Continuous Transformation - Scale (Part B) Leadership

This is the forth blog in the series, the first three are at:

• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/continuous-transformation-introduction-steven-guggenheimer/
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/continuous-transformation-technology-steven-guggenheimer/
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/continuous-transformation-scale-part-operations-steven-guggenheimer/

In the last post we started talking about Scale as a driver of transformation, in particular around “Operating at Scale”. This blog will cover the second part of the conversation on “Leading at Scale.” 

As my last blog “Operating at Scale” provides insight into the many ways in which scale impacts ongoing changes within an organization, “Leading at Scale” speaks to how a leader needs to transform as a person to be effective in this environment.

Leading at Scale

While operating at scale tries to show the many ways in which scale can drive change in a business/organization, the second area that drives change is learning how to lead in a scaled organization. This is much more of a personal driver of transformation, like culture, that drives both company and individual changes. 

There are many good books available on leadership, and I am by no means at the level of those authors. That said, I have had the good fortune to gain on-the-job training about leadership and leading at scale through working with other great leaders, and then having the opportunity to put different ideas/practices to the test in a scaled organization. 

As a starting point it is good to remember the difference between management, having people work for you, and leadership, having people willing to follow you whether they work for you or not. One can be a leader without being a manager and one can be a manager without being a leader. When I started managing people I was given a good piece of advice that simply stated having your team come to you for advice is a part of management; having people from outside your team come to you for advice/input is an initial signal of leadership. 

While learning to lead is a form of continuous transformation, the learning and trade-offs are not as cleanly defined as they are in operating at scale. As such I will go through what I think some of the outcomes are, and in blogs later in the series I’ll try to capture some of the key points that helped me transform as a leader over time. 

In learning to lead at scale, one of the first realizations is that we are all unique and will all approach this topic in a different way. It is awesome to learn from others, but you need to have your own beliefs and think about who/what you want to be as a leader. For me, I believe my role as a leader has been to: Enable Individuals, Teams, and Organizations to achieve more than they think is possible.

Once you have your core leadership purpose outlined then you can work on refining the critical attributes for leading a team in a scaled environment.  Given your organization, your team, and you are all continuously transforming, the attributes I believe fall in this bucket include:

• Simplifier - The ability to create clarity around complex topics or issues is a key part scaling as a leader.  In a complex matrix you will often have to work to find a direction with a broad set of people, many of which do not have the time to be as deep as the expert(s) in the area. The ability to create a framework that makes it easy for people to see the trade-offs in a decision, and provides the enough depth so they trust that the background work has been done, is a key to helping teams make decisions on complex topics. This is even more important in virtual or cross functional teams.
• Genuine - Being a leader people can identify with or feel comfortable with helps create a strong working relationship. In this area I find being empathetic to different people/roles/teams is more effective than being sympathetic. You can feel good or bad for someone in a certain situation, but if you can know why someone is responding a certain way that is even better. Having worked on both the product teams and our field/sales organizations, the ability to understand why each side might be pushing on a topic in a certain way was incredibly helpful in impedance matching between teams and individuals across many different groups and backgrounds. 
• Energy - A strong leader needs to be the provider of positive energy to the team. Given we're in a constant phase of transition, the leader needs to be a beacon of realistic, but positive, energy for the team.  The team will always pick up and ‘mirror’ the energy of the leader, whether positive or negative.  In times of significant change (org re-alignment, re-sizing teams, changing of directions), one of the hardest things to do as a leader is be that energy source for the team…. but that is when it's most important.
• Delivery - Ensuring the team is executing on its core priorities or mission feels like the basics, but it’s still critical. As a leader you need to stretch the team enough that you are truly delivering all you can, and at the same time ensure success at the right level on key measurables.  We often use a scorecard system at Microsoft with a simple Red, Yellow, Green view of results. I've always told the teams, and all green scorecard is a fail…. you are not stretching enough, and an all red scorecard is a fail, you’re not being realistic. What is the right balance of stretch targets, and key deliverables that bring the best out in a team?

Note these attributes line up with Microsoft's overall leadership principles but are tuned to my style. I believe the above attributes are core for any leader in a scaled organization, and apply very well to large or small groups, to leading a direct team or a virtual team, and more.  I also believe in a very large-scale organization (e.g. Microsoft over the last 15 years), there are a few other lessons I have learned as part of my own transformation.

• Scaling through Others - In a matrixed organization (which all scaled organizations are), the only way to make real progress is to leverage the entirety of the organization.  You must be willing, and able, to build a coalition of the willing and get them to participate in key initiatives as part of a broad working effort.  This requires a combination of exec air-cover with various leaders, a regular virtual team cadence with all the key stakeholders, a rational plan with focused milestones and execution, and a great process for making everyone part of the team’s success.  As an example, our work within Microsoft to make ISVs successful requires our country teams, our partner teams, multiple engineering teams, our operations team, and more all working together on behalf of our partners. This does not happen by accident, or good will, it requires all the attributes above applied across a virtual team with a shared goal.
• The Journey - Given we are in a state of continuous transformation, and we need to scale through our teams and others, it's critical to help people understand each new journey…where we are going, what the path will look like, and how best to participate. I always like to start with the North Star - what are we trying to achieve, and what does success look like? Then I try to help people with the fact the path from where we are to that point is never straight line, there will be ups and downs. Noting key milestones we will pass along the way, and clarifying questions like ‘what is our operating model?’, ‘how we will work together on this journey?’, ‘how does each team or person participate?’ Then make sure to update regularly on where we are, how we are doing, etc. This ensures that the journey is understood and not a series of surprises. It feels like a steady plan, even on the hard days.
• Comfort with Ambiguity - This is a tricky one, but critical. At some point you get to a state as a leader where you are the expert in the area… your boss might know some things about the topic, but you are on point. There are many forces at play, hard decisions to make, and you really want all the data to make those decisions…. but of course, it's never all there. You have to get comfortable with making decisions on limited information and having some level of ambiguity around the path. There will be opposing views, varied or conflicted inputs, and probably some politics… and there is no one to turn to for the decision. It’s yours. Get used to it.
• Letting it Go - Many leaders have both capability and capacity to cover a lot of ground. One of the hardest things at first is not stepping in and just "doing it" when something needs to be done and the team is not as fast or experienced as you might be.  That said, as you continue to scale, even with immense capability and capacity… you just cannot do it all, you can't fix everything that you can see needs fixing at once. So, you have to be comfortable to let some things go, know they are not right, and know you'll come back to fix them later… but they aren't the most important thing to address right now. Many of us want to have everything right all the time….and at some point, you are going to have to let some things go to focus on this most important thing first. It never feels good when you see something not working right, you know you can fix it, but you must let it go for now to work on something else. 

So, both Operating at Scale and Leading at Scale are major contributors to continuous transformation. Where operating at scale drive the world around you to constantly change, leading at scale drives you as an individual to constantly change and evolve. These are both fascinating topics, when layered with the technology changes in the previous blog and the cultural changes we will discuss in the next blog.  

Until next time, all the best - Guggs