The Leadership

Framework
TM

“Leaders establish a framework because

Even the best leaders can get overwhelmed when they’re facing difficult problems. If the problem
wasn't hard, it would have been solved a long time ago. The status quo is a powerful thing.
Change is hard. So, people look at the situation and they become overwhelmed by the difficulty,
by the complexity, by the moving pieces. And when people become overwhelmed by complexity,
they tend to forget important things.

I’ve experienced this throughout my career and so I developed a tool many, many years ago when
I was becoming overwhelmed by complexity when leading teams and organizations and trying to
solve difficult, complex problems. I would find myself forgetting key elements.

So, I built a tool, a straightforward, robust tool: the Leadership Framework. It helps us to be clear-
eyed about everything we have to manage, think about, execute on, and ask our team members
about. This isn’t about time frames yet. This isn’t about communicating your vision yet. This isn’t
about overcoming resistance yet.

I call it the Leadership Framework because it has four sides. And I use it for everything I do.

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 Strategy

We’re going to start with the top of the framework: Strategy. This is where you actually get
specific about what you will achieve when you get to solve the problem.

So, along the top, you’re asking yourself: what is it we are trying to achieve? What is our purpose?
Our Strategy? Our mission? Our goals? Again, we have to be as specific and descriptive as we can.

The reason this is so important is because what will invariably happen as you proceed from the
current state to the future state is that “stuff” will get in your way. Stuff happens. Right? “Hey,
it’s not quite as easy as we thought it would be.”

In other words, it’s never a smooth process. Sometimes, when you’re engaged in real problem-
solving, it’s two steps forward and three steps back. Don’t get discouraged – that’s normal. It
happens. That’s life.

The reason it’s important to get clear and committed and public about these goals with your
team is because, when the going gets tough, people will otherwise say, “Oh, you didn’t really
mean that.”

Pick your analogy. Your kids, your sports team, it doesn’t matter. At some point, when the going
gets tough, someone is going to test you and say, “You didn’t really mean that. C’mon coach, you
didn’t really mean 25 pushups. You only meant 10. You didn’t really mean that I need to complete
this much training.”

Change is hard. The status quo is powerful. People are always going to challenge your future state
– your intent, your seriousness, your commitment.

Achieving your goals doesn’t have to mean you have to get there the first time every time. It
doesn’t mean that you don’t adjust your implementation plan – but it does mean that you’ve
done the thoughtful work to define your current state and your future state, that you actually
know the goals you need to achieve, and that you are clear that you’re committed to achieving
them. Otherwise, you’ll never get there.

This is your future state. How many of you start a trip with no idea of where you’re going? Maybe
occasionally, but probably not very often. Most of the time we have a vision of where we want
to be. If we don’t, then any old place will do. And any old place is usually easier than seeing
possibilities. If you’re not clear, you will end up somewhere – but it won’t be where you intend.

So, define your goals clearly and commit to them with your team, with others. Don’t keep it a
secret.

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 Process & Structure

Now that you’re very clear about your strategy, we can talk about the second side of the
framework: Process & Structure. These are fancy words, I know. We love to talk about Process &
Structure in organizations, don’t we?

Fundamentally, what I mean when I say Process & Structure is: “How are we going to organize
ourselves to get this work done?” And this includes “What do we need to achieve our goals?
What do we not have that we need? What do we need to acquire or build? What talent do we
need? What knowledge do we need? What tools do we need? And how should those talent,
knowledge, and tools be deployed? How should they be structured and organized to achieve our
goals? Simply, who should do what?

It’s very important that we move through the framework in this direction – starting with Strategy
and moving toward Process & Structure – because Strategy should always drive Process &
Structure, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, it often happens the other way around. Many organizations love to reorganize.
It's our comfort zone. Let’s move the boxes around on the charts, right? We may not be clear on
what we’re trying to achieve, but we know we need to move boxes around. We need to move
people around and change titles and reporting structures.

I’m asking you to think about organizing not for organizing’s sake – but as an important step in
actually achieving the goals you’ve laid out.

And let me be clear – there are many, many goals that don’t need any reorganization at all. They
may need better collaboration or more information or better teamwork, but they don’t actually
need a restructuring.

Sometimes you do. I’ll give you an example from my own career. HP wanted to be a systems
company. We wanted to sell systems. But when I arrived at HP, we had 87 different business
units. We weren’t selling systems. So we established some goals around selling systems and we
realized pretty quickly that 87 units wasn’t going to work. We needed to get it down to a smaller,
more rational group of businesses that actually represented how customers bought our services.

But we also realized that the most powerful tool we had was not who reported to whom. The
most powerful tool we had to deliver for our customers was the process that we used to cut
across organizations. For example, a supply chain that cut across 10 organizations was far more
impactful for our customers than who reported to whom.

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You probably have analogies in your own work – where it’s not who reports to whom that
matters. It’s who communicates with whom? Who collaborates with whom? How do you engage
your partners? How do you work with other teams in the organization?

And you can’t forget the “Process” part of Process & Structure. People are our most important
asset, but they are not the only tool we have to unlock potential. Processes, systems, technology
– these are all tools that people can use to achieve the goals that you’ve set.

So take the Strategy that you built and think about the Process & Structure that you need to
achieve that goal. How will you organize your team and your partners to achieve that goal? What
processes need to be established? What tools, talent, or knowledge do you need? How will you
go about building or acquiring those things?

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 Metrics

For effective problem-solving, you need Metrics. You need to put in place a system to make sure
that you’re actually living up to what you said you were going to do.

Metrics is another fancy, jargon-y word. But it simply means: What are you measuring? How will
you know if you’re succeeding in your Strategy, against your goals? In every organization I will
guarantee you, what gets measured is what gets done. I don’t care what organizations talk about
or write in their strategic plans. What gets measured is what gets done. And the reason for that
is very fundamental. In your organization, if your team is measuring something, people assume
it’s important. It matters. That’s why you’re measuring it. So if you don’t measure it, it’s viewed
as unimportant and it won’t get done – at least, not with the same rigor. If you do measure it,
people will say – "Oh, that matters. I need to do this."

A lot of the organizations that I have led say they want to innovate. And in most organizations,
people will complain that they don’t see enough innovation. Innovation is a core value in so many
organizations. It probably is in your organization. And yet, I often hear, “We don’t have enough
innovation – we need more.”

The first thing I usually ask in that situation is: “What do you measure? Are you measuring new
ideas? Are you measuring new products?” If not, that sends a message. That tells people how to
spend their time.

You can’t measure everything. Organizations I’ve worked with often fall into this trap – they
realize that Metrics are important, but they go overboard. They try to measure every single thing.
It’s overwhelming, and you lose the ability to send a message.

You have to take into account what I call “the cost of the question.” There is no rule of thumb
about how many Metrics is the “right” number of Metrics. You’ll have to make that call, based
on your experience and your knowledge of the rest of the context. How much else is the
organization measuring? What else is going on? How will your new metrics be received? And in
some cases, when you determine a new Metric is important, it may mean you have to stop
measuring something else.

So as you think about what Metrics might be right for your Leadership Framework, consider the
broader context of your problem. How will you know that you are making progress toward your
goal? How will you demonstrate that this is an important priority for the organization? And how
will you do that in a way that inspires and empowers your team, taking into account “the cost of
the question?”

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 Culture

If the first three sides of the Leadership Framework – Strategy, Process and Structure, Metrics –
are the “hardware” of an organization, Culture is the software. And if you don’t have the software
and the hardware working together, you are not going to achieve the goal that you set out.

People will describe Culture as the “soft stuff.” It is not the soft stuff. It is the very, very hard,
tough, difficult stuff. In fact, it is the most difficult stuff. And it’s very important.

Culture is essentially a big, fancy word for: “What is it like to work around here?”

Every organization has a statement of values. We all do. Every team has a statement of values.
Most people aspire to very similar things. I worked in an organization once where, in our
statement of values, when we talked about our Culture, we said one of our values was having the
highest standards of respect. “We respect one another.”

Most organizations say something like that. And yet, as is true in many places unfortunately, this
was an organization where people were unbelievably disrespectful. Particularly higher-ups to
subordinates.

Culture needs to be consistent with what you’re trying to achieve – and it needs to be defined by
behaviors, not just words. People do not listen to the talk. They watch the walk. How do people
behave? Who gets promoted? Who gets lifted up? Who gets rewarded? These are incredibly
important, powerful signals to your organization about what your Culture really is. And, over
time, they drive behavior.

Start to think about the culture that you need to achieve your goal. What do you want it to feel
like to work on that problem? To work with you? What types of behaviors do you want to see?
What types of behaviors are essential to achieve your goal? Collaboration? Innovation? How will
you recognize and reward people who practice those behaviors?

Remember, Culture might be last in the Leadership Framework but it's not because it's least
important. Do not short change this when you work on your Leadership Framework.