The Drive to Create—Rocket Fuel for Entrepreneurs
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Professional Growth
I sat and talked yesterday with a uniquely impressive entrepreneur. She is not yet successful, and in fact she is barely two weeks young in her new adventure. If I was asked to handicap her chances of success, the odds would be very good.
I’ve known this professional for a number of years and it’s always been clear that she would move out from underneath her position as an employee and go off on her own. It was just a matter of time.
The time happened recently as the work environment became untenable not only for my friend, but for a number of the other talented members on her team. Bad Boss syndrome came home to roost as cutbacks and new policies were implemented that both destroyed internal morale and damaged the customer experience.
My friend and her team took matters into their own hands, and in a mere few weeks in their new service business, schedules are filled, business is good and the air in their shop is filled with the excitement of something new being created.
As we chatted about the experience, I asked my friend some of the vexing questions that trip up so many big organization executives.
- What’s your vision for your practice?
- What do you want people to associate your business with?
- What’s unique about your practice?
- 5 years from now, when you look back, what will you have accomplished?
- Why did your team follow and what makes them tick in this venture?
She fielded the questions effortlessly and offered simple but powerful answers that stopped me in my tracks. I’m not used to hearing answers to these questions without them being couched in business-speak and filled with lofty, mission-statement sounding answers that are like sugar-free frosting on a wedding cake.
Her answers focused on creating opportunities for employees, working with customers that the team loves and finding ways to contribute to the community. The answers came from the heart, were offered without hesitation and were backed by specific ideas.
There was also an underlying theme that the fuel propelling the team was the ability to do something truly unique in building a business. I sensed a burning desire on the part of my friend and her colleagues to create their own great organization, and to provide opportunities for those interested in working hard to pursue them. The talk on the floor was all about creation and avoiding the mistakes of former bad bosses and building for the future.
Money was not singled out as a driver. However, when I inquired about the “M” issue, she looked at me and indicated that they were already profitable and exceeding their best expectations in just two weeks.
The drive to create is powerful and while the pilot burns in the background for many, for the few that dare to jump in, the power to create is what fires the rocket.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Is your pilot burning? What do you want to create? What will push you to move from ideas to actions?
Leadership Caffeine for the Week of March 30, 2009
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth, Project Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders
A healthy spring snowstorm blanketed the northwest suburbs of Chicago overnight, making the morning cup of coffee particularly relevant as a source of both warmth and energy.
I’m back with a fresh pound of my favorite fair trade Mexican Roast from a great local roaster aptly named Conscious Cup. My first contribution to stimulating the economy today is to let you know that these great people ship.
My second contribution is to encourage a renewed sense of personal professional accountability. Yep, I’m striking a blow against Boss-Blame…that world class sport that so many engage in as part of rationalizing why their own results might just be falling short of something resembling excellence.
Quit Grousing…It’s Wasted Energy!
It’s common for me to hear quite a bit of grousing about the people we work for from attendees at workshops, at client sites or in classes. And while I don’t doubt that there’s a fair amount of truth in much of the talk about lousy managers and do-nothing exec teams, I truly don’t care and neither should you.
Do not let the chucklehead that you work for hold you back! Do not blame the management team for your inability to hit your targets, develop professionally or create a high performance team. The only one in charge of you is you.
I’ve long since concluded that in spite of our best intentions we have a low probability of fixing most of the bad bosses. Our best bet and your best bet is to develop a multi-pronged approach to the situation.
Suggestions for Overcoming Bad Boss Syndrome:
1. Mitigation. Sometimes “Bad Boss” syndrome can be mitigated by changing your own behavior. I’ve observed many situations where the boss has issues and the individuals that report to him or her have no qualms publicly depicting their lack of respect. While that might in some perverted way feel good, it is wrong.
Try using judo on the situation and increase your efforts to be respectful and helpful and to portray a genuine sense of empathy for the burdens that this individuals bears as a leader and as a person. Hey, no guarantees here, but you’ll be the better person for trying, and it might be you some latitude in the workplace.
2. Partnering. I work with many different project teams in IT and new product development, and I can predict with near certainty the top reasons that will surface in the post-mortem on failed projects. You know the issues as well, and yes, most of them have to do with people and leadership. (An oft-quoted E&Y study indicates that 80% of the reasons associated with poor project performance are tied to people.)
Work on a few project teams, and you can predict the problems like clockwork. Estimates will be off…people sandbag or play politics. The matrix gets in the way…people have multiple priorities and are not linked to one team. The sponsor spends her time jetting around Asia and is never present at critical times to do what a sponsor is supposed to do. And so on.
What is stopping you from working with your peers to focus your collective energies on eradicating the mostly controllable and predictable problems that bedevil so many teams? Nothing! If the project manager lacks the leadership savvy to broker resolutions and build a performance culture, jump in along with your peers and help out. Have an ineffective sponsor? Either educate him or her on the role or seek out a new one. There are few problems that arise that are dependent upon those upstream.
3. Your Personal Pursuit of Excellence:
In the final leg of my bad-boss mitigation & you must develop your own sense of accountability rant, this is for all of you first-time or mid-level leaders that are not getting the support and coaching that you genuinely should receive. Get over it, and make certain that you go to extraordinary lengths to give to your colleagues in spades what you are not receiving from your manager.
Boss not talked to you about career development? Well, you are in charge of your own career, and oh by the way, nothing is precluding you from working with your team members on their own personal development plans.
Don’t get much feedback on your performance? That’s unfortunate, but it is not an excuse for you not recognizing that feedback is your most powerful performance tool and practicing it constantly.
Does the boss work hard to protect turf and strengthen silo walls? Don’t fall into that shortsighted trap. Become a network broker across organizational boundaries. Learn and apply the art of lateral leadership and diplomacy.
The bottom-line
Just as it is common in life for people to hitch their sense of well-being and happiness to the actions and opinions of others, it is common for people to wallow in business misery because of the shortcomings of our leaders. It’s time to unhitch that wagon and take responsibility for your own business happiness and health. Get started this week!
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