Category: Transformation


Based on several true stories inside of multinational organizations:
When the chief human resources officer (CHRO) or any C-suite executive finally refuses to be a complicit bystander and commits to leading the business (like a real business leader)…here are 5 ways to start the conversation:
Dear CEO,

1) We have a serious problem …a culture problem.


We are witnessing a historic shift in what’s expected of us when it comes to understanding and evolving our company’s culture. We can’t deny or minimize the negative impact that our executive leadership is having on our culture any longer. The crisis of unconscious leaders is all around us, AND it is clearly a disadvantage for our business performance. This is a new era with new rules. We need to let go of some of the old success formulas…not all of them…just some. We are up to this challenge. We are going to shift the culture and expand the future-focused capabilities that we need (e.g., alignment, collaboration, curiosity, innovation, agility) so that we can not only stay relevant and competitive in the future but so that we can win. I (CHRO) am going to help you lead the way through this. I will need you to trust me. We will do this together.
 

2) Our industry, our history and our future are at odds.

It’s time for us to reactivate some of our originating startup/adaptive DNA and take our enterprise transformation seriously if we expect to win in the future.
Yes, we’re already rich, we have plenty of reserves, and we’ll probably stay afloat beyond your retirement…but we’re just floating right now. We’re not moving forward. We’re stuck. That’s not the kind of legacy we want to leave here after all this time, after all our hard work. The business case for change is undeniable, and yet we keep putting our head back in the sand, hiding in our offices, telling our employees and each other, “we got this.” But we’re just floating — and floating is insufficient. Just “getting by” is creating a long-term disadvantage for us, and it’s creating a ridiculous amount of unnecessary suffering right now.
“Just floating” is not going to be your legacy. And it’s not going to be mine either.This is not going to be fixed by having a two-day workshop or retreat. There is no shortcut. We need to shift some of our default thinking patterns/habits and close the gap on some key organizational attributes/behaviors that can make us more agile, collaborative and innovative. To be a legitimate competitor, we need to perform these attributes consistently at a professional, world-class level. This is not amateur hour or a time for dabbling/hacking away at this like it was a hobby to pick up over a weekend seminar. We have to evolve rapidly. We have to transform. We’ve been talking about this for years. If it were easy for us, we would have already been doing it. We’re stuck. We clearly all have a lot to learn. We need to adjust the way we think, relate, make decisions and take action. It’s never too early (and hopefully not too late) to ready our teams and ourselves for the future.

3) Our employees are losing faith…

So we have to act decisively. You saw what they wrote in the annual engagement survey. The research firm quantified just how much they are losing faith. You read the verbatims. You were upset by the quantity and toxicity of verbatims. You asked me:

“Who does that? Who writes that kind of terrible stuff, knowing that their bosses are going to be reading it?” Seriously, who does that? The “un-led” do that. (JL)
We can lead better. The people in our organization are telling us that we have a problem, and they want us to create a more constructive work environment.

  • They basically called BS on our leadership team’s ability to deliver on a majority of our company core values (e.g., teamwork, innovation, courage, respect, trust, creativity, integrity). They notice the incongruence. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they have 20 percent less confidence in our business potential over the next two to three years compared to their confidence a year ago. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.
  • They said they are 25 percent less engaged than a year ago across all business units. THAT IS A STRONG SIGNAL FOR US.

None of this will fix itself. We MUST ready ourselves to respond more effectively by leading a sustainable, strategic culture shift.
 

4) Our leadership team is not yet equipped to respond/lead a transformation like this alone. We don’t know how to do this effectively yet (and pretending to know is only making things worse). 

By our own words, we are at an inflection point that our default thinking patterns, behaviors and leadership muscles are NOT prepared for and need to change in order to achieve our three- to five-year plan success/goals — LET ALONE THIS YEAR’S STRETCH GOALS. We can do this, and I am going to lead this. We’re not transformation experts yet, so I’m going to get you and our entire leadership team the expert support, learning and development we all need to feel strong leading the way.
We will focus on consistency over intensity. We’re going to play the long game — no culture “change theater” or quick fixes. We will lead the way, with humility and empathy — not by knowing but by BECOMING LEARNING EXEMPLARS, showing that we value learning more than saving face. We are not yet personally connected to the kind of transformation that we are asking of our people, but we will be. This journey will be one of the greatest achievements of our career. We can do this.
 

5) To ready the organization for change  we should expect to invest in both expanding leadership capabilities and building internal capacity. 

We need to work on our inner game (transforming our mindsets) and our outer game (the way we execute the business). Our internal team of leaders will be fully involved and take on this initiative in a way that integrates with all of our existing work. Our leaders will be doing the majority of the training and development of middle manager cohorts — once we get a couple of cycles under our belt and I am confident that we can skillfully marry executive mentors and the extended leader/team cohorts into effective, sustainable programs that simultaneously support specific business priorities. For the transformation and readiness part, we will need to partner with an expert firm for the high-leverage areas that require their expertise, and we will need to be focused on the C-suite leadership development and culture change readiness (mentoring and coaching) work as well as ensuring high quality, internal capacity building.





To successfully achieve next level results/culture shift that we say we want, to maintain momentum and to build internal capacity to sustain it, I would expect us to work with expert resources/interventionists over the next three-year time frame while we build internal competency. It will more likely be front-loaded than equally spread out across those three years. It doesn’t have to be incremental learning and development dollars; we can reallocate some of our other important learning and development budget for this essential work.
Here are five more questions to engage the CEO.
 

I was working with a team the other day and one of the members said, “I want to feel it’s OK to say what I am about to say; and if it is OK to say what I am about to say, then I wouldn’t need to ask for it.”
The irony of psychological safety is that you only know you need it when you don’t feel you have it.
 
What is it?
Psychological safety is a term that describes the phenomena of feeling that it’s OK to take a risk. In my words, I can bear the discomfort of stepping out of my comfort zone in this situation with this group of people.
Research undertaken by Edmondson et al. and Google have found it’s one of the key ingredients in high-performing teams. This research has given us language to describe it and to start thinking about how we can intentionally create it.
The other day in an organization I was working with, I heard two colleagues discussing their manager: “He doesn’t make it psychologically safe for us.” I also hear executives talk about how they need to train their managers in psychological safety.
How do we train for psychological safety? How do we help each other to create the environment for each other to tolerate the discomfort of being vulnerable, of being seen in all our glory and messiness? Depending on our past experience, that can for some of us be almost intolerable. So how do we tolerate the intolerable?
 
Where does psychological safety come from?
Well, as I see it, it’s partly internal and based on one’s own level of tolerance of the unknown. As to some degree, we can only know it’s safe to take a risk when we have taken one and survived, and we carry that level of internal trust in ourselves around with us wherever we go.
This internal safety level is then heightened by and impacted by the situation we find ourselves in. We have an antenna that reads faces and body language, atmosphere and energy, and makes inferences and draws conclusion. It tells us whether it’s OK or not OK to express ourselves fully.
And it’s an infinity loop as how we are received, then it impacts future decisions, making us more or less confident to take risks in this situation and situations like them. Is that complicated or what?
 
So how do we create it?
It requires working at the “being” level as well as the “doing” level. Psychological safety is created moment by moment. It’s a felt sense. It often arises out of not feeling safe (i.e., in the bearing of not feeling safe, we find safety — the eye of the storm). It’s not static; it’s dynamic. And it’s not evolving.
 
What does it require of us?
It requires a mindset of a learner, of deep curiosity, of staying in a conversation with ourselves and others to help each other bear the discomfort of being vulnerable — being in open, transparent communication with each other, in each moment. For example, I can’t make my manager make it psychologically safe, but I can find out what is important to him/her and what he/she needs to feel psychologically safe.
It requires a mindset of taking responsibility for my part in the process and not waiting for someone else to give it to me or do it for me. For example, I don’t wait for the company to organize training on psychological safety. I find out what I can do in every meeting to make it easier for people to take risks.
It involves treating myself and others with kindness and compassion. We are much more likely to take risks if we feel we will be met with kindness — for example, remembering that most people care and want the best for everyone, and if they are behaving badly, it’s because they are scared or hurt.
It involves seeing our interconnectedness and interdependence, realizing that we are all similar in our fears and hopes, yet appreciating that we all have different ways of expressing our true nature in the world.
When we say what is true for us in that moment, we feel liberated and free to do our best thinking, and we became more productive.
 
What can I do?

  • Not pretend to know when I don’t; I can ask for help. This is difficult, especially when I feel like I should know and I am paid to know.
  • If someone is behaving oddly and creating an atmosphere, I can ask what is important to them. Usually we get defensive and upset when something we care about is at stake, so I can check if something important to them is at risk.
  • I can have check-ins at every meeting, which is an opportunity for everyone to arrive and get present, and to say anything that is concerning them or impacting their ability to be present.
  • I can say if something is concerning me, and that gives permission for others to say the same.
  • I can find a clean way to discuss the undiscussables.
  • I can continuously remind myself that I am human and, as such, I am impacted by others.
  • I can take risks to expand my comfort zone.
  • I can learn breathing and body practices to grow my ability to tolerate the discomfort of feeling unsafe.

How much do you consciously prepare for performance? In other words, to what degree do you leave your performance to chance?
At Axialent, we emphasize that one of the main levers to achieve extraordinary and sustainable success is to take full responsibility for how we respond in the moment. Specifically, we highlight the importance of enhancing our capacity to have a conscious response to what the moment demands from us as opposed to reacting from unconscious instinct and conditioning.
When we manage to do this on a consistent basis, we tend to feel empowered as a key player in our own lives instead of experiencing ourselves as a victim of circumstances. And because we’re focused on what we can do to get the desired results, we’re more likely to get the results we’re after.
This requires a mindset that can discern between what we can influence and have control over and what we can’t. It also means that we recognize the consequences of our own action and inaction. Obviously, developing expertise, skill and competence is also necessary, and they are important elements of performance.
We can work on developing our self-awareness so that we’re more conscious of how best to respond at any moment. This is a skill, and it’s one that gets stronger, just like a muscle when we train it properly.
We can learn communication models that help us express ourselves in a more productive way. We can train ourselves to become better negotiators and influencers. There’s a reason many organizations have dedicated learning and development departments. There is knowledge to acquire and there are skills to develop that help us. But these alone may not be enough for consistent high performance.
What I find is an often-neglected element of setting ourselves up for success—in addition to developing a certain mindset and skills—is specifically preparing for optimal vitality and brain performance.
For example, you may prepare for a difficult conversation by getting some coaching and doing some role-playing, but what about your energy, focus and mindset? What do you do to make sure those are in their optimum states so that you’re more likely to have the mental clarity, patience and necessary vitality to perform?
Have you ever noticed that you tend to be less patient and accepting when you’re tired? In fact, you’re more than likely to notice yourself being more irritable and reactive when you have low energy.
When was the last time you made some mistakes and performed less than optimal because you were tired?
Have you ever experienced your brain feeling like cotton or like it was in a fog—your mind seemingly dull? How did that impact your performance? Did you still have the impact you would have liked to have?
When you experience fatigue, difficulty focusing and lack of mental clarity, there are a few things to check for.
Perhaps you were simply dehydrated. Dehydration leads to brain fog and fatigue. In contrast, showing up to a meeting well hydrated improves your brain performance and energy levels.
If you lead a team meeting, you can raise the team’s performance simply by making sure there’s plenty of water available for everyone. Encourage people to hydrate and create a culture in which it’s easy to do so.
Another important factor that determines both physical and mental performance is sleep. Taking responsibility for your performance means making sure you get enough good quality sleep.
When you know you’re sleep deprived, find opportunities to do power naps. Research has shown this helps to offset some of the effects of lack of sleep.
And, of course, your nutrition has a big impact on how you feel, how much energy you have available, the resilience of your immune system and your brain performance.
Find out what nutritional approach is best for your individual constitution. Meet up with a nutritional consultant and create a plan so that what, when and how you eat is part of your plan for success.
Finally, make sure you get enough movement throughout the day. Your body is designed to move, so move!
Being a leader means taking unconditional responsibility for your performance. It is not only about how you respond in the moment. It also means that you anticipate and prepare for challenges and your ability to respond to them by planning for optimum hydration, sleep, nutrition and movement.
Keep these things in mind as you prepare for your next important event and set yourself up for success!


Speed matters in business.
Many executives today are leading high-growth companies and startups. Velocity-driven organizations and type A executives work hard at delivering new standards of performance and handling increased levels of change and creative tension without sacrificing trust or momentum. That is no accident though. These high-velocity and high-trust organizations are consistently working on their team dynamics and culture.
Most of us are only aware of our culture and its impact on our team’s performance when we have to adapt to something. Culture matters when there’s a problem (e.g., explosive change) – otherwise it’s just there. (paraphrased from E.Schein)
Sometimes, though, (even for business juggernauts) the continued pressure to make history and deliver on deadlines and commitments may lead to breakdowns. Despite the consistent good intentions and impressive accomplishments of the individuals on the team, team members may understandably get caught up in a “swirl” of counterproductive, cognitive conflict (causing drag forces) and affective conflict (causing drama/gravitational forces).
In physics, velocity, efficiency and momentum are negatively affected by drag. The faster you go, the more drag you create. Even tiny changes in drag can create large differences in performance.
At best, the “drama, drag and swirl” may be:

  • Distracting and diverting the team’s energy away from more value-added activities.
  • Decelerating the potential for additional momentum (i.e., maximum velocity).

At worst, the “drama, drag and swirl” may be:

  • Undermining the team’s effectiveness and ultimate success of their business objective.

Approximately $350 billion U.S in lost productivity occurs annually in organizations, due to negative behavior (e.g. swirl, toxicity) according to Gallup research. As much as 40 percent of manager’s time is spent dealing with conflict, drama and unhealthy tension another research indicates. (Source: http://powerofted.com/the-costs-of-drama/)
Everyday (default/reactive) methods for responding to this kind of tension/drag may not help regain collaborative momentum or help your organization recover quickly enough. In these cases, gravity becomes the overpowering force compelling your organization to a complete stop.
Instead of default methods of diffusing conflict, high-velocity teams and cultures practice staying above the drama, drag and swirl more effectively, with a shared set of drag-reducing mechanisms (e.g., tools, skills, mindsets). To maintain speed, they practice with these tools (see chart below) consistently — especially at critical moments when it doesn’t seem like there is time to stop and practice.

What is creating drama, drag and swirl inside of your organization?

As leaders, we have the power to transform the culture of our organizations. The culture, or the general consensus of “how we do things around here,” affects our business in every sense. It affects productivity, effectiveness, employee satisfaction and even our economic bottom line.
A key way each of us can make meaningful change in the culture is through our everyday interactions — one conversation at a time. We can lift the spirits and energy of our people and empower them to “be the change” of a conscious culture, without fear of failure, judgment or repercussion.
And if that’s not enough, there’s plenty of evidence that this will multiply your business results tenfold.


Source: Firms of Endearment by Raj Sisodia

What do leaders want?
Leaders at all levels, be they a team, function, regional or company leader, all want to solve their business problems with as little distraction and as QUICKLY as possible. While their particular focus could be productivity issues, effectiveness, speed or a lack of innovation, they all want a practical and doable change that will reap results right from the start.
Some leaders link their business problems to culture. If they do, they want to know how to increase the sense of ownership and engagement their people have and how to empower them. Other leaders haven’t yet made the connection that this intangible, invisible glue could be a key to greater success.

What do people want?
Most people come to their place of work wanting to do a good job. They want to be satisfied, to make useful contributions and to feel their effort makes a difference. At the same time, they want to feel they are valued by their company. Can you imagine the power if leaders can provide this kind of working environment when the change feels relevant and doable to every person in an organization? Can you imagine how quickly things could move forward?

Can they get it?
The big question is, can we achieve this?
The solution is to highlight interactions by increasing the quality of the exchanges between the human beings that make up that workplace. We want to captivate the hearts and minds of our employees by engaging in real conversation between people. These need to be ones in which they feel heard and feel they can express their own truth safely.
We spend long hours on the technical aspects of our work, and yet we don’t find the right “time” to have the game-changing conversations — the very thing that will create that productive uplift, the very thing that offers people their own power to make a difference.

One conversation can make a miracle; we just don’t believe it!
Now how do you close the gap? What if you could lift the productivity by even 1 percent? What would that look like over a quarter? Over a year?
This can happen through empowering, building ownership, engaging people, and change happens quickly.

Create an environment of powerful conversation.
How do you manage a wild horse? You don’t. You tend to its environment and overall health so it can be itself. It’s the same for us humans. The right environment that meets our physical and psychological needs enables us to step up and bring ownership to our tasks, to give full attention and energy to our work. So, as leaders, we can create a space where people feel trusted, feel they can bring their best and be appreciated for that, and feel they can raise their voice and contribute their expertise and have their opinions be heard. For human beings, the key for energizing today’s communities lies in the quality of our interactions and internal well-being — one conversation at a time.

Change culture — one conversation at a time.
We’re not just talking about any old conversation but a thoughtful, authentic interaction — not an automatic broadcast. The conversations that really have an impact are those that are a true heart to heart, where you discuss something that matters.
Consciousness means stepping out of the automatic and into the authentic conversations about what’s really going on. Press the “pause button” and truly engage in what you’re saying. Exercise choice when it comes to your interactions. All this is deceptively simple, yet it’s not easy to do. But every time you try to talk with people in a different way, it will make a difference. Imagine if every conversation was 1 percent more authentic. Just that tiny change can have an immense impact. Imagine how that could add up over a quarter…or a year.

Do people really feel empowered by it?
Feedback we have received from a client on why the “conscious conversations” work in practice identified how empowering it was for the individual. Unlike most corporate programs that tell people how to change, this way of transforming culture places the power squarely in the hands of the individual. Rather than waiting for others to step out first — for “them” to act — with powerful conversations, the decision and the action are for the individual to take.
Armed with a new view of self-responsibility, people can speak up and increase mutual understanding about what matters to them, what can be improved, changed or resolved. When this happens, connections are made.
In addition to empowerment, with conversations, you can keep learning, you can keep expanding your confidence, and you can come back again if it doesn’t go so well. It’s not a single change but a human learning curve that builds up. Like a muscle used, we get better at taking off the unhelpful masks we’ve learned to wear.
One thing we hear from people over and over is that when their leaders authentically enquire and listen to people as they express their fears, hopes, ideas and contributions, then they feel more encouraged and more valued. The magic is that the manager is more empowered with tough changes, as they connect with the heart of people’s fears and worries. Then people feel less alone through the turbulent times. It simply helps to know that others care, to hear you’re not alone, to be asked to express yourself, and to feel truly heard.

Where is our evidence of better results x10?
It might feel counterintuitive to spend time talking to achieve better business outcomes, but it does work. There is plenty of evidence out there. A client of Axialent, a big pharma company, conducted an independent assessment of their “changing culture, one conversation at a time” workshops by asking only 15 of the hundreds of managers who participated to assess the impact. They quantified a significant, and measurable, positive impact of over $100 million in the first 12 months.
Improved decision-making, better team communications and smoother interactions across organizational boundaries were all cited as causal factors.
Some years later, we still hear people say that the program is proving its stickability.

In a nutshell…
Changing culture, one (conscious) conversation at a time, makes business sense. It makes common sense.
You will get:

  • A better company culture. Results in minutes, not months. Real, doable, relevant change.
  • People who can take the change into their own hands. They craft it for themselves.

There are many ways to change a culture in an organization, but the actual transformation comes from its people doing something different, adopting new behaviors, changing the way they have conversations and how they interact with each other.

In order to change something, we need to understand how it’s created, shaped and influenced. There are three influencers that drive culture: behaviors, systems and symbols.

 
Behaviors
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most organizations have values and a mission posted on their website. They are presented to the organization in a beautiful way. However, those become obsolete if the leaders and key influencers do not role model those values. People in the organization will copy the behaviors of their leaders in order to be like them and create a sense of belonging, with the belief that the display of those behaviors will help them fit in and be successful. We learn this by looking around, mainly toward our leaders. What behaviors helped elevate them to the top? All become symbols, which we will discuss later. By themselves, behaviors are one of the most powerful tools leaders have to design and change the culture. If leaders and the key influencers can change their own behaviors by living more aligned to the values declared, people would get it faster.
If you notice as a leader that people are not displaying the behavior you would like to see in the organization, you need to first look at yourself and ask: “What am I doing (and my colleagues) that might cause others to believe it is the right behavior?” The interesting thing is, we are all leaders or an example to someone else in the organization. So in the end, we can all do something about it. I know, I know…you might be wondering why it all goes back to you. Remember the Player mindset: “If it affects you, it’s your problem.” The question is: How can you respond to the challenge?
Do you recall the secret change agents from the previous article? Understanding how behaviors influence the culture is a great way to create change.
How can you role model the behavior you would like to see in the organization?
 
Systems
These are related to all the processes you have in place in your organization. Some might be based on historical decisions and others might be more recent or born out of necessity. How is success in the organization measured, and how is it reported? What HR processes are in place, how is compensation defined, and what is the bonus scheme based on? How is budget allocated? These are all examples of systems at play. Systems are deeply ingrained in an organization and can be difficult to change. The question to change culture toward the behaviors you need should never be about the systems you currently have, but rather about the systems you will need two to three years from now. You need to stand in the future. Once you are there, look back to define the plan to get there.
Where do you see an opportunity for a systemic change in your organization to create the culture you need? If you had a magic wand:

  • How would people be rewarded?
  • What would the process be for allocating budgets?
  • How would decisions be made?
  • Is there any other system that is critical in your organization?

 
Symbols
This is the most visible and recognizable. When you walk into an office building, you can get a first sense of the culture by observing people at work, how things are organized, who is where, what you see on the walls, parking lot allocations, office spaces and how people talk to each other.
Other meaningful symbols include the way a budget is allocated, how time is invested, who is promoted and who is not, and how accomplishments are celebrated. Are they individuals or teams? What values and what results are taken into account? Does any of this sound familiar?
One of the more relevant symbols is the story or stories being shared. Like any other community (from our tribal ancestors to our current days), we often share stories about how things were created and who succeeded (even creating myths). We share stories that are funny and stories about failure. We share learnings, and many times we talk about cases and people. We create symbols, ideas, myths and a future based on history. One of the most powerful assets for culture change might be which stories are being shared in the organization. When linked with behavioral change and new systems, everything comes together, making sense to people in a faster, more effective way.
What are some of the symbols in your organization? How can this be changed toward the culture you need?
What are the main stories being told? How is this conducive to the culture you want? Which stories can start being told?
In working with a large tech company, we discovered how the behaviors, systems and symbols could be quite a force at play in an organization. One of the main goals for the year was to align the company with a new set of values and create a “one company.” We looked at all the different behaviors that would be needed or changed to align with what “one company” would look like. Increased collaboration, openness, listening and sharing are all characteristics of new behaviors. However, employees found it difficult to change, and we were curious what might be getting in the way.
The organization was heavily matrixed. Employees had multiple reporting relationships. One manager would be really good at role modeling the new behaviors, while another would revert back to his/her “old, more hierarchical” ways. A second layer was that the compensation and bonus plan was entirely based on individual performance, which created a conflict of interest. On the one hand, there was an ask for collaboration and sharing, but this would possibly put someone’s bonus at risk because sharing or collaboration might not yield the same results. Why take such a risk?
Lastly, there were some heavy restrictions on the type of computers and phones that an employee could use; yet at the same time, a lot of the leaders would have the “forbidden” equipment, which made it all very confusing.
From this example, it’s easy to see how behaviors, systems and symbols could have a significant impact on the culture of an organization — and how we need to link the three and work on all of them to create an effective culture change.
Once leaders see what we explained until now, they say, “We need a culture project!” This is something you might say in your mind. And yes, there are a lot of things you can do to influence the culture, but culture change is not just a project.
This is another strong belief or myth.
Just as the Greeks, Egyptians and Romans went before us, so did the culture of your organization. The culture was already there when you arrived, and it will continue long after you leave.
Culture is a never-ending process of defining and redefining who you are as an organization — and finding new ways to bring this alive in new contexts, with new people, addressing different challenges. You are always designing the culture, and you can do a significant amount of change in a short period of time. You might call it a project if you want to “shock” the systems to address big challenges and to get specific budget and focus. However, culture — as a concept and as a whole — will continue to evolve. It will need to be taken care of beyond your timeframe, and there will not be a day where you say, “We did it!”

Now that we have busted the belief that you need everyone on board in order to start a culture transformation process, we will add an additional layer to that belief — the belief or myth that you need to start such a process at the top, with the most senior leaders, the CEO or the Executive Committee.
But do you really need them to start?
Of course, it is an ideal scenario to have the top leadership of your organization leading the culture transformation efforts — the leaders who are role-modeling the behaviors of the desired culture and are fully engaged in the process. In our experience helping global companies with culture transformation, this only happen in about half of the cases.
Remember the story in the previous article about the large manufacturing organization and how we engaged with a single team at the time. Other teams took notice and engaged with the HR team to set the teams up with their own leadership development programs, and slowly the culture change in the organization began to grow more and more obvious. After four years of working with different teams, business units and leaders, the CEO started to take notice. The overall performance of the organization kept improving, and he realized the new organizational culture was the driver for this. The organization’s board, including the CEO, is now embarking on their own leadership development journey to take the culture transformation to another level. This program will cascade to other leaders in the organization who have not yet participated. The HR team never lost sight of their ultimate desire to change the culture, but they focused their energy on those willing to engage, eventually impacting the 56,000+ employees.
Instead of focusing on who is not on board (e.g., your CEO), how can you focus on who is? Just like the innovators and early adopters, can you find a leader or a team that has the energy, engagement and appetite to start something new? The more you focus on who is on board instead of focusing on who is not, the more likely you will see those who are, and there are more than you had imaged. You just didn’t see them.
Just think about when you had set the intention of buying a new car, for example. All of a sudden, you are much more conscious about the cars around you — the colors, the ones you want, the ones you don’t like, the model, the make. You see those same cars every day on your commute, but when you actually put your focus on them, you are more aware or conscious of them.

Remember William Hung (aka Hung Hing Cheong), the now world-famous American Idol singer of Ricky Martin’s hit song “She Bangs”? We love William. Over a decade and a half ago (early 2004), he entertained us all with his charisma (he says) and with his unconscious example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (others say).
The Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is” — Wikipedia. Psychologists Dunning and Kruger say that “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self.” They write that for a given skill, unconsciously incompetent people will:

  • fail to recognize their own lack of skill
  • fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
  • recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only AFTER they are exposed to training for that skill

UNCONSCIOUSLY INCOMPETENT TO CONSCIOUSLY COMPETENT
William Hung’s (and many other Idol’s) example of unconscious incompetence on live TV in front of millions of people satisfies at least one of the primary premises of the show. It lets the audience feel superior and relieved (for the moment) that at least we’re not THAT clueless about our own talents and abilities — as far as we know anyway. However, the Dunning-Kruger effect (aka the American Idol effect), like most cognitive biases, is a condition that we ALL can suffer from in our professions as well. Thankfully, we can all overcome it too, with a deliberate approach to training, rewiring default/reactive habits, surrounding ourselves with reliable feedback loops, increased mental complexity, increased levels of emotional intelligence and expanded curiosity muscles. (Note: The best way to develop curiosity muscles is by first working on the humility muscles.)

We are often unconsciously unaware of our own incompetence, in fact, that David Dunning goes on to say in the “You Are Not So Smart” podcast that “of all the irony of the things we don’t know, the one thing we definitely don’t know is where the borderline is between our knowledge and our ignorance.” That, he says, applies to everything including our decision-making in everyday life, not to mention the highly valued business decision-making arena of our professional life. It applies to our role as leaders of our family, our community and our company.
This psychological insight illuminates one reason why so many executives have heard themselves (including myself) say that innovation is hard. Maybe we say that because we don’t want to take responsibility or blame. Maybe it’s because we like to self-congratulate and brag about ourselves for doing the hard things that others won’t. Maybe we’ve bought into the party line. Either way though, innovation (change) is not hard or easy. It just is what it is. “Hard” or “easy” is not an attribute of innovation or change but merely a relative comparison of two things: 1) the challenge and 2) our ability/inability to respond to the challenge effectively.
Whether the challenge is to sing a hit song on the American Idol stage, squat 300 pounds or respond to changing market conditions in my industry, there are two ways to approach it: I can say, “singing at a world-class level is hard,” ignoring my own competence/ability/skill level, or I can say, “singing at an elite level is hard for me. My vocal skills/muscles aren’t skilled/strong enough to sing at that level yet.” But we don’t say that. We say it’s too hard to do. “HARD” is only relative to our ability to respond to the challenge of singing the song (on key), lifting the weight or accomplishing the innovation goal. If our muscles aren’t ready for the innovation challenge, then the challenge/change is harder for us. But that same challenge is NOT hard for many other leaders. Change (innovation) is not hard for teams and leaders who operate from higher levels of consciousness — less subject to pitfalls of outdated thinking patterns. Conscious leaders make better innovation leaders. Their cognitive muscles, mental models, mindsets, relationship/teaming productivity and fear/stress management skills are developed/trained and ready to respond effectively to VUCA (i.e., volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity). But you can’t work on it if you don’t even notice it.
NOTICING THE GAP IS A GOOD THING
We likely don’t even realize that we are blaming innovation/change for our own lack of ability to respond effectively to changes in our business environment and market conditions. Years of neglecting the change-readiness individual and collective leadership development work are a root cause that explains the leadership complexity gap. That’s why we are unconscious and unaware — we don’t know we are. If we don’t notice it, we can’t work on it. Conversely, if we do notice it, then we can choose whether or not to work on it. Either way, it’s better than falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

We can’t just try harder. That doesn’t work. Trying harder is not the same as deliberately training our innovation/change muscles to be able to respond better.

Experienced innovation leaders and conscious business Jedi (like Oseas Ramirez Assad, co-founder of Startup // Cisco) inside of David’s (startups) and Goliath’s (large corporations) will agree that innovation/change is easier when you:

REactivating your company’s startup DNA will require you to face entrenched cultural norms, fear of change, career risk and other obstacles that will require you to be working from well beyond your current level. You will need to be working from your “next level” of thinking — more open and more grounded as a conscious leader. This grounding is the platform to recognize old/new paradigms (yours and others), to be less blissfully ignorant, to engage in difficult conversations/healthy debates, to untangle explicit agenda versus hidden/unconscious competing commitments, their feelings versus emotional triggers, etc. Getting to our next level of Jedi thinking and behaving takes practice.

  • Even the biggest companies were startups once
  • Design a grass roots effort and apply startup innovation best practices that are right for your company (e.g., lean startup, BMC, design thinking, service design)


Focus on training mindsets, biases and core values (to help amplify the new growth strategy and fulfill the company purpose). This is an essential part of an innovation-centric lifestyle. Innovation can only be driven by a conscious leader who embodies the right mindsets, is aware of his/her own biases, and actively works to defuse them. Otherwise, people will immediately spot the incongruousness and slew of organizational contradictions. This will speak louder than the mindset itself.

  • Build a strong cultural foundation of expanded capabilities that help increase conscious awareness, broaden cognitive diversity, and deepen mental complexity and emotional intelligence
  • Apply startup constraints and bend/ignore rules as long as it’s clearly aligned with shared goals and core values


Target corporate antibodies (e.g., the fear of failure). You will have to earn the right to influence the corporate system. Even if you have the hierarchical authority, you will need moral and social authority (e.g., trust, respect, confidence) for the community of people to want to follow you. You could try and force them to follow you via command and control techniques, but compliance does not generate the same energy or integrity as inviting voluntary commitment.
The moral/social authority that is earned by being a more conscious leader will always be surprisingly more powerful and sustainable.

  • Address the organizational contradictions, competing initiatives, undiscussables and cultural/social norms (policies) designed to preserve/protect the status quo
  • Don’t just train alone; train together (cross-functionally) in a way that builds relationships and engagement across the enterprise (breaking down silos)


CONSCIOUS LEADERS MAKE BETTER INNOVATION LEADERS
They consistently deliver better results to the organization — it is as straightforward as that — for the sake of better business outcomes. The current leadership complexity gap clearly suggests that innovation leadership and transformation is a learned capability — a muscle group that has to be developed/trained for the gap to be closed.
The only way for our businesses to be more conscious is for our leaders to be more awake/self-aware. We need more men and women working from higher levels of consciousness — especially those who are responsible for implementing innovation strategies and those pursuing a new master plan of any kind.
The goal is to help leaders of organizations see more, plus collaborate better, plus feel stronger, becoming more agile in the face of uncertainty and fear. “Getting in the reps” of deliberate practice is what helps leaders more quickly and more effectively get to the complex problem-solving.
We need to pursue mastery of the fundamentals of conscious business. This practical approach helps leaders respond more resourcefully under stress, and it upgrades their operating systems with the intent of shifting to a culture with higher standards of performance, relationships and purpose.
Then again, we could be wrong. What if William Hung can sing really well…and we are the ones who are all tone deaf?

 

different typs of mindsets

I think that most of the important work that is done in organizations these days is done by teams. Even if people are not all sitting together in a room working simultaneously, their work is shared with others, revised, edited, informed, poked, prodded, enhanced, refined or otherwise manipulated into a product that features input from a number of people. And almost always, those other people think somewhat differently than we do. Maybe that’s because of where they’re from, or where they’ve worked, or how they’ve been trained, or the experience they’ve had in this organization or prior organizations, their age/generation, etc. In other words, their mindsets are different based on their background and experience.

In my work, I have often seen the impact of these mindset differences. And, importantly, another area of meaningful mindset difference is based on our functions. To be very clear, I am generalizing in making this observation. Not all finance people are sticklers for detail, and not all marketing people operate in the world of possibilities and potential. But many of them do—much to the dismay of people with other functional backgrounds. I think most of us would agree that organizations are much better off with the diversity of functional mindsets providing input into decision-making, idea generation, execution and other critical aspects of organizational success. But these differences can cause problems.
Have you ever been frustrated because someone across the table from you, or in one of your important meetings, rejects an idea on the basis of their legal regulatory experience? Or have you ever been flustered by someone on the team who insists that something can be done without providing any specifics about how? These are examples of cross-functional mindset challenges.

So what might we do about it? How can we work better together, have more shared success, as well as retain our sanity?
First, slow down, breathe and recognize that differences are part of our shared human experience, whether that’s convenient for us or not. Remember that those people across the table are almost always good human beings who are participating in a way that they believe is useful and effective, from the point of view of their function and their experience.
Second, take action to understand their priorities—the interests that underlie their positions. When you hear a “no” that feels like a door slamming, ask for a few reasons why that answer was given. Ask what would have to be true in order for you to hear a “yes” instead. There are other useful questions you could ask, of course. The important thing is to listen carefully to the responses. Doing so will not only provide a basis for understanding the other person’s thinking but also will very importantly provide you with key information about how to frame your response to them, such as a new proposal or suggestion.

Of course, this is easy to read here in a short blog and harder to do when the clock is ticking, the pressure is on, and we want to be finished with this conversation yesterday. Hang in there; make an effort. Perhaps others in the room will recognize how you are trying to move past differences and promote greater understanding and better results. They can join in as well. Share your intention with them and let your team know what you were trying to do and why. Chances are they will get on board.

Why Chief Innovation Officers (NOT JUST Chief HR/Diversity Officers) should be treating the “BIAS VIRUS” in your company…
SUMMARY: The very same (explicit and implicit) counterproductive cognitive biases that fuel decades of micro and macro aggressions toward women/minorities in the workplace are also fully embedded in the anchors of corporate cognitive bias and mental models that are undermining your innovation strategy, collaboration, knowledge sharing, engagement, complex problem-solving, any/all change initiatives (e.g., fixed vs. growth mindsets, knower vs. learner mindsets, victim vs. creator mindsets). Unconscious bias (UB) is a virus that’s killing your strategy and disadvantaging your best people at the same time.

SAME BRAINS. SAME BIASES.
For example, a long-held belief/bias that men are better leaders than women is as counterproductive today as a long-held belief/bias that a business strategy focused on hardware and software is better than shifting to that new “cloud” thing. The old success formula is great until it isn’t. Then holding onto it is just stupid. But your brain doesn’t care, and it’s in charge — not you. The same mental models and corporate social norms that lock those ancient systemwide biases (e.g., men over women, powerful men and women over all others) in place also keep your individual and institutional biases (e.g., reactivity over creativity, reliability over eventuality, evaluative over generative, patriarchy over mutual learning) commanding and controlling your future right into the past. Chances are your innovation strategy is so corrupted by these biases that you’re unknowingly designing your company into the 1970s. Until your executive team recognizes and addresses UB and the realities of associated gender/race inequality paradigms in your organization like the mission-critical, customer-facing, fully integrated, strategic business priority that it is (rather than treat it like a board/CEO pet project, “pseudo priority”), your company won’t make much progress toward the future. If your company is stuck in the past, chances are you are one of the powerful executives contributing to the spread of the bias virus and bystander culture.
MALPRACTICE AT WORST. INGLORIOUS “BYSTANDERING” AT BEST.
IF unconscious bias were a medical condition (and leaders/teams were the patients), THEN…most chief human resource officers, chief diversity officers, chief learning officers, learning and development directors, gender diversity and inclusion directors, the Ph.Ds. who fill those departments, and all of the CEOs and boards that sponsor/approve most of today’s UB prescriptions/UB treatment plans would be jailed/sued for malpractice…or at least fired for their silence and Paterno-like inglorious bystandering.
Unconscious bias IS the No. 1 business challenge from which all other business challenges arise. UB is silently killing your winning business strategy from the inside out. UB is stifling your business results and eating both your culture and your strategy for breakfast. UB doesn’t care. UB is sucking the energy, passion, engagement, trust, and commitment out of even your most talented populations while turning away the global talent and customers alike that you are trying desperately to attract. UB doesn’t care. UB doesn’t recognize what your company values, its purpose or business goals are. UB doesn’t care what kind of leader you think you are. UB doesn’t care what kind of leader (you think) your children think you are. UB is ruining your leadership impact. UB is making you (and your team of leaders) look outdated and oblivious. UB is killing you and the people you’re supposed to be leading. How tragic that you (should) know this already. How tragic and yet still so very little will be done about it during your tenure.
To change this trajectory, the funding and focus of disparate UB training programs, corporate universities, leadership development and innovation/transformation leadership programs all need to be elevated, consolidated and then integrated into new corporate lifestyle habits that have the power to overcome all the maladaptive biases we carry with us.
Even though our executives and boards are supposed to be made up of our highest value decision-makers, complex problem solvers and action takers (that’s the primary output of professionals in the 21st century), they aren’t adapting quickly enough today. In the context of readying the corporation for the future, these most valuable executives are supposed to be leading current and future teams of leaders through a transformative shift in their thinking patterns (investing in elevating the mental complexity and emotional intelligence of the organization) to take action against the counterproductive thinking patterns of the industrial age and the outdated behaviors that undermine the company’s current and future business strategy, ROI and competitive market positioning. They may think they are doing just that, but they are likely themselves even more trapped by the visible and invisible biases than the rest of us. Even the well-intended (enlightened) hierarchies holding the most powerful senior roles are unconsciously more imprisoned (zombified) and entrenched in perpetuating these unconscious biases largely because a) once they reach a position of power, they are less empathetic/less aware of the disadvantaged plight of those with less power; b) they are personally benefiting from the biases and power structures remaining in place. The more intelligent, accomplished and successful you are, the less likely you are to believe that your thinking + behavior could possibly be suffering from these unconscious blind spots. That makes you a more dangerous decision-maker (a “walker”).
Even when corporate boards and CEOs finally declare that mitigating gender/race/age bias is a priority, most of their employees don’t believe it — and they’re right not to. That’s because when this “pet project” of the board gets handed off to someone in HR or L&D to design and implement, it is still treated like an optional, bolted-on sidecar to the business strategy. It is underfunded. It is underestimated. The leadership mandate to make it reasonable, practical and scalable (efficient and cheap) creates a superficial treatment and doesn’t provide much cure. It’s odd that executives aren’t more sensitive to what’s effective vs. what’s reasonable and convenient. The “bias virus” (as I like to call it) doesn’t care what else is on your calendar…you’re going down, and there’s no flu shot or pill you can take to wish it away.
Today, many of the people responsible for treating corporate cognitive biases treat them as if they were only a minor, social, HR issue — a case of the sniffles or a sore throat that’ll go away with words of encouragement, patience, sensitivity and a box of tissues. They treat cognitive bias like a minor illness instead of treating it like the most Pervasive, Advanced, Chronic, Malignant, Acute, Neurodegenerative (PACMAN) and treatable leadership condition that drives individual and team behaviors while negatively affecting business activities impacted by those behaviors such as innovation, strategy, execution, customer centricity, retention, recruiting, collaboration, agility, engagement, risk-taking, knowledge sharing and culture change.
Treating deeply ingrained mental models, mindsets and biases (the “bias virus”) with the equivalent of little more than edutainment, awareness programs and two-hour webinars is like treating the Ebola virus with a bouillon cube shortcut because the equally ineffective chicken soup remedy takes too long for busy executives. That’s negligent and blameworthy to address individual, organizational and systemic corporate biases and the need to shift mindsets with programs that minimize or skip the deep, personal adult development work necessary for senior leaders to shift. It’s the only proactive development work that has the power to influence the system in a meaningful way. These bystanders, on the other hand, recommending anything less or suggesting that somewhere in the organization they are indeed working on a “much more strategic/comprehensive effort” (REALLY? LET’S SEE IT!) are complicit with their cowardly silence and sensitivity to corporate norms rather than being more sensitive to what actually works. Instead of effectively supporting the expansion of leadership capabilities, helping them ready the company for the network age that’s already passing them by, most learning and development executives (and their programs) are trapped in the same culture shackles of learned helplessness that they are supposed to be helping liberate.
2016 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: “The problem is, organizations are trying to reduce bias with the same kinds of programs they’ve been using since the 1960s. And the usual tools—diversity training, hiring tests, performance ratings, grievance systems—tend to make things worse, not better.” That’s what malpractice sounds like to me.
THE MALPRACTICE IS DOCUMENTED. LEADERSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY, METRICS AND STANDARDS ARE PRETTY LOW (EVEN WHEN CLAIMING TO BE HIGH).
Even the more progressive silicon valley tech companies and venture capital companies mostly treat the UB problem by ignoring it altogether or treat it like it is a political/social/HR issue with regard to sensitivity training or some corporate social responsibility program…loosely connected to business. Again, it’s a business leadership issue; it’s a strategy execution issue. Most programs are largely limited by budget, power or sponsorship, evidenced by how the programs are implemented and how little progress has been made and exposed in this “Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?” article.
There are endless amounts of research and data in every industry, including life and death ones, like in the article Bias in the ER — about how doctors suffer from the same cognitive distortions as the rest of us. Endless amounts of research on adult development approaches to bias by Kahneman, Tversky, Kegan, etc., all say similar things about our explicit and implicit bias/limitation of the brain that gets in the way of decision-making — some that were published back in the 1770s let alone the more recent stuff in the 1970s. In 2017, senior executive professionals in the field of learning and development are aware of the research, data, lawsuits and impact that UB has on decision-making and outcomes. In 2015, 20 percent of most large companies had unconscious bias (UB) and gender, diversity and inclusion programs (GD&I). By 2020, it is predicted that 50 percent of companies will have UB and GD&I programs. But what kind of programs will they be? The “bouillon cube” kind?
WHAT WORKS? VERTICAL LEARNING PROGRAMS SHIFT MINDSETS, CHANGE BEHAVIORS, AFFECT BUSINESS-RELATED ACTIVITIES AND CHANGE OUTCOMES.

Experts know that mitigating the negative effects of bias requires a special kind of transformation program — vertical (adaptive) learning programs — that unlock “next-level” mental complexity and emotional intelligence for leaders who want to pursue that. It’s an operating system upgrade. But most time-constrained and mind-constrained corporations deliver bite-sized, horizontal learning. Horizontal learning is adding skills at the current level of the current operating system. Horizontal learning is fine for many developmental needs but useless with regard to more complex adult development needs. To address bias with horizontal learning programs (or not knowing the difference) is useless, negligent and blameworthy bystandering.
Complex adaptive challenges (like culture change, mindset shifts and mitigating unconscious bias) require complex adaptive leadership training to overcome bias/beliefs (long rewarded and held consciously and unconsciously), creating blinds spots at the current level that block them from seeing the possibility of additional/viable perspectives, leaving leaders trapped by their prior success and by what they know, incapable of expanding their own perspective let alone facilitating a high-performance environment that can. Vertical learning programs include: a) stretch experiences; b) more direct applicable focus on the business challenges/goals, giving everyone a stronger reason to practice; c) new paradigms, frameworks for thinking, responding, practicing; and d) are designed to create long-term, formal and informal, peer-based (social learning) communities of practice that deliver depth over speed while being speedy. That’s how adult development is accelerated. That’s how adults increase their mental complexity and emotional intelligence. Complex adaptive leadership muscles are muscles that all leaders have. But for most, they have not yet developed them sufficiently to lead in the 21st century/Fourth Industrial Revolution.
 INCONGRUENCE — NOT WALKING THE TALK
I cringe when leaders say, “Our senior executives are all very aware of this priority, but we’re still figuring out how to solve it. They are all just so busy that it is not reasonable to expect them to spend more than a couple hours on this — though that’s all they need; they are very smart.” ARE YOU SERIOUS? That’s a real quote (from a distinguished Ph.D.) heard in similar forms from more than one diversity leader and more than one innovation strategy leader at double-digit, multibillion-dollar organizations. That’s what fear and confirmation biases sound like — unknowingly contributing to protecting the preference for the status quo = homeostasis at work.
Here are some additional examples of where the (“it’s a priority”) incongruence and appropriately labeled “bystander” behavior shows up:

  1. Most senior executives don’t go through the training themselves. They don’t go through the stretch experiences and conversations that they want others to go through — and it shows.
  2. Most executive sponsors demonstrate how they perpetuate organizational contradictions and how little they have prioritized the treatment of bias with their “cringeworthy” sponsorship speeches and oblivious comments like: “I don’t even think about gender bias; I don’t do that on my team” — only to embarrass themselves and undermine the integrity of the program and leadership overall.
  3. Most programs only touch a tiny population of “high-potential” employees — with a tiny portion of content. In a company of tens of thousands of employees, they might only expose a couple hundred employees (at best) to the program over a year’s time and then send them back into the inertia of the organization where it’s quickly understood what is valued and what isn’t.
  4. Most company leaders are afraid to publish your numbers for gender and diversity pay parity, promotion rate, etc., because they haven’t changed sufficiently. They don’t publish the metrics, don’t have target goals, and blame the attorneys for that bad business practice (plenty of companies, with more attorneys than you, do publish), and the transparency tsunami is going to expose your numbers soon enough. Some are updated regularly in public Google documents (e.g., women in software engineering).
  5. Most company leaders are visibly suffering from the leadership complexity gap, unable to respond better to change, lack of agility, curiosity, collaboration, engagement, etc., any better than they could decades ago.
  6. Most company leaders still proudly protect their own status by showing a tendency to focus on short-term efficiency over effectiveness; cost vs. transformation outcomes; speed over depth; etc., contributing to a lack of progress closing the leadership complexity gap.

Why is corporate bystandering still so prevalent? We all know it’s happening, right?
Corporations have not invested in training their mindset shifting muscles. They don’t have an expert orientation to their role as culture or change leaders. L&D has taught them to prefer and settle for edutainment bu$$sh#t awareness programs.
Power, it turns out, diminishes empathy and increases the “knower/fixed” mindset. And we all know that dominant power structures are biased and don’t give up their dominance willingly, even when it’s in their best interest and the best interest of the whole. Unless, of course, you are aware of your biases, then you can work on them.
WHO’S BYSTANDERING THE MOST IN THE FACE OF BIAS AT YOUR COMPANY? IT’S DIFFERENT EVERYWHERE. YOU DECIDE.

  • CEO (chief executive officer)? Yes, ultimate accountability, but most hide behind their executive team and blame them or they blame the culture (everyone else but themselves)
  • CHRO (chief human resource officer)? Yes, they should have command of all things people related but are focused mostly on administrative, policy, procedure, budget and legal matters
  • CTO (chief talent officer)? Should be connecting future capabilities/resources and business needs (It’s rare to find one who has enough business experience and people experience to be consciously competent for this role.)
  • CLO (chief learning officer)? L&D? Should be the experts at prioritizing vertical and horizontal development needs but are trapped by the same learned helplessness as the general population — deferring to business short-term demands and power structures, living in fear from budget to budget, trying to justify their own job through self-preservation vs. effectiveness
  • GD&I (gender, diversity and inclusion) leader? Should be the powerful expert integrated into the business but typically reports to CHRO
  • BU (business unit) leader?

 WHO IS WORKING ON IT LIKE A BUSINESS PRIORITY?
Chuck Robbins, CEO at CISCO, is very clear on the business benefits of addressing biases (conscious and unconscious) in a deliberate and strategic way. It is tangible in how the CISCO innovation team aligns with learning and development and gender, diversity and inclusion priorities as you can read what Robbins wrote in his blog post:
“With the increasing pace and complexity of today’s market, it’s critical that our leadership team understands our customers, delivers results, brings diverse perspectives and experiences, and builds world-class, highly motivated teams. This will differentiate us as a much faster, innovative organization that delivers the best results for our customers.”