So where do you sit on the changeability scale? In a state of dinosauric demise or chameleonic flux? How well honed is your environmental intelligence? Are you continually taking a cold bath in current reality as snow sets in. Or are you enjoying the warm shower of an imagined future full of sun laden days? In which of these two watery receptacles do you spend most time in cognitive soak. What wrinkles your brain the most?

Some managers and their organisations appear not to ‘miss a beat’ regardless of what changes around them? If it looks like that, it most likely is like that! Three clear distinctions set apart the effective LEADER manager.

1) Environmental intelligence: you are acutely aware and sensitive to your environment and notice subtle changes that are the signs of things to come. You are comfortable and willing to spend time imagining what your environment will become and will hold in the future. You allocate collective time and energy to your imagined future.  You listen with your eyes, ears and imagination with an open and curious mind.

2) Changeability: you have developed and constantly use the skill sets, mind sets and tools sets required to lead and implement fluid change in your environment. You coach and develop these same competencies in the people around you.

3) Adaptability:  you are able to seamlessly integrate environmental intelligence with changeability so that you and your organisation are adapting with natural stealth. You and your organisation is shape shifting in step with and ahead of coming change.

Adaptability Matrix

Anyone can move to a state of Chameleonic Flux very quickly indeed. All that is involved is commitment, work, energy and focus. It may be of further use to rummage through a grab bag of observations, paradigms and strategies employed by more effective LEADER managers. The traits apparent when imagining the future in a state of chameleonic flux.

They never argue with the scoreboard…

Which is a fool’s paradise, and as we all know an anti-room to hell, commercial hell. “If only the Government didn’t make that decision the score would be different.” Or worse, “If not for the uncertainty around China the score would be just peachy.” What bunkum is this?! Champion sporting teams don’t blame the weather; they adjust to the conditions and get on with stuff. To argue with the scoreboard is to pre-ordain the future result. Not good, bad!

They count socks, they have a sock count…

They examine, disrupt and change their own and others thinking. “The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein

None of us see the world as it is; we see the world as we are. Then we run around assuming everyone else is seeing it our way. Examine your own thinking. Are your assumptions based on an irrational fear. ‘If I do that it might hurt, I may fail.’ Based on what exactly? Someone else’s poor example or fervent attempts to hold you back. Disrupt the way you think. Try this: When you notice a negative pattern taking grip stand naked in front of the mirror and throw socks at your reflected head, keep count of all direct hits. Write down the number of reasons why you will benefit from changing equal to double your sock count. Stop being a silly sock head! Focus on what you stand to gain by changing. All the good things that could happen if you do it!

A sock count of 4 requires you to write 8 reasons why you should make the change and get on with it! Negativity has a hundred problems for every solution. You only need one positive reason, now you have 8.

Be curious, play more. Find new associations. Encourage ambiguity. Go off on a tangent. Explore. Learn new things. Break with old patterns of thinking.What held you back when you learned to walk, ride a bike or drive a car? So what’s holding you back now?

A phrase being heard by a LEADER manager somewhere in the world right now: No we can’t do that, it’s impossible for us right now!

LEADER manager thinking in unpunctuated quiet response, not talking out loud: oh no here we go again so we could work out how to put and bring home someone from the moon fifty odd years ago with a computer less powerful than most of todays mobile phones but we can’t work out how to move these products 12,000 kilometres in the next 48 hours with computers knocking on the figurative door of equal human intelligence (Hold that thought inside, resist all temptations to say it out loud, unlikely to be useful, i’ve had experience)

How will you disrupt this negative pattern mid flow? (there are a million ways) What questions will you ask to help identify the flawed thinking? How will you begin to identify the endless possibilities of both thinking and doing things differently for better results?

NB. LEADER managers take care in how they help disrupt the negative patterns of others. Fully clothed sock throwing perhaps? One thing is for sure, LEADER managers are disruptors. They break deeply entrenched and tightly held flaws in thinking. Their own first of course.

They are realistic about conditions…

The playing conditions haven’t deteriorated they have changed. The bad weather is not going to pass. We won’t wake up tomorrow and be back to sunny. Things won’t become more certain, less volatile, or simple again. This is it, suck it up. We are experiencing a new pattern, a new climate. Hold a steady hand; get a new plan. It is not useful to think of the climate as good, bad or ugly. It is more productive to think of times as holding opportunities in new and different places. Start turning new rocks, and don’t ever stop. It’s no longer enough to fish where the fish are, we have to move to where they are going to show up next. And keep moving. Move!

They push back hard…

The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. The only thing certain in business is costs and competition. Every year two things accelerate. The cost of doing business increases. The amount of competition grows and comes from places you didn’t expect. You are the meat in the sandwich. From below, a slice of upward pressure on your costs from suppliers, too many of which are solely focussed on increasing their own income. From above a slice of downward pressure on your income from competitors, all of which want what you have, your income. These external pressures conspire to slam shut your profit wedge. Push back. The new and trendy word for old fashioned ‘push back’ is innovation. If it doesn’t help with push back its unlikely innovative, although it may be creative.

They don’t fake it…

You can’t fake a push up. Do you understand every single point of contact with your customers? Go to each point of contact and experience it from your customer’s point of view. Imagine what your customers expect and what they would like. Find out the things your customers care most about. If you address that which your customer cares most about, better than your competitors, its impossible not to WIN. LEADER managers are genuine and authentic. They develop high trust. They understand the impossibility of  talking your way out of a situation that you have behaved yourself into.

They show up and show courage…

Once upon a time in Australia Mr. Keating told us about a recession that we all simply had to have. Furniture manufacturers retreated from a shrinking market, all except one that is. John Moran was a LEADER manager of gargantuan proportions. All of his competitors printed less advertising catalogues. They printed them on lesser stock and used fewer pages. They retreated. John dropped his shoulder and charged as hard as he could. He printed more catalogues on better stock with more and bigger pages. The market perceived him as the leader, he won confidence. He went against the trend, he went against popular thinking. He backed himself and his team. He showed courage. He showed leadership. He literally cleaned up. He gained a much bigger share of a shrinking pie. He stepped out from the pack. LEADER managers drop their shoulder and charge hard at things. Even if no one else is. They demonstrate belief.

They tirelessly look around corners…

Assess your current and future suppliers based on the extent to which they sincerely care about your success. If they are not striving to open your profit wedge in at least equal measure to their own, dispense with them. There is always a better supplier round the corner. Never stop looking. Collaboration means you both win. Too many talk about collaborating as a self serving means to their own end. Stop listening to what they say and watch very closely what they do. Move ‘em on and look around the corner, get a crick in the neck. When you find the true collaborators, ‘finders are keepers’.

They do something different…

If everything around you changes and you keep doing exactly the same things, there is a very high degree of probability that your results will also be exactly the same or worse still. If your results are staying the same then in very real terms, you are haemorrhaging. Dare to do and be different. Test, invent and incubate ideas for doing new things. Take stock on every Friday of what happened that was new and different that week. Encourage and empower others to try new things.

They know that nothing succeeds like a goal and a plan…

As the famous philosopher Alice once asked of the Cheshire cat, ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the cat. ‘I don’t much care where’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

If you don’t know what to do, it’s probably because you don’t know where you are going.

Write down very clear, specific and measurable goals, share and agree them with others. Shock yourself by how quickly they are achieved once articulated. Convert your shock into excitement around setting more goals.

They don’t multi task…

Air traffic controllers have lots of goals on the radar at any given moment in time. They land each goal one at a time with supreme focus and attention to detail. Then, and only then, do they move onto the business of landing the next goal. They make sure the next goal is the most important one, and they treat it as such. Can you imagine the scene if the controller tried to land several planes at the same time. Don’t make that your business. Deliver the next most important goal brilliantly, and then move on quickly to the next. Over time everything becomes brilliant!

They LEADER up…

Life’s not for sissies. They don’t complain or look to assign blame. Change what you are doing about pushing back on downward pressure on income from your competitors. Change what you are doing about pushing back on upward pressure on your costs from suppliers. LEADER up! Doing exactly the same things hoping for a better result is a commercial death wish.

The effective LEADER manager is constantly shape shifting in step with and ahead of change. They have in spades: adaptability, changeability and environmental intelligence. On Friday’s they can often times be found in the bar sipping a dubious green cocktail with dry ice flowing over the rim. If you run into such a person, ask what their sock count is and say ‘I’ll have what ever they’re having thanks.’ You won’t be disappointed.

Cheers!

Paul