Good stuff comes and bad stuff happens; people come and go—and die; great bosses join—and leave; companies start, grow, get acquired, shrink, layoff and file bankruptcy.

It’s called life; and no matter what you do, it rolls on inexorably

You can influence it, but you can’t control it.

The only thing you can control in life is yourself and your MAP.

We all have a tendency to forget this.

For better or for worse, you are the only thing you will always have; the only thing you can truly count on, so why not appreciate yourself? Value the best and improve the rest.

There is only one you and you get to live only one life, so focus your time and energy on changing/adjusting/enhancing what you do control and let the rest go.

Image credit: Celestine Chua

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Founders constantly talk about their need for ‘self-starters’ and ‘independent workers’.

They look for people who will ‘take the ball and run with it’.

They want high initiative and creative problem-solving.

What they really crave is a self-managing workforce or as close as they can get.

The disconnect results from the differences between what they say and their MAP.

If MAP fears any of the following then there is no way the walk can live up to the talk.

And while the answers to these questions require being brutally honest with yourself, they do not require being made public.

• Does letting go/delegating equal loss of control?
• Is your self esteem tied to methodology or accomplishments (AKA, your way or the highway)?
• Do you believe it’s more important that work is done well, than where or how it happens?
• Does your self-esteem equate control to power?
• Do you believe that people are intelligent, motivated and really care about their company’s success, OR that they are that you need to watch them every minute if anything is going to get done?
• How much of a micromanager are you?

Once you identify attitudes that need to change it’s up to you to modify your MAP as needed.

MAP can be changed, but those changes must originate internally—they can’t be forced by circumstances or other people, although either can be motivators.

Image credit: HikingArtist

There will always be people who disappoint, whether in your personal or professional life.

If their presence is outside of your control and/or they are part of your long-term world there is a simple-to-understand, but difficult-to-implement approach to dealing with them.

You can not control other people’s words or actions.

You can only control your expectations and reactions.

Any form of self-control is a hands-on effort that can’t be outsourced or multi-tasked.

And while both involve control, investing your energy in the second type will provide far higher ROI.

Flickr image credit: fatbwoy

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

A couple of weeks ago we took a look at Jim Heskett’s HBS discussion about why servant leadership isn’t very prevalent, considering how effective it is; this week he sums those reasons up.

Servant leadership is experienced so rarely because of trends in the leadership environment, the scarcity of human qualities required, demands that the practice places on the practitioner, and the very nature of the practice itself.

It’s easy to spot the major traits that get in the way.

“Ego (that) makes it difficult to ‘want to serve'” (Randy Hoekstra), “greed” (Madeleine York), and “An unhealthy desire to control” (Judesther Marc).

There is more; ake a moment and read the summation, it’s short.

Next look at yourself in light of the expressed reasons preventing the spread of servant leadership.

Then look at your company’s culture and how well that culture fosters and recognizes those who practice servant leadership.

Now fix yourself, so you can become a model of servant leadership, and then fix whatever needs fixing in your culture so that that kind of leadership will naturally rise to the top of your organization.

A few thousand years ago a gentleman named Lao Tzu said it all quite elegantly in just 45 words.

As for the best leaders,
the people do not notice their existence.
The next best,
the people honor and praise.
The next, the people fear;
and the next, the people hate—
When the best leader’s work is done,
the people say, “We did it ourselves!”

I can’t think of a better mantra to build your management around.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Stress is bad, right?

Bad for your health, bad for your relationships, bad for your life.

Or is it?

Actually stress can be a positive motivator.

So perhaps it’s not stress, but how we handle it.

The article may be looking at kids, but kids grow up to be adults and genetic traits come along for the ride.

One particular gene, referred to as the COMT gene, could to a large degree explain why one child is more prone to be a worrier, while another may be unflappable, or in the memorable phrasing of David Goldman, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, more of a warrior.

Granted, the researchers were looking at short-term, i.e., competitive stress, but the solution was still the same as it is for stress that lasts longer. (The COMT gene also has a major impact on interviewing.)

They found a way to cope.

For many people stress is the result of losing control.

But if there is anything experience should have taught you by a very early age is that you can’t control your world; not even a tiny part of it.

I learned that lesson as a child of five when my father died and nothing ever happened after that to change my mind.

If you put your energy into controlling stuff to avoid stress you are bound to fail.

Energy spent on control is energy wasted.

Energy focused on coping provides exceptional ROI.

Flickr image credit: Eamon Curry

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here

I rarely mention ‘leadership’, because I believe that given the opportunity to act anyone can and will step up and lead when the time and cause is right.

That’s why I when I coach one of the mantras I offer is “leadership is like manure, it produces the best results when spread around.”

You wouldn’t think founders today would even consider any kind of old world hierarchical management, but they do.

Not overtly, but covertly—and often unconsciously.

It shows in their unwillingness (fear?) to delegate the authority to make decisions along with the responsibility of doing the work.

But there are major advantages to spreading leadership opportunities at every level in your organization.

Foremost is the fact that if you want to hire these days you need to offer your workers meaningful opportunities to grow or they’ll walk.

Growing includes leading and managing—even if it’s only a group of one, themselves.

It means pushing responsibility further and further down in your organization—not just the responsibility—but the authority required to accomplish whatever it is.

And that’s where most founders (and bosses) blow it.

They assign the task, but then require their people to keep running to them for permission to do each step.

I’m not saying to hand over total control, but you need to hand over enough authority to get the job done.

Even when it comes to money, which is often the biggest hang-up, you can still do it.

Create a budget for each task and give the responsibility for spending it to the person responsible for getting it done. Let her decide how to spend it without interference or “help” from you—unless she asks.

If she goes over budget don’t freak out. It’s not that much (or shouldn’t be) in the big picture and if you freak she may never recover.

She already knows that she messed up, so beating on her will accomplish nothing. Sit down calmly and let her walk you through the thinking and decision-making that led to being over budget, discuss it and lead her through a pattern that would have succeeded.

But if it turns out that the error is yours and the estimate was wrong, admit it, don’t try and convince her that someone else could have done it.

People aren’t stupid, she’ll know that the discussion ended as a CYA function for you—as will everyone, since stuff like this never stays secret.

Other great reasons to spread leadership around are increased productivity, more employee satisfaction, fewer logjams when you’re unavailable or traveling, easier staffing and less turnover.

Finally, spread it around because that’s what great founders do—they pay it forward by fostering the growth of more entrepreneurs.

Image credit: HikingArtist

One of the most important things you learn if you want to be a great boss is how to let go.

Whether it’s to avoid wasting resources on projects going nowhere or removing someone who is damaging the team you need to know how to let go.

Why is letting go so difficult?

Because letting go is an emotional act as opposed to a rational analysis.

The unwillingness to let go is anchored in your MAP (the link goes to a blueprint of how to change it).

Letting go is very similar to those team building exercises, variations of which have been around for decades, such as the one where you fall backwards from a height trusting your team to catch you.

It’s scary, not because you’re up that high, but because it requires real trust and the result is outside of your control.

Letting go is like that.

There are three basic steps to letting go.

1. You need to trust that the people around you are giving you straight information with no hidden agendas.
2. Analyze the information and accept that at that point the failure of the person, version or even entire project is outside of your control.
3. Accept that no matter how good you are you won’t always be right. After all, Home Depot had Robert Nardelli and Steve Jobs had Lisa and Newton.

Flickr image credit: Shawn Rossi

I love words. They are one of my very favorite things, so I thought it would be interesting so see what others thought of them.

Edward Thorndike believes words are for the long term, “Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.” Sadly, it’s not just the wise ones that last through time.

Rudyard Kipling thinks they are addictive, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (I agree.)

Long before I wrote this, Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”

Americans point proudly to the words contained in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, but as Ralph Ellison reminds us, “If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.”

Philip K. Dick explains that further, “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” (Manipulation was our focus Friday.)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe hit the nail on the head when he said, “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” Just ask any politician, parent or, for that matter entrepreneur.

Common wisdom, AKA anonymous, offers critical advice that is too often ignored, “Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.”

Finally, smart people, as well as the wise, keep Adlai Stevenson’s words firmly in mind every time they open their mouths to speak, “Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.” Obviously politicians are neither smart nor wise.

Flickr image credit: AuthenticEccentric

There is much talk these days among what Jim Stroup calls the modern leadership movement (MLM) that leadership is all about influence.

What I’ve never seen is any mention that influence is about control.

Influence moves you in the direction desired by the leader, essentially controlling your choices.

Also faulty is the assumption that the influence ‘leaders’ exert is always for ‘good’; as I keep saying, assumptions are bad.

In this case the assumption is that a ‘leader’ you like/trust/respect won’t lead you in a direction that encourages you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own if you thought of it.

That is a faulty assumption at best and a destructive one at worst.

To paraphrase an old saying that has served me well in my life, consider the source of the influence sans assumptions before allowing it to affect you.

In other words, listen objectively to the words and consider what they mean.

One trick to doing that is to pretend someone you would never allow to influence you said the same thing. How would you react?

If you would pull back and say, ‘no way’, then it should be ‘no way’ even if the source is someone you like/trust/respect.

Fickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Do you manage like Microsoft?

When Microsoft, the company know for its ferocious attitude when protecting its own turf and simultaneously stomping on everyone else’s, released Kinect it unleashed a frenzy of innovative development among the great unwashed, AKA the open source community.

Rather than embracing their out-of-the-box thinking Microsoft started stomping, but when the rabble attacked, Microsoft backed down—part way.

In statements, Microsoft said it “does not condone the modification of its products” and vowed to work with law enforcement “to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.” After geek outrage spilled onto the Web, Microsoft spent the next day clarifying its position. It stressed that it objected to miscreants who might, say, use Kinect’s camera to peer into living rooms. It would not, however, sue well-intentioned tinkerers. After that peace gesture, Microsoft stopped discussing Open Kinect publicly.

Do you (or your manager) act like this?

Do you freak out when faced with innovation outside of the expected and difficult to control?

Do you threaten the instigators and/or your team to bring them back in line with your narrow vision?

Or do you cheer them on, embracing ideas that didn’t originate with you and weren’t planned, but open up new paths and even new worlds to conquer?

The world has changed and you need to change with it. Years ago someone said that Microsoft shouldn’t try and act like a scrappy startup when it was a 500 pound canary, but now that canary is merely obese.

Doctors faced the same dilemma, going from a world where their word was law to one in which patients research and demand a say in their treatment—and vote with their feet if they don’t get it.

And before you see this as an age-related problem look around. It’s not hard to find Microsoft-styled managers and doctors of all ages.

The Microsoft vs. open source is a good analogy for two different types of management MAP and you need to choose which you want to be.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eamon33/1528968969/