The Third Turn

The Convene Team I chair is blessed with the perspective of several manufacturers. After some recent case studies regarding hiring and some content on millennials in the workplace, it was noted that a great deal of the content they had come across didn't provide practical solutions for manufacturers seeking to hire and engage millennials. Most of the illustrations pointed to other industries like tech, health and service, perhaps more suited to flexible hours, a team culture and a quick succession of challenges. Finding there to be a virtual desert of ideas, we decided to gather senior leaders from several companies and pool experiences and ideas to see what might develop. What follows below is a summary of a conversation held on 18 October 2016, in Grafton, Wisconsin, at UFS.

My family story is one of holding our household together through my wife's long battle with leiomyosarcoma. Eighteen occurrences in sixteen years is a lot for anyone. We've made it this far, raising our children and now enjoying being grandparents, while building Design Group International, completing research projects related to graduate education, and finding ways to enjoy life, however constricted it might feel.

I'm finally reading  Michael Watkins' The First 90 Days in book form. I'd read a couple of summary articles previously. Two stand out items have already gripped me. They gripped me enough to send them to my Convene Team members earlier today.  Here are those insights--reflecting how deeply the concrete gets set in the first three months of any new hire, any new position, and any major organizational change:

Last summer we announced we were stepping deeply into CEO peer-based advising. We now have a couple up and running in Eastern Wisconsin:

1.  Leader2Leader -- a 9 a.m.-1 p.m. option for nonprofit and ministry CEOs
2.  Convene -- an 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. option for owners and CEOs of enterprise, that combines with monthly coaching conversations.

Both models include training days several times per year where nationally known content experts hold forth and Team members can bring some of their staff with them to maximize organizational application and impact. With our first training days now scheduled, I can hardly wait for them to take place so that our Team members can experience the full benefit! I also hope to plan a day some time in 2015 where both teams -- and perhaps some of the new ones we have on the drawing board -- can come together for excellent input and the opportunity to deepen the fabric of quality relationships.

Along the way I've held hundreds of conversations with business and service leaders, with many more to come. Everyone loves the idea and embraces the value of joining such a team. But as is so often the case, many choose not to. The responses remind me of the stories of religious revival meetings where people are invited but refuse to be "born again." 

• If I perceive we are doing well as it is, then why would I need this? I'll consider it if we ever get into trouble and need help beyond our current competency.

• If we are doing poorly, then how can we afford it? I need to earn my way back into the possibility before I can join.

Whether you are a Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director or interim CEO, you are responsible for the whole of the organization. Nobody else shares the responsibility for the complexity of the whole at the level you do, Even if you are fortunate enough to have a team member who demonstrates potential to perceive the complexity of the whole, they are not responsible for it. Their job does not depend on it. Organizational performance does not ultimately point to them with the intensity that it points to you.

In the executive leader peer-based advising teams I chair, the hardest work is to keep us curious. A CEO's working day is too often conversation after conversation of needing to provide perspective without really being able to listen. CEOs get into telling mode too quickly because of the constant press to move on to the next item.