Although I’ve been following developments in Gov2.0 closely over the last two years or so, this is my first direct involvement with it. And in the interest of jumping in with both feet, I figured it would be a good idea to use this blog to document my experiences on the CISC and with Gov2.0 more generally.

In the coming weeks and months, then, I plan to cover a full range of Gov2.0 topics, from the airy heights of theory to the nitty-gritty, down-in-the-weeds view of trying to actually get stuff done on the committee. And I look forward to making this a place for you all to share your thoughts and experiences with Gov2.0, not only to keep me honest with good old-fashioned heckling, but also to widen the conversation beyond my point of view to include yours.

My first post will be after the winter recess, but in the meantime, jump in and make suggestions for topics I should address, and I’ll get them on the docket for 2012.

I hope you all have safe and enjoyable holidays with family and friends and look forward to seeing you back here in January!

I’m a total book snob. The list of great books out there that I want to read is so long that, even if I spent twelve hours a day doing nothing but reading and lived another hundred years, it would be difficult to get through all of them. So I’m pretty protective of the few hours a week I actually have to devote to reading.

Given this, I was fairly skeptical when I dove into Patrick Lencioni’s Getting Naked last Saturday, because it was written as a fictional account of the takeover of a boutique consulting firm by a “big five” type firm.

I was ready for the worst that business books have to offer: hackneyed story line, wooden dialogue, obvious, Dr. Phil-esque “learnings” (just typing the word makes me cringe…when did “lesson” stop being good enough?)—and I was imagining all the books on my bucket list that I would never get to read because I chose to read Lencioni’s.Cut to an hour later, with me fifty pages in and not only totally engrossed but fired up about putting my suit back on Monday morning and getting back in the trenches with my clients—this is a fantastic book.

Lencioni does such a great job telling the story of Lighthouse Partners, the boutique firm that gets gobbled up by a Big Five firm, that you quickly forget how trite the idea of a business fable is and just get engrossed in the story. And the lessons here are anything but obvious, especially for folks used to working in the cutthroat, work-em-to-death environment of large professional services firms.

Lencioni gets at what the heart of consulting should be: a complete focus on serving the client. He shows us a firm where no one sells, they simply consult. Sales calls are just the opportunity to begin solving the client’s problems. If they find value in that activity and want to pay for more they will; if they don’t, they won’t, and both parties shake hands and part amicably.

Projects are not the delivery of the work agreed to in an SOW. They are the creation of value for the client, and the SOW is merely a starting point for that activity. And the creation of value for a client does not happen through having the smartest, most confident consultants in place telling the client what to do; it comes from having consultants who are egoless, fearless, and graceful under pressure work with clients to help facilitate solutions, all predicated on doing what’s best for the client, even if it means losing the business.

In this way, Getting Naked shares its fundamental orientation with Mahan Khalsa’s Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, although the latter is more about how to transform your sales process from a transactional approach to a consultative one.

And before you dismiss Lencioni’s approach as pie in the sky and untenable in the real world of management consulting, you should know that it’s based on the work he’s been doing with his own real-world, boutique firm for years now. And if you take a deep breath and think through your own experience with clients (with what’s gone well, what hasn’t, your successes, your failures), I think you’ll begin to see that the times you were most successful were the times you were focused on the client rather than the contract, your numbers, or selling, and that Lencioni’s approach is a powerful way to do that on a more consistent basis.

The final word

Clearly I think this is an important read for anyone who works in consulting. But I would expand that to include anyone who works with consultants, because you should be getting this kind of service from the folks you’re paying good money to (and lots of it) to get help solving your most important business problems. And if you’re not, Getting Naked will help you know what to ask for or, if that doesn’t work, find the kind of consulting firm that puts client service first, and everything else second.

I’m happy to say that The Information doesn’t disappoint. This book is a tour de force, even for Gleick, who specializes in tours de force. His scope is sweeping, from Plato to quantum computing, and, as we’ve come to expect from Gleick, he gets deep into the details of long-forgotten science and technology innovations.

While I’m doing that, here’s some oldie but goodie posts you may not have seen before:

• Putting one foot in front of the other
• Speaking of Leadership – Interview with David DeLuna
• The execution cycle
• Speaking of Leadership – Interview with John F. Moore

I listed four kinds of insulation in the introductory post:

• From the larger organizational context
• From the work being done on the ground
• From wider communities of practice
• From the marketplace

In this post I want to dig into the last one, insulation from the marketplace.

The problem

Of the four kinds of insulation, this one is the easiest to fall prey to and the most difficult to counteract. After all, the marketplace is made up of your competition and your customers—two very difficult folks to get familiar with. But without knowing as much as possible about both, you won’t be as effective a leader as you could be.

For those of you out there in sales, marketing, and customer service, being attuned to your customers or your competition (or both) is part and parcel of your job description. But for the rest of us, our day-to-day, short-term responsibilities can keep us so busy that we forget about the larger context of our work.

The solution

There’s no single best way to get to know your customers and competition better. But I want to share a few techniques I’ve used over the years to fight against this kind of insulation.

• Spend a day doing side-by-sides with customer service reps, both veterans and newbies. Hearing what customers have to say about your products and services (as well as what the reps have to say about their own experiences on the job) will give you a crash course in who your customers are and what they want.
• Get to know the sales team. These are the folks who are most intimately acquainted with your competition…because they go toe-to-toe with them every day out in the field. Ask to sit in on their sales meetings; take individual reps or managers to lunch/coffee to pick their brains; and when you get to know them better, see if you can tag along on visits to existing accounts—the latter is a great way to get in front of customers directly.
• Become an expert in your products and services. Maybe it’s because of the time I spent in IT, but I can’t tell you how many co-workers I’ve had who were bit fuzzy on exactly what we did at any given company. Sure, they knew in general what we did, but if they had to explain our product catalog to an outsider, they’d be a deer in the headlights. This might be okay for a line level employee, but if you want to be a leader, this should be ingrained in how you think at work.
• Use the marketing department as a resource. Your products and services don’t come out of thin air; they’re based on tons of market research that looks at potential customers and the competitive landscape. So, now that you have a solid grasp on your product catalog (see last bullet), reach out to folks in marketing to learn about the strategy and positioning behind the catalog: who are/aren’t the target customer segments? Who are/aren’t our main classes of competitor? What’s our go to market strategy for different product classes, customer segments, and markets?

The final word

That’s my best advice for how to get to know your competitors and customers—how about you folks? Got any tried and true advice on how to do this? Horror stories of what happens when you’re out of touch with either (or both) of them? Success stories about how you connected with either (or both) of them? Jump in, and let’s get the conversation started!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gleick, he’s a fantastic science and technology writer, best known for his biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman…although when you’re a polymath like Gleick, “best known for” oversimplifies the breadth of your accomplishments.

During the nineties, he was at the forefront of those who understood just how profound the changes taking place to the information landscape were. He may not have been right 100% of the time (more on that in a minute), but he was always willing to see past the immediate wow factor of any given technological innovation to get at the larger implications for us as individuals, for our culture, and for society as a whole.

As you might expect, he covers a lot of ground in WJH, from the joys and frustrations of being a WinWord power user, to the radical transformation of telcos, the growth of Microsoft, the Internet and politics, the death of money, Y2K, and even the state of Internet porn circa 1995.

All the essays are excellent here, although some are more substantial than others. And while Gleick is always well-informed on his subject matter, you can definitely tell which topics he’s engaged with more deeply (especially the history of telephony, which is the starting point for The Information).

Mostly right

What was most striking to me, his modesty in the preface notwithstanding, is how often Gleick gets it right here. Even in the dim first light of the Internet age, he saw with surprising clarity just what this new thing would mean for us.

We definitely laugh when he pokes fun at the Bell Labs employees running around with their buzzing, beeping devices getting plain-text stock quotes or news items and forwarded answering machine messages from their voice mail. But he also steps back from this near-sighted perspective to give us his real thoughts on the matter: these science experiments and toy gadgets will fundamentally alter how we live our lives–and had already started to do so, even way back when he was writing these essays.

And when he does step back, you almost suspect him of having revised the essays in light of what was to come…except in the case of porn (“This is Sex?”), which he doesn’t see as all that suited to the online world. A small misstep in an otherwise eerily prescient collection of essays.

A state of wonder

Beyond how right Gleick is about most of this stuff, there’s also a real sense of wonderment here, a slack-jawed stare at the changes going on that asks could this really come to pass during my lifetime?

It’s like looking at one of of those “Home of the Future” spreads in a 50s issue of Popular Mechanics, where computers cook meals and robots put your slippers on, except that in hindsight we know that Gleick was right–the amazing gadgets and technologies he previews have become an expected, even routine part of our everyday lives. It makes me wonder which of the futuristic capabilities that we marvel at today will be ho-hum in ten year’s time.

Getting used to it

Finally, I was amazed throughout the book at how rapidly we’ve adapted to all these seismic changes to the way we live our lives. From how we communicate with family, friends, and colleagues, to how we pay for goods and services, consume news and entertainment, do business, and participate in politics, things have changed radically since 1990. And as Gleick points out, we struggled with them deeply, and in retrospect, almost comically so, as they were emerging.

But from this side of the shift, it’s hard to remember in any tangible way what it was like before debit cards, cell phones, Microsoft Word, and seamless e-commerce. Reading Gleick’s first-hand account from the front lines of these shifts is a reminder both of just how difficult and how short-lived such transitions are these days.

The final word

All in all, this is a great book–required reading for anyone interested in technology and its impact on society, both looking forward and looking back.

And while I turn now plow through The Information, I’d love to hear from folks out there who’ve read WJH: what’d you all think? Love it? Hate it? Did I miss anything in my assessment? Jump in, and let’s get the conversation started!

I listed four kinds of insulation in the introductory post:

• From the larger organizational context
• From the work being done on the ground
• From wider communities of practice
• From the marketplace

In this post I want to dig into the third, insulation from wider communities of practice.

Something’s got to give

We all have enough to do for our jobs without taking on additional work. Most days it seems like just keeping on top of the currently burning fires is all we do.

Given this, it’s all too easy to lose touch with the wider world out there, i.e., the community of practitioners in your discipline. These are the folks who are doing the same job you are but at different organizations, are involved in standards boards and working groups, speak at conferences, write expert blogs, or publish articles and books.

You may know some of them…heck, you may have been one of them once upon a time before your regular job sapped all your professional energies.

My hero

Whatever the case may be, you likely envy them a bit–who hasn’t wondered how they manage to keep up with their day job and be a thought leader (and maybe daydreamed a bit about what it would be like to be them for a day or two)? Or maybe you think participating in the wider community of practice is a distraction, a nice to have, a way to put feathers in your cap that has little to do with getting the job done.

Just do it

The reality is that participation in the wider community of practice is vital to being an effective leader for a number of reasons.

• Inspiration - you can’t sustain your engagement with your job–to say nothing of your career–by simply putting out fires. At a certain point, you have to find a way to step back and focus on what you need to do to push yourself and evolve beyond your current skills.
• Networking - participating in the wider community of practice is a great way to build your network, which doesn’t just help you in your current position (by giving you fresh perspectives on the work you do) but also in your career path.
• Brand - lets face it, career advancement has changed in the last few years. Resumes on 24 lb bond paper and a killer cover letter have given way to robust LinkedIn profiles and social media footprints. True, knowing the right person is still essential, but there are all sorts of new ways to get to know the right person, and participating in the wider community of practice is one of them…and has never been easier.

The final word

No surprise: I think everyone should make the effort to participate in the wider communities of practice that are relevant for them…what do you all think? Are you currently an active participant? How do you stay involved and balance your responsibilities to your “real” job? Of if you think participating in the wider community of practice is a nice to have, tell us why.

I’d love to hear what folks out there think about all this…so jump in and let’s get the conversation started!

I listed four kinds of insulation in the introductory post:

• From the larger organizational context
• From the work being done on the ground
• From wider communities of practice
• From the marketplace

In this post I want to dig into the second, insulation from the work being done on the ground.

It’s good to be the king?

Insulation from the work being done on the ground tends to be more acute and pervasive the higher you move in the organization. After all, as you move up the food chain, you naturally get more and more abstracted from day-to-day work–what you do becomes more about enabling others to do that work…or enabling others to enable others to enable others to do that work (and so on).

But it can also be a problem for those line managers just one step removed from the work being done in the trenches. I know I’ve seen my fair share of newly-minted managers, fresh from the front lines, who all of a sudden have no clue what their team is doing. it seems that some leaders simply have a tendency to get out of touch with what their directs are doing, no matter that they’re sitting across the aisle from them day in and day out.

Here’s what I don’t mean

Before I dig in, however, I want to clarify what I do and don’t mean by being in touch with the work on the ground. I don’t mean that the leader should be doing the work side by side with their teams or even that they should be able to do it (or even know how it’s done).

Rather, a leader who’s in touch with the work being done on the ground understands the tasks their team is working on at any given time, the constraints on these tasks, the reasons why the work is being done, and the organizational stakeholders counting in it. They “get” what their teams are doing and can articulate it crisply to outsiders (their boss, peers, and others outside their group) and also discuss it intelligently with their teams.

Consequences

I think we’ve all seen what happens when a leader is disconnected from the work being done on the ground (and most of us at one time or another have probably fallen into this trap):

• They manage at the wrong level. They vacillate between leaving their teams high and dry (which they would call delegating) and micromanaging in an attempt to regain control…usually because they’ve been called out by senior leadership for not knowing what’s going on in their shops.
• They’re fueled by fear and uncertainty. Because they have to operate second- or third-hand from the work they’re responsible for and because they’re out of touch with it, they can never really be certain whether they’ll be a success or failure, whether they’re being called to the boss’ office to get congratulated or shown the door.
• They don’t adequately develop the individuals on their teams. And how could they? They don’t know what these folks do, let alone what these aspire to do or how they could help them get there.
• Their teams get less visibility than they should. How can these leaders act as advocates for their team when they don’t fully understand what they do? They can’t, and so their teams sit by and watch other groups get accolades and recognition while they labor in obscurity.
• They are almost universally disliked by their teams. They get paid more, but they don’t actually do any of the “real” work, nor do they add value as leaders–what’s to like?

Enough about me, what do YOU think about me

So much for what’s wrong—how can leaders reconnect with the work on the ground if they find themselves disconnected? They need to do three things…

• Learn how to effectively delegate. There’s a big difference between delegating and ignoring. Delegation is a way to deliberately shift work to others, not only to get the work accomplished more successfully, but also to stretch and professionally develop those you delegate to. It’s not letting things randomly drop off because you’re too busy, harried, or stressed.
• Recognize that you are not the center of the universe. Yes, as a leader, you have stresses and responsibilities that your team does not. But remember that it goes both ways: your team is responsible for things you are not, and just because you may have been responsible for this things in the past, doesn’t diminish the challenges they currently face.
• Make the time to stay in touch with your team. You can easily get caught up in the hustle and flow of being a leader and forget that one of your most important tasks is supporting your team–leaders are those who get work done through others–so removing obstacles, clearing administrative brush, and singing their praises is, if not Job One, then it’s Two or Three. Don’t leave it up to chance.

The final word

That’s what I have to say about being insulated from the work on the ground. In the next post, we’ll turn outwards and look at a kind of insulation that cuts leaders off from the wider world: insulation from wider communities of practice.

But while I’m cooking that up, I’d love to hear from those of you out there who have your own thoughts on how leaders can better align with the day-to-day work of the organization: give me criticism and feedback, ask a question of the group, share your own experiences or thoughts…jump in and let’s get the conversation started!

I listed four kinds of insulation in the introductory post:

• From the larger organizational context
• From the work being done on the ground
• From wider communities of practice
• From the marketplace

In this post I want to dig into the first, insulation from the larger organizational context.

Down and out

Insulation from the organizational context tends to be more acute and pervasive the further you move away from the C-level. After all, the top of the organization is where the larger organizational context lives and breathes, i.e., mission and vision, strategic imperatives and direction, high-level tactics. So it stands to reason that the closer you are to the top, the easier it is to stay connected to what happens there.

It also tends to be a problem the further you move away from the front office, whether that means into more supporting functions like IT and HR or less-central business units (geographically isolated, smaller P&L, non-core products and services). Again, the further you move from the center of the action, the more difficult it is to stay on top of that action.

Consequences

I think we’ve all seen what happens when a leader is disconnected from the larger organizational context (and some of us have even been that leader once or twice):

• Their funding and resources come and go with little explanation.
• Where they’re headed in the organization is unclear—no obvious next career move.
• Organizational changes and shake-ups catch them off guard—“I can’t believe so-and-so got moved up/down/out,” “I had no idea we were going to get rid of that division/product/office,” etc.

Beyond these three, the overall effect of being disconnected from the larger organizational context is to make the work they and their teams do every day less meaningful because it’s not working in concert with the rest of the organization to achieve results.

I will admit that if a team is particularly close-knit, folks may find being part of a rag tag bunch of rebels satisfying, but more often than not, swimming against the organizational tide in this way is exhausting and frustrating. I’ve been involved in both sorts of teams, and for my part, I much prefer to have my work aligned as much as possible with what the organization is doing.

Up and in

So much for the problem and its effects—how do you turn things around if you find yourself a disconnected leader? You need to do three things…

• Get familiar with how your CXOs see the business. Take the time to read corporate mission statements, strategic objectives, and other foundational documents. As fluffy as they can seem at first (or second, or third) glance, they’re not typically created by accident. Instead, they represent hours of individual and group effort on the part of executive leadership to define the work of the organization. And beyond that, funding and support tend to flow along the lines of the vision presented in these corporate-level documents—so you need to understand them if you hope to consistently get support for your day-to-day work.
• Get familiar with your organization’s products and services. Take the time to not only fully understand what your company actually does, i.e., what products and services it offers, but also what makes it profitable. What are your key costs? What drives margins up or down? Who are your competitors? How do your products and services stack up against theirs? What drives changes in your market (positive and negative)? If you can’t provide an intelligent answer to each of these, you have work to do to get connected to your organization.
• Align your work with how your CXOs see the business and with your organization’s products and services. I know you all know this, but I can’t tell you how often I see corporate leaders undertaking work that either has no direct connection with the larger organizational context or has a connection that’s not clearly articulated. Whether this is because they’re ignorant of the larger context or prefer to “do their own thing” or have blinders on, I don’t know. But long term, your best interests are served by making sure not only that the work you and your team do fits somewhere into the larger organizational context but also that people are aware of how it fits.

The final word

That’s my take on being insulated from the larger organizational context. In the next post, we’ll look at a kind of insulation that becomes more acute the further up the food chain you go: insulation from the work on the ground.

But in the meantime, I’d love to hear from folks out there who have thoughts on how leaders can better align with the work of the larger organization: share your war stories or thoughts, give me criticism and feedback, or just ask a question of the group…jump in and let’s get the conversation started!