Is Trust an alternative to Transparency ?

As a leader of leaders you always are out of detailed insights on all work streams / initiatives  / projects within your organization yourself and you lean on your next level leaders to take care of things. However, as a review mechanism to ensure the team is headed in the right direction and has the right level of support, we time to time review the progress, ask of details, challenge things etc. One of the things i have struggled at times is teams / leaders being offended to be introspected, asked for details and pushed to retrospect;  

A common element in all of this has come in my two decades of experience, i.e. "Demand for Transparency is perceived as a sign of Distrust"; I have asked this question to myself multiple times when i have experienced this and today i have this question for you, Is Trust an alternative to Transparency ?

So, is really trust an alternative to transparency and if you trust your team, you should not ask questions and audit things; Well i don't think really trust can be a alternative to transparency, rather transparency is a road which will leads you to build trust; And this works both ways, there are some common pitfalls leaders themselves fall into where their teams find themselves not trusted -

Observing and managing closely multiple leaders now, i have found some  common mistakes made by leaders when they ask for information which leads to be perceived by their leaders as distrust -

• Not building enough context of why details are asked, which also partly is because of not having clear expectation setting 
• Asking question more from a position of authority rather than a position of curiosity
• "Pretending" to be out of ground reality; At times leaders know the reality of why things are the way they are, but still chose to ask the "right" question;  
• Blaming team / leaders if things don't look clear are not progressing as expected
• Not spending enough time to help the team fix for transparency. Let them know what is really needed; Setting clear expectations;

Over 20 years of experience and with last 10 years managing leaders, i have found leaders who embrace transparency and proactive about sharing info even when things might entail tough conversations being trusted a lot more than leaders who believe in only indexing on an update of the end result; So if you are leader of a team and / or manage a large org, be comfortable sharing information; Create processes which gives top leadership, partner teams self serve ways to always be able to review things and suggest changes; The more you do, the more you would be valued as a leader and trusted;

Premortems - New Generation Mantra to Success

Premortems - New Generation "Mantra" to Success

With time as leaders, we have all become "experts" in learning from our mistakes. That's the classic question we ask anyone "What did you learn from your failure ?" & as long as we think we have learned from our failures we believe we have done our part and have better chances to succeed in future.  But does that happen, not for me yet :). The hard reality of a dynamic and everyday changing landscape around us is that neither the problems would be the same nor would the mistakes , so graduating from a school of failures is not anymore alone a recipe to success in future. 

So what do we do, stop learning from our mistakes :), definitely not ! We will continue to make mistakes and get better always learning from them, however in the generation which I call as the "Working Backward Era" your failures has to be Informed failures. You really should be able to predict your failure objectively and be able to plan ahead to avoid and/or manage the failure.  It's like doing a pre-mortem rather than a postmortem to diagnose a disease rather than curing the disease.

Your new "Key" to success 

Doing a pre-mortem of a business strategy, an architecture choice, a change request or an organizational decision is your new mantra to predict failure and as part of the discovery device checkpoints / mitigation steps to minimize chances to failure. In next section we will talk about how to do a pre-mortem -

Doing a Pre-Mortem

Pre-mortem is about fore playing disaster well before it happens, think about worst case and all possible ways in which things could go wrong. Learning back from my Amazon days, we use to do what we call as COE (Cause Of Error) documents for all business impacting incidence, and ask five WHY's,  the idea is to keep narrowing down on the root cause until you get to the root of it. If i take the same analogy to the concept of pre-mortems, its about answering the five HOW's, which is ask your self "How this plan could fail ?" "How could this decision go wrong? " and keep doing it multiple times which will force you to think of all critical reasons where the decision could get wrong.  

I have been practicing this as an important framework for a few years now for all of my critical decision making and i was impressed with the critical thinking and increased deep dive in embraced with my teams. We got lot better !! 

The Bandwagon Fallacy

 The Bandwagon Fallacy

One of my favorite topics and the most commonly experienced fallacy, The Bandwagon Fallacy. While before we get there, lets differentiate between Biases and Fallacy. A lot of people understand them the same or at least think Biases lead to Fallacy, which is actually not true. Being Aware of both helps you make better decision, but there is a clear difference between them; Fallacies are mistakes of reasoning, as opposed to making mistakes that are factual in nature, however Biases are persistent and widespread psychological tendencies that can be detrimental to objectivity to a decision.

I am going to talk through this Fallacy more in context of leadership roles which involves making critical decisions and how we get trapped in one of the most common fallacy at times. 

Let me start with some questions for you,

# How many times you got this argument to make a decision, "Everyone does it this way, so we should do the same"? Or

# Everyone did it X way, looks a popular way of doing things, must be the right way ! 

Picking the popular choice does not always mean, that you picked the right one :)  

Bandwagon comes from the idea in old times where people use to hop on to the Wagon when they found anything trendy. People would have blinders to reason aspects leading to make right decision and instead use popularity or commonness of a decision to chose on. 

As leaders we develop our brands overtime and one of the key contributors to the brand value we build for ourselves is based on the decision we make. Your decision reflect your ability to deep dive, your courage to make right decisions and your ability to own your decisions. It is really about you being at leadership position vs you being a leader. 

A lot of times when making decisions we know we are not making the right decisions but still we intentionally lean to choose the poplar one, any guesses why we do that (lets bring some real and discomforting answers) -

• The popular choices would have the minimum resistance, so its a easy battle to win. No one challenges you.
• We shy away from taking courageous accountability of the decisions we make, when choosing the  popular one, we can always blame the unknown for the popular choice not proving right :)
• We are in a hurry to get rewarded for our decisions. Time to know the uncommon decision proved right would be long, so one has to wait for the reward for the decision to realize unlike for popular choices reward could come in advance as well ! 

Ah, so many problems with trying to make "right" decisions and no real upside, so why should I take so  much pain ? 

Well the choice is yours, you want to be in control of your destiny or let the popular choice decide your destiny. Its also the mark you as a leader you want to create for yourself. As a true leader the biggest contribution you could make  for your team/organization, is to help make the right decisions. So if i think as a leader myself, i don't have an option and cant afford to have my team & organization suffer of me making a wrong decision.

So how do I avoid getting trapped in The Bandwagon Fallacy ?

Well its not that hard, few simple things can help you avoid the trap and make the right decision -

Be Aware - Being aware is the first and the foremost thing. One should be cautious of not being trapped in the fallacy and challenge the decision making process. 

Remove Blinders -  Often a times you or your team would have blinders in the decision making process.  Subconsciously our mind tries to find easy way out and when it finds a popular choices available it will try to put blinders around you to ignore facts. As a leader remove any blinders you/your team has and bring out facts which are key to decision making.

Focus on Input metric - One simple litmus test to find out you being trapped in the Bandwagon Fallacy is you focusing mostly on the output metric. People trapped in this setup would spend disproportionate time talking of the solution and very little to actually no time talking of the problem the solution was found for :)

Do A Pre-Mortem - One of the best way to break cognitive traps is to play "Disaster". Visualize the decision going wrong and try to work backward from it. Find out reasons why would the decision fail which will in turn help with things which you missed considering while making the decision. 

Remember DECISION making is the ultimate power you get as a leader and not being able to use your power right is the biggest failure. Decisions can prove "right" or "wrong", but the way you make decisions leads you to "success/failure" vs "Disaster" ! 

Choice is yours, put on your Thinking Cap !

Being A Mentor

Being A Mentor 

One of my favorite topics, what does it mean becoming a mentor. While the simple answer people would give is , Experience 😊, but is it just that.

Story: I have always been truly inspired by William Campbell, the great coach / mentor of the era. Once a employee in Kodak, later became VP of Marketing and board director for Apple Inc. , CEO for Claris, Intuit, and GO Corporation. Campbell coached some of the greatest leaders of the generation, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad Smith at Intuit, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, John Donahoe at eBay, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. 

Did Campbell had a magic pill for everyone to succeed 😊, what was the real deal ? If you go through his journey with all these leaders, one thing that you would notice, all these leaders are different, very different. 
So what was the secret sauce for his success as a mentor,  One thing he truly believed was mentoring is never about putting greatness in someone, it always about recognizing greatness in someone and helping it emerge. That's what he did with all the people he coached.

Being A Mentor is not about replicating yourself as you are great in something & the other is not. Its also not about giving something to someone - its about getting something out from someone. Most of times today, when we look for a mentor for a engineer , a manager etc, we try to find a great a great engineer or a great manager to mentor believing the mentor will make the mentee as good as him/her. You must differentiate between a trainer vs a mentor, lot of times leaders tend to have expectation of a trainer from a mentor, which may give you tactical wins in a particular setup but sadly does not actually serve the purpose of having a "mentor". It's always about getting someone realize their own greatness and your experience helping him /her to discover and use it appropriately to ones success. 

One of the key aspects for a mentor-mentee relationship to succeed is trust, lot of times i have personally seen the mentor-mentee relationship failing just because there was lack of trust between them. Its the foundation for the overall engagement to succeed.

Morale: Being a mentor is a loaded responsibility, don't take it casually. Its not about your greatness, its about him/her realizing their own greatness with your help. 

Tips:

Myths to Mentorship -

• I will help when he/she asks for it
• I need to make his strengths as of mine
• Mentoring is easy
• My goal is to get him / her hired - promoted

As Mentor, Its always about leaning forward to help!

What does it truly mean -

• Mentoring is helping the individual discover his / her strengths and not understanding your strengths
• As a mentor one needs to also help discover persons weak links and help him/her to offset with strengths he/she has. No one can be good on everything
• Being a true Mentor is not a transaction, it’s a relationship, build affiliation
• Try to learn from your mentees, they can prove to be great teachers for you to be better. We call this reverse mentorship

BullShit Happens

Bullshit happens! 

Lot of times we think how could this person be where he is, he hardly deserves to be where he is, i am way smarter and i am still here :( . We conclude thinking, believe one has great luck ! Let me tell you a story..

Story: There once were two friends, A Bull and a Bird which could just fly a little high to climb Bull's back. They both used to wander around a jungle in search of food. One day the bird sees a very high tree and desires if he could fly and sit at one of the top branches of the tree. 

His friend Bull, thought for a while and told him, "Friend, i can make you fly as high to be at the top of the tree :)". The bird got thrilled with excitement and  gratitude for his friend Bull and said, "Please tell me what i need to do, i can do anything to be at the top of the tree ?". 
Bull smiled, and said, " You have to eat my shit for a week, i can assure you at the end of the week, i will make you fly as high to be at the top of the tree". The Bird firstly thought, why should he eat Bull "shit", I am a respectable bird why should i eat anyone's shit. But, finally the bird thought that if he has to really go that high and sit at the top of the tree, he has no other choice. He convinced himself and agreed, told his Friend Bull, "Friend, if you can really make me fly that high, i am willing to eat your shit. I just have one request, please don't tell this to anyone else". The Bull nodded his head and said, "Don't worry, i will not tell to anyone". Days passed and with every passing day, the Bird ate the shit and was able to fly a little higher. At the end of the 7th day, the Bird finally ate the last part of his friend's shit and flew high to sit at the top of the tree. He was extremely happy sitting at the top and thinking "What as smart and great bird i am :)".

A few days passed and he continued to sit on the top of the tree. One morning, a hunter was out in the jungle hunting. He suddenly spots, the Bird sitting at top of the Tree clearly visible from far. He picked up his gun, aimed at the Bird who was unaware that the hunter saw him from far, and pressed the trigger of his gun. The Bird got shot and came tumbling down of the tree to the ground.

Morale: Bullshit happens, so don't feel bad when you see bullshit happening around you. Be assured, there is a hunter somewhere who is watching and aiming !

My Last Working Day

There is always a saying, First Impression is the Last one! but is it really so :).  I believed it 10 years back, but all my experiences over years made me realize the quote is incomplete in the corporate context we are all in. Lets try to complete it.. 

Story: It’s a story of an employee on his Last Working Day, coming to the office preped to leave his last marking note, has mixed emotions, deep feelings to miss his team , a feeling of accomplishment and full of anxiety/excitement for his next journey.  What does one expect out of this so very important day ? I am sure the answer is just the same for all of us, "One expects the day to be the greatest, full of joy and pride as it marks completion to a journey one started long back, paid a price in terms of hard work, personal sacrifices and a big portion of ones passion to succeed as a team." Isn't is so.

I am sure, took you back to your Last working day's in your careers and make you feel happy remembering good times, good team and most importantly symbolize your own experience with the leaders you worked with.  One of the key events you will clearly remember and will be able to echo will be how you were celebrated by your leaders on the last day. Believe me it's so very important for oneself. 

I have experienced this myself couple of times now :) and what I have realized is I remembered my past leaders lot by how was their interaction with me was on my LWD. It's like their signatures to me they left in my mental landscape.

For us as leaders it could be another employee exiting, but for the employee its end of a journey he/she chose to go with you along, it's a transition for the person and the team, it's about going through a change and getting ready for the next one. Should it not be celebrated !, absolutely a 100% of the time.

Say you boarded a flight from London to New York with an airline. When you enter the flight at the origin, all of them will try to welcome you, make you sit comfortable to start the journey. However, what really stuck me always for the DNA for an airline was how they greeted me while I de-boarded the plane, what really persisted with me is when the crew said at the exit "Thank you for flying with us". An employee departing for the team is as good as end of a hop in the journey for a team and you, as they get ready for the next flight.

It going to be the last thing to remember, its like the desserts you have after your full course meal. Now if all the meal was the greatest, but the desserts was not good, all you will talk to your friends and family is about the desserts and not recommend the restaurant. If say for instance the starters were not the best but deserts were awesome, you still cherish your experience in the restaurant. So, in a team your last impression as a leader is the most lasting impression.

This is the last opportunity for you as a leader to make the experience complete for the employee, your last opportunity to leave your final mark as a leader, your final opportunity to stand as a true leader whom the individual will feel good to be part of his journey :)

Morale: While the First impression is the last one, the last one is the lasting one !

Tips -

• Celebrate the journey of the individual (It's not about cutting a cake or making a speech, it's about truly valuing, letting the individual know of great things he/she did to the team)
• Be insightful on details you value ones contribution
• Talk about the journey of the team and the individual (Do remember, the team is never going to be the same team anymore, as any one person put in a team or pulled out from the team, changes the team)
• Thank truly and enough, don’t BS
• Do remember, it's about you & your signature and not about individuals image.