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The act and practice of leadership is a risky undertaking. Leadership is the act or bringing about positive change. This requires leaders to initiate, to blaze new trails, to venture into the unknown and unexplored terrain. All of this entails risk. Kouzes and Posner in their bestselling book, “The Leadership Challenge” describes it this way:

“Leaders are pioneers – people who are willing to step out into the unknown. They are people who are willing to take risks, to innovate and experiment in order to find new an better ways of doing things.”

Leaders take these risk because they have a vision, they see a future and a new world that inspires action and makes the risk worthwhile. Leaders are pioneers… not settlers. Great leaders take risk. They push past the edge of their current reality. Striving to bring their vision into today. How about you?

• Are you a pioneer or a settler?
• Are you taking the necessary risks to find better ways of doing things?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Risk, Pioneer

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I can across a really stunning post on failure by Tony Morgan, “10 Reasons Why You’re Probably Going to Fail” that is really worth sharing, so here is Tony’s list…

10 Reasons Why You’re Probably Going to Fail

1. It’s not your passion. If it doesn’t make your heart beat fast or cause your mind to race when you’re trying to sleep, you’re probably doing the wrong thing.
2. You don’t have a plan. You need a vision, and you need to identify specific steps to make that vision become reality. That includes a financial plan. (I happen to believe you need direction from God on this.)
3. You’re waiting for it to be perfect. Test-drive it. Beta-test that new idea. You’ll fall into the trap of inaction if you think it has to be absolutely right from day one.
4. You’re not willing to work hard. Everything worth pursuing in my life has involved discipline and perseverance.
5. It’ll outgrow you. Keep learning. Keep growing. But more importantly, build a team of people including leaders that can be who you’re not.
6. You’ve had success in the past. I’ve watched organizations hang on to a good idea for too long. Time passes. Momentum fades. It’s risky to let go of the past and jump on the next wave.
7. You’re unwilling to stop doing something else. Complexity is easy. Simplicity takes discipline. You can’t build a healthy marriage if you’re unwilling to give up dating other women. Who/what do you need to stop dating?
8. You won’t build a team of friends. Anyone can hire from a resume. You need to find people you want to share life with. In the long run, great relationships will get you out of bed in the morning.
9. You won’t have the tough conversations. When breakdown happens (and it always does), someone needs to put on their big-boy pants and initiate the difficult conversation that leads to relational healing.
10. You’re afraid of failure. When fear consumes you, it will cause you to do stupid things. You’ll let negativity distract you. You’ll embrace the known, and grow comfortable with mediocrity. The more often you fail, though, the more often you’ll find success.

Tony writes a great blog, worth reading. This is a really great list to work through when embarking on a new and challenging initiative. Any thoughts on what may be missing from this list?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Success, Failure, Goals, Business

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Forbes.com released their 2009 “The Most Influential business Thinkers”  results. The consulting firm CrainerDearlove compiled this list of today’s top thinkers, by surveyed 3,500 people and a panel of experts to determine the 2009 edition of the Thinkers 50, the fifth edition of a biennial list of the most influential living management thinkers. This years results are listed below.

Source: CrainerDearlove, www.crainerdearlove.com.

All in all a pretty impressive list. I have read many of the books an article by many of the top 50 and I have been impressed by their thinking and insights. All leaders in their respective fields.

Technorati Tags: Guru, Leaders, Top Thinkers, Management, Strategy, Thought Leaders

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The article “For This Guru, No Question Is Too Big” from the NY Times discusses the work of the best selling business author Jim Collins. Given the popularity of Jim Collins the article discussed how he allocates his time, which is as follows:

“… in a corner of the white board at the end of his long conference room, Mr. Collins keeps this short list:

Creative 53%

Teaching 28%

Other 19%

That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.”

This seems to be an odd approach to allocating how to spend one’s time! However, this time allocation suddenly makes sense when you consider Jim Collins “overarching goal,” which is “to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work.”

Besides making wise use of his time in a way that supports his overarching goal, Mr. Collins keeps focused, making sure he is not distracted.

“Mr. Collins also is quite practiced at saying ‘no.’ Requests pour in every week for him to give speeches to corporations and trade associations…”

To achieve meaningful and challenging goals requires “… a willingness to say no and focus on what not to do as much as what to do…”! All leader’s who are passionate about perusing a challenging vision, have to ensure they spend their time wisely and remain focused on their goals. How are you doing?

• Have you allocated your time in a way that support your overarching goal?
• Do you say “no” to distractions?

Technorati Tags: Goals, Vision, Leadership, Management, Time Management, Business, Focus

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Stew Friedman writes a great post titled “Define Your Personal Leadership Vision” in which he provides some guidance on how to go about defining your personal leadership vision. He describes a personal leadership vision as…

“… an essential means for focusing attention on what matters most; what you want to accomplish in your life and what kind of leader you wish to be. A useful vision has to be rooted in your past, address the future, and deal with today’s realities. It represents who you are and what you stand for. It inspires you, and the people whose commitment you need, to act to make constructive change towards a future you all want to see.”

The personal leadership vision is comprised of the following four components:

• A compelling story of the future is engaging; it captures the heart, forces you to pay attention. Those who hear it want to be a part of it somehow. And they are moved.
• What does your future look like – what’s the image? If others could travel into the future with you, what would they find? A well-crafted leadership vision is described in concrete terms that are easy to visualize and remember.
• The story of your future should be a stretch, but it must be achievable, too. If it were not achievable, you would have little motivation to even bother trying.
• Finally, future simply means out there – some time from this moment forward, but not so far away that’s it’s out of reach.

A personal leadership vision provides an anchor for uncertain times. Without out a clear leadership vision we are too easily tossed to a fro by every wind change. Finding it difficult to make progress and distracted by unnecessary work.

• Is your personal leadership vision clear?
• What dies the future look like?
• Is it achievable and future-focused?

Technorati Tags: Vision, Leadership, Future, Management, Business, Leader

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I an busy reading the book “Just Enough Anxiety” by Robert Rosen, which proposes the following five tasks of leadership.

1. Leadership: Successful leaders willingly travel into the unknown.
2. Strategy: Successful leaders set an evolving course through ambiguity, complexity, and change.
3. Engagement: Successful leaders inspire and challenge people to perform beyond their own expectations.
4. Growth: Successful leaders learn and relearn in real time by stretching themselves and the business.
5. Innovation: Successful leaders imagine possibilities, discover opportunities, and release creative energies inside their organization.

I thought this a great summary of the five key tasks of leadership. How effectively are you performing these five leadership tasks?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Practice, Strategy, Growth, Innovation

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“Every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.” – Dov Frohman

Making time to reflect and think is a critical leadership practice. In its simplest form, reflecting is just thinking about what happened. It’s the process of thinking about and examining what we’ve experienced, how we reacted and what changes we need to make to become more effective.

There are few people who make a conscious effort to learn from their experiences and fewer still learn from their mistakes. This is because reflection is not an automatic process for most people. Most of use make our way through life simply reacting to circumstances. To be effective leaders must make reflection a regular practice.

“Leaders like everyone else, are the sum of all their experiences, but, unlike others, they amount to more than the sum, because they make more of their experiences.” – Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead

A simple way to start the practice of reflection is by asking questions, questions about how we feel, about the results we are getting in our life, and what we can do differently to get different results. For example, find a quite place where you are not going to be disturbed then, take an issue that’s important to you, and ask yourself the following questions:

• What happened?
• What was I trying to achieve?
• What went well and why?
• What didn’t go so well and why?
• How did it affect me?
• How did it affect others?
• What were the consequences (positive or negative) for myself and others?
• What could be done differently next time?
• Would this change improve the consequences?

“Reflection is asking the questions that provoke self-awareness” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

As leaders much of our success is dependent on the way we think. Given this, it’s important that we schedule regular time-out to reflect on how we are behaving, how we are thinking about a situation and what adjustments we might need to make to improve our effectiveness. When was the last time you spent reflecting on an issue that is important to you?

Technorati Tags: Leader, Reflect, Leadership, Reflection, Management, Business, Experience, Learning

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Extract from the Netflix “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”

The shaping of culture is a critical leadership responsibility, as I have discussed on many occasions. One of the best examples of this is the observation made by Lou Gerstner, the former IBM CEO who is credited with its turnaround, in his book on the turnaround "Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?” wrote that…

“I came to see in my time at IBM that ‘culture’ isn’t just one aspect of the game – it is the game.”

It seems that Netflix understands who importance culture is in their business. This post discusses how serious Netflix are about creating a culture that support their success. To support their journey they have published a 128-page presentation called “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” that was sent around the company, and then put on SlideShare.

After going through the presentation, you get the feeling that Netflix intends to be different to other companies and as a result to behave differently to other large companies.

Extract from the Netflix “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”

• What is your current best thinking about what you need to do to maximize your likelihood of continuous success?
• How well is this thinking articulated?
• Do people know about it?
• Is it creating new conversations?

Technorati Tags: Culture, Change, Netflix, Leader, Leadership, Management, Business, Strategy

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The post “Why Are Creative Leaders So Rare?” by Navi Radjou who reflects on Dr Kalam’s (former President of India) lecture titled "Creative Leadership in the Global Knowledge Economy" in which he articulates the following eight key tenets of creative leadership.

1. The leader must have a vision for the organization
2. The leader must have the passion to transform that vision into action
3. The leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path
4. The leader must know how to manage both success and failure
5. The leader must have the courage to make decisions
6. The leader should have nobility in management
7. Every action of the leader should be transparent
8. The leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity

Leaders drive change and lead people in the pursuit of a vision. This means leaders are often faced with the challenge of venturing into the unknown and the unfamiliar. On any journey into unfamiliar places requires that the leader adjust and respond to unexpected situations. The ability of the leader to navigate in these times requires the traits of a creative leader as described above.

Technorati Tags: Creative, Leader, Leadership, Business, Management, Create

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"Leaders live in fish bowl and are always being watched. They should always be conscious of that fact and take advantage of it." – Gene Klann

Leaders are being watched all the time. Every gesture, action and word is being closely observed. In a New York Times article, “He Wants Subjects, Verbs and Objects” based on an interview with Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Air Lines, by Adam Bryant, Richard makes the following point…

“I’ve learned to be patient and not lose my temper. And the reason that’s important is everything you do is an example, and people look at everything you do and take a signal from everything you do. And when you lose your temper, it really squelches debate and sends the wrong signal about how you want your organization to run. And it was a good lesson.”

Everything you do is an example. Leaders are closely watched all the time. You are not only being closely watched, your actions are also being assessed and people rapidly draw conclusions. Conclusions about..

• What is the right way to behave around here?
• What are acceptable ways of getting things done?
• What topics and ideas are “ok” to share and talk about? What ones are not “ok”?
• How do decisions get made?

You get the idea. This means that leaders need to be a people of integrity all the time. As person of integrity you do way you say and say what you do. You are a living example of how things ought to be done. This means leaders do the right thing even when they don’t feel like it!

So? How do you stack up? How good has your example been this week? What needs to change?

Technorati Tags: Character, Leadership, Example, Management, Change, Mentor, Coach, Business

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