Feedfoward means giving people suggestions in advance about how to behave rather than waiting for them to fail and beating them up afterwards.  Anyone can give feedforward when they have an idea that may help someone else succeed.  For example, years ago my husband was about to present to his company’s executive leadership team for the first time. His boss gave him great feed-forward about how to dress, when to speak, how much detail to go into, etc.

While I usually talk about giving feedforward, Goldsmith also makes the great point that we can and should ask for feedforward.  If you have a behavior you want to change, try asking others for ideas and suggestions about how to succeed.   Most people who try this technique find that it is fun and they get great ideas.

Interested in learning and trying feedforward for yourself?  Check out this video from Goldsmith:

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the same time, optimism can be overdone – especially when optimism turns into overconfidence or turning a blind eye to problems and challenges.

Eric Klein recently blogged about this phenomenon, calling it “the problem with being positive.”  He wrote about leaders who shut down conversation and shy away from conflict by overdoing an emphasis on the positive.

The balance of realism and optimism is critically important for change leaders.   Leaders who squash any expressions of concern or who react negatively to problems run the risk of missing major issues that will ultimately impact performance. For this reason, some researchers have started to use the term “realistic optimism”. Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.  writes that realistic optimism consists of two parts:

Hurd goes on to say that:

My take on this is that effective leaders proactively look for facts, data, and opinions on what could go wrong.  They then take positive action – either personally or by empowering others – to overcome obstacles.  Their actions and words convey confidence and optimism, thereby positively impacting others’ emotions and commitment.

Check out the following resources for some good suggestions on being realistically optimistic:

• The Balance Needed to Lead Change HBR article by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, Kerry A. Bunker and Michael Wakefield
• The Problem with Being Positive, blog post by Eric Klein
• Just Enough Anxiety, book by Bob Rosen

Interestingly, there are several new books and articles on this topic that are hitting the market right now.  In May 2010 Forum corporation released their new book, Strategic Speed.  The book addresses these critical concerns for leaders:

• What role does speed, or lack thereof, play in the high failure rate of strategic initiatives?
• What are the barriers, or traps, to execution?
• Do faster companies financially out-perform slower companies?
• How can I engage people in accelerating our strategy?

The book’s authors found that many change efforts fail because leaders act so quickly that they ignore the people factor.  Conversely, efforts that succeed are characterized by the presence of three people factors: clarity, unity, and agility.

Watch the the video below to see  Ed Boswell, Forum CEO and one of the book’s  co-authors talking about key findings:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a May 2010 HBR article, Need Speed? Slow Down,  Jocelyn R. Davis and Tom Atkinson, also of Forum Corporation highlight the differences between strategically slow companies and the more successful strategically fast companies.  Among their findings:

• In strategically slow companies, groups move on to new projects without taking time to debrief whereas in strategically fast companies, groups make it a point to capture and communicate lessons learned.
• In strategically slow companies, time is rarely made for training and education whereas in strategically fast companies, even experienced employees receive training when initiatives are launched.
• In strategically slow companies, people work at cross-purposes due to competing objectives whereas in strategically fast companies, objectives and systems are aligned.

What about your own firm?  Is overdrive causing you to be strategically slow?  Is it time to slow down in order to speed up?

Spring is very different at an altitude of 8700 feet in Colorado.  Two weeks ago our aspens and lilacs barely had buds.  Today everything is gloriously green and the lilacs are literally unfolding their flowers right before our eyes.

The difference in the two springs has me thinking about speed and urgency.  The trees and flowers here know that they only have a few weeks to execute so they make the most of every minute.

Earlier this spring, I volunteered on a committee that organized a large community event in less than 6 weeks.  Initially, I and others in the group felt stressed and overwhelmed with the short time frame.  In the end, not only did we pull off a great event, but I learned that the short time frame actually helped.  We knew would couldn’t just meet and talk endlessly – we actually had to act . . . fast.  We kept meetings short and focused. We each committed to action items and we followed through.  We acted with urgency.

Change expert John Kotter has written extensively about how leaders need to instill a similar sense of urgency in order to lead change successfully. Urgency is a sense of pressing importance.  As Kotter writes, “A real sense of urgency is a highly positive and highly focused force.”

The challenge, I believe, is finding the right balance between urgency and overdrive.

As I’ve written about previously, overdrive is the state of dysfunctional momentum caused when leaders put extreme pressure on their people to get things done faster and with fewer resources.  Researchers have found that overdrive ultimately causes individual and company performance to suffer.  In my work on change initiatives, I find that overdrive causes leaders to miss or ignore key problems, to skip the critical communication and engagement phases, and to plow over resistance.

So how do you create a sense of urgency without pushing your organization into overdrive?  Kotter provides many specific guidelines and suggestions in his book, A Sense of Urgency.  It’s a quick and enjoyable read and one I highly recommend for all leaders.

But if you don’t have the time to read the book just yet, start by staying focused on no more than one to three specific and clear goals.  Every day communicate the importance of the goals, ask what progress is being made, reward progress and proactively investigate problems, listen, and address barriers.

In addition, I recommend having explicit conversations with your people about the speed with which you and they are operating.  One technique that works well is to draw a long line on whiteboard.  Label the far left with the word, “complacency”.  Label a middle/right point with the word “urgency” and the far right with the word “overdrive”.  Invite people to place a dot or an X with where they feel the team or organization is.  Talk openly about the results.  Doing so will help you and your team and/or organization operate in a state of energized alignment.

For more on this topic, see my previous posts on Avoiding Overdrive and Is Your Team Psyched Up and In Sync?

In his books, Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith uses the term “criteria” to get at the concept of being specific.  For example, when coaching an executive who wanted to spend more time with his kids – Goldsmith pushed the executive to be specific.  Exactly how much time with which kid? When?  Committing to spending 4 one-on-one hours with each child allowed this executive to track his progress and truly change.

The authors of Influencer present a similar idea in their book – claiming that for change to succeed, we need to get specific about who needs to change which exact behaviors.  They use the term “vital behaviors” to describe the concept and share scores of examples where change succeeded because the leader got specific.

Most recently, Chip and Dan Heath provided support for the need for specificity in their book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard.  The Heath brothers use the term “black & white goal” and argue that a concrete goal of zero defects, zero safety incidents, or zero snacks results in much more real change than a vague goal like reduce accidents, or calories.

There you have it – three books from the experts – saying the same thing (albeit a bit differently).  If you want change, you have to get specific.   So NO sweets for me until I lose the pounds I gained eating BBQ all week in Austin!

Bob’s impressive experience includes turns as Director of Learning Strategy for Microsoft, Executive Director of Education for Element K, and several years now with LearningGuide Solutions.  I was excited and intrigued when Bob started his presentation by telling us that one of his three objectives was “to inspire us to go back to our organizations and help establish a holistic ecosystem which features dynamic learning.”

In a nutshell, Bob helped our group acknowledge that learning has changed.  People aren’t going to class to learn as much anymore.  Learners want rapid, adaptable, collaborative, self-directed learning at their moment of need.  He calls this shift Learning 3.0.

Most of the presentation drilled down into how we, as learning and development professionals, can do a much better job of designing and organizing informal learning that can be consumed by learners when and how they need it.  I am working on a development program for emerging leaders right now for a global company and I am already applying what I learned by focusing our design on the precise “moments of need” our learners will likely encounter post-training.

If you’d like to learn more about Bob Mosher and his ideas, follow him on Twitter at @BMOSH or check out his blog at http://performancesupport.blogspot.com/.  Let us both know what you think and how you are applying what you learn.

Next time you have to present, consider whether you can use something surprising to keep your audience tuned in!

In my experience, if you want to engage your audience, it is critical to begin any presentation with the Three C’s: connection, credibility, and common cause.  Here are a few thoughts on each, along with examples from our attorney.

Connection

With most audiences, I recommend starting with a personal connection.  What do you have in common with the group?  How are you similar in thinking, background, approach, etc?  Our Saturday presenter started his talk by letting us know that he had been a teacher (with Teach for America) and that he is married to a teacher.  You could see the smiles spread around the room of educators instantly!

Credibility

Next comes what you know and how you know it.  What gives you the credibility to talk to the audience about this topic?  Our attorney let us know that he want to law school at Notre Dame and that he had been specializing on the day’s topic for more than 10 years.

Common Cause

This last item sounds a bit like “connection” but it means something different.   Connection helps your audience to relax.  They feel safe because they feel like you have said that you are like them, not better than them.  Common cause is about the bigger purpose that unites you and the audience.  Our attorney told us that he does what he does because he wants to improve the quality of education in America.  So did we!  Why else would we be at an 8-hour workshop on a Saturday?

For more ideas telling stories that help you connect with and engage your audience, check out Annette Simmon’s book, The Story Factor.

For some specific techniques to use at the start of your talk, check out this great blog post from presentation advisor, Jon Thomas:  5 Ways to Start Your Presentation Off Strong.

I use the term “Overdrive” to describe this tendency.  Overdrive is basically the overuse of the “get it done” style. Many business leaders I work with move into overdrive without even realizing it and recognizing its consequences.

It so happens that two premier business publications (HBR and the MIT Sloan Management Review) addressed the issue of overdrive this month, using different terms.

In Harvard Business Review, Heike Bruch and Jochen Menges write about a phenomenon called “The Acceleration Trap.” They argue that the constant pressure that executives are putting on their people to get things done faster and with fewer resources  ultimately causes company’s performance to suffer.  Sample grab:

The MIT Sloan Management Review article written by Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe is titled, “Learning When to Stop Momentum.”  Barton and Sutcliffe, both from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, studied the connections between teams that fight wildfires and business teams.  They found that groups in both situations often fall victim to “dysfunctional momentum” – which occurs when people continue to work toward an original goal without pausing to recalibrate or reexamine their processes, even in the face of cues that suggest they should change course.

Both articles provide suggestions for overcoming the traps associated with moving too quickly.  While all of the suggestions are good, I think the success companies will have with implementing them will depend on the support of the most senior level leaders.  The very people who have a tendency to go into overdrive themselves must realize that sometimes we all have to slow down in order to speed up.

I use the term Energized Alignment TM to describe the state of being both “psyched up and in sync.”  The model below shows a simple matrix that can help you visualize the concept.

Think about your own team, department, or entire workforce. A team with high alignment is united by a common goal and agrees on what success will look like. In the two decades that I have partnered with leaders on change initiatives, I’ve discovered that many leaders focused only on getting people “on board” with change.  In other words, they tried to use the old command and control mentality to get people aligned.  

But alignment isn’t enough. Taken to extreme, clear goals and expectations alone may equate to working on an assembly line. Sure, I know what is expected of me, but do I really care? Do I come up with innovative suggestions?  Am I able to react to a sudden change that throws the whole plan off course?

To succeed, teams and the people on them need to have enough energy to keep working toward their goals despite obstacles, setbacks, and ever-frequent changes. Again, consider your own team. How much energy do people bring to work? Are the excited about what they are working on? Do they have the opportunity to contribute new, innovative ideas? Are they invited to unleash their natural strengths and talents in service of the organization’s goals?  

Again, taken to an extreme, all energy and no alignment isn’t effective either. If you’ve worked with a team of people who are enthusiastic about their own ideas and energized about putting them into place but who lack a common focus, direction, and coordination you know it can feel a lot like herding cats. 

Being an effective leader is largely about constantly paying attention to your team’s current state of energy and alignment. It is about developing a style that builds a careful balance. It’s not possible to be perfectly in balance all the time. But it’s an ideal worth striving for.

In future posts, I’ll share some techniques for unleashing energy and accelerating alignment.  And I’d love to hear what has worked for you.