Necessary Endings (22 page)

Use Authority and Make an Executive Decision

I was talking to a seasoned CEO about this issue of creating urgency, and he agreed with me about the importance of al of the techniques we have been discussing. But he added an important one. He said, “Sometimes you just have to get authoritarian about it. That is why I like being in charge.”

He went on to explain what he meant: At times, teams find themselves in quandaries. They don’t like the options available to them, so they just stay where they are and don’t make a move. At those times, he said, you need to make an executive decision. I agreed.

He told me of a situation in his retail chain. In a downturn, sales were stuck at the bottom and were not moving. He checked in with management, and they told him al of the great things that they were doing—and they were. Marketing exploits, creativity, canvassing, motivational tricks, and so forth. They were doing it al but stil no sales. So to this seasoned retailer, that could only mean one thing:
price
. To him, when something is not sel ing and stil not sel ing, the price is too high. So he moved in.

He went to the division and told them that they were cutting prices. They rebel ed. “No! We can’t do that. We’l screw up al of our balance sheets, our financing relationships, our margins. . . .” They had a lot of reasons not to move on price, he said. But the bigger danger was that they would be sitting there six months from now with al of that inventory, real y in trouble. So he said, “Cut it”—by a big margin. They did, and it began to move.

As he said, the turnaround never would have happened if he had not used his authority and made the executive decision that they did not want to hear about. At some point, if you are a leader, sometimes you have to lead, even when no one wants to fol ow. Alignment and other issues notwithstanding, there are those instances when you sometimes have to grab the wheel and exercise the authority that you have. Sometimes urgency is created when the sheriff rides into town.

Urgent Is the New Normal

Creating urgency around necessary endings is key to what happens with your time and energy. If those are your main resources, which they always are, then letting time go by without bringing urgent energy to change is going to ensure that your tomorrow wil be the same as today. If stal ed out is normal now, create urgency so that action is the new normal.

Resistance: How to Tackle Internal and External Barriers

I
don’t know what happens,” Seth said. “I know there are issues that are vital to our mission, and I know I have to do them. I get real y motivated to get them done, but somehow, I find myself procrastinating. I just kind of stal , even when I know it wil be good to do. I don’t know why I don’t do what I know I need to do.”

There are probably few leadership or performance consultants or coaches who have not had this kind of conversation. Getting unstuck is a big felt need, and for good reason. We have already seen a lot of the reasons that stuckness exists, and in the previous chapter, we looked at how to get the energy focused to overcome this stuckness and move with greater urgency. But there is stil one problem left in terms of getting on the right side of time: resistance. Sometimes you can get moving, have good energy, and then stal out al over again or at the very least, slow yourself down.

In the interim, valuable time is being lost.

Incompatible Wishes

In the last chapter, we saw how one CEO had to make an executive decision to overcome his management team’s resistance to cutting prices. As he and I discussed this situation, the CEO said his team members were especial y concerned about what lowering prices would do to their profit margins. They had hoped for and committed to a certain rate of return as a metric for success.

The problem was clear:
they had two incompatible wishes.
They wanted to increase revenues, which they were not getting because they had no sales at current pricing. And they wanted a certain rate of return. Both of those are great goals, but in the environment that they found themselves in, they couldn’t have both. They could have sales, but they were going to have to forfeit the returns, because to get sales you would have to lower prices. That was reality.

The CEO saw this clearly, so it was easy for him to execute a decision. If you have no sales, you have no business. But members of his team were so married to their wish for certain financial performance that they could not get any sales going at al . So the wish for those numbers and the wish to have revenues now were incompatible. Therefore, they were stuck. Incompatible wishes are a formula for resistance.

Getting people to final y see the stark incompatibility of certain desires is often what final y gets them unstuck. Recently I met with a single woman who defined herself as stuck. She was in a relationship that was not al that she wanted, and she was chronical y dissatisfied. He did not have the

“drive” that she desired, which she saw as essential in order for her to “respect him.” This guy was just not that type. So when I asked her why she didn’t go after the kind that she wanted, she would say, “because I want
him
. I love
him
.”

“But I thought you wanted someone who was more like the driver, achiever type,” I said.

“I do, I know I do. But he is so great in other ways, and I love him. I want to be with him, too,” she said.

“Too?” I asked.

She knew she was caught as soon as she said the word
too
. That is the issue: that sometimes we want two or more things that can’t coexist. She wanted to be with an achiever and she wanted to be with him. But she could not have both of those wishes. Hanging on to both kept her from having either. Sometimes we can do this with a person, even an employee: “I want a high-performer, but I want to work with Joe,” you might think. Wel , make up your mind, because you can’t have both. If you have a high-performer, it won’t be Joe, and if you have Joe, you won’t have a high-performer.

Here are some examples of incompatible wishes:

• I want to get the team moving, but I don’t want to have to deal with the conflict that it is going to bring up.

• I want the margins that we need, but I also love the old product line that has the lower margins.

• I want a high-performer in this position, but I want Suzy’s people skil s.

• I want to meet with the team regularly, but I want to work from home.

• I want to have the highest performance in the company, but I also want time at home with my kids.

• I want more time with my buddies, but I also want to real y work on my marriage.

• I want to achieve more toward some of my goals, but I want more time off.

• I want to invest my money, and I want that new car.

• I want to eat al the brownies, and I want to fit into my jeans.

Part of maturity is getting to the place where we can let go of one wish in order to have another. The immature mind “wants it al .” But the truth is that the most valuable things come with a cost. To win, we have to give up some things for others.

So if you feel resistance about executing a certain ending, figure out what two or more desires are in conflict, admit to yourself that you can have only one, and then ask yourself this question:

Which one am I willing to give up to have the other one?

No Attachment to a Certain Outcome

In my discussion with the CEO who forced the price cuts, I noticed a quality that I had seen in him before, and I highlighted it. “You know,” I said, “you mention going in and making an executive decision as if that were the only key to making this work. But there is something else that was essential.

Do you know what that was?”

“No, not offhand. What do you mean?” he asked.

“It is a quality I have noticed in you before, and I think it is central to your success.
It is your ability to not be attached to any particular outcome.
A person is able to cut prices or execute any other right move
only
if he is free and not attached to any specific outcome, like margins, for example.

Otherwise, he is stuck,” I said. “You are able to exercise the right choice because you are not overly attached to having it work out a particular way.

Even though you want a particular result, you hold it loosely, do the right thing, and then don’t let your worry stand in the way.”

“Oh my,” he said. “
That is probably the most important issue
. You can’t get attached to any outcome. If you do, you won’t ever be able to do what’s best for the health and future of the business. Because doing the right thing sometimes can threaten al potential outcomes.”

“Did you always have this quality from the time you started the company, or did you get more secure in it after you had less of a need to make any particular deal happen?” I asked, curious if it was the security of his significant wealth that afforded him that freedom or if the reverse was true. In other words, was it exactly that quality that had made his success and fortune, or can you be that free to do the right thing only if you can afford to?

His answer confirmed my bias.

“I had it from childhood,” he said. “It was a family value. You do the right thing, make the best choice, and ‘let the chips fal where they may.’

Otherwise, you wil real y get sideways. I have always been that way.”

I was playing a movie in my head at that point of al of the great outcomes that derive from that stance. I could see thousands of negotiations in which he had been able to hold firm, refusing to give in to points that would not have been good for him or the business only because he
did not
have to have the deal go through. He was not attached to the result. He could walk at any time if the conditions were not right.
That is power, the power to not do something destructive because you are so free from needing any outcome that you are not forced into wrong choices.

I could see bad deals that he had walked away from and people that he had stood firm with because he did not need a particular outcome, did not have to have any specific deal work, and as a result, he had avoided many bad positions and had secured many good ones. This is a fundamental truth about endings:
you have to be able to face losing some things you might want in order to be free to do the right thing. If you
can’t
,
you are stuck.

In our discussion, he told me how true that principle had been for him, not only in business but personal y, as wel . He recal ed a story of a crossroads in a personal relationship many years ago where he had taken a similar stand, not knowing what the outcome would be, and how it solidified the relationship, which continued for many years. He had a business partner with whom he had to draw a hard line: “Change our deal to exclusive, or I can no longer be your partner.” He could not have taken that stand if he were not free from the outcome, i.e., he had to be wil ing to let the partner walk. Likewise, if the spouse of an addict is too attached to having her stay, he can’t do the right thing and say, “Get off drugs or get out.”

You have to be able to let go of the very thing, sometimes the very person, that the right choice may cause you to lose. “I need you to commit or go away.”

Here’s another way to say it: you can’t do the prudent thing if you cannot stand for it al to fal apart. Often, in necessary endings, you have to give something up or be wil ing to lose something in order to gain it. If there is a destructive pattern in a relationship, for example, and you want to take a stand to end it but refuse to do so out of the fear that the other person may walk away, then you are stuck. As the CEO put it, you have to be able to

“let the chips fal where they may.”

Sometimes people leave, customers go away, others are upset, or al iances are broken. And often those are huge losses. But staying stuck can be even more destructive in the long run. Detachment from any one outcome is a common trait that al great performers have in common. Here is your question:

What particular outcome are you unwilling to sacrifice to realize your vision of the future?

Medicating Thoughts

Have you ever had a friend who was a hoarder? You’re probably familiar with the resistance that happens when you try to get that person to throw away something that is serving no purpose but taking up space in the garage. What is it that keeps people from throwing things away that they need to get rid of? Usual y, it’s one of two thoughts:
I might need that
or
I will miss it
.

Consider a scenario in which one friend is helping another clean out an attic or garage. You might hear a dialogue that goes something like this.

“Here, let’s get rid of the stuff in this box. You don’t use this anymore.”

“No, I want to keep that,” the hoarder says. “Don’t throw that box away.”

“How long has it been since you used these things?” asks the friend.

“I don’t know, probably about twenty years.”

“So why don’t you get rid of them?”

“Because I might need them.”

In the same scenario, you might also hear an exchange like this.

“I’m throwing this away,” the friend says. “It’s just trash.”

“Don’t throw that away!” screams the hoarder. “That’s Johnny’s first poopy diaper! I wil miss it! It reminds me of how cute he was as a baby.”

The thought that keeps your friend a hoarder is something akin to
I love that item
,
and I will miss it too much if it is gone.
(By the way, that’s what memories are for . . . so you don’t have to keep everything.)

These two thoughts,
I might need that
and
I will miss it
are examples of “medicating thoughts.” For hoarders, medicating thoughts numb the anxiety that comes from making a decision to part with something they are attached to. They experience anxiety when they hit the moment of truth and know that it is time for an ending, but they get rid of the anxiety by giving themselves a good reason not to act. They think, “I may need that. It makes total sense to keep it.” Or “Because I wil miss it too much, it has to stay. No one would throw anything away that means as much to them as that diaper means to me.” Back in the box it goes, and the anxiety is gone until next time. When did “missing” become a criterion for what has value?