Craig Lemasters's Blog

Book Review: Pound On!

Pound On: From the Glass Slipper to the Glass Ceiling by Robin Rotenberg

I love my job, because when you’re in the business of connecting smart people, you inevitably get to connect with some yourself. It’s thanks to one of these timely introductions that I got to meet fellow author Robin Rotenberg. Robin is a sharp communicator and advocate who has demonstrated leadership in education, legal, and corporate careers. We share a passion for helping the leaders who come behind us. For Robin specifically, that means other trailblazing women.

Her book, Pound on: From the Glass Slipper to the Glass Ceiling, contains first-person essays from inspirational “Alpha Women” about their leadership journeys. In order to share some highlights from this book with you, I asked my Chief Operating Officer, Megan Kogan, to give it a read. Here’s some of Megan’s key takeaways:

Common challenges

Robin’s Alpha framework reveals the commonalities within these wonderfully diverse stories. It is heartening to read that despite some invisible barriers to female leadership, many of these women feel their hard work paid off. None of them suggest compromising who you are in order to fit a predetermined definition of success. And while they might not have had strong female mentors, they are all looking to support the rising leaders behind them. Robin summarizes this input into several Alpha Rules. Below are the ones that resonated with me the most:

Speak up for yourself and others
Take on meaningful work, whatever that means to you
Earn your own money
Demand and give respect
Give back with gratitude

The beauty is that there are so many ways to live out these rules in practice; in fact, the last rule in the list is fittingly described as, “Make your own rules.” Many young women can benefit from these lessons as they embark on an independent, professional life. Additionally, Robin describes ways to pursue “alpha-ness” at every stage in a career. There are no prerequisites to thinking and acting like a leader.

Your unique value

One piece of advice that particularly stood out to me was from Irene Britt. When she finished business school, she had lots of “shiny” job offers, but ended up accepting one of the less shiny ones. It’s one of the best decisions she ever made. Oftentimes, the “dull” things end up being the most interesting; they’re puzzles that need to be solved and can lead to new opportunities. This was a great reminder that whenever you decide to make a pivot – whether it’s joining a new company, taking on a new role, initiating a new project, etc. – don’t get distracted by flashy company names and titles. Look for roles where you’ll learn the most and be able to make the greatest impact.

All-in-all, Pound On! is an engaging read with applicable lessons for anyone, but especially professional women. Robin expertly ties personal stories to larger social movements to show women an achievable path to Alpha Womanhood.

Wisdom at a Glance

Female leaders can be kind and tough, supportive and bold, and demand respect at every level of their professional journey. Pound On! helps us learn from the women who went before us to better support the women coming after us.

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Coaching for Potential

I recently sat down with Rory Rowland to talk about Unstuck for the Coaching for Potential podcast. I love conversations like these. Of course I’m super passionate about sharing my belief in wisdom-based learning. But I also love how everyone brings their own experiences to the simple framework of stuck-unstuck. Their stories deepen my understanding of my own topic.

To that end, I wanted to pull out a couple of stories from my conversation with Rory and highlight them here.

The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing

This is a well known piece of Socrates’ philosophy that Rory connected to a part of his own history. Rory became CEO of a struggling organization fresh out of his MBA. The exact kind of moment I think would find leaders curled up in a corner of their new office. Against all conventional wisdom, Rory walked into his first meeting with the board of directors with total candor and said: “you know that I know that you know that I know nothing.” His only proposal was that he and the board work together to figure out how to best help the business. Turned out that was the right choice, but what a terrifying prospect! This is Humility 101.

As leaders, how can we follow Rory’s example and move from such an unsure place to a place of confidence? Identify people where you can let down the facade and admit what you don’t know. It might not always be the whole board of directors! But perhaps you have some willing leaders on your team or a great coach you can turn to. When you make space for that kind of conversation, you should very quickly be able to identify 2-3 gaps in your knowledge and experience which could help you move the needle.

Build a team that can (and will) replace you

Rory brought up another great illustration of humility from history. As he noted, the plan President Truman implemented to aide Europe after WWII was not named for himself but for Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Marshall was and is an extraordinarily well respected military leader. In fact, many advised Truman not to pick him for Secretary of State because popular opinion felt he would be a better president that Truman.  As Rory tells it, Truman replied that was precisely why he wanted him.

I love this story too because it reflects some of my own experience. I left public company life when I could look at my team and know that there were a few of them who would be better at the job than I was. And I think that should be the ultimate goal of any leader. Build a group that is not only talented, but perhaps one day better able to run the place than you can.

Wisdom at a Glance

Since the podcast focus is for executive coaches, I’ll leave the coaching audience with this advice: ask questions that drive at what your clients don’t know to help them get to that intersection of humility and wisdom. They are often the person best equipped to help you assess their needs.

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Book Review: Getting Grit

Getting Grit:The Evidence-Based Approach to Cultivating Passion, Perseverance and Purpose by Caroline Miller

Caroline Miller uses her book Getting Grit to deepen her thinking as an executive coach and motivational speaker. In her work with CEOs, professional athletes, and public individuals, Miller found a common group of characteristics determinant to their success. Taken together, passion, perseverance, and the ability to set long-term goals make up grit: an extremely important asset that drives successful individuals to achieve their goals. Expanding on previous research and her own years in the Positive Psychology field, Miller discovered that there are different types of grit, both positive and negative.

Authentic Grit

Miller describes authentic grit as the most efficient type to cultivate in order to generate success. A person that has authentic grit often has an altruistic attitude with a purpose to “inspire others to flourish emotionally, become better people, take positive risks, and live their best lives.” Nobody can build a victorious life or career by themselves. Nowadays, our own professional/personal growth is linked to our willingness to contribute to the growth of others. Sharing knowledge in a work environment is not only about passing on information, but also making room for exchange and mutual growth.

Grit Gone Bad

On the other hand, the author describes three different varieties of grit that opposes the core principals of being authentic. She calls these  faux, stubborn, and selfie grit. Often, professionals from all different areas see their passion, perseverance, and ability to set long-term goals waylaid by the pursuit of fame, money, and power. The desire to acquire these things drives individuals to take shortcuts and even fake accomplishments in order to obtain public admiration.

Besides defining a broad variety of positive and negative types of grit, Miller’s book guides its readers to identify and develop their own positive gritty traits. The author shares a diversity of tools that have been applied in multiple coaching sessions with CEOs, professional athletes and public figures. Getting Grit is a useful asset for everyone that is willing grow personally and professionally through cultivating authentic grit. Miller defends the idea that everyone is able to not only develop but also modify their grit throughout their lifetimes. With patience, reflection, and concentration, any reader will be able to move through the chapters and make significant changes to their grit.

Wisdom at a Glance

Getting Grit not only provides the tools for building resilience but also counters some of the negative myths about grit. Most significantly that being gritty doesn’t mean going it alone, or succeeding at the expense of others.

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Where Are All the Agile Leaders?

Our business environment has suddenly shifted, and we have no idea when things will feel normal again or what that may look like. In response, I’m seeing a resurgence of talk about “agile leadership”. It even made the cover of this month’s Harvard Business Review! So what are we really talking about when we talk about agile leadership?

I remember the first wave of buzz around agile leadership. It started trending around the same time many of us were confronted with the idea of digital transformation. We were promised a whole new generation of executives with the agility to navigate this change. But as digital transformation moved through the hype cycle, talk about agile leaders died off. And as I looked around, I didn’t really see a new breed of uniquely capable executives. Sure, we got better about digital. But most leaders I know are still challenged by rapid change. We still have moments of doubt. We can still be surprised by circumstances and feel ill equipped to meet them.

So where are all the agile leaders?

To answer that question you first have to answer: “What do agile leaders look like?” While a recent Forbes article names some important traits, I think an agile leader is simply an agile learner who is empowered to act on what they learn.

To be an agile learner requires a few key things: humility, curiosity, and collaboration. I’ve written before about why I consider humility such an important leadership trait, but the main reason is because humble leaders are unafraid to ask for help. They can step back from a challenge and identify their weaknesses. This is the same process that allows us to learn. To evaluate our current body of knowledge and its limits, and then seek new resources that can help overcome those deficits.

Humility is naturally paired with curiosity. If you can acknowledge where you have gaps, I would hope you’re also interested in filling them! The curiosity of an agile learner drives them beyond what they need to know in the moment. It keeps them learning, partially out of a desire to avoid feeling stuck again but also because the pursuit of learning makes them feel whole. Because there is joy in the discovery and application of new knowledge.

Finally, nothing is more essential to continuous learning and improvement than a willingness to collaborate. In fact, collaboration is enshrined in the original agile software development manifesto that continues to fuel the agile leadership movement. In the case of the agile software developers, that culture of collaboration was extended beyond the developer community to encompass customers, the users of the software they were producing. Similarly, agile learners and leaders must open wide avenues of two-way communication between themselves and external sources of wisdom.

W=KxE

And with that, I’ve really brought this discussion of agility back to my wisdom formula. Our main takeaway from the knowledge and experience, or wisdom, of others is confidence. The confidence to make decisions with speed and clarity in a context that was previously unfamiliar. In other words, we gain agility in our primary function as leaders. We get back to making choices, to prioritizing and delegating, in a nimble enough way to pursue our goals, even though our environment has changed. So where are the agile leaders? If you ask me, they are everywhere and anywhere people are sitting down to problem solve together.

Wisdom at a Glance

Wisdom gives us the confidence to take quick, decisive action, the hallmark of agile leadership. That means, to be an agile leader we must be willing to learn from others and keep learning. Collaboration will ensure we can act, even in new and uncertain times.

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What it Takes to Reopen: the new challenge for business leaders

Do you ever find yourself staring out the window, dreaming of the day you can return to your office building? It can’t be just me!

I think many of us are surprised by how much we want to get back to work, back to our routines, even back to the commutes we loved to complain about. It’s comforting to think that soon our leaders will name the date and everything will get back to “normal”.

Of course, if you play any part in your company’s decision to reopen, you know it’s not that simple.

I found myself wondering why. Why, with all the data we’ve gathered, is it so much harder to reopen successfully?

Leaders Make Choices

A quick disclaimer – this is not political commentary, medical advice, or an epidemiology debate. I’m simply interested in why some companies, industries, or communities are finding it easier to move out of the shutdown. On the flip side, why are many leaders way over their skis right now? I don’t believe it’s because they’re bad people or lazy, in fact I’m sure they are just the opposite.

But the leadership necessary to make the hundreds of complex, interwoven decisions to reopen a business is very different from the leadership it took to make one massive decision to shut everything down. Leadership is all about making choices. At the very top levels, leadership comes down to two different flavors of choices; expense efficiency and growth. The expense initiatives are easy. Turning off the economy is easy. That’s not to say that it’s always pleasant, but as a CEO I can announce: “We’re having trouble. We’re making a 10% expense cut across the board,” and everyone on down the line knows what they have to do to get that done.

Growth is just the opposite. If I walk out of a board meeting and say “we need to grow by 10% this year, go do it” I’m going to set off a lot of frantic scrambling without seeing much of a result.

Growth-focused Choices Require Wisdom

This is where my wisdom formula comes into play. Wisdom = Knowledge x Experience.

Reopening requires multi-layered choices, made with speed, decisiveness, and clarity.  The only way to reach that level of decision-making is through wisdom; the combination of knowledge and experience. Very few of us leaders and teams have ever been through something like this before. There’s a pretty big wisdom gap at our conference table. This is why I believe we’re starting to see a huge disparity in outcomes on the backside of this pandemic.

My advice? Wherever possible, try and take a zoomed-out, unemotional look at some of your reopening choices. Where are the people who have done, or are doing, something similar? If we break them down, at some level our challenges have been met before. Ask for help, acknowledge where you’re still learning, and encourage your teams to do the same.

Wisdom at a Glance

If you find yourself wondering why some businesses struggle to reopen more than others, consider whether their leadership team has been focused on growth or expense cutting. Growth-oriented companies have the knowledge and experience it will take to rebuild momentum.

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Leading Through Hard Stuff: Three things to focus on

Leading Through Hard Stuff: Three things to focus on

By virtue of being a little bit older and having the privilege of running a big public company for a long time, I’ve had to manage through some really hard stuff. First Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed our Miami-based company and many of our employees’ homes. Then 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and many smaller, but nonetheless challenging, events. It’s not hyperbole to say I sometimes wanted to retreat into my office and curl up under my desk. But giving into my naturally introverted tendencies is a luxury I didn’t have when employees, clients, and partners were distressed and looking for answers.

I’m grateful that I can look back at those experiences positively now because they were valuable learning opportunities. While the COVID-19 virus is uniquely challenging on a worldwide scale, I’ve synthesized a couple of things that really helped me in the past. This is what I’m focused on with my team now. I hope you find these suggestions as helpful as I have these past several weeks.

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The most important consideration right now is your people. Spend as much time as you can with them. Find out what people are struggling with on an individual level. If they know that you know, it can alleviate some of the stress of trying to continue as normal. I’ve found that most people are much more candid on video than even in-person. You just need to give them an opening and you may be surprised what they are willing to share. I firmly believe we, in business, don’t really know each other at the heart-level. Now is an opportunity to dig deep into what helps your team work best.

Model this as a leader by setting up group and individual calls. Probe a little deeper than “how are you?” and be willing to share some of your own honest challenges. Then you can encourage your team members to connect this way with each other. I’m seeing all new working pairs and groups spring up since GXG has been working from home, and we’re a very small company!









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Once you know their challenges, you can tailor productivity goals to each individual. We all have different levels of capacity in uncertain times. You can manage team-wide forward momentum with a daily check-in. We do a daily wrap-up around 4:15 PM where everyone can report out on their progress for the day. It keeps us all accountable, but it’s also somewhat informal, a chance to stay engaged when we can’t all be in the office together.

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Does a daily check-in sound like too much? It’s not. I firmly believe you should communicate as much as you think is necessary, then double it! As I mentioned above, I’m an introvert and this doesn’t come naturally to me. However, I’ve seen incredible boosts in morale and productivity by simply staying connected. I asked a week ago if we should quit our daily round-ups but no one wanted to!

Don’t forget to extend communication opportunities to your clients and partners. What was important before will be important again. Remind them that you are available for help, advice, or just a listening ear.

If you’re interested in a little more in-depth piece, I’ve also written a cover story for my publisher’s newsletter this week. I hope you’ll connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know what’s been working for you and your team right now.

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Recognize that leading and working right now is hard. Your job as a leader is to model open communication, flexibility, and a sincere interest in how your people are managing personally and professionally.

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Skunkworks: Protecting Innovation

Skunkworks: Protecting Innovation

Note for readers: This an excerpt that was originally drafted for my book – Unstuck. It’s a longer read, but trust me, it’s worth it!

Skunkworks? Seriously?!

Hey, that term has a long, proud history in American culture and business. In the depths of the Great Depression, Americans could count on a daily dose of humor from the denizens of Dogpatch, Kentucky, in the Li’l Abner comic strips from the satirical pen of Al Capp. His seemingly ignorant back-woods folks turned out to be a whole lot smarter than most “city slickers”—sometimes out of noble motives and occasionally to try to make a quick buck. Among the scoundrels were the Barnsmell brothers, home-spun entrepreneurs who took over a dilapidated factory on the edge of town and cloaked their skullduggery with toxic fumes. The brothers specialized in producing “skonk oil” through a foul process that involved old shoes and dead skunks. No one was ever quite sure of their recipe—or the exact nature of their product—because no one dared to set foot inside their Skonk Works for fear of the overwhelming smog that surrounded it.

That was all very funny, until the term was adopted for a life-and-death project. In December 1941, the U.S. officially entered World War II and, by early 1943, the U.S. Army Air Force realized that it desperately needed a jet fighter to keep up with German technological advances. Too many Americans were dying because they were outgunned by these powerful Nazi planes. Lockheed was asked to make a proposal for a sleek new American jet built around the design of a new British engine. Contracts took until the autumn of 1943 to be finalized, but Lockheed’s Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson and his colleagues already had started work in a secret facility they dubbed the Skunk Works as a humorous salute to Al Capp’s idea. The team designed and built the XP-80 jet in 143 days—a speed no one thought possible. The concept was a huge hit and Lockheed kept it rolling. In the 1950s, for example, the Lockheed Skunk Works developed the famous U-2 spy plane.

One hallmark of the Skunk Works concept was permission to start a project even before completing cumbersome legal and regulatory processes—sometimes starting with little more than a verbal agreement and a handshake. Another rule was strict secrecy from anyone who was not essential to the project at hand. That privacy was easy to maintain at Lockheed’s original Skunk Works, partly because it was located near an especially foul-smelling plastics plant. Lockheed became so proud of this record for innovation that the company retold the Skunk Works story in its promotional literature for many years. When a copyright issue was raised by Al Capp’s newspaper syndicate, Lockheed settled by trademarking a different spelling: Skunk Works as two words with capital letters.

That may be why authors like Vijay Govindarajan avoid the term entirely when describing this strategy for driving innovation by deploying small pilot projects. But—seriously—executives who know how to roll up their sleeves and cut some red tape to unleash our best pioneers still love Al Capp’s humor.

There’s still a lot of value in a potent li’l skunkworks.

That is, if we deploy one properly.

The Cautionary Tale: A Skunkworks, a Mouse and a Pirate

The most popular skunkworks story in the annals of American business actually keeps changing with each passing year. Business schools once told the story about Steve Jobs stealing the secrets of XEROX’s skunkworks in 1979 as a Shakespearean tragedy. In this version, the story became an example of a big old company failing to recognize that it held the keys to unlock the future—and, instead, letting a ruthless upstart swipe the crown jewels. In 1999, that’s how the tale was told in the Hollywood movie Pirates of Silicon Valley about the birth of Microsoft and Apple.

Then, in 2011, Malcolm Gladwell rewrote that story about Jobs’ 1979 peek inside XEROX’s research center in a long investigative story for The New Yorker. In reality, Gladwell argued, XEROX had been far smarter than anyone thought at the time. Their secretive research center in California was designed to give free rein to geniuses to conduct research on new products. Along the way, they had invented much of what we now regard as the essentials of personal computing—but that was not their core mission. XEROX’s future lay in imaging, not personal computers. The research center had, indeed, produced a bumper crop of revenue for the company’s core business. Sure, Jobs swiped some extremely valuable ideas that he immediately threw into his first products—but XEROX was never serious about developing those ideas, anyway, Gladwell argued. For a while after Gladwell’s landmark retelling of the story, XEROX looked more like a winner than a loser.

Then 2018 dawned with the first guns fired in a complex, drawn-out global struggle for control of XEROX’s future, because the giant company’s prospects finally appeared to be fading. Major newspapers and business magazines began writing XEROX’s obituaries. However, as XEROX’s owners and partners wrestled for control of the company’s assets, Bloomberg Businessweek staff writer Drake Bennett summed the whole mess this way: “The course of corporate governance has never run less smooth.” At the start of 2020, XEROX’s future is punctuated with a question mark.

Although the moral at the end of this Aesop’s fable may still be up for grabs for years to come, the basic story is an essential cautionary tale about what not to do when making these first, carefully protected bets on innovation.

To be clear, XEROX never referred to its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as a skunkworks when it was established in 1970. But business leaders understood that the PARC had all the hallmarks of the skunkworks strategy, including the long distance between the center and the home office. On top of that, XEROX also followed a hands-off approach to letting innovators conduct whatever research they thought could prove profitable down the line. Imaging was XEROX’s game, but the researchers realized that powerful new tools were required to operate future generations of printing machines. That’s how the XEROX team happened to develop an early personal computer with the world’s first graphical user interface (GUI) that was controlled not by typing arcane commands, but by a “mouse.” Another pillar of a skunkworks was secrecy and few people outside the PARC had any idea that these researchers were successfully operating such a game-changing computer. Unfortunately, even XEROX’s board seems to have misunderstood what their team was building.

How did Steve Jobs storm the gates? In 1979, Jobs had caused enough buzz in the high-tech world that XEROX wanted to buy some shares in his fledgling company. However, Jobs’ main condition in that deal was a quirky request to personally set foot inside the PARC with a few of his colleagues. His now-famous request was that XEROX had to show and tell, before Jobs would deal on his stock. Entire chapters of books about Jobs and Apple describe the tug of war this request set off inside the skunkworks. The geniuses at the PARC knew exactly what was about to happen if this pirate got a glimpse of their best work. PARC managers were furious that their board back on the East Coast would even consider Jobs’ request.

For the chance to buy a bit of his little company, XEROX’s executives forced the skunkworks team to guide him through their wonderworks. This actually played out over a series of visits with lots of arguments and disputes along the way. In the end, however, Jobs got what he wanted. He and his colleagues were able to explore a personal computer unlike anything they had dreamed was possible. The idea of communicating with a computer through images rather than typed text? Revolutionary. And, initiating this dialogue by rolling a hand-held device and pointing? Unheard-of! Jobs and his team freely admitted, after the visit, that they swiped every idea that wasn’t nailed down.

So, where does that classic tale stand today as business school professors get ready to tell it to new crops of students? Well, XEROX’s fate remains unknown as corporate gyrations continue. We may not know the end of the XEROX story for years.

One truth remains: The whole concept of a skunkworks is secrecy combined with lots of latitude to fuel unparalleled innovation. By any measure, XEROX’s PARC proved that principle, whether or not XEROX itself benefited from all of the PARC’s world-changing developments.

When Jobs stepped through the gates of the PARC, the person charged with handing over those ideas was the groundbreaking computer scientist Adele Goldberg, whose papers now are archived at the Computer History Museum in California. She had done everything possible to prevent this visit, short of quitting the company, before XEROX officials finally forced her to welcome that brash young man.

Handing him a key to the fortress, she later said, was nothing short of “incredibly stupid and completely nuts.”

Completely Nuts

More than once when setting up our own skunkworks at Assurant Solutions, I heard I was “completely nuts”. That’s because the atmosphere needed to create new things, including new demand for products we’d never tried to produce before, runs counter to a lot of traditional business thinking. The thing is, we had already proven the success of the idea with a small division in the UK.  When we undertook a similar venture Atlanta, I knew right away that we had to secure the team in an American skunkworks. I was not about to let our corporate gatekeepers slow this important work down to a crawl.

We already had our big building in Atlanta, but I did not want the innovation team there. Instead, we moved them into a little office in midtown. Then, I refused to share our address with the rest of the staff. I knew if I didn’t protect the team, the mother ship would suddenly appear out of the sky and suck the life out of all of them.

Of course, our people all had the company’s best interest at heart. Our reputation for solid business practices was very important to us. We had been successful for many years because of the care with which we researched, designed and maintained compliance on everything having to do with our policies. But, when we tried to build something new—well, the mismatch was sometimes just comical.

It was like doctors lining up to kill a cancer they had just diagnosed. The leader of the innovation office called me one day and told me that they had gotten a request from an Assurant Solutions auditor to schedule a visit.

“Well, they’re just trying to protect us,” I said, trying to reassure him.

“I understand that,” he said, “but this auditor told me how many people he’s bringing to do the audit—and that’s more people than we have working in this office!”

It got pretty ridiculous sometimes; and I did take a lot of grief for the way I ran interference for that skunkworks. This secrecy drove people in the parent company crazy. I refused to let anyone publish their address in our directories and I made it clear that our people were not supposed to just show up over there and start taking their time away from what they needed to build for us.

The result was a huge success for Assurant and the promotion of our first chief digital officer. The original little team from the skunkworks grew into a 250-person digital center of excellence.

Wisdom at a Glance

So what can you learn from these skunkworks stories? For more than incremental innovation, you need to give a team freedom from the traditional corporate structure. Often literal physical distance! At the same time, it’s unlikely that you want to support projects as wide-ranging as those at PARC. Set up your innovation team with a clear business purpose then let them run. Ideally, you’ll be able to bring ideas back into the larger business along with new capabilities and practices.

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Book Review: All You Have to Do Is Ask

All You Have to Do Is Ask by Dr. Wayne Baker

From a very early age, we have a desire to be independent. If you offer to help any toddler struggling with a simple task, a majority of the time you will be met with a frustrated “I do it myself.” As we grow up and master basic skills for living along with more complex skills for success, the one thing we still struggle with is asking for help. But what if this aversion to asking for help was holding us back from our true potential? This is the message for us in Wayne Baker’s new book All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success (New York, NY: Currency 2020). [Available here]

Right from the start, Baker emphasizes that not asking for help costs companies billions of dollars, causes burnout of employees, and negatively affects all aspects of our lives. Conversely, he provides anecdotes of people coming together and going above the call to help someone who had the courage to just ask a question.

The first half of the book focuses on Baker’s research into why asking for help is such a difficult task for most people. These reasons run the gamut from human psychology to social construct to workplace cultures and broken systems. However, Baker points out that generosity is waiting inside most people ready to be unleashed as soon as it is called upon. Help-seeking success is not a one-way street either. The larger message of the book is what Baker refers to as “The Law of Giving and Receiving,” a way of thinking that calls on us to balance helping others and asking for help. He includes an assessment that helps you to see where you stand in the spectrum of giving and receiving and gives descriptions of how these different personality types can help and hurt you in the workplace.

The second half of the book is full of resources that will help individuals and companies get the most out of asking for help. It begins with a tool that helps you identify your goals and needs and then guides you on how to formulate your request and find the right resources to meet your needs. Turning to business leaders, Baker provides many tools used by successful companies to help them build strong teams that open up networks, inspire people to ask for help, and reward individuals and groups who work together to solve problems. These tools, which include mini-games, technology platforms, budgeting strategies, and more, have been tried and tested in major companies such as Google, GM, and IDEO.

All You Have to Do Is Ask is Dr. Wayne Baker’s newest book. For more information about the author, visit his website.

Wisdom at a Glance

All You Have to Do Is Ask is a great book that empowers its readers to develop a simple skill into a powerful tool that unlocks a world of possibility. The concepts in this work can be applied both personally and professionally to build bridges in our lives and reach new heights.

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DriveThur HR [PODCAST]

Going from Stuck to Unstuck

I greatly enjoyed my talk with Robin and Michael about how business people often get “stuck” in their daily work and the steps you can take to get unstuck.

On the show, we discussed:

What elements of the macro business landscape cause organizations to get stuck?
How do you know if you’re stuck? What are some of the symptoms?
What steps can folks take to get unstuck?
How is this approach different from the traditional learning & development methods?

Wisdom at a Glance

It can feel discouraging when you’re stuck as a leader, but I want to encourage you that there is hope! There are people out there with knowledge and experience that are willing to help. You just have to find them and make an intentional ask.

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How to Use Core Values to Enable Decision-Making

My Definition of Leadership

There are probably as many definitions of leadership as there are leadership books, which is to say – a lot. But when it comes down to it, I believe the one thing leaders really get paid for is making choices.

Someone has to choose X over Y and accept accountability for that choice. By my definition, then, leadership occurs throughout all levels of an organization. That’s why it’s critical that organizations equip their leaders with a framework for making those choices. I believe the best way to do this is by establishing a strong set of core values.

Is it fun?

For example, here at GXG, I have a shortcut to weighing hard choices against our core values by simply asking “is this fun?” I don’t mean that flippantly. Since I believe most positivity in a workplace culture can be provided by revenue growth, we make sure to focus our efforts as a team around that. But “is this fun?” drives even deeper to remind everyone that, even when chasing revenue, we want our work to be fulfilling by 1) actually helping clients and 2) keeping us engaged with humble, positive businesspeople. If we wouldn’t invite someone home for dinner with the family, we don’t have to work with them.

In this way, core values help us at critical turning points in our business. We see this with clients as well. In our advisory boards, there always tends to be this breakthrough moment when the external board members and the GXG team truly get to know our clients. I like to say that we’re all really great at knowing things about each other, but we never really know each other. That changes the instant the advisors start to translate their recommendations into the language of the clients’ core values. It’s critical to listen through resistance and negative feedback for what’s actually just a misalignment between the suggestions offered and the way the core values guide operations.

That’s not to say that core values never need to change. But if a value is so tied to your operating model as to not accommodate innovation or growth, is it really “core”?

Getting Started Creating Your Own Core Values

For tips on writing your own company values, check out these tips and resources:

Don’t rush the process of creating your core values and revisit them on an annual basis. As your culture evolves, so may your values

Core values are not a corporate declaration, but rather a community standard

Core values should be a concise expression of the principles that already underly your business. That way, as your organization grows and your leaders have to make more choices, those choices become easier when they align with the internal and expressed values of your working community

Wisdom at a Glance

Your core values should guide you through times of change and be critical to, not inhibit, growth.

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