Changing the Lens of Leadership:

Four Leadership Principles to Improve

Employee Capability and Commitment
in the 2014 Workplace

Making progress on your most demanding challenges requires you to answer a critical
question: What Actions Does Your Organizations Mission Demand Today?
This requires leadership to be addressed from a different vantage point to make better use of
talent, time and resources. This text sheds light on why good leaders continue to make bad
decisions and how not to let it happen to you going forward.

DAMIAN D. SKIPPER PITTS, PH.D AND SUE GUIHER, MS BCC

Idea in Brief
We recall a common conversation amongst organizational leaders throughout the year about the level of commitment
employees today bring to the workplace. It seems that things have changed for some organizations. Leaders feel that
theyve lost the luster or high energy in their workplaces. While polling seventy-five CEOs, VPs and team leaders from
various industries and sizes of companies, more than sixty-percent of them expressed frustration over the level of
commitment and capability of their teams to move the organization up several levels from its current state.

To help these leaders understand ways of achieving this goal, it required our team to have, in some cases, difficult
conversations with them. In some cases, they had to come to the realization that the problems werent in the
employee ranks, but sitting between their own monitors and chairs. This article outlines four principles leaders can
use to improve capability and increase commitment across their organizations and teams. These principles are
outlined as:

1. Evidence-based Decision making: Transform your Goals to Targets

2. Get Up Close and Personal: Personal Engagement to Empower the Troops
3. Impact Investing: Skill Building to Improve Proficiencies
4. Closer Collaboration with Centers of Gravity (CoGs)

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Idea in Practice
Improving capability and increasing commitment across organizations is a conversation and challenge that is all too
familiar in industry today. There is nothing new to this dialogue that hasnt already been written about, discussed,
analyzed or diagnosed. However, it is surprising to learn that so many leaders today continue to face these same
challenges. At this point, anyone would wonder what seems to be the kryptonite that limits our leadership abilities
preventing us from overcoming these dilemmas at this juncture.

One consideration we must all begin to look at is the approach being taken to performance leadership. Performance
Leadership is a systematic, results oriented approach to management and leadership for high performing
organizations, teams and individuals. If you read that statement out loud to hear it in your own voice as I did, youll
understand where the challenge lies in performance leadership. Its the key word systematic.

There should be nothing systematic about leadership or the performance that drives results. If real change is the
expected outcome, the time should be now to move from a Performance Leadership perspective to a Performance
Driven Thinking agenda. Performance Driven Thinking changes the lens of leadership just by the very nature of what it
represents. It is fluid, passion and principled-driven, committed and disciplined in its approach to achieving the
unconventional. It allows you to be unique and courageous to show that you are not afraid to try new things to reach
greater heights, to change the game. And, it carries with it a changing perspective that wrecks the traditional
approach taken by the organizations nerve center because this new method realizes real change that actually
matters and will stick.

Performance Driven Thinking is the ability to have foresight to vulnerabilities and limitations that will cause harm to
momentum and good growth behavior. Its about becoming something you are not to change everything about who
you can become. It also brings along with it four principles that leaders can use to bring a much different vantage
point to their organizations to make better use of talent, time and resources:

Evidence-based Decision making: Transform your Goals to Targets

Get Up Close and Personal: Personal Engagement to Empower the Troops
Impact Investing: Skill Building to Improve Proficiencies
Closer Collaboration with Centers of Gravity (CoGs)

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1. Evidence-based Decision making: Transform your Goals to Targets

Performance Driven Thinking changes the perspective that leaders use in their decision-making. In the 21st century,
goals are a thing of the past because they offer opportunities for excuses; I really tried but, If they would have done
their job, It wasnt my fault because, But the [any word fits here] economy, marketplace, government, our clients
caused us to Goals are future plans to make something happen at a later time, but goals are moving targets. In
essence, goals are about setting realistic, easily achievable steps towards fulfilling something that you want.

The question then is are they unrealistic if they are not steady? Since they rely on so many moving parts variables,
specifically with people does it still make sense to turn goals into improbable dreams that can only let people down
if they are not realized? If goals are smartly measured and attainable objects received at the most opportune time,
then what are they if the objective is not achieved? Does it mean that the planning was flawed at the start? Is it okay
to have improbable dreams in your organization? These occur when the planning is flawed. Unfortunate and
improbable dreams are in reality, only pipe dreams that rarely come to any kind of realization a reality which no
one wants!

Targets on the other hand stand as opposing wills to goals. Targets offer an approach and method in which we work
towards a specific need or requirement. It is a simple concept. However, it is not always so simple to get anyone to
actually do this. Establishing targets, contrary to what you might believe, actually works well with human nature in
the context of organizational behavior. Learning how to apply the skills of developing new habits of success,
understanding what targets are, and learning the art of establishing targets over setting goals, will provide you with a
mapping sequence that will demonstrate to you the way to everything you require and deserve. But, how do you go
about achieving this?

First, you must understand what a target is. Targets are defined as having the ability to Take Action Right-now Giving
Everyone Timely-value in their approach to achieve Specific outcomes. In other words, TARGETS allow for others to
have a significant voice, thus communicating to them their own significant worth and potential in a way that is so
clear, they will come to see it in themselves to set a new passageway to become an unstoppable force.

For the organization, this approach and way of thinking means that as a leader, the mission to achieve a specific
objective requires specific talents and capabilities. So, the decision to move can only be decided on if the right
talents and capabilities are aligned with the right resource that must all be fully committed (must have some skin in
the game) towards achieving the expected outcomes with the understanding that together the outcomes good or
bad are the responsibility of everyone at every level. Establishing targets simply states that actual hits against the
bulls-eye will happen! Nothing else matters.

I refer to this approach as Targeting Tactical Solutions: Targeting to enhance and optimize the mission-intelligence
collection, exploitation, and dissemination process. Organizations and leaders today must begin using a more
equipped and enhanced strategically-enabled approach, combined with a dynamic mapping sequence to deliver a
completed end-to-end solution, to improve efficiency and enhance mission results. Weve developed an advanced
decision-based approach that allows us to clarify each target objective starting with a simple briefing process that is
guided by the five Ws agenda, which are mission-centric:

WHO will be impacted benefited, limited or eliminated?

WHAT are we applying our energy and resources against?
WHERE are we going? This is known as the compass heading and the target [Zulu] time.
WHEN do we plan to arrive? This is known as the Future Picture; the object location and desired
effect/outcome with descriptive memos for further guidance to make the best decisions or the mission.
WHY are we doing this? This is a descriptor about our purpose?

The accuracy and completeness of the intelligence collected and the ability to seamlessly overlay this information
into a variety of mapping environments [Targeted Optimization Modeling business simulations] and sequences
delivers a powerful objective solution proven to improve workflow efficiencies and enhance situational awareness
allowing for timely course corrections along the way. Additionally, the business of establishing targets requires digital
files to be easily stored and organized into relational databases with descriptive memos, making them searchable
to allow for patterns and relationships to be quickly identified.

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With that said, organizational objectives receive the accuracy they need to perform as planned. Establishing targets
delivers a successful solution that fits a unique set of requirements, enhancing capabilities, where the net result is a
force multiplier to any organization regardless of industry.

Leaders will be able to identify internally where gaps lie with talent resources to pinpoint where process needs to be
addressed before a mission is established and carried out. Planning is vital to establishing targets and being agile in
the target business is essential to the number of hits the organizations will actually achieve. In 1961 when President
John F. Kennedy pledged that the United States would land a man on the moon. It was not a goal, it was an
established target that required large amounts of planning, talent, resources, technology and innovation to achieve it,
and achieve it they did with significant amounts of value for all involved in the process.

Targets deliver evidenced-based decision-making before a mission is carried out. Leaders can begin to achieve better
than average outcomes simply by changing their perspective on establishing targets over setting goals. Targets to
leaders sends a profound message to say we will hit, while goals to a leader simply says were going to try our best
to achieve our planned outcomes. Do you see the difference? The first is Performance Driven Thinking while the latter is
Performance Leadership. Change means you must first transition your thoughts to Think Above the Bar!

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2. Get Up Close and Personal: Personal Engagement to Empower the
Troops

The days of leading from behind a senior office door, from behind a desk, and from behind a series of emails have
long passed if leaders today want to achieve the results they are seeking. Up close and personal means that your
hands are actually getting dirty. Youre making it personal, very personal to ensure that the troops are receiving the
necessary resources to actually get the job done right and on time using the five Ws agenda. We talked about
establishing targets and gave an example of JFK and others committed to hitting that target.

The key in that scenario was not the unbelievable tasks that led to the first astronaut, Neil Armstrong, to walk on the
moon, it was the target set by JFK and everyone involved who got up close and personal to achieve the task. Getting
up close and personal means leaders today must change their perspective and understanding for what leadership
actually stands for in themselves and for the people who are affected by their decisions. Getting up close and
personal also means leaders must possess the keys to resolving instability.

As a new year approaches, the norm is to accept challenging perspectives to unattended changes to ensure new
possibilities are able to be reached when addressed. These possibilities require, in most cases, an out-of-the-norm
experience to raise levels of thinking, levels of inspiration, and levels of action to inspire movement and to
accomplish the tasks at hand. A transformation like this opposes the status quo, but gives a credible audience to
what it actually represents change.

Our team has come to know this representation as Performance Driven Thinking and a higher level of leadership
Crisis Leadership that offer solutions to chaotic situations using a series of processes to influence resolve in a world
of operational chaos before the bedlam occurs. These processes begin with one known as Leadership Triplicity that
defines the behaviors people must utilize to understand, learn and do something (act) to impact the Future Picture.

The behaviors will position the existing conditions from uncertainty to a state of resolve, bringing stability to a
situation or desired existence. This is what Crisis Leadership is all about and theres no better way to get up close
and personal than to ward off disorder from the trenches because you can actually see it on the horizon.

Allow me to repeat the statement once again; Crisis Leadership gets up close and very personal. It is perfected
through uncommon practices and transformative thinking, and it means that leaders today must transform
themselves to have foresight, capability and a high level of commitment to raise the bar on performance. These are
the traits of a Crisis Leader giving them the ability to achieve three Centers of Gravity for their organizations:

1. Understand how to achieve the foresight to lead out from a crisis before it happens.
2. Understand why good leaders make bad decisions and how NOT to let it happen to them.
3. Understand how to define their levels of strategic execution (capabilities) by answering the four TIME
Questions for the organization: Where are they going? What are they applying their energy and resources
against? How are they going to execute? And, what are they going to do when they accomplish their
objectives (Exit: Now What)?

In todays uncertain society, wouldnt it be great to be able to answer each of these three issues with the knowledge
that your teams are also aligned (the value of voice) with your answers? Crisis Leadership is NOT about having all of
the answers, but strategically executing by asking the absolute RIGHT questions with everyone having a voice in the
matter. Having the ability to do this comes down to Performance Driven Thinking and Thinking Above the Bar.

Crisis Leaders possess the innate ability to create a transparent and open-book remedy as a path to success. They
use the disciplines of maneuver warfare in their response to any given situation a combat leadership philosophy
from the military that relies on leadership to inspire initiative and integrity to reshape the organization based on
seven guiding principles: targeting critical vulnerabilities, boldness, surprise, focus, decentralized decision-making,
tempo, and combined arms.

Understanding the problem, the challenge and the solution, and then knowing how to react to it successfully; this is
what Crisis Leadership is all about this is what Crisis Leaders do! Crisis Leaders also understand how to seize the
opportunity to effectively respond to other related issues throughout a Crisis Leadership situation. They understand
leadership purpose, leadership perspective, strategic leadership process/execution, leadership outcomes and Future
Picture results, and leadership timing and organizational behavior. They understand the pokers bluff. They
understand the adversarys third move before it happens. They know when to allow the business in any situation to
work without handcuffs, while keeping the reins tightly gripped allowing for a strategically-paced gallop if needed.

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Crisis Leaders understand that being a leader, an entrepreneur and just a good human-being is as exciting as it is
fraught with peril, and they focus on improving their decision-making, negotiation skills and strategic leadership
abilities each and every day without fail. For most people, they are the skilled firefighters, while some consider them
arsonist. They know the importance of selecting throw-away talent and how to repurpose their qualities to become a
member on an extraordinary team to keep the competition on its heels internally and externally.

Crisis Leaders understand the music, choreography and rhythmic beats that operational chaos delivers, and dance so
beautifully to the abstract sounds, allowing their actions to become a beautiful luxury to the recipient parties
witnessing the show. Every crisis is a story to a Crisis Leadership team, and each story delivers a series of lessons with
learning objectives for the team to go far beyond looking into the moment of a future crisis. Crisis Leadership
situations demand an orchestrated approach with a Concert Master leading the sections because every crisis is a
story that needs a soundtrack. Crisis Leaders are the Concert Masters who know how to wave their baton using a
broader strategic perspective to write the music throughout the show.

Heres a short story to bring it all home. During colonial times, the British while living in India tried to play golf, only
to be frustrated by monkeys who disrupted the game by chasing the golf balls that ultimately created chaos. The
British tried erecting fences and posted guards to keep the monkeys back, but eventually decided to play the ball
where the monkey dropped it as we often must do in life. Do you get the point yet?

Getting up close and personal, getting your hands dirty by staying in the trenches with the troops, it allows you to see
what is needed before it is needed. It allows you to respond before a response is required. And, it allows you to
resource before the resources are required. It is critically important to remain ahead of the challenges that are
definitely on the horizon and beyond your control. Crisis Leaders understand what it means to play the ball where the
monkey drops it. Can you say the same about your style of leadership today? What about when a crisis presents itself?
Are you always in response mode or are you already prepared to deal with the blows? What about your teamare
they (and you) Crisis Leaders? The only way to know the answer is to get up close and personal.

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3. Impact Investing: Skill Building to Improve Proficiencies

What were talking about here is Impact Investing. This involves making investments to deliver not only sound financial
returns, but also real social and environmental benefits to the organization. As it relates to Performance Driven
Thinking and Crisis Leadership, this means that you are centering your organization on the critical mission of values-
based investing doing what is required to invest in the required expertise to drive the organizations skills to the
next level while establishing and improving a culture of excellence.

Proficiencies must be analyzed and audited going into a new fiscal year to determine where best to attack the
limiting corresponding areas within your talent pool. Talent is more critical than processes. Talent is even more
critical than leadership. Why? Simply because talent determines how you will lead and how the organization will
respond to the established processes to achieve the Future Picture. This may mean that you will have to make some
tough decisions to move people out and bring new people in; or, move people to other areas to maximize their
potential and the potential of the organization going forward. However tough this may sound, you owe it to the
organization and the trajectory that youve placed the organization on to launch into higher orbits.

Smart investing is establishing the target of your talent index to align the needed proficiencies with the pre-
determined outcomes. Understanding Impact Investing from a leadership perspective requires a change in thinking
Performance Driven Thinking to become socially responsible in your talent investment strategies.

Theres a big difference between capability and likeability and it doesnt have to take a long period of time to
realize the benefits or lack thereof from either of them. Capability means you have what is required to achieve the
mission. Likeability could mean that the mission is flawed before it begins due to the wrong talent resources being
accommodated for the tasks to come. Capability means foresight; likeability could mean death from after-sight a
tough pill to swallow when all is done.

Additionally, Impact investments from the perspective of Crisis Leadership are investments made into companies and
organizations with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social and environmental impact alongside a
planned and significant return on the investment. Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed
organizations with the desired outcome to expand market share and target a range of returns from below-market to
above-market rates, depending upon the circumstances.

Think about the movie Money Ball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill where Pitt played a struggling General Manager
(Billy Beane) for the Oakland As baseball team. Although he was handicapped with the lowest salary constraints in
baseball, he knew that if he ever wanted to win the World Series, he needed to establish some targets to achieve a
competitive advantage. In the end, he and Peter Brand played by Hill made some tough decisions that essentially
turned all of professional baseball upside-down when he went against traditional thinking to use statistical data to
analyze and place value on the players he picked for the team.

This is a great Crisis Leadership example of Impact Investing. If you havent watched the movie, I would suggest that
if you are in a role of leadership and I hope that everyone understands they are in the business of leadership it is a must
watch before the new fiscal year arrives. It is an example of Performance Driven Thinking at its best! Impact Investing
definitely means that you must be willing to go the distance regardless of push-back, and you must be prepared to
Think Above the Bar to make a significant impact for improving proficiencies for you and others.

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4. Closer Collaboration with Centers of Gravity (CoGs)

Before we dive in here, lets first define what is meant by Centers of Gravity (CoGs). Simply by the very nature of
using this term in the context of Performance Driven Thinking and Think Above the Bar, CoGs are maximum impacts
required for the composition of a great leader to possess not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not
only imagination, but an element of agility, which leaves the competition puzzled as well as beaten.

Since beginning this journey in 2005, Ive heard many executives and consultants talk about the importance of
training and developing their teams to improve the customer experience. While I agree that having highly engaged,
well-trained and highly motivated employees is important, it is very far from sufficient. In order to make as plausible
of a case as possible, I must refer to one of the most important lessons from military strategy. In the early 19th
century, Prussian military strategist, Carl von Clausewitz introduced the concept of Centers of Gravity (CoGs) stating
they exist within any strategic system, whether it is political, military or an organizational system.

CoGs describes a systems most critical sources of strength; the elements that are most influential for stable and
successful operation of the system. The optimal military strategy is typically the one that achieves well-defined
objectives by attacking the enemys [competitions] system at its points of maximum influence or vulnerability.

While Col. John Warden, ex-Commandant of the U.S. Air Command and Staff College and chief architect of the air
campaign during Desert Storm has argued, Centers of Gravity of any strategic system consists of five concentric
components. Understanding this concept, CoGs will help you to start thinking about how you plan to fully utilize your
staffs and teams to impact the Future Picture. As luck would have it, the five concentric components that make up
CoGs offer considerations to impact your organizations utilization and this is a lot easier than it may sound.

First, lets identify what the five concentric components are to you as a leader: Leadership, Infrastructure, Processes,
Populations, and Action Units. Every leader is faced with each of these five concentric components, but how they
perform, respond and project guidance for an organization remains in the hands of the leaders ability to make the
best decisions for any given situation they will influence. Lets break each of these five concentric components down
briefly:

Leadership: Closer collaboration for leadership has two specific meanings. First, leaders model the way for others to
be inspired to share the vision that challenges existing process, enabling others to act in accordance with the
expected outcomes, to encourage the hearts of every stakeholder in order to align themselves with the direction
success is headed. This of course is what leaders must be doing on the inside of the organization.

But, what must they also be doing on the outside with vendors, suppliers and customers? Heres the second; closer
collaboration means that leaders need to communicate and become more intimate with their relationships with
external forces ensuring these outside relationships are always aligned with the direction of the organization. The
organizations pulse and heartbeat must be at the same pace as the relationships who are serving them. At the same
time, this too means the organization must also be aligned with the pulse of their provider.

Alignment both ways is essential to everybodys success. In most cases, outside forces are the spokes in the
leadership wheel that keep organizations moving at a steady pace. Leaders today must be proficient with both of
these areas internal and external synergies to impact the Future Picture for all parties. Closer collaboration means
a two-way street and this first Center of Gravity is essential to the heartbeat of the organizations success.

Infrastructure: By definition, infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation
of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. However, using it within
the context of defining how it offers a significant Center of Gravity to the organization, closer collaboration for
infrastructure is critical because it is the essential lever for shifting the customer experience. It comes down to the
structure that is setup for the organization to behave and perform. Lets for the sake of context identify infrastructure
as the performance leadership system that governs the organization (and this is much different than process). Lets
allow three intersecting capabilities to represent this specific Center of Gravity. They are: People Capability and
Development, Organizational Capability and, Knowledge Capability and Development.

People Capability and Development (why things are done): This is a focus on the development of core
competencies, the attitudes and behaviors that are fundamental to leading, as well as managing and
performing in a performance-leading organization. Since people are the organizations greatest asset, the
importance here is to transform the organizations worst qualities into its biggest assets by ensuring

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 leadership is always identifying the gaps and filling them at the most opportune and appropriate time.
People capability and development is all about improving skills.

Organizational Capability (what must be done): This is a focus on the development of core processes with
associated tools and techniques that are fundamental to a performance-leading organization. Representing
infrastructure as a CoG, leaders must ensure their leadership system is resident to the capability of the
environment. A performance-leading organization cannot achieve its objectives if the required resources and
environment are not equipped to handle its performance needs. In other words, you wouldnt attempt to
house a customer service call center in the middle of a bottling factory floor. Nor would you bring a civil
engineering company that relies on high speed technology to operate within an environment that is setup for
municipal waste management. Organizational Capability is directly aligned with performance-leading
measures and not being able to change your environment to meet the pace of change would be a deadly
decision on your behalf. Just as change occurs from good growth behaviors, so must the environment to stay
ahead of the organizations capabilities to perform and this, in no way, can be a reactive behavior, but
rather a proactive one if success is to be achieved in a timely manner.

Knowledge Capability and Development (how improvements are sustained): This is a focus on the
development of core business intelligence to underpin the quality of all decision-making in a performance-
leading organization. Knowledge is king, but the ability to use knowledge at the most opportune time tops
everything. Choose wisely.

The approach of the Infrastructure Center of Gravity exploits the fact that by first clarifying and then satisfying the
needs of key stakeholders People Capability and Development, performance on every level improves; hence
Organizational Capability, and Knowledge Capability and Development. However, none of this is possible if the right
environment is not made available for the organization to behave using up-to-date performance-leading strategies
and tactics with focus.

Processes: Closer collaboration for process means rather than establishing hard-and-fast rules, leaders use the
needs within the processes to provide guidelines for action in the nature of competitive business, concentrating on
mission orders, the focus of effort, and the search for gaps (strengths and weaknesses) to make the necessary
Impact Investments. Closer collaboration here is nothing more than ensuring the organizations ability to integrate,
build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments is able to be
achieved. This is also known as Dynamic Capabilities that lead to the core competencies of the organization. By
contrast, this is the capacity of an organization attempting to purposefully create, extend, or modify its resource base
allowing for immediate and agile responses when needing to make realized course corrections, in real-time, without
delay.

The basic assumption for process as a CoG is that core competencies with any process should be used to modify
short-term competitive positions that can be further used to build longer-term competitive advantages. Processes
within the CoGs context focus more on the issue of competitive survival rather than striving to achieve a sustainable
competitive advantage; it is important for leaders to understand the differences and the benefits in them both.
In todays business context, achieving a sustainable competitive advantage might lead to similar effects and
outcomes like the state of the two organizations in Nokia and Blackberry (they took the sustainable competitive
advantage approach, causing a level of comfort that became to lethargic.

On the contrary, taking a competitive survival approach using process as the driver for the organization emphasizes
the need to focus on building emergence to generate continuous momentum that focuses on the organizations ability
to quickly orchestrate and reconfigure externally sourced competencies. This approach keeps the organization on its
toes always seeking to get better from the inside-out. Process as a single Center of Gravity requires leaders to deal
with two key questions:

1. How can we change existing mental models and paradigms to adapt to a fresh and radical discontinuous
change approach Performance Driven Thinking to Think Above the Bar?
2. Ultimately, how can we maintain threshold capability standards for the organization to ensure competitive
survival?

Process as a Center of Gravity essentially stipulates that what matters for leadership and organizational behavior in
business is agility with the ability to remain fluid, always in motion, including: the capacity to 1) sense and shape
opportunities and threats, 2) seize opportunities, and 3) maintain competitiveness through enhancing, combining,
protecting and when necessary, reconfiguring the intangible and tangible assets.

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Populations: Populations are the emerging markets that leaders can drive their organizations to in order to become a
Center of Gravity for the sector, or to influence new possibilities because of its residency. Think about it from another
perspective. Imagine a failing strip mall in a rural town whereby the owners are successful at acquiring a strong
national retailer to anchor the property. Because of the strength of the new tenant, not only does the mall increase its
potential to flourish, additional retailers may consider the area to setup their businesses. Similar to a Walmart
superstore moving into an under served area; not only will the region be in a position to offer employment
opportunities, but additional options will also become apparent, increasing the direct impact to the families
(populations) in the surrounding region. This effect offers a significant force multiplier to the region and the
populations to be served.

Closer collaboration for populations defines how leaders influence the various sectors they reside, offering the
maximum impact to the entire organizational system, sector or region. It comes down to a push-pull cultural effect;
cultures that behave as a push-pull organization are in the business of give and take. This means two things; a pull
culture refers to an organization in which the demand and desire for engagement is high. On the contrary, a push
culture refers to an organization in which the demand and desire for engagement is low.

The question here is simple: as a leader, where does your organizations commitments fall, push or pull? Leaders
must be prepared to analyze the behaviors of both effects to fully maximize the possibilities, opportunities,
commitments, and capabilities within the populations being served. Its all about recognizing who will be influenced
by the organizational behaviors represented by the enterprise and system and being prepared to move to take full
advantages of the situations as they present themselves whatever they may become.

Action Units: Action Units are pivotal focus points of interest that provide an activity or activities within and to an
organization. They are significant relationships generally caused by an interaction between two parties that both
benefits greatly from one anothers operations (e.g., the interaction and relationship between UPS shipping and an
airport, law enforcement agencies and the court system, the Federal Government and the Department of Defense,
etc).

The importance of Action Units in business for leaders and their organizations cannot be held to any less of an
importance than other aspects of growing industry. Action Units are critical to the success of an organization or
business, as well as the internal CoGs (finance, marketing, sales, operations, etc) for the enterprise.

In leadership, closer collaboration for Action Units (using the description borrowed from Frank Capek, CEO at
Customer Innovations) identifies how the shift of behavior within an organizational system begins not with the
employees, rather in the leadership including the aspirations, capabilities, and beliefs of the executives, as well as,
something called the operating state of the organization (a significant Center of Gravity). The operating state
establishes the context for how the organization works together and includes four dimensions: Power, Identity,
Contention, and Learning. Operating state also describes how employee experiences drive organizational behavior
and how leader experiences drive employee experiences:

Power: Do people have the sense of possibility and the power to accomplish what is important to the
organization and to them? If your people possess a sense of possibility for the organization, youre ahead
of the curve, but if you are unsure or the answer is no (have you even asked the question?), the bigger issue
to consider would be what are you doing to ensure your team is capable to understand the organizations far
reaching possibilities for the future? Or better yet, do you currently have the right team in place that is already
committed to where the organization could possibly go to achieve what awaits in the Future Picture? Have you ever
decided upon how and what a Future Picture should look like for the organization?

Identity: Lets start-off here simply by just laying it out on the line: Do people identify with the mission and the
commitment of the organization as a whole or do they identify more narrowly with their function or department?
Performance Driven Thinking stands for radical thinking that is broader than any individual, department, or
function in an organization. Mission identity is critical because it allows every stakeholder to want to arrive to
work each day for more than a job or paycheck. Mission Identity is mission critical. Are the people you are
responsible to lead identifying with the clear mission that has been communicated to them in the last 30/60/90
days? Are you as a leader communicating clearly to ensure everyone is still committed to the direction, purpose, or
reason for existing as an organization?

Or, do you have a warm-body syndrome happening across the organization beginning with yourself? Identity
affects CoGs because it is the blood that runs throughout the veins of the organization. Without it, theres no
direction or map for people to know where to drive the vehicle. It will be like driving a car at night without the
headlights ever being turned on; eventually youre destined to hit something that will cause significant

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 damage. Everyone within the system embodies the brands identity while serving in the workplace and when
they are away.

Contention: This is one for the ages: Can people deal constructively with disagreement? Can they face up to
breakdowns, build alignment, and move forward? Think about contention as it relates to the current context of
economics. People must learn to do more and carry less; it seems that life has so many broken parts that we
as a people are made to do our best with the few working parts that must make up for the whole system.
With these two real-world issues in mind, how do they describe the current operating state, in whole, of your
organization?

People are the engines and the drivers of any organizational system. They bring contention in from the
outside and not because it is their intention, but people are crisis magnets people are messy, people break
things, and people get broken. This is all contention and it bleeds over into other areas of life and work.

Your ability to address contention constructively with disagreement as an organization, mirrors, in most
cases, how the organization is seen as a constructively contentious enterprise (customer service, vendor
relations, etc). Breakdowns, misfires, alignment and your ability to move forward strategically and flawlessly
demonstrate how you and the organization will deal with contention.

Learning: Heres a mouthful: Are people open to learning about the changing needs of the customer, real
strengths and weaknesses versus competitors, and ways the organization must change in order to continually
improve the experience? This topic leads us to the body of work by author Peter Senge who suggested that
organizations will be able to shift to a more interconnected way of thinking. Organizations must become
more like communities that employees can feel a commitment to, allowing the connection to inspire them to
be willing to work harder for the organization they have committed their careers to in the long-term.

Leaders must be aware that organizations dont just transform into learning enterprises; there are a few
factors, some of which we are discussing here, to allow this shift to occur. The question is then, what are you
doing as a leader, if anything, to ensure your people are open to learning about the changing trends to affect the
organization? Are they committed to remaining ahead of the trends to possibly become the trend that others will
look to follow as an organization within your specific industry?

Action Units offer unwritten rules that drive the real behavior of the organization independent of the espoused ideals
and formalized processes and systems. They also offer leadership and management systems that define how the
organization measures, manages, and rewards performance, as well as, how priorities are determined and resources
are allocated. They bring to light considerations that most leaders are not used to thinking about. They require a
different way of thinking that is not conventional. They are unconventional and offer a different approach and
perspective. They absolutely represent, in their very nature, both Performance Driven Thinking to Think Above the Bar.

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Summation
Leadership cannot keep up with the pace of change if it is not willing to change itself. And, since change is occurring
at such a fast pace that remains unforgiving and relentless, wouldnt you agree that our thinking must also lead us to
behave and change in the same manner? If the U.S. military can achieve this behavior type to perform with peak
excellence at all times, shouldnt our U.S. economy, the leaders responsible for leading industry and the valuable
people (employees) who are the drivers of industry be doing the same?

Changing the lens of leadership using the four leadership principles to improve employee capability and
commitment in the 2014 workplace requires a change in behavioral thinking, Performance Driven Thinking, as one of
the most central elements used to Better your Best! Inspired by authors David Hancock and Bobby Kipper,
Performance Driven Thinking integrated into this text allows us to continue inspiring people to closes the gap between
effectiveness and leading real change. Their body of work offers us and now you an enormous effort with fresh
perspectives for change practitioners and leaders who are committed to inspiring practiced transformative outcomes
at a higher altitude. It introduces a compelling framework to help harness the innate power of choice that lies deep
within us all. In the end, Performance Driven Thinking makes sense of the complexities to realize change at the most
opportune time for building your capabilities and capacity for reaching better results.

Combined with the four principles, it means that we must raise our thinking to Think Above the Bar to create an
environment within which systems, processes, behaviors and technology, along with front line employees and leaders
come together to deliver service to customers internally as well as external. Most systems are surprisingly still, in
todays economy, very resistant to change. Although they say they are not, their behaviors day-in and day-out
demonstrate that they really are.

Unless these four principles are addressed in a coordinated and holistic way, I would expect that efforts to train,
motivate, and engage front-line employees will lead to marginal results. As Col. John Warden has emphasized,
shifting the state of an organizational system requires a coordinated, simultaneous intervention on each of the
concentric components. I am suggesting the four principles outlined in the text that leaders and their teams must be
committed to:

1. Evidence-based Decision making: Transform your Goals to Targets

2. Get Up Close and Personal: Personal Engagement to Empower the Troops
3. Impact Investing: Skill Building to Improve Proficiencies
4. Closer Collaboration with Centers of Gravity (CoGs)

Furthermore, Carl von Clausewitz is quoted as saying; kind-hearted people might, of course, think there was some
ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy [competitive force] without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the
true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds; it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the
mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst. This is how the matter must be seen; it would be futile, even wrong to
try to shut ones eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality.

Clausewitz quote represents his theoretical explorations. It is one of the most important quotes on political-military
analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and a living influence on strategic thinking. If for a
moment, you are able to dissect its meaning to form a leadership analysis and strategy for your organization and
front-line employees, would it also be futile, even wrong to try to shut ones eye to what raising the bar in leadership,
organizational behavior and Performance Driven Thinking could actually mean for you, your team and your enterprise?

Although much has been shared here to take into consideration, Performance Driven Thinking, the re-occurring
principle discussed throughout the entire text, is the required mindset for unlocking and utilizing your full potential in
the 21st Century. Performance and leadership is the way we manage and lead our organizations for success.

By focusing everything we do on what customers value most [internal customers and external] we can get things done
better, faster and more cost effectively, creating value for all our stakeholders and becoming a significant force
multiplier as an organization that is poised for good growth, peak performance and excellence. And, we can achieve
this by continuously developing conditions for extraordinary success using the four principles in interdependent ways.

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Finally, because now we know how Performance Driven Thinking influences behaviors and outcomes, we can now
anticipate the circumstances in which errors of judgment in leadership-based decisions may occur and guard against
them to do a better job at responding to the needs of the organization and its most precious assets the people.

So, rather than relay on traditional behavior to guide us into the future, as well as rely on the wisdom of experience
within the normal organizational check-ups to gauge how employees feel about the systems direction, it is strongly
advised that we adhere or even consider the four principles as an integrative guide to leading through revolutionary,
difference-making change.

As change is a constant in our daily lives and disruptive change a norm in todays workplace, changing the lens of
leadership using the four leadership principles decodes the strategy-forward to present an accessible model to follow.
They offer ongoing checks and balances to ensure the behavioral response to impact Centers of Gravity remains on
the right course of action. These principles will also protect against making decisions that will lead to placing the
organization at risk when responding to change.

Changing the lens of leadership presents a valuable and timely outlook that focuses on two critical and important
areas for leaders in the 2014 workplace and beyond: strategic leadership and organizational behavior to change.
Employing a form of bombardment that these four principles each represent alone and together as a catalyst for
sustainable growth and development, leaders will be able to see the Future Picture with greater clarity. They will
point anyone in the right direction a different direction for establishing change using Performance Driven Thinking
to Think Above the Bar. This has never before been more significant than now.

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About the Authors
Damian D. Skipper Pitts, Ph.D is the Founder/CEO at The Leadership Bar, a premier Philadelphia-based
professional development center helping leaders learn how to Think Above the Bar, while achieving a Performance
Driven Thinking perspective to Better their Best. He believes that a brilliant strategy or breakthrough technology can
put you on the competitive map, but only solid, strategic and flawless execution can keep you there. He speaks to
organizations about delivering on their intent, while fighting off opposing wills that sets-out to derail objectives.
Unfortunately, by their own admission, the majority of companies and leaders arent very good at execution or
dealing with crises. For this very reason, Skipper offers options as a U.S. Marine veteran turned management
consultant to counteract these issues using proven military stratagems, by placing execution at the forefront. His
work integrates lessons based on proven Marine Corps methodologies to change the lens of leadership, strategy and
execution across industry to produce better outcomes into the future. He offers himself as a credible witness to
answer the question What Does Your Organizations Mission Demand Today? He can be reached by email at:
info@theleadershipbar.com.

Sue Guiher, MS BCC is the Managing Partner and Senior Executive Coach at The Leadership Bar. As a trusted
instructor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, shes committed to a personal mission of helping
emerging business owners, from small business to Fortune 500, grow their organizations to a place where they feel they
are thriving financially as well as emotionally. A seasoned professional with over 20 years experience in education,
marketing and sales, she continues to build on her achievements helping individuals and organizations develop
programs that actually work, to create real change that matters and sticks. Using her talents for making tough
challenges seem simple, ideas have a way of flowing easily for her when collaborating with leaders and organizations
to discover ways of achieving Tipping Points for the growing organizations and teams. She understands the value of
time and the exact steps leaders must take when creating and growing a business, allowing them to remain in the
drivers seat to improve the outcomes they deserve within their futures. She shares a valuable lesson using a
personalized process from her years of service to corporate America; to be successful, one must first understand the
value of their service and time. She can be reached by email at: info@theleadershipbar.com.

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