Money is a by product of contributing value and meaning

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Dec 2, 2011 in Change, Culture, Excellence, Innovation | 0 comments

As the legend goes, Peter Drucker was once asked by a business owner to review his financial statements and see if he could find better, more innovative, ways to make money from studying, and tweaking, his financials. To which Drucker replied, “You don’t make money, you make shoes. Work on making shoes. The money is just a by-product.”

The lesson reminded me of an interview I had with Yvon Chounaird, founder of Patagonia, who said in the interview, “Over the past forty years I have yet to encounter a business problem that cannot be solved by focusing on product excellence and product integrity.” Despite, and because of, the magnificent growth Patagonia has enjoyed over the years, Yvon and Patagonia found sustainability by consistently refocusing their attention on quality and excellence. The journey was not without various hurtles and faltering moments while those around him were distracted by financial growth alone. For the full story see this interview.

But my point is this: Everyone I talk to is talking about building meaning in their work – building meaning into their everyday life and endeavors, As Teresa Amabile reminds us, progress in meaningful work is what motivates and engages us. We’re preparing for an upcoming event with Benjamin Zander, renowned conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, and I listened to him talk recently about the importance and value of contribution, as opposed to competition. They aren’t the same thing – competition is when you mentally compare, evaluate and attempt to trump. Contribution has no such relative marker. Contribution is when you try, when you show up and muster what you got – hopefully from a source of practice and competence – but nevertheless a real try.

Dispel your worries of competitive evaluation, and focus on your best, and give toward your best efforts with honest intention.

Why Change is Hard – Embrace the Unfamiliar

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Nov 29, 2011 in Change, Innovation | 0 comments

Sometimes you make a leap. Perhaps you buy that new car you’ve been researching, or that slick new piece of software or technology you’ve been eyeing. And suddenly you see it everywhere and wonder if you weren’t on the cutting edge after all. Once you’ve gone through the diligence and effort, it’s become familiar and suddenly you see it everywhere. The same is true about out networks and connections – we know what we know and whille we think we adapt the new, and are open to new experiences, we readily default to the familiar, the known.

The same is true in organizations, and the change initiatives, new processes and designs that we start to adopt can get unhinged by our urge to retreat to the familiar. This psychological effect was documented years ago as the Mere Exposure effect. One of the more classic examples involved showing subjects, and their friends, pictures of the subject – both straight photographs, and a mirrored version, as the subject would see themselves in the mirror every day. Consistently, the subjects found the reversed image more appealing, and the acquaintances found the straight photograph more appealing. Of course because each image is exactly as it appears to themselves, and as it appears to their friends in the world. How we see the world is the most familiar and our most attractive and comfortable version of the world.

An important recognition here, confirmed in the studies, is that the more we expose ourselves to new ideas, the more familiar they become. To create change, in ourselves and within the ways we work, embrace the unfamiliar.

You’re more likely to be fired by your team than your boss

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Nov 22, 2011 in Culture, Leadership, Relationships | 0 comments

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Ken Hicks, CEO of Foot Locker had just said, “You are more likely to be fired up than fired down.” I was interviewing him yesterday and had asked how new managers and leaders could best make a difference in their first 60-90 days. He provided some intuitive advice about how if you go in with a grand plan to make a difference and expect people to execute on your great idea, you’ve lost the buy-in of the people around you. That is, you’ve lost the opportunity to listen deeply, understand and solicit the input of everyone on the team and gather the best ideas while simultaneously co-opting the engagement of the people ready to execute.

He went on to say – while defining the expression “You are more likely to be fired up than fired down” – that too often new (or existing) managers – get caught up in pandering to the imagined interests of superiors, and as a result lose the support of those around them. Building that support has to be more about listening to their ideas and contributions, than getting people to say what you want hear.

The result of lost support, while catering to the top, is that your team feels their voice isn’t heard, their ideas aren’t recognized, and so they disengage. When that happens, a manager cannot possibly execute on any grand vision and get anything done. Your team isn’t following any more. You’ve just been fired up. Sure, your leadership has the capacity to get rid of you top-down fashion, but long before that happens, long before the complete paralysis or catastrophe, or missed milestones, you’ve been fired up from the people you are supposed to be leading to a clear deliverable. Maybe you have that that grand vision in mind, but if you neglect the team, you’ve lost your ability to be effective.

When you Systematize, You Sterilize

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Nov 15, 2011 in Coaching, Communication, Passion, Talent | 0 comments

“To systematize is to sterilize.”
- Shlomo Maital

Lionel Messi plays soccer with the joy of a child. His inventiveness and wizardry can leave you (his opponents too) gaping in awe. In an interview for the New York Times with Jere Longman, Messi stated that he would quit the game as soon as it stopped being fun.

I have three kids and I’m convinced that they will far exceed me in their capability in pretty much anything that they’re working on currently. The capacity and abilities of my daughter, for example, in ballet and building fairy houses is well…already beyond anything I’m capable of, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. My boys, currently nine and eleven, are into skiing and soccer at the moment, and because of the understood 10,000 hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, I’m quite certain that they will far surpass me as well.

Last night I coached an indoor soccer game with my son Will’s team, and although individually each player is quite talented, we were playing a team that was a little bigger and little older than us. And while it was a close match at halftime, in the second half the opposite team outscored us probably 5-1. Later that evening I attended a party and I was chatting with Artie, one of the fathers of a player on our team who had grown up playing a game called futsal. Futsal is a game in which you play with a small ball on a small court, and the ball doesn’t bounce so well. The game rewards creative, inventive play, and since it’s played on small court, like indoor soccer, most goals come from either breakaways or crisp passing to find opportunities. The game does not reward a single individual attempting end to end efforts.

Artie was suggesting that we should play the game more like basketball in which once we lose the ball our team should retreat immediately back to a defensive position and wait for the opposing team to attack. Once we regain possession of the ball we should try for breakaways down the wings – down the sides and out of traffic on this small field. He pointed out that almost all of the goals scored in the game came from breakaways, we should employ the same tactic.

I’ve only been coaching soccer and lacrosse for a few years now – mostly to my young boys – but Artie has clued me into a couple things that Daniel Coyle has known from studying the worlds best coaches and players around the world, in disciplines ranging from skiing, to soccer to violin playing. The best coaches he finds, talk less yet say more, and let the kids define the play to accelerate the learning.

If you’re a parent watching sports, you have observed it is quite common to see coaches and parents from the sidelines yelling directions or ideas. But as the kids will remind me, and I’ve already observed, they really don’t hear very much as people yell from the sidelines. They hear you in the small moments when you speak to them personally and directly. The second key idea is to set up structured drills, but then allow the exercise to evolve as the kids choose the way the drill is created in real time.

The first idea is intuitive. It makes sense that if you pull a child aside and speak to them personally and customize each tip and bit of advice to them individually and let them understand you know them, your small bit of advice will resonate more strongly.

And the second idea – the one in which you allow the kids, the players, let the drill emerge as they see it happening, allows them find play and individual expression and joy in creating each moment, because the play comes from their own personal expression of skill and ability.

These ideas are aptly applied to our work. Daniel Coyle has spent the last few years studying just such coaches and players on a world class level and found numerous examples of how the best players and coaches mine and build brilliance from seemly “average” players, workers, contributors in almost any discipline. Join us December 7 for a live, interactive event in which Dan Coyle discusses these findings and provides clear, actionable tips on how to crack the talent code.

Gratitude = Meaning = Performance = Happiness

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Oct 24, 2011 in Change, Learning | 0 comments

The results were clear: Higher levels of optimism, increased life satisfaction, and decreased negative feelings were all associated with students’ expressions of gratitude. By the follow-up three weeks later, students who had been instructed to count their blessings showed more gratitude toward people who had helped them, which led to more gratitude in general.
– Jeffrey Froh, Professor, Hofstra University

I have three kids, currently with a combined age of twenty-one. The other day I was musing on how to teach gratitude to them and posed this question to my five year old at the kitchen table: “Annie, would you name three things you are grateful for?”
“What’s grateful?”
“Thankful. What are three things you are thankful for?”
She thought for a moment and said, “Santa Claus!” Cute. She also said painting with her grandmother and playing with our dog. A good start. Gratitude, just like creativity, can be learned. The importance and power of engaging ourselves in our work, connecting with the people and world around us, and deviating from convention to create new value, defines our potential in this creative age.

Jeffrey Froh, Hofstra University, did this cool study in which he and his colleagues, tracked 221 students and divided them into three groups, asking each group to think about 1. things they were grateful for and liked about school, 2. things they found to be a hassle and not fun, and 3. a control group they asked nothing of.

Pretty simply, they asked group one to spend just a few minutes each day identifying up to five things they were grateful for, and measured their school performance and engagement from both their perspective and the perspective of their teachers. Essentially, they found these students to be happier (by their own account), and more engaged in their work (by the teachers account), and…wait for it, they got better grades. Not only that, the effect lasted beyond the duration of the study itself. Finally consider the effect of extrinsic rewards in this study:

“Evidence from research with adolescents indicates that gratitude is incompatible with the pursuit of materialistic or extrinsic goals and that it positively predicts academic achievement, mental health and well-being—outcomes that are negatively predicted by materialism.”

Exploring New Terrain – Giving Greatness

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Oct 11, 2011 in Culture, Leadership, Relationships | 0 comments

There’s a sublimely beautiful spot in the north woods of Maine off the beaten path called Southbranch campground on the north end of Baxter State Park. It takes thoughtful planning to get there. To begin with, you have to mail in – yes, USPS mail in – your registration to Baxter State Authority. Although recently they do have an online calendar showing availability, you still have to fill out a piece of paper and select your top choices for camping spots, label an envelope, and mail it in. Baxter State Park Authority will mail you back a paper confirmation which you have to have in hand when you arrive at the checkpoint gate – more than ten miles out from the campground. Nothing motorized invited, on the lakes or trails, other than the car or van that got you there. We’ve visited the last three years and spend off-the-grid days paddling, telling stories by campfires, hiking, and sharing good company.

A highlight of this annual pilgrimage are gloriously high granite cliffs, about a morning-paddle away on an adjacent lake. After we awake, pack lunches, and paddle the length of Southbranch north lake, then portage to south lake along a stream, and tie up the canoes, we scramble up the faces of this granite rock to witness the beauty and quiet solitude of a wonderfully isolated deep lake in the north woods.

Then we jump! From various points that meet our own idea of courage, we jump. Here’s the thing – as the visit grows, as well as subsequent visits over a couple days, we find our collective rhythm in the adventure. We both encourage eachother, and ourselves, in more audacious jumps – or more interesting and unique jumps. Understand, at this site the sky is almost the limit – you could etch ever higher upon that rock and jump from a higher and higher point – there is almost no feasible summit since the true top is over 100 feet – a jump I have yet to see anyone take…yet.

Here’s the interesting part – after our group arrives and we spend time there, we first lead eachother to what is obvious, what is most accessible. As time passes, the sun rises and people start to find their own routes up the rock to higher jumping points, the group teaches what is possible, what can be achieved.

In the context of leadership, once everyone feels supported and in a safe environment, we begin to not only explore the possible but also teach those around us what is possible. Leading the way up the rock, demonstrating unique leaps of faith – older kids taking the hands of the younger to safely navigate the rock face. We have to examine both the novel and mundane with fresh eyes, and excitedly share those experiences – it’s only then we can both lead and encourage new climbs and new leaps from high above. Believe me, our work is no different. No group ever got dumber by hiding trails, or hoarding glory. Teach everyone on the path. That’s giving greatness.

Engage. Connect. Deviate.

Posted by G. Shawn Hunter on Sep 27, 2011 in Innovation, Leadership, Passion | 0 comments

Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once said, “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.” His point is that, once we label and partition a thing or an idea, it curtails our sense of discovery and curiosity to learn more. We have to regularly nurture curiosity to allow creative value to emerge. But don’t confuse creativity with brainstorming, or divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a critical component but not the end result. Divergent thinking—our ability to come up with a multitude of possibilities—does not necessarily equal creation of recognized and shared value.

What does this mean? www.JasonTheodor.com

For example, I showed a sign of a man throwing litter into a trashcan to my five-year-old daughter Annie and asked her what she thought it meant. She said, “It’s someone putting ice cubes in a hot tub.” Well, could it not be?

Similarly, our son Will watched my wife collect clothing and toys around the house to donate to Goodwill. After half an hour he had a puzzled look and said, “How can good Will wear all of these clothes? How old is good Will?” He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and it can be a good thing. Preserving a sense of remaining open new truths is a critical component of creativity, and that capacity to interpret the mundane as unexpected is innate in all of us.

To uncover the pleasantly unexpected in something we have known for a long time, or to have a novel interpretation of something we have never seen before, we must remain ever curious. This curiosity allows us to build a growing repertoire of ideas that, when gestated for long enough, can interconnect to create new mash-ups that, hopefully, are recognized by the world as possessing shared value.

When we are in flow—deeply engaged in activity—we can accelerate the duration it takes for those idea mash-ups to reach full potential by connecting ourselves with other people with whom we don’t interact regularly—or by making new relationships. These connections can quicken the process of borrowing brilliance to generate new ideas. Again, it’s those mash-ups of cross-pollinating, disparate ideas that leads to new value creation. Remember the most powerful new creative mash-ups often come when we reach out into our networks of people around us—particularly when we share, connect, and collaborate with those with whom we have weak (occasional) ties—that those new value iterations have a chance to form.

Finally, remember we find the best expression of ourselves when we don’t wait to be tapped by our leadership, our company – when we don’t wait to be asked. In our work, we all see opportunities to be filled, dilemmas to be solved, and possibilities to be executed on. And yet we hesitate. We’re waiting to be asked, ignoring the difficult, or pausing out of fear. That fear is often borne out of trying to anticipate what we think the company wants and expects of us – trying to intuit how the company or leadership thinks we should act.

The truth is, we will bring much greater energy, creativity and passion to our work when we take the lead, when we take the first step. Step boldly.