Good morning from a sunny and cold YVR! I am looking forward to the flight to Saskatoon as the skies above Vancouver are clear and bright and so the journey over the coastal mountains will be stunning!

I do so love the conversations that are sparked by these short notes. Last week I used the word “weeds” to metaphorically describe some individuals with whom we work. Almost immediately I received emails in response, both thanking me for naming an issue that someone was wrestling with, and from folks arguing against the use of the particular metaphor. One of our correspondents, made the following suggestion:

“the idea of referring to human capital as “weeds” is something that for me has negative connotations – i.e. remove/avoid the “problem” or “bad seed”. In another metaphor I’ve read, the same idea has been expressed more positively presuming that all “flowers” (or plants per se) have a purpose but some may be due for “transplanting” so they can continue to bloom and grow (or perhaps are better suited to one soil type/environmental growing conditions versus another). I personally prefer this more positive framing of leadership “gardening” work - and self reflection as you noted - to recognize goodness of fit and periodic renewal of right people in right roles for the health and rejuvenation of the “garden”

And then, just this morning, this joke arrived and I thought, the universe is really trying to tell me something!

A firm, feeling it was time for a shakeup, hired a new CEO.  The new boss was determined to rid the company of all slackers. On a tour of  the facilities, the CEO noticed a guy leaning against a wall. The room was full of workers and he wanted to let them know that he meant business. He asked the guy,"How much  money do you make a week?" A little  surprised, the young man looked at him and said, "I make $400 a week.  Why?" The CEO said,  "Wait right here." He walked back to his office, came back in two minutes, and handed the guy $1,600 in cash and said,  "Here's four weeks' pay.  Now GET OUT and don't come back." Feeling pretty good about himself the CEO looked around the room and asked, "Does anyone want to tell me what that goof-ball did here?" From across  the room a voice said? , "Pizza delivery guy from Domino's."

A fundamental challenge for all us as leaders is to identify what kind of garden we’re creating/nurturing? What are the values we want to work with and within?  What are the behavioural competencies we need to have and what technical competencies are required? We need then to not only know our garden, but to know the individual plants in it. We can make our garden great by planting the right plants in the right place, but sometimes we make a mistake, and find that a particular plant would be better suited in another garden. The real challenge is in the transplant where delicacy and care are vital. That said, the delicate and careful gardener must also be firm and strong, a sometimes difficult balance.

I’m really curious about your experiences with these kinds of situations; have you ever ‘fired’ anyone, have you been part of a large lay-off decision, or have you done some “transplanting” to continue the metaphor? What were your lessons learned, and what advice would you give anyone facing such decisions for the first time. I’ll compile them over the next couple of weeks and into the new year.

Again, thanks for you continued engagement with Leadership Notes

Good afternoon, I hope this edition of Leadership Notes finds you hale and hearty!

I’ve had some very interesting conversations this past week with leaders in different sectors and circles. All of them, to some degree involved a transition; moving towards retirement/or not, moving towards a change in relationship status, moving towards death, moving towards a new challenge at work, to name just a few. One of the conversations, interestingly one of the shortest involved a leader who found himself working in a culture that was quite different from his own; he was a Canadian, living and working in a regional centre in ‘middle America’. Now this conversation was interesting because it was the third one I’d had in less than 24 hours about the differences between the US and Canada.

Now for those of you who live in other parts of the world, you may well be scratching your head; a difference between the US and Canada?! Well in some ways our two nations are sisters; genetically quite similar, but the genes are put together quite differently. You can see the family resemblance in the eyes, or in the smile for example, but we are very clearly individuals. We have, generally speaking, quite different relationships with guns, for example.

Now the leader with whom I had the conversation found himself living in a place where the local zeitgeist was socially and fiscally very ‘conservative’, and I might describe him as socially and fiscally much more ‘liberal.’ I asked him, ‘how do you operate in a place where there are likely value conflicts between you and the people you serve?’ His answer was great; he spent most of his time listening; trying to understand where the people he served were coming from, and choosing his battles. He had come to understand that small wins were far more important and effective in the long run than trying to change people’s minds on big issues and values. For example, people would find it reasonable that the “eccentric guy down the street needed to have a criminal record check done before he could get a gun.” They would fight tooth and nail though if there was a suggestion that there be any kind of “gun control.”

What I find interesting in all of this is the importance of small steps; any transition, any journey from one point to another is a matter of one metaphoric foot in front of another. Yes, it is often best to simply tear off the band-aid quickly, but by the same token, you wouldn’t quickly tear a cast off a broken arm or leg. Our work as leaders, especially in difficult terrain is to move carefully, even while all around us is moving quickly or in panic mode. We need to listen more, to try to understand where people are coming from and to choose our battles. Sometimes we do need to turn up the heat; we do need to challenge, to provoke and to engage, and we always need to do that consciously and carefully, knowing that turning the heat up too much will cause the system to overheat. It is most effective to take a series of conscious small steps towards the big change.

May this week be one filled with small successes for each and every one of us.

Good morning from a snowy London, Ontario. Winter has descended on this part of the world. I’m here doing some work with an organization heading into a dramatic change; a merger.

One of the interesting parts of such dramatic change is what the late William Bridges called the ‘transition’, that is the psychological response to the change. This response is fluid and sits on  continua between anger/sadness/frustration and excitement/relief/happiness. My place on the continua can move from hour to hour and day to day. And when I’m within a group, those psychological responses can be influenced by how others around me are feeling; we are after all empathetic creatures.

I’ve had a few conversations this week with people sharing stories of where one person has been the catalyst for a group to gain confidence, excitement and see the possibilities of a change, and where another person has influenced a group in exactly the opposite direction! And the catalysts were not all managers and leaders, rather they are often people with ‘informal’ leadership roles in the group. Interestingly, I think that if I asked you to think of who in your group would be a catalyst in either direction, you would be able to identify both people almost without hesitation. What do you think?

I recall speaking at a regional credit union conference some years ago and saying that ‘one of the great things about working in the credit union system is how good we are to our people. And one of the most frustrating things about working in the credit union system is how good we are to our people!’ There and in loads of other businesses, we do not hold each other accountable for our behaviours. My friend Paul Alofs in his book “Passion Capital” warns readers about the “weeds”, and I like his metaphor. I’d like to build on it, suggesting that leadership is like gardening, you need to do some weeding to ensure that the weeds are not taking too much of the nutrients from the flowers you’re actually trying to grow. The big challenge is when you let the weeds grow for too long; the best weeding is done early on. To try and remove a weed after 20 years of service is going to potentially damage that part of the garden, and might in fact prove physically very demanding.

I know of one organization that gardens very well in this sense. They know that their values and corporate culture are an important differentiator in the market. They invest about two weeks in ‘on-boarding’ their new hires, and at the end of the two weeks, one of the senior team, if not the CEO, meet with the new group and invite them to join the organization. After the two weeks, they suggest, the individuals should have a pretty good idea about whether they’d ‘fit.’ If an individual realizes it would not be a fit, the organization obviously pays them for the two weeks, and gives them $500 more as a thank you, and to give them a little support as they look for a different job!   No harm, no foul. A potential weed is removed from the garden quickly and early, and the flower seedlings are given some more space to grow safely.

In the midst of our changing economies and environments, we have a responsibility to tend the gardens we are stewards for, giving nutrients and strength to the flowers and  as early as possible, doing some weeding. And if you feel yourself being influenced by a weed, or even turning into one yourself, as yourself, if this really where I want to be?

Good afternoon from a sunny and warm Vancouver! I hope the sun is shining, at least figuratively where ever you may find yourself this week.

Last week I was exploring the difference between what I called “black cloud” people and those people who bring light into our workplaces. I received, as I do periodically, some comments and questions. One note, from my great friend Danae Johnson (www.thinkingpartners.ca ) . She wrote in part, ”I have the capacity to be a dark cloud - the extent to which & who I share those thoughts/behaviours with is my choice (some of the time). I can also be a source of light, positivity, humour/levity and conscious/aware choice - on a good day perhaps or even if just for a few moments. I am both. I think that others that I may experience as one or the other, are also both as well as many other shades inbetween. There was something in what you wrote that inspired me to respond as I felt that there was a sense of being one or the other, an us & theming, an either or. And in my experience/belief, we have it all inside of us & we get to choose and be both.” I thanked her when I received her note, and am inspired for this week’s edition to riff on her very important point.

I did inadvertently imply “an us and theming.” And Danae is very correct, the dark cloud and the light are part of who we all are, as humans, as well as leaders. We all too often describe others as the ones with the ‘dark cloud’ and thinking that we are the ones who bring light to the world. In fact one of the single most difficult learnings as a leader is to recognize our own dark side, our own gollums for example as I wrote about a few weeks ago http://www.alisdairsmith.com/index.php/leadership-notes/35-lnotes/281-gollums-and-intention . We need to see, recognize and learn to accept our dark sides as part of who we are, and to honour the strength that part of us will often give us. We  then work on making the choice to use that strength to focus on the light we bring to ourselves and to our workplaces. It is a complex and difficult journey. And it is THE journey.

Thanks to Danae, and to all of you who engage with these notes, your comments are inspiring.