I was going through some old files and came across one from 1998 that I thought was fitting to share with you today. It had no attribution, but a little time with Google and it seems to be a product of Ralph Marston.
You
You are always you, no matter what kind of car you drive or what size house you occupy. You are always you, no matter what color your hair is, or how much you weigh. Inside, it is always you.
You are not your job. You are not the clothes you wear. You are not the body in which you live. You are more. You are you. There is no one else like you anywhere. You are unique. You have a special contribution to make, not in the distant future, but right now, today.
There is something you can do right this moment, for which you are absolutely the most qualified, the most appropriate, the best suited person to do it. You are better at being you than anyone else in this world. It is your grand, glorious responsibility and the best opportunity anyone could ever hope to have.
You are you. Make the most of that and you’ll understand how very special it is.
Today is a holiday and holidays are good days to take a bit of time just for yourself, kick back and cogitate about who you are, where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, who you’ll be when you arrive and, most of all, what you will leave in the wake of your travels through life.
I hope you take the time to do it.
Have a wonderful holiday, filled with all the things that matter to you.
Another Saturday and another collection of useful links for you.
Just remember to disregard anything you find that suggests that the skills and attitudes discussed are only for the anointed few and not for all of you to use as appropriate.
First up is a new site from the Washington Post and Harvard Business called The Intelligent Leader. It has some great content, including a diverse group of video interview opinions and commentary on leadership.
Next is something I’ve never heard of, which means I’m more out of the loop than I often think I am or the organization really is a bit obscure. It’s called the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED) and says that it’s dedicated to “Fostering Science, Technology and Free Enterprise.” What I found interesting is that it has excellent information and links to studies on the effects of enterprise employee ownership.
Third is McKinsey; I frequently referred to articles and studies they’ve done. The couple of minutes required for free registration pays big dividends in the quality and quantity of information that’s available. Additionally, you can customize the kind of information that you want delivered by email. Although it’s a year old, this survey the role that CEOs believe that they should play as public leaders vs. the role they do play—a lot more talk than walk.
Lastly, is another offering from Harvard Business School that many of you already know. It’s the Working Knowledge newsletter, and you can customize it for your interests. One of my favorite researchers there is Jim Heskett, who poses thought provoking topics that draw fascinating responses from his readers. Here are two of my favorites, the first is “Is There Too Little “Know Why” In Business?” and the second is “Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?”
So grab a cup of coffee, settle down and dig through the links and, whatever you do, don’t skip the comments to see what other people think—then take away the best of the intel for your own use.
I found a wonderful treat for you on this Friday before Christmas courtesy of Bruce Nussbaum.
It’s a video of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement address in which he says,
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”
Nussbaum says he watches this video every year and I plan to also. I hope it becomes a yearly tradition for you, too, and that you share it with your colleagues, friends and kids.
It seems that every time the leader of a corporation-in-trouble replies to the question, “What happened…?” the answer is that a ‘perfect storm’ of factors caused the problems.
Steven Pearlstein offers some great comments on this attitude, but it was what he said near the end that really resonated with me.
“What capsized the economy was not a perfect storm but a widespread failure of business leadership — a failure that is only compounded when executives refuse to take responsibility for their misjudgments and apologize.”
Accountability and remorse.
We demand these from our kids when they screw up and our mates if they cheat, but we seem willing to accept “reasons” from our corporate leaders.
Over the years we watched corporate leaders in Japan and Korea apologize publicly, heads bowed, for their actions and then resign in shame. Many of us considered it a quaint action stemming from a culture far different than ours. Some found it amusing and a few thought it was faked.
But think about it, how many of the executives you saw apologizing for the problems they caused have surfaced as head of another major corporation or in other leadership roles. In the US they land on their feet before the dust settles.
In the startup world failure is considered a badge of success, but only if the person has learned from it.
You can’t learn from something if you don’t recognize and admit your responsibility and feel remorse for mistakes that were avoidable.
A truly perfect storm would come without any warning and that probably doesn’t happen even once a century.
Be sure to read this terrific article in Forbes shows you why reading Machiavelli’s The Prince is well worth your time as it is a great guide to handling the powerful people at work and other places who have the ability to make your life hell. Machiavelli spent four months at Cesare Borgia’s court and lived to tell the tale and offer up guidance to the rest of us.
“In popular culture, Machiavelli is synonymous with deceit and treachery. However, Machiavelli’s main concerns were the security of the state and the welfare of its people. Much of his leadership advice is plain common sense.”
For most of my years in business, my clients’ nickname for me has been Michiavelli and I always saw it as a great compliment.
In addition to common sense, one of the traits we have in common is unvarnished honesty. Phil Gerbyshak over at Slacker Manager once asked me how that bluntness affected managing and other interactions; it was no problem as long as I never lost site of four basic points.
Blunt honesty is not about being
insulting, demeaning or contemptuous; or
personal attacks.
It is about
telling someone the truth as you see it and then listening and hearing their responses;
the clearly understanding that they have full reciprocity when they do respond;
never retaliating for their honesty.
For example,
When interviewing a company that isn’t doing well a candidate may say one of the following,
“I’ve read that your financials are really messed up. Whose fault is it and what are you doing to fix it?”
“I’ve read that the company is experiencing a period of financial difficulty; has the cause been identified and how could I contribute to the solution?”
The content is the same, but the manager would be justified for scratching the candidate for the first, while the candidate should drop the company if there is no valid response to the second
When your team is not doing as well as you like you can say, “Your productivity has gone to hell and I need you guys to get your acts together and bring it back up.” “Our productivity is down; we need to identify the causes and work together to turn it around.” For which manager would you rather work?
Honesty may be blunt, even brutal when people don’t want to hear it, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be harsh.
I love it! I just read a great article calledLeadership Malpractice. Not by the media or some external pundit, but by Harvard Public Leadership Lecturer Barbara Kellerman, author of Bad Leadership and Followership.
What a terrific idea. Kellerman says that since “leadership is increasingly considered a profession,”so leaders should be subject to the same punishments as other professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.
Doesn’t that sound like an idea whose time has come?
Kellerman points out that business leaders are appointed; “in the first nine months of this year a record 1,132 CEOs quit or were shown the door” due to poor corporate performance, a few are behind bars, but even truly rotten performance carried no serious consequences, in fact, “most left with their financial futures handsomely secured.”
“No insignificant number of top executives have been culpable of negligence, failures that caused injury to others. To take only a few glaring examples, top executives at A.I.G., Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, or for that matter at General Motors, all failed abysmally to protect employees and stockholders alike.”
Leadership has become a profession in and of itself.
“It is taught in professional schools, in schools of government and public administration, and in nearly all business schools. There are countless books on how to exercise good leadership, and countless courses and seminars, both in and out of the academy, in which leadership is taught. It’s time then to apply to leadership the same standard that we apply to other professions. Similarly, when this standard is not met, even minimally, it’s time to hold leaders accountable by suing them for malpractice.”
Once someone is on the ‘leadership track’ they move forward with amazing speed—and less and less scrutiny the higher they go. When they foul up, they are often eased out, rather than being fired—an action that would make the person who hired/promoted them look bad.
By the time they’re appointed to the corner office they are practically untouchable; with few exceptions this applies to the entire C suite. Oh, they can be fired, and they often are, but that rarely impacts their career.
There is much talk of accountability, but most is empty.
Perhaps leadership malpractice would finally bring some serious accountability to the guys out front—the same guys whose monster egos and Teflon finishes keep them walking away unscathed.
Sadly, this is Wes’ last post; his heavy schedule and several new projects preclude him from continuing to write for Leadership Turn. Wes sends this message, “Thank you all for visiting and reading my posts each Tuesday for the past several months. I hope that you were challenged to think differently about leadership and business management. My best wishes go to Miki and the entire B5 team.” I want to thank Wes for his insights on creating a leader-of-the-pack company; if they’ve proved useful to you please take a moment and say so. Finally, you can find more of Wes’ insights, as well as contact him, at the Ball Group.
Are you shooting yourself in the foot by giving away more and more in an effort to grow/maintain your business during bad times?
A proven secret to getting more [for you] is offering less [to them].
When the San Diego Padres moved to their new stadium in 2004, they had one-third fewer seats to sell, yet they sold a million more tickets at 32% higher prices that first year.
Subway franchisees have learned the best way to boost total sales is to reduce seating.
Many retailers have discovered that a smaller parking lot increases store traffic.
When you want to boost demand for almost anything, just tell people that availability is limited. Likewise, if you want more people to take you seriously and aspire to own what you sell, raise your prices.
Since all of the above are proven to work, why is it that as soon as the economy looks a little shaky, otherwise smart business owners and managers start trying to provide more for less?
There is an irrational fear that overtakes even the toughest and savviest business owners as soon as they start to project less demand ahead.
Instead of working on how to increase demand among the 85+% of those customers who still have needs on which they will spend, they focus on the 10-15% of customers who are willing to risk failure and loss rather than spend money and doing that undermines the value of their products/services to all customers.
Businesses start discounting. They work on giving away more for less. They make even well-heeled customers believe that their product or service is worth less.
Anyone, who has read my writing for more than a few weeks or who has seen any of the research I have conducted on what creates sustainable success, knows that I get really annoyed with marketers who needlessly give things away.
It harms them. It harms their competitors. It harms the category in which they sell. And it harms the economy.
It also works to prolong economic downturns, because it not only undermines the financial well-being of many companies, but also makes customers believe that prices should stay that low, extending the pain for months longer than necessary.
Take a clue from the Padres. If you have something worth selling, look for ways to give away less and grow your demand.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, you will do better and gain more long-term. You will also help the market in general.
Is your company reacting to the economy by doing more for less or less for more?
I’m about as far from pop culture as you can get—not into *ratti’s at all.
But I have to confess that I adore everything about Sir Richard Branson.
Where Larry Ellison comes over as arrogant and obnoxious, Branson is laid back and friendly—and oh so sexy. (Would that we could all look like that at 58—or 38 or any age for that matter.)
So, smart, sexy, brilliant, talented businessman and serial entrepreneur in the grand manner—what’s not to like?
“A good idea for a new business tends not to occur in isolation, and often the window of opportunity is very small. So speed is of the essence.” (A great message for all those ‘leaders’ who not only think they know best, but also don’t know how to get out of their people’s way.)
“We expect the first Virgin Galactic space flight to take place in 2008, which gives our Flying Club members time to save up all their miles.” (Just started testing this year, so it looks as if you have another 18 months to accrue more miles.)
“You’ll have at least two ways to get lucky on our flights.” (And a great sense of humor. He said this when his airline started offering casinos and double beds on it six new Airbus A380 planes.)
“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.” (14 words to by which to live—think about it.)
I had a recent conversation on the final post from a series last summer regarding supposed differences between ‘leaders’ and managers.
The reader said she was confused and asked whether managers needed to be ‘leaders’, too.
I think that my responses will be of use to others, so I’ve rounded them out below to increase access to the information.
It would be lovely if there was a nice, clear-cut answer to the ‘leader’/manager thing, but like a lot of these types of questions it depends on whom you ask.
There are two distinct schools of thought. One believes that leaders and managers are different and see ‘leaders’ as on a higher plane.
Others, like me, believe that to manage well requires having and using so-called leadership skills.
To further confuse the issue, there’s a growing movement that thinks leadership skills can and should be found at any/all levels of the organization (think organizational leadership) and become active as the need arises.
In other words, real leadership is what you believe and how you think and act, AKA, MAP, as opposed to your position.
Further, real leadership isn’t about style or even ‘vision’.
Style may change as you adopt a presentation appropriate to the people with whom you are interacting, but that stylistic change doesn’t change who you are and what you believe.
Vision presentation also changes based on your audience. Changes in the actual vision is a different subject
To summarize,
While management is what you do, leadership is the way you think.
Great management is composed of equal parts leadership and accountability.
True leaders are proclaimed as such by those around them, not by themselves.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Another Saturday and another collection of useful links for you.
It seems that every time the leader of a corporation-in-trouble replies to the question, “What happened…?” the answer is that a ‘perfect storm’ of factors caused the problems.
Be sure to read this terrific article in Forbes shows you why reading Machiavelli’s The Prince is well worth your time as it is a great guide to handling the powerful people at work and other places who have the ability to make your life hell. Machiavelli spent four months at Cesare Borgia’s court and lived to tell the tale and offer up guidance to the rest of us.
I love it! I just read a great article called 
Are you shooting yourself in the foot by giving away more and more in an effort to grow/maintain your business during bad times?
But I have to confess that I adore everything about Sir Richard Branson.
It would be lovely if there was a nice, clear-cut answer to the ‘leader’/manager thing, but like a lot of these types of questions it depends on whom you ask.
