| Lorne Rubis - Part 2

Don’t Be an Echo Chamber… Please Disagree!

201214 Sep
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Posted inBe Abundant

Key Point: Over my years as a leader, I’ve come to appreciate the incredible value of constructive disagreement and conflict. When you have people around you who care enough to present a viewpoint that helps an idea evolve or makes a decision better because of a debate, everyone usually wins. On the other hand, when people become passive or worse, ambivalent, to constructive conflict, we will likely run into difficulty. It is vital that we embrace disagreement as a way to improve thinking and the quality of an outcome. Do you really embrace disagreement and constructive conflict? What do you do to create a safe and positive environment for opposing viewpoints?

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us in this embedded TED Talks video, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counter intuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers… And how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.

Character Move:

Find a window to watch Heffernan’s relatively short 12-minute TED Talks video and honestly evaluate how much you promote honest dialogue and disagreement on ideas or propositions.
Spend more time asking versus telling. People are smart. They will know if you are genuinely interested in honest debate versus seeking unedited approval.
Do not punish people when they express a view you don’t like, (for example, don’t get mad, become defensive, show how hurt you are, etc). They will soon realize that having any disagreement with you isn’t worth the “pain” associated with the conflict.
The worse, and potentially dangerous thing is an environment where people are not capable of having constructive conflict. The outcome is that ultimately bad decisions will be made.
Stand up and learn how to constructively disagree. Celebrate better decisions that emerge from healthy, constructive conflict.

No echo chamber in The Triangle,

Lorne

Do You SLUDGE at Work?

201211 Sep
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Posted inBe Accountable

Key Point: We are going through a work revolution in many ways. But perhaps the biggest mind shift is recognizing that for many of us, work is NOT just where we go. Instead, it’s what we do. And related to that concept is the emerging understanding that all of us need to concentrate on managing work rather than each other. This combination of different thinking about work and management will be an opportunity for each of us. It is also a risk if we don’t revisit our thinking about the nature of work and how we are personally adapting. One-way to determine whether a person “gets it” or not is to observe how much they “SLUDGE.” What’s SLUDGE? Read on.

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson coined the term in their fascinating book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution. SLUDGE refers to any comment we make that reinforces old, outdated ideas of how work gets done. It is hard not to participate in SLUDGE, especially if you’ve been in the workforce for more than a decade. Many of us have it firmly placed in our heads that success at work is related to time spent in the work place. But if we give this view serious thought, this way of looking at work is complete nonsense. Here is the new deal: NO RESULTS = NO JOB.

It doesn’t matter how many hours we put in, how hard we try, how nice we are, how loyal, etc. We can get in the office before the sun rises and drag our way home after it sets… It does not matter unless we get the results needed from the work we are assigned. Since mobile technology lets many of us take work everywhere, it is vital to get clarity on what results are expected and to deliver, from wherever we need to be. Additionally, managers have a renewed responsibility to spend most of their time recognizing, assigning, measuring and delivering what adds value. Let’s all manage what needs to get done and encourage people to be self-accountable and manage themselves on achieving the needed results. (Do you personally need to be MANAGED)?

“Bill gets in the office after 9:00 a.m. every day. I get in at 7:00 a.m., and he gets a promotion. Obviously they don’t value hard work here.”

“I can’t believe how much time she’s out of the office. I bet she’s got a job on the side!”

“I haven’t taken a vacation in five years. That’s dedication.”

“Oh you’re here? That’s a surprise.”

“Sally must be close to pushing up daisies. Why don’t these oldie mouldies retire and make room for some one younger?”

The above are examples of SLUDGE and serve no value. In fact they are subtly or not so subtly sucking away energy from where it is supposed to be… IS the person getting the required results or not?

Character Move:

Be able to observe when you or others are participating in SLUDGE. (I did it the other day when I jokingly teased one my associates about leaving “to go golfing”).
Recognize that SLUDGE reinforces outdated beliefs that you’re only committed based on hours spent in the workplace, that you’re not trusted enough to be left unsupervised, and that you’re really not worth being respected.
Stop SLUDGE in your head and coming out of your mouth. And when you hear someone else doing it, ask him or her how that stuff they are SLUDGING on really is negatively impacting results and/or stopping them from doing good work. Or are they just being gossips? Don’t let SLUDGE stink up your department.
Get hands-on and granular on really defining results and spend time evaluating what you’re doing to get that work done. Spend less time worrying about appearances and office politics. If you’re a manager, help people get great results and expect them to have the value of self-management. Don’t use “time” to control your direct reports because they will learn how to show you how much time they’re putting in instead of spending their energy on delivering great results.
Remember… NO RESULTS = NO WORK! For you and others.

SLUDGE free in the Triangle,

- Lorne

What’s Your Return on Luck (ROL)?

20127 Sep
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Posted inBe Accountable

Key Point: I’ve talked with many people about their situations, and they often use “luck” when explaining how they landed where they are. However when luck is more analytically reviewed, it is not whether we have good or bad luck, but how we manage it that makes the difference. We are all going to experience “good” and “bad” luck. And this luck will likely not be experienced in convenient, evenly managed ways. Nietzsche’s famous quote, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” is a reasonable reference for managing luck.

Jim Collins’ book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck, devotes an entire chapter to the concept. It is a great read, especially the story about two climbers and their “luck” surviving a perilous mountain climb in Alaska. Collins’ team defines a “lucky” event as one that meets three tests. 1. A significant aspect of an event happens largely independent of the actors. 2. It has potentially significant consequences (good or bad). 3. The event has an element of unpredictability.

Collins and team provide ample evidence that unless the luck is so severe that it “ends the game,” the key matter related to luck is how we personally manage it. Winning the lottery, by most definitions, is “good luck.” But how many nightmare winning stories are there? There’s even well-documented data that most professional hockey players are born in the first half of the year. But still, research shows that most NHL hall of famers, the best of the best, are born in the second half of the year. Is that luck?

Character Move (based on the Collins team research):

Cultivate the ability to zoom out your lens and recognize when luck happens.
Have the wisdom to navigate it when it does.
Be sufficiently prepared for bad luck. It’ll come too.
Have the mindset to create a positive ROL. Do not be just reactive. Take good or bad luck head-on and decide to manage it to your best advantage.

Get a high ROL in the Triangle,

Lorne

What Do You Say to Yourself at Work?

20124 Sep
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Posted inBe Respectful

Key Point: My last blog talked about love at work. People have often struggled with the “love” word when paired with the office. But work is life and love has a very real and desirable place in the real world. When we love someone, we don’t dwell on his or her mistakes. We help them learn from the consequences. And when they succeed, we feel great (abundant) about congratulating them. We encourage them when they’re struggling, and like that great phrase captured in Ken Blanchard’s classic The One Minute Manager; “we try to catch them doing things right.” When we feel loved, appreciated and cared for, we try harder, take more risks, work more collaboratively, and perform better. It would be ideal if ALL our managers and leaders treated us with love and respect. But before asking that of others, I feel that it’s important to ask it of us. I believe the more we love ourselves, the easier it is to express genuine love to others. In our heads and private thoughts, we may beat ourselves up way more than we should; something we would never do to someone we loved.

The question is how do we operationalize more self-love through self-talk? I’ve taken suggestions from Peter Bregman, a behavioral consultant and regular contributor to Harvard’s blog to give us some guidance. The character move below paraphrases his advice:

Character Move:

Start by noticing your voice in your head. What do you hear when you catch yourself thinking about yourself? Do you sound like the leader you wish everyone would be? Or do you sound like that manager you once had (or still might have) that you dislike? Just paying attention will begin to change the way you speak to yourself.
And changing the way you speak to yourself will change the way you feel about yourself. Act the way. Don’t reward negative behavior with attention by lingering on your failures. Instead, distract yourself by immediately getting busy doing something else. Learn but move forward ASAP!
When you succeed, on the other hand, is a great time to pay attention. Take a minute to congratulate yourself. Let your good work reflect on you. Think about what you did that led to the success so you have a better chance of repeating it. Laugh with yourself. Enjoy yourself.
At first, it might feel awkward. But feelings follow actions. Once you get the hang of it, you gain more confidence in yourself. You’ll start to take more pleasure in yourself. And if you’re not there already, you might just fall in love with yourself.
At that point, what you find won’t look like arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you’re better than everyone else, which is often a protective mechanism born from insecurity when you don’t feel good about yourself. When you love yourself, you won’t need to feel better than anyone else, you’ll simply feel good about yourself. (This is where self-respect and abundance shake hands).
Loving yourself won’t just influence the way you talk to yourself. Over time, it will influence the way you talk to the people around you. Which will positively impact your colleagues, your department, your organization, and everyone who comes into contact with your organization. In other words, if you stick with it, this little mental exercise will expand beyond just your head, and the whole world around you will start to feel the benefit.

Talk love to yourself in The Triangle ,

Lorne

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.