Leadership Is Language

Finally, complete serves to proactively control the clock, exiting us from redwork and launching us into bluework. Controlling the clock gives us the operational pause we need to reflect and improve upon our processes. (IMPROVE will be our next play.)

Many of the strategies that thawed Frozen are components of the IMPROVE play. Improvement-which comes from egoless scrutiny of past actions, and deep reflective thinking about what could be betteris the core purpose of bluework, which is meant to improve redwork. Bluework in isolation is useless. It's relevant only to the extent that it makes redwo

In psychology, there is a concept called "metacognition," or thinking about our thinking. By preplanning the next pause phase, we free all of our cognitive resources for execution rather than holding some back for process monitoring. In other words, knowing that a pause is coming allows teams to focus 100 percent of their efforts on the w

Second, failure to complete also takes a toll on the humans in the organization. No completion moments mean no celebration moments. One hour merges with the next, one day into the other. Without completion, we do not feel a sense of progress for what we've accomplished or learned.

At my organization, we use black and red cards. We call them dissent cards and use them in a ratio of five to one. Five black for every one red. We shuffle the deck and people take a card. Here's the rule: if you have a red card, you have to dissent, and the card makes it safe and necessary to do so. You're not being a jerk-the card made you do it.

To celebrate with, not for: appreciate, don't evaluate; observe, don't judge; and prize, don't praise.

Celebrating by describing what you have observed and signaling appreciation for the behaviors can sound like this:

• "I see that you've organized the presentation into three sections-I've got your points organized in my head now."


• "It lo

Adults are no different. In short, if we are conditioned to think of ourself as "the smart one," we will avoid challenges that actually test our intelligence and its limits. Of course, taking on such challenges is the only way we can learn and grow. Therefore, the wrong kind of praise becomes stultifying, sapping our willingness to hone o

Here is the key difference: Thinking, benefits from embracing variability. Doing benefits from reducing variability.

The CEO of a public organization in Scotland told me how the group's business planning cycle occurred during the last quarter of the calendar year, which was also its busiest time of the year. So not only was it difficult to take people out of execution during this time, but none of the redwork performed during that last quarter, which might amount