Don Schmincke: Renegade Thoughts About Leadership

RENEGADE: [from Medieval Latin renegātus, to deny] someone who deserts a principle, rebels, breaks with established customs.

When thousands in your audiences call you a rebel who deserted established management theory -- but keep asking for more -- you've gotta have a blog. Hooked on 'refreshingly irreverant" views of biological leadership, this should help; and make my staff at The SAGA Leadership Institute nervous.

It's not my fault. I'm a scientist who went astray into the dark side. The rest, well, it's all in print. Here, you can get a taste of what I might publish next. Of course, there are no linear, rational thoughts in my head. But this range of ramblings in some syncronistic way always seem to converge on an idea; one that helps businesses create profit. Good luck, and enjoy!

The Danger of Innovation

Met with Eileen, our Managing Director, today. I was sharing a response I got from a CEO in the workshop last Friday for Vistage. He said our Beliefs model (he heard me present a couple years ago) transformed his company. Then he went on about how he applied it to take accountability to new levels. Then it hit me! OMG, a "Bart Simpson" moment! Why don't we do that!!!

Of course we know that. And to be fair we're doing a lot. A whole lot, and with a lean and mean team. The deeper issue is we got off course. Not from the lack of good ideas, but because we have too many! We innovate ourselves out of execution. We have so many ideas that we get stretched and execution time suffers.

OK, not we. Me. I'm the problem. I come in and they say it's like having a "tornado inside a hurricane"! They're right. I'm a research geek. I love to learn. I feed on ideas. I crave creativity (the destuction of orderly thinking). And this can bring a company to it's knees if not throttled.

Do you have an unbridled geek in your company? Better have a plan. What are we doing about it... I mean, me? Meeting schedule when I'm back of tour next week --- how to separate the lab (research, book publishing, media promotion, market branding, etc.) from operations ( training program development, consulting delivery, sales, client management, field staffing, etc.). This should work, or maybe I'll have another idea . . .

Free Market Failure? A view before the dust settles

Was lying on my back in an orthodontist chair today . . .

OK, what's a 50 year old guy doing at an orthodontist? Trying to avoid a jaw operation later. Dentist found out my jaw's not setting properly and causing teeth problems. Choice - jaw operation later or braces now. Bummer. New book release this fall and I need braces. Apparently I'm not alone. Significant part of this guy's business is adults! Where was I ....

Oh yeah,Congress just rejected the Prozac bill to stave off U.S. financial Depression today. Some say this whole mess is indicates a failure of the free market. So my orthodontist offers the thought - how could it be free market when the mess was caused by Fannie and Freddie? I mean aren't those guys supported by the government? Good question. What if they weren't? What if their owners and execs had to bet their careers, personal wealth, and reputations on their capacity to understand risk and return? Would they have been so frivolous and irresponsible to take on such risky loans? Perhaps this isn't a Free Market Failure, but a Government Interference Success!

Original Sin, Again: Leaving the Microsoft Garden

In front of 75 executives in Philly yesterday showing a 5 minute video. It crashed 4 minutes into it. Big Microsoft error window pops up saying that MediaPlayer had stopped working. Froze up everything - keyboard, control-alt-delete, video controls, mouse, etc. All I could say to the audience is "we're filming an Apple commercial." They laughed, and understood.

Everytime this happens, and it happens a lot, my Managing Director, Eileen, tells me to run to the Apple store. I've been avoiding it. But  our new book releases soon, and audiences are going to enjoy clips from my co-author's, Chris Warner, NBC Emmy-nominated special on the successful K2 summit. They're not going to enjoy what they've been used to seeing - Microsoft system crashes. I'm afraid I might have to go over to the dark side again; leave Microsoft's Eden by eating an Apple.

Seduction of Chocolate, and Tools

In the new book, High Altitude Leadership, that I wrote with Chris Warner, we discuss the danger of tool-seduction. Chris is one of the top climbers in the world and, as founder of Earth Treks, quite a successful businessman. He’s clear about what happens when climbers get too seduced by their tools. In their overconfidence they end up stranded at altitude. But as I read about what’s happening with Hershey, I wonder why it’s so hard to see the same effect in companies. The BBC said that “Swiss-based Nestle has escalated its assault on the US market by offering $11.5bn (£7.5bn) for chocolate giant Hershey Foods”. What happened?

There’s chat from the autopsy of Hershey’s failed ERM program. Did it have something to do with the urgency of the sale? I'm always struck about how invisible tool-seduction is in organizations. Some people can't make the link, but tools run rampant in companies: TQM, team trainings, reengineering, six-sigma, talent management, organizational change programs, etc.

I see this a lot. Once, I visited a high-ranking government official to alert him about an impending failure from the millions they were investing in a major consulting firm to implement matrix-management. I had just finished a Keynote speech for his staff conference, and having sat in on an earlier workshop by the offending consulting group,it was clear this project was doomed. But this guy starts the meeting with me by bringing in a copy of my book, The Code of the Executive. He says he was having a hard time fitting my concepts into 3 other books he used as his bibles. The other 3 books were best sellers, and I knew had high failure rates in implementation studies. But somehow everything had to fit into his “tools”. It never hit him that my book, a translation of an ancient samurai training, wasn't supposed to "fit". I was flabbergasted. And this explained why his organization had no respect for him. Nauseous I left the meeting never getting to the point that he was wasting millions of taxpayer’s money. My money.

Tool seduction costs the country a lot.

Communism Rescues Capitalism!?

I was flying back to Washington, DC this week as the US governement worked overtime on a financial-Prozac remedy to stop the another U.S. Depression. In between the power-down and cells-on phase of flying I don't have a lot to do but read and think. Probably the most innovative part of the flight for me. This time an insane ides hit me: Communism is now highly interested in bailing out the Capitalists. Wha??? They don't want to bury us?

That's right. Rumors abound that China is looking at investing billions into US entities to help. Albeit the help is selfish - if we suffer, they suffer. Yu Yongding, former advisor to China's central bank, said that if the Fannie and Freddie fail the consequences will be catastrophic . . .  the end of the current international financial system. This isn't new news:

1. Foreign central banks have been propping up the U.S. economy for years; financing the US to keep their exports heavily dependent on U.S. consumer spending. And now? Can you spell "vendor financing"?
2. At the end of 2007, Chinese banks held $376 billion in US financial markets.
3. www.thenation.com :"dangers are compounded by the fact that the United States is now utterly dependent on foreign creditors--Japan and China lead the list--holdings of US long-term debt securities have more than doubled since 1994, from 7.9 percent to 18.8 percent as of June 2007. If these countries get fed up with their losses and pull the plug, the US economy will be a long, long time coming back."

So the communists are trying to help rescue the capitalists. Are Stalin and Mao laughing? Of course you could argue that China made its money on capitalist practices, but once again business commerce tranforms the world. The only difference now is that it doesn't take centuries anymore. WWII veterans are still alive today.