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Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 6 of 6

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Leadership Role #5: Managing the Action Cycle

When making requests of team members, a leader must set clear expectations and conditions of satisfaction. This allows employees to request the resources they need to fulfill their project commitments. It is then the leader’s responsibility to ensure that these resources (e.g., budget, staffing, and time) are made available.

Poor communication of expectations is a frequent source of breakdown in leadership. When a leader fails to set explicit conditions of satisfaction for a request, his staff may be uncertain about what is required of them. In turn, they will likely fail to make clear requests for resources. If, as a result, the project fails, each side is likely to blame the other, producing a mood of distrust and resentment.

[wcm_restrict]To develop harmony within an organization, leaders must ensure that actions are properly coordinated between different individuals. This points to a key difference between leaders and managers. Management means coordinating the actions of many individuals in order to deliver on the conditions of satisfaction set by the leader. Though leaders often manage certain aspects of teams and projects, when a leader delegates authority, the competence of management is exercised not by the leader but by someone else. When this happens, leaders and managers appear as two different roles in an organization, with different domains of concerns.

Despite the fact that these two roles – leadership and management – can be mutually exclusive, leaders are ultimately responsible for the actions of the whole organization. After all, leaders are responsible for delegating authority, so the results produced by those they empower can ultimately be attributed to them. Final responsibility over the organization’s actions is never delegated.

The most effective tool for this aspect of leadership and management is what we have termed the Action Cycle. This is a body of work that is designed to enable the effective communication, coordination, and collaboration that are the essential competencies of today’s business world. Too much of what we call ‘modern management practices’ are relics of the bygone industrial era. The common wisdom still promotes management as supervision and leadership that gives orders. That worked during the industrial era. It simply doesn’t today.

Today the value generators in any organization are what we call Coordination Workers. These are people who are educated, agile, mobile, and creative. They are problem solvers who generate value through effective coordination with each other. The historical practice of management was designed to be effective with people who were uneducated, unsophisticated, and working out of survival. Coordination workers are not driven by survival; they look for autonomy, mastery, and meaning. And they don’t respond well to management as supervision.

As such, we find a new kind of waste in today’s business – coordination waste. It is much more dangerous than industrial-era wastes, because unlike scrap, inventory, and wasted time and motion, you can’t see coordination waste. Lack of innovation, poor listening skills, poor meeting practices, and miscommunication and miscoordination all produce vast amounts of waste, and none of the historical measures of management can detect them.

The action cycle provides a universal method for minimizing these wastes as it is designed to enable coordination and collaboration while driving wastes out of the organization. Leaders of today and tomorrow need to learn the practices of today and tomorrow and set aside those of yesterday.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 5 of 6

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Leadership Role #4: Building Followership

Leaders require followers who are committed to achieving the mission – ideally people who believe in both the vision and the leader and who want to be there. To create such a devoted followership, leaders must remember that they are also followers – not only in the sense of supporting others’ missions but also through subordinating their own interests for the sake of serving their teams and organizations.

We live in an era when downsizing, increased work hours, ceaseless pressure for higher profits, internal competitiveness, and similarly unpleasant factors have produced a toxic brew of resentment, resistance to change, and self-serving political maneuvering on the part of workers at all levels, and the cost is significant. Projects are abandoned or fail to achieve their objectives; employees are unwilling to embrace changes in business culture; self-interest takes precedence over the best interests of the organization as a whole; and so forth. This trend can only be reversed when leaders take their responsibility to serve those who support them seriously.

One area of particular importance is career. Organizations provide a framework of stability for their employees. Thus, great leaders create environments in which ambition naturally arises and flourishes. There are several ways to do this:

1. Declare vision that constitutes a game worth playing – one that inspires people to rally around it and makes them feel as though their contributions to the overall mission somehow make the world better.

[wcm_restrict]2. Provide opportunities to grow. Leaders cannot promise permanent employment, but they can promise satisfying work and opportunities to develop skills and competencies that will benefit the company and serve the employees throughout their careers. In today’s business world, learning is a constant requirement, so great leaders ensure that their people are continuously provided with new experiences and learning opportunities.

3. Reward effort fairly. Employees are encouraged when they see that promotion and salary increases are given to recognize genuine effort and achievement, rather than as a result of favoritism or political maneuvering.

4. Delegate authority and responsibility. Great leaders recognize talent and potential in their employees and, based on this understanding, they delegate responsibilities to those they believe are capable of meeting the challenges. In doing so, leaders not only provide their team members with new opportunities; they also expand their own power base and capacity for action.

5. Be accountable. Though effective leaders delegate tasks and responsibilities, they ultimately take responsibility for all the actions of their teams – including hiring and firing personnel, making contracts, and achieving or failing to achieve objectives – as well as the results of those actions, good or bad.

6. Pay it forward. One of the hallmarks of a great leader is the ability to develop other great leaders. Authentic leaders are not threatened by the emergence of new leadership in their organizations. Instead they cultivate it, channel it, and consider it a sign of their own effectiveness.

7. Act consistently with declarations. Followers typically assess how far a leader’s commitment to the vision and mission goes by observing the way she acts. In other words, to generate and sustain a mood of mutual trust and respect, a leader must ‘walk the walk,’ not just ‘talk the talk.’

8. Provide timely feedback. Few things are more frustrating than having one’s efforts assessed negatively at the end of a long, arduous project. Team members need feedback on their performance at regular intervals. This doesn’t mean a leader should micromanage but rather provide timely assessments of a performer’s alignment with strategic direction.

9. Remain constant in support. When a leader’s support appears to be arbitrarily bestowed, when it wavers in hard times, or worst of all, when it seems to have been removed under the pressure of organizational politics, employees quickly become jaded and discontented. On the other hand, mutual loyalty builds on itself, producing a positive spiral that can produce extraordinary results.

Leaders need loyal followers, which means they must also be loyal to those who serve them and treat their teams like the valuable resources they are. Those who do so find themselves surrounded by people who want to help them fulfill their visions. And nothing is more powerful than a team that truly believes in not only the mission, but also in the leader.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 4 of 6

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Leadership Role #3: Making Alliances

In today’s fractured, highly competitive, information-driven business world, collaboration is the name of the game. Therefore, an important competency leaders must possess is the ability to make smart, strategic alliances. Alliances open up new possibilities, creating new conditions and resources that allow us to play games we could not play before.

An alliance is made when two players agree to support each other while also retaining their autonomy for independent action. Mergers do not count as alliances, because in a true alliance players must keep their autonomy while working toward common goals.

[wcm_restrict]Alliances are usually based on the players’ assessment that by supporting one another, each player can increase his particular capacities for action. Despite the fact that players may need to make concessions or face some costs (i.e., a shared profit margin), they believe they will ultimately increase their power position within the game, or that they will lose less than they would working alone.

Alliances are built on trust – the belief that both parties will fulfill their promises to support each other (whatever this means for them). Thus a fundamental competence for leaders is the capacity to build and maintain trust with allies.

It is important here to be clear about our interpretation of trust. In the current common sense, trust is too often viewed as a feeling or a thing, and neither of these definitions is particularly powerful. In our interpretation, trust is an assessment that one makes when being promised something. We assess the other person’s sincerity, competence, and reliability. This is an operational view of trust and enables a host of actions that aren’t possible if one gets stuck in the traditional, moralistic view of trust.

When leaders can instill this type of trust in others, know how to have the conversations that rebuild trust when it inevitably breaks down, and create consistent practices for sustaining trust, they are able to build strong alliances that make both organizations more successful.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 3 of 6

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Leadership Role #2: Declaring a Mission

By articulating a vision, a leader opens up certain possible paths to the future while closing others. Using our computer industry example, if software is what will be profitable, then it makes little sense to shift resources into hardware production. Apple also made this mistake, and until the advent of the iPod, the company was relegated to being a small player in a vast market.

Out of a vision, a leader can declare a mission, or in other words, a ‘game.’ His team commits to playing a game that will create the organization’s future. A vision, then, is about the world and the impact we aim to produce, whereas a mission is a declaration of how we intend to position ourselves in this world and the results we are committed to achieving.

In declaring a mission, a leader is requesting that the organization align its actions behind certain strategic roles and objectives. The first requirement for creating a powerful and coherent mission is to ensure these roles and objectives are based on an explicitly stated vision, or interpretation of the world. Lacking this, a mission may degenerate into little more than a cheerleading slogan.

[wcm_restrict]Apple provides us a good example of both sides of this relationship. Steve Jobs famously declared that Apple’s vision was to “create insanely great products.” Few would disagree that Apple has done so, but we can make a strong case that this vision was in danger of never being realized as the mission was too narrow for some time. For years Apple focused on the PC market, and while their products may have been “insanely great,” they never gained more than a minor share of the market. When they expanded their mission to making “insanely great” products for the consumer electronics market and introduced the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, they were able to dominate in these areas and become a global powerhouse.

As we all know, Apple’s historical rival has been Microsoft. Here Bill Gates was very clear. The vision of Microsoft was to put a PC on every desktop, and the mission was to supply the universal software that would enable these PCs to connect across the planet. By and large Microsoft has accomplished their mission and in so doing realized their vision. We could make the case that the company is now languishing as they have no new vision, save perhaps maintaining market position – which isn’t all that exciting.

Vision and mission are interdependent: A mission without a vision is blind, while a vision without an accompanying mission can never be realized.

Much of what has already been said about articulating a vision is equally relevant to formulating a mission. To be effective in determining a business organization’s activities, a mission needs to:

  • Be stated in terms of a clear framework of distinctions.
  • Constitute a coherent story about the future.
  • Be grounded not only in a strong vision but also in a set of assessments and assertions about the organization’s ability to carry out the mission.
  • Evoke moods of ambition and willing cooperation (meaning it represents an interesting and rewarding game for the participants to play).

Only once a vision and mission are clearly articulated, communicated across the organization, and embraced by the team can a leader begin to take the action necessary to achieve the mission and make the vision a reality.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 2 of 6

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Leadership Role #1: Reading the World and Creating a Vision

No business is an island. Each organization exists within a rich and ever-evolving set of social, economic, political, cultural, and institutional environments. To a large degree, an organization’s success depends on how well it positions itself in the world. Therefore, one of the most important competencies of leadership is the ability to read the world. This means a leader must be well informed about emerging trends and developments in multiple areas that affect the business.

Grounded in his or her interpretation of where things appear to be headed, an effective leader creates a vision for the organization’s competitive strategy – paving the way for long-term competitive domination.

The capacity to create a powerful vision requires several distinct competencies:

[wcm_restrict]1. Observing the world within an effective framework of distinctions

The world sometimes seems to be simply an assemblage of facts, and we succumb to the illusion that with sufficient objective analysis, we can arrive at an accurate understanding of it. Experience tells us, however, that the world appears differently to different observers. We interpret the world according to the framework of distinctions within which we view it. Thus, two leaders operating with different sets of distinctions may come to widely varying interpretations of the future based on the same factual evidence.

2. Creating a coherent narrative

Making sense of the world requires more than a simple set of facts or distinctions. Understanding depends on coherence, or how things come together in our minds.
Our tendency as human beings is to create coherence in the form of stories or narratives. Business organizations also create stories about the world and use those stories to create business strategies. For example, in the ‘70s, IBM was convinced that the real profits in the personal-computer (PC) market would come from the manufacture of hardware. Bill Gates had a different story. Taking the same set of facts available to IBM, he constructed a vastly different narrative anticipating that technological advances would continuously drive down the cost of hardware. This meant the value to consumers, and therefore the profits, would come from software. Both IBM and Microsoft had the same information and data, but they created different interpretations about what these facts signified for the future of the industry. History has shown that Gates’ story – the way he made sense of what he saw – was the more powerful one, clearing the way for Microsoft to become one of the fastest-growing, most profitable companies of the century.

3. Grounding with rigor

A story about the world is a coherent interpretation based on a series of claims, and these can be more or less well grounded. For example, Gates could have found partial grounding for his claim in Moore’s Law (which says the price/performance ratio for microchips doubles roughly every two years, thereby lowering computing costs). The more rigorously grounded the claims that constitute a story, the more effective that story is likely to prove. This is where traditional business analysis tools can be useful, providing a wealth of factual assertions and ways to validate a given interpretation of current and future trends.

4. Evoking a Mood

Part of a story’s power lies in the moods it evokes in those whose lives are connected to it. An interpretation that prompts enthusiasm, ambition, and energy is likely to produce more commitment than one that triggers a degree of anxiety. The moods a story evokes are closely connected with the paths of action they open. The more these paths effectively address the concerns of participants, the more positive the moods prompted by the story.

Of all the competencies a great leader must have or develop, learning to read the world and produce a powerful interpretation of the future is perhaps the most fundamental and important because it provides a foundation for all the others.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential ProjectChris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.