We have two boys in my family, 6 and 3 as I write this. As a result, I spend a lot more time watching kid’s shows than a man my age ought to. The current lineup on continuous repeat in my house is a show on Disney+ called The Lion Guard. 

I'll provide a quick primer below for those not familiar with the show. If you have seen it, I'll assume your kids are like mine, which means you've seen it HUNDREDS of times, and you can skip the rest of this paragraph. The Lion Guard is a spinoff of the movie The Lion King. In the show, Simba has a son named Kion, who leads a group of animals known as the Lion Guard. The Guard defends the Pridelands from all manner of threats and consists of Kion, a honey badger, a cheetah, an egret, and a hippo named Beshte (besh-tee). I mention Beshte because he'll be the focus of the rest of this post. The other members aren't as crucial for this story, but you can read all about the whole gang here.

In Season 3, Episode 14, the Lion Guard goes on a trip to visit a group of animals outside the Pridelands known as the "Night Pride" who defend the "Tree of Life." Beshte decides to take advantage of some downtime in his Guard duties to tour the area and observe some new types of animals that he's never seen before. Along the way, he not only gets to see some unfamiliar animals, but he also proceeds to wreck their habitats in the process. He destroys the penguins' ice slide, brings down a rock slide on top of some mountain goats, and creates a mini-tsunami in a pond that causes problems for a couple of shrews. It's not that Beshte is a bad guy, he's just a big ol' lovable hippo that doesn't realize the damage a guy his size can do if he's not careful enough. 

Beshte also has a catchphrase. "poa," which I believe means "cool" based on context clues and a few of the Lion Guard fan sites like the one on Fandom. Say it in your best 80's movie surfer voice, and you'll get the idea. As an expert on the show, I can tell you that Beshte thinks just about everything is "poa." So naturally, as Beshte walks around checking out all the new animals that he's never met before, when he sees them do something cool, he says "poa" and moves on. He's oblivious to the damage he's causing along the way at this point, he's just a hippo being a hippo. 

Of course, from the perspective of the animals that have never met Beshte before, things look a little different. A strange, powerful creature has entered their lives, wrecked a bunch of stuff, and walked away. Surely this is a formidable creature to be feared and respected. 

Remember, the "Night Pride" is the group of protectors in this area. Not sure what to do about this new threat, each of Beshte's victims heads over to let the Night Pride to report what's happening. Along the way, the penguins, mountain goats, and shrews run into each other and exchange tales of their recent harrowing experiences. The penguins have already created a name for Beshte at this point, "Poa The Destroyer." There's even, in typical Disney fashion, a catchy tune they invent to tell the tale. I’ve embedded it below for your viewing and listening pleasure. As you're watching the video, remember, the hippo they're talking about is literally the most helpful, kindest animal on the entire show.

Ultimately, the Night Pride figures out that they're talking about Beshte, arranges a chat between the big guy and the animals, and everything works out. At one point, Beshte even ends up saving the life of the most vocal of the penguins and earns a friend for life and an ally in clearing his name. 

So what does all this have to do with leadership? Watching this episode with my kids, it occurred to me that it's a great analogy to what we see with executive leaders in the workplace. For starters, there's the term HiPPO which stands for Highest Paid Person's Opinion. Since Beshte is a hippo on the show, this one was just staring me in the face. 

The term HiPPO refers to the phenomenon that occurs when someone with a high ranking position in the company applies command and control thinking to decision making. These leaders are often in positions of power because they've been successful in their careers, and therefore believe they have the experience to make the right decisions. They are typically highly placed in the organization, so anything they say carries additional weight. Most people in the organization are afraid even to question them. This can lead to some pretty bad results like this one.

One executive I worked with for several years, we'll call him Paul, was deeply committed to business agility and lean/agile principles. He was also determined to create a thriving environment for digital transformation in his organization. He did Gemba Walks. He talked about business agility all the time. He was wholly bought into the idea of decentralized decision making and was vocal about it to everyone in the organization. He invested in agile transformation consulting and lean/agile leadership coaching for the organization. Despite this, when he would share an opinion on a topic under discussion, it would often be interpreted as an organizational imperative that sent large groups of people off to make it a reality. 

Once, while I was there for OKR consulting (Objectives and Key Results), he told his direct reports that he really wanted them to challenge themselves when creating their OKRs. This is standard fare for OKRs, they should be aspirational and challenging, though they should also be realistic. 

While coaching his direct reports on writing OKRs I realized many of them had gone overboard and set impossible targets for their groups. They were deeply demoralized as a result, but they refused to change their OKRs. When I sat down with them to understand why I discovered many of them had a different interpretation of Paul's comment than I did. They interpreted the comment to mean that Paul expected them to be incredibly aggressive in their targets. Because he was the boss, none of them were willing to challenge him even though they all knew that what they'd done didn't align with the intent of the OKR model. Granted, Paul was less than a year into the job and there was some cultural baggage at this company that contributed to the problem. Still, Paul had been there long enough to demonstrate that he had a different style of leadership and expected people to question him. When I told Paul, he was shocked. “That’s not at all what I meant!”, he said. Paul is not someone I would characterize as a HiPPO style leader, but that mental model is so embedded in the corporate culture that his team still assumed it applied to him.

It didn't matter. Paul's direct reports were so ingrained in the idea that "the boss is always right" that they weren't about to challenge him. The OKR implementation was a significant initiative at the company that Paul was pushing, and they needed to go with the flow to protect themselves and their careers. Just like our friend Beshte, Paul had no idea the effect his actions were having, and it took some effort for us to clarify his intent. 

As a lean/agile leader or executive, it's crucial that you are aware of this phenomenon and actively work to mitigate its impact. Realize that every word you speak to the people reporting to you carries enormous weight beyond what you might intend. This awareness is especially true for leaders new to their roles. Here are a few tactics you can use to create an environment where employees feel comfortable challenging your decisions. 

1. Be mindful of how your words and actions affect your team. A basic level of awareness is necessary, as I described above, but you need to go further. Make it a point to actively observe how your reports respond to your comments and the organizational activity that gets generated as a result.

2. Create psychological safety in your team. There have been numerous articles on how to do this over the years, so I won't go into detail here. This article is a good starting point.

3. Stop making decisions. Reserve the critical decisions for yourself and refuse to make others. Force your people to decide, then support the choices they make as a result. David Marquette tells a great story of how he employed this technique as a commander on a nuclear submarine. If he can do it there, you can do it in your organization. Check out the video below to hear this message from David himself.

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