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Number 163

William C. Taylor, a co-founder of “Fast Company,” knows a lot about how enterprises succeed – and fail – when they try to change things. As a journalist and management guru, he has interviewed innovative leaders in many enterprises, from the global crime fighter Interpol to the spectacular online vendor Zappos.

In “Practically Radical,” Taylor summarizes questions and techniques that have helped organizations make remarkable strides during the last few difficult years. Drawing upon academic research as well as his own interviews with bosses at 25 companies and nonprofit groups, he describes strategies for bringing about lasting change.

An important theme for Taylor is that you cannot create change unless you first change your perspective. If you want to stimulate creative new approaches, begin by asking questions and challenging normal assumptions. By inspiring a new mindset you can pave the way to innovative proposals.

Here are more of Taylor’s principles for change:

• What you see shapes how you change. Successful leaders may eventually lose ground because of tunnel vision. They may be tempted to keep looking at the organization, the industry and the competition in the same old way. But innovation may not arise from little, incremental changes. Sometimes you need to ask big questions about the way things are done, breaking out of conventional thinking and finding ways to get an entirely new look at what your group is all about. Taylor suggests some potentially game-changing questions like, “If your company went out of business tomorrow who would miss you and why?”
• Where you look shapes what you see. One way to get a fresh view is to see what is working in different fields. Taylor says that the most creative leaders don’t aspire to learn from the “best in class” in their own industry. Instead, they try to learn from innovators in other areas. Ideas that are routine in one industry can be revolutionary when they migrate to another. For example, Taylor describes how Lexus learned about luxury branding by sending its dealers to training at a Four Seasons Resort.
• There’s nothing wrong with your organization that can’t be fixed by what’s right with your organization. Taylor says, “For even the? most determined change agents, history and tradition can be unrivaled sources of strength—as the foundation for an enduring sense of purpose that newcomers can’t begin to copy.” He says a big reason “for the failure of so many change programs is that by focusing almost solely on what’s wrong with their organizations…. leaders undervalue what’s right with their organizations, and overlook home-grown strategies rooted in the wisdom of the past.” As an example, he describes how the Girl Scouts of the USA transformed themselves during the last decade by looking to the philosophy expressed in 1912 by the group’s activist, firebrand founder.
• It’s not enough to be “pretty good” at everything – you need to be “the most” at something. Taylor says that even if you do things well, if you do them the same way everyone else does then “why would you expect to do any better?” Super successful organizations have something distinctive, some idea that sets them apart. For example, maybe they are the most elegant, most colorful, most responsive or most focused.
• Care more than the competition. Long-term success is not simply about thinking differently than others. It is also about caring more—about customers, colleagues and values. Taylor suggests that behind every great brand there is an authentic sense of purpose. And, he says, a vital path to competitive advantage is to engage with customers in a meaningful way, creating opportunities for “emotionally charged employees to capture the imagination of emotionally drained customers.”

Number 162

Why is it that some people can go from success to success, while others stumble fairly quickly, then seem to spend more time down than up? Of course luck can help, but the people who keep landing on their feet tend to have something in common. The perennial winners don’t take success for granted -- they keep hustling, even in the good times.

If you are looking for ways to perpetuate success, in your own career or within your organization, consider these strategies:

• Pinpoint the brightest spots. Sometimes when people are winning kudos or making money, they just enjoy the results and don’t ask questions. A smarter approach is to gather data that will more precisely describe the basis of your success. Let’s say that you are making good money selling three products, each for $100. But what if a closer look at your costs shows that one product is more expensive to produce than the others because of the extra time you have to spend on it. With more detailed information you may find that you can make even more profit by phasing out or redesigning the time-consuming item. In other words, good information may help you to improve performance even when you’re doing well.
• Build on strengths. Doing well at work requires certain disciplines, processes and standards. Sometimes people stumble because they get busy and cut corners, or get arrogant and act lazy. To stay on top it is important to keep refining the methods and approaches, and polishing the expertise, that brought you success in the first place. For example, Jane’s company creates hand-knitted items. She built up her business by quickly creating fine products in response to her customers’ requests. At the moment business is booming, but she and her team are still working to reduce the time it takes to deliver each garment to an eager customer.
• Listen to your customers. Even when your customers (and bosses) already love you, pump up your game by listening carefully to what they have to say. If you understand their goals and problems you may spot new ways to add value.
• Look around. When you are on a winning streak you may feel so busy that you don’t have time to think about the bigger picture. If so, you are facing a big risk: tunnel vision. Just because you are successful today, doesn’t mean you can ignore the broader environment. It is not enough to simply benchmark your competitors. Change can come from any direction. Strong players are well informed about the wider world. And being engaged in any kind of learning experience can help you to keep an open mind, spot emerging trends and see things in new ways.
• Stay confident. Management guru Rosabeth Moss Kanter has written that confidence is what makes the difference in any competition, whether in baseball or high-stakes business. In her book, “Confidence,” Kanter says that in every realm in which individuals perform to high standards leaders can foster confident, winning behavior by focusing relentlessly on three values:
  • Accountability. Gather and share information, seek feedback and self-improvement, set high aspirations, avoid excuses and celebrate achievements.
  • Collaboration. Stress collective goals, avoid bickering, encourage people to get to know and support others, and build networks.
  • Initiative. Seek and reward improvements, empower team members by sharing resources and investing in small wins, and respect people and approaches that seem “different.”

Number 161

Municipal Judge-elect Gayle Williams-Byers has kept pushing toward her goals, even when life seems to have stacked the odds against her. A low point came a few months ago when she was going door-to-door, talking about her plan to bring change to the South Euclid Municipal Court system.

At the first house on a long street, an angry man refused to listen to her pitch. He jabbed her with his finger saying, “We don’t want to hear it. We’ve already made up our minds. You got no chance kid.”

Gayle was tired. She looked down the row of about 30 houses and thought, “I don’t think I can do this again.”

Gayle almost gave up. I asked her why she didn’t. She said, “that’s what self-determination is. You dig really deep when you don’t want to, and you decide to take one more step.”

Gayle shares her parents’ belief that, no matter how humble your beginning, you can become just about anything you want. She says, “If you can imagine it, you can do it.” Here are Gayle’s tips for developing your self-determination:

• Have a big goal. It is easier to keep going when you have a goal that is bigger than yourself. For her judicial race, Gayle developed a comprehensive plan for the court, and when she felt discouraged she tried to stay focused on what the change could mean for her community.
• Control what you can control, and work to accept the rest. When Gayle had cancer she faced challenges that she couldn’t control, but she focused her energy on studying hard and taking care of herself. She says she couldn’t control the fact of having cancer, but she could control how she spent her time.
• Find mentors and role models. Gayle deeply respects her parents and continues to learn from them. And she also hasn’t been shy about recruiting other mentors. It is easier to keep going in the tough times if you’ve built yourself a cheering squad. And if you know how to ask for help.
• Laugh at yourself. There’s a danger that self-determination can morph into arrogance or self-righteousness. A good way to avoid that is to keep your sense of humor, including when it comes to your own failures and mistakes.
• Keep learning. No matter what your goals, opportunities will continue to present if you stay engaged in learning. At all times it’s important to be on some kind of learning path, whether you’re taking a class or pursuing a new hobby.
• Build your confidence. An element of self-determination, of course, is confidence. One way to become more confident is by defining and achieving a series of small goals. A clear understanding of your own belief system can make you feel stronger, and Gayle says that some of her confidence is rooted in her faith.

Number 160

Some professional development experts are intrigued by recent neuroscience research on the importance of our creative right brains in accomplishing business and management projects. Training for professions like law and accounting has been dominated by analytical “left-brain” tasks, but that is starting to shift a bit. As Daniel Pink wrote in “A Whole New Mind,” organizations have a growing understanding that art can stimulate innovation, and today “even General Motors is in the art business.”

According to art historian Merry Foresta, this isn’t surprising. Until the 20th Century, she says, studying art was one of the ways that leaders were educated and encouraged to develop critical thinking. And now we are rediscovering the view that Art inspires progress and offers paths to achieving more in a satisfying way.

“Creative Culture,” says Merry, is a term used to indicate a workplace or other environment “where creative ideas are encouraged, supported, protected and nurtured for further development, until their true value can be understood and appreciated. Creativity brings imagination, curiosity, experimentation and idea-sharing into all manner of daily activities. And Creative Culture can bring imagination, diversity, curiosity, experimenting and idea-sharing into our work.”

One path to fostering an organization’s Creative Culture is to introduce access to art. “Even the language of art resembles the language of innovative leadership,” Merry says. “Art is often about surprise, finding a new perspective, seeing things we had never before noticed, developing a vision and communicating that vision with others. So is leadership.”

“By engaging in art, or simply looking at art,” Merry says, “we see new things, make new connections and learn that it is OK to ask questions and push boundaries. Some businesses are leading the way, using art to encourage employees to break out of their limited thinking and invent new ideas.”

If you want to bring new creativity to your office, or simply to your own work, start by looking at some art. Merry offers these strategies for stimulating innovation through art:

• Do some team-building. Take your team to a local art museum, and let people get to know each other better by talking about what they like and don’t like. Merry says “there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ just ‘intriguing’ and ‘interesting’!” Discussing exhibits can be a great way to bridge cultural, age and other gaps.
• Try another museum. Whether in the butterfly gallery or at a display of mummies at the SI Natural History Museum, or viewing the collection of First Ladies Gowns in the American History Museum, you can find art and beauty in almost any kind of exhibition. So if your group is turned off by the idea of an “art” museum, try another kind of exhibit.
• Redefine your book club. Do you belong to a book club or some other kind of social group? Vary your program by suggesting that one meeting be scheduled at a local museum.
• Take a course. Museums are finding new ways to engage and educate their patrons, and many schools and universities offer continuing education programs touching upon the arts. Stimulate your right brain by taking a course or signing up for a workshop.
• Take some home. Museum stores offer postcards and posters that make it possible to take home exciting art a reasonable price. And of course the Web makes it possible for us all to look at art, no matter where we live or work.

Number 159

Self-discipline takes many forms, including avoiding immediate gratification to obtain a greater benefit (like if you quit smoking), or doing something that you’re not in the mood to do in order to achieve a goal (like working when you feel like playing).

Wikipedia says self-discipline “can be defined as the ability to motivate oneself in spite of a negative emotional state. Qualities associated with self-discipline include willpower, hard work, and persistence.”

Sometimes it feels like self-discipline is something that comes easier than to other people than to oneself. Have you ever heard yourself thinking, “I could do that if I just had the self-discipline that she has”?

But if you want more self-discipline you can get it. Building your self-discipline is rather like building your body. Even if you are very weak, you could start today to build your muscle strength, and over time you would increase your level of fitness. In the same way, you can start now to build your self control “muscles,” and by working on them a little bit every day you will develop greater self-discipline.

Here are suggestions for increasing your self-discipline:

• Start with a goal. Is there something that you would like to do, if only you had the discipline to do it? Let’s say, for example, that you want to start getting to work on time. State your goal in specific terms, like “I will arrive at work by 8 o’clock every day for two weeks.”
• Know what self-discipline looks like. Identify steps that you would take to achieve your goal if you did in fact have the necessary discipline. To reach the office on time would you turn off the TV and go to bed earlier? Lay out your clothes the night before? Fill up your gas tank during the weekend?
• Choose discipline. Once you have a detailed vision of the person you’d be if you did have discipline, start choosing to act like that. The opportunities to practice will take the form of a series of small decisions, like whether or not to turn off the TV at bedtime even if something good is on. Each time you meet the challenge of choosing self-discipline you will be exercising and building your self-control muscles.
• Write it down. Keeping some form of log or diary is tremendously reinforcing, and can help you to gradually build your self-control. Once you’ve identified decisions that will help you get to work on time, keep track of how often you make the right choice. And if your initial plan doesn’t seem to be on target after all, write about additional activities that might help you to meet your goal.
• Reject excuses. When we’re trying to build discipline, we may be defeated by the voices in our own heads. Notice if you are tempted by internal arguments like, “I deserve a break,” or “I’m too tired to get organized tonight.” In “Excuses Begone!” motivational writer Wayne Dwyer describes how habitual excuses can block the achievement of our goals. Simply by becoming aware of the ways you rationalize temptation will help you to fight it.
• Encourage yourself with affirmations. Dwyer lists 18 excuses that commonly prevent us from acting like disciplined people. And for each he suggests an affirmation that can help us get past the excuse. For example, if you hear an internal voice saying “I don’t have the energy,” tell yourself “I feel passionately about my life, and this passion fills me with excitement and energy.”
  
  
• Acknowledge that it may be difficult. Research demonstrates that self-supervision can be exhausting. In their intriguing book, “Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard,” Dan Heath and Chip Heath describe self-control as an “exhaustible resource.” In other words, we can exercise self-discipline only for so much and for only so long. So in creating change it often makes sense to move forward in small increments. As each new behavior becomes a habit it ceases to become so tiring, freeing up our reserves of self control for another challenge. For example, after you start getting to work on time, you might turn your attention to something else, like your exercise program.