Success Authority Ronn Lehmann gives us insights into how we can build Competitive Immunity into our organization and culture. He provides examples of how companies thrive based on their focus and decision-making ability.
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Transcript:
Ronn Lehmann
The question for people is “Are we focusing on the urgent or the important?” I think that urgency tends to ring the bell, but you end up just chasing rabbits and going after this and this because there’s always going to be something else. Even if its urgent, if people look at each thing and say, “Are we spending time and energy on this because it leads us closer to or farther away from our goal?” If it’s just status quo, what else can we be doing about this? Sometimes it’s not as urgent as we think, or it doesn’t really need to get fixed, or it doesn’t need to be taken care of. It’s an interesting question to ask CEOS, “How much of your time is spent on urgent, the problem of the moment, and how much is spent on really planning and being intentional about moving forward?”
I heard a guy once posed the question to CEOs, “How much time do you spend on the present during your day, and how much time do you spend on the future?” He said, “If you’re 90:10, that’s a problem.”
Linda Ruhland
You mentioned urgent or important. It’s always important to someone. Or is it a question of relevance?
Lehmann
The relevance of importance is to your goals and your mission. If it moves you toward them, it’s important. A lot of times, the goals are a little fuzzy, like “We want to be the best!” Okay, so does the thing that we are doing right now help us be the best? If so, then great! But if it’s just treading water, or if it’s just something we feel like we have to do, maybe it’s not as urgent as we think. Or, we only have limited time, resources, and energy. If your hope is to get people focused and working toward something, then, not only as a leader do you have to ask that question, but you must have everyone ask the question, “Is this urgent or important?” And “Help me prioritize my day.”
When I talk to folks, a lot of times they’ll ask, “Can you help me prioritize? You’ve given me 58 tasks to do. How do I prioritize?” And, distressingly, the answer is often, “It’s all important.” No, it isn’t. You have to be able to prioritize. That’s a difficult call. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s simple. But there’s stuff that keeps the lights on, and that’s important. But there’s also building toward the future and the organization that you want. If most of your time is spent maintaining the present, you’re going to get there…let’s see. Never! You’re just never going to be there because there’s always something urgent. I think that’s distracting.
Ruhland
Is there a group think that takes place? Which either makes things urgent or more thoughtful and futuristic? Or is it all coming from individuals?
Lehmann
As always, I think it’s a combination. Culture has an influence on my personal way that I approach things. I may have a disconnect with the culture, but until that gets to a certain point, I’m going to try to fit in. Especially when you think about a new person. They figure out very quickly what’s important around here. As a leader, if I don’t have a culture and I’m not personally stressing what’s really important, then what becomes important is other stuff. The way I view the organization is inherent on my leader, wherever that leader is. It may be far down in the organization. But I figure out pretty quickly what’s important to my boss, and that’s what I’m going to do. Until it gets to a level where I think it’s pointless, and I don’t understand why we’re doing this. And my boss is looking to his or her leader…all the way up the chain.
One of the things that can happen is the CEO or owner has a real clear sense of what’s important, but that gets diffused as it goes down and interpreted differently. Unless you’re constantly making that important and saying, “What’s important is important.” Keep repeating it and talking about it all the time, and ask questions, “How is what you’re doing fitting in with that?” It’s very difficult for someone down in the lower parts of the organization to figure out “What do I do on this day? I have to make a decision. Where am I going to spend my time and energy? It’s clear my boss wants this done. I’m going to do what my boss wants.”
Unless you have a culture that supports asking questions and offering different things, and that’s accepted, it’s difficult for an individual to buck that for very long. What happens is that you end up with compliance instead of commitment. You also end up losing people that may be the very ones who could help you reach your desired future because they just won’t put up with it. People are less willing to put up with things that don’t connect either to their personal values or to what they would like to achieve. You get a sense of “I am contributing to this bigger thing, which is pretty exciting.
If I just feel as if I am going through my day solving problems, I say “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to be really good at being a fire fighter. I’m going to race around, put out fires, and take care of the urgent until I can’t or don’t want to do it anymore.” Always with culture, it comes down to communication. Even, as a CEO, if I have a very clear vision, I need to make sure that I’m communicating a clear, undiluted message all the way through the organization. It takes time and energy, but it’s important. It creates the culture of “I understand how what I’m doing fits into the bigger picture.”
Ruhland
In lots of cases people are putting off what they know they should do in lieu of what they feel they must do right now. But is this an opportunity for a potential third party to come into the organization and shine a light on some objectivity?
Lehmann
Absolutely. It’s a time to sort of pause and ask the question, “Is this getting us where we want to go?” And I think that sometimes an outside party can see something, or at least ask a question, that may not be as evident. One of the things is organizations get trapped into doing the way their competitors do them. Everyone plays the game the same way. It’s an opportunity to challenge that a little bit, disrupt things, and say, “Why are we doing this the way everybody else does?” If everyone else is being successful, we can be “me too,” copy whatever they do, and hope that, somehow, we’re more successful. Or we can say, “How can we change this up? How can we play something different?” Again, that’s a courageous decision because it’s easy to just do what everybody else does. You may have temporary competitive advantage, briefly. But once the conventional wisdom is challenged, everybody goes, “Why did we do it that way?”
Ruhland
Urgency does not prevent catastrophe.
Lehmann
No! It may prevent short-term problems and issues, but in the long term, organizations that do nothing but respond to urgency are going to miss opportunities. Part of it is because you are so focused on the competition, your little world. You don’t see things coming from the outside. More importantly, you don’t see opportunities that may lie outside your field of vision. Again, it’s important for the CEO to spend time thinking about the future, get up above the fray, and figure out where we want to go from here. Where are the opportunities, and what do we need to do differently in order to get there?
Ruhland
There is a lot of ambiguity. Soon hereafter, though, there may be some breakthrough opportunities as history has demonstrated.
Lehmann
Ambiguity is the state we’re in. I think so often we are seeking normalcy, wanting things to calm down and be the same as they were yesterday. They aren’t going to be. That’s the nature of the permanent-white-water change we are in. Ambiguity comes in when there are very few strategic situations in which we can know everything that we need to know in order to make the perfect decision. Most people have sat through meetings where they to come up with a best idea, best implementation plan, or best strategy. Whatever it is, there are all sorts of unknowns that simply cannot be discovered by spending more time in investigation.
Organizations get paralyzed by “We’re not going to make a decision until we have all the information.” In this ambiguous time, you’re never going to have that. So, the trick is, “Can we get to a point where we have 70 percent of the data and we’re going to make a decision, then see if we can get the rest as we implement. Then we can quickly change, fix, and revise as we go, rather than waiting for 100 percent.” Better to be partially wrong and doing something than waiting to be completely right because we’re just not going to get there. By the way, the other tricky part in this is in the time it takes us to make a decision while we’re waiting for the information, the stuff we already thought we knew is changing. It’s a constantly churning situation. If you’re hoping for all the information, you never had it and you’ll never get there. Sometimes we can create that information by adopting quickly, trying things, but be ready to change course if, we have to, and adjust. At some point if you’re building an airplane, you’ve got to fly the plane. You’ve just got to see if it’s going to fly! A lot of organizations get so paralyzed with fear of making a mistake, which comes back to culture, that they’re not going to do anything that they’re not 100 percent sure of. As a result, the catastrophe is atrophy. The company slowly falls apart.
Ruhland
I’ve got to believe that there’s a correlation between not knowing what to do, dealing with urgency as a priority, and not being able to retain or attract the people you need to make your organization thrive.
Lehmann
I’ve talked to so many people who much later in their lives or careers look back and said, “Boy, I had no idea how bad, or how good, that culture was.” I worked in an organization where I look back now and think, “What an amazing culture!” But at the time it was one of the first real jobs I ever had. I didn’t know, I thought every company was like this. You quickly find out it isn’t.
Ruhland
Is there something that we’re missing if we’re all in that same boat, chasing after the same people to do what apparently is the same stuff? What’s happening is that people are not staying. They’re just revolving through the system.
Lehmann
Peripherally, I think there’s a lot of talk about different generations having different goals and things. I resist that to a certain extent. I have two examples: Early in my career, I remember coming across some research that found that there were people who left college or school, took a job, and stayed with it. Then there were people who took a different job every five years. The people who took a different job every five years were far ahead financially and in terms of their enjoyment of their work. That was forty years ago. And now we hear about generations who jump from job to job, and we don’t understand it. That was happening back then, too. But maybe to less people. That was one example. The other thing is that I think it’s always been true that people like to do work that has value and like to be valued for that work. The current generation of younger workers seems much more courageous in making those decisions. In contrast where I might have hung onto something even though I didn’t like it, but wouldn’t quit until I had another job as opposed to saying, “You know what? I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to see what’s out there.”
When it comes to retention of people, that’s important. Do they feel valued? Do they connect what they do to something bigger that’s exciting? If a CEO sets a goal and says, “This is our vision. We’re going to do this.” Some people are going to get really excited about it and say, “Yeah, I want to be part of that.” Others may not and think, “Yeah, whatever.” Everybody’s different and takes it differently. But it’s the people who get excited about your idea that you want to retain at all costs. Those are the people who will put in the extra effort. They’re going to be creative and innovative. Then a certain percentage will go along with whatever you have. Then, there are people who won’t. That’s the challenge. But if you can keep that core group of people who are really engaged, those are the ones who are going to get promoted and move up. Pretty soon, your organizational culture is one of “We are going after bigger things. We innovate, we’re excited, and we disrupt. We look at and challenge things and ask questions.” Pretty soon, it becomes your culture because those people move up.
If I’m the new person and I want to get ahead in my career, I look around to see that, okay, the people who do that are the ones who are innovative and are taking chances and are making decisions and moving forward. In other situations, you look around and see that the way to get ahead is to keep your head down, don’t upset anyone, and play the political game. In many organizations, that’s true. It’s not a bad strategy if you want to get ahead—play by the rules that exist. Again, part of it is the CEO setting the culture and saying, “This is what we’re going to promote, reward, and recognize.” In terms of finding people, you have to have a compelling statement. It’s almost like selling to customers. You have to sell the job. Right now, I think a lot of organizations are just looking for warm bodies because there’s such a hard time finding people. That’s going to change because it always does. At that point, who are you going to end up with? Again, urgent versus important. Is it urgency to fill certain jobs right away? Okay, but just know that you may be mortgaging your future a little bit when you do that.
Ruhland
How do you recommend where people even start aspiring toward Competitive Immunity versus seeking a modest advantage?
Lehmann
It always starts with the senior leader, the CEO, who models the reflection of why we are doing this. Are we trying to survive or trying to thrive? Do we want to grow? If so, why? I’m agnostic about whatever people think is important, it’s okay with me. I don’t have a list that says, “You need to do or think these things are important.” But if the idea is that you want to start a business, grow to a certain point and either go public and make a fortune or sell it and make a fortune, great! What do you need to do to make that happen? What does “finished” look like? One of my favorite questions is, “When this is done, where are we?” What did we do? Beyond that, what’s the legacy? How is the world different, and hopefully better, because we had this business or this organization? How are our customers better? What problems are we solving by doing this? These are reflective questions on what we really want to do and how am I going to spend my time. They’re not making any more time. Every hour you spend in an organization, you’re not getting back. As a leader, it’s important to think about legacy—not just your personal legacy, but of the organization. For instance, if your goal is to journey toward Competitive Immunity, that has a vastly different strategic and tactical view than does competitive advantage or just wanting to survive as opposed to thrive. Obviously that’s on the organizational level, but it’s on the individual level, too, because everyone has to answer those same questions for themselves.