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TALENT MANAGEMENT

Stop in the Name of


Leadership
In my last column, I talked about when people and organizations
should consider a change (short answer: immediately). This month,
I'd like to talk about how they can effect change.

by Marshall Goldsmith

As a 10-year board member of the Peter Drucker Foundation, I


had many opportunities to listen to this great man. Among the
myriad wise things I have heard him say, the wisest was, "We
spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don't spend
enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I
have met don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what
to stop."

Very true, indeed. Think about your own organization. Have you
ever attended a corporate retreat or executive training session
that was titled something like Stupid Things We're Doing That We
Need to Stop Doing?

Or, when was the last time your CEO delivered an internal talk
that focused on his negative traits and his efforts to stop this
destructive behavior? Can you even imagine your CEO (or
immediate supervisor) admitting a personal failing in public and
outlining his efforts to stop doing it?

Probably not.

There are good reasons for this, largely allied to the positive tone
and fast-forward momentum organizations try to maintain.
Everything in an organization is designed to demonstrate a
commitment to positive action - and couched in terms of "doing
something." We will start paying attention to our customers
(rather than stop talking about ourselves). We must begin to
listen more attentively (rather than stop playing with our
BlackBerrys while others are talking).

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Likewise, the recognition and reward systems in most enterprises


are geared to acknowledge the doing of something. We get credit
for doing something good. We rarely get credit for ceasing to do
something bad. Yet, they are two different sides of the same coin.

Think of the times you might have seen colleagues go on a sales


call and return with a huge order. If they're like the salespeople I
know, they'll come back to the office ready to regale anyone
who'll listen with a blow-by-blow account of how they closed the
deal.

But let's turn that scenario around. What if, during that sales call,
these salespeople crunch some numbers and realize they were
about to agree to a deal that actually costs the company money
with every unit sold? What if they decided, on the spot, to stop
negotiating and say "no" to that sale? Do they rush back to the
office and brag about the bad deal they avoided?

Hardly. That's because avoiding mistakes is one of those unseen,


unheralded achievements to which we devote little time or
thought. And yet, many times, averting a bad deal or situation
can affect the bottom line more significantly than scoring a big
sale.

Think of Gerald Levin, the formerly admired chairman of Time


Warner during the 1990s. He was hailed as a revolutionary
business leader who foresaw the future of cable TV and helped
invent HBO, and also transformed the company from a
hodgepodge of magazines, music and movies to a media
powerhouse.

But in 2000, Levin made a mistake. He merged Time Warner with


online service AOL. It was the biggest corporate merger in U.S.
history at the time - promising an organization that would
dominate the media landscape for decades.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. The merger nearly


destroyed Time Warner: Its stock lost 80 percent of its value, and
thousands of employees lost the bulk of their retirement savings.
As for Levin, he lost his job, a big chunk of his net worth and all
of his reputation. He went from being chairman of Time Warner to
being the architect of the worst corporate merger in U.S. history
(with the possible exception of the recent Daimler-Chrysler
debacle).

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Now, imagine if Levin had walked away at any point during the
negotiations for this merger. Chances are, we'd never know about
it (or wouldn't give it much attention if we did). Levin certainly
wouldn't have held a press conference to announce the companies
weren't merging. If he had applied the brakes to this deal,
though, his reputation and net worth might have remained intact.

That's the funny thing about stopping negative behaviors and


actions. It gets no attention, but it can be as critical as everything
else we do put together. As you evaluate your own performance,
consider how what you aren't - or shouldn't be - doing is having a
negative impact.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith's 24 books include "What Got You


Here Won't Get You There" - a New York Times best-seller,
Wall Street Journal #1 business book and Harold Longman
Award winner for Business Book of the Year. His latest
book "Succession: Are You Ready?" - is the newest edition
to the Harvard Business 'Memo to the CEO' series. His
personal website,
http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/, contains
hundreds of his articles and videos.

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