Geek Alert Warning: This post will only appeal to busy managers and leaders who use a smartphone.

We're approaching the time of year where you might be receiving a gift card for the iTunes store or some other online outlet where you can buy apps for a smartphone. So, if you're lucky enough to receive an app store gift card, what can you download that will at least make your life a little easier if not totally and radically change it?

I'm an iPhone 4 user and here are five apps that I find myself using all the time (Which of these are favorites of yours? What's not on my list that absolutely should be?)

Evernote - This is a note taking app that works with text, voice, and camera inputs. All of your notes go to the cloud and are completely searchable. In addition to their smart phone app, Evernote offers apps for tablets and an application for your PC or Mac. I've used it for all of my note taking over the past year and love it. I'm terrible at filing and organizing documents. Because I can search my entire Evernote database for any related word in a few seconds, I don't have to worry about where I put the notes from that meeting a couple of weeks ago.

LinkedIn - You're no doubt familiar with LinkedIn, the business oriented social network. Here's the slickest use I've seen so far of their iPhone app. Earlier this year, I had a meeting with someone I hadn't met before. About a half hour before the meeting she sent me a LinkedIn invitation which I accepted. I showed up for the meeting and just after we said hello, she said, "I see we both know so and so." I was a bit taken aback and asked her how she knew that. Simple. She had used the LinkedIn app to check out our shared connections.

Flight Track - If you travel by air, you've got to have FlightTrack on your phone. It uses the same system that the information screens in the airport use to relay gate information, flight status and such. It's nice to have that information in your pocket because flight information changes all the time these days. Flight Track is also probably the quickest way to figure out what your options are to get where you're going when your original flight is delayed or canceled. Not that ever happens.

Flashlight - This is one of the many apps that are available that allow you to use the LED flash on your camera phone as a flashlight. Sure, it's not a business app per se but how many times a week do you find yourself wishing you had a flashlight to help read a menu or find something in your briefcase or (man) purse? It's also very handy for that last dog walk of the day. ('Nuff said about that.)

Shazam - In addition to being a smartphone geek, I'm also a music geek. When I find myself sitting in a restaurant waiting on someone to arrive, I'll start zoning out on the music they're playing on the sound system. Sometimes, I'll hear a great song for the first time or one that I know but can't remember the artist. That's where Shazam comes in. You open the app, tap the button and it listens to the song for 20 seconds or so and tells you the name and artist. Again, not a business app, but it's a nice diversion in a crowded day.

I could go on, but those are five apps that I find myself using a lot and make life a lot or a little easier. What's on your list? Share your wisdom in the comments.

It's Monday morning, so it's time for me to write a blog post. If you're a regular reader, you may have noticed that I typically post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Unless I'm on vacation, it's three days a week most of the time. That's been the schedule for about three years now. This is my 574^th post. Since the average post is about 500 words, that's about 287,000 words. The typical business book is around 50,000 words long. If you do the math, all of those posts add up to five or six books.

All of these stats are prompted by an article I read in the New York Times over the weekend called Willpower: It's All in Your Head. In it the authors challenge the point of view that humans have a limited amount of capacity for willpower. They've conducted their own experiments and have concluded that if you believe willpower is limited, it will be. Conversely, if you believe it is unlimited, it will be. It reminds me of something Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or think you can't; either way you're right."

It seems like two or three times a week someone will say something to me along the lines of, "I don't know how you write all of those blog posts. You must have so much willpower." Honestly, I hadn't really thought about it that way. Blogging was something I decided to do and I just kept doing it. After reading the article in the Times, I've concluded that maybe there is some willpower involved in blogging consistently (or going to yoga consistently, or keeping up with my work, or avoiding stuff that's bad for me, or anything else that one does that requires persistence).

So, as is my fashion, I've given some thought to the steps I take to build my willpower. I'm not holding myself up as the willpower world champ. I'm not by any stretch. (You should see me rip through a bag of potato chips for instance.) These are, though, some things that I do to follow through on what I commit to doing. Your mileage may vary. I'd love to hear what willpower building steps work for you through your comments on the post.

1. Know Your Payoffs: To have the willpower to blog three times a week or go to yoga six times a week, I have to be really clear about the payoffs on the time invested. The return on investment is clear in both cases for me. Blogging helps me organize my thinking, keeps me engaged with what's going on in the world and has introduced me to a community of people I would not have otherwise known. Yoga makes me feel better physically, mentally and emotionally. It also has its own nice community of people. It's hard to have the willpower to follow through if you don't know your payoffs.


2. Schedule It First: Knowing my payoffs help me establish my priorities. My priorities get scheduled first. Unless there is an unavoidable conflict with its own high payoff, I stick with the scheduled priorities. It doesn't really feel like willpower. It just feels like following the routine that's been scheduled on my calendar.


3. Turn Off Distractions: There are so many ways to get myself distracted from what I'm really trying to do. Checking my email is one. Listening to the Dan Patrick Show when I'm trying to blog is another. I don't have the willpower to avoid the distractions if they're on, so I turn them off.


4. Be Realistic and Self-Forgiving: One of the great truths in life is that stuff happens. Conflicts arise, energy is low, the idea well is dry. I've learned to accept over time that stuff happens and that I'm not always going to live up to my commitments. It's called being a human being. I've come to the conclusion that one data point does not a trend make. If I have an off day, I look on it as exactly that - an off day. It's not how things are going to be for the rest of my life. I can start over tomorrow. I've learned that my willpower is more likely to serve me if I give myself a break every so often.

So, that's what works for me on building my willpower. What about you? What keeps you going and forging ahead?

One of the jokes I sometimes make when I'm leading a workshop or giving a presentation is that being a coach is one of the greatest gigs in the world because you don't have to know anything. All you have to do is ask questions and let the other person talk. Like most jokes there's some truth behind the joke. Here's why.

If you have four basic questions ready to go, you can coach anyone in five minutes or less to think through and be better prepared for the most important thing they're going to do this week. It requires no formal experience or training as a coach. All you have to do is ask the questions, listen and ask the other person to elaborate.

Here are the questions. (Potential follow up questions are in parentheses):

1.  What's the most important meeting or event coming up on your calendar in the next week?



2.  If that meeting or event is a complete success, what happens at the end? (What do people know, think, do, feel or believe?)

3.  How do you need to show up to make that outcome likely? (What are you going to say and how are you going to say it? What kind of energy, body language, tone of voice and demeanor do you need to demonstrate?)

4.  (What else?) This is the all purpose coaching question because it draws out the extra ideas.

That's it. You can have a very productive coaching conversation in five minutes or less if you use those questions. I know they work because hundreds of people I've had coach each other in workshops tell me they work. The cool thing is that you can easily teach others how to coach you by sharing the questions with them. If you don't have anyone available, you can coach yourself using the questions.

I often say that one of the most important things I do for my coaching clients is giving them the space to listen to themselves think. With a simple coaching approach like this one, you can get a lot of thinking and preparation packed into a short amount of time.

Give it a five minute or less try with a colleague today and let me know through a comment or tweet how it works for you.

October 1, 2011 marks the retirement of Admiral Mike Mullen from the U.S. Navy and from his role as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Washington Post's David Ignatius offers a nice recap of the Mullen years in an exit interview column with the Chairman. I'm an admirer of Mullen and his leadership but have not had the opportunity to meet him.

So, as he retires, I thought I'd ask someone who knows and has worked with Admiral Mullen for his perspective on the leadership qualities he has shown over the course of his career and in his final job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. George Sterner is a retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral. His career included command of two nuclear submarines and the Naval Sea Systems Command. He is also the first person I interviewed for my book, The Next Level.

In this guest post, Admiral Sterner uses stories to illustrate the leadership qualities of Mike Mullen including his preparation, collaboration, listening, action orientation, courage, honesty and thoughtfulness for others.

Let's hear from Admiral Sterner:

I first encountered the Chairman as "Commander" Mike Mullen when he came to see me while I was managing the Navy's torpedo exercise assets. His Pentagon boss had directed him to, " ... go see Sterner and find out why the surface Navy is not getting their share, ..." of one thing or another in my program. This was not an unusual tension between the budget offices in the Pentagon and the procurement officials in the acquisition commands. Fortunately, we both did our homework before the meeting. Out of our meeting grew a lasting relationship and respect that served us well. Captain and later Admiral Mullen frequently sought input from the technical offices in our organization to get another perspective before he moved on an issue.

 

I was repeatedly impressed with his ability to listen to the inputs from the technical community, regardless of rank or position. He didn't dwell on issues but thoughtfully collected information as an active listener, considered both sides of an issue and then moved forward. This was a refreshing approach, almost unique, in our vast bureaucracy. (Remember, we were working in a world where a thousand people can say "no" but only one could say "yes," or so it seemed most days!)

 

I have never known him to side-step an issue or shy away from making the tough decision, even when others might counsel against it. Most importantly, there were very few surprises; if you had an issue with his approach you were seldom blindsided when you heard the public version. 

 

The most endearing trait in the Chairman's persona is the thoughtfulness that goes into every aspect of his work, ... day-in, day-out , ... with the most junior Sailor to the most senior official. Even today, as you see him in news spots with World leaders across the globe, you can almost feel the respect, the thoughtfulness and the sincerity of the man. He is truly a great American and has served his country well. Bravo Zulu!

Writer's note: "Bravo Zulu" is a Navy flag hoist signal from the days of only line-of-sight communications. It was hoisted by the Fleet Commander to acknowledge a particularly impressive feat. Today it is almost universally interpreted, in written or spoken messages, as "Well Done."

Are you accountable or responsible? What's the difference and why does it matter?

The first time I heard this distinction was years ago in one of my first coaching engagements. I was interviewing colleagues of my client and a senior executive said, "He needs to be more accountable and less responsible." That made a lot of sense to me and the distinction ended up being one of the nine leadership pick up and let go distinctions in my book, The Next Level. The idea is that to grow and be effective as a leader, you have to pick up accountability for many results and let go of responsibility for a few results.  

Since the book came out, I've had a lot of conversations with leaders about the difference between being accountable and responsible. The most recent one was yesterday in a wrap up session for our group coaching program, Next Level Leadership™. As we talked through the progress the participants have made over the past seven months, one of them said he was still struggling with getting a handle on the difference between the two.

I probably gave the most succinct and clear answer I've ever given to what the difference is between accountability and responsibility. It worked for the leaders in the room yesterday. I hope it will be helpful to you.

If you're accountable, you answer for it. If you're responsible, you do it. I think that's the essence of the difference. Here's why I think it matters.

As I've written here before, most leaders have a history of being the "go-to person." As the go to person, the get stuff done, get noticed and end up in bigger roles. It's a great thing until it isn't anymore. It ceases to be great when the scope of responsibilities is so great that you can no longer rely on the go to person approach to get it all done. That's when you have to make the shift from being the go to person to being the person who creates a team of go to people. One of the ways you do that is to pick up accountability for many results and let go of responsibility for a few results.

To answer for it instead of doing it, you have to have the systems and processes in place that enable you to be accountable for the results instead of acting as if you're personally responsible for the results. It's the only way that you can create the bandwidth to do the things that only you can in your specific leadership role. It's also one of the primary ways that you develop the capacity and capabilities of your team.

So, what say you? Are you accountable or responsible? How do you determine which answer is appropriate? Are there ever times when the answer is both? What have you learned so far on this journey?

There's lots of speculation about what President Obama will say in his jobs creation strategy speech to Congress on Thursday night.  Will he be bold?  Will he be meek?  Will he seek compromise? Will he draw a line in the sand?

Perhaps the most important question is will he offer a viable strategy for creating jobs and reducing the unemployment rate? Lately, I've been reading a book that will help you and me answer that last question.  It's called Good Strategy Bad Strategy  by UCLA business professor Richard Rumelt. Back in December 2008, Rumelt wrote in the McKinsey Quarterly  that the great recession was not the typical downturn, but a structural break that would require difficult fundamental changes to get the economy back on track. Almost three years later, it looks like he called it.

Since one of the basic jobs of leadership is to define a strategy that can lead to success, Thursday's speech provides an opportunity for an evaluative case study.  In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Rumelt says that there are three key elements that represent the kernel of any good strategy. Conversely, there are three signs of a bad strategy. 

So, building on what Rumelt offers, here's your viewer's guide to whether the President is offering a good jobs strategy or a bad jobs strategy on Thursday night. (The guide just might help you in your next strategy conversation as well.)

Rumelt says that the kernel of a good strategy contains three things:

1. "A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge."
2. "A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge."
3. "A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy."

If the president's speech contains those three elements, he's on his way to a good strategy.

On the other hand, if it contains one or more of these signs from Rumelt, it's a bad strategy:

• Avoiding "the pain or difficulty of choice."
• "Template-style strategy - filling in the blanks with vision, mission, values and strategies."
• "New Thought - the belief that all you need to succeed is a positive mental attitude."

Good strategy is rare, Rumelt writes, because it's a lot harder to develop than bad strategy. Let's take the President out of the conversation for a moment and talk about your situation.  Do you agree or disagree with Rumelt's markers of good strategy and bad strategy? What would you add to either the good list or the bad list? What's the most important thing you can do as a leader to make sure you're promoting good strategy and not bad strategy?

So, the big question on the East Coast yesterday evening was where were you when the earthquake hit? I was in a large conference room in Baltimore leading a group coaching session for rising leaders at a client company. They were working in small groups when I noticed the image on the screen jiggling crazily and saw the projectors hanging from the ceiling shaking back and forth.  We moved outside into the courtyard pretty quickly.  When the building was evacuated, we decided to call it a day. Definitely the first time I've ever ended a session early because of an earthquake.

What a great reminder that if you ever think you're the one in control, you're not.  In a way, that turned out to be the theme of the day. Just a half hour before the earthquake excitement, we had wrapped up a lunchtime conversation with a company executive who essentially said the same thing. She began her talk by holding up a sheet of paper with 75 names and pictures on it.  She told the group that this was all of the directors and above in that sector of the company in the year 2000.  "How many, she asked, do you think are still here?"  The answer was 23.  Then she showed a photo composite of the top 15 executives from 2004 and asked how many of them were still around.  The answer was one and he's the current sector president. 

Her point was not one of those, "Look to your left and look to your right; one of you won't be here," kind of deals. Rather, she was making the point that there are so many things outside of your control in your career that you have to be prepared for change and make the most of the opportunities you have while remaining true to your values. In her case, that has meant:

• volunteering for jobs that stretch her comfort zone


• always doing her best to "take the high road" (i.e. acting with integrity, treating others with respect)


• taking time for personal connection


• being realistic about what needs to be done


• not being satisfied with the status quo


• leaving space for and having interests for a life outside of work

Not to be overly dramatic, but yesterday's earthquake was a nice, relatively harmless wake up call.  When the "big one" hits how will you feel about the way you've led and lived? 

What happens in the end is ultimately out of your control. How you feel about what you're doing and how you're doing it between now and then is completely within your control. 

How are you doing so far?

With a shout out to the folks at SmartBrief on Leadership for pointing it out, I recommend to you a deeply reported article in Fortune magazine about how and why Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler was pushed out of his job last year.  It's an excellent, real life case study in the "Why Smart Leaders Fail," genre.

Some of the usual culprits show up in the Kindler story.  He micro managed, was indecisive, ignored voices of experience, acted like a prosecutor in meetings and lost his temper with executive staff and even board members. 

In spite of all that, perhaps the biggest reason for Kindler's downfall was that he trusted the wrong person. He hired his head of human resources, Mary McLeod, in 2007 just three years after she had been fired for cause at Charles Schwab. It only took her another three years to play a major role in helping to bring her new CEO down.

Here's how she did it.  They're five signs that your HR chief is trouble and they're not just unique to this particular situation at Pfizer:

Not Focused on Execution:  The first responsibility of an HR exec is to make sure that the trains run on time. It's one of those functions where if you don't get the basics rights, everybody suffers and everybody notices. McLeod reduced the headcount in Pfizer HR but paid little to no attention to the day to day execution of the basics of the function. Your credibility takes a hit when you don't get the basics of your job right. If it goes on too long, your boss's credibility will suffer as a result.

Remote from the People:  The story reports that McLeod was unavailable to her own staff and others throughout the organization. She communicated by email and webcasts. If your HR exec is not connecting with the actual human resources in your organization, you've got a problem.

Terrible Optics:  McLeod was so highly compensated that she almost made it into the list of the top five highest paid execs in Pfizer's 10-K report. She regularly commuted to New York from her home in Delaware via a company helicopter. It doesn't take long for the buzz on that kind of perk abuse to get around. Terrible optics are a sign of an executive who's creating trouble.

Inducing Paranoia:  No doubt aligning themselves with the culture McLeod was creating, an HR staffer attempted to force an external consultant to turn over confidential 360 degree assessments that were to have been used only for the purpose of top executive development.  (Kudos to the consultant for refusing.) In the environment of mistrust that was developing at Pfizer, moves like this only raised the level of paranoia.

Playing the Consigliere:  One thing that those in the know at Pfizer agreed on is that McLeod did an excellent job of positioning herself as the chief consigliere to Kindler.  She fed him back channel information and opinions, controlled access to him and delivered tough messages for him.  If you're a CEO and you find yourself spending inordinate amounts of time with one lieutenant, you probably need to step back and reassess what you're hearing and not hearing.

So, as they say in the drug commercials on TV, "If you notice any of these symptoms, call your doctor immediately."  If you notice all five of these at once, call an ambulance and tell them to bring a crash cart as you're going to need emergency assistance.

Of course, these signs of trouble are not necessarily limited to HR executives.  They could apply to anyone in a top position.  What else, in your experience, are the warning signs that a senior executive is steering you towards trouble? 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post titled "Are You an IBM or a Dell?"  Today's post continues with the tech ID theme and is inspired by an article in the New York Times by Randall Stross. In it, he makes the point that the big decisions at Apple are made by one person, Steve Jobs relying on his gut and sense of design.  In contrast, the big decisions at Google are made by groups of people relying on data.  As Stross frames it, it's the auteur vs. the committee.

I thought it was a great article because it makes the point that there is rarely only one right answer about how to get things done. In my own case, I'm more naturally inclined to the Google model where decisions are made by lots of people providing input based on fact based arguments. On the other hand, I'm writing this post on my iPad, totally love my iPhone and am the last person in my family who is not working on a Mac. I can see both sides of the argument.

So, which side do you come down on? Auteur or committee? What are your thoughts on when it's best to go with the edict of the genius and when it's best to go with the wisdom of the crowd?

Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference. I see this all the time in coaching leaders. In fact, it's usually the simplest things that make the biggest difference.  Here's an example from my executive coaching files.

One of my clients was a senior executive I'll call Sam. He was brilliant in his technical domain, not so much in the people domain. I actually worked with Sam on a couple of occasions. The first time our focus was helping him establish better connections and engagement with his team. Based on the feedback we got over a number of months, he improved a lot on that front.

The second time I worked with Sam was after he had been promoted to senior vice president.  The issue now was how to work more collaboratively and effectively with his executive level peers.  Sam and I knew each other pretty well at this point so I thought we'd nail things pretty easily and quickly.  Boy, was I wrong.  Sam wasn't that enthused about engaging with his peers.

After about six weeks of getting nowhere, I showed up at his office for an appointment and was getting nothing from him in the conversation.  Lots of one and two word responses to my questions, lots of dead air, no questions back to me.  After about 15 minutes, I started putting my things away and suggested we try again in a couple of weeks.  Sam's response was a true to form, "OK."  As I walked toward the door, I asked him  if I could share an observation.  Sam said, "Yes."  I replied that, "My observation is that you're the most difficult person to have a  conversation with that I've ever met."  Sam looked stunned and puzzled and asked why.  My response was that in most conversations I had been in in my life, one person would say something and the other person would reply with some information or perhaps ask a question of the first person.  I told him that he didn't do much of either one of those and that made it difficult to have a conversation with him.

We were scheduled for a phone call a couple of weeks later and I wasn't expecting much from that either. Boy, was I wrong again.

When Sam called in, there was a tone of excitement in his voice that I had never heard before.  "I've been doing what you told me to do and I can't believe how well it works!"  I didn't remember telling him to do anything.  All I'd done was make an observation so I asked him what he had been doing.  "I've been asking one more question, he said, and I can't believe how much I'm learning."  When I asked him to explain, he told me that when he thought a conversation had reached a logical conclusion, he'd ask one more question of the other person and that's when the real conversation started.

Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and roses from there.  Sam still had a lot of work to do to connect with his peers, but that was the breakthrough.  Something simple.  It was easy to do and usually made a difference.  It was a momentum builder and it helped make him a better executive leader.

What's your version of "one more question"?