Disintegrated Leadership

You always have to have that one boss in your career. I wish it happens fast to you so you can move on and put it behind. It happened to me and I'm in still the process of letting go. I'm writing another post called 'Shitty Bosses' (not ready yet) where I want to highlight things our boss say or do that prevents your growth as a professional or person, at a individual level. In this post I want to select behaviors that lousy bosses do to stop growing the company at team level.

A good friend of mine called it Disintegrated Leadership, and the concept fits very well when you briefly explain. Whenever I'm in a meeting, dinner or even interview and people ask me the dreaded question: "so what happened at X company that you are no longer there", I always answer these 2 short words: Disintegrated Leadership. This is usually followed by a nod and some hazing from the questioner, to which I immediately give ideas about what it means and people rapidly get it.

Disintegrated leadership is like cancer. It tears apart the teams, effort is wasted and energy is executed inefficiently, time is wasted, people get exhausted and in the end all you have a is high rotation and morale down the floor. These are some of the things that cause this, taken from real life experience, from a senior C-level manager we had as a leader, but of course it didn't work and the cancer won.

Coherence

In more coloquial terms, walk the talk. Preach what you pray. There is nothing more demoralizing than a incoherent leader that says one thing and does another. It is very easy to set golden rules and say that you will lead this way or the other, but when reality bites, the actions are what count and they can talk different than what your mouth is saying. Actually, the main reason I created The Top Floor is to avoid falling into this behavior, as stated in the first post. The bottom line is: you should align mind, body and soul, and cut the crap.

Vertical Structure

'I don't want to be bothered by your problems or sit down and understand what your whole department is doing, so from now on you report to this manager'... After saying (in an indirect manner, making the incoherence stronger) variations of this quote to different mid-level managers, you can turn a 10+ direct reports to a vertical structure of 4, with managers piled up one below another, and shoulder to shoulder with specialists and analysts. So what happens next? Power is dissipated, people don't know who to follow: your new report? your old boss? where is your strategy? After this, meetings are next to guys with 1/3 of your salary, which is not a good sign for you. Get ready to get restructured.

Holy Wars with half the company

All companies have a core business. For example in a law firm, it's the lawyers, in an airline it's the pilots. The main leader of the company (CEO, note C is for Chief, not Crappy) simply cannot forever be in a "Holy War" with the core business talent. In some companies this will account for half the headcount or more. Regardless of size, the leader must have a conciliatory attitude, and the main goal is to get everyone aboard the same train, not pretend to leave people behind or don't care if some teams, even the core of the company, hop on, or do zero effort to mend that situation. It's easy to yield the excuse "P&L first", but for 21st century, it is "People First".

Zero involvement

The perfect team working for you is like this: wake up, get to work and find all the reports on the desk, in the mobile phone, email and middle managers coming in to your office in synchronized order to brief you on each department. Everything works perfect. Reality: people get caught up in meetings, information and reports are delayed, problems arise that can delay things, managers get caught in day-to-day basis, and might need help solving stuff. The problem: Leader is too busy, or dealing with more important stuff to not go through his whole team every 1,2,3 or whatever weeks it takes. It doesn't matter if some areas are very organized and don't need help, it's good for morale to show support and interest. It makes a whole world of difference to empower the managers and make people feel they have an impact on what they are doing.

Criteria formed from 3rd parties

Continuing from 'zero involvement' comes how your form a criteria of someone's work. Impossible if you are not leading (hence, getting involved), so you will end up forming what you think of someone's work based on what people around tell you, which, as you now, some people will take advantage of and throw dirty water on anyone's job, actions, put words where they don't belong and many other dark things you can imagine humans do. It is not an option: Leadership means getting to know the people, their works, their way of thinking. An interesting thought: Tim Cook from Apple mentioned in some interview how to disconnect from the day to day basis of the job, he visited the stores, to talk to customers and salesmen. That simple act will make a difference on your life and the life of the people you talk to. He will not get told how the stores are, he will know first hand.

In the end, I think all this sums up to something really simple: Leading means help people grow. What does growing accounts for? If you go beyond professional education towards human education, people learn by example, by getting involved, by being coherent, by communicating and by forming relationships that inspire. Did you know you can tell how a company is being lead just by how the frontman or receptionist treats you?

I hope you find this post really interesting and if you'd like to share something that relates to you or brings you memories from similar experiences, let me know in the comments. What do you think a proper leader should be like? What are the golden rules for a leader? How would you form an Integrated Leadership? Please let me know in the comments below!

Be an Inspiring Boss - Part 2

Following up on my article about being an inspiring boss, I stated that I would split it in different parts because of the different bosses I've had along the way, each leaving individual marks and mentoring, and each deserving to highlight them. That being said, the time has come to share with you another experience I could write about from a couple of years ago, circa 2015.

Dear Boss, 

I'm not sorry I quit. I was exhausted, gave it all on the field and needed to open my mind to new challenges. Nevertheless, I want to get rid of the bullshit-meme-content that goes around the web saying that "people don't quit companies, they quit their bosses". This is not my case and here is why:

Before I came to your area, I talked with other colleagues at lunch about who were the top performers in the division and your name always came up. This was very inspirational and determined my objective: one day I will work with this guy. When the opportunity knocked on the door, I was as excited as pissing-my-pants-scared because I know the demanding level required to succeed with you.

The first lesson from being your employee was being accountable for your team, making sure things got done from other departments and paving the way for your team to succeed, witnessed while joining meetings and seeing people expecting your requests, demands and compromises. Talking about accountability, I also learned how to be accountable myself. I remember one of my first calls with an angry provider, alone, by myself, to solve the problem while you were in the next room... a big change from my previous boss who would have carried me over the pond holding hands, a.k.a joined the phone call and argue with me. I learned to swim and grow by jumping into the pool, hands-on because you believed in me that I could do it, and let me do it. 

Another valuable lesson is to resolve conflicts with the phone. Go beyond chat and endless chains of emails, just pickup the phone, dial to the highest person involved and close the problem in 2 minutes. If disagreements arouse between another group of colleagues, specially during brainstorming, the best way to solve them was not to impose an idea, but to get people together, let them discuss so they arrive to their very own conclusions, which you already knew and just waited patiently for them. 

Many times I went to let you know me or my team were burned, overloaded or knee-deep in trouble, or that things "just sucked" and many times you taught me to watch the language in my mind, to keep it positive thinking, the mind plays you tricks. If things are though don't show it, don't let it soak through your brain, show a positive image to yourself, your team and other departments. 

A key takeaway is how often we had feedback. Constantly you were aware of the environment, actions, reactions and results from meetings, presentations and committee and constantly gave and requested feedback, in an effort to improve permanently. 

I learned the value of keywords during presentations. Is it possible to condense 15 slides into 1? Yes, it was possible using keywords, being tight and to the point, having seniority to present a topic at executive level. When presenting you must have precision in your data, don't say any sort-of, kind-of, or I think more or less, just say the exact number, and learn it. Most importantly, for critical-decision presentations, get buy-in before from your colleagues, so the presentation becomes just a formality for something already sold. 

Finally, the freedom I learned to work away from my desk was liberating. All the visits we performed together across the country were invaluable lessons on time management, scheduling, talking to new people, asking the right questions. It didn't matter which city we were, what time we got to the office, what time we left, if we worked on weekends or disappeared to enjoy with the family, the focus were results at the end of the day and for that I'm forever grateful, because I can look back and say I changed as a person and as a professional because I worked for you.

After reading this letter a couple of months later, and now having a team under my responsibility, I have realized a couple of things:

1) How much can a person influence and exploit the potential of your employees, if done right.

2) A leader always has to be inspirational, so that others follow you and are open to your feedback and teachings.

3) Most of the times, a tough boss will shape you for the rest of your life, so it's up to you to positively take this opportunity and turn him into your mentor and friend. It is possible, hey, I did it.

4) Finally, ask yourself this: How are you inspiring your team? If you leave today, will they have something to write to you?

Shake-up month

Getting back home Friday morning at around 10:30 a.m. felt like a nice relief. My head was exploding with migraine, hunger dominated my stomach even though I have had breakfast twice, and my hearing needed a break from the loud wall-street environment I experimented in the last 3 hours. I had just signed my resignation to my sweet corporate job full of benefits where I once had my dreams for a long career to become CEO in the telecom industry.

Even though I felt it was the right thing do, and I already had another job on the line, I was shaking with fear and anxiety, thinking about all the friends and colleagues, contacts, power for decision and the expenditure possibilities I had just left behind.  What I am going to do now? This is what I know… this is my comfort zone… these are the people I know… will I be able to change? or so I was thinking. I cannot allow myself to think this.

The shake-up month I refer to doesn’t begin from the day I resigned, but instead it started 2 weeks before, when was faced with a decision to make a change. I think this is the hardest part, because after you have decided, the ball starts rolling and all your actions will come forward to your goal. It is the point of no return, the point where you burn your boats to never look back or revert back to safe port. I decided I was leaving, for several reasons, among the most important one was that I wasn't learning business skills.

I took the decision to quit my job after several months of meditation about what I really wanted for my life. I felt there were things out there more dynamic, that would allow me to have more fun implementing and innovating, making an impact and leave my mark. Every time I talked to my brother who is an experienced innovator yet to have a big break, I would hang the phone call up depressed at how stale and predictable my life had just become, at how other people are chasing their dreams and having fun at it, while I was chasing an old dream that wan't fun anymore and I was experiencing corporate culture that I wasn't agreeing with how it was being carried.

At the same time I was getting buried deeper and deeper into the company. At some point I was only doing presentations, modifying them 300 times, then after finally presenting it, modify again for extra analysis, get a buy-in, then revert back to the previous analysis which was actually enough... all this in an endless and useless cycle for a couple of months. After a conversation with my father who retired from the same company 30 years after he did his internship, I realized this is how corporate would go for the next 30 years as he described me the top layers I would experience in the corporate world in the future. As you climb higher its just more of this political chess and strategy to get buy-ins, from the eternal-existing higher level that never ends.

It is at this point that I had a realization of change, and took charge of it. After a couple of days of phone calls I managed to engage into conversations that led to a interesting job offer. This got to mean something. Nevertheless, I still was holding on to my current state. I looked in the mirror, I talked to my wife day-in and day-out,  then Monday morning an email came in offering volunteer retirement. This cannot be true, the time has come, 2 mighty planets have aligned: a new job and a retirement option for the old job. Processing... I'm gone. Some retention here, some more waiting there, a lot of paperwork and the next Monday I was kissing my wife goodbye for work while I stayed at home.

It never crossed my mind the regret question "what have I done?". Because I knew what I was doing. Actually, I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew where I was going which is more important, and where I wanted to arrive. So I would never forget about it and commit the unforgivable sin of looking back, I wrote on a pice of paper that I keep visible everyday : "Long term objective: be independent, build your own company. Step 1: quit (check) . Step 2: Learn . Step 3. Work with external people. " . If all else fails, revert back to Sun Tzu's Art of War quite: burn your boats so you don't think about going back. Thats what I did.

So what do you do on a Monday morning after you've kissed your wife goodbye and you have nowhere to go (besides waiting for your new job to start in a couple of weeks.? Read Step 2 of my yellow post-it: Learn. I read a great book, Exponential Organizations in 6 days. Still not my all time record held by Dave's Mustaine's "A Heavy Metal Memoir" which I read in a weekend. Also, got ahold of a bunch of online courses, articles and research about my upcoming challenges and industry. Took a bunch of notes, wrote down a lot of ideas. My mind was as open as it hasn't been in a couple of years. This was critical for switching your brain to a new upcoming challenge. I felt I wasn't advancing on knowledge, but instead catching up to a world that moved on faster than I could learn of.

When you come to realize, a couple of weeks after have passed in my learning and switching state, making it a month and a half has since my turn to swing the bat came. You have all your life in your car, all your dreams on the road upfront, leaving a great city and great past in the mirror which has formed your ADN with passion, which is all what you take from companies. Your life will not be forever the same. This is a risk from a change, I don't know what will happen, all I know is I took action...  but staying put and quiet is also a risk, so I call it even and move on.

This was the "me" from one year ago, during November 2016.

Confidence is a Bitch

Yes It happened to me. I never thought it would. I lost confidence for everything during a couple of months. Nothing. Zero. Nada. Well, not everything, at least activities that involved other people like sports, music and work (i.e. everything...). How does it feel like? it feels like you become a shadow. You don't want to be loud or visible, you want to let the moment pass. When you attempt something you prefer going soft and easy, stay on the safe zone, just trying to not screw it up, or hoping others won't notice. It sucks.

For example, in music, more specifically playing guitar with my band, when I had to make some fills for a song I just forgot the exact notes so it wouldn't be accurate. My guitar was in tune according to the tuner, but not in-tune with the other instruments, at least for 1/8th of a tone, just a tiny bit, but it sounded awful, like our ears got pierced and everyone had that tone difference bluetoothed to their inner ear. Great, my guitar just broke down, so I will just sit here and wait for the next song.

So we are going to play another song. Is the chorus 2 bars or 4 bars? is this the part where I have to play? or the drums come in? lets go, 1,2,3,4 (everybody plays... not me, I go in 5). My chorus effect is too bright so I will just tone it down and remove the treble. Now the guitar is barely audible against the other guitarist. Definitely the problem is my monitor, I cannot hear myself. If I had just known from the beginning, not after the gig. But it's over now, and things are finished.

Lets play golf, maybe here I can score better results. Here I am one of the top players of our group. Wait, this 3 feet putt ... should I hit hard or soft? Never mind, its gone past the hole farther than it was before. Now lets go back softer. Nice touch Mary, just barely moved it. Lets hit the driver in the next hole. But I will do a soft swing to secure the impact zone. But I swing so soft I mess the syncof the swing hence the ball goes into beautiful soft slice ending up in the bushes. At least it was soft, it didn't go out of bounds.

How do you fix this? It takes a couple of days. The first thing is to realize that you have lost your confidence.  Once you have this in sight, take 10 to 15 minutes every morning to meditate. Just organize your thoughts and ideas, put them in place, set your brain in a balance and stability by breathing and focusing on inhaling and exhaling. Think about previous experiences where times got though but you still managed to move forward. Remember your accomplishments and achievements, and how you got to be where you are. Be thankful where are you right now. If it helps, make a list of your accomplishment (at work, in life, at your hobbies, with friends, etc) and feel good about it.

The next step is not let people bring you down. When someone tells you negative comments, just ignore them and reinforce your believes, what you have been working on your morning meditations and on your activities. Remember there are 2 types criticism: you should be open to constructive criticism and reject destructive criticism. To give you an example, a constructive criticism is when you need to listen to what someone tells you to improve and it's up to you to work for it, while a negative or destructive criticism is just an opinion or bullying that no matter what you do you cannot change, so ignore these and reject them.

Finally, the difference between a confident person and insecure on is attitude. Basically how you face problems, challenges, and how often you exit your comfort zone willing to learn, explore and stretch your limits and boundaries. You have to be bold to move forward, and you have to be ready to leave things behind such as thoughts, fears and other noise that gets in your head. Expect to make mistakes (read my post called FAIL TO RISE) and with open mind detect why you failed and make corrections. The critical part to overcome a confidence problem is detect and correct. Have you ever experienced episodes like mine, where you feel everything is going south? Please share and comment below!

Dynamism in life

As time has passed and as I have accumulated more experiences, I've found myself more and more often telling my story to colleagues, interviewers, pupils or friends about the different changes in my life while pursuing a career and life-fulfilling experiences. After telling these stories I noticed a pattern of cyclical and radical changes that I have made every 2 to 3 years responding to accomplishment of objectives, goals or even an enlightenment to my mind which led to act and change.

These changes have included moving to another country, city or company given by the completion of studies, settlement of a job position or inspiration to grow either professionally or personally. You know you have reached this state when your mind triggers the question “What’s Next?” usually at the same time that your routine becomes stale and you start to count your minutes to get out and do something else. When this happens, it is important to take a step back and believe your “next” is... that objetive or goal you have in mind.

Let's think of dynamism as the combination of realization and reaction, and depending on your situation, can be on a life level or on a day-to-day basis. Either way, you need to be open minded ready to make yourself uncomfortable, willing to listen to your inner voice as well as your peers, disable your lizard brain and set in position to audit your current state. Only after these steps is when you can enter a realization period, a time that begins with the question "Where do I want to go?", "What do I want to do?", continues with analyzing alternatives and ends with the most important phase of them all: action towards your new objective.

I still don't know which is harder between realization and reaction. I think this would depend on your personality. For some people it is harder to listen, have situational awareness and know your surroundings , for others it is harder to take "radical" actions and move on or adapt. There are 2 quotes from Sun Tzu's Art of War that can be used to describe your attitude towards realization and reaction.

The first quote is related to adaptation (which requires situational awareness and understanding your surroundings).

"...Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
 He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.
 The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth) are not always equally predominant; the four seasons make way for each other in turn. There are short days and long; the moon has its periods of waning and waxing".

The second quote is burning the boats, related to moving forward and taking action. He said that when soldiers arrive to port, they should destroy and burn their boats so when they are in battle their only option is to move forward and to avoid the slightest thought of retreat to cross their mind. Bringing this analogy to your life, you should always make your decisions based on what you feel (current state), what you want to accomplish (future state) while detaching yourself 100% from your comfort zones (previous state).

“…When your army has crossed the border, you should burn your boats and bridges, in order to make it clear to everybody that you have no hankering after home."

When implementing dynamism in your life, most of the time you will feel as you don’t know what you are doing. Nevertheless, if you are living a dynamic life you will realize this is a normal feeling because you are constantly leaving your comfort zone. In order to keep advancing in spite of these feelings, it is important to have your clear objective defined and made visible to yourself everyday. There will days when you will wonder why you made the change, and then it is key to remind yourself by looking at your objective and knowing decisions where made as actions to take you to your goal, so keep moving forward focused.

A simpler type of dynamism is on a day-to-day basis, where you should constantly set you team and process to the read team tactics as a realization stage, always questioning if what you are doing is the best way to do it, if you have the right people, if you are learning the proper knowledge, if you customers and employees are happy and satisfied, which will ultimately lead to the reaction stage to make changes. Always focus on your objective and what you want to accomplish in order to survive through the adaptation and execution.
How many radical changes have you implemented in your? what is harder for you to implement between realization and reaction? How often do you leave you comfort zone? How quickly do you adapt? Please share you answer and comments below.