Courage...or calculation?

Most organizations establish and publish mission, vision and values statements.  For some organizations these act as key communication tools.  They inform the public in general or their clients in particular about what can be expected from the organization, how services will be delivered, what things the organization will do and perhaps what the organization will not do.  In similar fashion, the mission, vision and values of an organization can be key guideposts for employees - here is why we exist, here is where we are headed and here is how we will act in achieving our mission and vision.

Some organizations put extraordinary time, effort and energy into the development of these statements.  The process of creation can take many months and engage all staff and a variety of external stakeholders.  The intent behind such significant efforts is to not simply communicate the organization's mission, vision and values but hopefully to create ownership of these statements particularly by the staff.  If done well, staff become great ambassadors for what the organization states it stands for.  In the best scenarios, staff become empowered to take corrective action to support outstanding service without referral to their immediate supervisor.  Everybody is on the same page, moving in the same direction.  Powerful stuff.

In the same way, individual leaders sometimes take the time to identify and voice their own commitment to a set of personal leadership values.  This is most often the case in senior leadership positions.  It's rare that one achieves such a position without having to articulate a response to the question "What's your leadership style?" or "What's your leadership philosophy?"  Over time, this leadership style, philosophy or set of leadership values is refined by experience and polished by circumstance.  But ultimately, most leaders stake their ground, identify what they stand for, and provide some indication of how they might be different from other leaders.  It's how we sell ourselves to the organization we hope to join.

If an organization has done its job right the recruitment process for a senior leader will ensure that there is a high congruence between the stated values of the organization and the stated values of the individual leader.  The recruitment process should test for this not only by asking a candidate what their leadership values are but should further validate the response by seeking out concrete examples and confirming statements through an objective reference process. 

All this effort is necessary but can it guarantee "success"?  Some leaders are quite articulate in the statement of their leadership values - as are some organizations.  But there are enough examples in the private and public sector to tell us that many a leader and organization can put on a good show before being "discovered" for their true selves.  All too often, when a leader is put to the test it becomes clear that the values that were espoused during the recruitment interview or touted in a public forum, organization website or marketing brochure were simply platitudes. 

In some cases perhaps there was sincerity on the part of the leader when these statements were first uttered.  However, when put to the test, the leader lacked the courage to stay true to their original commitments.  Maybe as time has gone, they have made compromise after compromise believing that each small decision point did not really mean all that much in the context of their overall values.  Perhaps as individual leaders have gotten closer to the end of their careers courage has started to take a back seat to calculations of pensionable service.  In the worst case, perhaps leaders were just saying what they thought people wanted to hear with no real intent on following through in the first place.  The goal was simply to get and keep a leadership position.

So as a current or developing leader, who perhaps like me has become more than a little jaded and cynical about leadership in large organizations, what do you do to keep up your enthusiasm for work and perhaps ensure that your own moral compass remains centred and pointing to your true north?

There are two key pieces of advice I would offer.  First, I suggest we all need to do some self-discovery.  If you have not taken the time in your career to articulate and write down your own personal vision and values then I believe you are going to be much more susceptible to being battered about by the storms of circumstance.  You are very likely to have feelings of anxiety and moral distress but won't be able to pin down the exact source of your frustration.  And I do believe it is critically important to put your work in writing!  We all need that rigour and those physical reminders down the road.  Many years ago, I took the time to develop and put to paper my own personal vision and values.  I've gone back to those statements a few times in my career and done some refining.  Overall though, I've been surprised as to how stable that vision and those values have been over time.  This exercise and the results have helped me focus on what's important for me in my career.  More importantly they have helped me properly position my work within the context of my life.  Each of us needs to be aware of our own personal guideposts.  Only in that way can you determine - for yourself - whether you are able to continue working for a particular organization. 

Second, when I've been in situations where my own personal values didn't mesh with that of the organization I worked with - but I had no other immediate options available to me - I tried to be true to myself and my leadership commitments by focusing on what I could control.  Certainly, I made efforts to influence my organization in a direction that I felt was appropriate to our stated values.  However, when I didn't get as much traction as I would have liked in that regard, I focused my attention on practicing my leadership values within my own sphere of influence.  Working from my own personal vision and values, I continued to work to be transparent with my direct reports and my portfolio, I continued to develop an environment in which open discussion and vigorous debate were encouraged, and I continued to work to coach and develop my staff.  Overall, I tried to treat them with the same level of respect that I would want for myself.  Overall, I tried to remain true to my stated vision and values.  You owe yourself and your staff no less.

There is no doubt that every day presents us with challenging circumstances and choices.  As a leader you are called upon to act with both courage and calculation in making decisions.  I encourage you to make the best choice possible based on a calculation of what keeps you most aligned with your values.  Have the courage to live your values.  Put your values into action and you will make a real difference - and likely be happier in your day-to-day work life too!
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.
 

Ironman as a Metaphor for Leadership

A bit of different twist for this blog entry.  My first crossover blog!  I've been running another blog focused on the trials and tribulations of preparing for, competing in, and recovering from Ironman Canada.  I've done two of these events - in 2010 and 2011 - and competed in a few other half-Ironman events and a few more run competitions. 

Through much of 2011 and into 2012 I had the privilege of working with an executive coach.  Russell Hunter, National Director at Human Performance Institute of Canada Inc, was my coach and helped lead me through some challenging times and a major transition in my career (http://ca.linkedin.com/in/russellhunter). Aside from all the skills and talents you would expect to see in an executive coach, Russell brought another dimension to our conversations - he is an accomplished triathlete and has competed at Ironman Canada.  This shared experience allowed us to make many comparisons to my work environment and Ironman.  It allowed me to put into perspective aspects of my work that I did control and those that I did not.  With the 2012 version of Ironman Canada set to go this coming weekend (August 26) I thought I would share with you some of the analogies we drew between Ironman and Leadership - and throw in a few more that grew from that conversation.

First, there has to be some motivation or goal in mind to undertake an Ironman event - as there must be in taking on a leadership role.  As "they" say , without a goal any direction will do! Ironman is a daunting undertaking - 3.8 km swim, followed by 180 km on the bike, followed by a 42 km marathon.  As I'm sure most amateur athletes would attest to there are not a lot of accolades that come with doing this event.  You certainly get cheers along the way from family and friends, and sometimes from complete strangers.  And you do get a finisher's medal at the end of the race.  Otherwise it's a lot of hard slogging through the three disciplines and sometimes a lot of talking to yourself as you try to reach the finish line.  You are in the race in some cases just to say you did it, to prove to yourself that you are capable.  And most of us in leadership roles would agree that recognition is outweighed by ongoing challenges and it's often a lonely journey we take on.

Second, for best results in an Ironman, you spend a significant amount of time in training and preparing for the race.  No different than getting ready to take on a leadership role.  For Ironman, you can find yourself starting to prep as early as a few weeks after the last race for the next race!  Granted your training isn't as intense at this point. Rather, you are now trying to maintain your level of fitness, work on improving or sustaining technique, improving core strength and (if you are like me) perhaps looking to shed a few more pounds.  Entering race day - or starting a leadership position - without any form of preparation is a high risk proposition to say the least!  For most of us - including the professionals - success does not come without months of preparation.  Others may spend years getting ready for the ultimate event, building up confidence to take up the challenge by doing shorter distance triathlons.  In much the same way, successful leaders prepare themselves academically, take on smaller challenges, and ultimately work up to larger leadership roles.

Triathlon is a multi-discipline sport.  So is leadership.  However, if we think of triathlon as swimming, cycling and running we would miss out on other equally important components.  A critical part of training and race day preparation is making sure your nutrition and hydration is race ready.  Throughout the year leading up to Ironman you use training days and smaller events to figure out what works for you and will keep you fueled for the race - what will your body tolerate? what amount do you need to sustain race pace? what kind of electrolyte replacement do you need? do you need to use salt replacement? how will that change depending on weather conditions?  So what's the leadership analogy for nutrition?  My take on that is all leaders need to continue to fuel their minds through continuous education and learning.  You can't continue to make positive impact if you don't continue to hone and advance your skill set.  There is too much change too fast in our health care environment - labour force dynamics, regulations, government direction - to stand pat with existing learning.  Leaders must continue to fuel their minds.

Success in Ironman also requires that your equipment - wetsuit, bike, shoes, watch - is race ready.  This means making decisions early on as to whether you want to take on the race with a road bike or a tri-bike, whether you want to go with base components for your bike or invest in top-of-the line products, what type of running shoes work for you and so on.  You'll also find that your training and smaller races will take their toll on your equipment.  At points in time you will have to replace your shoes as you put on the miles, that you will need to replace your tires and otherwise tune your equipment in the hopes of not having a breakdown on race day.  In much the same way, as a leader, you have to make the appropriate investments in equipment and tools to undertake your leadership task - do you have the right measurement systems in place, the right tools to effectively communicate with your stakeholders, the right mechanisms to ensure that your work group or organization is aligned towards the achievement of a common goal.  Your experience will cause you to change your tool set as you work towards your goal.

I can't do justice to the comparison between Ironman and Leadership if I don't discuss mental preparation and hardening.  You can have everything in place mentioned above - training in several disciplines, fueling plan nailed, equipment ready - but if you are not mentally prepared for race day all of the prep work might be for naught.  In this way, "failure" during training or in a shorter race may become the best guarantee of future success at Ironman.  If you don't face adversity, large or small prior to Ironman - flat tire, slipped bike chain, bad weather - you likely won't know how to react when something like that happens on race day.  And you don't want to be doing all your learning on race day!  It's no different with leadership.  The best leaders have faced their share of adversity on their way up to their current roles; they've experienced conflict, they've had to make tough choices, they've had to balance multiple priorities and tasks, and they have sometimes failed.  However, that's what has (hopefully) molded them into better leaders.

Then it's race day.  All your preparation has led to this moment.  Last year at Ironman Canada that meant nearly 3,000 people entering the water at the same time.  Each one with their own anxieties, skill level, and goals.  Some were rookies.  Some had done this more than a dozen times.  Regardless, for the next nine, ten, twelve or even seventeen hours you effectively begin to race on your own, trying to beat the clock.  At this point there is no guarantee as to how the day will go.  You may have expectations but once you start the race you surrender yourself to the events of the day.  Weather can be a factor. In 2010 I got hailed on part way through the bike ride and the temperature dipped to 10 degrees Celsius.  In 2011, the temperature hit a peak of around 40 degrees Celsius.  Same course - different conditions.  In 2011, I got slugged in the face and developed a cramp in my leg half-way through the swim.  Early in the bike course somebody had thrown tacks on the road.  I got through while others had to deal with replacing a punctured tube.  I saw someone else with a broken bike chain.  You can't predict what will happen.  No different in our leadership roles.  Your day day can be exquisitely planned out and then you get that one call and your day is radically altered.  As a leader you must be prepared to respond and adjust to the events of the day.

At some point the day does end!  While I did better in 2011 than I did in 2010, I still believe I have more in me.  I have a desire to achieve what I believe my body is capable of.  As in leadership, there is a need for a post-event evaluation.  What worked?  What didn't?  What would I change?  In Ironman you have a small number of well-established metrics that help you to objectively evaluate your performance - heart rate, pace, swim time, bike time, run time, transition times, and finish time.  There are also subjective evaluations at play and most of them relate to how did I feel during different parts of the race and after the race.  Was my stomach working ok?  How well did my body hold up to the pounding?  What does all of that mean in preparation for next year?  In the same way, leaders have to conduct ongoing evaluation of their efforts by whatever means available so as to ensure a greater degree of success in future endeavours.

While I have described Ironman as a solo event it is anything but.  Most competitors have been introduced to triathlon through other people.  We don't just miraculously decide to take on triathlon without having someone initiate us or inspire us to take on the challenge.  Many of us are also part of teams that we train with and learn from.  Good leadership is also a function of working with and learning from a team.  This includes subordinates, peers and mentors.  We shorten our learning curve and mitigate the risk of failure by learning from others and leaning on their experience and knowledge. 

Finally, as I hope all leaders and triathletes would attest to, none of us truly succeeds or reaches our full potential without the support of our families.  Training for an Ironman can often take up to and over 20 hours of time each week as we get to our peak preparation.  This means many early mornings, evenings or weekends away from family.  It means adjusting family plans to allow for participation in lead up races and Ironman itself.  It means financial investment in equipment.  Same holds true for most leadership positions.  Early morning meetings, late evening meetings, planning forums that take place out-of-town, conferences and crisis events all take time away from family.  In addition, as leaders we all experience varying levels of stress, trials and tribulations in the course of our careers.  We have to make decisions about when to upgrade our education.  We have to make decisions on when to make a change in career.  Are we prepared to move to another city or province to pursue a career opportunity.  None of this can be a solo decision and our success is in no small measure attributable to our families. 

Ironman and Leadership - more than a few lessons to be learned.  Keep training and enjoy the race!
______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.

Dark Clouds - Part II

If you've been paying attention to the news in Alberta in the past week, the temperature has only been ramping up on the expense scandal involving a former executive at Alberta Health Services (AHS).  Opposition politicians have been panning government and AHS responses to date (somewhat predictably) and have been calling for the resignation or termination of the current Minister of Health (again somewhat predictably).  AHS, no doubt supported by the government, has also stated that it will not be paying a severance package to the executive at the heart of the scandal.  I'm not sure how that will stand up in a court of law if the situation goes that direction, but perhaps it is only intended to be a symbolic gesture anyway.

The government has now directed one of its associate ministers to tighten up expense policies, identify ways to improve transparency to the public on expenses incurred by politicians and senior officials, and to review hiring processes for senior officials.  These might be the right things to do and may send a message to the public that matters are being taken seriously but unfortunately at this point it may just equate to closing the barn door after the horses have already bolted.  And for those of us horses that remain it sounds as though we might just get whipped harder even if we were well behaved.

Regrettably, the one thing that hasn't seemed to enter much into the public discussion in any meaningful way is around the existence, application or enforcement of professional codes of ethics or conduct.  I believe this is far less an issue of inadequate controls and guidelines for approving expenses.  At the core it is really about professional behaviour.  There is no doubt that there has been some discussion on the periphery of the issue and perhaps this forms the base for our visceral reaction to the story - we are scandalized because the circumstances seemingly affront some shared set of values we as a society share about what is right and what is wrong.  But there really hasn't been much depth to that part of the discussion.

I am a health care professional.  I place a fair bit of pride in that designation despite the black mark that recent events have given to administrative leaders.  I am currently a member of two health care professional bodies - the Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL) and the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE).  I have been a member of both for several years.  I have served with the local chapter of CCHL as an executive on a couple of occasions.  I have also certified as a Fellow in the ACHE.  In the coming months I expect to become a certified management consultant and in the next year or two perhaps a certified executive coach.  All of these professional organizations have a code of ethics or a code of conduct which, as members, we undertake to uphold and advance. 

One phrase of the ACHE Code of Ethics stood out for me in light of the current controversy - "Healthcare executives have an obligation to act in ways that will merit the trust, confidence, and respect of healthcare professionals and the general public.  Therefore, healthcare executives should lead lives that embody an exemplary system of values and ethics." 

Reasonably powerful words.  Performing to this level of expectation is not just about working with an existing system of policies, procedures and regulations.  If I'm to achieve the level of performance suggested by ACHE (and other professional bodies) it seems to me that I should be striving for more than just the bare minimum acceptable behavior.  I have to undertake some significant work, introspection, and self-management to achieve this lofty goal.

I suspect that there will be more revelations in the days and weeks to come on this issue.  I hope, however, that this will be my last blog entry on the matter.  In that regard, I'm trying to live by an adage which I paraphrase here - those of us who have not sinned should cast the first stone.  I can't say that I am perfect and I'm sure that many of those casting stones have a few faults as well.

So while appropriate action should be taken as circumstances dictate, I hope that we as health care professionals can use this as an opportunity to proactively advance and support our professional code of ethics.  They cannot simply be statements posted on the wall or accessed through a website or handed out on the first day of orientation never to be seen or discussed again.  I believe we need to make much more practical use of these codes in our day-to-day work - using them to recruit management personnel, making them significant conditions of employment, effectively using them to evaluate managers and reward (or not) their performance.  Only by doing these types of things on an ongoing basis do I believe that we will have a chance at reinforcing positive behaviour.

Ultimately, as leaders we must demonstrate the behaviours called for by our professional code of ethics.  People are watching.  What they learn depends on us.

______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.



Dark Clouds

It was a dismal time to be a health leader this past week with no shortage of controversy or outrage in Alberta.  For those of you not familiar with the story and/or living outside of my province here are a couple of links to get you up to speed:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2012/08/01/edmonton-alberta-health-services-merali.html

and

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2012/08/02/edmonton-weatherill-resigns-merali.html. 

In this case truth is stranger than fiction.  Who could conceive of such a storyline?  I've heard a lot of feedback so far from John Q Public about how could this happen?  This feeling is mixed in with real anger that severance packages for this latest round of departures from Alberta Health Services (AHS) could even be possible, along with vain hopes that these expenses could be repaid by the people implicated in the scandal.  Unfortunately, I see more bad than good coming out of this story, at least in the short term.  There is some grim satisfaction for members of the public watching the departure of key players from their roles with AHS.  However, I don't for a minute believe that there will be any recovery of the expenses paid out between 2005 and 2008.  I don't for a minute believe that this was an isolated set of circumstances relating to one senior executive in one former health authority.  I don't for a minute believe that there won't be another severance package due in the current circumstances - I doubt that AHS has any legal basis upon which they could deny such. 

I WANT TO believe that since the creation of AHS and under current leadership that this type of behaviour is not still going on.  AHS has made a commitment to be transparent about its current leadership expenses and the Office of the Auditor General is conducting further investigations as well.  Moreover, the Minister of Health has expressed an intent to not only find out how such expenses could be approved and paid out, but also indicated a commitment to determine how these issues could have been missed in a hiring process for an AHS senior executive.

I do want to give credit to the Minister of Health and AHS for taking immediate action when these issues came to light.  Timely and appropriate action was taken.  The right message has been sent. 

There is a lot of collateral damage coming out of this situation.  Health care leadership has been given another black eye.  Other health care leaders have been tainted with the same brush regardless of the fact that most of us don't go out for expensive dinners on the public dime, do not have luxury vehicles whose repairs we bill to our employer, nor have we received millions of dollars in payouts.  Most health leaders are hard-working, committed professionals who make every effort to try to improve and manage the health system for the benefit of the patients, residents and clients receiving care.  Under the best of circumstances in our health care system, however, administration and "back office" personnel are often the first and easiest targets for attack and cost-cutting initiatives.  Regrettably, events of the past week do much to feed this view and diminish any value the public might attach to leadership ethics, integrity and competence. 

There is much real work to do in improving health care.  Unfortunately, events of the past week will only detract from the focus needed to get things done.  In the days and weeks to come much time and effort will be spent on writing policies, revising procedures and putting other measures in place to try to prevent things like this from happening again.  While some form of punishment has been meted out to those implicated in this situation all health leaders bear the weight of this transgression.  Next week our health leaders will try to regain focus and move on.  It won't be easy.  Our credibility has taken another hit.

This is also a time of opportunity for health leaders.  We can use this event and others like them to strengthen our professional codes of conduct, enforce better behavioural norms on each other, and raise the bar for health leadership.  It's clear that the alternatives to self-management are far less attractive.

In the short term the actions of a few have made the work of those left behind immeasurably more difficult. 
  ______________________________

Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.