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Leaders must always be monitoring their metrics to keep the ship steered in the right direction and continuing to make adjustments. These metrics, or KPI’s, are critical to the company’s health, and can be anything from net profit to EBIDTA to market share. However, just knowing how the dashboard is working is not enough, any more than having a fever and taking your temperature every day to monitor it, without taking the meds or resting. Knowing the metrics is simply a way of keeping score.

Reverse engineering leadership is a phrase I came up with to describe how the leader can use the metrics in a way that is useful and adds value to the organization. The term “reverse engineering” historically describes the process of improving something, say, a computer, by investigating its present functioning, in order to understand its inner structure, and thus make it better. I had a fan in my house break and the handyman simply took the whole thing apart, with pieces all over the place. Then he figured out what was wrong and made it better. He was a “reverse engineer.”

In the same way, use your metrics to go deeper into the DNA of your organization, and you’ll learn a great deal about its innards. Then you are on the way to permanent improvements, not just band aid fixes. For example, a low month in sales could point to any of the following:

• A leadership problem in your sales management staff
• A lack of clarity for your sales staff, in the areas of pricing, market issues and sales tactics
• A cultural issue, for example, a sales staff who are not being engaged with personally, only given quotas
• Another cultural issue, for example, no clear motivational expectation system of what is required
• A market shift
• A competition issue
• A product that is not as relevant as it once was, requiring more research into future trends

Here is the point: a red flag metric can point to more than one cause. Don’t get stuck in the traps of either trying to make the numbers get better by simply working harder, which is usually not the answer; or trying to have “one size fits all” in the answer. There is an old Buddhist proverb that says, “Beware the person whose only tool is a hammer, for he sees every problem as a nail.” You see leaders make this mistake with their one hammer, for example the hammer of:

• Efficiencies
• Comp package
• Random tactical answers to deep cultural problems (“maybe if we have a barbecue once a month that will fix the culture of fear”
• Positive thinking without dealing with negative reality
• Getting frustrated and having tirades which then cause the staff to lose respect

The advice I always give my consulting clients is this: Dig into several things and ask “Why” about them. Now you are reverse engineering:

• How aligned are our people with our mission, vision and values?
• Do we have the right people on the right bus?
• Is our culture healthy?
• Are our systems and processes adequate?
• Do our teams work and play well together?

95% of the time you’ll find your answer. Reverse engineering leadership works.

As a rule, leaders simply talk too much!!! We have lots of great ideas, want to impart vision, and want to challenge the troops. But I promise you, leaders deliver way too many words per conversation and it gets in the way of what you want to do. In fact, neuroscience has discovered what happens to the brain when it is being lectured to. It goes to sleep!!! Your brain can only receive so many words from another person before it checks out and takes a nap.

Why do leaders talk so much? Lots of reasons. The good: We are excited about a new initiative. We want to explain a process or a challenge. We have seen great speakers catalyze audiences. And the not-so-good: We like to hear ourselves. We have little clue about the impact on our verbiage on others. We talk more when we are anxious, to feel more in control and less insecure. We think the more words we use, the more clear the explanation. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether the intent is good or not-so-good. The outcome is the same. People check out and while they are looking at us, nodding, saying “Wow, that’s so true, yes, that’s exciting, thanks Boss.” They forget what you said, so their behavior doesn’t change. And most importantly, they are less likely to pay attention to you the next time you start talking.

Here are some tips that will help:

Cut it by 2/3. I think leaders can have great organizational performance and only use 33% of their words. Just use the right words and think “less is more.”

Listen well before you speak. Make sure you aren’t answering a question that has already been answered. When I have the chance before speaking to a group, I have a query session so that I really know what’s going on with the team.

Allow silences. The space between sentences will work for you. The best speakers in the world have meaningful pauses at the right time. You are allowing their brains to think about and digest your last point. The fire hydrant approach simply doesn’t get the job done.

Settle for less information. You don’t have to recreate the world, whether it is a point you are making at a party, or a keynote at an association meeting. Just make a couple of points that matter, give a story or two, and stop. As a writer, I have the same problem. Yesterday I had a talk with my publisher’s executives about a proposal for a leadership book I want to write. They said, “We love the content, but you do what you always do. It’s too much, probably 3 books’ worth here. Just write one of those books here first.”

Get honest honest honest feedback. Ask someone who is truthful in your life, “Do I talk too much? You can’t hurt my feelings.” Actually, they can, but it will be worth it. Listen to what they say, and ask “When am I especially verbose: team meetings, social gatherings, conferences?” It will help.

You can help your people by talking less and saying more!

Execution, or the capacity to get things done, doesn’t get the respect it deserves in organizational performance.  It’s sexier and more energizing to be disruptive, innovative, and to create a new future, and those activities are critical to sustainability.  But if someone is not making sure that the great ideas become tangible reality, it’s all a pipe dream of wishful thinking, and the organization does not get to where it needs to go.

Being able to execute strategy is one of the competencies we focus on in the Townsend Leadership Program that I discuss in the video below.

Here are some tips to help you respect execution by paying attention to it.

Do the due diligence.  Just after the brainstorming conversation, there needs to be another conversation.  This is the talk about “OK, now how do we actionalize the dream?”  For example, suppose your disruptive idea is that you have decided to improve your company’s  culture because you have seen the research proving that healthy culture significantly accelerates organizational performance.  Culture is a popular and also vague term.  Many companies get excited about it, and have a few team meetings about communication and positivity, and have social get-togethers to rally the troops.  But that is not proper execution.  You need to do some research.  Find out what healthy culture is, and what your company’s health culture should look like.  Web research, books, conversations with HR and colleagues, and talking with consultants will get you the info you need. My point is, don’t go off half-cocked, but take some time to do this first step right.  You’ll save a great deal of time and energy by not having to retrace your decisions.

Set measurable goals.  Every dream has a pot of gold at the end of its rainbow.  What do you want to happen at the end of the disruptive process?  Craft goals which are metric, so that you will know if you’re on track, behind, or ahead of schedule.  If the goal is not metric, you risk people getting discouraged and forgetful, and you wind up one day saying “Remember that cultural thing we talked about last year?  Whatever happened to it?”  For example, some assessment tools break down culture into measurable pieces, and you can use that to take a “before and after” snapshot, the same way you do with your financial KPI’s.

Determine the right behaviors.  After you know what you want your disruptive idea to look like, figure out what behaviors will bring this around. Well-run organizations are driven by values, and are executed by behaviors.  What are the top 5 behaviors that will get you where you want to go?  Staying with the culture example, those might be:

1. Assign a cultural champion
2. Budget time and resources for the project
3. Add cultural aspects to your regularly scheduled team and all-hands meetings
4. Create new experiences outside of the regular meetings that improve culture
5. Determine what behaviors you as the leader need to be implementing, to model healthy culture, such as more “walking around” leadership or more vulnerable conversations.

Behavior is behavior, and that means initiating actions.

Make the path.  The strategic plan is the roadmap from dream to goal.  It introduces the concept of a process of time to the dream.  Determine when the end goal is reached: 1,3 and 5 years for example.  Break it up all the way down to weekly goals which support the path.  Make sure everyone is clear, resourced and accountable.  For example, you may want to first announce the new culture initiative, then have input meetings, then act on the ideas from those meetings.

Determine the champion.  Organizations are always busy, with many urgent needs and challenges.  Someone must become the dedicated individual who will champion the execution of the dream.  It’s probably not a full-time task, but this person must have dedication, patience and perseverance to continue the monitoring process for the team. This might be you, or your COO, or just someone who not only believes, but is good at follow through.  In our current example, that might the the head of HR.  But this is the person who lives and breathes the plan, who worries about it, and who brings it up in the conversations.

Keep the process front and center.  In a culture addicted to “new”, the disruptive idea will soon compete with newer and more disruptive ideas.  Don’t let the dream atrophy because of an addiction to bright shiny objects.  Whoever is the champion must continue monitoring, and keeping the plan a priority.

In our example, if you are not the “culture champion” yourself, you need to “champion the champion.”  Keep asking her how things are going and how you can help.  Nothing is more energizing and focusing than a leader who checks in on progress, long after the dream is not the hot new thing.

Respect execution.  It is there to help you get somewhere, but you must put away the whiteboard and get to work on it.

Best to your leadership.

Leaders wear two hats:  the leadership hat and the SME (subject matter expert) hat.  Often a CEO or owner must also be engaged in direct work with sales, operations, finance or marketing.  This can be because of financial limitations, or because he is simply head and shoulders more skilled in an area than the other talent is.  Sometimes this is a temporary situation (the money comes in with the growth, or the talent is recruited).  Sometimes it is permanent.

Regardless of why this is, the leader often feels torn and not effective in terms of time management. Here is a video about another area of frustration among leaders, and that is isolation.

The real tension comes in when she has to tear herself away from something to spend time developing people. She feels as if she is walking away from a fire that needs to be put out, or an opportunity that needs to be leveraged. This doesn’t end up helping her or the organization.

So, here are some ideas for leading well while you are delivering direct services at the same time.

Make a “What the Company Needs Most” list.  Create two columns, one with all your roles as a leader and the other as the SME.  Keep your “brutally honest hat “on and check off the roles that:

1. Bring the most value to the company
2. Only you can do, no one else.

This is critical because leaders often do what they do best or enjoy most.  Get out of your world, and into the company’s world.  You may want to get  feedback from someone who can be fair and objective about this as well, as it’s hard to do that when you’re in your own skin.

Default to Leadership Activities.  When in doubt with what to do with your time, always default to investing it in leading and developing others.  That is always your best path to the success and the sustainability of your organization.  People can replicate your efforts and you can move the company on at higher levels.  Even if the organization is in crisis, or if your absence from a role (sales, for example) will temporarily slow matters down, if your company can tolerate it, you will be OK in the long run.

Lead from both structured and informal levels.  The SME boss must have formal team meetings and 1-1 meetings with key directs.  But with your time limitations, make sure you are also doing ad hoc leadership, where you show up and train, affirm or challenge someone.  This can be what’s called “walking around management”, dropping by someone’s office or cubicle, or asking someone to grab coffee with you.

I once worked with a time-intensive medical company in which the physician/leaders actually had literally zero time for structured leading.  They could not meet with the people they were leading, because so much of their time was engaged in the practice of medicine.  So I crafted a “drive by leadership” model for them to adapt to that reality.  They learned to lead when they were walking from one office to another, on the way to lunch or even on the way to the restroom!  It wasn’t ideal, but it did the job.

Press toward less SME.  Keep training and developing your people.  If, after a few months of doing X% of SME and Y% leadership, it is the same, you have a problem.  Push toward getting your SME roles delegated or outsourced.

Wearing two hats takes work, but it can be very effective.

Best to your leadership.

As a leader, are you able balance vision with reality?

Your organization requires you to have great vision for the future but it also needs your hard-nosed reality orientation. Great leaders know that if you bring in reality too early people become disheartened and discouraged.

One way to stifle vision with too much reality is to micromanage your people. They will respond in various ways as I discuss in this video.

The best leaders can integrate their vision with reality.

I love when leaders have great visions because:

• Organizations flourish when you show them how the company can capture another market, or perform at a new and unheard-of level.
• Teams are catalyzed to high-level action with good visions.
• At the same time, when you help teams face the negative, they are protected and stay sustainable with reality, not afraid to face financial, market, competitive or other obstacles.

For example, take team meetings.  We all know that the marketing person must present first at the team meeting. Then the financial expert must say what is in the budget, and what is not.  That simply makes sense.  But that is not enough for a great leader.  The best leaders I know and work with are able to do both tasks themselves, and integrate them.

• They know that you must start with vision, as it is the primary source of energy, focus and loyalty.
• They  practice the habit of bringing struggles, challenges and limitations to the conversation, instead of avoiding them, because they know that companies make bad decisions and experience empty promises when the problems aren’t brought up at the right time.
• They don’t in reality too early – before they have time for the vision to capture them, to engage with it, and to become emotionally committed to it.

I often hear from a leader, “I am the visionary.  I set the pace and see the big picture.  I’m not the analyst or the CFO.  I leave that work to them.”  And less so, but still more than I’d like, I also hear from other leaders, “I  keep reality in front so that we are always aware of it, and don’t end up with positive thinking that keeps us from having substance, and puts us in danger of missing important data points.”  Certainly, leaders can’t do it all. They need to hire and resource great analysts, financial people, and creative innovative talent as well.  But that doesn’t mean you aren’t still casting vision and interpreting reality.  Your people don’t need to see this bipolar-type leadership modeled for them, the unrealistic visionary or the head-down nothing-but-ops person.

• You need to be a mixture of both of these traits.
• You need to know when they need to be inspired to go beyond themselves with a story, or your own enthusiasm, or by guiding theirs.
• And you need to know when it’s time for them to buckle down and persevere, doing follow up and diligently working the plan.

Here is the best practice:  Before 5pm every day, bring something visionary to someone in your organization.  And, before 5pm,  face a tough reality with someone, either something the company is experiencing, something you are struggling with, or a problem they have.  Make that a goal.  It doesn’t have to be the same person.  But it must come from you as the integrated leader.

As a leader, in the end, you are what you do.  To lead well, you need the necessary elements of the right vision, values, resources and plan.  These are non-negotiables.

Ultimately, it ends up being about behavior.  You will succeed by what you actually do, and you will be measured by that as well.  Behaving in ways that lead you to the outcomes can’t be overstated.  Too many leaders with great ideas and talent end up with a glass ceiling because they simply didn’t “do” what they were supposed to do.

Don’t be that person.  Here are a few ideas to help you along this path.

Follow every significant conversation or meeting with an action step.  If you are taking the time and energy to meet, brainstorm, strategize or solve challenges, there needs to be some behaviors that happen as a result.  You might have a conversation that you have been avoiding, or get on the phone with a client, or jumpstart your sales team, or cut some costs.  But meetings are only as effective as the actions they produce.

Be accountable for those actions.  Leaders are busy people, often overwhelmed with competing demands for their attention.  I have seen so many leaders just get too buried to follow up on their action steps because the only person they were accountable to them lived in their own head.  Ask your assistant, or board member, or a trusted person, to remind you of the actions you have committed to.  My assistant told me she didn’t want to nag me, as she had done that when she raised her kids.  I told her I’m not a rebellious teen.  I need her to remind me, ask me, recommend to me and yes, nag me!!

Analyze, then act before analyzing again.  This is the famous “paralysis by analysis” problem. Leaders who are a bit perfectionistic, risk-averse and a bit OCD, tend to overanalyze situations.  Then they never take action steps, or by the time they do, the opportunity window has closed.  Here is a way to do this:  in areas you have good history of success with, jump out a little sooner than you are comfortable with.  In areas of struggle or failure, take longer.

Do the best actions, not just any actions.  A busy leader is not always an effective leader.  You may be busy deleting emails or putting out fires, or having compassion fatigue because you are enabling and rescuing too many people. Always, always, always, start back to your mission and your strategy.  Ask yourself two questions:

1. “Is this action serving the mission and the strategy?”  That is, is your action step driving your organization toward the right goals?
2. “Is this action the best use of my time and energy?”  There are lots of positive things you can do.  But do what only you can do.

Take initiative.  Be active.  Be a leader who does what you believe.

By the way, being active doesn’t mean that you say “Yes” to every challenge as I talk about in the video below.