8: Sustainable Results
It's one thing to come up with a grand vision, and a completely different one to bring it to reality. Or in some cases, a change is made that actually takes effect, but over time people drift back into their old habits and the benefits are short-lived. Or in other cases, people give it all they've got, but exhaust themselves and deplete resources until they can no longer carry on. Getting short-term results is often straightforward and rather simple. Sustaining them over the long haul is harder and requires sustained energy and focus on making changes permanent.
Enthusiasm is the anticipation of a reward, and this is the reason it's easy to be enthusiastic about undertaking an effort because the reward is greatest at the onset. As we take action, we may have doubts about whether we will get the results we imagined - and this saps enthusiasm. Or if we are successful, the increased level of results becomes the norm and we no longer appreciate the reasons we're getting those results. This, too, saps enthusiasm.
Consider the metaphor of a gold mine: the harder we work at it, the more gold we get out - but the less gold there is still to be had. We are thrilled to be getting large nuggets, but less thrilled when those are exhausted and we get small pebbles, and less thrilled when the pebbles are gone and we're panning for flakes and dust. There may be more gold in flakes and dust than in nuggets, but it takes more effort and the ongoing process is tedious, boring, and utterly enthusiasm-killing.
Managing enthusiasm must be intentional and conscious, and it must be a key priority. There are many skilled hands and brilliant minds who fail because they burn out and drop out along the way to success. Maintain enthusiasm, especially in stressful times, and you will continue toward the goal. Fail to maintain it, and you will likely quit the fight.
Sustainability
Sustainability is about creating win-win situations for others and ourselves. This is the task of the leader, if he is to be successful. To blow people full of smoke and then walk away is doing far less than half the job.
The situations also have to be ongoing, which is very difficult. People can make an extra effort for a short period of time to accomplish a goal - to work around the clock, call in favors, and do unusual things to make something extraordinary happen. They cannot continue to do this for a long period of time, so results that require "extra" effort are not sustainable.
Sustainability is about maintaining energy and enthusiasm. Certain activities feed enthusiasm while others drain it. Some are mixed. The author suggests making a three-column list of your activities and assess which category (gain, lose, or mixed) each activity falls into - and this will give you a sense of the sustainability of your work.
(EN: Her illustration is just a list, without much quantification. I sense that the amount of time is also important. If you have three "gain" and one "lose" activity, that matters not if you spend only 15% on your time on the gains and the other 85% on your losses. Or perhaps the degree to which each thing is valued, or contributes to satisfaction, may weight the results. But then, obsessive quantification can undermine a model.)
She also mentions in passing that interacting with certain people also have an impact on your own energy - whether you gain or lose energy when interacting with another person. (EN: It likely deserves more than a passing mention, as for many people the social aspects of work is more significant to their job satisfaction than the tasks they perform.)
Naturally, your strategy should be to maximize your involvement in the gain list and minimize your involvement in the lose list. The items in the mixed list are a bit more difficult, and you may need to consider them further and consider the aspects of the task. Of course, you will likely never get everything into the gain list, as every job involves necessary tasks that are not engaging - but skew the balance to the positive as much as you can.
Finally, the "sustainability audit" is not something that's once and done but should be periodically revisited because as you take action to gain control, it will change.
Case Study
Another narrative about a CEO who felt he had a company of order-takers and no leaders. This was a result of his own micromanagement - in that he gave his people no opportunity to lead and was even upset when they got the results he wanted by doing things their own way - people were motivated out of fear just to do what he said and not think for themselves.
In terms of his sustainability audit, he listed people instead of tasks, and found no-one in his "gain" category - most were lose, and some were mixed. But in this instance, it wasn't that he needed to avoid people, but merely to let go of his need to control them, and learn to take energy in results rather than procedures, become more patient, and give people room to lead.
In the story, he did this slowly at first, and discovered his people were more focused ,intelligent, and creative than he gave them credit for - they could find their own way to get the outcomes he wanted and did not need micromanagement. The more he trusted in them, the more they were able to do without his direction - and the more they shifted to the positive side of his sustainability audit chart.
Where Sustainability Gets Squashed
All leaders want to spend more time on strategic work, but often find that they are saddled with drudgery. And as such they find they spend more time on low-value activities that they are not very good at than high-value ones that they are good at, and that drive results for their organization. They need to defer, delegate, or ditch a lot of these low-value tasks.
Another enthusiasm-killer is the need to be reactionary - to be constantly confronted with crises to which we respond with the animal state (fight/flight/freeze) instead of using the higher mind to analyze situations and use our higher mind to make an intelligent choice. The problem is that the animal-state response seldom effectively addresses the problem, so rather than getting things permanently off the to-do list, this kind of management creates problems that are recurring and ongoing. You have to get into your high-minded state to effectively and permanently solve problems and keep them from coming back.
Focus: Problems and Opportunities
As previously suggested, the author beliefs we all have a "default role" that was set early in life and that we fall back to whenever we are under pressure or stress - rather than choosing a modality that will be effective. She describes three basic default roles: victim, persecutor, and rescuer.
Problem Focus
Being problem-focused puts us into a negative state: there is a problem, which causes us anxiety, and so we react. The reaction is driven by anxiety, which is an emotion that arises in the limbic system and our reaction does not tap into our frontal cortex. There are a myriad of problems that arise when the "animal brain" takes control and our higher mind shuts down.
The problem focus asks the question of "what's wrong?" followed by "Why is this happening?" It keeps us concretized in present reality. There is only one way to solve a problem, we assume, so as soon as we find something to blame, we attack it in hopes of solving the problem immediately. We are also difficult to satisfy because a problem must be completely solved, and a partial solution is unacceptable because we don't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary dealing with a problem.
This spawns the roles that were previously mentioned:
- Persecutor - The person (or group) that creates the problem
- Victim - The person who suffers from the problem
- Rescuer - The person who attacks the persecutor to save the victim
On an organizational level, a company with a culture of problem-solving often does little more than maintain its current level of performance, decreasing to the degree that they do not solve the problems, and having no forward momentum.
Opportunity Focus
Being opportunity focused is better: there is an outcome we hope to achieve, which causes us to feel attraction, and so we act to move closer to achieving it. Attraction and desire are high-brain emotions that arise from imagining what that future state might be, and engages our frontal cortex rather than the fear reactions of the limbic system.
The opportunity focus asks the question of "what do we want?" followed by "how might we create it?" In this state we are imagining the future. Further, a person in this state generally recognizes there is more than one way to get what he wants, and can make intelligent choices as to how to act. We can also appreciate our progress, because an opportunity must be eventually achieved, and partial success is entirely acceptable - if we don't get it immediately, we can keep working at it.
This spawns three different roles:
- Visionary - The person who recognizes the opportunity
- Beneficiary - The person who will benefit from its attainment
- Guide - The person who coaches others to achieve the outcome
On an organizational level, a company with a culture of opportunity-seeking can experience growth (rather than simply maintaining present state) to the degree to which it succeeds in realizing its vision.
Turning Problems into Opportunities
Our focus is a matter of perspective - whether we place emphasis on the undesirability of the present situation (problem) or our vision of a future state in which things are better (opportunity). The very same situation and set of facts can be interpreted in both ways. It may take some effort to adopt an opportunity focus: to recognize you are in panic-mode over a problem, reframe it as an opportunity, and proceed accordingly.
But turning problems into opportunities takes more than just word-games: you cannot substitute the word "opportunity" for "problem" and expect to achieve results or motivate people. It takes a longer discussion in which you contribute positive thoughts, or ask key questions to get the other person to shift their perspective, to get them to make the transition.
- They will tell you what's wrong with the present, you must get them to describe how they want things to be in the future.
- They will tell you the problem is the most important thing in their life, you must get them to realize it's one priority among many
- They will tell you what's preventing them from escaping, you must provide them the resources to overcome these limitations
- They will have a single-minded focus on a specific solution, you must get them to brainstorm multiple opportunities
- They will demand compete success, you must convince them of the value of just making progress
This is presented as a dialogue between two people, but it can also be an internal dialogue when you are "of two minds" about a situation - your human self is coaching your animal self. In a culture of opportunity, people coach one another.
(EN: I would also suggest that this is prescriptive, but can be used diagnostically: you can tell when a person is trying to manipulate you or get you to act quickly out of panic because they are attempting to push you into a problem-solving rather than opportunity-seeking mode.)
Hero Mode
The author provides another story about an exhausted executive, someone who was constantly going into "hero mode" to solve problems for their company. While this person was widely appreciated for her ability to step in and save the day, she also did not appear to be accomplishing very much aside of helping her firm to maintain the status quo.
The problem becomes compounded when a person gains a reputation for being a talented problem-solver, because people bring them problems and call them into problem situations. And while it is a great relief when the problem is solved, the solution merely restores the status quo rather than moving the organization forward.
Being a hero is also exhausting. You care constantly called into very bad situations, where superhuman effort is needed, and where the results you achieve are not appreciated very much because you didn't create anything, merely fixed what was broken. It's soul-draining work that never ends and never gets easier.
Managers who complain about spending the majority of their time "putting out fires" are also in hero-mode, though in a less dramatic way. The same managers complain about not being able to pursue their agenda or accomplish their goals because of the time they spend in hero mode.
In her story, the hero in question shifted to becoming a facilitator. Rather than stepping in to save the day herself, she began to coach others - to reframe their problems as opportunities, the consider various options to get what they wanted, to proceed in a less frantic and more rational manner, and to be gratified by incremental success.