Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (13 page)

Lutz was shameless in speaking about his own mistakes. He loves to tell stories, and his favorites are about his mistakes. Instead of hiding his own mistakes or diffusing them onto his staff, he confesses them. When he launched an unsuccessful product, he talked about it openly and what he learned from it. One member of his management team said, “He brings an intellectual curiosity for why things didn’t work out.” By taking his mistakes public, he made it safe for others to take risks and fail.

Insist on Learning from Mistakes

Lutz creates room for other people to make mistakes. When Chris Pirie, the general manager for sales and marketing working for Lutz, was newly promoted to lead sales for Microsoft Learning, he tried a risky promotion. Unfortunately it didn’t work. But instead of rationalizing the mistake, he went to Lutz and admitted the misstep, diagnosed it, and then tried something different. Chris said, “With Lutz, you get to make mistakes. But you are expected to learn fast. With Lutz, it’s okay to fail. You just can’t make the same mistake twice.”

Lutz loves feedback. He isn’t just open to it. He insists on it. A direct report of his recalled a time he had to give Lutz some tough-love feedback. Lutz was involved in a critical project and was particularly excited about the possibilities for the business. As such, he had been dominating the discussion and had taken over. Lutz’s direct report scheduled a one-on-one. He sat down in Lutz’s office and delivered the feedback: “Lutz, you are sucking the oxygen out of the
room. No one else has any room to breathe. You need to back off.” How do you think Lutz responded? How would you have responded if one of your people suggested you were a domineering oxygen hog? Lutz’s curiosity was triggered, and his response was simple. He asked, “What does it look like? Who did it impact? How do I avoid doing it again?” After taking the time to understand his mistake, he asked his direct report, “Will you tell me if I do this again?” His final comment to his direct report was, “I wish you would have told me sooner.” He really meant it.

Lutz achieved the climate he wanted even amidst a stressful external environment by generating rapid learning cycles. As Chris Pirie said, “Lutz creates an environment where good things happen.” Even in times of immense external pressure, Lutz created a climate that drew out people’s best thinking and work. He maintained a creative intensity.

Tyrants and Liberators both expect mistakes. Tyrants stand ready to pounce on the people who make them. Liberators stand ready to learn as much from the mistake as possible. The highest quality of thinking cannot emerge without learning. Learning can’t happen without mistakes. Liberators get the best thinking from people by creating a rapid cycle between thinking, learning, and making and recovering from mistakes. They move rapidly through this cycle in order to generate the best ideas and create an agile organization. As K.R. Sridhar explained, “We iterate fast so we can bring cycle time down. The key to this rapid iteration is creating an environment where people can bring up risks and deal with mistakes sooner.” A.G. Lafley, former CEO at Procter & Gamble said, “You want your people to fail early, fast, and cheap—and then learn from it.”

Diminishers don’t generate these cycles. They might request—if not demand—people’s best thinking, but they fail to establish the environment where ideas are easily expressed and developed to full maturity and efficacy.

THE DIMINISHER’S APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENT

Diminishers haven’t developed this smooth duality of comfort and pressure. Instead, they jerk the organization around as they swing between two modes: 1) militant insistence on their ideas and 2) passive indifference to the ideas and work of others.

Timothy Wilson is an award-winning Hollywood property master. He and his team set the scene and create context for a movie, and he has worked on some of the biggest and most successful films. He’s a creative genius, but he comes at a high cost. Why? Because so few people are willing to work with him
twice
.

One of his staff said, “I’d take any job before working with him.” Signing up to work with Timothy means working in fear and stress with little enjoyment. Those who do work for him say, “You don’t want to come back to work the next day.” From the moment Timothy steps onto the set, the mood changes. People brace for his criticism. As Jeremy sees Timothy walk over to one of the props that he had been working on for the last two days, Jeremy wonders which of the usual insults it will be. Or will he perhaps deliver a rare compliment? Timothy inspects the prop, and delivers his signature critique, loudly and to the whole group, “This looks like a prop for a B movie.” And then there are the random things that set him off. If the prop cart isn’t organized correctly, he goes crazy. One day he got so tense that he argued with the director of photography and threw his walkie-talkie at him. The set went from tense to tenser as people prepared to duck and cover.

Some leaders create an
intense
environment that requires people’s best thinking and work. Timothy created a
tense
environment by dominating the space, creating anxiety, and judging others in a way that had a stifling effect on people’s thinking and output.

DOMINATE THE SPACE
. Tyrants are like a gas that expands and consumes all the available space. They dominate meetings and hog all the air
time. They leave little room for anyone else and often suffocate other people’s intelligence in the process. They do this by voicing strong opinions, overexpressing their ideas and trying to maintain control. Garth Yamamoto, chief marketing officer at a consumer products company, uses up almost every cubic inch of space in the room. He jumps in and interrupts people’s presentations, he expresses very strong and extreme opinions, and either spends his time micromanaging or is noticeably absent. People warn newcomers in his division, “The art of being successful around here is figuring out Garth.” One member of his group said, “I think I am atrophying here. I’m probably giving him about 50 percent.” That person has since left the organization and is thriving in another company.

CREATE ANXIETY.
The hallmark of a Tyrant is their temperamental and unpredictable behavior. People don’t know what will set them off, but it is almost certain that the mood will change when they are around. It is as if Tyrants impose an “anxiety tax” wherever they go. A percentage of people’s mental energy is consumed trying to avoid upsetting the Tyrant. Just think of the wasted productivity on the set with Timothy Wilson. Instead of using their full energy making “A movie” props, Timothy’s team worries about the next thing that Timothy is going to say or do or, for that matter, throw.

JUDGE OTHERS.
Tyrants centralize their power and play judge, jury, and executioner. In sharp contrast to the rapid learning cycles of the Liberator, Tyrants create cycles of criticism, judgment, and retreat. Like the presenters scurrying to adjust their presentations for Jenna Healy (the telecommunications sales leader who resembled Miranda Priestly in
The Devil Wears Prada
), people retreat to a safe position where their ideas won’t be criticized or exposed. The Japanese have a saying for this:
Deru kui wa utareru
, which translated means, “The stake that sticks out gets hammered down.”

When leaders play the role of the Tyrant, they suppress people’s
thinking and capability. People restrain themselves and work cautiously, only bringing up safe ideas that the leader is likely to agree with. This is why Diminishers are costly to organizations. Under the influence of a Diminisher, the organization pays full price for a resource but only receives about 50 percent of its value.

FROM LIBERATION TO RESOURCE LEVERAGE

Why do Liberators get the full value from their resources?

Multipliers know that people are intelligent and will figure it out. Because they engage people’s natural intelligence, people offer them back their full brainpower. Because people have a foundation of safety and comfort, they are free to offer their boldest ideas, not just the safe ideas that will keep them out of the wrath of a Tyrant. The environment of learning has enabled them to take risks, and quickly and inexpensively recover from them.

There is an assumption that underlies the practices of a Liberator. It is that
people’s best thinking must be given
,
not taken
. A manager may be able to insist on certain levels of productivity and output, but someone’s full effort, including their truly discretionary effort, must be given voluntarily. This changes the leader’s role profoundly. Instead of demanding the best work directly, they create an environment where it not only can be offered, but where it is deeply needed. Because the environment naturally requires it, a person freely bestows their best thinking and work.

Multipliers not only get full brainpower from their team, they grow capability rapidly. Our research shows that they don’t just get twice more, they get twice the capability with an extra 5 to 10 percent growth bonus.

Diminishers, on the other hand, believe that
pressure increases performance
. They demand people’s best thinking, but they don’t get it. They fail to establish the environment where ideas are easily expressed
and developed to full maturity and efficacy. An unsafe environment yields only the safest ideas.

The following chart reflects why Tyrants leave capability on the table while Liberators extract full intelligence and capability from the people around them.

Tyrants

What They Do
:

Create a tense environment that suppresses people’s thinking and capability

What They Get
:

People who hold back but appear to be engaged on the surface

Safe ideas the leader already agrees with

People who work cautiously, avoid taking risks, and find excuses for any mistakes they make

Liberators

What They Do
:

Create an intense environment that requires people’s best thinking and work

What They Get
:

People who offer their best thinking and really engage their full brainpower

The best and boldest ideas

People who give their full effort and will go out on a limb and learn quickly from any mistakes

The promise of a Multiplier is twice the capacity. Let’s now look at a few of the starting points for how someone becomes a Liberator to their organization.

BECOMING A LIBERATOR

Remember that the path of least resistance is often the path of the Diminisher. As Michael said, “It’s not like it isn’t tempting to be tyrannical when you can.” Becoming a Liberator requires long-term commitment. Here are a few starting points.

The Starting Block

1. PLAY YOUR CHIPS.
If you want to create more room for others to contribute, and especially if you are prone to dominating a discussion, you might consider a good game of poker chips.

Matthew is a smart, articulate leader. However, he often found himself frustrated and out ahead of his organization, struggling to bring a cross-functional team along with him and his ideas. He was also struggling to be heard. He had great ideas, but he was simply talking too much and taking up too much space in team meetings. I was working with him to prepare a critical leadership forum for his division. He was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to share his views about the strategy for advancing the business to the next level. Instead of encouraging him, I gave him a challenge.

I gave him five poker chips, each worth a number of seconds of talk time. One was worth 120 seconds, the next three worth 90 seconds, and one was worth just 30. I suggested he limit his contribution in the meeting to five comments, represented by each of the chips. He could spend them whenever he wished, but he only had five. After the initial shock and bemusement (wondering how he could possibly convey all his ideas in five comments), he accepted the challenge. I watched as he carefully restrained himself, filtering his thoughts for only the most essential and looking for the right moment to insert his ideas. He played his poker chips deftly and achieved two important outcomes: 1) he created abundant space for others. Instead of it being Matthew’s strategy session, it became a forum for a diverse group to voice ideas and co-create the strategy, and 2) Matthew increased his own credibility and presence as a leader. By exercising some leadership restraint, everyone was heard more, including Matthew as the leader.

Try giving yourself a budget of poker chips for a meeting. Maybe it is five; maybe it is just one or two. Use them wisely, and leave the rest of the space for others to contribute.

2.
LABEL YOUR OPINIONS
.
As you know, formal organizations can create a strong deference to the opinions and thinking of the leader. One executive described his first week as the newly appointed president of a large company. People came at him from all directions to ask him their pent-up questions. He was new and wanted to be helpful, so he would offer a casual opinion. To his amazement, weeks later he found that his opinions had become a set of disjointed policies. As he unraveled the mess, he learned to carefully label the difference between a random musing, an opinion, and a policy decision.

Try the practice used by Michael Chang, in his shift to Liberator. Divide your views into “soft opinions” and “hard opinions”:

• Soft opinions:
  where you have a perspective to offer and ideas for someone else to consider
  
• Hard opinions:
  where you have a clear and potentially emphatic point of view