One of the most common frustrations that I hear from my executive coaching clients often centers around the need for change and to remain a high performance organization even when to outsiders (and some insiders) there is a sense that the organization is doing very well. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great stated that the enemy of great is good and the experience of my clients reflects precisely that.

Often we focus in on the ability of the leader and the leadership team to create a sense of urgency to support and drive the change. This is easy to create when the organization is losing money and market share in a very public way. But how do you create it in a profitable and stable organization. Waiting for the crisis to become more evident is not always a good plan (ask music stores about iTunes or Blockbuster about NetFlix). The key comes down to creating a meaningful sense of urgency within the organization.

Weighing in on this issue is respected Business thought lead John Kotter in his recent book “A Sense of Urgency“. To assist his readers, Kotter discusses three distinct states: complacency, false urgency and true urgency.

Complacency is the known quantity that we all have bumped up against and have to deal with in our own way as it blocks, both actively and passively, action designed to move the organization and the culture forward.

False Urgency is often the unrecognized issue. Because the people involved often are very active it is frequently mistaken for true urgency. These characteristics lead to high levels of activity with little productivity attached to it . . . where people tend to be reactive and defensive rather than proactive and curious, and lack clear direction or planning in their actions. This leaves them feeling overworked and frustrated which is not conducive to achievement and positive change that is being sought.

True Urgency is that rare state where people are fully engaged with a deep personal connection to the issue. It is easy to engage the mind with a well presented and factual business case. To create the deep personal connection you need to engage the heart of the person. This is best accomplished through the use of a story or example which creates a personal attachment to goals. It also creates a strong personal motivation that ties the individual to achievement of goals. It is stories that enroll the person in the desired goals and compels them to action.

Kotter provides a number of tools that can be used to help make this transition and to identify times when complacency and false urgency exist. The bottom line, you as a leader need to act with true urgency each and every day!

Bringing all this back to our executive coaching clients,means that they need to be self aware and curious about their own role. It can be easy to personally feel that once a particular task is done that the foot can be lifted from the gas pedal for a bit and a deep breath is in order. This is often observed as rationale for feeling that the worst is over and that one’s guard can be let down. Are you guilty of the same thing in your position or in managing your career? What messages are you sending to the organization that may be undermined by your behavior? How are you shortchanging yourself and your organization if you don’t act with a sense of true urgency each and every day?

This is where the executive coaching relationship can have its maximum impact and value for each of our clients. The ability of our executive coaching to support you to hold you, the client, accountable for creating true urgency. The ability and to enhance your self-awareness as leader in ways that avoid self-subvertion, but rather to be  in  true service of moving your and your organization’s agenda powefully forward.

For many of our executive clients the biggest learning has come from identifying the blocks that they create for themselves and as a result creating strategies for overcoming them . . . establishing true urgency in their lives. Once these blocks are removed you,  the client,can quickly begin reaping the competitive advantage, both personally and corporately. This comes from living and acting with a sense of true urgency!

I have just one question to leave with you, “What would you be able to create in your personal and professional life by coming from a place of true urgency in all you do each and every day?

“I can’t believe those people. They just don’t get it!” was the response of my executive coaching client, Gerry, who heads up a key line of business with a leading defense contractor. I typically start off coaching conversations with a check-in question. After listening to Gerry further, I asked “So what’s in the anger my friend?” For a moment there was silence on the phone. I had learned long ago to always let silence do the heavy lifting! “Hmmm . . . , ” he expressed and then went on, “I really resent the fact that we had agreed on what had to be accomplished last week, and they haven’t even started on it. It’s simply damned unacceptable. I really feel let down. I could tear my office door off the hinges right now. I’m going into a meeting with them shortly and I think I’m going to straighten them out . . . make them new rear ends if I have to!”

“Well before you charge on in, are you game to take a few minutes to step back and take a look at what’s happening with you right now?” I asked. Gerry, to his credit had always been very open to self-exploration and said “Yeah, let’s go for it coach?” I love his honesty and candidness.

“So, if your boss was this angry with something you did or didn’t do, and stormed into a meeting with you having the same intent, how would you react?” In his typically succinct and earthy way he quickly responded, “Well I’d probably hang back, not offer much and look for an opportunity to get the hell out of there!”. “Given that, then what would you predict your people will do when you give them the old what for?” “Got it!”, he said with a bit of a snicker.

“So coach, I’d like to hear what the heck you think?” Gerry asked. “Sure. First of all, it’s not about them, it’s about you Gerry! Anger is actually a gift, not a weakness. It only becomes a weakness when this strength is taken too far. Kind of  like manure in the system that gets clogged up. Need I say more? Does that make sense?” “Completely.” Gerry responded.

“So, having said that, what’s in just enough anger for you?” I asked. “Well, for me,” Gerry shot back, “It certainly gets me up and running. Actually a source of energy. It sort of acts like a catalyst for making things happen. Come to think of it, if I become more aware of it in the moment I can actually use it to be more effective, otherwise it can get in my way. I think I prefer the former. Any thoughts on what I can do to regulate myself when the old fuse gets a tad short?”

“That’s a great question. Why don’t we take a quick moment and brainstorm some approaches?” “Ok”, Gerry said, “Maybe I should start not to sweat the small stuff as they say. Hell, if I learn how to better spot it when it shows up, I’d be better able to dial down the intensity a tad, not shoot first and figure out what I shot after the fact!”

“I love what you’ve come up with.”, I said. “You might also consider talking yourself down, for example saying to yourself, hey, this is no big deal, can I put this issue on the backburner for the time being? Perhaps I should give this some thought before I shoot. Why don’t I take  a couple of minutes to just let every muscle in my body, from my toes right up to the top of my head, just relax and decompress. You do whatever works for you.”

“So, when you do walk into the meeting after decompressing, how do you need to be?” I asked. “As opposed to what I would do?”, he responded. “Yes, exactly,” I retorted. Gerry then continued, “Probably be calm, more focused on them rather than me. I need to be honest with them in a respectful way, by sharing what my thoughts are in a fairly specific way, how I feel about it all in terms of its importance to me and what it is I think we should consider doing about it.”

“That sounds like a superb approach, but what might you do even before that?” I asked. “I think I know what you’re driving at. Rather than adversely pre-influencing them in a way that they think they’re getting my orders, it might be a hell of a lot better if I asked them collectively and individually what they thought, felt and wanted regarding the issues at hand, and then do the former. Yeah, that’d work a lot better. Probably generate a lot more information and data that would help us make much more informed decisions. Man, that’s my game plan!”

“What are some other potential payoffs of your taking this approach? I asked. “Obviously, it’ll be a heck of a lot safer place them, we’ll build more trust, they’ll feel heard, buy in will clearly go up, and the solutions we collectively come up with will  probably be a lot more effective as a result.” said Gerry.

“So what’s the take away for you my friend?” I asked in bringing our meeting to a close. “Well I guess it’s that I can use my anger in service of myself, my folks, our customers and our organization, or I can quite frankly let it control me and then blow it!” “If it is the latter,” I asked, “What might be the adverse consequences for you?” “I don’t want to even think about it . . . too scary!” Gerry concluded. “May the force be in you my friend with the upcoming meeting. I know you’ll be more than successful!” I offered.

Does your temper rise at times and get away from you?  Do you find that under stress your anger, anxiety, fear and/or shame show up a tad too quickly?  Do you even notice it?  If you do notice, what do you do with it?  I’d love to hear your insights and experiences. Take care.

Any transition to a new role, while exciting and an acknowledgement of what the organization thinks of us, is a time of anxiety for the newly transitioning leader.

A few of the common errors of a new role leader include trying to do too much too soon, failure to understand the de facto culture/sub culture, and/or misinterpreting the expectations of their superior. Danger lurks ahead….. in the form of mistrust by others, leader fatigue, compounding anxiety with over preparation, and creation of an unsafe environment for employees. As stress intensifies for the new role leader, can you really be making the best decisions for the organization as a whole, your team and yourself?

A recent research article from the University of Washington reported the findings of imposing stress on rats. It took only one uncontrollable stressful episode to greatly effect the behavior of a rat. It actually took the rat several days to recover from the effects of the stressor and return to normal decision making ability. The learning of the stressed rat control group was delayed. As well, this group was unable to readily adjust to alterations made in the imposed stress exercise. Stress altered the ability to learn, the ability to remain agile, and the ability to make decisions. How does this convert to humans? Well, the scientific community has been using rats as study participants for years…there must be something to their selection.

As I look to newly transitioning leaders whom I have coached over the past 5 years, I relate to the news of the above study. Stress has a tremendous effect on performance levels and at a time when a leader is under the microscope and readily judged by others. Clients have shared with me how this has manifested for them and projected in all areas of their life. Many suffer from extreme sleep disturbances and/ or dietary challenges.

I have worked with leaders who admitted that they had hardly slept in two months and leaders who existed on a pop and pizza diet. It is rewarding as a coach to support leaders in these circumstances and be part of the process that allows them to gain back a feeling of balance and control……rewarding them with restful nights rather than a continuum of wide eyed 3 AM note taking sessions. With invested and targeted support, these leaders can bring about greater contribution to the organization in a shortened time frame as they learn to manage their stress, embrace the transition, garner early credibility and move powerfully forward with their leadership.

What is the cost to an organization of not readily investing in the transitioning new role leader? As this is an area of continued research for me I repeatedly see transitioning phases of 14 – 24 months in executive level roles. More complex portfolios can exceed this timeframe. This is not just about the leader’s transition. One must take into consideration the transitional impact on those who surround the leader and the cost to the organization when their performance falters as a result of how the new role leader shows up for others.

What is your personal experience in a recent transition, either as the leader or as a direct report to a newly transitioning leader? While you are drinking from a fire hose, what soothing techniques have you found that help to manage anxiety and stress for you? In hindsight, how do you feel your decision making during a recent leadership transition may have been impaired?

“I’m responsible for Strategy.” said Mike Payne, General Manager – Strategy & Portfolio with Shell Gas & Power, while on a Continental flight from Houston, Texas to Seattle, Washington. We just finished introducing ourselves and had an interesting discussion about organizational strategy, employee loyalty and corporate cultures and how they positively or negatively affect organization performance, particularly during these white water times. The whole concept of corporate strategy, its development and implementation have always fascinated me. Having led and facilitated strategic change both in organizations in executive roles and as an executive coach/consultant, I’ve always believed that strategy development, which of course is critical, is really where “the rubber hits the sky.” Strategy implementation on the other hand is where “the rubber hits the road”! The latter is where real management change takes place. I’ll come back to this shortly.

Strategy development is critical, but my experience and observation is that most senior leaders would simply rather chew through their left arm than spend the usual inordinate amounts of time working through a long laborious strategic management process facilitated by high priced consulting firms over many months (even years). The end result is a strategic document so massive that one could hit a moose between the eyes with it and drop him right on the spot. Typically, along with the other ‘pressing demands’ that await them back at the ranch, the participants never truly want to revisit these documents no matter how well initially intentioned.

So what’s the alternative? Most will agree that organizations have to have a clear vision and supportive strategy! In these turbulent times being faced with imperfect organization systems, people and the world around us, there are truly no right answers. But there is a way to accelerate the development of powerful strategy with the foregoing imperfections. By utilizing full involvement of the whole organization from top to bottom you will be able to maximize understanding, ownership, commitment of the people that have to make it happen (not the executive) and quickly increase the probability of the organization’s strategic advantage and success.

This means moving forward in a way that fully involves the organization’s people while driving up the collective dissatisfaction of all involved with the organization’s current state of affairs and producing substantive clarity around what improvement would look like. Collectively determine the first steps toward moving quickly and powerfully forward on that vision and clarify the capabilities that need to be developed to accelerate the changes needing to take place rapidly thus resulting in the organization overpowering the ever present inertia that resists any planned change.

Now that your organization has a quick and well developed strategy it’s ready to move forward! Whoa Nellie, not so fast. Remember that inertia piece previously referred to. Well it has been temporarily disabled and if you don’t exploit it quickly it will solidly re-establish its dysfunctional presence. You must start to quickly redesign your organization to assure you successfully achieve your organization’s new dream: the strategic plan. The focus now is on redesigning and changing your organization in ways that will enable it to quickly realize the new strategy. This requires you to revisit your organization’s current structure, systems, staffing, competencies, leadership style and the way we do things around here (often referred to as your organization’s culture, those principles that guide how people are expected to work with each other and the organization’s customers/clients).

These key areas must be revisited and fundamentally changed creating full alignment with and producing the strategic results planned for. Otherwise, as Edward Deming put it, every system is perfectly designed for the results it produces! So if you want different results, i.e. achieving the organization’s new strategy, then by definition you must change each of the foregoing components of your organization or it will simply continue to create the results produced to date and perhaps further deterioration of same. Oh, the dangers of being an executive in this day and age! No wonder these positions are affectionately known as ulcer jobs!

Here’s a small insight, the most important aspect of the foregoing is not the strategic planning, strategic management and change in management processes, but rather having the ‘leadership cajones’, courage and confidence to make it all happen! This requires a very unique leader and these are truly a very rare breed, thus being paid the big bucks as they say. However, if the desire is squarely there, then surrounding oneself with the right team who first prepare to invest in themselves working from the inside out, rather than the outside in (i.e. strategic planning, management and change) then you have a fighting chance of success.

This is really all about the CEO and his/her team being different individually and as an executive leadership team as opposed to simply doing things differently. Otherwise, as was previously inferred, the probably of bringing about needed change will be minimal. If anything it will probably become worse. Being different at both the individual and leadership team levels necessitates having the courage to work with highly seasoned executive coaches, being ready to engage in quick and powerful diagnostics, and preparing to first make the personal changes necessary to assure that the new strategy truly sticks to the wall and doesn’t just slide away. Otherwise the whole strategic management process will be an enormous waste of time, money and organizational energy. And if this is the case, it will clearly contribute to executive candidacies for transfer outside the organization!

What feelings surface for you on this subject? What to you think about it? What is it that you want to do with the information? I’m most interested in hearing from you: the good, the bad and the ugly!

“Those guys just don’t get it!”, “I’m thinking of going elsewhere given the new assignment they’ve forced me to take!”, or “This place is a zoo and no one knows which way is up or down!”. Often when engaged in coaching these and a myriad of other perspectives get voiced loudly and clearly. Although many of these clients don’t know it, being ‘stuck’ in a particular perspective or point of view is more common than not. They’re simply stuck because of his/her not being able to see ‘the blinding glimpse of the obvious’. With commitment from the client to ‘want to break through this’ (usually because of the associated pain and discomfort) and powerful coaching they typically make strong breakthroughs quickly and effectively.

So how’s this done? It’s simply a matter of coaching the client to step back and begin looking at the same situation but from different perspectives. Reviewing and clarifying these perspectives, and then making a choice that is ‘integrative’, that is taking in the needs of those significant other stakeholders and his/her own needs, creates a ‘win-win’ resolution and then ‘makes it happen’ as Kathy Dannemiller and Jake Jacobs would put it. Easier said than done, but then that is where a highly experienced senior executive coach comes in, particularly for senior executives, individual contributors and hi-potentials constantly wrestling with those organizational concerns where there is never a ‘right answer’.

A universal phenomenon that exists for us all is that we’re always in choice no matter the circumstances that face us. We’re in choice in the morning when we wake up. “What will I wear?”, “What will I have for breakfast?”, “How will I get to work?”, “Do I want to go to work?”, “How do I want to feel right now, today, tomorrow?”, “What attitude do I want to take toward my organization, boss, peers, sub ordinates, team members, customers/clients, family members, etc.?” The list is simply never-ending.

Another universal phenomenon (oh, they’re limitless), is that for every choice there is a consequence . . . good, bad or ugly! That is why knowing this information is key to our true success and fulfillment as children, parents, team members, employees, leaders and community members. Always consider your thoughts, wants and feelings (in equal amounts) before choosing. If the results impact others, always share with them what the foregoing are for you, and then also ask them what they think, want and feel about the same issue and use this collective information to make choices that satisfy.

Heck, even our dogs are in choice. Say that again! OUR DOGS ARE ALSO ALWAYS IN CHOICE! Let me give you a for example. In June of 2008 we adopted two new rescue Brittany Spaniels through the American Brittany Rescue Association. I drove Skya in from Nebraska, and drove Woody from Montana. Both were to replace two rescue Brittany’s who had passed away from old age a few months prior. Back to being in choice. Skya had been picked up off the street and was about to be euthanized in a Kill Shelter. Fortunately, someone stepped in at the last minute who rescued her turning her over to the American Brittany Rescue Association, and we picked her up a month later. In the interim, in that she came off the street and no one knew her real name, she ended up being called Sidney.

Of course, when I picked her up she did not respond to her assigned name. So on the drive back to Vancouver, BC from Nebraska I called Bev, my wife and fearless CEO of RWBA, and asked that she set up a meeting with Jerry Wong, a well known human and animal psychic. Jerry had worked very closely with Beau, our previous male Brittany who had passed away of cancer. The objective: have Jerry connect with Sidney.

Well to make a long story short, he did it. Initially, after some preliminary work with her he was not able to get a specific name from her. He worked hard at connecting, but to no avail. Then Bev said, “Why don’t you ask her what she wants to be called?” so Jerry went back to work with her. He simply put her in choice! She responded by showing Jerry a huge night sky with a plethora of stars throughout. Bev and I immediately shouted out the obvious: “Star! “ Jerry asked her and she communicated no. You’ve no doubt already guessed that she had chosen and communicated through images to Jerry that her name is Skya! When this was actually said out loud she immediately reacted by jumping up excitedly and running around our family room. I’m getting ‘verpluncked’ just sharing this with you. Yes, even our sweet Skya was and is always in choice. Thank you Jerry for coaching our little gal!

So there you have it, we, all of use, are always in choice! So what was the blinding glimpse of the obvious for you, your team and your organization in the above? I would love to hear your thoughts and gain your perspective. Thank you for taking the time to read this.