Accomplishing Autopilot

Autopilot sounds great, but easier said than done. Create a system (s) that eliminates interruptions, enabling me and my entire organization to be exponentially more productive? Sounds like some sort of pipe dream – the stuff of high-sounding books . . . or blog posts.

Perhaps we should start here:

Just because I am the leader, does not mean that I am not the smartest person in my organization. Others are just as, and possibly more capable of making decisions than I am.

With this understanding, start addressing each situation. Each time you are called upon to make a decision, consider if the person asking could have made that decision on their own. Start asking them what they would advise, or "what would you do?" type of questions, to encourage critical thinking and build your comfort and trust in their abilities.

Then, extend the authority.

"From this point forward, you do not need to call me for decisions related to . . ."

"I trust you ability to make the right decision in these situations."

Repeat as often as required until you have opened up your time to lead more effectively; to think, coach, challenge, train, influence and inspire. Your people and your organization will thank you. So will your family.

Accomplishing Autopilot

Autopilot

Modern day sophisticated aircraft have the ability to fly and land without any pilot intervention. They are able to do this through the use of systems commonly referred to as autopilot, which can actually fly an aircraft better than a human, generate better fuel economy and land in foggy conditions with zero visibility.

The benefits of autopilot in an aircraft are many: increased situational awareness, more resources available for airspace surveillance, reduced crew workload and fatigue levels, improved accuracy, efficiency and reduced costs. Autopilot creates exponential increases in productivity in the airline industry.

Leaders create systems of autopilot for similar benefits within their organization. This is always in the form of extending responsibility and authority or empowering people to make decisions and deal with virtually any situation. Effective leaders find ways to reduce the need for their presence and intervention, measuring success in this pursuit by reduced interruptions. They become increasingly irrelevant by enabling others to take care of the business.

Autopilot allows the pilot to take a break, even leave to cockpit, without worrying about the path of the aircraft. If you are overwhelmed and find it hard to take a break and catch your breath, I suggest that you begin working on automating your business.

Autopilot

Finding the good

We need to catch people doing things right. What is right? Is it perfection? If you get 80% on a test – is that right? Is it good even though it is not perfect? What if the usual was 55%, but today the score improved to 70%; is that good? I think most would offer praise, which of course would be the right thing to do. If you were critical of the missed marks in these examples, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog.

The weird thing is that in the workplace, we do criticize in the gap between right and perfection. Instead of recognizing what is good, or right, we magnify the areas that are less than perfect. The reasoning: calling that which is not perfect, "good," is not doing my job. If my boss knew that I was providing positive recognition for this, that is less than perfect, he would think I don't understand the standard.

The reality: it will never be perfect!

If you recognize everything, or every part that is right (good), those that did the work will try harder than ever to bring the remaining parts to good, usually without you ever having to mention them. They will just want more of that praise and will work harder than ever to receive it.

Not being able to find something good says more about you the leader than it does about anyone else.

Finding the good

Intentional Influence

If leadership is "intentional influence," which it is, what separates great leadership from poor?

Influence, is often unintentional; setting a bad example. True leadership is intentional; done on purpose, not by accident. Therefore, there is no separation between good or poor within the word "intentional" in our definition.

It is the "influence" part where we find either remarkable or abysmal leadership, or varying degrees between.

Great leaders can describe their influence with these words: persuade, empower, inspire, encourage, win over, stimulate.

Poor leaders are identified by these descriptions: control, pressure, manipulate, power, command, and threaten.

If you were to reflect personally on your past 24 hours of leadership, which description most accurately matches your behaviour? Your influence impacts every person that you come in contact with; at work, at play, your family. It includes those around you that you never even speak to: at the grocery store, your neighbours or other drivers sharing the same road as you.

Someone is always watching what you are doing. Hopefully you are always showing the example that you intend.

Intentional Influence

How do YOU measure success?

What makes you successful? What I mean is, how do you measure success? At the end of the process, year, term, month, life, etc. how will you know if you have been successful. Think about that for a moment for the current year – how would you answer that question?

Not that it would ever be declared, but for some this is measured by just getting by, successfully navigating the week in order to get to the weekend, keeping the job, being able to retire, or just actually waking up in the morning. Posing this question to others might bring the answer that they think everyone wants to hear; good marks, good results, financial independence, but they have not put a great deal of thought into it and really don't own the goal.

I suppose what I am really talking about is goal / objective setting. When traveling, a destination is set and then the path to arrive at that destination is determined. This seems obvious if you are traveling, yet very few people actually do this in life. Why? I think we tend to make it too complicated. I am not one for sitting down to plan and write out my life goals – short, mid and long term – only to forget about it and only refer back to it when I read or hear someone say that I should have planned goals. I do have these, on paper and I know where they are – but I have not looked at them for well over a year.

Those who know what success looks like, for them, form a picture in their mind's eye of what that success looks like. When asked, they communicate with an "it looks like" phrase that anyone can picture as explained to them.

"Every leader in my organization will have identified and developed talent throughout their team, creating multiple successors for every management position in their business unit."

"We will become a people factory for the rest of the organization – building capacity among our team – measuring ourselves by the number of successful candidates we have developed and promoted."

"Obtain a beautiful home with a picturesque view, which I can go outside and hear nothing but solitude – the birds, and the wind in the trees."

Can you see, in your mind's eye, those pictures of success?

How do YOU measure success?

You must become irrelevant

The manager couldn't take vacation, actually, it was hard for him to even get a day off. Taking a day off was almost not worth the trouble considering the chaos that would meet him upon his return.

Have you worked for a leader that hoards information and authority? One that selectively releases information – keeps everyone on a need to know basis? How did they make you feel?

What about you, are you the brains behind the entire operation? Are you the source of all knowledge that causes everyone to have to come to you for answers? Does your phone ring constantly with people calling for simple answers to easy questions? Do you believe that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself?

This next statement is going to be quite difficult for some to hear; the individual described above is insecure. They believe that they establish their own personal importance and relevance by how much more they know, and how much more decision making power they hold, compared to their subordinates.

For great leaders, the opposite is true; success is determined when you become irrelevant and no longer needed. They become dispensable.

You must become irrelevant

Busy work

If we are not careful, the busy-work will end up ruling our agenda and lives. Busy-work is all that stuff that comes at you continuously that seems to demand your attention. Questions, projects, problems, email messages, meetings, conference calls, can all be examples. Stephen Covey called it urgent but not important. It has been referred to as fire-fighting and being stuck in the weeds.

This past week I found the pull from the busy work particularly strong. Perhaps it was a worldwide phenomenon this week because Seth Godin wrote about this in a blog post today titled Incoming, in which he provided some brutal honesty on how electronic messaging controls us. While I have not completely tamed the busy work monster, I took some steps to beat it back. The main one was actually the simplest – I turned off every alert, ring, vibrate and alarm that went off when I received an email message. Do I really need to be made aware every time I receive a new message? Is an email message more important than anything else I am doing that I should stop and read it? Think of it this way; do you stop conversation with someone whenever someone else walks up or interrupts you? I hope not.

The key to avoiding the trap of busy work is to keep focused on what you are trying to accomplish. Imagine what excellence looks like. Imagine what it looks like when you have accomplished your goals – when it is done. Now, focus on the work that gets you to that goal and push away, divert, delegate and even ignore the busy work. Simple? Yes. I think we need to return to simple.

On another note: a real problem for most is that they have not imagined what excellence looks like – they have never pictured the end – and is the reason why busy-work controls so many.

Busy work