January 2005 Newsletter

TURNING TRANSITIONS INTO TRIUMPH: CORPORATE CULTURE AS A DANCE

"There may be trouble ahead.
But when there's music, and moonlight, and love and romance....
Let's face the music and dance."

The classic Fred Astaire number, "Let's Face the Music and Dance" offers a great philosophy when it comes to confronting the large and small shifts every company must make as it evolves. It may sometimes feel grim to "face the music" and admit that something has to change. Shift that paradigm for a moment; imagine the power of turning necessary change into a dance. Pick your favorite: waltz, samba, electric slide, two-step ... Whatever dance you choose, there's a new sense of freedom -- the professional equivalent of romance -- when you work with the flow of change. It's important to remember that vital combination that helps you move smoothly across every bridge, through every change of key: keep the beat, make sure you and your partner(s) really listen to each other, and find the joy. Then, the dance lifts you (and your company) into a soaring rhythm that helps you ride the music (and your profits) to a new level of success.

In my research, personal experience and mentoring practice, I've observed the unique challenges corporations face as they move through the inevitable or unexpected transitions of today's market. How we address those challenges determines our ability to grow into a healthier team, build efficiency, and support our customers' needs. The most effective leaders aren't fooled by fancy footwork. They are attentive partners, finding ways to build on their strengths, let go of bad habits, and improvise graciously.

KEEPING THE BEAT: Building on your strengths....

What do you do best? What do your co-workers value most about your contribution? What support and insights do you uniquely offer when there's trouble ahead?

You probably know some of these answers already. Maybe you're like my former colleague, H., who always know whom to call to clarify the rules and regulations in a pinch. Or maybe you're like T, who knew when to keep her mouth shut and quietly catalogue possibilities, when everyone around her was stumbling and stammering. Or maybe you're like C., who could quickly summarize a crisis discussion into a clear, clean memo to customers that communicated practicality and optimism. We usually know one or two of our strengths -- after all, we cultivated them.

You might be surprised to find out how your colleagues, staff, and co-workers would answer those questions. Maybe you try to keep your head down in difficult meetings; someone might see this as keeping your head! Maybe the quality you think is your greatest weakness is seen as your greatest strength, like D., who worries that he asks too many questions, but is seen by the whole office as the brave one, who asks exactly what everyone else most needs to know.

Everyone brings unique strengths to a team. And when the team is facing the music, it's your strengths that you should call on, whether you're leading or following in a particular dance.

Here's good exercise for a team preparing for a transition: have everyone fill out an anonymous form, honestly naming the strengths of each colleague. (Make sure you have a trusted facilitator who can share the most important comments in a public discussion, supporting morale and excellence in the process.) Praise fuels success, and once we see how our work has been valued in the past, we can cultivate our best qualities as we transform a challenge into a dance of respectful teamwork.

LISTENING TO YOUR PARTNERS: Letting go of bad habits....

What do you do every week that annoys, distracts or creates a distance between you and your co-workers? Where do you regularly cut corners? Are you unconsciously sabotaging yourself and your company with your regular habits?

The "golden handcuffs" of habit are our biggest challenge when it comes to listening to our office dance partners. Especially during a tense transition in the company, we need to explore the ways our daily routines can undercut our co-worker's success or comfort. It's not just the little things we do unconsciously -- humming in our cubicles, for example, or jiggling our legs in a meeting. We need to consider the habits that are part of our work persona: long lunches, emails that haven't been spell-checked, or nit-picking perfectionism that pushes deadlines up and efficiency down. These are our daily choices that everyone has to live with.

To us, they're comforting, justified. We might even think of them as fundamental to our personalities. But when a culture faces a crisis, that's when we need to quickly and calmly separate our comfortable, unproductive habits from our sense of self . We can change our habits, and improve our relationships and effectiveness. Imagine if Fred Astaire kept kicking Ginger Rogers' ankles when they turned; they woudn't have been partners long! Becoming conscious of the effect of our daily habits allows us to support each other better as a growing team.

A good exercise for looking at the habitual performances that become our regular daily practice and shape our work relationships is "The Pet Peeve" brainstorm. Here, instead of specifically listing everyone else's bad habits, (an easy way to shut down everyone's ears!) the facilitator encourages people to finish sentences like: "It distracts me when...." The whole group can suddenly see that our daily routines are made up of a thousand habitual choices. Some of them build towards our goals; others do not. Effective leaders, seeing this, model a calm, conscious shift away from the habits that undercut teamwork. As a result they gather good will, better partners, and new skills as they move smoothly towards their vision for a successful company.

FINDING THE JOY: Improvising graciously....

Effective leaders build grace, integrity, and care into their daily work. They recruit partners, staff and consultants who help them build on their strengths, balance their weaknesses, and teach them new, energizing skills. While the difficult truth is that all great leaders sweat the small stuff, the beauty of improvisation is that the smallest (mis)step leads to a new opportunity to flow with the music.

So how does improvisation help us face the music? Fred Astaire was apparently very self-conscious about his large hands, and that's why he developed that unique way of curling his hands as if he was caressing the air with every step. It became his trademark, his "brand," because he improvised, curved space itself, and found the joy within the skill that propelled him through every turn. When he pauses, swinging the beat, he's as strong as a hawk floating above a mountain. And let's not forget Ginger Rogers, who, as the saying goes, "did everything Fred did, except she did it backwards!" They were a seamless team, flowing with each other's strengths, compensating for each other's weaknesses, and lifting above mechanical skills into art.

We all know from our own experience facing a deadline, turning around a tech breakdown, or developing a new product, that what looks like a seamless team from the outside is a group of people improvising moment-to-moment, planning and implementing solutions in the same breath. The art of business becomes even more important when people are facing a new learning curve in the dance of excellence. When we find the joy -- in possibility, if in nothing else -- then the collaboration becomes exhilarating. Think of the stories of early dot com and software development companies, with a corp of designers starting with nothing but new ideas, building new programs and companies that crashed gloriously, again and again, and then launching products that created a whole new market -- a new dance that has changed the way we work and play. Improvisation is the key to successful risk.

"THERE MAY BE TROUBLE AHEAD..."

If the only things certain in this life are death and taxes, why bother thriving? If you're reading this, you're a leader who knows that making your vision into reality takes integrity, grace, skill and flexibility. With the certain knowledge that trouble is the doorway to new markets and better business, you're ready to face the music and dance.