Reality-Based Leadership

Reality-Based Leadership: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace and Turn Excuses Into Results

By: Cy Wakeman

ISBN: 978-0-470-61350-4

Publisher: Jossey Bass

This review was first published on CSRwire.com on March 8, 2012


Book Description

Recent polls show that 71 percent of workers think about quitting their jobs every day. That number would be shocking -- if people actually were quitting. Worse, they go to work, punching time clocks and collecting paychecks, while completely checked out emotionally.In Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances-one who deals with the facts, clarifying roles, giving clear and direct feedback, and insisting that everyone do the same, without drama or defensiveness. Filled with dynamic examples, innovative tools, and diagnostic tests, this book shows you how to become a Reality-Based Leader, revealing how to:

• Uncover destructive thought patterns with yourself and others.
• Diffuse drama and lead the person in front of you.
• Stop managing and start leading, empowering others to focus on facts and think for themselves.

Commentary

Leadership accountability is one of the most underplayed themes in sustainability today. This shows up when heads of companies receive massive bonuses that are not directly tied to corporate performance. It shows up in the way employee performance is evaluated – using inputs (what people do) rather than outcomes (what results they deliver). It shows up in the fact that 31 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs (and 17 percent are actively disengaged). It shows up in the fact that "71 percent of workers think about quitting their jobs every day." It shows up in the fact that far too many underperforming people remain far too long in organizations in which they are not positively contributing (and in some cases, they are actually causing damage).

Sustainable Reality-Based Leadership

Wakeman’s book was, perhaps, not written for the sustainability bookshelves. It was written for the Business Leadership, Management and Human Resources sections of business literature. However, its relevance for sustainability is compelling. Business sustainability requires leaders who deliver sustainable results through people. A business cannot be sustainable when only a third of the workforce is engaged or two thirds are thinking about how to get out. Here are some of the issues Wakeman lists as holding organizations back through lack of effective leadership feedback:

• Tenured employees whose skills are not current – leaders must raise the bar for performance and decide who makes the grade and who doesn’t.
• Employees at the top of their pay scale who no longer deliver top value – this happens when "leaders over-reward and under-coach employees over the course of their careers".
• Righteous top performers – "great employees whose performance is compromised by their righteousness and judgment of others."

Stop Managing, Start Leading

Effectively addressing these issues requires executives to stop managing and start leading. First of all, Wakeman writes, they have to "stop arguing with reality." This means relating to the facts of different situations at work, rather than the stories we tell ourselves or making judgments. An example might be when a coworker receives a promotion – you tell yourself that it's not fair, you should have received the promotion, you work harder than the coworker, you deserve it etc. This line of thought is judgmental and reflects "entitlement" thinking.

Instead, if "you embraced reality, you would note that a promotion occurred and do the appropriate thing in such a situation: congratulate your coworker, offer to help and resolve to learn how to deliver what the company values. You'd be high on professionalism, low on drama and investing in better relationships and mutual support in the future…You are arguing with reality whenever you judge your situation in terms of right or wrong instead of fearlessly confronting what is."

Reduce the Drama

By the same token, instead of trying to keep employees happy, leaders should focus on helping them understand reality, while empowering them to build their capabilities to deal with all situations that arise. If you want to evaluate the behavior of the people you lead, you can take Wakeman's Freak-Out Factor test, which will show you how your organization or team measures up in terms of level of drama in the workplace.

"Empowerment without Accountability is Chaos"

Restoring sanity to the workplace is about the adoption of leadership behaviors that drive accountability. The problem with employee engagement surveys, writes Cy Wakeman, is that they don't measure accountability. They are simply "invitations for people to critique their reality". All you end up with is a list of "what would need to change in order for your staff to grace you with their performance". However, one can never create a perfect working environment which meets everybody's aspirations. Engagement surveys are setting leadership up for failure. Instead, Cy Wakeman recommends two questions for employees:

1. What is the one thing you need to be more productive in your work?
2. What are the three things you are willing to do to get it?

Such an approach eliminates the "victim factor" and builds accountability, while enabling leaders to understand what they need to do to truly empower their teams.

Work with the Willing

In leadership, playing favorites is "fair game," Wakeman observes. "Too many leaders I work with have surrendered to the idea of mediocrity in order to never, ever offend anyone. Some leaders are so concerned with treating everyone the same that they are hesitant to give honest feedback". Leaders should spend most of their time coaching the employees who are delivering the best results. In reality, leaders spend "on average 80 extra hours per year thinking about and working with a single person who's in a state of chronic resistance". These people won't change and worse, the best employees will be dragged down by a negative office culture. The idea is to "compensate value, not effort" and give your focus to the employees who deliver. " You will have problem employees for as long as you continue to hire them and put up with them".

Everybody's Opinion Counts. Not.

Wakeman says your workplace is not a democracy. Ninety percent of the people in any organization at any given time are not key decision makers. Leaders need to set clear expectations and goals and focus the energy of their teams on working towards the desired results, rather than wasting hours complaining about why certain decisions are made. Offering constructive feedback is positive. Fighting against decisions that are not yours or your team's to make is futile.

Reality–Based Leadership contains practical, mindset-changing and entertaining advice, anecdotes, tools, and recommendations that anyone who leads people in organizations should read. Just as sustainability relies upon a realistic assessment of business impacts on people, society and the environment and the formulation of appropriate strategies to improve these impacts, so leaders must confront the realities of how they behave in organizations, how accountable they are and how they leverage reality-based tools to ensure their sustainable contribution.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen   on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Dilemmas in Responsible Investment

Dilemmas in Responsible Investment

By: Celine Louche and Stephen Lyndberg

ISBN: 978-1-906093-51-8

Publisher: Greenleaf Publishing

This review first appeared on CSRwire.com on 21st December 2011

Book Description

Dilemmas in Responsible Investment examines the problems responsible investment (RI) practitioners face daily. It emphasises the importance of asking the right questions as well as getting the right answers; and the importance of process as well as product. The authors pay attention to the diversity of opinion and variety of approaches available. They also raise fundamental questions about the very purpose of investment and the responsibilities of investors, both economic and societal.

Although dilemmas in RI are not always easily resolved, Louche and Lydenberg believe that they are also a source of valuable and necessary debate about the appropriate role of corporations in society and the ability of the financial markets to appropriately serve the societies in which they operate. Such dilemmas provide a valuable framework for public debate and can encourage the emergence of innovative answers and approaches.

Commentary

Social Responsible Investment sounds easy enough.

Step 1: Negative screening, positive screening, decide and place your cash where it will do what you want it to do.

Step 2: Review the financials with set values in mind and pick your portfolio.

Step 3: Against sin stocks, for the environment, what could be simpler?

When you read Dilemmas in Responsible Investment, you realize that it isn’t as simple as it sounds. While written for responsible investment practitioners, the book has much to teach anyone with an interest in how money makes the sustainable world go round.

Dilemma 1: Conventional Money Manager & Responsible Investment

You are a conventional money manager and have become interested in the responsible investment market. You advertise your responsible investment services and four different types of potential clients approach you.

A single working mother, passionate about sustainability issues with a modest sum to invest; a wealthy investor, who is toying with the idea of directing his investments towards a more environmentally friendly portfolio; a CFO for a small church with an endowment to invest and a focus on fairness and societal justice; and the head of the board of trustees for a large pension fund, pressured by retirees not to invest in companies that manufacture landminess.

How do you prepare for these meetings? You can either start with one general presentation for all four clients or tailor your response to each one's specific needs right? Or you can target your presentations with a focus on ethical issues or sustainability issues, highlighting business risk/opportunity elements and, therefore, potential consequences for your clients' return on investment.

Dilemma One is a taster for the series of progressively more specific and detailed dilemmas or case studies (12 in total), which teach us the detailed considerations that come in to play when responsible investment is the subject. This first dilemma shows how each potential responsible investor comes with certain expectations, a greater or limited understanding of responsible investment options and the need for investment practitioners to develop customized investment products to accommodate different needs.

Dilemma One may not sound that complicated, however, so let’s consider some other dilemmas that come up:

1. A client has read about a manufacturer of electronic games in China which has abusive labor conditions, and wants you to sell the stock. However, the company in question denies the allegations and the facts are not altogether clear. Sell, buy time to investigate or tell your client not to believe everything he reads?

2. Ten years ago, you sold a large successful company that was criticized for poor labor conditions, poor environmental record, discrimination in the workplace and more. In the two years, the company has apparently turned things around and is now talking CSR. Do you continue to stay away or recommend your clients to invest?

3. You want to develop a Responsible Investment product that will have global appeal. However, responsible investment standards are different in several countries and many have conflicting demands or standards. How do you balance local values and practices in a single new investment product?

4. Your client, an environmental foundation, wants you to hold back on any investments, which include use of nanotechnology. She fears that use of nanotechnology can be potentially harmful with unpredictable consequences for human health and the environment. Scientists are divided on the issue – there is no clear cut case against nanotechnology. Do you immediately sell all nanotechnology-related stocks or do you try to persuade your client that it is premature to exit?

This is but a small selection of the interesting questions posed in the field of responsible investment.

In the book, Dilemmas in Responsible Investment, Louche and Lyndenberg dissect these issues from multiple angles and offer possibilities for action and the implications of each. A fascinating read, like I said before, for anyone even remotely interested in understanding the connections between sustainability, ethics, financial services and our global economy.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success

The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success


By Carol Sanford

Published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
ISBN: 978-0-470-64868-1

This review was first published on CSRwire.com on 19th April 2011.




Description

The Responsible Business offers a new and strategic approach to doing business that holistically integrates responsibility into all aspects of an organization, allowing for returns at every level, business and social. This book goes beyond the often well intentioned but limited attempts at sustainability to present a framework that allows organizations to bring responsibility into everything they do and re-imagine success. From innovation, product development, and production processes to business management, strategic planning, and shareholder development, the author shows how being a Responsible Business is a practical skill that can be applied day-to-day at every level of the business.

 

Commentary

When Carol Sanford speaks, it's well worth listening. In her first book, The Responsible Business, Carol defines what a responsible business is ("a co-creative partner ensuring the vitality and health of all the communities to which it belongs") and what it is not ("a set of metrics to be tracked or behaviors to be modified"). Responsibility is "central to both the purpose and the prosperity of a business and must be pervasive in its practices." Carol goes on to reinforce the concept of responsible business with case studies from her vast experience of consulting to Fortune 500 and other companies, with stories from Herban Feast, Kingsford Charcoal (now part of the Clorox Company), Colgate, Seventh Generation (in the Jeffrey Hollender heyday) and E.I. Du Pont, before summarizing the five recurring themes that turn companies into responsible businesses: Reality - connecting to the real lives of stakeholders; Systemic Effects - as the only measures of success; Systemic Wholes - to combat fragmentation and promote integration; Self-Direction - the redesign of work to "evoke self-directed people doing self-directed work that is self-evaluated within the context of a business strategy" and Capability Development - building critical thinking skills for internal and external stakeholders.

By this time we have come to understand Carol's approach. It is not one where corporate responsibility is a project to be led by a single person or a group. It is a fundamental redesign of the way a business is led, structured, performs and interacts holistically with stakeholders. This is the point at which we meet the Pentad.

The Pentad, the geometrical framework for responsible business, is Carol's own stakeholder model which sees five core stakeholder groups as most significant to overall business success: (1) customers, (2) co-creators (everyone who is involved in creating the product or service for the customer which includes employees, contractors, vendors and raw material suppliers, (3) Earth, (4) communities and (5) investors. This is not light-years removed from the stakeholder models that have contributed to sustainability thinking in recent years, but the uniqueness of Carol Sanford's model is threefold. First, the concept of co-creators as one indivisible group is new, based on the view that employees and suppliers work together toward one shared goal - serving the customer. This approach is arguably much more suited to today's business, where supply chains are often outsourced, than models which separate employees from the rest of the supply chain. Thinking in terms of a supply chain, maintains Carol, "actually destroys understanding of the co-creative process" because the upstream contributors often get overlooked or undervalued. The second unique aspect of the Pentad model is that it has a defined, and not open-ended, number of stakeholders into which everyone connected with the business in whatever way can find a voice. The third aspect of the model is the way it is used. The stakeholder impacts of any decisions are discovered by evaluating each group's interest in turn, and in the Pentad-prescribed order. In this way, stakeholder understanding follows a logical flow, with the most important impacts finding their place in the right order of things, in a way which can enable a company to take the appropriate action, after all impacts have been assessed as part of an indivisible whole and without giving precedence to any stakeholder group. This integrated approach provides the bedrock for the responsible business as part of the universal ecosystem which aspires to help stakeholders live as "responsible and creative contributors to their communities." There is clear merit in this thinking. Stakeholder understanding and engagement is one of the most under-developed aspects of the sustainability movement today. Having an informal chat with a supplier at a conference, or conducting an annual employee satisfaction survey is not stakeholder engagement and it is not a dialog about sustainability. Deep stakeholder understanding comes from discussing the tough issues in a structured way and truly listening to all points of view.

The Responsible Business continues with multiple stories from companies that have applied the Pentad model and the successes they achieved. Taking us through a tour of how the brain works in order to unlock creativity and "conscious choice," Carol builds her case competently and with the wisdom of a business veteran. Much air-time is devoted to the way organizations should be structured to do work of the future and the inappropriateness of many current structures for responsible business. Hierarchies, for example, should not govern decision-making; work teams should be autonomous and self-organizing and learning should be on the job. Ultimately, providing a map of how to become a responsible business and detailing the steps to take, this book forms a sound guide to achieving transformational value.

In The Responsible Business you can read about "urban acupuncture" and the turnaround of a Brazilian city Curitiba, the way Google changed the game on bandwidth auctions, how Procter and Gamble applied their guiding principles in their plant in Lima and how Seventh Generation and Whole Foods worked together in "co-creation" to provide freedom of choice for customers. And much more.

The Responsible Business is an intensive read with a worthy central message, substantiated by years of practical experience and deep insights. For anyone who has not yet subscribed to this approach, the Pentad model may be just what you need.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en

Macrowikinomics

Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World 
By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Publisher: The Penguin Group
ISBN 978-0-670-06516-5

This review was first published on CSRwire.com on 4th January 2011

Description

A follow-up to Wikinomics, the best-selling management book of 2007, Macrowikinomics offers nothing less than a game plan for all of us to fix a broken world.

Drawing on an entirely new set of original research conducted with countless collaborators in fields such as healthcare, science, education, energy, government and media, Macrowikinomics tells the stories of some of the world's most dynamic innovators, from a global citizen’s movement working to reverse the tide of disruptive climate change to for-profit startups that are turning industries ranging from music to transportation on their heads.

The authors argue that collaborative innovation is not only transforming our economy, but all of society and its many institutions. Now the onus is now on each of us to lead the transformation in our households, communities and workplaces. After all, the potential for new models of collaboration does not end with the production of software, media, entertainment and culture. Why not open source government, education, science, the production of energy and even health care?

As this book shows, these are not idle fantasies, but real opportunities the new world of wikinomics makes possible.

Commentary

Macrowikinomics is an essential education for everyone on the planet. Its scope, breadth and overall coverage of developments in our interconnected society provide insights substantially backed up by examples of an emerging new reality that opens our minds to incredible possibilities of collaboration we had never dreamed possible. This book is a life-changer. After reading Macrowikinomics, you will not think in the same way.

An oft-quoted saying by Albert Einstein, "problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them," is apt for this book. Authors Dan Tapscott and Andrew D. Williams do a splendid job, continually astounding the reader with their depth of their research, scope of material covered and the innovative connections they describe, effectively demonstrating that a new way of thinking can truly exist and lead to new ways of behaving as a society, as governments, as businesses and as concerned and responsible individuals.

Wikinomics, published by the authors in 2007, set the scene for peer collaboration and cyberspace-connected citizenship, in itself an illuminative provocation to a different kind of action. Macrowikinomics goes further by suggesting that the Wikinomics way, based on five key principles (collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence) "for achieving a world that is secure, prosperous, just and sustainable," is a compelling imperative, and not merely a nice option for techno-geeks. Macrowikinomics, then, is a "way to rethink and rebuild all of the old approaches and institutions that are failing," or as per the book's subtitle, a way to "reboot business and the world." The collaborative age is here, say the authors, and those who do not get on board risk being "ever more isolated."

In the book, we learn about the application of macrowikinomics principles in the financial services industry, in addressing climate change, remodeling higher education, reinventing the media and entertainment industries and in creating value at government level. The first of these explorations looks at "opening up the financial services industry" in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, and the "fresh and radical thinking" that is required to make financial modeling more realistic and more equitable. This involves doing away with "toxic assets" by moving to open, collaborative peer-reviewed valuation of financial products such as that made possible by the OMC platform, which enables improved financial valuations to be created collaboratively by academics, industry experts, analysts and financial professionals rather than relying on the traditional behind-closed-doors approach of the financial sector.

Equally, the principles of open crowd-sourcing can apply to Venture Capital, as demonstrated by the Vencorps initiative, which uses the crowd to determine levels of funding to new initiatives - which had might not made the VC radar using traditional methods. This contributes to growth and new economic possibilities for all.

Finally in this chapter, peer-to-peer banking is also discussed, with Zopa (whose advertizing states: "where real people sidestep the banks, and everybody wins, except the fat cats"). Prosper, Smava and Qifang (a way to give students in China an equal opportunity to fund their education), all presented as social banking models which create a new meritocracy in the virtual economy, opening up routes to financial opportunities for many who cannot find equitable solutions in the traditional banking industry.

In what other ways can Macrowikinomics move us forward as a global society? Enter the chapter that deals with climate change, and the way mass collaboration can save the planet. Tapscott and Williams talk about the "erroneous assumption underlying conventional wisdom… that politicians and other powerful interests can manage climate change with new regulations issued from a patchwork of national capitals around the world," urging us to push for an approach that requires less central control and more self-organized mass collaboration.

Already today, there is a new generation of energy prosumers that are entirely off-grid. Companies such as Nike and Best Buy are using a GreenXchange database to collaborate for clean innovation. The authors mention Google lobbying for open standards, Apple's iPhone and the apps explosion, Zipcar and other businesses that are building a new model of reindustrialization. Also of interest is the prowess of the Danish market's use of renewable energy in part by encouraging massive local ownership of wind turbines, made possible by collaborative networked intelligence and the exploitation of digital possibilities.

However, addressing climate change alone is not enough to make our society entirely sustainable. Security, social justice, an inclusive global economic agenda are all aspects of sustainability, which solutions to climate change won't address. The macrowikinomics approach supports advances in these areas too, not least by providing collaborative platforms for governments, supporting social innovation, reducing bureaucracy and inviting citizen influence - such as in the German city of Hamburg where participatory budgeting exercises using an online budget app enable the submission of "citizen budgets" for discussion in local parliament.

Business is part of a holistic whole and cannot be seen as separate from the global sustainability agenda. As such, the opportunity for businesses to exploit the new digital age becomes a way to manage risk and even a matter of survival. This is where macrowikinomics meets corporate social responsibility and sustainability, as the stakeholders of every business are part of a networked economy in which all can and should be encouraged to collaborate, providing new ways of addressing global issues for the benefit of all.

The business applications in this new, networked world may be daunting but nonetheless preferable to the alternative which is more of now. The authors do a good job in presenting and countering the arguments opposing networked intelligence (Is online collaboration killing privacy? Is social networking ruining true relationships and destroying communities? Etc.) and lead us to the conclusion that we have no choice but to "reboot business and the world using wikinomics principles as our guide."

Ultimately, macroeconomics is about ethics, human rights, social justice, stakeholder engagement, innovative responsible business practices and a new kind of corporate role in society. If this is not the heart of the corporate sustainability agenda, then it's hard to know what is.

It's convincing. It's scary. It's exciting. Macrowikinomics is a masterpiece of a book that I strongly recommend to all who think "wiki" is just about collaborating to produce an online encyclopedia. I also recommend it to all those who would welcome hundreds of examples and ideas to inspire them in becoming a part of the new networked world.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainabilty Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my website www.b-yond.biz/en