:50 gender split, and strong representation of New Canadians, an aboriginal woman as Justice Minister (who also happens to have been an experienced Crown attorney), an amputee in the Veteran's Affairs post, and - demonstrating the new PM's wry sense of humour - a former astronaut as Transport Minister.
In stark contrast to his predecessor's governance-by-imperial-fiat style, PM Justin serves notice: "Government by cabinet is back".... baby! (I feel an Austin Powers moment coming on here.)

As I've discussed in a previous post, industrial age organizations (as in, most throughout the 20th century) hire human "resources" as one might consider replaceable machine parts. On the other hand,  contemporary organizations intentionally hire individuals who can enable the type of organizational transformation needed for whatever contemporary circumstances the organization intends to navigate. Put another way, hire for the organization you want to become, not the organization you are today. Skills, knowledge, and experience are important, to be sure. Contrary to almost ubiquitous hiring practices, resume-parsed skills, knowledge, and experience aren't the be-all and end-all—the exclusive "gold standard" of hiring.

Since every new hire – every new person who accepts an organizational role – effects a unique transformation in the interpersonal dynamics emerging from the "connection (i.e. valence) relationships" they create, it is the individual's potential for organizational transformation that really counts. Unpacking that complex sounding idea: Everyone in an organization connects to everyone else via a set of valence (uniting, combining, reacting) relationships. Change a person and you necessarily change the interactions among those relationships. Change the quality and nature of those interacting relationships and you change the organization. Thus every new arrival and every fresh departure is a transformational act. Contemporary hiring strategy is less of "what skills do we need?" and more of "who, what, and how do we want to become?"

Trudeau's cabinet effects a message of transformation for government, for parliament, and for the country as a whole.

Fifteen years into the 21st century, it's about time!

How to Win Baseball Games, that is, Transform Your Organization with One, Simple Idea

The summary: The Blue Jays came back from 8 games behind in July to lead the American League East by 6 by the end of the regular season. How? The trigger seemed to coincide with acquiring two players – David Price (Pitcher) and Troy Tulowitski (Shortstop). One could say these players were hired because of their respective abilities on the field. However, it was not solely their functional ability – which is the typical hiring criterion – that enabled the Jays to become the hottest team in baseball.

Valence Theory – a new model of “connected relationship” organization – predicts that hiring should be about the transformation potential of a new organizational member, rather than merely satisfying the replacement of functionality—that is, a job specification. The acquisition of these two admittedly top players created a transformation that went well beyond what they could accomplish functionally, primarily boosting the Identity and Affective Valence Relationships among the other members of the team. The rest, as they say, is baseball history that could work for your organization, as well.

Talk about a turnaround! By the last week of July, the Toronto Blue Jays were eight games behind with a win/loss average of just over .500—.509 to be precise. Three weeks later, they moved from that eight game deficit to take the lead in the American League East. They never looked back. (Okay, they may have watched the Yankees receding in the dust through the rear-view mirror.) The Jays finished six games ahead of their perennial New York nemesis. Their win/loss percentage improved from .509 up to the end of July, to .722 (!) in August and September.

And talk about resilience when in a tight spot! Like being down two games in the American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers, having lost the first two at home? They go on the road and blow out their opponent, scoring (cumulatively) 20 runs to Texas’s 16, bringing the series back to Toronto for a fifth and deciding game. In a matchup that was, admittedly a little out-of-the-ordinary given the bizarre seventh inning, they defied the 93% odds against them to win the best-of-5 series after having to play two elimination games on the road.

So what was the magic that enabled the team to turn on like a light switch at the end of July? The turnaround came with hiring two players: Shortstop Troy Tulowitski, and Cy Young award-winning pitcher, David Price. Granted, both of these players are at the top of their game. But, “Tulo” is only one bat in the order of nine (and was out with an injury for a good part of September). Price only plays once every four or five games, depending on the starting rotation. Their baseball skills – their “résumés” as it were – as impressive as they might be, aren’t the answer.

Imagine if you could improve your organization’s productivity by 22 points in just two months! Imagine if your organization could rally with an amazing, statistics-defying comeback in the face of strong competition. Imagine if all your change management projects, and strategies to combat so-called resistance to change, and reorg after ineffective reorg could all be heaved into the bin and replaced by one, simple strategy that effects sustainable organization transformation. Like the Toronto Blue Jays, you would be hitting home run after home run—metaphorically speaking, of course.

The simple idea: Hire for the organization you want to become, not the organization you are.

The fact is that most organizations hire for the organization they are, for the job (specification) they have to fill. Directed by the gatekeeping function that is the HR department, hiring managers – not unreasonably – most often choose to go with the best and most experienced applicant who can perform the current job specification. Ideally, it’s someone who is currently doing that specific job or at worst, has already done that job, often for many years. The underlying reason for this may not be as obvious as it might seem.

Let’s go back to the early 20th century, and the foundational idea that has informed management, management education, and especially the predominant hiring practices for over a century. Frederick Winslow Taylor, who gave us the concept of “Scientific Management,” set the tone for modern, efficiency-focused hiring practices: Employees are essentially seen as interchangeable machine parts in the factory model of organizations. The hiring ritual to which we have all become accustomed reflects this perspective. A formal job description lays out, in great and minute detail, the specification for the replacement part. Applicants respond with a résumé that provides details of how well s/he satisfies those specifications. This matching process has become so devoid of human judgment, so mechanistic (notably, completely consistent with a factory/machine metaphor) that recruiters are inconceivably proud of the fact that they spend no more than seconds screening a given résumé. What they are actually seeking is the optimal outcome: a job applicant who has previously performed precisely the job specifications for which they are currently hiring. Nominally because of the massive competition for positions, HR departments in medium to large organizations almost universally have instituted automated systems that remove the subjective and human qualities from the hiring process and reduce unique individuals to a set of check-box specifications. On one hand, automation of the résumé acceptance process is clearly an efficiency innovation. On the other, its effect is to substantially dehumanize human resources, reducing a unique, resourceful, and whole individual to a set of seemingly objective specifications.

Here’s the thing: We want people to bring their “whole self” to work. And therein lies the disconnect.

Specifically, the fundamental disconnect of this efficiency model of human resource management stems from the fact that we’re no longer in the factory age. What might have been appropriate for the industrialized 20th century is undoubtedly much less effective for organizations that exist in our massively interconnected, continually transforming, emergent effects, contemporary world. The context that made the factory model (theoretically) useful (although that is arguable) a hundred years ago is dramatically different from now. In fact, organizational contexts in today’s world are completely fluid, constantly changing, reacting, interacting, combining and recombining, often in unpredictable ways. The old model was, “I want to hire someone who has already done exactly what I think needs to be done.” Today’s model adds the crucial caveat, “…even though they did it in a completely different context, under vastly different conditions, and what they’ll actually do in the future in our context is likely worlds apart from what they did previously.” Case in point: JC Penney’s disastrous hiring of former Apple Store executive, Ron Johnson.

The overwhelming majority of workers in the massively interconnected knowledge economy (and particularly those in the most successful organizations) do not merely perform their job specifications. They inevitably bring their entire self to the workplace, and create robust relationship connections that are far more than the simple economic exchange of skills and production for money. They enact affective connections that are vital to an organization’s successful working. They contribute their unique history of all the organic learning that constitute past experiences – far more than could ever be expressed in a two-page resume under the goal-oriented heading of “accomplishments” – and a wealth of tacit knowledge that creates novel opportunities for the organization and its members. And perhaps most important, they bring a potent and reciprocal identification with the organization and its intentions for the effects it will enable among its various constituencies. These aspects – Economic, Affective (originally called Socio-Psychological), Knowledge, and Identity – are the Valence relationships that create contemporary organizations in relation to their members and constituencies.

What does Valence Theory say about the hiring process? The theory predicts that any new hire into an organization transforms that organization according to the principles of complexity, based on the changes in Valence relationships that occur as soon as the new person arrives. Any new hire, irrespective of role, rank, or remuneration, necessarily transforms the organization in ways that most often have little to do with their Economic (i.e., exchange of value—labour for money) skills alone.

Alex Anthopoulos, the Toronto Blue Jays's General Manager, demonstrated his innate understanding of these principles when he traded – some might say, mortgaged the Blue Jays’s future – for Tulowitski and Price. Yet it has been widely reported that especially Price introduced a significant change in the locker room dynamic that clearly strengthened the Affective, Knowledge, and Identity relationships well beyond his contributions in the starting pitching rotation. In other words, Anthopoulos hired for the organization he wanted the Jays to become, not specifically for the job specifications he had. After all, there are lots of strong starters and lots of cannon-armed shortstops to be had in major league baseball.

Some might say that HR resume screening selects the most skilled from among dozens, if not hundreds, of applicants. It is up to the hiring manager to select for the other, “softer” skills that could fulfil the wisdom of hiring for the organization you want to become. Indeed, sometimes this is the case. However, in summarily rejecting sufficiently qualified candidates who may not have had the right job titles, the correct buzzwords, or the specific experience in favour of those whose history comes closer to the machine specs, the prospective transformative agent that could ignite and launch the organization to the stars may be among the candidates whose applications disappear into the black hole of automated HRM systems.

Efficiency-oriented, automated systems necessarily hire for the organization you are. Only human judgement, human experience, and human insight can possibly screen and hire for the organization you want to become (which is a whole other matter in and of itself!). Generally speaking, finding the intersection between what we want to become and the set of attributes of a candidate who might catalyze that transformation is a daunting task. But here’s a potential approach and a useful first step: When commencing a hiring process, we usually ask some form of the question, what job do we need to be done? Armed with the realization that every new hire necessarily transforms the Valence relationships thereby transforming the organization, why not ask instead, “How do we want our organization to transform? Who do we want to become? ” That simple perspective shift might lead to fewer resumes to screen, and more home runs.

Understanding this One Key Distinction Virtually Guarantees Leadership Success

Pssst… spoiler alert… it’s Effect vs Intent

The title of this post ranks right up there with the most click-bait-y, Upworthy-ish headlines going. But, it turns out that this one distinction in the way you, as a leader, understand your own decision process could mean the difference between your (not to mention your enterprise’s) success, and… well, let’s not consider the alternative. Consider instead this recent ruling from the US Supreme Court.

As reported recently in Psychological Science:

In an historic decision on the Fair Housing Act issued last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged that such implicit biases have the potential to be just as damaging as more explicit motivations, noting that housing policies can be considered discriminatory even without evidence of overt discriminatory intent. According to Kennedy, focusing on the disparate impacts of a policy, rather than disparate treatment, acknowledges the role of “the unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment.”

The implications of a direct interpretation of the ruling itself is massive, having all sorts of implications in housing, social policy administration, education, hiring, among other aspects. It is a remarkable recognition of what has emerged from over three decades of solid, empirical research—that there are systemic biases to which people are socialized in a way that influences their decision-making that they themselves might not consciously realize. But, despite the social consequences – and they’re positively huge – that’s not what I’m specifically focusing on in this post.

Instead, let me draw your attention to the particular distinction Justice Kennedy makes in his ruling: He directs us to concentrate on “the disparate impacts of a policy, rather than disparate treatment,” indicating conscious intent.”

Impact – effects – rather than intent. What actually happens to others, rather than what I nominally intended or wanted to happen that might or might not have worked out.

That distinction completely changes the way we consider decisions, and decision-making processes. It completely changes the goal of analysis, and how those who are at the helm of organizational leadership navigate the vessel of their enterprise, irrespective of sector, profit motive, industry, size, physical incarnation, or cyber-presence. It shifts our understanding and framing of intention from a specific goal- or objective-orientation to one that focuses instead on effects. And, it highlights why vision as the dominant sensory metaphor for business (and politics) is so last-century. More on this part later.

Intended Effect vs. Intended Outcome

Consider this: You do or say something that affects someone else – your spouse, your children, your friend, your colleague, your client – and, for whatever reason, it lands wrong. And badly. You stammer, “that wasn’t what I meant….” but it’s too late. The damage is done. And it takes a bouquet of roses, a trip to MickeyD’s, a discount, a box of chocolates, a “let me buy you lunch,” or a drink (or three) to begin to undo the damage. It wasn’t your intention to hurt them, but that was the effect. “Unintended consequences” is the management-speak version of this story. And how often do “unintended consequences” happen? Well, let’s put it this way: the proverbial road to Hades has a lot of construction materials to work with!

As leaders make business decisions, inevitably they intend for the right thing to happen—the right outcome, achieving the right objection, accomplishing the right goal. They almost always have an analysis or some logic that connects the action to said outcome, objective, or goal. Their intent (aside from Wolf of Wall Street types) is most likely a good one, one that typically supports overall corporate or organizational objectives. What they fail to think of, however, are the realm of possible effects, and therefore fail to notice those effects manifesting until the decision has gone off the rails. Worse, of course, is the blind ignorance that the decision HAS gone off the rails—and this occurs most often in politics, but is well-known in the corporate realm. In such cases, an official or spokesperson will boldly state that black is white, up is down, failure is success, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

Instead, consider the difference in decision-making when it is the impact or effects of the decision that are the foremost consideration. Authentic, contemporary leaders ask, “who (among all the constituencies that might be touched) will be affected by this decision? In what (multiple) ways will we affect them? Are these effects the ones we actually intend to occur?” This line of questioning is markedly different than the typical risk-and-benefit analysis among so-called stakeholders in which, if the benefits outweigh the risks especially in the opinion of the HiPPO-in-the-room, the decision is taken.

This is a different mechanism as well from those driven by that overused-to-the-point-of-cliché sensory metaphor of vision. People whose work I respect, like Jesse Lyn Stoner, asks the simple question, “How do you know where you’re going if you don’t have a vision?” I respond, how do you know if where your vision is leading you is actually where you want or need to go, or more significantly, where you’ll want or need to be when you actually arrive? Tragically, vision – often blurred, misfocused, or hallucinogenic – has led many astray on quixotic quests, or towards the aptly named. Icarus Paradox (goodbye Kodak, Xerox, Digital Equipment Corp, Firestone, Litton, Control Data Corp, Compaq, A&P,… all of whose leaders, by the way, possessed – or were possessed by – visions).

Put simply, vision drives intended outcomes. Precisely that against which Justice Kennedy cautions.

Tactility: Operationalizing Intended Effect

Over the past few years, I’ve written about The End of Vision, Living Without Goals, and even More on The End of Vision and vision's associated problematics. Here’s the is <tl;dr> version: Tactility in leadership first asks the simple question, “who do we want to touch, and how do we want to touch them, today?” As a matter of leadership process – “navigating through an ever uncharted and unchartable milieu,” as Marshall McLuhan puts it – tactility asks another simple question: “are the things we’re doing and the decisions we’re making having the intended effect(s), or should we course correct? Changing one’s mind or modifying – even reversing – a decision previously taken, is not a demonstration of weakness, “flip-flopping,” or (necessarily) an admission of being wrong: it is the prudent application of a well-understood principle of navigation. Navigating for intended effects rather than holding firm to a prior decision (which, by definition was made without the benefit of complete information) enables successful leadership, even – and especially – in a complex environment replete with wicked problems and social messes.Navigating for effects creates complex consistency.

Moreover, collaboratively and inclusively developing the tactility for your organization enables everyone to actively participate in that process of navigation, and that brings with it a whole host of goodness, from activating intrinsic motivation, enhancing employee engagement, encouraging innovation, and ushering the 21st century into your organization.

Authentic Acknowledgement and the Roots of Engagement

With employee engagement becoming the prime focus of today’s “Talent Management Business Partners” among many large corporations, the question of what truly drives engagement comes to the fore. It’s widely accepted that acknowledgement is a key facilitator of engaged employees. Being thanked for one’s work is a good start. Being recognized as one of the contributors to a project’s success is a useful follow-on. In fact, we see this all the time in formal, staged political events when the leader specifically names some otherwise obscure individual who has supposedly contributed a good idea, inspiration, or venue to the good fight being celebrated at the podium.(This has become a standard trope in American politics, for instance.)

It makes sense, then, that the opposite should prove to foster disengagement and demotivation: not being explicitly recognized for one’s contribution. (And, here I’m not considering the egregious and borderline sociopathic behaviour of a manager claiming personal credit for one of their underling’s work.) Indeed, fostering an environment of non-appreciation clearly does nothing for boosting morale, enthusiasm, and commitment. But there is an act of omission that proves to be even worse for undermining motivation and fomenting toxic dissatisfaction, so-called active disengagement.

Imagine that you’ve worked long hours developing and delivering a great analysis that potentially has significant strategic importance for the business. You’ve created a dynamite presentation and won the kudos and plaudits of key decision makers in the organization. Acknowledgement emails flow in through the next day from everyone concerned. And then…

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Not a single thing changes as a result of your fantastic effort. The recommendations – widely acknowledged as being tremendously insightful and useful – languish and people’s attention move on to the next fire drill. How do you feel?

Authentic acknowledgement is the basis upon which leaders create trust and enable true engagement. That authenticity necessarily requires demonstrable appreciation. To feel demonstrably appreciated – as opposed to receiving some euphemistic synonym of simply being thanked – individuals must be able to viscerally perceive the results of their effort in affecting the course of the enterprise. In other words, it’s all about the effect—if what I do has a perceptible effect, I know that what I’ve done has value, and therefore I feel valued. Feeling valued (which, according to Valence Theory is the Economic-ba relationship) is the effect of authentic acknowledgement, and therefore is the true driver of employee engagement.

Bottom line: If you want truly engaged employees – and believe me, you do – ensure that what you ask of them demonstrably shows up in the strategy and tactics of your business.

Bad Business Practice, or Why I Won't Give Another Penny of Business to Intuit

Call it a cautionary tale. According to their Customer Service people, I have had “ongoing issues” with QuickBooks. More precisely, my “issues” are with Intuit and its business practices. Here’s why businesses must be cognizant of the effects their business models and strategies have on their customers. And, here’s why they must reality-check whether their nominal company values actually inform their in-use business practices or whether they are only so much feel-good window dressing.

I’ve been a QuickBooks user for over fifteen years, having upgraded – that is, repurchased – the program twice in that period. The software works for me, and like most software, it’s “easy to use” mostly because I’m used to it. I had to turn on payroll for a relatively short period of time using the 2014 edition, and much to my surprise and delight, the program told me that because of the particular edition I bought, I could use payroll for free. Yes, that would indeed be consistent with one of Intuit’s operating values, “Delight Customers.” Imagine my undelighted surprise when, six weeks later, I received a charge on my credit card for $31.64, the subscription price of the “free” payroll offer. The nice customer service folk informed me, essentially, that there ain’t no such thing as a free payroll. Oh, by the way, Intuit’s number one operating value is “Integrity without Compromise.” But we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what Intuit considers “Integrity.”

I put up with the payroll charge primarily because any equivalent payroll service would charge about that amount or more, and I preferred to manage things myself, as I’ve done over more than a decade. The next surprise (and oh how I wish Intuit could be more like the old Holiday Inn—the brand’s motto is about six paragraphs from the end of the article) was when the payroll stopped working because the payroll tables were apparently out of date. Now what good is a subscription service when updated payroll tables aren’t provided, I asked myself. Certainly this must be some minor error or slip-up on the part of the update system. After all, updating payroll tables is a simple matter of substituting one set of deduction factors for government remittances with another, based on the then-current rate of taxation, Canada Pension Plan, and Employment Insurance.

A call to Intuit support informed me that, no, it wasn’t a mistake. Intuit had DELIBERATELY chosen not to update these parameters in the 2014 edition, forcing all users to upgrade to the 2015 edition. And, by the way, the cost of doing so would increase my monthly billing from about $360 per year to OVER $600 PER YEAR! Yes, the capitalization of that last sentence reflects my utter shock, horror, and abject anger over that little piece of “Integrity.” Are we delighted yet?!

I screamed bloody murder. The only other businesses that I know of who hook their customers for free, then start charging, and once they are firmly ensconced in using the product for which the cost of leaving is relatively high (as it is for an accounting system) are the Mafia and drug dealers. Call it the Intuit “Corleone & Escobar” Business Model. Big Tobacco is only slightly less egregious, since theirs relies on a physical addiction.

My screaming resulted in them offering me a “discount” back to (only slightly more than) what I was paying. I discontinued using payroll in January and, after tax season when I had to produce and submit T4s, I called to cancel the subscription license. I only needed the accounting function, and therefore no longer had to rely on the non-free, free payroll service. Imagine my surprise (again) when they told me that, despite the fact that I had already paid them nearly double what the software would have cost in the store had I bought it fresh, I still “owed” them nearly $200 more for a license that I hadn’t wanted and didn’t need were it not for THEIR choice not to provide payroll deduction factors for the 2014 version.

I could easily have walked into Staples and bought a version of QuickBooks 2015 for $99, installed it fresh, and been done. But Intuit’s egregious business practices, arrogance, and total tone deafness with respect to customers caused me to do something else: I bought a copy of their competitor’s software (for more than double what QB would have cost), went through the hassle of converting my accounting, and am climbing up the learning curve of new software, because I will never give another penny of business to Intuit. Additionally, even though I’ve used QuickTax (now TurboTax) for on the order of twenty years, I will never again do that either, choosing instead to use a competing product.

I’m told by a former Intuit insider that QuickBooks, by far and away the market-leader in the accounting software market, has been enjoying a steady, quarter-by-quarter decline in its business over the past number of years. Presumably, more and more users are reaching the point of “enough is enough.” The strategy of “lock-in” – that is, create an excessively high barrier to exit in order to preserve captured customers – may be a winning strategy when ethical business practices are a distant also-ran in decision criteria. However, from a point of view that is cognizant of today’s reality of interconnected ecosystems and “doing good to do well,” it cannot be sustainable. Nor can such practices be sustained, sanctioned, or supported.

Are You Leading Your Brand, and Branding Your Leadership?

“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action.’” Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger may be more menacing in his notice of repeated occurrences. For me, once is a notice. Twice is an observation. The third time, it’s emergent pattern. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had not one, not two, but three conversations that began with my in-depth analysis work transforming operationally oriented voice-of-the-customer (and social media) data into strategic, actionable insights. But, it’s where they ended that caught my notice and suggested the emergent pattern—the strong link among brand development, leadership, and organization culture.

In one sense, this is not at all surprising. A brand is what your product, service, or company is in the collective minds of your customers. It expresses the sum total of the perceptual relationships that you have with your public—how people feel about you and your offering(s), what they represent, the personality attributes they convey – which is more about the emotional responses they engender than, you know, their actual personality – the expectations they set, the identity they create, the behaviours they enact and encourage, the promises they make. Organization culture, arguably, establishes much the same connections among an organization’s members, both internal and external to the organization. The dominant themes of that culture are enacted in the environment enabled by the organization’s leadership. In extreme cases the two merge to such an extent that the organization almost becomes more known for the brand of its culture than the brand of its offering (Hello Holacratic Zappos!).

So there are three linkages we can consider: How brand and organization culture connect and influence each other; how leadership informs and influences organization culture and hence, individual behaviours; and therefore, how leadership and brand become intimately connected.

Brand and Culture

In a paper on Branded Service Encounters (Siriani, Bitner, Brown, & Mandel, 2013, Journal of Marketing) the authors describe how service interactions with customers should ideally be aligned with the brand’s positioning. For example, Lululemon seeks to hire staff who portray an active and enthusiastic lifestyle; Southwest Airlines (or WestJet in Canada) would employ people whose everyday activities are infused with fun. Siriani and her co-authors point out that “aligning employees’ behaviour with brand personality serves to strategically link the employee and brand in customers’ knowledge structure.”

However, vital to the success of this endeavour to imprint the brand’s personality on each and every customer interaction is how authentically customers perceive the interaction to be. Pasting on a smile when staff are drowning in low morale won’t work—“the beatings will continue until morale improves” is neither an effective strategy nor sustainable! Authenticity – the degree to which customers experience sincerity in staff’s brand-aligned behaviours – occurs when employees genuinely feel and embody the culture’s values espoused through brand positioning. Thus, a brand whose positioning is well aligned with the organization’s culture-in-use enables employee’s external actions to match well with their internal feelings. (For those relatively new to the concept originally conceived as espoused theory and theory-in-use by Chris Argyris, “culture-in-use” refers to the way an organization’s culture is actually enacted, as compared to the “espoused culture” of what is said. An organization might, for example, espouse collaboration, yet the in-use or enacted culture conspicuously rewards individual achievement.)

Culture and Leadership

Trickle-down economics doesn’t work all that well. But trickle-down culture as enacted by leaders? That’s quite another matter. Irrespective of the corporate values on display in the lobby, or moulded into metrics that drive performance reviews, employees observe and follow the lead of leaders in much the same way that a two-year-old emulates the behaviour of her parents. In a fascinating paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2012, Liu, Liao, and Loi explore “The Dark Side of Leadership”—specifically, the “cascading effect” of abusive behaviours from senior supervisors down the line. I described the particular effects to which the paper refers in an earlier blog post. Among the effects, simply put, is the notion that employees will look to, and emulate, the leader’s behaviours – good behaviours and bad – if they believe that enacting such behaviours paves a path to personal success in the organization. Any perceived inconsistencies between the organization’s espoused cultural values and the leader’s embodied attitudes will inevitably be noticed. That inconsistency inevitably fuels cynicism and a host of ills, from disengagement to malicious compliance to creating bureaucratic quagmires. Forget about innovation and creativity—another finding of the paper. And forget about authentic, branded service encounters, too.

Quite a number of great examples come to mind that vividly illustrate stark disconnections between actual, in-use leadership behaviour and espoused organization cultural values. However, in the interests of avoiding libel suits, they will remain in my mind. Instead, have a flip through this Prezi about WestJet, paying attention to the comment about how most airlines ignore the human factor, something about which WestJet takes great pride, among both its customers and employees, collectively, (some of) the organization’s members. Such a focus on “the human factor” leads to culture-creating behaviours that are modelled by the senior leadership and authentically enacted by individuals throughout the organization, irrespective of role or rank.

Organizational culture is collectively created by the people who comprise the organization. Nonetheless, in keeping with my view that a leader enables the environment from which an alternate future becomes possible, it is indeed that environment from which the organization’s culture emerges.

Leading Your Brand 

Putting all this together, the logic is fairly straight-forward. As a leader, you’re enabling an environment that will inevitably yield a culture—the collective, enacted behaviours among employees as they engage – for good or for ill, authentically or not – with customers. Literally, when it comes to attitudes that directly affect day-to-day actions, employees follow the leader. They see and do, much as your young children might. Thus, a leader who embodies espoused brand values and personality contributes to a healthy, engaged culture enables employees to do the same. They, in turn, provide authentic, branded service encounters with customers. Doing so can become a secret marketing weapon, especially for relatively unknown brands where such encounters have to potential to match or even surpass market leaders (according to the Siriani et al. results).

The moral of the story: Like other aspects of an organization’s existence, when it comes to branding, culture does indeed eat strategy for breakfast, and the leader is the chef in the kitchen!

Storytelling for [Creating Common Organizational] Purpose

Last evening, I once again had the pleasure of attending one of Rick Wolfe’s “Kitchen Table Conversations” on Storytelling for a Purpose. The dozen or so people around the table – not in his kitchen, but at the Centre for Social Innovation—Annex in Toronto – shared story snippets, experiences of the power of stories for both personal and business purposes, and various aspects that comprise effective, purposeful stories and storytelling. A light bulb went on for me towards the end of the session; not an earth-shattering light bulb, but one that provided some illumination on what is, retrospectively, sort of an obvious issue.

People tend to hold onto their stories. This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “we are the stories we tell about ourselves.” In fact, we construct our individual experiences of reality – to which we also hold very tightly – by creating stories that contextualize our experiences in a product comprised of our context at the moment, our prior experiences of similar contexts, and our history. In fact, the effects of many of these constructed stories are to serve the maintenance and sustainability of that constructed reality, irrespective of how objectively absurd it might be. [Note: objective and absurd are in the eye of any particular judgmental beholder.]

If one of our objectives in the process of leadership is to enable some sort of cultural congruence throughout our organizations, that necessarily requires congruence among the stories that pervade the lives of our members. This can be accomplished by edict – the so-called alignment of values, vision, and mission that characterizes 20th-century leadership practices. Alternatively, this can be accomplished through collective storytelling: Creating a series of stories and storytelling venues that can eventually create a congruence among contexts, experiences, and history. The mythic tales of an organization create and have the ability to re-create (as in, “alternate future”) the organization itself.

An organization, like an individual, is the stories it tells about itself. Change the story; change the organization. Change the story; enable the possibility of an alternate future.

Five Secrets of Effective and Enjoyable Leadership

“I realized that the more fun I had, the better I did.” So says actor Bill Murray in an interview posted on Business Insider. To be sure, for any of us in almost any profession, the more fun we can have, the more enjoyable our daily enterprise, the better – more productive, more effective, more innovative, more engaged – we can be.

It’s not too hard to conceive of having such fun as an actor, especially a comedic actor like Murray. But in other roles, say the role of leader, what does it look like to truly experience fun and enjoyment, not to mention doing better! I’ve heard many people say that they enjoy their role so much that they’re surprised that they’re being paid to do it. (I often feel that way myself when engaged with students.) But strip away the extrinsic trappings of leadership – the material privileges of big office, high salary, expense accounts, and any number of executive perqs – and the sometimes heady exhilaration that accompanies a perception of total control, and we’re left with the question, how many truly enjoy the role of leader? How many are therefore situated to do and be the best they can, as Bill Murray suggests?

Most people who are in leadership roles today came through their leadership training – whether formal or informal – based on the industrial model of the 20th century. Need I say that the contemporary world is radically different (okay—I just did)? What can make the leadership role considerably more enjoyable, more fun, and more effective for all concerned are embedded in five (not-so-secret) secrets:

1. Contemporary leadership is not about “leading.” It’s about creating a very particular environment.
   Specifically, leadership is about enabling a conducive environment for people to come together and create a shared experience, from which an alternate future becomes possible. Received wisdom, sustained for over a century, that a leader has a vision that translates into a mission with objectives that are disseminated among aligned functional departments, with individual employees given carrot-and-stick incentives to accomplish lists of specific, measurable results—that is a description of industrial management, particularly 20th-century management dating back to Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar Animation Studios, suggests in his book, Creativity, Inc. that leadership is not about driving the train, it’s about laying the track. In other words, good managers keep the business running and accomplishing the nominal objectives (more about this in a moment). Contemporary leaders, on the other hand, are the ones who conceive of the new destination – an alternate future – for their organization and enable the conditions for that future to be realized.


2. Contemporary leaders don’t drive for goals. They navigate for intended effects.
   Over a period of several years, I was invited to facilitate the annual strategy retreat for a social justice organization. Each retreat would begin with a session that celebrated the prior year’s accomplishments relative to the goals that were set at the previous retreat. One year, the leaders lamented that for the needs of a particular constituency they had intended to address that year, not one of the set objectives had been accomplished. However, during the review, we discovered that this constituency had indeed become well-engaged through a variety of programs and initiatives. Moreover, their engagement was to an extent that exceeded all prior expectations. Had the group been evaluated on the basis of accomplishing its identified goals and objectives (as is the case for countless individuals in the vast majority of annual performance appraisals), the year would have been considered a dismal failure. However, the group navigated a constantly changing environment so as to enact the intended effects through their programming. The initiatives met the needs of their intention and were therefore tremendously successful. The world has become far too complex, and therefore, far too unpredictable, volatile, and ambiguous for any fixed objectives to remain relevant for long. No one can know whether objectives and goals that seem appropriate at any point in time will in fact be considered to have been appropriate at some future date. Moreover, it is often the case that specific goals (because of the artificiality inherent in setting such goals) don’t actually effect the organization’s overall intentions: Individuals may achieve their goals. The organization fails nonetheless. Or, put more colloquially, the operation was a success, but the patient died.


3. Contemporary leaders base their organizational culture on individual autonomy and agency, collective responsibility, and mutual accountability.
   Giving someone responsibilities and holding them accountable is a great way to exert control. In a complex environment, however, control is the last thing you want: attempts to control a complex system changes it ways that inevitably produce the infamous “unintended consequences.” It kills initiative and intrinsic motivation. Worse, perhaps, is that control stifles innovation and creativity, precisely what you don’t want to do in today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected environment. But think about it: all of those systems of checks, balances, incentives, rank scoring, top-down planning, rolled-up objectives… all of them induce stress for everyone concerned (especially managers) and create specific personal incentives to sandbag goals and “look out for number one” rather than collectively looking out for the enterprise as a whole. Today’s world is nothing if not collaborative. People entering today’s workforce are nothing if not entrepreneurial and enterprising. Giving them licence to have their own autonomy of action and agency to accomplish what matters to them makes them not only happier and more engaged, but vastly more productive. Creating conditions and incentives so that all members are collectively responsible for the success of each ensures an environment of continual interaction that promotes innovation. Having a personal sense of accountability to each other rather than just to a boss enables a person’s intrinsic motivation in favour of collaboration. The three – autonomy/agency, collective responsibility, and mutual accountability – ensures alignment throughout the organization and appropriate navigation without the need for high control. And everyone ends up enjoying their time in the workplace a whole lot more.


4. Contemporary leadership employs strengths-based, appreciative practices.
   In theory, having employees set development goals that focus on improving areas of weakness will make them more effective as employees. In theory, providing them with “feedback” – especially when things have gone wrong – will enable them to improve their performance so that the wrong thing “will never happen again.” In practice, however, having a person focus on their deficiencies and deficits is a sure-fire path towards disengagement, demotivation, non-reflective dependence, and compliant – rather than committed – behaviours. Besides, unless you’re among the relatively few sociopaths in society, how enjoyable is it to constantly point out someone’s faults to them? Even when things do go sideways – as they are wont to do in an inherently unpredictable, complex environment – wouldn’t it be far better to initiate a reflection beginning with what went right? Which of the individual’s core strengths did they call on during the situation as it was unfolding? What was missing that precluded a more desirable outcome? Rather than measuring annual performance against possibly irrelevant or retrospectively not-useful goals, wouldn’t it be more effective to ask which accomplishments made the person most proud (and why)? Instead of dictating top-down performance objectives, often conceived against an artificial and arbitrary model of “mission pillars” (or some other similarly immovable metaphor), doesn’t true engagement begin with collaboratively creating a common appreciation of what’s possible (see point 1) leading to a common volition to action?


5. Contemporary leaders recognize that one’s work integrates with, rather than balancing in opposition against, one’s life.
   “Work-life balance” is a baby-boomer construct, defensively countering the puritanical Protestant work ethic construction of corporate capitalism. It sets up a false dichotomy that one’s work and one’s life are two separate, distinct, and antagonistic entities. Ideally, “work” and “life” should ideally be balanced—a notion responding to the rather unfortunate fact that for many people in the last (and to a certain extent, current) century, work dominated – and often ruined – people’s lives. Even the now-hoary admonishment – “nobody on their deathbed ever said they regretted not spending more time at the office” – has been nominally, if cynically, remedied by the office following us home via always-on connectivity. Thanks to the first generation to be born into the internet society entering the work-force, whose apparent lack of a work ethic distressed many a boomer manager, we now are beginning to realize that work must be integrated as but one part of a well-rounded life. This concept shift gives leaders permission to ease up on their expectations of themselves as they reset expectations of others. It also suggests that all sorts of policies, procedures, and control mechanisms can be dispensed with, particularly if the other four recommended guidelines are brought into effect.

By removing a considerable amount of pressure imposed by Industrial Age command-and-control precepts of “good management,” organizational leaders can direct their attention towards creating and enabling the optimal environment for their members to engage with one another, achieve personal and mutual aspirations, and have one heck of a good time doing it.

Predicting Organizational Dynamics—Empirical Validity of Valence Theory

Good theory does three things:

1. It explains observed phenomena and behaviours.
2. It makes (testable) predictions of future behaviour.
3. It enables one to derive new behaviours and phenomena in response to new circumstances.

(You might ask, what’s the difference between thing 2 and thing 3? The second case predictions are based on situations that one could anticipate or conceive. The third case deals with situations that are completely from out of the blue, which is increasingly what we face in our contemporary world.)

As organizations and intra-organization behaviour have become more complex, academics, organization development practitioners, consultants, and managers seek new models to explain, predict, and derive what happens, will happen, and could happen in organizational contexts. Over the past fifteen years or so, it is increasingly common to use the metaphor of communications networks – roughly modelled on the Internet – to describe organizational dynamics. Information flows within organizations no longer strictly follow the hierarchical chain-of-command first described by Henri Fayol back in 1916 (in French; 1949 when translated into English as General and Industrial Administration). To model the complex, interconnected feedback and feedforward loops that occur throughout most large organizations, and indeed, the social graphs of informal teams or spheres of influence, adopting a network theory of contemporary organizations seems to be a useful thing to do.

As an aside, there are two complementary thoughts on theory: The first says that, although all models (theories) are wrong, some are useful. The second says that all models (theories) are right—until they’re not. It is indeed useful to bear both of these in mind so that one resists the temptation to substitute the model for reality (leading to very problematic “abstract empiricism”), and understands that any model has its limits of applicability (i.e., the trick is to know when to stop).

In particular, a network theory of organization would predict that if a person becomes a blockage or impediment in information flow or effectiveness, the network would “route around” – that is, avoid involving – that person. Indeed, that is what often happens. It follows that if that obstreperous person (and their department, if they are a manager) were eliminated, the adapted flow would simply continue and the organization itself would not be expected to undergo any substantial change. After all, the information flowed before; it can flow afterwards, relatively unchanged and unimpeded, all other things being equal.

Valence Theory predicts something else. Valence Theory defines organization as “that emergent entity resulting from two or more individuals, or two or more organizations, or both, that share multiple valence relationships at particular strengths, with particular pervasiveness, among its component elements at any point in time.” The five Valence relationships are: Economic, Affective (socio-psychological), Knowledge, Identity, and Ecological. There are two forms of each valence – fungible and ba – that respectively account for more traditional, bureaucratic, administratively controlled, and hierarchical organizations, and “connected relationship” organizations that are more consistent with the ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate reality in which we live.

A Valence Theory conceived organization is potentially always in flux based on the precise nature of the relationships at play at any time (and the relationships themselves interact in ways that are not deterministically predictable). In a practical sense, however, given a more-or-less stable cohort of actors (staff personnel and those external actors with whom they interact), and more-or-less established relationships, the organization would usually exist in a state of stable homeostasis. One of the predictions that Valence Theory makes has to do with changing members: When people arrive or leave the organization, relationships and their interactions necessarily change. Valence Theory predicts that the organization itself necessarily changes, even in the absence of any other change-initiating impetus.

One could see an organization changing if, for example, a relatively (hierarchically) senior person were to change. Conventional thinking would say that a relatively lower-level (again, hierarchically speaking) person coming or going would not be considered as important enough to initiate a substantive organizational change—even though complexity thinking might suggest otherwise (based on the principle that in a complex system, small perturbations can initiate substantial systemic effects). Valence Theory, on the other hand, predicts that any change of members necessarily changes the organization because the nature and quality of (the Valence) relationships necessarily change.

Consider the case of the aforementioned troublesome person around whom information flow re-routes. Valence Theory would predict that if that person were to leave, the relationships would necessarily realign to such an extent (because they had been, colloquially speaking, so bent out of shape that they would have no choice but to realign) that the organization would experience a clearly observable change. That change would occur seemingly of its own volition without the organization having to undergo an explicit change initiative or a formal re-organization (which often changes very little, in actuality—deck chairs, meet Titanic...).

I recently had opportunity to observe this precise phenomenon occurring in a live environment. At the “Fair Contest” company, there was a mid-level manager who was responsible for a support function, nominally acting as an internal supplier to the line business departments. This manager happened to possess characteristics that, taken together, would characterize that person as a “dark triad personality.” For numerous reasons, people in other departments learned, over time, to effectively marginalize that person and avoid using that manager’s department or resources, choosing instead to “route around” that department and obtain their own, usually external, suppliers. Suffice it to say that the department enjoyed very little credibility at Fair Contest.

A network model of organization would predict that the departure of the dark-triad manager should not necessarily result in a substantive change, since the other, relatively autonomous managers would continue to use the services they had come to know and rely upon. (Note that budget was not a determining factor between using internal and external resources.) Valence Theory, on the other hand, would predict a substantive change in organizational trajectory because of the resulting major realignment of relationships, and consequential organizational reconfiguration of valence relationship dynamics.

Last fall, the dark-triad manager was, in fact, fired for cause (apparently not directly related to their narcissism, psychopathy, or Machiavellianism). In the relatively short period between then and now, there has been a significant, beneficial shift in organizational trajectory in both tactical operations and strategic positioning even though none of the many changes which occurred had been specifically planned. In fact, they can be well explained as the result of realigned valence relationships among members that, in turn, reconfigured organizational dynamics. The departed manager – true to their narcissistic character – was heard to say that the Fair Contest Company had made a big mistake in letting them go. Nothing could be further from the truth, even though no one had anticipated the magnitude and positive significance of the ensuing changes. No one, that is, except Valence Theory.

Valence Theory called it.

Appreciative Performance Reflection: A powerful alternative for annual review season

In a recent post I critique the traditional, so-called SMART-goal-oriented, performance review, an annual ritual that most people anticipate as eagerly as they do tax season, or a visit to the dentist (not that I have anything against dentists!). Advocates of this latter-day corporate version of the auto-da-fé would insist on the necessity of setting specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time-bound goals to ensure that individuals are aligned with the overall objectives of teams, departments, divisions, and the organization as a whole, that they are objectively held to account for their responsibility towards the organization’s intended achievement, and that there is a fair and manageable mechanism to assess the relative contributions of individual team members. “Besides,” more than one command-and-control freak has assured me, “people want to know how they stack up against their peers.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and hardly a left-wing advocate of fads like holocracy, puts it very simply:

Managers don't like giving appraisals, and employees don't like getting them. Perhaps they're not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don't work. … Performance appraisals often don't accurately assess performance. … Performance reviews mostly reflect how well employees can ingratiate themselves with the boss. … Reviews occur too infrequently to provide meaningful feedback. … Those receiving the reviews invariably believe they are above average—and defensively resist being told that they aren't. … Performance appraisals [are] unlikely to improve performance. … Possibly the biggest issue, however, is that performance appraisals focus managers' attention on precisely the wrong thing: individual people. … By focusing on the presumed deficiencies or strengths of people, individual performance reviews divert attention from the important task of eliminating the systemic causes, such as inferior technology [not to mention problematic HR-driven systems or personally-dysfunctional managers], behind poor performance.

So what’s a possible alternative?

I recommend periodic Appreciative Performance Reflection conversations. This process derives from the Appreciative Inquiry methodology developed by David Cooperrider, from which the Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny structure is taken. It is a way of enabling a positive-focused review of one’s accomplishments in the larger context of long-term aspirations and ambitions. More than that, Appreciative Performance Reflection enables one to contextualize those accomplishments in the service of organizational and colleagues’ objectives. Using a reference group comprised of those with whom the individual mostly interacts as well as their manager, rather than simply reviewing accomplishments with one’s direct supervisor alone enables better collaboration and activity coordination among individuals, especially those working in diverse functional areas. Additionally, this process encourages more innovation and greater initiative than traditional goal setting exercises. Traditional goal-setting often provides an incentive for uninspired objectives—people quickly learn that greater rewards accrue from setting non-challenging goals.

The Appreciative Performance Reflection is ideally held with a reference group of three people chosen by each individual, which often includes the individual’s direct supervisor or manager. The reference group helps facilitate, and actively participates in, what is essentially a coaching conversation around the individual aligning their aspirations and bringing their strengths to the organization’s collective success. The participation of the reference group helps to create mutual accountability and collective responsibility. It enables organic, emergent alignment of everyone's efforts towards common successes. Ideally, the reference group process obviates the traditional necessity of a hierarchical command chain to align people’s activities so that the organization accomplishes its goals. The thinking behind this acknowledges that autonomous individuals are capable of self-organization towards common goals in a context of common understanding, a key finding of my research.

The setup and framing is roughly as follows (noting that the animating questions have been condensed for the post):

Appreciative Performance Reflection

Given your current understanding of the aspirations, high-level objectives, and business needs of our organization over the coming medium term (i.e., up to a year), please reflect on the most recent six to twelve months past, the coming six to twelve months, and one to three years ahead as you answer the Discover, Dream, Design, and Destiny questions, below.

Discover

• Since the last reflection and formal check-in, what have been your greatest personal successes? What is it about these accomplishments that is important to you, that helped them be memorable and significant? Who contributed to your success in these accomplishments, and how?
• Reflecting on your own personal growth, development, and transformation since our last reflection and formal check-in, how have you have changed, and how did those changes occur?
• What is one thing about you at this point in your experience here that you want to herald to the wider organization?

Dream

• What would you like to do more of, do differently, or do even better than you’re doing now in order for you to be even more successful and satisfied?
• Imagine that you are in your ideal role here, doing precisely what you love, and feeling very proud and satisfied. What does that role look like? What have you done to achieve that role?

Design

• Which one or two aspects of the ideal role inspire you to take positive action over the next while? What initial steps can you take?

Destiny

• What resources and individuals do you want to call upon to support your aspirations? What type of support do you want from your supervisor? What resources to which you don’t have ready access would support your success over the medium term? Which from among your particular strengths will you call upon to support your progress and success towards achieving your aspirations?

Using such a framework to guide a strengths-oriented, appreciative reflection enables the desired alignment of individual’s activities among collaborative groups with whom each person interacts the most in a way that encourages people to bring their best towards achieving their – and the organization’s – aspirations.

[Review] "No Journey's End": A Wild Ride, and a Wild Read

No Journey’s End, a new, “creative nonfiction” book by PeterChiaramonte, should best be enjoyed with a background soundtrack of Steppenwolf’s classic, rock & roll anthem, “Born to be Wild.” Chiaramonte takes us on a ride that perpetually seems to be heading over an existential cliff as he recounts how his life-path intersected for a time with that of a convicted member of Charles Manson’s murderous “family,” Leslie Van Houten. We follow the journey of Chiaramonte as an aspiring but rebellious academic who chafes against the reins of the traditional academy that leads him from an uninspiring job in a suburb of Toronto to the psychedelic adventure that was Southern California in the early 1970s. After seeing newspaper pictures of the then young-and-beautiful Leslie Van Houten, he is compelled by an irresistible drive to pursue, woo, and win the heart of a woman whom we know is ultimately doomed. The author portrays Van Houten as a naif, caught up through little fault of her own in Manson’s vengeance project driven by the sex-and-drugs-enabled mind control of his followers. Throughout the hard-driving narrative, a variety of characters from both Van Houten’s and Chiaramonte’s lives act as crash barriers for the tragic couple careening towards the inevitable end. It is no spoiler that would threaten the sheer roller-coaster enjoyment of the read to note that Chiaramonte managed to veer safely to a life-long academic career, while Van Houten has spent nearly her entire life in the maw of the US penal system.

Given Chiaramonte’s credentials, it is not surprising that this book can be read as a philosophical and existential reflection on one person’s inexorable attraction to impending disaster. The narrative is filled with drugs and rock-and-roll that typified the times (although notably, very little sex). It is also filled with fast cars and the vicarious horrors that were the crime scenes, both physically in the LaBianca and Tate/Polanski homes, and in the psyches of the drug-deranged family members. During the prison visit scenes, in which the author speaks with the object of his desire through bullet-proof glass, one gets the impression that he is actually looking himself in a Narcissus-inspired mirror. Zeus, it is humorously said, advised Narcissus to “watch yourself.” Chiaramonte is given the same advice throughout the book by various and sundry actors that populate both his and Van Houten’s lives. As the reader vicariously races through the hell of the Manson experience in the author’s “shotgun seat,” often watching the blur of scenery through spread fingers of hands over eyes, one realizes that among many other things, No Journey’s End is a cautionary tale that retrieves the ancient trope, there but for the grace of God go I. Chiaramonte does a masterful job reflecting on what might – but could never – have been, looking for adventure, taking the world in a love embrace, and exploding into space.