Dad’s notes on his goals for the college. A plan he followed through out his 51 year tenure.
Note: This is a follow up to our Posts “Be a Disrupter . . . Or Not” and “If Not Disruption . . . then What?”
Reliability over Time . . . or Continuous Innovation and Mastery
Regarding my beloved Huskers (see earlier posts above), I am more impressed by Tom Osborne’s consistency over 30 years (9 wins or more every season) and the flexibility to overcome the annual obstacles of being very good, even elite . . . than I am by the achievements of the “Decade of Dominance” and the national championships.
Dominance, like the Huskers had in the 1990s, requires a lot of things to “go right” or simply “fall into place” (The Miracle in Missouri and Matt Davidson ring a bell?), many of these variables, the leader simply has no control over. (One year, we had three different quarterbacks win games. How many teams had that kind of depth?) Will a player fail their classes, have a family tragedy, suffer an injury? Will the team chemistry in the locker room support or detract from their performance? Leaders try to manage all these contingencies but, in the end, they simply cannot control all the variables necessary to successful win a championship.
The goal then should not be to become a disrupter but to seek innovation and driving to mastery.* This is easily said and very hard to do.
Brook Berringer’s career wouldn’t be described as disruptive by most—he wasn’t even the starting QB—but at least one national championship, maybe two, wouldn’t have happened without him. Photo credit: Wikipedia
By wht_wolf9653 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/white_wolf/5417349804/in/photolist-9fHkmQ-9fHkXd/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37640562
Is Mastery an Achievable Goal?
One problem is that you can never really say you’ve arrived . . . at Mastery. If you think you have, then someone, still innovating, will prove you wrong. Mastery is the goal, Innovation is the path you take to get there. But innovation doesn’t mean “blowing where ever the winds take you.” Instead, it means having a strong commitment to a vision . . . and then seeking any means necessary to achieving it.
I know this firsthand. When my father—who worked for one organization for 51 years, most of it in leadership positions—passed away, we found a bullet list of goals he created when he first started in senior management. We shared it with the President at the time, who took one look and said, “It’s remarkable! He still had that same focus throughout his entire tenure! Yes, he did.
But in 51 years, neither my father, nor the organization—despite much success—had “arrived” at mastery. The organization’s success, once achieved, was not sustainable without continued innovation. Nor was the organization’s mastery anything akin to perfect. The goals, met any many ways, were constantly challenged by changing conditions. I witnessed the struggle to “stay on point” over the years despite the “winds” blowing from many different directions—social forces across the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s for one—and that sustainable drive wasn’t without a focus on continuous innovation and mastery. (see post “From Doc to . . . Mabe the Babe.”)
A close up shows the title of his old note pad. Simple typed letters, “From the desk of Mabrey L. Miller. No as fancy as todays versions.
Time’s Effects on Leadership
Exercising leadership is not without it’s erosive elements. The demands of the “mantle” weigh heavy. Leader’s daily tasks include fixing problems—a task that is never complete. The pressure to impulsively attempt quick fixes is always present and amplified when troubles are evident. Leaders, ground down, by the abrasion of their role become ineffective. Their passion for the vision no longer provides the “fire” to push forward. They begin to look to avoid, try and control more variables, or grasp at new leadership “straws” that they hope will fix the problems they are experiencing. Too often, it’s without a deep, rigorous approach to understanding what their team really needs.
The biggest need, for most leaders, is not to search for a easy fix. They don’t need a wholesale adoption of a new approach with new “buzz words,” a new disruptive scheme that will contort their direction of growth, or even a brilliant guru.** They need a deeper understanding of their team and how to continue to innovate and improve within their own scheme.
What leaders often need is perspective . . . and the courage to act—not be reactive—regarding the human elements of their organization or business. Board member comments, customer complaints, employee issues, the list of stakeholders that can increase the potential for reactive leadership is long—all suggesting how to quickly improve the situation. While a leader should “stay aware” of possibly new disrupters, models, etc. that could create a competitive edge, they shouldn’t focus on chasing them. Yes, there is danger in being stagnant. But, a larger threat looms. Leaders can get caught up in chasing model after model and destroy continuity and crush the stakeholder’s belief in leadership.
Why is it that some coaches can get more out of their talent than others?
I remember a conversation I had with a former Division I quarterback about a team. “They don’t want to play for these coaches,” he asserted. “Just look at their body language,” he continued, “heads down, not making eye contact, avoiding the coach when they come off the field.” He was right. The coaches had lost the team and their performance, and subsequent downward spiral of losses, proved the accuracy of his observations. The players no longer believed in the coach.
Which brings me to this . . .
It’s about the people. It’s always about the people.
There probably are as many ways to “innovate and master” as there are people. In business, the “Lexus model” does not duplicate the “Walmart model.” Nor should it. What makes a team highly functional is the shared vision, application of discretionary effort, interpersonal trust, and other “soft” factors. Call it team chemistry, operating as a “family,” being hungry, or several other euphemisms . . . success is through, and about, people’s willingness to sacrifice, work, and their drive to achieve. To succeed as a leader, you better understand the people element. To wit . . .
You want to do a survey and ask what would make employees more satisfied? Implement a new attendance policy? Iinstall a slide at work? Start the morning with a team chant? You better have a good idea about why this change will be good for your particular organization and understand how people are likely to react to the change. Far too many “good initiatives” have back-fired on leaders and given them the exact opposite of what they hoped to achieve.
Being Real
This starts with “being real.” A leader needs a good grasp of where the team is . . . and where the leader wants them to go. People, even young people, will know if you are not being real. For example . . .
I remember watching a youth baseball game some years ago. One team had an obvious advantage in “talent” and was pummeling the other team. The coaches, obviously steeped in the “lets not focus on winning and losing” model were trying, desperately, to tell the kids that “it’s not about winning” and we are not keeping score!” The coaches continued to correct any attempt by players to draw comparisons on performance that came up. Yet, as the game drew to a close, two young contestants exited the field and walking by me, I hear one say to the other, “They killed us, like 27 to 3.”
{Side note: I, for one, as a former athlete, am not against de-emphasizing the win-lose emphses—particularly with the very young—who we would like to focus on learning skills and enjoying the competitive process. I am against pretending that if we tell them to compare themselves by the amount of funds scored then we have accomplished something if in fact they continue to compare themselves in that manner anyway.}
Leaders exercise this same “wish fulfillment” approach with employees because “if they believe it the employees will too.” However, they are often wrong . . . because they do not have an outsider perspective. Leaders tell me, “Our team is on board.” Is it? “Employees believe in the mission.” Are you sure? “We’re a family.” Yes, but are you functional or dysfunctional?
The leader’s ability to be clear about the reality of where they are and to engage the team to achieve more is an art . . . and largely dependent upon the emotional intelligence and people skills of the leader.
* Yes, I know. I think it was Wayne Gretzky who said, “I miss 100% of the shots I don’t take.” I am not advocating giving up on one’s dreams. But many of us had to change our vision of being the next greatest, in my case a NBA player, as reality became apparent. I, for one. when faced with being a 6’1” forward going up against 6’8” college competition, altered my path into academics.
**Yes, new vision and approaches can be helpful in continuing to improve your vision and at times can be a venue to a competitive advantages. It can, for example, help hire millinials in the IT world but mimicking a successful model (ala: Pixar) won’t make the company perform like it’s model company. Trying to be Pixar-like, or Amazon-like, or whatever . . . in a world that already has a Pixar and Amazon . . . or assuming the model with translate across industries, locations, and time is, at best, a wild hope.
Often, disrupters are simply those who have a viable idea and then dogmatically work to achieve it. They learn how to harness the right people to accomplish their vision and understand how to continue to navigate the inevitable pitfalls of the human dynamics present in any organization.
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