Guru speak Liz
Wiseman Rediscover the rookie in you
Liz Wiseman is an author
and founder of The Wiseman Group and a member of the Thinkers50, a list of the
world's most influential management thinkers
Executive advisor and Thinkers50
member Liz Wiseman has a simple advice for senior people she advises: don the
rookie hat. In her latest book, Rookie Smarts, Wiseman argues that corporate
leaders have a lot to gain when they think like rookies. In an interview with
Karen Christensen, Wiseman explains what the rookie mindset is all about and
why it helps. Edited excerpts:
Talk a bit more about the lure of
inexperience.
I refer to it as `being in a rookie
state' a mindset you can adopt a at any age: it's a way of approaching a task
when you are new to something that is important and difficult.
In this newcomer state, we operate
much like backpackers exploring a new terrain; we are both alert and in seeking
mode, which I call `hunter-gatherer mode.' The value of the newcomer is that
they have no ingrained ideas about how things work.When you ask a person with
experience to do a job, they tend to bring their baggage to the table. In the
rookie state, because our situational confidence is low, we're cautious. We
stay connected to our stakeholders, seeking signals, and we don't veer away
from them for very long. As a result, we tend to be very responsive.
In the rookie state, we move
quickly, because we don't yet have any `points on the board', and we want to
score a few. I call this way of working `firewalker mode', because it's similar
to how one might walk across hot coals. This looks like the agile and lean
methodologies that so many companies are trying to implement right now.
You have said that when there is so
much to know, having the right question is more important than having a ready
answer. Please explain.
I found this in both of my research
projects over the last couple of years: the leaders who bring out the
intelligence of their teams tend to think in terms of questions, not answers.
Answers are static; but questions are dynamic; they open up possibilities, and
the right question can focus the energy and intelligence of a team. Rookies are
naturals at asking questions, because they don't have all that ingrained
knowledge holding them back.
You have said that ironically, the
most valuable rookie of all is the seasoned executive. Please explain.We found
that the highest-performing rookies are experienced professionals at the
executive level who come out of one domain and are put into a rookie assignment
where they don't have all the answers. Sure, they bring along leadership
skills, savvy, and an ability to work with people and communicate well--but
they are thrown into unknown territory. This is where companies get the
greatest value, because these leaders know enough to ask the right questions.
When the people in an organisation
know that their leader needs their help, they tend to step up to find answers
and to innovate.That's why the greatest value lies keeping our most experienced
professionals and our most senior leaders in this hungry, unknown space. My
fantasy scenarios is that we get to the point where corporate leaders can
readily say, “I don't know the answer.“ Really powerful things happen when
leaders at the top are allowed to show the chinks in their armour.
Last but not least, do millennials
have natural rookie characteristics? And which demographic group is in trouble?
I do think millennials have a
natural advantage in this environment, and it has to do with their impatience
and their desire to contribute immediately. We need incumbent leaders to let go
of the idea that new hires need to pay their dues before any big responsibility
is given. Millennials are coming into the workforce wanting big responsibility
immediately, and that attitude gives them a natural advantage in terms of
rookie smarts. As companies smarten up to this, they will move beyond
lamenting, `Oh, these millennials are so annoying; they come in, they want big
jobs and then they leave after two years. Why should I invest in them?' Smart
companies say, `You know what? These people probably are going to be moving on
to something else in two years, so rather than lament that, let's encourage
them to contribute from day one.' If you don't feed them a steady diet of
challenges, they will move on and get their fix somewhere else. In terms of
disadvantaged groups with respect to rookie smarts, I found some interesting
points with respect to gender.Not surprisingly, our research showed that women
don't necessarily like stepping out of their zone of competence into a zone of
incompetence.
At the same time, women tend to have
natural rookie smarts: the ability to ask questions, to mobilize, to
collaborate and a humility that allows someone to learn in a lot of different
directions. They actually tend to do better on some of these things than men.So
there is an interesting duality whereby women might not naturally embrace the
rookie zone, but once they get there, they tend to be at their best.
Those who will be truly
disadvantaged will be the highly successful--people whose experience has led to
success, and then to hubris. Experience is not the enemy: it is the hubris that
is often a by-product of experience that is our greatest enemy. CD
(Reprinted, with permission, from
Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of
Managment.
http:www.rotmanmagazine.ca)
CDET3JUL15
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