World-class companies have adopted similar ways of thinking regarding innovation. Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Co., said: “To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.”
You learn nothing from your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again.
—DEE HOCK, FOUNDER AND FORMER CEO, VISA INTERNATIONAL
Smart leaders create an environment that encourages appropriate risk-taking, an environment that makes it safe to make mistakes. A good example is IBM founder Tom Watson Sr. In Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus recount the following story about Watson:
A promising junior executive of IBM was involved in a risky venture for the company and managed to lose over $10 million in the gamble. It was a disaster. When Watson called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, “I guess you want my resignation?” Watson said, “You can’t be serious. We’ve just spent $10 million educating you!”
It’s this type of learning that caused Watson to say, “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”
TRUST TIPS
On the bell curve, to Get Better most effectively clearly involves all 4 Cores. You need Integrity to make and keep improvement commitments. You’re at the peak when your Intent is to improve your ability to make a contribution to the lives of others—whether those others are the beneficiaries of your sharpened talents and skills or (as in the case of your family) those who benefit from your ability to earn. Get Better involves Capabilities. Aside from the obvious, this includes the capability to set and achieve meaningful goals and also the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust. It also involves Results, both in terms of maximizing the input/output ratio of the effort you invest in getting better, and also seeing the relationship between the focus of improvement and the results you’re trying to achieve.
In order to Get Better, you might consider doing one of the following:
• Send out a “Continue/Stop/Start” inquiry to your direct reports, to your customers, to members of your team, or members of your family. Ask three simple questions:
1. What is one thing we are now doing that you think we should continue doing?
2. What is one thing we are now doing that you think we should stop doing?
3. What is one thing we are not now doing that you think we should start doing?
Thank people for their input, tell them what you’re planning to do, and report on your progress.
• The next time you make a mistake, rather than agonizing over it, reframe it as feedback. Identify the learnings from it and ways you can improve your approach to get different results next time.
• If you have a leadership role in an organization, on a team, or in a family, take steps to create an environment that makes it safe to make mistakes. Encourage others to take appropriate risks and to learn from failure so that you create high trust, high synergy, and high-level productivity.
SUMMARY: BEHAVIOR #7—GET BETTER
Continuously improve. Increase your Capabilities. Be a constant learner. Develop feedback systems—both formal and informal. Act on the feedback you receive. Thank people for feedback. Don’t consider yourself above feedback. Don’t assume today’s knowledge and skills will be sufficient for tomorrow’s challenges.
BEHAVIOR #8: CONFRONT REALITY
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
—MAX DEPREE, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, HERMAN MILLER
Have you ever been a participant in those “meetings after the meetings”—those informal discussions where smaller groups of people talk about all the things that should have been addressed in the formal meeting, but were not? How much time and money do you think was wasted because the real issues weren’t directly addressed and resolved?
Have you ever been in a family situation where it was obvious that everyone was avoiding what business author Kathleen Ryan has called the “undiscussables”—those things that get in the way of open, trusting relationships, but that no one ever seems to have the courage to bring up? How much difference do you think it would make if there were no “undiscussables”—if people felt free to interact about any subject with openness and respect?
Behavior #8—Confront Reality—is about taking the tough issues head-on. It’s about sharing the bad news as well as the good, naming the “elephant in the room,” addressing the “sacred cows,” and discussing the “undiscussables.” As you do these things appropriately, you build trust—fast. People know you’re being genuine and authentic. You’re not shying away from the tough stuff. You’re directly addressing the difficult issues that are in people’s minds and hearts and affect their lives.
Confront Reality is based on the principles of courage, responsibility, awareness, and respect. An outstanding example of Confront Reality is U.S. Admiral James Stockdale. In dealing with the harsh realities of surviving eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—and earning enormous trust and respect from all who were incarcerated with him—he demonstrated what Jim Collins has called the “Stockdale Paradox.” In his book Good to Great, Collins quotes Stockdale as saying:
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Collins goes on to say that “the Stockdale Paradox is a signature of all those who create greatness, be it in leading their own lives or in leading others.”
Another good example of Confront Reality is Cheryl Bachelder, who became CEO of Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in 2007. Though she came in with an exceptional track record, Cheryl and her team were subject to “inheritance taxes” stemming from four CEOs in seven years, declining restaurant profits, a lack of focus on franchisee financials, and years of flagging product development. She was told upfront by one of their senior franchise owner/operators, “Don’t expect us to trust you anytime soon.”
Unlike most CEOs and executive teams in publicly traded companies, who focus first on their investors and Wall Street, Cheryl and her team determined to zero in first on growing trust in the one area of the organization that would make the biggest difference in their business: the crucial relationship between franchisor and franchisee. Cheryl knew that building trust with the franchisees would require a lot of confronting reality. To overcome the poor track record of results she and her team inherited would necessitate clear declaration of intent and consistent behaviors to strengthen strained relationships.
They began their efforts by focusing on the credibility of the company itself. Cheryl worked with her team to clarify both their individual and team purpose and values. They communicated these purposes and values to their franchisees and sought to behave consistently with them. As an example, one of the principles they decided on was “We are fact-based and planful.” They discerned that the most important measure to understand and improve was restaurant profitability. But, in Cheryl’s words, they were “faced with a paralyzing lack of accurate information.” So they went to work. “We collected Excel spreadsheets from every restaurant in America,” she said, “to compile, analyze and compare their profit and loss statements. We looked at them for all stores, within their markets, and against each other.
“That transparency was game changing. Later, a franchise owner called out in a franchise association meeting, ‘That promotion you launched in June nearly bankrupted our system!’ I politely responded to him, ‘That promotion contributed the highest per restaurant profitability of any event in the last year.’ He asked how I knew that. I said, ‘We have your P&L statement—and that of over 1000 restaurants in the system.’ He paused and said with a smile, ‘Well then, I
guess you know.’ That promptly changed the dynamic and emotion in the room.”
In this situation, confronting reality with facts—rather than with emotions or conflict—inspired trust, transformed relationships, and made success sustainable. In the process it created enormous benefits for everyone. Franchise owners now rate the Popeye’s leadership team at 95%—the highest in the industry. And Popeye’s stock price rose from $13 per share in November 2007 when Cheryl’s team came together to nearly $79 per share in early 2017 when the company merged with Restaurant Brands.
The opposite of Confront Reality is to ignore it, to act as though it doesn’t exist. It’s burying your head in the sand, thinking that maybe it will go away or that it’s not really there after all. The counterfeit is to act as though you’re confronting reality when you’re actually evading it. It’s focusing on busywork and sideshows while skirting the real issues.
One of the problems with both the opposite and the counterfeit is that whenever you fail to deal with the real issues for any reason, people tend to see you in one of two ways: They see you as lacking in character (you’re not being open or honest, not being transparent, not talking straight) or lacking in competence (you’re clueless, naïve, incompetent; you don’t even know what the real issues are). Either way, it doesn’t inspire trust.
SPEED AND COST
When you openly Confront Reality, it affects speed and cost in at least two important ways. First, it builds the kind of relationships that facilitate open interaction and fast achievement. Second, instead of having to wrestle with all the hard issues on your own while trying to paint a rosy picture for everyone else, you actually engage the creativity, capability, and synergy of others in solving those issues. Ideas flow freely. Innovation and collaboration take place. Solutions come much faster and better, and are implemented with the understanding, buy-in, and often the excitement of others involved in the problem-solving process.
My own experience in the wake of the FranklinCovey merger was a powerful affirmation to me of the trust dividends that come from confronting reality. That day in Washington, D.C., when I offered to set aside the meeting’s agenda and talk about the issues people really wanted to talk about, I could feel the initial shock. I could feel the disbelief. But within an hour, it was like a huge dam had burst. I could feel openness and trust flooding the room and the enormous relief and appreciation of everyone there. It was truly a watershed experience, and it made a quantum difference in our ability to work together—and eventually in our ability to create more value for our customers—from that point on.
SO WHY DON’T WE CONFRONT REALITY?
In his book, Open Book Management, veteran business writer John Case suggests that the key to successful management is in treating people like adults. “When treated like adults,” he says, “people act like adults.” That’s the paradigm behind “opening the books,” confronting the realities, and sharing the bad news as well as the good. According to Case, this kind of approach shows respect. It says to others, “You are an adult. You can handle this.” To me it also says, “I value your input concerning how we can make this situation better.”
You rarely gain anything by shutting out the very people who are in the best position to help you solve the challenges and problems you face, or by shooting the messenger who might be helping you Confront Reality by bringing you bad news. As former DirecTV Chairman and CEO Mike White said “How you receive bad news the first time determines whether you will continue to get bad news.”
So why don’t people confront reality?
In some cases, they want to be popular. They don’t want to be the bearers of bad news themselves. Sometimes leaders leave the bad news for their lieutenants to deliver, thinking they need to create some distance from what’s going wrong in order to maintain credibility and trust. But in reality, such action has the opposite effect. It creates a huge tax because people feel their leader is not being honest and straightforward, that he’s ducking from interacting with them on these tough issues and leaving the “dirty work” for others to do.
Careful “messaging” to downplay problems makes you appear to be lying, deluded, ignorant, or uncaring. Sharing problems is an act of inclusion that makes employees feel invested in the larger enterprise.
—ED CATMULL, CO-FOUNDER, PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS
In some cases, people want to avoid discomfort. Sometimes, for example, parents don’t want to hear that they have a child involved in drugs, or some other addictive behavior. It causes too much pain, so they overlook the clues, they look the other way, they don’t confront the child—instead of acknowledging the problem and taking the quick action that might save the child from serious addiction.
In some cases, people don’t want to lose face. I saw this clearly one time when I counseled with a family that had serious financial problems. Their income had suddenly taken a huge dip, but they persisted in living the kind of lifestyle their prior income would support. Bottom line, they were embarrassed. They were concerned about not appearing as successful as they had been and were worried about losing face with their friends, so they kept trying to cover up the situation by draining their savings and going into debt. But the reality was that if they continued on that path, they were going to bankrupt themselves and get into really dire straits. They didn’t want to face that reality, so they had buried their heads in the sand. It took a lot of counseling, months of straight talk, but ultimately they acknowledged the reality of their situation and took the necessary steps to deal with it.
In my own experience, both personally and professionally, I’ve learned that you don’t wait to confront reality. It doesn’t get easier. It doesn’t get better. And, in some cases, if you don’t get the relevant information from people and act quickly, you start losing options. You’re into damage control.
According to a Mercer study, only 39 percent of employees believe that senior management does a good job of confronting issues before they turn into major problems. Just think of the cost! How much more effective it would be to confront the issues early, when the cost of dealing with them is relatively low.
I tell the truth, and I’m not afraid to say the hard things. They’re not always great. They’re not always fun, but I think if you have a pattern of having the hard conversation, saying what’s really true, that builds up over time.
—SHERYL SANDBERG, COO, FACEBOOK
The bottom line is this: Don’t be afraid to deliver bad news. Don’t feel like you have to try to spin everything in a positive light. Of course, you don’t want to be on the far right end of the bell curve saying, “Everything’s terrible and we’re all going to die!” But, as Jim Collins points out, you can “confront the brutal facts yet never lose faith.” In fact, the companies (and leaders) he studied that went from good to great did precisely that, and their approach actually became a source of their strength. Collins said:
In confronting the brutal facts, the good-to-great companies left themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.” Likewise, you can say, “Here are the facts. Let’s deal with them. Let me also tell you why we’ll prevail,” or “Here’s how I believe we can move this team forward.”
TRUST TIPS
The “sweet spot” for Confront Reality clearly reflects the judgment that comes from the interaction of all 4 Cores. On the left side of the curve, confrontation is ignored or, at best, diluted. It’s too mild to be effective. Or perhaps there’s confrontation, but no follow-through. Movement toward the “sweet spot” comes by increasing courage (Integrity), improving Intent, working on trust abilities (Capabilities), and gaining confidence from experience with the Results of confronting reality.
On the right side of the curve, people are into confronting other people instead of issues—and sometimes brutally.
Or they’re into extremism (“This is terrible and we’re all going to die!”) or victimization (“This situation is awful, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do”). Again, strengthening the 4 Cores is the key.
In your effort to improve in confronting reality, you may want to consider the following ideas:
• The next time you feel reluctant to confront reality at work or at home, explore your feelings. Are you hesitant because of fear of the outcome or fear of the pain? Consider the consequences of not confronting reality. If necessary, try to reframe your attitude toward others involved. See them as adults (or as strong, resilient children, if that’s the case) who are capable of handling things as they are. Move ahead. Confront reality, and treat them with respect.
• Think about your financial life, your professional qualifications, or your health. Are you confronting reality or are you living in “la-la land”? Work on being completely honest with yourself. Take on the challenge of aligning your life with the principles that will create the results you want to have.
• If you feel uncomfortable in a personal or professional relationship, ask yourself why. Is there some issue that’s getting in the way of creating an open, high-trust relationship? Consider confronting the issue head-on, with respect.
SUMMARY: BEHAVIOR #8—CONFRONT REALITY
Take issues head on, even the “undiscussables.” Address the tough stuff directly. Acknowledge the unsaid. Confront issues before they turn into major problems. Confront the reality, not the person. Remove the “sword from their hands.” Lead out courageously in conversation. Don’t skirt the real issues. Don’t bury your head in the sand.
The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything Page 24