Category Archives: Leadership

Two Recent Consumer Experiences

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I wrote several blog posts recently about organizational transformation efforts at Zappos.Com. I figured I should check out their customer service so I ordered a pair of casual shoes. I really liked the shoes and wore them often for about 10 weeks. But when I turned them over I saw that the heels of each were coming apart.

The online instructions were clear and easy to follow. I boxed the shoes up and sent them—postage free–off to Zappos. Two days later, I received a cheery email telling me that the package had survived its travels and that my credit card was credited the full amount of the shoes.

A typical customer service email from Zappos:

Hello Tom, Thank you for contacting the Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team. My name is Lui, the Comics Guy, and I’m happy to help you today. On behalf of the whole Zappos family, you are very welcome! We like to consider ourselves more of a service company that happens to sell different products. It is our goal to give you the best shopping experience you can find. We are happy that you are happy! Thank you for being an awesome customer and taking the time out of your day to share your kind words with us. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or Super Villains that need stomping! For now, I must go back to my secret hideout, to keep watch over everyone, protecting them from evil-doers and delivering happiness to all the citizens of Zappos City! Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you, we’re here 24/7. Have a super day!

I will visit Zappos.Com again.

About the same time, I ordered a $1.00 look at my credit report at Experian.com. The process went well and I got my look at my credit report. My credit card was charged appropriately. I liked our transaction. A week later, I noticed a charge for $21.95 from Experian for a “credit tracker.”   I hadn’t knowingly ordered anything from Experian.

I went back to Experian.com and found the fine print—right under the link (above the link would be a better place for consumers) I clicked to order the $1.00 credit review. I had unwittingly become a trial member in something and had a week to cancel my online order or I would be charged $21.95 each month for my permanent membership.

Perhaps this is just an example of buyer beware. Technically I had ordered the product and Experian had provided it to me. Maybe I should just chalk it up to experience and be more careful reading the fine print. But I felt scammed: the fine print was in a small font and it was easy for my eye to miss it as my attention focused on the large link pointing to get your credit report and FICO score. Once I clicked, I moved to another page. In hindsight, I was also suspicious about not receiving any information during the trial week. When you join up with something on the Internet, you always get a ton of emails telling you about your new product. But not this time. I imagined they didn’t want to alert consumers that they had become members of something for fear they would realize their mistake and cancel. But they were sure quick to bill me $21.95 as soon as the “free trial” expired.  I wasn’t alone: I found hundreds of complaints about the same issue at http://www.consumeraffairs.com/privacy/experian.html

My wife and I had to search the Internet to find an email for Experian customer service (from a site that helps people cancel services with Experian). I wrote and cancelled my membership. I also asked that my credit card be credited for the purchase I had not wanted, didn’t know I had made and hadn’t ever seen. They didn’t reverse the charge. What reputable company would not immediately refund the price of a minor product purchased in error by an unwitting customer who didn’t want or even receive the product? Only a company who wants the $21.95 more than they want a relationship with the customer.

Experian violated our new relationship.

I disputed the charge with my bank and asked if I could block Experian from making charges to my account—as I don’t trust them to cancel my membership in whatever club I had joined.

I like to be treated with respect; I don’t like to be treated with disdain. I will be saying nice things about Zappos for a long time and I will buy from them again soon. I will be warning others about Experian. I will not do business with them again.

My letters to the Better Business Bureau and to the Minnesota Attorney General are ready to go into the mail.

We do what we can.

Zappos and Transformation

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Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to
whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
T.H. Huxley

The recent attention to change at Zappos.com has brought renewed focus to the whole concept of organizational transformation. Some of the voices I hear surprise me: they talk as if they have invented something new (see my recent posts re Zappos).

Efforts to change organizations from the Frederick Taylor model–hierarchical, bureaucratic, anti-human and mechanistic with conformity as the first rule–have gone on for a long time. I led a transformative change process at the Star Tribune newspaper in the early 1990’s, and I learned about self-managed teams from manufacturing industries. I then spent 13 years consulting with leaders who wanted to make such transitions.

Most transformational efforts—fundamental changes in culture, values, and operating procedures–fail.

Why? Some important reasons:

1. Leaders like quick-fixes: fast, easy and painless. They jump from one fad to another without internalizing the lessons of any of them. They often lack commitment. Real transformation takes time, is hard and pain and conflict are necessary.

2. Mechanistic leaders try to lead organic change with a mechanistic mental model. They recreate a more insidious version of what they want to change. Transformation requires an inner transformation within leaders and employees to an organic world view that sees organizations as living systems. They must transform from mechanics in suits to artists who love people.

3. Leaders implement off-the-shelf change programs or copy what may have worked somewhere else. They gain compliance from employees. Transformation requires people to go through their own struggle to learn and internalize new beliefs and assumptions and develop new skills unique to their reality. People gain commitment and support what they help create.

4. The skills of a mechanistic enterprise don’t work in an organic organization. A living system organization requires skills in things like facilitation, personal mastery, conflict management and systems thinking.

5. Mechanistic organizations ignore emotions. Transformation change is emotional. People suffer losses, they fear the unknown, they get upset and leaders have to lead not just physical changes but emotional transitions.

6. Mechanistic organizations change from the top down and don’t support non-conformists or outliers. Living system organizations require leaders and change agents throughout the enterprise.

7. Mechanistic leaders ignore the dark side of their enterprises. The dominant culture will resist and try to expel the vulnerable islands of organic growth. The shadow side must be acknowledged, brought to the light of day and engaged with.

8. Mechanistic leaders often marginalized talented leaders in the ranks. Talented leaders of change must be supported, protected, and empowered to lead changes that upset the status quo.

9. Mechanistic managers and supervisors yell and threaten often but rarely hold anyone accountable in a formal way and when they do, they often mess things up. In a living system organization, relationships based on trust are essential. All in management must embrace a tough-love mentality of high standards AND compassion. People must be held accountable so trust can grow along with relationships.

Transformation is a spiritual journey. Real transformative leaders may have to couch change in the language of making money but they know it is really about creating conditions where people can come to work and use their talents to fully engage. Then the money comes.

Few leaders have the courage, patience and consciousness to lead such a journey.

Organizations fail because of the lack of the right kind of leadership.

Zappos and Employee Empowerment

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Continuing with the stories brought to mind by the business news accounts of Zappos.com.

News accounts point out that 14% of Zappos employees accepted a severance package instead of go forward with the fad of the month: Holacracy.

I’m not surprised with the percentage of employees who choose to leave the company. I’m sure there are many reasons but one resonates with me.

Peter Block described a simulation his colleague Joel Henning designed, which rings true in most of my experience:

Three teams role-played high-control patriarchal leadership, cosmetic empowerment, and genuine participation and empowerment. The high control group was quiet, had their arms folded, and had one or two pale, informational questions at the end. When asked their feelings about the meeting, they said they felt controlled and punished.

The cosmetic empowerment team had many questions, all of which were cynical and reeked of barter and deal making. They asked, “What’s in it for me?” and “Where did this fad come from?” They wanted the leaders to prove their sincerity. There was a lot of laughter and energy during the meeting. Upon reflection, they felt manipulated and doubtful, although they admired the cleverness of the strategy.

The genuine participation group went last and when they shared their intention to involve everyone in defining the program and solution the employees would have none of it. They wanted a common vision and strategy, they wanted to know what was expected of them and were fed up with this soft, open-ended non-solution. They questioned who was in charge and who was going to steer the ship to a safe harbor. They wanted to know what management was going to do to fix the problem. In processing the meeting, they felt management had abdicated. The employees had 20 suggestions about how the team could have done a better job and voted no confidence.

What disturbed Block?

• We resent patriarchy and its dominance,
• We become cynical at attempts at cosmetic change,
• Yet faced with the prospects of real participation and accountability for an unpredictable tomorrow, patriarchy begins to look better and better.

Block concluded that while we may talk blithely about the end of command and control, emotionally we miss it when it’s gone. If we are offered real choice and power, we push our leaders back into a controlling and directive stance. Our lips may say no to a benevolent monarch, but our eyes say yes. Leaders see the longing for good parenting in our eyes, and they have little choice but to respond.

Genuine empowerment carries freedom, responsibility, and accountability with it. We get to make choices about the work that we do. We get to select between alternatives that matter. It is our job to make our decisions real and to implement action steps. We get rewarded or punished, praised or criticized for our choices and actions. We get to act like adults and are treated like grownups. Many of us don’t want this level of adulthood in our work lives. Many of us, instead, want freedom from responsibility and escape from conflict.

Genuine involvement is messy, difficult, and time consuming. Reactive problem-solvers have to learn to be imaginative anticipators and that is hard to do—maybe impossible. People disconnected from others throughout their competitive work histories have to learn to listen, engage, connect, cooperate, compromise, empathize with others, and find win-win solutions. People who only feel okay when they are accomplishing a task have to learn to sit still, think, and engage with others. For them it feels unproductive

Many of us don’t want to develop new emotional and intellectual muscles. When put in a situation that asks us to stretch, we can’t get away from ourselves fast enough. We may prefer to be one of the walking dead so prevalent in our organizations. Aliveness is way too threatening for us.

Zappos & Happy Employees

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True happiness involves the full use of one’s powers and talents. John Gardner in Self-Renewal

Zappos.Com has been in the business news recently. See my recent posts: Zappos, Teams and Pizza Pie and Zappos and the Dark Side of Leadership. I’m interested in the organizational work at Zappos because it is similar to leadership and consulting work I did long ago. No, Zappos organizational work is not new—just repackaged and renamed. Zappos likes to call attention to itself so we can get a glimpse inside.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wants employees to be happy. He even wrote a book about happiness.

Other company’s invest in employee happiness.

The media tends to focus on glitzy stuff like a kitchen for employees, flashy meetings, and Zappos even pays people to leave the company (few take the offer). I understand the quick-fix mentality of the business world and the “for public consumption” success stories so I look with skepticism on the stories.

Here’s one organizations story and what we learned about happiness.

I led a transformation at the Star Tribune newspaper (Minneapolis, Minneapolis) in the early 1990’s. This change effort began when employees invited the Teamsters union to organize a union in the Customer Service Center: a call center that answered a million calls a year. Employees were upset with a reorganization plan for the department that leaders commanded and controlled from the top-down without employee involvement.

Senior management, determined to not have a union in this department (there were 13 unions at the Star Tribune), fired five women managers–scapegoats for the higher-ups who created the conditions for the organizing effort. I was asked to take over the department and told to defeat the organizing effort AND save millions of dollars at the same time. I created the vision for a new business unit: The Customer Service Center would join the newspaper’s Circulation field operation, which had already moved to self-managed teams.

We wanted to make employees happy to defeat the Teamsters.

We soon realized that being in the happiness business led to frustration and disappointment. We found happiness an elusive idea.

I learned that it was better to create conditions where employees could come to work and feel valued, involved, and informed and have their talents and passions utilized in jobs big enough for them–if they wanted to. Profits would grow as involved, engaged and self-managed employees pursued noble goals and they would feel alive in the process.

Back in the early 1990’s, not many books were available to help us chart our course. We had to learn on our own with the help of a consultant by the name of Diane Olson who practiced as a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant. She guided our process, made sure our decisions were consistent with our vision and values and helped us understand how to lead in a new kind of organization. We learned to understand and incorporate the emotional side of change into our leadership. We were action oriented: we planned (but didn’t get bogged down), took action, reflected on what happened, and adapted as we went–just like all pioneers.

Such an organization–much more difficult to work in and lead than the mechanistic model of command and control– required trust, diversity, relationships, excellence and a tough-love leadership. I had as much or more to learn than anyone. I asked for regular feedback and received it. I apologized often for my slips back to the old ways of leading.

Here’s what employees did in the customer service center:

•I met with employees in groups of 10 and described to them what we had already done with self-management in the field operations. I invited them to join in the vision of employee engagement/involvement, value driven leadership, and the goals–in this order: to improve employee quality of work life, improve customer service, become faster moving and more creative, and increase revenue/cost savings. The employees choose to join us.
• I selected my staff and got the right people in place.
• Employee groups worked to design 15 self-managed teams, and a skill-based pay system. We invited the more skeptical and outspoken employees to become change process teams who insured that employees felt valued, involved and informed as we went through change. They reported to me and became engaged.
• We downsized the workforce by 35% and eliminated most supervisory positions (see my post Zappos, Teams & Pizza Pie).
• Employees created and implemented a process that required all employees to apply for the new positions (jobs big enough for them) and teams.
• We saved millions of dollars, customer service measures improved dramatically and we celebrated.

In the process, we freed up vast untapped energy, talent and potential in employees.

Were the employees happy? I think so. They accepted the difficulties of this change and rejected the Teamsters union.

I felt inspired and I left the company to return to graduate school at age 48 to complete a Ph.D. in Leadership and Organizational Change and to teach others about leading the transformation from a mechanistic world view to a living system world view and how a shift in organizational metaphors leads to dramatic changes in how we work, lead and follow.

I learned over the years that I am responsible for my happiness. I use the Sigmoid Curve as a model to review the stages of my life and help me to become aware of the need and time for continued evolution in my life hence more time of flow or feeling alive. Organizations can use this model to find the right time to change before decline sits in. Enterprises don’t renew themselves just once: they do it routinely from the peak of their success to a new vision of their organizational life—that is, if they want their enterprise to be sustainable.

I agree with John Gardner: happiness comes not from perks but as an outcome of the pursuit of noble goals.

Zappos and The Dark Side of Leadership

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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh described a dramatically new design for the company and told employees to get on board or leave the company with a severance package. He made this announcement via a 4,552 word email. The email was long, directive, jargon-filled and overwhelming.

Approximately 14% of Zappos employees left the company.

One paragraph from the email:

As of 4/30/15, in order to eliminate the legacy management hierarchy, there will be effectively be no more people managers. In addition, we will begin the process of breaking down our legacy silo’ed structure/circles of merchandising, finance, tech, marketing, and other functions and create self-organizing and self-managing business-centric circles instead by starting to fund this new model with the appropriate resources needed to flourish. Functions that were previously silo’ed will be embedded inside these business-centric circles instead — this structure will require fewer roles that primarily manage expectations and drive alignment across legacy silos. We will continue using Holacracy’s systems and processes for prioritization and resource allocation, so it’ll be extremely important for all of us to keep Glass Frog up to date.

Say again?

I imagine that in the beginning Zappos.Com, like almost all organizations, operated from a mechanistic/paternalistic model: linear, hierarchical and compartmentalized organizations with functionalized departments with detailed job descriptions and rigid rules and boundaries.  A machine where managers tell workers to follow directions and leave the thinking to management. Mechanics (supervisors) with metaphorical wrenches tighten controls in search of consistency and predictability. Not a place of self-management, self-organization or humanistic values–anti-human places where conformity is the first rule.

Here’s what happens too often: Smart executives want to transform their enterprises from  mechanistic/paternalistic systems to various forms of employee involvement/engagement such as self-managed teams or self-organization for the bottom-line benefits of fully engaged employees. Suddenly the company talks about valuing employees. Leaders get excited to get going. They begin to put self-managed teams or self-organized teams in place. But their deeper beliefs and perhaps the only model of organizations they have ever known–often unconsciously–remain mechanical/paternalistic. With good intentions, they unconsciously fall victim to what author Peter Block defined as the dark side of leadership, “The very system that has patriarchy as the root problem uses patriarchal means to try to eliminate its symptoms.” We recreate what we want to change. Befuddled employees might feel crazy.

We cannot create organic–relationship based–organizational forms (self-management) with the thinking and skills used to manage mechanistic organizations.

Was Mr. Hsieh’s email an example of the dark side of leadership?

Before they rush into the fads (fads not because the theory is bad; fads because leaders like quick-fixes and move on quickly when change gets hard) of the day, people must have what Peter Senge called “moments of Metanoia.” Their inner shift opens them to a new and more expansive world view. Their underlying beliefs and assumptions about people, leadership and organizations change. The light bulb goes on and they “get it.”

Organizational mechanics can still use the mechanistic world view and tools of Newtonian physics for machines and linear work processes but now organizational artists can use the living system worldview from chaos theory, quantum physics and other natural sciences–where relationships are fundamental–for people.

This shift in thinking, required for self-management to succeed calls for new thinking and new skills not generally common  in mechanistic organizations. For example, systems thinking, emotional intelligence, conflict management skills, facilitation skills, a tough-love mentality. Evolved people must be developed or found. People with the courage and character to live by their personal and organizational values. Self-directed and assertive people who will take risks and who want to learn. And leaders must love people.

Most efforts to transform organizations fail. Real transformation is hard and rare. Few leaders have the skills, ability, wisdom, maturity or experience to lead successful organizational transformation. And many leaders, at all levels, are needed.

Instead of a paternalistic top-down memo, the leaders at Zappos might have used their imaginations to find a way to engage directly with employees about the vision for the future.They might have invited employees to engage in examining and charting the future course of Zappos.Com.

People comply and conform to top-down orders and threats; they support what they help create.

See Value Driven Leadership: A Story of Personal and Organizational Transformation.

Zappos, Teams & Pizza Pie

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Zappos.Com, an online shoe and clothing shop based in Las Vegas, Nevada, offered employees three months’ severance pay to leave if they felt they could not get behind the company’s move to self-managed teams. The Washington Post reported that about 14% of Zappos 1,500 employees took the money and left.

The article reminded me of a similar story.

In the early 90’s, I was privileged to lead a business unit at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis, MN through a cultural transformation, which included the move to 15 self-managed teams in the Customer Service Center (we also added 15 self-managed teams in the Circulation department’s field operation spread throughout the newspapers Primary Market Area).

Our goals were to improve the quality of work life for employees, improve customer service, become faster moving and more creative and save millions of dollars. On top of that, we had to defeat a Teamster’s Union organizing effort in the Customer Service Center.

We wanted to downsize 100 positions without laying anyone off. We froze hiring in the Customer Service Center, the newspaper froze the hiring of outside candidates so our employees could apply for positions throughout the company and some employees accepted an early retirement incentive. And we offered an incentive similar to Zappos.Com for employees to leave if they wanted to do something else.

More people signed up for the incentive plan than we had anticipated. Nineteen employees who counted on the money had to be told they would not receive the severance pay. We scheduled a lunch and had pizza brought in.

The people were excited and filled with anticipation as they walked into the conference room. They thought they would get the severance pay. I welcomed everyone and invited them to dig into the pizza. I said I had good news and I had bad news. They looked at me expectantly. The good news was that we had achieved our downsizing goal through voluntary means. The bad news? They would have to stay.

The people were shocked, angry and disappointed. One married couple had booked a cruise. A man had bought a new car. They were critical of me. Some felt we were obligated to give them the money anyway. Some were critical of the process. I never thought I would be criticized for telling people they had a job.

We survived and went on to implement 15 self-managed teams, a skill-based pay system, reduced job descriptions from 25 to 12, eliminated most supervisors, reduced staff by 35%, improved customer service dramatically and saved millions of dollars. Employees told the Teamsters to go away.

The teams were engaged, empowered and morale was high.

I wrote the story of our transformation in my e-book, “Value-Driven Leadership: A Story of Personal & Organizational Transformation.”

The leadership experience changed me. I left the company after the transformation was finished. I completed a PhD in leadership and organizational change, wrote about life and leadership and consulted for 13 years before I retired.

What happened to the teams? Neglected by a mindless senior management, the teams faded away. A great opportunity was missed.

I  believe in the vision of organizations filled with engaged and involved employees who produce phenomenal business results. I’ve lived the experience.

I also believe that at this time in history we lack the number of leaders, at all levels, who have the talents, skills, maturity and experience to understand the difficulty of such transformation and lead such change.

My  prediction: Another transformation will prove unsustainable for lack of leadership.

Best wishes to Zappos.

I hope you prove me wrong.

 

P.S. to Zappos leaders: Knock off the jargon. It shows your lack of experience. It’s your job to learn the theory and explain it to employees in ways that they can understand. Realize that what you are doing is not new. Do your homework on self-management, employee involvement and past efforts to transform organizations.

 

When Cops Kill

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I’d rather be judged by 12 of my peers than buried by six pallbearers. Law Enforcement trainer

I investigated crimes in the worst areas of Chicago long ago. I played by the rules. I support police officers on the front-lines. They do a dangerous job. But I support justice, respect, excellence and professionalism more.

America’s had a recent and ongoing outbreak of horrific killings and beatings of black men by white police officers. Technology has given us a look into the dark side of law enforcement. Are these violent acts—even murders–random events or a deeply ingrained cultural pattern? A law enforcement colleague wrote me: “After 35 years, I am pretty astute in what is required in most police confrontations. When I was on the street using my weapon was the last option, today it seems to be one of the first options.”

How can officers who shoot or use other deadly force as a first option be so self-assured?

I believe their confidence comes from a culture that makes it okay to mistreat people. Trained to be in control and aggressive, officers don’t take lightly to resistance or challenges to their actions. They cannot lose a confrontation: their culture demands that they win.

Many suffer chronic stress. An “us vs them” mentality fans anger. Group-think drags people down. Cynicism runs deep, secrets abound and some suffer burnout. Racism is real and conformity required. Police work in the underside of the community and can become desensitized to verbal and physical violence. Some officers come to the job unfit; others become unfit because of the job. Power gets abused.

Officers first get away with verbal and physical assaults. Minor abuses become larger cruelties when values are not upheld. Bonded by secrets, danger and loyalty, good cops usually go along to get along and suffer their failure of moral courage in a culture that values physical bravery. Police administrators—most former officers–exonerate bad cops. Self-policing favors the police officer. Strong police unions fight for the guilty. Prosecutors rarely charge cops for wrong doing. Violence and abuse become normal. “I feared for my life” becomes, for a few, a free pass to kill.

Responsible for their actions, those who break the law should be held accountable. But police leaders, the silent good officers, the unions with misplaced priorities, political prosecutors and citizens who look the other way share the systemic responsibility for the culture that makes it okay for officers to mistreat people—from verbal abuse to murder.

Responsibility and accountability have diminished as personal values in America. As a consultant, a lack of accountability cut across every organization I worked in. Many executives don’t want to know what goes on in the enterprises they lead. They don’t want to deal with painful or embarrassing issues. Instead they prefer quick fixes that provide the illusion of real change.

Former Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza wrote (2012) that police are out of control and said the same on April 15, 2015 on the Chad Hartman radio show.

Video evidence and public outrage will result in accountability for some. But a broader and deeper transformation is needed in police cultures for change to endure.

Efforts to transform organizations most often fail or succeed only temporarily. Few leaders have the talents and skills needed to lead transformative change.

For sustainable change to happen in the police culture an awakened and outraged citizenry must put nonstop pressure and demands for change and accountability on mayors, prosecutors, city councils and police administrations.

 

Leadership & Training Costs: A Huge Waste?

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$70 billion a year for corporate training in the U.S. (Forbes)?

Much of that obscene amount is spent on leadership development and mostly failed efforts to transform corporations.

I had nine promotions over 16 years at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis, MN. When I left the company the CEO of Cowles Media said my leadership had changed the company forever.

In each job I led groups of people from mediocrity to excellence in value-driven ways. In eight of those positions, I didn’t have consultants or training programs to help me. I simply did what made sense to me and acted according to my values.

Each time I left a group, it regressed to previous levels of mediocrity or worse. This pattern cuts across all levels of leadership in all industries.

I left the Star Tribune and completed a Ph.D. in Leadership and Organizational Change. I wanted to help leaders develop the talents needed to lead organizations through transformational change. In 13 years of consulting, I met two leaders I thought were great. One was fired (guess what happened to the company he led) and the other was promoted.

I met many executives who claimed they wanted to transform the cultures of their organizations as one way to improve the bottom line. None had the insight they needed to change how they thought about leadership and organizations and undergo a personal transformation as or before they led their organizations through transformation. All resisted doing the difficult personal work to grow as leaders. All proved to lack the skills, talents, courage, and commitment to lead difficult change. They wanted cosmetic quick-fixes: fast, easy, cheap and painless and from the outside with no demands for them to learn new things or manage difficult conflict. They didn’t want to lead people; they wanted to fix machines.

Quick fixes endure because they ask so little of us.

I interviewed a front-line supervisor in the power industry. He was upset.

He said, “A consultant sat with me every minute for two weeks and told me how to do my job. I thought I was going crazy. I had to go to a psychiatrist.”

I asked, “What happened after the consultant left?” He smiled and said, “Everything went back to the way it had been.”

That outcome happens in a high percentage of training and change efforts that try to mechanically fix organizations from the top utilizing outside experts who get a significant percentage of the $70 billion spent on “corporate training.”

James Hollis, Ph.D. wrote in “What Really Matters”:

Further, I have come to consider most of what passes for “self-help” literature today as obscene because it ignores the complexities of life, glosses over the ardor and commitment required for change, and promises panaceas not likely to happen.

I could say the same about leaders, academics and consultants. Our enterprises have a dearth of quality leaders. Too many leaders, consultants and authors of books about life in organizations ignore or deny the dark side of life in organizations. Real leaders in organizations often get marginalized. People try to transform organizations from a world view that guarantees a reinvention of what already exists. Too many lie about how hard change can be. Billions of dollars are, I believe, wasted year after year.

Those few genuinely talented and value-driven senior leaders in our organizations should save much of the money spent on corporate training, identify the gifted leaders in their companies (at all levels) who get marginalized because their abilities frighten others, and elevate them to positions of power in their enterprises. Then involve them and engage them with you to create vision, values and purpose and send them out to engage and involve employees and make the vision real.

These leaders will do the rest including making decisions on the books they will read, consultants they will hire and training programs they will use.

Happiness at Work

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On-site exercise equipment. Paid volunteer time. A wall of baking tools you can borrow. These may sound like the perks some flush tech companies extend to their engineers.

Can leaders and organizations make people happy at work?

I learned that being in the happiness business led only to frustration and disappointment. Happiness is too elusive an idea.

I learned that it was better as a leader to create conditions where employees could come to work and feel valued, involved, and informed and have their talents and passions utilized–if they wanted to.

That way, employees felt alive in pursuit of noble goals and profits grew along with happiness.

Please Disturb Us (and the Mall of America drop the charges against demonstration organizers this week)

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Shortly before Christmas, organizers of a group protesting the treatment of black men scheduled a demonstration at the local monument to consumption: The Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. The Mall is private property and authorities said no to the request to demonstrate inside. Demonstrators said they would demonstrate there anyway to bring attention to their cause.

Authorities tried to use the threat of force and mass arrests to deter the demonstrators. Sandra Johnson, Bloomington city attorney, threatened charges of disorderly conduct, trespassing and even inciting a riot for orchestrating a peaceful demonstration meaningful to everyone. That made matters worse.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people gathered in the mall’s rotunda and sang songs and chanted slogans. Twenty-five people were arrested by police in riot gear.

After the demonstration, the Bloomington city attorney—with an advanced degree in over-reaction–continued to talk tough: “You want to get at the ringleaders,” she said threatening to use social media to identify the leaders so they could be prosecuted. I thought: “Good luck with that.” She also wants to force demonstration leaders to pay for police overtime and the business losses to Mall establishments.

Johnson comes off as a prosecutor who sees life’s choices as either/or, black/white and right/wrong with non-conforming citizens as enemies to demonize and dehumanize and force into compliance instead of seeing life as it is with shades of gray, of both/and thinking and with people as human beings to respect and involve. People who use power to mindlessly force order and conformity scare me far more than demonstrators for justice do.

Sometimes power and force are necessary. Sometimes demonstrators should be arrested and charged—but not as an automatic default response without creative thoughtfulness. In this case, a more creative win/win approach might have worked better, felt better, and built community instead of fragmenting groups. But the either/or of win/lose is always easier than the both/and of win/win.

The status quo of America—how police treat black men is part of the status quo–is not sustainable and trying to return to a romanticized past, as some want to do, is suicidal. Our nation must embrace a wiser, more evolved and inclusive vision for the future if we want a vibrant country for future generations.

A significant percentage of Americans sleepwalk through life. They mindlessly rush through the day unaware of the many serious issues that harm people. While they nap, America declines. The good people who have gone to sleep need to be aggravated and awakened—even if their shopping gets disrupted for an hour or two.

We might not think the treatment of black men by police officers is our issue. Take a moment to read Charles Blow’s painful and powerful piece in the January 12, 2015 New York Times about the shooting and death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio recently. The callous disregard for the humanity of this child and his sister is immoral and is everyone’s responsibility.

We need a perspective on demonstrations and demonstrators that is broader and deeper, wiser and more insightful and more appreciative of those courageous and conscious people who care enough to give of themselves to fight injustice in whatever form it takes: racism, poverty, inequality, civil rights, immigration, or climate change. An assault on human dignity, in whatever form, is an attack on each of us and all should join in and speak up against such actions—not try to silent the voices of justice.

I hope the primary election process for 2015-2016 will be a season of peaceful protests by Americans young and old that awaken our awareness. I hope we understand that justice towers in importance over the demand for rigid and blind order and conformity and the suppression of free speech. I hope that authorities will learn and experiment with new ways to manage demonstrations. I hope people who have gone to sleep will be disturbed enough to wake up and vote for candidates and issues that improve life for all of us, not just a few of us

When demonstrators disturb us and offend our views, we should examine our views.