I was reading a post at LeadershipNow entitled Getting the Information You Need. It referred to an article written by Mark Ronald and Robert Shaw from the Leader to Leader institute entitled Developing Peripheral Vision.

They warn to watch for signs of resistance to change:

Silence: In leadership teams, members who don’t support the trend of a decision often simply disengage from the dialogue and remain silent rather than pose a contrary point of view—particularly if the leader appears to support the decision or the group is moving quickly to closure. Who has checked out?
Non-answers: People can opt out by appearing to agree with the leader when, in fact, they do not. “If you think it’s the right decision, that’s good enough for me.”
Omissions: It is often what is not said that is most critical—particularly on issues that the leader believes will be problematic.
Specific language: People surface their true feelings in hundreds of subtle ways. Leaders need to pay attention to the specific use of words that are flags suggesting that more discussion or follow-up is needed.
Offline input: Often, the insights people bring to a leader (or each other) during the breaks of meetings or in informal hallway conversations are more important than what is said in formal discussions.
E-mail traffic: In many firms, e-mail offers insight into potential issues that may require a leader’s attention. For example, an overly formal e-mail message with multiple people copied (or blind copied) is often a protective action taken by a team member with concerns.

Those six behaviours are part of what I call “background conversations” which are typical incarnations of “passive resistance” – the worst kind of resistance. Background conversations occur when one’s head says YES and one’s heart say NO; when one lets other under the belief that agreement exist, when in fact it does not.

What I don’t find discussed much however is that such problem should not be a Leader-subordinate issue. Most leaders have, or should have, developed a leadership team, and in there lies a powerful tool. In companies I lead, we openly talked about background conversations at the leadership team level.

When Ronald and Shaw say “know your people”, the one thing we already know for certain about your people is that there is always resistance to change. So, the CEO has to establish [as early as possible in his/her tenure] a leadership model based on the assumption that there will be resistance to change. The best way of dealing with change is to establish a “change leadership” culture at the senior leadership level, and allow open and frank argumentation, and where, in the initial stage, disagreeing is OK to a degree.

By getting the leadership team on that page from the get go [regarding change leadership], more eyes on the watch for signs of weak support, no only with subordinates, but more importantly amongst peers. I have countless examples where one member of the leadership team was “taken on” by the rest of the team, without the need for CEO influence. They used “we’re on the same boat and have to row in the same direction” message. It was no-longer the problem of the CEO, but that of the leadership team. This behaviour propagates through the organization and sets in as a cultural characteristic.

In this way, the leadership team become the primary guiding coalition which can propagate the vision and the plan.

In a previous post I talked about what would make a Great CEO and concluded that a Great CEOs, those in the top 2% of the Bell Curve, would have had a broad experience. Well, there is more to it than just a broad experience. A Great CEO for me has some personal characteristics uncommon on many people. I know that, as a CEO, I was certainly conscious about improving these aspects of my personality. So here are the top characteristics I would consider an exceptional combination:

Stamina – Not age. Ideally your looking for someone in its 50′s with the energy of a 35 year-old go-doer. The job of a CEO is very demanding, meeting challenges after challenges, analyzing situations, making decisions, aligning all staff towards common goals, traveling, and keeping the family happy in the process. The CEO regularly clocks in 12 hour days, often working 6-7 days a week. This is not a job for the faint of heart.

Educated – Not Necessarily Formally. MBA maybe, well read for sure. The CEO needs to stay current on the stock markets and on industries, on leadership, on people management, on marketing, on technology, on performance management, on micro economics and macro economics. The CEO must have an insatiable thrust for learning. The worst CEOs know it all from the get-go.

Visioning – Balancing Reality and Execution. There is no future without a strong present, that’s a given. Yet, the CEO must have very clear idea as to where he/she is taking the organization, not this quarter nor this fiscal years, but in some distant future. He/she must be able to articulate a very compelling image of what I call the Envisioned Future and to articulate the several stratagems that will be deployed to ensure the vision will be met. The Envisioned Future and the stratagems must be anchored into a reality, that itself generates a sense of urgency, a need to change and a desire to move forward. The CEO must also focus on the immediate imperatives on the journey to the Envisioned Future. It is this ability of a CEO to go from 30,000 feet (seeing the future, the big picture and the strategic plan) to the street level (selling and executing) and back up to 30,000 feet that keeps the organization moving forward on their tracks.

Listening – Really Listening. Listening for what is said, and what is not. Listening to the vibes. Listening to the atmosphere. It is by listening that the CEO can fully appreciate the challenges experienced by the organization, the divisions, the individuals, the competitors. Listening to what is not said is just has important. When a competitor fails to announce any wins for several months, after announcing wins every month before, speaks a lot. Employees that leave for other opportunities, say a lot if you care to listen.

An eye for talent – First Who. As Jim Collins says “First Who then What”. The best CEOs surround themselves with right people, with the right personalities, and put them in the right seats. This way, the efforts are not spent on moving people forward, but are expended moving the company forward.

Passion – Adhocracy Not Autocracy. Great leaders do not tell what to do; they communicate their passion for the end result, for the ways to get there, for how to behave. They are charismatic, but not in the flamboyant sense. It is their passion that people fall in love with. Their passion is infectious and allows them to sell their vision, to communicate pride of accomplishments or learning in failures. Passion is paramount for creating a sense of urgency. It allows what would seemingly be ad-hoc decision making to be I perfect alignment with expected outcome.

Discipline – Not Hopes. “We’re not sure”, “I hope”, “we expect”, “may be” are not favoured terms; instead they would prefer “we plan to …”, “we are doing …”, “we’ll be done by …” and “we’re done”. Hope is not a strategy and MBH (Management by Hope) is not a discipline. A great CEO is looking to empower the organization while establishing clear empowerment fences imbedded in plans, structures and processes. A great CEO declares a culture of discipline and accountability.

Communications – Walking The Talk. Yes, walking the talk is communicating. Certainly, the CEO has to communicate with great coherency, consistency, relevancy and frequency. But the magic occurs by looking at how one behaves. Nothing is worse than a CEO that says one thing and does otherwise.

Follow through – Controls are important. Great CEO’s are “control freaks”; but not in the pejorative sense of the term. He/she does not want to be in control of everything; he/she wants everyone in control. Because lose-ends are biologically unacceptable, a great CEO will follow through on commitments made, to/by him/her.

Technical, Selling and Leadership – in one suit. Credibility obliges. The perfect CEO grew through the technical ranks (regardless of the industry), developing a set of muscles necessary to sense when the offerings are aiming right. The perfect CEO gets that there is more to selling than picking up orders. He knows to be directly involved in the revenue generation process. For Great CEOs, Selling Strategically means going at it with method and discipline. The perfect CEO gets what leadership is about. He/she has to know that, despite the years of experience, he/she is the prime conductor and that others are needed on the bus to deliver the results.

Controlled Emotions – Not Faked Emotions. Yes a great CEO is a person of passion, but controlled passion. Sometimes parked for greater impact, other times wearing emotions on his/her sleeves for greater impact, the Great CEO will control the display of emotions to achieve the expected outcome. Do not confuse this trait with faking emotions, because it is not; it is calibrating the outburst of genuine emotions for the right reasons.

Adaptability – or the Board will take care of that. It is often said that a specific CEO can only take the company from A to B, and that another one will be necessary to take the organization from B to C. In an ideal world, that won’t be the case, because the CEO can learn and adapt at a faster pace than will be needed.

Level 5 Leadership – Not Big Ego. CEOs that can build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will is what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Executives. CEOs are rarely directly responsible for success, but are always directly responsible for failures. Great CEOs use the word “we” with “successes” and “I” with “failures”.

Ethics – Taken For Granted. Visibly always walking the high road, from the mundane to the real serious stuff. Much like with children, your staff will imitate what you do, not do what you say.

Of course, an experienced and successful CEO would have all of the personal characteristics above, so let’s focus on the CEO’s experience. Right? Well not really. The reasons CEOs have been successful are numerous and varied – hence the hundreds of books on the subject. Knowing why they were successful is more important, ensuring they were successful by exercising the traits above, and not by some series of coincidences, would be reassuring to me.

We all know the power of the brain. No one would argue that humans can achieve the seemingly impossible when they apply their collective brain to a problem. Since the beginning of human kind, countless proofs of the power of the human “belief engine” can be found in everything that surrounds us, from harnessing the power of fire, to the invention of the wheel, to landing a spaceship on a moving planet traveling at 87,000 km/h, 36 millions miles away.

Beliefs shape how we act in our everyday life. Albert Einstein had beliefs, despite his Cartesian approach to science, based on logical analysis and mechanistic interpretation of physical phenomenon. He had postulates [hypothesis assumed without proof] on which all of his work is based. He believed, for example, that the speed of light [c] was constant which is a fundamental premise for his famous E=mc². He even believed in God, as he repeatedly said “God does not play dice”, referring to the predictability of outcomes.

It has been said that faith can move mountains. I grant you that faith is necessary to move mountains, yet we all know faith alone is not sufficient. You do need to believe but you also need the right equipment. Furthermore, we can also agree that having the best equipment is insufficient, and that without belief one is likely to fail.

This belief power, works both ways. If one believes that something cannot be done, that person will be absolutely correct. If you believe you cannot do something, you will be right all the time. Beliefs set our individual frontiers for the possible, and it is very rare that one can go beyond these imaginary frontiers. Now, why is that? Because we won’t try. Because of the fear of failing.

Let me tell you a real story.

In 1993, I had hired a sales rep from a competitor. His largest transaction with his former employer was in the neighborhood of $250K, which was considered an extremely good transaction size for his company. His surrounding was not encouraging him to belief in something bigger. In our company, the average transaction size of the time was $750K, which was very annoying to me [as it was way too low for the value I believed we brought to organizations.] One day, he came to me for help. He had secured a meeting with the CIO of a larger electric utility company in Eastern Canada, and was very anxious about this opportunity which was coincidently neighboring $750K [by far the largest contract he ever had to secure]. So we did a review of everything we knew about the account and everything that had been done with them. The prospective customer wanted to replace their legacy accounting system and the proposed transaction reflected the expressed requirements.

I accompanied him to his half-day meeting with the CIO. Not only did we end-up spending the whole day there, we uncovered different types of needs. We spent hours with the COO as he spelled out his aspirations for the organization; the replacement of accounting system was their perception on how to get there. By probing, by listening, by imaging, by daring, we allowed them to paint a much larger picture of what was possible; they sold themselves on a much broader project. At that moment, they realized that they were not looking for a software vendor, but for a partner; the very partner that had taken their blinders off. We walked away with a $5M order covering all of their needs for the next few years. But this is not the end of the story, it is the beginning. Not only did the customer’s blinders come off, so did the sale rep’s.

From that moment on, that sales rep had different beliefs about what was possible in a sales process. He went on to sign a $10M order and then a $17.5M order. We had removed his blinders. We had created a difference frame of reference, a different belief. Other sales rep took notice, shattered their own blinders and before long, the largest single transaction had become $30M.

Beliefs apply to organizations as well. An organization’s fundamental belief is linked to its mission. Why do we wake up in the morning? Why do customers buy from you? Why do investors invest in you? Because they share beliefs.

At SAP Canada of the mid-1990s, we had the collective belief that legacy enterprise systems used by Canadian organizations were an old collection of patched, broken, inflexible un-integrated systems beyond the point of repair. Furthermore, we believed that this state of affair would hamper their ability to adapt to a globalizing world, and as Canadian we cared passionately about that. So we set our mission, our raison d’être, to “make Canadian organizations better”. This was our sense of purpose. This was why people came to work for us. This is why employees came to work every morning. This is why customers bought from us. This is way our customer satisfaction rating was second highest n the world (second to the Mexican subsidiary, which was an order of magnitude smaller). This was, in part, why SAP Canada, then, significantly outperformed other much larger SAP subsidiaries.

Corporate beliefs drive passion in the organization’s sense of purpose or mission. So the message to CEO’s is this: make you beliefs clear.

Believe is or not, it is your call. In either case, you’re likely to be right.

When all you are allowed to see are the two beige pixels, it is hard for anyone to get a good perspective of the task at hand.

Are these two beige pixels part of a bigger picture, the sole of a shoe perhaps? Even knowing that this is the sole of a shoe is not all that enlightening. The second picture gives more details: the shoe belongs to a child sitting on the ground scribbling on a piece of cardboard. That still, you guest it, does not give the full picture – because you’ve seen there is a more complete picture below showing other kids sitting on the ground also scribbling.

Surely, now you can tell me what the big picture is! If you can’t, I can add that the scene is in Afghanistan. The caption under the picture started by saying “Even in a war zone, learning continues.” It then continued by saying “Students in the Northern Alliance territory take final exams at a school that has no building.”

The pictures alone would not have sufficed at delivering the message. The explanation alone would not have helped either.

The same is true in creating organizational and operational alignment in organizations. You need a Big Picture and a lot of documented explanations. When employees are shown only their respective pieces of the whole picture [the sole], it is virtually impossible for them to react properly when unplanned events occur, as they surely always will. It is not that employees are un-intelligent, they simply lack the perspective. It is a fundamental leadership role to make the big picture clear.

Nothing else matters until the Big Picture clear: no plans, no compensation model, no change initiative, no organizational change, no acquisitions or divestitures. The Big Picture explains why!

In my language, to avoid confusion with vision and vision statements, which are essential, I’d rather talk about the Envisioned Future. The Envisioned Future is an image [not necessarily a "real" picture] of how the future is envisioned supported by documented explanations. It should be as detailed as is needed to make the big picture clear. It should be communicated enough so all [management, staffs, the board] get it.

When all employees see the big picture of your envisioned future, they will then better understand the business strategies being implemented, they will better understand the organizational model in which they work, they will better understand the changes being made. It gives the organization the ability to empower its staff, with the comfort of knowing the direction is clear. Because all can now witness how the dots are connected, it improves communications. Then, when someone points at the two beige pixels, at least there is a better chance someone else will ask which?

It is the big picture of your Envisioned Future that is the foundation on which your business strategies are developed. It answers the question, “where are we going?”

Many organizations throw sales people out on the street in the hope they will make their companies successful. Although sales success is not possible without great sales people, a lot more than hiring great sales people is required to achieve sales success.

Sales leadership starts in the office of the CEO. The office of the CEO must induce a culture of strategic selling to the whole organization. Selling strategically means implementing a Sales Governance Model and developing competencies at 3 levels: Sales Governance, Sales-Cycle Management and Sales Execution.

As you look at the list of competencies an organization has to develop, at various levels of its hierarchy, it is not surprising that there are many weak spots that need serious attention.

Bad sales leadership is just as lethal as ineffective closing skills. Going after the wrong market is just as ineffective as delivering poor customer presentations. Keeping underperforming sales people is just as expensive as working on unqualified prospects.

A great sales person will manage his/her sales cycles to mitigate other weaknesses in the organization’s selling paradigm, but it would be a mistake to believe all your sales people are at that level of efficiency and effectiveness. Less than 10% are.

To make the other 90% of their sales people more successful, organizations should look at their sales model in a holistic manner. It is my belief that organizations are responsible for the success of their sales people, and not the other way around.

You can read more here… GOOD SELLING !