Leadership is Language

Key Takeaways

1. Language shapes leadership: Industrial Age vs. modern approaches

Changing our words changed our world.

Industrial Age leadership relied on coercion, compliance, and conformity. This approach separated thinkers from doers, creating steep hierarchies and stifling innovation. Modern leadership requires a new language that empowers all team members to think, decide, and act.

Modern leadership language:

• Embraces variability and curiosity
• Invites dissent rather than driving consensus
• Gives information, not just instructions
• Focuses on learning and improvement, not just performance

By changing the language of leadership, organizations can create more adaptive, innovative, and fulfilling work environments.

2. Redwork and bluework: Balancing action and reflection

Doing and thinking are the basic building blocks of all human activity.

Redwork is action-oriented, focused on execution and reducing variability. It benefits from a performance mindset. Bluework is reflective, embracing variability and focused on decision-making and improvement. It thrives on an improvement mindset.

Organizations need to balance redwork and bluework:

• Redwork: Executing tasks, following procedures, meeting deadlines
• Bluework: Planning, strategizing, learning, innovating

The key is to create a rhythm between these two modes, allowing for both efficient execution and continuous improvement. This balance helps organizations stay agile and adaptive in a rapidly changing world.

3. Control the clock: Making space for deliberate decision-making

Never underestimate the power of fear to distort common sense in environments with a strong culture of control and compliance.

Controlling the clock means deliberately creating pauses in work to allow for reflection and decision-making. This play counteracts the Industrial Age tendency to "obey the clock" and rush through tasks without proper consideration.

Ways to control the clock:

1. Make pauses possible by not preempting them
2. Give pauses a name (e.g., "mariners' minute")
3. Call pauses when needed
4. Preplan the next pause

By controlling the clock, teams can avoid rushing into poor decisions and create space for thoughtful collaboration and improvement.

4. Collaborate, don't coerce: Fostering genuine teamwork

The wisdom of the crowd can be undermined in several ways. Anchoring and social conformity are two of those ways.

True collaboration involves creating an environment where all team members feel safe to contribute their ideas and perspectives. This contrasts with the Industrial Age approach of coercion, where leaders simply tell others what to do.

Techniques for fostering collaboration:

• Vote first, then discuss to avoid anchoring bias
• Be curious, not compelling
• Invite dissent rather than driving consensus
• Give information, not instructions

By embracing collaboration, teams can tap into their collective intelligence and make better decisions.

5. Commit to action, not just compliance

Commitment comes from within, whereas compliance is forced by an external source.

Commitment involves team members choosing to take action based on their own understanding and agreement. This is more powerful than compliance, which is simply following orders.

To foster commitment:

• Commit to learn, not just do
• Commit actions, not beliefs
• Chunk work into small, achievable pieces

When team members are committed rather than just compliant, they bring more discretionary effort and creativity to their work.

6. Complete and celebrate before continuing

Completion gives us not only a sense of accomplishment, but also psychological separation from our previous activity.

Completion involves deliberately marking the end of a work phase or project. This allows for reflection, learning, and celebration before moving on to the next task.

Benefits of completion:

• Provides a sense of progress and accomplishment
• Allows for learning and improvement
• Prevents burnout from endless work

Celebrate completion by focusing on:

• Behavior, not characteristics
• Journey, not just destination
• Observing and appreciating, not just praising

7. Improve and learn, don't just prove and perform

Improvement—which comes from egoless scrutiny of past actions, and deep reflective thinking about what could be better—is the core purpose of bluework.

The improve mindset focuses on learning and growth, while the prove mindset focuses on demonstrating competence. Organizations need to create environments that encourage improvement over mere performance.

Techniques for fostering improvement:

• Focus forward, not backward
• Look outward, not just inward
• Emphasize process, not just people
• Aim for excellence, not just avoiding errors

By emphasizing improvement, organizations can become more adaptive and innovative over time.

8. Connect with people, don't just conform to roles

Connection is about caring—caring what people think; caring how people feel; caring about their personal goals.

Connection involves building genuine relationships and understanding between team members. This contrasts with the Industrial Age approach of simply conforming to roles and maintaining emotional distance.

Ways to foster connection:

• Flatten the power gradient
• Admit when you don't know something
• Be vulnerable
• Trust first

By connecting authentically, teams can create psychological safety, leading to more open communication and better collaboration.

9. The dangers of goal-setting and steep hierarchies

Specific goals at the strategic level set in motion a cascading mindset of prove-and-perform down the organization—locking people into redwork and raising barriers to bluework.

While specific goals can improve short-term performance, they can also lead to unethical behavior and short-sighted decision-making. Steep hierarchies exacerbate these problems by making it difficult for lower-level employees to speak up about concerns.

Risks of overly specific goals and steep hierarchies:

• Narrow focus that misses important information
• Increased likelihood of unethical behavior
• Suppression of learning and adaptation

Organizations need to balance goal-setting with flexibility and create flatter hierarchies that encourage open communication.

10. Implementing a red-blue operating system for adaptability

In a complex, fast-changing world, long-term survival is more about adaptation than achievement.

A red-blue operating system involves deliberately alternating between periods of action (redwork) and reflection (bluework). This approach can be applied at strategic, operational, and tactical levels to create more adaptive organizations.

Key elements of a red-blue operating system:

• Balance redwork and bluework based on project stage and uncertainty
• Involve all team members in bluework, not just leaders
• Use shorter redwork cycles early in projects, longer cycles later
• Apply the system to individual careers and lifelong learning

By implementing a red-blue operating system, organizations can become more agile, innovative, and resilient in the face of rapid change.

Last updated: January 25, 2025

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