ASSUMPTIONS
- Good leaders are visible, active and leave others feeling more motivated (strategic actors).
- Managers don’t do things themselves, but rather through others. Plan to delegate everything you re currently doing or “penetrating”.
GUIDELINES
- Lead by example.
- You set the pace for everyone else; don’t settle for mediocrity.
- Develop at least one distinctive competence that you do better than anyone else.
- Visibility and giving time are motivating.
- Manage By Wondering Around (MBWA); the oil that makes it all happen.
- Ask five levels of questions and listen acceptingly to get information.
- Invest in “time management” and interpersonal skills to control the job and not the reverse.
- Avoid procrastination by “swiss cheesing” big problems.
- Write plans and small components for 1 or 2 big opportunities.
- Real time To-DO lists for all functional area managers.
- Instill a sense of can-do and urgency in stretch quantities.
- Creative use of deadlines, but not at the expense of quality and mastery.
- Measure and communicate any positive progress. Good news vehicles – crediting statements, meetings and newsletters.
- RESULTS
- Things get done. Same old complaints stop.
- Responsibilities are identified. Positive momentum and spirit start to build.
- Initiative-taking spreads.
- Continued growth, stimulation and excitements; ruts and boredom are dissolved.
- Start upward spirals.
Be careful to avoid thoughtlessness and belief in quick fixes.
- For troops – be a pathfinder; a solution planner; create measuring and reward systems; set guiding values, then get out of the way.
- Troops work 140% hard and 80% smart, but learn from small mistakes. Company pays a “tuition expense” for these lessons.
- Management free to spend more time penetrating new areas and keeping growth going.
- Reform egotistical, workaholic managers. Glory hounds harm the team output.
- Don’t be: a maintainer; functional micro-decision maker; or a victim of reverse delegation.
- Be a motivating and trustworthy communicator:
- Regardless of your job, be a salesman selling win-win initiatives.
- Stay in touch continually with the most influential constituents.
- Always think of the future significance of what you say or contract for.
- Never say anything about a person that you wouldn’t say to their face.
- Don’t lie. Keep quiet at least.
- Don’t tell secrets. There are no secrets.
- Keep promises – and those that others think you made. Trust is the miracle currency for progress.
- Be a winner – smile when you win and when you lose. Don’t be defensive.
- Communicate values to the troops many ways.
- Written; signs; sermons; case discussions.
- Goal: to instill guidelines that channel energy and improve micro-decisions.
- Instill relevancy, enthusiasm and fun into the workplace; it must be more than a job (see Personnel – High Performance Environment).
- Develop “Ideal Coach” attributes and be a good “programmer” of winning skills.
- Interpersonal management skills.
- Rule of 5 – 7 and 1 – 10.
- Practice at “leadership core skills”.
- Time management
- Inter-personal skills
- Problem solving
- Listening
- Public speaking
- Negotiate with employees, customers and suppliers using measurable, objective standards. Always look for (+) pie-growing, multiple-win solutions.
- Read “Getting To Yes”. (Search for it on Amazon.com)
- Be considered fair and firm.
- Build loyalty, trust, partnership spirit and goodwill accounts.
- Solve problems as well as defusing the background history and emotion (e.g.: an emotional customer with a small problem).
- Be whole brained in outlook and thinking. Remember the importance of image, ceremonies, customers and other emotionally-packed or subjective opinions.
- Be flexible, open-minded, cool and a good listener. There are lots of OK answers, if employees own them and act. “Guidelines” allow leeway.
- Check the facts with other sources if possible before decisive actions. Don’t make decisions until you have to.
- Look for “system solutions” that kill several birds with one stone.
- Be bi-focal and know where the basket is.
- Look for four-way win economics for stakeholders.
- Optimize the dimensions of: merit; equality; humanity; and behavior.
- Make decisions in the “heads-up and action”, opportunity stage; not the heads-down and reactive”, danger stage: or worse – the “heads-down and in-action”, crisis stage. Lots of small adjustments grow people and organizations better than big, costly, reactive, critical adjustments.
- Have a judgment, experience, good guidelines and a desire to be an artist, not a scientific manager. Have a sense of rhythm and chemistry.
- Have courage and self-confidence (incremental G.F.I. factor) to:
- Initiate change when things are fine.
- Stick to values in tough times.
- Hire people better than you.
- Be an innovative subordinate and ensnare boss in good practices.
- Deal with mistakes; the acid test for good managers.
- Make an authentic “one minute apology”.
- No one is smart enough to run a company anymore. Employees will run themselves more and more.
- Balance decentralization VS. Balkanization Anarchy Lethargy
- Invest in guideline training.
- Create a high performance environment that induces desired behavior.
- Love and the balance of all methods are the two greatest keys to leading.
- Give up ego, selfishness and your desires in order to:
- Secure others’ desires.
- Enable others growth.
- Teach so that the message isn’t out-shined by ego.
- T out-shined by ego.
- Don’t go for your successes, but others.
- Turn every negative into a positive. Conflict into a creative option. A problem into an opportunity. A mistake to a lesson. A trying experience into patience. An unattractive person into a negative role-model of what not to be.
- Be a student of natural processes:
- To identify emerging opportunities.
- To teach sufficient enlightenment not the complex theories of “hyper-trophied, left-brained, articulate incompetents.”
- Too much enlightenment is confusing and overwhelming.
- Examples: life cycle; human passages; economic cycles; mastering a skill.
- If humans are to do it; it must be systematized and simple.
- Be situational and generally fading with involvement.
- At start – plants the sapling carefully.
- In the middle – facilitate growth indirectly with least intervention.
- At the end – be happy with their final state; it never is what you originally envisioned.
- Trying to control anyone who has taken root usually fails.
- Stretch people a bit; otherwise, you can’t rush their growth process faster.
- Show them the clearest path.
- Coach them on necessary skills
- They must grow up themselves and in spite of themselves.
- Pushing too hard harms progress and motivation in the long-run.
- Phony expertise or phony anything is neurotic. Say, “I don’t know; what do your think?” – these are great motivators.
- Punishment doesn’t work.
- Shed light on the consequences to specific actions and make them responsible.
- Harsh intervention: shows emotional bias and investment on your part; increases bad judgments; and causes withdrawal and hostility by others.
- Stimulation or sensationalism is not teaching. Passing the rules of 5 to 7 and 1 to 10 with patience and discipline is teaching.
The following (15-23) are influenced by “The Tao Of Leadership” by John Heider. 1986.
SECTION TWO – MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES