How a Backyard Treehouse Can Teach Us to be Better Leaders

Remember when you were eight years old and wanted a treehouse in your backyard more than anything in the world? You pleaded with your dad, your mom, your grandfather, your uncle, and anyone who would listen. You had seen one at a friend's house, or on the television, and a ‘fort’ was the answer to all of your dreams.

Now if you grew up in a solidly middle-class or lower family, you knew there was no custom-built treehouse in the budget. If, after much pleading and all the sales acumen a preteen could offer, you got approval for said treehouse, you got to work. You would start scrounging the neighborhood for scrap 2X4s, milk crates, old plywood, anything that could be used to build your dream. You promised that you would do a myriad of chores to make as much money as possible: clean your room, feed and walk the dog, take out the neighbor’s trash each week, leave your sister alone, not fight with your little brother … whatever it would take.

When the day finally arrived for the building to start, you were there for every nail, helped with every measurement, sometimes even twice, and tried to cut every board. You and your father/grandfather/mother/uncle spent countless hours, countless weekends making sure your treehouse was just the way you wanted. It might not have been the best treehouse ever built, but it was yours and you helped build it.

As you played with friends in your treehouse over the next few weeks, fighting mock battles, sleeping below the stars, or just enjoying the wind blowing and the tree swaying back and forth, you first understood what it meant to make a dream come to life. 

The lessons you learned in the building of that treehouse apply to your business life.

1. Dream big. Jim Collins called it the BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Treehouses are big dreams. Kids can dream big. Get back in touch with that ability.

2. Do your research. Find out what else is out there that you can model. Once you knew you were getting a treehouse you looked at every treehouse-related concept you could find and made notes on what you liked about some, and what didn’t work about others. You learned early on what you could live with and without.

3. Plot your plan of action. As with the building of the treehouse, this is about bringing your dream to life. What supplies do you need? Who do you need to help you make it happen? What are your biggest barriers and how can you overcome them?

4. Choose your team. No one wants to be in a treehouse by themselves. It takes a crew to make a treehouse come to life, hoist the baskets of snacks, defend against intruders, and keep watch over the area. Your treehouse crew was made up of friends you could trust. They watched out for you, you watched out for them, and everyone was better off for it. You need the same in business: people you can trust and who share your passion for achieving and living your dream.

5. Build and adjust along the way. When you were a kid building a treehouse you built the best you could at the time. You didn’t build the perfect treehouse. That would have taken too long and cost money you didn’t have. You built and adjusted as you learned what worked for you. The same holds true in business. Don’t let perfection get in your way. Build and adjust.

6. Celebrate the lessons and successes. Treehouses are easy to enjoy. Sometimes we forget that business can be enjoyable as well. Once you’re done, even if just done with a stage, celebrate the progress, invite others to the party, and keep the positive energy going.

As kids, we’re hardwired to use our imaginations and chase dreams that seem too big. Somewhere along the way many of us learn to tamper our creativity and keep our ideas to ourselves. Maybe it’s time for you to get back in touch with that kid with the imagination and the willingness to fight to make the dream a reality. Chances are you’ll be a better leader, a better teammate, and have things you’re proud to share as a result. 

How is your treehouse these days? Let’s start a conversation.

Stop Calling All Groups of People Teams!

Every year I work with companies on organizational health and building strong teams. One of the fundamental issues is distinguishing between groups and teams.

Managers often place high performing individuals together and expect them to work well together. Then they are usually disappointed when those same individuals fail to reach even basic goals and objectives. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise. There are countless examples of high performing individuals fighting one another to reach the top of some mountain while happily sacrificing others around them.

Welcome to the dynamic of a group versus a team.

The late motivational speaker and sales guru, Zig Ziglar, liked to share a story about Belgian Draft Horses. As he told it, one Belgian Draft Horse can pull around 7,000 pounds (think high performing individual). Harness him to another Belgian Draft Horse and together they can pull over 15,000 pounds (think a group of two high performing individuals). But—and this is the difference between groups and teams—teach them to work together and the team can pull up to 25,000 pounds.

Teams leverage individual strengths and work with agreed upon operating procedures to accomplish a common goal.

How teams work versus groups:

1. Leverage individual strengths—I often tell people it’s important to embrace the OCD in others. Let them obsess in their own areas while you obsess in yours. Groups of people tend to try to establish their boundaries and gain positional advantages. Great teams don’t do this. They work to the strengths of those around them and outproduce their counterparts by exponential factors.

2. Agreed upon operating procedures—Strong teams are clear what’s expected, how they are supposed to conduct themselves, and who is responsible for getting things done. I’ve run into plenty of companies that seem to believe groups will make up their own rules and somehow those rules will work out. That hasn’t been my experience.

3. Accomplish a common goal—The best teams know what they are trying to accomplish together. I have found that good teams can fall apart when the goals aren’t clear. It’s as if you lined everyone up on a starting line, fired the starter’s pistol and everyone ran to a different destination. That’s chaos. Make the goals clear.

Building strong teams is critical to building healthy organizations that can consistently tackle big challenges and change the world. They don’t happen by accident, and they often don’t happen by themselves. The deliberate guidance of executives and managers to leverage their strongest players can have a profound impact on how well their company performs—or whether their best performers decide to leave the company for greener pastures.

Need help building healthy teams and a company culture? Let’s talk.

It's time we give each other a break.

I've worked with hundreds of companies, executives and cultures over the years. The issue that comes up time and time again is a concept psychologists call the FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR.

It's that moment when someone blows through a red light and you think "What an idiot! They're reckless and are going to kill someone?"!!?

But you have no idea what's happening in that car or in the life and mind of the other driver.

On the other hand, YOU run a red light and give yourself a pass: "I'm late to a meeting. My kid just spilled her shake in her lap and is screaming. I looked down for a second and didn't realize the light changed."

It's easy to forgive ourselves for issues that seem SITUATIONAL. We're not bad people, we just found ourselves in a situation that caused us to do something bad.

However, we far too often assign those same issues to other people as part of their PERSONALITY. They ARE bad, stupid, ignorant, uncaring ... and their mistake is simply a manifestation of all that is wrong with them.

This week, challenge yourself and your team to see the GOOD in people. See that they ARE trying—that they ARE working to solve the problem.

It's hard enough out there. Let's give each other a break. #teamspirit

You are undeserving!

Try that phrase again and remove the "un". You are deserving.

Or this way: You. Are. Deserving.

When I work with companies with unhealthy cultures I often find people who have been beaten down over time and feel like their best their ideas have been killed by the system. When this happens often enough, people simply lose faith in who they are, what they can do and why they come to work each day.

Management's job isn't to beat people into submission. It's to lead them with a focus on a greater good, a bigger goal that will require everyone on the team bringing their best ideas every day. You deserve to have your best ideas heard.

You deserve to be recognized for contributing to the greater good. You deserve to know you have value in your role every day and that the company you're in is better because you are there.

You. Are. Deserving.

It's tough out there. Making a difference takes a lot of work. We need you to bring all the goodness that makes you uniquely you. And you deserve a company that will celebrate you. You are deserving.

"That's not the problem we told him to solve."

When working with executives to document their core Behaviors (Values) I often ask them to name an employee or two who represent their ideal staffer and then unpack what makes them great.

In one particular exercise the attributes included: can-do attitude; takes initiative; passion; courage, etc. Sounds like the kind of people who could move a mountain, right?

In the next exercise we did the same thing only with employees who don't embody the culture we want. One employee was named but there was some concern in the room because one exec said the guy had really come through on an issue.

"But that's not the problem we told him to solve," came an exasperated reply. And then the room fell awkwardly quiet.

On one hand they wanted people like themselves who took initiative and conquered big challenges. At the same time, they felt threatened by that behavior. Managers who live like this destroy good people and derail careers. They kill cultures and companies from within.

You want your best people solving problems on their own. You NEED your best people solving problems on their own. You also need people to solve problems you don't see or understand.

Strong managers get this. Weak ones never will.

Why You Should Make Better Mistakes

Avoiding mistakes is useless. Making them is human. Owning mistakes and learning from them is where leadership begins.

As we wrap up one year and head into a new one, I think it’s healthy to reflect on what was tried, what failed and what succeeded over the last 11 to 12 months. It may be a factor of age, but I’ve gotten to a place where one of my biggest fears is not trying enough big ideas to make a difference, in settling for less than what was possible and becoming comfortable with what is versus what could be.

Fear of failure is the term we hear most often. I’ve seen it in brand managers afraid to screw up a brand assignment they just took over. I’ve seen it in corporate executives who were living examples of the Peter Principle who, instead of remaining open to help from others and being vulnerable, fell prey to the idea that they always had to have the winning idea. I’ve seen it in senior managers who killed ideas because they were more disruptive than the manager was willing to fight for, even though disruption was desperately needed to keep the brand alive. When this happens teams eventually fail because the ideas just get smaller and smaller—because small ideas are easier to protect.

This is also a problem with people who haven’t been allowed to fail along the way. The kid who must get straight A’s, who can’t miss a note on an instrument or make a bad throw on a ball field may be doomed to a life of pursuing a goal that doesn’t exist.

Perfectionism Is An Issue

Better by Mistake author Alina Tugend, put it this way: “Experiments showed that those who are always scared to make mistakes—ultra-perfectionists, they are called—perform worse in writing tasks than those who aren’t as worried about being flawless. Experts theorize “superperfectionists” are afraid to practice writing, because to practice means to make mistakes. More importantly, they fear receiving any kind of negative feedback, so they don’t learn where they went wrong and how to get better.”

You Can’t Win Them All

Once you accept that you are going to fail, eventually, you free your mind up to do bigger things. It’s the act of trying that makes the difference. Relax. It’s not like you avoiding mistakes is going to make things any better or worse. Peter Drucker once said, “People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” If you accept that you’re probably going to make two big mistakes a year, wouldn’t you rather make those two mistakes on something that has a chance to change your world? Or change the world?

There are stories out there of people who made it big without putting themselves or their ideas on the line. Personally, I think most of these are just scrubbed to remove any blemishes in the pursuit of perfection. When you aim high you may achieve great things. But even if you don’t win, you find out what you’re made of when you get back up again.

Consider these examples:

• Triathlete Mark Allen, in the seven years before he won his first of six Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii, did not finish, placed 3rd, placed 5th, did not compete, placed 2nd, placed 2nd, and placed 5th.

• John William Lindsey, who played first base for the LA Dodgers, spent 16 years in the minor leagues, the most by any player, before being called up to the Bigs.

• Post-it Notes came to life when Art Fry heard of colleague Spencer Silver’s low-tack adhesive and figured he could use it to help him mark his place in his hymnals because his bookmarks always fell out. It only took 10 years or more for the formula to find a home.

• The inventors of Bubble Wrap started out with a concept for wallpaper, then moved to greenhouses, then to packaging.

• Silly Putty was discovered during the pursuit of a rubber substitute for World War II. Though it wasn’t suitable for tires or boots, it was suitable for fun. Okay, this one probably shouldn’t go in the great examples category, but I like Silly Putty, so here it stays.

So You Blew It. So What?

I’ve been in bands and played guitar and sung on stage for years. One of my worst moments became one of my favorite memories. Standing in front of an audience of a couple hundred people in a church in Mississippi one night I played and sang a song I had performed dozens of times. Yet on this night as I finished the chorus and started the second verse I couldn’t for the life of me remember the words. Not one. And since I didn’t have lyrics with me I was stuck.

Rather than try to fake my way through the rest of the song and limp back to my seat I stopped, kind of chuckled nervously and said, “Have you ever had one of those moments when you forget a song? Yeah, me too. But I’m not leaving this stage until I finish a song for you, so if it’s okay with you I’d like to try a different option.” The audience laughed with me, which helped calm my nerves and ease the uncomfortable silence in the room. I sang my second song without any issues and got a standing ovation at the end. I figured I had just survived the worst nightmare a performer could have on stage. And I haven’t forgotten the lyrics in a song on stage since that night some 25 years ago.

Failure Has its Benefits

Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber, Ph.D., wrote, “People who fail repeatedly develop persistence in the face of difficulties … only people with extensive histories of failure could survive the difficulties that (some) individuals endured. Such dogged persistence is not a universal trait, of course.

With success, people keep on doing the same thing. When they fail, they are forced to adapt and change. That is not just a human characteristic but constitutes a basic feature of how the mammalian brain works.

If a lab rat no longer gets rewarded for pressing a lever that had yielded food pellets before, it gets visibly upset. As its frantic efforts fail, it resorts to all manner of strange, or novel, reactions from grooming itself to biting the lever, or leaping into the air. It is learning that the world has changed and its brain is getting rewired, so to speak.

When one combines emotionalism with originality, that is fairly close to what most people think of as artistic creativity. Artists are not necessarily frustrated people but tend to be dissatisfied with what they have accomplished previously and try to do something better, or something new.

The magical power of failure is not restricted to the arts, or to political leadership. It applies to all fields of human endeavor, including the crass activity of financial money grubbing. Anyone who bought Apple stock over most of the past decade made wads of money but learned nothing. Those who bought at the peak and lost 40 percent of their stake are still scratching their heads. Like the rat in the experiment, they are learning something.”

Failure Helps:

1. Discover what didn’t work

2. Fuel your creativity (I won’t compare you to the lab rat example above)

3. Inspire new energy

4. Warn you off of a dangerous approach further down that path

5. Uncover your own strengths

6. Humble the bold

Five Tips for Making Better Mistakes

1. Start with the idea that most people truly want you to succeed, so they want to support you versus try to break you down. The mind space you use to worry about what’s chasing you could be better spent looking forward and considering options. If you fail, those same people want you to get back up and win.

2. Surround yourself with people who embrace the chaos, accept that mistakes will happen and know the team will grow as a result. Building a healthy team culture enables you to keep the right kind of positive mindset you’ll need to try, fail, pick yourself up and try again. And again. And again.

3. Consider both sides of the results of your efforts. Life is rarely lived in the extremes, so the goods may not be as good as you dream and the bads are rarely as dismal as you fear. Unless you’re Nik Wallenda and walking tightropes between high-rise office buildings, failure will probably not be life threatening. And as long as you’re alive, you can try again.

4. Live and learn. Failure is rich in information, which you need so you can build your way to success. Stay open to the data, learn from your stumbles and keep moving.

5. Share your stories. The school of hard knocks is a tough way to learn, but necessary on the way to greatness. Learning principles would seem to indicate that you will get more out of your experiences, both good and bad, if you will teach others the lessons you learn. Your students will benefit as well.

Embrace your blunders. Learn to love them, then move on.

Now get out there and try. I kind of hope you fail, just a bit, so you can go on to do something amazing.

Unleash The Power Of Your Organization With Bottom-Up Leadership

Taking a bottom-up leadership approach can positively shake up your company and help bring some of the best ideas out of the shadows and into the market.

Most companies operate under a top-down management approach, in which visions and business plans are set at the highest levels and passed down through the organization. This can be great in theory, but it can also leave some of the most innovative and breakthrough ideas locked inside the people on the front lines. When those people feel disconnected from or shut down by leadership, the company can be doomed to irrelevance, especially in an era that demands innovation.

Build A Strong Core Team

W.L. Gore & Associates, a company known for its innovation and made famous for Gore-Tex, uses sponsors to help new hires untangle the system and find their place in the organization. They help make connections and find links so people are set up to succeed from the beginning. The company further allows employees to choose their assignments and follow their passions. Once an employee selects a project or team, they’re pretty well locked into the commitment. From that point on, their accountability is to their teams, not to their bosses. But great ideas often come from passionate individuals and strong teams.

Listen. Repeat. Act.

When current General Motors CEO, Mary Barra, first started at GM, she was an 18-year-old student co-op full of new ideas. She had the good fortune of working with mentors and managers who helped her learn and grow—and who listened to her ideas. As she moved through the company she saw the value of staying in touch with and open to the ideas of those on the front lines.

With a father who worked as a die maker for Pontiac for 39 years, Mrs. Barra fully understood what could be learned from those who touch the product every day, even in adjusting minor details that affect the people on the front lines. In an interview recently with Business Insider, Mrs. Barra proudly stated how as VP of Global Human Resources for GM, she shortened the unwieldy language of the dress code to just two words: Dress Appropriately. While something like this might seem trivial to some, it can be a sign of respect to those who feel patronized by the language passed down by managers who have lost sight of what life is like in the trenches.

Remember That Great Ideas Come From Anywhere

Passionate people with their hands in the work have a better chance of making connections between seemingly disconnected dots. Many people are familiar with how 3M’s Arthur Fry used an experimental light adhesive to create a better bookmark and thereby invented Post-it Notes. Mr. Fry’s inventiveness was evidence of a 3M culture where ideas, even ones that aren’t immediate successes, are shared in order to make the collective output even better.

The same can be said of the Gore Company. Dave Myers, an engineer with Gore’s medical teams, thought the company’s technology being used on mountain bike cables to block out gunk might work on guitar strings as well, since guitar strings lose tone and quality over time due to oils in the skin. After a bit of of exploration, Mr. Myer and his team introduced Gore’s industry-leading Elixir guitar strings.

In these and myriad other examples, success comes from sharing ideas and staying open to contributions from all areas of the company. Keeping employees locked into silos significantly diminishes the organization’s chances of regularly discovering breakthrough ideas.

Watch Out For Management Bias

Far too often managers miss the great ideas generated on the front lines. NPR host and author Shankar Vedantam believes he knows why.

In his book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, Mr. Vedantam’s research shows that managers often put more weight behind ideas from distant sources than ideas from their own employees. Simply put, it’s easier—and often more attractive—to hire high profile consultants than to ask for ideas from within the organization.

Vedantam goes on to discuss how managers can rush forward with “confirmation bias”, seeing only the ideas that support their own theories while discarding proof that their idea isn’t the strongest one on the table. This can be a culture killer because employees quickly see their ideas being pushed aside in favor of hierarchy and management. When this happens morale plummets as key employees face a cruel choice: stay with a company that undervalues their contributions or take their ideas elsewhere.

Be Wary Of Superstars

In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, talked about the problem with shooting stars. “Successful bright people rarely experience failure,” he said, “so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure.”

Bock continued: “They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved.”

By contrast, “We’ve seen that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.”

Ask Yourself: What Could Bottom-Up Thinking Do For Us?

Far too many management programs today emphasize action over listening, and title over experience. Most tend to prefer the sanitary approach of using consultants because writing a check is easier than building forums. When this happens, we communicate to our employees that they and their ideas don’t matter.

Management has to listen and act.

We think using these simple ideas can make a big difference. What do you think?

Why You Need Change Management Bread Crumbs

In the classic tale of Hansel and Gretel, two small children are led out into the woods to fend for themselves and with expectations that they won’t survive the night. However, the kids have the evil plan all figured out and leave a trail of pebbles and bread crumbs to find their way back home so they can eventually slay the witch.

Managers Are Evil Until Proven Otherwise

For many employees involved in change management initiatives, the story of Hansel and Gretel is far too close to their own experience, minus the bread crumbs. We hear it all the time: employees feel like they’re being led into the woods to certain doom while senior managers feel like they’ve done their jobs in telling their staff that big change is coming, that they shouldn’t be worried and that everything is under control.

These broad and vacuous statements do nothing but reinforce the idea that upper management is trying to “change” employees right out of a job.

Upper management must understand that the prevailing attitude with line employees is that change is going to end badly for them. It’s survival mentality. In his book Leaders Eat Last, author Simon Sinek discusses at length how the brain fires up a dose of the hormone cortisol when we sense danger. The human body doesn’t wait until we can see the danger, it takes care of business ahead of time. Cortisol helps focus our attention on getting out of dangerous situations.

In change management initiatives, employees tend to sense that change is happening even if nothing has been announced in the company. Keep in mind that bad news travels faster and is, frankly, more exciting than good news. So given the chance to leap to conclusions, most of us leap the wrong way. Managers have a responsibility to their direct reports and to their companies to over-communicate what’s happening and help overcome human nature. No shady language, no duplicity, no dodging the hard questions.

This steady stream of communication can be considered the bread crumbs out of the woods for employees. The biggest difference here is that the trail leads to a new, hopefully even better, destination instead of back to the original starting point.

Error Increases With Distance

It’s easy for managers to be lulled into complacency when communicating change issues. Many believe that since they delivered a clear message once or twice, then everyone should be on the same page. Others believe that since they heard a message from their managers then everyone else must be getting the same message. This isn’t even close to reality. With one client, we found up to 10 degrees of separation from line employees to the C-suite, which made those at the senior executive level appear to live above the clouds. They were for all intents and purposes untouchable to the average employee.

But the CEO leading the change worked very hard to shorten the distance between his office and the people making products every day. He communicated clearly to his senior leaders and expected them to help cascade the same language, using the exact same terms, to the people below them. And he got regular reports on who was doing the communicating and how the messages were being received.

This seems like such a simple concept, but many of us forget that with every level in the organization comes a greater chance for error, for key messages to be twisted and altered to fit the personality or agenda of the messenger.

Whenever possible, we suggest that senior leaders shorten the gap between the top of the company and the bottom. Deliver messages directly and in person to the broadest range of employees. Expect managers to do the same, and measure both participation and impact. This enables executives to manage the chaos before stories get too far off the desired path.

Go Far Together

One African proverb says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The same is true of change management.

Change doesn’t happen fast nor should it, in most cases. It takes time and planning to get the messages right and help everyone get on board. Organizational change is about setting up the company to go the distance. You can’t do that by racing alone.

Build a solid platform, communicate the end goal and how the company plans to get there, and recognize that most of the workforce won’t believe the messages until they see them lived out in and through management. With these bread crumbs the rest of the organization will make their way back to safety and join the rest of the company in reaching new goals.

Are Middles getting in the way of your progress?

It’s been my experience that many of the major blocks to change, growth, innovation, and more are tied to Middles: middle class and middle management.

The problems of having just enough

Middles tend to have just enough, so they fear risk that might cause them to lose what they have. Rags to riches stories don’t come from Middles. This group has a hard time seeing the potential gain because the potential loss is so overwhelming. You rarely hear Middles saying they are willing to risk it all. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’m a huge fan of small bets and what Jim Collins described as firing bullets before cannon balls. But Middles can struggle even with firing off bullets unless those bullets are fired in incredibly safe territory.

Middles also can’t afford bigger bets, so the adage of “it takes money to make money” serves as a roadblock. Because risk is such a major inhibitor, Middles can have problems taking the steps they need to make a major impact in their communities, churches, businesses, etc. When you have enough to be comfortable, but not enough to be carefree, comfortable is like living within giant walls covered in razor wire surrounded by a moat filled with crocodiles. No one is getting in, but no one is getting out, either.

Don’t screw it up!

Middle managers who share this risk aversion can kill progress in companies. They often live by the mantra “just don’t screw it up!” So they passively block innovative thinking, change within the company and new people with new ideas. The Middles don’t like new. They like big, comfortable, proven and safe.

We’re not in a safe economy. With innovation being the buzz word for companies of all sizes, having a culture filled with the Middles mindset can passively kill whatever progress upper management has in mind.

The absence of yes

One of my favorite statements related to the passive aggressive behavior of Middles came from a 2015 episode of the TV series The Good Wife. I’ll spare you the details of the show, but the line “The absence of ‘yes’ times time equals no” is a brilliant representation of the Middles code of compliance.

Think about it. You’re in a company that desperately needs to change to stay relevant and gain the best new talent, plus you need to innovate and offer up something new for your audiences. Upper management develops new foundations with a vision, mission, values, purpose, building a positive culture, etc. The Middles don’t say “no” to the change. They just don’t say “yes”, either.

Then it’s time to get innovative. Upper management is now under the belief that their teams are on board. Since they didn’t get much push back on the change initiatives, they believe everyone on the boat is rowing in the same direction and now will embrace innovation as well. The absence of no does not mean yes. Middles don’t like to say no, partly because saying no means they will have to defend their reasoning—and their reasoning may mostly be centered around the fact that they don’t like change. Especially in a culture where upper management is driving to a new destination, Middles don’t want to be seen as the boat anchors.

But don’t think for a minute that Middles agree with or support the progress. The absence of yes can be seen as passive agreement. That would be a mistake. Middles know that when it comes to organizational change and innovation, usually they just have to outlast the idea of the hour and then they can get back to managing their comfortable worlds. Thus, the absence of yes times time equals no.

So what can you do? Here are five suggestions for dealing with Middles and the Middles mindset.

Overcoming the Middles

1. Use Middles to strengthen the core. Middles aren’t all bad. They just don’t like risk and change. Middles might be excellent at managing the core of any organization and keeping the company on track. Embrace their strengths and focus on strengthening the middle.

2. Don’t ask Middles to lead change and innovation. In his excellent book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, author Clayton Christensen recommended moving disruptive innovation outside the core of the company. Why? Partly because the Middles often treat innovation like a virus that needs to be attacked, passively or actively, by the body. Do your organization a favor and let the Middles focus on their strengths while enabling the Innovators in the organization room to move and grow.

3. Help Middles see the future. Middles need time to embrace change. Middles want the company to continue doing what it’s always done and, in some cases, get back to the glory days the company once enjoyed with its legacy products and services. Because they tend to not be early adopters, this is going to take more time than most organizations want to recognize. Understand this. Schedule time, training and work to get buy-in before all the decisions have been made so the Middles can see themselves as part of the future.

4. Get verbal agreements. If you’ve ever sat in an exit row on an airplane you’ve been asked by a flight attendant to give him or her your verbal acknowledgement that you know you are in an exit row and have the ability to manage the exit door in an emergency. They don’t take a chance that you might be able to do the job, because if the plane goes down, you managing that exit door could be a matter of life or death. You need that same kind of agreement within the company to know everyone will do what you think they will when the time comes. Don’t let the Middles passively kill progress with an absence of yes.

5. Be willing to make the change they can’t. Just as important as getting the right people on the bus is helping the wrong people find a different ride. Once the vision and expectations are set, the coaching managed and programs initiated, it’s time to keep an eye on progress. If key metrics aren’t being met—and this tends to be consistent over time—and team frustration grows, it may be time to help some Middles find new roles inside or outside the company. In some cases this is just a factor of the company taking a new direction and needing new skill sets, so coaching people out of the organization doesn’t mean they are damaged goods, simply that they may not fit the future as well as they did the past.

The truth is we need both Innovators and Middles in most organizations. Just know that they can cancel each other out and see each other as the problem. Knowing where the company needs/wants to go will help, but things can’t end there. Upper management has to keep an eye on progress and people who are truly part of the program. Embrace those who join the efforts to move forward. Coach those on the fence. Help the others find success somewhere else.

The Copy Paper Syndrome: why selfish behavior is killing your company from the inside out.

What difference can a few sheets of paper make?

We’ve all been there: you head over to the office copier, one that’s shared by a dozen or several dozen other employees who all bear the same responsibility for keeping it stocked with paper, only to find that the paper trays are empty. You look around for the spare reams of paper and find that those, too, are somehow missing.

Here’s where the syndrome kicks in: what’s your next move?

A) Walk to wherever the boxes of paper are stored and bring a whole box, or at least several reams, back with you and fill the paper trays while stacking up the extra paper for others to use later?

B) Walk to the paper storage area and retrieve a ream of paper so you can completely fill the tray you need?

C) Walk to the nearest other copier, grab a handful of pieces of paper based on what you need and return to your copier to finish the job?

D) Walk to the nearest other copier and take care of your task there, since that machine apparently has paper?

If you chose options A or B, you’re already in rarefied air in today’s me-first company cultures. Unfortunately, it is far too common to find employees and managers alike who focus on taking care of themselves and their needs rather than looking out for the good of the company and their fellow associates.

The perils of looking out for you versus looking out for us

Companies are made up of a variety of moving parts, all working together to make a product or offer a range of services. It takes everyone on the team to make that happen. When employees fill their days with only those items that are important to them, or are listed on the scorecard they are held accountable for, they miss the ‘working together’ principle of teamwork. If it’s always someone else’s job to do the little things, then the organization begins to break down. Things that are left for others invariably end up never getting done.

Short-term outlook negates the long-term vision

The Internet is filled with disparaging articles on Millennials and their give-it-to-me-now approach to work and life. But it’s not just Millennials. This is a systemic issue. Many large organizations promote managers on regular two- and four-year intervals, as long as those managers don’t screw things up. As a result, those managers avoid long-term solutions and instead focus on what will help them get promoted to their next station. We have found brand and marketing managers who recognized larger issues with their brands and that someone, eventually, would need to address them. But why worry with the big picture when grabbing the low hanging fruit will get you to the next level?

Upper management rarely sees the problems—because selfish behavior is like a cancer in the corporate body silently killing the company from the inside out. By the time upper management gets wind of the problem the cancer has spread and now manifests itself as missed orders, shipment delays, product quality issues, facility breakdowns, budget overruns, etc. The systematic dysfunction comes about because people are looking out for themselves. And because many companies reward the behavior, they only have themselves to blame.

The boy who saved Holland, but couldn’t save the corporation

There’s an old tale about a boy in Holland who was walking along one of the dykes and noticed a trickle of water coming out of it. Knowing that water coming through a dyke could eventually lead to a catastrophic failure of the dyke and therefore imperil the country, the boy stuck his finger in the hole and thus saved the Holland.

The same story could happen across many manufacturing plants today—but it doesn’t. In the name of budget cutting, companies neglect to make basic repairs to their facilities.

For example, in one large manufacturing plant we found in our research, the facilities stretch across tens of acres and require constant maintenance and repair to withstand the intense weather outside. Now no site manager wants to fork over their entire budget to repair 40 acres of rooftop, so you do what you have to, and you divert the water. Short-term fix for a long term issue. No need to repair a small hole or two in the roof when those dollars could be conserved or used elsewhere, right? The mentality shifts to just putting a tarp up to block the drip when it rains.

But little holes add up. And since employees are looking after themselves, remember here that no one is rewarded for plugging the hole, the drips and tarps keep coming. As a result, on rainy days, this manufacturer’s facilities look like they’ve hung circus tents inside to deflect the water. Deflect is the operative term here. Because the tarps aren’t solving the problem. No one is solving the problem. In terms of the Copy Paper Syndrome, they’re just getting a few sheets of paper for themselves and leaving the larger problem for someone else.

Be the one who breaks the cycle

It is important that we look out for the needs of more than just ourselves to ensure that all areas of the company are tended to. Don’t leave a task for that unnamed person—who probably doesn’t exist anymore anyway. Make the time to look out for the person behind you. Be the one who gets the extra paper even when you only need a few sheets. Be the manager who, even if you can’t solve the larger problems, makes sure upper management is aware of them and has line of sight on the issues. Sure you’re busy. Everyone is busy. It takes the entire team to win the game.

Want help breaking the cycle and moving your organization to a healthier culture, let’s talk. Join the conversation here or reach out directly.