More thoughts on Fear of Commitment

Hmmmm.

Nice post, I think this is a very good topic and I think that I agree with pretty much everything that you have said, but I also think there is a bit more to the story. As you are painfully aware, I like to be the "there is always more to the story" guy.

A few things that come to mind for me on this issue:

1.) We need higher level communication and deliberation skills.

I think that for the most part we are not very good at convening, communicating, and decision-making in a way that leads to plans and commitments that are real and connected to the work that we do. I think it is not at all uncommon for a "leadership team" to spend time and money on a retreat and a facilitator to develop plans and commitments, which then get printed (in color and on nice paper), and then get slammed into a three-ring binder, which then gets stacked on top of the book shelf in the corner of our office where it promptly gets forgotten about. I think there are a lot of organizations and a lot of leaders that this applies to.

True story: I got contacted by an organization about 3 months ago to work on a 3-4 month project of guiding them through a strategic planning process and culture building process. My contact was the Executive Director, who had been in place about 6 mos. before contacting me. In between our 3rd and 4th planning conversation she discovered that there was a comprehensive strategic plan already in place. Something is horribly wrong with a strategic plan when nobody knows / remembers that it exists.

I think that this has a lot to do with the fact that we have become very dishonest with our language and conversations in the workplace to the extent that the plans, documents, and language that we produce often means nothing. Spinning, and messaging and bullshitting has become such an exact science that it has removed all meaning and value and reality and humanity from what is said.

So, we end up with people and organizations that a) have plans and goals that are being ignored and / or b) that are resistant to making plans because they have gone through that process repeatedly and the outcome has never been of any real value.

2.) Sometimes plans can be over-rated.

A long, long time ago in a far away galaxy, I was an infantry squad leader in the Marine Corps. We spent a lot of time learning how to make plans, communicate plans, and implement plans. But we spent even more time learning how to "improvise, adapt and overcome", because plans rarely survive contact with reality. Things change. Situations change. People change, priorities change and if an organization is going to be good at developing and following good, solid actionable plans, it also has to be good at supporting its people in understanding what is changing and adapting to those changes. Rigid adherence to a suddenly flawed plan is a good recipe for tragic outcomes. For organizations that are very serious about planning and goal setting, I think it can be easy to place too much faith in a static plan and in goals based on what was true yesterday.

This is becoming increasingly dangerous for business now as we live in a time of great change and change is happening more and more rapidly.

3.) We are wired differently.

One last thing that comes to mind for me is that we are truly wired differently and we function differently. Some of us are all about structure and detail and linear process. Some of us are much more intuitive in nature. I do not think that one is necessarily better or worse than the other, I believe that they both have pros and cons, and I believe we can all benefit from some of both.

I am much less structured than you. I have had my own business for two years now and I do not have a business plan. You would probably not do much of anything without having a business plan in place. Formal plans feel restrictive to me. I am probably not ever going to have a business plan, and I am quite comfortable with that. I am everyday doing work that I love, and my work continues to move in the right direction with more clients and bigger opportunities. I am not saying that organizations or people should not have objectives and plans, but I am saying that they can take a lot of different forms. I operate my business without a formal business plan, but that does not necessarily mean that I am without direction.

For what it is worth. Have a good weekend.

-joe

Fear of Commitment

Joe,

One of the things that continues to perplex me about both individual people and corporations is why the idea of strategy and long term goals are so intimidating. The more experienced I get, the more I've come to realize that running a successful team, organization, or company boils down to three key actions:

• Find and keep passionate, talented people
• Define your purpose so you know why you do what you do
• Clearly outline a strategy so you know where you are going

These seem to me to be obvious and they might be to others as well. The first two, talent and purpose, are areas where companies at least seem to make some efforts (note I didn't say successful efforts) through talent management programs and mission statements. But, I am continually surprised by how few organizations spend the time to have well-defined strategies. Likewise, I seem to encounter very few people on a day to day basis who know where they want to be professionally in 3 years, let alone 10 or more. So, my question is why?

My theory is that it isn't safe to set long range goals. As an individual, if I set a long range goal or strategy and communicate that to others, I'm now bound to make my best efforts to go achieve that. If I fail, I'll have some explaining to do. However, if I don't set long range goals, when I arrive at where ever I end up down the road, I can rationalize that it was where I wanted to be all along. No goals, no explaining, no failure. I think the same thing happens with groups of people. No big goals, no big failures, no explaining to do.

On top of this, setting strategy and long range goals takes work. It's not easy if it's done well. It requires asking tough questions and making some decisions that we'd rather put off.

Have you experienced the same thing, Joe? If so, what is your theory?

-Jason

Personal Responsibility #4

Joe,

I think that you are right when you said that we may have a crisis of personal responsibility on our hands. I've seen the symptoms of this manifested in a number of ways. When I think about this issue, I quickly jump to the question, "How did we end up like this?"

I don't know if we've even had a culture or time in history when personal responsibility was not a challenge. The big question is why? It seems that it is part of human nature to reject responsibility and accountability as a way of protecting ourselves. Accepting responsibility for our actions and the consequences of thos actions can lead to some pretty uncomfortable, sometimes downright painful, conclusions and outcomes. It's easier and safer psychologically to believe that it's some one else's fault that I failed. Or that someone else holds the key to whether or not I succeed. It's for this reason that I think organized religion has such broad appeal. When you "give yourself over to God," and put your life in God's hands, it relieves you of a large degree of personal responsibility (in many religions). Whatever happens, good or bad, is God's will; not the direct consequences of our own choices or behaviors. It's a very comforting feeling to know that someone else is watching over you and making things happen. Now, before I start a riot, I know that not all religions are the same. My point is that human nature seems to drive us towards opportunities to avoid or transfer responsibility for our actions and that religion is just one place that I believe you can observe this.

So, this leads me to conclude that accepting personal responsibility is a set of learned skills and behaviors, that most of us don't come by these naturally. So, what are those skills/behaviors and where should we be learning them? That seems to be the next question and it seems like a pretty complicated one.

Here are a list of some of the mindsets that I think people must learn in order to accept personal responsibility:

1. The only thing you control are the choices you make and how you respond to what happens around you. We tend to focus on changing things we can't control (i.e. "If only my manager would stop treating me this way, I could do a better job."). I can't control what others do, I can only control what I do and how I think.

2. Every choice has a consequence, positive or negative. There are no neutral choices. Every thing you eat or drink has a positive or negative effect on your body. Every word you speak has either a postive or negative effect on those who it was spoken to. If we begin to understand this idea, we will think more carefully about the choices we make every day. When you own this concept, you own that what happens as a result of your choices is your doing. Hence the birth of personal responsibility.

3. It's okay to want things, even big elaborate, crazy things. It's critical to have goals and dreams. These things will give you a reason and a context to make choices. It also gives you a reason to care about the consequences of those choices because you've made the stakes higher for you personally. One of my personal goals is to attain financial independence for my family. That means that we can live well and have the things we want and not have to work for anyone else to have or maintain them. This is a loftly goal, but it definitely shapes my choices. When I make a choice professionally or financially, I deeply care about the consequences of that choice because of my goals and dreams.

Well, I'm not sure if this gets us any closer to a way to help people learn personal responsibility. What are your thoughts on how to teach or build personal accountability in people?

Jason