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Some projects just won’t die. These vampires suck the resources, creative energy, and eventually the integrity out of the organization.

When everyone sees that the project will not succeed, but the boss won’t kill it, far more is lost than just the cost of the project.

Protecting project vampires is much more corrosive to the organization than killing them off too soon; customer rejection of a variation in the marketplace means that the boss can no longer hide a personal bias that keeps the vampire alive.

While feeding the vampires appears to be the opposite of killing them too soon, the root cause is the same—prejudgment.

Just as we “know” that some variations cannot possibly work, we also “know” that a few specific variations just have to work. In both situations we have substituted our own personal opinion, or prejudice, in the place of test results with customers.

Why do we do it?

What are the mental and emotional processes that cause us to continue feeding vampires?

First, there is persistence, that two-edged virtue that causes so much trouble. By feeding a vampire are we being persistent or just plain stubborn.

An old joke asks, “What is the difference between persistence and stubbornness? Come back in ten years to find out.”  But possibly more apropos is Einstein’s definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If you keep working the same variation hoping for a different verdict from customers, then it’s time to pull out the silver stake and drive it through the heart of this vampire project. Your team will be surprised and even a little bit impressed.

But perhaps your business instincts are leading you in the right direction. Evolution has a recommendation here—try a few more variations.

When evolution converted a fin into a hand and fingers, it did not know how many fingers were optimal, or even if there was an optimal number for fingers. Evolution has experimented with two fingers, then three, four, five, six, and even seven. The opposable thumb has worked for some species, but not for others.

Finally evolution settled on five fingers for most mammals, but it still uses one or two fingers (hoof or cloven hoof) for other mammals.

So…

• Create a number of variations on the vampire variation.
• Ask the development team working on the vampire. They may have a number of recommendations for changes, based on their direct experience with it.
• Ask the customers who have seen it. What did they like or not like? What would they recommend to improve it? What one feature did they hate?  Why did they stop using it?

Any variation has a number of function points, just like the bolt we discussed earlier. With your development team, review the function list one by one. For each function point, create ten possible variations. Most will not work, but remember not to kill off them too soon.

Use the lessons of evolution to create variations on the vampire variation. That’s persistence.

A second reason to keep a vampire alive may be resource issues. It may be generating resources in a peculiar way. The vampire may be the source or reason for funding by a customer. The vampire may be the project that keeps a highly talented team or individual at your organization. Or you may believe that you cannot afford to kill this vampire because your boss/customer/company will leave/quit/fire you if you kill the vampire. Whatever the reason, identify it directly.

Demonstrate to your boss/customer/ organization/team that the customers have thoroughly rejected the vampire as it exists today.  Outline your plan to create new variations and your plans to test them in the marketplace. The evolutionary process will eventually lead you to success.

Finally, you may have some very personal reasons for keeping the vampire alive. Your own success/promotion/growth/bonus may need this vampire to succeed. In this situation, first recognize your own needs to yourself, if not to anyone else.

Then return to the evolutionary model of creating variations. Somewhere in the mix of new, unlikely variations, the customers will find a few that they like, often using them in novel ways that you did not imagine.

Checkup for Killing Vampires

• What is the difference between persistence and stubbornness? Which are you?
• Why do you think the vampire will succeed?
• What variations have you tried on the vampire?
• Who wants the vampire to stay alive? Why?
• Who wants the vampire dead? Why?
• How can you create many more variations on the vampire?
• What is the personal cost to you for feeding the vampire?
• What is the personal cost to you for killing the vampire?

You may have noticed that this post was not particularly helpful in dealing with personality quirks—personal or organizational—that keep the vampires alive. I am not a psychologist, and do not pretend to offer psychological advice. My blunt advice, taken directly from the lessons of evolution, is: “Grow up. Get over it. Shoot the vampires. Move on.”

Socrates was a little gentler with his dictum, “Know thyself.” Miki says it differently, “Know your MAP and know that you can modify/change it at will.”

Your career/customers/team/organization/boss is more important than any single variation. You are valuable specifically for your ability to create and deliver variations. Kill the vampire! Create one hundred more variations to nurture and test.

Next time:  We will begin to explore selection. How does evolution use the environment to select the fittest variations? What exactly is evolutionary fitness?

By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership Turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.ballgroup.com.

The government is changing its mind faster than a three year old.

No wonder the stock market is scared silly.

Let’s get this straight.

In an attempt to help more people gain “the American dream” of owning a home, the U.S.  It even went so far as to set up organizations to help resell those loans, so the risk was spread around to unsuspecting investors.

Then, when it looks like some people are being irresponsible with this program, and actually putting people at risk of losing everything, the government says, “Oh, that’s really OK, because it is achieving the goal of putting more people in homes.”

Then, when it all collapses and a lot more than just the 6% of loans that were risky start to go bad, the government says, “Let’s buy up those bad assets and free up the credit markets.”  Then, finally, just as the financial industry is starting to believe that perhaps there will be some stability and security ahead, the government changes its mind and decides to focus on consumers and saving a broad range of hurting companies instead, government put pressure on banks to loan money to people who really could not afford it.

Is it any wonder that the stock market is going through such wild swings?  Can anyone blame corporate executives for being terrified?  With the children running things, who can guess what’s next?

One thing is certain:  leadership is supposed to provide vision and a sense of predictability and stability.

Can anyone call what we are seeing “leadership?”

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Dave Zinger wrote a post on employee DISengagement, saying that it doesn’t exist; that it isn’t the employees who are disengaged, rather it’s the organization’s responsibility to engage them and he’s right on the money.

Engagement isn’t something that happens by accident or that you can order your people to do.

Engagement happens because you, and hopefully your company are engaging.

This isn’t doubletalk or smoke, think about it. Think about what engages you.

• The guideline is the same thread that has run through every major philosophy and religion for thousands of years—treat your people as you want to be treated, whether your boss treats you that way or not.

• Authenticity is the current buzz word, but it translates simply to be honest, open and do what you say; never fudge, let alone lie, intentionally or otherwise.

• There are absolutely no circumstances that warrant or excuse the messenger being killed. None. Because if you do, there’s no going back—ever.

• If your company doesn’t have an engaging culture then you must be an umbrella for your people, because you can create one below you, even if you can’t change it above.

Organizational engagement is cultural and we’ll be talking more about it this week.

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote Leadership is All Hype (credit Peter Drucker for the title) and among the commenters was Bruce Lewin of Four Groups; as I told Bruce, his most recent comment deserved a full post response. (I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole thread.)

This part of the conversation is focused directly on leadership as a business.

“Leadership is arguably a nascent industry.”

Leadership has been around for several thousand years, but it was only after WWII that it attracted practitioners who actually earned their living by teaching ‘leadership’ skills, in spite of “little consensus from suppliers, customers and even academics about what works. But that doesn’t stop either the selling or the buying.”

“I believe that there is a subconscious or unknown quantity to ‘leadership’ or self development, otherwise there would be more ‘if you do X you get Y’”

First, it seems to me that much of leadership marketing involves telling people that by learning X they will be able to do Y and the training involves teaching X.

If there is an unknown quantity it’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), which is know, but often ignored. I’ve never known or heard about anyone who was able to implement actions or ideas that weren’t at least synergistic with their MAP. So do X get Y works if, and only if, you can authentically do X.

“Self acceptance (and its derivative forms in language) are a lowest common denominator for human nature. People’s success/wellbeing/good stuff/bad stuff is a function of their self acceptance.”

I vehemently disagree with this and the proof of its invalidity is incarcerated across the country, found on welfare roles and in gangs and dropouts, as well as the C suite and Harvard.

Much of self-acceptance starts in infancy and stems from what we hear others say and their actions towards us.

Consider the thousands of kids every year who accept themselves as ‘slow’, when, in fact, they aren’t slow, but are bored or have a learning disability.

If enough people tell you something and eventually you believe it.

That’s as applicable to being told good things as being told bad—the input is internalized and you accept it as a truth about yourself.

Extending leadership throughout an organization makes perfect financial sense for the organization; obviously it makes sense for those in the leadership industry.

But I’m not at all sure that economies of scale will increase opportunities for all or a willingness to fund training for those who don’t jump forward—often because they’ve been told that they aren’t ‘leadership material’, which takes us back to that self-acceptance thing.

Sadly, I think the industry bears much of the responsibility for all the people who’ve missed their chance to be all they could be because the industry sold the idea to their management as well as themselves that leadership is only for the few, the special, the chosen.

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See all mY generation posts here.

I’m about as far from pop culture as you can get—not into *ratti’s at all.

But I have to confess that I adore everything about Sir Richard Branson.

Where Larry Ellison comes over as arrogant and obnoxious, Branson is laid back and friendly—and oh so sexy. (Would that we could all look like that at 58—or 38 or any age for that matter.)

So, smart, sexy, brilliant, talented businessman and serial entrepreneur in the grand manner—what’s not to like?

“A good idea for a new business tends not to occur in isolation, and often the window of opportunity is very small. So speed is of the essence.” (A great message for all those ‘leaders’ who not only think they know best, but also don’t know how to get out of their people’s way.)

“We expect the first Virgin Galactic space flight to take place in 2008, which gives our Flying Club members time to save up all their miles.” (Just started testing this year, so it looks as if you have another 18 months to accrue more miles.)

“You’ll have at least two ways to get lucky on our flights.” (And a great sense of humor. He said this when his airline started offering casinos and double beds on it six new Airbus A380 planes.)

“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.” (14 words to by which to live—think about it.)

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A lot of interesting stuff makes the rounds of the Internet. I received this scan and tracked through Google to Snopes (I love Snopes).

These remarks were made spontaneously  on a Voice of America broadcast that was heard in more than sixty countries.

It would be very cool if it had really happened in 1968, but that was literary license; the broadcast actually took place in May 1961.

But the seven years difference doesn’t matter. What matters is that his comments were prophetic and came true in far less time than many believed possible—right up until last week.

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I had a recent conversation on the final post from a series last summer regarding supposed differences between ‘leaders’ and managers.

The reader said she was confused and asked whether managers needed to be ‘leaders’, too.

I think that my responses will be of use to others, so I’ve rounded them out below to increase access to the information.

It would be lovely if there was a nice, clear-cut answer to the ‘leader’/manager thing, but like a lot of these types of questions it depends on whom you ask.

There are two distinct schools of thought. One believes that leaders and managers are different and see ‘leaders’ as on a higher plane.

Others, like me, believe that to manage well requires having and using so-called leadership skills.

To further confuse the issue, there’s a growing movement that thinks leadership skills can and should be found at any/all levels of the organization (think organizational leadership) and become active as the need arises.

In other words, real leadership is what you believe and how you think and act, AKA, MAP, as opposed to your position.

Further, real leadership isn’t about style or even ‘vision’.

Style may change as you adopt a presentation appropriate to the people with whom you are interacting, but that stylistic change doesn’t change who you are and what you believe.

Vision presentation also changes based on your audience. Changes in the actual vision is a different subject

To summarize,

• While management is what you do, leadership is the way you think.

• Great management is composed of equal parts leadership and accountability.

• True leaders are proclaimed as such by those around them, not by themselves.

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