Issue 13 (emailed version), Thursday November 23, 2000
Made in New Zealand - twice winners of the America's Cup


"Women tend to spend way too much time preparing instead of just winging it. And the fact is, we can succeed by just winging it. There are times when taking a leap is better for you than taking another course."

Denise Brosseau, CEO and cofounder of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs http://www.fastcompany.com/fast.take/online/41/ifaqs.html

Welcome to issue 13 of EDGE FIRST, an email magazine dedicated to making you a better leader, by providing:
- provocative thinking about what it means to be a leader
- the tools, techniques and best-practices that drive leadership improvement

Increasingly, we'll lean towards the personal, and away from the corporate – delivering on our promise of big ideas in a small package, but with a clear focus on total quality you.

In this issue
WarmUp – telling (your) stories
Ten minute MasterClass – how to talk
QuickStudy – David Gergen's seven lessons of leadership
Looking after YOU – finding the right balance
Resources - from Management General

To access Portable Document Format (.pdf) files you'll need Adobe's® free Acrobat® Reader.
WarmUp® – telling (your) stories
The 'soft stuff' is not always all about best practice HR and diversity and team work and the other one-to-one and one-to-many people-management things. It's also about culture and history and 'the way things are done around here.'

You may well be hip-deep in change insurgency (see Award 32) but there also has to be some constancy, some uniformity of purpose, and more than a little cause for loyalty. You want change, sure, and that takes a fair bit of pushing and shoving and often-times results in bruises and sore toes and even some attrition. But you don't want to lose too much of the intellectual capital that walks out the door every night.

Telling stories: Your stories, their stories, everyone's stories, is a powerful way to give your culture arms and legs. To make real and relevant the heart-warming and motivating accounts of corporate success (and sometimes failure) that people like to hear, and like to tell.

It's a leadership thing. It's about values and principles. And as always in those areas, our pop ethicist Jeffrey L Seglin has something worth-while to say.

In his November 19, 2000, THE RIGHT THING column (Storytelling Only Works if Tales Are True) in the NY Times, Seglin recounts a story told by Stephen Denning program director for knowledge management at the World Bank.

”I was desperate," Denning said. He had been trying to convince his colleagues of the importance of sharing knowledge throughout the organization. But his usual persuasive tools – charts, graphs and written reports – weren't working. So he decided to tell them a story.

There was a health care worker in Kamana, Zambia, he said, who in 1995 was searching for a method to treat malaria. The worker logged on to the web site of the Centers for Disease Control and within minutes found his answer.

Lights went on. The importance of information collected in one place and available to everyone suddenly became clear, Denning (author of The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations, Butterworth Heinemann, 2001) said. By the following year, an organization-wide knowledge-sharing program was in place.

Storytelling can be an effective business tool. “People just don't hear stories,” says Joseph Badaracco, business ethics professor at Harvard Business School. “It triggers things – pictures, thoughts and associations – in their minds,” making the stories more powerful and engaging.

But beware, says Robert Metcalfe, retired founder of 3Com: don't yield to the temptation to embellish the story. Too often, the temptation may be to let exaggeration evolve into an out-and-out lie for the sake of the story.

Telling stories doesn't mean making things up, Metcalfe says. “I have told the story of 3Com a thousand different ways. You make it dramatic. You select facts. You add drama. You wink. You smile. You leave out unimportant things that might weaken your point. It's all part of the gentle process of persuasion.

It can be particularly damaging if fabrications find their way outside the company and into the news. We've all seen how overstating a past achievement can hurt a political campaign (witness Al Gore's claim to have 'invented the internet'). Porkies, deliberate or otherwise, can throw a company (or a campaign) into chaos while the truth sorts itself out.

Even those who are expert at using storytelling as a management tool have found that employees will call them on it when they have gone too far. David M. Armstrong, a member of the fourth generation to run Armstrong International, a maker of speciality steam products, and author of Managing by Storying Around (Doubleday, 1992), said that if you're telling a story about yourself "there's less reason to be inaccurate, because you were there."

Still, on one occasion, Mr. Armstrong recalled, an employee came up to him and said: "David, you talk about working in the shop for two years. You spent two summers. It wasn't two years."

"He was doing it more out of fun," Mr. Armstrong said. Perhaps. But other employees who heard the story and had actually put in two full years on the shop floor might not have appreciated the elevation of summer work into a year-round effort.

The real challenge for any storyteller in business is to know that for the message of the story to ring true, Seglin concludes. The facts of it must have integrity as well.
Ten minute MasterClass®
HOW do you tell your stories? Find new ways to talk!
Oxford University historian, philosopher, author, management consultant, and BBC radio personality Theodore Zeldin says if you want to create change in the workplace, start a conversation.

For the past three years, Zeldin has been conducting 'human audits' of British workers across a spectrum of occupations and professions as part of a research project funded by the European Commission to create a vision of work for the new millennium.

Zeldin believes that most of us are working in jobs that make use of only 20% to 25% of our potential. Companies need to be reinvented to allow us to do work that we will find enjoyable, and that will make us better people. What does he mean?

It's simple, Zeldin says, "I talk at great length about every aspect of a person's life and aspirations. I'm not interested in measurables. You cannot measure the minute nuance that makes the difference between being happy and unhappy at work.

"For example, I talked at length with a senior executive at one of the UK's biggest retailers. Only after three hours did he reveal that he had always wanted to be an actor. He had been seduced by the salary, bonuses, and company car, and he had become a prisoner. But why should he be denied the opportunity to act? After all, what is a shop if not a piece of theater?"

Engaging in world-changing dialogue involves more than sending and receiving information, Seldin says. The 'new conversation' demands that you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person. Results cannot be predicted, but adventure is guaranteed (and, your editor can't help interjecting, doesn't this sound just like intelligent coaching?).

Here are a few of Zeldin's tips on talking:
Get out more. "Asking the same old question, 'Who am I?', cannot get you very far. However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself. Other people are infinitely more interesting and have infinitely more to say."
Think ahead. "Talk without thought is empty. Change the way you think, and you are already halfway to changing the world."
Be bold. "We need to start using conversation to create courage in the face of failure. I'm talking about a balanced kind of courage that can resist disappointment and that can at last make us immune to the cynicism that has so long been our scourge."
Talk with purpose. "The main purpose of engaging in conversation can no longer be personal advancement or respectability. Instead, I'd like for us to use conversations to create equality, to open ourselves to strangers, and, most practically, to remake our working world."
QuickStudy® – David Gergen's seven lessons of leadership
The name David Gergen does not evoke, for most people, the image of a scholar on leadership, editor Tom Brown writes in the latest (and last?) issue of the Management General eZine.

Instead, they think of him as a top aide to four US presidents – three Republicans, one Democrat. Or as the lay-it-on-the-line columnist for US News & World Report, or as one of the savvy pundits who appear on all the major TV networks (including CNN, for those of us outside the US - Ed).

Since early 1998, Gergen has been Professor of Public Service at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government; now, he is also co-directing its newly-founded Center for Public Leadership, which is planning to do case studies (a la Harvard's famed B-School) on community rather than corporate leaders.

Gergen's notes - compiled while serving on four different White House teams - led to Eyewitness To Power. A book that – through stories and illustrations about the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton – culminates with a compelling argument for seven lessons of leadership. And you know we can't resist lists!

I realise that there are differences between political leaders and corporate leaders, Gergen says, they are not automatically interchangeable. I was aiming at three distinct audiences.

First, the broad general audience, people who are curious about what it's like in the inner circles of Washington, DC.

"But I really wanted to write a book for two other groups: college students studying government and political science; and business school students, managers, and executives."

The book opens by stating: It is just possible that we are living at the dawn of a new golden age. Asked about that line, Gergen argues that "Good leadership is more important in the year 2000 than at any other time."

He notes that, from the perspective of US history, the times when Americans most consistently point to the power of "bold leadership" are times of crisis: the founding of the country and the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or World War II … periods of robust, strong leadership.

What's the crisis today? "The challenge for leadership today is a challenge of opportunity, not crisis. Think of just two major forces at work in the world today: capitalism is spreading and the life sciences are entering territories the human race has never known.

"… what's apparent is that we have the opportunity for a generation of leaders who can shape the future. Tomorrow's leaders can shape a world that transcends anything that's being dreamt about today. But a new golden age won't just happen on its own; it needs to be steered!"

What, then, are the seven lessons of leadership that Gergen uses to measure past, present, and more importantly, future leaders?

1 - Leadership Starts From Within
A leader must have a deep well of personal integrity. "Or, as Heraclitus put it more succinctly, 'Character is destiny.' The inner soul of a president flows into every aspect of his leadership far more than is generally recognized."
2 - A Central, Compelling Purpose
"Just as a president must have strong character, he must be of clear purpose. He must tell the country where he is heading so he can rally people behind him." Furthermore, a leader must make sure that purpose is rooted in the core values of the country or organization he leads.
3 - A Capacity To Persuade
A leader must be able to effectively use every medium to argue for the purpose and direction that's right. He must be able to mobilize the public.
4 - An Ability To Work Within The System
However, leadership is more than persuasion. "In effect, a president should see himself as the center of a web. Surrounding him are six different institutional forces with whom he must form successful working relationships, whether by cooperation, charm, or persuasion. The public, Congress, and the press... foreign powers, domestic interest groups, and domestic elites." In sum, a leader must harmonize all his major constituencies.
5 - A Sure, Quick Start
Leaders must "hit the ground running." Although in many institutions, "the power of a leader grows over time..., [T]he presidency is just the opposite: power tends to evaporate quickly." Thus, leaders must set a progressive pace and keep to it.
6 - Strong, Prudent Advisers
"The best presidents are ones who surround themselves with the best advisers." A leader needs quality people close at hand who can both support his thinking -- or challenge it!
7 - Inspiring Others To Carry On The Mission
"The point is that most effective presidents create a living legacy, inspiring legions of followers to carry on their mission long after they are gone.... Today's politics are ripe for a president to come into office and offer 'a new paradigm.' ... [The] leader who will set forth a clear, steady path into the future ... will also be the next to have a living legacy."
Looking after you – finding the right balance
Doesn't matter whether you lead an old-economy b&m operation or a bleeding-edge start-up, you'll be re-writing the rules of business. That's fun, exciting, and the adrenalin keeps you perking, right? But there's a dark side, Fast Company's George Anders says.

There just aren't enough hours in the day or enough days in the week to get everything done. Important projects pile up at such a rate that they can't all be finished by 6pm Friday. As work spills into evenings and weekends, something deeply troubling starts to happen. Friendships with people outside work begin to disappear. Cherished side interests – training for a marathon or photographing a favorite beach – become distant memories. The family suffers. A question looms: If I'm so smart, why am I not enjoying my life more?

At its worst, the new economy's fast track has become a road to exhaustion and disappointment – a journey to nowhere. But the opportunities before us are so great, and our expectations of what we can do from within our companies are so high, that sitting passively on the side of the road is not an option either.

That's why a new question faces millions of ambitious people who still want to do great work but who don't want to lose themselves in the process: Am I on the right track?

In the search for an answer, also ask: What are my priorities? Who are the people that matter most to me, and what should I be doing to strengthen those ties? Do I know how to say no – and if not, is there a way to learn how? Do I know how to say yes and make it count? Most fundamentally, what am I really trying to accomplish?

Are there winning strategies? Or are we talking about barely tolerable trade-offs? Check email at 6:30am/help make the kid's breakfast – but not both. Be part of an exciting new project/say good-bye to weekends.

Some people are extricating themselves from the worst aspects of the fast track, Anders says. And not just retrospectively (made the fortune, NOW I'll slow down).

There's the simple self-imposed discipline (don't check voice mail on weekends), and hard thinking about what's not essential at work. Coaching and mentoring increasingly feature in leader's toolboxes – not because a coach or mentor knows better, but because they can help you step back and discover your own answers.

At the highest level, three main strategies are worth exploring:
(1) When there just isn't time to do everything, think about "the time-release career." Use each stage of life to center on different goals – so that work enjoys top billing for long stretches but gives way to other priorities.
(2) Spell out your own definition of success, so that you can aim for your targets instead of constantly being dependent on the shifting demands of others (and that, incidentally, is where professional coaching adds real value).
(3) Find or create a supportive setting. If colleagues, bosses, and clients understand that work is merely a part of an overall picture, there's hope.
Resources - from Management General "The mission of our webzine is to provide vanguard thinking about management and leadership to the world -- for free!" MG is published with the support of Internet News Bureau. Details at http://www.mgeneral.com/0-home/inside00/new-toc.htm

EZZAYS
Mark Breier (Author, THE 10-SECOND INTERNET MAN@GER) "Become A New Economy Cheetah!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110001mb.htm
- Des Dearlove (Co-founder, Suntop Media) "E-Inspire!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110002dd.htm
- Jim "Gus" Gustafson (VP/General Manager, ELECTRICjob.com) "Be Socially Responsible!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110003jg.htm
- Cliff Hakim (Author, WE ARE ALL SELF-EMPLOYED) "Be Independent -- And Interdependent!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110004ch.htm
- Marc Tyler Nobleman (Cartoonist) "You Will Be Enhanced!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110005mn.htm
- Richard Pascale (Co-author, SURFING THE EDGE OF CHAOS) "Move To The Edge Of Chaos!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110006rp.htm
- Dirk Schneider (Co-author, THE AGE OF E-TAIL) "Follow The Net Imperative!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/3-now/00-now/110007ds.htm

LEADER-LINES COLUMNS
- Mary Chung (Co-author, RIDING THE TIGER) "Riding The Information Tiger" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/1-lines/00-lines/110001mc.htm
- Richard Shenkman (Author, PRESIDENTIAL AMBITION) "Good Leaders Learn From History!" ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/1-lines/00-lines/110003rs.htm

TOP 10 BOOK REVIEWS
- Peter Cohan, E-PROFIT: HIGH PAYOFF STRATEGIES FOR CAPTURING THE E-COMMERCE EDGE ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/5-top/00-top/cohan.htm
- David Gergen, EYEWITNESS TO POWER: THE ESSENCE OF LEADERSHIP -- NIXON TO CLINTON ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/5-top/00-top/gergen.htm
- Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann, Linda Gioja, SURFING THE EDGE OF CHAOS: THE LAWS OF NATURE AND THE NEW LAWS OF BUSINESS ...
> http://www.mgeneral.com/5-top/00-top/pascale.htm

SUPERSITE LINKS
Special SiteCites For - (U.S.) National Institutes Of Health [Associations], Jay Schuster and Patricia Zingheim [Authors], Curled Up With A Good Book [Books], Tech Jobs (ZDNet) [Careers], Advertising [Consulting], Tom Paine [Journals], Business [News], History And Politics Out Loud [Videos/Webcasts], Guinness World Records [Websources], and MWorld (American Management Association) ['Zines] -- AND 1,350+ More LeaderLinks ... > http://www.mgeneral.com/1-lines/suprsite/suprsite.htm
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