Work Matters

Category: Leadership

  • More Reasons Creativity Sucks: Creative People Seen as Having Less Leadership Potential

    Ever since the days when I was writing Weird Ideas That Work, I have been careful to point out various ways that creative people suffer in comparison to their less imaginative counterparts.  My focus has been largely on the differences between doing creative and routine work (see this post on why creativity and innovation suck).  Much theory and research suggests a long list, including:

        1. Creativity requires failing most of the time; routine work entails succeeding most of the time. So doing creative means screwing up constantly, while doing routine work means you are usually doing things right and well. As Diego and I like to say, failure sucks but instructs.

         2. Creativity involves constant conflict over ideas, although that can be fun when it is done right, even the most healthy groups struggle to avoid having conflict over the best ideas turn very personal and very nasty.

        3. Creativity is messy,scary, and inefficient. Routine work is clean, comforting and efficient.

        4. Doing creative work right means generating a lot of bad ideas, it also means that most of your good ideas will get killed-off too.

    I could go on and on. But the best quote I have ever seen on the probabilities and emotions associated with doing creaitive work is from James March (I quote this in Weird Ideas That Work), quite possibly the most prestigious living organizational theorist. Rumor has it that he has come fairly close to winning the Nobel Prize in Economics once or twice:

    "Unfortunately, the gains for imagination are not free. The protections for imagination are indiscriminate. They shield bad ideas as well as good ones—and there are many more of the former than the latter. Most fantasies lead us astray, and most of the consequences of imagination for individuals and individual organizations are disastrous. Most deviants end up on the scrap pile of failed mutations, not as heroes of organizational transformation. . . . There is, as a result, much that can be viewed as unjust in a system that induces imagination among individuals and individual organizations in order to allow a larger system to choose among alternative experiments. By glorifying imagination, we entice the innocent into unwitting self-destruction (or if you prefer, altruism)."

    I don't mean to bring you down even further, but a study with more bad news for creativity — actually an academic paper containing three intertwined studies — just came out by Assistant Professor Jennifer Mueller at the University of Pennsylvania. It is called "Recognizing creative leadership: Can creative idea expression negatively relate to perceptions of leadership potential?"  The upshot is that people who are seen as more creative are judged by others as having LESS leadership potential than their unimaginative peers UNLESS they are also seen as charismatic. 

    This bias against creative people is first demonstrated in their study of employees of a company in India who were in jobs where they were expected to do creative work.  It was then replicated in a controlled experiment, with about 200 students, half of whom were assigned to be idea generators or "pitchers" and half to be "evaluators." The pitchers were then divided into two groups.  As the researchers, they were asked to either '1) prepare a creative (novel and useful) or 2) a useful (but not novel) solution to the following question: “What could an airlines do to obtain more revenue from passengers?"' 

    The results are pretty troubling. In short, although the judges saw no significant differences in the usefulness of the ideas generated, and did construe that subjects who were instructed to generate creative ideas did, in fact, come up with more creative ideas than those instructed to come-up with ideas that were not novel, the judges also consistently construed the more creative subjects as having less leadership potential, measured with this 3-item scale: “How much leadership would this applicant exhibit?”, “How much control over the team’s activities would this member exhibit?”, “I think the applicant is an effective leader.” (α = .86).

    The bright spot, or perhaps the warning, is that, int he third study, where the "charismatic leader prototype was activated" (this was done by asking judges to list five five characteristics of a charismatic leader), things changed.  Here is how the researchers described their findings from this third study: "when the charismatic prototype was activated, participants rated the candidate in the creative idea condition (M = 4.08) as having significantly higher leadership potential than the candidate in the useful idea condition (M = 3.41; t = -3.68, p < .01). Conversely, when the charismatic prototype was not activated, participants rated the candidate in the creative condition (M = 3.08) as having significantly lower leadership potential than the candidate in the useful condition (M = 3.60; t = -2.03, p < .05)."

    BNET asked first author Mueller to explain these findings, and I thought she came-up with a pretty good answer: 

    'Muller notes that leaders must create common goals so their groups can get things done. And the clearer goals are, the better they tend to work, which means leaders need to root out uncertainty. One way leaders can do this is to set standards and enforce conformity.  But when asked to describe a creative person, words like “quirky,” “nonconformist” and “unfocused” often take their place right alongside “visionary” and “charismatic.” Says Mueller: “The fact is, people don’t just feel positively about creative individuals-they feel ambivalent around them.”'

    Yes, this is one just paper. But it is done carefully and uses multiple methods. And it is instructive as I do think — and there is evidence to show — that our stereotypes of the hallmarks of creative people do often see at odds with our beliefs of great leaders.  In particular, to add to Mueller's list, creative people are also often seen as inner focused (not just unfocused), inconsistent, and flaky.  That is not the boss that most of us want.  It is also interesting that charisma seems to be the path to being seen as both creative and having leadership potential.  It certainly has worked for the likes of Steve Jobs, Francis Ford Coppola, IDEO's David Kelley, and Oprah Winfrey. 

     This research suggests that if you are a creative type, and want to lead, do everything you can to get your boss and other evaluators thinking about charisma — "activate" the charismatic leader prototype by talking about well-known charismatics, and perhaps engaging in actions congruent with the "prototype" of a charismatic person — articulate, inspiring, setting forth an emotionally compelling vision, and touching on themes and stories that provoke energy and passion in others. 

    On the other hand, there are plenty of successful creatives who have achieved leadership positions who seem to lack at leasst some of these qualities — Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, David Packard, and Bill Hewlett come to mind.   And there are still other successful creatives who led wonderful and important lives despite having little if any interest in leading others — Steve Wozniak and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman appear to qualify. Indeed, although we need great leaders, it seems to me that — especially at this moment in history — we need creative people even more.

    To me, the upshot is that these findings are intriguing and some people may find them useful — especially creatives who are trying to get leadership jobs. But it also strikes me that presenting a false front usually backfires in the end, and perhaps the most important implication is that, if you are in a position to judge and select leaders, keep reminding  yourself that you will probably be unfairly biased against creative people — unless you think they are charismatic (or you are just thinking about charisma), in which case you may be giving those creatives too much credit for their leadership potential!

    I love a careful and creative study like this one.   No it is not perfect or the final word, no study is or can be, but it is pretty damn good.  If you want to read the whole thing, here is complete reference, including a link to the PDF:

    Jennifer Mueller, Jack Goncalo, Dishan Kamdar (2011), Recognizing creative leadership: Can creative idea expression negatively relate to perceptions of leadership potential?, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

     

  • Guy Kawasaki Makes an Enchanting Offer: Buy One, Get One Free

    Enchantment1 I recently wrote a post on Guy Kawasaki's new book: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Minds, Hearts, and Actions. I focused on the cover, which is probably the most beautiful I have ever seen for any business book — look at that thing, it is so damn pretty! If you know one that is more lovely, I want to see it.  And it resulted from an amazing story that Guy tells in the book, starting with design contest that Guy ran… and then much more happened. 

    I was planning on writing a review today, as the book comes out Tuesday, March 7th.  I was going to do it in the morning, as I just finished reading the book yesterday. But I learned some amazing news that convinced me I best write a short review before I go to sleep (it is after midnight in California).  The upshot is that this is Guy's best book — he was born to write on the topic of persuasion.  Buy this book and Robert Cialdini's classic Influence, and you've got the best two book on the subject.  I am not alone in this opinion, as Enchantment just got a glowing review from Kirkus, a group that is very tough on authors. They offered praise including:

    "Kawasaki transforms the otherwise exhausted and overwrought tropes of how to win friends and influence people with a complete makeover here, whether he's talking about wardrobe choice or tips for effective swearing. The author, a modern-day Dale Carnegie, offers explanations on how to wield the most influence in the digital age: Push Technologies like presentations, e-mails and Twitter are discussed as active means of enchanting others, while Pull Technologies like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn passively draw them in. The author's suggestions for achieving likeability and trustworthiness, as well as overcoming resistance, are thoroughly explained and can easily translate from the workplace to the real world….. Informative, concise guide from one of America's most influential and, yes, enchanting entrepreneurs."

    You were probably going to buy it anyway, but as Guy is the master of influence,  he — or someone, I am not quite sure how this is happening — is offering a deal that expires midnight on March 7th, so roughly 48 hours from now.  If you buy  a copy of Enchantment (at a bookstore or online), and fill out this form, yes this form, you will get copy of Guy's last book, Reality Check, sent to you for free as a bonus.  Reality Check is a also a great book (although I confess to being even more taken with Enchantment). As I wrote when it came out:

    "If you love Guy's smarts and irreverent charm, you've got to read this book.  If you have never read his blog or books — or seen him speak — this is the place to start if you want to understand why Guy has such a huge and loyal army of fans.   Guy has had a lot of different careers, including at Apple as an evangelist, a venture capitalist, the master of ceremonies at wildly popular entrepreneurship Boot Camps during the boom."

    The form is really easy to fill out, all you need is a pdf of the purchase (which is simple to produce, for example, from the email that Amazon sends you when you order it).  Be warned there are limited quantities of Reality Check and this offer only holds for U.S. addresses.  Enchantment will be the best-seller that everyone will be talking about in the coming months, and if you don't own Reality Check, here is a chance to get it for free.  I just did it myself, and I am getting copy of both books (I bought Enchantment at Amazon) for $13.74. I timed myself and it took me just under 160 seconds to order the book, make the pdf, and fill out the form.  Such a deal!

  • Carolyn’s Rule: A Great Test of Character

    My attempt to stave off email bankruptcy is not only going pretty well — I am down to 135 emails to deal with — I just found a gem from a couple months back that forgot to write about here.  A reader who asked to described as "Carolyn in Austin, Texas" wrote me nice note about The No Asshole Rule and especially emphasized that she liked my assertion in Chapter 1 that "The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. "

    Carolyn suggested a second test that I just love.  In fact, let's call it Carolyn's Rule:

    You can determine someone’s character by how quickly they realize they’ve made a mistake and how readily they admit it.

    Not bad, huh? It makes me think of one colleague I've know from nearly 30 years who has never admitted a mistake — even in multiple cases where it is clear this person has made big mistakes, has damaged other people, and it would be best for all concerned.  Indeed, as I implied over at HBR, Carolyn's Rule is also a good test of a boss's skill.

  • My First Time Attending the World Economic Forum at Davos

    I am in the final throes of getting ready for the World Economic Forum, which takes place this week in Switzerland.  I have never attended before and some of the famous people on the list are rather daunting.  There will be sessions involving world leaders like David Cameron from the UK, Angela Merkel of Germany, Bill Clinton from the U.S., lots of CEOs including Google's Larry Page to Heinken's Jean-François van Boxmeer, and a session by "miracle on the Hudson" pilot Sulley Sullenberg.  You can read about it here in the The New York Times, which has a wonderfully cynical opening paragraph.  

    I am among the many academics invited and will be participating in three sessions. First, I am moderating a session on design thinking and business, which should be interesting as it is becoming ingrained in the positions and practices of so many organizations now.  Second, I am participating in a session on what leaders of the present can learn from leaders of the past.  Third, I give a talk on "the no jerk rule."  The WEF is sufficiently respectable that the organizers thought it was best to refrain from using the world "asshole" in the title.  But I plan to use it a few times in the talk, although perhaps fewer times than usual.   In addition to the sessions I am part of, I am going to focus on learning about scaling, my current primary project, as several sessions focus on the topic and there will be a lot of people there who have a lot of experience with this challenge.

    The place is just buzzing with interesting people and sessions, but I have been warned by the people who run the event and by experienced participants like IDEO CEO  Tim Brown to pace myself as it can get overwhelming.  They also have warned me to bring warm clothes and good snow boots as it is a ski resort.

    I will do some tweeting and blogging.  I don't know quite how much, as I expect I will be busy and distracted. But let me know if there is anything you are especially interested in hearing about, and I will try to address it.

  • New Study: When NBA Players Touch Teammates More, They and Their Teams Play Better

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    I've written here before about research on the power of "non-sexual touching," notably evidence that when waitresses touch both male and female customers on the arm or wrist, they tend to be rewarded with bigger tips. Plus I wrote about another study that shows when either women or men are touched lightly on the back by women, they tend to take bigger financial risks.  That second study showed that touching by men had no effect.  Well, there is a new study that shows the power of nonsexual touch among male professional basketball players.  You can read the pre-publication version here.

    It is called : "Tactile Communication, Cooperation, and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA" and was published by Michael W. Kraus, Cassy Huang, and Dacher Keltner in a well-respected peer reviewed journal called Emotion earlier this year (Volume 10, pages 745-749).

    In brief, here is how they set-up the paper; these are opening two paragraphs:

    Some nonhuman primates spend upward of 20% of their waking hours grooming, a behavior primates rely upon to reconcile following conflict, to reward cooperative acts of food sharing, to maintain close proximity with caretakers, and to soothe (de Waal, 1989; Harlow, 1958). In humans, touch may be even more vital to trust, cooperation, and group functioning. Touch is the most highly developed sense at birth, and preceded language in hominid evolution (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996). With brief, 1-second touches to the forearm, strangers can communicate prosocial emotions essential to cooperation within groups—gratitude, sympathy, and love—at rates of accuracy seven times as high as chance (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006). Touch also promotes trust, a central component of
    long-term cooperative bonds (Craig, Chen, Bandy, & Reiman, 2000; Sung et al., 2007; Williams & Bargh, 2008).

    Guided by recent analyses of the social functions of touch (Hertenstein, 2002), we tested two hypotheses. First, we expected touch early in the season to predict both individual and team performance later on in the season. Second, we expected that touch would predict improved team performance through enhancing cooperative behaviors between teammates.

    I love that. As I always tell doctoral students, and I emphasized during the years that I edited academic journals.  A research paper is not a murder mystery.  The reader should know what you are studying and why by the end of the second paragraph — this is a nice example.

    Kraus and his colleagues go onto explain their research method a bit later:

    Coding of the tactile communication of 294 players from all 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams yielded the data to test our hypotheses. Each team’s tactile behavior was coded during one game played within the first 2 months of the start of the 2008–2009 NBA regular season. Games were coded for physical touch and cooperation by two separate teams of coders.

    They explain:

    We focused our analysis on 12 distinct types of touch that occurred when two or more players were in the midst of celebrating a positive play that helped their team (e.g., making a shot). These celebratory touches included fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles.On average, a player touched other teammates (M = 1.80, SD = 2.05) for a little less than 2 seconds during the game, or about one tenth of a second for every minute played.

    They also had coders rate the amount of cooperation by each player studied during that same early season game:

    [t]he following behaviors were considered expressions of cooperation and trust: talking to teammates
    during games, pointing or gesturing to one’s teammates, passing the basketball to a teammate who is less closely defended by the opposing team, helping other teammates on defense, helping other teammates escape defensive pressure (e.g., setting screens), and any other behaviors displaying a reliance on one’s teammates at the expense of one’s individual performance. In contrast, the following behaviors were considered expressions of a lack of cooperation and trust: taking shots when one is closely defended by the opposing team, holding the basketball without passing to teammates, shooting the basketball excessively, and any other behavior displaying reliance primarily on one’s self rather than on one’s teammates.

    Karaus and his coauthors then used these imperfect but intriguing measures of touching and cooperation to predict the subsequent performance of players and their teams later in the season; I won't go into all the analysis they did, but the authors did at least a decent job of ruling out alternative explanations for the link between touching and performance such as players salaries, early season performance, and expert's expectations about the prospects for team performance in 2008-2009.  And they still got some rather amazing findings:

    1. Players who touched their teammates more had higher "Win scores," defined as "a performance measure that accounts for the positive impact a player has on his team’s success (rebounds, points, assists, blocks, steals) while also accounting for the amount of the team’s possessions that player uses (turnovers, shot attempts). "

    2. Teams where players touched teammates more also enjoyed significantly superior team performance than those where players touch teammates less (the authors used a more complicated measure of team performance than win-loss record, it took into account multiple factors like scoring efficiency and assists, and other measures, which correlated .84 with the number of wins that season.

    3. The authors present further analyses suggesting that the increased cooperation among teams where players engage in more "fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles" explain why touching is linked to individual and team performance.

    Now, to be clear, as the authors point out, this an imperfect study. They only looked at touching in one game for each team.  So there is plenty to complain about if you want to picky.  But I would add two reminders before we all get too critical.  The first is that there is no reason I can see to expect that the weaknesses in this study would inflate the effects of touching; rather, quite the opposite.  The second is that the touching and cooperation were coded by multiple independent coders who did not know the researchers' hypotheses or the patterns they were looking for, and there was very high agreement (over 80%) among them.

    As the researchers emphasize. more research is needed, but this study at least suggests that it is worth doing.  It is at least strong enough to increase rather decrease my confidence in the the touching-cooperation-team performance link.   And the way it plays out in different settings might require some careful adjustments in research methods and employee behavior.  For example,  basketball is setting where touch is clearly more socially acceptable than in the offices that many of us work in.  So if you and your sales or project team all of a sudden decide to start doing high-fives, group hugs, and chest bumps, it might backfire given local norms.  Perhaps a more reasonable inference is that, given what is socially acceptable where you work, touching on the high side of the observed natural range just might help.

    I would love to hear reader's comments ont his research, as it is quite intriguing to me.

    P.S.  No, this is not an invitation for you creepy guys out there to start grabbing your colleagues and followers in inappropriate ways that make them squirm and make you even more disgusting to be around!

     

  • Matt May’s Shibumi Strategy: What a Lovely Book!

    I have had Matt May's new book, The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meanningful Change, sitting on my desk for a few weeks, and I finally picked-up. Wow. I read it from cover to cover this morning. It is sort of a business book, sort of a change book, and sort of a self-help book… it defies classification in some ways, but that is one of the things that makes it so great.  A quick and satisfying read that made me think of ways I might lead a calmer and more constructive life. 

    Below is my review on Amazon; also check out this one at Fast Company:

    I am one not a Zen or touchy-feely guy, so I began reading this book with considerable skepticism. But once I got past the first page or two, I was hooked, the story is great, it feels authentic and emotionally compelling, and as it unfolds it teaches you how to apply the Zen mindset and concepts to be more effective at what you do, more patient, to avoid pushing too hard, to keep pressing forward during tough times, and always, to chip away at small wins. It is nothing like a typical business book, and as a result, far more fun, satisfying, and useful then most other business books. It is a bit like Randy Komisar's The Monk and the Riddle, which is a great book that sold a lot, but it is even better and I think even more useful for most of us.

  • Harnessing Ignorance to Spark Creativity

    I just got an email from a writer who was checking to see if I had argued — in a talk long ago — that true innovations come from people who ignore customers.  As I told her, I don't recall saying exactly that, but as I argued in Chapters 12 and 13 in Weird Ideas That Work, there are many virtues of ignorance and naivete in the innovation process.  At IDEO and the d.school, we talk about "the mind of the child" (see Diego's great post on this at Metacool).  Also see this old article I wrote that draws on these chapters.

    Invisalign-questions   Indeed, radical innovations do often come from people who don't know what has been or can't be done.  I once had a student who worked as an earlier employee at Invisalign (those clear braces that replace the ugly wire things), and he told me that none of the members of the original design team had any background in traditional braces or dentistry.  Indeed, at least one history of the company suggests the initial idea came from one of the founders, who had no background in dentistry at all:

    The company was founded in 1997 by Mr. Zia Chishti and Ms. Kelsey Wirth, who — as graduate students at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business — realized the benefit of applying advanced 3-D computer imaging
    graphics to the field of orthodontics. Like many breakthrough inventions, the idea for Invisalign® grew from happenstance.Mr. Chishti wore braces as an adult when working in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, which was awkward and embarrassing. When his braces were removed he wore a clear plastic retainer. He noticed that when he neglected to wear the retainer for several days his teeth would shift back and upon reinsertion his teeth would shift back to their desired, straightened state. It was the observation that a clear plastic device was capable of moving his own teeth that led to Chishti’s conceptualization of a process that became the Invisalign System. A background in computer science gave Chishti the insight that it was possible to design and manufacture an entire series of clear orthodontic devices similar to the retainer he wore, using 3- D computer graphics technology. He and Ms. Wirth started Align Technology in 1997 to realize this vision. And the rest – as they say – is history.

    In this vein, Chapter 13 of Weird Ideas That Work offers some guidelines for harnessing innovation:

    • During the early stages of a project, don’t study how the task has been approached in the company, industry, field, or region where you are working.
    • If you know a lot about a problem, and how it has been solved in the past, ask people who are ignorant it to study it and help solve it.  Young people, including children, can be especially valuable for this task.
    • Ask new hires (especially those fresh out of school) to solve problems or do tasks that you “know” the answer to or you can’t resolve. Get out of the way for a while to see if they generate some good ideas.
    • Find analogous problems in different industries, and study how they are solved. 
    • Find people working on analogous issues in different companies, fields, regions, fields, and industries, and ask them how they would solve the problem or do the job.
    • If people who have the right skills keep failing to solve some problem, try assigning some people with the wrong skills to solve it,
    • If you are a novice, seek experts to help you, but don’t assume they are right especially if they tell you    they are right. 

    What do you think?  Do you have more ideas for harnessing innovation?  Do you know of other instructive cases?  When is ignorance dangerous and destructive?

  • CEO Decision-Making: A Great Observation By Venture Capitalist Ben Horowitz

    I have been reading through "Ben's Blog," which is written by Ben Horowitz of Andreesen Horowitiz (a firm that just raised 650 million, yikes!)  He wrote a great post awhile back on how the firm evaluates CEOs. Read the whole thing, it is inspired.  I especially love this part, because it is so true and explodes the myth of the all knowing and all powerful CEO:

    Courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. In fact, at the time of the decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10% of the information typically present in the ensuing Harvard Business School case study (emphasis added by me).  As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right. The most difficult decisions (and often the most important) are difficult precisely because they will be deeply unpopular with the CEO’s most important constituencies (employees, investors, and customers).

    This point dovetails well with the quote at the top of Ben's Blog:

    There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. - John Von Neumann

    I will poke around more; he is a very thoughtful guy. Also, Ben's point reminds of something I heard Andy Grove say several years back along similar lines — see this HBR post on how a good boss is confident, but not really sure.

  • Goldman Sachs Bans Swear Words in Emails

    This story was reported in the Wall Street Journal the other day. I guess Goldman is doing this because emails leak — or in their case — may surface during legal proceedings against them.  And all that dirty talk isn't helping their already rather soiled reputation.  But given how most people I know in their industry actually talk, there is a lot of hypocrisy here.  On the other hand, an interesting research project (given this is now an explicit norm at Goldman) would be to see if, as a result of sanctions for violating the norm in writing and what will no doubt be new training material, if this new norm leads them to yes fewer cuss words in conversation.  It just might — that would be an interesting demonstration of how norms in a company can change through explicit management action. 

  • BP Improves Their Rhetoric

    I wrote a post last week taking BP to task for the heartless CYA language in the giant ads they were taking out in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.  I lamented that there wasn't even a hint of human compassion, that they were taking responsibility in the most mealy mouth way possible, and that the dull march through the facts conveyed that will they were taking steps to stop the leak and clean-up the mess, their cold corporate heart wasn't in it.  I made a comment that it seemed to be written by lawyers, not caring people. On second thought, that is unfair to lawyers as many have far for common-sense and humanity than the narrowly focused and emotionally tone deaf people who wrote those ads.

    I was taken to task on this blog and at Psychology Today where I reposted my BP comments for,among other things, being naive to expect anything else.  One reader chastised me here:

    "Of course
    BP's language is legalistic, with every public word chosen carefully.
    There will be lawsuits, and lawyers will scrutinize their every
    utterance over the last century for ammo. Would you really expect any
    public admission of culpability from them as the vultures are gathering?"

    Comments like above one are, in my view, correct in that we would expect them to be careful about what they say because of all the lawsuits.  But to me — and this is a difference between a good lawyer and a bad one, by the way –a  good lawyer and the leaders they advise balance litigation concerns with other business issues, such as the hits in the press and stock market the firm is taking and (to be crass) what will enable the current management survive the firestorm of blame.  As I said in my last post, there are plenty of examples of leaders and firms that have effectively struck this balance and I reject the argument that purely legalistic language or even the absolute best language to protect the company during future litigation is always the business decision.  Indeed, I believe that BP's numerous indications of arrogance and coldness have attracted and motivated more vultures and the legalistic language, finger-pointing, and dull language have made things worse. 

    While I will refrain from commenting on the reality of what they are doing (it is hard to know, and frankly, I remain unimpressed based on the disputed and twisted facts I do encounter about BP).  But I do give them credit for finally getting the compassion thing right and other elements required to come across as actual caring human beings in their big ad today in The New York Times. 

    The new headline is "We Will Make This Right"   Compare it to the old headline in the ad last week, which sounded like a dull corporate memo from a cold-hearted creep: "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response" — it did not even say whose response.  In the new ad, while I bet their more narrow-minded lawyers are squirming at the language, there are statements that suggest compassion, accepting responsibility for fixing things in less mealy-mouthed language, and a commitment to pay for it (well, they may sue others to get the others, but saying that taxpayers won't pay for the clean-up is smart if it is true).  Examples include "Stopping the leak will be a major step, but only start.  We know our responsibility goes much further."   And although they stop short of quite admitting blame, we finally see some compassion here;  "The spill and hardship endured by Gulf families and businesses should never have happened."   And they end well:  "You expect us to make this right. We will." 

    Note that I am being very careful to withhold judgment about the reality here, and the fact that it has taken BP many weeks to use language that suggests a hint of humanity suggests to me that this is not their first instinct.  But better late than never, at least from a PR standpoint.

    Also, there is another message beyond the humanity that comes through in this ad that is quite consistent with research on effective leadership when the shit hits the fan: They are talking about things they have done and will do to take control of the situation — one of the topics I discuss in chapter 2 of Good Boss, Bad Boss, which is on how the best bosses persuade others they are in charge. If you are in a leadership position, a big part of your job is convincing people that you are wrestling to get control over even difficult events and are making progress — that there is a link between what you and your people are doing and good things that are happening and that will happen.  BP started-out pointing so many fingers at others that they didn't seem to quite grasp this point, but seem to be slowly getting it as well. Of course, if they never stop the leak, their credibility will evaporate, but it does seem like their sustained period of failure to do so may have finally taught them to express some compassion and wisdom — or to be more cynical, perhaps they are so desperate that they are pretending to be caring and compassionate as a last resort!

    There is a lesson here for every leader who ever gets into a PR mess.  If your lawyers are only thinking of future litigation and don't grasp its importance relative to other business risks, beware of their advice. Specialists of any stripe can be dangerous when they see events only from the perspective of their narrow expertise, be they engineers, HR people, PR people, or lawyers.  But I believe lawyers are especially prone to causing such problems because they are often especially adept at arguing their point of view and trashing others.  This can be a great quality, but only when used with proper precautions and in the context of the larger business decision.

    If you are convinced by your persuasive lawyers to use legalistic and vague language, and talk like heartless people who don't care about anyone but yourselves and who are bent on pointing fingers at everyone else, it may help with the litigation down the road.  But in the intervening years, you may be fired, your organization may decline or die, and in fact, by the time those lawsuits are contested, you or your company may have ran out of money to pay your lawyers — and pay the claims against your company.   Again, a great lawyer is crucial under such conditions, but the great ones see beyond their narrow area of expertise.