Posts from — December 2007

One of my students in a recent class provided the content of today’s post. The task of an assignment was to provide an example someone experienced where an organization has failed in spite of a great market and great products. The main point was to explain what happened, why the effort or organization failed, and what they could have done differently to prevent this outcome.

Jerry worked for an organization that had a niche market and product. The 1980’s and early 1990’s were filled with growth and prosperity and then in 1995 the president of the company retired. Chaos ensued. Communication broke down. Sales faltered and a once viable organization was left dying on the vine.

The organization failed because the new president lacked “the ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative.” When conflict arose, he looked the other way. Instead of opening himself to issues and his employees, he shielded himself in his office. He promoted individuals based on their ability to maintain status quo and their ability to further shield him from the inner workings of the company, not on their actual performance. Eventually the board forced him to retire.

Had the new president opened himself up to conflict, the company could have continued to prosper. Had he participated in the day-to-day activities and made himself available to his staff, the results would have been different.

One of the issues that is of interest here for a future leadership decision is the recruiting of this person in the first place. Applying the Performance IQ® assessment and recruiting system we use at AMC LLC, and then possibly working with the new leadership in areas of needed improvement could have avoided some of the trouble.

Looking at chapters 11-13 in Henry Clouds book titled Integrity, a number if interesting aspects can be found.

When it comes to the aspects of character, Jerry is strong in all areas save the last two. He tried to narrow it down to transcendence, but he isn’t sure if he struggles with transcendence or growth. If there’s a five-year period of adjustment to change, then he’s sitting in the midst of year four and what he feels are growing pains. Or, he wonders whether I am delusional and am unwilling to transcend my own resistance and see the big picture. Either way, the answer to my conundrum is: “pain is temporary, victory lasts forever.” Or to quote the movie “Galaxy Quest,” “Never give up! Never surrender!”

With this precursor, and reviewing chapter 4 of Clouds book, the idea was to pretend that a meeting of all employees has been called. The workforce has been gathered to hear the new president (a fictitious version that hs replaced the failed former president) for the first time explaining how he plans to act during the  first 100 days on the job. Her eis what Jerry suggested:

I’d like to welcome you all here today. As your new CEO, I want to tell each and every one of you how impressed I am by your commitment and dedication to XYZ Company. The past few years have been difficult ones for all of us. I know first-hand some of the frustrations you have felt upon discovering that XYZ no longer had an open-door policy and that issues were meant to be hidden and conflict avoided. I like  to change all of that with your help. Part of my plan for my first one hundred days is to meet with each department manager and anyone of you who like to help make this organization into a better place for all of us. I’d like to hear what you have to say. What you feel is going well within departments and your workplaces. What you feel is working well within the company and what we need to improve upon. I’m here to recreate XYZ’s open door policy and to extend an invitation to all of you to drop in and tell me what on your mind and in your hearts. I’d like to get to know you better. I view XYZ and its employees as my family and one of my goals is that under my leadership XYZ will have an atmosphere where we can openly talk like family members again..

As a community of professionals, we’ve got some big issues to tackle involving honesty and respect. I’d like to ask for a commitment from each of you to rise above the pettiness and the hallway gossip of the past. Please, put that behind you. For us to succeed we need open and honest communication. The key here is honesty. If there’s a problem, I want to know about it, not next week or next month or at the next meeting. If you’ve got time to tell someone else about it, please use this time to tell me. And when things are going well, I want to hear that too. It gets old listening to complaints, so spread around a little cheer and lets celebrate our successes together, even the small ones. As for respect, I want you to stop and take a good look around the room. (go on - I’ve got time)  Everyone in here is on our team, is part of our community. We need to work together to make XYZ the success I know it can be. And I think you do too, or you wouldn’t have stuck around for the past few years waiting for things to get better. Now is our chance to prove that we can do better and leave the past behind us. So are you up for the challenge?

There is no right or wrong way to address a situation like this. Maybe this suggestion gives you some pause, and if you have your own suggestions, please feel free to comment on this post.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

As you know by now, I am a big fan of Barbara Tuchman’s writings about history. If I had more time, I would probably get all the books she wrote and digest them deeply. For our main subject of creating success, better leadership, and talent development, I like to use lessons learned from the past.

We often hear that nobody wants to re-invent the wheel, but the tendency to actually look into history and learn from it doesn’t seem to be well developed.

Solon was one of the early leaders in ancient Greece. Barbara Tuchman talks about him in her books. I like to offer you some of the lessons learned and the story behind it to reflect on. It will bring you a perspective to consider and possibly integrate into your own management, leadership, or self-development endeavors.

Solon, when assuming the lead position in Greece enjoyed the unusual distinction of being acceptable to both the poor and the rich. By the rich, according to Plutarch, because he was a man of wealth and substance, and by the poor, because he was honest. In the body of laws he proclaimed, Solon’s concern wasn’t partisanship, but justice, fair dealing between strong and weak, and a stable government.

He abolished enslavement for debt, freed the enslaved, extended suffrage to the plebeians, reformed the currency to encourage trade, regulated weights and measures, established legal codes governing inherited property, civil rights of citizens, penalties for crimes, and finally taking no chances, exacted an oath from the Athenian Council to maintain his reforms for ten years. When looking at this list, you might want to ask yourself how much of these things have been turned back to lesser freedoms in the last 10 years.

Then he did an extraordinary thing, possibly unique among heads of state: purchasing a ship on the pretext of traveling to see the world, he sailed into voluntary exile for ten years. Fair and just as a statesman, Solon was no less a wise man. He could have retained supreme control, enlarging his authority to that of a tyrant, and was indeed reproached because he did not, but knowing that endless petitions and proposals to modify this or that law would only gain him ill-will if he did not comply, he determined to leave, in order to keep his laws intact because the Athenians/Greek could not repeal them without his sanction. His decision suggests that an absence of overriding personal ambition together with shrewd common sense is among the essential components of wisdom.

In the notes of his life, Solon put it this way:

“Each day I grew older and learned something new”

Strong and effective leaders, if lacking the complete qualities of Solon, rise from time to time in heroic size above the rest. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their shining moments secure their ability to lead. We have examples of this phenomenon in our current time. President Bush would not have had a chance to get reelected, with however slim a margin, had he not been able to create an atmosphere of fear that he claimed to be the only one to control. This became a believable proposition because he had shown some ability to lead during the events of 9/11. What was forgotten by the public was the fact that 9/11 was an event to which the leaders of the country reacted, and not something that occurred as a result of proactive, responsible action.

In the current campaign for the nomination as presidential candidates, the runners are still trying to prove their worth by pointing to their reaction to the 9/11 events. What stays in the background is the actual ability to lead and reform, as Solon did. Managing the results of an event caused by someone else is management, not leadership. I wish for all of us to work towards becoming the Solons of modern time, not to leave on a ship to travel the world, but to create sustainable change for the better of our communities and the environment we live in.

I hope you will reflect on recent actions and reactions, and determine how much of what was caused by our current leaders had positive results. Compare that to how the reactions of our leaders to events caused by others are sold to us in the media and all other places as positive and successful leadership. With your knowledge about the difference between management and leadership, I hope you draw the best possible conclusions and begin to apply them to your own leadership.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

I was introduced to this book during my masters studies at Antioch university in 2001. It impressed me then because it was an easy read, even though the context was complex. No wonder Barbara Tucman won the Pulitzer price a number of times.  Picking it up again, I find it amazingly applicable to our current situation. There is a familiar old adage that teaches us about those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it. THE MARCH OF FOLLY brings this message back to the forefront.

Barbara W. Tuchman eloquently discusses the bizarre propensity of governments throughout history to pursue policies contrary to their own interests. Mind you, this is not a pacifist book but rather one that begs governments to beware of the reckless pursuit of policy that might prove to be dangerous. And, yes, I admit right readily that hindsight is 20-20.

Beginning with the Trojans and their acceptance of the Trojan Horse to benighted Papal policy during the renaissance to Britain’s stupidity during the American Revolution to questionable American policy during the Vietnam war, THE MARCH OF FOLLY invites the reader to consider the fact that as things change in historic chronology apparently nothing else does.

Given our current war policies, efforts and mistakes in Iraq, Tuchman’s masterpiece is a very poignant read and we must confess, regardless of individual political leanings, that the potential for history to repeat itself yet again is considerable. Who knows, there may yet be a sequel to this one appropriately titled THE MARCH CONTINUES

Tuchman’s brief history of governmental folly begins with the Trojan’s ill-fated decision to admit the Greek wooden horse, moves across the Mediterranean in time for the Renaissance popes to provoke the Reformation, then moves to exclusively English-speaking follies, culminating in Vietnam. Folly, by her definition, is pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest, best summarized in relation to Philip of Spain, for whom no experience of failure of his policies would dissuade him of their essential excellence. Vintage Tuchman; by far the strongest passage is the wonderful tableau of British eighteenth century splendor depicted in the American Revolution section. As she portrays it, the life of a Whig parliamentarian was so sumptuous that only the insanely puritanical would trouble themselves with minor administrative hiccups like the Boston Tea Party.

Writing about the Trojan horse, Barbara Tuchman states that “the feasible alternative, that of destroying the horse – is always open. Capys the elder advised it before Laocoon’s warning, and Cassandra afterward. Notwithstanding the frequent references in the epic to the fall of Troy being ordained, it was not fate but free choice that took the horse within the walls. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 49)

To an unusual degree in the Renaissance good walked with evil in a wondrous development of the arts combined with political and moral degradation and vicious behavior. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 57)

Alongside the rascals and scandals [of the renaissance], decency and piety existed as ever. No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 60)

The abuse that precipitated the ultimate break was the commercialization of indulgences, and the place where the break came, as everyone knows, was at Wittenberg in northeastern Germany. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 113)

It would be tempting to claim that the comfort of carriage horses lost America, but distance, time, uncertain planning and incoherent generalship were the greater faults. Lord George’s nonchalant way with the dispatches was only a symptom of a larger carelessness. It would be tempting, too, to say this carelessness might be traced to the overprivileged lives of Georgian ministers, but then, what of other famous failure of communications: when American commanders were not warned of probable attack on pearl Harbor? Failure of communication appears to be endemic to the human condition. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 218)

What America lost in Vietnam was , to put it in one word, virtue.
The follies that produced this result begin with continuous overreacting; in the invention of endangered “national security,’ the invention of “vital interest,” the invention of a “commitment” which rapidly assumed a life of its own, casting a spell over the inventor. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 374)

A second folly was illusion of omnipotence, cousin to the ‘Popes’ illusion of invulnerability; a third was wooden-headedness and “cognitive dissonance”; a fourth was “working the levers” as a substitute for thinking. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 375)

“Nation-building” was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had build a nation from the Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 375)

A last folly was the absence of reflective thought about the nature of what we were doing, about effectiveness in relation to the object sought, about balance of possible gain as against loss and against harm both to the ally and to the United States. Absence of intelligent thinking in rulership is another of the universals, and raises the question whether in modern states there is something about political and bureaucratic life that subdues the functioning of intellect in favor of working the levers without regard to rational expectations. This would seem to be an ongoing prospect. (Tuchman, 1984, p. 377)

As can be seen with relative ease, Barbara Tuchman is a master of history and pointing out what leaders could have learned from previous events and actions. Movies like “The Crude Awakening” show us that the lessons we could have learned are not always politically opportune and therefore left in the dust.
When it comes to our survival, people will start looking towards those individuals and leaders who can actually provide solutions for the increasing number of problems. Some of the problems are home-made and have been repeated throughout the last decades. Others are made form greed, disregard for the bigger global picture, or the believe that a great nation will always be great, have resources, or the power to command them. This theme will probably change pretty soon. As leaders we need to be prepared, try to learn for the lessons in history that Barbara Tuchman has shown in this book and many others before and after it. We will need to shape a vision of the future that is sustainable, environmentally conscious, and believable past the fanfare of politics.

Current presidential politics about Iran and the conference in Bali as well as the positioning of those who want to become the successors of eh current administration show little change. Maybe a movement form the bottom up is required, in which business leaders are putting the rights steps together for a better future for all of us. Some state governors seem to have understood the need and work consistently to offer local support. We should take advantage and hope for better times at the federal level. Though it might be lacking right now, it’s not an excuse not to take action to create a better world with success and in harmony with nature immediately.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC

As a long time member of Live out Loud I receive frequent updates from the organization. I am still contemplating to join the big table in 2008. I finished my coaching and our business is growing nicely. Many of the things Laural Langemeier teaches and promotes is very true and has shown significant success at AMC LLC.

In one of her most recent articles, Laural again touches on 8 steps to take to create a successful business. We all know that a credible approach doesn’t work in weeks or months, as some of the MLM folks want you to believe. A consistent approach for 3-5 years is the way to go. If you make it to that point, you have succeeded over 95% of all start-ups.

Laural calls herself a wealth coach. For AMC I prefer the name Performance Coach. Here is what Laural wrote:

As a wealth coach, my favorite definition of wealth is “the act of profuse abundance through the actualization of one’s skills and gifts.” If you think this way, not only are you able to create wealth with the skills you already have, but it’s something that grows and lasts when you do it with a team.
Creating new money is a huge component in the Wealth Cycle. Many of you probably have jobs working for others to earn most of your money. For now,  you should keep your job and start your business on the side. For today’s entrepreneurs who are ready to live the life they want, you can actually make more money with your own businesses if you know what they’re doing.
You’ve got to get out there and start exercising your business leadership muscles as soon as possible! Once you get going on the Wealth Cycle, there’s no turning back.

Here are some of the key elements that make new business owners successful: To learn the steps and how to apply them, click here-