During the past two years, all types of organizations, from small non-profits to corporate giants, have experienced enormous upheaval. Keeping a steady hand on the tiller as you face and adapt to the changes that appear, and paying attention to opportunities, are vital to how you capitalize effectively on setbacks. It is crucial that leaders cultivate the most productive approach on how to deal in-the-moment, and yet maintain the long-term view on how to stay the course.
Read MoreThere isn’t much that is certain about work today, except uncertainty. In June, when we posted the first part of Are we Having Fun Yet, the Covid situation had evolved from office shutdowns and work from home (if one could) to vaccine development and administration. By the late spring, some enterprises (such as Disneyworld, featured in Part I) were adapting their workplaces to respond to the health-related requirements for operating safely in a pandemic. Our hopes rose for a return to something resembling normal, as our world moved toward a reopening.
Read MoreA year ago, in one of our posts, SmarterWisdom enjoyed describing 2020 as an exceptional year. We have since been toying with how to label 2021—and Alice in Wonderland came to mind: topsy turvy, a croquet field where the balls are live hedgehogs? Definitely. Through the Looking Glass, with a grinning Cheshire Cat! For sure. So here we go: the crazy journey of the year behind us…
Read MoreResearch shows us that boards and leaders who have already faced different kinds of crises, perhaps the need to cut programs, or a significant loss of accustomed admissions sources in schools, or a public relations scandal of some kind, or the loss of a senior leader mid-term and so on, are better equipped to face new ones, such as the pandemic. Schools, for example, who put policies and practices in place during the mid-2000s SARS-epidemic crisis, or even just surfaced the key generative questions, were more prepared for the recent challenges related to Covid. Having faced different trials and tests, organizations that incorporate ongoing reflective learning from these experiences, and create replicable, sustainable approaches, will thrive during new challenges and threats.
Read MoreSomething I learned early on as a leader was the idea of managing up. I remember my Harvard MBA spouse describing the idea to me after a particularly unproductive series of meetings with my boss at the time. It seemed I could never get my needs met, that she never seemed to notice anything that I did that I felt good about, and that she had a lot of needs of her own that I was unsure about. Fast forward through almost 30 years of leadership, working for one boss sometimes and working for entire boards of directors at others, to today and the work SmarterWisdom does with leaders facing the same issues. How do we collaborate best with our immediate supervisors? The advice my MBA spouse gave to me was to manage up, which meant to considering more where the “boss” or “the board” was coming from and work it. Is this effort really necessary? Does it pay off? How does it integrate into the whole picture of leadership success?
Read MoreDuring the pandemic, we have all been sorely tested—not just leaders, or teams, but all of us, as individuals. We have been forced to question what work means, our roles and the systems we have taken for granted since we entered the world of work. Looking back to my own education, in high school and college, I was definitely taught, in general, that to be part of a team meant to subjugate self; to be sure that the team trumps the individual. The old adage ”There’s no ‘I’ in team,” that leadership guru, Peter Drucker articulates above, seems mostly to remain tried, tested and true. We have certainly read, and SmarterWisdom has written, that the team must take precedence, and paying attention to both the formation, and the nurturing of the team is vital to success. Is that really the case? Or has the pandemic and our changed ways of living and working perhaps pretty much upended much of our thinking about the concept of team?
Read MoreThinking is hard. Planning is hard. Figuring out why what you are thinking and planning isn’t working is harder still. But in a fast-moving world, we are often doing our thinking and planning on the fly. We are taking action even as we are still processing important considerations, and we are regularly trying to remedy problems as they are happening—the proverbial changing-the-aircraft-engine in mid-air dilemma.
There are many reasons why this approach is often unsuccessful. A not unsubstantial cause is the pressure we all feel to be productive quickly. That stress can feel unrelenting and pushes us to want to “solve” or “fix” things fast. Because so few of the issues in our universe are “stand alone,” considering the implications of choices can be a time and energy consuming activity. Doing so involves generating sequences of if/then reasoning, often with many branches along the way. And that exercise produces considerable data which requires precious time for reflection. We’ve even given a pejorative name to how that can appear to others: “analysis paralysis” reflects both our penchant for rhyming terms and our bias toward speed.
Read MoreTalk about pent-up demand! After 15-plus months of pandemic-mandated behavior---social distancing, mask-wearing, working from home, not eating in restaurants, etc., restrictions are lifting. Everyone is thinking about what will come next. Fantasies of steaming ahead, full throttle, toward a return to “normalcy” are ubiquitous: Cruise lines are vowing to set sail from the US this summer, schools are pledging to reopen for full in-person learning by the fall and workers who have been working from home are waiting to hear from their employers about what’s next for their futures. But what, exactly, will the new normal be?
Read MoreBurnout, Resilience & Agility
While it was somewhat cathartic for SmarterWisdom to look in the rearview mirror at 2020 in our January Words of Wisdom post, as leadership consultants we are more typically focused on helping people look forward and plan for what is to come. There are, of course, many unknowns ahead; and, after a year of living and working in a world-wide lockdown, perhaps these unknowns are even more complex? My own recent doom-scrolling confirms many experts’ concerns about job loss (already showing up significantly with women and BIPOC communities) burnout and mental health issues—the latter affecting all ages, from young school-aged children through the middle-aged. It is not a rosy outlook at all, but as I look at the work of Jeffrey Hull, Jacinta Jiménez and Angela Duckworth, among others, I feel hope and see some preventative solutions that we might try, as leaders and colleagues.
Read MoreThe sub-title of Atul Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto (Metropolitan Books, 2009) is How to Get Things Right. Atul Gawande is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is a brilliant man, a superb speaker and an expansive thinker. “How to Get Things Right” is a bold sub-title for anyone, for a surgeon it is certainly a comforting sub-title—and for those of us right now leading and working during a pandemic, getting things right seems all but impossible, but of course extremely important as a goal.
Read MoreBoth the author Daniel Goleman and Harvard psychologist, Howard Gardner have written a good deal about “good work.” Expressing not only the need for basic competence and effectiveness at what you do, but also the alignment to mission and ethical values. (New York Times, 2008) Without these characteristics, Goleman argues “it does not make the cut for good work.” I want to develop and deepen the definition of “good work” even further by considering additional models for mutual partnerships. I have always found ways to love my work; and I have always worked with colleagues who do too. I know that this is a luxury. Finding the time to reflect about how you find joy in your work brings you to a level of wisdom and self-awareness that cannot fail to propel you forward and influence those around you to engage in good work together. In short, it can make work truly worthwhile—for you personally and, perhaps, for the greater good.
Read MoreAs SmarterWisdom Consulting celebrates its first birthday—during the entire month of January—we have been reminiscing about what we learned during twelve extraordinary months. The good news is that exceptional experiences--and 2020 was, if nothing else, an exceptional year—can lead to great learning! As we speed away into the new year, we want to build on these insights that have inspired us.
Read MoreIn his book, A Sense of the Mysterious, (Vintage Books, 2006) physicist and author Alan Lightman includes an essay called: “Unwillingly Trapped by the Wired World.” Lightman’s piece and a New York Times (2010) article called "Growing up Digital. Wired for Distraction," by Matt Richtel caught my attention and prompted some of my initial deeper thinking about our connection to the wired world. While both of these pieces struck me as helpful to the high school students and their parents with whom I was working at the time, and, as I think more broadly about the world of work in my current leadership consulting role with SmarterWisdom, I see the need for us all to harness our use--and overuse--of technology. Ensuring that we have time for the reflection and learning that helps us access our inner wisdom is even more crucial at this moment. As we all cope with the myriad demands and changing landscape of our lives during Covid, finding a way out of our involuntary entrapment, and thus ensuring our continued potential to dream and imagine, is vital to leading a fulfilled life.
Read MoreIn reflecting on our observations of our clients over the past six months, we have noted a range of responses to the unusual situation in which we have all been living and working. Without question, each organization’s workforce has expressed an evolving set of emotions; what workers were feeling in the earliest stages of the pandemic has been largely replaced multiple times over as the duration of the crisis has lengthened. Keeping a finger on the pulse of employee needs and emotions has been one of our strongest recommendations to our clients; knowing where their workforce is “at” is a critical component of keeping employees engaged and productive. It also underscores the reality that what got workers engaged in February 2020 cannot be assumed to have the same effect in October of the same year.
Read MoreIn his excellent book WISDOM@ WORK (Doubleday, 2018), author Chip Conley lays out a road map for organizations to create lasting benefit for success by tapping into the wisdom of the ages. By creating partnerships and teams of both younger, frequently more tech-savvy professionals, and also older more work-wise individuals, he argues that we will build stronger and more agile places of work—and ensure a healthy teacher/student relationship that flips from one group to the other. He also tells his own story about his journey to become a “modern elder.”
Conley’s basic premise, which aligns beautifully with SmarterWisdom’s philosophy, is that people who have been on this earth for a while have amassed work and life experiences that are invaluable. He also makes a strong argument for “rewirement,” positing that open-minded, growth-oriented professionals have plenty of time and space for learning more. He acknowledges, as we all do, that younger people have grown up in a time where uses of technology, social media and other modern tools have become part of their lives—the intersection of the generations, then, provides an enriched source of learning and creative possibilities for organizations.
Read MoreOpportunities for professional growth are abundant these days; how many invitations are you seeing in your in-box daily: webinars, seminars, Zoom meetings, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, an endless array. How to be a good leader in the age of a pandemic? How to build a more diverse and inclusive team? How to apply Marie Kondo to schools? It’s endless. Perhaps the most important question is: How do you decide whether or not 45 minutes on a video presentation is worth your while?
SmarterWisdom has certainly wasted some time tuning in to a few failures. One of us finds something that looks good, and as part of our partnership and commitment to constant learning, we both tune in. Ten minutes in, one of us texts the other: What do you think? Sometimes we hang in there and sometimes we don’t, determining that our time will be better spent elsewhere. We usually agree on the decision to jump ship. So, what kinds of calibration and measurements are we using to determine that we are no longer in?
Read MoreObviously most working teams or committees are composed of extroverts and introverts—I would argue you need that combination to make problem-solving and the generation of ideas successful. In typical meetings, extroverts will often find it easier to contribute, to speak up, and process their thinking out loud; this approach is not in the wheelhouse of more introverted team members. With more on-line video meetings as part of the normal workday, there is significant pressure and need for leaders to step forward and manage team interactions, in order to ensure that each member is fully functioning in the interest of the success of the organization. Deliberately employing explicit structures and guidelines, that employees become used to over time, will set the stage for better productivity and involvement.
Read MoreCross-fertilization of ideas consistently happens in good working relationships; openness to new thoughts from all sources tends to set effective leaders apart. For all of us, our arenas of work and ideas have necessarily expanded rapidly during the recent pandemic experience—there are so many external influences that we are responding to, and again good leaders see all of this as opportunity and pivot as quickly as they can from a reactive to an active, look-ahead stance. Internal influences are equally very present in our lives—they always have been of course, but right now might be the time to take advantage of what already exists internally. Opening up our thinking as widely as possible will enable us to take advantage of our strengths in different and imaginative ways. This is a time to be ready for completely new ways of doing things, using a growth mindset. For example, within your organization right now, there are likely five generations of people (the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen.X, millennials, and Gen Z.). That might be an untapped wealth of wisdom! Wisdom that we would do well to take advantage of.
Read MoreDoes your organization claim to be “world class?” If the answer is yes, we have two important words to share: Be careful.
One of our clients was a newly appointed school leader who described joining an institution that considered itself world-class in every way. She reported being struck positively---at least initially---by the consistency of the culture of pride she encountered. Unfortunately, as she got to know the institution better, her initial response turned into uneasiness.
In addition to the omnipresent “we are world class,” mantra, our client described a pattern of institutional insularity: for example, administrators rarely belonged to professional associations, or attended meetings with their peers outside of the institution. Instead, they turned to each other for advice and, especially, for affirmation on any initiatives they considered launching. This in-culture review limited useful critical feedback. Of course, that made sense: without any kind of outside measurement and enveloped in a self-congratulatory ethos, new ideas nearly always got not only a thumbs up, but frequently a gold star or two.
Our client faced a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, she was hired with the understanding that she would both nurture and strengthen the reputation of the organization. On the other hand, she knew that unless she encouraged the enterprise to grow and change, its true positioning in the real world would diminish
Read MoreElizabeth is a principal with a health economics consulting firm based primarily in the northeastern part of the United States. Her current work involves leadership and project management, drawing on quantitative and qualitative research, and managing clients. When she was hired by her current employer two years ago, it was made clear that her primary base of work would be her home. During the recent months of lockdown and work-from-home, Elizabeth’s level of comfort and success, while WFH, have made me think about, not only what mindset and skillset it takes to make this shift, but also other lifestyle improvements that the shift enables.
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