From 1975 until his retirement in 1988, Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin published a monthly winner of his Golden Fleece Award.  A fiscal hawk, Proxmire aimed to expose what he considered a wasteful use of taxpayer money.  The idea was quite popular and I remember many a newscaster gleefully exposing the latest in government waste.  Years later, in some discussion on scientific research, the Golden Fleece Awards came up again.  The grant money for fundamental R&D came overwhelmingly from government agencies like the DoE, DoD, NIH, etc and research grants were often the “winners” of Proxmire’s award.  We discussed one of these winners in depth: a research program to understand the sex lives of roaches.

I can see the eye brows raising.  The sex lives of roaches?  That seems a fairly ridiculous thing to study.  Except it wasn’t.  The researchers were investigating pheromones, those naturally produced agents that attract a member of a species to breed.  All jokes aside about actually wanting roaches to breed more, the identification of a cockroach sex attractant led to a fairly useful invention:  The Roach Motel.  Pre-Roach Motel, you would need to spray a poison around your kitchen or bathroom to hopefully banish the beasts (good luck with that).  The Roach Motel, however, attracted the roach to the “device”, which it entered and found the nicely contained poison.  (“Roaches check in….but they don’t check out.”)  For anyone with small children or pets, this was a huge safety improvement.  Now, pheromones are part of our common vernacular and are a critical part of the pest control industry.  Worth a little basic understanding of the sex lives of roaches.

There are several jumping off points from here on which to build an essay.  I could talk about how important basic research is and how scary it is that the US has severely reduced its support for fundamental knowledge building.  I could talk about how the practical application of knowledge is often a twisty turny unexpected road and most often cannot be managed through the use of Gantt charts, but patience in funding R&D is a topic for another time.  No, I want to go more general.  What the above example inspires in me today is this thought:  If something looks simple, or ridiculous, or stupid to me, my first thought is that I just don’t know enough about it.

A wonderful aspect of being retired is that I now have the time and the mental energy to read a whole lot more than I did while I was working.  I was a great skimmer, before.  And a great buyer of books and magazines that would pile up.  Now, not only do I have time to read these things; but being a lover of non-fiction, I have time to let my curiosity take me further into answering those follow on questions.  What I invariably find is that the truth has nuance and what I thought was fairly clear cut is not quite so clear.  For example, right now I am reading a lengthy treatise on Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who has been fighting the Federal government for the right to graze his cattle on federal grasslands without paying a fee.  Reading the backstory is giving me a much greater understanding of where the Bundys are coming from.  While I still don’t agree with most of their positions, I do see a different way to have the conversation to come to an agreement.  And couldn’t we all do with a bit more understanding of where others are coming from?

Before I went to grad school at Penn State, I was a city girl who ardently opposed sport hunting.  I remember walking on College Avenue one day, seeing a car drive by with a deer strapped across the roof rack.  “How can they just kill these magnificent creatures?!” I would judgmentally exclaim.  Then I began to talk with my new friends, many of whom had been sport hunters all their lives.  I learned about deer overpopulation because their natural predator, the mountain lion, had been driven out.  I learned how deer were starving.  I learned about the true sport hunter and the ethics of sport hunting:  only fire when you can make a clean kill, use the meat, follow the state game rules.  I still abhor people who sit on the tops of hills with a high powered rifle, just knocking off animals for the fun of it.  But I understand and appreciate true sport hunting.  I appreciated it even more after I had a car accident with a deer!

In a business environment, assuming “easy answers” brings a lack of understanding across business functions that need to work together to accomplish a goal.  Things always look simple from a distance.  If you are in sales and you need a tweak to a product to close the deal, that tweak can often seem pretty minor–unless you are the process engineer who needs to figure out how to do that tweak.  Magnify this difficulty ten times when someone gets the “bright idea” to enter a new market without sufficient research.  Distance from the details always makes things look simple and straightforward.  We’ve talked about assumptions.  Don’t assume that just because you don’t know how difficult something can be that it must be easy.

This issue is exasperated in large organizations where those several layers above the people doing the work do not understand what it takes to get something done.  I remember a time when a hurricane flooded out a production facility.  Once the flood waters receded, a team was put together to assess the damage and execute repairs.  These people worked day and night for several weeks.  It was an amazing effort!  The quick turnaround saved the company loads of money in lost sales.  I was in a meeting where this result was brought up in side conversation. The senior manager’s take was “Geez, why can’t we get people to work like this all the time?” DO YOU HAVE ANY FREAKIN’ IDEA WHAT THOSE PEOPLE WENT THROUGH?  No, you don’t.  You were too far removed from the details of the effort. That was not sustainable! 

In this current world, where we are inundated with sound bites from all directions, resist the temptation to just accept what you read and hear.  Consider the source.  Dig a little bit to find all sides of the story.  As with other topics we’ve discussed, though, you do need to pick your battles.  It is time consuming and mentally exhausting to try to research every little thing.  However, never doing it is just as dangerous.  Even just retaining the consciousness that you may not know enough to judge is a very good thing.  Certainly you would want people who might judge–or misjudge–you and your actions to take the time to understand.  So even if you don’t have the time to dig into it, at least remember that if what you are hearing sounds ridiculous, simple or dumb, you probably just don’t know enough about it.

I have been anticipating writing this essay since the idea for this blog went from idea to reality.  People who know me know that this concept of owning your decisions and actions, owning your own role in creating the situation you are in, is a BIG hot button of mine.  I’ve built your expectations of an “essay to beat all other essays” as I’ve teased the appearance of this entry.  We’ve been building up to it over the last three essays, discussing first identifying the RIGHT problem to solve, then thinking forward a few steps in your decision-making process to ensure you are making the best decision, followed by a discussion on the consequences of the actions (or inactions) you take.  It all boils down to this thought, though:  whatever decision you make, whatever actions you take (or don’t take), whatever consequences occur because of those decisions and actions, you must own the outcome and deal with it.  So, here we go. (Steps up onto soapbox)

All of you out there, whether you’ve been in large multinational corporations or small “mom and pop” shops know someone like this:  They walk around every day grumbling about how unhappy they are.  “This place SUCKS,” you will often hear them sneer.  “I hate it here.”  After a while, you lose your patience and ask the obvious question:  why don’t you leave?  Invariably, the answer is “I can’t.  I’m stuck here.”  Oh, I got so tired of hearing “victim talk”!  You were not stuck there!  You just didn’t like the consequences of your other options.  You chose to stay, whether you wanted to admit it or not.  That was usually when I wanted to scream, “Shut up about it and make the best of the situation!  Own your choice to stay.”

I know another person, a serial small time entrepreneur.  He has had glimpses of brilliance, but invariably within a year or two each venture has failed.  Miserably.  Every time our paths would cross, there would be another sob story about what went wrong.  It was always due to issues beyond his control:  I couldn’t find good employees; the location was bad; there was too much local competition; and, my favorite, I was misled about the opportunity.  Do you know what I have never heard from him?  I have never heard any such version of:  this is what I’ve learned from this venture and what I know to look out for next time.  Never, I repeat, never has anything ever been his fault, or had he done anything which he could consider learning from for his next venture.

While I hesitate to go here, there is an awful lot of victim-playing going on in our current social environment.  The types of opportunities available to certain groups of people have changed as our economy has evolved.  Accepting that and asking the hard questions about what you need to do differently to get on a better path is hard work.  And often depressing.  And can leave you feeling helpless and hopeless.  For many, it is easier to play the victim and blame the “other”.  Unfortunately, our current social environment has embraced blaming the “other” to a violent and clearly counterproductive degree.  I know it’s hard, but OWN your situation.  Life may not have treated you fairly but blaming someone else is not going to make your situation better.

Although I’ve now spent about half this essay talking about how annoying, frustrating or even dangerous it is when other people don’t own their choices, I want to focus on you.  Or, rather, get YOU to focus on you.  As much as I’d like to complain about the behaviors of others, I can’t make them act any differently.  I can only affect my own actions, just as you can only affect yours.  So, as I step down from my soapbox, let’s discuss some ways to resist playing the victim and set strategies for successfully owning your own decisions and their consequences.

First, let’s be clear and honest about one thing:  consistently owning your decisions and their consequences, consistently resisting playing the victim, is difficult work.  It is downright exhausting.  And it is hard.  You will, at times, blame others or something out of your control.  That’s ok.  Sometimes that becomes a self-preservation mechanism.  The key is to not do this most of the time nor to get stuck in that mode even for a given situation, like a job loss or relationship crumble.

I hear the cries from the gallery:  “Sherri, what do you, or anyone else, care about how I handle my own crises?  It’s none of your dang business.  Leave me alone and stay in your lane.”  I hear you and in some cases that is true.  However, in most cases, you not owning the consequences of your decisions affects many others.  And those of us affected care very much!  Even if we don’t care much about you, personally, we care that you’ve impacted our situation.  So, gallery, it’s not just about you.

Over the years, I have sat on panel discussions aimed at various age ranges, to discuss “what should students/young adults do to best prepare themselves for success in the ‘real’ world?”  I would listen to my fellow panelists wax poetic for extended periods of time discussing various strategies for success.  When the mic came to me, I always shared some short version of this:  Show up on time; do what you say you’re going to do; own the consequences of your decisions and actions.

As someone who has hired and managed scores of people over my career, these were always my guiding principles for evaluating employees and the standard to which I tried to hold myself.  It’s not rocket science, but nor is it necessarily easy.  I promised strategies, so here is what I recommend:  as noted above, no one can hold themselves to this standard 100% of the time.  It’s ok to give yourself a little pity party.  We all do it.  But make it short and keep it as private as you can.  Remember that you are not doing this to be accountable to anyone but yourself.  Others will benefit, but no one more so than you.  You are worth it.  You want to like what you see when you look in the mirror.  It can be extraordinarily frustrating to see many others around and above you shirking responsibility but I guarantee this:  over time, it will in some way come around to them; and the longer it takes the worse it will be.  Shut them out.  Focus on yourself.  Show up on time.  Do what you say you’re going to do.  Own the consequences of your decisions and actions.

When I was in high school, I had a math teacher named Ms. Counts.  Yes, really.  And I didn’t see the humor in that name until I was much older!  Ms. Counts was a no nonsense lady.  She dressed impeccably and sat ramrod straight on a stool next to her overhead projector where she’d teach her lesson for the day.  As she wrote, the spool of transparency film containing her writing (this was the ‘70s) would ooze down the aisle behind the projector as we all tried to keep up.  My classmates would often raise objections when she announced a test or homework.  Invariably, Ms. Counts would respond, “You don’t have to take the test” or do the homework or whatever.  She’d wait a beat to get hopes up and then would say, “as long as you are willing to accept the consequences.” Then she would smile her Ms. Counts smile. 

Decisions and consequences.  In the last couple of essays, we discussed the need to make sure you are identifying the REAL problem to put your efforts toward solving and then the equally important need to think forward a few steps to make sure the pathway you are evaluating is not actually going to make things worse.  This process is all about evaluating the consequences of actions and that is what I want to spend time unpacking today.

Throughout my life, I have heard people make this statement in explanation of an action or inaction:  “I had no choice.” For a long time, I accepted that justification.  I would look at the situation from my best guess of their point of view and say, “Well, I guess you are right,” even if that decision had a fairly negative impact on me.  Once I entered my Ferocious Forties (and all the life experience that came with that age), I realized that comment is absolute bullshit.  Repeat after me:  You always have choices; you just don’t like the consequences those choices bring. You will always choose the decision that has the most acceptable (or least unacceptable) consequence.  You are assuming, of course, that you truly know what the consequences are.  But since most of us do this evaluation subconsciously (and instantaneously), the assumptions you are making about which consequences you are facing are often faulty.  The first step toward addressing this issue of faulty assumptions is to first realize that you DO have choices and those choices DO have different consequences.  What are the choices?  What are the consequences you have presumed?  What assumptions have you made that led you to those presumptions and have you tested their veracity?  (Starting to understand why I find “assumptions” so critical?)  Following this process consciously will not only lead to better decisions but also, I hope, better ownership of the choices you have made.

Choices and consequences are also strongly related to priorities.  Thus, this process also works well when someone tells you that they just don’t have time or money for (blank).  That is wimp-speak for “what you are asking me to do is not a high enough priority for me and I don’t accept the consequences of shifting said priorities.”  Here is another repeat-after-me:  You always have time and money for the things that are important to you (read: high priority).  One of my last deadly volunteer activities while I was at Air Products was taking over the leadership of a cross-business task force looking into the need for a formal Career Development activity at the company.  Since this would invariably cost money and take time, this group was tasked first with defining the need for access to this capability.  The process involved interviewing many employees from across levels and business functions as well as senior executives.  Executive after executive would tell me, “Gosh, Career Development is so important.  I wish I had more time to devote to it.”  After talking to dozens of employees who said, essentially, “I have no idea where to even START,” I reported back to the Executive Committee.  What I tried to get across were two thoughts:  1) Knowing how to kick start your career was either instinctive to you executives or you lucked into great mentors when you needed them.  You had no trouble, so you don’t understand why anyone else does; and, 2) You would have plenty of time to devote to this issue if you considered it a higher priority—see #1.  I don’t need to tell you how that went over.

Look, I don’t want you to beat people up who don’t give to your fundraiser because they don’t consider it a high priority (“I don’t have the cash to spare”) or don’t do something with you because “they don’t have enough time”.  Focus, instead, on how to make what you want a higher priority for them.  How does your cause impact them directly (or someone or something they care about)?  What do they get out of spending time with you—are you proposing an activity they like?  Make whatever “it” is about them and not just about you.  Similarly, don’t get mad at (or judgmental about) someone for making a decision that you think is idiotic based on the consequences that YOU see. What are the consequences of action or inaction that they are evaluating that led them to their choice?  Increasing transparency to information may change how they see those consequences.  Or, perhaps, understanding their “big picture” might cause you to reevaluate how you see the consequence trade-off.

My high school math class would always sigh and murmur after Ms. Counts would say that line about accepting consequences. But we all knew what she meant.  No one is MAKING you do anything.  You may not WANT to take the test or do the homework, but neither are you willing to fail the class.  You know the consequences.  Don’t whine and play the victim.  Own your choices; own your actions; own the consequences of them.  And regarding that personal accountability?  We’ll tackle that one next time. I dare say my classmates and I internalized those critical lessons about consequences, choices and priorities and we are all the better for it.  Ms. Counts, wherever you are, thank you.

When I was a kid, my Dad taught me to play chess.  I only realize now, in my late 50’s, what incredible perseverance my Dad had.  I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 8 when he taught me and I doubt I had much patience with the game.  He seemed to agonize over which move he would make.  I did not.  Or at least not at first.  However, learning to play chess was worth the effort.  Chess is a wonderful metaphor for decision making in general.  More specifically, for the importance of thinking through the consequences of your decisions as well as “thinking several moves ahead” of your current position.

As many of you know, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, which has a storied history with kudzu.  Kudzu is a vine native to Japan that was introduced in the US at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.  It was soon brought to the south as an ornamental vine to shade porches and backyards.  The big purple flower just added to the appeal.  Kudzu proved to be a hardy, fast growing vine.  Since Southern farmers had just about thoroughly depleted the soil by growing so much cotton, the government decided to push kudzu planting to stem major soil erosion.  What could go wrong?

What went wrong is that kudzu quite literally took over the South. The Atlanta of my youth was one big kudzu covered mound.  No one apparently voiced concern that kudzu was not native to the area, so the natural forces that kept it in check might not be there.  The vine was uncontrollable, even choking out forests.  By the mid-70’s, kudzu covered 7 million acres of land in the south.  In recent years, the effort has focused on eradication—everything from herbicides to goats to another Japanese import, Megacopta cribraria, a bug that’s been chomping its way through kudzu growth since it landed accidently (probably through the airport) around 2009—and, yes, we don’t know yet what else it might chomp through.  (Thank you to the Atlanta Journal Constitution for these fun kudzu facts.)

My point is this:  no one took the time, back in 1876 when it was first brought over, or in the 1930’s and ‘40s when kudzu was purposely introduced to control erosion, to ask the question about what might happen next.  Examples abound in our casual abuse of nature, since she has had about 4 billion years to evolve a beautiful balance and we seem to be able to upset that balance in decades or less.  But there are plenty of other examples of not thinking a few steps ahead across our lives.

Let’s take active involvement in deposing a horrible dictator, like Sadam Hussein or Mummar Khadafi.  Both were horrible, violent rulers.  Few in our society could argue that they should be stopped.  However, in both Iraq and Libya, where the US was either very publicly or more covertly involved in removing those dictators, the aftermath was a mess.  Why?  Because as horrible strong men, they kept their countries together by force.  In the absence of that force, there was a vacuum of control and violent civil wars ensued.  Let’s remember that these areas are tribal lands and have been for thousands of years before the winners of WWII drew “country” boundaries. Allegiances were always more to the tribe than to the country as a whole.  While this probable outcome was no surprise to many who understand these lands and people, there was still very little effort put into the “post-deposition” plan.  Tens or hundreds of thousands of people died.  It’s important to think a few steps ahead.

There are many examples each one of you could think of in your workplaces or in your home life.  How about the very common situation of a company needing to reduce costs to improve profitability?  While I would love to get on my soapbox about “you can’t save your way to profitability,” cost reduction schemes often get companies a quick boost on Wall Street.  I’ve been through those discussions about who loses their jobs (the only real way to save quick bucks).  You can’t just pick off the biggest salaries or the people least likely to sue.  You must think through how a person fits into the organization, the skills they bring (both technical and personal), who depends on their output, who can pick up the slack or how you can make the work go away.  I say “you must” but we all know that rarely happens effectively or at all.  And even if you try, there are always consequences you can’t effectively mitigate.  However, most of the time, managers don’t think several steps ahead and the consequences can be disastrous and long lasting.

Another common situation is how people choose a car.  I want that sleek looking coupe!  Too bad I didn’t think about how to get a car seat in the back or, even worse, how my elderly Mom is going to get in and out of the front seat (or her walker not fitting in the non-existent trunk).  Then there are the people who really, really, really want to drive a luxury car but can’t afford to buy a new one.  They are focused on their monthly car payment, so they either buy a used car or lease one.  What they often don’t think about is the cost to insure a luxury car vs. a more modest vehicle.  Or the cost to maintain or repair one.  Or even the need to use premium fuel vs. 87 octane.  I applaud those that think about the full cost of ownership.  I also know you are rare.

Just as it is critically important to ask five successive “why” questions when trying to identify a real root cause problem, it is equally important to ask a few successive “what” questions when thinking about the consequences of a decision or action.  Ask yourself: “If I make this decision, what do I expect to happen, both good and bad?”  What steps could you take to mitigate the bad things that might happen and what other things might THOSE actions cause?  Go down a few levels.  Then try that with a different decision.  Think a few steps ahead, just like you would in a chess game.  What seems like a good move at first can be disastrous.  And what seems like a wimpy move could end up leading you to win the game.

There’s a bit of a thought flow developing here.  First we discussed identifying the REAL problem you are trying to solve.  Today we discussed thinking through the consequences of your decision to help choose the most favorable path.  Coming up is a more thorough treatment of “consequences”, leading to one of my favorite topics (OK, it’s more of a hot button)—taking personal responsibility for your actions.  Stay tuned!

If you are a regular reader of my essays, you know that I have been gifted with a number of wonderful bosses and mentors throughout my life and career.  At some point, we’ll discuss some of the non-wonderful ones but not today.  I am reminded often of a lesson that another of my favorite bosses taught me.  This lesson came during the “at the lab bench” part of my career.  My lab mates and I were working on developing new chemical products to solve a particular need we saw in the market or trying to solve customers’ problems with existing products we were already selling.  We would often have heated discussions during project review meetings, arguing about the proper pathway or the interpretation of data.  Our boss, known for being quiet until he wasn’t, would listen for a while and then cut us off with his favorite line:  “What problem are you really trying to solve?”

We’d stop talking, mouths open mid-word.  We’d look at each other.  One brave person would try to frame the question.  Another would disagree.  We’d start talking over each other again and he would cut off discussion once more:  What. Problem.  Are you.  REALLY. Trying to solve?  We’d try again and in a few minutes we’d have agreement on what the real issue was.  Amazingly, alignment on next steps came quickly after that. 

This concept of stopping up front to define the true issue or problem is broadly applicable.  Everyone has assumptions they’ve made about the REAL problem, but usually those assumptions are not verified.  I’ll stay away from controversial political examples (of which there are many) and give a simple household one.  Let’s say you have a water stain on your kitchen ceiling.  Well, you have a stain.  Saying it’s a water stain is an assumption.  The easiest thing to do would be to get out some paint and paint over it.  Problem solved.  Until it comes back.  Then you hit it with KILZ and paint.  Proud of yourself, you keep one eye on the ceiling and go on about your life.  Dangit.  It came back again!  The issue is that the problem you are trying to solve is not the stain.  That’s the symptom.  The real problem is that you have a water leak in the bathroom upstairs.  Not as easy to fix, but you can paint that ceiling 900 times and if you don’t fix the REAL problem, the stain will always come back.

It’s human nature to look for easy fixes.  Sometimes they actually work but most of the time they don’t.  Not getting enough breakthroughs in R&D?  Fire and replace the staff.  Not getting enough traction in the market for your new product?  Take out more ads.  Not able to hire and retain reliable staff?  Must be the talent pool. Finding and then owning the REAL problem takes work. No one wants to hear that they have made the wrong investments in R&D strategy or that the product they introduced does not meet the market need or that their skills as a manager and leader do not attract top talent.

One method I like to use is “The Five Whys”, often employed in Root Cause Analysis studies.  The basics of this technique are simple:  when trying to identify a true, underlying issue, ask “Why” at least five times.  To see how the technique works, let’s try out the five Whys on a simple problem.  How about the “hypothetical” issue of my weight gain in the last few years:

1.  Why have you put on weight, Sherri?  Well, I’m older now and have been through “The Change”.  It happens.

2.  Why would getting older and going through said Change cause you to put on weight?  Um, my metabolism has dropped.  My body doesn’t use calories the same way anymore.  Happens to every woman.  Nothing I can do about it.  Oh, and Trish has taught me to enjoy a glass of nice wine regularly.

3. Why would your metabolism changing (and the regular glass of wine) cause you to gain weight?  Well…I guess I don’t use as many calories anymore for energy.  And wine has more calories than water.

4.  Why would more calories and less efficient usage of them cause you to gain weight?  I’m taking in more calories than I’m burning, Einstein.  That’s the only reason people gain weight.

5.  Don’t get snippy.  Why are you taking in more calories than you are burning?  Sigh.  Because I need to control portion size and perhaps gets to spin class more often.

Getting to the REAL problem has a few key advantages.  First, you design solutions that get at the source of the problem and not a symptom.  Second, you are forced to face a more complex or simply “less fun” solution than you might really prefer to pursue.  Third, as in the case above, you are forced to take personal responsibility for the solution instead of playing the victim, which I will plumb in more detail in a future essay.

Now the above was a rather obvious example.  For more complex issues, you can find yourself really surprised by the answers to those third, fourth and fifth “whys”.  Wouldn’t it be nice to see this process used on the more intractable issues of our day, such as drug overuse, immigration, gun violence, environmental policy, tax policy, even trade?  I’d sure like to see us get at solutions to the real problem instead of reacting to a symptom.  These are complex issues requiring multi-faceted solutions.

Recognizing the importance of identifying the root problem is also key in creating strong relationships.  During my career, I facilitated countless discussions involving employee disputes.  The gratifying outcome is they usually solved the problem themselves.  My role was getting them to actually LISTEN to each other, discover what incorrect assumptions they were making about each other’s behavior, and get them to articulate the real issue between them.  Once that was achieved, resolution usually happened quickly.  I try to use this thought process in my personal life, as well.  Don’t assume what is driving someone’s behavior.  Get to the root issue behind the disagreements and own your piece of it.

I’ve vacillated on how to end this essay.  I could implore you to apply this goal of identifying underlying causes as you think about the big issues of today.  I could remind you that the first challenge in getting to the real problem is untested, unarticulated assumptions (which you know is a favorite topic of mine).  But I think I’m going to end this way:  give yourself and others around you a little grace.  We’ve all got so much going on, that it seems almost impossible to take the time and mental effort to get at the real problem, bust through the blame game and fight the desire for a simple solution.  Yes, you have to pick your battles.  But please pick them.  Problems, big and small, will never get fixed until you understand what problem you’re really trying to solve.

Now, THAT is a presumptuous title for an essay!  Teasing out critical leadership characteristics is an entire field of study that many people wiser than me have devoted their lives to figuring out.  And making the assumption that I can give that topic any sort of decent treatment in a 1000 or so word essay is probably brave.  So let me start out by saying that these thoughts are mine and mine alone, and built from no more rigorous research than what I have observed over my life and career.

I have had the opportunity to study leadership in many a training class and seminar.  I have been to Leadership Development camps designed by two different multi-billion dollar, multi-national companies.  I have even been fortunate enough to have had a personal leadership coach.  Go on the web, search “top leadership characteristics” and you’ll get a slew of lists from Forbes to Tony Robbins to the Center for Creative Leadership.  They usually contain such stalwarts as integrity, ability to delegate, ability to inspire, communication skills, decisiveness, and passion.  All good qualities, to be sure.  And while I hesitate to pick one that stands out from all the rest, I’m going to do it anyway.

I believe the most important characteristic of a good leader is humility.

Let’s think about that for a minute.  To be “humble” as I use the word here is “to have or show a modest estimate of one’s own importance.” (Dictionary.com)  That doesn’t seem to jive with many of the characteristics noted above, which are often high energy and forceful.  One thinks of a humble person as deferential and quiet.  Not what we think of when we think of a “strong leader”.  I beg to differ.  I propose that the effectiveness of those other characteristics is directly correlated with the level of humility that the leader embodies.

The importance of this concept was really driven home to me during my stint leading one particular Intertek business.  Because of distance and other responsibilities, I was only on site for one or two days a week—and that was when I wasn’t traveling somewhere else.  This type of management is only possible if you have a strong #2 on site every day.  When I first took over the business, I inherited a very strong personality as my second in command, one who had been with this particular business for decades, long before Intertek purchased it.  Our working relationship took no small effort to build since he naturally thought that HE should be leading the business, not me.  He quickly realized that since I was physically there only a relatively small amount of time, he could just do what he wanted (to a point) while I wasn’t there.   The “what” he did wasn’t a huge problem.  He ran the day-to-day operations and there wasn’t too much wiggle in the “what”.  It was the “how” that was the big problem.  I would catch him summoning people to his office for regular yelling sessions.  And he would always summon them to him—I rarely saw him walking the halls.  He led through intimidation one minute and then, maybe after he read an article in the Harvard Business Review, would suddenly get poetic about the importance of personal accountability (in others).  You never knew which personality you would get from day to day, although he always managed to be deferential to me and to others when he knew I was watching.  As much as this behavior gnawed at me, I did not take immediate action because I needed him: he really knew the business!  Finally, as a prelude to putting him on a Performance Improvement Plan, I sat him down for a talk.  “The most important quality in a leader is humility,” I told him, to start the conversation.  We talked a lot about his “how”.  He refuted every statement I made.  Within a week, he quit.  And while he left a big hole to fill, the majority of the organization heaved a sigh of relief.

What drives a leader’s behavior can be a tricky topic of discussion, especially when you are talking with other leaders as opposed to those they lead.  Let’s be honest:  the perceived power of many leadership positions drives ego.  We’ve all fallen prey to it now and then.  But what really should drive a leader is the awesome responsibility of the position as it relates to the people who are depending upon you to make decisions that impact their wellbeing.  The larger the leadership position, the greater the impact on a larger group of people and the greater the probability that each decision will impact some more positively than others.  Finding and owning that balance requires introspection and deep personal ownership of the outcome.

Humility is what causes a leader to recognize that she doesn’t have all the right answers all the time.  She has the confidence to seek true counsel, not just confirmation of her positions.  The humble leader remembers that the real work gets done by others and she needs to focus first on making sure they have what they need to be successful.  Her success is dependent upon their success.  What they need is a well-articulated direction and strategy and the tools to execute, not required blind adherence to a set of rules not explained.

Humble leaders don’t lead through fear and intimidation.  They lead through motivation.  Employees respect him.  And he’s earned their respect, in turn, by respecting and valuing them for what they bring to the table.  The difference between a good business and a great business is that extra bit of effort an employee chooses to give: that extra bit of attention to a report; that extra bit of time with a customer on the phone; that extra question they ask themselves about the quality of their work that causes them to choose to spend more time to get it right.  People want to work for the humble leader and give that extra bit of effort because they know he will notice.  They know he will say “thank you”—and mean it. 

She has no real problem finding and retaining strong employees.  When something goes wrong, the humble leader does not ask who’s at fault but rather “what can we learn from this?”  And the humble leader does not blame “conditions outside of my control” for her struggles, but rather asks “what can I do differently next time?” She does not shirk personal responsibility and accountability. The humble leader is not “soft”.  She will discipline as needed and do so quickly—the whole organization is depending upon her to do just that.

We’ve all worked for both types of leaders—those more humble and those infinitely impressed with themselves (and who seem to desire your constant confirmation of it).  I don’t have to ask who you prefer working with.  I’ve tried to be a humble leader when at all possible.  I have not been 100% successful and look back with a bit of embarrassment at those times when I was more caught up in the position than being respectful of what the position required of me.  I learned the humility lesson over time and through seeing the huge difference it made when I took a more humble approach.  If you are a newer leader, give some thought to this concept.  Save yourself some time and pain!  Get over yourself now and you will have a lot more to be proud of over the length of your career.

Air Products, like many large companies, ran a rotational assignments program for new employees in engineering and R&D.  It was a great way to get to know the company and get experience in several different areas.  I myself benefited from that program.  Over the years, I coached many young scientists through the process of choosing their next rotation or their roll-off position.  These kids agonized about their choices!  “If I take an assignment here,” one would say, “it could set me up for this pathway.  But if I take an assignment there, it could set me up for this alternative possibility.”  “What if I choose this assignment,” another would ask, “and they end up closing down the project?”  Weeks would go by.  Interviews.  Discussions.  Pro and con tables.  More discussion.  Finally, I would encourage them with this thought:  It’s not about the decision itself, it’s about what you do once you’ve made the decision.  In other words, it’s more important that whatever you decide, you give it 100% effort.  You don’t look backward.  You don’t second guess.  Your performance in a role will determine your opportunities, not so much the role itself.

Don’t get me wrong.  Establishing a decision-making process is important.  But at some point, you have choices that are all above a certain threshold of “goodness”, and further agonizing is not going to add more value.  At this point, success is more determined by what you do once you’ve made the decision.  There is not a single pathway to success and happiness.  Many different choices can get you there—if you put your all into making it work.

Think about how you’ve made some of the most pivotal decisions in your life:  Where you went to school.  Where you decided to live.  Who you married.  Various job changes.  In some cases, those were highly considered multi-layered decisions.  In other cases, much less so.  I think about how I made the decision to go to Goucher College.  I knew I wanted a school known for its chemistry program.  I knew I wanted a smaller institution.  I knew I wanted to live away from home.  That narrowed down the choices, but left many others!  Mom, Dad and I made a campus visit one beautiful fall morning and that was it:  I went Early Decision and committed to acceptance on my application.  My choice of college led to my choice of grad school which led to my first job which led to living in the Lehigh Valley and all that came with that.  I could have chosen another college and chances are it would have led down a totally different path.  Is that a good or a bad thing?  I don’t think it needs to be considered either one.  My life surely would have been different, but most likely (hopefully) equally successful and happy. 

I also think about how my career progressed.  It sounds like a well thought out plan—one role leading to the next, building a set of skills that opened up other opportunities.  Those opportunities added more experiences that opened up other roles until I ended up as Vice President of a collection of North American businesses.  The reality?  I had no idea what I wanted to do.  I had no idea of even the breadth of opportunities that were open to me!  I took a job that looked fun and rewarding.  When another opportunity presented itself at a time I was ready for change, I took it.  That process repeated itself many times over.  Each step along the way, I refined my preferences.  I got a better sense of the alternative paths open to me and what skills and experiences I’d need to attain.  My “preferred pathway” changed many times. 

There was one constant in all of this:  I learned to focus my all on the job I was doing, not on the job I thought I wanted next.  I wasn’t always successful, but when I failed to do my best, it usually meant I had moved into a role that wasn’t really right for me.  I’d make a change and try again. 

That brings up an important corollary to this theorem.  Don’t let any misstep lead you to believe that you are destined to failure.  It emphatically does NOT—not if you keep giving each new opportunity your all.  Life sometimes gives you a little nudge to get you on the right path.  Some of my biggest professional disappointments ultimately led me to some of the most successful and gratifying phases of my career. 

I have been incredibly fortunate in my career and life.  I was drawn to a field that was in demand at the time I graduated.  I happened upon a string of managers and mentors who helped me improve my skills each step of the way.  And I learned to keep plowing through during the tough times, yet made some good choices when it was time to shift lanes.  I was blessed with parents that taught me to value knowledge, believe in myself, and comport myself with integrity.  But more than anything else, I had been given the gift of understanding early on that there are few truly bad decisions.  There is just the need to make a commitment and put in the effort to get the best out of each decision you make.

I’ve mentioned that I have been very lucky in life to have just the right mentors show up at just the right times.  Sometimes the mentoring bestowed was narrowly focused, like how Mrs. Cherry encouraged my interest in Chemistry in High School.  And sometimes the lessons were broad, on-going, and formative, such as those from one of my first bosses at Air Products.  I was extremely lucky to come under Tom’s guidance at a time when I was still really green from grad school and bumping into proverbial walls daily in a business environment.  His patience was legendary; his wisdom more so.  Over the years, my coaching has been peppered with “Tom”-isms.  The subject of this essay is one of the first he taught me and one of my favorites.

Let me set the scene.  Making that transition from school to “real work” was tough.  At least, it was in the late 1980’s when there was not a ton of interdisciplinary learning in school.  I knew Chemistry and lab work and research.  I loved molecules and they loved me.  However, I knew very little about how a laboratory discovery was turned into a viable product that people would actually buy and thus pay my salary.  I knew even less about the challenges interacting with associated divisions would bring.  Who knew what manufacturing, sales or finance needed to know to make my fabulous little discovery commercially successful?  I also knew very little about the politics of a working environment.  There were so many people working at different levels that I began pulling into myself more in order to avoid discomfort and conflict. 

This pathway is one that many people, especially scientists, end up taking.  They dive ever deeper into their own area of expertise and lose patience with those on the outside.  Not being able to connect with others is a huge issue not just in large corporations but in any venture where individuals need to contribute their part or the business will not be successful.  People talk past each other; they make incorrect assumptions around language and priorities; they minimize the difficulty of what other players contribute.  It’s not so much that people lack social skills (although that can be an issue) but that they fail to create a human connection that will allow more effective discussion.  Tom clearly saw me heading down this destructive pathway.

I don’t remember exactly what led Tom and me to have this discussion, but I sure remember the advice he gave me:  “Sherri, throughout your career and life you are going to have work with all kinds of people.  Some will be easy to connect with and some will not.  Here’s what I suggest you do: with every person you meet, find one thing about them that you can like or admire and one thing that you can learn from them.”  Simple advice.  But when I remember to put it into action, the impact is significant.  I have tried to employ this advice whenever I’ve needed to establish a new connection, be it professional or personal.  And I’ve had to establish a lot of connections over the years!

One area that this advice has helped me a lot has been at networking events.  I am a horrible networker!  I hate it, even!  I am an introvert and working a room is the biggest energy drain imaginable to me.  More often than not, I latch onto a couple of people I know and maybe let them introduce me to new people.  But when I remember to apply this Tom-ism, things get easier.  I start to ask people questions to find that one thing I like and that one thing I can learn.  Maybe it is a hobby they have, or a story they tell about some experience.  Maybe it is the way they smile or how kind they are to the person who interrupts our conversation.  Back in my Paint Chemistry days, I always appreciated when they knew something about corrosion resistant coatings or how to formulate better brush flow into a paint.  Maybe I just like their shoes.  But there is always something I can like and something I can learn. 

This advice is even more valuable, as you can imagine, with difficult work colleagues (or family members or neighbors or spouse’s friends or whomever).  It’s applicable not just to new people, but also to people that have become a challenge.  Here’s a good one.  After I came back from Mexico, I experienced something akin to career altitude sickness.  I jumped quite a few career levels and assumed a position that required way more political savvy than I had developed.  My timing was horrible, too.  I came back early in 2001 and we all know what happened that Fall.  When the economy fell off a cliff and business conditions soured, my lack of political skill was a real detriment to me.

One of my co-workers was not particularly happy that I was elevated to this new position.  Over the next few years, he took advantage of (and encouraged) my mistakes to slowly undermine my influence.  I gave him plenty of opportunity, too.  As I finally got my sea legs and worked to right the ship, I began to understand what he did.  Let’s just say he was not one of my favorite people.  But I had to keep working with him.  Find something you can like and something you can learn.  It was not easy.  But, over the coming years, I grew to appreciate his insights into the technology development process.  And I learned from him how to better use data and numbers to make a stronger case for a decision.  I focused on those things.  And by the end of both of our careers there was a thawing.  Dare I say even a fondness?  And, yes, even something of an apology for past indiscretions on both our parts.

I will admit that I am not always successful at putting Tom’s advice into practice.  With some people, finding the “something I like, something I can learn” is easy.  We connect right away!  Sometimes I don’t have enough time to find those jewels.  At times, like in the example above, it takes time, effort and persistence.  But I am convinced of this:  ultimately, you can always find something you like and something you can learn from any person.  Make the decision to do that and you can work with anyone.  And if you can work with anyone, you will find greater success.

I am a selective procrastinator and it drives me nuts.  “How,” I ask myself, “can you be such an organized, list-making, spreadsheet-loving, OCD-like person and yet put off seemingly random, often straightforward things for an eternity?!”  Here’s an example:  I’ve wanted to write about procrastination for a long time, but haven’t done it until now.  Seriously.  I kept putting off writing about procrastination.  Why?  Well, here’s the story.

I wanted to include a favorite cartoon that I cut out of the paper when I was in grad school.  The first five panels of this Sunday cartoon showed a woman going through a series of cleaning and other chores.  In the last panel, which is the one I saved, she lay exhausted in a chair with the caption:  “Beneath this workaholic exterior beats the heart of a lazy person.”  I loved that cartoon!  I was convinced that underneath it all I was really lazy.  I was never sure exactly how I got done whatever I did get done!  So, before writing this essay, I wanted to find that cartoon.

I could have sworn I kept that last panel on the door to my lab in grad school.  And I’m sure I kept taking it with me, office to office in Air Products.  So, it would have made it into the box of office stuff I took home after leaving Intertek, right?  Now, where was that box?  I searched through the basement.  I came back up to my home office and looked in various hiding places.  I saw most of the Office Items that would have been in that box scattered about so I must have unpacked it.  After digging around the office for hours, I think, “Let’s try on line.”  I searched first the website of the cartoon that I swore was the source.  Then searched more broadly with the text of the punchline.  All of this activity happened piecemeal over many, many days and weeks.  Meanwhile, no essay had been written.  I felt I couldn’t start writing until I found that cartoon.  See where I’m going with this?

There are lots of reasons people procrastinate.  There are lots of reasons why I, myself, procrastinate.  Sometimes it’s fear, like why it took me so long to try a spin class at the Y.  Sometimes it really is just laziness, like trying on the bathing suit I bought months ago.  But a good percentage of the time, I realize, I procrastinate because I’m a perfectionist.  I think about how I’ve coached many people over the years to get over their procrastination tendencies.  “Just start,” I say.  “Just create the blank file or a spreadsheet.  Start by making a list of the tasks that need to be done and then tackle just the first one.”  And then the clincher: “It doesn’t have to be perfect.  It just needs to get done.”   

But I want it to be perfect!  Not surprisingly, I’ve done some research on “perfectionism”.  There are two types of perfectionists:  Externally Motivated and Internally Motivated.  I am an Internally Motivated Perfectionist.  I couldn’t care less about YOUR judgement on my degree of perfection.  It is ME who wants everything I do to be perfect.  I like the neatness of it; the elegance of a perfect solution; the satisfaction of doing something as well as I can do it.  But being perfect at a task seems like such a herculean effort that it paralyzes me!  And so I keep on looking for the cartoon because the cartoon would make the essay perfect and I want it to be perfect.  And I delay writing the essay.  Or the business proposal. Or the performance review. If I can’t be perfect, I don’t want to do it at all.  Then I get mad and frustrated with myself.  And then I usually have a snack.  That leads to other issues that will be discussed another time.

While I share this trait with many, I don’t share it with my wife.  Trish is also an Internally Motivated Perfectionist, but instead of paralyzing her and leading to procrastination, her perfectionism drives her to complete any task on her to-do list as soon as humanly possible: to the extent that she drives herself nuts, runs around frantically, and usually ends up hurting her foot. 

Trish keeps a short list of must-do items and her drive is to get them DONE.  Me?  I have an endless number of potential tasks on my to-do list.  I don’t just care about getting them done, I care about getting them done PERFECTLY.  We balance each other well.  She can motivate me to get moving with a heavy sigh, an eye roll and a gentle “You haven’t done that yet?”  I can calm her down a bit and convince her that she doesn’t need to go outside in the dark in the rain to find out why a landscaping light isn’t working.  It can actually wait until morning.

The next step in this essay should be some magic words of wisdom about how to overcome this problem.  Sure wish I had them.  All I can say is that sometimes I can get myself going and sometimes I can’t.  What helps is that I’ve learned to give myself a bit of grace because I am old enough now to know that things that really need to get done somehow always get done.  True enough, I would sigh in frustration when tackling a business proposal that I just couldn’t get myself to start.  I’d read emails.  Or walk the halls.  Or even, lord help me, make a phone call I’d been putting off.  But, eventually, things would get done.  I wrote the performance reviews and business proposals.  I’ve written this essay.  No, they don’t necessarily reach the degree of perfection that I would want, but they are good enough.

So, give yourself a little grace, too.  We all procrastinate.  Most of us are perfectionists to some degree.  We all get paralyzed by a task every now and then.  Or sometimes we continue to plow forward to just get something done instead of taking a step back and assessing a better path.  Think about what is causing you to hesitate and who is relying on your output.  Sometimes just putting the reasons in context helps you get going.  Don’t beat yourself up.  You know that just makes it worse! 

Remember to give others some grace, too.  Yes, you are depending on that person to get something done.  You can’t do what YOU need to do until they do their part!  Help them get started, or at least offer.  And if someone else offers you help, take it.  

So how long did it take me to get this essay done?  Well, the bigger challenge was starting the blog.  Those who have known me know that I’ve been saying I’ve wanted to write for years and years.  I needed to figure out the “what” and the “how”, but more than anything I had to get over my need for everything I put out there to be perfect.  That activation barrier was huge!  Now if only I could get myself to organize this office space, but I think I’ll get Trish off that ladder in the rain before she falls.

In the title essay to this blog, “Don’t Leave Rocks on the Pavement,” I described how my time living and working in Mexico opened my eyes to a range of assumptions I make every day.  Anyone who knows me, or has been subjected to my energy on this topic, knows that I believe at the root of pretty much every bad thing in the world today are unarticulated and untested assumptions.  OK, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but it’s an important topic.  So before I go much further, let me not assume that you know what I mean when I talk about assumptions.

The definition of an assumption is “a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof” (Oxford).  Assumptions are not, in and of themselves, bad things.  What trips us up is that pesky “without proof” part of the definition.  We have to make loads of little assumptions to get through each day.  Most of them prove to be valid because we’ve either seen the situation before or have been told something is true.  When so many of the little assumptions you make are either true or the consequences of being wrong are not visible, you are rarely even aware that you are making an assumption.  So, when one of them turns out not to be valid, the result can be a significant misunderstanding that can lead to even worse consequences.

The example I gave in my first essay was about a cultural assumption:  I did not believe that leaving rocks on the pavement was a big enough problem to require a road sign every few kilometers.  The result of that invalid assumption was my embarrassment at insulting my host.  However, the impact of untested assumptions can sometimes be physically dangerous as well.  Let me tell you another story.

San Juan del Rio, the pueblo in Central Mexico that I lived in, has been around since the 1500’s so there are quite a number of passageways too narrow for two cars.  One of those was on my way to the manufacturing plant where I worked.  The first time I was taken to the plant, we approached that narrow tunnel at the same time as a car coming in the other direction.  The other car flashed their lights and we stopped.  Had I been driving, I would have continued to plow forward.  The custom in the U.S., the custom my father taught me when I learned to drive and the custom that held up where ever in the U.S. I drove, was that the car that flashed their lights was signaling for the other car to go first.  Fortunately, I was not the one driving.  Just as I was about to question why we were waiting, the other car came through.  It never occurred to me that in Mexico, the custom is that the car flashing their lights goes first!  Another invalid assumption, one that would have ended in a head-on collision if I had been behind the wheel! 

These are just a couple of small examples around cultural norms, but we make all kinds of assumptions in our daily lives.  For example, there are language interpretation assumptions, such as the meaning of a word or phrase, or even the definition of an acronym.  I remember one really confusing conversation with a marketing team where one group was using the acronym PSA to mean “pressure sensitive adhesive” and the other group was interpreting PSA to mean “public service announcement”.  You would be surprised how long it took us to figure that out!

Then there are body language assumptions, either the meaning of a gesture (be careful in which countries you make the thumbs up or “OK” gestures!) or the meaning of a body posture.  And this is not just confusing between countries and cultures.  Folks in your neighborhood can mean very different things by their body language or tone.  It is natural to project the meaning you would use to explain an expression or gesture even when it comes from someone else, but that is certainly not always correct. 

Additionally, there are assumptions we make about a person’s education or intelligence or maturity or honesty, based on how they look or dress or talk.  I am forever impressed by people who speak English as a second language with any reasonable fluency.  I never got past the fluency of a native third grader in Mexican Spanish, but it was my vocabulary that was limited, not my intelligence.  How many times have you assumed that a new English speaker was not very intelligent simply because they hadn’t yet learned the words or grammar to better express their thoughts?

Unarticulated and untested assumptions run rampant in the workplace and not just related to how people interact with each other.  I firmly believe that the reason so many outstanding business plans fail in execution is connected to the different assumptions operating and planning personnel apply to the same terms.  As I began to tease this concept of assumptions apart, I began to ask a lot more questions.  For example, what do you mean by “marketing”?  One time, when I was negotiating for more “marketing” support, I failed to ask that question early in the process.  When I was asking for marketing support, I meant market research.  The person I was negotiating with was offering marketing communications.  Two very different aspects of “marketing”!  I also found that job titles carry assumptions, based on your experience.  The title of “Specialist” in some companies is the very top of the technical ladder.  In others, it is used for entry level positions.  Made for some very awkward job offer discussions!  Believe me, I could go on.

Clearly, you have to “pick your battles” because questioning every assumption will wear you out. And I certainly continue to make embarrassing mistakes!  However, you can stay attuned to when you might be falling into an assumption trap.  I encourage you to start asking yourself if you are making a judgement based on an untested assumption.  Does something sound ridiculous to you?  It may be because it clashes with an assumption you’ve made—one you haven’t tested in that situation.  Slow down.  Ask more questions.  Get others to articulate what they mean.  “Different” doesn’t have to mean wrong.  In fact, sometimes “different” can be better.  And that’s the real richness of testing your assumptions.