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I live in Portland. During most winters what you get is rain. A lot of it. And grey skies as well. But with moderate temperatures. This winter, however, has been a record setter, with colder than usual temperatures and more snow than the city has seen in a while. Sure it snows here every now and then, and we do get ice, but this winter has hit hard. And, as many of you have noticed in the news, Portland doesn’t do well with big snow storms and ice events (see The Wall Street Journal’s “Oh, No, It’s Snowing! What’s Poor Portland to Do?”). In fact, the city comes to a stop. Work is called off. Schools close and children don’t go to class.

So it was the combination of this winter’s weather and the winter break that schools provide that allowed me the privilege of taking care of my son for more than month. Now, I love my son. He truly is a great kid. I think he’s one of the smartest at his age (but who amongst us proud parents wouldn’t say the same about their own child). He’s eleven now and, as with any age, there are challenges. Sometimes we call them opportunities. But I learned a tremendous amount during the day in and day out of watching him and taking care of him. So most people might ask, “what does taking care of your son have to do with leadership?” As I thought through it in the weeks since then, I saw several lessons that are quite applicable to leaders in the workplace and the lessons they convey. Here are a few of them.

First, I would be remiss not to give a sincere shout out, thanks, and appreciation to all of the stay-at-home parents out there who do this on a continuous basis. Especially the mothers. It’s true that to understand what a person is going through that sometimes you have to walk in their shoes. While I’m not sure my experience completely counts as ‘walking in their shoes’ (after all it was only a little more than a month) I certainly have a much better appreciation. And this is perhaps the best observation to begin with: to spend time walking in the shoes of the people you lead. There’s no better way to understand what they are going through and the issues they face then to actually experience it. As a leader, having that understanding goes a long way. Not only does your credibility increase, but it gives you an added opportunity to improve your coaching and mentoring of those individuals by being able to contribute first-hand experience.

The next thing I learned is that children develop a mind of their own and while it’s our job to provide guidance and direction, ultimately only they determine and choose their own behaviors and outcomes. An excellent HR Manager I worked with (who was also a great business partner and sounding board) had a passage near his desk written by Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children. 

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. 

They come through you but not from you, 

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts. 

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you. 

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

It’s easy to want to tell your children what to do, how to do it, and the proper behaviors. It’s also easy to solve their problems for them. I realized that you can tell them until you’re blue in the face. In the end, they will decide their actions and their behaviors. You are there to provide guidance and coaching and to help them learn to solve their own problems too. In a similar fashion, the teams that you lead will determine their own actions. They own their behaviors. Leaders provide guidance and coaching along the way and help them to become problem solvers on their own. Often managers try to form teams of clones who act and behave just like themselves. It must be the right way to act and behave because that is what the manager knows and what led to their success. However, as Kahlil Gibran says, “seek not to make them like you.” Don’t tell and dictate, rather guide and coach to instill the behaviors you’re looking for.

The last lesson I’ll share is a great lesson, particularly in leading smart and bright people. When we got our first snow storm and the city shut down, my son dabbled in mundane things that were interesting to him, played some games, and, of course, went outside to sled and play in the snow. After a couple of weeks and at the time of the second snowmageddon I noticed that he was in a rut. He went about the same routine and he complained about being bored, yet he still went about the routine. This caused the occasional venting. I decided to introduce some new ideas and new work that he could do, sticking with some of his interests: art, science, and cooking. He started working on some new and different ‘projects’ that added to what he was doing and brought diversity to his routine. It was what he was interested in and he dug into it. He really sunk his teeth into it. I found a couple of things from this. One, there was less venting after increasing his engagement in different, yet interesting, tasks. Second, he was excited about learning more and showing what he could do. The leadership lesson here is that you have to keep finding ways to engage your best and brightest people. If they are not challenged, they follow the same routines and can easily get into a rut. They will get restless and bored. Some may even act in ways they wouldn’t ordinarily. Constantly providing new and different challenges to your team keeps them engaged, improves their skills, and makes them happier.

There you have it. Three simple lessons from taking care of my son that I learned can be directly related to leading others. What lessons have you learned from your kids?

In a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal, the future of management was highlighted, beginning in the lower corner of the front page. At least according to one company, whose efforts have been underway at automating management tasks throughout the organization in an attempt at a more perfect management solution. The article showcased a hedge-fund firm, Bridgewater Associates LP, whose leader, Ray Dalio, has built the firm into one of the largest, and most profitable, among it’s competitors, managing $160 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The success of the company can be attributed to the development of algorithms that automatically track millions of data points and execute trades based on those automation schemes. According to the paper, the firm was able to analyze data so well that it warned, in 2006, of the looming financial crisis that would come to topple markets and the economy and take years to recover! It’s with similar logic that the systems and routines Bridgewater Associates was built upon, the same reasoning that has given way to their financial success, that their team of programmers, led ultimately by Dalio, is now writing code to automate the routines of management.

Can Management be Automated?

It’s incredible to think that the everyday routines and tasks of managers around the business world can really be automated. Just think of the effortless decisions that can be made and the perfection of those thought processes, always following the logic that was programmed. The power of freeing up thought to more important tasks at hand, while computers flawlessly execute thousands of lines of code to arrive at their logical decisions, let alone the savings that can be had by vastly minimizing the number of managers needed in business. It’s almost something from the Jetsons!

However, management will never ever truly be automated! There’s just no way to evaluate all the permutations and possibilities that go into complex decision making. While often managers are asked to eliminate emotion from decision making, there’s no way to get around the human aspect and consideration that goes into fully executing effective managerial tasks. Programming the algorithms alone take people to define the logic and thought processes that go into the desired decision making. However, even those algorithms prove worthless at the first signs of a deviation from the criteria and conditions the algorithm was designed for. In the Army, there was a saying that plans never survive the first contact of battle, because the conditions and the information change from minute to minute, events transpire that were not exactly as anticipated, and yet leaders must process that information and make important life and death decisions so quickly that no algorithm could ever be prepared to tackle with such quickness and ease. So too, attempts to completely automate management routines will never be able to efficiently tackle the changes that happen in real life.

The Three Ps

Since management can never really be truly automated to a set of coded decisions that can be executed according to the logic programmed, what is a manager to do to still be effective? There are a lot of thought leaders out there on the topic of managing others and a lot of sound advice on how to manage effectively to deliver results. Here’s what I’ve learned over my career. It’s a simple framework I call the Three Ps. For those Lean practitioners out there, the Three Ps should not be confused with the 3Ps, the production preparation process, a Lean methodology for achieving breakthrough or transformational change. Instead what I call the Three Ps is a framework to successful management and effective execution in a fluid world.

People

In a presentation I shared last month at the 2016 American Aerospace & Defense Summit I shared the Three Ps framework as a means to effectively execute in today’s business environment. It is the underpinning of a mindset towards continuously improving your business and delivering results. And it all starts with people. That is, having the right people on your team. As I’ve stated before, and throughout my career, having the right people on your team is critical, perhaps the most critical decision you can make as a leader and manager. Once you have the right people, with the right skillsets, and the right attitudes and behaviors, then you find the right role for those people to serve in to maximize the performance of your team. Unfortunately you can’t shortcut the process. You will not achieve what is possible by simply putting any available person on the team toward the tasks that you have, let alone your most critical tasks. You must have the right person on the task for maximum effectiveness.

Process

Throughout my career I’ve always sought to continuously improve the organizations I’ve been a part of, from my roles in the military in line combat units to my roles as a General Manager of high-technology Business Units. I’ve been a student and practitioner of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and have found their toolsets and thought processes to be quite effective in delivering significant results. Regardless of whether you’re more of a fan of one methodology over the other (or even yet another continuous improvement methodology), one thing they all have in common is the concept of process. Everything we do is a process, from waking in the morning, getting your early workout in and getting ready for the workday, to developing and delivering a strategic plan, to delivering a package to an end customer. They are each a series of steps, a series of decisions to be made, a series of actions to be taken. Effective management is about having the right people managing with an understanding of their processes and managing through processes. Tied to the first P of the Three Ps, People, remember that great people will always find a way to execute your processes to achieve great results! People first, then process.

Performance

The final P of the Three Ps framework is what I refer to as performance. With the right people in place, with an understanding of their processes and working through deliberate processes, you achieve the desired results by having in place, and measuring frequently, the right performance measures. The right performance measures are those that drive the processes you aim to deliver, not simply the outcomes of those processes. In Six Sigma, a fundamental lesson taught is that Y = f(x). We are all interested in the Y, the outcomes and results of the process, so we measure them endlessly. But let’s not forget about the process variables, the Xs, and evaluate those measures as well and their effect on the Ys.

When used collectively, you will find the Three Ps to work well whatever the situation may be, whether managing a sales team to drive revenues, by managing an engineering team to develop the best products on-time and at cost, or to managing an operations team intent on meeting the highest levels of on-time delivery to customers. Find the right people for your team. Ensure they are process minded, both in terms of understanding the processes they manage and manage by process. Measure your processes to gauge your progress toward achieving your desired outcomes, and be sure to keep in mind those important in-process variables that drive your process results. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. The Three Ps.

Last week I had the privilege of presenting a plenary session at the 2016 American Aerospace & Defense Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. This was a well-done, first-class event pulled together and hosted by Generis. The event was great, with a close-knit feel that featured senior executives from top companies from across the Aerospace & Defense industry. While there were many different companies and executives in attendance, with a number of different topics covered, they all shared a common interest in moving the industry forward. Through all of the sessions I participated in, there were three key messages I took away.

Leadership is more important now than ever

Topics at the summit ranged from common problem areas, such as supply chain issues, to the new Airbus final assembly line in Mobile, Alabama, to DARPA’s take on future military technology. While there was a range and diversity of topics, the common thread was the need of strong leadership to solve tough challenges and lead teams to deliver enduring solutions. Strong leaders are going to resolve supply chain issues effectively and collaboratively. They will tirelessly work through the challenges of bringing up a manufacturing line in a completely different part of the world, fresh with its own unique challenges. They will also challenge teams to develop mind-bending technology, and continue to move it forward in spite of the doubts that exist and the hurdles that come.

What does each of these three topics have in common? The common thread is that today organizations are facing issues and challenges that they haven’t encountered before. Challenges are still there, and they are as tough as ever! And that’s where having strong leadership makes the difference. While there are still supply chain issues, the issues encountered today are different than even a decade ago. Airbus never had a final assembly line in the US, certainly in the southeastern US, until just recently and needed to swiftly address the challenges with bringing a new facility up to speed. Even DARPA continues to take the unbelievable and transform those ideas into mere doubt. Every business is facing new, tough challenges and those challenges can only be effectively tackled with strong leadership.

Leadership is about people

The presentation I presented was on a rather innocuous topic, discussing the application of continuous improvement techniques, such as lean and six sigma, in Aerospace & Defense. It certainly paled in comparison to discussing the complexities of new materials technology DARPA was evaluating to support the battlefield of tomorrow. However, to drive change and continuous improvement, just as with finding tomorrow’s technology today, it begins with people. Leadership is all about people. More specifically, leadership is all about having the right people on your team. Back in 2001, Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, said that leaders of great companies begin first with “who” and not “what” or “where”. Leaders put the right people on the bus first, then worry about putting the right people into the right roles. You see, even in driving continuous improvement in your business, you must have the right people in those roles to lead the change.

Frequently companies will say that their people are their most important asset and their people are what differentiates them and allows their company to excel. It’s true. It’s not often a company will say that a particular tool or piece of equipment or software was their key to success, or that the next-generation aircraft was going to usher in a new period of significant prosperity. After all, you need great people operating that equipment to get great benefits. However, not all leaders remember that when approaching the hiring process. There are numbers to achieve and budgets to meet, and they cannot be met without a person in the seat. So they settle, rather than find the right person, the best person they can find. After all, as the saying sometimes goes, having someone in the role — even if they are not the best — is better than having no one in the role. No hiring manager wants to also be faced with a lengthy recruiting process, let alone the scrutiny that comes about from having an opening for so long, and risk losing the opening. There are pressures from above, and sometimes those pressures only encourage, if not dictate, hiring a person just to fill the seat.

Hiring great people is what differentiates great leaders. These leaders are compelled to hire only the best to add to their team and they take the time to do so. They understand that they owe it to their team and their organization to find the best people possible. They understand the multiplier effect hiring great people will have on their team’s performance and the impact to the organization. People are such a precious resource in any organization that you always need to hire the best and cultivate the people you have in your organization. As a former boss once told me, every team can be expressed as an average and there is a bar that represents that average. When you hire, you want to raise the average performance of your team, raise that bar! The key is to find the right people and the right fit to address the needs of your team today and in the future.

Leaders hire great people to solve difficult problems

The Aerospace & Defense industry will never be short of difficult issues to address or problems to solve. There are technological barriers to overcome and the ever-present constraint of cost, schedule, and quality to manage. While the Aerospace & Defense industry has it’s own host of challenges, every industry has their own as well. In each industry the problems are difficult and a lot of them were not concerns just a decade ago. In fact, a lot of the problems were not even on the radar! So great leaders must have a team of great people to solve those difficult problems, even when those problems continue to change and evolve.

Since the issues and problems continue to change over time, organizations employ continuous improvement methodologies to address those challenges. They staff those key challenges with their best people. They invest in and train their best people with the tools and techniques to become even more effective leaders and to enable them to solve those difficult problems. They do this because they know an investment in their best people will reap huge benefits in making the most difficult problems go away. They also teach their people the power of process and data, two key foundations in any continuous improvement program. Remember, tools are just tools unless they are placed in the hands of the right people to employ them.

Great people harness the power of process and data in leading their teams to solve those problems. They help others to see what’s going on by visualizing each of the steps in the process using simple tools such as process maps and value stream maps. They highlight and simplify the problems and pare them down to their essential pieces to aid in effective team engagement in resolving problems, using data to tell the story. Finally, great people maintain the resolve and desire to see an issue to its end.

Strong leadership will always be in high demand, especially as problems become tougher and more challenging. And great leaders will continue to build teams consisting of great people to solve their toughest problems.