Being a Leaders Who is the Source of a Compelling Future

What distinguishes great leadership from those who are leaders in title only is the way great leaders speak to their various constituencies – a way of speaking that generates possibilities and a mood of excitement, and enthusiasm and an itchiness to get into collaborative action to follow and make things happen – yes, even a cult like following. (Think Apple)

It is a speaking that sources, or generates, or brings into existence a bold new future for his or her organization, and everyone the organization touches – and, it is a future the leader really, really, really wants.

It is a speaking that engages and compels - one that redirects the trajectory of the organization’s impact in the market.  

It is a speaking we all have access to in those moments when we are in touch with our purpose, passions, vision and commitments – in those moments when our connection to our purpose passion, vision and commitments is so visceral it has pushed aside conversations about feasibility, practicality, pathways… blah, blah, blah, that, so often derail even our most ambitious intentions.

Great leaders recognize the default mode of most speaking is descriptive. They know the discussion in most meetings, or the exchanges of most commentators is simply the point-of-view, or opinion of the speaker, being spoken as if describing facts.

Leader’s speaking is sourced from the stand they are, independently from how they think/know people will react.

Great leaders have mastered how to respond to peoples’ reactions to the future they want after they speak vs. conditioning their speaking before the fact so as to avoid push back or the clamor for certainty and agreement that follows the, “Yea but…” – they know how to reframe concerns and connect people to shared passions and commitments.

Reflect briefly about the leaders you admire and respect the most – your version of Great Leaders Through History – and check for yourself:

• Were they shaped by circumstances or their commitments? 
• Were they resolute in pursuing their vision or reasonable in the face of resistance?
• Were they shaped by organizing principles or were they practical (political), going along to get along?
• Were setbacks an excuse to change course, even give up, or were setbacks fuel for more imagination and creativity?

Reflect on your own leadership:

What do you see to STOP that gets in the way of you being a great (or just better) leader?
What do you see to START that will contribute to you being a great (or just better) leader?

What do you see to CONTINUE that already contributes to you being a good, but not yet great, leader?

What do you see to DO DIFFERENTLY that will contribute to you being a great (or just better) leader?

Free People to Express Their Full Contribution - The Organizations Vitality Depends On It

Karl Popper the philosopher had a wonderful admonition that leaders would be wise to take to heart. He said, don't confuse clock with clouds. To paraphrase him, he said clocks you can take apart, examine, rebuild, make bigger, more complicated with more features... Clouds, on the other hand, need be dealt with as a whole, they are complex, self-organizing, adaptive systems, not mechanisms. You can't deal with clouds with the same thinking and methods as you deal with clocks.

Any system that includes people needs to be thought of more as clouds than clocks - or, how do we unleash/harness the complex, adaptive, intelligent, human social system to self-organize around the organization's purpose, mission, strategies and values, so that the system is ever expanding to take advantage of opportunities in the market and be self-repairing in the event of loss of key parts of the system – knowing that a clockwork/mechanistic approach won't do it?

I am often in conversations with clients about succession planning. My counsel: don't waste time on these kinds of planning exercises. Instead, create a culture and a set of habits for ongoing talent development so that people are continually growing readying themselves to step into new roles with new accountabilities as the business needs them to.

At Perret Roche Partners our perspective is that we need to think from a different place about talent development, about succession, even about how we organize to get things done day-to-day – here are some examples:

• Have the dominant organizing model be a network of accountabilities - with each person accountable to a specific person(s) to produce specific measurable desired results in time – all cascaded from the leader's accountability – being the source of  the purpose, mission, strategies, and values of the organization
• Functions stay in place as centers of excellence, example, finance, IT, manufacturing
• In a self-organizing, distributed leadership organizing model personal growth is part of everyone's role and that means always getting ready to take on larger accountabilities
• Regular after-action reviews and the practice of giving and receiving feedback is the most effective way of continually preparing people for larger roles and accountabilities.

Here are some cultural perspectives that forward/constrain succession development. For example:

Augmenting knowledge sharing/knowledge management with ignorance management – the practices for surfacing areas of ignorance to be the trigger event for ideation

Distinguishing carelessness from failure – the former to be minimized, the latter to be encouraged 

Manage requests, promises, and offers as part of supporting individuals become more reliable in taking on and delivering ever larger accountabilities.