The Art Of Magazine - Volume 19

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How to Cultivate a Successful Culture Denise Lee Yohn

How You Can Increase Your Helpers’ Sense of Effectiveness Dr. Heidi Grant

A $2.4 Billion Lesson All Innovators Should Heed Stephen Shapiro

7 Strategies For Feeling Less Busy While Getting More Done Laura Vanderkam

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Alan MULALLY

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BUILDING TOMORROW’S LEADERS

TODAY Since our inception in 2008, The Art Of has shaken the complacent and challenged the status quo as we’ve forged a dynamic global community that has helped to define and inspire thousands of individuals and businesses over the last 10 years. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

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ANNIVERSARY

CONTENTS TOP INSIGHTS FROM Arianna Huffington, Marshall Goldsmith, Malala Yousafzai and Welby Altidor

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BEING BUSY IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT! RETHINK YOUR WORK TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS Morten Hansen

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7 STRATEGIES FOR FEELING LESS BUSY WHILE GETTING MORE DONE Laura Vanderkam

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HOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS LEADERS WIN IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Kevin Connolly and Mike Sharun

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HOW YOU CAN INCREASE YOUR HELPERS’ SENSE OF EFFECTIVENESS Dr. Heidi Grant

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TEAM PERFORMANCE: HOW TO TURN GOOD INTO GREAT Alex Vincent, PH.D.

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THIS IS DAY ONE Drew Dudley

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MAKE VISIBLE THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN Mitch Joel

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ALAN MULALLY AND ACCOUNTABILITY Patrick Lencioni

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BEING BUSY IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT!

16 7 STRATEGIES FOR FEELING LESS BUSY WHILE GETTING MORE DONE

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A $2.4 BILLION LESSON ALL INNOVATORS SHOULD HEED

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HOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS LEADERS WIN IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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HOW TO CULTIVATE A SUCCESSFUL CULTURE Denise Lee Yohn

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CAN YOU BE AN INDEPENDENT THINKER AND A TEAM PLAYER? Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

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DEFYING NORMAL TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS Caroline Riseboro

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WHERE YOU ARE Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith

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A $2.4 BILLION LESSON ALL INNOVATORS SHOULD HEED Stephen Shapiro

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WHEN IT COMES TO LEADERSHIP, ALAN MULALLY WILL ALWAYS BE THE BOSS The Art Of

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BODY LANGUAGE TO BEAT THE STRESS Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson

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THE MIND OF THE LEADER: LEADERSHIP TRAINING HAS IT BACKWARDS Jacqueline Carter

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STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TO TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANIZATION David Heather

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SURFING THE WAVE AND SCALING THE CURVE: A PRIMER FOR PERSONAL DISRUPTION Whitney Johnson

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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB INDUSTRY WORTH $2 BILLION IN REVENUE? Tiffani Bova

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CO-FOUNDERS Christopher Novais Scott Kavanagh

Ten years ago, if you’d invested $1,000.00 in Netflix stock, that investment would be worth well over $50K. But visionary investments aren’t just financial. Today, savvy CEOs invest in talent, recognizing that they may not have ready-now leaders who are able to step up to replace those who move on or retire. And while many in leadership roles understand they don’t need to be technical experts themselves, the need to understand how to nurture the up and comers while building strong teams to ensure a solid succession plan is critical.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Joey Van Massenhoven

HOW TO REACH US The Art of Productions Inc. 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor Toronto, Ontario Canada

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Arianna Huffington

ELIMINATE SELF DOUBT Women should be changing the world itself, because it is not working. We can do this by eliminating the voice of self-doubt within ourselves. Silence the voice of self-doubt within yourself by giving your body the rest it needs. A fresh mind leads to better decisions, which leads to more success.

Exerting yourself constantly can lead to mistakes, which increases the voice of self-doubt in you. Don’t become your own worst enemy to your success.

AVOID THE BURNOUT There is a popular belief that the key to success is being ‘always on’, and the price for success is burnout. Software and machines were created to reduce downtime, but for humans, downtime is a necessity. Downtime is essential for our performance, wellbeing, and our health. We need to realize that downtime is important for our success. Employees who are burnt out are 35% more likely to change jobs.

MULTITASKING IS A MYTH When we decide to do two things at once that involve cognitive effort, we end up doing neither. When we focus on one thing, and give it all of our input, we naturally perform better. Peak performance does not come from trying to do more within the time that you have and tiring yourself.

Multitasking seems to be the solution to everything, but in the end we don’t get the results that we want, and end up burning out.

Downtime is essential for our performance, wellbeing, and our health.

KEEP YOUR COMPANY HEALTHY The culture of a company is its immune system, letting us identify and fight problems almost instantaneously. If the company’s culture is not strong, problems proliferate and infect every part of the business. Allowing people to thrive and refuel lets them perform at their highest level consistently.

The best culture is a performing one. In fact, employees who are burnt out are 35% more likely to change jobs.

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Malala Yousafzai

WHERE TO FIND YOUR STRENGTH You can find unexpected circles of strength with your friends and family, even if you are afraid to revisit the past as I did by returning to my country for the first time in 5 years. You find strength when you focus on the positive; when you don’t think about the worst things that can happen.

When you focus on the positive, change can happen for the better! When you believe in yourself, you feel confident. Unfortunately, confidence is a trait that is most associated with men, not women, and we need to change that. We need to speak out against lack of education for women, sexual harassment, and gun violence. These issues affect us all and we need to take a collective action against them.

THE WORLD IS OUR CLASSROOM The future generation is aware of the current issues and they are trying to find ways to tackle them. What gives me hope and allows me to keep going is when I go and visit young girls in different parts of the world.

The Malala Fund focuses on the most marginalized regions. For example, education is not a basic right in Pakistan. The Malala Fund supports local activists and invests in education because every girl in each country should have the right to a safe and quality education. But the benefits reach beyond knowledge and careers. What’s important is where it’s invested because investing in education ultimately reduces poverty and conflict.

PASS THE MESSAGE, NOT THE BUCK We still see that there is a lack of representation amongst the community.

People need to come together. Interacting with people is the most crucial way to address the issues you are tackling and speaking to others and by speaking out, we can pass our message. My parents and my father are are an inspiration to me. I listen and learn from my friends. The key is to learn something from everyone you meet. There is always something that you can get from everyone, especially when it comes from someone’s strengths. Invest in people and it will bring you positive energy.

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The key is to learn something from everyone you meet.

TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Marshall Goldsmith

CHANGING YOUR HABITS Marshall Goldsmith is an expert on habits and triggers. A trigger is any stimulus that might impact our behaviour. We traditionally face a trigger, which leads to an impulse, which results in continuous behaviour.

Goldsmith challenged us to take control and form new habits by doing things the new way: face a trigger, have an impulse, but become aware of this impulse and make a different choice. This will shape our new behaviour.

TO HAVE A GREAT LIFE, LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE We are too competitive all the time. Ask yourself: am I willing at this time to make the investment required to make a positive change on this topic?

If not, don’t go for it. We waste a lot of time on things we know we will never do anyways. If the answer is yes, however, go for it.

ASKING FOR HELP IS OKAY Changing your habits is not easy, and Goldsmith reminds us that it’s okay to ask for help (and he even encourages it). He requires help himself too and shares his technique; he has a woman call him every single day and listen to him read off questions he wrote and his answers.

ENGAGE YOURSELF Companies always make the effort to engage their employees but there is more to this equation. We must engage ourselves too. We can do this through asking ourselves a series of questions like Goldsmith’s. To have the best results, make sure they are active questions – for example, instead of asking “Did my company engage me?” ask “Did I do my best to engage myself?”

instead of asking “Did my company engage me?” ask “Did I do my best to engage myself?”

THE SIX ACTIVE QUESTIONS The six active questions Goldsmith suggests are to ask yourself if you did your best to: be happy, be engaged, find meaning, build positive relationships, set clear goals, and make progress towards goal achievement.

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TOP INSIGHTS FROM

Welby Altidor

CREATIVITY BENEFITS BUSINESS As leaders, we have a choice to either empower and nurture creativity within our companies or sacrifice creativity to maintain corporate rules. The downside to this approach is that we sacrifice growth. 95% of all people never get to connect and discover their superpowers—their creativity and the ability to do amazing work.

Sadly, they never get a chance to practice them, hone them, or best of all... share them. “You don’t have to be a superhero to have superpowers.”

PROCESS CAN DRIVE AMAZING OUTCOMES Amazing results with an amazing outcome come from implementing a process that is just as amazing as the work itself. In my leadership role, the most important job was to create the most fertile soil or environment possible, to allow my co-workers and colleagues to flourish and excel creatively. In other words, the work needs to transcend itself. Think about how you have impacted the process; how you have changed or improved something for the better, rather than just focussing on achieving the outcome. Ask yourself, when you leave an organization, finish, or move on to the next project, what value did you bring from your work.

CAUTION, IMAGINATION AT WORK In the corporate world, there is a sense of suspicion aimed at the use of imagination.

Often times, we’re afraid to let our minds wander, or in fact, let other ’s minds wander. Even if you are afraid of the unknown, and afraid of trying new things, don’t be a hindrance to others. Don’t be afraid to ruffle feathers, most of all … don’t be afraid.

PLAY, DON’T THINK (TOO MUCH) The greatest athletes bring themselves to a point where they don’t think while they play, it just comes naturally. thinking itself can sometimes often be the hindrance. Why can’t we reach that point creatively? How do we get there? The path to creative courage starts with building trust. Fostering trust is the first step to fostering creativity and building trust amongst your team. One can try to push the boundaries of creativity because everyone is collaborating with those they trust.

Playing with danger lets people play outside their comfort zones while they push their boundaries, and therefore their limitations. You’re providing a safety net for them with the trust you have built as you unlock your team’s creative courage.

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Don’t be afraid to ruffle feathers, most of all... don’t be afraid.

BEING BUSY IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT! RETHINK YOUR WORK TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS MORTEN HANSEN

If you’re like most people, you believe you’re being productive when you create output, are busy, or reach a goal. But what if those outputs aren’t valuable?

Pursuing the wrong metrics will make you unproductive!

Here is a bit of an extreme example: When I conducted research at HewlettPackard some years ago, I visited an engineer at one of the company’s Colorado offices. After I introduced myself, he waved me off, claiming he was too busy to meet. And he was busy: He had to complete his goal for the week as specified in his job description, namely, submitting a quarterly project status report to headquarters. He sent off the report in time, as he had every previous quarter.

Good output, right? Yes, except for one issue. What I knew—and he didn’t—was that the corporate research

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and development division in Palo Alto no longer used those quarterly reports.

His dispatches sank to the depths of an e-mail box that no one bothered to check.

He thought he had been productive, but he had contributed zero value.

The advice, “start with goals” when planning an effort is wrong. We need to start with value, then proceed to goals. Ask yourself: What benefits (value) do your various work activities produce, really?

One major problem is that we confuse value with volume metrics.

In the modern workplace, we have a perverse tendency to equate volumes of activity with accomplishments.

Doctors have traditionally measured their performance according to the number of patient visits they handled rather than how often they arrived at the correct diagnosis. Lawyers bill clients based on how many hours they work,

regardless of whether they’re dispensing good counsel. Sales people fixate on revenues, regardless of whether their products end up benefitting customers.

The chart on the next page provides more examples of how people confuse reaching some internal goal with pursuing value-metrics.

We also have people who rack up volumes of activities and run around bragging about how busy they are as if busyness equals value. People mistake the number of meetings, task forces, committees, customer calls, customer visits, business trips, and miles flown for accomplishments, even if in reality all these activities may not add value.

Think about it next time some colleague brags about all the frequent flier miles they have racked up in their job, as if that’s a measure of productivity! Being busy is not an accomplishment!

To shift from a volume view to a value perspective, ask yourself these questions: •

What are the key productivity metrics I use in my job? (Hint: where in the table below do you fall, left or right column?)

•

What value are you truly creating in your job today?

•

What new and additional value do you think you can create in your job? Every employee must have a precise definition of value as it relates to his or her role. While I have provided some examples of value creation, there isn’t enough space here to go into details. To learn more and gain a deeper understanding, I invite you to check out Chapter 3 in my book Great at Work

GOAL VS. VALUE-FOCUSED ROLE

GOAL-FOCUSED

VALUE-FOCUSED

HUMAN RESOURCES

Completed annual performance reviews for 70% of managers

70% of managers received helpful feedback for how to improve

BUSINESS LOGISTICS

85% of shipments left warehouse on time

85% of shipments delivered to customers when they needed them

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER

Completed 3 years of teaching math and obtained tenure at school

Helped 90% of students to become proficient at math

LAWYER

Achieved 80% billable hours in first quarter of the year

Helped client solve legal problems in 80% of cases in the first quarter of the year

MEDICAL

160 patient visits during January

Diagnosed patients accurately 80% of the time and gave proper treatment

Formerly a professor at Harvard Business School and INSEAD (France), professor Hansen holds a PhD from Stanford Business School, where he was a Fulbright scholar. His academic research has won several prestigious awards, and he is ranked one of the world’s most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50.

Morten Hansen was also a manager at the Boston Consulting Group, where he advised corporate clients worldwide.

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7 STRATEGIES FOR

FEELING LESS BUSY WHILE GETTING MORE DONE Laura Vanderkam The internet is full of tips for making people more efficient. You could procrastinate for weeks by reading such articles, or books on how to be more productive. Since I write about these topics, I’ve waded through a lot of the literature. Some is not terribly useful. I doubt anyone will change their lives by writing “K” instead of “OK” in emails.

But there are a few strategies that I use in my life, over and over again, because I find they make time and life feel so much better and more doable.

Here are my favorite seven:

3. Figure out three “anchor” events for the weekend.

This tactic is really two ideas combined into one. The first realization is that life is lived in weeks — 168 hours — so the best unit of time to plan for is the week.

All sorts of things can fit in 168 hours that can’t fit in 24. As for Friday? It’s best to think through your weeks before you’re in them, so you can take a step back and ask what matters and what doesn’t. On Friday afternoons, plan out your most important professional and personal priorities for the next week, and see where these items can go.

Since I have four kids and a house to manage, it would be easy for my weekends to be taken over by chores and children’s activities. To make sure I still enjoy myself—and feel rejuvenated for Monday—I make sure to plan in three activities that will add to my energy levels. Sometimes these things involve my children (a family bike ride, or trip to an indoor pool in winter).

Sometimes they don’t (dinner out with my husband, an adults-only party, reading 100 pages in a good book). In any case, making a plan and figuring out the logistics ahead of time vastly increases the chances that these things happen, and that the weekend feels both full and good.

2. Measure what matters.

4. Tackle the toughest work first.

Keeping an honest inventory of anything that matters in your life

Most people have more discipline and focus early in the day. Scheduling in

1. Plan your weeks on Fridays.

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can hold you accountable, and nudge you toward your goals. Want to read more? Keep a list of books read. You’ll relish seeing it grow. Want to exercise more? Record your workouts. As you see progress—running faster, lifting heavier weights—you’ll feel motivated to keep going.

VOLUME 19 | TheArtOf.com

important tasks early means you’ll be more likely to have the energy to do them. They’ll take a lot less time than if you wait until that mid-afternoon slump (at which point you’ll keep getting distracted, re-reading the same emails and checking headlines, until panic sets in and you realize you’ll be working late again.)

5. Use bits of time well.

If you have 5-10 minutes before a phone call starts, you could surf the web or delete email newsletters you can’t remember subscribing to. Or you could read a few pages in a book (perhaps on ebook on your phone). You could also use this time to meditate, write in a journal, plan your weekend.

Deleting emails feels productive, but it isn’t really. Use this time for something more meaningful instead.

6. Make very short to-do lists.

Making a daily to-do list is a sensible idea. The trouble is that people make endless to-do lists. If there are 50 items on a list, you won’t do all of them, and then you’ll feel bad. There’s no point in putting something on a to-do list and not doing it. Instead, keep the list under 10 items. Five is even better.

Stuff comes up, as it always does, so

There’s no point in putting something on a to-do list and not doing it. Instead, keep the list under 10 items.

Five is even better.

revisit the list toward the end of the day to make sure you’re on track. A 4 p.m. “triage” of your list can help you make sure you do anything that has to happen by the end of the day early enough to leave on time.

7. Have a bed time.

I aim to be in bed around 11 p.m. these days. It doesn’t always happen, but if I wake up between 6-6:30 a.m., I’ll feel well-rested. Giving yourself a bedtime

provides a nudge to make a decision.

You can blow past your bedtime—you are an adult after all—but you have to choose. If there’s no good reason to stay up, you might as well go to bed.

Your morning self will thank you.

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How emotional intelligence Helps leaders win in the age of

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE KEVIN CONNOLLY AND MIKE SHARUN

Technology is transforming business.

You can’t pick up a magazine or journal today without finding at least one article dedicated to the major shift in the way business and technology interact. At one time in the not too distant past, technology was a cost of doing business.

Today, it has evolved into a major revenue generator for companies in all industries.

In an era where virtually every company is a “tech company”, it’s no longer a question of “if and when” leaders should incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their strategy, but “now and how”.

Our best advice for leaders during a time when robots seem to be taking over? First, ensure you have a great technology partner to guide you through this transformation so you don’t miss the opportunity to make

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your business more profitable and serve your customers better. Second, and with equal importance, don’t lose sight of the human side of your business – it’s what will help you build and maintain a culture that supports transformation now and in the future.

Your people are still the backbone The right technology partner can help you keep your business agile through digital transformation, but that’s only one part of the equation. Your culture needs to support that transformation, and the way to build that culture is to lead with emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is defined as “The capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle

interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”.

This is key to leadership success and you’ll notice that all great leaders follow this. It’s about mastering interpersonal relationships and empowering your team, inspiring them to take calculated risks and do their best work. None of this can happen if you don’t nurture the relationship, just as you would with a customer.

Celebrate their uniqueness As long as you have hired people who are aligned with your organization’s goals and values, their personalities and approaches can be completely different. In fact, that’s something you should encourage because a diversity of approaches will help you reach a broader

Kevin Connolly is the President of Commercial Sales at Dell EMC Canada

Mike Sharun

you can embrace a digital transformation wholeheartedly, but if you don’t lead with emotional intelligence, you could lose the backbone of your business.

is the President of Enterprise Sales at Dell EMC Canada

market. You can be the glue that holds it all together by doing your job: ensuring that your team members fully understand the strategy and goals, especially during times of transformation. If they don’t end up reaching those goals, then you haven’t set them up for success by communicating the strategy clearly enough.

At Dell EMC Canada, our goal is to help customers leverage new technologies to drive revenue, reduce costs, and become more efficient. Our teams are aligned with this goal, and we trust them to achieve it using their own unique approaches. In fact, your ability to trust your team plays a huge part in your organization’s success.

Organizations built on a culture of trust are far more likely to thrive and scale. This is why it’s a major part of our philosophy and we nurture it every day.

Embrace a realistic approach Emotional intelligence also comes into play when dealing with individual successes and drawbacks. When you promote someone, encourage them to be themselves in their new role. You didn’t promote them so they could fill someone else’s shoes. You promoted them because they bring something unique to the table. As they gain more experience in the position, they will evolve. And on the flipside, if you’re trying to motivate someone to do better, don’t try to mold them with robotic corporate rhetoric— talk to them and find out what might be affecting their work. In other words: Be real!

Sometimes as leaders we can be tempted to fall back on knee-jerk reactions to successes and failures. Both come along with taking risks, which is an essential part of driving business growth. Risk-taking is both encouraged and valued here at Dell EMC Canada, because you can’t learn or grow without it. This is where the control part of emotional intelligence comes in. To be an effective leader, you need to have a sense of realism. One of our favourite mantras here at Dell EMC Canada is: “Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems”. Celebrate successes but not too much or you could

be blindsided when they don’t last.

There’s always something to improve.

And when things go south, don’t nitpick everything your team is doing wrong— take a genuine interest in learning how you can help them do better. Dell EMC has another great mantra that speaks to this very well: “Pleased but never satisfied”.

We’re all in this together Good leaders know that when you care about your customers, they’ll reward you with a fruitful, long-term relationship.

The same can be said for your team.

While artificial intelligence and machine learning make their way into our world, we shouldn’t surrender our humanity.

It’s your responsibility as a leader to add your personal flare, treat your team like individuals, and trust their individual approaches. In turn, they’ll be motivated to work hard for you.

At the end of the day, you can embrace a digital transformation wholeheartedly, but if you don’t lead with emotional intelligence, you could lose the backbone of your business.

Find a balance between both and you can build a resilient organization that survives and thrives through the next industrial revolution.

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HOW YOU CAN INCREASE YOUR HELPERS’ SENSE OF EFFECTIVENESS DR. HEIDI GRANT

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Helpers need to feel effective in order to want to support you, to benefit from supporting you, and to sustain that support over time is perhaps the most over- looked factor when it comes to soliciting help. Here are some things you can do to make sure your helpers will know that their help got the job done:

1

Be clear up-front about the nature of assistance you want and what its impact will be. Vague, indirect appeals make it difficult for people to imagine how it’s all going to work and whether or not they will have an impact. I have frequently received requests, for example, from people who wanted to “get together over coffee” and “pick my brain about some things.” I say no to these requests literally every time. When I have no idea what you want, or why, or how exactly I might be of help to you, I’m not interested. No one is.

2 Follow up afterward. Let them know in advance that you will. It doesn’t feel good to wonder if the time and effort you put into something was worth it. It doesn’t feel good to wonder if the person in need ended up better off or worse. Take the time to let people know the impact they had on you and how things turned out.

Letting someone know at the time of the request that you intend to follow up gives them that much more confidence that they will end up feeling effective.

3 Allow people to choose how they help you, if possible. Be direct and specific about the kind of help you are looking for.

But just as important, be willing to accept alternative offers of help, even if it isn’t what you originally wanted. People will often want some flexibility. After all, helpers want to give the help that is most likely to be effective, something they can actually do, given all the other demands on their time.

The other day, a reporter wanted to schedule a call with me for a story on first impressions. The timeline was tight, and I was booked solid with meetings for the next two days. So I offered to answer the questions via email instead, knowing that while not ideal, at least I would be able to help in some way. The reporter ended up with a few usable quotes and was able to turn in the story on time. I ended up feeling good about the help I could give, instead of having to just say no.

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Thinking about the effectiveness reinforcement helped me finally understand a classic children’s book by Shel Silverstein: The Giving Tree. I had never really understood that book’s appeal. Here’s a short summary if you have not read it: tree and boy love each other. Over the years, the boy increasingly ignores and neglects the tree, though he does stop by on occasion to ask the tree for her apples, branches, trunk, and so on for his own seemingly selfish reasons, which the tree willingly agrees to give him out of love. In the end, when all that is left of her is a stump, the boy—now an old man—returns to sit on her. At which point—and I’m quoting here—“The tree was happy.” To say the tree gets the short end of the stick here is the understatement of the century.

But seen through the lens of effectiveness, the tree’s happiness makes sense: the tree is pretty darn effective at giving the boy what he asks for.

(I still think the boy is awfully selfish, though.)

As a colleague and as a manager of people, helping people see the impact of their work—their help—is one of the most important motivators you can wield.

PEOPLE ARE HELPFUL MUCH MORE OFTEN THAN NOT. PEOPLE DON’T THINK LESS OF YOU FOR NEEDING HELP. AND HELPING, WITH THE RIGHT REINFORCERS IN PLACE, FEELS WONDERFUL.

WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER I’ll be totally honest. I’ve never been good at asking for help. Or, rather, all my life I’ve avoided doing it like the plague. In high school, I refused to ask my mother, who is German, for help on my very challenging German translation assignments. I spent hours in college pouring over library books just to avoid asking the teaching assistant for the answer to a question that would have taken him five minutes to provide. I put myself deeply in debt in graduate school, rather than asking my parents for more support, because I was embarrassed to admit I couldn’t make ends meet. I clean my house before the housekeeper gets here, so she doesn’t have to deal with my mess. The list goes on and on.

Writing this has forced me to realize that my discomfort about seeking help stems from precisely the same mistakes I’ve been telling you not to make. I’ve been terrified someone will say no. I’ve assumed people will think less of me for needing help. And worse, I’ve believed deep down that having to help is awful, and I have no right to ask it of anyone.

None of that is true. Not one bit of it.

The evidence couldn’t be clearer.

People are helpful much more often than not. People don’t think less of you for needing help. And helping, with the right reinforcers in place, feels wonderful.

There is no better way to give someone the opportunity to feel good about themselves than to ask them to help you. It brings out the best—and the best feelings—in all of us.

DR. HEIDI GRANT is a social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of motivation. In 2017, she was named one of Thinkers50’s most influential management thinkers globally. She is the Chief Science Officer for the Neuroleadership Institute, Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University, and bestselling author.

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TEAM PERFORMANCE:

How to Turn Good Into Great ALEX VINCENT, PH.D.

A senior vice president of a big financial services company asked for a meeting to talk about a concern he had with one of his teams. Typically, this is how things begin: an executive asks me to help fix an average or below-average team and get them back on the right track.

Except this time, it wasn’t a dysfunctional team. This SVP wanted to know if I could take his best team and make them even better.

At first, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

He went on to explain that this particular team regularly achieves 100% of its targets based on measurable results and had been at this level for a long time. The SVP asked me bluntly: “Do you think they can do better?”

It was a fascinating question. We focus most of our work on helping average teams improve. Or, we are called for our opinion on whether a totally dysfunctional team should be saved or blown up. But take a team from good to great? That was different—and exhilarating.

Still, we dove headlong into the work, interviewing team members and

dissecting the dynamics that governed their work. We used the same tools and approaches we would use with a team that was missing its targets. And wouldn’t you know it, some interesting issues started to arise.

The members of this team had clearly started to take their success for granted. Once they realized they were close to hitting their targets and their bonuses were secure, they began to ease off the accelerator. It was almost as if they had become complacent about being good, so much so that they never really considered becoming exceptional.

We worked closely with the team members to find that extra gear, and the results were extraordinary.

In the first year after we had contact with this team, it achieved 135% of its measurable goals. There was no longer any doubt in my mind: good teams, even great teams, can become exceptional with the right help.

That anecdote has always been an important reminder to me about the importance of our work to improve

team performance.

Teams are the backbone of most companies, and most companies are going through an extremely difficult period of disruption and change.

Just look at the business landscape today: the onset of seismic disruption from digital technology; intensifying global competition; sweeping demographic changes; increased regulatory pressures; political and economic uncertainty. Our traditional concepts of work and organizational structure are being reshaped in profound ways.

As a response, organizations are transforming, both in the way they do things and, sometimes, by adopting entirely new business models. And in many instances, those organizations are relying on teams to help plan and execute critical transformation initiatives.

Unfortunately, at a time when we are relying on teams more than ever before, it’s clear they are not stepping up to meet these increasing expectations.

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LOW LEVEL OF SATISFACTION WITH TEAM PERFORMANCE To gain greater insight into the current state of teams, LHH partnered with the Human Capital Institute (HCI) to survey more than 250 professionals, ranging from individual contributors to C-level executives at mid-sized to large

organizations across North America.

The survey results confirmed that the majority of organizations (92%) believed that high-performing teams were essential to organizational success.

However, only 23% were satisfied with

the performance of their current teams.

How did this gap between expectation and performance come to be? A deeper examination reveals that the very nature of teams has changed dramatically.

TEAMS FOR THE NEW AGE Teams have traditionally involved a leader and a group of followers, all co-located in the same place to create regular, face-to-face contact. The team leader would organize the work and assess performance. Team members executed the plan.

Today, the team dynamic is much different.

Workplaces have gone global. Matrix structures now require teams to work across departments, functions and geographies. Fellow team members could be located down the hall or on the other side of the planet. Relationships are largely virtual—a voice during a conference call or an image from a video link.

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Teams today are also more fluid and numerous than in the past. Teams are formed, disbanded and rebuilt continually. This means one may participate on several teams at once, either as the leader or as a team member.

The rapidly evolving role and function of teams certainly seems to be taking its toll. But how much of a toll?

We conducted a more intensive survey with leaders from various sized companies representing more than 20 different industries across the United States. We asked these leaders to rate their existing teams on a spectrum of 32 behaviors. We also asked survey

respondents to answer several openended questions to better understand their thinking on team performance.

What we found was a crisis in team performance.

Among the more startling results is the fact that most organizations believe their teams are average at best.

A whopping 88% of survey respondents rated their teams as average, below average or poor. Only 6% of respondents rated their teams as truly exceptional.

Think about that for a moment.

At a time when organizations need their teams to be at their strongest, we find that they are unclear, aimless and uncommitted.

THE FOUNDATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY As startling as the survey results were, they did not explain why certain teams had been able to rise above the stress and strain of transformation to achieve

exceptional results. Digging deeper into the survey results through interviews of HR executives, we found that they kept returning to two foundational qualities

of high-performing, accountable teams: clarity and commitment.

clearly understand the expectations of key stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. Finally, the team has absolute clarity about what needs to get done, how it needs to get done and when.

Remarkably, we learned through our research that a great many team members do not have a collective understanding

of the strategy of their team. They also do not fully appreciate how everyone’s work contributes to the execution of the strategy. Without clarity, leaders and their teams are flying blind, unsure of where they’re going, why they are going there and what is expected of them along the way.

leadership, both on their team and for others in the organization. In short, they demonstrate a deep commitment to each other.

The most important aspect of commitment is that team members

are passionate about the future of the organization. This implies that the executives and others need to paint a positive vision for the future as the critical building block in building commitment. Without this key

CLARITY Our respondents were definitive: a successful, accountable team must be a clear-thinking team. That largely means ensuring every team member has a clear, unambiguous understanding about the business context in which it operates.

Teams must be clear on their core purpose and strategy as it relates to the overall organization. The team must

COMMITMENT Commitment ensures every member is “all in” and fully engaged on the team’s mission. They show a willingness to work with other people and teams across the organization. They are committed to the idea of collective

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component, it will be difficult to obtain a high degree of commitment from teams and anyone else for that matter.

The next component is that everyone needs to fully commit to executing the organization’s strategic priorities. Once team members are clear on the future

vision and the strategy, they can commit to executing the strategy to achieve the vision.

These findings strongly suggest that the most important determinants of commitment need to be provided by the organization. With these in place, the

team can drive the other components of commitment: supporting each other’s development as leaders; breaking down silos to collaborate across the organization; and holding each other accountable by calling out unproductive leadership behavior.

CLARITY AND COMMITMENT ARE INTERTWINED A key finding of our study is that clarity and commitment are correlated to a highly significant degree. In other words, organizations that are composed of teams with a high degree of clarity also show a high degree of commitment.

This finding implies that clarity is the

foundation of commitment.

If there is little or no clarity on the goals, mandate and leadership culture needed to succeed, then commitment will remain at moderate levels or, in some cases, erode to potentially dysfunctional levels. Either way, it leads

to underperforming, unremarkable teams.

This significant finding suggests that team leaders must work both on clarity and commitment at the same time. If you increase one, you’ll increase the other.

to acknowledge another truth: team performance can be improved.

Our work with the team from that financial services company proved to us that, with proper attention to the core principles of leadership accountability and constant attention to ensuring clarity and commitment, almost any team can improve its overall performance.

The poorest performing teams

obviously have the largest opportunity for improvement. But even average and strong teams can reach extraordinary performance with careful attention to the principles of accountability, clarity and commitment.

Not all teams can be saved. But the good news is that the vast majority of teams cannot only be saved, they can be improved to an exceptional degree.

CONCLUSION After looking at the current state of teams, it could be easy to give in to despair. How can companies trust their teams to drive performance and transformation if the problems seem to outweigh the solutions?

While this is true of teams today— confirmed by our interviews, research and consulting experience working with teams across the globe—we need

ALEX VINCENT, PH.D. Senior Vice President, Leadership Transformation, Lee Hecht Harrison As LHH’s Senior Vice President of Leadership Transformation, Alex Vincent has spent his career focused on the ways to maximize individual, team and organizational performance. Employing an array of ground-breaking research, compelling keynotes and dynamic workshops, Alex has travelled the globe to help leaders and teams from a wide array of industries and sectors—including engineering, healthcare, financial and professional services and the public sector – find the path from good to exceptional.

Alex is an acknowledged subject matter expert in many of LHH’s premiere offerings, including The Leadership Contract, The Leadership Contract for Teams, Leading Innovation and Strategic Leadership.

Alex completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Toronto and went on to complete post-doctoral studies in the Human Performance Laboratory at York University. He is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, as well as a previous faculty member in the department of Psychology at the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University.

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THE

LIST

10 BOOKS ON OUR RADAR

PRINCIPLES Ray Dalio

GRIT Angela Duckworth

WHEN Daniel H. Pink

GROWTH IQ Tiffani Bova

BROTOPIA Emily Chang

THE INFINITE GAME Simon Sinek

THE CULTURE CODE Daniel Coyle

LEADING MATTERS John L. Hennessy

DROP THE BALL Tiffany Dufu

BUILD AN A-TEAM Whitney Johnson

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This Is Day One DREW DUDLEY

I’ve had a lot of Day Ones in my life.

I’ve had Day One of a life without alcohol. I am powerless over alcohol, and for more than two decades it often turned me into far less than the man I want to be.

I’ve had Day One of being a vocal advocate for mental health awareness.

Doing so has meant being open about my bipolar disorder in a world where 28

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mental illness is often confused with mental weakness. When your career relies entirely on the perceived credibility of your ideas, that can be terrifying.

I’ve had Day One of my life as an entrepreneur. A friend of mine once told me that “the three most addictive things on the planet are crack, carbohydrates and a salary.” I didn’t fully grasp the

truth of that statement until it came time to give up a steady paycheck from a prestigious university. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to feed myself, let alone build a thriving business and write a book.

I’ve had Day One on a weight-loss voyage of over 100 pounds. When I delivered the TEDx Talk that truly launched my career, I tipped the scales at over 300 pounds. Today, physical

LIVING DAY ONE LEADERSHIP MEANS EMBRACING THE SAME PHILOSOPHY: IF YOU WANT TO BE A LEADER, CHOOSE TO BE A LEADER TODAY. REPEAT THAT CHOICE EVERY DAY.

fitness is a huge part of my life and I no longer need to look at the scale to know when I’m healthy.

Each of my journeys—to sobriety, mental and physical health, and business success—began with a Day One. There is nothing you want to achieve “one day” that doesn’t begin with a Day One. Day One is when you begin the consistent behaviors that lead to what you’re hoping for one day: the weight loss, the corner office, your own business, and most importantly feelings of satisfaction, pride, and peace.

There are going to be a lot of difficult days on your journey to recognizing and applying your leadership, so here’s a fundamental premise of this book: you must treat every single one of those days like it’s Day One of your journey. This idea is not unique to this

book: the concept is foundational in most addiction recovery programs, is a mindset adopted by elite athletes and is a key business philosophy of some of the world’s biggest companies. This book applies the approach in a very specific context: personal leadership development.

Day Ones provide a sense of renewal, commitment, and forgiveness.

When I committed to sobriety I learned that I need to treat every day of the rest of my life as if it was the first day of my recovery. My sobriety hinges on a single, nonnegotiable daily behavior: choosing not to have a drink today.

When I wake up in the morning, five straight years of making that choice doesn’t matter: I must commit to it again today if I’m to be the person I want to be. All that matters are the actions of today.

If I fail (and yes, I have failed some days), I cannot consider the failure permanent. I treat the next day as another Day One: a renewal of my commitment to the behaviors that make me someone of whom I’m proud.

Living Day One leadership means embracing the same philosophy: if you want to be a leader, choose to be a leader today. Repeat that choice every day. It doesn’t matter if you failed to do it yesterday or if you’ve done it every day for a decade: every new day begins with a recommitment to that choice.

How do you choose to be a leader?

You make that choice with your actions—the behaviors you make nonnegotiable each day. This book will help you choose the right behaviors for you: the ones that will make you feel and act like a leader. They will be unique to you because they are intended to narrow the gap between the person you want to be and how you actually behave each day. Only you can truly know the nature of that gap, so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

We’re going to customize it for your needs.

Working to close that gap is leadership: the leadership to which we all can and should aspire. It’s the leadership I want you to acknowledge and to which I want you to commit by implementing the process in this book.

Let go of the connections in your

mind between leadership and titles, money, influence, and prestige. Those things come from others and are outside of your control. Only your behaviors are within your control and the biggest determinant of how others feel about you and how you feel about yourself is how you behave on a day‑to‑day basis.

Leadership isn’t in the big things— leadership is in the consistent things.

Develop a relentless commitment to specific daily leadership behaviors and you’re living life as a leader.

Live today like a leader would on Day One and you’re a leader today. Live each day this week like a leader would on Day One, you’ve lived a week as a leader. Live each day this month like a leader would on Day One, you’ve lived a month as a leader. Then a year. Then five years. Then a lifetime.

The key is to stop worrying about the weeks and years: your commitment to leadership shouldn’t be over a block of time. Your commitment should be to act as a leader for a single day: Day One. Then treat every day as if it’s Day One: with a renewed commitment to your most important leadership behaviors.

What’s possible in your life and career will grow with each subsequent version of Day One, but what’s essential (those key leadership behaviors) will always stay the same.

Let’s get started on exploring what your Day One might look like.

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MAKE VISIBLE THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN MITCH JOEL

How can we, as a brand, truly open up more?

WHAT DOES LEADERSHIP LOOK LIKE IN 2018?

Are leaders still believed? Are leaders still trusted? The obvious answer is, “of course!” Just look at the health of the market, the economy and how one business, in particular, crossed the financial threshold into the trillion dollar market valuation (well done, Apple). On the other hand, stop and think about the divisive state of politics, the news, the global economy and the changes shifting us away from a more connected and open world, to one of nationalism and “let’s take care of our own first.” With all of these strange shifts (it does seem like we’re talking out of both sides of our mouth), the leaders of today not only have to deal with the economics and politics at work, but must dig deeper, and find more reason and meaning for their team to pull it together, show up, stand out and make a difference.

LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT MORE THAN NURTURING A TEAM AND CONTRIBUTING TRUE ECONOMIC VALUE TO THE CORPORATION.

Our world of disruption, innovation and transformation is less about the technology that we’re deploying (and the people who make it happen), and much more about getting back to what Simon Sinek has defined as “the why?” As more and more leaders begin to think about the true corporate “why?,” and how the culture of the team will (and must) adapt as our business world changes, there is—perhaps— something bigger to think about: How can we, as a brand, truly open up more. Not just to our consumers, but to our team as well.

TAKE A PRINCIPLED APPROACH. READ RAY DALIO’S PRINCIPLES. It’s a big book, it’s a deep book and it’s a counter-intuitive book to how most businesses operate today. These principles worked for Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates, which, over the last forty years, has become the largest and best performing hedge fund in the world). What’s most striking about the book, Principles - Life & Work (and how 31

What is hidden that we can make visible? It can be asked today. Even if it is answered and resolved, it can be asked again next month, next quarter, and every year. There is always more.

Bridgewater grew) is their unprecedented transparency (you can also learn about how radical it truly was in his TED Talk: How to build a company where the best ideas win). While Dalio encourages every organization (and individual) to pursue this route, there was a bigger theme (for me, personally) that emerged from the book that every organization (and individual) can focus on...

MAKE VISIBLE THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN. Data, business process, human resources, technology implementations, sales, marketing, professional development, internal meetings, team performance, and the list goes on.

There are countless areas where leaders can make significant changes and advances, simply by making visible (to all) that which is hidden (to most). A great (and public) example would be MLS (aka Multiple Listing Service) for the residential real estate market. Think back before this platform existed. If an individual wanted to buy a home, they would speak to a realtor (usually referred by a family member or friend). This realtor held all of the available MLS information in a black box.

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More often than not, consumers would only hear of homes that the real estate agent was personally listing (which may be expanded to other agents in their office, or agents that the consumer’s agent was friends with). It was hard (almost impossible) to get a pulse for how many homes were on the market, their prices and more. The agents guarded this information. While the real estate industry may still have agents that don’t like the disruptive force of MLS, the industry continues to roll along. Consumers don’t just feel more empowered in their own home ownership journey, they are having more open and honest conversations with their agents, because there is less being hidden from them.

IT’S NOT JUST AN OPEN MARKET. A former Google employee once told me that everyone who worked at company can see very specific information about every teammate on their internal platform. There was even an area that had each Googler’s presentation skills rated.

Rated not just on how this individual does in the room, but ranked in relation to every other Googler. By making that

(usually) hidden information visible, teams for pitches and presentations could get sorted in a much more efficient way.

A strategic by-product of this ranking, was that Googler’s with a higher rating would often get called for external presentations (to clients or industry events) and this would heighten their visibility within Google, and to their industry.

A helpful bump to one’s professional development.

A CHANCE TO MAKE VISIBLE THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN IS AVAILABLE TO ONE AND ALL. It’s a great question for every leader to ask: What is hidden that we can make visible? It can be asked today. Even if it is answered and resolved, it can be asked again next month, next quarter, and every year. There is always more. Companies always have these incredible pockets of information, talent and value that sits hidden and/or dormant (to a certain degree). As the French would say: “ouvre la fenetre!” Open the window. Let the sun shine in. Let the people walking by see what’s inside. Take a look around. Which companies have made visible that which is hidden, and how did that work

out for them? Leaders lead. That is the job. Leaders clearing the path, not just for the rest of the team (and the bottom line) to succeed, but to set the business on a course that allows it to thrive (not just survive) in these hyper-competitive (and different) times.

Let this be the leadership battlecry from this day forward: Make visible that which is hidden!

Mitch Joel is Founder of Six Pixels Group—an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on commerce and innovation. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon. Learn more at: www.mitchjoel.com

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ALAN MULALLY and

ACCOUNTABILITY PATRICK LENCIONI

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What Alan Mulally did as the CEO of the Ford Motor Company from 2008 to 2014 was, perhaps, the single greatest feat in business in the past 50 years.

Really.

Leaving Boeing after a 30-year career there, he walked into a massive, bureaucratic, broken company in one of the most troubled industries in the world. And he refused the money that the government offered, and eventually gave it to his competitors. If you haven’t read the book American Icon, I highly recommend it. The story of Ford’s turnaround under Alan is as readable as it is astounding.

But I want to focus here on one particular aspect of Alan’s leadership approach at Ford, something every single leader at any level should emulate. It will surprise you how simple, even juvenile, it seems. And yet, it was absolutely key in what Alan accomplished. Before I get into it, I should provide a bit of context.

As hard as it may be to believe, Alan fired almost no one at Ford during the turnaround. Any reasonable person would assume that he would have gone in and removed dozens of the leaders who were involved in creating the mess that existed before he arrived. Right or wrong, this is extremely common during turnarounds, especially in massive companies with such entrenched cultures like Ford. Add to the fact that Alan hired only one outsider, and you have to wonder how he could have orchestrated such a dramatic recovery.

And that brings us to one of Alan’s true gifts. He knows how to hold people accountable with tough love. That’s right. Love. Let me give you an example, based on one of many conversations I’ve been fortunate to have with Alan over the past few years.

One of the things that Alan did to

remake Ford was institute a critical meeting structure that would allow the company’s executives to understand, address and stay on top of the challenges that they faced. Those meetings were long, arduous, and seemingly worst of all, weekly. When a prominent member of Alan’s leadership team didn’t come to one of the meetings, Alan told me that he immediately confronted him and asked “why?”. The guy explained that he was extremely busy and probably wouldn’t be able to dedicate the time

Yeah. We can still be friends. But you can’t work here.

It’s up to you. required to make every meeting. Alan didn’t waffle and ask the guy to try his best to come. And he didn’t get mad. He simply smiled and said, “That’s okay.”

The executive was relieved, and said “really?” Alan said, still smiling, “Yeah.

We can still be friends. But you can’t work here. It’s up to you.”

You have to know Alan to realize that he says things like this without bitterness or malice. He is dead serious, but he’s not in the slightest bit mean.

And that, right there, is what every leader of a healthy organization needs to learn how to do. Consistently, persistently, lovingly hold people

accountable, not just for hitting their numbers or achieving their goals, but first and foremost, for the behaviors that the organization requires.

If the meetings example wasn’t basic enough, consider how Alan handled his senior executives using their phones during meetings for texting or checking the news. He would stop and just look at them intently, until they put their phones away. Yes, like a seventh grade teacher. Ford’s executives soon learned to turn off their phones and focus on the discussions at hand. Every CEO should have the courage – yes, courage – to do that.

In my work with executive teams, I often hear them complain about the politics and confusion that lives deep in their organizations, and they want to know how they can get middle management to eradicate it. The thing is, if squashing bad behavior doesn’t start at the top, it won’t happen below. And that means that a CEO, more than any other person, has to be brutally intolerant of any behavior that contradicts what he or she is trying to create to make the organization healthy.

Few CEOs, if any, enjoy this part of their jobs. I get that. But it is a leader’s first, and most critical, responsibility.

Most leaders, and analysts, will read about the Ford turnaround and focus on how Alan and the team at Ford sold off many of the company’s peripheral brands, and redesigned this car or that truck to sell better in a specific market.

That is interesting stuff, for sure. But if you were to ask Alan about the most critical aspect of turning Ford around, he will tell you it was about creating a new culture and set of behaviors, from the top down. More than any other leader I’ve met, Alan embraced that part of his job. He did it without fear or compromise, but he did it with a smile.

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HOW TO CULTIVATE

A SUCCESSFUL CULTURE DENISE LEE YOHN 36

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With brand-culture fusion, you develop a culture that: Is the culture of your organization holding it back? Are you trying to create culture that’s more innovative, agile, or digitally savvy but can’t seem to get people to adopt a new mindset, much less a new skill set? Or are you struggling with attracting and retaining top talent… or increasing diversity and inclusion? Or perhaps your employees are among the 87% who Gallup reports are not engaged at work?

Cultivating a healthy, valuable, growth-oriented workplace culture isn’t easy. If you’re like most business leaders, you know your culture should produce a competitive advantage and improve your organization’s performance, but you don’t know how to cultivate and leverage the kind of culture you need to succeed.

In the research I did for my latest book, FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies, I discovered the secret behind the leaders and companies that have unlocked their organization’s potential for success: brand-culture fusion—the full integration and alignment of internal organizational culture and external brand identity.

In nuclear physics, fusion is the reaction that happens when two atomic nuclei come together. Nuclear fusion releases large amounts of energy—it’s what powers the sun. When fused, the two nuclei create something entirely new. In the same way, you can unleash great power when you fuse together your organization’s two nuclei: your culture -the way the people in your organization behave and the attitudes and beliefs that inform them (i.e., “the way we do things around here”) and your brand or brand identity, how your organization is understood by customers and other stakeholders.

IS UNIQUE Most of the most of the existing rhetoric on culture-building says that all company cultures must be warm and friendly and all managers must treat their colleagues like family by being nurturing, encouraging, and inclusive. That’s just not true.

Every organization is different, so its culture should be too. A family-like culture might fuel one company’s growth but might backfire completely at another which must be more competitive and driven by standards. Instead you need a unique culture.

When you fuse together your culture and your brand, your culture expresses your organization’s unique purpose and core values, orients everyone to the specific challenges and opportunities of your competitive landscape, and develops the mindsets and behaviors that enable your employees to deliver on-brand customer experiences.

CREATES ALIGNMENT By aligning and integrating your culture and brand, you get everyone thinking and talking about your business in the same way. You reduce uncertainty and confusion by establishing a single guide to action and people are less likely to function at cross-purposes when they’re working toward a clear, common goal. This in turn increases the efficiency of your organization and the quality of its outcomes.

CULTIVATES ENGAGEMENT The Gallup organization has found that only 41% of employees strongly agree that they know what their company stands for and what makes it different from competitors. It’s no wonder that so many employees feel uninspired and unengaged.

But when you put a compelling brand promise at the center of your organization, you’re more likely to attract and retain employees who understand and value the meaning behind their work. They feel an emotional connection to your company and brand, so they work hard to fulfill their commitments. Not only are they more engaged with customers, they also feel more

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By aligning and integrating your culture and brand, what you say you are on the outside is truly what you are on the inside... connected to other employees because everyone is united by a collective identity and common goals.

PRODUCES AUTHENTICITY Customers are very savvy these days. They see advertising rhetoric for what it is, and they no longer accept brands at face value. They are skeptical about the claims companies make. They want authenticity— brands that live up to their promises and stated ideals.

While most companies simply slap “authenticity” on their list of brand attributes and try to engage

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customers superficially via social media to appear more humane or relatable, these efforts to create a more authentic brand image rarely convince customers. People don’t want brands to appear authentic, they want brands to actually be authentic in the way they operate and the customer experiences they deliver.

By aligning and integrating your culture and brand, what you say you are on the outside is truly what you are on the inside, so you pass the test of brand authenticity.

IMPROVES RESULTS It’s widely known that increased employee engagement results in greater productivity, improved quality, and higher customer satisfaction. Fusing your brand and culture can improve your business results even further.

For one, with brand-culture fusion, you increase your competitive advantage because it enables you to produce intangible value that is difficult to copy.

Competitors may be able to match what you offer to customers and employees, but it’s much harder for them to embody the unique why and how of what you do.

Also people increasingly make decisions about

which companies to work for or to buy from based on meaning and shared values, so deliberately linking your brand to your culture can increase your organization’s perceived relevance, differentiation, and appeal.

Independently, culture and brand are powerful, often unsung, business drivers. But when you fuse the two—when you create an interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between how your organization thinks and acts on the inside and how it is perceived and experienced on the outside—you create the ultimate solution for the culture problems that constrain most businesses today.

Denise Lee Yohn is a leading authority on positioning great brands and building exceptional organizations, and has 25 years of experience working with world-class brands including Sony and Frito-Lay. Denise is a consultant, speaker, and author of What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest and the new book FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies.

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CAN YOU BE AN INDEPENDENT THINKER AND A TEAM PLAYER? CHESTER ELTON AND ADRIAN GOSTICK 40

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Most of the truly great teams we’ve studied have at least one member who could be described as an independent thinker. These types of people don’t need much encouragement to share their views.

Richard Hackman was a professor at Harvard and the preeminent thinker on teamwork of his time. He said, “Every team needs … someone who can help the team by challenging the tendency to want too much homogeneity, which can stifle creativity and learning. (They) are the ones who stand back and say, ‘Wait a minute, why are we even doing this at all?

What if we looked at the thing backwards or turned it inside out?’”

In many workplaces, however, managers tell these independent thinkers to keep their radicalness to themselves. Great leaders, however, leverage their contrariness.

Hackman said, “In our research, we looked carefully at teams that produced something original and those that were merely average, where nothing really sparkled. It turned out that the teams with deviants outperformed teams without them. In many cases, deviant thinking is a source of great innovation.”

Thus, it’s important for leaders to fight the impulse to dissuade inquiries and questioning.

Adrian will always remember a high-school classmate who modeled a terrific behavior. While most of the students in his twelfth-grade math class suffered through lectures with a stoic cluelessness, keeping as quiet as mice to avoid admitting their ignorance, one bright student named Emily would not hesitate to raise her hand and say, “I don’t get it.” The teacher would then explain a dense concept again, at which Emily would either nod, and the teacher would move on, or she’d shake her head and say, “Nope, still don’t get it. Am I the only one?” She would literally demand clarity. She was fearless. And Adrian’s entire class learned a whole lot more because of it.

As you might imagine, people who veer from the norm like this often do so at great personal cost.

Radicals are willing to say the thing that nobody else will, and that means they can raise people’s level of anxiety—especially that of their leaders.

“When the boat is floating with the current, it really is extraordinarily courageous for somebody to stand up and say, ‘We’ve got to pause and probably change direction,’” said Hackman. On most teams, no one wants to hear that, which is precisely why many team leaders crack down on independent thinkers and try to get them to stop asking difficult questions and making off-the-wall suggestions.

Maybe they even bump them off the team.

In the Harvard professor ’s research, however,

he found that when a team loses its deviant it often becomes mediocre.

When we speak about this concept of independent thinkers to some groups, often a few folks come up after and let us know that it struck a chord. The first thing we ask is if they are independent thinkers, or devil’s advocates. Because the two are very different.

One CEO told us devil’s advocates are “cheap intellectuals,” scoring points by taking potshots at any new idea. A truly independent thinker doesn’t offer up only negativity for negativity’s sake, she’s arguing to look at things from a different perspective—especially the customer’s—and more

Wait a minute, why are we even doing this at all? What if we looked at the thing backwards or turned it inside out? importantly is known for offering up fresh, even wacky ideas. A devil’s advocate, however, looks only at the negative.

Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO, has found that people who are independent in their thinking push the work of innovation forward by assuming various positive personas. They may take the form of “anthropologists,” who bring new insights to the team by observing human nature—especially that of end users; “experimenters” who prototype new ideas continuously; or “cross-pollinators” who explore other teams or industries and bring back learnings and fit them into the needs of their teams.

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DEFYING NORMAL TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS CAROLINE RISEBORO

Our normal is a world where no matter their circumstances, girls and women face a wall of resistance in their struggle to define their futures, exercise their power, and lead boldly.

But I also believe that we have the power to stand in defiance of this normal, this system that persistently tells women and girls they are not equal. And I don’t mean just parts of the system—we cannot stop until every construct of this normal, every bias, every discriminatory law, and harmful norm is replaced with equality for all.

Until every obstacle is leveled, and every ceiling is smashed.

We all have the power to stand up against the status quo and push back against what we’ve come to accept as normal.

1) UNLEARN WHAT “IDEAL” LEADERSHIP LOOKS LIKE Normal is men and boys leading and women and girls following. It’s entrenched and outdated policies and practices that systematically exclude women and girls from leadership roles.

Normal is unspoken and unconscious barriers that prevent women and girls’ 42

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access to the skills or experience needed to access seats of leadership.

Over generations, the normalizing of exclusionary structures has only served to reiterate the prevailing and innate bias toward male leadership.

We need to redefine and reimagine leadership. As it exists now, it is a product of the exclusionary system that created it. We need to stop trying to make women fit into molds made for and by others and start re-shaping the system to better elevate women of all diversities and backgrounds.

Trailblazers like Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister who recently gave birth while serving in office, or Michelle Phan, the first woman to build a $500 million company from a web series, are helping defy the norms of what leadership looks like.

Despite what gender stereotypes may tell us, women just like men, can excel at leadership.

They do it every day at home, in their personal lives, and at work. They are not afraid to ask for help when needed and surround themselves with people that can support them.

Leadership under women may look different than leadership under men.

We need to stop seeing different as bad.

The fact is that dismantling traditional norms of leadership is beneficial to everyone, including men. All too often men are pressured to prioritize work and career ambitions over their families.

Male leaders should also be empowered to strive for work-life balance, to express empathy, and to invest in their families.

2) SET UP A YOUTH ADVISORY COUNCIL AT YOUR ORGANIZATION Normal is the powerful few shaping the future for those who follow them.

Normal is youth, especially young women and girls, shut out of the decisions that define their world. It’s older generations underestimating younger generations, believing they are the leaders of the future but not the leaders of now.

In the coming years the population under the age of 30 in the most fragile and unstable countries is going to spike. Adolescent girls in particular are in an incredibly important yet fragile position. They are deeply impacted by the decisions leaders make, yet too

I believe in creating platforms for telling and promoting the stories of those who have not traditionally had a platform from which to speak.

often normal for them means being disregarded in important discussions.

But young people, and especially young girl activists, are defying this normal. One of the most important truths I have learned as CEO & President of Plan International Canada is the awesome and unstoppable power of youth to change our world. They are also the leaders of today.

They’ve got this. What they need from us is our support, belief and hope.

Does your workplace have a youth advisory council? If the answer is no—here are three reasons why you’re missing out:  • Youth are better able to resist one of the most toxic and unproductive forces of the 21 st century: cynicism. Driven by optimism and hope they can cut through the noise and shape conversations in meaningful and authentic ways.

• Youth are more willing to challenge systems that aren’t working for everyone and create something new where everyone has the opportunity to unleash their human potential.

Something deeply rooted in equality, openness and optimism.

• Youth are redefining the future every day. You and your company don’t have to watch these shifts from the sidelines, you can play a role in redefining normal by supporting and engaging youth.

To all the business and civic leaders reading this, I call on you to commit to supporting youth, whether in your community or in a community half way around the world.

3) DON’T ACCUMULATE POWER, GIVE IT AWAY Normal is the powerful only having a voice, while those without power often watch from the sidelines. Normal is when vulnerable voices aren’t given a platform. But if the #MeToo movement has taught us anything, it is the power of breaking silence with stories.

We need to stop thinking of vulnerable and excluded women and girls simply as beneficiaries of change, but instead as change agents with stories and solutions to share.

Wherever possible, my organization is committed to building agency and helping to unleash the potential and

power of women and girls. I believe in creating platforms for telling and promoting the stories of those who have not traditionally had a platform from which to speak.

It’s time for us to help raise up new voices, new narratives and new visions of our shared future, and our normal.

The best way to do this is by sharing your power.

This goes beyond simply empowering people. It is means truly shifting long-held power dynamics and imbalances, so everyone can thrive, not just a few. I promise you that you will see remarkable results, as these individuals will undoubtedly offer up new and innovative solutions and ideas to some of your organization’s biggest challenges. This will ultimately mean a better world and more equality for everyone.

My goal is to inspire Canadians to build a future where we can all enjoy power with each other, rather than power over each other, and where everyone can draw strength from the power within themselves.

When we reach this goal, there is no limit to what our organizations, Canada, and even the world can accomplish.

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WHERE YOU ARE SALLY HELGESEN and

MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

Excerpted from the book HOW WOMEN RISE by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, published on April 10, 2018

by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group. Copyright 2018 Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith, Inc.

Where are you right now in your work and your career? Are you in a place that feels satisfying and gives scope to your talents? Are you valued not just for your contributions but also for your potential? And do you feel your work is leading to a place that will satisfy your ambitions and help you make the difference you want to make in the world?

After all, you get to define what success means to you. You get to define what it means to rise. Maybe for you it’s moving to a higher, more lucrative position. Maybe it’s finding a wider playing field or getting more recognition for your work. Maybe you want more say in the direction your organization will take in the future. Perhaps you want to create a new business or product.

Maybe you want to instill a spirit of joy among your collaborators, customers, and clients. Or you’re fired by the desire to help other women get ahead.

The point is, your definition of rising is always going to be personal, individual to you. But one of the biggest impediments to rising is also personal and individual: being blind to the behaviors and habits that keep you stuck.

These behaviors may have worked for you earlier in your career, which is why you may be tempted to cling to them. But as you move higher and

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assume more responsibility, what got you here—wherever you are now— can begin to work against you. This is true for men as well as women, but in our experience, the behaviors that undermine women are often different from the behaviors that undermine men.

Our focus on behaviors doesn’t mean we seek to blame women who have not risen as quickly as they would have liked or that we don’t appreciate the role external barriers play in keeping women stuck. Impenetrable old-boys’ networks, sexist bosses, men who seem incapable of listening to women or who claim credit for their ideas in meetings, career tracks that assume families do not exist, performance review criteria subtly designed to favor men, the unconscious biases that shape hiring and promotion: these impediments are real and unfortunately continue to play a role in stymieing women’s advancement.

Although women have made extraordinary and rapid progress in nearly every sector over the last thirty years, workplace structures and expectations created with men in mind continue to frustrate many women’s talents and ambitions. So we repeat: we are not trying to gloss over or deny obstacles that we know are real. However, our primary focus in this book is not on identifying external barriers or providing road maps around them. It’s on helping you recognize the behaviors that get in your way as you seek to become more

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successful on your own terms.

After all, your behaviors lie within your control, whereas external forces like unconscious bias may not. If the executive your boss reports to only feels comfortable talking with men he meets on the golf course, trying to change that will be an exercise in frustration. If your company uses performance criteria that subtly penalize women, you can be a voice for pointing this out and work with HR to explore alternatives, but it’s difficult to persuade your company to immediately jettison how it evaluates performance.

However, uprooting an unhelpful habit, behavior, or attitude you’ve picked up over the course of your working life is the one thing that does lie within your control that can seriously improve your chances of success. At minimum, making the effort should improve your daily experience of work and better prepare you to reach your goals in the future.

So think of How Women Rise as giving you the means to clear your path of self-imposed obstacles so you can become more successful and take greater satisfaction in your work. Our goal is to help you make the biggest positive difference that you want to make on the path you choose through life.

HOW YOU DEFINE SUCCESS Before we get started, we need to clarify

what we mean when we talk about success, a word we’ll be using quite a lot in this book. In our experience, women often define success a bit differently than men. This means they also define success differently than organizations have traditionally expected people (primarily men) to define success.

Instead of viewing money and position as the sole or even chief markers of success, women also tend to place a high value on the quality of their lives at work and the impact of their contributions. Enjoying co‑workers and clients, having some degree of control over their time, and believing that their work makes a positive difference in the world are key motivators for many successful women.

This does not mean women don’t care about financial reward or position—not at all. If women believe they are underpaid or feel their position in the organization doesn’t reflect the level of their contribution, they will resent it. And this will certainly impact their commitment and their perception of success. After all, money and position are still the carrots companies use to reward people and recognize their value. And most of us work because we need or want money.

However, one reason organizations sometimes struggle to retain highperforming women is that they operate on the presumption that high salary and high position will always be sufficient motivators even if the quality of work

life is consistently low. This assumption, especially when it comes to women, is often wrong. In fact, women are more likely to leave jobs that offer a high salary and position but a low quality of life. They often report finding such jobs “not worth it.”

These are not wild generalizations.

We are basing our observations on decades of experience, as well as on hard data.

For example, Sally and her colleague Julie Johnson joined with Harris Interactive, the polling company, to conduct a study of similarities and differences in how men and women perceive, define, and pursue satisfaction at work. The results appeared in their book, The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work.

The survey, which was delivered to 818 men and women who held management positions in companies with more than fifty employees, found many similarities between men and women. For example, both men and women reported deriving great satisfaction from leading teams, posting results that exceeded expectations, and being recognized for their contributions.

But the survey also indicated that men tended to place greater value on attaining a high position and earning a high salary, whereas women placed a higher value on the actual experience of work. Earning an excellent salary or achieving a top position did not feel as

satisfying to women if they were unable to also enjoy their days. Not every day, of course. But enough to make the job feel worth it.

Men not only tended to view position and salary as more important than women do, they were more likely to judge themselves (and others) based on these measures. Sally and Marshall have both seen how this form of comparing can lead successful men to underinvest in key relationships, such as family, friends, and community, even though these relationships have consistently been shown to be essential components of human happiness and satisfaction.

Sally and Julie’s research also found that men placed a greater value than women on winning, viewing it as a significant source of satisfaction and a key marker of success. They enjoyed besting competitors, “running up the score,” and often assigned a numeric value or rank to their contributions and achievements. Women, by contrast, took less satisfaction in competition and scorekeeping and often went out of their way to describe winning as the result of a collaborative endeavor. Whereas men were more likely to describe themselves as “playing to win,” women were more likely to agree with the statement “I will pick up the slack for others to assure that a project is successful.”

Marshall’s decades of experience working with successful leaders confirm these findings. When he was

interviewed for the Harvard Business Review, he was asked, “What’s the biggest challenge of the many successful leaders you have met?” His answer: “Winning too much!” As Alan Mulally, one of Marshall’s heroes, observes, “For the great individual achiever, it is all about me. For the great leader, it is all about them.”

The transition from achiever to leader can be particularly hard for highly competitive men, who may have difficulty recognizing that, as leader, their job is to make everyone else a winner. Women are less likely to struggle with this transition. Although many of the women Marshall and Sally have worked with like to win, they tend to be less interested in winning for themselves than in helping their organizations or their teams win.

This reluctance to view money, position, and winning as chief arbiters of success is psychologically healthy for women and great for their teams and organizations. But it can have a dark side, leading women to underinvest in their own success even as they devote time to building up others. This instinct for selfsacrifice also lies at the bottom of a number of behaviors that hold women back.

As you will see, the trick to maximizing your talents and opportunities is not becoming a less thoughtful and giving person, but rather being purposeful and intentional about your choices while also addressing the behaviors that keep you stuck.

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DON’T FALL INTO

A $2.4 BILLION LESSON ALL INNOVATORS SHOULD HEED

STEPHEN SHAPIRO

Being different is not the same as being differentiated…

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After years of development and $2.4 billion in investment, the Revel Casino opened its doors to the Atlantic City Boardwalk on April 2, 2012.

This beautiful hotel is top-notch, sophisticated, and classy. I know. I visited it.

To differentiate themselves from other casinos in the area, the Revel did not allow smoking anywhere and they didn’t offer a players’ club. They also decided to nix the buffet and bus trips to/from the casino. Oh, and there was a two-night stay minimum along with a wall that blocked easy access to the casino from the Boardwalk.

The goal was to create an exclusive and high-end experience.

Unfortunately, the typical person who visits Atlantic City isn’t looking for an East Coast version of Las Vegas. Let’s face it, the Boardwalk attracts families with children who want to eat cotton candy and hot dogs.

Combine their design decisions with a tanked New Jersey economy, increased competition from Pennsylvania casinos, and bad investment decisions (such as building their own power plant), and you have a recipe for disaster.

The Revel Casino opened April 2012. Two and a half years later it went bankrupt and closed its doors September 2014. One year after that, the casino was sold for pennies on the dollar at $82 million and remained closed until June 2018, when it opened with a completely different name and concept.

What can we learn from this?

Being different is not the same as

being differentiated.

The Revel was different. It chose policies and a design that was intended to help it stand out in a crowded market.

But these changes were not appreciated by their customers. Serious gamblers wanted to smoke or wanted a players’ club. By eliminating the buffet and bus trips, they alienated the more casual gambler.

Innovation is about creating experiences for customers that address their explicit and implicit wants and needs. Clearly, the Revel did not do this.

One of my mantras in business and in life is, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Just because they could create a unique experience at the Revel that bucked the design used by every other casino, didn’t mean they should.

At the end of the day, all innovations need to be desirable; creating something customers will pay to buy.

The Revel just reopened its doors again a couple of months ago under new ownership and with a new name: The Ocean Resort Casino. With its launch, they “corrected” many of the decisions that were originally made.

Smoking is now allowed. The buffet is back. A one-night stay is an option.

Stairs were added making it easy to get to the casino from the Boardwalk.

For more than 20 years, Stephen Shapiro has presented his provocative strategies on innovation culture and collaboration to audiences in over 40 countries. During his 15- year tenure with the consulting firm Accenture, he led a 20,000-person innovation practice. He is the author of five books, including “Best Practices Are Stupid,” which was named the best innovation and creativity book of 2011.

They even reconfigured the casino floor to make it less confusing to get from place to place, addressing a common complaint. And the casino is offering more things for kids and families to do, such as a large candy store and “Cereal Town,” a restaurant where you get cereal from around the world all day long.

Time will tell if The Ocean Resort Casino will be successful. Although it seems to blend elegance with

One of my mantras in business and in life is, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” friendliness—a recipe that has worked for the Borgata—there are still many hurdles to overcome. Regardless of the future for this property, there is a lot to be learned from its past.

The rapid and massive failure of the Revel should provide a cautionary tale to any innovator who thinks that being different is the same as being differentiated.

When it comes to leadership

ALAN MULALLY

WILL ALWAYS BE THE BOSS. THE ART OF 50

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Simply put, Alan Roger Mulally is the Bruce Springsteen of CEOs— the consummate frontman. For 37 successful years, he was the Executive Vice President of Boeing and the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He joined the Ford Motor Company in 2006 with the company in turmoil. Shortly after, he secured enough private money to keep the company afloat. He took the struggling automotive giant from the brink of disaster to soaring profitability.

Along the way, he picked up awards—lots of them. Mulally was No. 3 on Fortune’s list of World’s Greatest Leaders, is listed as one of Barron’s World’s Best CEOs, and was Automotive News magazine’s Industry Leader of the Year. Not bad for a kid who, at the age of 17, was inspired

by President John Kennedy’s challenge to send a man to the moon.

But this isn’t a story about how a car company went from a staggering $17.6 billion loss to one of the greatest turnarounds in American business history. This is a story about a corporate leader, a keen student of leadership and communication, and how he kept his talent from jumping off a sinking ship while reinventing a corporate culture.

In his own words, “Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation, and talented people working together.”

Connection played a major role in Mulally’s leadership style. He is often quoted as saying, “People want meaning.

All of us want to know that we are doing great things, that we are touching a lot of people, and that what we are doing is something bigger than ourselves.”

It all began with a plan. Mulally communicated with infectious optimism, frequently quoting company founder Henry Ford. “We’re giving people the freedom of mobility” and “take advantage of opportunity” were oftheard phrases. He was personable and made people feel important. He was single-minded in his expression of his vision and used it to evaluate everything from car design and consumer benefits to corporate decision making. True to his notions of strategy and communication, Mulally brought his vision and plan to life with ‘One Ford’.

The strategy itself was made up of 4 different goals: 1. Bring all employees

together as a global team 2. Leverage Ford’s unique knowledge and assets 3. Build vehicles people wanted 4. Get financing in place to pay for it all. He created ‘One Team’ to eliminate preexisting silos and turf battles. He created a simplified leadership structure that aligned with his vision to get people to work together across the company as a global team. Says Mulally, “It’s about people working together for the good of all of us.”

In 2008, he had a chance to test his plan when he championed Ford’s decision to go to Congress with GM and Chrysler to call for a federal rescue. Ford didn’t need rescuing. In fact, Mulally had previously arranged a multi-billiondollar line of credit that he secured by personally appealing to the biggest banks in America. Mulally re-established

Mulally knew that without trust, cooperation, and teamwork, the plan would fail.

Ford’s credibility and got the ball rolling for his turnaround plan. He believed that GM and Chrysler threatened to drag the entire country into a depression and that going before Congress was “the right thing for the industry and the right thing for the United States of America.”

Mulally continued to get everyone focused on what was best for Ford. He recognized that the potential was there but he needed to activate it. He made a speech to 4,000 Ford employees and car dealers where he asked the executive team to stand and look the dealers in the eye. He then asked the executive team to tell the dealers they loved them.

According to a dealer who was there, it was the defining moment when the culture at Ford began its transformation.

Mulally knew that without trust, cooperation, and teamwork, the plan

would fail. He believed then, as he does now, that you can’t just be there for your people. You have to love them.

From the beginning, Mulally prioritized open communication and galvanized his employees by stating “We have been going out of business for 40 years” at one of the company’s town hall meetings. The statement was profoundly accurate and had a major impact on employees. Leaders who value their people don’t view them just as a means to an end. Mulally gave his employees a voice, and would often seek out their ideas and opinions, holding weekly meetings to review his plan. He encouraged honest dialogue, forbidding anyone in his meetings to use humor at the expense of others because it undermined honesty and connection.

He also knew how to retain his top talent, discovering hidden potential amongst existing employees and growing his teams while he recharged the corporate culture at Ford with very little churn in human resources. Being united in corporate culture also paved the way for a more technologically driven company with a focus on innovation.

Part of the ‘One Ford’ vision was to bring suppliers, customers, and even the unions into the fold as partners.

This would have the double benefit of helping convince the skeptics that the organization was really in the midst of positive change that would benefit everyone. Mulally’s plan was that Ford would communicate clearly and with great detail why the situation was now different, how things had changed, what was going to be required for the turnaround to be successful, and what the organization was willing to do so that everyone could share in the success. And he never looked back. Ford went on to post record profits with soaring stock prices.

Mulally stepped down as the President and CEO in 2014, but he’s still performing in the spotlight. He is on the Google (now Alphabet) Board of Directors, the subject of a book outlining his monumental achievements at Ford called “American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company” and was considered to become the next Secretary of State by the Trump Administration.

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BODY LANGUAGE TO BEAT THE STRESS MARK BOWDEN AND TRACEY THOMSON Working life never ceases to be a cause of stress. Deadlines, responsibilities, the rigours of maintaining excellence and high performance; and just too many items to action that we are always chasing to catch up with are some of the pressures that over time have the potential to really get us down and feeling tired, overworked, and super stressed. All this can really knock our sense of confidence and our sense of self-worth, making us feel small. So how can we use our body language to build ourselves big again, manage stress,

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make ourselves feel more confident, become more calm and assertive and in so doing, always come across as trustworthy and credible?

When we feel small and unconfident, our body language can often display these feelings to others, as we will often minimize our size and impact by displaying submissive body language. Submissive body language is characterized by gestures that make us look like we are caving in, defensive, reclusive or indecisive—in short, body language that makes us look

powerless. Submissive body language shows that we do not want to take the power position, nor do we want to be in control‌ when the reality may be entirely the opposite!

Submissive body language where we appear that we are taking up less space and looking small may also have us making less noise. We take up as little nonverbal real estate as possible, be it physical, aural, or temporal. When we are more confident not only do we often take up more physical space but we also maximise the volume of the sounds that

we make and the time we take up with all of this. In a meeting this will come across as “speaking up” or “getting our point through” but of course at the overly confident or dominant end of the spectrum it can come across as “hogging the air space”.

Of course context is key to all body language and so submissive body language can appear more extreme when seen next to someone exhibiting more dominant body language, gestures that take up space, sound and time. If someone is moving loudly and decisively through territory over sustained periods, you’ll notice them; so the opposite, the submissive body language, may appear as more extreme in relation to that. Some of these gestures are: cringing, which looks smaller and non-threatening; head bowing; wide eyed innocent “startled” staring of the freeze, flight, fight, faint system; hunched shoulders of fear or passiveness; we may even look physically unbalanced, like we could

be pushed over. Crossed, defensive postures can also trigger others into feeling you are submissive or indecisive.

When you cross your body you hinder your ability to move, and therefore although you may feel less vulnerable, you may look to others and even feel in yourself more passive. Not a great position to be assertively negotiating from!

Add to this the physical and psychological impact of always holding and staring down at our smartphones, and there is the opportunity to compound the effect of giving off passive or submissive body language. Body language expert and TED Talk sensation Amy Cuddy explains a correlation between the bad posture so many of us experience from using smartphones—what she calls iPosture, also referred to as iHunch

by New Zealand physiotherapist Steve August—and the psychological damage and changes in behavior that result. Citing studies that link

depressed postures to lower selfesteem and mood, greater fear and more negative verbal reactions to questions, Cuddy’s research finds that the “slouchy, collapsed position we take when using our phones actually makes us less assertive—less likely to stand up for ourselves when the situation calls for it,” and she recommends we counter these physical effects with exercises and stretches… or trips to the osteopath! The good news is that there are some things that we can quite simply and effectively do for ourselves.

So with all the stress, overwork, pressure to be responsive and accompanying postures forcing you into looking and feeling submissive and non-assertive, let’s look at how you can counter these postures, assert yourself through your body language, help yourself regain your calm, shed the stress, and show colleagues and employers that you are capable, trustworthy and credible. Here are three top tips that you can do right now:

Submissive body language where we appear that we are taking up less space and looking small may also have us making less noise.

Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson are co-authors of

TEDx talk, he has four books, including bestselling

TRUTH & LIES What People are Really Thinking, a fresh,

Winning Body Language. Tracey Thomson as Co-Founder

insightful, myth-busting guide to reading body language

of TRUTHPLANE advises companies and individuals on

in the post-digital age. Mark Bowden is voted #1 Body

questions around communication and body language.

Language Professional worldwide, and as a thought leader

Her background directing and training performers

in nonverbal communication is sought after internationally

internationally in the psychology of movement as well

for his keynote speeches and communications training

as her professional experience gives her unique insights

through his organization TRUTHPLANE. With a popular

into human behavior.

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1. TAKE SPACE Try taking up more physical space.

First off, sit up straight. If you are at a table, move your chair back 6 inches so you are showing off more of a physical presence to others at the table. Place

your hands on the table so that you are taking up more territory as well.

Place your smartphone on the table and push it away from you to take up even more territory and also to keep

yourself from reaching for it and hiding away with it. You can even stand up sometimes when you are speaking or making important points.

this vulnerable area of your body makes them feel that you are very confident.

By assuming this physicality, you will feel confident too! And by showing your palms open with nothing in your

hands to let others know that you mean no harm and are speaking for their benefit you will also feel more open and commanding while still giving a universally recognised ‘friendly’ gesture.

read more than we think, and when the picture of the words is taken away it becomes harder to verify the language.

The audience will perceive or create negative feelings about your intentions — in the absence of information, we ‘make it up’ and always lean towards

the negative to prepare for the worst when theorising about the inner thoughts of others. And by covering yourself up and minimising the space you take you may compound the feeling that you have nothing worth saying in the first place!

2. TORSO TALK Place your hands in what we have trademarked the TruthPlane, the horizontal plane that extends 180 degrees out of your navel area. Bringing the audience’s unconscious attention to

3. REVEAL YOURSELF Avoid having your hands at mouth level when speaking, for example when sitting at a table with your chin in your hands, often a physical symptom of feeling stress and pressure weighing us down and making us look more passive or submissive. We lip

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THE MIND OF THE LEADER: LEADERSHIP TRAINING HAS IT BACKWARDS JACQUELINE CARTER

During the summer of 2015, Pierre Nanterme, Accenture’s CEO, announced that the global professional services company would reimagine its performance management system.

The company found that after decades of serving its purpose, the system had become massively demotivating. Accenture’s global workforce had changed.

Their people—and your people—are not motivated by being a number on a performance rating scale. Rather, today’s workforce is increasingly looking for meaning, human connectedness, true happiness, and a desire to contribute positively to the world. Nanterme and his leadership team realized Accenture needed a better way to lead for these foundational human desires and better engage their 425,000-plus employees— to speak to their intrinsic motivation.

Accenture is no outlier. A global movement is taking place in the C-suites of thousands of progressive

organizations like Marriott, Starbucks, and LinkedIn. The question the leaders of these organizations ask themselves is, “How can we create more human leadership and people-centered cultures where employees and leaders are more fulfilled and more fully engaged?”

As human beings, we are all driven by basic needs for meaning, happiness, human connectedness, and a desire to contribute positively to society.

That’s true whether we’re at home, out in the world, or at work. But it’s one thing to realize this and another to act on it. Speaking to our people’s intrinsic motivation calls for leadership and organizations that cater to these desires. It’s something that forwardthinking organizations and leaders are increasingly realizing and addressing.

As Javier Pladevall, CEO of Audi Volkswagen, Spain, reflected when we spoke with him: “Leadership today is about unlearning management and

relearning being human.”

How important is this message?

Consider this: In a 2016 McKinsey & Company study of more than fifty-two thousand managers, 86 percent rated themselves as inspiring and good role models. But this stands in stark contrast to how employees perceive their leaders.

A 2016 Gallup engagement survey found that 82 percent of employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring. In fact, the same survey found that only 13 percent of the global workforce is engaged, while 24 percent are actively disengaged.

This seeming lack of good leadership is not because of a lack of effort. According to a recent report, organizations around the globe invest approximately $46 billion annually on leadership development programs.

That’s a lot of money for seemingly little return. What’s going wrong?

We conducted a 2-year research 55

study, to find the strategies for great leadership in the 21st century. We interviewed 250 C-suite executives from Microsoft, Google, McKinsey, Lego and more, assessed 35,000 leaders and trawled through thousands of studies of leadership. From this work, we came to two clear findings.

First; leadership education has got it backwards. Leadership pioneer Peter Drucker said, “You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.” Much leadership education starts with skills like strategy, vision and finance. But from Drucker ’s point of view, this approach starts at the end and misses the beginning. It’s like building a house by starting with the roof.

Our research found that leadership starts with yourself. More specifically, it starts in your mind. By understanding how your mind works, you can lead yourself effectively. By understanding and leading yourself effectively, you can understand others and be able to lead them more effectively. And by understanding and leading others more effectively, you can understand and lead your organization more effectively— and by “more effectively,” we mean in a way that’s going to tap into your own and your people’s intrinsic motivations and sense of purpose. If you’re able to do that—and we have witnessed that with practice and persistence, anyone can—you’ll have a more engaged and productive workforce. And perhaps

more importantly, you’ll be part of creating more happiness, stronger human connectedness, and better social cohesion within and beyond your organization.

Second, we found that three key mental qualities stand out in great leaders: mindfulness, selflessness and compassion.

Mindfulness is about learning to manage your attention – a critical skill for today’s leaders. When you learn how to manage your attention, you learn how to manage your thoughts. Mindfulness provides leaders with a stellar focus on the task or person at hand enabling greater productivity as well as an ability to be truly present with people. Professor Jochen Reb of Singapore Management University found, there’s a direct correlation between leaders’ mindfulness and the well-being and performance of their people.i Mindfulness gives us the ability to better manage our mind and as leaders, direct it towards things that are beneficial for yourself and your organization.

Selflessness in leadership is the wisdom of getting out of your own way; not letting your own natural egoistic tendencies to prevent you from being of best service to your team. According to research by Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at University of California, Berkeley, leaders are more likely to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.ii Cultivating selflessness counters these

inclinations. It is defined by a strong sense of humility and the ability to be of service to others. Selfless leadership is about understanding that leadership success is based on an ability to skillfully develop the potential of people.

Compassion in leadership is the quality of having positive intentions for others. Researchers from the University of North Carolina Business School found that compassionate leaders are perceived as both stronger and better leaders.iii With compassion, a leader increases trust and social cohesion because it is clear they are looking out for the best interests of the team. People are more likely to go the extra mile for a compassionate leader because they know they have their back. But don’t be fooled into thinking that compassion is about always being nice. Compassionate leadership is also about giving tough feedback and making difficult decisions.

It requires wisdom and courage.

Leading with mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion makes you more human and less leader. It makes you more you and less your title. By bringing more humanity into our leadership we can create happier, healthier and more productive work environments for ourselves, our people, our organizations and beyond. If you are interested in getting started on becoming more mindful, selfless and compassionate here is a link to an app that will get you started on the journey.

Jacqueline Carter is an International Partner and the North American Director of Potential Project a global leadership and organizational development firm focused on training the mind to enhance performance, innovation and resilience. Jacqueline clients include Accenture, Cisco, Bank of America and Marriott to name a few. She is co-author of two books: The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results (HBR Press, 2018) and One Second Ahead: Enhancing Performance at Work with Mindfulness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). i J. Reb, J. Narayanan, and S. Chaturvedi, “Leading Mindfully: Two Studies on the Influence of Supervisor Trait Mindfulness on Employee Well-

Being and Performance,” Mindfulness 5 (2014): 36-45. ii D. Keltner, “Don’t Let Power Corrupt You,” Harvard Business Review, October 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/10/dont-let-power-corrupt-you. iii S. Melwani, J.S. Mueller, and J.R. Overbeck, “Looking Down: The Influence of Contempt and Compassion on Emergent Leadership Categorizations,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97 (2012): 1171-1185.

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STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TO TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANIZATION DAVID HEATHER Who manages their own finances on an annual basis, looks at their bank accounts once a year, checks their RRSP and other investments and then leaves them for 12 months, hoping that everything remains okay?

The answer, hopefully, is not many people. Yet, this is how most of us have become accustomed to managing performance at work. We set goals at the beginning of the year and then we check in again at the end of year to apply a rating to our colleagues. Meanwhile the business that we operate is rapidly changing and the employees adapt with it.

We have seen a number of companies become frustrated with the performance management cycle and in some cases abolish the process altogether. Others have adapted their current process to make it more real time and valid for their employees. Still more companies continue to wrestle with the dilemma of how to effectively manage their employees’ performance.

As we continue in a cycle of relative full employment, companies of all sizes are working harder to “activate their talent,” rather than simply ‘’manage their talent’’ in a traditional manner.

Companies are endeavoring to engender a culture of engagement in which all their employees can do their best work.

They recognize that people often work best in teams and excel when they clearly understand what is expected of them and have a chance to use their strengths every day at work.

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3 STEPS TO SUCCESS: 1. KNOW YOUR PEOPLE

NOT CONVINCED?

While an incredibly simple concept, this is all too often missed by organizations and their leaders today. The first and most basic step in an effective performance management program is to get to know your people. This doesn’t mean you need to know their dog’s name or what their partner majored in (although those are nice to know). However, you should quickly come to understand what their professional goals are, where their strengths lie, which parts of their job function they love to do and which they are great at. The flip side of that is understanding which parts of their job they struggle with, take longer to complete or generally do not enjoy.

The Marcus Buckingham Company, an ADP Company, commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment enterprises may realize by deploying the ADP PM solution, StandOut. Among the key findings were that 1:

2. FOCUS YOUR PEOPLE By becoming aware of and acknowledging the strengths that exist within your team, you can begin to focus your employees. Of course, some weak areas will require coaching if they are a necessary part of their role, but by allowing your team members to play to their strengths during their work day, they will find their work more rewarding and fulfilling, and will in turn unlock their individual potential to accelerate their own performance. If the work feels enjoyable, people are likely to work more efficiently, which will instill new beliefs and habits throughout each team that can initiate ripples which will bring about real organizational change.

•

Participating organizations saw number of “fully engaged” employees increase by 65%

•

StandOut helped new employees become engaged and productive faster

ARTICLE

3. ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE Let your people take an active role in growing and developing the team. Empower team leaders to measure and improve engagement in real time and involve them in the process of identifying and isolating the factors that make your team successful. Invest in real time employee sensing tools that take the pulse of your employees on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.

1

Higher employee satisfaction and improved management reduced turnover

•

Organizations using StandOut saved $81,000 over three years in hiring costs from improved retention alone

The workforce and the workplace are rapidly changing. This requires leaders to be innovative and strategic when it comes to motivating and engaging their teams, to keep the organization moving forward.

Strategic performance management can transform your company and your business.

Forrester Research, Inc.,” A Forrester Total Economic Impact Study Commissioned by The Markus Buckingham Company,

An ADP Company ”, November 2017.

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SURFING THE WAVE AND SCALING THE CURVE: A PRIMER FOR PERSONAL DISRUPTION WHITNEY JOHNSON Theoretically, I’m a surfer.

I am always on the lookout for— even pursuing—the next big wave. No ocean, no water, but still, I’m watching the waves everywhere.

In 2007 I was working at the Disruptive Innovation Fund I cofounded with Clayton Christensen, where we used the S-curve model to help guide our investment decisions. This model, popularized

by E.M. Rogers, has traditionally been employed to predict the rate at which new ideas and innovative products— disruptors—will be embraced and how rapidly they will penetrate cultures and markets. I began to realize S curves are good models for human learning curves too. At the base of the S, progress is slow and there is a high degree of challenge learning something new; eventually a tipping point is reached.

Hyper-growth follows—acceleration up the steep back of the curve as the high learning challenge yields to

competence. At the top, progress slows again as competence morphs into mastery and learning slows, flattening the top of the S. I visualize these S-curves as waves—exciting, new opportunities we can surf to new learning. And I advocate that we each need to catch a new wave on a more or less regular basis. Neuroscientists argue that cognitive effort, stimulated by learning something new, keeps our brains humming along with dopamine and other feel-good neurotransmitters. This elevates our mood in the short term and can help wards off cognitive decline over the longer haul. Regularly tackling a new learning challenge keeps us more productive and more actively engaged

in our work for a longer period of time.

Personal disruption requires that we periodically leap from a high S curve position of hard-earned expertise and peak performance on one wave, to catch the low-end of the next, becoming a novice, struggling to gain footing on a new learning curve.

I have codified seven accelerants of personal disruption that can facilitate successful navigation of these tricky moves from wave to wave; here is a summary of these essential techniques:

WHITNEY JOHNSON Recognized as one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), Whitney Johnson is an expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption; specifically, a framework which she codifies in the critically acclaimed book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work and in her latest book Build an “A” Team: Play To Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve. (Harvard Business Press, 2018). She is also the author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream

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1 TAKE THE RIGHT RISKS

3 EMBRACE CONSTRAINTS

A wave can get pretty crowded with multiple surfers. Instead of trying to go head to head with a colleague or competitor, try to find a unique wave, one that isn’t occupied by someone else. If you create or step into a role (or innovate a new product, service, business, etc.) that meets a presently unmet need, you greatly increase your chances of success. Look to play where others aren’t; being the first surfer on the wave gives you the advantage over all who might challenge you later.

‘Constraint’ sounds like a limitation on freedom. But constraints are liberating; without them we are bogged down by an over-abundance of options. Fortunately, at the low end of an S curve wave, there are inevitably limitations—too little time, money, expertise, buy-in. In fact, unlimited options can be paralyzing, an impairment to good decision-making. Fewer options force us to prioritize, emphasize resourcefulness and innovate. Innovation is the coin of the realm.

2 PLAY TO YOUR DISTINCTIVE STRENGTHS What are you not just good at, but uniquely good? What have you always done well, even in childhood? What makes you odd? Consider a compliment that you frequently receive and are quick to dismiss. Or, watch for the things that irritate you in other people. Carl Jung famously said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” I have found this to be a good gauge of our superpower(s). Most of us are annoyed by the ineptness of others at the things we naturally do well.

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4 BATTLE ENTITLEMENT I have called entitlement the sneaky saboteur of personal disruption. Entitlement is a close cohort of complacency and leads is into unprofitable paths of ease, low-learning, low-growth and stagnation. The entitled hesitate to abandon their position of relative comfort to tackle the challenges found at the low end of a new learning curve. They are inclined to believe that good things need not be pursued, but should simply roll their way. They may be bitter or

recriminatory when this doesn’t happen. Entitlement saps the strength needed to disrupt the status quo and try something new.

5 STEP BACK TO GROW Forget what you’ve always thought about the corporate ladder. Moving sideways, backwards, even down can position us at the high-learning end of a new wave.

Visualize a slingshot—we pull back to generate forward propulsion. To be highly engaged we need to be learning new things and solving significant problems. To battle entitlement we relinquish our hold on the wave we’ve mastered and leap to a new wave with lots of energy still to expend.

6 GIVE FAILURE ITS DUE There is a cosmic abundance of dreams to pursue and contributions to make. Failure is the great instructor. When one avenue comes to a dead-end, successful disruptors will take what they’ve learned and employ it to greater

achievement on the next wave.

7 BE DISCOVERY DRIVEN Waves are unpredictable. When we first decide to surf, we don’t know how the future will roll out. Flexibility is key to successful disruption. Most of the celebrated explorers and discoverers in our history books were not prepared for the challenges that arose on their journeys. Improvisation, adaptation and resourcefulness are essential to advancing knowledge. Personal disruption requires us to launch ourselves into the unknown and discover our wave as we ride it, innovating as circumstances present themselves.

Personal disruptions can be daunting and feel dangerous, but chances are good that if we don’t disrupt ourselves, choosing our own waves to surf, we will be disrupted anyway, at times and in ways we do not prefer. Wipeouts are an inevitable part of the deal, but often leave us ideally positioned to catch the perfect wave. I can see it now, rolling in.

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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB INDUSTRY WORTH $2 BILLION IN REVENUE? TIFFANI BOVA

In 2012 the bosses of Philips Hue (ADR) engineers George Yianni and Filip Jan Depauwe were asked a baffling question: why more than one hundred thirty years after Edison’s invention had light bulbs hardly changed at all while everything around them had? The developed world now lived in a reality of personal computers, cellular phones, digital games, transcontinental airlines and the internet. Yet, the now-prosaic little light bulb, lighting up homes around the globe and sold by the billions every year, had yet to be supplanted by another technological breakthrough. Was it really that irreplaceable?

Philips had a major stake in finding the answer. For almost 90 percent of the history of the technology itself, Philips had been making light bulbs. However, not much had changed during that time. But now a new reality had set in – the context of the market was changing and changing quickly due to the advent of technologies not available to them even a decade before. As Philips management looked around they saw the consumer interest in alternative illumination technologies – notably the light emitting diode (LED) was gaining interest as ‘sustainability’ and energy efficiency was entering the consumer consciousness. It realized that the time was ripe for a major disruption, and they knew that if they weren’t willing to disrupt themselves, someone else 62

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would do it for them. Philips wanted to get there first, but the essential question was how?

In following the Philips story while researching the nature of corporate growth, I was surprised to discover that instead of what is assumed to be a near-infinite number of options for a company to take to improve its current circumstances, there are in fact, just ten paths to growth. Prior to choosing which path is best, it is important to understand the competitive context in which the company finds itself, the combination of actions it must take to pursue a path, and the sequence in which those actions need to be taken. They needed to sharpen their Growth IQ. Philips was dialed into the shift in market context, so it clearly understood what it needed to do, but it also realized it needed to more than just produce a LED lightbulb. Looking at one of the most mature, and commoditized industries imaginable, Philips decided to reimagine what it meant to “light up a room” by offering a whole new product technology to the billions of existing customers—what I’ve called product expansion—as well as attract an entirely new set of customers and use cases—what I’ve called customer and product diversification. In the end, it chose to empower its design lab to think beyond the status quo and come up with a radical new product with a whole new type of functionality

(digital, networking, adjustable palette of millions of colors) and use- cases, then roll it out supported by an ad campaign called “How Many Years Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb”—a parody of sorts showing a single while lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of the same house, over a different family, as the decades passed.

Unlike anything they had tried before, Yianni and Depauwe were given just 11 months to ‘make a splash’ and leverage 50 years of innovation with LEDs. This compresses timeline put everyone in the company on notice that this wasn’t going to be business as usual. It was looking for a once-in-a-lifetime idea –one that could have the potential to revolutionize not only home lighting, but also the emotional connection people had with such a commoditized and consistent product such as the light bulb. An important clue to the direction they should pursue came from Jim Andrew, Philips chief strategy and innovation officer. He proposed that whatever light the team invented, it should incorporate digital into the equation, instead of just looking at the traditional analog technology. This was the perfect storm for Phillips. It had an impending market shift in customer preference and context, It had access to new technical capabilities, and unwavering executive support. The result?

Phillips was able to capitalize on all three to deliver a true

revolution in lighting.

Faced with such a challenge, the two designers had an epiphany—a true “light bulb” moment that the light bulb had been waiting for all these years. With their team they set as their goal not just a new consumer product but actually opening people’s eyes to the possibility of creating value beyond mere illumination: an LED-based, digitally ‘connected’ and networked light bulb capable of ranging across 16 million different colors all controlled by a ‘smartphone.’ With those range of colors, its ability to accept digital signals, and its lifespan of decades, home and commercial lighting wouldn’t just be about illumination, but about seeing and feeling better – and as an atmospheric conveyor of information. That’s when Phillips Hue was born.

The Yianni/Depauwe team met their deadline. Now their new Hue light bulb had to be rolled out into the world. In the much slower, more insular world of the 19th century, Edison had years with little competition to introduce and proliferate his light bulb. In the fast-paced global marketplace of the 21st century, with hungry competitors ready to swarm, Philips had mere months. Now Philips knew how it wanted to grow, it had defined the new product it was going to introduce and the path it would use to drive growth.

While this may seem counterintuitive, that was only the 63

Would users discover a way to use this new technology to solve an intractable problem— would they have their own “light bulb moments”?

second part of the challenge—first, the company had to sell the new light technology to its own established corporate culture. This is where the sequence comes into play. Knowing what you want to do, doesn’t mean you can just act on it immediately. You must ensure you are establishing the right level of internal ‘buy-in’ to get everyone rallied around an entirely new kind of product and frankly a new value proposition. It wasn’t about just lighting a room, it was about creating a personalized and connected experience with color and light. After all, Philips had manufactured traditional bulbs for more than a century – and this new technology not only smashed the hegemony of that technology but ultimately also demanded a new radical way of thinking about designing and launching products. In other words, Philips had to sell the idea internally before it sold its new Hue product to the rest of the world.

It took a company-wide campaign over the next few months to begin that process. Engineers had to be told to design-in the new technology as part of the user experience and focus on the ‘feeling’ lighting can provide and not just providing ‘white light.’ The sequence of these internal cultural changes were critical to the overall success of Philips Hue. Management had to stay on top of the process to keep the culture from sliding back into the old ways, what it had always done, successfully I might add, for 130 years. In the end, it took a combination of training, reinforcement, rewards and penalties to force the change. But surprisingly quickly, the connected, adaptable software driven culture started by the Hue light bulb permeated all Philips products, from $40 DVD players to million-dollar MRI scanners.

But one very big step remained: adoption. It took a halfcentury from Edison’s Lab to that evening when all America turned off its lights in tribute. Could Philips at least start down the path to social assimilation of its new lighting technology? Eric Rondolat, Philips’ global CEO for lighting

believed that ‘the company that understands outcomes and applications will be the company that thrives’. So, were there other uses cases besides providing “light’ that would emerge out in the world that would point the way? Would users discover a way to use this new technology to solve an intractable problem—would they have their own “light bulb moments”?

One such moment arrived at the most unlikely place. A small regional call center in Kansas City that was struggling to improve customer satisfaction. It needed a quick way for a floor manager to identify when an agent needed help with a customer. The current solution —which was software based, features on the phone etc.—at the time just wasn’t working quickly enough.

Then one day, an IT manager at the call center heard me tell the Philips Hue lighting story at a conference in Phoenix Arizona in 2013. He practically ran up to me after I got off stage to tell me that the metaphorical ‘light bulb’ went off when he was listening to me. He could solve the problem about notifying floor managers by putting one of those new connected digital light bulbs above each cubical. Called up on the computer by the operator, that light could quickly provide visual notification based upon color when a call agent needed help. It was a simple, elegant and inexpensive solution for which the new Philips’ lights were uniquely suited.

Was this the original intention when Philips decided to pivot towards a connected lightbulb with 16 million different colors, I’m guessing not. But it didn’t matter. The call center got its solution, Philips took a new path and proved to its customers its Growth IQ in lighting technology (and saw a growth jump in the process) – and, it turned out, was credited with one of the pioneering products in the emerging Internet of Things (IoT). I got a great story to tell . . . and the light bulb finally got its “light bulb moment”—indeed several of them.

Tiffani Bova is s the Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce and author ofGrowth IQ: Get Smarter About The Choices That Will Make Or Break Your Business. Previously, she was VP, Distinguished Analyst and Research Fellow with Gartner.

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