Those heady times and the pursuit of WOW...

The following is the original and the rewrite can be found by clicking here.

During the heady times of the 80s and 90s* it seemed you just couldn't get enough of Tom Peters and his endless parade of books on leadership - In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence, Thriving on Chaos, Circle of Innovation and finally my favourite, The Pursuit of WOW! (He has authored more but these are the ones I bought and have read to various degrees)

I would be hard pressed to give you specifics from the many pages after all this time but I will never forget the inherent meaning of WOW - Be it expressing astonishment or admiration or a sensational success or when you impress and excite someone greatly - It's a word that covers a lot of ground and works well with bold colours. WOW became the definitive emotional and qualitative measure for me; if you heard someone utter the word WOW, you were onto something**... the bigger the WOW, the bigger the success. 

It even worked it's way into the theme of one of our meetings where I amused the audience with "WOW stories", gifted everyone the book, and presented a teal shirt with the word WOW! emboldened on the front; we could not help but stand out as a united front of teal at that evening's baseball game and even made it onto the "Videotron".***

Why after all of these years was I reminded of The Pursuit of WOW!?

Honestly I could not tell you; maybe I was just day dreaming about those heady times of the past... although more likely somewhere in the "messed up filing system that is my brain", a small alarm went off signalling that I was not hearing WOW enough (either out of my mouth, or someone else's). 

Why did my brain do this? It is because hearing the word WOW tells you that you're "stretching yourself", reminds you to set the bar higher, motivates you to experience something new, indicates sensational success, and lets you know you are impressing and exciting someone greatly. Also, I suspect my brain wants to look back at 2016 as heady times. 

And if you decide to pursuit WOW, please don't turn it into one of those words like "awesome", "genius" or "brilliant" that are now grossly misused and trite - The Hubble telescope is "genius", not using two thermal sleeves on a very hot Starbuck's latte macchiato.****

iamgpe

* Were the 80s and 90s really that heady historically speaking? Probably not, but for me it was a time of great learning, experience building, and a great amount of fun & adventure.

** WOW does not replace hard data but it is an amazing lead indicator.

*** The Videotron is the large video screen at the stadium of the Toronto Blue Jays. At the time was called the SkyDome but is now the Rogers Centre. Don't ask me what team they were playing... it was a long time ago and there was beer.

**** I borrowed this line from Louis C.K who is in fact a comic genius.

Meritocracy is great, except when it isn't... then it's a @$%# train wreck.

The following is the original and the rewrite can be found by clicking here.

Up front I will tell you George is no one person but a "mashup" of people and situations I've experienced over the years.

The organization from the top down made a point of saying the culture was one of meritocracy; people were rewarded for ability and performance be it merit, incentives or the coveted promotion. If you exceeded your goals and objectives you were rewarded. Straight forward enough when you see it on paper.

And now for a bit of a tale:

The reasons for George's promotion can be summed up as "he was good at his old job", the organizational structure was trying to keep up with growth, George had experience with the organization, and his boss to be liked him (minimizing the risk of problems down the road).

A couple of years went by with George's performance being somewhat average; as some of his peers were promoted around him he began to notice and asked about being "promoted" to a senior manager (reflecting his hard work and tenure with the organization). The feedback was his performance and current competencies did not warrant a promotion; development plans to one degree or another were put in place.  

Over time, the bemoaning turned into overt complaining about the situation, he dismissed his 360 degree feedback outright, George's people began to talk behind his back, his peers began to question his behaviour and his lead and lag indicators continued to be average at best - And then... he was promoted. SCREEEEECH, BANG, BANG, CRUNCH, BOOM, BOOM.... KABOOOOOOOOOM!! What a @$%# train wreck

Granted, the sound effects may be suspect but that doesn't make the imagery any less accurate; let me offer some perspectives as to why, and let's start with George.

• George is really happy, as you would expect; all of his questionable behaviour and average performance has been re-enforced as a good thing... I mean, he did get a promotion after all!
• George's boss is relieved that she doesn't have to listen to George complain anymore but unfortunately she has just re-enforced all of George's behaviours (not only with George, but all of her other reports). And what about those average performance results? There was no reason to expect they would change and in fact they didn't.
• George's peers started to question the credibility of reward for performance and what is needed for the "next promotional opportunity". Also, George's behaviour seemed to be effective, so why not include it in the "toolbox".
• Employees emulate their boss, as she (or he) is their direct role model for success. George's thinking and behaviour will spread to his direct reports.
• The company sees a malaise of mediocrity has settled into the organization with regard to performance and true leadership; it wonders why there is an ever shrinking pool of high performance people and can't understand why great people are leaving. All of which comes with a heavy cost.

As fun as it can be to play the "blame game", it is more constructive to drill down to the root causes(s) and this particular "train wreck" was the result of poor leadership (be it the noun or the verb... you choose).

• Leadership had not established an "objective talent management process" used throughout the organization to promote people, and if they had, it was not robust enough to ensure that everyone understood what it is and adhere to it. In other words, "Talent management helter skelter"
• Leadership could not, would not, or did not engage in appropriate management to "develop George up or out".

I suppose George's promotion could have been the result of using "promotions" as a retention strategy; or that some analysis was done that determined "moving on George" was at the very best a zero sum gain so to "promote him and move on" was the best course of action; or maybe the leader simply knew something that "everyone else did not", and the promotion was very much justified in her mind. 

Again, we find ourselves back to "poor leadership" as a root cause.

And by the way, the real sound of this @$%# train wreck was not the loud SCREEEEECH, BANG, BANG, CRUNCH, BOOM, BOOM.... KABOOOOOOOOOM, but the nearly inaudible swoooosh as Meritocracy collapses into a trite and hollow word.

iamgpe  

"Around the table advice" for new entrepreneurs...

The following is the original and the rewrite can be found by clicking here.

A short while ago I found myself "around the table" engaged in the conversations of business and the opportunities to be found in an ever shifting economy; the odd bourbon*, MBA's, CA's, CPA's, Six Sigma functional excellent "black belt's", CFA's and decades of leadership fuelled the discussion.

I suppose it was inevitable that someone would eventually blurt out, "Is it me, or is everybody today an entrepreneur?"

This, along with another round of bourbon, ignited passionate discussion that ebbed and flowed around the topic of entrepreneurship; opinions and examples seemed endless.

With most of the conversation still fresh, and my memory holding up as much as could be expected (after a bourbon or two), I wanted to get the highlights down "on paper" - I might as well start with what one of the entrepreneurs said:

"Just because you don't want to work for someone does not make you an entrepreneur" - He went on to say it's also not something you call yourself between "gigs" while you look for a "job"; he was rather emphatic as he said it's all about a fire inside to create and own something sustainable that you can call "yours". He did admit he couldn't work for someone though. 

Although an "idea or invention" is important, it is all about creating a viable business that "generates revenue" - Revenue will catch the attention of investors and will "feed" cash to your insatiable business.

There is a big difference between being "CEO of a company" and being "CEO of a business" - The CEO of a company entails less than $100 dollars and half an hour on a government web site to register, whereas being the CEO of a business entails building out a product or service to sell, creating a process from order to cash, involves an endless amount of time to expand the business, hiring people to lead, etc, etc, etc.

There was a good amount of discussion and examples of how entrepreneurs needed to really, really, really understand the cost structure of managing their business - There were more than a few examples of CEOs who quickly ran out of "cash" because they didn't understanding their processes, didn't understand the cost structure of the business and assumed there was an endless amount of "easy" money to be raised. Declaring bankruptcy, having to tell investors there is no return on their investment, and having to lay off people is a ghost that may haunt you longer than you think; people will remember and think twice the next time.

As an entrepreneur you have to be honest with yourself and ask, "Is my idea a solution looking for a problem?" - If you do not have a clear line of sight to the problem you are solving for and if you can't plainly articulate it, you will most likely have great difficulty selling your idea because there isn't a customer need - The harsh reality is you may think you have the "greatest idea ever" but no one else does.

Entrepreneurship is not predicated on age and thinking an entrepreneur has to be under 30 is asinine - More than one person pointed out that they've seen entrepreneurs of all ages and the most successful ones were those who had cross pollinated age and experience in their business.

And this leads to the final point...

Self-awareness; the best entrepreneurs seem to be self-aware - They understand their strengths and weaknesses and hire people who can fill in the business gaps.  

In the end, someone pointed out that much of what we were talking about applied just about everywhere, but as an entrepreneur the "tolerance for mistakes" is so much less because there's little insulation to absorb them. From there I think we shifted to our "selfie ready" Prime Minster and the next round was ordered. 

Feel free to join us around the table the next time we get together. You can buy the first round.

iamgpe

* I'm not advocating the need for alcohol to have a good discussion but I will add there is something about having a Woodford Reserve in hand that just makes the conversation a little bit more enjoyable.