The job of a leader has gotten much harder over the past year or so. Let’s face it, it’s relatively easy to get out in front of people and be positive and uplifting when things are going well and business is growing. Lately though, leaders have had to take the stage and deliver somber news and a dismal outlook Leaders who want to keep their organization strong during this period, though must still find a way to focus on a message of hope, possibilities and resolve. That’s what leaders do. That’s not to say that leaders need to pretend everything is rosy when it’s not or lose touch with the harsh realities that face their organization. But one of the biggest jobs any leader has is helping others see a way out, no matter how dark the situation looks. In 2003, McDonald’s posted a loss of $343 million and had suffered from consistent sales declines for over two years. The stock price had tumbled from the 30’s to below 13 in about ten months. Stock analyst Jim Kramer had this to say about the company “There can be no fixing of McDonald's because there is no McDonald's. The company itself can't control its franchises. The franchises used to be the source of so much growth and so much profit, but now the franchises can't…
I still learn about leadership every day. In this challenging economic climate I’m learning faster than ever and often from people who might not be considered traditional leaders. I’m learning from people who have lost their job. Their job represented the ability to feed their families, raise their kids the way they want, and achieve their own version of success. And now it’s gone. Unfortunately, most of us have had discussions with friends or family, recently where we’ve heard the story of a lost job. Right after we hear the part about how they lost their job we will hear one of two things. Either they will describe all of the obstacles that keep them from moving forward or they will talk about the opportunity they have to find a great new career and how they are working to make that happen. In these conversations I learn whether or not these people are demonstrating one of the critical qualities that sets those who merely have the potential to lead, apart from those who actually do. Resilience. Every time I walk away from a conversation that sets an example for how I can deal with my own challenges more effectively, I know I just learned from a leader. Every successful leader gets knocked off their feet occasionally…
I came across an article in Business Week online last week that I found amazingly refreshing. It was written by Shoshana Zubroff who was a professor at the Harvard Business School and taught in the MBA program there for 15 years. In the article she states: “I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, destabilized the world economy, and accelerated the demise of the 20th century capitalism…” Pretty bold statement. I was struck by the admission that institutional learning, often believed to be teaching leaders how to be ahead of the game, was behind it. She goes on to say: “The old rules that most B-schools have preached were invented a century ago for supplying mass consumers with affordable goods and services. They are poorly suited to the values of today's new consumers, who want help to live their lives as they choose, with personal control, voice, and a practical sense of connection.” Zubroff then continues on to talk about the new rules that business leaders need to live by in this new economy and she has some great ideas about some of the changes leaders must make to adapt to the shifting marketplace. Here’s the point that I think gets…
I often get asked about what makes a great leader. I used to try and cover all of the aspects of leadership when answering that question, because leading others is a complex and dynamic art. Now I often just answer with a simple phrase: they lead themselves first.In most cases great leaders were leading themselves long before anyone put them in a position of leading others, that’s how they got there. The people who get promoted to leadership roles are the ones that become leaders long before someone gives them the title. There are many ways that people lead themselves but I’ve tried to capture the essence of what good self-leaders do in these four steps.Set the PaceDwight D. Eisenhower illustrated the art of leadership by placing a string on a table and saying “if you pull it, it will follow you anywhere but if you try to push it, it will go nowhere.” Leadership is about being in front and moving differently than others. It’s about deciding where you want to go and then going there with a sense of purpose. If you are sure of your goals and your destination and are moving toward them you are leading yourself in a way others will quickly notice. It’s impossible to lead from behind. Decide what’s most important to you and start…
You can't win if you are only thinking about your next move.
I can’t count the times I’ve heard the expression “survival mode” over the past year. It seems like every company struggling due to the recession moves into “survival mode” as if they physically relocate the entire organization to a place where thinking past next month's numbers will get you kicked off the island. After all, “if we don’t resort to survival mode now we may not be around for the long term”. The same thinking was around three years, five years and ten years ago and it sounded like “if we don’t make our growth numbers this quarter we may not be around for the long term”.Survival mode is not new. In fact, it’s the very kind of thinking that contributed greatly to us being in a recession in the first place. We just have a better excuse for it now that we can point to a reason for being myopic. There’s no question that in this economy businesses need to manage the bottom line, cut costs, rationalize their talent and make hard decisions. But there’s nothing about that list that businesses shouldn’t be doing on a daily basis. What’s dangerous about survival mode is the focus on the immediate future rather than the efforts to build a lasting sustainable business.Let me give you a real world example of two companies…
It’s been said before that leadership is not about having the right answers, it’s about asking the right questions. Many people hear that and picture the leaders thoughtfully posing deep, introspective questions of their followers. Asking questions that cause them to think differently and ultimately come to the right conclusions on their own about the decisions they need to make. That’s a great way to cause people to examine and be proactive about their decisions. What might be more important though, are the questions the leader is asking himself or herself.Every leader I’ve ever worked with who is getting great results and driving real meaningful change has been focused on his or her own behaviors and actions in additions to the actions of others. That often manifests itself in the questions that they ask themselves each day. There are many great questions that would cause leaders to think carefully about how they lead a team or an organization, here are three.1. What kind of culture am I supporting today and building tomorrow?Culture is one of the critical jobs of any leader and you either build it consciously or you end up fighting it in order to execute new strategies in the organization. The behaviors of leaders are largely responsible…
One of the toughest challenges I’ve faced in my years of working with leaders is that there are so many individuals who appear to be successful and yet they have spent much of their time using with fear, intimidation, and a draconian approach to managing others. There are far too many examples of people who lead the wrong way but seem to reap abundant rewards for doing so. Violence, even in an organizational sense, really is the quickest path to behavior change.Organizations often celebrate leaders who hit all of the numerical targets without taking a closer look at how they made that happen. Sometimes managers getting results by using a big stick are promoted to a larger role where they repeat the pattern they were rewarded for and continue to use techniques that are fast, easy and wrong to continue their rise to the top. Eventually, they get to a place where armed with only one tool and numerous enemies in the organization, they lose the ability to make things happen. Leaders who have been moved fast and don’t learn from their mistakes typically derail at some point because they become too controversial to promote further and they are no longer having success with their current team. Fear as a tool is fast, but it’s not sustainable. Over…
I was in a high level meeting at a huge company once when the leader in the room sent an assistant out to retrieve lunch. The executive had not eaten lunch yet and it was creeping into the afternoon hours so not all that uncommon. What happened next though, shocked me. When lunch was brought in, the executive was having a little difficulty eating the deli sandwich and so the assistant was summoned again, left with the sandwich, and returned with it cut into bite sized pieces. Did I really just watch a multi-million dollar a year executive have someone cut their food up for them? With a fully stocked pantry armed with sharp utensils just steps away?It’s not surprising that I don’t remember what else happened during the meeting, I’m sure the other participants don’t remember either, especially since it was a while back. The food-cutting incident however, became the stuff of legend. Everyone was buzzing after the meeting about how the behavior had shocked them as well but I can guarantee you that there were a few in the meeting who thought, “wow, I can't wait until I get to the level where someone cuts my food up for me”.I know the executive didn’t intend for the action to be interpreted that way but as a leader in a business, everything…
If you have ever wanted to upgrade the talent in your business, now is the time. There’s never been a better talent market and there are some highly skilled employees available that are looking to work in a place where they can make a difference. Under normal circumstances, these kinds of people are fully employed and you have to find and recruit them away from other companies. Right now they are out there actively looking for their next opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you are cutting back on your own staff, it’s still a time to see what’s available in the talent pool and make a few key hires. It may be possible in this market to find that one key leader who is going to help your company grow faster as the recession subsides. You can’t afford not to go look for people like that in this unique environment. Many big companies haven’t been careful about the talent that they let go in their efforts to cut costs quickly and drastically. Often they have made job cuts by looking at the org chart instead of the individual performance or the potential of the employee to contribute to the company. That means that some great talent has been caught up in the frenzy and is looking for a new start. The other phenomenon that I see happening…
I knew it would happen when I named the company 4th Gear Consulting. I get a lot of questions about the name and what it means and I enjoy answering them because it really is at the heart of what we are about. Many people assume that it’s about speed and while that’s certainly part of it, 4th gear is really about commitment.Potential for you as an individual is created by knowledge, skill and experience. Those three things determine how good you can be at any particular activity. You can get better by increasing those things but at this very moment, they represent your potential relative to any particular task. With a business, it’s about the collective knowledge, skill and experience of the people who make up the organization and who work to achieve the mission and goals of the company. The first three gears, knowledge, skill, and experience only create results however when the 4th gear, commitment, drives them. Billions of dollars are spent by businesses each year training people to develop more skills, teaching them more knowledge and developing programs and processes that increase their experience. The reality is though, that most businesses fall far short of using the potential that already exists within the people that make…