THE EXECUTIVE SKILL OF NURTURING


I've been thinking about the tone of today's companies:
-Almost hysterical action--go go go go go go.
-Overload, hopelessness about getting "it" done no matter how hard you work.
-Top leadership distant from the heart of the business.
-Disruptive solutions and ideas with no time to test the viability before a new one arrives.
-Accelerated hiring and firing trying to get "it" right
-No rest, very little validation

And you as top leader, may not see that your company needs a little nurture.
You, yourself, have probably learned to live without it and have forgotten that you could use a little yourself.  

Nurture feeds.
Nurture gives rest when needed
Nurture stays on the look out for danger or illness.
Nurture stays in touch and knows instinctively what is going on and what is needed.
Nurture enjoys caring.

If this all sounds a little too maternal just look at the definition of "nurture".
"to care for and encourage growth and development
 to provide what is necessary for health and welfare of an organism
 to nourish for growth"

Your Board should be all over you if you are not nurturing your organization.
I think most companies could use a little soothing and reassurance in order to keep giving their all.

I'm saying you may be blind to your own need for nurture and therefore are not giving it to your company and its people.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO DO A GOOD JOB

PEOPLE REALLY DO WANT TO DO A GOOD JOB AT WORK

I cringe a little as I write that because I can hear the counter arguments coming at me.
"Most people just want their paycheck"
"Many people don't care about the company--it's just a job."
"You don't know so and so who stole, sexually harassed, undermined, had an affair, embezzled."
"There will always be a few rotten potatoes."

Well, yes I do.  
In fact, I had to fire quite a few.
And in the firing, often found what had gotten rotten at work or at home.
And it was a sorry loss.

But I also saw the hurt and lost potential of many who:

Learned they couldn't trust top leadership's words
Never had a review and who were hungry for a little feedback and recognition
Saw a glaring double standard between top leadership and the "rest of the company"
Were managed as if they were recalcitrant children
Became cynical as espoused values became a laughing stock
Lost hope as harshness became the response to tough economics
Began to think their loyalty to the company was foolish, not smart

And I was lucky enough to see the opposite.
I saw the x factor of commitment and energy when:

People were talked to straight
Company challenges were put on the table for all to solve
Tough action like down-sizing was done collaboratively
Values were created through behavior not words
Idealism wasn't scorned as soft
Associates were given as much decision making impact as possible
Company direction made sense
Gains and losses were shared equally 
Work challenged the best in everyone

Don't let a blind spot (or perhaps, better put--a callus) develop simply because times are tough and you live between a constant rock and a hard place.
Start by assuming people want to do good work for you.
Then the questions are different.
How do you release it?
How do you trust it?
How do you lean into this fact rather than deny it?

It's a much healthier organizational stance with much more potential for
the x factor of achievement than the grim approach of thinking you have to tug behavior out of your people.

BE LOYAL TO THE COMPANY NOT TO INDIVIDUAL P

BE LOYAL TO THE COMPANY NOT TO INDIVIDUALS

I much prefer trust to loyalty when it comes to organizational health.
I have just experienced and watched clients experience the toppling of relationships when they are based on individual loyalty rather than on organizational loyalty. 

These are screechingly tough times of duress and rock and a hard place pressure.  There seems to be not-- "enough"--time, resources, market share,
labor, ideas--you name it. 

There is a lot of unexpressed fear and distrust.
So people hope to find safety and survival by joining forces which we call loyalty  which is certainly a soft term for a harsh reality.  Organizations develop fissures among teams and levels and departments.  People choose which party they belong to--Leader A or Leader B.  It's a bet on who will win.  It's almost like a silent civil war. 

The more the external pressure, the more the divisions stand in bold relief.  Down sizing, restructure falls along these fault lines.  Huge chunks of talent are lost to mistaken loyalty.  If only this loyalty could be to the company not to individuals.

It is one of the supreme tests of CEO character and skill to make loyalty to the organization strengthen in times of duress.  And it is a supreme CEO failure if loyalties (not loyalty) magnify division and bring the level of possible transcendence of differences down to the lowest common behavior of "me first".  I have seen long term working relationships and teams tattered when the CEO him or herself demands loyalty to themselves rather than the organization.
  
I hate it.  I hate the souring of people toward the company as loyalties shift.
I hate the lost of collaborative achievement in tough times.  I hate the common
crassness of selfish loyalty.  Loyalty should bring out the best in people not the worst.

So I opt for trust.  Reliability, strength, truth, ability. 
Loyalty scares me in today's organizations.

I DARE YOU TO ASK A COLLEAGUE--"AM I BURNED OUT?"

It's tough for a top leader to spot his or her own burn-out.
One of the reasons it's tough is that most of you are determined to do a good
job against all odds.  No matter what you feel.  Another reason is that you view it as your job to set an example for everyone in your company.  Always on, never lagging onward and upward. You get used to living with "grueling" as your steady state of being.You are in adrenaline overdrive most of the time with no respite to ask yourself how you are doing.  REALLY, how are you doing?

Here's what I have seen and experienced as signals of burn-out.
See if any are familiar.

-You are beginning to feel both overly challenged and bored at the same time

-You create new task forces for the same ole problems

-Your outside corporate citizen work feels restful to you

-Vacations are irritating

-Your HR executive asks you about your calendar overload and your focus

-You face your key meetings with dread and obligation

-You can't take your hand away from the flame be it a problem or a growth possibility or a talent issue. 

-You talk a lot about your commitment and energy for the company.  It feels a little like "you doth protest too much".

-You wait too long to take action on key issues and then the action is too extreme

-There is a sense of staleness and repetition to major organization events

-There is a treadmill quality to your work instead of momentum

Burn-out is insidious and quiet and sucks vitality from your company.
When you have a whole top team that is burned out, it is mutually reinforcing.
No one sees it.
Check yourself for the intimations of burn-out and welcome the voice that mentions it bluntly.

              YOU --NOT THE BUDGET--SET THE SPENDING THERMOSTAT FOR YOUR COMPANY 

It is the rare CEO who treats his budget and expense account exactly as she or he would a budget at home.  Most of you remember the thrill of your first company car or the initial first class flight with the sense of undeserved abundance or well earned perk.  But it quickly becomes second nature and money is easily spent without the kind of twinge that happens when you do personal spending.  The comfort and ease become habitual. The bottles of wine become better quality.  The meeting sites get more luxurious.  Everyone gets unspoken permission for spending creep.

  It's repugnant to police people.  Especially peers. Don't.  This is the supreme walk the talk moment.  How you spend, the company spends.  How you spend is shared and gossiped about.  How you spend decides if you have a caste or class based company. 

Simply assume there is a YouTube video watching you spend company money.
What would you immediately do differently?

  

SEE ENERGY AS TANGIBLE AS YOUR P&L

SEE ORGANIZATIONAL ENERGY AS TANGIBLE AS YOUR P&L STATEMENT

I get agitated when people tell me about the boring, non-productive, rote,
poorly organized, non-focused meetings and retreats and workshops they have to attend.

Let's start with "have to".  What if all meetings were voluntary?
State the purpose and see who shows up. That would tell you where organizational energy really is.  Where does people's energy go?
Too often it goes to figuring out what the heck is going on with the top executives.

I have seen meetings become a resting place. People enter a trance.  
"Thank goodness, I can rest and hide in this cocoon of a meeting?  Hope my numbers are right.?  I'll do my part and then wait til this washes over me.
Where's my Blackberry?"

OK,not all meetings, but way too many.


Coming together away from the flow of work should create energy not kill it.
And not just for the moment of the meeting or event.
It should create a battery full of energy for the work that every one wants to do--that this particular organization wants to do.
"Wants" to do.  Hello.  "Wants to do"
That's where energy comes from.
Wanting to do something.
So its your job to involve people with the something to co- create the "want"
"To do" or action comes from that want.
After that let the energy flow.
It will find its way to the result or goal  IF the organization "wants" it.

Meetings should ignite and reignite the desire to get something done.  
Tie everything you do back to that basic "want"
What does your company "want" to get done.
People should leave your meetings with more energy and focus and optimism than when they entered.  


Everything else is waste.

ON THE OTHER HAND, COLLEAGUE RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE SOME OF THE BEST IN YOUR LIFE.

I say "on the other hand" because I talk a lot about top leaders, especially CEO's,  needing to accept the distance of their formal role from most people in the organization.  This helps creates the highest level of  fairness in a company and lessens skewed perception--the blind spot for top leaders that I talk about.  And it  also allows associates  to project onto the top leader the qualties they most want and need in a leader.  This in turns pulls from them the qualties of their best selves.  I don't mean fakery and pretense. But I do mean not  letting the organization join you in your sloppiest, worst, flawed intimate characteristics.  Human-- yes.  Repulsively real--no.

However, a top team of true colleagues is one of the richest most satisfying experiences a leader can have.  Under pressure, in a crisis, working together, creating new direction is so satisfying with good team colleagues.

You know one another well. 

You forgive faults because the goal demands that you focus on strengths. 

You support stronger bolder action because you are not in it alone.

You ignore personal slights, bat them away, because you know they don't matter in the larger scheme of things and you trust that they were not vindictive--just part of bumping into one another as you move fast and decisively. 

You speak your truth and have at it with one another and it is invigorating not debilitating or political.  

You make big glorious mistakes that are not held against you. Later they become hysterically funny. 

You rescue one another in bad moments.  There is a fundamental trust that is palpable.  You can lean into it.  You know that it is rare and you don't mess with it.  You honor and protect the trust. 

Triumph is shared and magnified because it is shared.  Big fat failure is shared too.  And both happen again and again.  And the colleagiality matures and can handle more.  What could be better? 

The art is to keep this kind of colleague relationships from becoming favoritism or too intimate.  

Not easy in practice. 

But colleague relationships can be some of the best in your life.