 In 1994, Margaret Thatcher spoke about her memoir The Downing Street Years to a packed ballroom in Toronto. I was in the audience, along with my Gilbey Canada executive committee colleagues.
Quick.... when you hear Margaret Thatcher's name, what comes to mind? Maybe who she was. Maybe what she did. She has a long list of accomplishments. What is interesting is that she intentionally took a path of memorializing just a few of them. That morning in Toronto, Mrs. Thatcher framed her remarks by mentioning the four great issues facing the UK when she took over as Prime Minister in 1979: restricting the power of trade unions, controlling inflation, civil service reform and confronting the unrest in Northern Ireland. I leaned over to my boss and whispered, “Wouldn’t it be great if our business only had four problems?” That speech is something I often return to, almost 30 years after I heard it. In a wildly chaotic time with responsibility over 55 million souls, she was able to simplify her situation to a handful of problems to address. Let’s be clear. Thatcher knew there were more winds buffeting her than these four things. But she was able to close out the noise of other exigencies and focus on the critical few. I’ve heard this echoed in different ways over the years. At its heart, strategy is about sacrifice. Becoming more senior in a role means an increase in scope, scale and complexity. It means leaving important matters to others, so you can focus on yet more important matters. Here is a useful discipline to apply. What should be the epitaph for your job? When you leave your position, what will your tombstone say? What is the single accomplishment you will be known for? Yes, Thatcher had four objectives, but she was running a country, after all. I will make it easier for you. You don’t have to be known for only one thing for your entire career, like inventing the lightbulb or writing the national anthem or electrifying the auto industry or bringing design to technology. No. Just come up with one thing for this job. Maybe it’s integrating an acquisition on time and on budget for the first time in your company’s history. Or bringing forward a digital transformation that changes how your work gets done. What does that say about where you spend your time and effort? And all the other things in your purview? How much effort goes into the things you won't be remembered for? I will make it easier still. Once you’ve accomplished that one thing you’ll be known for, come up with something better. So, more than one priority, just not at the same time. Because, if you don’t try to top your own record, you’re on a sad glide path. Most of us don’t stay in the same role for forty years. Imagine having a career with 10-20 roles, each with a single significant accomplishment. What a great resume that would be! I return to Margaret Thatcher to close. In her Downing Street tenure from 1979 to 1990, she became known for more than her four stated priorities. She conquered some of the original goals. Other times, new situations rose to the top. She led the UK to victory in the Falklands. She was an axis point along with Ronald Reagan for transatlantic conservatism. She helped steel George H.W. Bush’s spine in the Gulf War. And she remains Britain’s only female Prime Minister. But the lesson we can all take from this remarkable individual is her remarkable focus, a focus we can try to emulate.
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 My friend Alpetkin Aksan is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Al and I worked together when I became a board member and CEO of Minnepura Technologies, a green tech startup he cofounded. Al made a distinction between two groups involved in the venture. He referred to his colleagues on the technical side, all professors or postdocs, as “the eggheads.” Those of us with business backgrounds were “the grown-ups.” I am not sure that we deserved to be called grown-ups, but there was a big difference between the two parties, on how we looked at our world and the language that we used.
The eggheads employed the scientific method. They created theoretical models, and they sought empirical evidence to support or refute predicted outcomes. They were trying to figure out why things work. They would offer their hypotheses for peer review, to see if others could poke holes in their theory. The rest of us embraced capitalism. We looked to exploit resources (capital, materials, knowledge, people) to address a need we observed. We weren’t concerned with why something worked; we wanted to know how to use it to our advantage. We would ask three questions: Does somebody want it? Can we make it? Can we make money on it? At Executive Springboard, we’ve recently run into some situations where people have been hired into leadership positions because they were subject matter experts. Once in the role, they question whether their expertise is valued. One executive recently described his situation: “I’m the VP of Clinical Research at a startup company building a software medical device. People rely on my work product, but they do not entirely understand the complexity, which has led to underfunding of my department. The dynamics are complicated, but I feel my work is under-appreciated, and I don’t feel set up for success. It is my first executive role and the first startup I’ve worked at.” Our advice to this new VP: Trying to explain the complexity of your work is not a winning strategy. The people you seek to influence may not understand; and if they do understand, they probably view this as getting in the weeds. Instead, simplify your explanations. Provide solutions with costs. Your CEO is a serial entrepreneur in healthcare, pharma, eCommerce and SaaS, with several things on his plate besides your piece of this business. He wants efficiency, or in egghead parlance, elegance. Another mentee cut her teeth as a marketer with P&G, so she is what you would call “classically trained.” That was a big change for the founder-owned company that hired her as its Chief Marketing Officer. She was used to working in a certain buttoned-up fashion. The entrepreneurial employer knew they could use her talents, but its culture rebelled against the over-produced. While she strove to be flawless, her organization took pride in its “Keystone Cops out of a clown car” persona. The CMO did not change the standard of her work to fit the culture. But she learned to share only the headlines, and she kept the details in her back pocket, ready to pull out in case of a challenge. I’ve worked with engineering executives who brought the processes that worked well for them in large companies into their new, much smaller, businesses. Those processes might be needed to get their new employer to scale up or become more efficient. Invariably, they faced resistance, not just because people feared change, but because they resented the new boss’s implication that they had not been effective before their arrival. Explaining the intended "improvements" was a lesson in condescension. The problem of experts trying to deliver actionable advice has been evident in the COVID-19 response. As the New York Times put it, government health officials speak the language of academia, without recognizing how it confuses people. Rather than clearly explaining the big picture, they emphasize small amounts of uncertainty that are important to scientific research but can be counterproductive during a global emergency. They are cautious to the point of hampering public health." The experts bemoan the public's lack of understanding, not understanding that it is their own communication that is to blame. Many of us have our self-worth wrapped up in a perception of our competence. We may try proving we are good at something to reinforce our value. We use the language of a functional expert, educating an audience on the “why,” That audience only really wants to know how you propose to exploit the thing we’re good at, how will that work here. We don’t get extra credit for showing our work. In fact, we show arrogance or insecurity in the process. You may take a role in a company that needs the technical expertise you provide. Your ability to have an impact requires you to learn a new language, not the language spoken by an egghead but that spoken by the business. |
AuthorExecutive Springboard President Steve Moss shares learning from years as an executive and a mentor. Archives
June 2022
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