The Practice of Leadership

What will be the most important leadership qualities over the next five years?

George Ambler — Sun, 30 May 2010 20:29:55 +0000

The “2010 Global IBM CEO Study” was recently published, it’s one of the largest one-on-one CEO interview studies, surveying 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from 60 countries and across 33 industries. The four primary findings of this year’s survey are as follows:

Today’s complexity is only expected to rise and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it. Seventy-nine percent of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity ahead. However, one set of organisations we call them ‘Standouts’ has turned increased complexity into financial advantage over the past five years.

Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organisations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number one priority.

Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners. They do so by simplifying operations and products, and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets around the world. Compared to other CEOs, dexterous leaders expect 20 percent more future revenue to come from new sources.

After reviewing the findings what becomes clear that there is an overarching theme, the is the extent to which the economic downturn has affected customers, business and society. The world will not simply go back to “business as usual” after we recover from the economic downturn. The world has undergoing a significant paradigm shift and it will never be the same.

As we move towards a recovery in the world economy, leaders world-wide are experiencing high levels of complexity and uncertainty where “eight in ten CEOs expect their environment to grow significantly more complex and fewer than half believe they know how to deal with it successfully.” This environment creates an urgent need for leadership. Given this, the survey explored what CEOs consider to be the most important leadership qualities that would be required over the next five years, the results are illustrated below.

CEOs cited creativity as the most important leadership quality over the next five years…

Creativity is essential when uncertainty is high and where the future is expected to be a significant departure from what we’ve known in the past. When uncertainty is high you cannot just repeat the successful practices of the past and expect similar results. You will need to find new ways of thinking, new ways of operating and new ways of behaving. The IBM survey puts it this way…

“Creativity is often defined as the ability to bring into existence something new or different, but CEOs elaborated. Creativity is the basis for ‘disruptive innovation and continuous re-invention,’ a Professional Services CEO in the United States told us. In addition this requires bold, breakthrough thinking. Leaders, they said, must be ready to upset the status quo even if it is successful. They must be comfortable with and committed to ongoing experimentation… It’s not that CEOs are just now becoming aware of the importance of creativity they have long been aware of the need to innovate their products, their processes and their customers’ experiences. Even in 2004, CEOs were telling us that ‘CEOs the world over were refocused on growth and they viewed innovation as the way to get there.’ But today, creativity itself has been elevated to a leadership style. Traditional approaches to managing organisations need fresh ideas, ideas that are intended to disrupt the status quo.”

It seems that we are entering a period that places a premium on effective leadership. It’s not often that we have the opportunity to re-invent how we choose to approach our life and work. These are exciting times indeed…!

What are you doing in response to this increased demand for leadership?
Are you re-examining your existing leadership practices?
Are you experimenting with new approaches, new paradigms, new ways of working? If not, why?

Technorati Tags: Creative, Innovation, Leadership, Research, IBM, 2010, Integrity, Management, Business, CEO

The power of leading by example

George Ambler — Sun, 30 May 2010 20:28:52 +0000

Photo by Jaako

A recent post “Developing future leaders” by Mitch McCrimmon provides and interesting perspective on the importance of leading by example as follows…

“Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela had a one-off leadership impact on their respective governments without being members of those governments and having no authority within them. Similarly, when knowledge workers promote new products to management, they have a one-off leadership impact with no managerial authority over their bosses.

Leading by example is not restricted to those in managerial roles. Employees can show leadership by example to their colleagues. And companies can show leadership by example with innovative products despite having no managerial authority over their markets… Pure leadership means showing the way for others, either by example or by explicitly promoting a new direction.”

We all intuitively know that leading by example is the most powerful form of leadership, but ironically it’s often the most overlooked. As Mahatma Gandhi once said “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” The insight from Mitch, is that leading by example is something that we can all do, no matter our role, no matter our position. We can all make the choice and take responsibility to be the change we want to see. We can all take initiative, we can all make the decision to “show the way for others”.

Are you leading by example?
Have you chosen to be the change?
Have you chosen to show the way?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Example, Leader, Practice, Management, Vision, Change

The surprising truth about what motivates us

George Ambler — Sun, 30 May 2010 20:00:36 +0000

This video by Dan Pink provides a really insightful overview as to what motivates people. As leaders this is a critical considerations. Unless we can inspire and motivate people to follow and engage with the vision – leadership fails!

As was so effectively illustrated in this video, we tend to overly rely on monetary reward as the primary means to motivate people. Which can be a very blunt instrument. This is especially true of how we reward and motivate our leaders. high levels of monetary reward does not produce leadership! the best leaders are primarily motivated by purpose and mastery, rather than money.

What are your thoughts?
Can leadership be bought?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Purpose, Business, Inspiration

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What is your organisations leadership strategy?

George Ambler — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:01:17 +0000

Photo by Scott McLeod

I recently stumbled across an interesting article by William Pasmore in Forbes titled “You Need A Leadership Strategy Now” which really got me thinking, especially his statement regarding change…

“Change is tough and always has been. Many executives aren’t good at leading change because they don’t understand the importance of making critical changes in how their companies are led, not just in how they operate.”

Leading in an environment that is characterised by constrained resources, an uncertain and unpredictable economic environment and where competition is constantly increasing, is extremely challenging as there is no clear direction, not clear answers and the risk of failure is high. In these times, when decision making is difficult and change has become the order of the day, having the right leadership team in place is of utmost importance. This is why having a robust leadership strategy is key.

You many be asking yourself, what exactly is a leadership strategy and how will is help in times likes these? William Pasmore describes a leadership strategy as follows..

“A leadership strategy makes explicit how many leaders you need, what kind, where, with what skills, and behaving in what fashion individually and collectively to achieve the total success you seek.”

According to William, developing your organisations leadership strategy require that you answer the following four questions:

What are the drivers of our business?
What kind of leadership do we need?
How am I myself leading?
Who are our leaders?

Taking the step to think through the implications of your organisation’s strategy on the kind and style of leadership you need is critical. However, as noted by William, in practice it’s rarely done! Take for example a change in an organisation’s structure, we change the organisation’s structure to align more closely to strategy. Over time we find that the change has made little to no difference, people are still behaving as they have always done and we’re no close to achieving our strategy. This is because we too quickly focus on changing how we operate, rather than focusing on changing how we lead! Instead of focusing only on changing how we operate, we also need to take time to think about how we are going to change the way we lead, so that people will behave differently, so that we achieve our strategy.

When planning to adopt a new strategy think through the four questions described previously. As yourself:

What style of leadership will be required to support our new strategy?
How would we need to lead differently?
Do we have the right leaders in place that can lead in this way?
If not what are we going to do about it?

Technorati Tags: Change, Leadership, Management, Strategy, Business, Execution

Leaders are future orientated…

George Ambler — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:59:50 +0000

Photo by johnnyalive

“Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo… As a leader, you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.” – Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

Leaders are future orientated and future looking, they have a vision of a better future. Leaders have a strong sense of direction and a clear point of view. Unless the leader knows where he is going, people will be hesitant to follow. Leaders are always looking towards the future, looking for ways of plotting a course for unknown lands, leaders are modern explorers, always seeking new lands and striving for distant shores. Kouzes and Posner in their their classic “The Leadership Challenge”, see leaders as pioneers…

“Leaders are pioneers. They are people who venture into unexplored territory. They guide us to new and often unfamiliar destinations. People who take the lead are the foot soldiers in the campaigns for change… The unique reason for having leaders – their differentiating function – is to move us forward. Leaders get us going someplace.”

Leaders always deal with the future, they have a future-orientation which acts as a signpost, point the way, giving other the confidence to follow, to make sacrifices and to take bold steps forward.

How future orientated is your leadership?
Do you have a clear vision of the future?
Is it clear to others?

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

How are these four elements of trust affecting your leadership?

George Ambler — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:54:40 +0000

In the May edition of the Ignite! Newsletter published by The Ken Blanchard Companies is an interesting article on trust. The article discuses the ABCD Trust Model™ from Cynthia Olmstead, founder and president of TrustWorks Group, Inc. which highlights the following four elements of trust:

Able: demonstrates competence, expertise, experience, and capability in getting the desired results accomplished

Believable: walks the talk of a core set of values, demonstrates honesty, and uses fair, equitable practices

Connected: interacts with staff, communicates and shares relevant information, provides praise, and gives recognition

Dependable: is accountable, takes responsibility for own actions, and consistently follows up

As we are all aware trust is the foundation of all effective leadership, however trust does not just happen. It’s something that a leader must consciously and constantly work on developing. When it comes to developing trust, actions matter! Cynthia Olmstead goes on to explain that “…people need to see trust in action more that they need to hear about it.” It’s only as leader’s act in a trustworthy manner, by example that trust is developed.

Without trust effective leadership is impossible. Consider the following:

Considering the four elements of trust how do you and other leaders in your organisation rate?
What impact does this level of trust have on your ability to lead?
What action can you take this week to improve the level of trust?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Trust, Management, Business, Team, Teamwork, Communication, Change, Execution

How Malcolm Gladwell masters his “look no hands” style of speaking

George Ambler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:19:51 +0000

Photo by penmachine

Gideon Rachman provides some insight into “The secrets of Malcolm Gladwell”, that is some of the secrets to his great speaking ability. In his post Gideon makes the following observations from his experience of speaking alongside Malcolm Gladwell.

“First, he is a master of the “look no hands” style of speaking. He just stands up there, with a button mike and talks – and it all sounds very spontaneous, with little asides and jokes, and messages tailored to his Mexican audience. Second, he tells stories – there are theories attached to the stories – but the bulk of the talk is made up of charming anecdotes to illustrate rather simple themes…. So how does Gladwell do it? Afterwards, I broke through the autograph-hunters surrounding him and asked him how he managed to time his talk so beautifully – so that it ended bang on 45 minutes, without ever looking at his watch. He answered – ‘I know it may not look like this. But it’s all scripted. I write down every word and then I learn it off by heart. I do that with all my talks and I’ve got lots of them’”

This is a great illustration of what I too have discovered, that nothing can replace thorough preparation when it comes to presenting and public speaking.

Technorati Tags: Communication, Presenting, Leadership, Leader, Management, Speaking, Lecture

Goal setting at Google

George Ambler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:18:20 +0000

Photo by Anderaz

Don Dodge, a Developer Advocate at Google helping developers build new applications on Google platforms and technologies, wrote an interesting post “How Google sets goals and measures success” discussing how Google goes about goal setting. Don describes the central philosophy to Google’s approach to goal setting is as follows:

The Google goal setting process happens in a 90 day cycle…

“Every quarter every group at Google sets goals, called OKRs, for the next 90 days. Most big companies set annual goals like improving or growing something by x%, and then measure performance once a year. At Google a year is like a decade. Annual goals aren’t good enough. Set quarterly goals, set them at impossible levels, and then figure out how to achieve them. Measure progress every quarter and reward outstanding achievement.”

Don makes the following observations and insights of his experience with the goal-setting process at Google:

OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. I submitted my Q1 OKRs with what I thought were aggressive yet achievable goals. Not good enough. My manager explained that we needed to set stretch goals that seemed impossible to fully achieve. Hmmm…I said “This is just a 90 day window and we can predict with reasonable accuracy what is achievable. Why set unrealistic goals?” Because you can’t achieve amazing results by setting modest targets. We want amazing results. We want to tackle the impossible.

Failure is not an option – A while ago I wrote a post about the culture of “failure is not an option” and how, taken the wrong way, that actually conditions people to set modest achievable goals that they are certain they can achieve. Because if they fail…they are fired. Taking great risks, pushing innovation, and striving to achieve the impossible will never happen at companies like that. In that post I discuss how startups definition of “failure is not an option” is completely different. For startups it means they will try 5 or 10 or 20 approaches until they find one that works. They won’t stop until they succeed. Google’s culture seems to follow the Thomas Edison approach which paraphrased is “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found lots of approaches that don’t work, and I am closer to the solution”.

Achieving 65% of the impossible is better than 100% of the ordinary – Setting impossible goals and achieving part of them sets you on a completely different path than the safe route. Sometimes you can achieve the impossible in a quarter, but even when you don’t, you are on a fast track to achieving it soon. Measuring success every quarter allows for mid course corrections and setting higher goals for the next quarter.

Rewards For Success – The rewards for achieving the impossible are significant. As you might expect there is an algorithm for calculating engineering bonuses with various multipliers. Google attracts the best people in the industry for many reasons, maybe most importantly because they give people the resources and support they need to achieve the impossible. Financial rewards are significant, but they are not the primary motivator. Working with the best people in the world and achieving greatness is the ultimate reward.

It seems to me this continually striving for breakthrough innovation, by setting BHAG’s and clear objectives is working for them. Too many organisation don’t take this process seriously enough to commit the necessary time and resources to defining a limited set of clear outcomes and committing the necessary resources to ensure it’s achieved.

Technorati Tags: Strategy, Performance, Management, Leadership, Objectives, BHAG, Vision, Goals, Goal-Setting, Execution

Are you a Leader or just a Boss?

George Ambler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:15:36 +0000

I often find that many people onfuse leadership with positional power. We tend to believe that a person in a position of authority or someone with a title, has their position or title due to their leadership qualities. However, in many cases there is no correlation between someone’s position and their leadership ability. Just having a title does not make you a leader, leaderships is about influence. Title only buys you time to exercise true leadership, and in this time your leadership either increases or diminishes and eventually fails. There is a huge difference between being a boss and being a leader…! Consider the following…

“The boss drives group members; the leader coaches them.
The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will.
The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.
The boss says ‘I’; the leader says ‘we.’
The boss assigns the task, the leader sets the pace.
The boss says, ‘Get there on time’; the leader gets there ahead of time.
The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how.
The boss makes work a drudgery; the leader makes it a game.
The boss says, ‘Go’; the leader says, ‘Let’s go.’“

– Author unknown

People follow the boss because they have to if they want to keep their jobs. People follow leaders because of who they are and were they are going. Too many leaders today rely on their position to lead. How about you?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Authority, Management, Business, Leader, Boss, Power

A 2009 Review of The Practice of Leadership

George Ambler — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:47:33 +0000

Photo by Sabrina Campagna

A happy New Year to you all! The top posts for 2009 and of all time featured on this blog are listed below….

Top Content

Just in case you missed some of the great posts from 2008 here are were the most read posts of the year…

Wishing you all the best in 2010! Hoping that this blog will continue to add value to your lives as we all strive to become the change we wish to see in the world, leaving a legacy that will touch future generations…..

Technorati Tags: leadership, best, 2009, new year, management, business