Vision Driven: Lessons Learned from the Small Business C-Suite

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is with great appreciation and affection that I recognize and express my thanks to those individuals who provided their time, energy and wisdom to making this book a reality.

Glenna Garcia, for her sincere candor, her proficiency in guiding the book through production and for being there;

Leah Shepherd, for her expert editing, her crisp comments and her thoughtful advice;

Royce Holladay, for her creative brilliance, her solid grounding and her vast editorial know-how;

Cathy Perme, for her keen abilities, for bearing witness and her honest friendship;

Gail Champlin, for her exceptional capacity to give, her incisive ability to listen and her gift for grasping the big picture;

Kelly Walters-Kennedy, for her strength, her own far-reaching vision and for believing;

Dr Glenda Eoyang, for her genius, her unbounded passion and her steadfast commitment to asking questions;

The many small business and nonprofit professionals and colleagues who shared with me their own stories and lessons learned; and

The enormously talented and dedicated individuals it was my honor to work with side-by-side every day.

INTRODUCTION

The First Day on the Job

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

John Wooden

Within the space of two weeks I left my position of seven years working under contract for the Department of the Army; helped clean out and organize our house in Maryland which was being sold; found and rented a temporary apartment in Connecticut; packed an assortment of my personal and professional belongings; drove 280 miles to my rented apartment; and prepared to start a new job.

On a holiday Monday at noon, Roberta, my new assistant, met me at the office. Going over many housekeeping details, she handed me a set of keys and took me on a brief tour of the facilities. While she and I walked around the floor, her husband, Keith, and my husband, Stephen, were left to chat. When she and I returned and they left, I asked Stephen what the two of them had talked about. Nothing, he said. He was afraid to say the wrong thing. After all, you’re the new boss. You hold their future in your hands.

I thought about that for a long time. Me? Of course I was aware of my responsibility and authority. Upon hiring, my mandate from the board of directors was to (re)position the company for the future as the current CEO was stepping down.

I knew I’d have to make more difficult decisions than easy ones, plan and carry out more complex tasks than simple ones and implement significant change in an environment that was deeply rooted in the past. I was also prepared at any moment to be held accountable for everything. Well, it goes with the territory.

However, the truth was that he was only half right. We each held the others’ future in our hands. Throughout my entire tenure at that organization I never forgot that. It was not them or me, though there were times when it seemed like it. It was us. Lesson No. 1.

* * * * *

The purpose of this book is to offer a kaleidoscope of snapshots into the everyday workings of leading and managing small organizations. This book is not simply about one particular assignment or environment, but the learning, development and growth that emerge from small-business management experiences, particularly in the nonprofit sector. Every organization is different. Yet the skills, talents and wisdom that are necessary for success are common to all enterprises.

Being a CEO – or even upper-level officer or manager – is often a larger-than-life position and filled with questions that aren’t answered in an MBA education. Every challenge has multiple solutions, each of which can be right and wrong in a given situation. Therefore it is the questions and context we must pay attention to, and more often than not, that is where our learning comes from.

Let me assure you that your craziness in the job is under-stood; there are others out there who share your angst. For example, I recall during the first months of my tenure as CEO I harbored a nagging suspicion that at any moment the CEO-police would come crashing into my office, pointing at me in indignation and shouting, Out Imposter! I took it upon myself to become quite knowledgeable about the imposter syndrome and learned that (1) I was not alone; (2) this phenomenon is thought to be more common among women; (3) it seems to affect individuals who are actually successful rather than those who are not; and (4) it passes. This turned out to be another lesson learned.

In this book I offer some fundamental insights about your greatest and most common challenges. This is served as discerning food for thought based upon my experiences and the research and practice of others. You can use them today or tomorrow to address your persistent dilemmas.

I have deliberately chosen the format of vignettes. Each brief self-contained narrative offers a situation that focuses on the moment at hand. Opportunities for learning often sneak up on us or come out of the simplest exchanges of words or deeds. They are all pieces of the whole and as the picture emerges so, too, do patterns and the chance to act.

We have all taken advantage of teachable moments. By stopping and examining an event in the moment, we create our own lessons learned. In addition, each of these stories ends with a question. They are triggers for your own ideas, adding a reflective as well as informative activity for consideration. Sometimes in the most complex environments things are often less complicated than they seem. That is where common sense and clear thinking are more important than lots of models and theories.

The book is divided into three parts.

Part One is The Vision.

Anyone who steps into a leadership role or stands at the helm of an organization, particularly when there has been a long and rich history before you appeared on the scene, understands that you are essentially taking on three distinct entities. The first is the organization of today: doing business as usual, maintaining customers, contracts, obligations, commitments and quality.

The second is the organization of tomorrow: that which will emerge based on your vision, goals, efforts and ideas. That organization will successfully meet the challenges and opportunities of the shifting business landscape. It is what you aspire to. Finally, the third is the organization that is in transition, moving from the here and now into the future. This encompasses change, growth, development and integrity of mission and commitment to your constituents and stakeholders. Oh, yes, and resistance, too.

Your Vision is the basis of all that you do. It creates a foundation, sets the stage and informs others about who you are and the purpose and meaning that you bring to and share with your organization. Jonathan Swift said, Vision is the art of seeing the invisible. This is at one and the same time a mystery and it is crystal clear. It is what you carry around with you wherever you are, whatever you do, what you see fixed on the horizon.

Part Two is Lessons Learned.

The day-to-day management and operations of the organization provide a dynamic canvas whereby the common trials and triumphs of the workplace and its members can be viewed and assessed. From the daily course of doing business, we can take the expected, unexpected, intended and unintended consequences of our actions and create a body of knowledge known as lessons learned.

Perhaps more familiar in government and military environments, the notion of lessons learned speaks to that knowledge that comes from the implementation and evaluation of a program, project or process. This knowledge is gained empirically rather than by expertise. It identifies and highlights the incremental, innovative and measurable improvements for the organization. Taking advantage of lessons learned supports the replication of successful outcomes while eliminating unsuccessful outcomes.

In selecting the accounts for Part Two, I concentrated on significance, relevance, the relationships involved and the connection of the circumstances to the whole system. Lessons learned are not only a critical piece of an organizational culture that is committed to change. The true value and eventual payoff come in transforming lessons learned into lessons applied.

Part Three is The Big Picture.

When I was a girl in school we would hear much about our permanent records. Nerdy kids like me acted with great care and concern because we knew that any mishap or misstep would be placed in our permanent records – forever a blot upon our fair names and fine characters. It was only with time, experience and a bit of wisdom that I recognized that the random misadventures of children did not speak to the sum total of who and what we are. The whole of each of us and all that we do are greater than the sum of our parts. We can choose to fixate on each wrinkle that presents itself or open our mind’s eye to the abundant and broad cloth of experience and wonder that make up the entirety of our world.

So, too, it is in our work. We each stand within our own landscapes. It is through an awareness, examination and analysis of the panorama of behaviors, trends and patterns around us that we can clearly view our organizations, their activities and processes. It is a shift within our heads.

The big picture may represent a particular circumstance or issue or the entire enterprise; it may also include the individual, the organization or the entire community. More importantly, it allows us to see ourselves from a systemic stance, in relation to others and our environment. Context matters and this is where we move from our feet planted firmly on the ground to a vantage point of 25,000 feet in the air.

By the way, I think all of our permanent records are now available on the Internet.

Finally, if we really think about it, we recognize that everywhere we turn we are amidst complex systems. These systems, such as corporations, communities, families, Girl Scout troops and alumni associations, have characteristics that influence the whole and whose parts are connected and interdependent. Since our systems are open, they are subject to outside influences such as time, space, market crises, political world events and Mother Nature. As such, the system and those who are part of it – us! – must in our own individual and collective ways respond to our environments.

To say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is only the beginning of understanding. For example, a new work group comes together on a special project. There are introductions, shaking hands and getting-to-know-you conversations. These are soon replaced with agendas, schedules and brainstorms. Order evolves, as does a plan, assignments and project timeline. Through organization of processes and procedures – however that happens – tasks are accomplished, deadlines are met, deliverables are completed and a new product is launched. Successful outcomes all around and yet beyond the individual and the whole is the greater whole: interdependencies are identified and influenced; alliances are developed; bonds are created; relationships are recognized and appreciated; new patterns are formed. From all of this motion and commotion, something fresh and sound, vibrant and important, has emerged.

When we stand in this new and different space, with a broader point of view, we can begin to grasp all that is in front of us. Our means are interpretation, implication and then application. That is when we can understand the influence of the environment and those around us; set and guide the behavior of others; and know what is important. By identifying the patterns that make up our world, we can influence and inform the paths to innovation, collaboration and participation.

And we can lead.

PART I - The Vision

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1

Understanding Your Organization

Understand the culture to understand the organization.

Edgar Schein

We all live and work in a complex world made up of complex systems. Everyday we and those around us choose to act in certain ways, and our behavior creates recognizable patterns. These patterns – emerging from the actions, connections and relationships that have meaning across space and time – create culture.

In defining culture, we say that it is the personality of a community, organization or group. It is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and artifacts of its members and their behaviors. At times culture may be difficult to express, but everyone knows it when they see it and sense it. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at how the furniture is arranged, what folks brag about, how people are dressed and the rituals that are maintained.

Culture is learned and it provides a reinforcing template shaping what we do and how we think. With this in mind, we have a responsibility to examine and question these templates, keeping an eye out for three potential traps. These are: "isms," Social Construction and Cultural Programming. All can color our assumptions and alter our perceptions.

We look around and see isms wherever we go. They are doctrine, ideology or theories that categorize individuals and groups. Isms are based upon human qualities that are often different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong; they are, however, present in others. Isms such as racism, ageism or any otherism are sustained by inference, belief, bias, generalizations, habit, ignorance, simplification, stereotypes and tradition. Isms often create particular, unrealistic or negative expectations. For example, when Carol went car shopping, her brother, Teddy, tagged along. The salesman was told Carol was the buyer, but kept addressing himself to Teddy, even to the point of asking, What color car is she looking for?

Social construction creates a standard or defines a principle believed to be fact that has been developed or constructed through social practice. This truth appears to be natural, or the way things are, but can, in fact, be based simply upon history, repetition or habit. For example, a woman is not (educated, intelligent, strong, agile, tough) enough to be a (commander, cardiac surgeon, electrician, financial analyst, CEO).

Finally, there is cultural programming. Because of what we know, either implicitly or explicitly, we do not just observe a behavior, event or situation; we also attach meaning to it and then act based upon that meaning. Our interpretation of an action or interaction therefore includes an evaluative or judgmental component. The danger lies in the potential for misinterpretation. For example, you are from a different part of the country than I. The first time we meet, I make a rash of judgments about you based exclusively on where you were born and your accent.

Notwithstanding these hazards, there is good news here. Complex