Tag: growth

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Are you treating your team like a mechanism or an organism?

Hands holding mechanical looking plants.
"Mechanisms are built and organisms are grown."

The thought I want to share with you today comes to us from a fairly unlikely place: English “philosophical entertainer” and popular interpreter of Buddhism, Alan Watts.
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Watts proposes a useful distinction between organisms and mechanisms that is an excellent leadership insight:
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“Mechanisms are built and organisms are grown.”
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One of the mistakes leaders make (myself included) is to treat organisms as mechanisms.
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As leaders, we often get stuck because we have a certain set of tools we’ve relied on for success in our mechanistically oriented world. We’re engineers who have solved engineering problems, coders who build software, safety professionals with deep wells of technical knowledge, and lawyers who sink or swim based on our expertise.
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Yet when we become leaders, reaching for these old tools can leave us frustrated.
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Those tools don’t work on people or organizations.
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When leaders treat people as mechanisms, we rely on tools like incentives and try to control behavior.
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“If only they would listen to us and do what we ask them to,” we sometimes think to ourselves, “this whole problem would be solved.”
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But people are not built; we are grown. And as organisms, we thrive when we are in relationships with each other. And relationships and trust are what really get things to change.
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We need to choose the right mode of operating for the right problem. It’s important because bringing the wrong tool to the job creates stress and friction, adds to resistance and dis-ease, and increases wear and tear.
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I created The C.L.E.A.R. Path to Executive Leadership, a program crafted after in-depth research and work with hundreds of leaders at global organizations, to help leaders grow their awareness and bring the right tools to the challenges they face.
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The C.L.E.A.R. Path to Executive Leadership is a 12-week-long journey designed specifically for busy leaders and emphasizes reflection, practice, and tools.
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After this program, you will listen better, lead more confidently, empower others (while holding them accountable), and create cohesive and empowered teams with a unified vision so you can drive results.
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Do you think this might be of service to you?
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If so, book a complimentary 30-minute leadership diagnostic call. We’ll spend the first part of the call reflecting on your approach to leadership and wrap up by seeing whether this program might be a good fit for you.
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​Click here to book​.
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Implementing Change Without Weirding Out Your Team

A man with a red clown nose sits behind a work desk.
If you can effectively manage the tension between being tasked with getting better results, and not being “too weird,” you will see tremendous value.

As a change maker, you have a lot of tension to manage. 

 

Leaders are rewarded and promoted for results, so in theory, going against the grain and doing things that get you better results is good. 

 

On the other hand, there’s a fine line between subverting a process and being in noncompliance with it.

 

We kind of know this instinctively: unless you’re in an organization that tolerates a lot of difference and a lot of diversity, you can’t stand out too much. 

 

But if you can effectively manage this tension between being tasked with getting better results, and not being “too weird,” you will see tremendous value. You will learn faster, work with more creativity, get more done with less stress, and build stronger relationships with the people you work with. 

 

Learn more about how to manage this tension better by watching my video: 4 Tactics for Implementing Change Without Weirding Out Your Team.

 

 

If this resonates with you and you’re interested in learning a new way of leadership and bringing it into practice in your organization, let’s chat.

 

Click here to book a free leadership exploration call. We’ll focus on your context and your challenges to see whether what we’re doing in the C.L.E.A.R. Path to Executive Leadership might be a good fit for you.

 

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Bottlenecked: Complexity and Risk in Simple Operations

A man in a suit crawling through the desert toward a water cooler.
Who knew water delivery could be so complex?

When I first started out in the business world, I would dream of the day I had my own water cooler in my office. I don’t know why — I just always felt like having one would be a sign that I was finally successful.

 

Well, I finally got a brand new, space-age, state-of-the-art water cooler, and I’ve got to say, they’ve changed a lot since the clunky, gravity-fed dinosaurs of days gone by. You know the ones — the water bottle was up top, and you’d have to maneuver it into place, and you’d always spill a little bit, but once it was up there, gravity did the rest of the work. Crude, but simple.

 

My new system has a pump, so the water container can go underneath it, which is nice and convenient, but I just know that someday this pump is going to fail. It might be five years from now, it might be five months from now, but someday it will break, and I’ll need a specialist to come fix it.

 

I asked my water distributor, and he told me that not only is the water cooler company dealing with technical problems and issues with inter-team communication, but it’s also dealing with a costly staffing shortage!

 

Even simple business models with few functions encounter unexpected risk and complexity. Things catch you by surprise. I bet until this year, or until very recently, my water cooler company was not even thinking about staffing as one of their key risks. And yet, as the labor market changes, you still need to get water into people’s offices.

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With capability comes complexity, which is something I talk about in Meltdown.

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Complexity can arise in even the most unexpected places, which is exactly what I ponder in my newest video. Here’s something a simple conversation with a water delivery agent taught me about the unexpected risk of operating a business:

 

 

In Meltdown, we talk about the paradox of progress and how capability adds complexity. There’s always going to be risks out there that you can’t consider.  

 

We have a free sample chapter available here. 

 

Check it out if you haven’t read it yet, and if you have, leave a comment about something you’ve taken away from it. 

 

With that, I’ll say thank you for your attention, and I’ll see you next time.

 

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The Risk of Moving Too Quickly Toward Solutions

As leaders, we love to jump to solutions, often far too quickly. Here’s what’s at risk…

One of the hardest leadership missteps to unlearn is the tendency to move too quickly toward solutions.

 

We see a problem and want it resolved immediately.

 

A question arises and we need an answer, fast!

 

But reacting to a situation before it is better understood places us at risk of missing critical context, which can lead us to make preventable mistakes.

 

When we move too quickly towards solutions, we’re at risk of a few things:

  1. Offering a solution to the wrong problem
  2. Moving forward with the wrong solution to the right problem
  3. Solving the right problem with the right solution but without bringing your team along

 

Why is it so hard to resist jumping right into solutions? There’s something really challenging about not moving forward. As leaders, we crave action and it’s hard to keep in mind that stillness isn’t the same as being stuck, and that not everything needs to happen immediately.

 

A lot of leadership — particularly in complex organizations—is about staying in the space of the undefined, and yet I still struggle when I’m confronted with uncertainty! It’s a lesson I need to reconnect with on a regular basis and a challenge that I’ve confronted with varied levels of success throughout my career.

 

If you recognize a tendency to move too quickly toward solutions in your own complex organizations, or if you are part of a team that struggles with patience when faced with uncertainty, check out my video:

 

Many Leaders Move too Quickly Toward Solutions

 

 

 

In it, I share about a recent situation where I failed to heed my own advice, what it cost me, and what I recommend to fellow leaders when it comes to digging deeper instead of jumping straight to solutions.

 

 

If you want to avoid more missteps in your leadership journey, check out my free guide: Three Mistakes Leaders Make with Change. I developed this guide to help the leaders I work with create better influence, work effectively with resistance they encounter from the team members and stakeholders, and identify pitfalls that prevent them from co-creating better solutions to complex problems. It’s a really valuable read that I believe will help you start to identify patterns that are keeping your change effort stalled.

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What Too Much Toast Taught Me about the Paradox of Change

A stack of toasted bread next to a butter knife and a bowl filled with pats of butter.
“Let's make this real. What’s the value I get from eating all this toast?”

I feel vulnerable telling you this, but there have been periods in my life where I’ve eaten a lot of buttered toast. At night, after a long day at the office, I’d get home and just devour toast with too much butter. As I’m eating the toast, I wouldn’t say I’m particularly happy about it.

 

Eventually, I hit what I now call my “Peak Toast” period, eating six, sometimes seven slices a night.

 

It was getting out of hand. 

 

The Paradoxical Theory of Change

 

During this time, I was also learning about the Paradoxical Theory of Change, the concept that change happens when you stop focusing on the person you want to become and instead turn your attention to who you are now, and the reasons for your current behaviors. By paying attention to your present experiences, thoughts, and feelings, you can learn new ways to support the hidden motivations behind your behaviors, and ultimately, the change will occur as a natural process. 

 

This way of looking at my problem helped me discover the reasons behind my actions—helped me to ask myself, “Alright, let’s make this real. What’s the value I get from eating all this toast?” 

 

If you’ve found yourself wrestling with behaviors antithetical to the person you want to be and want to hear more about what the Paradoxical Theory of Change can teach you about leadership, watch my video: Peak Toast.

 

 

The Paradoxical Theory of Change isn’t just a powerful tool for self-realization, it can also help you work through situations in the workplace where you are running into resistance from others. 

 

Are you trying to drive organizational changes, but team members or stakeholders just aren’t there with you? Pay attention to the Paradoxical Theory of Change and turn your attention to the behaviors you see right now instead of focusing solely on the changes you’re driving.

 

Curious how you can enroll your team in your change vision? So many leaders I know struggle with team members and stakeholders who either don’t see the vision or don’t like it. They encounter resistance. Some of my most impactful work comes from helping leaders develop the skills of influence they need to create cohesive, empowered teams. It all starts with learning how to work with resistance effectively. My free video Understanding the Levels of Resistance teaches you some of my best strategies for working with resistance. Download it now.

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Leaders Need to Know It’s Not Their Fault

A woman standing in a projection of multicolored data.
Past a certain scale and complexity, you can't lead through expertise or control. That’s not your fault.

I work with leaders who are at a moment in their careers when they decide to take things to the next level, and I see the same struggles again and again:

 

  • Leaders who are daunted by the need to constantly lead change in their organization
  • Leaders who are frustrated with encountering resistance from others
  • Leaders who don’t know how to drive their vision forward, particularly when they’re a specialist in a bigger organization 

 

If this sounds like you, dear leader, here’s what I want you to know: 

 

It’s not your fault. 

 

Past a certain scale and complexity, you can’t lead through expertise or control.


You’re no longer facing technical challenges, you’re facing complex challenges, and you need to lead through these not by solving problems, but by building relationships and cultivating curiosity.  

 

You are doing the best you can with the tools that you have: a set of tools that has served you and your organizations incredibly well for your whole career, but now, you’re navigating growing complexity. The world can’t be easily understood anymore.

 

If you are someone who has led through control in the past, but now you recognize that answers are no longer enough, stop kicking yourself and watch my video:

Leaders Need to Know It’s Not Their Fault 

 

In this video, I share why so many of the leaders I work with transform their impact once they shift from expertise-based leadership to curiosity-driven leadership, and how you can do the same.  Answers are rarely the key to leading through complexity.  Instead, we need to grow our ability to influence others.  

 

You can’t be everywhere at once: answering every question, solving small problems, making sure everyone is following the new SOP — that will leave you stretched thin and unable to lead effectively.

 

That’s why I created The C.L.E.A.R. Path to Executive Leadership, a program crafted after in-depth research and work with hundreds of leaders at global organizations. The C.L.E.A.R. Path focuses on strengthening key skills that every leader benefits from: Curiosity, Listening, Empowerment, Accountability, and Results. 

 

If you are leading change, and this sounds like something that could help you with your challenge, I’d love to hear from you. Click here to book a free 30-minute diagnostic call with me where you can tell me about the challenges you’re facing. Together, we can talk about how you’re trying to create lasting change in your organization. 

 

Book a free call with me here.

 

We’ll talk about your challenges and what kind of support you might need for the next part of your journey. In half an hour you could be unlocking new dimensions of how you can lead.

 

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Are you daunted by the complexity of your work?

daunted girl frowning at math equations
If you feel daunted, I want you to know that it's not your fault. You are being asked to do a lot while facing forces and trends that are outside of all of our controls.

“So Sarah, you’re leading your organization through this big, complex transformation. Does that feel daunting?”

 

“It is! Oh my gosh, it’s so daunting!”

 

I distinctly remember my first conversation with Sarah, a capable leader who would become a longtime coaching client. Sarah was tasked with changing how her organization built software. She worked for a large and successful manufacturing company that used a host of legacy systems and processes. To compete in a rapidly changing competitive environment, the CEO and board of Sarah’s company recognized the need to rebuild their systems, and they tapped her to lead the transformation.

 

Common Traits of Successful Leaders

 

Like Sarah, almost every leader I work with has made it to where they are by having a solid foundation of technical skills. Sarah has a finance background, thinks fast, and is good with numbers. When we started working together, she told me she feels most comfortable working in a spreadsheet. Other clients shine as lawyers, engineers, or coders. They are all good at coming up with answers to problems. I bet you are, too!

 

Complex Problems vs. Complicated Problems

 

On the one hand, the ability to solve complex problems is a superpower. But, as you progress on your leadership journey, it can also be a liability. Leaders like you are asked to solve increasingly complex problems. Complex problems aren’t just bigger versions of complicated ones. They can’t be easily broken down into smaller, simpler problems. They have unpredictable outcomes even if you deeply understand the underlying principles. They lack a single solution, and the problems change as we tackle them, so they require flexible problem-solving approaches that account for emergent patterns.

 

The “Golden Age of Complexity”

 

All of this means that we can’t deliver a neat, tidy solution. These problems are beyond the ken of any single person or team to solve. They are chaotic (in the sense that small, impossible-to-track details matter). They require others to co-create a new reality — a bold and daring act. 

 

In Meltdown, we wrote about the arrival of the Black Death in the middle ages. In October 1347, a fleet of ships carrying infected sailors arrived in Sicily. Many sailors were already dead; others were coughing and vomiting blood. The epidemic — which would go on to kill tens of millions of people — moved rapidly along new shipping and trade routes. It spread through populations newly concentrated in cities. But we wouldn’t develop the technologies of epidemiology, antibiotics, or sanitation for centuries. We didn’t even have a theory of germs! This mismatch between challenge and tools led one historian to call the middle ages “the golden age of bacteria.” Today, we are in a golden age of complexity.

 

Challenges in Modern Leadership

 

I suspect that most of you are rooted in organizations that want to solve problems faster — when slowing down and deepening our understanding is what’s needed. Consequently, we face pressure to move faster, technologies that demand that we’re “always on,” and organizations that frequently shift priorities. Many of us work for bosses who model management-by-telling instead of leadership-as-listening.

 

The Importance of Vulnerability and Openness in Leadership

 

True leadership is fundamentally an act of vulnerability and openness. It’s about being curious about our impact on others so we can understand how we can serve them. We need space, time, and new ways to help us think and lead. Not many of us learn how to build solid relationships, facilitate meetings, work with strong feelings (our own and others!), delegate tasks, accept feedback, or work with an executive assistant to free up our calendars for our most important work.

 

Overcoming the Challenges: Sarah’s Transformation

 

So if you feel daunted, I want you to know that it’s not your fault. You are being asked to do a lot while facing forces and trends that are outside of all of our controls. A few weeks ago, Sarah and I wrapped up our work together. In leading her organization’s transformation, she herself transformed. Even as she was promoted to a more senior role with more visibility and more significant challenges, she told me that she’s never felt more confident.

 

She’s still a spreadsheet whiz, but she’s more comfortable wading into ambiguous problems that can’t be solved with Excel. She’s building stronger relationships with those around her. She’s learned to use curiosity to shape the direction of her organization and succeed in her role. And she’s led her growing team through a challenging reorganization with poise and composure.

 

Sarah’s journey makes me feel hopeful, and in the near future, I’ll write more about some of the specific approaches she took in our work together. 

 

But what about you? Which of the challenges above resonated with you?

 

Clearfield Group
About | Process | Blog | Schedule Call

Clearfield Group
About | Process
Blog | Schedule Call

Too many leaders struggle to create change for their organizations—even when they have a strong vision. I offer coaching and group consulting workshops so that leaders can work with me to learn, practice and apply new ways to make an impact and influence their teams and stakeholders.

3 Mistakes most leaders make with change

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