OS for Leaders
Every decision you make, and
Every action you take.
It's a set of coherent principles that work in concert. It's the DNA of your leadership.
I have a lot to say on this site about the relativity of how-tos. But I want to emphasize that not everything is relative. Core principles aren't. They're distinct from how-tos in that way.
For example, a key principle of the sustainable and soaring operating systems is that you always treat everyone with respect. How you enact that respect though can be very different depending on the individual and what they need in the moment...
Challenging Tema might be how you show her you believe in her.
Comforting Ted might be how you show him that you care about him.
Mentoring Teri might be how you show her how much it matters to you to have her on your team.
All of those things are ways of putting respect into action. And how you do each of those things will be brought to life by your personality and your talents and strengths.
So while how-tos are situational, underlying principles are steadfast.
But now let's look deeper into this idea of having a system, because it matters that you have a system that helps you instead of one that hurts you.
There are many leaders who have told me that they don't have an OS, but when they talk me through a typical week, it turns out they do have one. It's just not conscious.
And it turns out that being conscious of your OS, so you can change it or strengthen it as needed, is a key to being effective as a leader.
I think about nonprofit leadership in terms of three systems:
This hurts you and keeps on hurting you.
This grows you and keeps on growing you.
This makes you exponentially more effective,
and it's just the best kind of fun.
As I said on the home page, the point of this site is to help leaders...
Stop sacrificing,
Get sustainable, and
Go soaring.
And here's what's really cool...
Upgrading the OS of the organization is the way a leader takes her personal progress and turns it into progress for her whole team.
When I see leaders step into soaring, what I see is that they want everyone they work with to go soaring, too. They become more passionate than ever about this. That's because...
Sacrifice drags leaders down into resentment.
Soaring calls forth a leader's natural spirit of generosity.
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.
Leadership is a relational thing. Even when it doesn't look like it.
When a leader is lonely at the top, that doesn't mean the people at the bottom are happy. Quite the contrary. Usually everyone is in the same unhappy boat together. They just don't feel the togetherness of it, because they're mad, or scared, or judgmental.
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. That's what keeps you going. And the more progress your team makes, the deeper the partnership you can have with them.
So when I tell leaders, "I hope you'll put yourself first," I'm not encouraging selfishness, or isolated individuality, or rampant egoistic arrogance, or any other such things that would put the brakes on the kind of teamwork that's necessary to make social change happen.
Social change is social. And I believe that soaring leadership is also social. And has to be.
Putting yourself first, in the way I talk about it on this site, is absolutely a win-win kind of thing.
Your leadership practice
Just as you might have a spiritual practice, your operating system is your leadership practice.
And the difference it makes is tangible...
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.
Here's something else that can happen...
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 crossed over from sacrificing to sustaining, which was not easy. It took her from spring through summer and on into fall.
Halloween morning she called me to say, "In the process of changing my OS, 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!"
Sacrificial leadership brings with it the whole family of sacrificial problems. If you try to take them on one by one, they'll beat you because sacrificial behavior can't solve sacrificial problems.
The answer is to pull the rug out from under all those problems at once. Which means upgrading your OS, 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.
And speaking of productivity, 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.
What's in a name?
If
you decide to read through these 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, detail by 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, made himself at home, and then started having the time of his life.
When I list the three operating systems on this page they're in a nice, neat order. But real life is more complicated...
Some leaders start out vowing to be sustainable, but then get buried in so much work that they find themselves trapped in sacrifice.
Some leaders have true soaring moments, even though most of their day is spent in sacrifice.
Some leaders are mostly sustainable, but have one or two areas where they are still hanging on to sacrificial behavior.
Some leaders achieve soaring, but then a personal crisis knocks them all the way back to sacrifice.
Some leaders skip over sacrifice altogether, never even visit it, not even as a tourist, and just go straight to the fun of sustaining and soaring.
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."
So please don't take my categories as the final word on anything. Please use what you find here to make the decisions you need to make and take the actions you need to take.
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 miss my family. I want to be home more.
I want to be able to eat lunch in the middle of the day.
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 five pages which make up my OS constellation...
OS for leaders
The overview of the operating systems.
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
