i believe that everyone is motivated by something. i’d say that most accountants have a natural love of working with numbers. i’m sure that stock brokers get a special kind of high out of making the deal that nets their clients big returns. and i’m sure that if you spent even just a little time with three of my colleagues as they talked about solving linear programs and differential equations you’d be amazed at how much they can geek out over it. but when was the last time, as a manager or leader, that you had a discussion with your employees to find out what drives them?

some of you might answer — if you’re being honest with yourself — “the job interview”. how long ago was that? people change over time, and so you must be willing to spend the time to really watch and track how your people are changing and the kinds of people they’re changing into. you might have someone with a modeling and simulation background whom either suddenly or even gradually falls in love with data visualization. you might have a history teacher whom has a newfound love of english literature. but you’ll never know any of this unless you take the time to know your people.

do you have carrots (bonus structures, awards systems) or sticks (hard deadlines, performance reviews) in place because they actually work? or is it just because it makes your job simpler?

everyone is motivated to do something.

find out what that is. then have them do that.

image from softsupplier.com

there has been a bit more attention paid to video games since it became a multi-billion dollar industry. and even though sales were down last year, those figures don’t include many of the emerging facets of the industry such as downloadable content (game add-ons and such) or mobile gaming (angry birds alone raked in $12m). with that much money flowing around, it’s hard to ignore it.

but what if we didn’t just analyze video games as a business and instead thought about how business can be more like a video game? jane mcgonigal gave a fantastic talk at TED in 2010 pointing out what gamers are good at, and why they spend so much time playing them. why not try shaping our businesses to engage and leverage these ‘virtuosos’ as jane calls them?

one of the great things about video games is the constant feeling of progress towards a goal. but it’s not just the progress, it’s also the measurement of that progress — many times in terms of experience points, or XP. it’s what keeps people playing. “i only need 200 more XP before i level up!” and that’s where i think we have things backwards in business today.

we like to use salary as a reward for hard work, but in considering rewards you must also consider the social implications of them. after all, as humans, we are social creatures. i don’t know why, but it seems that business often forgets about this fact. salary is nice, and financial rewards do certainly help because someone has to pay the bills. however, when you look at it, no one really knows how much another person earns. you can make assumptions based on various factors, but still, you’re never really 100% certain unless that person has told you. and when yearly performance reviews occur, and someone gets a bump in pay, it’s generally done behind closed doors with just that person and their manager. not much of a reward, if you ask me.

but when people are promoted, it’s often made public some way, and those persons are greeted by co-workers with smiles, congratulations, and handshakes (i prefer fist bumps) — all of those social things that make people feel good about themselves. but because there are so few levels for people to climb in business, it’s not a feedback mechanism that people get very often.

in games, however, it’s not uncommon to have 20 levels or more for you to strive towards. each action of yours gaining you XP, and each level up earning you more and more options and bonuses. all along the way, you discover things — in treasure chests, or getting to a hard-to-reach place, etc. — things that you can use to help you in your next quest or to make your character different from the others. why can’t we do some of the same things in business?

primary author on a deliverable: 5XP. give a presentation to the client: 10XP. go outside your workstream to help solve a problem: 20XP. speak at an industry event: 250XP. be the keynote speaker at an industry event: 500XP. all different scales of things that we do on a normal basis, we add on a measurement to, and in order to get to the next level, you have to gain enough XP. since you know how much XP it takes to get to the next level, you know exactly what you need to be doing to level up. and with each level getting progressively harder to move to the next, it’s a simple formula: if you want to level up, get the biggest XP items or be prepared to put in lot of time taking out a lot of small items. it becomes a motivator to get people to seek out industry events to speak at, or to spend time developing that new idea.

but we can’t just have the standard 4 levels of hierarchy, we need a lot of these levels. we need 20 levels for people to strive towards because if there’s too much distance between the one they’re currently in and the next level up, they’ll just be discouraged and feel defeated; that it’s not even worth trying for. why is it that there are so many people stuck in professional levels and never make middle-management? is it because they don’t have the ability, or is it because there’s no motivation to get there, or because they feel it’s a gap too far?

constant feedback. social rewards. understanding progress towards a goal. earning things better than what’s provided by default. these are all things that make video games so appealing. these are the things that motivate us as gamers to keep picking up that controller, even when you’ve failed the mission on multiple occasions. it’s that intrinsic drive to prove our mastery, to prove that we’re capable of being that level 20, that keeps us in the game. it’s these very qualities that are blatantly missing from corporate life as we know it.

image by ortizmj12, flickr artist

one of the higher-ranking members at booz allen has an internal blog titled, “lead, or get out of the way!”

i certainly appreciate his willingness to to pass on the knowledge that he has learned over his distinguished career — and in such a contemporary form — but i have to say that i think it’s wrong.

at least in the innovation age it is.

i’d like to change my colleague’s statement to become “lead, then get out of the way!” and here’s why…

the old notions of what leadership is all about work for the old notions of what business is all about: well defined, well documented, and well understood challenges that are solved through controlled, repeatable processes. but increasingly, the challenges we face in business are open-ended ones that we’ve never faced before. there are no blueprints for solving these problems. there are no repeatable processes. in order to meet these challenges, it’s going to take some ingenuity from a lot of free-thinking, self-motivated individuals.

to lead in such an environment, it’s going to take a different kind of approach from the generally understood form of leadership which is “get behind me, and i’ll take you there“. the ideas and approaches to solving today’s issues don’t come from the top, but rather they bubble up from the bottom. a true leader in the innovation age understands this new dynamic.

leaders will always be responsible for putting their people in the right positions to succeed; that much will always be true. leaders will still be responsible for setting the strategic direction for an organization, and they’ll need to build their organizations to support that vision. this is the crux of leadership in the innovation age: filling your organization with the right people.

but once you’ve articulated your vision and built your organization, it’s time to step away from it all. your job — from here on out — isn’t to lead, but to support. provide the necessary tools for success — be it training, capital, mentorship, or even just lending an ear — and try your very best to not get in the way.

don’t tell people that they have to work on something else other than what they want to be working on. don’t tell people that they can’t use a certain set of tools or technologies. don’t ever balk at an idea because of whom or where it came from. don’t get too focused on what your current strategy is (it might be obsolete now). don’t let yourself, your plan, or your project become bigger or more important than the overall success of your organization.

forget your previous notions of what leadership is because they don’t work anymore. get out of the way! people are going to do some amazing things, if only you’ll let them do it.

don’t spoil it.

the problem with knee-jerk reactions is that they are generally conceived by the “fight or flight” portion of our brains; the portion of our brains that doesn’t consider impacts beyond the immediate situation.  so while the reaction might be good for you right now in diffusing the situation or mitigating the issue, it may end up having negative impacts down the line.

fight the urge to make those knee-jerk reactions.  your task, your project, your business is far too important to hinge its future on a decision made without just deliberation.  before you make a decision on how to solve your next challenge, ask yourself two simple questions: “have i gathered multiple points of view?” and “have i really given good thought to this?”

image by Round Indigo Rock, flickr artist

we’ve had a big hiring push lately at my firm, and to be quite frank i don’t really like it.

to me it’s not enough to hire bright, intelligent, promising people to add to your workforce.  you have to go beyond that and think about the team(s) those people will be on.  this is hard to do when you are hiring people for their capabilities rather than a particular task.  you need to be asking: can they become the new leaders of this team?  can they handle the pressures of a highly dynamic development process?  will they be able to form those trusting bonds with their coworkers?

i’ve been a part of many teams in both my academic and professional lives to know that just because someone has all the skills necessary, and their resumé checks all the boxes on your list of “the perfect candidate,” that doesn’t mean that they’re the right fit for your organization.  conversely, i’ve known people who have not been the brightest or the most talented but whom have made the organization thrive because they were excellent teammates.

when i was coaching hockey at penn state, we had a fantastic player on our division 1 club.  he won acha division 1 player of the year, and broke just about every record in school history as a forward.  when he had an extra year of eligibility left, he joined our division 2 club.  some thought that he’d score well beyond 50 goals that season.  how could the former player of the year do anything less than spectacular?  but he never did gain a level of comfort in the lower division that he enjoyed in the first tier, and because of that he struggled mightily.  his scoring totals dropped off dramatically and we exited early from the national tournament that year.  the following season after he graduated (along with over 10 other seniors), we reloaded our club with a group of freshmen more known for their work ethic than their abilities to handle the puck and put goals on the board.  it was that season — however — that we had our best run, going deep into the national tournament.

our group of over-achieving, under-sized grinders was just a mere 60 minutes away from a semi-final berth because our team was made up of the right players, not the best players.  they fit our system.  they played the way we asked them to play.  they played for each other more than they played for themselves.  they were nothing we were looking for, but turned out to be everything we were hoping for.

the problem with finding people for your organization is that when you’re looking for the “best available” you tend to overlook the “best for your team.”  what do you look for when you hire?  are  you checking boxes, or are you looking at a bigger picture?

image by foreverdigital, flickr artist

i’m not sure exactly what my favorite part of hockey is.  as a goaltender (in my younger years), i have to admit that few things get me going more than a glove save on a 2-on-1 breakaway.  i can still appreciate a fine dangle, however.

i can tell you with conviction, however, that one of the best moments is the celebration when a player scores a goal.  the unbridled passion, the camaraderie, everything great about the sport of hockey comes through in one moment shared by 5 players on the ice (sometimes more).  it’s one single moment that embodies all of what hockey is about.

teamwork.

so why is it, that hockey players — among other athletes — celebrate their teammates hard work together, but we in business don’t?  anyone who hits a home run in baseball is greeted with a collection of fist bumps when he gets back to the dugout,  basketball players get chest bumps after knocking down a big three late in a game, football players get a firm slap on the butt after a big play, and soccer players… well, they do things differently than everyone else.  but no matter the sport, they all celebrate together.

what is it about business that makes us treat the dolling out of awards and kudos as a function of management?  imagine if home runs didn’t come with fist bumps, and soccer didn’t come with… miko vucinic.  imagine a sports world where goals weren’t celebrated, or big plays appreciated, except when from a coach.

so the next time you see a co-worker putting in long hours, or shoveling tons of crap to keep the client happy, don’t wait for management to step in and give an award.  do it yourself.

organize a happy hour in their honor and pay for the first round.  buy them lunch when you see they’re too busy to stop and grab one themselves.  every day there are opportunities to thank each other for doing the hard work that many — especially management — take for granted.  find some way to express your gratitude.

because what good is scoring a goal if no one’s there to… take off their pants?

image by csitscenter, flickr collection

i was in a meeting recently with a senior associate in my firm, and spent the vast amount of the 4 hours we had together furiously taking notes.  unfortunately i couldn’t write as fast as he was talking, so i ended up not capturing all of the information that was there for the taking.  for the most part, the vast majority of the time was spent discussing our earned value management capabilities at booz allen.  we did talk some about business in general and building capabilities that can grow and expand, and it was from this discussion that my largest, boldest, “even used a highlighter on it” note came from.  he said something to me that made a lot of sense:

always plan on success.

it’s a great quote.  you may mistakingly take it as an inspirational message, but that’s not at all what he intended.  it was actually meant to scare us, and remind us that we need to be prepared to succeed.  to be successful in business, it’s not enough to have a good idea.  even having passion and being a hard worker isn’t enough.  when you’re trying to stand up or start up something brand new, you have to have certain things in place to handle the change in environment.  nothing can kill a good idea quite like being unprepared to succeed.  if you aren’t ready to expand with the business, you’ll undoubtedly experience growing pains – much like wearing a shoe that’s two sizes too small.

the main question you’ll want to ask yourself, “if 5 clients called me today, would i be able to provide this product to them?”  here’s a simple checklist that should have you on the right track to answering that question with a “yes.”

• do you have the right people in the right markets?
  business is about having the right contacts and having those people in the right places to get your foot in the door.  securing a $12 million contract is going to be difficult if you don’t have someone helping you out from the inside.  identify these connectors in your organization and get their buy-in with your new business venture because they’re probably going to be the ones who make the first sales pitch to your prospective clients.
• do you have the right people to do the heavy lifting?
  you need to have a people strategy for the actual work as well.  identify the skills and roles that will be needed in order to roll out new business to your clients and make a list of them.  do you already have people on your immediate team that fit into those roles?  if not, can you quickly obtain those resources either through new hire acquisitions or by borrowing from another team within your organization?
• do you have the right resources to onboard new employees?
  along with the item above – if you are bringing new people onto your team or into your organization, you need to also have the right resources to train them and get them up to speed on how to deliver the expected results to the client.  they need to understand their roles and responsibilities as well.  you need their buy-in too, just as you’d expect from anyone else.
• do you have the right resources to make a splash in the market?
  now that you have the right contacts, and the right people strategy, and the resources available to ramp up production of your new product or services – you have to ensure that your marketing materials are set.  you should have an ‘executive summary’ brief developed that gives a high-level overview of the product or service and the benefits to the client at the enterprise level as well as the user level.  it’s also important to have a brief that you can take to the user level of the client’s organization that shows why they want what you’re selling.  are there conferences you can speak at?  are there white papers in your organization you can help co-author?  identify areas to get your name out there.

once you have the questions above answered, you can begin in earnest to develop your business.  it’s always fun thinking up new business and being a part of it from the start.  brainstorming and whiteboarding and cocktail napkin doodling are definitely the stories that people tell when people ask the question, “where did you get this new idea?”  what many people don’t see are the strategic moves that happen behind those romantic stories of serendipity.  it’s important that you don’t become enchanted with the stories of overnight success and put in the effort to build the foundations of long-term growth.  always plan on success, because it just might happen.

image from Crashmaster007, flickr artist

it’s easy to tell people what to do or what’s expected of them, but leading by example says a lot about who you are as a person, not just as a leader.

when you’re a leader, one thing you expect from your team or organization is accountability.  you expect your people to embrace their roles, take ownership of their tasks, and ensure that their work is done when it needs to be, at a level of quality that will positively represent your organization.  if you expect that from your people — shouldn’t you expect that from yourself as well?

everything that you expect from your people, you should be willing to do yourself.  work hard, and let people see you working hard.  be prepared for different situations, and let people see you prepare.  you should do what you expect the people following you to do, and you should let them see you do it.  it’s inspirational, it forges trust, it sets a good example.

you can’t tell your people, “stop working so hard and take time for yourself,” and send emails at 1:00a on a weekday or 9:30p on a weekend.  it seems more like a challenge to work harder than a sincere concern about work-life balance.

so as a leader — when you make a promise, or institute new rules, or try to change habits — it’s best if you start with yourself.

leading by example says a lot about who you are.  what are your actions saying about you?

image by Matheus Van Lobatos, flickr artist

as i see it (that sounds familiar [looks at blog title] oh yeah!…), there’s one rule of management which trumps them all. it’s what i like to call “the frank sinatra rule.” it’s very simple.  it says: “if you’re going to delegate, be sure that you delegate all the way.” many managers struggle with this key capability. people in power want to have all the power, but share the responsibility.

quite frank-ly (see what i did there?) — that situation is hardly ever going to work.

when you delegate, there has got to also be a delegation of authority as well as responsibility. if you don’t empower those folks underneath of you to make their own decisions, then you’ve only come half-way. not to mention, from a strictly business and financial perspective, you’re paying someone many thousands of dollars to be a “deputy project manager” or “functional lead” when you could have saved that money and gotten yourself an administrative professional or intern at a far lesser cost to handle things like scheduling meetings and organizing status reports.

the whole reason that you’ve appointed someone to a management role is because you are in some way overburdened. how do you lessen your burden without also lessening the amount of decisions that you need to make? the president of a corporation doesn’t make all the decisions. that’s why he or she appoints CEOs and CIOs and CFOs and CMOs and so on. why? because the president says, “i’ve got enough to think about without having such issues of ‘which web browsers do we allow our employees to install on their work machines?’ to deal with.” no work would ever get done if the president, chairman, or majority stock holder(s) had to make every single decision for the company. and there’s no reason that this dynamic should change in a project setting (with such a similar hierarchy of authority).

if you put people in charge of some kind of functional area but still wish to call the shots, what it’s really saying is that you don’t have trust in that person to make the proper decisions. and if you don’t have trust in the person/people whom you’ve appointed, what you’re really saying is that you don’t have trust in yourself, in your own ability to recognize talent and make good decisions about the people surrounding you. in either case — that you don’t wish to relinquish control, or that you don’t trust in your own people — it reflects rather poorly on you as someone who is confident and able to lead whatever project is at hand.

so when you delegate, don’t just put people in charge to handle administrative tasks and report back to you. when you delegate, be sure to pick the right people — then allow them to make their own choices.  when you delegate, follow the frank sinatra rule, and do it all the way.

photo by tiarescott, flickr artist

i couldn’t tell you the number of times people have said to me, “i wish i wasn’t in meetings all day; i’d be able to get some actual work done for a change.” if i had a nickel for each time someone moaned or groaned about having to go to a meeting, i’d have easily paid my student loans off by now. it’s no secret: meetings suck.

but they don’t have to!

if a meeting you’re in is ever boring, or uninteresting, or leaves you totally disengaged — you’re doing it wrong. read through these 5 reasons your meetings suck, and learn from them.

1) too many people
a major issue that many meetings have is the number of people that are invited to attend. if you can achieve the goals of the meeting without having someone around, then it’s probably a good idea not to invite them. for people development reasons, i can forgive this. for instance, wanting to bring a new hire into a meeting with the client to observe proper etiquette and what kinds of personalities he or she can expect to have to work with in the future is a great idea. it’s exposure that you can’t replace and experience you can’t simulate. including someone on a meeting for their “visibility” is just plain ridiculous. if you think someone needs to be at a meeting so they can absorb information, you’ve missed the point; that’s what meeting minutes are for! so stop inviting people to meetings who don’t need to be there.

2) not the right people
no meeting should ever take place if a key decision maker isn’t present. you can only get so much done before you’re going to hit a wall. you can talk all you want, but you’re only spinning your wheels until your manager, team leader, project manager, resource manager, or whoever drops the starting gate. similarly, include all SMEs (subject matter experts) on the topic at hand. you wouldn’t ask your bartender to cut your hair, would you? (if you would, you’re a seriously strange person — and i think i’d like to meet you) also, if you know one of your key meeting invitees can’t make it — or otherwise cancels on you — cancel the entire meeting and reschedule it. make sure you have the right players in on your meetings. every time.

3) too many meetings
if you have a recurring meeting, for each instance of that meeting — make sure that it’s still relevant. there’s nothing worse than blocking off an hour or more of your time (which could prevent you from having some other meeting that is actually important), stopping the work you’re doing, and getting in the right frame of mind (i.e. caffeine to blood ratio) for a meeting, only to have the organizer say, “well…. we don’t have much to talk about today.” each and every meeting should add value to what you’re trying to accomplish. the good news is that this is often times easy to see in advance. if you know that you won’t have much in the way of an agenda for a meeting, then ax it and find some other means of delivering your abbreviated news flash.

4) too few meetings
on the flip side, if you invite a list of people to join a meeting, and go round-robin style around the table (or phone roster) taking inputs from each person individually, you’re doing it wrong. meetings aren’t meant to be token ring networks! meetings are supposed to be periods for collaborative discussion, not a one-to-one or one-to-few broadcast of information. if you need information from multiple sources, and those multiple sources aren’t interconnected, you should be having a meeting with each individual source. take the meeting minutes from those individual sources and disseminate them to the rest of the team as needed. remember this one key note: there ought never be a situation where you have invitees to an hour or two hour long meeting who only speak for 5-10 minutes.

5) you don’t wrap with action items
every meeting you participate in should have some kind of outcome. there needs to be a list of action items for people to follow up on (with dates!). a meeting should persist even after it’s adjourned — otherwise what was the point? the organizer should always recap what just happened in a meeting, and always make sure that action items are assigned to someone before they leave the meeting. action items should also be reflected in the meeting minutes and at least somehow addressed in the agenda for the next meeting.

fix these five issues above, and you’ll no longer have people decrying meetings in twitter posts, facebook statuses, and instant messenger away messages. when used correctly, meetings are “actual work.” your best ideas should be created in meetings, and your best analysis should be done in meetings — if not, you’re misusing your time… and everybody else’s.