Musings at Altitude

“Change (5)” was my 100th posting on this blog, which only started out as an experiment and then grew into a way for me to capture my thoughts nearly real time and share those thoughts if and when others wanted to read them!  I’m just a little bit stunned by how quickly I got to 100 and how much I enjoy capturing and sharing what I’m thinking.  Many of you that know me well will say it’s not surprising to you that I write so much…I tend to be a bit too verbose in my communications anyway.  But it might be just a bit surprising that I’ve stuck with it this long and this consistently…that’s not necessarily like me.  But since this is a form of therapy, maybe it does make some sense!

I’ve enjoyed this immensely thus far and I greatly appreciate those of you who have given me material to write about – good or bad, serious or funny, knowingly or not!  Thank you!

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Now that my wife and I are done with all the yard work, I can’t help but think about how the work we did today mirrors a change process – in a grossly comparative way!  We started the process with three goals in mind – (1) mow; (2) weed; and (3) prune.  I grabbed the lawn mower and started the mowing process going clockwise around the house, while she grabbed her gloves and a lawn bag and headed counter clockwise doing the weeding.  We crossed paths in the middle in the back, and then joined back together once the mowing and weeding were complete to compare notes, view the landscape and then decide what would be pruned.  We then pruned together and sat back at the end and admired our handiwork.

Amazingly, changes in business aren’t a lot different than the process we just did for the area around our house.  In business we mow and weed all the time, making sure we optimize our outward services and appearance and remove the “weeds” from our organization.  At some point when the mowing and weeding are done in the business, we sit back and look at the landscape and decide what if anything needs to be pruned.  We don’t really prune nearly enough, although sometimes things get so desperate that pruning becomes a mandate rather than an option.  We ought to be pruning all the time, cutting off underperforming structures so that the focus and the investment of the organization can go to the higher performing assets thus guaranteeing the optimum long term growth.

At times, both in yards and in business, landscape and business architects may be needed to change the overall structure of the yard or business respectively.  This may be needed when the environment changes so dramatically that the way things looked and worked before may not be appropriate for going forward.  If it gets hotter and drier here at my home and drought conditions continue, it may be wise to move towards more natural grasses and landscaping rock and away from grass which requires significant watering.  The same is true in business.  When the environment changes or the resources we had before are not available going forward, then its time in business to do those dramatic changes too so we can optimize our business landscape for the market and for the resources available.

In my yard, I hate going more than a week without mowing, more than a month or so without weeding, and more than a quarter or so without pruning.  Maybe we ought to look at a similar structure for change in business as well?

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I’m trying to figure out if my wife is telling me something.  Here’s the book she gave me yesterday:

I must admit, I do like things to occur in certain ways.  I do get just a little bit cranky when something I want to do gets pushed aside for something someone else wants to do.  I do get a little bit grouchy when folks are really loud around me and having a good time and I want to be in a quiet time doing quiet things.  But I’m not crotchety…never have been…never will be.

By the way, Dictionary.com defines crotchety as “given to odd notions, whims, or grouchiness, of the nature of a crotchet.”  Now that says it all…how could anyone think I’m crotchety?  Another definition says, “having a difficult and contrary disposition.”  Unbelievable…that is so not me!

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When you travel as much as many of us do, Starbucks can be a very relaxing stop on a journey and a very important place to do business at a destination.  I’ve joked many times how I should plot on a map the number of Starbucks I visit, because that’s what I look for, even overseas.  Starbucks seemed to be everywhere…and unfortunately they were…and even more unfortunately, evidently they were in markets that weren’t nearly as profitable as they needed them to be so now they are closing some stores.

Starbucks announced that they would be closing stores a few weeks ago.  Then the waiting began as to which ones would be closed.  Kudos to Starbucks for now giving us the list of all 600 stores that will be closed weeks in advance of the closing.  Here’s the list if you want to see if any are closing that you visit – http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/USStoreClosureInfo.pdf.

When I talked about change and the need for open communications, this seems to be a great example of being both open and very honest, knowing that team members’ lives will be affected by the loss of jobs and knowing that people will need time to adjust if they are directly impacted.  I know I’ve been to quite a few of those on the list – Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Wichita Falls, Fredericksburg, Federal Way, Mobile, Loveland, probably San Francisco and San Diego (don’t remember the addresses), and at least 3 of them in Baton Rouge.  Closing the stores in Baton Rouge doesn’t surprise me because always right nearby were Community Coffee stores which is the hometown brand, and incredibly good coffee, and what my wife and I drink at home (we live in Colorado so we have it flown in from the South).  But some of the others seemed to be pretty hopping stores at the times I visited – maybe that wasn’t the case.

Any change that requires closing facilities, shutting down locations, or eliminating organizational structure (or even entire companies) is hard.  I’ve seen first hand the gut wrenching debate before making such decisions and then also the heart breaking pain in those decision makers when the changes take place.  Obviously there are some that can make such decisions and then execute those changes with no feelings at all about those impacted, but I believe those are few and those aren’t the executives that I’ve been closely associated with in my past. 

With Starbucks, I appreciate their transparency.  I appreciate them letting both their teams and their customers know in advance that change is coming.  I appreciate them now telling us specifically what change will occur.  And I appreciate them knowing that these changes will cause pain and also feeling that pain themselves.

Though I don’t know all the details and I’m not sitting in all their meetings, they sure seem to be doing things better than most as they approach these changes.

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As I’ve been tracking my contacts (see “Staying Connected”, 6/21), I’ve been thinking about those that mentored me in past years, those that are mentoring me today, and those that I may be mentoring today.  As I’ve aged and gained experience in business, much like a son appreciates a father much later in life, I’ve grown to appreciate things said and done and opportunities provided by my mentors.  In some cases, working with my mentors was a real business hell, because the expectations were so high and the consequences of failure so great that the pressure somewhat tempered the appreciation for the mentoring.  But with time, that appreciation has grown, and with experience, I find myself in some ways sharing with others much like those mentors of my past shared with me.  I’d like to share two very special mentors of mine with you.

Back in the mid 80’s, I was the youngest and most junior officer in Communications on the Air Staff at the Pentagon.  When I arrived, I was greeted by a hardened through experience Colonel who had fought in wars, fought the bureacracy of staffs and commanded large numbers of troops.  As he looked up from his desk when I reported in, his opening words were, “why in the world is a Lieutenant on the Air Staff?”  I provided some lame response about someone who knew someone and he recommended me for this job, and he laughed and said, “well you’ll need money living here in Washington DC, so don’t hesitate to ask”.  For the next two years, that Colonel put me in positions where he treated me like every other officer on his team, ignoring my inexperience and very junior rank.  I briefed 4 star generals and represented the US in NATO forums with other nations represented by very senior officers.  Each time he said, “you’re our rep; I don’t care about your rank.”  I was fortunate to have an open door to this Colonel’s office where I frequently asked questions and needed advice.  He never hesitated in spending the needed time to help me be prepared, and he never once questioned whether I should be the one doing that job or not.  To this day, I still smile in knowing that he gave me responsibilities and authorities that many others in his position never would have given.  But I remember even more that I never felt isolated or alone…I always felt like he shared the burden of decisions and actions with me, even though he let me charge forward and craft the strategy for our division. 

Just a couple of years later, I ended up taking an assignment that most of the Colonels on the Air Staff recommended against…they felt it was a career ending move, but I felt it was a chance to do something radical and get deeply involved in special mission environments thus out of the main stream of Air Force communications.  The Colonel who selected me for this assignment told me I was different than the rest of his team.  He felt like he needed new folks on his team that focused on the people side of the business rather than just the technical.  In an early meeting with his entire team, we all took a personality test, and just as he said, when they divided up the room as to “types”, I was standing alone on one side of the room while the rest of his team were together on the other side.  Over the next 4 years, I watched as this Colonel revolutionized the communications support to our organization and challenged his team to achieve a level of service that was very atypical of military commmunications organizations.  As he stretched us with technology and challenged us in service, he also delegated down and then trusted team members throughout the organization to deliver above and beyond what would normally be expected.  With millions of dollars per day riding on decisions made by team members throughout the organization, he remained unusually calm in the most critical mission scenarios, as he trusted all of his team to deliver against mission requirements.  He typically got the most upset with bureacratic responses to any issue or lack of creativity in defining solutions to mission or administrative needs.  He wanted us to be leading at all times, in all issues, and with all our actions.  He also wanted us to embrace change, accept risk, accept failure (as long as reasoning was sound to begin with), and challenge each other.  In the four years we worked together, he frustrated me beyond belief with his attention deficit to the things I needed him to focus on, but he trusted me to have things under control and thus he was off on the next big thing for the organization shortly after any decision was made and then action delegated down to others like me to execute.  To this day, I was amazed at the trust he so willingly passed around the organization, and I was even more amazed at the acceptance of failure as an expected result of some portion of actions because we were pushing so hard to advance the organization.

Both of these individuals had one very important trait in common – they trusted their teams and gave those teams responsibilities well beyond what their experiences or rank warranted and then stepped back and watched the magic (grounded in that trust) of phenomenal results.

Mentoring is so natural for some, and so unnatural for others.  Trust is not easy for everyone; accepting risk is not easy for everyone; allowing for mistakes is not easy for everyone…but they seem to be so easy for the mentors that I’ve respected the most in my professional life.  I’m very grateful to not only these two very special people, but to a very select list of others who have mentored me in my career and still mentor me today.

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What a hot topic of conversation, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that two things keep coming up as the biggest irritants regarding change:

(1) poor communications

(2) lack of a specific timetable

For communications, most organizations go into stealth mode in advance of any formal change announcement.  Most of the team members of an organization know that change is coming, have mentally prepared for change to occur, and then get left out of most change discussions.  Without any communications, the rumor mill runs rampant and the fears of both organizational and individual consequence take flight. 

For timetable, a formal change process is often defined with only minor tweaking yet to do, and then the organization goes into a holding pattern where the people, the processes, and the strategy get stalled until a “go” date is decided.  During this holding pattern, many things continue to progress that must then be reversed once change begins and many people are hired that may not be the right people to do the job once change has occurred. 

If change is needed, it’s best to get change started.  Even with only a partial change plan, the tone and the intent is set once change begins.  In most cases, the certainty of change and then an open dialogue about change will actually accelerate change in an organization and make change more meaningful and more accepting to the organization.

As I talk to friends all over the country right now, almost every company is in a change process.  In fact, the only certainty right now is change – market conditions and our struggling economy guaranty it.  I’m impressed by how prepared most folks are for change and how disturbed they are about both internal communications and timetable.  Many business leaders are making the change process very scientific, and thus nothing can happen until all the various hypothesis are worked through.  In reality, change is a real art and the picture being painted becomes clear well down that change road.

I take great comfort in knowing that everyone I talk to is facing change today.  I also get great counsel from those who have moved forward and thus share their lessons learned with me in advance of any change that I may soon be part of.  I clearly see that communications and timing of change are critical issues for everyone.  I also sense that a lack of communications and uncertain timing reflect more on discomfort for something specific in the change process rather than a discomfort for the need for change overall.  If my senses are right, starting the change process without a sophisticated change plan will allow much of the specific discomfort to go away because you delay those most uncomfortable decisions till later in the change process when you have more information and a better understanding of the affect of that particular component of change. 

For those of you in that holding pattern, just start changing!

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At dinner this evening, I felt the need to do the fatherly thing and encourage my 14 year old to follow in my footsteps and go to the Air Force Academy.   My oldest went on to study nursing and my middle son is studying English.  My son would like to be in the military, but not as an officer and not in the Air Force.  So all my hopes now fall on my 14 year old.

As we were discussing her future, I reiterated my dream that one of my children would go to the Air Force Academy, and she quickly popped off, “kill me now”.  That pretty much ended the discussion about someone living my dream for their lives.  The 14 year old went on to talk about her dream of working with children, and she didn’t buy it when I said that the 18-22 year olds in the military were often times like children. 

I still have 4 good years to work on her, but I’m sensing my dream slipping away.  Knowing each one though, I’ll be very proud regardless…just not at that ultimate hat throwing ceremony with the Thunderbirds flying over at graduation!

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Me and my 3 girls went on a road trip today – about 300 miles to where I needed to visit one of our job sites and they needed something to do.  So we packed into my SUV (did I mention my oldest brought her female dog along too?) and headed North out of Colorado into Wyoming.  I was sitting in the co-pilot seat, head bobbing up and down as I was still incredibly tired from my trip into the Arctic North of Alaska and then still recovering from the red eye plane ride back into the “lower 48” just yesterday.

In one period of awakeness, I started to think about this drive.  In the car with me was my wife of 25+ years who is closing in on menopause…she was the pilot.  In the back seat behind her was my 23 year old daughter who’s about to burst as she heads into her 9th month of pregnancy and can’t possibly get comfortable in any position in any vehicle.  And behind me was my 14 year old, who never lets much of anything bother her and brings up random stuff all the time – never a dull moment.  As a 14 year old, she’s exiting the girl phase and rapidly entering the “I have to look good all the time” teen phase, and those of you with teens understand full well that moving into this phase is as traumatic for those of us around her as the pre-menopausal and the almost-ready-to-deliver phases.  

As I was thinking about those on this particular journey with me, my 14 year old put her foot up through the side of my seat and rested it on my arm rest.  As she looked at her toes she pondered, “I wonder why my second toe (the one next to the big toe) is longer than my big toe?  If it was shorter, my toes would look like the Cingular commercial.”  That cracked us all up, and sadly, we all knew what she was talking about!

After a few minutes of relative quiet, her big sister and her got into a heated discussion about something, and I remember only the following.  My 23 year old told her, “you’re on the right side of the car.”  And my 14 year old responded with, “if we were going the other direction I wouldn’t be on the right side.”  I got a great chuckle out of that one and I looked over at my pre-menopausal wife and she was trying not to completely die laughing, thus putting us all at risk since we were driving in the middle of nowhere. 

As the discussion continued, I went back to my semi-sleeping stupor, knowing that all was well in my family.   After all, with 3 women in the car in 3 of the most emotionally complicated phases of their individual lives, sleeping may have been the best option for me…or at least pretending to sleep to avoid any conflict, confrontation, or misunderstanding that I might cause!

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I have three reservoirs that need to be constantly filled – physical, emotional, and spiritual.  The physical reservoir is the one that gets the most neglect right now.  I don’t take the necessary time to get my exercise, although my travels do allow me to walk a significant enough distance to at least provide me some physical value.  My emotional reservoir has been abundantly filled over the last few weeks with two different trips North of the Arctic Circle where I was able to find the serenity of God’s magnificent creation.  These trips also allowed me to remind myself of the real beneficiaries of our current business efforts, which provide some emotional grounding for all the struggles that we’ve been going through. 

My spiritual reservoir is very special, because I have a large number of sources that pump into this reservoir and fill it up for me whenever it gets low.  Our church is something special, with commitments to missionaries around the world, commitments to preaching the Word here at the services, and commitments to building within the community starting with the family.  My friends are something special too, lifting me up in their prayers, constantly providing encouragement and words of praise and comfort, and always being timely in the reminders of God’s great love and His constant presence with us.  My parents provided the foundation early in my life for my faith today, and my family today provides me with encouragement and support, as well as the quiet time I need to get into the Word and to take advantage of that reservoir.

It’s rare when all three reservoirs are full.  In fact, there is some form of supporting structure that crosses through the reservoirs that allows me to tap into one when another is getting low.  My spiritual reservoir is the one tapped into the most to flow into the emotional reservoir when I get discouraged.  Sometimes, I also lean on my spiritual reservoir to “pump me up” when my physical reservoir gets low as well.  In thinking this through, maybe that means that my spiritual reservoir is actually the master reservoir that feeds and supports all others and thus my spiritual reservoir is the one I need to protect at all costs.  That would make sense.  That would also track to what is actually happening.

It’s time for me to go focus on that spiritual reservoir…that’s what Sunday’s are for…in fact, that’s what every day is for if I can pause in the chaos and heat of the business battle and remind myself of my real purpose in life and the real provider of all I have.

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I’ve been talking a lot about change lately, mainly because I thrive on it and I’m desperately seeking change, but also because I’m curious as to the affects change has on leaders and those being led, and how the organization responds to change based on the types of leaders any particular organization does have.

Several things are obvious as I think through change:

(1) some folks just can’t handle it, even if its for the good

(2) other folks just ignore it, assuming that all change is temporary and this too will pass

(3) some limited number of folks aggressively embrace it (probably like me), knowing that change brings opportunity and opportunity brings experience and progression

(4) some are cautious about any change, with half being cautiously optimistic and the other half being cautiously pessimistic; both can be good for a change process, but both could also be destructive depending on who the individuals are, what roles they play in the organization, and how much they can influence the water cooler and the executive table with their overt and covert dialogue.

As leaders facilitating any form of change within an organization, it’s imperative that we listen for the whispers occurring that will tell us what our team members feel about, know about, and talk about regarding the changes underway or the changes to come.  Those whispers can be incredibly hard to hear forcing us to develop numerous channels to achieve any level of legitimacy.  But once those channels are mature, the whispers can be a wealth of organizational knowledge and understanding.

Here are some suggestions to open our ears to the whispers:

(1) go to where the whispers are – its rare that the whispers will be right outside our doors, because those that are whispering are typically not pacing those hallways; we find the whispers at the water cooler, at the admin desk, at break area, but rarely if ever on the executive floors

(2) listen with your ears, eyes, and hands – the words don’t often convey the real whispers; the way folks walk, the way they hold their heads, the way they shake hands or hug, or the way they get quiet when someone walks up who they don’t want to hear the conversation, all of those say something and convey a message from the whisper

(3) provide a non-threatening channel of communications for the organization – make it easy for folks to call, to walk in, to invite you out, or to send you a note with insight into the organization…that’s a direct line to the whisper

(4) get to know folks well beyond business – when we talk about family, when we talk about pressures of person finance, when we talk about the pursuit of the first home or buying that new car, then we take the conversation outside of business and to a personal level; once trust is built beyond business, the whispers get louder for some reason

(5) always validate the whisper with a trusted source – much of our time may be spent in better communicating what’s being done, but often times the whispers carry vital organizational dialogue about what needs to change in the change process, and many times, those whispers are right

The whispers in an organization are in essence a part of the organizational dialogue that occurs not in the main hallways but in the nooks and crannies.  These whispers are a form of collaboration for those being impacted by any organizational decision, and I’m convinced that no one is truly isolated from the whispers.  We all hear them, just some of us tune them out to the point that nothing is heard anymore.

One more thing before I end this posting – different types of leaders respond very differently to the whispers.  Some will say, “well they don’t know what’s going on anyway, so its not important.”  Others will say, “that’s just a way for folks to whine, so let’s allow them to whine and then let’s get everyone back to work”.  And finally, a few will say, “I wonder what they’re thinking on the other floors, and I wonder if we can capture that and improve our plan?”

The latter is rare; the former and the middle are unfortunately way too frequent.  Those whispering develop very sophisticated lines of communication as they sense futility or intransigence in the organizational leaders who should be listening to the whispers.  Mastering the whispers is an art; very few do it well; even fewer can whisper back with great responses and great respect from those whispering.

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