what's your personal guarantee worth?
Every summer when we were kids, our mother would ship me and my brother off to lake country in northwestern Ontario. We spent our time swimmin', boatin' and fishin' with our large collection of cousins and under the tutelage and safe hands of one of our three uncles. Much of what I learned about being a man and a good person I took from these formative summer trips.
My mother and aunt Dorothy grew up under the watchful eye and protection of my scrappy uncle Bob. He was one of those people who would-be aggressors just knew not to fuck with–someone who would lay his life down for someone he loved. "Hubby", as he was known by pretty much the entire community of Kenora, lived for his family and for time on his house boat. The complex web of channels, straits and islands that made up the Lake of the Woods was second nature to him.
On one of these occasions, we were several hours down the lake and I was getting a bit cagey in the tight quarters of his floating sanctuary. We came upon a derelict boat abandoned on the shore of an uninhabited island and I wanted to go see it.
My uncle was not a tall man despite his stature. The gunnel of the decaying vessel was taller than he was and he could not see inside the hull, so he tossed me up over the rail. I still remember flying through the air and landing on a wasp nest that was bigger than I was.
The next thing I remember, I was in the water with my uncle shielding me from the angry swarm of wasps. I didn't get even a single sting. He took the beating for me and returned me safe and sound to my mother. He made that choice long before the first wasp threatened his young nephew.
on the hook
My uncle Don, who was married to my Aunt Dorothy, was a scout leader and always had something to say like, "if you see a job do it". We would stay out all day on Gibi lake fishing for Pickerel, which he kept alive and tethered to the boat until just before it was time to eat dinner. He cooked the fish in a giant cast iron frying pan he kept upside down on a stump, that he always wiped clean with a rag but never washed. That only seemed to lock in the very unique flavour of that fish and it remains my favourite.
The first time we went out to his camp my brother and I, who he called "rappies" (short for rapscallions), were still quite young. We got skunked on the lake that day and we were starving, but he had brought a chicken and some potatoes as a back up. He slid the plates in front of us, along with a bottle of ketchup, and then confiscated the meal as soon as we reached for the condiment. We went hungry that day and learned a valuable lesson about treating food with respect. (I found out later when I led his funeral service that this was a standard "training" for all cousins.)
We were much luckier the next day and returned to camp with our daily limit of pickerel. I was very excited about the coming feast when we arrived back at the dock. Don asked me to tie up the boat. We had our fill of fish and went to bed very satisfied. This beautiful feeling lasted all the way to the next morning when we discovered that the boat was floating in the middle of the lake. I stayed in camp all day practicing knots which I can still tie quickly to this day.
expanding the zone of ownership
Shortly after meeting Sam Jenkins, I asked for and he granted me the license to be his coach (just as my mother had granted licenses to my uncles to protect her sons). From that moment forward, Sam officially became one of my people, though truthfully that really happend the moment that Morgan Hamel, who knew us both, suggested that Sam and I shared a strong set of values and would make excellent partners in his growth. I had not even met him yet when I had made the choice.
Sam is playing the game of life in a big way and as a result he attracts big challenges–the kind of challenges that either invite us to grow to the next level of capacity or grind us under the heels of their jack boots. I respect anyone willing to take on any problem that in the moment appears larger than their apparent strengths and skills to impact its solution.
In one of our sessions, Sam was briefing me on the three-headed hydra of his current problem space. The business, personal and family issues that most of use deal with had piled up in this one wicked place and time.
There are twelve press points I work on with each of the leaders I coach and Sam had picked accountability as the door he wanted to walk through into the next levels of personal and business growth. Despite all that is published and said on the topic, it is a thorny, confounding and deeply misunderstood topic. Most, if not virtually every person I've met, myself included, get stuck on the idea that accountability is a performance management concept. But as Bagger Vance said to Rannulph Junuh on the topic, "it is and it ain't".
Sam was stuck. He had not yet framed the triple-threat as an opportunity, but he was always willing to. And he soon would.
Most of what I've learned about the subject of accountability I learned from my own coach Phil Holcomb, who prefers to use the term "ownership". This is a friendlier way into the experience and expansion of accountability. Ownership is a precondition of the flow state. Flow is pleasurable and constructive.
Many leaders use the term accountability as if it belonged to the unfortunate and misplaced surveillance economy that lives in so many organizations. "Holding people accountable!" Can you imagine if someone said to you, "come by my office at the end of the day. There's something I'm going to hold you accountable for." I have no issues with metrics and targets but no one ever found a pleasant invitation into their personal greatness in that stern-sounding request. This is the fault and blame underbelly of accountability. It is the predictable response to an unmet expectation and when an important result has failed to materialize (as they often do).
The world is too complex and unpredictable for cause and effect thinking. Timing and other kinds of good and bad luck are an inherent part of a performance management system. Claiming the credit for a good result is just as unworkable as assigning fault. Taking the blame might sound like ownership, and maybe it is on the path to ownership but there is a bigger game to play than the martyr or victim. And that game feels like ownership.
I asked Sam, "who do you think I would say is accountable for all these issues"? At this point, people often start listing people in the chain of causality, to which I say, "no, that is not who I would say is accountable". To which they say, (pointing at their own chests), "it's me. I am the one who is accountable". This is where Sam started but I said, "no, that is not who I would say is accountable". Then who he said? I pointed to my own chest. "It's me. I am the one who I would say is accountable for all those issues." He protested. "Why? You had nothing to do with any of these issues. You didn't cause any of this to happen and there is very little you could have done to help me avoid any of this." I then responded: "you are my leader and I am your coach; everything that happens in your life and business is my problem. It happens on my watch. I may well have very little to do with the solutions to these issues but I care about you and everything that happens to you belongs to me."
From my perspective, Sam lives and works inside my zone of ownership. Sometimes I am a little slow to put something in that zone. It's during these times that I feel disappointed, frustrated or overwhelmed.
what are you most resistant to?
Every spring I embark on a nasty hill training program with my oldest client and good friend Scott Darling. At 63, Scott is still a beast on a mountain bike. He seems to have an inexhaustible well of mental toughness and physical resilience and generally grinds his way up tough hill climbs without stopping for breaks or complaining. He can be hard to follow as he never appears to suffer.
Our program consists of running laps up and down what is known as the Husky Hill for several weeks. The road winds it way up a gravel road to a gas plant and gives us access to dozens of great downhill trails. Husky did not build the road for us. They took the most direct route to their site which forces us up an unrelenting 12% grade for 3 km. It's a soul-sucking gut punch but our idea was to ride it so often that we desensitized ourselves to the pain.
At the base of the hill on our first lap of the year I said to Scott, "With every fibre of my being I do not want to climb this hill right now". He agreed, but once we agree to go, we both show up and keep going until we get to the top. We keep each other bound to the program.
On this evening I was pretty gassed from a tough week of work. I also hadn't done as much fatbiking over the winter as I usually do, so I was feeling on the fat side and not very fit. I barely made it to the top, when Scott asked me if I was up for another lap. I said emphatically, "not a fucking chance".
Practically speaking, to burn off my winter weight gain and gain back my fitness level, I need to go through about 20 rides that aren't going to feel that pleasant or fun. I just have to force myself to do them. So when Scott suggested that we ride down to the last switch back about a quarter of the way down, I agreed. When we got back to the top of that, he suggested that we ride half way down to the next switch back and then come back up. I was pretty spent after that so we rode back to the base of the hill, but when we got back down I decided to ride back up to the first switch back, thereby completing the equivalent of the second lap that I said I wasn't going to do at the top of the first.
I did not feel disappointed, frustrated or overwhelmed. I made the choice to keep going with every spin of the pedals. I felt powerful.
Feel Frustrated. Make a choice. Feel Powerful. Take Action. Get a Result. Feel Powerful. Make Another Choice. Rinse. Repeat.
yours to deal with
Prior to starting my coaching business and the twenty years I spent coaching with Phil, I ran the Calgary office of the seminar business that Phil was a part of. The first course in the series was called, The Pursuit of Excellence. I had done the course and assisted my friend Dan Haygeman, when he facilitated this course in Calgary on several occasions.
The core of my understanding of accountability and ownership is the deceptively simple idea of one owner, multiple actors. I am the source. I might not be the cause of everything; I might not be the cause of most things; but I have taken the position, as I am feeling powerful, that I am the source. It's MY life. MY marriage. MY family. MY body. My business. There may be many forces acting upon my interests for both good and bad, but in my life, I am the only owner. It all belongs to me. When I feel dissappointed, frustrated or overwhelmed, it's sure bet that I have forgotten this most basic of framing ideas (when I suggest some other person or some other external force is the source of my results, even and especially when this feels true.)
A big part of the Pursuit is the accountability exercise. The night before, Dan asked all the participants to make a list of all the things that happen that they could not possibly be accountable for. The next morning, Dan made a list of everything that the forty participants came up with: earthquakes and other "acts of God", death and illnesses of loved ones, things politicians do or don't do. This list was of nasty things that any reasonable person would understand that they had no causal part of. Dan now had the room right where he wanted them.
People (and bosses especially) get hung up on what seems like an intuitively true connection between results and actions. And for many things this connection is valid. I do something and a result happens. I drop an egg on the floor, the shell breaks and I then have a slimey mess. So when an egg breaks it is easy for us to blame others or ourselves for the slimey mess, ignoring the big wind that blew it out of the person's hands.
There was a lady in the program who was having a particularly hard time letting go of the cause and effect frame. Dan had remembered that she had told everyone on day one when introducing herself that she was "single and looking". As the course proceeded it was clear that she was mystified about why she had not found a partner and was really beating herself up. Dan asked her, "imagine that the man of your dreams bursts through that door, takes one look at you and then declares his desire for you. What did you do to deserve that?" "Nothing" she said. "But he would be yours to deal with."
bold promises
Years ago I started coaching a lady who had just come into organization of my largest client to take over the sales function.
Every coaching session closes with the declaration of a key result for the next one to four weeks until the next scheduled session.
I noticed that Kim routinely made bold promises to deliver things that were largely outside of her control (usually relating to closing or moving forward on a piece of business).
As the months and years progressed, I observed that she did not always complete on her promises. But I also realized that she completed on a lot of them and the total value of a year spent making bold promises was likely much more significant than a year making smaller ones.
People often remark that, "I never make a promise I can't keep". This sounds like integrity and it is related to the idea of "under promise and over deliver" which also sounds good, but I think Kim has the better of the ideas. She does not always win and she still has a lot of growth infront of her, but when she does win, she wins big. Even if she is not the actor that causes the results one way or another, she bleeds when she doesn't win and learns something valuable when she does.
daily updates escalated
Since the launch of Claude and the other LLMs, it has been much easier for professionals like me to build AI tools to extend our reach. Traditionally, I see my clients in regularly scheduled sessions every one to four weeks depending on the cadence and complexity of the change processes they lead. But it's what happens in between the sessions where all the gore, grit, genius and greatness live. I have the same 168 hour limit a week that everyone else has, so I needed some way to be present in the lives of my leaders during the moments between.
One of the things I appreciate about coaching with Phil all those years is the illusion that I was his only client. He is busy but he always seems available. I live in his zone of ownership. To me knowing that he is pretty much always on tap means that I always feel his presence between our chats. I know what Phil would say or do in pretty much any setting. This will survive his eventual passing and I think is a rare kind of achievement. He is embedded as an icon in my mind.
This past week I launched my new app. Every morning my leaders receive a text from me with four simple questions:
- how are you doing and feeling?
- what happened yesterday?
- what is the single most important priority for the day?
- what is the key for the day? (what support do you need?)
The app builds context longitudinally through time, up from front-line leaders closest to service delivery and customers and down from the senior leaders closest to investors. I get notified when they all submit an update.
I read and respond to every single one.
My emotional presence primes their emotional choice. Their emotional choices accumulate as better results which cascade and accumulate through their entire organization. By the time I get to their next scheduled coaching session I already know where they've been. And I am not the only one who notices.
This is why I think my “app” actually works. It functions on an emotional level not just an intellectual one and it is a hybrid between the best of artificial intelligence and human intelligence. And it's not just my intelligence as human. This system also notifies other people in their support loops: key people who care about their success and happiness, including their friends, peers, mentors and bosses. This is not a tracking tool or a surveillance tool. It is a web of loving support. So it is and so it ain't a performance management tool. But it is most definitely an engagement tool. Ownership is the emotional engagement that precedes and makes high performance possible and even more likely.
The update begins with that first question: how are you doing and feeling? To answer that question my leaders simply choose a position on the chart that best captures how they are doing and feeling.
For example, today as I write this, I am at position A4. I am +1 on power and +1 on completion. When I started doing daily updates I was stuck in the red zone in the D4 position (-1 on power and -1 on completion). I was feeling very frustrated and much of what I was working on from golf, diet and exercise to aspects of my business were not working very well and coming up short.
It took about eight weeks to get to A4 where I was feeling much more powerful and completing a lot more important results. Improvements in diet and exercize led to better sleep, more golf practice and more consistent service delivery. I still occasionally go to C4, D1 or B3, but I bounce back to A4 much more quickly. I often pounce up to A1, A2 or A3 when my performance matters and it is much easier to do from A4. I make choices in each position on the chart but I make better ones and follow through more constructively when I choose to be in A4 consistently. I was not aware that I was choosing to be in those other places on the chart. It felt more like the events themselves were pulling me over and down. Once I acknowledged the power of choice, my choices improved and so did my actions. I am the source if not the cause.
Sam began his journey with me on daily updates about 12 weeks ago and he is now consistently in A4 (he does not stray too far from that set point). The CODEX is a tool that presents where everyone in an organization is feeling, how they are doing and what their priority is. This makes an unprecedented level of loving support available to a team of leaders looking to grow through their personal and business challenges and to make a more significant economic and social impact. Sam is implementing the CODEX with his sales team first and then to the rest of the organization as he learns how to nudge his people towards greatness every day.
agency
My CTO Chad Thomas called me this week to discuss the ongoing development of stepapp, while I was in the hot tub meditating. Just as I answered, the word "invitiate" randomly popped into my head. I coined the word (as far as I can tell). The root of the word is from the Latin "vitae" or "life" and we decided it means to bring someone willingly across a threshold by invitation rather than direction or coercion. To "bring something to life" as it were.
My uncle Bob demonstrated accountability or ownership as Phil would call it. He was already prepared to offer his life up to keep me safe long before we set out on our journey. Accountability in this way is best thought of as a matter of emotional engagement. My zone of emotional ownership is populated with everything I care about. There may well be a practical limit to how much I can do on an any given day but there is no practical limit to what I can care about. A feeling of personal power accompanies the choice to care about something and I express that choice not only through direct, do-it-myself action.
My "see-a-job-do-it" uncle Don represents the journey of responsibility. If accountability lives in expanding the universe of what I care about, responsibility is expanding my capacity to act.
Most sophisticated leaders are familiar with the Eisenhower matrix.
For demands that appear to be both urgent and important the matrix suggests that the appropriate choice is to DO something about it: "tie up the boat" and "practice these four knots". My long-time client Richard Clark coined this phrase: "I only do what only I can do". This does not mean "I only do what I love doing" or "I only do what I am best in the organization at". There are things that only I can do in my business like managing my schedule and touch points with the people I coach. This one is a DO that belongs soley to me. I have used an EA in the past and get some help from an AI scheduling but keeping leaders in coaching when they are stressed and struggling is a sophisticated coaching activity.
My leaders generally all do too many things themselves, either because they think they're the best ones to do them, or they like doing the task, or they are afraid someone else will fuck it up. This behaviour does not scale well. So I have added DRAFT to the list of possible choices. This is not a version of delegation which is something the matrix suggests for demands that are not important but still urgent. DRAFT means go enroll someone (or perhaps some AI tool) to help you do the task. This extends your leverage through community. The Latin word for power is "posse". When I was in university I moved a lot and hosted many beer, pizza and moving days. Six or so guys would show up and we'd carry my shit to the new place. It's very hard to cart a mattress down several flights of stairs on my own. Plus, I owned the truck so I had to return the favour when someone else drafted me onto their moving day posse, which happens a lot for the guy who owns a truck, but fair is fair. What help goes around comes around.
The second part of "I only do what only I can do" is that if someone else can do something, someone else must do that thing, even if that person is not presently on my team. To DELEGATE does not mean abdicating accountability, it means caring about the result while systematizing, monitoring, mentoring and training someone else to DO the DOING. Delegation is the production of mentor coaches within an organization. It might take me ten hours to build a formal process to do something I can instinctively and somewhat effortlessly do in an hour. I will break even on that choice: short-term pain but long-term gain. I then trade not having to spend that hour doing the thing with maybe ten minutes supporting the doing of that thing by someone else until they are unconsciously competent at it. The best leaders I know make time for coaching. The whole organization eventually gets more shit done. These tasks are still important to me (my accountability) I just support someone else being effective at them (their responsibility to execute and my responsibility to support). One owner with multiple actors. This is an underutilized and underappreciated choice even if the delegates are also operating over their own capacity. The compression serves to support everyone in working more effectively and efficiently and build the supporting AI tools and a few key hires to pick up the slack. In any case, it still begins with me.
The matrix directs me to DEFER things that are important but not urgent. The risk is obviously that scheduling a task for a later date becomes a habit of procrastination. These can pile up like a long list of flagged emails that lodge themselves in my subconscious mind as an anxious tick. So how important are these anyway? A deferral is a triage decision. Triage has French linguistic roots meaning to sort and gained its utility as a medical screening procedure. I let Claude convince me that my swollen feet, which were persisting a few days after a long flight, could be indicating a risk that clot might in fact be a pulmonary embolism racing to my heart from my feet to kill me. I went to the triage nurse who took a few measurements and had to decide where in the queue to put me. In general terms a triage decision is one of three things: this is likely a legitimate life threatening situation so we will handle the patient immediately and be that difference between life and death; there is nothing we can really DO to save the patient's life, so we will just make him comfortable and call the priest; the patient won't likely die today, so we will put him off until tomorrow, knowing full well that he is going to have a very shitty time suffering while he waits for us to get to him. That last bit is the key to preventing an endless procrastination loop from starting: we still care about that one even as we are putting it off.
The last two on the list of responsible choices are also underappreciated and underutilized. In the Eisenhower matrix this would be to DELETE the task. This means take it off the list and then grieve its loss rather than just pretend that it was important and leave it on the to-do list indefinitely. This acknowledgement helps me understand the difference between what I really care about and what maybe my boss, parent or society in general have convinced me that I should care about. In coming to terms with this gap, I leave the process with a greater probability of completing my legitimate priorities and I am likely to be more discerning as I accumulate more obligations. This means telling myself the truth about this thing I am pretending is important. Phil never beat me up for coming to a session with an incomplete promise, he only said, "if this is truly important to you, find some way to get it done, otherwise just dump it; it's waste of both our times talking about it otherwise".
The last one on my list is similar dumping something with one key difference. To DEFAULT on something is not to admit that something is not important; it is simply to own the reality that I don't have the capacity or the will to follow through on a promise. The best case scenario is not simply to abandon the promise but to attempt to renegotiate the terms of the promise. But in the end if that is not possible, I might make the very hard choice to quit. I went bankrupt and got divorced. In retrospect, these two very difficult choices were among the best contributors to the growth that made me who I am today. Default is not something to overuse but it is an option when it is the last option available.
coda
When I am in resistance to something and feeling some combination of powerless, hopeless, overwhelmed, frustrated, sad or dissappointed, I always have a choice, even if I don't like my options I can choose to:
- DO the hard thing. Start at the beginning and work without distraction until you are complete.
- DRAFT support. Do only what only you can do. Recruit helpers. Build tools.
- DELEGATE structured work, tasks, processes and projects. Clarify expectations. Monitor progress. Mentor and train your delegates. Give constant constructive feedback, positive and negative.
- DEFER the slippable thing. Reschedule work for a better time. Once. Don't forget about it.
- DELETE the false promise. Tell yourself the truth. Challenge the assumption. Renegotiate.
- DEFAULT make the hard choice. Relieve the pressure. Take the hit. Come back fighting.
Taking ownership feels heavy and time-consuming to most people since it implies a greater burden of responsibility and more tasks, especially for people who are strongly biased to doing everything themselves.
Remembering that I have a broad array of choices is the expansion of my zone of ownership. I feel powerful. I execute on the choice. I make an impact. I feel more powerful as I complete on my promises one way or another. I make another choice...
What is your single most important priority for today?