Did Heartbreak Ridge Teach Us Anything About Low Performing Teams?

Do low performing teams aspire to be more or are they just a bunch of slackers?  Capitalist reader Scott chimed in on a comment thread with the following observation:

"There are two movies that kind of touch on this subject. "12 OClock High," which is an old WWII movie about bomber pilots, and Clint Eastwood's "Heartbreak Ridge." They kind of have the same plot -- under-performing group is perceived to be of lesser quality than another group. Demanding manager moves in. Temporary chaos and disgruntlement is replaced by sense of pride in ones work.

I think even among slacker business units people want to be successful. They aspire to more. In my experience people are more interested in "fair" than "nice." Though you don't have to be mean to be fair. You may see slacker's vote for perceived slackers in unskilled jobs (I'm guessing 16 year old movie theatre ushers aren't as interested in being driven to excellence as someone with a mortgage and a family may be), but I'm thinking you will consistently see the interactive managers who expect and deliver favorable results from and to their teams getting the winning votes once you get beyond that level."

For the kids reading this blog, check out the movie "Heartbreak Ridge" for a primer on what Scott's talking about.  I've added a clip for you to take a look at at the bottom of this point (email subscribers click through for that), but here's what I learned about low performing teams from watching Gunny Highway (the new leader) and the platoon in Heartbreak Ridge:

1.  Low performing teams initially try and drive away any leader who expects more.

2.  It takes a tough SOB to fight through that and not give up as a leader of a low performing team.

3.  The work units around the low performing team want the low performing team to suck.  It makes them look better.

4.  The new leader has to show a little compassion for the personal lives of the low performing team to really break through.

5.  The new leader has to fight for his team, and at times fight his team, to break through a culture of "sucking".  

6.  The new leader has to box in his team constantly, consistently and in many different ways to get a breakthrough.

7.  Once the team has success, the leader has to do a lot less.  The breakthrough means the formerly low performing team will start policing themselves.

The movie is an interesting take on acquiring a low-performing team.  It takes leadership to pull a low performing team out of the funk, but it can be done - it just takes tons of focus.  

Take a look and rent the whole movie sometime soon.  Lots of leadership lessons from Gunny Highway.

LEADERSHIP FRIDAY: The Many Sides of Ronald Reagan...

Let's talk about leadership.  Let's talk about Ronald Reagan.

I totally got sucked in to the HBO documentary on Reagan.  It reminded of some reasons I love the image of Reagan as a leader, and then reminded me of some things that show just how hard leadership is at the macro level.

Among the complexities:

1.  Reagan was a formal liberal turned hawk conservative.  

2.  Reagan was a big reason the whole cold war thing turned out the way it did.  The examples are too numerous to mention here, but you can't say that Reagan didn't lead in the cold war vs. the USSR.  One of my favorite things about Reagan as a leader.  He chose a big theme and delivered.

3.  Reagan had an ethical lapse in the whole Iran/Contra thing.  A big one.

4.  Reagan understood the power of being on message and branding yourself as a leader.  No one did it like him in the media age until Clinton, and then Obama.  But he's at their level, just in a different way.

5.  There's still a lot of talk about the effect of his trickle down economic policies in America.  Did they do more harm than good?  Did the transfer of wealth to the richest 2% really happen that  way?  Was that a bad thing?  

6.  Reagan didn't mention the word AIDS for 7 years of his presidency until his family promoted the importance of what was going on to him and friend Rock Hudson was diagnosed.  A missed opportunity.

What's it all mean?  To me, the moderate republican, the use of media, image and brand and the unbelievable stance he took against communism make him one of the best leaders we've had.  But - the Iran-Contra situation along with the economic policy questions show me one thing - leadership is very, very hard.

And at the top, it's lonely as hell.

RIP, Ronald Regan.  Highly recommend you watch the HBO piece regardless of your politics.  It's a balanced account of a leader with a lot of complexity you can learn from.  (Video tease below, email subscribers click through)

Not In My Freaking House... The Psychology of Emotional Leaders....

Ok NFL fans... Leadership fans as well... 

You're a new leader.  You're locked in a battle with another rising star who does something to disrespect you.  Do you take the high road and walk away, or do you get your Irish up a bit and react so your team sees that you're not soft?

Case study in the NFL this past weekend.  Here's the rundown from ESPN:

"You've probably seen the video by now. If not, you'll soon see jubilant 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh bounding to midfield for the traditional coaches' handshake. Harbaugh wound up and gave Schwartz an excited handshake, followed by a hard slap to the back with his left hand. 

Schwartz immediately turned around with a perturbed look on his face, chased Harbaugh down and bumped his right shoulder into Harbaugh's left shoulder. Schwartz then chased Harbaugh about 40 yards downfield to the players' tunnel and made a number of attempts to charge into a quickly growing mass of players, coaches and staffers to get at Harbaugh. Order was eventually restored, but afterward Schwartz neither apologized nor backed off his reaction. 

"I went to congratulate Coach Harbaugh and got shoved out of the way," Schwartz said. "And then I didn't expect an obscenity at that point, so it was a surprise to me at the end of the game." 

Asked for further details, Schwartz said: "I'll just leave it right there. I'm sure it's on video." 

OK - now watch the video and we'll talk afterwards (email subscribers click through for video):

What do you think?  Was Harbaugh out of line?  Was Schwartz out of line?  

Here's my take.  Both Harbaugh and Schwartz are young leaders.  Both are passionate, and both are lifting teams out of the basement of the NFL to lead their respective divisions.

Harbaugh operates on a lot of emotion.  So he runs across the field after the big win on the road, shows his belly to a lineman while doing a dance, then approaches Schwartz and does two things that might warrant a response.

1. He does a pretty demonstrative handshake.  More like a big hand slap.

2. He slaps Schwartz on the back, but at ground level (couldn't find the clip from that angle) it's a push.

Translation.  He punked Schwartz.  Came into his house and took his candy.  Then acted like a fool during the traditional handshake.

Schwartz appears to be content to the do the handshake, then seems to say "Wait a second... Did he just act like a fool towards me on my field?"

It's an interesting leadership question, one that happens between execs at different companies and one that happens internally as well.  Someone has the energy.  They're trying to run over you.  What do you do?

Rule #1 - Always bet on the person who has enough of a spine a) to run over you, whether they know they're doing it or not, and/or b) bet on the person who reacts and challenges being treated that way.

Your team is watching.  Sometimes being passive is the right call.  Being passive all the time is rarely the right call.  If you're going to lead, you're going to need to show passion.  There are a million different ways in an organization to show you're standing up to the challenge.  

The main thing is that you show your team you aren't afraid to rise up if you're being disrespected. They're watching and waiting for someone to rally around.

Believe that.  Detroit believes in Schwartz this morning.  The bay believes in Harbaugh.  They're both winners in this one.

Is a Presentation From Tony Hsieh of Zappos Enough? (#HRFL11)

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh keynoted HR Florida this morning.  Before I go off on a rant, let me say this – I’m a fan of HR Florida, Zappos and Tony Hsieh.

Tony Hsieh has done it – he’s built a great company and a culture at Zappos that can actually generate business and opportunity unrelated to the core business of his company – by talking to people about culture.   He’s a great speaker and the thoughts he shares on culture, building a company and chasing a bigger purpose are compelling.  I’m a buyer when he speaks.

HR Florida is a great conference.  I put it in my top two in the HR space:  HR Florida and the HR Technology Conference, which will be in Vegas in October.  Both shows do a great job with content, logistics and the thousand details that go into putting on a production of this size (HR Florida has 1,500+ attendees this year and in addition to Tony, also has Daniel Pink coming in on Wednesday).

The problem, as it so often is, is what people do once Tony pumps them up to change the world.  You want to be like Zappos.  I want to be like Zappos.  Let’s start with a couple of simple tweets I put out this morning while listening to Tony to see if you’re ready to do what it takes:

“Test for building your version of the Zappos culture: Are you willing to list every employee you have that’s active on Twitter on your company website?  #hrfl11”

“Be real and you have nothing to fear – Tag for transparency at Zappos.  #hrfl11”

What about it Sparky?  Are you willing to put up the 500 most active employees you have on twitter on a rolling widget on your corporate website and control none of the message?

No? Then you’ve got some work to do before you can be like Zappos.  Apparently people are real in your company – so real that you can’t tolerate the transparency of the exercise described.

If you won’t show off your team members in that way, it’s usually because you think some of them are not ready for prime time.  And that’s the point.  The naysayers to me claiming that a keynote from Tony isn’t enough will say, “Kris, Tony doesn’t advocate being like Zappos.  He thinks you should build it in the way you want.”

The naysayers are right.  But I suspect Tony would be a huge advocate of doing whatever it takes to reset your culture and have actual values you are willing to hire and fire by.  That doesn’t mean you have to copy what Zappos has done.  It does mean that you should take down the plaque that espouses Integrity, Communication and Teamwork and see if they really drive your culture.  Of if they’re just hollow values written on paper that no one can recite, and certainly no one lives by.

The real issue with having a supernova like Tony deliver a keynote at a great show like HR Florida is the lost opportunity.  Other keynotes are simply aspirational.  They're present to pump you up, often with stories that have nothing to do with HR.  Not Tony.  Culture is in the wheelhouse of what HR is supposed to own.  But no one really knows how to get started.  How do you reset a culture that's driven by your founder being around for the last 20 years and doing it the way he (and his wife) wanted?  Scary stuff for most HR pros to think about taking on.

I’d love to see a conference track after a Zappos keynote that really challenges and develops those who are interested in taking the pain that’s necessary to reset their corporate culture.  I’d love to see that track arm HR pros with tools that can help them make the case.  First conference that really tries to dig in and make HR pros who volunteer uncomfortable after a big meaty keynote wins.  Big.

Tony Hsieh: +1.  HR Florida: +1.  What HR pros do next after hearing Tony speak:  Not registering a score at this time.

(check out all the tweets from HR Florida by searching the hashtag #hrfl11)

The Best Hard*$$ Quotes of Outgoing Apple CEO Steve Jobs....

You've probably already heard - Steve Jobs is leaving Apple, meaning one of the all time greats related to innovation - as well as being direct and hard on people - is leaving the leadership ranks.

We love the dichotomy of Jobs here at the Capitalist - creative and numbingly hard on people - so here's a rundown of our favorite post to say thanks, and to remind you that the best leaders are many times perceived as incredible harda$$es by folks like you and me.

Posts on Jobs at the Capitalist:

S*** Steve Jobs Says: The Difference Between a VP and a Janitor....

S**T STEVE JOBS SAYS: Still Proving Great Leadership Isn't Always Pleasant...

Steve Jobs and the Holy Grail of Hostile Interviewing.....

Play on Steve. Sometimes you've got to be hard to show you care...

Shelf Life For Leaders: < 5 Years

Dateline:  Office of a CEO this week, City in the Southeast.

Topic: Strategic Plan that's 10 Years Long

Me: "Are you going to be around for 10 years?"

CEO: "I doubt it."

Realization:  Every leader has a shelf life, even when things go well.  I'd put that shelf life, when things are going well, at 5 years.  After that point, the leader has two options:

--Option 1. Get out. People stop listening to you if they've heard your game 100s of times before.  Complacency follows - from you and them.

--Option 2. Reinvent yourself, dramatically so.  It's the only way to get fresh to the point where people will listen to you for beyond 5 years.  Think Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails.

Worker bees have shelf lives too.  Move beyond 5 years in any job, and when times get tough, you're hoping you don't get impacted by a RIF when the axman cometh.  

NOTE:  You're hoping.  That's no way to live.

S**T STEVE JOBS SAYS: Still Proving Great Leadership Isn't Always Pleasant...

Went to the beach over the weekend and took some reading material - in this case, a 700-page tome about ESPN entitled "Those Guys Have All The Fun"... Might do a review on it after I'm done, not sure yet...

Early returns on the book - good read, a reminder that even the organizations you respect and rely on the most are psychotic, especially in the early days of existence.

Another reminder - for all the great books on leadership out there, there's still a truth that's not documented often enough.  Sometimes, the best leaders have skills so strong in areas like innovation and execution (as well as other areas) that they can say and do almost anything they want.

Case in point - Steve Jobs.  We all admire what Apple and Jobs have done from a product perspective.  The design.  The ultility.  The look and feel!

Surely that means Jobs runs the company from a democratic perspective, right?

Wrong.  

I love following the leadership stories of Jobs.  A couple of weeks ago I covered this gem related to Jobs reaction to the MobileMe team - read it if you haven't yet.  You also have countless other stories, including this one where he accused a straighlaced engineer interviewing for a job at Apple of being a virgin (wasn't on the job description).  

Now I have a new one to add to the list -Those Guys Have All The Fun has a great account of a chance meeting between George Bodenheimer (President of ESPN) and Steve Jobs, around the time that ESPN was launching a failed cell phone service as a brand extension.  Here's the scene and quote:

The story goes that ESPN President George Bodenheimer attended his first Disney board meeting in Orlando, FL, just after the company had bought Pixar, the innovative animation factory, and spotted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a hallway.  It seemed like a good time to introduce himslef.  "I am George Bodenheimer," he said to Jobs.  "I run ESPN."  Jobs just looked at him and said nothing other than "Your phone is the dumbest f***ing idea I have ever heard," then turned and walked away.

Classic.  Read the books on leadership, HR Pros, then remember the truth:  Sometimes the great ones not only throw out the kinder, gentler book on leadership - they wrapped their coffee grinds with it just to prove a point.

More Steve Jobs quotes, please.

Reaction to Bin Laden's Death: Just Like When Someone Takes Out a Terrible Manager...

Bin Laden is dead.  That's pretty good news.

The reaction: Immediate unification of the USA.  Democrats and Republicans celebrate together.  People start looking back and remember how dark some of the days have been.  There's a sense of relief and pride among all.

Sound familiar?  It's the same reaction that happens within a work unit when someone finally decides to take out the terrible manager who also just happens to be a people terrorist.  You know the type I'm talking about.  The big jerk, the one who tears down everyone at every opportunity, regardless of the situation. Maybe he gets results (or not) and he's allowed to remain in the leadership seat, regardless of the number of complaints and whispers about his behavior and style.  The people who could leave are gone.  The rest are hostage to the leadership style.

Then, one day, he's gone.  He's out.  

The people who are still at the company drift around from cube to cube and office to office and share the news - "did you hear?".  Stories are shared.  People who don't really like each other on a normal day shake hands and share stories.  They end the conversation by asking about each other's family.

Unification.  It happens when a force of negative energy is removed from the playing field.  

The big question - whether the employee base is America or the Accounting department at AT&T in Birmingham - is simple...

How do you stay unified when the great news fades?

Does This Leader Belong in Jail? We Report, You Decide...

It's Friday, so what better time to talk about "gray area" stuff in your organization?  Here's a tasty tidbit we used at the BCHRMA show yesterday to show the conflicts HR leaders find themselves in related to values vs. results:

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The Story:  Bill’s a SVP of operations in a telecommunications company that provides a triple play to their customers – voice, data and video services.  He’s risen through the ranks from his humble beginnings as an installer to manage the operations arm of a region that consists of 25% of the company’s total subscriber base (no easy career feat in a company that does 1B in revenue annually).  A sound operator with immense knowledge of the business, he’s lauded by the C-level for his determination to make budget every quarter and every year.

The Problem:  Complaints are starting to roll into corporate HQ about a specific policy implemented by Bill in his region.  Bill has directed every local operation under his command to give him status updates on Accounts Receivable and Customer Aging, which he accumulates and then sends edicts out to the field related to when customers can be disconnected, sometimes waiting until bills are 120 days past due to disconnect the service (the standard is 45 days).  Complaints about the business practice run hot and generally accuse Bill of ethical issues related to the business practice, which keeps his subscriber count artificially high at quarter’s end.  Bill makes the numbers but has 18 complaints against him at HQ for the practice.

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What do you do with that one?  Does Bill have an ethical issue?  If you have Integrity as a company value, is Bill killing you with his moves in the field?  If he doesn't have an ethics/integrity issue, how do you communicate that to the folks who are complaining without it appearing that you're simply enabling someone who will do anything for results?

Like Run-DMC once said, it's tricky.  More on this one next week.  Hit me in the comments with what you think.

 

Do Managers Who "Do The Work" Get More Respect and Performance From Employees?

Conventional wisdom says that any manager of people who can do the work they're asking others to do has a leg up on a manager who can't.  Do you buy that?

All things being equal, I think it's true.  If a manager can be active in the type of work going on in his shop to show that he or she is a subject matter expert, I think it's going to allow them to be a more effective coach.

Case in point - Shaka Smart, the 33-year old basketball coach at VCU.  VCU had an improbable run to the Final Four this year, and the video clip below is from their public Final Four practice.  The drill is the "Ironman", where each player has to take a charge, dive for a loose ball and then run/jump to save a ball going out of bounds.  It's a drill used to encourage players to provide more hustle, which in the workplace could be called "discretionary effort".  Which is what you want lots of...

Here's the twist.  To pump up the players, Smart did the drill for the players.  Before the cynic in you comes out with the blades, watch the video and observe the players following Smart around the court as he performs the work.  What you observe could easily be catagorized as "engagement".

Doing the work you ask others to do.  Not all leaders are in the position to do it, but when you can, it's certainly an effective leadership tool.