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The Ohio and Texas primaries are
tomorrow. For the two contenders for the Democratic nomination, the
stakes can’t be higher. On the outcome of these primaries could
hinge the nomination. On that nomination could hinge the general
election. On that election depends the path of the free world for the
next crucial eight years. On one side, there is optimism, confidence, and
a rising awareness that the future rides with them. On the other, a
determined core of resilience that yet hides a desperate hope. In that
desperation, there resides a central belief that the tide can be turned by
reaching to the minds of the American people. Persuasion takes the form
of reasoned debate, a look at the facts, a rational assessment of reality, a
point by point answer to doubt.
But, in this election, as in most, that is the path to
defeat.
Hillary Clinton, a wonderful candidate, a hard worker, a
tireless advocate for the issues of the ordinary American has run into a
tsunami. It is a tidal wave of feeling, or irrational exuberance, of the
heart over the head. It is, in fact, the force of inspiration. No
rational analysis, no reasoned debate will win this election. The pundits
and analysts will talk all day about policy, white papers, positions on salient
issues of the day and detailed plans for the future. They will sagely
point out that in opinion polls and in one on ones, the voters have said that
they want the candidates to be specific on the issues, to outline their
positions, to delineate their plans. That is what the voters will say.
It is not how the voters will vote.
What the voters want is for the candidates to tell them that
they are in good hands, that the future is a bright one, filled with promise
and capable of fulfilling their dreams. They want to know the story of America in the
21st century and they want the candidates to tell them how the
ordinary American will fit into that story. They want to know everything
is going to be alright. Most people want to know that white papers exist,
that, in fact, there IS a plan. Do they want to delve into that
plan? I’m sorry, but I don’t think they do. The last
several elections have been won on “It’s the economy, stupid”
and “A return to moral values” and “we must stop the
terrorists”. Where were the plans with these things? How
detailed were they? What did they have to do with experience?
All elections are about the heart, ultimately. I think
we like to believe we vote with our heads, but I think we ‘feel’
the rightness of a candidate, and go from there. We like to feel that the
candidate is human. We like to feel that they CARE about us. We like to
think that they will take care of us, represent us well, serve as the guardian
of our dreams. It is a tall order for anyone, and impossible for the mind
to grasp. Not so for the heart. It is our emotions that tell us
that there is no inconsistency in these desires. It is our BELIEF that
all of this is possible that gives value to ourselves. And, in the end,
it is all about value.
Obama has done the best job, so far, of speaking to the
heart. Like I said earlier, Hillary did well in New Hampshire because, for a brief time,
people forgot everything about her except that she was real. When she
showed emotion, she spoke from the heart, and not the head. She connected to
the audience, who desperately WANTED to connect to her. She hasn’t
gone back to that dangerous place again. What Hillary COULD do, if she
wanted, is have a conversation with the nation. An intimate
conversation. A ‘fireside chat’. Without stridency,
without the trappings of the need to be ‘presidential’. With
Hillary, inspiration can come from who she really is. She could tell the story
of America,
as a story, for the next eight years. What will we be like in eight years
time? When that wonderful day comes, will we see the world be a better
place? How will that look for us? Will we feel that, once more, we
can stand with the purpose that has defined being an American for the last 225
years? Will we feel that, once more, we are the beacon for the world, a
city on a hill, a nation set apart? Will we feel once more our special
destiny that, deep down, has made us all proud to be Americans?
I believe that most Americans feel, at some level, that
something has changed over the last eight years. For whatever reason,
most Americans feel that we have lost that special place in our own heart that
make us proud of who we were. We have stepped down from the high ground
into the darkness of the forest. The candidate who will win this election
will take us from the forest to the mountaintop. That candidate will say, “We
have been in the dark, but there is a brightness ahead, and it is the light of
home. It is where we all reside, all of us Americans. It is a place
of beauty and idealism, a place of hope for the future and of faith in
ourselves. Within the hearth of our home burns the fire of our
possibilities, for it is our aspirations that draw us onward, that give value
and purpose to all that we love, and that fuels the strength and determination
that has forged our national character. All greatness comes from the
inherent belief in the nobleness of what we stand for, in the purpose of our
lives. Though we sometimes falter and slip from the heights to which we
aspire, in our hearts, we still believe that that height is where we belong”
The candidate who will win this election will never forget
that what America
wants is to be great. We may not say it, we may not shout it out, but we
feel it to the core of our being. And greatness in not defined in
military power, or economic wealth, it is defined by the value we give to our
dreams.
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Super Tuesday is nearly upon us and on the political front here in the United States, things are starting to shake out. John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani have dropped out as the field winnows, their objectives unmet. On the Republican side, it looks like McCain and Romney have put themselves in position for a knockout blow in a few days, with McCain the favorite. In the debate last night, Romney seemed to have an impressive grasp of the facts, both of his record and the record of Senator McCain. Nevertheless, the Senator seemed to come off slightly better as the Governor showed his exasperation. On the Democratic side, it is now just Obama and Clinton and what a tough choice it is! Experience vs. charisma. What to do.
I’d like to say a few words today in light of the aforementioned results with regard to Secret #3, “Set the High Performance Objective”. The other day, we were musing about the difference between the OBJECTIVE and the HIGH PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVE. We talked about the latter, mostly because the former seems so obvious. But, sometimes, even in sophisticated organizations and teams, the simple OBJECTIVE of the team becomes lost and/or confused. Let’s take the Giuliani campaign, for instance. The Objective of the campaign was to win the White House, and along the way, the Republican nomination. Knowing and setting the objective of the team DEFINES the team. Without an objective, the team is only a collection of individuals, going out on the town for a good time, but not a real team. With the Giuliani team, the objective got lost in the tactics, or the benchmarks, along the way.
The other candidates had studied history and understood the process, setting their own short term objectives to dovetail with the long term. Historically, public opinion of ones candidacy is generated most strongly in the early going, meaning Iowa and New Hampshire. To skip those two for all intents and purposes missed a vital opportunity to generate the proper appeal nationally, as they are easily the most covered primaries in the whole process. Setting the objective is all about knowing what the objective is all about, and using the experience of others as well as yourself to understand how to get there, or the benchmarks needed to get there step by step. It can show a certain amount of arrogance and/or ignorance to ignore the experiences of others and chart a radical course that, while seeming bold, is SO far from the tried and true as to appear counterproductive. This is what happened with the Giuliani campaign. His advisors believed they knew more, had a better grasp of the fundamentals and had crafted a strategy that would trump the other candidate’s more conservative approach.
Following a consistent conservative strategy in planning is not always effective either, but, bold new initiatives, while being vital to progress, are sometimes only ‘bold’ to those who were not in on the planning behind them. Usually, bold, slashing plans have been backed up either by a solid foundation of research on the history of the event in question, or, by intuition backed up by experience. In successful ‘bold’ strategies, there is really very little wild risk. Giuliani’s campaign had almost no historical record to back it up, and the results were predictable. The objective was not really understood.
With Hillary and Obama, the objective is the same, win the nomination and then on to the White House. The benchmarks along the way are, ostensibly, the same as well. To win the nomination, they need to win enough delegates to be elected the nominee at the convention. But with each of them, the steps along the way ARE different. They appeal to different demographics, AND they have to both win those demographics, appeal to the other’s demographics, and convince the national party that THEY are the one most likely to draw independents in the general election. Both campaigns are objective oriented team’s with reliance on polling for course corrections and impressive ground campaigns in a number of states. Focus on their individual objectives is the key. Obama can’t influence Hillary, and vice versa, by concentrating on Hillary, other than the actual results he or she achieves that might alter the planning and the short term objectives of the other. What this means is that the most effective way to achieve the objective is to FOCUS on the objective, and not on external factors that you can’t control.
Most of us don’t do that very well. We focus on the competition, we focus on those things we can’t control. That is a usually counterproductive strategy. That most successful businessmen, athletes, politicians, artists, whatever, focus on what they can control and demonstrate a laser like concentration on the core objective. That does not mean they lack flexibility. Not at all. They use their flexibility to manipulate the resources they have and that they pick up along the way to move constantly towards the objective. Sometimes, this can be described as “staying on message”. This has achieved a less than stellar name over the last decade, but the idea is still very real. The ‘message’ is the objective. Stay focused on it like a bull terrier, but show the flexibility to change benchmarks and tactics along the way. Tomorrow, we’ll talk a little more about story telling, speech making and the core of the Eight Secrets “Ennoble the Effort.”
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I promised the other day that we would say a few words about Secret Number Three “Set the High Performance Objective”, in light of the Presidential race. It was fitting, I think, to have first delved into the meaning of ‘greatness’ and what it takes to achieve ‘greatness’ in the context of the needs of our country now in the early years of the twenty first century. First of all, I’d like to define the difference between the ‘high performance objective’ and the ‘objective’. The ‘objective’ is the goal, the object of a team’s attention. The HIGH PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVE, on the other hand is quite different.
Let’s look again at the Presidential race in this country. On the Republican side, the contest has become a tactical battle among Governor Huckabee, Senator McCain, Governor Romney, and Rudolph Guiliani. All four, while defining the objective as winning the Republican nomination and then winning the White House, have also broken that objective down into measurable benchmarks. Delegates have to be won state by state. Public opinion has to be swayed both nationally and locally to develop momentum that can influence voters in each future primary. Each candidate has strengths and weaknesses among different demographics represented in each of the fifty states. In short, it has become an extremely interesting competitive test. Out of this contest may come a very strong candidate, annealed in the fire of close combat and tactically adept, patient, and willing to understand the benefits of concentration on process, perseverance, and confidence. Or not. It all depends on whether, during the next few weeks, they all keep their eye on the prize.
A high performance team is DEFINED by the goal it sets, but it is MADE by the environment it creates to get it. That is the real difference between the objective and the High Performance objective. On the Democratic side, Hilary and Obama are trading blows like two heavyweights intent on an early knockout, while Edwards waits in the wings for the critical blow that could disable one of the major combatants. Who will win this match depends on what I’ve mentioned before, the power to tell the story of America in the 21st century, as well as which of the candidates remembers the inherent advantage the Democrats possess in this election; the American people are no longer interested in tactics. They want a leader who will represent for them who and what each and every American truly WANTS to be. They want a leader who will say, ‘The objective is not to win the White House. The objective is to stand for the best that WE CAN BE, as a nation.’ THAT is the high performance objective. It is not defined by benchmarks, not even by stretch goals or BHAGS (Big hairy Goals). It is way beyond the largest stretch goal you can imagine. The High performance objective simply says ‘I don’t know what it is I can do, or you can do, or my team can do. I have no idea. But, having said that, I am not going to hold you, me, or the team back from what it is they can truly do. I am going to believe in the possibility of perfection, of maximum effort, of inspired brilliance and I am going to free all of us to go there.’
In other words, it is not enough to achieve a stated objective. Not only does that have nothing to do with greatness, it normally impedes the pursuit of greatness. In a political campaign, it may be impossible to stay true to a higher calling, to stay true to the pursuit of the perfect. Perhaps, in politics, it is not only laughable, it might be an impure thought to hold to the possibility of staying above the fray and calling on the best that is within us. The temptation, after all, to go tactical, to answer the flurries of attacks, to grind out a ‘win’ through sheer dogged trench warfare may not only be irresistible, it may be a necessity. Having said that, the truly great will somehow struggle to rise above the tactical and remember what must happen in the end.
The descent into attack that has characterized the last week or so of the Democratic race has dragged both main contenders into the tactical mire and has given life, however briefly, to John Edwards. The High Performance Objective is to create the environment ‘where champions are inevitable’. It is not to worry about the gold medal. It is to create the environment where gold medals happen. The candidate who can do that will win the race. That may not always be the case in political campaigns, but I believe it is the case this year. The country is starving for real leadership and sensing the uncertainty of the future. Now is the time to see who will step up to the plate to continually echo the call of our hearts and help us find the ‘hero within’ that will take us into the challenges of the next fifty years.
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Building a high performance team is never easy. It requires the WILL to do so. What I’d like to talk about today is where that WILL comes from. The question I have for all of us is simple. What makes us GREAT? What makes the teams you lead GREAT? What, in fact makes this nation, GREAT? I suppose we should start by talking about what it means to BE great. Greatness, I think, is the state of being the best of what we are capable. It is not defined against a standard, necessarily, or against the others around us. It is defined against our hope for ourselves and those we lead in the context of the best of what we expect from ourselves as a species, as members of the human race.
Why is this important? Because in learning how to create, maintain, and lead a high performance team, we must know that for which we strive. A high performance team is all ABOUT greatness. It is all about reaching for “the stars”. To be a high performance team means to be a team inhabited by champions. And champions yearn for greatness. Why? Because within each of us is the need to be valued, to be special. That is why Secret number two in the Eight Secrets of Inspirational leadership is the key to every high performance team. Everyone WANTS, in fact, NEEDS to be valued.
Many years after the Battle of Waterloo, an older Lord Arthur Wellsley, Duke of Wellington was asked how the outnumbered British, Prussian, and allied armies won the great contest against the most successful general of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte. The gruff and direct old Duke looked at his inquisitor with a glint in his eyes and said simply, “The battle of Waterloo was won upon the playing fields of Eton.” To contemporaries of the old commander, the meaning was clear. To others, looking back through the haze of history, maybe a little less so.
When the smoke of battle swirled around the beleaguered English troops standing atop the long sloping ridges of Waterloo, the lines held, despite shot and shell that screamed overhead or ploughed through the massed ranks of the famous British squares. It held despite the repeated cavalry charges lapping around the edges of the bristling formations. It held throughout the long day in the terror and heat of conflict. Men fell, were decapitated, sprayed with their comrades blood, witnessed the most horrible sights imaginable, but still fought on. Why?
Studies done in the last thirty years or so have overwhelmingly demonstrated that despite all, people will undergo the most traumatic experiences to avoid being cast from the tribe, to stand up for their brothers or sisters in arms, to prove the nobility of community. That is true, and well documented. Having said that, there have been communities and communal experiences that have resulted in the most terrible crimes imaginable. On the battlefield, communal solidarity is noble and uplifting, in times of social unrest, communal solidarity can sometimes become mob violence. So, whereas the nobility of community explains the result, where do the agents that bond the community together, those that make the community great, where do they come from?
Ultimately, those ties come from the values a community shares. When the New England settlers sailed the Mayflower to the shores of America, they shared religious values that emphasized the pursuit of human perfection. The fervent desire to be a “city on a hill”, a light to all nations, was the tie that bound all of them together. In fact, those ties made each and every settler feel special, valued, part of something bigger, elite, noble and apart from all others. That, in essence, is the defining aspect of greatness.
When those settlers came to become teeming colonies who came together to fight and win a revolution, they decided to put on paper an explanation of what made them special. Not only in the Declaration of Independence, but also in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, our founding fathers tied us all together and said to the whole world, ‘we represent something unique and special. We are, in fact, ourselves, unique and special.’ We have accepted the CHALLENGE of pursuing the best that is within each one of us, the best of our very HUMAN nature, the best of ourselves. What a powerful belief! That belief led to the sense of manifest destiny, the jingoism of the Spanish American war, the patriotism of the first and second World Wars, the belief in the economic power of the nation that led to the breathtaking explosion in prosperity of the last 60 years. It was, and has been, a belief in our essential uniqueness, our willingness to accept the challenge of being better than we are.
The British officers who stood erect even as cannonballs blew great gaps in the line, or in themselves, did so because they too, were tied together with certain values, the values of the English public school, the values that were drummed into them ‘upon the playing fields of Eton’. They would not show fear, even in the most fearful circumstances. For the community that they valued, which was the community of their peers, they would rather die than be humiliated. Courage was the price of social acceptance, the tie that bound them together, and the rules of the game they learned in their youth, when they threw the ball around according to ‘the rules’.
Sometimes we forget ourselves and how important it is to adhere to values that define us. It is not just social convention, it is the very WILL to succeed, to be GREAT, that is at stake. When we embrace the CHALLENGE of rising above the ordinary, we provide the will that makes greatness. When we drift away, individual by individual and we forget, our will to win recedes like the falling tide on a lonely shore and we become ordinary, losing our history, our tradition, our place in the world, and eventually, ourselves.
The lessons of nation and team are as true today as they ever were, and as hard to execute. More than ever, we need to remember the values that created who we are in this country and in our teams. Now is certainly the time for leadership, and, for greatness.
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So, now Iowa AND New Hampshire are history. Interesting results indeed! But how do they relate to inspirational leadership and building a high performance team? Well, when first talking about the results of Iowa, I mentioned that Obama had done a nice job of being positive and painting the vision, but not a GREAT job. The vision was full of hope and the wonderful rhetoric that is such an added bonus to the true inspirational leader. However, ultimately, the vision was not painted with enough specificity. That, by the way, does not mean the policies and plans of Obama’s potential new administration were not laid out chapter and verse and backed up by numbers, statistics, examples and rock hard certainty. No, it means that the STORY of the future has not been told yet by Obama with enough meat so that we can all see ourselves as participants in it. If Obama can tell the story of where we WILL all be at a designated time in the future IF we commit to a current path, then he will have fulfilled the heart of the eight secrets of inspirational leadership, which is Secret Number Four “Ennoble the Effort”. In other words, if Obama could say something such as:
‘I see an America where all of our people are united against the power of prejudice.
I see an America where our borders are windows of opportunity, not walls of fear and insecurity.
I see an America where every child can live in health and not despair of help in times of illness
I see an America where the world looks to us for strength and does not cower in hatred of our arms.
It is this America, a land of true freedom and unbending opportunity, that this generation of Americans can and WILL create. It is this America, a land where education is seen not as an accomplishment to be derided, but a noble goal worthy of our best efforts, where our citizens do not revel in bread and circuses but rather stand tall in the uniqueness of our individuality to be what we were meant to be, what we were born to be, representatives of a city on a hill, a light to the world, the hope of what we all truly desire, the best of ourselves.’
And then ELABORATE on that story in his subsequent speeches, he will begin to fill in the picture of what that America will be like and how we, as Americans, can play our part in the great drama of the 21st century. If he can do that, or if anyone can do that, they can reach to our hearts and move us towards a better, more purposeful, more noble future.
In New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton finally did what I noted she needed to do in order to resuscitate her candidacy. She CONNECTED to the audience. As I mentioned, she needed to somehow make the emotional link that every successful candidate in this particular election NEEDS to do with the electorate. Her little teary eyed moment (and I think it was very real), in a single heartbeat, made that connection. People could finally say, ‘wait a minute. Not only is Hillary sharp, experienced, determined, and hard working, she is also REAL. She is just like me, ONLY BETTER.’ That is so important to all of us. What we hope to have as our leaders are people who in fact ARE better than we are. We hope to have people who represent the best that we can be. We don’t want people who are not as good as we are or who don’t represent the best of us. On the other hand, those people have to have the qualities that we all value more than anything; our humanness. Our sense of compassion and empathy that reminds us we are all precious members of the human race and, in the end, that is what we must have from our leaders. Why? Because we want to know that when it comes down to it, those who lead us are not only aware of our best interests, they are truly looking out for US, not just US collectively, but US as individuals. The emotional connectivity that Hillary showed (and that she needs to keep showing) answers the question that everyone has been asking “how much does she REALLY care?” Hillary’s moment was all about secret #2; Everyone wants to feel valued. We all want to feel valued by our leaders. We don’t want to be another statistic. It is very hard to express value to large masses of people, but sometimes, a little tear here and there goes a long way.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee continues to make that emotional connection, though his policies and belief system seems to be at odds with the conservative base. He has a wonderful sense of humor and a folksy way that is more articulate and ‘real’ than Fred Thomspons’ down home manner that just doesn’t quite match up to Ronald Reagan’s quiet certainty. John McCain has shown resilient determination and the ability to connect one on one. As I mentioned earlier, however, he has not been able to paint the future for the country with the warmth and connectivity he can show to a smaller audience. It will be interesting to see what happens as we go forward into South Carolina and Michigan and all of the other states that will be contested between now and February 5th.
What we are seeing now is inspirational leadership and teambuilding on a national scale being played out right in front of us every day. We should all take note. Leading any team requires the same skills that these candidates are either showing they have or proving they lack. The Eight Secrets are as good a guide as any and better than most for pointing the way. I wanted to talk a little bit about secret three, setting the high performance objective in light of the campaign, but I will address that next time!
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