Successfully Moving to an Executive Role - A Primer

Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Dawna Jones Abstract: New executives are failing fast as ­companies transform from one operating system to another. ­Business conditions require thinking agility and c­ onsiderable comfort with ambiguity in the context of complexity and ­exponential speed of innovation. Higher personal mastery and leadership consciousness, backed by a broader perspective, flexibility, and expanded mindset, is r­ equired to rise above the crutch of authority; it demands more ­responsible decision making and leadership.

Keywords: Complexity, Consciousness, Decision making, Executive role, Leadership, Uncertainty, Success

Introduction: The Call to Higher Levels of Executive Leadership Dawna Jones, Insight Out Consulting Inc. (From Insight to Action), conducts practical workshops on advanced decision-making skills and mentors leaders navigating new territory.

Adept at perceiving the deep dynamics sourcing results, Dawna’s insights provide leaders with the leverage to solve wicked problems.

She is exploring how VR–AR can restore personal to workplace health.

Podcaster and provocative speaker, she authored Decision Making for Dummies , contributed to The Intelligence of the Cosmos by Ervin Laszlo, and hosts the Insight to Action podcast.

The future of workplaces isn’t what you see today.

While you are reading, the future is unfolding at lightening speed. The context and conditions you see now change constantly. You need a growth mindset, love of learning, and athletic level fitness to know when to stop, ­reflect, self-examine, reinvent yourself, then move up a level or two in decision-making awareness and leadership consciousness.

Your mission is, and it is voluntary, to accept the challenge of exponential growth personally and professionally to match the pace of exponential companies, ­exponential change at quantum speed.

Buckle up. It is a glorious ride where you become more than a leader, more than an executive. You become your full potential in alignment with your higher p ­ urpose. By choosing the challenge, you enter a new level of human potentiality, where the new consciousness, the ethics, the mindset, and the compassion bring new hope to the world of work and life at home.

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role If your life has involved overcoming difficulty, you enter the journey with some advantage in that if you have faced ­intense adversity and have become a better ­ human being as a result, you have learned to bounce forward; be resilient.

Business must tap into the collective intelligence residing in companies and in the social network of suppliers, customers, and communities to use adversity to advantage.

Caring and workplace culture is the strategic advantage.

With that vision in mind, here is an overview of what lies ahead.

Surfing Exponential Change While the business culture struggles to adapt, unless it is designed for agility, it is the role of the leader as an executive to pay attention to how outside conditions impact pressure on employees. Not paying attention results in companies creating costs of stress-related illness, failure to innovate, and an underlying inability to adapt.

Making the Mindset Shift Intellectually, psychologically, and s­ ocially the executive role requires much higher consciousness, an expanded worldview, and leadership not relying on being in a position of authority. Thinking flexibly and developing conscious perception mark the distinction between how executives functioned in the past and what level of ­personal mastery is essential to design the future.

Leading Yourself through New Territory Context changes from concrete and more predictable at the operational levels to ambiguous and a mix of concept plus ­ concrete. From big picture down to per­ sonal leadership, how do the forces of today shape your decisions, your moral ­ and ­ethical compass? Or your focus: fear, or creativity? How can remaining aware of the emotional-social workplace environment inform the impact you seek to make in an executive role?

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Developing Character How do you use what you experience to ­create work and workplaces that hold meaning and respect for diversity of opinion, and perspective? How do you ­ transcend the biases that steer many unaware decision makers and companies into trouble?

Uber’s CEO and internal culture show the reputation and social cost of operating as if integrity was not relevant. As such it is a classic example of what not to do.

Will you choose to alter your relationship with power as an intrinsic quality instead of power over others? Will your leadership steer the company to be a force for good?

Do your mistakes and failures make you better or bitter? What guides your ethical and moral compass?

Working with resilience as a beacon for leadership and learning enables you to make a real difference in the lives of ­people who have given up for one reason or another.

Conscious Leaderships Skills The future of work is not about having power and control over others but of being able to work with others on a peer-to-peer basis. You may wonder what the word consciousness is doing here. Consciousness, as systems scientist Ervin Laszlo defines it, is the determining factor of how we see the world, of who we are, what the world is and what we can do in the world. It is the ­mindset—the totality of pre-assumptions, ­assumptions, intuitions and information about the world, each other, the possibilities, dangers and opportunities.1 Equate consciousness with mindset, and the package of beliefs, intuitions, ­insights, and more, which, in a lovely biological-psychological mash-up, directs your ­decisions, perceptions, and quality of your 1

Podcast conversation: http://insighttoaction. libsyn.com/-toward-a-new-business-leadershipconsciousness

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role relationships. The skill set weaves throughout the conversation here but culminates in an understanding of how to level up your growth. While the world might be spinning out of control, you will have control over how you respond, see things and not miss key insights that deliver accuracy.

Fortune Favors the Prepared John had his eye on an executive-level position from the time he’d started with the company. As the old guard retired, spots were finally opening up. It felt like it had taken forever to be given a chance to prove himself.

Flagged as a high potential gave him an advantage yet not one he wanted to take for granted. Although he felt pretty confident, he had seen others fail and had no interest in adding to that statistic. Learning from actor Chris Evans, who recognized when he accepted the role of Captain America he needed to properly prepare, John realized his success rested on being psychologically and emotionally ready to handle whatever came at him. How could he prepare for the uncertainty?

Catherine started her company on an inspired whim. Seeing a need that hadn’t been met, she began putting

the pieces together to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and ­secure seed funding. Her background was product development so that part came naturally. It was dealing with the unpredictability of market and global conditions she was concerned with. How could she build a team, predict the future and make the executive-level decisions her experience did not prepare her for?

Though John and Catherine are in different positions, their role as executive decision makers requires advanced skills and expanded awareness—the capacity to broaden perspective and see the big picture while perceiving dynamics beneath the surface. As companies convert from directing and controlling performance and ­ behavior to creating the conditions for rapid response and initiative, there is an added requirement to inspire initiative ­repressed by aversion to risk and mistakes.

What worked in command-and-control environments and what works today are totally different. Leading at the executive level, demands growth on ­every level.

According to article in Chief Executive magazine, the top ten reasons (https:// chiefexecutive.net/top-10-greatest-causesof-leadership-derailment/) your ambitions can be derailed are:

Leadership Derailment Reasons—Underlying Assumptions SelfPersonal ambition comes before team success and network of allies.

Leadership A failure to know how to learn and know what to focus on.

Excessive ego, arrogance, and a need to control the details. Self-centered rather than caring.

No sense of direction/vision or if one exists then it is either negative (you know what you don’t want) or your vision collides with the values of the organization.

A failure to understand leadership without leaning on authority and the value of valuing employees as your allies in success.

Mindset

Resistance to change marked by inflexibility. Inflexibility is rooted in a fixed mindset. Flat, one-dimensional perception where only one dot is in view at a time, leads to failure to adapt to surprises.

Assuming everyone is in it for themselves. Trust is low. Assuming that betrayal and deception are part of business. Do you truly care about something greater than yourself or are following your ambitions at the expense of others?

Having fixed ideas about how the world works leads to: I’m right and you are wrong.

Continued

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Leadership Derailment Reasons—Underlying Assumptions Decision making

Often connected to hiring through your ego, you end up with a scarcity of leadership skills and square pegs in round holes.

Wrong people on your bus. Ignoring the role of bias in decision making or seeing bias in others but not in yourself.

Emotional, Social, Spiritual Skills

Your social skills need work. You’re more comfortable with machines than people. You hold the view that emotions are for wimps and new-agers and not a barometer of workplace health.

You lack the know-how to deliver results, set priorities, accept responsibility for your decisions and actions and be accountable to anyone including yourself.

Surfing Exponential Change: The Context for Executive Competencies We occupy a world that is connected on multiple dimensions, and at a deep level— a global system of systems. That means, among other things, that it is subject to ­systems-level failures, which require systemslevel thinking about the effectiveness of its physical and digital infrastructure.

Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, ­President, and CEO of IBM. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, better known as VUCA,2 ­refers to the effect of the global conditions d ­ escribed by the US military in the 1990s. Some would argue it is a fad worn out by overuse, but that view would detract from the opportunity to raise the level of leadership and decision making to match what is termed exponential change.

The VUCA Push (my words) refers to the intensifying pressure on companies from a multitude of disruptors. From technological (Hashgraph, blockchain, AI, robotics), social (changing values of ­customers), e ­ cological (global climate change and movement to energy renewables for ­instance), emotional 2

Volatility: speed and turbulence of change. ­ ncertainty: unpredictable outcomes. C U ­ omplexity: systemic entanglements—­everything is interconnected and interdependent in globally connected economies and societies. Ambiguity: No one clear course of action—multiple viable options and outcomes.

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fear (violent acts) and impact of natural disasters there is a lot to process. Oversimplified interpretations lead to frustration and failure. Without consciousness, in traditionally managed companies where leadership is confused with authority, pressure is relayed to ­ employees without exploring or examining how or what to control. The notion of managing (controlling) change is ludicrous and will not serve as a substitute for leadership development accessing greater human potential. To attain collective agility all must be engaged in foreseeing and rapidly ­responding to surprises that could render your business model redundant overnight. Workers were once dispensable in a m ­ echanical framework but today; all are partners in achieving survival through creativity, not unethical desperation. It is time for more companies to accept responsibility to truly being an agent of world benefit. This is the highest leadership role for the new executive.

The VUCA Push is pressuring command-­ and-control organization’s designed for stability and not agility, to reinvent the organization’s design. The embedded c­ hallenge is redefining leadership to become more consciously aware of systemic effects, on biosphere resilience; an ecological consciousness that demands more personal mastery. Willingness to ­ accept responsibility for impact of decisions on systemic health is an inherent aspect of the executive calling.

Executive leaders need advanced knowledge of how to work with complex systems,

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role guided by an intuitive understanding of ­social dynamics in the workplace. Working with deep dynamics is an inherent ­aspect of the skill set both in terms of paying ­attention to how outside conditions ­impact the relationships inside and what the i­nteraction is between formal and informal structures.

Not paying attention or understanding the biological effects of emotions on workplace health results in companies creating costs of stress-related illness, failure to innovate, and an inability to adapt. Company failure rates are accelerating. From longevity of 60 years or more, it is forecasted that companies can expect to last no longer than 10 years without some serious agility built into the decision-maker’s mindset to switch ­perspective and thought process. A small sampling of large ­companies is ­designed for longevity because their cultural DNA ­ embeds biomimicry m ­ anagement into leading and decision making. Novo ­Nordisk, N ­ ucor, and five o ­ thers exemplify an a­pproach where ­ business is learning from the planet’s life supporting principles.3 ­Ultimately, progressive visionary and responsible companies aim are to restore health to the ecological overdraft resulting from decisions that failed to consider ­impact of the action. The work done by the Fowler Center for Sustainability and Business Agents of World Benefit and others brings these companies into a community.

You will, at some point, be faced with making the decision to reinvent the company. In the spirit of “you can’t change what you can’t see,” your capacity to broaden your perspective and deepen perception will be the foundation for making the shifts in day-to-day decisions.

Inc. author Ilan Mochari reported on a survey conducted by Innosight asking e ­ xecutives from 91 companies: “What is your organization’s biggest obstacle to transform in response to market change 3

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greatwork-cultures/do-companies-that-mimicn_b_12674962.html

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and disruption?” “Forty percent of survey respondents cited ‘day-to-day decisions’ that essentially pay the bills, but undermine our stated strategy to change.” . . . The next most popular answer, at 24 ­percent, was “lack of a coherent vision for the future."

Recognizing and breaking free of decision-making ruts takes courage, foresight, and higher self-organizational awareness. It demands an equal balance between the intellectual and the intuitive guidance that you, and the community in the company, has available. In climates of fear, foresight is a casualty quite simply because executive brain functions go offline. To compensate and ensure that you have your head up and all eyes open, paying attention to incoming waves of change needs to be installed as a routine practice.

Contextual Awareness Strategy #1: Scanning the External Environment for Change Surfers know waves come in sets. The set wave is the larger one of a group coming in off a swell. A surfer processes ­multiple streams of data including wave velocity, layers of currents, wind direction and speed. The data is rapidly absorbed and interpreted to calculate catching and then riding a wave until it loses momentum.

In a similar fashion, leaders are b ­eing asked to take in multiple streams of data, which is much more of a sensing skill than a cognitive function. Sense-making draws on a mix of cognition, intuition, and insight.

Watching for waves of change emerge is not much different from being a surfer choosing a wave to let go or catch. Make scanning the horizon a regular habit. Start with you, then extend the practice to your team to pay attention to various streams including: social, technological, political, economic, environmental-ecological, consumer. In the context of exponential change, weekly is a healthy timeframe. Start now.

Expect to be challenged by b ­ eing unable to connect what changes are emerging and

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role what it means to your business or to your customer’s values. Closing the gap will require a broader perspective, which will be covered further down.

Scanning alone is not good enough. As you make sense of what is going on in the outside world flag any assumptions you may be making in seeing the impact. What are the implications of what you see in your scan? What does it mean to consumers values? To the design of the world? To your world?

Contextual Awareness Strategy #2: Scanning the Internal Environment for Decision-Making Habits New hires come up to me at events and ask: “Can they not see what is going on?”

“They” refers to management. To a new hire, and you can no doubt relate, the decision-making patterns and out dated beliefs are fully exposed. Millennials are ­ also gifted at seeing transparently into ­covert systemic patterns. The simplest and most effective strategy is to ask what new hires see, and listen to understand and perceive the dynamics showing up in ­surface dynamics. If you are certain you have ­ ­nothing to learn, then do not ask for information you do not value. This may seem obvious but to ask a new hire what they ­observe can be perceived as a career limiting move if there is really no interest in hearing the answers. A successful executive stance is not to have all the answers, but to know what questions to ask. Then hear the ­answers without blame or judgment—staying open to the honesty of what is said—is a taller order than you might think.

Typically, new hires and millennials r­emain silent after being told this is the “way things are done around here” or out of a need for job security. Insights are lost when they are needed most for breakthroughs and i­ nnovation purposes. In ­hierarchies, multiple layers of bureaucracy block communication and seeing change in market conditions so your scans may produce surprises. You can appreciate the

consequences of flying blind in a global context where anything can happen ­ without giving a week’s notice. Regular scanning can avert high risk shocks that might be overlooked.

Organizational Design Considerations Opening up communication channels to restore multiple feedback loops from all parts of the organization will restore much needed input.4 Include customers, e ­ mployees, and suppliers. Think about the whole ecosystem of interactions. Widen from one point of view to embrace multiple p ­ erspectives in order to assemble the whole picture.

Making the Mindset Shift: Flexible Thinking Traditionally managed companies rely heavily on analytic, problem-solving ­reductionist mindset. The underlying ­belief that capital assets are more important than people lies at the source of decisions ­despite what the posters on corporate values say. Decisions are strongly driven by fear of not making the next quarter, of failure to survive making ­decisions risk averse by definition. Fundamentally the company believes that profit is the purpose for ­existence and that its contribution to society. High levels of disengagement result from such a low aspiration.

Trust levels are low. Quality of conversations are low, meaning the difficult conversations needed to confront the truth of a situation either cannot or do not happen. Either harmony is preserved at all costs, including growth or conflict reigns as a destructive force rather than serving as creative tension for better solutions.

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Organizational design is distinctly different from organizational development. Design shapes the interaction of the entire organization (organism), whereas development ­refers to improving what is already there. See Paul Tolchinsky’s (EODF) video explanation at the European Organizational Design Forum in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/ ­ watch?v=gDAFTLL2WeU&t=15s

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Imagine a bird’s eye view of a corporate meeting where the “boss” is ­ speaking to employees. The boss comes to the front.

Employees take a step or more backward unconsciously creating distance from authority and centralized power. In this scenario, the distance-to-“power” r­atio is high and it is typical of a traditional o ­ rganizations steeped in a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is one that relies on b ­ eliefs, analytical thinking and business process mechanics over inspired action and a more humancentered approach.

Future-focused companies, in contrast, rely on creative solution focused approaches. Survival is achieved through creativity and guided by a higher purpose where purpose drives profit. Purpose is something much higher than any one person can achieve. It is an inspiring purpose that engages a full-hearted effort and wider spectrum of intelligences that are innately human but not fully realized. In high-trust environments, peer-to-peer leadership and networks form without the barriers of authority to emphasis the gaps between the “thinker” and “doers.”

Two very different mindsets differentiate perception of reality in a traditional command-and-control company as distinct from a progressive, more agilely adaptive company. The two different mindsets also apply to you as well. Carol Dweck, in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, talks about a growth mindset and a fixed mindset: In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits.

They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of ­developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort . . . In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point.

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This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

This description makes a mindset sound like different departments in a department store. In reality you will have moments where you learn and bounce forward after making a mistake (growth), and moments where you punish yourself for making a mistake (fixed). It is much more intertwined in reality than in thought form.

The value of a growth mindset as an ally for executives and organizational performance is impressive. Greater resil­ ience arises from how the growth mindset responds to setbacks. People with a growth mindset ­ recover from setbacks by tackling the goal as a challenge. Much higher performance is the ­result. A must read is Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success although her examples are not the best available.

Game science adds another layer of depth to Dweck’s psychological research. Jane McGonigal, in Superbetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, ­Happier, Braver and More Resilient, describes a threat and a challenge mindset. Can you rise above the challenge, tapping into deeper creative ­responses, or do you feel it is outside of your control? The challenge mindset recognizes risk, but transcends risk aversion to focus on growth; on achieving a positive outcome over a negative one.

“Cognitive appraisal,” according to ­McGonigal, determines how you respond.

A good way to test yourself, apart from the quiz in Superbetter, is to test your response to AI, robotics, or violent events in the news. What is your emotional response?

Your intellectual response? Tracking your response on at least these two levels puts control back in your decisions in that you can choose your response rather than ­operate as if you have no choice. Otherwise, you will likely feel pulled in multiple directions possibly feeling overwhelmed or powerless. Being emotionally and socially

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role aware at the moment is pivotal to knowing when you can pivot and respond differently. Unconsciously, humans pick ­ aggression or slide into depression. M ­ aking the decision consciously allows you to tap into creativity at levels required for ­handling any uncertainty.

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Do you see challenge as something you can rise up and meet?

Or is it a threat that could overwhelm or harm you?

What Mindset Do You Identify With Your answer is subject to change with each interaction or challenge. Watch how you perceive language and situations in difference situations. For instance, some equate therapy with personal growth.

Therapy a­pplies to solving a psychological problem. It relies on analytical thinking to find the root cause some­ where in your history. The quest is to find the problem.

Shifting perspective to take a holistic view, personal growth is the means to expand your effectiveness in the world. Self-awareness is the meta-skill—the c­ompass for self-­ discovery. The d ­ ifferences are not semantic because the m ­ eaning is connected to the purpose and the focus you bring to making sense of your experience. Is the goal to remove the pain from the past and stop there?

Or is it to be the best human you can be starting by understanding what extra baggage you carry with you?

Big questions face humanity today, so constantly learning from whatever happens in full-on growth mode is essential.

This means being aware of when you are attaching emotional value judgments as ­being good or bad. Consider that there is no emotional charge or value judgment. Feedback from reality does not come in good or bad packages. It is simply neutral information. If you can avoid assigning emotional value judgments you will increase accuracy in perception.

Mindfulness as the Vehicle for Conscious Perception Training your mind requires ­ recognizing what you are focused on, your self-­ perception and perceptual stance m ­ oment to moment. One way to strengthen your skills is to practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness amounts to training your mind about what to pay attention to in order to support conscious decisions as opposed to decisions made reactively or automatical and default responses. Without mindfulness you will have much less control over how to raise your level of e ­ xecutive leadership to meet the challenges you face.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that spac’e is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.— Viktor E. Frankl Without being able to train your brain’s attention to awareness of what you ­ focus on, you cannot improve your ability to self-regulate or better manage your r­ esponse to surprises or chaos, including daily chaos.

Mindfulness training i­mproves your ability to bring no judgment to communication; to accept and receive without the impulse to control what is being said or who is saying it. Conscious perception is amplified providing a clearer perception of reality without distortion. Generally, a ­wandering mind is an ­unhappy mind. ­Matthew A. Killingsworth’s research (https://news.harvard.edu/­gazette/ story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happymind/) reveals that 46.9 percent of the time, people are thinking about something else in any given moment, especially when in the heat of sex. Under stress, the automatic reactive default responses take charge. Mindfulness is required to improve cognitive control so that instead of attempting to control outer conditions, you control your response to outer conditions. The d ­ ifference is not trivial in effect. Organizational wellness and performance are tied to how you collectively ­respond to outside and inside pressure. Gaining control puts you back in the driver’s seat.

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role The organization also benefits from a personal practice of mindfulness. Corporate benefits include a positive increase in job performance and health. This is where going slow to gain proficiency reciprocates with strength and speed. Companies that offer mindfulness training include SAP, E & Y, Goldman Sachs, Ford, and Adobe.

You can also apply mindfulness to redirecting your focus from negative emotions to positive emotions, giving a boost for decision-making accuracy. When you are angry or emotionally compromised, you simply cannot make your best decisions.

Cognitive functions are impaired and intuition slows down, albeit by millisec­ onds. Energy flows where attention goes, so redirecting attention toward rejuvenating emotions boosts your health. Simple and powerful.

Two Tips for Training Your Brain’s Attention Self

Take time out to breath. In the rush of moving from one crisis to another, breathing moves from the diaphragm area to the throat. Martial artists ­anchor themselves in the diaphragm area; as do synchronized swimmers, singers, and ­ other professions where being present is imperative to focus. When you are under stress or in an environment where fear runs the show (most companies except those on high trust) the prefrontal cortex, where executive-level d ­ ecisions get made, goes offline. This ­ explains why bad decisions get made by smart people. To bring your executive brain back online and be more c­ontextually pres­ ent with what is going on around you, refocus using your breath. Dr. Emma ­ Seppala of Stanford U ­ ­niversity illustrates how to do it in less than 5 ­minutes.

Apart from a calming b ­enefit, breathing sends o ­ xygen to your brain, which is fuel for better decision making. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_ continue=9&v=sx5sLPNfhlA

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Team

At the end of each meeting do a fast round of what insight was gained from the conversation. The practice helps ­focus ­attention on listening. Making the report out quick helps exercise a more intuitive part of the brain’s resources. If not much has been gained, the value and purpose of the meetings is worth questioning. ­Reflection brings attention to what are we doing out of habit that offers little to minimal value.

Thinking Agility The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.—Peter Drucker A quick Google search offers up nine or more ways of thinking. In traditional companies, linear/analytical has ­become deeply i­ngrained, which leaves the company vulnerable in a context of complexity. How you think, your preferred mode, need not be an obstacle to your success but knowledge of a few things are r­equired if you are to gain sufficient a­ gility to see and work with complexity as an ­advantage. For example, given that ­organizations are not machines but made up of complex interaction and relationships, the ability to reduce everything to its component parts erases access to the deep d ­ ynamics that actually influences decisions and results. Linear analytical thinking has serious limitations when working with nonlinear living systems of interactions otherwise known as companies. Further, the complexity and speed of innovation do not follow the predictability of linear thinking where one thing is a consequence of the next. This does not wipe out the value of linear thinking but it does mean that it does not ­apply everywhere, only to some types of problems.

Thankfully, many young up-and-coming executives are creative thinkers. Creativity is much needed to generate the inspired innovation needed to restore health to ecosystems and to social interactions at the

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role community and national level. The downside of being incredibly creative is that focus is required, otherwise distraction can be a problem. Training your brain and focus, and implementing through itera­ tions, will restore focus without losing the value of creativity.

In the following list of thinking styles that apply to how you perceive reality ­today, select the ones you feel most able to toggle between. Then ask your friends or colleagues what they value about your thinking. If you really are not sure, take Sally Hogshead’s test (http://www.howtofascinate.com/get-my-profile) given in her book How to Fascinate. It will bring clarity not to how you see the world and what you bring that is uniquely you. It will also give you insight into how to work with others who come from a totally different perspective.

Linear Analytical Thinking

Linear thinking relies on moving step-by-step, sequentially. Planning ­assumes all things operate linearly. A ­ nalytical thinking r­ elies on breaking big i­ssues into component parts. Relationships b ­ etween the parts can be viewed causally and directly as in “if I ­attain my goals, I receive my bonus.” Systemic relationships are not perceptible using analytical thinking. With respect to problem solving, causal analysis is used to find root cause. Applied, causal analysis works well for concrete problems like “there is a hole in the bucket.” When applied to complex systems with multiple layers of interrelationships, such as business cultures, only one part of the system is in view at any given time. ­Trying to solve a complex problem ­using analytical thinking generates a ­recurring issue. In systems everything is ­interrelated, so attempting to “fix” a problem by focusing on one part takes a lot of time and is less effective. In business, priorities are an expression of linear thinking where one priority takes precedence over another but may not produce the highest return for effort. Greater discernment is required.

Nonlinear Thinking

Applies to seeing the big picture, interrelationships, and relational dynamics. Works for complex systems and adopts a higher thought process in the sense that your depth perception must be honed to intuitively detect the leverage points. Leverage points are where a small effort generates the maximum return. Leverage points are extremely important when working with complex issues where the interrelationships are not necessarily clear. Nonlinear thinking is as much a function of sensing over thinking as perception engages whole brain-body capacity and goes beyond the conscious mind.

Divergent Thinking

Essential when exploring ideas to gather the picture. Diverse perspectives, each revealing a bit of the truth, are aired out without pressure to conform or converge.

Extremely valuable when gathering perspectives that, together, form the landscape for what will be implemented, for instance, and how that might be accomplished. Thinking needs to diverge before converging. In an adrenaline addicted company very little tolerance is given to divergence. Clarity is sacrificed because pushing to arrive at convergence too early means no one is clear on the common thread or ­focus. Confusion or inertia is the signal.

Convergent Thinking

After diverging to explore possibilities and see what the moving parts are, convergent thinking brings the diversity together to find common ground; collectively see and articulate solutions so everyone has the same picture in mind.

Conceptual Thinking

Conceptual and abstract thinking works with ideas, symbols, and the intangible.

Metaphors help ground the meaning into images. Conceptual thinking requires a practical overlay at some point to bring ideas into reality.

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Concrete Thinking

Concrete thinking is more literal, and tends to focus on what is visible in a specific way.

Operational thinking is often more reliant on concrete thinking. If you are an ­aspiring executive, embracing c­ onceptual thinking will permit access to strategic conversation and big picture thinking. You need both conceptual and operational for effective and engaged implementation. If you cannot think conceptually and ­operationally, then you need people who complement your strength by contributing to your weaker ­areas. This is the power of diversity.

Creative Thinking

Possibilities emerge when the imagination is set free to break free of convention and breakthrough to new levels of innovation. The creative process is messy and feels like chaos to someone who needs certainty and predictability. Out of chaos comes ­ order but this is not comfortable for many to witness without gaining some practice in working with ambiguity. As companies move from being profit-driven to creating value, c­ reative thinking works in ­balance with the operational implementation know-how. Ambiguity is part of the business decision-making environment. ­ It is much easier to work with it than to deny or avoid the reality of not knowing or ­having all the answers.

Critical Thinking

As organizations run faster to cope with the economic pressures, the value of installing critical checkpoints to identify assumptions in decision making can accidently be dropped. The value of critical thinking or taking the time to reflect provides the ­capacity to calculate risk and learn from what happens. Critical thinking does not refer to being critical as in applying a negative lens. Critical thinking is more a matter of thinking the unthinkable. Playing What if? This or that happens. Psychologically, risk is better identified, appreciated and utilized when treated as if it were real and

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not some far off distant possibility. Some of the foreseeable engineering goofs took place when egos fearing mistakes omitted critical thinking out of not wanting their expertise questioned.5 Given the variety of thinking approaches you have access to, it is better when you are able to switch gears from one thought process to another based on the nuances of the context you are in. Dexterity of thought can be developed either at a personal level or through diversity in how teams members think. Meeting up with thinking that is not your preferred style can create discomfort such as when visionary thinkers meet concrete. Benefit is gained when you stay open and use the diversity to gain from the value of both.

As an aspiring executive, observe when fixed positions tenaciously adhere to one thought process even when it is clear it is ineffective. You will see it in yourself and in how the company you work for rewards risk taking for instance.

Linear analytical thinking holds a ­narrow focus on reality. To work with complexity and ambiguity, a broader perspective is ­essential. If you are more comfortable with concrete, you must do a 180-degree flip to be equally comfortable with concept otherwise you will not be able to make decisions at the executive level, where strategy is a more messy mix of fact, feeling, and, hopefully, foresight.

At minimum you need to be able to identify and observe the different thought processes at work otherwise you limit your ability to switch gears when it is needed.

To flex your observation skills start with observing how teams think things through.

Apply no judgment to your observations; otherwise you will miss the value.

Train your observation skills: Observe a meeting at work. Listen for the mix of gathering or sharing information, making 5

Reference drawn from http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/ thinking/types-of-thinking-2/

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role decisions, diverging in terms of airing out different thoughts and converging to share focus on what happens next. Most teams do five to six steps at once. In an executive capacity, doing one thing at a time, not 12 things at once, will help you keep a clear mind and save energy. You be spending less time and energy tracking the convolutions of the conversation.

Putting Anxiety to Work for You: Emotional Awareness and Self-Regulation Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. It also signals a desire to do something, accompanied by unease.

Anxiety derails well-being and decision making. While it is treated as a dysfunction, anxiety can also be a signal to acknowledge a deeper drive.

Humanity stands at the intersection of the most exciting time in human history and equally the most uncertain, ­unpredictable, and volatile. Aware or not, every single person absorbs fear (and other emotions) broadcast through media or interpersonal communication or distant threats of violence or aggression. When your personal purpose is not clear, anxiety is the calling card for bringing your purpose and energy into alignment. Transforming anxiety into clarity can start by clearing out the “noise” in your life to see a sense of purpose on how you make a difference in the world: in the workplace, at home, or in society. It may also start by redirecting your focus on restoring emotional calm and balance.

Health is a natural state of the h ­ uman body and should also be natural in workplaces if companies hope to be economically sustainable. Yet workplace stress of the unhealthy kind, a product of workplace environments not designed for human performance, has stigma attached to it.

(On the other hand, eustress refers to positive stress originating from a positive challenge.) ­ Anxiety is an indicator that

not all is well in the world. Workplaces can ­ either channel anxiety into inspired purpose or blame the employee. Most blame employees. If you look at anxiety as ­energy, then much can be done to restore balance. Conventional thought files anxiety as a “disorder” and “mental illness,”. It is more ­ constructively understood as an invitation to be more aligned within yourself: who you are and why you came to the world. Workplaces that run on the processes ­ defining traditional management create pressures that create stress-related illness.

Mindfulness applies to redirecting, or refocusing your attention away from anxiety at the early indications of an anxiety attack to what you want, rather than what you do not want, is a sophisticated skill informed by your self-awareness and somatic (physical) body awareness. In a parallel fashion, observing organizational dynamics through mindful presence ­allows you to detect the health of the organizational body. Dave Packard, cofounder of Hewlett Packard, was once asked how he knew the culture was working (the HP Way). He responded, “I don’t know.

But I can sense when it is not.” Sensory capacity and mindfulness together serve ­ to enhance perception to detect the deep ­dynamics that reveal the health pulse of the company’s culture.

Complexity is forcing a move from an a­ddiction to action to become better balanced with reflection so adjustments ­ can be made. Developing conscious perception through mindfulness gives access to being an objective witness to how balanced a company is with respect to action and discovery. Action-oriented companies are running hard to get somewhere. Apart from meeting quarterly targets not everyone will agree on the destination, goal, or vision. Discovery is the place of receptivity, acceptance, and the opening for collective intuition where collective capacity to see ahead, receive insight, and create spontaneous innovations is found. Both are

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role needed to stay attuned to whether strategy is working or not. Organizations that are addicted to the adrenaline of ­high-pressure action are not well equipped to make adjustments. They operate much like a ­ train on a habitual track. Agility is not possible nor is it encouraged. Being mindful of where the organization is focusing its ­attention gives you a high-level overview of where and how to redirect focus. At the executive level, this is a critical vantage point. Otherwise, there is a good chance that ­ habitual decision-making patterns will lead to the death of the company. The cause? Distracted by short-term crisis and narrow focus on the short term.

Leading Yourself through New Territory If you routinely make operational decisions, decision making seems easy.

Choices ­ appear to be concrete without much gray. It is easy to think that outcomes are p ­ redictable using causal thinking. If we do ___ then ____ will happen. That works when you can predict what will happen as a result but at the executive level, this isn’t always obvious. Every decision has a systemic effect on some other part of the ­organization, on the customer experience and loyalty, on employee capacity to ­engage and contribute or on the future of the company and your career either ­directly or indirectly. Given that most organizations are caught up in routine decisions that derail innovation or strategic breakthroughs, leaders more than ever must see ahead, and intuitively grasp where leaps of leadership will redesign reality.

Wicked problems illustrate ambiguity.

No one knows when sea levels will rise or when the earth’s capacity to sustain life will collapse under the weight of ecological overdraft. No one knows when the impacts of global climate change will bankrupt capitalism still operating with limited purpose and contribution to society. No one really knows how AI, robotics, and technological innovations will impact how humans

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evolve or the ethos of humanity. No one knows how loss of biodiversity will impact the end of human civilization. Similarly, you may not know what the impact is of the next decision you make will have on the fortunes of the company. Ambiguity is a condition of the executive function.

Being open to more than one interpretation, one strategy, one potential outcome is essential.

How to know you are not ready for ­executive role: 1. Everything is black and while with no shades of gray. You think in terms of right way or wrong way.

2. You deny uncertainty is real. There is one strategy or course of action and you know what it is.

3. Things you cannot control easily frustrate you. You take uncertainty and convert it into something you know you can control.

If you plead guilty to any one of the above, you will need to gain experience and practice to benefit from diverse perspectives, and a wider range of data and conditions. Any kind of emotional or cognitive overload, in the worse case meltdown, is an indicator that decision making is compromised and more growth is needed.

Three Ways to Train for Ambiguity and Uncertainty 1. Engage others in exploring alternatives to problems you see internally that would benefit from a creative approach. For ­instance, explore creative ways to r­ etain and engage talent by working with the talent demographic leaving most frequently. Put the problem in front of both of you. Use their perspective to see what is not obvious to the routine eye.

2. When making a decision on an issue, survey diverse views including people you regularly disagree with. Listen with the intention to understand, not reject their thinking. Take in dissimilar views

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role without forcing anyone to agree with you or anyone else. Ask discovery-oriented questions to deepen understanding and clarity. Hold the diversity of perspectives without drawing conclusions. What assumptions did you make that are not supported by the information you have gathered? What do you see now, that you didn’t see before?

3. Take a decision made recently by yourself or someone at the executive level and follow the trail of impact. Identify how the decision changed focus and in what way. Look for the emotional effect of the decision on risk taking. Explore to understand the interrelationships.

Warm up by playing with a dot-to-dot application. Ambiguity offers multiple alternatives involving many touch points (dots). Connecting them provides you with clarity even when you do not know what will happen next.

Working with ambiguity and clarity ­ nlists deep listening, aiming for mutual e understanding so that values are in the open along with apparent clashes between personal and organizational. You are aiming for depth over a superficial skim of the surface.

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Flexible: how flexible? Are you comfortable with being flexible everywhere or somewhere in particular?

Ideal and normal are also relative to context and frankly not that useful as qualifiers.

Depending on what you are referring to as normal may not be helpful. Be specific.

Maximize, minimize, and optimize are three favorite business words, which mean very little unless you can provide a clear picture of how anybody will know when any one of the three has been attained.

Another cringe-worthy phrase is “in a timely fashion.” This phrase was used to explain the policy behind notifying next of kin after a relative had died and referred to a situation where it took a month to notify a mother of a grown child’s death.

It means nothing. Be much more specific.

Robust and user-friendly are two terms that depend on what the stressors and who the user is. What conditions would make a product or service “robust?” Who is the user in user-friendly? Tech savvy or executive technophobe?

Sufficient is a word used when saying I have had enough to eat but it doesn’t say anything in a business context without knowing what quantity is enough.

Criteria6 help.7

Avoiding Ambiguity in Your Communication

Decision Making in Complexity: Data, Intuition, and Insight

In an executive role you deal with ambiguity all the time, You may also be creating it through how you communicate. Confusion or mismatch of expected results to what ­actually happened will be your signal.

Here is a list of words you might be u ­ sing that create ambiguity in how you communicate with teammates or colleagues:

Several myths guide business decision making and impair accuracy and speed.

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Acceptable or adequate: Begs the question, how would anyone know? Set clear criteria for what is or is not acceptable.

Better and faster are equally ambiguous. Relative to what? is the question.

Qualify or quantify so people know what the goal is.

1. Myth: Emotions are not for business and do not belong in the workplace.

Reality: Humans process emotions faster than facts. The limbic system is responsible for taking signals from different 6

Criteria establish what qualities or conditions a decision must meet. For example, a European executive opening a store in North America must speak English.

7 Drawn from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ top-10-ambiguous-phrases-avoid-when-writingbusiness-colin-quinn/

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role cortical areas and keeping the amygdala on alert for danger. It is a very ­ancient part of the human brain. If your workplace is on high alert 24/7, you and your coworkers are likely to experience stress-related symptoms. Certainly stressinduced decisions are likely to occur.

Stress compromises heart coherence.

Without heart coherence, both ­cognitive, and intuitive functions are compromised.

The notion that human cyborgs, void of emotion, make better decisions is false because emotions inform timing and readiness for action. By embracing emotions and being able to recognize fear or risk aversion you can take the time to ensure you regulate your emotions to be in a happy state.

The limbic functions include controlling emotions like anger and fear, sensory information including smell, and controlling functioning of the autonomic nervous system including pulse, blood pressure, and breathing. Not surprisingly breathing is one of the simplest ways to restore a calm state needed for more accurate decision making. Negative emotions like fear, stress, anger all compromise cognition and intuition so using the Heart Math coherence technique can restore calm and support better decision making.

2. Myth: Intuition is the same as emotion.

Intuition is also untrustworthy.

Reality: Neither intuition nor rational decision making is 100 percent “accurate” in the sense of never being wrong, which is why a balance of both works best. From research done by Gary Klein, the order is not that relevant. Intuition is impaired by your limiting beliefs, and by your emotional state as is rational decision making. Add on the distortion originating from cognitive bias and the need for higher self-emotional-socialcontextual awareness is an imperative.

To learn more, see Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow or any of Gary Klein’s books documenting his

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research with military decision making and Naturalistic Decision making.8 The argument for business as stanch bastions of rational decision making has lost credibility. The consequences of externalizing externalities such as air quality, water quality, and social health has pushed the planet’s life support systems to the brink. So disconnected from the ecosystem have we become, that the dots connecting ­interrelationships internally and externally are not in view either. In fact, Michael Pacanowsky, formerly with W.L. Gore & ­ Associates and now Founding Director of the Center for Innovation in the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business at Westminster College, on the Evolutionary Provocateur podcast shared a conversation he had with a plant manager for a well-known and large software development company. He was describing the hierarchy in his company, which wasn’t excessive. There were seven levels of management, and he was at the number four level of management. He was responsible for a set of software development projects and about 3,000 people, most of whom were colocated in one plant.

He said, “I’m the last level in the hierarchy who can see the effects in the marketplace on any changes that we make. Above me, they’re jockeying numbers around in spreadsheets. I’m the last person who sees what the impact is on customers.”

If the impact on customers is not in sight, the ecological or any other precipice is not either.

Business can play an important leading role in restoring some of the damage previously inflicted by decision makers operating at limited levels of conscious­ ness ignoring responsibility for the impact of decision made. Business executive leaders can merge advanced decision-making skills, drawing on more human inner technology than before to complement the tech tools as support.

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https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/wp-content/­ uploads/2017/02/Klein_2008_HF_NDM.pdf

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role In Decision Making for Dummies, an ­advanced book despite the title, you will find explanations of instinct, belief-based, value-based, subconscious decision making. You will also find the science of intuition from the Heart Math Institute. ­ Understanding how your intuition tries to get through to you is critical to making decisions in a complex, high-stakes world. One entrepreneur I spoke to when researching Decision Making for Dummies told me that he felt a warm physical sensation. This proved useful when listening to the facts and figures of a pitch because he could ­detect when either people didn’t b ­ elieve in what they were saying or the facts were an attempt to cover up a proposal that was not viable.

“Gut decision making” is used more o ­ ften in a business context to refer to intuitive ­decision making although scientifically “gut brain” refers to a cluster of neurons at the gut level that detect danger. Gut ­instinct, is a holdover from caveman days yet equally valid in dark alleys at night when sensing a threat could be life-saving.

Entrepreneurs rely heavily on intuition and so do executives although many would deny or not be aware of it. In complexity, intuition is an ally because in a data and ­information saturated world, it is easy to blow brain fuses trying to process the data through your mind. Intuition is a precognizant knowing. It is not emotion but is impacted by your emotional state. See the quick heart coherence ­exercise on the Heart Math site (https:// www.heartmath.org/­resources/heartmathtools/quick-­coherence-technique-for-adults/) or in ­Decision Making for Dummies for a way to r­ estore coherence.

With respect to sharpening your ­decision making, running your decisions through the following questions will support greater accuracy: 1. What impact will this have on customers, employee well-being, and systemic health (ecological, social)?

2. What assumptions am I—are we—making?

3. Where is the focus? On the past (in the case of using data) or on the future?

Data-driven decision making is s­ubject to bias the moment you interpret the data, making rational decisions an impossible ­aspiration. Neuroscientist David Rock states it bluntly: “If you have a brain, you are biased.”

Dealing with Bias Relying on data alone will not save you from your brain, your subconscious b ­ eliefs, or the 150 or so cognitive biases revealed in gender equality, social health, h ­ iring, or investment decisions for instance.

All i­ntergenerational “gaps” and gender inequality originates from bias that has ­ not been ­ acknowledged or addressed in the ­design of the decision-making process.

Uber’s business culture and their CEO is an unfortunate illustration of what happens when low self- and organizational awareness and the inner skills of an ­executive are not advanced enough to meet ­demands of transparency and the ­diversity in the workplace. Estimates suggest unchecked bias has burned up $28 million dollars in Uber ­injected into maintaining a toxic corporate culture; money that could have averted the reported financial downslide in 2017.9 Addressing bias is best achieved by ­designing the decision-making process to address the following buckets of bias identified by the NeuroLeadership Institute10 and summarized in their SEEDS model: Similarity: People like me, are better than others.

Mitigate by finding commonalities before decision making.

Expedience: If it feels right it must be true.

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http://amp.smh.com.au/business/uber-paysa-26-billion-price-for-its-toxic-corporate-culture20170630-gx1x3w.html 10 www.neuroleadershipinstitute.com

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Mitigate by considering all information particularly from diverse perspectives.

Paint the complete picture.

Experience: My perceptions are accurate.

Mitigate by getting other perspectives; seek opposing views.

Distance: Closer is better than distance.

Mitigate by removing distance from the equation. Treat risk scenarios as if they were immediate, instead of remote possibilities somewhere in the future.

Safety: Bad is stronger than good.

Mitigate by creating psychological distance.

What would John do if he were making this decision? What would someone ­unfamiliar with the context do?)

Being aware that you are biased does not help. Nor does judging bias as a negative. Making decision-making processes less subject to bias is one way to mitigate the effect. Hiring decisions are frequently exposed to bias making it an easy place to start putting into effect better processes to offset human bias.

Putting Fear to Work for Your Decisions 53% of people suffer from nomophobia—the fear of having no mobile phone.

Fear saturates the news media. Companies that have spent a long time building up value, fear losing what they have built, losing market share, not being profitable, or not meeting the targets. When fear permeates the workplace, it permeates your decisions to default back to being risk averse.

Unless you can step back, put distance and preferably some altitude into your view, so you can see from a higher vantage point, you will fall into the rut of fear-based decisions. You are biologically wired to either be in growth or be in protection. Logically fear puts you in a risk averse decision-making context without you even noticing.

Fear constricts perception to create the illusion that the health of economy is not connected to the health of society. The

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opposite of fear is seeing every single surprise or challenge put in front of you as just that—a challenge and not a threat. Employing a growth mindset allows risk to serve as an advantage rather than something to fear.

Should you make the wrong decision, judging yourself only feeds the fear and compromises your decision making. Do a retrospective to see what assumptions were made. Reflect on who you didn’t talk to and needed to. Each time you learn from mistakes you strengthen your decision making and personal resilience. Rather than freezing in the form of procrastination or inertia, keep making decisions so that your inventory of what works under specific conditions grows. Your subconscious uses that inventory, to make any one of 90 ­ percent or more automatic decisions that happen while you are busy thinking.

Without a range of decisions that work or did not work, your intuition is handicapped by not enough data and experience.

Freedom centric companies belong to WorldBlu,11 a community the powerful question: What would you do if you are not afraid? The community of companies in WorldBlu supports executive leaders in moving past fear, doubt, and worry. The value of feeling fear and naming it allows you to use it to overcome a challenge, or ­accept a seemingly impossible task. Only by doing so can you learn what you are truly capable of.

Insight: For Innovation Two police officers are sitting in traffic.

One is driving, and the other is just looking around waiting for the traffic to clear.

They notice the car in front of them, a nice, new model BMW. The driver is smoking. He takes a drag on the cigarette and then flicks the ashes on the car seat. The police officer is stunned by that and thinks: “Did I see that right? Who does that to your new car? If you 11

http://insighttoaction.libsyn.com/freedomat-work-worldblus-democracy-in-the-workplace-with-ceo-traci-fenton

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role borrowed from a friend, would you do it to a friend’s car? Who would do something like that? Maybe somebody who has obtained the use of that car illegally?” They pull the driver over. Sure enough it’s a stolen car.—From ­Seeing What Others Don’t by Gary Klein Gary Klein, in a podcast interview for his book Seeing What Others Don’t,12 described insight as an unexpected shift in the way we ­understand things. We haven’t planned for it, sometimes we’re not even looking or working on a problem and something happens and all of a sudden we say “now I see what’s been going on” or “oh, that’s what’s happening”. It comes without warning.

We haven’t been deliberately working at it and all of a sudden there’s that “aha!” moment and we understand things in a way that we didn’t before and the new understanding really lets us makes sense of things that were puzzling us and it leads us to anticipate what might be happening and it’s more accurate. It’s more complete and it allows us to be more successful.

Not only does it allow you to be more successful but it also reveals openings for innovation, optimizing risk (taking calculated risks for breakthrough results), or averting ethical downward slides of companies like Enron exemplified. Wicked and perplexing problems are informed by insight.

In Dr. Klein’s words, insights come in when the ­calculations aren’t going to be enough. ­Insights come in when we deal with wicked problems, where there’s no clear right answer. Insights come in when some 12

http://insighttoaction.libsyn.com/how-­ insights-bring-value-to-wicked-problems-andinspired-innovation-with-gary-klein

of the data that we’ve been wanting on may be wrong and we have to discover that rather than continue to crunch those numbers because they’re the wrong numbers. Insights come in when we’ve been making the wrong assumptions. The number crunching can go off in a useless direction because our assumptions are flawed and it takes insights to make that discovery that there’s something wrong with our thinking. I think insights are an important complement for businesses that are maybe becoming too focused on number crunching.

Yet companies routinely block insights and adopt processes that impede innovation. Dr. Klein also talked about the ­damage done by processes such as Six Sigma, which rigorously seek and destroy errors. Without errors, innovations like the post-it note would not exist. In our interview Dr. Klein further explained, one of the most discouraging parts of my research, was encountering all these companies that believe that they want innovation, they want ­insights, they like to use claims but they don’t act in that way. They act just the reverse and the reason they act in the opposite direction is to have a smoothly running company where everything is predictable, and running according to plan. Insights aren’t part of that. Insights are disruptive. Insights are disorganizing. For an organization that values predictability and having things moving in a regular schedule, insights become a problem. The more dramatic the insight, often you find the greater the resistance. That’s why companies block insights by becoming really extremely concerned about errors.

They go to excessive steps to try to prevent any kinds of errors. The ­actions that they take get in the way

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role of insights. Companies will increase the number of reviews and the job of the reviewer is to make sure that no error could creep in to the plan.

They are looking at it from the point of view of focusing on mistakes rather than opportunities, or discoveries.

Reviews increase and the number of controls increase. Checklists are followed because that makes it easy to see if somebody missed a step or if they carried out that step incorrectly. All of this is in the service of stamping out errors. You have people document their reasoning more carefully and so people are consumed by their busy work and they don’t have the space to form insights.

Opportunities are being missed.

Two Tips for Spotting and Using Insights 1. No one person can kill an outlier idea or observation. Bringing seemingly fringe ideas forward for review so discussion is on discovering the value in contradictions. Most companies discard the insightful idea to ensure predictable certainty. and conform to the norm.

2. Gather the insight stories to explore what went right. Companies celebrate what went wrong but flipping the focus to what went right as a learning practice places the spotlight on more positive things being put on the learning stage.

The result will discourage the overly cautious risk-averse individual from hiding or suppressing a perfectly sound observation out of fear of it being unfamiliar.

Developing Character

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Neither our violence nor our transcendence is a moral or ethical matter of religion, but rather an issue of biology. We actually contain a built-in ability to rise above restriction, incapacity, or limitation and, as a result of this ability, possess a vital adaptive spirit that we

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have not yet fully accessed. While this ability can lead us to transcendence, p ­ aradoxically it can lead also to violence, our longing for transcendence arises from our intuitive sensing of this adaptive potential and our violence arises from our failure to develop it.

—Biology of Transcendence, Joseph Chilton Pearce Three ingredients contribute to who you ­become as an executive leader: how you use power, your capacity to make high-stakes decisions, and become a better person as a result of failure or mistakes. Your ethos, your communication, and decision-making style can make you a credible respected leader promising you choose each pivotal decision to level up your learning.

Mindset is an aspect of character along with presence in communication, in how you connect with others through empathy or making them comfortable. Mindset matters but it is rarely developed overnight.

Each time a setback occurs how do you use it to learn, gain strength and then try again? Believing you have direct control over creating a positive outcome no matter what the circumstances is an expression of self-efficacy—an executive-level trait in an increasingly disruptive world.

Other executive character traits include: Presence: Have you ever experienced an executive walk into the room and ­everyone knew he or she was there? You felt their presence from across the room. ­Presence is an expression of how much in the m ­ oment an individual is. Able to be fully present with their mind not wandering randomly.

Confidence: Confidence is authentic and communicated as much by stance as by word. The TED talk by Amy Cuddy outlines the power of stance13 and how to attain it.

Clarity: Being able to articulate your ideas clearly is fundamental to the executive role.

If you cannot articulate them to yourself, it will be impossible to convey confidently

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https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_ your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

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and with clarity, your ideas to anyone else.

Writing and speaking both help because they push you to say in a concise manner, the key points in an engaging way.

Resilience: While not all executives demonstrate resilience being able to bounce forward after a setback is fundamental to growing companies and yourself at the same time.

Beyond character traits, be aware of what your decision-making style is and where you need to push your growth to be comfortable with uncertain and ambiguous or emergent situations. Observe where you feel most uncomfortable and then lean into new territory. If rational fact-based decision making, where you feel certain you are making the right decision, is your preference then steer towards becoming more aware of where you make decisions automatically. If you tend to make all your decisions on speed, and efficiency take ­ time out to reflect on what drives your choice of one option over another.

Your Relationship with Power Power, decision making, and authority have long been tangled up. Centralizing decision making in positions of authority did much to create the belief that you are a leader and have power if you are also in a position of authority. Today decision making is becoming distributed through all levels of the organization, to provide a company with the agility to respond to changing conditions.

Leaders lead at every level and responsibility is shared in a peer-to-peer network. In progressive companies, this is the way it is now. This means your relationship with your personal power: your capacity to r­ espond by choice to what you experience, replaces the idea that power is applying force to get what you want. David Hawkins did an outstanding job of differentiating power versus force in his book by the same name.14

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There is a short video here that e­ xplains further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJKUm5QyMYw

Increasing awareness of your relationship with power is a journey in strengthening self-esteem, and realizing your full potential. It has nothing to do with having power over others. Power over others assumes that one person has all the answers.

Wisdom of the crowds, crowdsourced decision making and collective intelligence is far more powerful and accurate.

Developing a healthy relationship with power includes practices like: 1. Noticing where you have a fixed position about how the world works and being willing to open it up and explore other perspectives. The goal is to gain flexible thinking while being anchored in your values.

2. Respect differing points of view without needing to agree with them.

3. Notice where you find yourself thinking in a pattern, reacting the same way to similar situations all the time. Being defensive for instance, when you hear something you see as negative. Break the pattern and replace it with a clear concise image of what you would like to see.

Personal power is about knowing what difference you would like to make in the world and how you will achieve it while respecting the role and contribution of others.

Making High-Speed Decisions Under Pressure Ron was 98 percent through the ­executive recruitment process.

One of two final candidates for the executive position he had applied for, today was the big day. He was meeting the top two executives who would decide if he was the one to add to their team. On the way to the interview, Ron hit every red light plus a massive traffic jam. Knowing he was running late he was getting increasingly frustrated. As

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role he arrived at the parking lot one other car ­arrived at the same time.

Assuming the guy was going to cut him off, Ron hit the gas and gave the guy his middle finger. Finally reaching the executive offices, he walked into the room to meet the two men who would ­decide if he would get the job. One of them looked familiar.

With a sinking feeling he realized it was the man driving the other car.

High-speed decisions, when you are under pressure, require emotional self-regulation.

In fact, any decision benefits from emotional self-regulation. ­Observing your emotional state and then bringing yourself back to a calm state, ­restores cognitive functioning and ensures you can respond to what happens in the moment, instead of reacting to what you think is happening. The Heart Math technique mentioned earlier, plus breathing into your diaphragm both clear the mental chatter impairing calm. They are both methods ­requiring practice. See The Magic of Conflict: Turning a Life of Work into a Work of Art by Tom Crum to learn the martial arts way of working with the unexpected.

How would you recover from the situation in the story above, whether you got the position or not?

attempt to control reality. Rather than hard-core fixed plan work with short-term experiments to get to a clear vision or shared goal. Replace tightly scripted plans with iterations. It requires a higher comfort with uncertainty than you will see in many executives today. The world is changing very quickly so your ability to work with emergent opportunities over attempting to “manage” or control disruption will determine your success and well-being.

Improvisation is an art form, and not the same as flying by the seat of your pants.

Ask any musician.

You can avoid some mistakes simply by checking your assumptions and your ego.

Here’s an example.

Arcelor-Mittal Steel, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO. The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business.

He asked the guy, “How much money do you make a week?”

A little surprised, the young man looked at him and said, “I make $400 a week. Why?” The CEO said, “Wait right here.” He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said, “Here’s four weeks’ pay. Now GET OUT and don’t come back.”

How Do You Handle Mistakes?

As you begin to take action toward the f­ulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must r­ ealize that not every action will be perfect. Not every action will produce the desired ­result. Not every action will work. Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.

—Jack Canfield This pretty much says it all. Mistakes are part of the journey to increasing awareness of how to work with volatile conditions. Nothing ever goes according to plan.

It is better to acknowledge the uncertainty and work with what shows up rather than

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Feeling pretty good about himself, the CEO looked around the room and asked, “Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?”

From across the room a voice said, “Pizza delivery guy from Domino’s.”15

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https://ldsfacts.net/justfun141/

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role

Who Are You Really? Value-Based Consciousness The ultimate stress test of your ethics, as expressed through decision making and leadership consciousness, comes anytime money is involved. The CEO of Wells Fargo demonstrated a very limited consciousness and unethical behavior after pressuring staff to meet metrics contrived to ensure shareholder return and executive reward. Millions of fraudulent accounts were created without customer permission or knowledge to meet aggressive sales targets. Initially the employees opening the accounts were blamed and fired. Five thousand three hundred16 employees took the fall for what proved to be pressure coming from top management to reach unattainable targets. The CEO was later fired and, while testifying in front of the S­enate Banking Committee with Elizabeth W ­ arren, showed no apparent appreciation of the unethical nature of the decision making. Estimates released in the spring of 2017 r­evealed 3,500,000 million false ­ accounts17 were created. The now former CEO, Stumpf, ­received incentive bonuses from the sales.

Prior to the bank being charged, he reportedly sold 61 million dollars’ worth of Wells Fargo stock putting $26 million in his pocket.18 The Consumer Protection ­Bureau later fined the company $185 million.

Richard Barrett, founder of the B ­ arrett Values Center, has measured the valuesbased consciousness in leaders, teams, organization, and nations. The ­development of values-based consciousness is mapped vertically. Negative and limiting values, like greed, violence, and bureaucracy sit in the lower three levels. Former CEO 16

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bankfees/index.html 17 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/wells-fargo-increases-fake-account-estimate-67-to-3-5-million 18 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wellsfargo-ceo-john-stumpf-sold-millions-in-company-stock-before-bank-fraud-revelations/

John Stumpf’s decisions illustrate what limited levels of consciousness look like (see https://www.valuescentre.com/mappingv a l u e s / b a r r e t t - m o d e l / l e a d e r s h i p -­ consciousness). Wells Fargo is a case study in how to make unethical decisions motivated by self-interest and greed. Contemporary executives need to be able to see the interaction between formal metrics and structures and the indirect consequences. The results are visibly exposed in the health of the workplace and employees. Employees who were pressured to meet the unattainable targets, and subsequently fired, reported vomiting and other stress symptoms. We are in times when care must exceed greed, otherwise business will fail to be relevant, credible, and trustworthy to customers and society. The future of the world depends on a higher level of leadership and a more caring compassionate executive-level decision maker capable of empathy and able to see and design a healthy world.

To lead into the future, executives must anchor decisions in values rather than believing that profit is the purpose for ­ ­existence. Ethical decision making b ­ enefits all including shareholders; however, shareholder value is not the measure of ­company success. On the contrary, the value a company offers to the world demonstrates real value creation. See the r­esearch done by investment advisor J­oseph Bragdon19 to learn the return when companies manage themselves ethically and with a higher contribution to society as their goal. As an executive decision maker, you need to be clear about what you stand for. In many traditional companies the metrics are skewed to benefit shareholder value, ­described as the dumbest idea in the world

by Steve Denning, Forbes ­contributor, and others.

What are your core values? How do you ­incorporate them into your daily ­decisions?

Value assessments are ­available online. One is the free personal ­values assessment offered by 19

www.LAMPindex.com

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role the Barrett Values Center at https://www.valuescentre.com/our-products/products-individuals/ personal-values-assessment-pva

Ten Mastery-Level Conscious Leadership Skills Micheal Pacanowsky shared this story: CHG Healthcare Services is a professional healthcare services company.

Its business is matching hospitals, clinics and places that provide healthcare with doctors and specialists on a temporary basis. In underserved populations in rural America, there may be one internal medicine doctor, and that person wants to go on a two-month vacation. So the hospital is looking for someone who will fill in for two months. CHG Health Care is a hierarchical organization with control, though not command and control. Though they don’t use the words servant leadership all that much, they’ve really taken it to the degree where a leader is expected to help his or her team be successful. . . Leaders are expected to listen to feedback, and kind of say, “Here’s what I’ve heard,” and, “Here’s what I’m going to work on.” The company is savvy enough to know that no leader is a perfect article, but there’s always room for improvement. If the leader is someone who demonstrates that they can hear feedback nondefensively—and that usually is the first hurdle that they have to get past—and then take action to try to improve. They create a kind of virtual cycle where the team helps the leader be better and the leader helps the team be better.

And the result of this is two things: One is that they have been on the “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for eight years in a row. That’s a

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good thing. But equally powerful to me is the fact that in this industry, a temporary placement industry, the turnover for frontline people who are in touch with the providers and the client locations, runs between 50 and 60 percent per year. When CHG first started on this path of trying to listen and change and ­improve, they thought they were doing pretty good because their turnover was about 45 percent per year among their frontline. Over the years, they dropped the attrition rate by about 3 to 5 percent per year. In 2016 their attrition was 17 ­percent. You can imagine the competitive ­advantage CHG has when their a ­ ttrition rate of frontline workers is 17 percent ­compared to an industry average of 50 to 60 percent. They don’t have to spend as much time hiring. The people that they have don’t have to go up a learning curve . . .

There’s a huge, huge financial benefit to CHG to have this model of lots of feedback; leaders responding to the feedback and leaders being mostly responsible for making sure that the team is successful. It’s visible, everybody can see it, and so they’re very, very excited about that. And yet they have the executive EVPs and VPs and senior VPs and all of that sprinkled throughout their organization, but the feel of the place is completely different.

Evolution of your consciousness as a leader has a powerful ripple effect. ­Moving through fear, doubt, frustration, with confidence, respect, and trust in yourself and others, demands a commitment to mastery. Mastery starts with conceptual understanding, and then application of the new learning, so it becomes integrated into your actions and new habits form.

© Business Expert Press 978-1-94784-313-4 (2018) www.businessexpertpress.com

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Successfully Moving to an Executive Role Four universal principles set the bar: 1. Tell the truth without blame or judgment.

Clear yourself of all emotional triggers that stem from historical wounds or traumas so that you can be present and open to learning from all life has to offer.

2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning for yourself and for those you serve as a leader.

3. Be present to who is speaking and the situation and to yourself, your emotional well-being and your heart’s energy.

4. Be open to outcomes, rather than controlling to arrive at a predetermined outcome.

Six practices apply to daily life: 1. Turn mistakes into learning. Learning turns mistakes into knowledge.

2. When facing a fixed position, ask exploratory questions. Stay curious.

3. Use conflict to understand what lies underneath. Discover.

4. Perceive the deep dynamics underlying surface-level behavior. Intuit.

5. Observe where energy and attention are going. Follow the flow.

6. Build trust out of not knowing what will happen but trusting all will know what to do. Make leaps of trust.

Whether you work in a traditional hierarchy, a self-managed governance model, Holacratic, Teal, or next-generation com­ pany, the most powerful technology is you.

The world we live in is being created, modified, destroyed, inspired, and reinvented one decision at a time. The future of work requires leaders at all levels who make e ­ xecutive-level decisions with compassion and awareness guided by perceptual depth and insight into the interrelatedness of all things.

© Business Expert Press 978-1-94784-313-4 (2018) www.businessexpertpress.com

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