In a recent post for The Guardian my co-author Judith Merkies,  a member of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, and I laid out an alternative model — the leasing economy:

(a system) that incentivises manufacturers to maintain responsibility for their wares through the end of their useful lives, in order to gain access to mass amounts of materials they can use in place of virgin materials. A leasing society model prompts manufacturers to design sustainable products not through force or regulations, but through economic incentives. When consumers lease instead of purchase, companies will need to consider not only what happens the moment a product is sold, but also what happens when it comes back in. The realisation descends that, from now on, they have the economic interest to make their products more durable and more sustainable, because their expenses will be minimized when the product lasts for its entire leasing period.

This leasing model moves beyond the “pre-configured media-imposed archetypes” that characterize the climate change debate.  It also draws upon and expands a framework that is at least somewhat familiar to manufacturers, retailers, and consumers:

Consider Michelin, the world-leading tyre manufacturer, which now offers durable and rentable tyres; the Dutch telephone company KPN, leases phones to take back and recycle valuable materials, or the flourishing chemicals and carpets leasing markets, developed by Ray Andersen via Interface. Successful precedents for leasing have been set in both the commercial and consumer markets, with fungible economic and environmental benefits. It is time to nurture this alternative economic consumption model for a far broader range of products. Not for moral reasons, but for reasons of shared prosperity.

I invite you to read the full post and share your thoughts. We are, after all, in this together.

However occasionally I come across some bite-sized morsels worthy of consideration. Recently I came across 10 Lessons for Young Designers from John Jay, executive creative director at celebrated advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy.  I think that it would be a shame to limit these to designers or the young: I have encountered several seasoned professionals in a range of industries who would benefit from Jay’s wisdom:

Ten Rules for Young Designers:

1: Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.
2: Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.
3: Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.
4: Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.
5: Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.
6: Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.
7: Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them.
8: Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.
9: The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.
10: If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.

All ten of these deserve greater exploration on reflection. I particularly resonate with numbers 3 — our world is dominated by the digital and we are ill-served by forgetting the analog — and 5. The latter, it should be noted, doesn’t mean another business trip locked in an airport hotel: Go see something different. Be a one-hour tourist.  Number 7 is another that more people would do well to heed. If they did, some organizations would find themselves with a lot of empty office space.

The other reason that these appeal to me is that I was fortunate to work with John Jay early in my career. He was Creative Director at Bloomingdale’s and I was a public relations coordinator with a cubicle just down the hall. Although it has been just about 30 years, I still recall one encounter with John that has helped shape my approach to work and life.

The store was preparing one of its then-famous “country promotions” that filled Bloomingdale’s not just with merchandise but also museum exhibits, craftspeople, and whatever else would make the far-away land tangible and compelling. The country’s government often contributed money to support the cultural aspects of the promotion and Jay was central to crafting the pitch. No store comes close to this level of temporary transformation today.

Japan was the pitch that season and John was working on the logo that would go on shopping bags, signage, hang tags, and many other items. I was walking by Jay’s office, called a quick “hello,” and then was summoned back. Jay had several versions of the logo mounted on presentation boards on a wall tray that kept them at about eye level.

“I’m working on Japan,” he said, motioning toward the artwork that portrayed variations of a rising sun against a black background. “I’d like to know what you think.”

John Jay wanted to know what I thought? I was a 23-year old who, next to him, knew little about art, Japan, or anything else for that matter.  He wanted to know what I thought. He likely knew that his work had to appeal both to the sophisticated and the aspirational and perhaps I was a valid sample of the latter.

With that simple gesture, Jay cemented himself in my worldview. I believe that he was genuinely interested what I and many others had to say about his work. He was confident but not so egotistical that he believed that only he had the aesthetic chops to judge the art. In working in media that many others thought of disposable, he was a democratic designer and sought to instill the everyday with artistic beauty.

I do not know if John realized the impact that this interaction had on me. It told me that I was a valued part of the team with a contribution to make – something we now know is critical to building employee engagement. He established in me a higher expectation for what my role in an organization would be. I have judged every organization for which I have worked since against that standard.

I went on to become a creative director myself before moving on to study and write about leadership. I was never demanding about working only on the most prestigious campaigns or in the media most likely to win awards. I won my share of awards although that was never the point. I worked, I think inspired by John’s example, to elevate even the most mundane project to a higher level.

And so to John Jay’s 10 lessons I would add two more:

11) Create opportunities to let your colleagues feel valued, even in a small way;

12) Never miss a chance to be mentor. You never know what your impact might be.

Thanks, John.

Such a high-profile exit ignited a lively debate with some calling Smith a hero, others defending Goldman, and yet others believing that Smith was naive. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave a spirited defense in an internal letter to employees. I do not have a view into the storied investment bank and so I will withhold judgment here. The episode, however, holds many lessons for leaders.

These events are a dramatic example of the Purpose-Values-Performance (PVP) framework that I have developed in the course of studying why firms succeed or fail:

-          Purpose asks “What job is our customer hiring us to do?” and “What are we trying to build?”

-          Values asks, “What standards will guide us as we do business?

-          Performance asks, “How will we measure success?”

While Smith’s and Blankfein’s ideals in each of these may align, it is clear that their perceptions of reality are far, far apart. This is the root of the problem.

A leader’s first job is to create clarity of PVP throughout the organization. Unity of effort can only be achieved when an understanding of purpose, values, and performance is consistent from top to bottom. If Smith’s perception is correct, the firm has gone far off the course that made it a Wall Street legend, putting itself ahead of its customers; purpose and values were dispensable if they stood in the path superior financial returns. If Blankfein’s perception is correct, all is apparently well but one of the executives who worked for him – the head of the United States equity derivatives business and one of only 10 out of 30,000 employees to be included in a recruitment video – was somehow drawing significantly different conclusions.

I can’t allocate blame for this but I can assign accountability and it lies clearly with the top team at any firm. Goldman Sachs, like most firms, surely has highly evolved measurement systems for financial performance and they are tied tightly to evaluation metrics, bonuses, promotions, and status. Firms need to be equally rigorous in measuring and rewarding how they help customers succeed. Those who live into values so dynamically that value statement wall plaques seem superfluous must be celebrated. Truth, even uncomfortable truth, must be able to be heard up, down, and across the organization.

How can this be done? How about a quarterly award to the person or team who creates the most customer value – with no regard given to the positive or negative that it has on short-term firm performance?

I also think of David Logan’s work on tribes. Logan argues that tribes are the basic unit of human organization and that we are all part of tribes at home, work, and other arenas of life. Logan sketches five levels of tribes: the lowest level is united by a belief that “life sucks”; the next is brought together by a shared view that “life sucks for us”; the third level tribe coheres around a shared belief that “life is great for me”; the fourth is “life is great for us”; and the highest level is one where the tribe is glued by a belief that “life is great.”

A great number of organizations – particularly those that run on the star system such as many Wall Street firms – are level three tribes: they hang together primarily as vehicles for individual achievement. Highly engaged “best places to work” organizations are often level four tribes: people like to belong because the firm offers engaging coworkers, sufficient pay and benefits, and challenging work. The organizations that Logan believes change the world are level five tribes. They are values-driven above all where people think not just about themselves or the organization, but also measure their success in terms of their customers and communities. They see the whole world as stakeholders whose success matters.

Logan notes that leaders must be able to speak to all levels of tribes because people can only hear one level below and one level above where they are. At Goldman, it appears that CEO Blankfein was speaking from level three while Greg Smith was trying to hear at level five – and the sound just couldn’t carry that far.

Smith’s high volume public exit broke all of the sound barriers.

Leaders who create clarity around purpose, values, and performance make it easier for people to discern the tribal markings and so that they can join where they best fit.  I believe that people who share purpose and values will blast through the performance measures more often than not.

Which kind of tribe do you want to lead?

A version of this post also appeared at BecomeALeader.org

Why does this matter? Data cited by Paul Hodgson at Forbes.com reveals that diverse teams have richer discussions and make better decisions. That is a valid and important point. Why should we be concerned about gender diversity in particular?

My specialty is not gender differences.  But as a cognitive anthropologist I study how the mind works, how people “make meaning”, how people form attachments to things, and how people make decisions.  In that search I have inadvertently uncovered something fundamental about the sexes: WOMEN CYCLE, MEN CONSUMMATE.

So, in celebration of women crossing the 10% mark, I’d like to share some thoughts that I originally penned for Forbes on cycling, consummation, and why boards need to harness the power of both men and women. I look forward to your thoughts.

Nowadays, a word increasingly heard around the C-Suite, the water cooler and the media screen, is “uncertainty.”   It has always been true that knowing the answers to important questions requires expertise.  In today’s seemingly undecodable landscape, though, we often do not even know the right questions to ask.

New dynamics fashioned by the intersection of the global economy, the digital world, and the geopolitical context has rendered predictability opaque.  One thing is certain: we need multiple viewpoints and sensibilities toiling collectively to arrive at a firmer footing.  More female corporate board members working in concert with the male of the species might help.  This is not a quota issue.  It is a cognitive requirement for a more successful collective intelligence.

In this post 9-11 and post-Ponzi world, a larger mix of worldviews is necessary to understand things beyond their immediate surface manifestation.  One implication: It is insufficient to have only 15% women seated around the boardrooms of the Fortune 500.  When men and women work together their different cognitive temperaments – in alchemy and in mutual oversight – can create visions and solutions that have a better “fit” to the current environment of complexity.

My specialty is not gender differences.  But as a cognitive anthropologist I study how the mind works, how people “make meaning”, how people form attachments to things, and how people make decisions.  In that search I have inadvertently uncovered something fundamental about the sexes:

Women cycle…Men consumate.

As a population the male is oriented to the present, the concrete, the visual, the “hit,” the win, the “me.”  Evolutionarily speaking, the male must bring home the bacon.  No Dilly-Dallying.  No excuses.  The male is in-the-now and, above all else, is a pragmatist.

In contrast, the female is oriented to the conceptual, to underlying dynamics, to the relationship between things, and to stability over the long-term. Because women intrinsically cycle, they tend to experience and understand patterns over time.  They are more sensitive to how things move and mutate.  They are more prone to resolve conflicting meanings by creating higher-order concepts.   When the game is about paradox (which it so often is, nowadays), women have home field advantage.

The benevolent leader has always been the one who rides the cusp between two paradoxical vectors: Being familiar and being mythic.  Being accessible and being “’The One’ who knows the way.”  Women can often be nurturing while still having a spine of steel.

In business, mixes or blends of any kind are too infrequent.  Things tend to be siloed.  Neat, stereotypical boxes satisfy the need for simplicity, but usually don’t foot the bill.

Mixed male and female groups who combine the different gender-based ways of perceiving causality, time, and power, tend to compose better problem-structuring and problem-solving entities compared with same sex groups.  Concatenations and concoctions of cognitive gender differences can frame and enliven each other.

Males act and say things like: “You’ve got to act, you can’t wait too long.”  “You must know what the data and specs mean.  Then pounce.”  “My goal is feeling unbounded.”

Females act and say things like: “It takes time to have things in order.”  “I want to feel good about where I am and what I’ve done.”

“My goal is long-term stability.”

Male: Do what you set out to do and finish the job.  Female: Evolve.

Male: Achieve.  Female: Experience.

Male: Stay on top of things.  Female: Create good relationships.

Males and females also have different aesthetics of risk.

Together males and females are better than each separately.  They could help each other bring out the best in he boardroom.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, when Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia, one of the things he said was, what the world needs now, is more understanding, not more explanation.

Explanation entails seeing the world as governed by finite laws that humankind can direct through successive approximations.  Understanding requires comprehending meaning from the inside-out, in its unfolding.  To understand, the world can’t be approached solely from a cold, hard, logical stance.  Women can bring more of this understanding to the mission of a corporate board.

Capabilities such as reading each others’ emotions and moods, allowing time to listen and hear, trusting others who are outside your own biography, and engaging in innovative metaphorical thinking does not align well with alma mater or McKinsey-like management spreadsheets.  Each person on a corporate board should be able to find in “The Other’ something that is familiar and something that challenges one’s familiar.

This ongoing negotiation between soloists collaborating to produce something new is the art of corporate leadership.  The exchange and cross-fertilization created by males exiting the world of an all-male board as more women enter that domain could cause all to find themselves in a new light.

 

In this era of high uncertainty many problems seem caught in an eddy. We now need a deeper understanding not only of institutions and of technologies, but also of human nature and the nature of mind that contribute to and can solve our commercial and political challenges.  If we had more individuals and groups with cognitive inclinations from both genders, those bodies just might add some innovative points of view to the mix of ideas already on the table.

Gender juxtapositions around the boardroom table can give rise to exciting ideas that could even override assumptions of a zero-sum game.  When male and female sensibilities work together, there is a heightened chance for creating new solutions that reflect principles underlying a more enlightened strategic outlook as well as a socially responsible world.   These principles are:

1. PATTERN, not just point.  The ability to perceive more than the metric of a data point and appreciate the underlying pattern (idea) that gives rise to the surface numbers; this is required for strategy development.
2. QUALITY, not just quantity (size).  Recognizing that bigger and more is not necessarily better; and that a steady build is often better than an impulsive but fleeting response.
3. CONNECTEDNESS, not just individuals.  Communality can reign over dominance; and that we must create a new narrative to replace hegemony.  We are all bound together.
4. AUTHENTICITY, not just immediate appearance.  Persona, biography (or history), and current contingency must all be factored in, and that universal principles underlie situational particularities.
5. SOCIETY, not just markets.  Markets are numbers.  Markets can be counted and the goodies duly noted.  But numbers are not people.  People have feelings.
6. QUALITY OF LIFE, not just incomes.  There are material and spiritual needs made up of individual wants and musts, but these too are cast in the context of a social matrix.
7. REASONABLENESS, not extremism or absolutism.  All issues have grays, and exaggerations to one side or the other only blind us from the fact that we are all perpetrators and victims.  The great task before us is Imagining ‘The Other’.

Men and women working together on a corporate board is a difference that could make a difference.  It could help move corporate America a step further passed being “right” to being “smart”.

Some corporate and some global problems we face seem not to give us much time.  It is our subjective perception of time itself that we must alter.  A he-man alone cannot always carry the day.  The male and female, together, may be better able to break new ground.

DR. BOB DEUTSCH is a cognitive anthropologist, founder and president of Brain Sells, a strategic communications and innovation consultancy (www.brain-sells.com); and Fellow of The Rosemont Institute.

It may actually be time to start giving competitive advantage way.

Well, not giving it away so much as finding ways to share it profitably with competitors. As I write in my latest post for HBR.org, Nestle is just one company that has found it financially advantageous to share. In Nestle’s case, its financial success is dependent, in part, on collecting and reusing plastic for recycling. Rather than simply working to outdo its competitors in this area, the company is organizing rivals in an effort to optimize the overall recycling system. It benefits them all.

This give-more-to-get-more approach may revolutionize how we think about competition. What do you think?

Read the original post on HBR.org.

Why, I wondered, now? Was there something in the water in Copenhagen? Was it a reflex to the sobering financial meltdown of 2008.

Perhaps it is actually that companies are waking up to the fact that they really do run the world and if it isn’t run well, it won’t work well.

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy recently posted an article that laid it out in stark terms:

The sales revenues of the world’s largest company, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., are higher than the GDPs of all but 25 countries. At 2.1 million, its employees outnumber the populations of almost 100 nations. The world’s largest investment manager, a low-profile New York company named BlackRock, manages $3.5 trillion in assets — greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet. In 2010, a private philanthropic organization, the $33.5 billion-endowed Gates Foundation, distributed more money for causes worldwide than the World Health Organization had in its annual budget.

I am not sure how I feel about this as the world wrestles with how to deal with the possibility of Iran as a nuclear power. Will the Islamic Republic forgo long-missiles in exchange for everyday low prices?

My read, which is in line with at least the sentiment of the thought leaders named above, is that business leadership as now commonly practiced is largely not up to the challenge. While Rothkopf posits that “striking the right balance between private and public power is the fundamental challenge of our age,” I would suggest that a more immediate need is to transform the leadership of major corporations: if executives are going to be world leaders, they best be as adept with state craft and social challenges as they are with balance sheets.

I don’t know that many executives realize how significant is their stride onto the global stage. Have they not simply been guided by the invisible hand toward economic utility? Do they realize that they may also be responsible for social ills as well as economic opportunity?  Are they ready to have the fate of the world in their hands? The purpose society sees business serving may have changed dramatically.

The good news is that some executives seem to be aware of what has emerged and are game for the challenge — if not to confront nuclear Armageddon then at least to take a crack at climate change or the challenge of fast-growing cities in the developing world.

Choosing the people with the right mindset and values for corporate offices and boards — and equipping them with the right skills: that may well be the greatest challenge of our age.

I explore this tension in my latest post for BecomeALeader.org. It is an issue that executives should consider before they are put to the test. If they talk about values as much as they talk about performance, they might actually find that these situations don’t arise in the first place.

What are your thoughts?

“Maximizing shareholder value has been the mantra of corporate boards for at least the last two decades. But the ways to boost profit have changed dramatically in that time. And boards are struggling to keep up.”

In my most recent post in The Christian Science Monitor I suggest that boards would benefit from stakeholder audits and other moves to put them in closer touch with the people they are supposed to represent. I also argue that boards should diversify and need to quantify how they create value for all stakeholders, not simply shareholders.

“It’s time for corporate boards to adjust in order to guide and oversee their companies’ efforts to deliver value to stakeholders worldwide. Global society will be better off – and probably wealthier – as a result.”

What do you think of the state of boards today? What changes would you make?

Sarah has a C level role at a global financial services company. She complains bitterly that she can no longer find time to do any strategic thinking. In a recent 360 degree assessment her peers and boss commented on this and criticized her for her lack of vision and long range plans.

Andrew is a senior executive at a fast growing social media company. He is sleep deprived and feels tired all the time. Nevertheless he find it impossible to go to bed without first checking his email, facebook and twitter accounts. Inevitably he then spends a further hour reading, following links and responding before he gets into bed. Most of it is recreational.

Pamela has a C-suite role at an airline. She loves literature and used to read a novel a week in either English or French. It’s been 6 months since she last completed a book. She says she just can’t concentrate long enough to get gripped by the story.

What do these people and many like them have in common? They are all suffering from Engagement Deficit Disorder (EDD). That’s right. They find themselves unable to engage with anything for longer than a few minutes.

Our collective inability to concentrate and engage is a major epidemic. The causes are well documented. Our brains are wired to seek new information so it’s no surprise that the internet as the perfect provider of bright and shiny new things, is turning out to be the ultimate tool of distraction and the nemesis of our ability to focus. I’m not the first to write about this and frankly this isn’t what interests me. Since Pandora’s ‘inbox’ is well and truly opened, I’m much more focused on what we can do to overcome it.

Recently I’ve been doing research interviews with HR SVPs, and Chief Learning Officers from Fortune 100 companies. Each of them cited low employee engagement scores in their top 3 issues keeping them awake at night. Each of them had programs in place to improve how well their companies are engaging with their employees.

Interesting.

You see, I’m observing a clear link between low employee engagement, and the general ability of our employees (ie us) to concentrate. If we’re finding it hard to engage with anything, then why would work be the exception?

I’ve seen many engagement surveys, and I haven’t come across a single one that explores how engaged the respondent is with areas of their lives outside of work. Surely that’s a vital piece of information. If our overall capacity for engagement is dropping, then we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s also declining at work.

I look regularly at the questions that make up engagement surveys and I do wonder if what they measure is actually employee engagement with their everyday work. I spend significant chunks of time one-on-one with senior executives exploring their work and career issues. Whilst these individuals may be highly motivated and feel involved with their work in general, I can testify that many find it difficult to engage in the moment with the work on their desk.

As you read this, are you identifying with it? Do you suffer from a deficit of concentration? Difficulty in really focusing on something without jumping to your email? Impatience with slow talkers? Inability to get gripped by books and movies that once would have held your attention?

If so, you’re definitely not alone.

Instead of designing organization-wide programs to help the corporation engage better with its employees, we should be designing education programs that teach our employees how to engage in general….with anything…..at anytime….in all areas of their lives. We can’t isolate work from this epidemic, so the antidote is necessarily going to be broad spectrum.

The good news is that our ability to focus, concentrate and engage is a skill that is trainable.  Sure we’re all losing it, but there are definite steps we can take to retrain our plastic, malleable brains and win back our attention spans, maybe even improve them. I’m seeing great results with my clients though it does require them to concentrate a little to learn how to do it. The starting point is to become aware of our distractions and when they’re most likely to divert us. The next step is to log the pattern of our distraction – it’s usually quite shocking to discover how much time we spend diverted and how little time we focus. Depending on the results, we need a program tailored to reduce our distraction and increase our concentration. This can include relatively small steps like carefully scheduling our days so that our distractions are confined to specific timeslots, all the way through to hard core actions like 30 minutes of meditation each day to settle our busy brains and re-acquaint them with calm and sustained focus.

The correlation between success and ability to concentrate is well documented in every area of human endeavor so even though it may be something of a slog to win it back, the  ROI is fabulous….and not just for the individual, but for the corporation too.

The Center for Public Leadership’s seventh annual National Leadership Index tells a pretty grim story. Confidence in leaders is at its lowest point since the Index began. Some of this can be ascribed to the tough economy but the decline predates the recession. There are underlying issues of trustworthiness and competence. Some highlights, or low lights as the case may be, of the Index include:

• For the fourth year in a row, Americans’ confidence in their leaders is significantly below-average.
• The belief that we have a leadership crisis is at its highest level since 2008 when it picked up with the election of Barack Obama after several years of decline.
• Confidence in the leadership of eight sectors declined during the past year: medical, nonprofit & charity, the Supreme Court, education, business, the Executive Branch, Congress, and Wall Street. Confidence in Wall Street and Congressional leaders was barely above “none at all.”
• Confidence in Congressional and educational leaders decreased for the second straight year.
• Confidence in Congressional and Supreme Court leadership fell the most precipitously during the past year.

According to the Center’s director, David Gergen, “the levels of unhappiness have reached a point where they threaten the coherence and stability of our society.” The good news, he noted, was that Americans still believe that the leadership crisis can be turned around.

Read the full report here.

That’s what we’re dedicating our efforts to in 2012: understanding and catalyzing what it takes to find and promote the leaders we need now.