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by Forum CEO, Ed Boswell 

I’ll confess – I’m a news junkie. But lately, I’ve found myself tuning out. Not because the news isn’t interesting; in some ways, it’s too interesting. Rather I find the news terribly unhelpful as a business leader. Most of it focuses on forces over which we have no control. The news also has become a bit of an echo chamber; once someone utters the latest doom-and-gloom headline, it is repeated so often on radio, television and the newspapers that one wonders if we aren’t creating some self-fulfilling prophecies. And finally, sometimes the news just seems, in an ironic way, out of touch with reality. Let me tell you what I mean.

I spent time recently visiting clients on the West Coast of the US and speaking at an industry conference. What I realized in my travels and conversations is that most companies, like my own, are as fundamentally sound today as they were six or nine months ago – still producing high quality products or services for customers and still staffed by highly productive and committed men and women. No one can deny that the financial markets are a mess and that credit is tight. Nor can anyone deny that almost all of us are engaged in some form of belt-tightening. And finally, no one can deny that it has become more and more challenging to lead and sell in this tough economy. But who we are and the value we provide to the marketplace remain unchanged.

There is a huge psychological element in all of this. If we focus on the grim headlines and on the factors over which we have no control, I’m afraid that we’re in for a long recession; our attitudes (for instance, our caution in making investments) and our actions (for example, huge cutbacks in spending) will only prolong the pain. But if we turn our attention to those things that we can control, to those assets of ours that do provide value, and to our customers who do depend on our products, services and insight, then we have a better than even chance of emerging from this downturn sooner and in better shape.

I haven’t cancelled any of the newspaper subscriptions yet, but I am spending more time on the human interest stories and not the front page!

While thinking about the idea I discussed in a recent blog post—that it takes 10,000 hours to attain a level of mastery—I recalled a tiny, yet profound book I’d read more than 15 years ago entitled Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard. I was fascinated by how articulate Leonard was in laying out a path to achieving mastery in almost any area of endeavor—sports, music, cooking, whatever—and it struck me that you could talk about achieving some form of leadership mastery by following his process.

The keys Leonard focuses on are self-awareness and self-discipline, neither of which is easy to develop or practice.

More specifically, Leonard’s advice is “learn to love the plateau.” Think back to a time when you were determined to learn a new skill. Let’s take skiing as an example. How did you go about it? If you were truly serious about learning to ski, you probably got some basic equipment (rented first, then purchased), took some basic lessons, and you practiced. The practice was slow at first and probably hard. Only little kids like to fall down, after all. But you kept at it. Eventually you improved and could now “master” the beginner’s slopes with some confidence. You went back home feeling pretty good about your newfound skiing ability.

After that initial excitement you planned another trip to snow country before the winter was over. You got a rush from the feeling of accomplishment. This time you picked up almost where you left off. Since you’d made such excellent progress in learning to ski the first time, you were pretty sure that you’d see some real improvement this time too. Did it happen? Probably not! In fact, you had hit your first plateau—which lasted the whole weekend and left you feeling a little daunted.

You’re no quitter, though, so, after mulling over the dreaded plateau for a couple of weeks at home, you decided to attack that mountain again. This time you figured you’d better take another lesson. At first, the results were not too reassuring. In fact, you seemed to be getting worse, not better, until, after some really concerted practice, you made some visible progress to the next level. You had the usual dip in performance that accompanies learning a new technique to improve your overall skill, and—now comes the worst part—you were now back on another plateau, and you probably didn’t even know it yet.

Leonard talks about how to learn to love the plateau, because if you don’t, you’re doomed to become a dabbler. You’re doomed to be the person who gets just good enough to get by. You get to that point because you never push beyond the level of the original lesson and the plateau that follows. The plateau (when you love it) is the place where your new skills get integrated into your repertoire. The plateau, even though it feels like no progress is being made, is actually the place where you fine-tune your progress to date and prepare to press on. It’s also the place that can bring the most frustration and disappointment, and, for that reason, it is on the plateau that most people stop stretching for mastery and learn to live with the level they’re on.

In terms of learning to lead this may be the core contributor to Murphy’s Law. Our level of incompetence is really just a plateau. The challenge is to recognize that and find a path to the next plateau, learning to love that one for what it can teach you.

At a recent meeting with about 100 top leaders in a client organization I observed the level of energy and the heat of the conversation increase every time the topic of collaboration arose. This is a highly sophisticated, technology-driven company. They have a wide range of products and services. And, they serve an educated, demanding customer base.

For a casual observer they seem like a highly collaborative organization.

So, why did their collective blood pressure rise every time the topic of collaboration come up? Why did they see collaboration as the primary challenge to their growth and success? What could they do to become more collaborative?

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“The important thing is NOT TO STOP questioning.”
  –Albert Einstein

Creating a mindset of “work as learning” is neither easy nor, necessarily, natural. The tactics and politics and semantics of the leaders’ daily work demand action, not reflection. A focus on reflection interferes with action, in the minds of many leaders and their observers. Make decisions! Take command! Be decisive! Motivate! Commit! Execute! Drive!

All these leadership characteristics scream “action.” Each is applauded as the stuff of leadership.

So, how does the active leader find time for reflection? Why should they find time for reflection?

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How will I get 10,000 hours of leadership practice under my belt? How will it be a meaningful and efficient experience? Most importantly, how will I get my work done if I’m so focused on learning to lead?

These and related questions trouble the training community, as does the dilemma of balancing ever-increasing amounts of work with the need to lead more effectively. In seems that more and more line leaders have no time for traditional training—in particular, for classroom training.

Being out of the office for even a half a day seems to impact workflow significantly: the price for leaders is too steep to pay—even if they’ll get excellent results.

Succeeding in managing this balancing dilemma may involve taking two related approaches:

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What do master violinists, professional hockey players, and world-class computer programmers have in common? According to Malcolm Gladwell, they have all practiced at least 10,000 hours to reach a level of mastery in their craft. In his new book about what makes people successful in their chosen professions, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, Inc., 2008), Gladwell argues that, going beyond their innate skill and ability, all successful people need to practice their craft; they must do so under a variety of circumstances, and a coach or teacher must be helping along the way.

What does this say about learning to lead or to manage?

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Satchel Paige, the old baseball star of the Negro Leagues, once said, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

In business, Satchel Paige’s long-ago words certainly ring true today. The complexity, challenges, and opportunities faced by business leaders require them to actively seek out the ideas of others—those they agree with and those they don’t agree with. The central dilemma in their doing so is determining how to take advantage of “all of us” while still maintaining the levels of efficiency and control demanded in today’s “instant response” business environment. Delayed product launches, poor investment decisions, and failed mergers are just a few examples of problems that result when leaders fail to take advantage of “all of us.” So, how can these leaders manage the dilemma inherent in the need for consensus building and speed of strategy execution? How can consensus-building and speed-to-action coexist? They can coexist when they are built into the decision-making process from the beginning and addressed simultaneously.

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I often get asked by our clients about brainstorming. It seems like chaos, so why do it? How can you make it really work? When should we do it? How do we reward and reinforce that kind of thinking in the workplace?

Brainstorming is one of those techniques that we’ve done so much and for so long that we forget what made it work in the first place. As a result, we tend to ignore the fundamentals, and we do so at our peril, because it’s the fundamentals that made the process work in the first place.

Here are some of my thoughts about the fundamentals. They build on what Daniel Pink has to say about the way the brain works and provide a rationale for brainstorming:

1. We tend to rely on the left side of our brains in business more than the right.
2. The left hemisphere is sequential. The right is simultaneous.
3. The left hemisphere specializes in text. The right in context.
4. The left hemisphere analyzes the details. The right synthesizes the big picture.
5. The left side is the logical, analytic side. The right is the imaginative and creative side.

Since we spend most of our business and professional lives living in the left hemisphere we tend to be analytic, sequential, text-oriented, and detail-focused. In doing so we often ignore the big picture, the context, the connections, and the unexpected jumps the brain can take to uncover unusual ideas and new ways of seeing old problems. We also tend to take the more simple view (versus the systems view) of the business challenges we face.

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If you’ve read a newspaper, turned on the TV, or looked at your retirement portfolio in the last few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the financial system is under enormous strain, if not in downright crisis. U.S. lawmakers are struggling to find a solution to the problem that satisfies their constituents while settling the markets. No sooner did they pass a “rescue” bill than the problem rippled throughout the world, creating a global financial meltdown.

You can look at this situation through the prism of economics, or politics, or your personal financial situation. But for the moment consider the “mother of all” leadership challenges it creates. These are some of the ingredients that are threatening to convert a business challenge into a global emergency:

• Anxiety: Someone once said “Anxiety breeds anxiety and confidence breeds confidence.” Nowhere is this truer than in the stock market, which is fueled by perceptions of risk and opportunity. In the current climate, investors are fleeing to safety and consumers are on the verge of panic.

• Complexity: The crisis was brought on in part by the buying and selling of sophisticated financial instruments, such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that even some heads of leading financial institutions failed to understand fully. Plus, the global financial markets are so interconnected that problems in one area have effects elsewhere that are difficult to predict.

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