RealTime Leadership

A survey conducted in March 2009 by Innovation Tools found that the climate and funding for innovation is holding up during these difficult economic times.  Instead of cutting back on R&D, as might be expected during a downturn, 37% of respondents reported “no change” in the level of funding for innovation, while another 28% reported an increase.  The climate for innovation is also healthy with 27% reporting “improved slightly” and 20% reporting “improved significantly.”

Chuck Frey and Renee Hopkins Callahan, the authors of the study, summed it up this way:

In today’s re-engineered, lean business environments, innovation offers one of the few remaining strategies for positively impacting the bottom line while at the same time meeting customer needs and strengthening the organization’s competitive position, and the survey results appear to support that.

The fact that support for innovation is incresing  is not surprising if you study how companies who continued to invest in innovation during the 1930s gained on their competitors when the economy picked up again.  An article in the McKinsey Quarterly, “Innovation Lessons from the 1930s” shows the deceleration of patents during the 1930s, evidence that there was a broad pullback in innovation.   However, the article goes on to point out that the few companies that did maintain or increase innovation like DuPont, Hewlett-Packard and Polaroid all did very well when the economy started to grow again. 

Anne Mulcahy, the CEO of Xerox, warns companies of pulling back on innovation during times like this:

 I know from experience one of the biggest mistakes that can be made right now is to slash investments in innovation. And by innovation, I don’t just mean product research and development. It can also be innovating in new markets, launching new businesses, and even disruptive innovation in work processes.

In the Fortune article cited above, Mulcahy draws on her experience earlier this decade when Xerox was experiencing its own downturn.  At the time, many around her, including investors, were pressuring the company to reduce R&D, but she resisted, and it paid off for her and the company down the road.

The idea that companies look beyond just R&D is extremely important.  The most popular innovation strategy during this recent recession, according to the Innovation Tools survey is “looking for creative ways to improve or extend your existing products.”  The authors point out that while it is the breakthrough innovations like the iPod that grab all the headlines, for most companies it is little incremental improvements that add up to competitive advantage over time.  These are what Ram Charan calls the “singles and doubles” rather than swinging for the fences.

The bottom line is, think hard before you cut back on innovation to save costs.  It could make all the difference for your company in the long run.

The common attribute of high performers in sports, music and chess is not talent, as is so often assumed, but 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.  This begs the question, what is deliberate practice and can it be applied to individuals and organizations to improve the quality of business leadership?  The following is an adaptation of a set of principles defined by Geoff Colvin in the book, “Talent is Overrated.”  By studying the principles of deliberate practice and how successful business leaders such as Steve Ballmer of Microsoft have applied these same principles throughout their careers, Geoff Colvin provides valuable insight into how we can develop better business leaders.

Deliberate practice is far different than what most of us do every day as we set about our task of getting work done.  Most people in business are content with a relatively low pace of performance improvement.  High performers in any discipline are only content if they are achieving measurable improvement every day, and they are willing to work extraordinarily hard to maintain that level of improvement over long periods of time. 

1. Have a long-term goal.  First and foremost, you must know where you want to go.  Take the time to stop and consider what you want to accomplish in 5 to 10 years.  The rigors of deliberate practice are so demanding that we don’t have a chance of sustaining the required level of intensity over many years to achieve success unless we have a firm commitment to our long-term goal.  Think of Tiger Woods who, at an early age, set a personal goal of surpassing Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major golf championships.
2. Design a system of deliberate practice that can be applied every day.  Great performers in music and sports have highly refined daily practice routines designed to achieve incremental performance improvement.  Granted, the world of business does not lend itself to what we traditionally call “practice,” however there are methods and routines business leaders can employ that lead to steady improvement over time.
3. Set a daily goal.  Before you arrive at work every morning, target a competency or skill for improvement.  This could be presentation skills, providing feedback to employees, financial analysis or even technical skills.
4. Reflect on your performance.  As you go about your day, reflect on how you react emotionally as you are challenged to improve.  Is there an emotion or feeling that may be derailing your progress?  If so, why is that and what can you do to overcome this problem?  Great athletes are in tune with their bodies and will rate every practice session and drill.  They don’t wait for the end of the day to rate and reflect on their performance.  The same principle can be applied to business.  Having the emotional maturity to reflect and self-regulate in this way is another reason why emotional intelligence is becoming so important for leadership development.  It is critical for improvement.
5. Seek Feedback on Your Results.  Just as great runners time their practice runs and compare their performance to their daily goal and past performance, so to must business leaders seek feedback on their performance.  Some people think there is too much feedback in business but I don’t think there is enough.  That doesn’t mean you ask for 360-feedback every day, but you can identify specific measures of improvement.  Most people in business are content with saying, “I did a pretty good job today.”  High performers are only content when they can validate their performance with results.
6. Identify errors that were made.  The fad in business today is for business leaders to focus on their strengths and largely ignore their weaknesses, but that’s not how Michael Jordan achieved his success.  High performers are diligent about recognizing and admitting to errors, and taking personal ownership for addressing their weaknesses and improving.  Mediocre performers in any field are much more willing to assign blame to external factors when considering their poor performance.  I find myself falling into this trap when I play golf.  After hitting a poor shot my mind often assigns blame to some defect in my equipment or the poor condition of the course.  I highly doubt Tiger Woods takes this same approach.
7. Get a coach.  Having a coach, someone with deep-seated knowledge and experience in your field, is extremely valuable for business professionals.  In the business career path, we all eventually reach a point at which there is no rule book for what is the “right” or “wrong” decision.  This can be said for any field, but it is even more true in business where, unlike chess, music or sports, the rules of engagement are not clearly defined.  A coach helps business leaders go through the steps of deliberate practice, from setting a daily goal to giving feedback and identifying performance improvement.  After hitting the poor shot on the golf course and assigning blame to my equipment, it is my coach who points out the flaw in my swing and suggests a subtle adjustment.
8. Deepen your Domain Knowledge.  One of the by-products of logging 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is an extensive knowledge-base within your area of expertise.   This extensive knowledge is put to use by high performers to achieve a competitive advantage over others.  They are faster at making decisions (Malcolm Gladwell has great examples of this in his book Blink) and they are better able to identify future trends.  Mediocre performers in business tend to assume that the domain knowledge of their company and industry is something they will pick up naturally over the course of their career.  There is no real urgency to go out and acquire the knowledge proactively.  High performers are the opposite, they eagerly read about the history of their companies and industries, they interview other high performers, and they study competitive products and strategies.  Deepening your domain knowledge is not simply amassing statistics and facts.  To really put domain knowledge to use, high performers build and conceive mental models for how a company and industry function, or even how they communicate and interact with others.  These models provide a framework for analyzing and understanding situations, helping leaders to make better decisions and continue to improve every day.

Deliberate practice is not easy and unfortunately, the organizational culture and systems in place at most companies today do not support business leaders who strive to apply the principles.  Those of us working in professional and leadership development today must ask ourselves how the cultural and organizational factors in our organizations support the principles of deliberate practice.  Perhaps, instead of investing more time and resources in the next great leadership training program, we should be designing systems to help our future leaders log their 10,000 hours of deliberate practice as timely and efficiently as possible.

Well, Geoff Colvin certainly thinks so and I agree with him. But first, let me explain what I mean by “talent.”  This is a word that gets thrown around a lot, especially in our field.  When I say “talent is overrated” I’m referring to “talent” as the innate (some would say God-given) ability, granted to us at birth, that confers an advantage over others lacking such ability.  We often hear the word “talent” used in this way when describing musicians, athletes or chess players who achieve what appears to be a miraculous level of greatness at an early age. 

In Geoff Colvin’s book, “Talent is Overrated,” he describes a study whereby researchers polled education professionals and more than 75% of them:

…believed that singing, composing and playing concert instruments requires a special gift or talent.

I’m guessing a similar poll of business professionals would reveal that many people attribute business success to some innate talent or gift.  Warren Buffet promotes this myth when he says; “I was hardwired at birth to allocate capital.”  I’m sure people would also attribute practice and experience as important factors for achieving greatness, but talent is often the overriding factor cited by others.

So when in 1992 a group of researchers in England went looking for musical talent, I’m sure they fully expected to find it…but they didn’t.  After extensive research (see Chapter Two in Colvin’s book, it’s very convincing), they could find no evidence of some innate talent propelling certain musicians to the best schools and performances.  What then does it take for young British concert musicians to achieve grade 5, a highly refined and objective achievement? The answer is, simply, 1,200 hours of practice.  That’s it.  No magic, just practice.

This finding turns up again and again across all disciplines and sports.  Malcolm Gladwell spends considerable time on this subject in his book, “Outliers” where he also debunks the myth of talent.  Even when you look at child prodigies like Mozart or Tiger Woods, one finds that they achieved true greatness only after consistently logging at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

So it’s not talent at all.  The key to becoming world-class, whether in business, music or sports, is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.  Most of us have spent way more than 10,000 hours at work, so why haven’t we all achieved greatness?  The answer is that just spending time at work is much different than deliberate practice.  It turns out, deliberate practice is difficult, extremely uncomfortable and mentally demanding.  It’s not much fun and there are very few who are willing to endure what it takes to log 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.  Thus, only a select few make it to the very top.

What if we could unlock the secret to deliberate practice and clear the way for more of our employees to achieve true greatness? 

In my next entry all explore the concept of “deliberate practice” and what it can teach us about developing great leaders in business.