OS for Leaders
Every decision you make, and
Every action you take.
Just as you might have a spiritual practice, your operating system is your leadership practice.
But not all operating systems are equal...
SACRIFICING
This hurts you and keeps on hurting you.
SUSTAINING
This grows you and keeps on growing you.
SOARING
This makes you exponentially more effective,
and it's just the best kind of fun.
When I start working with a leader, I like to ask her about her operating system. If she tells me she doesn't have one, then chances are she's using the default or sacrificial operating system. It's the one that works best when it's unconscious, because the more you see it for what it is, the less you can make yourself do it.
I love helping leaders get sustainable and go soaring. And there are two reasons why.
First, it's good for the leader. Upgrading from he sacrificial OS takes moxie and it takes discipline. It's a serious thing to do. But that's what gets you to the serious fun of leadership.
Second, it's good for everybody in the organization—staff, Board, clients, and donors, too.
Let's look at how this works.
Marilla had a list of problems she was tackling one after the other. But every time she thought she'd solved one problem and turned her back to take on the next one, the first problem blew up again.
In our first meeting she said, "This is driving me crazy. It's like these problems are stuck together in a big glob. I can't make them let go of each other."
Marilla was ready for change: "Whatever it takes!" She got to work upgrading from sacrificing to sustaining. It took her from spring through summer and on into fall.
Halloween morning she called me to say, "In the process of changing my operating system, all those old problems have disappeared. It's like they all just got on a bus together and left town. Very sweet. No more tricks, just treats!"
Problems come in families. So instead of trying to solve them one by one, you can pull the rug out from under the bunch of them at once by doing an upgrade. And that works, because sacrificial problems won't run on the sustainable operating system:
Gossip doesn't continue in a vigorous culture of mission discipline.
Acting out doesn't continue in a culture where the accepted standard is taking responsibility for your own actions and being direct in your communications.
Low productivity won't continue when people know how to work from their strengths and are eager to do it.
So Marilla's nonprofit became a much happier place to work, not just for her, but for everyone.
And speaking of happier and more productive, there's a lot of emphasis these days on capacity building...
It's important to remember that the operating system of an organization is the primary determinant of capacity.
In sacrifice mode, people can be super busy exhausting themselves. But exhaustion is not what makes people productive. It's good to institute capacity strategies like project management and economies of scale, but first let's make sure that we're calling forth the inner capacity of the people doing the work.
And let's make sure that capacity building never means demanding even more of an already exhausted staff.
Whenever someone calls me with a problem I always want to take a look at their OS as part of understanding what's going on...
Diana called me because her organization was in trouble. She was about to embark on a ten-month, $10,000 strategic planning process to see if that might fix things.
When I laid out the three operating systems for her, she was shocked at how sacrificial she and her organization were. She decided to change that first. Her Board and staff were glad to follow her lead.
As they shifted into sustainable mode, they could see that their programs were fine and their strategy was fine. It was only their OS that needed to be replaced.
They not only saved a serious chunk of change but also ten months of working hard doing the wrong thing.
And again, this was a win not just for the leader, but for everyone in the organization.
Here's something I see all the time...
Sacrifice drags leaders down into resentment,
Soaring calls forth a leader's natural spirit of generosity.
In my experience, when a leader is doing really well herself, she wants everybody to do well. It's not like she's going to go soaring and leave everyone else in the sacrificial dust.
And besides it just can't work like that. If you're a soaring leader and you take charge at a sacrificial organization, typically one of two things will happen...
You pull the organization up, or
The organization drags you down.
Soaring leadership is definitely not a solo thing. You can soar on your own—there are artists and musicians and athletes who do just that.
But...
You can't be a soaring leader on your own.
You need a team that's soaring, too, or on their way there. Social change is social. Soaring leadership is also social. And has to be.
So when I urge you as a leader to put yourself first, there's nothing selfish about it, not the way I'm talking about it. When you upgrade your leadership operating system, everybody wins.
What's in a name?
If
you decide to read through the OS pages, please don't be too quick to
slap a label on yourself. That's because even though there's complexity
to each of the three operating systems, you are even more complex.
I urge you to take the time to look at your life carefully before you decide what your operating system is.
Sometimes there are surprises...
Aileen thought she was stuck in sacrifice, but not so. She was a masterful leader, it's just that she had a fierce inner critic telling her she was a loser. Once we cleared that out she she found herself soaring.
Bob thought he was soaring because he kept having ecstatic moments. But these were actually sacrificial highs. How could I tell? Because they were consistently followed by crashes. By contrast, soaring highs are followed by deep contentment.
Carrie thought she was in sacrifice because she felt burnt out. She had spent 20 years as a leader in her field. She had mastered and more than mastered everything she was doing. She was just bored. And no wonder. She needed something new. In Carrie's case, she needed the challenge of soaring. It wasn't optional, she needed it.
Danny felt disoriented and was worried about feeling that way. He took it as a bad sign. I asked him to tell me what his days were like, in detail. When he was done I listed for him the characteristics of soaring. He immediately saw the match. He was actually in soaring mode, he just didn't know what it was. Once he understood it, he relaxed, settled in, and then started having the time of his life.
One more note about complexity. As you'll see if you read further, I have more than one name for each of the operating systems. Feel free to use whatever name works for you or to make up your own.
Also, you'll see that sacrificing and sustaining are opposites. They are incompatible with each other. They are adversarial.
But soaring grows naturally out of sustaining, so they are partners. The more you develop mastery, and the more you develop a culture of mission discipline, the more soaring becomes possible.
And given this partnership, I sometimes talk in terms of two systems instead of three. For example, when I'm working with a Board and have very little time, I'll often use shorthand. I'll use the name "conventional operating system" for sacrifice, since that's the default OS in the nonprofit sector.
And then I'll put sustaining and soaring together and call them the "premier operating system."
Taking the whole journey
Just for fun, here's a quick example of what a journey from sacrifice to soaring might sound like...
Stop sacrificing
I refuse to live like this.
I'm done with being exhausted.
I'm done chasing crises.
I'm putting a stop to all this acting out that's going on because it makes everyone so miserable.
I'm done tolerating a Board that's a dozen different kinds of trouble.
I want to be able to eat lunch in the middle of the day.
I miss my family. I want to be home more.
Whatever it takes, this sacrifice stuff is over.
Get sustainable
I'm twice as capable as I was a year ago. It's like there are two of me in my position now.
I've stopped being a savior, now I'm a leader.
No more being a drudge. I've got my spirit back.
I've found my own asking voice. I'm okay with asking for money, so I raise more of it.
I'm getting good at setting limits and boundaries. I want to be able to say no every single time I need to say no.
I'm getting good at authentic negotiating (not the stuff in the movies). I'm learning how to bring people together around real needs. So my working relationships, both in my nonprofit and outside, are now 100 times better.
I know my strengths. I build on them. That's why I'm up to speed. I manage my limitations but I don't let them distract me or slow me down.
I've stopped listening to my inner critic. Really stopped. Yes, there are still some days when it clobbers me, but those days are rare enough that I don't worry about them.
I work strategically every day. We still do planning, but not the grand, formal plans that are DOA because the world has moved on while we were busy planning.
I'm learning the psychology and politics of how people behave in groups, so now I can fix problems and make magic happen.
I've recruited a Board that knows how to be on our team and focuses on contributing. No more critical parents, fussbudgets, or dead weights.
I put serious time into developing my staff, so everything I'm learning, they get to learn, too.
I'm starting to have moments of soaring, which are a little scary and a lot exhilarating.
Go soaring
I used to say I was doing really good, but now I'm doing really great.
I've had big ambitions from the start. And now, finally, I'm making the kind of difference I always dreamed of.
I've created a staff culture where everyone lives by the discipline of mission and loves it. We call forth the best in each other. We're the wind under each other's wings.
Funders consider us colleagues not supplicants. They come to us as often as we go to them.
Donors come to us, too. We blow their minds with what we do. They think we're cool and they want to know us.
Our light is shining. People can see who we are and what we're made of.
We're surrounded by so many kindred spirits we almost can't keep up with them. They're inspired by us so they get involved.
I'm so thankful for this life I have.
And once you've gotten to soaring, that doesn't mean the story's over, because there's no end to soaring. There are always new dimensions to discover. You get to keep reaching deeper and flying higher.
And now, here are the four pages which make up my OS constellation...
Source and spirit
This is where your leadership starts,
with what's deepest in your heart.
SACRIFICING
This hurts you and keeps on hurting you.
SUSTAINING
This grows you and keeps on growing you.
SOARING
This makes you exponentially more effective.
© 2008 Rich Snowdon
