Recently a friend said to me, “Criticism is the death gargle of a non-achiever”. It’s a great statement and I’ve found it to be true. Many years of leadership have given me the opportunity to see the long-term impact of different mindsets on a person’s life. The truth is that all too often those whose criticism rings the loudest are the very same people who have contributed nothing but words. Non-achievers.

It’s easy to be a critic. To pick apart what others have created. To appoint ourselves as judge and look down on those around us. To deflect attention from our own inadequacies by focusing on what we believe are the faults of others. Sadly in Australia, where I live, it is so common in our culture that we created a name for it – Tall Poppy Syndrome.

We’ve probably all sat in business meetings where the culture made being creative nearly impossible. In that environment you quickly learn that bringing an idea to the table is seen by others as invitation to shoot you down. Those businesses often wonder why there isn’t more innovation coming from their team, but they don’t recognise that their critical culture is the silent killer of creativity.

I just spent seven weeks traveling with my family. While we were in New York City I saw a subway advertisement that read “Stupid creates. Smart critiques. Be stupid”. To me it was a great reminder that there’s a certain risk of appearing stupid that comes with being creative instead of critical. But it’s the risk every achiever must take.

Does that mean that we should never be critical? Do we hold back on feedback? No, I believe it’s really about the overall balance of our communication. It’s one thing to offer suggestions on how something could be improved, and another thing altogether for negativity to be your default setting. What’s the theme of your communication? Do you tend to notice and commend what is good, or notice and condemn what could be better? When my team know I am for them and I give encouragement whenever possible I can bring criticism from time to time without becoming “the critic”.

I recently heard speaker Steve Penny say, “I would rather fail tremendously than live dismally”.

To me that’s the bottom line. I’d rather being defined by my creativity than by my criticism.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback

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What could you stop doing in 2010, to do more of what gets real results?

This time of year most people are setting goals and making plans that revolve around adding things to their lives. New projects. Extra staff. More products and services. The problem is that many leaders are hoarders when it comes to strategies. Over time their teams become burdened beneath the weight of ideas that have outlived their usefulness.

Here’s a new mantra for shaping your new year: Simplify.

Often the most effective plans are marked by simplicity not complexity. So before you rush headlong into planning your new year with the assumption that leaders are supposed to constantly add, why don’t you take stock of what you already have?

Don’t add, subtract to multiply your impact.

My wife and I have been spring-cleaning our house in recent weeks. There’s something liberating about throwing things out. Giving yourself permission to jettison all those items that you’ve hung onto just in case they become useful again at some point. As a coach I’ve worked with businesses that need a serious spring clean. Purge the plans. Rethink what is valuable. Get ruthless with things we’ve outgrown or rarely use.

I believe there’s wisdom in the well-worn saying “less is more”. Often the most creative thing you can do is simply stop doing something that isn’t working. In trimming the deadwood you create the space for the best things to flourish.

The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of your results in life are produced by only 20% of your efforts, and my own experience seems to prove that true. It’s a great theory that many of us already know, but it’s not until you actually apply it to your plans that it makes any difference. So if you had a life-threatening illness and could only work one day a week because of your health, what would you focus on when only 20% of your week was left? Make 2010 about those things.

• Is a stocktake of your priorities long overdue?
• Is it time to write a not-to-do list, as David Allen suggests in ‘Getting Things Done’?
• Could you de-clutter your mind and your plans with a ruthless spring clean?
• Is 2010 the year to simplify? Subtract to multiply.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback
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It’s been said that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just a little bit “extra”. There’s a coffee house that I’m irrationally loyal to (in fact I’m there even as I write this). It’s not as though the coffee or the service or the surroundings are so drastically different to other purveyors of the bean. No, it’s in the little things that they’ve wooed me into this trance. They’ve got the basics mastered but then they dazzle me with a little bit extra.

Classic example: I walked in recently and the barista proudly held up an extension cord. Strange greeting, but it turns out they’d noticed that my favourite spot by the powerpoint was getting popular, so they bought an extension cord so I could work at my laptop from another table. That’s the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. And what did it cost them? What are the economics of extra? It was probably $6 at the supermarket, but the real point is the value that it communicated to me. I matter. Somebody noticed. Some team member cared enough to remember it next time they were picking up supplies.

That’s value. It’s often like that with being extraordinary… the real cost tends to be less about money, and more about the effort and energy it takes to “go the extra mile”. Yet the rewards are enormous. I’ll drive past five other cafes on the way to this place because they won my loyalty with tokens of effort and energy.

I heard a speaker recently who said, “The gap between where you are and where you want to be is largely determined by the price you’re willing to pay”. It’s a bitter pill to swallow because we’d rather blame something external. But what price am I willing to pay to bridge the gap between where I am and where I want to be? When it comes to my fitness it’s more convenient to blame being busy than to accept that in reality I’m not as fit as I want to be simply because I don’t do those little extra things that fit people do.

So what about you and your team? Imagine you were to take an inventory of all the things you do – every product, service, contact point, and piece of value you add. How many of those would be left if you were to take out everything that could be classified as “ordinary” or standard? If “ordinary” was defined as “doing what’s expected”, “what others do too”, “what you’ve always done”, or “the basics”… what would be left on your list? What is it that you offer that is “extra“ordinary?

It’s time to define extraordinary-

• Ask your loyal fans and passionate advocates what they believe your “extra” is.
• Ask your team to automate the ordinary so they can give their personal attention to the extraordinary.
• Ask yourself what you could do today to invest your best effort and energy into multiplying your extraordinary points of difference.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback

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Years ago a friend’s father had a car accident and was given a loan car over a long weekend by the smash repairer. Since the father didn’t need the car, his son’s friends hatched a plan to get away for the weekend… to Uluru (Ayers Rock)… half way across Australia from Sydney. Driving and sleeping in shifts they raced against the clock, knowing the car had to be back in three days. They barely saw Uluru before continuing on to Darwin (and the untimely demise of a Kangaroo who smashed a headlight and dented the panels). Then they braved muddy floodwaters near the Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland and completely submerged the car. Miraculously they were able to restart it and they limped the car home. But there was no miracle for its condition – smashed, scratched, flooded and full of mud. Tuesday morning came, they returned what was left of the car, paid a paltry insurance excess and walked away. True story.

That’s what a lack of ownership will do. You’d never treat your own car like that. But there’s something in human nature that treats what belongs to someone else without respect, unless we cultivate a sense of ownership. Do your team treat your organisation like a loan car? You know you’ve got Loan Car Syndrome when the team don’t value the customers, the assets, the products, the reputation or the vision like the boss does. In great teams you get the sense that every person sees himself or herself as an owner.

I’ve got an Apple iPhone, and I worked out pretty quickly that if I needed help with it I should go to Apple, not to the phone company that sold it to me. I won’t name the phone company to protect the not-so-innocent but they represent what is worst about modern businesses. Departments blame each other, repairs are outsourced to someone you can’t speak to, you wait 30 minutes on hold to have someone waffle about a ‘glitch in our system’. But take your phone to Apple and someone with a t-shirt that reads “Genius” will sit down with you and help you… face to face… because they love their product… they’re proud of it… and if something is wrong they’ll replace it on the spot.

So how can leaders develop a culture of ownership in their teams? It goes deeper than attaching people’s pay and bonuses to performance measures, although that can have its place. By contrast I’ve led teams in volunteer organisations where hundreds of people demonstrated deep levels of ownership without receiving a cent for it.

My Top 5 Ownership Strategies-

1. Demonstrate it daily. They’re watching what you do, not what you say. If the standard is low, first check the standard you’re setting yourself.
2. Reward ownership wherever you see it. You get what you focus on so make heroes (and managers) of those who are exemplars of true ownership.
3. Shift your language from “I” and “my” to “we” and “our”. It’s our business and we have a great opportunity here.
4. Allow people to take responsibility and authority. If you micro-manage your team, or you delegate responsibility without authority, don’t be surprised when they lack ownership.
5. Make sure your people can own the successes too. Ownership should include sharing in the plunder, not just the problems.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback

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This week I’ve launched www.paulandrew.net – highlighting the work I’m doing as a speaker across a whole range of industries. I’d love you to take a few minutes to check out the site, with videos of me in action and testimonials from my clients.

Feel free to pass it on to anyone who might be looking for a results-oriented speaker for leaders & teams.

I was talking with one of the senior team at Gloria Jeans Coffees last week and she made a memorable statement as we discussed the different ways leaders can view the challenges facing their teams. Sadly it’s something many organisations don’t seem to understand- “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I’m not one of these leaders that describes themselves as being a “big picture person” in an attempt to gloss over a lack of attention to detail. In fact, I love strategy. I enjoy problem solving. I care about scoring every point I can, not just winning the game.

But if I had to choose between culture and strategy as my primary weapon there is no contest. I will choose culture in a heartbeat.

1. Culture Is Soil

The culture of every organisation is to its team what soil is to the plants that depend upon it. Focusing on strategy without addressing culture is rather like planting a palm tree in a swamp. No matter how good your strategic initiatives may be in their own right, the likelihood of their sustained success comes down to culture more than just about any other single factor. I’m no horticulturalist, but it’s common sense that unsuitable, barren or toxic soil will eventually kill even the best plants. The leader that ignores culture is often the same person who rants about the ineffectiveness of their team, blames HR for poor hiring, moans about “Gen Y”. Their team are stunted, fruitless and impotent. And culture is their silent killer.

• So what’s the true condition of your soil?

2. Culture Is Life Blood

The culture of your team is its life supply. Its essential role, like blood in your body, is to bring life to every area and to carry away the toxins that would otherwise destroy it. For better or worse, when a team is injured they bleed the true culture. Who we are when things go against us says everything about our actual values, regardless of what mission statement we put on our website. A healthy organisation has potent culture pumping through its veins, mostly unseen yet nourishing every part. No hardened managers blocking arteries. No internal bleeding quietly draining life away.

• So do you need a blood test?

3. Culture Is Ideology

If we elevate strategy without giving attention to culture, we’ll win the battle but lose the war. Down through history the empires that have truly altered the world as we know it were those who ideas, world view and beliefs impacted the cultures that came into contact with them. The best teams have a pervasive passion about them. They get the big “why”, and as a result “what” and “how” tend to flow quite naturally. When we live our values its easier to develop people because everything we do and say is part of their training. Great ideology creates a contagious culture.

• So what’s your infectious ideology?

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback
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I learned to drive in an automatic V8 Holden in the early 90’s, it was a powerful and thirsty beast with a novice at the helm. One day as I was driving with my Dad I approached an intersection and at the last moment the light turned orange. I should have kept going, but instead I jumped on the brakes. And then something strange happened; we didn’t stop. We slowed down, but the harder I braked the louder the engine roared. Instead of sailing easily through we crawled across the intersection after the red light, cars honking around me with Dad pleading “Go mate, just go!” It was then that I looked down and saw the problem. In the rush I had put my foot across both pedals… I was braking and accelerating at the same time.

Often leaders do the same thing. They brake and accelerate at the same time. On the one hand they say to their teams “We need to increase new business” but then the marketing budget is the first one to get slashed. They talk about growth but their actions tell their team another story. I wonder if you’ve done that lately? Have you run a muddled strategy that’s neither offence nor defence and ended up crawling through the intersection with everybody frustrated?

Instead of pressing even harder on the accelerator maybe it’s time to check if your foot is also on the brake-

• What are you saying, doing or believing that is slowing your team down? Think about that, honestly.
• To what extent is your own leadership creating obstacles to your team’s momentum?
• Perhaps the breakthrough you’ve been hoping for is less about increasing results, and more about decreasing inertia.

So if acceleration is what you really want, remove whatever you can that works against it.

• Make it your mission to remove the obstacles to faster decision making, initiative and progress.
• Get ruthless with the burdens of bureaucracy that punish those who try to move things forward.
• Be clear on your strategy – are we on the offence or the defence right now? There are times for both, but running them both at once doesn’t work any better in business than it does in sport.

The rabbit in the headlights only has so much time to choose left or right before either option would have been better than indecision. At the end of the day it’s the leaders role to choose the strategy. Sometimes you’ve just got to make the decision and then back yourself.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision” Peter F Drucker

Please add your comments…

I’m writing a project about the vital differences between ordinary companies and those that become ‘something more’. Inspired by the legendary likes of Apple, Google, Harley Davidson and those rare businesses that somehow seem to transcend being just a product or a service and instead engender raw energy and deep loyalty from those that connect with them.

So what you believe makes the difference between companies and movements? If you had one chance to inspire a business leader to create something truly extraordinary what would you say?

PLEASE ADD COMMENTS WITH YOUR THOUGHTS

Here are a few that came in via Twitter @paulwandrew & Facebook

“Movement = where people are people, not a resource; where integrity & truth are inherent; vision is the culture, not a memo” Matthew D

“Movements are built by passionate people who have been empowered to believe and strive for more” John B

“Company is about infrastructure … movement is about people who take ownership of an effort” Penny H

“A company moves forward together with great momentum when everyone speaks a common language” Rebecca F

“It’s about buy-in / vision and purpose / innovation / ease of communication and interaction / future focussed / integrity” Gabriel K

“A movement is a business that puts people and their values before profit” Tom G

I love Twitter… ever present on my iPhone, my Twitter page keeps me connected. To some it’s a communication tool, to others a gossip aggregator, and to others a beloved time-waster. But I believe that the way in which Twitter works should remind leaders of some truths about effective leadership. Thankfully, in many places, the old command and control style of leadership is pushing up the daisies. As Sony puts it “we live in exponential times” and I believe these times call for a serious rethink of our leadership models.

So what can we as leaders learn from Twitter?

People follow you by choice (and can opt out any time)
There’s nothing I can do to make people follow me on Twitter. They choose. In fact anyone can choose to follow me whether I know them or not. And most importantly, they can silently opt out of following me at any time. Today’s effective leaders realise that people are following only because they choose to. Gen Y get a lot of bad press for being less loyal to their employers, but all too often they are simply leaving leaders who appear to think that they can force people to follow them.

You’re being watched
Common sense says “watch what you tweet”. It amuses me when people are shocked that some employee gets fired for Twittering that they’re at the beach after telling their boss that they’re sick. I believe true leaders understand that accountability isn’t just a fact of life; it’s something they signed up for when they accepted the role of leader. Instead of fighting that reality I want the realisation that I’m being watched to cause me to lift my life and leadership to a higher level.

Say it in sound bites
Twitter forces you to distil your ideas down to their essence – 140 characters. That’s a good discipline for leaders. As a speaker I use the one sentence test… don’t speak for one hour until you can explain your point in one sentence. In a day of overwhelming access to content, only the well-crafted sound bite has a fighting chance of being remembered… let alone acted upon.

People retweet what you say
I always think of it as a compliment when people retweet what I say on Twitter. In that moment my words are exposed to an audience with whom I hadn’t had direct contact. Of course even my misguided ideas, spelling mistakes and general ignorance can be broadcast too (think: Hugh Jackman’s tweet about the “Sydney Opera Centre”). Leaders must remember that everything they say has an audience beyond the immediate. So craft what you say with retweeting in mind.

Leaders follow others as well as being followed
My favourite people to follow on Twitter follow other interesting people themselves. By contrast we can sometimes subscribe to the stereotype of the leader that follows no-one. They don’t care what others think; the only thoughts that matter are their own. Yet the best leaders have heroes too. There may be thousands following you, and just a handful that you follow, but all the more reason why those influencers should be well chosen because…

Who you follow says something about you
I can’t choose who follows me but I can choose who I follow. Something I seem to do by impulse whenever I look at a person’s profile is to see who they are following. On some instinctive level I believe that I can tell a lot about a person by looking at who they choose to follow. So do the people you follow represent you well?

More often than not the struggles we deal with as leaders revolve around the ways in which people are different. Perhaps two team members have very different communication styles or personality types. Or maybe we’re mediating disagreements between middle managers with opposite concepts of what it means to be a leader. People are different, that’s clear. But it’s the extent to which you can manage those differences for the good of the team that greatly impacts your effectiveness as a leader.

I sat with a leader recently who described his 2IC as the opposite of himself in many ways. “How’s that going?” I asked. In response he laughed, shrugged his shoulders and said “Well… we’ve worked together for a few years now. We used to fight but I guess we’ve learned how to put up with each other”. I got a real sense in that moment that he’d figured that was about as good as it could it get. So I drew this for him on a napkin…

In my view there are four levels on which we can deal with the differences between us

1.    Conflict is the lowest level. Conflict says, “Difference is bad”. When we stay in a place of sustained conflict over the differences between us, each of our contributions to the team is significantly impacted and in all likelihood we also make the work environment unpleasant for those around us. A little conflict is a part of life and can even be good for teams. But when conflict defines a relationship nothing good is likely to come of it for anyone.
2.    Tolerance is a step forward but it’s not a worthy goal for effective leaders. Tolerance says, “Difference is a fact of life”. Great teams do more than just learn to get along. Tolerance takes very little skill, just the ability to put aside our differences and get on with the job. In fact novelist William Somerset Maugham called tolerance “another word for indifference.”
3.    Appreciation is the ability to recognise differences, then move beyond conflict over them and then see those differences as worthy of praise. Appreciation says, “Difference is good”. So the visionary then recognises the contribution of those dealing with the details of their grand ideas. The free thinker realises the value of critical thought. The diplomatic communicator becomes grateful for the person who “calls it as they see it”.
4.    Leverage is the ability to turn those differences into an advantage for the team. Leverage says, “Difference is an opportunity”. It’s one thing to tolerate or even appreciate what’s different about another individual, but it’s a true leader that can capitalise on the contribution those different views or strengths can bring to the organisation. Great leaders don’t just embrace diversity they seek it out. They resist monocultures. No sports coach worth their salt wants a team who are all the same, and neither should you.

Take a moment and write down the names of a few people who are very different to you
•    On what level are you seeing those differences? Conflict, Tolerance, Appreciation or Leverage?
•    If you’ve settled for tolerance, try writing a list of things that you could begin to value about their unique outlook or methodology.
•    Better still, how could those differences present an opportunity for the competitive advantage of your team? What could you do to better leverage what every individual brings to the table? That’s a worthy goal.