A Sad Day for the Friends of James Madison

James Madison has no monuments or fancy remembrances as do many of the other founding fathers (and mothers.) Yet without him, we might not have our republic, our constitution, and be an independent country today.

When Madison was a student, at what is now Princeton, he stayed another year to work on a study of the world's constitutions while soaking up the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment from the university's president. This began his life-long passion for republican ideals and constitutions. After flailing about for a while after college, he was elected to the Virginia (Colonial) House of Burgesses and began his life as a politician. He followed this calling to public service until the end of his presidency. Those who call for term limits and hold their noses at the idea of a "politician" could learn a lot from his decades of devotion.

After the Revolution, he watched with mounting horror as self interest brought out the worst in the Virginia legislature and the Congress under the Articles of Confederation was worse than "do nothing." By 1878, the country was in turmoil, Congress was impotent, groups of States talked of leaving the fragile union spurred on by European powers, the economy was a shambles, and Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts frightened every property owner. The prognosis for continued existence of the country was dire.

So Madison joined Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin to conspire to overthrow the government; they committed treason for the second time. Working with others, Madison persuaded General George Washington to join in the call for a Constitutional Convention to provide the political cover they needed. Madison got the resolution through the Confederation Congress and became a delegate along with Washington and others to the gathering. His long-time rival, Patrick Henry, refused to have anything to do with it; "I smell a rat!" He was right, of course. Madison's intent was not to amend the Articles but to abolish them.

Jemmy and Me

He arrived in Philadelphia early, having made a thorough study of republics and constitutions "ancient and modern." He persuaded the governor to present his draft as the "Virginia Plan." Although little of it remained in the final draft signed by the delegates, it did serve as the agenda and shaped the nature and substance of the debates. Madison and the most committed delegates toiled for four months in the Philadelphia summer heat with early morning committee meetings, all-day debates, and informal politicking in the evening. Madison took voluminous notes we still marvel at today and early Supreme Court justices used to unravel "original intent."

But when the delegates scattered back to their states, the work wasn't over. They had to get the special ratifying bodies to agree to the document. In Madison's Virginia, Patrick Henry led the anti-federalist forces. Despite Henry's legendary oratorical skills and political clout, Madison bested him and eked out a tiny margin of victory.

Then he was off to the new Congress as a Representative in the House and to serve as Washington's whip in that body to achieve his legislative agenda. He served as Jefferson's Secretary of State and then as President, presiding over the War of 1812. In fact, he was the only Commander in Chief to actually go into battle, despite having no military credentials.

He was the last of the "fathers" to depart this world and did so on this day, June 28, 1836. His parting words were, "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear." James Monroe, who succeeded him as President, referred to Madison in his dying words, "I regret that I should leave this world without again beholding him."

In my Google Alert for Madison, about 95% of the mentions are from people, right or left, trying to claim his "authority" for their views. Like anyone quoted out of context, Madison's words are distorted. More importantly, because Madison was a patriot, a passionate politician, and as partisan as anyone, you can always find some snippet to support you. These folks do a disservice to the man, his memory, and his message.

Madison, like all of us, evolved and changed with age. At the end of the Convention, he thought the Constitution was a failure because it created a Senate representing the states and not the population. Yet he went to the ratifying convention and worked with Hamilton to write the Federalist Papers defending the new Constitution with every ounce of his considerable persuasive talent. By Washington's second term, he had joined Jefferson to destroy Hamilton and the Federalists and create the Republican Party (precursor of today's Democrats.) As president, he opposed legislation for building roads and canals or providing "charity." As an elder statesman, he made it clear he had evolved to support these government efforts.

What made Madison so great was he was NOT an ideologue. He constantly thought about things, changed his mind, and made it clear where he stood at any moment. He was prepared to compromise for the good of the nation. He seldom held real animosity for his opponents. (Today he'd be derided as a flip-flopper, drummed out of whatever party he was in, and excoriated by the chattering class and talk radio.)

What I've always found so appealing about Madison was his humanness. My favorite quote from him is (out of context, of course,) "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Madison is great because he is no saint on a pedestal. He was dead wrong on many things. He made no claims to perfection. We can admire him, not because we agree with him or can find some phrase to prove our political point, but because he thought continuously and was willing to change and grow and leave old notions behind.

If today's leaders, whether in politics or business, would spend a little time with "Jemmy, the great little Madison," they might be less inclined to require unthinking adherence to a static idea. Madison's interpretation of the republic's mission statement, the Preamble to the Constitution, matured and morphed over time. If we could take a page from his book, we might all succeed in evolving, being more strategic, making better decisions...and leaving old ideas behind.

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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein and Advantage Leadership, Inc. 
Want to know more about Madison and his role in the Constitution and early republic? Want to know how modern leaders exploit the Madison Factor? Check out Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers. 

Your research into the planning sessions of the Constitutional Convention and the struggles that our framers of the Constitution faced has been cleverly weaved into the strategies of modern business. I am pleased to have your book.  

-- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (RET) 

What veterans can teach you about mission

“It's a smart business decision to hire veterans. Give vets a mission and the result you want and they will achieve it. That’s what they've been trained to do,” an entrepreneur pointed out on a recent business show.

What about your organization? Have your folks been trained to be laser-focused on the mission? Will they give it their all to get results? Is this what you've trained them to do?

In too many companies, employees may not even know the mission or it may have been relegated to meaningless words on a plaque. I recently had a poor experience with an airline and took a look at its mission. I couldn't find it on the website but an analyst’s report pulled a statement off the annual report that covered the territory...Not a word about the customer among its five focus areas. The airline believed if it was clean, safe, on time, had courteous employees, and delivered great revenue at competitive costs it would have “exceptional customer satisfaction.”

How does that happen exactly? If I'm an employee, focused on the five areas, as long as I stay courteous and don’t do anything to escalate costs, I'm fulfilling the mission.

This is not a rant about poor airline service. This is a rant about the power of mission to focus everyone’s energy to achieve company goals. Examiners for a major quality award routinely ask every employee they encounter, “What’s your role in achieving the corporate mission?” When people can tell you this in their own words, you get stellar results. The whole point of the mission is to guide daily action and decision making.

When a mid-sized commodity manufacturer was faced with an urgent need to transform or be acquired, it started by revamping its mission and vision.

Mission: The people of XYZ are leaders in the design and manufacture of abc solutions to meet your def needs.

Vision: To be a premier supplier of abc using innovative technology throughout our company while sustaining this in a positive and creative environment. 

This was a major change for the company; emphasizing people and a positive, creative environment. It was the first step on their successful, sustained renewal journey.

You can read about creating a mission and the bottom-line impact data in an earlier blog. http://tinyurl.com/3uz4mnb  To repeat one fact: in companies where almost every employee believes the mission is important, profits are 5 – 15% higher than in companies where few people believe mission is important.

My husband and I were honored to be part of a ceremony commemorating the 70^th anniversary

Sculpture “Les Braves” by Anilore Banon,
Omaha Beach St. Laurent Sur Mer, France

of D-Day at Omaha beach. The band was conducted by Colonel Arnald Gabriel, Conductor Emeritus, The United States Air Force Band, who had come ashore on this beach that “longest day” as a young recruit. His mission was to get rid of the machine gun nests raining death on the troops wading ashore. The mission was clear so the results were clear.

If you want to put your people first in meeting goals, that must be clear in the mission. If you want to build a positive, creative environment, that must be in your mission. If you want to achieve "exceptional customer satisfaction," as the airline claimed, you must have that in your mission, train and empower employees, and reward them for doing everything to achieve the mission. 

“Get people on a mission and the metrics will follow,” John Zumwalt, former CEO of engineering firm PBS&J, told his company leaders when he took over. If you have a strong mission AND train your people to accomplish it, you will succeed. Learn from our veterans.

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Join a live webinar, Get People on a Mission: Strategic Decision Making Drives Daily Action, Thursday, June 25, 1 PM Eastern or catch it on demand or on DVD. http://tinyurl.com/m8d6bf7   Learn from contemporary CEOs and the U.S. Founding Fathers about how to create a mission to drive results.

Slow Down to Speed Up

            Are you running like that rat in the wheel; up early, working late, vacationing with your tablet, and taking calls whizzing down the road? The labor movement fought hard for the 40-hour week. Do you scoff at working only 40 hours? When was the last time you slept 7 - 8 hours for weeks at a time?

            Everywhere I looked last week someone addressed the need to slow down. Bruce Turkel wrote a great blog; NPR's TED Radio Hour featured several presentations too. Wha's up?

            People are questioning the efficacy of our insane pace. Hundreds of studies over 50 years show these results; humans are designed to sleep 7 - 8 hours every night or we become sleep deprived. When we run on 5-6 hours for months, our health suffers, and more importantly for our productivity-obsessed business world, our efficiency plummets. We are not as mentally astute as we think; we make mistakes, have accidents, and destroy our mental capacity. The bad news? We cannot make up lost sleep. We sleep in, but that's exhaustion...no net gain.

            Here's some more bad scientific news; humans are designed to work 35 - 40 hours over a 7-day period. 50 years of data show a sad trajectory; once we work 9 or 10 hours a day, several days, our efficiency drops like a stone. Keep it up for weeks and we have to work 50 hours to do what we did in 40. The results on productivity, mistakes, mental keenness, and capacity mirror sleep deprivation. Depending on your health, age, physical and mental fitness, when you experience the toll varies. Even the heartiest lose productivity within weeks.

            Combine not-enough sleep with too-many work hours and you burnout. Period.

            Another scary reality: Large companies have Employee Assistance programs. If you're addicted to alcohol or drugs, they intervene and you can get treatment for your disease. Companies understand the destructive power of addiction. What about addiction to work? A joke, right? When they discover you're a workaholic, they rejoice and say silently, "We've got a live one!" and publically, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person!"

            I write about this because, "My name is Rebecca and I'm a workaholic." I've taken the first step and admitted it. I first realized this 20 years ago while dining with friends in Toronto. "Rebecca, you never talk about anything except work anymore." I was gob smacked. They were right.

My Simple Formula to Treat Work Addiction (most days):

·         Admit you have a problem.

·         Get 7-8 hours sleep.

·         Eat nutritiously.

·         Exercise.

·         Practice mindfulness.

·         FOCUS on important work only for an effective 35-hour week.

            When I do these things, I have more energy, get more done in less time, am rarely sick, feel better, and enjoy life more.

What a concept; sleep more, work less, and be more creative, efficient, and effective.

           I didn't change overnight and learned to decompress anywhere. For example, I arrived at an Asian airport 3 hours early, discovered a butterfly garden, and spent 2 hours in a peaceful, beautiful universe; no email, false urgency, distractions, or modern-life intrusions. I walked out calm, energized, and thoughtful to make the 30-hour flight a creative experience, not a dreaded ordeal.

           At the end of your path, no one writes on your tombstone, "He was a good corporate citizen," "She was a multitasking maven" or "The kids bragged about how many hours mommy and daddy worked."

           I always bring these discussions back to lessons from great leaders, especially the framers of the Constitution. The delegates included leisure naturally; they fished, trekked to factories, attended concerts, lectures, and religious services, read books, enjoyed tea with "the ladies" and dining with friends, kept up lively correspondence with family and friends, and ran businesses from afar. They mastered the art of a balanced life. Look what they accomplished; they created a Constitution for a successful republic, which is still in place. These guys had their wits about them. Can you say the same?

            Are you ready for workaholic rehab? Are you ready to change yourself and lead your team to be more creative and productive and transform the destructive workaholic culture of your organization?

            Dr. Deming, the great business guru said, "Why are we here [work]? We are here to come alive; to have joy in our work."

            You cannot be joyous, productive or creative when you?re running on empty. In other words, slow down to speed up.

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©Rebecca Staton-Reinstein and Advantage Leadership, Inc

Let us help you and your team become more effective and efficient.

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 Webinar: Get People on a Mission: Strategic Decision Making Drives Daily Action
    These extraordinary times require extraordinary performance by every manager and leader. Start with your mission and its power to galvanize people?s energy and imagination to accomplish more. Create a mission to guide robust planning, execution, and daily decision making. Get results that sustain and assure organizational growth. Sign up now! February 27, 2014 or listen at your convenience. http://tinyurl.com/5rcm256

Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform and Progress Like the Founding Fathers is packed with practical useful information from a group of remarkable CEOs and taps into the strategic leadership secrets of the US Constitutional Framers. Get your copy at a special price for newsletter subscribers: http://www.conventionalwisdomcenter.com/friends.html  

New Address:

Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.
320 S. Flamingo Road, Suite 291, Pembroke Pines, FL 33027
Rebecca@AdvantageLeadership.com
www.AdvantageLeadership.com  

Mission Ain’t Wishin’ Drive Daily Results with a Powerful Mission

When John Zumwalt became CEO of PBS&J, a well-regarded engineering firm, he helped craft a new mission. When many managers thought missions were a little fluffy and wanted to focus more on their traditional measures of success, he told them something extraordinary.

Get people on a mission and the metrics will follow

For Zumwalt and PBS&J, the metrics did follow – dramatic revenue increases, outperforming peers in talent retention, and wide-spread recognition as an extraordinary company to work with and for.

When I interviewed Zumwalt and 19 other executives with a track record of turning vision into reality, most told me stories of being mission driven.

But the importance of a mission is not just anecdotal. The Gallup Group* and many others who have studied this in depth find some astounding results:

• 83% of all workers believed having a clear mission was very important;

• 

  Importance of Mission

  When companies were ranked by how strongly their employees agreed with the importance of mission, the top quartile had profitability that was from 5 – 15% higher than the companies in the lowest quartile;

• Work groups with a clear sense of mission had from 30 – 50% fewer accidents; and

• Mission-driven work groups had from 15 – 30% percent less turnover.

It was "as if the employee can't energize himself to do all he could without knowing how his job fits into the grand scheme of things."

The Gallup research also found the most critical influence a leader has on the organization is through the mission. When the leader is on a mission, it cascades through the organization if the leader constantly reinforces it.

Does your team have a clear mission to guide daily decision making and action? In these times of 'do more with less,' a strong mission is a requirement for successful action and results.

5 steps to create and use a strong mission. 

1. Team brainstorms important values and results
2. Team prioritizes the list and chooses the top 3 – 5
3. Team can keep these phrases or write a short, simple statement incorporating them
4. Each team member discusses how his or her job contributes specifically to the mission
5. Team discusses results regularly in relation to fulfilling mission.

Start getting your results using a powerful mission. Sign up for my first webinar as part of Advantage HR Seminars; Get People on a Mission: Strategic Decision Making Drives Daily Action. This seminar is an approved provider for the HR Certification Institute (PHR, SPHR, and GPHR.)  See details and Register here.

Apply these techniques to create or adapt your current mission to drive execution and daily decision making to get the results you need to sustain your organization and assure its growth. Live on October26, 2011 and available on DVD.

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© Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

*Rodd Wagner and James Harter, 12: The Elements of Great Managing, Gallup Press, New York, 2006. Material in this blog is excerpted from Conventional Wisdom: How Today’s Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers.

Be Careful What You Ask For: Getting the Mission Wrong

Be Careful What You Ask For: Getting the Mission Wrong
Is your Mission statement leading you to new and greater accomplishments or down the road to perdition?

No, this is not a rhetorical question. Although everyone today is aware that they need a mission for their organization, just having one doesn't mean you will automatically be successful. In fact, many mission statements are simply meaningless. They've been wordsmithed by marketing types and vetted by the lawyers to a point where they no longer really say anything.

The mission should bind the individual to the organization. It should give him or her a clear statement of what the organization is all about. Then the person can make decisions and take actions by asking one simple strategic question:

Will this decision or action move me closer to or further from accomplishing my mission?

No firefighting. No knee-jerk reactions. No crisis management...or at least not as much!

The first step is to have a clear concise mission statement. It should be short and to the point. It should provide guidance for action.

Ritz Carleton Hotels stated in its credo: We are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen. Every employee can view his or her work through this clear lens.

It's 2 AM and you're the desk clerk facing a disgruntled guest who just got in from a grueling trip. He's tired and cranky and taking it out on you. What do you do? In most hotels the rest of the story would not be pretty. At Ritz Carlton, the clerk goes through something like this in his or her head: 'I'm a gentle person and that guest is a gentle person having a very bad day. What can I do to help?' And then the clerk acts accordingly...the key word is 'act' not 'react.'

A couple of decades ago the city of Portsmouth, Virginia was down on its luck...but not completely out of luck. The City brought in a remarkable and talented City Manager who set a new -- simple -- mission for the city: ‘Clean City, Economic Development, and Customer Service.’ And then George Hanbury spread that mission and it's meaning to every official and employee.

The city turned around under Hanbury's leadership. Eighteen years later they invited him back for a special 'George Hanbury Day.' At the reception a man came up to him. "I'm sure you don't remember me but I drove a garbage truck when you became City Manager. I still remember that mission you gave us, 'Clean City, Economic Development, and Customer Service.' It changed everything."

That's the power of a good mission. It's transformational.

But there is a nasty little problem hiding under the surface in many mission statements. They can contain the seeds of their own destruction. And when you get it wrong and follow it successfully, you can destroy yourself. A major utility company presents an object lesson. The company decided to reinvent itself and implement a new quality philosophy. They stated their road map for action this way.

"During the next decade, we want to become the best managed electric utility in the United States and an excellent company overall, and be recognized as such."

On the surface it looks fine. It is striving to be well managed and excellent. These are admirable goals if a little vague. But the problem comes in the final part of the statement, 'be recognized as such.' At first it seems reasonable. Come up with a measurement that will demonstrate this excellence. Sounds OK. It helps counteract the vagueness.

Here's where things took a wrong turn. The CEO and his team decided that the 'recognition' would be winning the Deming Prize. This was the prestigious Japanese quality award named for the great guru of quality, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who had been pivotal in helping Japanese industry recover after World War II. A special foreign division prize had just been announced. So the company decided to 'go for it.'

Now this in itself was not necessarily a bad thing. The prize required great rigor, dedication and leadership to be achieved. It would certainly be an important recognition of excellence. So far so good...

They set off on their excellence journey. Without meaning to or even noticing it, the mission shifted to emphasize the 'recognized as such' part of the mission. This happened slowly, imperceptibly despite a lot of good intentions and excellent improvement results that were well documented. As the prize itself slowly refocused people's efforts, a 'quality bureaucracy' materialized. As a former employee quipped, 'you couldn't plan lunch without doing a 7 step storyboard!'

The great day came and sure enough the company achieved its mission measurement -- the Deming Prize. It was a Pyrrhic victory.

First they were attacked in the local paper and then Public Service Commission got into the act. Who was going to pay for all of this? The rate-payers didn't want to foot the bill! This was despite the fact that the company made significant strides and reduced costs. There was that initial investment that people did not want to pay for. Later that year there was a freak storm and service was interrupted significantly. The howling media jumped all over the notion that the company was 'excellent' or 'well-managed.'

It wasn't long before the CEO was out of work and a memo was 'leaked' to the papers announcing the dismantling of the quality improvement program and its infrastructure.

What went wrong? That decision to add 'be recognized as such' led to choosing to win a prize and then to a distortion of the company's focus. No one meant it to happen. These were bright, experienced and well intentioned people. And the media weren't fair but by that time it was really too late. Chasing the prize (which Dr. Deming himself always criticized) did the damage long before the papers got into the act.

The point here is not to 'put down' the company. In fact, I was a great admirer of their efforts and accomplishments. I used much of their methodology to accomplish some great results. The point is to be very careful in constructing your mission. If you use it right, you will accomplish it, unintended consequences and all.

The mission requires regular scrutiny. Is it still leading us in the right direction? Is it as powerful in achieving results as those of the city of Portsmouth and Ritz Carlton Hotels? Have we slipped off the path without noticing it? Does every single person understand it, embrace it and use it every day? Are we on the happy path or the road to perdition?

There's a wonderful old country tune that the Carter Family used to sing:
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,Keep on the sunny side of life. It will help you on your way, It will help you every day,If you keep on the sunny side of life.

Keep your mission on the sunny side.

-- Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., President

Advantage Leadership, Inc.

http://www.advantageleadership.com/

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Look for our new book, Conventional Wisdom How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform and Progress Like the Founding Fathers early in 2008 and read more about how leaders handle mistakes and much more.

Based on the US Constitutional Convention of 1787 and interviews with successful CEOs, this unique business book combines history and business. I examine the Convention as an example of typical strategic planning with all of its creativity and messiness. Spring forward to the present and see how today's CEOs use the same techniques to transform their companies and translate vision into reality. Learn from all of the leaders --what works in the real world so that you can improve your own abilities as a strategic leader.