First of all, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to share some thoughts on here.  Hopefully I can make up for lost time with a few articles on short order, but time will tell. 

As I’m rapidly approaching my 30-year professional milestone, I’m reminded that the reason I began this journey was to relate and share experiences in the interest of (hopefully) helping others avoid some of the many mistakes I’ve made over the years.  In my mind, if you’re lucky, you are doing things as part of your professional (and arguably personal) life that are challenging enough to create the conditions to fail or minimally sub-optimize outcomes to the level that you’ll reflect and realize there was a better way to approach things if you had another chance.  That is fertile ground for learning and development.  Said differently, we only truly understand our potential when we challenge ourselves to reach beyond our established norms and pursue aspirations to achieve and accomplish more.  Ideally, over time, we also become more self- and situationally-aware, so we continue to adapt and adjust how we do what we do, minimizing negative impacts and maximizing the value we create while things are still in motion (versus during a “debrief”/retrospective process).  That’s ultimately a byproduct and benefit of experience and, unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing you appreciate once you have it if you’re humble enough to admit you make mistakes in the first place.

Focusing specifically on the topic at hand, I was thinking about innovation recently and a keynote address I heard a number of years ago.  The speaker made a point about the difference between “best practice” and “innovation”.  His overall point was that there was a significant difference between the two and leaders often unfortunately weren’t doing a good enough job distinguishing between them.  In the case of best practice, you have a process or approach that has been done so many times that there is a well understood and generally accepted “best” way to do it.  If that is effectively true and we seek to do things in a way that aligns to best practices, how innovative can what we’re doing actually be?  What is truly unknown or exploratory in that situation?  Arguably not very much, and yet best practice thinking is often recognized and sought out from a leadership standpoint as a way to drive process or operating improvement.  Is that necessarily a bad thing?  Not necessarily, because it could be that the nature of the area is not one where any level of significant change or transformation is anticipated or desired and the organizational goal is really just to stabilize something and make it execute well and consistently enough that it is not having an adverse impact on overall performance.

Where I’d suggest there is room for thought is whether this “status quo” is true anymore in the world of digital business.  Is there really ever a case where you have a process that is so static that there is literally no room for making it better?  I’m not sure.  Can you make it more predictive, automated, integrated with customers/partners/suppliers, quality-oriented, etc.?  The complexity of digital business, particularly in terms of integration, speed, quality, and customer centricity would tend to make me think that even the most mundane of our solutions to current problems provide opportunities to improve.  If that’s the case, then I’d offer that relentless innovation is worth consideration. 

The litmus test can simply be this question: if you had a blank sheet of paper and had to design your process in a perfect world, would it work exactly how it does today?  If you set aside limitations, constraints, the current operating environment, and opened up the discussion to the realm of possibilities on what excellence could look like in that domain, what would it be?  If it looked different from current to desired state, what would you do about it?

This isn’t to suggest change for change’s sake or having a lack of priorities as there is a point to prioritizing efforts based on maximizing value, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a vision of a desired “ideal state”.  The point is that it’s very easy to accept the status quo and the perceived safety of the known in terms of best practice and lose the opportunity that comes with continuous reinvention.

This is where courageous leadership comes into play and we should ask ourselves why we prefer the best practice solution to true innovation.  Is it the safety that comes with not taking the risk of exploring the unknown?  As leaders we can take the safe route, let others take the risks for us, learn from their mistakes and implement only those things that are generally accepted to work (and work well).  Where does this leave us, however, in terms of establishing competitive advantage and differentiation in the marketplace?

Technology delivery is challenging and it is becoming even more the case as the pace of innovation is accelerating.  Most organizations will struggle with being able to adopt and integrate new technologies as they emerge over time and limit their competitive position as a result.  That is somewhat related to antiquated architectures and infrastructures that stifle innovation and change (something I will address when I write about framework-centric design and the future of enterprise architecture), but I believe it’s also related to a lack of organizational agility and courage in terms of innovation itself.

Innovation should be uncomfortable.  By that, I mean there should be an element of the unknown that creates a healthy discomfort you may actually fail in the pursuit of what you’re doing.  If it isn’t “scary”/exhilarating at some level, are you really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible or just re-treading a path that others have explored before you?  This is not an argument for being undisciplined or taking unnecessary risks.  Rather, the point is to understand that true innovation should be pushing the boundaries of what is actually achievable to the point that you could fail.  If what you’re doing is simply an iteration of current solutions, at the pace technology is advancing overall, the odds may well be that what you’re doing will be obsolete by the time you ultimately deliver it (if it involves any scale or time to execute).  Said differently, if you’re going to set an innovation goal, make it audacious and one worth achieving in its ability to truly transform your business, because the alternate path will eventually lead you to obsolescence.

Having worked on innovative efforts at various points over my career, one thing that I have come to look for (as a watch item) is a lack of fear/awareness on a delivery team when what they are doing is still fairly new or unproven.  Experience tends to give you a sense of what to watch out for, or minimally an awareness that, as you delve into areas of technology delivery that are not very mature, you are going to encounter unexpected issues that will threaten the ultimate success of your effort.  Leaders who have operated in this space generally seem to know that, so their enthusiasm over pursuing the next “big thing” tends to be tempered by a healthy dose of humility on what they don’t know, need to understand, have on their “watch list”, etc.  That, to me, is a sign of strength and experienced leadership.  Where I’ve had a decent number of “lessons learned” in the past is exactly the opposite situation, where we took on a difficult challenge and took a “we got this” mindset (and there’s nothing wrong with being highly motivated), without really appreciating the complexities of what we were doing to the point that, when things eventually went sideways because of an unknown in the delivery effort, we were ill prepared to adapt and address the situation.  Experienced leaders know what they don’t know or minimally that they have blind spots that they need to identify.  Motivated inexperience tends to breed overconfidence and that’s dangerous when it isn’t held in check with discipline.

In creating an environment for excellence, the challenge for leaders is to create space for individuals and teams to experiment and innovate while making it safe to fail when things don’t work out.  It’s better to fall short of accomplishing something great and strive for true innovation than to excel at the routine and find yourself overrun by your competition at some point in time (and it’s only a matter of time if you encourage safety over courageous leadership).

Hopefully the thoughts were helpful…

-CJG 03/21/2022

Having thankfully (and finally) gotten past writing about IT as a whole, I’ve wanted to write on a dimension I associate with engaged leadership, which is the role a leader plays in establishing the conditions for success.

Before diving into the specifics, I believe everyone in an organization can and should think of themselves as a leader with the opportunity to contribute in meaningful ways (see my “Power of N” article for more on that).  I’m referring to leaders in a managerial capacity for the purposes of this piece.

Setting the Tone

First of all, I believe it’s important to acknowledge the personal accountability that leadership involves.

While culture and core values tend to be established at an organizational level, it is the leader who sets the tone and culture for a team, and that is largely a matter of choice.

In a leadership development session many years ago, a key point was made about “externalizing” leadership, calling attention to the situation where a leader would assign blame for decisions they were making on an ongoing basis to a third party such as their customer or other leaders to whom they reported or with whom they were working.  The challenge offered in that discussion was to reflect on that situation and ask why we, as individuals and leaders were not taking accountability for the choices we were making in spite of those circumstances. 

It’s not uncommon in my experience to see this situation occur, with examples along the lines of:

• Difficult or aberrant behaviors of a leader translating to a next level of leaders who work with them, and thereby exponentiating the impact of the overall leader’s behaviors on the broader team
• Challenging customer behaviors leading either to an order taker mentality or similar pattern of unhealthy behaviors within technology leadership that, again, have a detrimental impact on the associated team and work efforts
• Organizational misalignment or lack of collaboration between teams translating into fragmented solutions being defined and delivered, ultimately creating complexity, limiting organizational agility and speed, and also increasing technical debt

The key questions in the situations above is “Where does this end?” or “Why doesn’t someone do something about this?”  The ripple effect of a lack of leadership can be quite substantial and the reason courageous leadership is needed is because there will almost always be some level of negative reaction that occurs the minute the cycle of dysfunction is broken.

Leadership starts with each of us and the choices we make every day.

The right questions for a leader to be asking in the situations above are rooted in personal ownership and accountability: “What can I do about this?” and “How can I set an example for how things ‘should be’ by comparison with how they are today?”

I’ve certainly been in situations in the past, particularly in consulting, where the client or personalities of a core team were not necessarily healthy or positive in terms of promoting collaboration and partnership.  It has also been the case where the direction I received from the larger organization may not have been in the best interest of my team, the client, or both.  This is, again, where integrity can be tested and doing the right thing is critical. 

In my view, a leader needs to set a positive tone for what is possible, to act in good faith, with integrity, and do their best to insulate their team from the adverse circumstances that may surround what they are doing.  This creates space for culture to be positive, engaging, and effective and for team members to do their best work.  By contrast, when a leader allows those circumstances to dictate their actions in a way that becomes unhealthy, they are effectively punting their accountability to lead in the first place.  Again, it’s a choice, and it’s one that truly matters if you want to pursue excellence and high-performance teams.

Given the above three scenarios, the outcomes of making the right choice can be significant:

• Not transferring dysfunction to the “next level” can unlock the performance and impact of the team that had previously been under-utilized. That could have a positive impact on output, on quality, on morale, on turnover, etc.  The negative impact of poor leadership is fairly well established in terms of operating performance
• Addressing customer challenges with effective leadership can provide greater portfolio stability, less missed expectations (because they are communicated, set, and managed properly), and overall improvement in the health of the work, not to mention the positive team impacts referenced above
• Finally, providing effective leadership in an organizationally misaligned environment can help provide clean solution designs that increase agility, accelerate speed to value, and reduce cost of operations

Wrapping Up

In short, the point of this article was to suggest a moment of reflection. 

What are the challenges you see in the organization in which you work today?  Can you do something about them?  Does that actually require “permission”?  What or who would prevent you from making a positive change?

My experience over time has been that leadership opportunity is always there, in part because you can almost never have too much of it.  It takes courage to step into the void and challenge the status quo where dysfunction exists… and it also takes a degree of fearlessness to truly drive excellence and transformation.

I used to echo a concept to a team many years ago in the interest of encouraging personal ownership and engagement: make a difference every day… no matter how large it is, it matters over time.

Imagine the possibilities if only a fraction of the leaders in an organization tried to create positive change every day…

I hope the thoughts were worth sharing… feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

-CJG 10/30/2021

I thought I’d start out with a fairly simple mental model for thinking about employee engagement and its role in leading transformational change.

Like others, I’ve spent many years being indoctrinated to the concept of the “individual contributor”, which is the equivalent of a non-manager/ doer / worker / employee who presumably spends the majority of their time executing against responsibilities partially or entirely defined by someone else.

While not wanting to delve into the “manager versus leader” topic right now, I can say that I never really thought too much about the language above itself and what it implies if we’re not careful when leading teams.

My assertion is that thinking of team members as “individual contributors” establishes a mental model of linear impact and marginalized value.  In the worst-case scenario, the collective potential of a team of 10 individuals is effectively 10n… the sum of their individual contributions, with no added value beyond what they accomplish on their own, in isolation, given tasks defined, created, and assigned by someone else (their “leader” for simplicity’s sake).  While I don’t know that we’d see much of this ever play out fully in practice, the situation would likely be one where team members work in silos, don’t ask others for help, don’t participate or offer ideas to better the team or the organization, and see innovation and leading change as entirely someone else’s responsibility. 

Something in there sound familiar?  I suspect it does, because it happens almost everywhere in my experience, to varying degrees, based on culture, leadership, and probably a number of other factors.  What I don’t believe the critical determinant is, however, is talent.  If talent is a concern, operating in an “individual contributor” mindset is a sure way to have an adverse effect on the overall math, because arguably there will be individuals performing at less than their full potential, and the impact will be further reduction in team productivity and effectiveness.

So, shifting to the right side of the equation, what we want is to capture the Power of N… the exponential impact that comes from engaging a team fully, maximizing their potential contributions, and shifting from a passive to an active role in innovation and change.  Turning the capability of 10 individuals (10n) to a high performing team that generates the impact of n¹⁰.

Some litmus tests for this kind of environment could include:

• Is there a shared vision to which individuals are able to connect and see their contributions advancing?
• Do team members work across boundaries and collaborate actively with their teammates and others in the broader organization?
• Is there an inclusive environment where ideas from members of the team contribute to the objectives of the team as a whole, solutions presented to customers, opportunities for improvement, etc.?
• Do members of the team actively help coach and guide others in their professional development?
• Is it a cooperative or a competitive environment?

Enrollment is a critical lever in unlocking the collective potential of a team and the proportionate impact that they can have on an organization as a whole.  It requires awareness and humility from a leadership standpoint, because it’s very tempting to present the idea that you have all the answers, are the keeper of the keys when it comes to the vision, and have control of the greater whole at all times.  The problem is that this is the surest way to stifle contribution and innovation, because you also just became responsible for every “good idea”, limited advocacy of your greater cause, and took on the burden of having to direct the lion’s share of the execution, when a self-directed team will be far more productive (and effective) overall… and that is an incredibly limiting way to approach working with teams.

Now extrapolate this out to a team of 25, 50, 100… more… the impact of leveraging the Power of N is in our best interest when we want to promote transformational change.  It has to start with individuals, who execute against that shared vision, help define its advancement, and ultimately determine the bounds of what’s possible.  That is where the most knowledge (and capacity) in an organization ultimately resides and tapping into that potential matters.  With all the organizations with whom I’ve had a chance to work over the years (including clients as a consultant), even the most engaged and well-intended leaders don’t know the realities of the people who are on the front lines, facing the daily challenges, and seeing the opportunities that exist for sustainable change.  Closing the gap between our aspirations and daily realities is important to having an actionable strategy (something I’ll likely write about separately).

So, if any these ideas make sense, the suggestion would be to engage with your team, and ask questions… “Do we have a vision for where we’re going?”, “Are there questions/concerns about it?”, “Is this the right direction/the best we can do?”, “How should we deliver on that goal?”, “What help do we need to make it happen/Are we equipped to be successful?”, “Are we collaborating effectively?”, “How will we know we’ve been successful?”… and listen, and listen, and listen… and respond… and engage.

Today’s question for reflection: Do we want to lead a team of individual contributors producing marginalized results or a self-directed team that is engaged in driving transformation?…  It’s a choice.

Hopefully the thoughts were worth reading… feedback is always welcome.

-CJG 08/13/2021