Writing is funny; sometimes a second writing allows you to incorporate new ideas and reasoning. Other times, however, you find that what was written years ago is still valid and only needs a bit of minor editing.

When I poke around the more than 4000 posts I’ve written I’m bound to find some that are embarrassing, but I also find others with information as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

When I decided to write 2018’s first post about leadership I realized that I had already said what I wanted to say nearly eight years ago in a two-part post.

Here they are.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Leadership Is Fertilizer

To thrive in today’s world companies need to constantly innovate; innovation requires initiative; initiative is another word for leadership.

Because initiative and leadership are synonymous, leadership needs to be pushed out of the corner office and spread throughout the organization.

Doing so will encourage growth, creativity and innovation.

If leadership is the fertilizer then culture is the water, without which nothing will grow, and people are the seeds from which ideas come.

By spreading leadership evenly through out your company garden and watering regularly, leaving no area unfertilized or dry patches in which a seed are stunted or die, you assure yourself a bountiful harvest that will be the envy of your competitors.

Composted Leadership

Fertilizer is created in a lab. with scientists controlling which chemicals are used and in what amount. The formula is then mass produced a factory.

Anyone who gardens knows that there are a multitude of brands that produce different fertilizers, some considered “general purpose,” but most with specific formulas to accomplish specific goals, including forcing growth.

Experts say compost is a better choice.

Compost is natural, produced when multiple kinds of organic matter are brought together and left to decompose with the aid of a variety of organisms.

The result is an incredibly rich material that produces sustainable results without damaging the environment.

Leadership is similar.

You have the kind that is produced in colleges and MBA programs, learned in a sterile environment, with ingredients that parallel the thinking of selected experts’ mindsets and attitudes.

Thus, the student is indoctrinated in a set of specifics and is often prejudiced against anything that falls outside those boundaries.

Leadership learned through doing—taking the initiative and accepting the risk of failure—is different. It combines a variety of experiences, good, bad and indifferent, and adds a variety of organisms in the form of the varied humans that populate the organization.

The effect of those organisms on the experiences of individual initiative produces a deeper, richer, more flexible form of leadership.

Chemical fertilizer needs to be applied again and again as it wears out.

Compost mixes with and enriches the soil itself, so that the more you add the better the growth medium.

In which do you want to plant your people?

Image credit: Oregon State University

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

This one reminds us that there are as many cultures as there are bosses/managers/supervisors/team leaders in the company. All existing, for better or worse, under the umbrella of the company’s official culture. Read other Golden Oldies here

“That culture is like the air we breathe or the water that fish swim in. It has the potential, for better or worse, to affect everybody in the same way.” –Dr. Linda H. Pololi, a senior scientist at Brandeis University

Dr. Pololi was talking about the culture in academic medicine negatively affecting men as well as women, although the women’s situation has a higher profile.

While the information in the article is interesting, as well as unexpected in part, it’s her comment at the end on which I want to focus.

As a manager you set the culture of your own group; it may closely resemble your company’s culture or may be wildly divergent.

The divergence is not always a bad thing—many managers have created great cultures in the midst of toxic ones.

By the same token, toxic mini cultures have been propagated within good company cultures by managers who believe that approach is the best way to manage.

Companies are much like gardens and the cultures within its main culture are what grow therein.

If you equate good culture to flowers and bad culture to weeds the problem becomes obvious.

Flowers are fragile and require more thought, attention and cultivation for them to spread.

However, with no effort on the part of the gardener, weeds spread quickly and if ignored will take over the garden.

There is an anonymous poem that I do my best to emulate throughout my life,

Your mind is a garden,
Your thoughts are the seeds,
You can grow flowers or
You can grow weeds.

With a bit of tweaking you can use it for your company,

Your company is a garden,
Your cultures are seeds,
You can grow flowers or
You can grow weeds.

It’s always a choice, but this choice will affect your employees, customers, vendors and investors.

Be sure to choose consciously, wisely and well.

Flickr image credit: William Murphy

How do you get culture-blind managers to wake up to its importance?

How do you get them to understand that just as there is no “I” in team there is no “I” in leader and that if they insist on capitalizing the “I” in leadership it will change to leadershIt?

In other words is there a way to motivate managers to change their MAP if the “I” is a function of inexperience or ignorance as opposed to entitlement and willfulness?

A useful 2×4 to accomplish this is vested self-interest (VSI) as manifested in the MyCFF mantra so popular today—my compensation, my career path, my future.

It is amazing how much a person is willing to change when those changes further their own goals—even as far as changing “I” to “i.”

Click vested self-interest for how-to details.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/3000885176/

What does the boss really contribute to her organization?

The culture; it’s the boss’ MAP that forms and shapes the culture for her organization.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a mom and pop operation, startup or global giant; whether the company has two, two thousand or twenty thousand employees; whether the boss is called owner, founder, president or CEO.

Cultural ideas can’t percolate up from the ranks without a top boss who enables the bottom-up culture in the first place, as well as providing the fertilizer that allows ideas to bloom.

It’s not enough to announce the cultural attributes in which you believe, such as no politics, and then ignore political actions because you believe that your senior staff are adults and won’t engage in behavior that goes unrewarded.

Even those who manage culture by benign neglect must see to it that there are repercussions for actions that flaunt the corporate culture just as there are for actions that violate legal issues such as harassment.

And all this is just as true for the individual subcultures that establish themselves around every manager in the company all the way down through team leader.

Creating and caring for the culture should be written into every manager’s job description at every level.

If that seems a bit extreme, keep in mind that study after study has proven that culture affects productivity, engagement, innovation and retention.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akumar/3180900835/

After considering my recent views on compost as it applies to leadership and culture I want to add another for you to ponder this weekend.

It’s extremely short and I hope you will add your thoughts to my idea.

Life is compost.

You are the composting machine.

From birth to death a myriad of learning and experiences come your way.

The end result is a rich mixture of ideas, attitudes and actions and even a bit of wisdom if the worms and bacteria are especially effective.

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: Bruce McAdam on Wikipedia Commons

Click to see a guaranteed loss for all of us

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Last Monday and Tuesday I hit a nerve when I described leadership as fertilizer and went on to say that the composted kind was better than that produced in a lab.

So today I went looking for good quotes about fertilizer. I only found two really good ones, especially the one from Rick Pitino

Since there aren’t more, I thought I’d invite you to make up you own. Read the posts (if you haven’t already) and share your fertilizer quotes in comments.

“Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.” –Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making “mistakes.” –Rick Pitino

“Spreading fertilizer on others juices your own growth.” –Miki

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: iChaz on flickr

Continuing with more thoughts on yesterday’s post Leadership Is Fertilizer.

Fertilizer is produced in a lab with scientists controlling which chemicals in what amount are used and then mass produce that particular formula in a factory.

Anyone who gardens knows that there are a multitude of brands that produce different fertilizers, some considered “general purpose,” but most with specific formulas to accomplish specific goals, including forcing growth.

Experts say compost is a better choice.

Compost is natural, produced when multiple kinds of organic matter are brought together and left to decompose with the aid of a variety of organisms. The result is an incredibly rich material that produces sustainable results without damaging the environment.

Leadership is similar.

You have the kind that is produced in colleges and MBA programs, learned in a sterile environment, with ingredients that parallel the thinking of selected experts’ mindsets and attitudes. Thus, the student is indoctrinated in a set of specifics and is often prejudiced against anything that falls outside those boundaries.

Leadership learned through doing—taking the initiative and accepting the risk of failure—is different. It combines a variety of experiences, good, bad and indifferent and adds a variety of organisms in the form of the varied humans that populate the organization. The effect of those organisms on the experiences of individual initiative produces a deeper, richer, more flexible form of leadership.

Chemical fertilizer needs to be applied again and again as it wears out.

Compost mixes with and enriches the soil itself, so that the more you add the better the growth medium.

In which do you want to plant your people?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

To thrive in today’s world companies need to constantly innovate; innovation requires initiative; initiative is another word for leadership.

Because initiative and leadership are synonymous, leadership needs to be pushed out of the corner office and spread throughout the organization; doing so will encourage growth, creativity and innovation.

If leadership is the fertilizer then culture is the water, without which nothing will grow, and people are the seeds from which ideas come.

By spreading leadership evenly through out your company garden and watering regularly, leaving no unfertilized or dry patches in which a seed will be stunted or die, you assure yourself a bountiful harvest that will be the envy of your competitors.

Your comments—priceless

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Remember to share your favorite business OMG moments for the chance to win a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running. The contest ends August 31.

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Image credit: INeedCoffee / CoffeeHero on flickr