Capability

The Power of “Co”

August 30, 2013

The Power of “Co”

Almost all organizations operate with a singular leader at the top, whether the Chairman, CEO or President. A few have two individuals functioning as “co-leaders”. But how many organizations are run by a troika? Three people working equally together to lead the team. Gensler, a global architecture, design, planning and consulting firm with over 3,500 professionals working at 44 locations in 15 countries on 6,700 projects is led by the threesome of David Gensler, Diane Hoskins, and Andy Cohen. With diverse backgrounds, they’ve worked together for 20 years, and now share the leadership role of the firm that David’s father founded in 1965. Their most notable current project is the 2,073 foot tall Shanghai Tower that was topped off in August. It is now China’s tallest building, and second in the world to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

What makes their working relationship even more unusual is that every two years they shift responsibilities for different aspects of the firm. Rather than align responsibilities solely around their areas of strength or interest, each of them continues to grow through taking on roles that are not in their normal suite of skillsets. Their success is evident by their list of projects and clients, about half of which are Fortune 100 companies, and is profiled in the September 2, 2012 issue of Fortune.

What is “Co”?

Gensler’s leadership team has harnessed the power of “co”; sharing joint or mutual responsibility among two or more people. At the risk of riling dictionary enthusiasts, the opposite of “co” is “solo”, or one who leads or functions alone. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with operating solo, or as the singular lead on a project or initiative. The decision to do so is a result of individual style, skillset, convenience, or appointment. But let’s take a minute to explore the power of “co”; sharing accountability and authority with two or more people to lead a team or accomplish a goal.

Here are ten principles to help leaders to successfully leverage the power of “co”.

1. Collaboration – A form of co-laboring or working together collectively to lead the firm. This is their key word and they model its effectiveness by integrating each other’s strengths, ideas and knowledge for the good of the team.

2. Mutual Respect – This involves recognizing each other’s value, esteeming and acknowledging one another. In many cases, having mutual respect is the key to resolving disagreements, because it provides a basis for working toward positive relationships.

3. Communication – Sharing information, seeking input, and ensuring clarity and alignment of purpose and direction. Cohen says they can almost complete each other’s sentences. They also have a video meeting every Friday that is “sacred”.

4. Likability – Shared values and interests form the basis for liking someone. It’s an intangible factor in building effective relationships. Gensler says that they’ve worked together for so long that they’ve even built a level of affection for one another.

5. Low Ego – Some corporate leadership styles are domineering and authoritarian, based on the premise that only one person can run the organization. Operating as a “co-leader” requires valuing colleagues as much as, or more than oneself. Since David Gensler’s father founded the firm, one might expect that he’d have the lead role, but that’s not the case.

6. Cross-Pollination – Recognition that great ideas may come from a variety of people, and ensuring openness to receive, debate, evaluate and integrate those ideas.

7. Perspective – Leaders who have diverse points of view on situations, events and causation can create a rich environment of discussion and debate, but too much diversity can lead to divisiveness. An underlying shared perspective is important for cohesiveness and alignment.

8. Self-Confidence – When leaders are comfortable with who they are, their skills, abilities and particularly their limitations, they will be more open to others’ ideas and input. Insecure leaders are cancerous to the organization.

9. Trust – This is like the oil that makes the engine run. Without trust the organization will quickly seize up and cease to function.

10. Cooperation – The team must work together towards a common purpose or benefit. Their actions must complement one another and be aligned toward a singular goal that is clearly understood by all.

Leverage Your “Co”

Leaders that model the power of “co” at the top, derive benefits from it at all levels of the organization. The effectiveness of their working relationship defines the culture for current and prospective employees to share information, ideas and intellectual capability, and models the behavior for others.

Of course, all organizations aren’t conducive to a leadership troika, three people working equally together to lead the team. But all organizations do need the leadership team to operate with the power of “co”, using the principles outlined above to be more effective in reaching their goals. Even the singular Chairman or CEO needs a team supporting him or her that demonstrates these traits.

So whatever your role or the size organization or team you may lead, think about how you can leverage the power of “co”.

Read the Fortune Article here.

The Accidental Entrepreneur

August 1, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Capability

The Accidental Entrepreneur

Most of what we accomplish in building a business involves balancing the right combination of the person, product and profit. The person must possess the right business and leadership skills. The product has to be in demand for the market. The profit comes from sufficient funding and management of resources. But is it possible to accidentally be successful as an entrepreneur?

Auntie Anne’s pretzels is a phenomenal success and today has 1200 stores across 26 countries, with 2012 sales of $410 million. The business wasn’t a likely candidate for such success though when it was started by Anne Beiler. Anne was raised in the Amish community and when she married at 19, her only goal was to become a mother. Unfortunately, a tragic accident killed one of her daughters and her marriage went into a crisis for six years. Thankfully she and her husband were able to restore their relationship. In an effort to support other families going through similar marriage and family issues, they opened a free marriage and family counseling center in their community. To fund this initiative, they purchased an Amish-owned store that sold pretzels, pizza and ice cream for Anne to run.

Anne lacked the education, financial backing, and business plan for this entrepreneurial adventure, but credits her success to her discipline, teamwork and perseverance instilled through her upbringing. Over time she improved on her recipes, narrowed the product to just pretzels, learned how to market, built a franchise operation, and found an angel investor. She credits her overall business success with using three small Ps, purpose, product and people, to yield one big P, profit. After about 17 years of ownership, she recognized that the company’s growth was outpacing her capability and capacity, and she made the difficult decision to sell it. The company still bears her name, but she has no financial interest in it.

The Entrepreneurial Knack

Contrast Anne’s skillsets as an entrepreneur with typical traits and characteristics of entrepreneurs as suggested by Kara Page of Demand Media. These traits include:

The ability to motivate yourself and others.
Integrity of your product or service, and yourself
Creativity to continually identify new ideas and opportunities,
Inquisitiveness to ask questions and engage in continuous learning about the competition and your own business
Willingness to fail and ability to evaluate what went wrong to keep trying
Sociability to meet potential clients, suppliers and develop networks.

This challenges my paradigm of the skills that are really most important to be a successful entrepreneur, because what I expected to see, but is missing from this list are the standard items like education; experience in financial management, marketing, sales, or operations; strong leadership skills, etc. As the business grows, the entrepreneur can hire people with these skills, but in the early years, the founder/entrepreneur frequently has to be a jack-of-all-trades. While Beiler didn’t appear to have a plan for a franchise business when she first opened her stores, she seemed to possess the majority of these skillsets.

Accidental or On-Purpose

Thus Anne looks like the accidental entrepreneur. In spite of her business deficiencies, she developed a good product and created a demand for it. The opportunity propelled her forward to success, and part of the motivation was being able to use the profits to help her community.

So if you really feel a calling to entrepreneurship, but aren’t sure whether you have what it takes, are you focusing on the right skillsets? Are you shortchanging your abilities and experience? Have you creatively explored different approaches to accomplish your goal? Maybe you have a non-profit organization and entrepreneurship will provide the funding to support it.

Admittedly, there’s really no such thing as an accidental entrepreneur. People simply approach business ventures differently based on their background and perspective. The true key to success is combining the right skills with your entrepreneurial passion and calling…in essence, being on-purpose…in line with what you’re called to do. Who knows? Maybe your entrepreneurial success will be a gift to those around you.

Read more about Anne Beiler and Kara Page’s characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Photo courtesy of IStockphoto

You Dreamer!

March 29, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

You Dreamer!

Disruptors, innovators and entrepreneurs; that’s how Forbes Magazine describes their 30 Under 30. These are the 30 brightest stars under the age of 30 in 15 different fields such as media, music, energy, education, sports, marketing and advertising, finance, and science. I call them dreamers. As leaders in their respective fields of expertise; many of them accomplished feats that most people haven’t even dreamed of attempting. Their inventions, innovations, creative thinking, physical abilities, and thoughtful approaches have had a major impact on society and culture. Several that most impressed me were:

Joshua Sommer – Seven years ago as a freshman in college he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Instead of accepting the low possibility of survival and lack of treatment options, he cofounded the Chordoma Foundation dedicated to raising money to fund research to cure it.
Hugh Evans – Founded the Global Poverty Project committed to ending extreme poverty, and developed an innovative means of raising $1.3 billion in new funding commitments.
Leslie Dewan – Is developing a new kind of nuclear reactor with a plan to power the entire U.S. with zero carbon emissions and eliminating mountains of nuclear waste.
Matt Mullenweg – Launched WordPress open source blogging software at the young age of 19. It’s now used by 17% of all websites.

Qualifications

But how did they accomplish so much at such a young age? As I read their stories, several qualities were obvious.

Dreaming – Every great accomplishment starts with a dream, and a great dream combined with great desire leads to destiny. The dreamer believes in the possibility of what appears to be impossible; believing that as they move toward their destiny, the pathway will emerge. A great dream may look fragile to the outside world, but is intense in the mind of the dream holder.
Selective hearing – They ignore the naysayers, those who would try to tell them that whatever they’re attempting isn’t possible; that no one has ever done it that way before. They don’t buy into the status quo and accepted ways of doing things. They chart their own path.
Sacrifice – Being the best at what you do only comes with hard work and lots of it. That won’t seem “fun” to others, but there is nothing else these dreamers would rather do than to work to pursue their dream. In fact, what others perceive as sacrifice, brings pleasure to the dreamer.
Failure – This is simply the process of eliminating options that don’t work. Thomas Edison reportedly failed 1,000 times before he succeeded in making the light bulb. But Edison says that he discovered 1,000 ways NOT to make a light bulb. (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090218050711AAw6KhA) So learn from every mistake. Failure with a purpose equals progress. John Maxwell’s book on Failing Forward says that the only difference between people who achieve and those who are simply average is how they handle failure.
Perseverance – Giving up is not an option. Setbacks can be turned into setups. Difficulties, roadblocks and financial worries are simply tests of your commitment. They build commitment just like lifting weights builds strength.

Your Dream

I believe that everyone has a dream of accomplishing something that is bigger than them, but few people follow through on it. For some people, that dream is vivid and tangible; they can almost reach out and touch it. They think about it daily, devise plans to work toward accomplishing it. Others are still discovering their dream. And still others have almost abandoned theirs. Maybe it once existed in the recesses of their mind, but was beaten still further back by constant affirmations of impossibility.

Children are often great dreamers because they haven’t yet learned all the reasons that adults have bought into about why their dream shouldn’t come to pass. They have:

No boundaries to confine them.

No past to live up to or sustain.

No thing to lose and everything to gain.

No fear of failure.

So what is your dream? You may have to reflect back on your early years to remember what it was, and what happened to it. Can you recapture the passion you once had for it? Can you regain the excitement you once felt as you replayed it in your mind? Can you take one step to redirect your path toward accomplishing that dream? Let go of the things that restrict your ability to dream. Instead, dream big and make something happen.

Game Changer

December 31, 2012

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

Game Changer

A simple act…

An interesting project…

A problem to be solved…

A wish to be granted…

Something you did that started small. You followed your interests and desires, taking one step that turned in to two, four, twelve, fifty or one hundred steps. You didn’t realize the significance of that first act, nor that it was rooted in a deeper desire or passion. All of your steps prior to this time prepared you for this moment, even when the path was circuitous, hilly, and filled with signs that said “Stop”, “Yield”, or “Caution”. Yet it brought you to the point of influencing the lives of many others; changing the way people approach a problem, learn or behave; or freeing them to accomplish their goals. Like a rock tossed into the ocean can ripple into a wave on the other side of the ocean, your simple act flourished and thrived into a movement, a game changer. You changed the rules of operation, and disrupted the normal system with a positive impact.

The Khan Academy

Salman Khan is an example of this. Khan is the founder of The Khan Academy, a company with over 3,600 brief free instructional videos on topics including math, science, computer science, finance and economics, humanities and standardized test prep, designed to help students of all ages learn about these topics at their own pace. According to a recent article in Forbes, over the past two years Khan’s videos have had 200 million views. There are currently 6 million unique students per month who visit the site, and over 750 million problems have been solved over the past several years. As a non-profit organization, they’re supported by foundations and individuals such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, venture capitalist John and Ann Doerr, the O’Sullivan Foundation, Reed Hastings, Google, and the Windsong Trust. Khan has pledged that the company will not go public despite the urgings of several venture capitalists who see the potential for significant profit.

It all started out when Khan began posting YouTube videos to facilitate tutoring sessions with his cousins. Even though his video viewing audience grew to tens of thousands each day, he still looked at this as a hobby. He grew up poor in Louisiana raised by his mother and was mathematically gifted. He gained acceptance to MIT, completed an M.B.A. from Harvard and became a hedge fund analyst. During this time he supported his wife through her medical training while caring for his baby son. He quit his job when he realized the impact his videos had on helping students learn. Khan continued working on videos in a bedroom closet for ten months until Ann Doerr wrote him his first check for $100,000. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now with a $7 million budget, and a staff of 37 people headquartered in Silicon Valley, Khan is changing the education game. His ability to reach millions of students cheaply via the internet using inexpensive tablets (particularly important in developing nations), on a wide range of subjects is generating a growth spurt in online education. Khan Academy has proof of the efficacy of their teaching videos, and the global reach to provide high quality education for a small fraction of usual costs. Other universities and faculty members have similar results as courses at Harvard and Stanford offered online drew well over 100 thousand students each and provided a quality of learning equal to what they would have received in the classroom. According to the Forbes article, Khan has a vision for radically changing the education system of the future, and is referred to as “the most impactful educator in the world”. All this, even though he’s not a traditional educator by training.

What’s Your Game?

It doesn’t appear that Khan planned this business or career, but it grew out of his passion for teaching concepts in an easy to understand format. He recognized a problem around him, cared about how others were dealing with it, and decided to do something on a small scale without even thinking of the potential for growth. His passion was so great, and his impact so effective that he is playing a significant role in changing developing a new approach to education. He recognized the changes in how people communicate, learn, interact and apply that learning, leveraging the increasing electronic capabilities of the millennial generation. So Khan seized the moment and made the most of it. He took a leap of faith and leveraged his leadership abilities to help others learn more productively. He’s changing the game.

How are you changing the game around you? It typically begins with a paradigm shift, moving from acceptance that something in your environment must continue as it is, to challenging it to be different. This may be seen as disruptive to others, and such disruption normally causes a level of discomfort in those who are used to the status quo or have a vested interest in things remaining as-is. Disruption can be unconstructive, chaotic and threatening. But when you find a constructive approach to addressing a worthy cause, and with enough momentum and support, you can metaphorically move the car out of the rut and onto new higher ground.

So what are you passionate about, concerned about, interested in, desiring to be different? And what are you constructively doing about it? Do you have a vision for the future? Are you helping someone else accomplish their vision? Do you have faith in your ability to make a difference in the lives of others? Then you too can be a game changer.

Reference: One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education by Michael Noer. Forbes Magazine, November 2, 2012.

Solve a Problem

September 30, 2012

Priscilla Archangel

Capability

Solve A Problem

Kevin Plank recognized a problem. As a football player at the University of Maryland, he became increasingly focused on the fact that after they played, the cotton t-shirts worn by the players under their pads were constantly soaked with perspiration. Kevin felt that the weight of the shirts negatively impacted their performance on the field. Already an entrepreneurial hustler on campus, Kevin decided to find a way to develop a shirt that would draw moisture away from the body. He started with a synthetic fabric made from women’s undergarments, and a friend joined him in marketing their product to sports teams and retailers. His brashness, creativity and pure hustle paid off, and they were eventually able to sign well known endorsers. Today, his company, Under Armour has a full line of athletic clothes, undergarments and shoes for men and women. They went from their first big sale in 1996 to becoming a publicly traded company in 2005, and their 2012 second quarter apparel net revenues increased 23% to $253 million compared with $205 million in the same period of the prior year. (Click here to read the full story by Monte Burke in the September issue of ForbesLife.)

Plank’s solution to a problem became his key to success. Problems are all around us every day. The question is whether we recognize situations around us as “problems”, and what do we do about it. This requires attention to our surroundings and issues, and a willingness to own a role in developing a solution.

A Peanut and a Sweet Potato

George Washington Carver is a perfect example of this. According to Os Hillman in his book Change Agent: Engaging Your Passion To Be The One Who Makes A Difference,(p. 104) Carver lived in an era of pervasive racial discrimination when he encouraged southern farmers to plant peanuts and sweet potatoes because their land was depleted due to planting too many cotton crops. They initially criticized him for this suggestion, believing that the market wouldn’t support it, but nonetheless began to do so. Carver, a Christian from an early age, would get up in the morning and go out to the fields where he sought the wisdom of God on what to do with these crops. God obviously answered his prayer because he subsequently created three hundred products from the peanut, and one hundred from the sweet potato. This revitalized the economy in the south, and made him a friend and confidante to presidents and business leaders. Why? Because they recognized that he was a problem solver. He had the ability to recognize problems where others overlooked them. Then he was willing to own the problem and take on the challenge of addressing it. Finally he had the vision and creativity to develop and implement a solution.

Your Personal Problem

Unfortunately too many of us look past the problems surrounding us with the attitude that we have no ability to impact or address them. We feel powerless and incapable of coming up with a solution, and look to someone else to handle it. But there’s nothing special about Kevin Plank or George Washington Carver. They simply opened their minds to future possibilities, and didn’t let their circumstances limit them. Both had a vision to see a problem situation and identify a potential resolution for it. They didn’t blame others around them for these problems; they stepped up and took responsibility for the solutions. Individuals who demonstrate this skillset are valuable members of any team

Each of us has a problem or set of problems assigned to us from God that we are uniquely equipped to solve. God is exposing the problem to us, and drawing us to Him so that He can reveal the solution. Based on our instincts, interests and initiative we can be a change agent in our environment. Joseph demonstrated this capability in ancient Egypt when he interpreted the King’s dream of the coming seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. Then he provided a proposal on how to prepare for the famine. He was instantly appointed second in command in the kingdom. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have used their billions in assets to address global issues of hunger, poverty, education and health care. Every problem solver won’t reach the same number of people, but every problem needs to be addressed.

So what problems has God assigned to you? Be diligent in discovering them because solving them is your pathway to your purpose and your road to success.

Wise Leaders, Foolish Leaders

June 17, 2012

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

Wise Leaders…Foolish Leaders

Have you ever wished that you could give a colleague some wise feedback that would help him or her in their career, a project, or some aspect of their responsibilities? But you couldn’t because you recognized that they weren’t receptive to it, or they would have difficulty understanding it. You recognized that their perception or beliefs about what they were doing were so strong or deeply rooted, that it would be difficult for them to see any other point of view. You may have even recognized that this could develop into a serious professional derailer for the person. Maybe you carefully planned a moment in time to have the conversation, only for the person to rebuff your remarks and try to make YOU think that you were foolish.

As much as you wanted to help the other person, to help them see the folly of their ways, you knew that you had to wait until they WANTED to listen to you. You had to wait until they fell and got bruised and tried to figure out what happened and why….then maybe, just maybe you’ll be able to help them recognize how their own behavior or decisions contributed to their situation.

A rock with the word Wisdom engraved on it. Realistically, none of us are completely wise or completely foolish. There are simply areas in our lives where we exhibit more or less wisdom (sometime a lot more or a lot less). The goal is to increase the areas where wisdom shines through; to seek the counsel of other people who are wise; to be able to recognize the difference between wise and foolish behavior.

This is even more important for leaders, because their wise or foolish decisions impact not only themselves but others around them. A CEO who makes an irrational or foolish product decision can drive the company’s stock downward effecting investors and employees. A CFO who foolishly covers up material financial information similarly damages the corporate reputation and subjects the firm to negative sanctions. The greater your responsibility, the greater your need for wisdom. The greater your wisdom, the greater responsibility will come to you.

(more…)

The Power of “Co”

The Power of “Co”

The Accidental Entrepreneur

The Accidental Entrepreneur

You Dreamer!

You Dreamer!

Game Changer

Game Changer

Solve a Problem

Solve A Problem

Wise Leaders, Foolish Leaders

Wise Leaders…Foolish Leaders

Leadership Tips