Organizational Culture Insights to Strengthen Leadership and Drive Change

Want better results? Challenge your thinking. You’ve had your rest. Now it's time for reflection. As Labour Day approaches, it’s the perfect time to get into the right headspace for a solid fourth quarter. I’ve often said that leaders really only have two assets: their brains and their time. How you harness the latter to maximize the former is the great differentiator. So, use this last stretch of summer to actively examine your underlying thinking – the mental models, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions that shape your actions and, ultimately, your outcomes. Because exceptional leadership starts in your head. The TAO of leadership Your thinking has a far more dramatic impact on your leadership outcomes than anything you say or do. Until you get clear about your motivations and assumptions, shine a light on your mental blind spots, and examine those unconscious things driving your actions, you can’t begin to draw others into the collective work that will take your organization to the next level. This idea is so important and powerful that it’s our core philosophy about how leaders grow and thrive. We call it Thinking-Action-Outcomes or TAO. It answers a simple question: what is that voice in my head, why does it say what it does, and what are the implications of listening to it? Being able to identify and question your underlying mental models is foundational to your journey to becoming a more thoughtful, empathetic, and effective leader. Leadership roles come with big blinders. Part of your job is to keep removing them, questioning and challenging yourself and others. Thinking IS work This might be a tough assignment if you have a bias for action. Most leaders like to be busy, getting the work done and knocking down deliverables. But while it might look like nothing’s happening, this kind of deep reflection is actually one of the best investments you can make in your leadership development. And, frankly, it’s one of the most challenging things you can do to make a real change. This kind of deep, personal learning means challenging your unconscious idea about how the world operates. That can be challenging and uncomfortable. But it can also unlock more of your leadership (and personal) potential. Remember: Focusing exclusively on doing is not necessarily the best use of your time. It’s too easy to get caught up in the task treadmill. You can’t outwork every problem. Real change goes deeper. When it comes to making change for better outcomes, most leaders engage in what Chris Argyris, the brilliant business theorist and professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, calls “single-loop thinking,” devising intelligent solutions to external issues. But the complex challenges and accelerated change we’re contending with today cannot be solved by slight tweaks to what we’ve always done. Pre-conditioned responses result in predictable outcomes that can only deliver slight variations on previous results. Nothing much is likely to change when nothing really changes about our thinking. Simply put, better actions that lead to more successful outcomes rest on better thinking, which starts with becoming conscious of what you believe, assume and perceive. That’s why it’s so essential to develop a habit of self-reflection or self-interrogation. Your thinking isn’t just in your head: it affects every action, which in turn generates a three-dimensional ripple effect: An effect on the present situation An impact on the culture via the story that action creates Lessons learned by those who hear the story over time. The forces that shape us Where and when you were born, your family’s finances, education, your religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, and many other factors affect your worldview. Challenging how those influences shape your thinking and actions can feel existential like you’re questioning the core of yourself. But the ability to self-reflect doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning your beliefs and worldview, just becoming more aware of them and how they influence your choices. For instance, “Don't just stand there, do something” was a phrase I often heard growing up, and it taught me to put a premium on action. It’s taken me years to identify how this kind of thinking has influenced how I work. Once I was able to name it, I could tame it. How to start challenging your thinking The prospect of examining everything you think, feel and believe may feel overwhelming. But like any other challenge, you can train for it. Here are some concrete ways to start the process of challenging your mental models: Read—a lot. Go outside your usual reading list to expand your thinking. (Check out our summer reading list for leaders for recommendations). Talk to strangers. Seek out people with different points of view. Cultivate curiosity about their perspectives and experiences. And listen. Reflect upon your leadership . Some questions to ponder: What do I think about leadership? What is my role as a leader? When faced with tough decisions, what are my thoughts, beliefs and assumptions about the situation? What about this situation may be different from what I perceive? What data am I missing? Am I filtering anything out? Who has a different perspective from mine? What are the unintended consequences of my decisions on critical stakeholders? What challenges do I face? What have I done about them? What were the results? Argue another point of view. When making a decision, make a case for taking action different from your default. When debating a course of action with others, have everyone “flip” their thinking and argue a different point of view. Keep an open yet critical mind. Apply it to everything you read and hear. Keep a journal. Record your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions about your role as a leader. Watch how your mental model may change as you are exposed to new perspectives or experiences. This work is challenging. But if you can build a practice of self-reflection, you’ll develop the awareness, empathy and flexibility that leaders today need. And while you’re here, I’d love to know what mental models you’ve noticed guiding your thinking and, thus, your actions and outcomes?

Reclaim your calendar by empowering your team Do you feel like your calendar is running you, not the other way around? Are you frustrated trying to “manage your time,” only to have reality lay waste to your best-laid plans? I hear this a lot. Leaders have a lot of priorities that come at them fast and furious, fighting for attention. In ‘ Top-Down Bottom-Up Time Management: Getting the Right Things Done In the Midst of Chaos ,’ our signature priority-setting program, I’ll often start the first session with a simple question. “How many of you are looking for more work?” Of course, not one hand goes up, not once, in over 30 years of asking. But I do get many knowing smiles from leaders who feel there aren’t enough hours in the day. As somebody once said, “If you can’t get your work done in 24 hours a day, you might have to work at night!” Think of how it feels when you’ve got that rare blank space on your planner. Or that feeling of joy when a non-essential meeting gets cancelled, giving you that gift of time? (By the way…if the meeting is “non-essential,” why is it on your calendar in the first place?!?!) What if you could give yourself more of that? With delegation and discipline, it’s possible. TOP-DOWN, BOTTOM-UP TIME MANAGEMENT There are two traditional schools of thought when it comes to time management. The top-down approach that emerged in the 1960s focused on effective planning, allocating your time to align with your priorities. Then there’s the bottom-up school of thought, which our team affectionately calls “managing the mess.” This is about putting everything you have to do into the buckets and being super-efficient. Here at Whitewater, we see a lot of value, as well as gaps, in both of these approaches. So we took the best of both. Our approach blends the top-down approach, allowing you to focus your efforts on the most highly leveraged activities for your time with the efficiency of bottom-up planning that accounts for the messy realities of life, such as interruptions and the unexpected. This hybrid gives leaders the ability to manage both their high value-added priorities AND the dozens of stimuli coming at them in a rapidly changing, often high-stress environment. That sweet spot in the middle is your planning center, and we’ve seen how, instead of constantly being in reaction mode, it gives you the tools to proactively plan and build the skills to set long-term goals and then translate them into high-impact daily and weekly activities. THE ART OF DELEGATING Delegating is at the heart of our hybrid time management model, and for good reason: the best classic case studies on time management highlight it as the great differentiator between leaders who control their time and those who do not. There’s MacGregor , Arthur Elliott Carlisle’s classic 1976 case study on the super-organized manager of a large refinery who has so much white space on his calendar he’s free for leisure. While the golf references and all-male workforce date the article, the author’s observations on the value of what he terms “participative management techniques” are as relevant as ever. As Carlisle noted, many leaders think they are good delegators, but their behavior indicates otherwise, as they hold on to the lion’s share of decision-making. Contrast this with “MacGregor” (an alias and an easter egg, referring to Douglas McGregor, author of The Human Side of Enterprise from 1958), who strategically, systematically refuses to take on his subordinate’s problems, the work he rightly sees as theirs, not his. Relinquishing decision-making is easier said than done. It brings with it the risks of learning, namely mistakes. But to MacGregor, it’s worth it when mistakes are framed as learning experiences and decisions as growth opportunities. Or, in more modern times, as an executive coaching client of ours likes to say, “Why should I deprive my team members of a development opportunity by doing their work for them?” DELEGATION IS DEVELOPMENT MacGregor challenged the prevailing idea, then and even now, that a leader’s role is “chief decision maker” for those who report to them. MacGregor saw his job as setting clear performance objectives and staying informed about how his team was measuring against them. He’d “quit making other people’s decisions” to be a proper supervisor. MacGregor saw his time as a scarce commodity, so he guarded it with an intentional and disciplined managerial system that provided clarity around quotas and budgets, so objectives were clear. He prioritized communication in the form of weekly Wednesday reports and Thursday meetings. As he told the author, “A lot of managers feel that they have to keep proving to their people that they know more about their subordinates’ jobs than the subordinates themselves by doing their work for them. I refuse to do that anymore.” Who’s Got the Monkey? , William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass’s oft-cited 1974 Harvard Business Review article provides a compelling visual representation of problems and work in the form of a monkey. How do you keep them from ending up on your back? It’s all about developing your team’s initiative. “When you encourage employees to handle their own monkeys, they acquire new skills—and you liberate time to do your own job,” the article states. HOW TO KEEP THAT MONKEY OFF YOUR BACK The most effective managers of time share some common traits. They: Set clear goals for themselves. Identify the highest priority actions that lead to the accomplishment of those goals. Adopt a weekly or longer scheduling horizon to ensure they structure their time for those important activities. Constantly ask: “What is the best use of my time right now?” Adapt daily. Recognize that people are the most important thing, and prioritize decisions to spend time on important “people” issues as the need arises. Building these habits takes time and discipline. For a few days, keep a time journal. Write down every task you do in those days. Write a list of your top three goals and prioritize them. At the end of the week, map your tasks on the simple, four-quadrant time management matrix. Along the top, make two boxes: Important and Not Important. Along the side, add two more: Urgent and Not Urgent. What is both not important and non-urgent? Those are low-hanging fruit for elimination or outsourcing. Next, check out your Important and Urgent categories. What can you stop doing to make more time for your high-priority goals and activities? If it still needs to get done, does it need to be done by you? If you follow this simple exercise, you’ll likely be surprised at how much more spacious your planner feels and how much more focused you are at getting the right things done.

THE THREE Rs FOR A STRONG, STRATEGIC Q4 Just a few weeks ago, my family and I had a whirlwind Labor Day weekend in Toronto to wrap up the summer. Over three jam-packed days, we took in all the city had to offer, including the Canadian National Exhibition, an outdoor concert by Arctic Monkeys, and roller coasters and fireworks at Canada’s Wonderland. It was hot, humid, and tons of fun. Since then, my son’s gone back to school, the leaves have started to change to orange and red, and my clients have well and truly returned to the office, some refreshed from vacation, all refocused on the last quarter of 2023. For many people, September, more than January, is the actual new year, a reset for a last chance for a solid finish to the year. Bon voyage, vacation vibes! While this clean slate can be invigorating, it can be overwhelming. We’ve all had that feeling of returning to work after a holiday, all rested and renewed, only to find that freshness evaporating by noon. Sadly, vacation vibes tend to fade quickly in the face of workplace realities. You’ve got real work to get done, goals to accomplish, strategy to execute. Team members still need attention. Competitors are still competing. Customers are still demanding. If you’re already feeling overloaded by accumulating demands, let’s take a breath, step back from task mode, and refocus on what matters most so you can effectively drive your strategy to results by year’s end. Here are three ways to head into the rest of the year with clarity, calm and confidence. Sure, it might not be the Zen of vacation, but it beats the frantic busyness that is the norm for far too many leaders. 1. Revisit your map The first step is to revisit your big picture: your strategy. Things change quickly in today’s hyper-accelerated business climate, including, perhaps, your company’s highest priorities. It’s easy for even small shifts in direction to get lost in the summer shuffle. So, before you launch into action mode, confirm if there have been any changes to your strategy that might have a knock-on effect on high-priority items. Talk to your colleagues and higher-ups to ensure you’re up to speed, and confirm your course. Even subtle shifts in focus can compound results if you’re not aligned. It’s a lot easier to get clarity now so you can make any necessary adjustments to your team’s work plan for the rest of the year rather than trying to correct your course weeks or months down the road. 2. Reconnect with your team. It’s easy in the summer to go days or even weeks without communicating with your colleagues and team members, especially since so many people now work in remote or hybrid models. Fall is the perfect time to get the band back together. Make time to connect with your key team members individually and bring everyone together. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a chance to reconnect around priorities and tasks and convey any shifts in direction. It’s also an opportunity to hear from your people about how their work is going and get debriefed on what they’ve been up to. What progress have they made on key projects? What challenges are they anticipating or experiencing? Along with the work-focused part of this outreach, actively connecting with your people is also a chance to renew your relationships and show them that you care. This is crucial to engagement and employee satisfaction. People want to feel seen, valued and respected,to know that their contribution matters. Once you’ve reconnected, make intentional regular communications, both one-on-one and as a group, part of your plan moving forward. 3. Reclaim your calendar I’ve said it many times: leaders really only have two assets: your brain and how you choose to allocate your time to optimize it. But too many leaders live deep in the weeds, lost in the day-to-day busywork of keeping things running. Delegation is critical to reclaiming your calendar and focusing on high-level thinking and tasks. I’ll dig deeper into this vital topic in our next post. Along with an overview of the leading time management theories, I’ll share our tried-and-tested framework for getting the right things done, even amid the chaos. You can take back your time and head into the last few months of the year feeling calm, confident and in control. For now, make a list of those things only you can do. Avoid the roller coaster. Anything that doesn’t make the list, delete or delegate. As always, we love to hear from you. How do you refocus in the fall? What are your greatest challenges heading into the last stretch of the year?

Our team reflects on what we’re grateful for in 2024 As the end of 2024 draws near, Heather and I wanted to take a few moments to stop and look back on this whirlwind year. Like many growing businesses, our usual mode is GO!, so this kind of quiet contemplation is too rare. Our team members share our passion for the work and our clients, so even when we catch our breath, we’re pretty happy to talk shop!  That said, there is a time for work– and a time to reflect. I invited my team to join me in this exercise, asking them to share what they were grateful for over these last 12 months.   What struck me in their replies was the consistency: ultimately, close and loving relationships mean the most to us. Our careers are important, gratifying, and a key source of meaning and connection for many of us, but they are not everything. And that’s as it should be.   I hope you enjoy these heartfelt reflections. And if it encourages you and your team to also count your blessings, we’re grateful to have provided the prompt! Darlene Miller, Facilitator, Instructional Design In October, I celebrated my first anniversary with WhiteWater! I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work with amazing clients who are truly committed to developing their employees and fostering leaders who exemplify both caring leadership and a results-driven mindset—the perfect balance of heart and impact. This journey has been a rewarding step toward building a future where I can fully support myself and my family through work I’m passionate about.  Howard Wellema, Facilitator I am thankful for faith, family and friends. For me, nothing comes close to these. There is no greater joy than to see my family healthy, happy, and with hearts that are loving and kind. I'm very thankful. Very grateful. And I am very happy to be in a comfortable groove with WhiteWater’s fantastic content and materials. Survey results from sessions confirm we are making a positive difference.  Jillian Gentleman, Operations Manager  I am thankful for my family and friends, who have become my family. Without them, I am not sure where I would be. The people in my life are few, as I have a small circle, but they mean the world to me.  I am so fortunate to have WhiteWater as part of my career. I'm very proud and thankful to be part of this team, even part-time. It goes to show that WhiteWater can bring out the best in people. Tracey Ross-Watmore, Instructional Designer I am thankful for my friends and family. No matter what happens, I remain so fortunate to have these lovely people in my life. Seeing my children thrive and pursue their dreams has been extraordinary, and I am grateful to be around to experience that. This was my 15th year as part of the WhiteWater family. I have had the privilege of doing meaningful work, meeting amazing people and working with wonderful colleagues every day. That counts as a blessing in my book. Fatima Hassan, Communications Manager I’m incredibly grateful for the blessing of welcoming my baby and celebrating a milestone wedding anniversary this year—a time filled with love, joy, and growth for my family. I’m proud to work alongside the amazing team at WhiteWater, whose support and collaboration make every accomplishment meaningful. Being part of such a dedicated and innovative group is truly rewarding. Heather Ryan, COO, CFO Can you believe 2024 is already wrapping up? It feels like the year just started, and we were waiting for our annual March break shenanigans. Somehow, here we are, planning our next shenanigans already. What a year it’s been—a mix of chaos, insane travel, and moments that made me stop and think, “Wow, I really don’t have it all figured out.” (Like there was ever any doubt). So there’s my family. They’ve been my constant source of love, support, and unsolicited advice this year. Whether it was celebrating the wins or reminding me that everything happens for a reason, I wouldn’t have made it through without them. That’s what we all need–equal parts cheerleaders and reality-checkers. Then there are my friends. You know who you are. You’ve brought the laughs, the vent sessions, and occasionally the bad ideas that somehow turned into the best memories. If I ever wrote a memoir, you’d each get a chapter entitled “ They Did What?!” Thank you for always being there—whether in person, on FaceTime, or via group chats full of memes. Business-wise, 2024 has been like juggling flaming swords: exciting, terrifying, and surprisingly rewarding. There’s been growth (yay!), some missteps (oops!), and a lot of figuring things out on the fly. But through it all, I’ve learned so much and gained an even deeper appreciation for my team and everyone who’s been part of the journey. Looking back, this year has been a reminder of how much there is to be grateful for. The big wins? Amazing. The tough days? Character-building (so they say). The small, everyday moments? Those are the ones that make my heart and life full. So, here’s to family, friends, work, and all the little things that made 2024 unforgettable. Thanks for the love, the laughs, and occasionally putting up with my nonsense. Let’s bring on 2025—hopefully, with a little less chaos and a little more sleep. Sean Ryan, CEO  It all starts with the WhiteWater team. I’m incredibly grateful for the passion, energy, expertise and commitment they bring every day. They genuinely care about our clients’ success and put enormous effort into being their best. It’s both incredibly exciting and humbling as our team has made us better than our wildest expectations.  I’m so grateful for our clients who have fueled our continued growth and success while we try to contribute to theirs. We are honored to be invited to work with them and do our best to earn their continued trust. And, of course, none of this happens, or even matters, without my family and friends. Heather has always been supportive of the WhiteWater journey. Over the past few years, she has been an integral part of our growth, most of which would not have happened without her. Shockingly, she still talks to me (at least, most days!) As our son finishes his last year of high school, I am incredibly thankful for his growth as a student, athlete and as a human! Finally, we are blessed to be surrounded by a huge circle of friends. We love you all!

It’s not too late to set targets for this year! Did you intend to do your 2024 planning in December, but here we are, already deep into January?  No worries. It’s not too late to set some goals. In fact, it’s the perfect time, as you’ve hopefully had a little break and are coming back fresh and rested after the holidays. You don’t need to bring in a consultant or block off a whole day to map out your targets. A couple of hours of focused work can set you on a good course.  In this post, the first of our three-part series on moving from strategy to results, we outline some simple ways to get going, focusing on your strategy. In Part 2, we look at how to set results-oriented goals using our SET form. In Part 3, we’ll look at the high-value actions, what we call performance drivers, and what it takes to make them happen. But first:  START WITH YOUR STRATEGY. In early January, I got a rather panicked call from a new client who’d recently been named general manager of a national construction company.  The industry was new to him, and he was busy learning about the business. Meanwhile, the annual sales team meetings, where the year’s targets would be set, were fast approaching.  “I'm trying to figure out how to make our time together valuable,” he says.  Let’s start with your strategy, I suggested. What does it say?  “Well, instead of quoting every job, which we used to do, now we’re only going to quote jobs that matter.”  Hmm. I was starting to see why he was struggling. For starters, their “strategy” wasn’t a strategy at all. It was a tactic.  This happens a lot, and it helps explain why so few organizations successfully get the results they want.  Many clients confuse goals, strategies, tactics, and actions. When the relationship between these ingredients for results is blurred, it creates confusion and makes it hard to get everyone aligned to move forward together.  So, just to recap:  Strategy  tells us, at a high level, where the organization wants to go and how it will position itself to create a competitive advantage.  Goals  give us specific targets to move in that direction (more on that in Part 2 of this series) Performance drivers  (or critical actions) are the things we need to do to get there (see Part 3)  Your strategy is your North Star that guides all of your goal-setting. It really is the first step to driving results.  But too often, these plans collect dust. If that’s the case for your organization, pull out the document, determine what’s still relevant, and think about how to flow this into three to five specific strategic goals. Some general questions to kick off the discussion: Where are our growth opportunities? What differentiates us? What target markets do we want to be in? What do customers in those target markets value? Where should we consider reinvesting? And if your strategy needs refreshing, check out our earlier post  on how to design and execute your best strategic thinking session yet.  MAXIMIZE YOUR ASSETS. We see many clients burning themselves out pursuing new customers, building new products, and chasing new markets when their existing assets still have a lot of juice left to be squeezed.  Instead of always going after what's next and what's new, the smartest move might be doubling down on what’s already working.  As you think about potential goals, ask yourself:  What do we do exceptionally well?  How might we expand our offerings?  For service-based companies, how might we productize our expertise?  What opportunities do we have to upsell to existing clients?  In many of our client's businesses, we see the 80/20 rule play out in terms of products and profit, with 20% of their offerings generating the majority of the business. What’s your 20%? What goals might maximize it?  CONNECT TO YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE. I know a builder whose differentiator is an iron-clad commitment to project timelines. If he says the roof will be on by Dec. 1, it’s as good as done.  This delivery commitment creates a huge advantage over the competition, who won’t make promises because of the challenges of scheduling subcontracting tradespeople.  This example is interesting because the service he provides – the construction – isn’t innovative. What is unique and gives him an edge is how he manages the tradespeople on which the construction industry depends.  What advantages, unique value propositions, or proprietary products or services set you apart from the competition? How might they be leveraged to help you reach your goals?  In our next post, the second in our three-part series on moving from strategy to results, we look at how to set results-oriented goals using our S.E.T. form.  In Part 3, we’ll look at the high-value actions, what we call performance drivers, to take to make it happen. Goal Setting

When we ask our clients what their company’s goals are, very often, they don’t know.  This is typically true at all levels of the organization, from senior management to the front line.  Yikes! And when they do think they know what the goals are, very often, what they report are, in fact, activities  rather than actual results. Or their stated goals are so abstract as to be meaningless: “We want to be better this year than we were last.”  This vague vision is not helpful. Our last post looked at how there must be a natural flow from strategy to goals to results. In this post, we’re peeling another layer of the onion to show you how to take the general ideas from your initial reflections and shape them into clear, crisp, results-oriented goals. (In our third post in the series, we will dig into actioning them).  INVOLVE YOUR TEAM IN GOAL SETTING In a lot of organizations, the goal-setting process happens at the top. The leadership team hands down the goals as a proclamation from on high: “Here's your target. Go hit this number.”   This top-down approach is typically doomed to failure because the people responsible for hitting the goal don’t know where those numbers came from or how they align with the company’s overall strategy (which should be the North Star for everyone).  A client once told me their department’s goal was “10% fewer product defects in 2024.”  Ok, great. But why? How does that relate to your strategy? How does it create value for your customers? Is that achievable for your team? Does it make sense based on your resources?  There is also the risk that it may not be realistic, setting up your team for frustration and failure, which is a major motivation killer. It can also create confusion or even resentment because, really, who among us likes receiving orders that seem arbitrary?  NAME THE RESULT We once worked with a telecom company with the strategic objective of increasing brand loyalty. Love it.  But when it came to goals, this strategic aim was nowhere to be seen in the priorities guiding the front-line customer service reps, who are crucial to customer experience. Their performance was primarily based on a metric: take at least 100 calls daily. (Ironically, this target actually ran counter to the strategic goal because it encouraged reps to end calls quickly, even to the point of intentionally hanging up on customers to hit their target!) Instead of activities, they should have been promoting outcomes. This is where setting results-oriented  goals comes in.  Results-oriented goals are a game changer because they define what you want to accomplish  rather than what you should do . By setting these types of goals, everyone in the company can understand how their work contributes to the larger picture. It also sets you up to easily track progress and adjust as needed.  Results-oriented goals can be either quantitative or qualitative. Some examples of the former include increasing market share, profitability, or new product development. Some examples of qualitative goals are improved service levels, elevated thought leadership, or better client satisfaction.  The important thing is to look at the result rather than the activities to get there.  REFINE INTO S.E.T. GOALS OK, so now you’ve got one or even a few results-oriented goals defined for 2024. You know what you’re hoping to achieve.  Now, we’re going to take things a step further, refining your goal into SET form so it has a:  S tarting point  E nding point T imeframe The starting point is where you’re at now, and the ending point is – you guessed it – where you want to be. This is as simple as it sounds, but it’s incredible how articulating these three simple boundaries can help focus your team. Just defining this gap can help motivate your team and provide a healthy tension to drive performance.  And the timeframe? That’s just the deadline or target date for achieving your goal. It helps your team manage their time and priorities. It also allows them to direct their energy and focus. A goal with no timeframe feels arbitrary and formless. The chances of realizing it are slim indeed.  So, going back to our telecom company, a SET goal might be to increase the Net Promoter Score, a critical measure of customer loyalty, from 65 to 75% by the end of the year.  The specificity of the result and the timeframe aren’t just motivating; they will help you determine if you’ve met your goal in the future. It also makes planning and provisioning around the goal easier because the tools and talents needed to succeed should be pretty clear. Not having the right architecture – the systems and processes – to deliver is one of the most common reasons organizations fail to transmit well-formulated strategies to results. BE BOLD YET REALISTIC By now, you should have at least one (but maybe a few) results-oriented goals that align with your overall strategic objectives, defined in S.E.T. form.  Amazing! You are already ahead of more than half of organizations and on track to hitting your targets for 2024.  Now, look at your list and ask yourself: what can we reasonably expect to accomplish this year? There’s no point in setting goals that are impossible to hit based on your team, processes, or other factors.  More on that in our next post, which will show you how to break your goal into  bite-sized actions and focus your team’s energy and time to align with the goal. We’ll also show you how to measure your progress as you transition from naming goals to getting results. Before you know it, you’ll be on your way to achieving your goals for 2024.

Actionable ways to be a more connected leader In our last post, we looked at empathy's benefits for leadership and its positive power to influence your organization's culture, morale, and bottom line.  Simply put, when you care about people, they’ll also care about you and your shared goals. This is the reciprocal power of empathetic leadership. The research backs this. But to maximize engagement, more than merely transactions between managers and employees is needed. A 2015 Gallup study, Employees Want a Lot More from their Managers , found that employees who feel their manager is invested in them as people, not just workers, are more likely to be engaged. Remember: empathy in leadership isn’t soft; it’s smart. But for many leaders, it can feel hazy or slippery. How do you show empathy to make it tangible to your colleagues and teammates?  We’ve already explored the Empathy Spectrum and Empathy Map, two tools for building empathetic leadership practice. In this post, I share five practical ways to level up your empathy to foster stronger relationships and create a culture where everyone feels seen, valued, and supported.  Empathy in Leadership: Creating a safe space A productive workplace is one where people feel safe—safe enough to experiment, challenge ideas and each other, share information, and support one another. Team members are prepared to give their manager and organization the benefit of the doubt. However, none of this happens if employees do not feel cared about. Stereotypical small talk—“Hey, how about those Dodgers?” “How are the kids?”—isn’t going to cut it. Again, this is not a mere “check the box” effort. The best leaders make a concerted effort to get to know their employees and help them feel comfortable talking about any subject, whether it is work-related or not.  This is no small feat. It requires some real engagement on your part, allowing yourself to care about each person. That means listening deeply and empathetically, getting to know their individual passions, interests, and challenges, and actively supporting their success and growth to help them be their best. The best leaders understand that each person they lead is different, with their strengths, skills, and challenges at work and away from it. Knowing their employees as people first, leaders accommodate their team members’ uniqueness while managing toward high performance. To build deeper relationships with people, you must work through five levels of connecting. (And bonus points if they have kids AND you know their names!). 1) Establish trust This means developing a mutual understanding of your respective drivers, preferences, motivators, and demotivators for high performance at work, and coming to understand what makes each other tick. 2) Align on expectations You both need to understand what you are trying to achieve at work and why, then align the expectations you have for each other to achieve those outcomes. 3) Show genuine appreciation This includes helping team members focus on where they are being successful, jointly understanding what drives that success, sharing how much you appreciate their contribution and exploring ways in which they can use their skills and talents to benefit both themselves and the organization. 4) Challenge unacceptable behavior or inadequate performance There will be times when you need to hold more difficult conversations, to agree on a more effective set of behaviors or results when the team member’s performance or actions are getting in the way of the team’s overall performance and results. 5) Grow for the future Understanding your team members’ career aspirations gives you the best chance of creating the conditions for them to build that career within your organization rather than elsewhere. And, occasionally, it means helping them achieve those aspirations in other organizations, if that’s what’s best for them. As these five simple levels show, it really comes down to connecting better with people. Remember, workplaces where people feel connected deliver better results. And, ultimately, isn’t that our job as leaders? Want to learn more about empathy or get some professional support making it part of your leadership development strategy? Our program, Lead with Empathy , which is based on many years of fieldwork with hundreds of leaders, is designed to help close this gap. Meanwhile, we’d love to hear from you. What’s helped you build closer relationships with your team? What’s your biggest empathy challenge ?

How seeking new knowledge, experiences makes you a better leader Reddit has become my go-to social media platform, and one of my go-to SubReddits is  “TIL: Today I learned,” which is precisely what it sounds like.  There are always interesting posts, from how 16th-century Venetian glassmakers protected their trade secrets to the fact that 21 of the 50 oldest living people are Japanese to any fact you can imagine, from history and sports to science, pop culture, business, and more. The posts range from goofy and oddball to pithy and profound. What they share is a sense of delight in learning and sharing knowledge. Here at WhiteWater, we’ve long known that curiosity is vital to unlocking your business’s potential. Last year, we led a project with a large multinational organization client to understand what separated their highest-performing leaders from the rest. Intellectual curiosity was the most significant differentiator by far . (Check out the entire case study here .) These leaders were open to new ideas and people. They relentlessly pursued their interests. They were proactive in seeking new information and hungry for learning. And their curiosity fed itself as new ideas made them thirsty for more knowledge: They’d read something that would trigger an idea or question and keep pulling that thread, seeking more articles, books, podcasts, and people to explore the topic.  So, what makes intellectual curiosity valuable? It means you’re willing to consider other viewpoints and explore and adopt new ideas. It’s the basis for mental agility, which translates into business agility. It fuels innovation.   And while it’s a trait that some people naturally have, it’s also a skill you can build. And summer is the perfect time to polish up your curiosity toolkit.  What kind of curious are you?  Of course, like any trait, intellectual curiosity isn’t one-size-fits-all.  Our team here at WhiteWater loves The Five Dimensions of Curiosity , a 2018 Harvard Business Review article by Todd B. Kashdan, David J. Disabato, Fallon R. Goodman, and Carl Naughton. It explains that curiosity can be broken down into five distinct dimensions rather than a single trait.  As the article states, “Instead of asking, “How curious are you?” we can ask, “How are you curious?” Synthesizing leading research, the authors co-created a five-dimensional model of curiosity: Deprivation sensitivity  is when you recognize a gap in your knowledge, and filling it offers relief. Joyous exploration  is that sense of wonder you feel when confronted with or consumed by something fascinating.  Social curiosity  is talking, listening, and observing others to learn what they are thinking and doing.  Stress tolerance is a willingness to accept and even harness the anxiety associated with novelty. Thrill-seeking  is the willingness to take physical, social, and financial risks to  acquire varied, complex, and intense experiences. By understanding curiosity as nuanced and varied, you can harness its incredible power.  “A monolithic view of curiosity is insufficient to understand how that quality drives success and fulfillment in work and life,” the authors write. “To discover and leverage talent and to form groups that are greater than the sum of their parts, a more nuanced approach is needed.” Check out the end of this post, where we’ve included their curiosity scale. Take the test to figure out what kind of curious you are.  HOW TO BUILD YOUR INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY Becoming more curious takes attention and intention. Here’s how: This might not come naturally, and that’s OK. Even if your interest is forced at first, fake it until you make it! I promise your curiosity muscle will become toned the more you use it. Curiosity requires valuing questions, and intellectual curiosity thrives when you're asking better ones. To assess and improve the quality of your questions, check out Questions that Fuel Curiosity ,  a LinkedIn Learning video by Becki Saltzman. At just under 5 minutes, it’s a quick hit of actionable ways to up the ante on your questions, resulting in instantly better answers. We like it so much that it’s part of the prep work for WhiteWater’s Intellectual Curiosity program!  Fish can’t see the ocean they’re swimming in. Likewise, when you’re a leader, it’s hard to spot the ruts, routines and conventions in your organization. Make a conscious effort not just to accept how things are, but also to question whether there’s a better way.  Remember our client’s high-performing leaders from our research? We found they read a lot and tend to have more diverse social and professional networks. In other words, they don’t stay in their lane–and neither should you. Put yourself into new, even uncomfortable situations. It might feel forced at first, but over time, like any habit, it will become more natural.  Curiosity is an infinitely renewable resource - the more you have, the more you’ll generate.

Performance drivers to master your goals Welcome to the third and final installment in our trifecta of posts taking you from strategy to goals.  This last post is all about those high-value actions, what we call performance drivers, to make your goals happen. This is where things go from big ideas to real-world success.  Fun, right?  If you’ve followed along, you’ll remember my housebuilder friend, whose differentiator is an iron-clad commitment to project timelines. I love using this example because his work is so tangible, but this advice applies to any business, from a small, family-owned shop to a large, multinational company.  Below, I outline four key performance drivers to help you hit your 2024 goals. Think of them as gears – they fit together to transmit energy. As I write about in Get in Gear , my 2020 book about getting from strategy to execution to results, the more aligned they are, the less friction between them, and the smoother your path to success.  Right, Right, Right.  You want to start by having the right people with the right capabilities in the right roles at the right time.  That means finding the proper skill sets but also people with the right attitudes and values to get to your goals. A master technician with a bad attitude and a big mouth will drag the rest of the team down. And don’t miss the talent you’ve already got: how can you engage and develop your existing team?   Using our home builder example, this means having a team of reliable construction professionals and tradespeople, from framing and finishing carpenters to electricians, plumbers, crack-fillers, and painters, lined up to do the job. He wants workers with great technical skills, a good work ethic, and high reliability. He needs to count on them so the company can honor its commitment to on-time delivery.  It’s important to remember that you never “solve” Right, Right, Right. It’s an ongoing adaptation, and part of getting it right is to look for people who embrace the opportunity to develop themselves to perform better in their current and future roles.  Align the Architecture Having the right people is not enough – you need an architecture, the systems, structures, and  processes that align with your goal.  This can feel risky. It may mean challenging the way things have always been done.  Take our builder.  In an industry that’s been slow to go digital, I’ll bet he’s using software and online tools to create an efficient, transparent, aligned organization.  Construction is a very choreographed field: timing is essential to bring the right skills, materials, and equipment together, as well as managing administrative elements such as permits and inspections. For our builder, this means project management software that tracks human resources, costs, and timelines. It’s just one of the architectural elements that keep things humming.  So, when it’s time to dig the foundation, he doesn’t have a crew standing around, leaning on their shovels, waiting for the excavator.  Visible Scorecards “What gets measured gets done,” an old management maxim states.   In every industry, there are key performance indicators that tell the story of how things are going.   In construction, schedule fidelity drives everything else – including costs. The farther you fall behind schedule, the higher your costs will go. So, it follows that our builder’s scorecards would track performance related to those key drivers. From a system standpoint, he has both individual project and cumulative scorecards that he looks at weekly, monthly, and quarterly results to stay on top of the day-to-day and spot larger trends or challenges.  When creating scorecards, start with the premise that people want to do work that matters and will rise to the occasion when given the chance. Scorecards don’t work when they feel punitive. When people have clear targets, they tend to spend less time messing around with stuff that doesn't matter.  Good scorecards drive performance by clarifying the connection between effort and results and highlighting shortfalls, prompting corrective action or extra effort to close the gap.   Follow-up, follow through.  A goal without a plan is just words.  Consistent follow-up, follow-through ensure we honor the commitments that we've made. This is communication to drive accountability. It keeps the goal active and in sight.  This communications cascade must flow down through the entire organization. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be in every meeting – that would actually be a really inefficient way of communicating. But it does need to reach the team members responsible for executing the work that will help you hit your goal.  For our builder, I’ll bet he is in contact with his site superintendent or construction manager daily for a status report on each house. The construction manager is, in turn, following through with their team, suppliers, inspectors – anyone who’s essential to keeping the project on track to reach their goals.  Follow-up, follow-through should have its own architecture, a clear, repeatable process, so everyone knows what to expect.  And there you have it, our round-up of the four most important performance drivers you need to be aligned. With that, our three-part series on getting from strategy to goals is complete.  We love to hear from you. What is the status of your goals for 2024? What struggles are you having? What has most helped you and your team hit your goals? Share in the comments below. Goal Setting.

Stretch Goals Keep You Ahead of the Curve Disruption is one of the great buzzwords of our accelerated digital era.  It seems like everything is constantly being disrupted: how we work, shop, socialize, get medical care, buy our groceries–you get the picture. It’s that feeling of perpetual whitewater I’m always talking about (and that I named my business after!) Disruption can get a bad rap. For some, it’s synonymous with instability. With risk.  That’s not wrong. But it also misses the fact that in disruption’s destructive force lies its potential. If you can learn to embrace disruption, to get comfortable proactively challenging your company’s status quo, that’s a position of incredible power.  Think bigger– much  bigger Most companies have growth as a goal, but their margins are too modest. A typical quality improvement goal might be 10% each year. That kind of steady-she-goes growth might result in some incremental improvements. It might even be fine for an overall target.  But every business has areas where 10% better is simply not good enough.  As I wrote in a year-end post  reflecting on Whitewater’s recent growth trajectory, it was only once we embraced the idea of exponential growth, of doubling year over year, that, well, we started to double. Before that, I’d been pretty content to keep on keeping on. We were comfortable, complacent, and frankly, vulnerable to our competition. That was the prod I needed to kick into high gear. There’s a great business story from the 1980s about how Motorola responded to intense competition in the pager market (yes, I know I’m dating myself, but stick with me, the fundamentals are still relevant!). Motorola was getting trampled by cheaper, better Japanese-made models. It turns out that quality controls were the problem. Motorola’s defect targets were 20% (20 per 100 units).  Compare that with the competition’s standard of three defects  per million .  Not even in the same universe, right?  Defects are expensive, and they were killing Motorola.  Wisely, its leaders realized that at 10% better a year, they had zero chance of competing.  They had to set a stretch goal: to get 10 times better every two years. It was a big lift. They had to transform all of their systems, structures and processes. And, as I discuss later in this piece, their people also needed to be brought along. (Unfortunately for Motorola and pager manufacturers everywhere, that line of business got wiped out before they could fully catch up, but the underlying story is still valid.) Motorola’s pager story shows that there are times when you have to do better by orders of magnitude, to make quantum leaps, not just incremental gains. Ask yourself: where does your company need to be ten times better than you are today–not just 10%?   Disrupt your brain Once you decide you've got to be ten times not 10% better, another realization will quickly arrive: your current thinking will never get you there. Disruption starts from within. And it takes a leader who’s willing to self-reflect, to hold their thinking and the group-think of their organization up for examination, to compel others to come along on this journey.  So challenge yourself by actively examining your underlying thinking – the mental models, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions that shape your actions and, ultimately, your outcomes.  ( Check out this post f or ideas on how to examine your thinking and understand how it influences your actions and outcomes).  And get ready to get comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing.  Make disruption your culture.  When leaders talk about disruption as a positive force, it sets the tone for the whole organization. It helps create a culture where innovation, change, experimentation, and adaptation are the norm. It nurtures the kind of risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking that’s needed to reach stretch goals.  Returning to the Motorola pager example, what they did from a people perspective is fascinating. One of their realizations was if they wanted to get dramatically better at quality, they had to instill total quality management principles across the entire organization.  It was a big shift–and it worked. I think that’s partly because when your team feels part of something bigger than themselves, something bold and new, and when they have permission to try–and fail–it nurtures a new boldness.  I think back on a project I’d worked on in the early 2000s at a failing golf resort that was burning cash and barreling towards bankruptcy  I’d been brought in as a consultant to turn things around. We needed to set some big goals and work fast before the money ran out. Every day, we had to make decisions with less-than-ideal information. There was no time to wait. The team was resistant. “We're moving too fast,” they’d say.  But if we slowed down, we would have died.  And you know what? We made it.   Most of us are comfortable with the pace at which we've grown accustomed to working. But your competition may be moving at a very different speed–and if you don't move faster, you’ll be left eating their dust. My takeaway from the resort turnaround project is that we often don't know how fast fast is.  No one thought breaking the four-minute mile was a human possibility until Roger Bannister did it. Once he cracked it, his record was beaten in just 46 days. Disruption is a mindset as much as a set of actions or a strategy.  It is heady, scary and, well, fun! Don’t forget to enjoy that rush of exhilaration. It’s contagious. And it will help fuel you in those challenging moments when your confidence in your ability to hit your stretch goal is ebbing.  By imagining the impossible, it just might become achievable. And even if you don’t quite get there, you’ll still run faster and further than you likely ever imagined you could.

How to build an inventive culture that seeds and feeds new ideas, fostering innovation Raise your hand if your company wants to be more innovative.  Now, keep it up if you’re struggling to do so.  I’ll guess there are a lot of elevated hands out there. That’s because, for many organizations, innovation feels like  such a big lift.  And not a few leaders I’ve met mistakenly think they need to implement R&D departments and dedicate vast resources to innovation.  But innovation really isn’t so complicated. Some simple tweaks to your mindset, culture, and priorities can yield fresh ideas.   Here are some simple things you can do today to make your organization instantly more innovative: Reframe failure By now, I think we’ve all heard 3M’s  most famous innovation story about the creation of the Post-in note. In 1968, Spencer Silver, a company scientist, failed to create a super-strong adhesive, instead turning out low-tack, reusable glue.  For five years, Silver promoted his "solution without a problem" without success. It took a colleague, Art Fry, who, six years later, had the idea of using Silver’s adhesive to stick a bookmark in his hymn book. He worked on the idea using 3M's  "permitted bootlegging" policy which gives employees time to tinker, and, long story short, the Post-In was born.  There are so many nuggets of innovation wisdom in this story: finding the right solution for your problem, rather than starting with the problem;  widening the lens of possible applications. inviting curiosity; tenacity; and a company culture that encourages experimentation.  Examine your garbage One day, on vacation in Mexico last year, my wife and I got chatting with a friendly couple beside the pool. I learned that the husband had a management consulting business and had recently published a book, Lunch With Leaders , in which he shared highlights from conversations with a range of CEOs and founders.   One was with the woman who started the Little Potato Company . If you’re not familiar, they sell bags of tiny tubers prized for their cute appearance on your dinner plate and creamy texture. They effectively created a new category in the produce aisle in the notoriously competitive and challenging food market. I checked with my local grocery store: a bag of baby potatoes, by weight, sells for four times the price of a bag of regular Russets.  The innovation learned from this tasty example? How they took a product that was traditionally treated as waste and repositioned it as niche, almost gourmet.  Another example is closer to my home in New Brunswick, where forestry is a major traditional industry. It may be a traditional industry, but it isn’t stuck in the past. Along with technological innovations and scientific advancements in growing trees, they’ve looked at their production line, including what was traditionally considered waste, to innovate new products.  Today, they turn sawdust and chips that were once mill detritus into wood pellets, which fuel increasingly popular pellet stoves as consumers look for lower-price alternatives to expensive oil or electric heat.  And, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my great friends at Nucor . In the 1960s, then CEO Ken Iverson spotted a need for an inexpensive source of steel for their Vulcraft joist fabrication business. In those days, steel was made in blast furnaces from iron and coking coal. And, old steel was merely disposed of in landfills. Iverson recognized the opportunity to remelt that scrap steel (garbage!) in electric arc furnaces and turn it into new steel. Since no one else wanted the scrap, that gave Nucor a huge cost advantage. Along with an incredible culture, they have used that innovation to grow into the largest steel maker in North America AND the largest (by weight) recycler in North America. As an added bonus, greenhouse gas emissions from recycling old steel into new is a fraction of the emissions from traditional blast furnaces. In all these examples, the companies saw treasure, whereas others saw trash.  And even if you’re not a manufacturer, there are by-products of your process and services that can be spun off as value-added offerings. Act like it's improv night Innovations look wildly different, but they all rely on a particular mindset that’s willing to experiment, play and imagine.  So, how do you promote that from within your organization? How do you nurture a culture that is open to new (maybe even wild-seeming) ideas and not dismissive of them? I’ve seen a lot of workplaces inadvertently crush good ideas before they see the light of day, in part due to a structural challenge: there are more people in your organization who can say no to an idea (almost everybody) than those who can say yes (typically a few leaders vested with authority). So how do you change that nay-saying mental model, that paradigm within the organization?  One easy way is to take an improv approach. Instead of “no, but…” being your default stance, try “yes, and…”  It’s incredible what this simple shift to a more open and positive mindset can do to nurture potentially innovative ideas. While the first kills them right out of the gate, “yes, and…” encourages exploration.  Swap ‘should’ for ‘could’  Another easy mindset shift is changing the questions your team asks.  When solving a problem, the typical approach is, “What should we do?”  This divergent line of inquiry aims for the “right” answer, which is limiting.  Instead, ask, “What could  we do?” This is a far more open-ended and potentially generative question. Of course, eventually, all those “coulds” will have to converge. But starting with divergent will give you a much richer pool of ideas.  Give the people what they want  Innovation doesn’t need to come from within–it still “counts” if it comes from someone outside your organization. Sometimes, it's just a matter of being alert and responsive to opportunities.  This has been the case for us here at WhiteWater. Most of our product development ideas come from clients asking us questions.  My first book,   Get in Gear , resulted from a client asking, “How do we better translate our strategy to real results?”  We had the pieces to that answer; we just had never put them together into this cohesive new form.  Ditto another offering we’ve got in the works, a training program to develop leaders’ intellectual curiosity, that also came from a client request. We had done original research on the topic, which we found to be the top factor separating high-potential leaders (check out this post to learn more). We knew there was a need for this kind of program, but it was on the back burner. But we knew we had to act when another client asked about it.  Our latest venture, a pilot program called Lead With Empathy, was the same. I talk and write about empathy a lot, but it wasn’t until a client asked for a program specifically focused on it that we created it.  It might be the most significant thing we've ever done. And it’s completely client-driven. Be alert to client-driven innovation. If you listen to your customers, they'll tell you what they need and help you innovate.

Imagining another’s experience unlocks new ideas, connections. My team has been thinking deeply about empathy lately as we build a new program for a client to develop their leaders’ capabilities in this area.  At the same time, my attention keeps getting pulled toward innovation because it’s become so apparent that survival in our business climate of accelerated change demands new solutions to problems. (Check out my latest blog post on nurturing an open, inventive culture.)  Well, it took me a while to connect the dots, but I recently had a lightbulb moment where the two ideas converged, and I began to see an inherent relationship between empathy and innovation.  The more I thought about it, the more I saw threads linking them. And I think they are essential priorities for exceptional leadership.  High-quality attention Both innovation and empathy rely on an unusual quality of attention, a degree of focus you’re willing to give to a customer, colleague or problem. I’d argue that both innovation and empathy require you to get out of your self and direct your attention externally rather than internally, as most of us tend to do much of the time.  Innovation and empathy both require us to sit with a problem or person and give them our deep attention. That’s an increasingly rare and valuable gift in today's distraction culture.  Active imagination This quality of deep attention is paired with a certain imaginative capacity: in both innovation and empathy, it’s necessary to imagine what is not , or at least what we ourselves are not directly experiencing. (Even when we’re able to empathize with another’s situation because it’s similar to something we’ve also felt or lived, we can’t really  know how it feels to be them).  That ability or at least willingness to try to understand somebody else's emotions or perspective, to vicariously experience their life, is an act of imagination.  And so is conceiving of a new solution or approach to an old or emerging problem – the very definition of innovation.    Comfort with discomfort  What do trying new things, advancing potentially wacky ideas, active listening, and being present with another human being have in common?  They can all feel a little … awkward.  That’s because they challenge the status quo, where we all know what to expect, and go beyond the superficiality of most work relationships. Innovation and empathy can feel risky because, well, they are! They require vulnerability.  It’s scary to open up like that.  But let’s consider what the opposite of empathy and innovation looks like. And here, too, I see a lot of common ground. Mostly, it’s a closed, potentially even defensive stance.  My mental image of the non-empathetic/un-innovative leader is a nay-sayer with tightly crossed arms and a look on their face that says, “Try me.”  It’s the office conversation killer. It’s the boss who won’t listen or who’s dismissive of your concerns. It’s the colleague who says, “Oh, there's no reason for you to be upset about that.” It’s the teammate who scoffs at your suggestions and the team meetings where ideas are not really welcome.  These kinds of shut-’er-down responses will kill creativity, trust and connection.  I’ll bet dollars to donuts that a more empathetic organization is also likely to be a more innovative one, because it’s the same foundational elements that nurture both.  Innovation and Empathy