Marcia's Leadership Q&A

Q. I’ve cleared my In Box and finished my calls at the end of my day. I’ve got 10 or 30 free minutes. What are the best things I can do?

A. This answer will be different for each individual. Time every day (even 10 or 30 minutes) for self-care is rejuvenating. I’ll share a few ideas, and see what resonates for you.

Over time, you might try different ideas. Be quiet, close your eyes, reflect on your days: did you accomplish what you planned; did you help someone; did you refer someone; what did you learn; what mistakes did you make; what will you improve tomorrow; what’s your plan for tomorrow?

Other options are to listen to a podcast or in Clubhouse; read an article; write a thank you card, a letter, a poem, or write in your journal. Do some physical activity, a video exercise class. Do something that you enjoy for yourself. Or do something special for someone else: send flowers and surprise someone

Think about the people who make a difference in your life, often times those closest to you and thank them and give them recognition, both children and adults.

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Q. Sometimes it feels like work is all-consuming. How can I create more distance between my work and personal life?

A. Over the past year, people have experienced such different situations. Some have had to work less hours or leave the workforce due to family obligations. Some have worked less hours but improved their efficiency and productivity. Others have gotten consumed with work and Zoom meetings.

Part of work becoming all-consuming may be the habits you’ve created. If they’re not healthy, it’s time to break the bad habits and create new ones. When you think about your Wheel of Life, what are the parts that make up your life? Family, hobbies, friends, career, fitness and sports, health, finances, spiritual, school, romance? Are you dedicating your time and energy (not just your words) to the parts of your life that are important to you?

Schedule time to dedicate to the parts important to you. Put healthy limits on the parts that are consuming you. Schedule your work hours. Set up consistent habits so you feel a division of work and home life. Create some routine at the beginning and end of your day so that you prepare for your day.

Then change your venue to begin your work day. Take breaks and get a change of scenery; take a walk or a drive for 10 or 30 minutes. Interact with different people. Then go back to work. Finish your day and shift your venue again.

Do something for yourself, with family or friends to take the mental break. Both routine and some creative outlets and variety will be refreshing and healthy. Keep trying new things and see what helps you feel better.

Marcia’s Leadership Q&A

Send your leadership and team questions to Marcia Daszko at md@mdaszko.com.  She works with Boards, C-suite leaders and teams to pivot, innovate, accelerate and achieve bold results never before imagined. A provocative keynote & virtual speaker, strategic Deming advisor/consultant for 25+ years, she is the bestselling author of the book “Pivot Disrupt Transform.” www.mdaszko.com

Q. When should a team prepare for a crisis? Is it too early to plan for the next crisis, especially when we’re still in the middle of this one?

A. Great leaders, at work and at home, anticipate and consider challenges and how they will respond to them. Whether it’s pilots training to deal with a challenge in flight, families preparing for an earthquake or a hurricane, a driver being aware of the traffic, a company preparing for a pandemic or loss of a major client, people do a variety of crisis planning. Some companies had a plan in case they were ever faced with a pandemic. Did your company have a plan? Those that had one had created it with calm rationality and could quickly adapt it. Others had to rapidly pivot, or they struggled.

Thoughtful leaders at home and at work think ahead. They scan their environment for safety. What might they be faced with?  With your team, what do you need to think about, anticipate, discuss, plan and prepare for? It’s never too late to make a plan. That’s what leaders do. When it’s needed, leaders and their rapid action teams adapt and pivot, and respond. If an unforeseen crisis occurs, teams who have a foundation in leadership thinking, will respond rather than react or freeze in fear.

Q. What signs should a leader look out for that signal that they may not be the right leader for the job anymore or should take a different role in the organization and move aside?

A. It is not uncommon for a founder, owner or executive to move aside as an organization grows, needs to scale, or goes through transitions they have no experience in or are uncomfortable with. The enterprise may be moving and growing at a fast pace, building in complexity, or innovating into new areas of expertise. If executives feel overwhelmed, uncomfortable, fearful, or are micro-managing, they need to assess if they are continuing to find joy and satisfaction in their current position.

There are multiple ways to address this situation. Many young founders have a close mentor(s) such as a supportive CEO, Board Director or a professor who guide and advise them as they navigate and develop. Or an executive may have founded an organization and be passionate about product development, but may not have an affinity for running or growing a business. People have natural leadership within them and each person needs to decide where they can best contribute and feel fulfilled.

Pivotal Leadership: Thoughtful Action

2021 will be a year of thoughtful action for leaders and their teams.

Strong Connections

It means creating a stronger link with:

• Customers

• Collaborative team members

• Partners

• Suppliers

• Your coaches and mentors

Investments Are Essential!

2021 will be a Year of Investment! Invest in:

• Yourself; your self-care, your learning; your time to be humble and grateful;

• Rapidly developing your staff, your teams, your colleagues, and your partners; educate, develop skills, and strengthen their communication and team-building.

• Deeper commitment to communicating in multiple ways to all of your team, in every corner of your operation;

• Your systems and processes! What do you need to do to optimize your System (not maximize!) and quickly improve your processes? The status quo and small improvements are not enough.

• Your infrastructure; build out more foundational systems for scaling growth into the future. The time is now!

Reduce the Built-In Flaws, Complexity, and Waste

Organizations are full of waste (estimating 60-80%.) Ensure that you’re reducing waste and increasing productivity:

•  Conduct a Team Audit. Are your teams all focused to support the Aim of your organization? Are they making progress at the speed you need? If you have too many teams that are struggling, you’re zapping the energy of your resources. Focus on a few, and disband those that are unproductive.

• Post-pandemic planning and 2021 Strategic planning are different. Are you ready to implement both—at the speed that you will need?

• Teams are burning out, zooming hour after hour (executives, managers, and employees) are exhausted, and often are too afraid to speak up. I’ve developed new team education, processes, and policies that can increase your meeting time productivity and reduce the time in meetings by 40 to 60%. Help your teams!

6 Executives Use Pivotal Leadership: Pivot, a Powerful Business Strategy

In December, Managing Editor Josh Moss of the Silicon Valley Business Journal invited me to write the cover article for a January issue. We chose Pivotal Leadership as the topic so we could explore and share what pivots executives had made in 2020—and why pivots need to continually emerge for healthy organizations.

If you question how to pivot, to rapidly move your teams and organization forward faster, to capture new markets, and to make a difference with stellar customer experiences, contact us today at md@mdaszko.com. We can help you assess where your barriers are to pivoting and innovating and how to remove them, and achieve rapid growth you never before imagined!

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THE POWER TO PIVOT IN 2021:

Pivotal leadership — the ability to transform challenging crises into bold solutions and a new future — is essential.

The challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic demanded unprecedented responses last year that few leaders had ever had to make. Across all sectors, leaders faced new dilemmas on an hourly or daily basis.

Pivotal leadership — the ability of leaders to pivot and adapt as their world is disrupting around them — is essential. What does it really mean?

“Pivot” means to make a fundamental, often abrupt and rapid change in direction.

Leaders had to take the essential step to pivot in 2020, to either survive or thrive, and they’ll have to keep doing it this year.

As Covid hit, some executives immediately closed their companies and furloughed their employees. Others adopted a “wait and see” stance, assuming the pandemic would end soon.

But pivotal leaders quickly assessed the situation, sensed what their constituents needed, and responded. They gathered rapid action teams, brainstormed ideas, and created solutions. They designed, focused and applied on the move.

Pivoting takes vision, rapid decision-making, and ubiquitous communication. It’s a commitment to experiment and take immediate action. Time is of the essence!

Leaders who pivot have a compelling, focused aim, and a solid foundation of management thinking to draw from.

We saw auto manufacturers GM and Ford pivot and produce 100,000-plus ventilators for hospitals. Distilleries made hand sanitizers. Luxury clothing manufacturers produced PPE gowns and masks. Schools pivoted to virtual learning, healthcare to telemedicine, and millions began working remotely.

Why pivot? Current needs aren’t being met. The status quo doesn’t work. Leaders see a need and boldly jump into action.

People who continually generate the most creative ideas are the most resilient and likely to pivot, survive and thrive.

I reached out to several executives to find out more about the challenges they faced early on in the pandemic and how they applied pivotal leadership to adapt their organizations. Here are their stories.

Healthcare

“We’re doing things we’ve never done before,” said Chris Boyd, a senior vice president and area manager for Kaiser Permanente, who led Kaiser’s Santa Clara facility when Covid-19 first hit. “For healthcare the pandemic got very real, very quickly.”

Immediately, the leaders at Kaiser identified its needs: Safety, personal protective equipment, a command center, and accelerated and widely dispersed communication.

“At first, the projections were so dire, but we succeeded in doubling the capacity of the hospital,” Boyd said. “By the second surge, we were well prepared.

“Communication was crucial, and it had to be different for everyone. We did video visits with patients to video broadcasts to employees, but we also needed contact with others who were not at a computer. Executives took a beverage/snack cart and visited staff to address their fears.”

Great leaders are always pivoting, creating, innovating — finding new solutions and markets. They see a crisis or amazing possibilities and bold opportunities.

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Serial entrepreneur Toby Corey founded GetVirtual in March 2020. The Santa Cruz-based organization connects small businesses affected by Covid-19 to tech-savvy university students who could help pivot the businesses online with digital tools.

TOBY COREY

Social entrepreneurship

In March 2020, serial entrepreneur Toby Corey founded GetVirtual.

The Santa Cruz-based organization connects small businesses affected by Covid-19 to tech-savvy university students who could help pivot the businesses online with digital tools. Students receive college credits from partnering universities (it started at U.C. Santa Cruz and has spread to other Bay Area universities), invaluable experience in entrepreneurship, and an opportunity to give back to the community.

“The need is extraordinary. Everything is a process,” Corey said. “There are already 100 students working with 100 small businesses. The students want to be social entrepreneurs, be intellectually curious, and experiment.”

Corey said that altruism is important and that Generation Z is especially altruistic.

“Modern thinking is mindful,” he said. “It’s paying it forward; we’re doing that. We inspire greatness, disruption and innovation.”

The mindset of leaders who are able to pivot are focused on growth, the future, and meeting new needs with bold solutions.

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Kavitha Mariappan, Zscaler executive vice president, customer experience and transformation.

SCOTT R. KLINE

Cybersecurity

Leaders pivoted for the safety of their employees, contractors and customers, locally and globally. For Zscaler — a San Jose cloud security company that became 2018’s biggest Nasdaq tech debut — that meant also dealing with a new level of security.

“One pivot has been the rapid, higher-level emergence of IT for business continuity. IT has been a savior,” said Kavitha Mariappan, Zscaler’s executive vice president, customer experience and transformation. “Preventing disruptions, addressing threat activities (the Zscaler cloud processes 140 billion transactions per day), being resilient, and innovating are what we do to protect the ‘crown jewels’ and protect our customers.

“We talk to our customers about transformation, and pivoting is critical, for security, safety and scaling for the future,” she said. “The pandemic was a true test in leadership authenticity and empathy. It’s a time of growth. We accelerated our initiatives and invested more in our people, infrastructure, and customers. We have a ‘rest and recharge day,’ a day to take a break. We’re anticipating, ‘What does re-entry to the office look like?’”

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Executive Briefing Centers

The conferences and trade show sectors, as well as travel and hospitality industries, were impacted or devastated in 2020. The initial impact on global executive briefing centers where sales teams meet with customers was also felt.

Elizabeth Simpson, president of the Association of Briefing Program Managers, reported how rapidly her 600 business members pivoted with each other.

“It was a tsunami of sharing,” she said. “Members immediately asked for resources to go virtual. We didn’t have them, but two members responded with help for the whole community.”

She continued, “One of our members, Pam Evans, senior director of the Executive Briefing Programs at Palo Alto Networks, made a powerful pivot with her team. She met with the VP of sales to say, ‘We’re open for business. We can take care of our customers virtually.’”

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Bob Linscheid, the new CEO of the Silicon Valley Organization, is the past president/CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, as well as CEO of Linscheid Enterprises Inc.

TOMAS OVALLE/ SILICON VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL

Business advocacy

Bob Linscheid joined the Silicon Valley Organization last fall to help the wounded organization get on a new path forward.

After an internal upset caused the previous CEO to resign, Linscheid was tapped to be interim president and CEO. He said he is ready to make a pivot that heals the 133-year-old organization.

“My job is to find the SVO’s path to reconciliation. As the No. 1 most innovative city in the U.S., San Jose is expressing its needs.” Linscheid said. “I’m doing a massive amount of listening to 1,200 diverse members’ voices and processing a lot of information. We have problems to solve, and we’ll be stronger as a group to make a difference. Great leaders hang out in uncertainty, but will be the most innovative.”

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San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan with linebacker Isa'ako Togia at CEFCU Stadium.

TOMAS OVALLE

Sports

From his first day four years ago, Brent Brennan, San Jose State University’s head football coach, began a holistic approach to develop the young men on the team.

In his first two years, the Spartans won just three games. This season, he took the team to the Mountain West Conference championship and won — something that hadn’t been done in nearly 30 years.

With 110 players, Coach Brennan defined success by many measures, not just on the scoreboard. They focus on academics, health, training, and engaging with the campus and community. The team supports other athletic events, delivers dinner kits, and visits schoolchildren.

“Football is the best sport to learn about systems and holistic thinking. The game is a good training ground to pivot. It’s the process, the struggle. The players need to lean on each other. The pieces come together,” Brennan said. “The mindset is (to) keep moving forward: Go to class, get stronger, make good choices, contribute to the community, deal with setbacks together. Their pivotal growth as a team came when they each started caring more about each other and giving to the team. They are more connected.”

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2021 pivots

What do you anticipate in 2021? Are you ready to pivot at the speed you will need? What leadership strategies and creativity do you need? Have you assessed your ability to lead and done your pivot audit for 2021? It will not be business as usual.

Pivoting means that leaders will transform and go where they never before imagined!

Marcia Daszko has been working with senior executives for more than 25 years. She guides leaders to pivot to survive, rapidly scale, and achieve bold results. The bestselling author of “Pivot, Disrupt, Transform,” she serves on various boards and has taught MBA classes at six universities. Contact her at md@mdaszko.com.

TOMAS OVALLE/ SILICON VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL