The Leading Edge by Mark Goulston

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The Leading Edge - Would you rather be king or rich?

A few years ago I was on an Ernst & Young "Milestones" panel in Boston speaking to an audience of venture capitalists, investment bankers and entrepreneurs.

One of the VC's told me one of the most clarifying questions he asks all entrepreneurs for which there is only one correct answer.
He asks them: "Would you rather be king or rich?"
If they answer, "king" he has learned to pass on them.
He went on to explain that being an entrepreneur is part of process of going from: idea --> start up --> early stage company -->stable company where you have maximized its value and then sell it to begin the process with another company. He said that people who would rather be king than rich often become too attached to their company and don't realize that the company is just a part of a process and that such people will get in the way of what's necessary for that company because they will have trouble letting go of control.

Does that make sense to any of you?

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The Leading Edge - Visionary vs. Implementer "Not Good Enough" Syndrome

As I have been speaking with CEO's I know, I have been noticing a phenomena.

Some CEO's who did not create/invent the core service or product that their company is based on feel that they are not the real deal. They just took something that was already there and made it work better and be more profitable. They have what I call "visionary" envy.

On the other hand some founders/creators/inventors who created an incredible service or product, but were not able to turn it into a profitable company feel initially ripped off, but then go on to feel embarrassed/ashamed and even depressed that at the end of the day they "were full of sound and fury, meaning nothing" meaning that their great ideas without the ability to execute fully and profitably on it eats away at them.

I wonder if others have noticed examples of "visionary envy" of great implementers on the one hand and "execution envy" of great visionaries who are not able to execute on the other hand.

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The Leading Edge - Manage Your Fear

Just because you feel afraid
doesn't mean you have to act afraid.

If you haven't noticed, fear or at least anxiety is in the air. All you need to do is look deeply into people's eyes -- from Jane and John Doe to Presidential candidates -- and you'll see it. And the place it is most visible is in the contrast between what you see in their eyes and the expression of their mouths which are trying in vain to cope with it.

Fear usually takes on one of two manifestations or a combination or alternation of both.

FEARFUL AVOIDANCE - This makes sense intuitively. When people feel afraid, they hunker down or bunker in. Their their cheek bones are sunken in and their mouths are downcast. They look as if they'll either run or start crying if you say, "Boo!" to them.

You'll see it in John McCain's face when he knows he's going to be asked a question about Gay marriage by Ellen Degeneres or the economy that is above his head.

You'll see a slightly different version in Barack Obama's face when he knows he's going to be asked a question about Reverend Wright. His look is more one of exasperation as if to say, "Do we really need to go through this for the umteenth time?"

FEARFUL AGGRESSION - This is the confusing one and most discombobulating and counter-intutitive one. It is what show dog's do where they growl when they are afraid. It has to be trained out of them or else they'll never win "Best in Show." In fact we watched several cases of it in the comedy movie of the same name.

In this manifestation, people bare their teeth instead of their neck. The speed and pitch of their voice increases and the inflection at the end of their most substantive statements seem more adamant (or at times strident) than authoritative.

It usually occurs in people who are very controlled, controlling and distrustful. It happens because they have experienced some upset which as caused them to feel vulnerable and in danger. This reflexly causes them to counter attack to prevent a second upset when they are in a vulnerable positon and that second blow threatens to undo them.

Hillary Clinton and intermittently now, Bill Clinton, seem to be demonstrating this mode. It is going so poorly for them because anxiety feels contagious and although they may come across as forceful on the surface, the anxiety the belies this starts to stir up our own.

What can you do if you suffer from fearful avoidance or fearful aggression?

Here are six steps that might help you calm yourself down and prevent you from shooting from the hip and shooting yourself in the foot.

1. React - don't deny that you're upset and afraid, instead say it to yourself (vs. acting on it) and give it those names. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA has said that when you accurately give a name to a feeling and say it, it lessen Amygdala activation and prevents that from part of your brain from hijacking you away from you common sense and calm.
2. Release - after you have admitted it, breathe deeply and slowly through your nose with your eyes closed and let it go. Keep doing this as long as it takes to let it go.
3. Relax - after you have released it, keep breathing and r-e-l-a-x. This will allow you to begin to regain your inner balance.
4. Recenter - keep breathing and let yourself go from Defcon 1 back down to Defcon 3 and 5. It may help to say these words as you go through this transition: "Oh f***!" "Oh sh**." "Oh geez." "Oh well..."
5. Refocus - start to think of what you need to do now and today to make it the best (or least lousy) day under these circumstances.
6. 
   Re-engage - if you have had your eyes closed up to now, open them and then go back to what you need to do.

(c) 2008 Mark Goulston

Visit Mark at: MarkGoulston.com

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The Leading Edge - "We" an Idea Whose Time has Come

The parents of baby boomers, born around WWI, living through the Great Depression and fighting in WWII had many reasons to be fearful, but didn’t give into it. Still, their fears managed to help them keep a lid on runaway impulsivity and giving into their baser instincts. And their leaders (FDR, Truman) managed to keep those fears from turning into panic.

Other than the “fallout shelter” paranoia in the 1950’s and the Cuban missile crisis in the early sixties and worries about getting drafted in the middle late sixties, baby boomers have not had to live in or with the same fear as their parents. As a result, baby boomers’ baser instincts around sex, rampant materialism and greed have ridden roughshod over civility and civic mindedness, increased and maintained a high rate of divorce, and spawned a generation of X’ers, Y’ers, and Millennials that are much more about “me” than “we.”

Interestingly as “me-minded” as the Millennials may be about not wanting to be told (by boomers) what to think or do, they do subscribe more to a Google-mindedness vs. a GE mindedness.
The GE of old represents a “command and control/hub and spoke” mindset which was a carry over from the parents of the baby boomers and to a certain extent the boomers themselves. In times of fear, the masses look to a central figure to take charge, set a direction and reassure in order to stave off panic (i.e. FDR in WWII and George W. Bush immediately post 9/11).

Google represents an open source approach to the world. The Internet has created a “flat world” where we see our enemies are more like us –with similar fears of being controlled and similar desires to love and care for their children –than they are an evil empire. The more we see others and they see us and the more we see that there is little to fear (scattered groups of terrorists and global economics notwithstanding) on the scale of WWI, the Depression, and WWII, the more an open source mindset is prevailing over a command and control one.

What we are seeing in the current political races of Obama vs. Clinton and McCain is an evolution from that command and control to an open source mindset. Clinton professing to be the candidate who is “ready on day one” (when she takes office) vs. Obama saying “Yes we can” is reflective of this shift.

Let’s hope that “we” mindedness is an idea whose time has come.

At the very least it could do no worse than the “me” mindedness that has created so many of the troubles in the world.

Visit Mark at: MarkGoulston.com 

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The Leading Edge - Goodbye GE, hello Google

One of Freud’s dictums was: “Where id is, let ego be.” In essence, replace your runaway impulses (Id) with a more reason/reality driven (Ego) approach to life. Not a bad guide
to live by, given the times of Freud and the rise of Germany in early/middle part of the last century.

Something more apropos for today’s corporate world might be: “Where ‘hub and spoke’ is let ‘triads’ be.”

For “hub and spoke” think GE under Jack Welch; for “triad” think of the open source approach under Google.

Under “hub and spoke” you have a powerful leader that everyone relates to and through. The good news for the leader is that he/she gets to be in control; the bad news for
everyone else is that the “spokes” get into a “sibling rivalry” for the attention of the leader, feel a “zero sum” competition between each other including occasional feelings of paranoia and consciously or unconsciously undermine each other rather than working to help each other. This also can make succession difficult, because often that powerful figure is difficult to replicate.

With a “triad” the leader has a vision, hired the best people, but then facilitates relationships between the spokes in as completely an open, transparent and mutually supportive way possible. Trust and generosity is placed from the leader into the other members of the triad.

With “hub and spoke” the leader appears to hoard power(despite words to the contrary) and instead of trust and generosity directs fierce accountability towards the spokes with the edict that the bottom will be sloughed off to maintain optimal performance. Such a culture may get performance in the short run that shareholders will like, but few people will enjoy working at such places (even if they are richly rewarded with stock options).

Given the success of Google and the trials and tribulations of GE (despite Jeff Immelt trying to move away from a “hub and spoke” culture), hub and spoke may be an idea whose time has come…and gone.

To learn more about this, check out the best management and best book on cultural transformation that I have read in many years. It’s entitled Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee-Fischer-Wright.

There are just too many potent and relevant insights from the book to go into now, so I will go into more in weeks to come. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

10:43 pm | 0 recommendations | 4 comments

The Leading Edge - Hillary, It's Time to BATNA Down the Hatches*

Show me someone who hasn't thought through a BATNA
(Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) and I'll show you Hillary Clinton.

BATNA is a term first developed by negotiation researchers Roger Fisher and Bill Ury of the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON).
When people in a negotiation or campaign for the Presidential
nomination have not thought through a contingency plan if their first one
fails, they tend to become more desperate and intransigent on their
first position.

The reason people don't let go of their
obsessive hold on a losing outcome (or some would say its obsessive
hold on them) is that doing so threatens to throw them into a free fall
leading to a dark black hole that feels bottomless.

It is like a death. And like a death one needs to go through the stages that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross outlined in her seminal work: On Death and Dying.

Those stages are:

1. Denial – "I won't accept it, because I can't accept it, because I don't what else I'll do if this fails."
2. Anger
   – "I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who tries to make me
   accept it, because I will be too lost if this doesn't happen."
3. Bargaining
   – "Okay, I'm not going to be President, but how about Vice President or
   something so I don't have to face having nothing."
4. Despair –
   "It's all real. It's not a bad dream. I AM lost and don't feel like
   doing anything else. Everybody, just leave me alone."
5. Acceptance
   – "Okay, I guess I don't have nothing. I still have my family, I still
   have people who believed in me, I still have a job in the Senate, I can
   still make a difference."

It's time for someone to say
strongly, firmly and lovingly to Hillary: "Your campaign is over, your
life is not over. You have the opportunity now for poise and
graciousness, or for bitterness and despair and it's up to you to
choose which one."

Obama V. Clinton: The Smiles Have It!

* I am indebted to Ken McLeod, Executive Director of McLeod & Associates for assistance with this piece. 

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The Leading Edge - Feeling Anxious?

In anxious times, keep a leash on your fearful aggression
and embolden your fearful avoidance.
If you don't get a handle on your anxiety,
it will manhandle you.

Fearful
aggression is what every show dog trainer needs to train out of their
dog if they want to win "Best in Show." It occurs when fear causes dogs
to growl and bark. On the other hand fearful avoidance causes dogs to
cower which is not going to win them any ribbons either.

Dogs are not the only living creatures that exhibit fearful aggression. You see it in others, yourself and many people in the public eye who push too hard and come off as more desperate than strong.

I
remember a business owner I worked with who was transformed into a
tyrant as his fear of missing out on an opportunity caused him to bully
two key employees to the point of leaving, and guaranteeing that his
company would lose that opportunity.

Fortuitously, his company
had another opportunity within a year. After I helped him "manage his
anxiety" by channeling it into focus, preparation and determination, he
managed to bring in and inspire people to replace the ones he had
lost…and he was able to seize this one instead of letting it get away.

One of the best way to manage your anxiety is to follow these steps at the beginning of each day:

1. Admit that you're anxious by saying to yourself, "I am anxious."
2. Accept that you're anxious by saying to yourself, "It's not something else, I'm anxious."
3. Just experience that you're anxious by saying to yourself, "I feel anxious."
4. But DON'T act on it by saying to yourself, "Just breathe slowly and let it go."

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The Leading Edge - No Country for (Angry) Old Men or Women - Are you listening Hillary and John McCain?

Hillary Clinton waged a negative campaign and it sounds like John McCain is getting bankrolled to do the same thing. Barack Obama can be occasionally pulled down to that level, but clearly he doesn't like to engage in dirty or negative politics.

Is the guy chicken? Is he afraid to engage in a knock down drag out battle? Or is something else going on?

I choose to believe the latter. I choose to believe that Obama knows that people who throw stones do live in glass houses and when people wage negative campaigns it is more often motivated by a desire to draw potential voters away from the scent of their own misdeeds and send them on a wild goose chase into the foibles and human shortcomings of their opponents.

If you haven't noticed, Americans and especially "baby boomers" don't age gracefully or graciously. They have trouble realizing it is no longer their turn and that it is time to pass the baton to the next generation(s), wish them well, help them if they ask for it, and then stay out of their way.

Instead, they marry younger women, have (too much) plastic surgery, live vicarious through their children (using them to get the extra scoop of ice cream that they feel they didn't get and were entitled to) and in many other ways "Rage against the dawn" instead of going "gently into that good night."

Obama represents the next generations' hopefulness about focusing on what is possible and what can be built together through cooperation and synergy now that the world is flat and we are more global than ever in the history of the world. He represents the desire to turn away from the "zero sum" mentality of older generations, and turf wars between Democrats and Republicans more concerned with staying in office than in truly serving the people who elected them.

I am a baby boomer, and don't particularly like aging and don't particularly like letting go of power and influence. Fortunately I like even less desperately and bitterly holding on to something that rightfully belongs to the next generation and the future.

Are you listening Hillary Clinton and John McCain…and Congress?

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The Leading Edge - Post PA Primary Debrief - Looking for Leverage in All the Wrong Places

It’s not what you can do (Obama) or what you will do (Clinton),
it’s what you’ve already done
that has made a positive, lasting and measurable difference
that earns you leverage.

I
was trying to figure out my mixed feelings after the Pennsylvania
primary and where my ambivalence towards Obama and Clinton comes from.

I
think it derives from the dissonance that both candidates trigger in
me. Dissonance occurs when what you see and hear doesn't match what you
feel or "What are you going to do FOR me?"/"What are you going to do TO me?"

I see and hear what both Obama and Clinton are saying, and I think the mixed feelings I have towards each are as follows:

Obama = Can do but hasn't done yet
Clinton = Been there, done what?

Obama
lacks the track record and experience. Clinton has the experience, but
lacks the track record of being effective in making a positive, lasting
and measurable difference.

So I guess it comes down to the Devil
you don't know (Obama) vs. the Devil you do (Clinton, and for that
matter McCain) which makes for a devilish decision come election time.

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The Leading Edge - Deja Pu - Obama, Clinton and O.J. Simpson

        "This
Presidential campaign is starting to be a circus," my friend proclaimed to me.

            Talk about
flashbacks.  I immediately thought of the
O.J. Simpson criminal trial in which I served as an advisor to the
prosecution.  I remember what started out
as the chance to showcase to the world how justice could be served by the
sequential and orderly presentation of indisputable evidence turned by mid-trial
into anything but that.  Somewhere along
the way justice and rationality got lost in the daily salvos that Marcia Clark
et al and Johnnie Cochran and friends launched at each other.  Just when it looked like one side was on the
ropes, they bounced back in a way that made you think, "Well maybe what they just
said was possible."

            Back and
forth and then back and forth again.  By
the time the trial was over, you just wanted it to be over.  Despite the ordeal of watching it, Los Angeles and much of the country, if not
the world, stood transfixed reading newspapers and starting at televisions like people rubbernecking at
the side of multi-vehicle car crash.  You
wanted to look away, but couldn't. By the end, justice had long been replaced
by just wondering who was going to win and who was going to lose.

            Fast
forward to Election 2008.  Hillary Clinton
as the annoying, aggravating, unrelenting, "nails on a chalkboard" and oblivious-to-her-substance-obliterating-style Marcia Clark.  Barack
Obama as the mellifluous, velvet toned, easy to listen to but occasionally gaff laden and factually (or at
least experience) insubstantial Johnnie Cochran. 

            Are we
witnessing or at least experiencing a similar phenomena?  If so, what was the lesson that O.J. taught
us and the one the current campaign is trying to teach us?  I would posit it is that when you are in thrall
to your emotions, you need to resist with all your strength throwing logic and
common sense under the bus, where they become casualties.

            To carry
the analogy one step further, what is at risk in Election 2008? What
corresponds to the desire for justice, following Rodney King, that was in short
supply in 1994-97 that fell completely through the cracks? The answer is
leadership.  As we head towards November,
2008 there is a widespread perception that America is either being misled or
at the very least is lacking leadership. 
If one of the measures of effective leadership is how committed
the
followers are and you match that against the current approval of
President Bush (72 % disapproval for 4/2-4/6/08), you get a sense of
just how much
leadership is wanting.

            Clark
and Cochran may have been as much victims and extensions as they were causes of the
public's emotional state of mind during the mid- 1990's. And perhaps it's just as likely
that Clinton and Obama are extensions or an expression of the current American
psyche.  Whatever the truth, the American psyche is every day
looking to leadership to solve the problems of a war without end, the
upside down economy, health care reform, education to enable America to
compete globally, etc. and unfortunately for which there are no
simple, easy answers (something that the public doesn't take too
kindly).

            If
hindsight is 20:20 and the lesson from the Simpson trial was to keep our eye on
the prize of justice and to forcibly push aside anything that would detract
from it, the lesson for Obama, Clinton and
McCain is to keep their eye on the leadership that this country sorely
needs and is desperate for.

            The
foundation of that leadership rest on three key abilities. First, the ability
to see and articulate a clear, compelling and convincing vision that all of
this country will want to be a part of. 
Second, the ability to identify and recruit the talent to turn that
vision into a reality. Third, the ability to engage that talent so they will do
it.

            The
greatest problem for all three candidates is the lack of that front end
vision.  In its place is an opportunity
for each of them to reach the pinnacle of their political careers.  But an opportunity for each of them
professionally does not a vision for all of us to embrace make.  In the 1930's we had the New Deal; in the
1940's we had defeating he evil Nazis; in the 1950's it was living the American
dream after the war and being safe through the Cold War; in the 1960's it was
putting a man on the moon and after that it becomes a little iffy and to this
day, that lack of vision is something we all ache for.  After 9/11 the reaction to retaliate and
defend our country against terrorism was temporarily a shared vision, but the
war has continued without a clear end in sight or even a clear notion that Iraq was the
enemy we should be fighting.

            I don't
know what that vision would be, I just know that our next President needs to
know.  

(c) 2008 Mark Goulston