Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

The External Push

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“I am fairly confident,” Marissa supplied. “I know what I want. I have a cause, rather a cause that has me, that I care deeply about. I think I have what it takes.”

“All necessary, but not sufficient,” I replied.

“What am I missing?” she asked.

“You think that, to be successful in your endeavor, all that is required is an internal drive, perhaps a singular focus toward that goal. But, success is more complicated than that. There is not a singular reason, but a multitude of complex elements and events that will determine the outcome. And, you will likely have to respond to most of them in one way or another. You think you have the internal fortitude to meet the challenge. But you will wake up one morning, and not be in the mood. Some one thing will look too difficult. You will go inside and come up empty. All may look lost. In addition to your internal toughness, you must surround yourself with people who will support your journey, who will listen to your story, encourage your spirit and not allow you to falter. This is your inner circle, who you go to for counsel and guidance when what is inside you, is not enough. They will not let you off the hook for the sake of a lame excuse, a bit of trouble or something unforeseen. Look around you. Who are you holding hands with?  You will need them.”

Breakfast for Your Head

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You and I can talk. But, the success of your organization will not depend on our discussion. It will depend on you. It will depend on your thoughts, the way you think and how you think, perhaps fueled by a cup of Natural Mushroom Coffee to enhance clarity and focus.

You can wake up in the morning and feed your brain (breakfast for your head) a buffet of morning news shows curated to lead your thoughts in a well defined prescribed manner, including persuasion to take a drug to lose weight. Or you could spend a few minutes in silent meditation, connecting to those things closest to your own intentions.

You could brace yourself for the onslaught of inquiries, emails, chatter in the coffee room. Or you could think about your next small steps to those things most important to what you want to accomplish.

You could attend a mindless meeting whose agenda was long ago discarded in favor of the update. Or you could sketch out the purpose for that meeting and what you wish to accomplish, before sitting down. When you sit down, you either give permission to others to spend your time for you, or you proceed with your sketched out intentions, your agenda.

How do you start your morning? It depends on the way you think.

Your Contribution

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The competent individual has a firm sense of the capability they possess and capability beyond. Periods of doubt creep in, but that leaves room for growth and maturity. Periods of doubt are painful, as the individual moves from an ordered world to one where there is doubt.

In this chasm, most of the problems we face are self-inflicted. Looking at any problem we encounter, there are the following characteristics. The problem. The problem’s impact. The cause of the problem. The context. And, then, there is you.

You (and we, because I have the same problems as you) are part of the problem. You have made contribution to the problem and its impact. You may be the cause of the problem. If you don’t face your contribution, any solution will leave lingering conditions for the problem to resurface, perhaps uglier than before.

It is always easier to deal with an external problem out there, than an internal problem closer to your heart.

Constructive Discontent

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Too much chaos and we breed internal anxiety. Too much order and we breed boredom. We do not have to tear the world asunder to make improvements. Some improvements will be incremental, hardly noticeable. Some improvements may lead to leaps of understanding requiring a brain scramble.

The aim of lean, six sigma, theory of constraints is continuous improvement. How we think about improvement requires a state of constructive discontent. I describe this as a mental state, it’s a framework that is constant. It’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach. It is discontent, but not anxiety, because it is constructive.

Yes, we achieved the goal, now what?

Competence Distorted

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How we fool ourselves. It’s not a question, it’s an observation. Each of us has a sense of our own competence. And, we have a version we keep tucked inside and a version we portray to the world. Woe to the person whose versions get too far apart.

Others can listen to your version of competence and in short order observe the difference in your story and reality. They may accept a slight space of difference, chalk it up to braggadocios. Or are willing to keep quiet about the distortion as a quid pro quo to their own sense of exaggerated competence.

The competent individual knows exactly what they are capable of and where they underperform or fail. The competent individual needs no distortion because their underperformance is not permanent. Each day, they make moves toward mastery, inch by inch, with a firm grasp of capability in hand, a fixed vision of the goal and the willingness to proceed in the face of failure. The competent individual, most importantly, possesses the competence of learning.

The competent organization, most importantly, possesses the competence of a learning organization.

Dimensions of Organizational Competence

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We watch sports on television to give us meaning. It’s an odd statement. Why do the Olympics attract such a large audience? We do not gather around our screens to witness mediocre performance. We can do that at our local park, where there are no throngs of spectators. Without competence, life is half-hearted. Competence is the spark that drives full throated experience.

Individual competence is a delight to watch. It is about repetition, training, discipline. Team performance brings new dimensions of coordination, sacrifice, humility, selflessness, celebration. Those are the elements of team competence, the competent organization.

Teams and Competence

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What does it mean to be a team player? This is not cliché. Most companies eventually find a great salesperson (or other important role) who makes rain, head and shoulders above the others, but simultaneously creates havoc within the team. They are a great individual performer, given leeway, slack, permission to dance around the rules, yet in the end are destructive to the organization.

You cannot build an organization solely focused on individual performers. The way the team works together becomes more important than any individual on the team. Yes, you need Steph Curry to drain a shot from downtown, but someone has to inbound and pass him the ball.

Building a competent organization goes beyond individual competence.

Individual performers have their own vision of the way the world works and how they intend to make their mark on the world. How do you capture that attention to get those individuals to work as a team? A dramatic shift occurs when we invert our understanding how goals drive behavior. It is not that a person has a goal, but that a goal has the person. It is not that the team has a goal, but that the goal has the team. It attracts the team, pulls them together in coordinated synchronicity.

We give short shrift to mission statements, vision statements, with flowery language. What is a marriage if it is only two individual performers under the same roof? Its mission must be more or the marriage will underperform. What is an organization if it is only a set of individual performers collected in the same room? Its mission must be more or the organization will underperform.

Without an ironclad focus, it will never become a competent organization. This is not a goal the team has. This is a goal that has the team.

Out Loud

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Much in your life will be determined by how you think and what you think about. Unfortunately, most people don’t think with much intention related to what they think about, and have little discipline about how they think. Words are the way we organize what we think. If you don’t know what you think, translate it into words, meaning, talk it out, talk it out loud.

When you talk your thoughts out loud, you will discover what you think and how you think. Sometimes, when you talk out loud, you will find your thoughts brilliant. Other times, when you talk out loud, you will discover the awful truth of the defect in your thinking.
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Watch Tom Foster on Chris Comeaux’s Anatomy of Leadership.

Are You Lucky?

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In 1995, Red Scott asked me if I was lucky. “Luckier than most,” I said.

Call it luck, call it fate, call it inevitable. Luck happens, good luck and bad luck. The real question, will you be prepared to handle luck when it comes your way, or will you squander it because you were not ready?  You cannot manage luck, you can only manage yourself in relation to luck.

Some people handle luck with ease, effortlessly navigating the twists and turns. It wasn’t because they were lucky. It was because they were prepared. Preparedness goes hand in hand with competence.

Individual Performance, Not Enough

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In the beginning, there was a Founder. Who had an idea to start a company. Perhaps it was a hobby. Perhaps it should have stayed a hobby, but, then that wouldn’t make for a very good story.

There was work to be done, and it was the Founder who was doing the work, there was no one else. And, there was work left over, so the Founder hired some people, mostly friends and family to help out. Each of these people contributed according to their own ability, work organized around each of their talents. And, there was still work left over.

At some point the Founder realized work could no longer be organized around the people. The people had to be organized around the work. Roles emerged, specialized roles for people to play. Individually there were good performers and poor performers, but individual good performance does not necessarily translate into organizational performance. Not only do people have to be effective in their individual roles, but those roles have to work together to create a competent organization.

Organizational structure is simply the way we define the working relationships between roles. Individual high performance is not enough, we have to look at the way people work together.
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Watch Tom Foster on Chris Comeaux’s Anatomy of Leadership.