The first foundation of effective leadership is clarity of purpose. Why are you doing what you do? This is in sharp contrast to what you are doing, which so much of the business day is focused on. What is the purpose of your work, stated clearly and in plain English (or appropriate language) in a way that allows your people to connect and buy-in.
Purpose is not mission or vision statements. It’s certainly not anything like the bafflegab most organizations put on those pretty plaques on the walls that state their mission or vision. “We strive to be a world-class provider of excellence in products, service and customer service for and an employer of choice for the best talent in the world.” That’s about as motivating as day-old pizza. Purpose is simple, plain English, and focused on how you serve and make a difference in the world.
Far too often when we initiate organizational change, we obsess with what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and who’s doing it. Org charts and job descriptions abound and we build structure after structure, like one band-aid over another to solve problems that our past fixes created.
How often do you step back to ask why you are doing the work you’re doing? What’s the difference that you’re making in the world? What is it you’re striving to become? Without that context you can often simply be moving deck chairs on the Titanic.
Clarity of purpose gives a focus and direction for all of your work. It also allows your people to connect at a fundamental, emotional level to what they’re doing. Human beings are driven by emotion, and to tap the full potential of your people, you have to engage them at an emotional level. You can micro-manage and whip them to excellence. They have to want to excel, and to do that, you have to give them a reason to do so – especially the younger generations who are driving our workplaces today.
Kodak went through tumultuous change over the past few decades. Most of what made their company thrive barely exists today. But they still live their core purpose – they make memories. No longer is it on film and with chemicals. But they still make memories.
What’s the core purpose of your organization? Of your department? Of your team?
Maybe you don’t have the answers. That’s good to admit that. It’s an amazing journey to start to discover this.
And here’s a radical thought if you don’t have an answer – what if you engaged your people in helping craft it?
In my last post I spoke of how my focus whenever I step into a leadership role is to do nothing. It’s far too easy as a leader to jump in when someone drops the ball. The challenge is growing your people to do what they’ve committed to, and a different approach is required to get there.
The foundation for this work comes from the systems approach I’ve developed based on a systems perspective from my friend and colleague, Michael Basch, one of the founding partners of FedEx and the creator of most of the systems that built their reputation for excellent service in their first decade. What I love about Mike’s frameworks is that they’re amazingly simple to grasp and yet so incredibly powerful. I’ve modified Mike’s original framework with elements from the Chaordic Design approach developed by Dee Hock, founder of Visa.
At the heart of this approach is the core purpose of the organization and the principles by which it lives that purpose. These feed into the goals that are set for each individual, the relevance of each goal and the feedback systems to show the progress.
What most managers do is focus on the actions that people take – either micro-managing them or jumping in to do it themselves when people don’t do what they commit to. That creates far more work for the manager and dis-engages everyone else. And that’s what sets managers apart from leaders.
In the next few articles I’ll explain how leaders focus on all the other elements of this systems framework and allow their people to take the actions they need to get the job done.
The leader’s job is not to do the work, but rather to ensure it gets done.
I’m attending a leadership summit for a professional association I belong to, where we bring together the natioanal board with the chapter presidents and president-elects from across the country. We were asked to share the most valuable leadership advice we had with other participants. My advice: Do nothing.
While this is a group of volunteer leaders, I think that advice is just as applicable in the ‘real’ world.
This is largeley an association of solopreneurs, and when someone on a volunteer board doesn’t do something, it’s often ‘easier’ for the president to jump in and do it himself or herself than to get the other person to fulfill their commitment – and I’ve seen this happen in the workplace time and time again.
Unfortunately, the problem with this is that you disengage your people, and teach them that they don’t have to fulfill their commitments. And you wind up taking on more and more work, burning yourself out. Not a good plan for the long term.
Whenever I take on a leadership role, my objective is to do nothing. My job is to engage and tap the passion of my people to create a plan of action and create a space where they can make a commitment. Then my job is to support, coach, needle, cajole, push, bribe, whack up-side the head and do whatever it takes to help them fulfill that commitment.
Is that more work? Yes, up front. But in the end they grow, they accomplish and they own the result. They do it all. I do nothing but focus, align and support.
The leader’s job is not to do, but rather to ensure that it is done.
There are foundational steps to get to that point, and I’ll touch on those in the next blog postings.
There has been a lot of criticism of the younger generations in the workforce, saying that they want to get out of work, that they have no work ethic. That’s not true. They’re simply not willing to work for work’s sake. They want meaningful work, as illustrated so eloquently in this video of Viktor Frankl, survivor of the Holocaust and author of Man’s Search for Meaning.
Memphis took on its mantle as the distribution center of America in a very short time and through a very deliberate strategy. Michael Basch, a founding partner of Federal Experess and one of the architechts of this tranformation tells us exactly how a small, dedicated team (r)evolutionized and transformed Memphis.
Leadership continues to evolve. First there was the autocrat, then the bureaucrat, and most recently there has been a lot of talk about the visionary or transformational leader. Now, with the massive turbulence in today’s society and organizations, we’re seeing the emergence of a new leadership style to navigate today’s complexity.
Over 70% of most major change initiatives fail because they treat organizational change as a mechanical change to implement, and forget the ‘people’ side of the equation. It requires time and work to build buy-in and commitment to change.
In this week’s Leadership180.Net, Ravi Tangri introduces Chrysalis’ ‘Go-No-Go’ framework for building buy-in and commitment to change.
One of the greatest challenges today is how to engage multiple stakeholders and/or large numbers of stakeholders in collectively crafting a way forward. How do you allow each person to be heard and yet craft a strategy to move forward in a reasonably timely fashion.
Traditional engagement methods fall short, but there is a process that allows every voice to be heard and that enables groups of tens, hundreds or even thousands of people to swiftly tap their collective wisdom and collective find a way forward. This process is the World Cafe.
How can you expect your people to respect you as a leader if you don’t respect them? During my Leadership180.Net interview with Avinash Menon of the Ritz-Carlton, I asked Avinash what one principle made the leadership approach of the Ritz-Carlton so effective, and his response was clear – respect. That is the foundation upon which their leadership – and their phenomenal service culture – is built. And yet, how often does respect show up as a leadership competency?
Far too often, the leader is seen as someone who is ‘above’ and apart from his or her followers. Respect is expected because of his/her position and respect given is often little more than lip service. Now, think of your own experiences. If someone doesn’t show respect to you, what is your natural response? Is it to fawn over them with adulation and respect for them? Not often.
In today’s world, where one leader cannot have all the information needed – and thus needs to engage all the other players in co-creating the way forward – respect is a fundamental requirement for leaders. If you are going to engage others, you have to start from a place of respect, not command.
While delivering a leadership program at the Ritz Carlton in Doha I had the opportunity to interview Avinash Menon, the Director of Human Resources to dive deeper into how their leadership shapes their service culture.
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