Leadership and Vulnerability

How are these two things connected?

I have long maintained that vulnerability is a key component of effective leadership. It’s right up there with self-awareness. I’m willing to bet that almost any leader whom you admire has, at some point, displayed his or her vulnerability. Not only that, it is that very display that makes him or her so admirable.

I was doing some research for a talk I’m giving later this month on performance appraisal systems (more on that later), and I came across this set of short videos featuring Brene Brown. I love her work. Perhaps you’ve seen her TED talks. She’s a social science researcher who specializes in vulnerability and shame. Cool, right?

In these brief clips, Brown talks about how her years of research have led her to the conclusion that uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure are the building blocks of vulnerability. She goes on to make the straightforward connection to leadership: leaders are in the business of dealing with uncertainty, and managing risk and exposure, emotional or otherwise. By definition, then, leaders are required to step up and into what makes them vulnerable.

I thought she put a rather hard edge on what we typically think of as a soft, squishy topic.

What is it about Performance Appraisal?

Such a good idea, and we run it off the rails.

What comes to mind when you think about “performance evaluations?” Or “performance measurement”?

If you’re like most people, what you are thinking of right now is not very pleasant. Performance evaluation ishard to do. Even though it is a fundamental part of a manager’s job, it will never be comfortable or routine. The process is all about judging people, and no amount of streamlining or design is going to change that.

At its core, a performance appraisal is intended to evaluate how a person is doing in her job with a view to helping her improve. This seems like such a beneficial and reasonable idea, especially when creating the conditions for individual improvement lines up with the broader strategic objectives of the organization. Then everybody wins, at least in theory.

Most performance measurement systems try to accomplish multiple tasks, which can lead to confusion if not well understood and skillfully executed. This list often includes:

• Performance feedback
• Inputs to the reward systems (compensation and promotion)
• Review of the appraisee’s potential for professional development
• Documentation for any centralized reporting that HR may do
• Raw material for any coaching the manager may do with the team member

This is a lot to accomplish in a single, yearly interaction, even though there is considerable connectedness among many of these tasks. And then there are things like motivation, counseling, retention, discipline, and firing, all of which can also be loaded into the mix from time to time.

Much has been written about the difficulties with performance appraisal in our organizations, so I am not going to pile on. There are, however, three interrelated obstacles that I see as at the top of the heap: burdensome administrative systems, rater capability, and participant resistance or apathy.

There is a way out of this, and it won’t be easy. So many managers and supervisors, particularly at large institutions, have embedded systems and processes that can’t be shifted. So, starting small is one way to get things going.

What I have in mind is a focus on the conversation. This is the one component that the manager and appraisee can influence to meet their needs.

My posts next week will look at ways to shape the way to talk about performance.

Upside-Down Organizations

Powerful modeling or cynical gimmick?

An organization I know well uses a simple and powerful idea to make the point that its clients come first: an inverted organization chart. That’s right, clients and client-facing staff at the top, CEO at the bottom.

At first glance, this may not seem like a big deal. More like a gimmick or technique. But think about it. 

It changes everything.

Front-line staff really appear on the front line. Managers are depicted doing what they ought to be doing: supporting those who are closer than they are to the productive activities of the enterprise.

Why don’t more organizations do this? They may talk (a lot) about how customers come first and employees are their greatest asset, but they provide little real evidence of this alleged commitment.

In order for this to work, the words and deeds of leadership need to line up with what’s implied by the pictogram. This can be hard for people weaned on the idea that individual success is measured by how far and fast you move up in the organization.

Still, it shouldn’t be difficult to swap that metaphor for the one that says the more senior people carry the heavier burden.

One of the more challenging aspects of operating like this is what it means for how information is treated: information has to flow much more freely and transparently than is the norm in most places I know. After all, if front line employees are the most important ones in the organization, it stands to reason that they need to know everything about how the business is running.

Figuring out how to get comfortable with this level of transparency and then doing it consistently and well is perhaps the single characteristic that distinguishes organizations that successfully turn themselves upside-down from those that cynically adopt it as a gimmick.

Working from Home (Again!)

It’s about leadership, direction, and courage

So here’s the thing. Or at least one thing to follow up on the Marissa Mayer decision to call all her Yahoos! home.

I characterized her elimination of working from home as a failure of imagination in my previous post because Mayer seems to want to revert to an older way of getting the work done, rather than striking out in some bold new direction. Or any new direction.

More than new HR practices, Yahoo! needs a strategy and it needs leadership. These are the things that will move the company out of its funk.

Leadership isn’t bossing people around. Leadership isn’t telling people where to go or what to do.

Leadership is setting direction, with clarity. And with force, unapologetically, if the circumstances warrant. Leadership is doing the heavy lifting that clears the way and makes it possible for your people to move in the direction you’ve set.

Blogger Max Nisen writes about how this is all about culture change and saving a troubled company.

If that’s the case, then Mayer needs to say that. She needs to say exactly what she means. Repeatedly. If this is about building something new, she needs to say that in every piece of communication that is generated.

I read the leaked memo. It is brief and refers to the elimination of the remote work policy with a sprinkling of corporate cliches: “...contribute to the positive momentum...feel the energy and buzz...become the absolute best place to work...the best is yet to come…”.

Some have come to Mayer’s defense, suggesting she is a data fiend and makes no decision without a spreadsheet. The data reportedly show that people aren’t logged in (and working) nearly as much as they say they are.

Still others say she has made the rounds of some employees (presumably those working in the office) and has received an earful about how un-collaborative the work-from-homers are.

If she has undertaken a significant review of the data, if she has spoken to employees about the situation, then she has to say that. She can’t just make pronouncements and expect that everyone knows how rigorously she reached her surprising conclusions. 

Making pronouncements, even if you are the boss, is not how you build trust. And trust seems to be a big part of what’s lacking at Yahoo!

There is also a big people management issue here. Is it really too hard to manage people from a distance? Or is this just another failure of imagination? Make it part of every manager’s job to figure this out. In the right kind of supportive environment, left to their own devices, people will figure it out.

One idea worth considering is something Nancy Dixon calls the oscillation principle. Degrees of interdependency and task complexity are determining factors in the frequency of face-to-face contact. Most of the time remote or virtual interaction works just fine. And there are times when the situation demands being in a room together. Determine what those are on a case by case basis and act accordingly.

Or how about this: What if Mayer spent a month visiting her remote employees in THEIR places of work? The kitchens and attics and coffee shops. How much do you think she would learn? And what kind of a message would she send throughout the organization?

Yes, it’s hard. Leadership is hard. It takes courage. And that includes a willingness to get it wrong once in a while, admit it, and move on.

Working from Home (Not!)

What is it that Yahoo! is up to?

Last Friday, an internal company memo was leaked to the press, and since then the interwebs have been furiously debating the (de)merits of Marissa Mayer’s decision to tell all her employees (known as “Yahoos” -- I love that!) that as of June 1 working from home is no longer an option.

I know you all have been waiting breathlessly to learn what I think of the move, and to be honest, I can’t fully make up my mind.

Initially, I was struck dumb by the delicious irony of a Silicon Valley high tech giant doing something that appears so retrograde. 

However, there are few who know Yahoo! who don’t think some kind of a shake-up is necessary to wrest the company from its extended doldrums. We educated observers, from our privileged position, can argue over whether this was the right shake-up at the right time. And are we ever.

“Begin as you mean to end,” my wife tells me all the time. This bit of homespun wisdom has embedded in it the thing about Mayer’s edict that is giving me fits. Does she really mean to chain people to desks and cubicles as the way forward? And if she doesn’t, why is she doing something now she knows she’ll wind up undoing later?

Maybe that’s not her point. Regardless, what we all can agree on is the shock value of the new policy. From that perspective, the announcement is an unqualified success.

Sometime in the very near future I can imagine Mayer saying to her 11,500 employees -- at least the ones who show up back at the office -- something like, “Now that I have your attention, here’s what comes next...” And it’s that “what comes next” part that will determine success or failure.

____________________

Is this the beginning of the end for working remotely? I can’t imagine that to be the case. I understand and have frequently benefitted from the connectedness that is now possible in our virtual world. I marvel at the facility with which I can instantaneously link myself to almost any other human being in any part of the planet, and how easy it is to learn about anything I can imagine.

And yet. 

My own work presents me with a dilemma. There, I thrive on the essential power of “physically being together,” to borrow one of the several tortured expressions from the newly-famous Yahoo! document. Interaction is more robust in a face to face setting. So much of the breakthrough progress I see with my clients comes as a direct result of being in the same room together, breathing the same air, being in contact with each other.

And so I’m split.

What I find so disappointing about the whole thing is the apparent lack of imagination. If the idea is to remake the culture, wasn’t there a similarly bold shock that could have been sent to the system, one that would have signaled a confident, positive step into the future? You can probably guess that I see this as neither confident nor positive.

Could Mayer have done it differently? I think so, but don’t have any good ideas yet. I’m going to sit with it for a while and see what I come up with. What about you? What have you got?