Note from Art: Today’s post is by Guest Blogger, Amy Meyer, a veteran technology marketing and product/project management professional, and an all around talented leader and wonderful person. I hope that this post helps launch Amy’s blogging career. She has a lot to say worth listening to. (More Bio/Contact Info at end of post.)
My name is Amy Meyer and I have had the pleasure of working for and with Art for many years. I look back on this time with gratitude, for the experience has rewarded me with life-long insights into how a company can achieve and maintain excellence. But I can also tell you that this is truly a double-edged sword. The experience has also made me less tolerant of poor leadership and as Art continually shares, there are plenty of examples from which to draw.
Today I’d like to cover what I believe to be a disturbing management trend. In today’s world of the Balanced Scorecard, companies have never focused so much energy on alignment of results with strategy. I applaud the approach. In fact I recommend it. But sadly it seems that for some organizations, results have become the sole focal point—the only thing that matters. What they are losing touch with is the fact that results are driven, at least in most companies, by living, breathing human beings.
It’s time these companies face the facts. You can’t get results by placing a scorecard in front of a talented individual and say “Get this done or you won’t get a raise next year”, and then walk away. This approach only works if your goal is to drive up your attrition rates and lose your best and brightest.
A balanced scorecard is not a replacement for leadership. To blow your scorecards out of the water, you need to nurture those people who make the magic happen. This requires more than management—it requires inspirational leadership. It is great to have smart people as colleagues and friends, because they can help you out if you ever need to write a guest blog! In this case I asked some of my most respected how they would define an inspirational leader. Here’s what they had to say.
An Inspirational Leader is Someone Who…
- Includes you in deciding the team’s direction rather than telling you what direction to go
- Picks up the shovel and digs with you rather than standing above you telling you to dig faster
- Makes other people feel important and appreciated, helps people believe in themselves
- Sets the pace, leading by example rather than decree
- Only assumes credit for providing his or her team the opportunity to succeed
- Motivates through personal performance examples and exemplifies the skills that he\she possesses through knowledge transfer and demonstration
- Knows when and how to encourage individual talents and maintains team integrity while respecting every individual
- Takes time to understand team members, creating bi-directional relationships that ensures the team that he/she has their best interests in mind
- Is proactive rather than reactive—two steps ahead, instead of one step behind
- Creates excitement in the workplace
- Builds efficient teams by trusting the occupational strengths of his or her subordinates and recognizes individual talents that balance one another
- Builds team morale by recognizing work-related achievements
- Provides opportunities for development on enjoyable and challenging projects rather than artificially inseminating the team with mandatory bonding events
- Sets a credible and ethical example to follow, has integrity
- Displays exceptional communication behavior, both as a speaker and listener, using well-educated inference as necessary
- Can either make or break a company
It’s time to wake up. Scorecards are measurements. To achieve and exceed your corporate goals requires the inspiration of confident leaders. So, how are you doing? Are you providing your team the support they need to achieve the results the organization requires? Why don’t you ask them what you could change to make them more successful! Being an inspirational leader requires a thick skin. Have the courage and the self-confidence to learn from the team you serve.
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Amy Meyer is a veteran technology professional with a broad spectrum of experience including strategic marketing, product and project management, software development and IT management. Amy is currently focusing her efforts and research on the topic of enhancing technology project success through investment in talented individuals and collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders. If you share Amy’s passion for the topic, feel free to contact her via e-mail at [email protected]
Excellent thoughts Amy, and many thanks for the useful list of leadership attributes to keep at top of mind. Like most, I have seen both ends of the spectrum for leadership ability and it is easier to appreciate the best when you have experienced some of the worst. It is important to point out that if someone is stuck working for poor leaders, its constructive to learn from it while you are there and observe the impacts as examples. When it’s your chance in charge, you can then better avoid the same mistakes.
Best,
Mike
Amy: A provocative and thoughtful post. Thank you for sharing it.
I agree and I disagree. The problem is not the Balanced Scorecard (or whatever tool du jour–said halfway tongue in cheek). The problem is the way management, yes management, not leaders, tend to implement it.
Too many implement these tools as an end in itself, or as a means to excuse themselves from strong — inspired — leadership. Any tool used incorrectly can have a terrible impact and produce terrible results. However, a powerful tool, used by an inspired craftsman can produce works of wonder.
You make the point, but I’d like to keep the tools and argue for their expert use by inspired leaders. I think they can help organizations and leaders achieve even more than they dream.
Well, the Art-and-Amy collaboration is alive and well and inspiring people yet again.
I loved Amy’s take on the Balanced Scorecard and how it can too often tempt executives to blindly follow a dimly-lit path that promises eventual enlightenment, instead leading to dashed expectations and disaffection. While Balanced Scorecard certainly opened up a new dialog and forced executives to expand their interpretations of corporate success, following the buzzword-du-jour without strong leadership, as Amy’s post so aptly describes, will merely propel managers toward a dead-end.
Jill Dyche
Partner, Baseline Consulting
Thank you to all who have commented on this post thus far. You have added greatly to the discussion. In particular I appreciate how you’ve called out that the Balanced Scorecard is simply today’s example and that the tool is not to blame. You are absolutely correct. Excellent clarification!
The same risks DO hold true for other tools and other “hot new strategies.” Imagine the possibilities if executives would put equal effort and expense into learning how to lead through a genuine investment in their greatest resource–their own people. Inpirational leadership will generate excellent results and will grow loyal, talented teams that will stick with you through thick and thin.
I have a team of 25 great people who have families and lives and bills to pay. I take this responsibility very seriously. There is a huge difference between management and leadership…and those who don’t really know the difference can never be leaders. As a leader, if you don’t have your team’s trust, you don’t have a thing. And, as a leader, you genuinely need to care about people. This is a trait that you cannot learn at school, rather it’s something you learn while tagging along with your mother when you are 5 years old and she is volunteering at a nursing home, a school, a church or a food pantry. If you have a team that was built on a foundation of TRUST along with leaders who TRULY CARE about you and your team, all the way up the chain of command, then you will have the opportunity to achieve just about anything.