It’s Always About Leadership
From BP and the Deepwater Horizon to the response to Hurricane Katrina to the allegations swirling about the captain, officers and crew of the cruise ship, Costa Concordia, leadership or lack thereof, is always THE issue.
It’s hard to fathom that the Captain, the Officers and Crew of this formerly floating city could allegedly display such callous disregard for the safety and lives of the liner’s passengers. By now, most of us have seen the cell phone video clips and heard the reports of complete chaos during the crisis.
Leaders step up during times of crisis. This is where people in positions of responsibility finally earn the right to the “L” label. Unfortunately, in this instance, much like just about every other crisis we’ve created or viewed, leadership seems to take a holiday, replaced by “everyone for himself” and “it’s not my fault.”
Those paid to oversee the safety and comfort of their passengers were nowhere to be found at the point in time when they were most needed. The Captain has been charged with a number of crimes, including the odious act of abandoning ship in advance of the passengers. In the not-so-distant past, that act alone might merit keelhauling.
The CEO of the business behind the ship, Pier Luigi Foschi, has already pointed his finger squarely at the Captain. Yes, Pier, the Captain is likely at fault for the incident. However, you and your firm hired him, trained him and his crew and created the culture that allowed this to happen. See also the comment on keelhauling.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
If you’ve been given the responsibility and the title, you better be prepared to act selflessly when the time comes. Anyone can float through their days showboating and blowing their own horn. It takes a real leader to step up when the ship hits the rocks.
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Art Petty is a developer of leaders and a strategy consultant. Art frequently speaks on leadership and management, and his work is reflected in two books (Practical Lessons in Leadership and Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development) and over 1-million words published at The Management Excellence blog. You can reach Art via e-mail to learn more about his leadership development, speaking and management consulting services.
Art’s Weekly Leadership Message: Always Go Beyond the Bare Minimum
“With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
Unless you’ve been cut-off from all forms of media for the past few days, those were the words offered by former Penn State Coach, Joe Paterno, as he reflected on his actions a few years ago in response to learning that a former assistant coach had been allegedly viewed in the act of child abuse.
We all face moments of truth…hard calls that define our lives and showcase our character. Paterno faced the toughest one of his career, and this iconic builder of leaders and promoter of character-based leadership failed at just the wrong moment. Or, at least he failed to provide the response appropriate for the transgression. Seriously, can you think of anything that is more valuable in any organization than the life and innocence of a child?
I don’t mean to pile on to Joe Pa. He’s got enough troubles. For the rest of us, recognize that the most difficult points in our leadership lives are profound moments of truth that define us going forward. We either face them, embrace them and grow stronger from them, or we let them beat us.
A half-measure in the face of a profound moral or ethical call is a failure of the highest order.
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Want More? Check out Art Petty’s latest book, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. Created for fast-moving and highly motivated professionals and leaders, Leadership Caffeine offers more than 80 short, idea-packed essays for the critical leadership and professional development situations in your life.
Join the many groups and management teams and meeting/conference organizers who have adopted Leadership Caffeine as a discussion and development tool. The collection makes a great gift for the newly promoted leader or for your team during the holidays.
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About Art Petty:
Art Petty is a Leadership & Career Coach and Strategy Consultant, helping motivated professionals of all levels achieve their potential. In addition to working with highly motivated professionals, Art frequently works with project teams in pursuit of high performance. Contact Art via e-mail to discuss a coaching, workshop or speaking engagement or to inquire about being a guest on The Leadership Caffeine podcast.
Leadership Caffeine-Do You Have the Courage to Kill Your Business To Save It?
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Organizational Transformation
Note from Art: no businesses were hurt in the writing of this post. Also, thanks to my good colleagues for agreeing to let me share a few of their thoughts and ideas in this post.
Fresh off of my recent podcast interview with Geoffrey Moore on his new book, “Escape Velocity-Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past,” I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with my informal Board of Advisors (2 CEOs, 1 GM and 2 Consultants and all experienced leaders) on this very topic…building a new business while running the old one. With my thanks for their input and ideas, here are the highlights.
Discussion Highlights:
-Slow to React: It was generally agreed that most businesses and most leaders struggle and fail at this endeavor of business reinvention. They often accept the need for radical business change too late and they move too slowly, passively and incrementally on the changes once the need is visible to all.
-The View Gets in the Way: the CEO contingent offered an explanation…but not a defense for their fellow club members, indicating the view from their chairs of the needs and wants of customers and stakeholders (board, employees, investors), often suggests more incremental than revolutionary action. One CEO described her firm facing a disruptive situation and the board and investors pushing back, with a rationale of, “We invested in this business, not this mythical one you are talking about. Make it work.”
“While the logic felt wrong, it was hard to overcome that mentality,” she added.
-Strong Leadership Required: All agreed that it takes strong conviction and true leadership to make what Moore describes in Escape Velocity as asymmetrical bets…investments on offerings and approaches radically different from the current ones. “Most of us are wired to solve problems within the framework of our traditional thinking. This world demands that we as leaders look at our business through different lenses and filters and sometimes that requires fighting through the dominant logic that our teams have used to succeed in the past.”
-Politicians Everywhere: the group offered that the need for radical change often begets a hyper-political environment, where land grabs and jockeying for position and resources often shift the focus off of the emerging business dilemma. Again, it was agreed that extraordinarily strong leadership was required to navigate this volatile political situation and survive.
-Don’t Forget the People Who Do the Work: To a person, the group indicated that even if the need is visible and the top-level commitment made, the failure of senior leaders to build a coalition of mid-level leaders is often fatal to the attempt to change.
What’s a Leader to Do?
1. Grow Your Paranoia: Andy Grove may have been right with his, ”Only the paranoid survive” mantra. The group encouraged the development of a healthy paranoia around the potential for the business to be disrupted. They suggested involving as many people as possible in environmental scanning and creating mechanisms for feedback and sharing.
2. Diversity Counts: Another participant suggested that diversity might be important. “Strive to build diverse teams…culture, background, experience and importantly, viewpoints. Your diversity might just save you when it comes to looking for solutions.”
3. Learn from Steve Jobs and Jack Welch: Invoke a bit of Steve Jobs and quit asking and start creating solutions for problems that people don’t know they have. The take-away: if your primary business planning tool is asking your customers what they need, you’re heading for an innovator’s dilemma event. Engaging with customers is great, but beware falling victim to their natural myopia.
Another group member suggested that Jack’ Welch’s s approach to the rise of the internet via his “Destroy Your Business.com” program is an appropriate model for engaging the broader organizational population in a significant change program.
4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: Follow Kotter’s advice on leading change and remember that “you cannot over-communicate” during these periods. In particular, create processes and events that keep stakeholders apprised of changing circumstances. If you’ve waited until the crisis lands to build some awareness with your stakeholders, don’t be surprised when they grow a bit testy and recalcitrant.
5. Recognize that Politics is a Full Contact Sport. Don’t underestimate rationalize away your need to play on the field of politics. Too many decisions take place in this environment, especially in larger organizations, for you to be unplugged.
6. Grow a Spine. If the situation calls for radical change and you’re in charge, it’s up to you to leave it all on the battlefield in pursuit of creating understanding and garnering stakeholder support for radical change.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
There’s nothing courageous about leading a business during good times where a rising tide effectively lifts everyone in the market. True leadership is forged in the fires of leading and managing and living through crises, including disruptive events. Perhaps the event doesn’t have to be your firm’s death knell, but rather a call to action in a new game of survival and success.
Leadership Caffeine: Fun at the Cousin’s Reunion with Luck, Hope and Hard Work
Filed under: Career, Crisis Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Social Commentary
Luck, while nice when she smiles on you, is a fickle and elusive relative. She rarely shows up at family events and when she does, it’s all about her. She raises expectations of ridiculous things to insane levels, and then disappears after disappointing, without a word.
Hope, is much more accessible than Luck, but in some regards, she is even more frustrating to deal with. Hope is comfortable and comforting, providing us with possibilities, but most often leaving us disappointed. What Hope doesn’t tell you is that she relies on her cousin, Luck, and of course we’ve already established that Luck is undependable.
Luck and Hope hang out with a bad crowd. Their latest buddy, Silver Bullet is the one who promises quick, almost magical fixes to the toughest of problems. Unfortunately, as the rest of us have learned, Silver Bullets don’t work any better than Hope or Luck.
The quiet one in the corner at this reunion of cousins is Hard Work. HW for short, is not glamorous, but of all of the cousins, she’s the one that delivers. HW is a stern task master, demanding time, attention and practice. Her price is your time and your sweat and your genius, but the payoff is always there eventually. Yes, HW is the reliable one.
Of course, Hard Work comes from solid stock. Her mother is Dreamer and her father is Common Sense. The combination of the three is nearly unbeatable.
Of Dreams, Hard Work and Common-Sense:
For some reason, Dreams, Hard Work and Common Sense are rudely shoved to the background during times of difficulty. That’s perverse, because these are the only three that are capable of supporting us as we persevere against an endless barrage of bad news and tough choices. Dreams give us something to reach for, Common Sense guides our way and Hard Work…well, she does all of the heavy lifting.
Consider our world today:
- Economic growth is built on the backs and brains of hard working people who aspire to something more and are willing to invest and sacrifice and work to get there. Economic growth is not built on the back of government spending which offers false hopes about a magical multiplier that exists only on the pages of your hopeful and luck-driven, silver-bullet laden Keynesian economist. At best and worst, the government must create rules that incent people and capital providers and businesses to invest and work hard.
- Organizations hoping for a return to normalcy are in for a disappointment. This is the new normal and once again, Hope has disappointed.
- Senior teams looking for a silver bullet fix for their mature and declining business in this ferocious global environment might as well be searching for a mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Alternatively, they can invest in lottery tickets and let Hope and Luck guide their actions. Oh, and the products, customers and markets that helped you make it this far…don’t count on them taking you any further. It’s time for the Hard Work of business reinvention.
- Leaders who expect people and performance problems to simply disappear are bound to be disappointed. Hope strikes again.
- Leaders who expect the presence of just a job to engage and retain the best and brightest have suspended common-sense and are flirting with the rarely spoken of family member, Arrogance. It might work for a few minutes in time, but it’s a bad plan.
- To those struggling in this economy and looking for your next step in your career, working harder on solving your problem is the only way forward. No amount of luck, false hope or magical silver bullet jobs program from your friendly government is going to solve your situation. You will have to work harder than you ever have before…likely at reinventing yourself and your career. After a lifetime of working, it doesn’t seem fair, but Fair is from a different branch of the family, and he almost never shows up at this family reunion.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Right now, grab Luck, Hope and Silver Bullet by the collective collars and throw them out into the street. Stare Hard Work in the eyes, thing long and hard about what her parents, Dreamer and Common Sense would have to say about your situation, and get going.
Leadership Caffeine-Churchill on Overcoming Adversity
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Management Excellence Tips for Tough Times, Social Commentary
You’re to be excused if you feel like you live in a world under siege. From wars and violence to natural disasters and man-made financial and governing catastrophes, these are most definitely challenging times.
Winston Churchill, the remarkable wartime leader of Great Britain, served as a source of strength and motivation for an entire nation with his dogged determination to survive and ultimately succeed in the face of incredible adversity. And while perhaps today’s situation doesn’t quite rival that of the early 1940’s, a little dose of Churchill seems appropriate at this interesting point in time.
Churchill on the Need for Forward Movement:
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Fear and frustration overwhelm individuals, teams and organizations. While it might seem appropriate to just plop down and call it a day, the only way out of the mess is to march forward. There is no chance of success without movement.
Politicians Take Heed:
Of course, action without context and understanding can just be wasted energy. In particular, our politicians will be well served to heed his advice here:
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. It’s also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
And again for our politicians, Churchill’s unyielding faith in Americans was balanced with a clear sense of reality:
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”
On Attitude:
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
The most successful people I know look for the opportunity in every problem. The world has enough whiners…it needs more people with the fortitude and tenacity to keep marching towards solutions.
On Determination:
As his nation stared at likely extinction, he offered the following to Parliament:
“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.”
Good words of inspiration to remind us of the need to face up to our economic, social and governing challenges.
On the Thought of Giving Up:
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Get up, keep marching, take time to listen, keep fighting and don’t for a second think of giving up.
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About Art Petty:
Art Petty is a Leadership & Career Coach helping motivated professionals of all levels achieve their potential. In addition to working with highly motivated professionals, Art frequently works with project teams in pursuit of high performance. Art’s second book, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, will be published in September of 2011.
Contact Art via e-mail to discuss a coaching, workshop or speaking engagement.
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