I have been intrigued by the subject of leadership for a long time. Like most of us I’ve worked with leaders good, bad and mediocre, inspired by some and bored by others.
Early in my communication career I found myself drawn to exploring the nature of business and that led me to discover more about the leaders who so profoundly affect organizational life. I was an absolute sponge for the stuff. Looking back, I realize my early interest probably had more to do with wanting to change the leaders I worked for. How successful do you think I was at that? It took a while but I came to understand the inevitable: When it comes to leadership, I could only change myself. Hmmm. Back to square one.
So now that we’re at square one where to begin? There are numerous great books on leadership to be read and inspired by. Here are just a few of my favorites:
Michael Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change
Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence
John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do
James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge
I have also learned from the writings of William Bridges, Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge, Dave Ulrich and others whose perspectives have further enriched my understanding. One thing is certain. There are more books on leadership than there is time to read them. That’s why recommendations from others go a long way to making the best of our reading time.
What about you? What books on leadership are at the top of your list? What would you recommend to this community?
by Elise Roaf
Not that it should have come as a surprise to those of us who study organizational behavior. Flattened hierarchies and virtual enterprises have increased workplace complexity while reducing institutional support. We’ve gone from relying on org charts to depending on social networks. So now, more than ever, successful professionals must leverage their relationships.
Which makes me wonder about the connection between personal networks and organizational change . . .
In the pursuit of “hard skill” competencies and formal strategies we may have failed to notice that the most effective change agents are those individuals who have placed themselves at the center of intricate webs of relationships. How to help employees build and maintain these unique relationships may be the most effective change-management “technique” a leader could learn.
The new business fundamentals include an increasing focus on knowledge, trust, relationships, and communities. And social networks – those ties among individuals that are based on mutual trust, shared work experiences, and common physical and virtual spaces are in many senses the true structure of today’s organizations. Anything you as a leader can do to nurture these mutually rewarding, complex and shifting relationships will enhance the creativity and readiness for change within your team or throughout your organization.
This is true because your team or organization is an example of a complex adaptive system. In the natural world, examples of complex adaptive systems include brains, immune systems, and ant colonies. In each of these systems there is a network of individual “agents” acting in concert. In a brain the agents are nerve cells, enzymes, etc.; in a corporation the agents are departments, functions, individuals. Each agent functions in an environment produced by its interactions with other agents in the system. The relationships among agents are the conduits for the intelligence of the system. The more access agents have to one another, the more possibilities arise for creating innovative solutions to challenges faced by the whole system – and (as a direct consequence) the more prepared the system is to anticipate and react to change.
But, in order to capitalize on the business potential in relationships between people, trust has to be established. Trusting is not a matter of blind deference, but of placing – or refusing to place – trust with good judgment. In what are called “dense” relationships, the strength of connection is such that trust is taken for granted. In newer, less dense relationships, trust must be built.
Trust is the belief or confidence that one party has in the reliability, integrity and honesty of another party. It is the expectation that the faith one places in someone else will be honored. Or at least that is the definition of trust in its “benevolence-based” form. Another type of trust, “competence-based,” describes a relationship in which one party believes another to be knowledgeable about a given subject. When building personal networks, both types of trust are essential. People have to believe that you know what you’re talking about, that you have accurate information and expertise, but they also have to believe that you’re taking their perspectives and concerns to heart.
Another ingredient of trusting relationships is consistent credibility. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you can talk until you’re blue in the face, but you will never create trust unless your sustained behavior parallels what you say. That’s why building trust can take so long. People are waiting to see a long-term, consistent pattern of behavior that is congruent with what you’ve been telling them.High-trust relationships are also very personal. Beyond the obvious link of work-related issues, we develop relationships through finding things in common: loving the same music, rooting for the same team, having children in same school, liking the same kind of food, or playing the same sport. And sometimes a leader has to create experiences that enable individuals to get to know one another as fellow human beings.
A story I often tell in my Creative Collaboration program is about Jeff Garbin, whose first management assignment was to help facilitate John Deere’s change from the “cell concept” of manufacturing in which employees merely performed one or two operations on a component before passing it on to the next cell to a “modular production system” in which all employees working on a given component would share equal responsibility for the finished product.
Along with the other new module leaders at Deere, it was Garbin’s job to help his employees through the transition – and he had inherited a problem. In Garbin’s words: “We had ten people working the early shift and five on the late one. There were people on the two shifts who had never spoken to one another before. They didn’t know each other, they came from different manufacturing disciplines and they had a reputation for not getting along. I had to build some kind of relationship between the two shifts – and I had to do it quickly. What I thought of was pretty simple, but it turned out to be very effective. I got everyone together in a room for a couple of hours, with no limits on what they were to discuss, except that it couldn’t be business-related. That was the beginning. Within three months, people started coming in early or staying late just so that they could talk with people on the other shift about what was happening at work.”
Another issue leaders should be aware of is motive. Ron Burt, of the University of Chicago, discovered through numerous studies that certain patterns of connections that individuals build with others brings them higher pay, earlier promotions, greater influence, better ideas, and overall greater career success. But the MIT study found that high-performers didn’t develop and maintain these networks because it was “political” or self-serving – but rather because it was a natural consequence of the most effective way to get work done. And the connections made with others worked in ways that were mutual and reciprocal.
I’m not saying that leaders should throw out all formal change-management strategies. But I am suggesting that leaders should understand that the social side of change – which includes building personal networks and developing trusting relationships – might prove to be the most powerful strategy of all.
“The leaders we need are already here.”
These magic words come from Margaret Wheatley, co-founder of the Berkana Institute (http://www.berkana.org). The Institute is a worldwide community of people who recognize the need for change in communities, organizations and nations and who offer their leadership to help resolve the most pressing local problems. Of leaders, she says, “We define a leader as anyone who wants to help, who is willing to step forward to make a difference in the world. We know that the world is blessed with an abundance of these leaders.”
These are good words to live by in our own organizations too. In yesterday’s model, leaders were singular and appointed. Leaders were at the top of the heap by virtue of title. Others were deemed followers. Leaders were expected to know all the answers and by force of will to get followers somewhere. By virtue of this model leaders held power and followers did what they were told.
Today’s leaders can emerge from any part of an organization. Rather than being given the title, leaders choose for themselves to make a difference and take action to do so. They see themselves not as experts but as learners. Rather than focusing on heroism and control they focus on enabling others to succeed.
This brings us back to Margaret Wheatley. About 15 years ago she began writing about the connection between living organisms and organizations. “Every living thing seeks to create a world in which it can thrive. It does this by creating systems of relationships where all members of the system benefit from their connections,” she wrote. “As the system develops, new capacities emerge from … working together. Looking at what a self-organizing system creates leads to the realization that the system can do for itself what leaders have felt was necessary to do to the systems they control.”
Wheatley urges leaders in self-organizing systems – and, by the way, all organizations are self-organizing — to abandon the fear-based practice of command and control. “We have to ask ourselves, “How much trust do I really have in the people who work here?”
And what is the reward for embracing a more participative approach? “Those leaders…tell of their astonishment,” she says. “They are overwhelmed by the capacity, energy, creativity, commitment and even love that they receive from the people in their organization.”
It sounds like Utopia. Trusting leaders can bring about an astonishing array of positive results. And anyone can be a leader. If, as Wheatley says, “the leaders we need are already here,” what are the attributes of today’s leaders? How can we prepare ourselves to become a leader? How do we step forward and nominate ourselves for the job? Stay tuned.
By Elise Roaf
According to IBM’s Global CEO Study 2006, competitive pressures and global market forces are driving 65% of the world’s top executives to plan radical changes at their companies over the next two years.
Looking over the results of this survey, it becomes very clear that CEOs today are looking at new kinds of innovation to drive substantial organizational change. It’s not just product innovation anymore. Now it’s about innovation in a business model, an operational process, or a management behavior. In making this point, one CEO commented that “The business model we choose will determine the success or failure of our strategy,” while another stated that “Products and services can be copied, the business model will be the differentiator.”
Fear is definitely a factor in the impetus for change. In fact, 61% of CEOs admit they fear that their competitors will make changes in their own business models that ultimately reshape the landscape of their respective industries. So CEOs want their companies to be ready to adapt rapidly – or, better still, be the company leading the industry transformation.
CEOs today want innovative ideas not only from employees but from customers, and trading partners. This is in direct contrast to past corporate philosophy, where innovation was considered too critical and proprietary to involve outsiders. In fact, the study highlights the link between external collaboration and financial performance. Top performing organizations used external sources 30% more than under-performers. On this kind of collaboration, one CEO stated that, “We need third parties as benchmarks and sparring partners. This also helps our staff broaden their views.” While another simply stated, “If you think you have all of the answers internally, you are wrong.”
While a large portion of CEOs recognize that big changes are on the horizon, a significant portion indicated some trepidation about their company’s ability to execute the necessary changes. As they contemplate this radical change, only 20% of CEOs say they’ve been highly successful in such endeavors in the past.
So what does all this mean to communicators? Well, for starters – here are the messages you’ll be asked to spread throughout the organization for the next couple of years:
WANT TO INCREASE YOUR VALUE TO THE ORGANIZATION?
Become a top-knotch collaborator.
Benchmark everywhere.
Constantly reinvent your job.
Nurture innovation in your team or work group.
Become a champion of change.
Do all that – and the future is yours!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Because of the bilateral surgery, Ray spent a full week in the hospital (instead of the usual three days) and I was with him every day. That gave me plenty of time to observe the hospital staff. And what I saw was almost as impressive as Ray’s speedy recovery. I was constantly surprised and delighted by the highly collaborative spirit of the team of physicians, nurses, therapists, and aids who worked on his case.
I was especially grateful because I know how rare it is to get this level of service. I’ve consulted with several healthcare organizations where, instead of patient-centric synergy, a silo mentality had taken over.
And healthcare isn’t the only industry dealing with silos . . .
A study by Industry Week found that business functions operating as silos are the biggest hindrance to corporate growth. A more recent American Management Association survey shows that 83 percent of executives said that silos existed in their companies and that 97 percent think they have a negative effect.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article on the latest business buzzwords, the word “unsiloing” was listed. Unsiloing mangles the noun silo to make a simple but important point: Managers must find ways to foster cooperation across departmental, hierarchical, and functional boundaries.
Which is no easy task.
Turf battles happen everywhere – in hospitals, government agencies, associations, school systems and private industry. Silos can be created around an individual, a group, a division, a function, or even a product line. Wherever it’s found, silo mentality becomes synonymous with power struggles, lack of cooperation, and loss of productivity. And always, the customer/client/patient is the ultimate loser.
I’ve seen firsthand what silos can do to an enterprise: The organization disintegrates into a group of isolated camps, with little incentive to collaborate, share information, or team up to pursue critical outcomes. Various groups develop impervious boundaries, neutralizing the effectiveness of people who have to interact across them. Local leaders focus on serving their individual agendas – often at the expense of the goals of the rest of the organization. The resulting internal battles over authority, finances and resources destroy productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate objectives. Talented (and frustrated) employees walk out the door – or worse yet, stay and simply stop caring.
What can be done to tear down silos, reduce conflicts, and increase collaboration? Here are a few ideas:
Reward collaboration. Too many companies talk about collaboration yet reward individual achievement. Therefore, the first obvious solution is to change the reward system. Define and make collaborative performance objectives part of the employee review process. Recognize and promote people who work across organizational boundaries – and tell their stories to the whole organization.
Focus on innovation. Innovation is triggered by a cross-pollination of ideas, such as when the “right people” happen to meet at the right time and discover, in the course of conversation, that each has information needed by the other. It is in the combination and collision of ideas that creative breakthroughs most often occur. When an organization focuses on innovation, it does so by bringing together people with diverse perspectives and expertise – breaking down barriers and silos in the process.
Communicate transparently. In any organization, the way information is handled determines whether it becomes an obstacle to or an enabler of collaboration. Company-wide communication is a vitally important tool in breaking up silos or avoiding their creation. You need to make sure that every employee has access to the same candid information about how the company runs its business – its financial challenges, competitive pressures, and strategic initiatives.
Encourage networks. Employees with multiple networks throughout the organization facilitate collaboration. You can accelerate the flow of knowledge and information across boundaries by encouraging workplace relationships and communities. Use a tool like Social Network Analysis (SNA) to create a visual model of current networks so you can reinforce the connections and help fill the gaps.
Create alignment. You want your people to understand their roles and what they do to help the organization succeed. You also want them to understand the roles of others. To help combat silo mentality, departments and teams need to know how they support or influence other areas of the organization. They need to understand the importance of working in concert with other areas to achieve crucial strategic objectives.
Mix it up. Encourage teams from different areas of an organization to work together. Find opportunities for managers and other employees in the organization to collaborate in cross-functional teams. Rotate personnel in various jobs around the organization. Invite managers from other areas of the organization to visit your team meetings, even making them members of the group, as you work on mutually beneficial efforts.
Focus on the customer. Nothing is more important in an organization – whether it’s a for-profit company or a non-profit group – that staying close to the end user of the service or product you offer. Unfortunately, within silos, the focus is typically on internal issues rather than on response to customers. You can refocus the organization by sharing marketplace information and customer feedback. Better yet, bring in a panel of end users to report on their experience so that everyone understands how the enterprise as a whole is meeting, exceeding, o
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Answer: Location, location, location.
Question: What’s the secret of organizational change?
Answer: Communication, communication, communication.
Which is not to say that the top-down cascade communication strategies of the past are sufficient. They’re not. What is taking their place is a broader, more inclusive definition of communication. Here are five ways to add strategic value to your change communications.
1. Don’t just recite the facts – interpret them.
Facts are neutral. People make decisions based on what facts mean to them, not on the data itself. What people really want to know is, “What sense do you make of this? What is the conclusion? What does it mean to us?”
2. Utilize the power of symbolic communication.
There are a thousand ways to communicate symbolically. There are ceremonies, awards, logos, icons, drawings, and metaphors. Best of all, there are real-life leadership behaviors that “speak” volumes.
Folks at BBC still remember when Michael Grade, then controller and now director-general of BBC One, visited the news department one day when they were short-staffed. He pitched in and acted as a junior researcher to cover a shipwreck incident, finding a member of the coast guard to interview. That example raced through the company grapevine to become a positive symbol of corporate culture change.
3. Tell more stories.
Storytelling is an important tool to connect with audiences on an emotional level. In communication terms, storytelling is a “pull” strategy, in which listeners are invited to participate in the experience and to imagine acting in the mental movie that the storyteller is presenting. Stories resonate with adults in ways that can bring them back to a childlike open-mindedness — in which they are less resistant to new and different ideas.
4. Turn first line supervisors into first-rate communicators.
There’s little doubt that one’s direct boss is a crucial link in the change-communication delivery system. Who better to align employee efforts to the change goals? But most first-line supervisor are lacking a key communication element.
While consulting for a utility company in New York, I was observing several supervisors delivering a change message to their teams. As you would expect, there was a great variety of styles and expertise on display: Some managers were glib ad-libbers while others were stilted and read from a script. Some were well liked and others were barely tolerated by the people they managed. But all the supervisors had one weakness in common. Not one of them had the training or skills to turn a monologue into a dialogue.
5. Harvest the grapevine.Research suggests that up to 70% of all organization information circulates through the grapevine, yet few communicators have taken advantage of the informal channels in their organizations. Gossip moves through people who gravitate into an intermediate position, making connections between individuals and factions. Those who control the gossip flow hold a lot of power.
The company’s commitment to leadership development is in direct contrast to what I’ve seen in many other organizations. Definitive, purposeful succession planning is rare, even at the very highest corporate levels. Too often the “bench strength” in leadership is so poor that careers stall because no one else has been groomed as a management successor. Companies that don’t address this issue now are going to be at a serious disadvantage in the very near future.
By the year 2011, the leading edge of the Baby Boom workforce will be 65 years old – eligible for full retirement. And that generation’s collective wisdom will leave with them unless it has been transferred to younger employees. Which in turn makes succession planning and knowledge sharing increasing important to an organization’s financial strategy.
Effective leadership is a crucial source of competitive advantage, and corporations can’t just wait for leaders to arrive, fully developed. Organizations must actively seek out people with leadership potential and find ways to nurture and develop that potential. It takes a serious commitment of both time and resources to do it right. But that is the key to what separates great companies from good companies. Great companies make developing leaders a priority.
Here’s how . . .
The process begins with the early identification of leadership talent, and the realization that under certain circumstances, leadership potential is easy to spot. In an area of complex problems or in times of crisis, there are people who organically rise to the top. They are proactive, reliable, thoughtful, and they automatically take control. These natural leaders speak up – and other people listen to them because they’re providing solutions, not just stating problems.
Joseph Pieroni, president of Sankyo Pharma, notes the emergence of informal leadership in his organization: “Every time we are in a tough situation, people point to the same two or three individuals because we feel confident these ‘leaders’ will go well beyond their area of responsibility – and do whatever is needed.”
Identifying new leaders is something that all current leaders should be responsible for – and that policy is most effective if it starts at the top. CEOs and presidents need to spend time focused on this issue, assessing leadership strengths as well as current and future organizational requirements. And leadership development should start early. Ten or fifteen years before a person is expected to be at their full potential, current management should be discussing how to develop this individual. The most valuable conversation will center on how people use their time: How can their skills be leveraged in new ways? Who needs to know these people? Who should be working with them, coaching and mentoring them? What experiences would be the most advantageous?
Spotting potential leaders is also a smart move for managers who want to advance their own careers. As one savvy leader told me, “The minute I begin a new assignment, I start looking for people who can be groomed as my successor. I know that I won’t be able to take the next step until someone else can take over my current job.”
However future leaders are identified, the next step is to find ways to nurture their potential. Along with formal educational opportunities, mentoring relationships, and personal coaches, leading-edge companies make sure that key candidates receive the kind of assignments that help them grow and develop.
The head of Ketchum’s brand practice, also the associate director of their New York office, was offered the director position in Atlanta as a way of rounding out her expertise. That was a decision made to advance her career, and looked at from the standpoint of what would add the most value for her. Another example from Ketchum is a director from the San Francisco office who was moved to a leadership role in London so that he could gain international experience.
But leadership development isn’t only about acquiring business skills. It’s also about effective mental preparation. According to Bob Dilenschneider, CEO of The Dilenschneider Group, the key is learning to keep a sense of perspective: “Keeping your balance at all times can be extremely difficult. Since leaders play the game at the highest and lowest levels, they experience the glory of the victories as well as the disappointment of setbacks and failures. The trick is not to let the glory go to your head nor let the disappointments devastate you.”
I agree with Bob. Giving people the freedom to succeed and fail – and the guidance to help them deal with both – may be the best leadership development strategy of all.
Not likely.
Elephants are those forbidden subjects and hard questions that lurk in the back of everyone’s mind – and which senior management hopes will go unnoticed.
Every organization has its own elephants. But if you listed them, you’d be surprised at how the same themes exist in company after company. Here are some verbatim examples from email surveys and focus groups at various organizations I’ve worked with.
* Senior leadership paints a picture of Utopia. What world are they in?
* I’ve met with the mayor of this city more times than I’ve met with our company leaders.
* We have managers, not leaders.
* How can our executives say “we’re all in this together” when they get all the benefits and we get all the cuts?
* Our best people are leaving and the “dead wood” is staying.
* No one cares how hard we work.
* Loyalty is a one-way street here.
* They talk about collaboration, but we don’t get rewarded for it.
* The wrong people get promoted into leadership positions.
* Leaders don’t tell us the whole story.
What if, at the next all-hands meeting, leaders talked about the elephants in the room? What if they used that opportunity to set a tone of transparency and candor? How do you think employees would react?
Well, in my experience, a well-planned session around these unspeakable issues builds employee engagement better than all the “rah-rah” motivational speeches ever could. It breaks down barriers, creates equity between leadership and workers, and jolts people out of their usually complacent or skeptical mindsets.
Here’s how I’d design it:
1. Use email and focus groups to uncover key issues. Capture exact words and phrases.
2. Create a “Top 10 Elephants” list.
3. Prepare executives for the process, but don’t let them see the list beforehand.
4. Bring in an outside moderator to ask pointed questions and push for real answers.
Sound risky? Sure. But how risky is it to think employees can focus on work while surrounded by a herd of elephants?
The company 3M, one of the first organizations to fully embrace innovation as the essence of its corporate brand, defines it as “new ideas – plus action or implementation – which result in an improvement, a gain, or a profit.”
Good definition, but it needs another element. People.
Innovation is people using their imagination, experience, curiosity, instincts and relationships to develop and implement ideas that create value.
Innovation is the fuel of our future — new products, new services, new markets. But it is isn’t just the “next big thing.” It’s also a million small things. Innovation is about people working within a philosophy of continuous improvement and change.
If you are looking to communicate this kind of innovation, here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:
1) Let leaders know that whether they lead a team, a work group, or an organization, they can’t innovate alone. They must involve and rely on others.
Isolating leaders as the sole visionaries in the organization simply won’t cut it anymore. Thirty years ago, by the time an idea got to the senior leadership, it had been sifted through several layers of management. Now, savvy executives encourage e-mails and phone calls directly from people on the plant floor to get their opinions and suggestions.
2) Help leaders recognize that the heart of innovation is trial and error. While I’ve never worked with an organization that truly encouraged failure, I have worked with leaders (at all levels) who created environments where failure is acceptable. Where it becomes a learning experience, and not something to be punished.
3) Tell stories that show how mistakes can become successes. One such story: For years Charles Goodyear labored to find a way to make rubber commercially useful. Then one day Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur he was holding on a hot stove. The chemical reaction of heat applied to this mixture resulted in the discovery of the vulcanization process used to manufacture rubber tires. And with that “mistake,” an industry was born.
4) Help stamp out the Not Invented Here (NIH) mindset. An example of generating motivation to break that mindset came from General Electric in the days when Jack Welch was in charge. Welch made it clear that the sharing of good ideas across the organization was a high management priority. This posed a challenge for GE managers because of the size and diversity of the company. If you did have a good idea, how could you identify the people in other businesses who might benefit from it?
The Chief Learning Officer at GE came up with a simple solution. He created a “hot line” to be manned by his team. This operated similar to a dating service – only instead of matching people to other people, it matched good ideas with business units that might benefit from them.
5) Whenever you communicate this topic, look for ways to broaden the definition of innovation. Go beyond the creation of new products and services to include strategic innovation – new ideas about mission, values, and goals; administrative innovation – changes in internal systems; field level innovation – front line workers inventing solutions to better serve their customers; and incremental change that encompasses everyone in every job thinking about ways to do things differently and ways to do things better.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
I thought of the Warren Bennis quote (the myth of leaders being “born” that way) when I read about a new book due for publication next month:
According to the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance,” the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in sports or surgery, ballet or computer programming, music or leadership — are nearly always made, not born.
One of the most interesting findings from this research is that there is little hard evidence that anyone could attain a level of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.
This is not to say that all people have equal potential. But it does mean that a certain kind of practice (called “deliberate practice” in the study) is needed to build on whatever potential you have. So, our mothers were right, it’s practice that makes perfect – if that practice has two key elements: immediate feedback and specific goal-setting.
According to the findings, rather than saying you don’t have the talent for something, a more accurate statement would be that you don’t have the desire to devote the time, energy and focus that it would take for you to excel.
Thinking of changing jobs – careers – industries? Then find something you love and go for it! If you don’t love what you do, you are unlikely to put out enough effort to get very good. And if you do love your work, you’ll be surprised at how “talented” you can become.
What’s your opinion of this research? Do you agree or disagree with the findings?
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
The company 3M, one of the first organizations to fully embrace innovation as the essence of its corporate brand, defines it as “new ideas – plus action or implementation – which result in an improvement, a gain, or a profit.”
Good definition, but it needs another element. People.
Innovation is people using their imagination, experience, curiosity, instincts and relationships to develop and implement ideas that create value.
Innovation is the fuel of our future — new products, new services, new markets. But it is isn’t just the “next big thing.” It’s also a million small things. Innovation is about people working within a philosophy of continuous improvement and change.
If you are looking to communicate this kind of innovation, here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:
1) Let leaders know that whether they lead a team, a work group, or an organization, they can’t innovate alone. They must involve and rely on others.
Isolating leaders as the sole visionaries in the organization simply won’t cut it anymore. Thirty years ago, by the time an idea got to the senior leadership, it had been sifted through several layers of management. Now, savvy executives encourage e-mails and phone calls directly from people on the plant floor to get their opinions and suggestions.
2) Help leaders recognize that the heart of innovation is trial and error. While I’ve never worked with an organization that truly encouraged failure, I have worked with leaders (at all levels) who created environments where failure is acceptable. Where it becomes a learning experience, and not something to be punished.
3) Tell stories that show how mistakes can become successes. One such story: For years Charles Goodyear labored to find a way to make rubber commercially useful. Then one day Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur he was holding on a hot stove. The chemical reaction of heat applied to this mixture resulted in the discovery of the vulcanization process used to manufacture rubber tires. And with that “mistake,” an industry was born.
4) Help stamp out the Not Invented Here (NIH) mindset. An example of generating motivation to break that mindset came from General Electric in the days when Jack Welch was in charge. Welch made it clear that the sharing of good ideas across the organization was a high management priority. This posed a challenge for GE managers because of the size and diversity of the company. If you did have a good idea, how could you identify the people in other businesses who might benefit from it?
The Chief Learning Officer at GE came up with a simple solution. He created a “hot line” to be manned by his team. This operated similar to a dating service – only instead of matching people to other people, it matched good ideas with business units that might benefit from them.
5) Whenever you communicate this topic, look for ways to broaden the definition of innovation. Go beyond the creation of new products and services to include strategic innovation – new ideas about mission, values, and goals; administrative innovation – changes in internal systems; field level innovation – front line workers inventing solutions to better serve their customers; and incremental change that encompasses everyone in every job thinking about ways to do things differently and ways to do things better.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Mark van Vugt, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent, thinks that leadership is genetic. His theory, published in the journal “Personality and Social Psychology Review”, states that leadership is the product of human evolutionary history and, as such, played a crucial role in the success of humans and is now deeply embedded in our genes; so much so that the human brain possesses a hardwired leadership prototype, a fixed idea of how a leader should behave and what they should look like, that is innate and difficult to change.
A few thoughts from his theory:
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For millions of years there was no formal leadership in human groups. Essentially, it was the best hunter or the fiercest warrior that emerged as leader. In present times, we still evaluate leaders in that way. The most admired leaders are the ones that help us defeat an enemy group – or unite various factions.
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Living for millions of years in small groups with close personal contacts between leaders and followers has ensured that what we are looking for in leadership is an intimate personal touch. Ideally we would like our leaders to know us personally and take an active interest in our lives. Successful leaders are still the ones that make people feel special.
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Leaders who try to dominate followers are particularly disliked. In ancestral times, overbearing and selfish leaders were simply ignored, ridiculed or sometimes even killed. This egalitarian ethos is still visible in modern society.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
We know intuitively that Mr. Strasberg’s reasoning is sound, but leaders seldom apply it in the workplace. Instead, most workers report that they are singled out for notice only when there is a problem with their performance. Here is a question I often ask my audiences: If your boss told you that she noticed something about your performance and wanted you to come to her office to discuss it, would you assume that she had noticed an area of your special competence and wanted to bring it to your attention? Among the majority of audience members who respond with nervous laughter, only a few hands raise.
Bosses tend to notice and comment on weaknesses and mistakes more than they comment on talents and strengths. While continuous learning and self-improvement are valid concepts for future success, focusing solely on what is lacking leads to an unbalanced evaluation of employees’ worth and potential. It is no wonder then that most workers have problems taking risks and confronting uncertain situations.
Certainly, if you manage people or lead a team, a powerful change-management strategy is to help people focus on their strengths and find ways to build on them that is congruent with the direction the organization is taking. It’s the same thing in change communication. Approaches (such as Appreciate Inquiry) that look at what an organization already does well – and builds on those accomplishments to be even better – energizes and stimulates people to change because it is based on talents already possessed.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
Here’s how to get started:
Bring in the customer. Despite the demonstrated benefits of working closely with customers to drive sales, improve product innovation, and better match supply with demand, a recent study by Deloitte found that only 3% to 8% of respondents are actually engaging their customers in this manner. If your company is not already collaborating with customers for innovative product/services development, this is the place to begin.
LEGO Factory has been around for a while, but it remains an inspiring example of how to tap the creativity in a customer base. Children and other building enthusiasts visiting the site are invited to design models (using easy to use, free downloadable software) and take part in competitions for LEGO prizes. A popular contest last year entitled winners to have their model produced and featured in Shop@Home, receiving a 5% royalty on each set sold.
Make suppliers part of the solution. As part of Chrysler’s SCORE (Supplier Cost-Reduction Effort), there is shared responsibility for innovative ideas to get cheaper parts. The goal for each supplier is cost-cutting opportunities that equate to 5% of its annual billings to Chrysler. The collaborative program has generated a flood of more than 100 ideas per week and an estimated savings of $2.5 billion.
Partner with the competition. Collaboration among competitors is the most difficult and delicate form of partnership. But archrivals Procter & Gamble and Clorox have managed to make it work. The two packaged goods companies compete fiercely in the cleaning products and water purification categories, yet both profited when Press’nSeal, a new plastic wrap based on breakthrough P&G technology, went to market under Clorox’s well-established Glad brand. And the collaboration continues with the recent introduction of Glad ForceFlex trash bags, which are made of strong but stretchable plastic developed by P&G.
Choose the right people. The best collaborative projects are often those in which the team members can let go of their own (sometimes entrenched) views and ideas, and apply a more open style of working with others. Because collaboration is built on a foundation of good working relationships and trust between individuals, personal qualities (good communicators, good relationship builders, flexible, culturally and politically savvy, confident without being arrogant) are often more important than subject matter expertise. Experts can be brought in as a resource to the process, whereas key interpersonal skills are what keep the collaborative venture on track.
Here’s what scientists have found: A baby, viewing a videotape of the mother’s face becomes distraught; the baby needs to see the mother’s “real” face before it calms down. Eye contact, it seems, is not just important for conveying messages, it is the means by which two limbic systems come into contact and affect each other.
To me, that reply was brilliant!
Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles to success. Yet every major achievement is preceded by many failures. It’s the lessons you learn from your mistakes, how well you apply those lessons to future endeavors, and how quickly you bounce back, that matter in the long run.
Great leaders know this is true. Tom Watson, Sr., the founder of IBM was often quoted as saying, “The way to accelerate your rate of success is to double your failure rate.” One of my clients, a savvy executive in a Fortune 500 company agrees: “I tell my folks to make at least 10 mistakes a day. If they’re not making that many mistakes each day, they’re not trying hard enough.”
But, oh my, how we human beings hate to fail. So sometimes we need a little encouragement to overcome that fear. Here’s where leaders can step in . . .
The general manager of an insurance company, concerned that her salespeople were so afraid of failure that they hesitated to take even well calculated risks, took action at a sales meeting. She put two $100 bills on the table and related her most recent failure, along with the lesson she had learned from it, then she challenged anyone else at the meeting to relate a bigger failure and “win” the $200. When no one spoke up, she scooped up he money and said that she would repeat her offer at each monthly sales meeting. From the second month on, the manager never again got to keep the $200, and as people began to discuss their failures, the sales department became more successful, quadrupling their earnings in one year.
“Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is,” said Walter Wriston, the former chairman of CitiCorp. But it can be difficult for people in an organization to have a genuine discussion about failure that doesn’t include blame or rationalization. To facilitate this kind of productive conversation, the United States Army developed the After Action Reviews. AARs are now used by organizations around the world to help employees learn from their mistakes, prevent future errors, and find new solutions to problems.
Basically, the AAR process assembles people who were involved in a planned project or event and asks them to answer these questions:
1. What was the desired outcome?
2. What was the actual outcome?
3. Why were there differences between what we wanted and what we achieved?
4. What did we learn? (What would we do differently next time?)
Organizations looking to increase innovation are also finding ways to encourage and even reward mistakes. DuPont’s Textile Fibers Division awards a quarterly “failure trophy.” The failed efforts must have been ethically sound, recognized as failures quickly, and learned from thoroughly. DuPont realizes that insight and knowledge come as much from failure as they do from success. Understanding what doesn’t work may be at least as important as understanding what does, especially if these errors are revealed early in a project when few resources have been committed and other approaches can be tested.
The heart of creativity is trial and error. Thomas Edison’s early attempts to come up with the right filament for the light bulb were dismal failures. He tried a thousand different materials – with no success. A colleague asked him if he felt his time had been wasted, since he had discovered nothing. “Hardly,” Edison is said to have retorted. “I have discovered a thousand things that don’t work.”
What about you? Had any good failures lately?
1) Acknowledge weaknesses, but play to people’s strengths.
Todd Mansfield, the executive vice president of Disney Development Company, found that his company had been spending too much time on employee weaknesses. He said, “When we’d sit down to evaluate associates, we’d spend 20 percent of our time talking about the things they did well, and 80 percent on what needed to be improved. That is just not effective. We ought to spend and energy helping people determine what they are gifted at doing and get their responsibilities aligned with those capabilities.” 2) Don’t assume people know how good they are.
I gave a speech for the top management team of a software company in Northern California that was relocating out of state. A few days later the president of the company telephoned me to say, ” I have an administrative assistant who is probably the brightest, most creative person I’ve worked with. The problem is, she’s married and can’t move her family out of the Bay Area. I was wondering if you would see her for a private counseling session, so that when she applies for a new job, she will come across just as terrific as she really is. I’ll even pay for the session.”
Of course, I agreed, and looked forward to meeting this talented woman. When she came into my office I said, “This is a real pleasure. I’ve heard so many nice things about you. Tell me about yourself. What is it that you do exceptionally well? What would you most want a prospective employer to know about you?” The woman was silent for several seconds. Finally she sighed and said, “I really don’t know. I do a lot of things well, but when I do them, I don’t notice.”
3) When people do something very well, acknowledge it immediately.
Timing is everything when it comes to building confidence. Get in the habit of commenting on outstanding employee behavior as soon as you notice it. When managers at El Torito Restaurants in Irvine, Calif., catch a worker doing something exceptional, they immediately give the employee a “Star Buck.” Each restaurant has a monthly drawing from the pool of “stars” for prizes (cash, TV, etc.), and each region has a drawing for $1,000 cash.
4) Encourage people to recognize their own achievements and then to go public.
One manager I know came up with a creative solution to her employees’ lament that, although she did a pretty good job overall, there were many times when she seemed too preoccupied to notice accomplishments. She put a hand-painted sign in her office and jokingly encouraged employees to display it whenever they had a significant achievement. What started out as an office gag is now a favorite employee ritual. The sign reads, “I just did something wonderful. Ask me about it!”
5) Help people identify strengths and then find ways to capitalize on them.
Everyone has unique talents and abilities that are not always used in their present jobs. Paula Banks, a former Human Resources director at Sears, once had a secretary who was doing an adequate, but mediocre job. Paula talked to the woman and found out that, in her spare time, she was a top salesperson for Mary Kay Cosmetics. In Paula’s words: “I found out she had great sales skills, so I changed her duties to include more of what she was really good at – organizing, follow-through, and closing deals. She had this tremendous ability. My job was to figure out how to use it.”
6) Create small victories.
To encourage people on the way to achieving goals of exceptional performance, managers need to design “small wins.” One manager put it this way, “A stretch goal can scare people to death. I always begin with a mini-goal that I know my staff can achieve, and then I use that victory as a confidence-builder for reaching the larger objective.”
Resent advances in brain analysis technology allow researchers to track the energy of a thought moving through the brain in much the same way as they track blood flowing through the body. And, as scientists watch different areas of the brain light up in response to specific thoughts, it becomes clear that we all react pretty much the same way to change. We try to avoid it.
Here’s why . . .
Most of our daily activities, including many of our work habits, are controlled by a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. These habitual, repetitive tasks take much less mental energy to perform because they have become “hardwired” and we no longer have to give them much conscious thought. “The way we’ve always done it” is mentally comfortable. It not only feels right – it feels good.
Change jerks us out of this comfort zone by stimulating the prefrontal cortex, an energy-intensive section of the brain responsible for insight and impulse control. But the prefrontal cortex is also directly linked to the most primitive part of the brain, the amygdala (the brain’s fear circuitry, which in turn controls our “flight or fight” response). And when the prefrontal cortex is overwhelmed with complex and unfamiliar concepts, the amygdala connection gets kicked into high gear. All of us are then subject to the physical and psychological disorientation and pain that can manifest in anxiety, fear, depression, sadness, fatigue or anger.
It’s no wonder that logic and common sense aren’t enough to get people to sign up for the next corporate restructuring.
So what’s a change agent to do?
1. Make change familiarIf you show people two picture of themselves – one an accurate representation and the other a reversed image – people will prefer the second. Because that’s the image they see in the mirror every day.
With change comes the need for an ongoing communication strategy. It takes a lot of repetition to move a new or complex concept from the prefrontal cortex to the basil ganglia. Continually talking about change and focusing on key aspects will eventually allow the novel to become more familiar and less threatening.
2. Let people create changeNo one likes change that’s forced on them, yet most people respond favorably to change they create. Brain research shows us why this is so. At the moment when someone chooses change, their brain scan shows a tremendous amount of activity as insight develops and the brain begins building new and complex connections. When people solve a problem by themselves, the brain releases a rush of neurotransmitters like adrenaline, and this natural “high” becomes associated positively with the change experience.
This means that you can’t “sell” change and you can’t lead it with command and control tactics. But you can provide enough background information (about trends, customer demands, competitive pressure, and other key issues) and a forum for people to reflect on and discuss the implications of those forces for the organization. Rather than lecturing and providing all the answers, try asking questions and letting people work out the solutions on their own.
3. KISS your communicationThe prefrontal cortex can deal well with only a few concepts at one time. As tempting as it may be to lump everything you know about the change into one comprehensive chunk – don’t do it. Your job is to help people make sense of complexity by condensing it into two or three critical goals they can understand and absorb. 4. Never underestimate the power of a vision
Human beings are teleological. That is, we are attracted to (or repelled by) images we hold in our minds. If all the mental pictures employees hold are of happier times in the “good old days” or the painful reminders of unsuccessful change efforts of the past, they will naturally resist the next announced change.
Here’s where a vision becomes crucial. And, by using the term vision, I’m not referring to a corporate statement punctuated by bullet points. I’m talking about a clearly articulated, emotionally charged, and broad picture of what the organization is trying to achieve. 5. Don’t “sugar coat” the truth
The prefrontal cortex is always on guard for signals of danger. When overly optimistic outcomes or unrealistic expectations are exposed (and they always are) the prefrontal cortex switches to high alert – looking for other signs of deception and triggering the primitive brain to respond with feelings of heightened anxiety. 6. Help people pay attention
The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain. In fact, attention is continually reshaping brain patterns. Concentrating attention on a thought or an insight or a fear will, over time, keep the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive. With enough focus, these circuits become stable, physical links in the brain’s structure.
The term “attention density” refers to the amount of attention paid to a particular mental experience over a specific time. The greater the concentration on a specific idea, the higher the attention density. High attention density facilitates long-term behavioral change. One way to encourage people to pay attention to new ideas is to continually repackage them in attention-grabbing ways – in a story, a game, an experience, a humorous skit, a metaphor, an image, or even a song. And the way to focus people on the organization’s optimal future is to get them to pay attention to their own insights and to develop pictures of the needed new behaviors in their own minds.
My friend, Joe, keeps information to himself. In his mind, not telling what he knows gives him a personal competitive advantage. After all, he reasons, “Knowledge is power.”
My other friend, Ken, doesn’t see it that way. His recent promotion came as a result of the exposure he received from sharing his ideas and experiences (in conversations and presentations) throughout the organization.
So who’s right?
According to evolution – maybe both!
Recent research shows that the instinct to hoard can be traced back to early humans hoarding vital supplies, like food, out of fear of not having enough. The more food they put away, the safer they felt. In an evolutionary sense, those who hoarded food and other basic necessities, were better off, healthier, and produced more offspring.
This emotional attachment to our possessions has been hard-wired into our brains to help us survive. And, still today, whenever we feel threatened, fearful, distrustful or insecure, the “hoarding gene” kicks into high gear, urging us to hold on tightly to whatever we possess – including knowledge.
On the other hand . . . humans are also a learning, teaching, knowledge-sharing species. This too has been hard-wired in us. Experiments at Notre Dame support the notion that cooperation helped our ancient ancestors survive. Computer simulations add to real world evidence that teamwork in early humans was critical. For example, the common use of stone tools suggests they shared information on the location of suitable material. These sites are sometimes 30 kilometers away from where the tools are found and would have been difficult for individuals to discover on their own.
This knowledge-sharing instinct is alive and active in little children. They can’t wait to tell what happened in school or on the playground. And when children grow up, they become adults who thrive on collaboration. According to just about every employee survey I’ve seen, hoarding information is identified as a huge barrier to optimal productivity and morale. People prefer to work in a collaborative environment because it is where they feel that their contribution matters. High participation builds high employee engagement.
So, when it comes to knowledge, which survival strategy (hoarding or sharing) is more likely to be effective in today’s fast-paced, information-intensive world?
The answer lies in the shift from the Industrial Era, when knowledge obsolescence took years and when hoarders created leverage and power bases by hanging onto what they knew, to today, when the shelf life of knowledge is much shorter. Knowledge is no longer a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) its worth over time. It’s more like milk – fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration date. And by the way, there is nothing less powerful than hanging on to knowledge whose time has expired.
Want to add real value to your team – your company – your profession? Want to build a reputation as an informed player? Then put your knowledge into action – fast. The new model of power/influence/success is a cycle of learning quickly, sharing what you know while it is still valid, unlearning what no longer works, and relearning.
Now that’s an instinct worth cultivating!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
I love the holiday season! A great time to get together with extended families – and a perfect time to conduct a little informal research on generational differences.
Here’s one example . . .
I recently attended a family gathering where 17 year-old Alexandra, announced that she was quitting her weekend waitress job because the manager wouldn’t give her time off to attend a party. Her statement and the responses she got from various family members were classic:
“It’s no big deal,” Alex said. “I’ll just get another job somewhere else.”
“Never quit one job until you have another,” counseled her 28-year-old cousin.
“Maybe you should consider staying there a little longer. It will look better on your resume,” added her 49-year old mother.
And Alex’s septuagenarian grandfather grumbled, “Where is your work ethic young lady? That restaurant is counting on you!”
When I address business audiences, I’m often asked whether or not it’s fair to generalize when talking about individuals. And in many ways, it isn’t. Everyone is unique – with personal motivations, desires, and goals.
No one likes being lumped into a generational category that encompasses 18 years – and then stamped with a single label. But, like it or not, there are shared circumstances that help shape expectations and attitudes. And these circumstances differ with times in which people were born and raised.
In today’s work force, four generations are currently represented:
o The Silent Generation, born between 1927-1945, are the children of world wars and the Great Depression. Because economic times were tough when they were looking for jobs, this generation tends to be hard working, loyal, and thrifty.
o Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were raised in an era of opportunity, progress, and optimism. Growing up in a radically changing society marked by rebellion, shifting social norms, and outward challenge of authority, they created the need for organizational “vision, values, and mission.”
o Gen Xers were born between 1965-1983. They are technologically savvy and were raised in the age of dual-career families. Watching their parents “bleed company colors” only to be found “redundant,” this generation hit the job market looking for career development, flexibility and work-life balance.
o The Millennials (1984-2002) are the newest members of the work force. A “plugged-in” generation, they have been around technology since birth. Navigating the world of blogs, wikis, podcasting, and instant messaging is as natural to them as breathing.
Each of these distinct groups of people views life differently. And it isn’t just technology that divides the generations. Their differences include perspectives on authority and respect, hierarchy and collaboration, balancing the demands of work and home, aspirations for leadership, and the definition of workplace loyalty.
Just consider the friction that is bound to exist in financial attitudes between those who grew up with economic scarcity, frugality and rationing during the Depression era and those who were raised in an “instant gratification, no payment until next year,” society. And there’s sure to be a clash between members of the Silent Generation, whose definition of leadership reflects the military structure with its command and control philosophy, and their Millennial counterparts who are distrustful of leaders in general – and who expect a collaborative/inclusive work environment.
So what can organizations do to engage and motivate employees across generational boundaries? Here are a few ideas:
o Expect and accommodate differences. Career growth and development opportunities are crucial to the retention of younger employees – as is exciting, challenging work. Silents and Boomers may be looking for a way to leave a legacy or to have their contributions acknowledged and shared.
o Create choices and let the workplace organize itself around the job to be done. Call it empowerment or autonomy or flextime or “doing their own thing.” The reality is that different work styles/hours/locations can attain the same results. And results are what count!
o Focus on commonalities. Regardless of generational category, all employees have two things in common: They want to be successful and want to do meaningful work. When you build your management and communication strategies around these universal motivators, you appeal to the most senior as well as the newest members of the organization.
Each generation has much to offer an organization – and much to offer other generations. The more we know about generational differences and similarities, the easier it is to create workplace environments based on complementary talents, mutual respect, and unified purpose.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.