“And when do you need this done?” sighed the already-dubious employee.

“Yesterday!” said the manager, pivoting abruptly and walking away.

The employee shook her head almost imperceptibly and said to no one in particular, “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Exactly.

‘Yesterday’ is not an answer. It’s an attitude.  And a cliche on top of it. The ‘I need it yesterday’ attitude says to the employee:

“You are now guaranteed to fail. I’m going to be unhappy with you no matter what. You should have thought of this yourself. Do I have to think of everything?” That’s  lot of attitude for one word.

And like the employee said, what is a person supposed to do with it?

Give the people in your scenes information they can put to use! Information that will shed light and bring clarity to the problem at hand. Don’t muck up the scene with your imperious attitude and your unrealistic expectations.

Richard Saul Wurman holds court at USC school of Architecture, 01.10.12

On Tuesday, I went to see Richard Saul Wurman speak to an audience of architecture students and faculty at USC. Afterward he held court outside the classroom for half a dozen students who stayed around and asked him questions. One student asked, “What do you think of urban planning?”

Wurman sized up the student for half a beat then shook his head. “That’s a terrible question,” he scolded. (He pulls no punches.) “It’s too general, too broad. How can I even begin to answer it? It’s like asking a doctor what he or she thinks of medicine, or asking an oceanographer what he or she thinks of water!”

See, there’s learning in the ‘Yesterday’ scene for both players. The employee had an attitude, too. “When do you need this done?” made scheduling the task the manager’s problem. It was therefore not a very useful response to the manager’s request.

Instead of a question that made scheduling the task the manager’s problem (and setting herself up to be a victim) a question or statement that engaged the manager in the scheduling process would have been better:

“I’ve got five to-do’s on my list ahead of your request. Help me prioritize.”

“I can have it done in 48 hours.”

“Rate the urgency from 1 to 5, with 5 being an emergency where I have to drop everything and do it now.”

Whatever you do, whatever role you’re playing, give your scene partners information they can act on, not an attitude that makes it more difficult or even impossible for them to solve the problem of the scene.

Nobody, including Young Dillon, had to ask what this meant.

The old role model of leadership was about control.  How do I get what I want when I want it?

Leadership in a networked world is not nearly as much about control as it is about adaptability. How does a team get the resources it needs to solve the problem?

Now—-

Just because leadership is highly adaptive doesn’t mean it is without structure. In fact, it’s the opposite: Because what it means to lead can change from scene to scene, it  calls for even more structure and definition than the old models did, when one org chart covered every leadership scenario.

We call our role model the 3A Role Model. Here’s why: There are three A’s to every role: Accountability, Autonomy, and Authority. When the 3 A’s are clearly defined and understood by all the players in a scene, and when they are complementary between players, leaders will emerge organically and authentically from that team and its scene.

When the 3 A’s are muddled, overlapping or disputed, leadership can get territorial and ’status-y.’ When this happens, leadership  arises from something that’s not part of the scene—qualifiers like job titles, seniority, family ties, company politics, intimidation, scapegoating, etc.—all of which are unrelated to the problem to be solved in the scene and therefore offer only an illusion of leadership, not the real deal.

The 3A Role Model:

Accountability. We are Accountable to our team, and to the ‘game’ of solving the problem at hand. We are also Accountable to our company, to the agreement that we are engaged (one hopes) in generating something worthwhile in the world, and in caring for families, loved ones, communities, and ourselves. These are the most important aspects of Accountability, because they are intrinsic to teams and individuals. Beyond that, Accountability does, in fact, mean organizational responsibility–who reports to whom? This structure is extrinsic, though, and does not guarantee a good flow of communication. In fact, if leadership is extrinsic, scenes often produce a one-way flow of communication, which is a big no-no. Good leaders make it clear they are every bit as Accountable to their team as their team is to them. And so it flows…

Autonomy. If Accountability is the root system of an organization, nourishing and sustaining it from within, Autonomy is the leaf system, which has the potential to energize and give it life by drawing in outside resources and opportunities.  Autonomy means the freedom to decide and act on one’s own, without any other player’s approval or oversight. Nobody tells a leaf which way to turn! A company’s spirit of entrepreneurship and ability to innovate are liberated by Autonomy. Its ability to turn these energies into growth rests with Accountability and….

Authority. Authority—-which stems from a 13th-Century Old French word, autorite, meaning “a book or quotation that settles an argument”—–is the ability to empower and disempower. It governs the other two A’s. To extend the permaculture metaphor, this is the planter or designer who decides what grows where. In the parlance of IT departments and gamers (and IT departments), this is ‘god’ or ’superpower’ status.’ This ‘A’ regulates the other two ‘A’s’, by deciding, for instance, the makeup of a team. Authority also means Authorship—of strategies, plans, vision, letters to employees, and the game elements of Environment, Roles, Guidelines and Objectives. It can also mean Authorization and Authentication: Who has access to accounts? Lists? Records and reports? Facilities? Fellow employees? Who can call a meeting? End a meeting? Okay a budget?

Ultimately, leadership is the art of role-modeling. When a team’s roles are modeled artfully, its leaders will emerge when and where they are needed.

In a business environment that changes at the speed of thought, there are lots of issues with this leadership model. Specifically, it’s too slow. it does not let an organization act quickly enough on opportunities or adapt cost-effectively to changing market conditions.

In networked organizations, by contrast, leadership is organic, it grows out of the structure of the scene and its problem-solving process, and not from a presumed hierarchy.

Visibly good leadership is essential to attract employees and customers to a brand and keep them engaged in its narrative, but that visibility can come from anywhere. Sure, it can and should still come from the ‘top.’ It can also come through the side door, from behind, the center, the edge, from out of left field, up from the ashes, or out from the shadows. It can be bombastic, it can be imperceptible, or any dynamic in between.

In networked organizations, leadership is everyone’s responsibility, and there is no single context for it, or one accepted style of leading. It is the scene that determines what leadership looks like, and what purpose it serves.

Further, being a leader is no bigger or lesser a deal than being a follower (i.e. team player). Just as everyone in a networked organization ix expected to be a leader, everyone is also expected to be a follower. A player’s leadership (or followship) status is a condition of the scene and the game, not necessarily a condition of his or her rank in the organization.

Among the questions addressed, on a scene-by-scene basis, in a gamechanging leadership model:

-Whose subject matter expertise, perspective, or professional experience is most important to the scene?

-How well-articulated and shareable is the vision?

-Is your scene’s narrative (and its possible outcomes) scripted ahead of time, or co-created by your team as a result of its problem-solving process?

-Are your team’s roles complementary and supportive, lacking expertise to solve the problem, or overlapping and in conflict?

-What is the balance, and who does the balancing, between listening and speaking? Between information and intuition? Deconstruction and construction? Postmortem and Premortem? Questions and declarations?

-How does a team stay focused on the problem at hand, while at the same time honoring historical and future organizational narratives?

-Who decides? How?

-What’s the game? When is it time to change the game or edit the scene?

And while there’s no one style or way of behaving that defines effective leadership, two things are true of all gamechanging leaders:

1) They listen first. 2) They do not script outcomes.

They understand that there are many ways to solve a problem, and that most of those ways will not be their own. This leadership model is the only way to act quickly enough on market opportunities and adapt cost-effectively enough to changes in the environment to stay competitive in the networked world.

NEXT: How we define Roles

Katehi

The old games are exactly that. Old. And like anything old, they lack sap, spine, vigor. In many ways, the Occupy Wall Street movement calls this out. Saturday’s Silent Protest against the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, is one of the best ways yet of #OWS demonstrating the impotency of old games.

Here’s the scene breakdown:

A day after the notorious on-campus pepper-spraying incident, the UC Davis protesters have the idea of  creating dialogue with Katehi, by forming a stage between the Administration Building and her car. (Note that no one is out front taking credit for this idea, it doesn’t belong to anyone. Ownable ideas are typical of an old game; shareable ideas are typical of a new game.) The stage is a hundred yards long, a catwalk extending the length of the theater, lined by hundreds of students sitting on the ground in order to effectively elevate the stage.

In forming this stage, the protesters change roles, from ‘Quad Occupiers’ to ‘Silent Audience.’ It doesn’t take them much time to do this. There’s no ’spin’ of a story being told or sold, no research to back it up, no ‘official position,’ only a simple intuitive agreement to keep their mouths shut for the duration of the scene. Game on. ‘Silent Protest’ is the name you can give the game. The reality of the scene emerges from the focus on this game, this agreement. It is the absence of protest that will make the protest so dramatic.

After 3 hours of what must have been a lot of hemming, hawing and phone-calling by her team about ‘how to handle it,’ the scene finally begins when the Chancellor enters, accompanied by a couple of non-speaking ‘extras.’ She is lit dramatically by the glow of cameras—-eyes of the world—-tracking her across the stage. Her delaying has made this a nighttime scene, which is even more dramatic, the darkness creating a heavier silence. By taking the stage without a script, i.e. nothing in her head, Katehi is exposed as someone with nothing in her heart. She’s got nothing. Because —-

The script won’t be ready until tomorrow!

The silence of the audience is remarkable.  Its discipline is impressive. No one breaks. The silence is marred by a few unable-to-resist journos whose subdued questions as the Chancellor nears her car only underline the otherwise-completeness of the silence.

Here is what gets revealed by the scene: The Chancellor cannot speak for herself. Her heart is closed, her emotions as frozen as the mask of solicitude frozen on her face. She is afraid of saying the wrong thing. Her institution’s students intimidate her. There is no dialogue between player and audience, between administration and student, between authority and autonomy. No dialogue. Just an old game, getting called out for what it is. Empty.

The protesters didn’t have to say a thing. All they had to do was create an environment in which the old game of ’script and control’ would be displayed in all its inadequacy for the world to see.

'A Captain of Industry' by Graham McKean

I don’t think it’s a matter of anything ‘taking leadership’s place.’ What are we going to do, remove the word from the dictionary? Are we all going to wait around for someone else to make the first move? (Oh wait, that’s what happens now.) What leaders can do is adapt to a business environment that is different than the one that shaped the textbook definitions of leadership. This environment moves faster, with more, and more fleeting, opportunities for a generation of restless, tech-savvy players entering the global workforce. To prosper in this environment, leaders and the companies under their guidance must adapt. This is not a one-time only thing, adaptation is not a new program that that can be taken off a shelf and ‘acquired.’ It’s a way of life.

We call this new model of leadership Flexible Vision. Naturally it is informed by the principles of improvisation, among them:

Take care of yourself first. This is a phrase popularized by Chicago improvisation master, Mick Napier. It doesn’t mean be selfish, as in ‘get your golden parachute packed, and don’t worry about where the plane is going because you’re jumping off before it gets there.’  Not that. It means come prepared. Have a take. Be someone. Stand for something. Rock your style. What your style is doesn’t matter nearly as much as whether or not you rock it.

Begin with listening. How can you contribute to the conversation if you don’t know what the conversation is about?

Follow the follower. This is a Viola Spolin concept. The narrative was going on before you entered the scene, and it will continue after you’re gone. Don’t ‘try to make things happen.’ Connect with what’s already happening.

Let go of status. In the old leadership models, status followed a person from scene to scene. If you were the CEO that was your role, and you played it in every scene you were in. This model forced a lot of managers into a mode of pretending to know more than they actually did, to feign authority in subjects with which they were not familiar, just to preserve their status. These ‘false narratives’ are a big inefficiency in any organization clinging to old leadership models. Improvisers, by contrast, change roles and status freely from scene to scene. Though your title is ‘The CEO,’ your roles can be ‘Student,’  ‘Fearless Explorer,”Arbitrator,’ ‘Cheerleader,’ etc. Adaptive leaders adjust their role and status to fit the scene, not the other way around. And the higher a person’s rank in the company (however that is gauged), the more adaptive that person can be, because the range of roles he or she can play is wider than that of a lower-ranked person, e.g. a new employee.

Give gifts. This is the phrase improvisers use for supporting one’s scene and one’s fellow players. In improvisation, giving gifts is the most productive move there is. Those who do it most consistently? Those are our leaders.

'Made for Each Other' by Graham McKean

]]> http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/archives/2743/feed 0 http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/archives/2731 http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/archives/2731#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:21:20 +0000 admin http://www.gamechangers.com/index.html/?p=2731 She sold her HuffPost to AOL for $315M, and didn’t offer as much as a thank you note, forget about any money, to the people who, like myself, had posted most of the content that created the value behind her brand.

Today, the HuffPost ran this headline:

GameChangers LLC owns the trademark ‘GameChangers’ in 17 different trade categories, including business education, seminars, improvisation for business, training, etc. I’m not going to say that HuffPost’s repeated use of the phrase ‘Game Changers’ in its editorial violates our trademark (though I implied it in a snarky comment on her story today). And I don’t know for sure, the difference, litigationally speaking, between ‘GameChangers’ and ‘Game Changers’ with the words spaced. We don’t own the phrase, didn’t coin it, and lots of people use it–including every sports announcer who ever lived, and the Bloomberg Network, which DOES for sure tromp on our trademark (but how are we going to sue or even slow down a billionaire politician’s billion-dollar company in the legal arena? If you’ve got ideas, let me know.)

I do know that last year my HuffPost producer, Willow Bay, brought up to Arianna the HuffPost’s use of the ‘Game Changers’ branding and proposed a conversation between the two of us about a possible collaboration. Nothing. Zippo. We shouted into the maw and got nary and echo.

In improvisation, we honor taking. You’ve got to take strongly, and politeness has nothing to do with it. Be aggressive. Play hard. Go for it. Claim turf. ‘Take care of yourself first,’ in the words of the legendary teacher, Mick Napier.

The thing is, we honor giving, too, and if anything, we honor it more. Yes-and. Connect. Make others look good.  Share the narrative. Give gifts.  Politeness, the consideration of others, has a lot to do with it.

One without the other makes you only half a player.

This is just my experience speaking, it does not represent any kind of larger dataset, for all I know Arianna has given $314M to Sloan-Kettering Hospital since February. It is pretty direct experience, though, so it must mean something. What it means to me is that Arianna is Half a Player. She’s fantastic at taking, and needs to work on her giving.

As you go about your business today, wielding a sword forged by your your authority, your education, your responsibility, your intelligence and experience, don’t think of this sword as a severing device that you use to slice, dice, and eviscerate. Don’t go medieval on anyone’s ass, or be chopping off  heads to generate fear among the populace. Instead, think of this sword of yours as a de-severing device, a weapon of compassion, one that joins–

the fire of purpose with the steel of structured action;

the art of entrepreneurship with the craft of leadership;

the genius of others with your own;

your history and your future;

your intuition and your intellect;

your character and your role;

your brand and your customers.

A weapon of choice isn’t the same thing as a choice of weapons. How you choose to use your weapon is way more important than what weapon you choose to use.

We jump at shadows. A weekend pilot who wanders into the airspace above Camp David (where the President was not staying at the time) is immediately characterized by the media as a possible terrorist; this followed by dire predictions from Homeland Security that the next wave of terrorist attacks will come in small planes.

A mentally ill person armed with an AK-47 shoots up an IHOP in Nevada. The media blend this and other sad events like it into a nonstop drumbeat of fear, marching us inevitably backward in time, toward the paralyzing events of 9/11. We go into hiding from one another. Gate our communities. Update our security systems. Buy more guns. And all this does is blind us to the reality that we live in a country where mentally ill people can get their hands on AK-47s. Instead, we are made to feel powerless that we can anything about it. Except burrow deeper into the darkness.

I’ve got an idea for this week, an antidote for the fear being foisted upon us by people who want to manipulate and profit from it. An idea that doesn’t involve chest thumping, flag waving, or the naming and elimination of our enemies:  Do what the Amish do. Forgive.

When five young girls were executed in a schoolroom by a lunatic with a handgun in Nickel Mines, PA, in 2006, the Amish did the most difficult thing I can imagine. They forgave the gunman and his family. They bulldozed the schoolhouse where the massacre took place, and set about doing the unfathomably hard work of getting on with their lives.

When it comes to 9/11, we haven’t been allowed to forget, and we certainly have not been encouraged to forgive.  Warmongers like Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz saw 9/11 as a business opportunity. And that, with Cheney’s abominably-timed book promotion, continues to this day.

The battles we must fight are not with our enemies but with ourselves. No matter how much we hurt, or how much harm has come our way, we can never find healing in bringing more hurt into the world, or in harming others as we have been harmed.

Forgiveness is the first step out of the shadow of our fear, into the light of a better world.

2006 Site of the Nickel Mines Schoolhouse, Today

Looks like the narrative for Prince Harry’s outfit at the Royal Wedding, doesn’t it?

Now take a look at the plan Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, drew up for how Southwest was going to enter the airline business 40 years ago, in 1971…Looks like the design for Pippa Middleton’s outfit at the Royal Wedding. Simple. Elegant. Easy to understand. Ultimately, appreciated by all. Beneath this design, of course, was a lot of complexity–but the business problem, as Herb Kelleher saw it, was as simple as how to build a triangle.

Kelleher continued this tradition of drawing up Southwest’s year-to-year strategies on a napkin over a lunch with his key executives. This structure allowed the company’s employees to improvise solutions to every problem they encountered.

The U.S. Military command, by comparison, finds itself in the business of trying to tie a bow–or create any recognizable design for that matter–out of all those threads.

Are your epaulets–whatever you ‘carry on your shoulders’–tied so heavily to obligations that it causes you to bend over in your carriage with eyes down instead of keeping your spine straight, and your vision up the road? Look at those braids and ropes latticed into Harry’s epaulets! They used to pay Houdini big money to escape from messes like like that.

What kind of collar do you wear? Is it stiff and tight like Harry’s ? Does it restrict your range to the ‘Voice of the Monarchy’ that His Hankness has been taught to repeat? Or is it loose and open, so that your voice can express all the colors and range of the voice of an opera star like Juan Diego Flórez?

Does your outfit sport ribbons and medals that require a degree in Heraldry to interpret? Or do you walk into scenarios unadorned, prepared to adapt to whatever best suits the situation and the problem at hand?

And speaking of hand…does your outfit give everything and everyone the white glove treatment–no dirt, and no skin except for a penny-sized patch in the fat of your palm? Or is your sense of touch free to achieve its full potential? In a digitally-mediated world, touch is a hugely appreciated experience.

If you put a lid on your outfit, do you do it in an old-school marching band style like the unfortunate Harry, who presumably had no choice in the matter? Or do you make it a lid that people might actually choose to wear themselves? Can you imagine a non-Halloween event where you’d want to wear a lid like Harry’s?

Now..in contrast with the Best Man’s outfit, take a look at what Pippa Middleton, the Maid of Honor, is wearing:

Everything about Pippa’s outfit contrasts with Hank’s. It is open, subtle, simple, and elegant. For such a momentous occasion, it is surprisingly casual. Most of all, what comes through is the personality of the wearer. There’s nothing in its design to distract us from her Pippa-ness, which is downright lovely, even the tension around her mouth, which says she’s putting up with the pomp, maybe she’s even amused by it, but she’s not reveling in it.

Who’s playing a role and who is showing character?  Who is trapped in the past and who is living in the moment? Who is free to move, and who is tied down by an institution? Who’s going to look good in shoes or barefoot? Who could go for a swim without drowning? Whose attire wouldn’t damage you physically you if you slow dance together?

Improvisation results in an outfit like Pippa’s, one that best suits the occasion, and shows you in your best light.  A totally-scripted outfit like Harry’s sits around in the closet, waiting for an occasion to suit it. That’s a lot of overhead. Unless you’re His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, you probably can’t carry it. And even if you can, why would you want to?

It was like this, see...