"Rounding Third" #12: "My Black Playmate Next Door"

In 4th grade, my family moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, an all-white NYC suburb.  In my senior year, Glen Ridge voted 90% for Goldwater. My house backed up on an all-black neighborhood in the town next-door, Montclair.  Our rear fence literally demarcated segregation.

When I began playing in my back yard with the black child from Montclair whose home abutted ours, our next door neighbor called my dad.  It was not appropriate, he asserted, for me to be playing with that black “so and so” in our neighborhood.  My father told him to “pound sand”.  

That began my social justice journey.  In college, I led the movement to integrate my fraternity, I was inspired by Martin Luther King who spoke on campus and I marched with our black community when he was assassinated.  While in law school, I worked for both Newark and Camden Legal Services and read a great deal of black literature during down time in the Army Reserves. I admired Muhammad Ali’s stand against the draft.  As a young associate in a corporate law firm, I regularly staffed the firm’s poverty law office in West Philadelphia. I advocated to our partners that integrating women and blacks into our law firm was not only right but made economic sense.  I was proud when assigned to mentor our first black lawyer, now a college president. I have supported diversity on governing boards I’ve joined, and in organizations where I worked; and I have volunteered for 40 years with a social service agency serving minorities.  

I patted myself on the back.  

Then, a few years ago, I attended a racism conference which included self-awareness exercises.  I later read a book about white privilege.* I began to understand – for the first time – just how much  deep-seated institutional racism, poverty and white privilege have negatively impacted our fellow black citizens.  On a personal level, I recognized my own buried biases and realized how often white privilege had benefited me over my life at the expense of minorities.  I began to wonder what this revelation meant for organizational leadership.

I concluded that the calls of well-intentioned leaders for board, executive and employee diversity are not enough.  Neither is hiring a minority person to a top HR position. Recruiting people of color (and other minorities) to board and executive positions isn’t either.  White leaders must first learn about and appreciate the underlying causes and effects of racism, poverty and white privilege in this country, and they must honestly identify and confront their own subliminal biases.  Without these foundational understandings, there will be no personal leadership commitment to, or basis for, transforming organizations to eliminate discrimination and capture the full value that comes from a diverse board, executive team and creative workforce.  

That transformation will require an organization-wide culture change, one that will take commitment, understanding and persistence.    

* Debby Irving, Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race (2014)

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #11: The Element of Surprise

The executives around the table early that Monday morning bent in, listening intently to the CEO.  He was recounting a horrible mistake over the weekend which cost a patient’s life. When he finished, one-by-one his administrative team went into damage control:  what and how to report to regulatory authorities, how to handle the press when the word got out, how could such a thing happen, who was to blame, has the insurance carrier been notified, what did legal counsel say, how should this be communicated to the board, how to deal with fall-out from the patient’s family.  Everyone had clicked automatically into a liability mitigation mindset.

Everyone, that is, except the CEO.  Suddenly, he exclaimed “Stop!” After a pause, pregnant with anticipation, he added calmly and with emphasis, “Forget liability.  Our liability will take care of itself. Right now we have to talk to the family, tell them we screwed up and let them know we care.”  And, they did.

Another hospital CEO realized early on that he had inherited years of negative baggage when he assumed his new role.  He gathered his employees in the auditorium and asked them to write down on note cards their fears, regrets and complaints.  He collected the notes in a box and led the employees in a silent procession outside where he conducted a burial. Into the ground went the box and, symbolically, the baggage.  Now they were ready to build together a new, positive culture.

To make a similar point, another CEO led his employees out the door one morning after they had punched in on the time clock.  Under his arm was the time clock. He threw the clock into the pond in front of the hospital. He was effectively telling his employees that he trusted them to do their important jobs and that was more important than micro-managing their comings and goings.  

These stories have common elements.  The leaders used the element of surprise for an impactful purpose to help their employees and thus the organization.  They used the tactic rarely, thereby increasing the likelihood that their employees would remember the experience and act on it.  They thought through use of the tactic in advance and executed in a serious manner to project authenticity so that no one could misinterpret it as a silly exercise.  Finally, the exercise did not embarrass, demean or intimidate anyone.
 

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #10: Sixty One and Counting

This is the final of three blogs looking at lifetime leadership lessons.

Ages 61 to 70:  I went to Italy without my computer when I was 60.  I could get emails, texts and calls on my phone, but didn’t.  My wife and I were on the go and having too much fun to be bothered.  When I returned, business had gotten on just fine without me.

This got me to thinking that I wasn’t actually indispensable.  I had just thought I was. I had impressed myself, rationalizing that my work (and, by implication, I) was needed and, therefore, important. Outstanding performance reviews and worthy results were not my exclusive province.  Most of my superiors and peers also worked hard and smart. People moved laterally to other organizations, took new positions elsewhere and retired. Yes, some even died. Healthy organizations had survived, even thrived, without them as new talent moved in.  The best leaders, understanding they were replaceable, served as enlightened caretakers entrusted by their organizations as stewards during their tenures until well-groomed successors took over in smooth transitions. Those leaders were defined not by their positions, but by their character.  

71 and Beyond:  If your life is defined by your job, recognizing that you can be replaced can be deflating, even depressing.    Fortunately for me, recognition that I was replaceable in my early 60’s was liberating. It was as if I had lifted my head at daybreak from my keyboard, switched off my phone, looked out my window and saw a bright new sunrise of opportunity.  Rather than hide my plans to leave my employer as I neared age 65, I let everyone know.

Some executives who have been defined by their jobs enter “retirement” without a plan.  But, with nothing else to do, golf can get old fast.  Instead, I recommend what my mentor friend John calls “re-fire-ment” ; i.e., getting fired up to take advantage of your new found personal freedom.  

Before committing to anything new, spend a “sabbatical” year of discovery.  Read and reflect on subjects of intellectual interest. Try new professional and leisure activities.  Identify new endeavors that will capitalize on your best leadership skills. Challenge yourself in new ways.  Resolve to achieve a meaningful personal purpose. Enjoy life on your own terms.

Seize the lifetime opportunity to become truly indispensable to yourself and your loved ones.

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #9: Thirty-One to Sixty

This is the second of three blogs looking at leadership lessons learned over my career.

Ages 31 to 40:  These were the formative years of legal practice when I chose health care over securities as a practice specialty and built my firm’s health care practice.  I learned how to: develop a business strategy (I wrote a business plan - unheard of for lawyers at the time!); develop and market a practice differentiated from our competition; recruit and manage  talented support staff; establish a reputation for client service and trust; and capture administrative efficiencies. Looking back, it all came down to value creation for clients and my law firm. Value creation for customers became a theme essential to leadership.   

Ages 41 to 50:  During these years my health practice grew and I then joined a large university hospital in a business capacity to help develop a regional health system.  Recruiting talent to support this initiative was crucial. I found that identifying smart future stars with great personalities and strong values, selling them on partnering to achieve a dynamic vision of growth and excellence and then cultivating their personal development and careers was a winning formula.  Great people are often destined for great things. So, when they were promoted or left for better jobs, it became an occasion for celebration rather than protestations of disloyalty or cause for regret.

Ages 51 to 60:  The CEO of our health system, which was growing in a very competitive market, told our senior team that “we don’t need to become the biggest, we just need to be big enough to be the best.”  As I helped executed the growth strategy, in a kind of on-the-job MBA mode, I realized that growth for growth sake, without a focused purpose and plan, is a formula for failure. Having the best product or service, top talent, best management, superb strategy execution, phenomenal customer impact and strict accountability are more important than volume or growth increases.   Scale is important, but only if it yields profitability. Over-expansion is folly.

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #8: Zero to Thirty

As I look to new beginnings at age seventy, this is the first of three blogs looking at leadership lessons learned over the decades of my life.

Ages 0 to 10:  I was, essentially, an only child.  I had loving parents and friends, but my siblings, much older, were in high school and college during my formative years.  I spent a lot of time alone but wasn’t lonely. I engaged in a wide range of creative play, building baseball stadiums with plastic bricks, pitching nine inning games against the barn door and conducting Olympic track and field and swimming events on my vibrating electric football field.  Later, I enjoyed using games, some I invented, for ice breaking, morale boosting, stress relief and team building for my leadership teams. They were effective in building camaraderie and a common sense of purpose.

Ages 11 to 20:  When my dad died early in my second decade I escaped into a hardworking, competitive mode, striving to be tops in Boy Scouts, athletics and academics.  By age twenty, I knew that hard work can produce excellence. I also realized that: competition for the sake of self-winning only, rather than achieving a higher purpose, can be self-destructive; and competition, which gets stiffer as life goes on, is also about losing. Learning how to deal emotionally with loss and minimizing the chance of loss while taking risk are important leadership skills.

Ages 21-30:  My third decade was spent in formalized and on-the-job learning in law school and a law firm and trying hard to balance achievement in those environments with a new wife and first child.  Focus, discipline and critical thinking became valuable assets achieved too often at the expense of my family, meaningful leisure, spirituality and other intangibles which make life truly joyful.  Looking back, I can’t believe I paid that price. While focus, discipline and critical thinking are, indeed, crucial leadership traits, great leaders apply them in all aspects of life, not just their business lives.  Doing so yields emotional intelligence and empathy and sets an example for people they lead.

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #7: Is 'Busy-ness' Good Business?

We called him “Busy Timmy” growing up.  Our second son always had something to do, catching frogs, batting practice, playing his guitar, reading books.  

Many executives are the same.  They bounce from meeting to meeting, one-on-one sessions with subordinates, check-ins with higher-ups, lunches with key stakeholders, speaking engagements, confidential calls scheduled weeks in advance, cell-phone calls from the sidelines of a daughter’s lacrosse game.   I know. I regularly dictated memos to my assistant from my car on the way to work at 6:30 a.m. and finished calls with business associates at 9 p.m. in front of my garage door.

If you are busy, it’s because what you do is important, right?  Or, is it that you are important?   And, I suggest you ask, is this “busy-ness” really effective?

In between bites of a hotdog at a ball game I asked my friend, Ed, a 50-year-old, rising executive at a large health system, what he thought was the single most important leadership trait.  He answered immediately, “Life/work balance”. I was skeptical, having heard that bromide often. So, I pressed him.

“Well,” he offered, “If you spend more time with your wife and family and pursue personal interests, it forces you to keep it simple at work.  You can’t over-process matters and you make crisp decisions. I can’t tell you how many people I observe who are busy from early to the end of the day and accomplish little.  Keeping it simple also sends a positive message to your staff about the importance of life/work balance and being efficient. And, it keeps you healthy.”

I would add to this wise counsel that planning un-busy time at work gives you time to think and plan.  And, time to listen and keep in touch with your organization, if your door is open to others and you walk the floors.  

“Rounding Third” Leadership Series #6: Getting Great Ideas Done

There’s nothing more frustrating for a leader than to see a great strategic idea die.  

Great ideas frequently fail.  No one follows up. Layers of approvals delay implementation.  The cost is too high. Attention is diverted to other priorities.  Everybody is already too busy. The list goes on.

When ideas fail, nothing happens.  Perhaps inattention forced the idea into oblivion.  Or, people conveniently forgot about it, retreating to their “day jobs”.  Reasons (read: “excuses”) for the failure are conveniently conjured. There is no post mortem to figure out what really happened.  

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Insightful leaders avoid those pitfalls by taking four critical steps to bring their ideas forward.

They cultivate up front Critical Thinking.  The leader and senior staff, sometimes with outside help, take time off from normal distractions to evaluate the idea from all angles, identifying and evaluating its most critical aspects, both positive and negative.  The leader encourages and is open to honest debate. Early passion and excitement about the idea’s potential are tempered with cold, objective, realistic analysis.

Next, if the idea holds water, a Good Process is designed.  This is an end-to-end set of steps that will translate the idea into action, through to fruition, on an expedited basis.  My mantra on this is simple: “Good Process Yields Good Results; Bad Process … well, you finish the phrase”.  

Then, the leader finds someone to “Own” the Process, along with the leader, and get the job done.  This person is well-respected, knows the organization, has the right skill sets for the project and has ready access to the leader.  The leader empowers the process owner with the people, technology and funding to succeed.

The final ingredient is Accountability to the organization through the board, executive and senior leadership.  The key question to ask throughout is whether the new initiative is likely to create value with desired positive outcomes on a sustained basis for the organization’s customers, the people it serves and other stakeholders.  If not, drop it.

But, if the answer is still a “yes” at the end of the process, then you have an idea worth pursuing.  It might just be a great one.