Seven Sins of Leadership

May 19th, 2013

Okay, so you are probably burned-out on the “seven deadly sins” theme, but I can’t help that they exist as leadership derailers. They include:

Anger
Pride
Paranoia
Overused Ambition
Unpredictability
Myopia
Passivity

Interestingly, the first five of these sins involve the presence of negative behaviors, while the last two involve the absence of positive behaviors. I have listed them in this order because the first five tend to bite leaders quickly, while the last two bleed them slowly.

The good news is that they all have a common root cause, stemming from insecurity and an internal belief, deep down, that they do not really belong as a leader. This insecurity simply plays out differently in leaders based on the hard-wiring of their personalities. The fix would appear to be relative simple. Address the root cause and change the behavior. If only.

The problem is that we all tend to revert to type when we are under stress, and stress has never been higher than it is in the productivity/profitability obsessed hyper-competitive global marketplace. But still there is hope.

Stay tuned as I unpack each of these leadership sins and offer advice on how to blunt their influence, based on my experience in the c-suite and years of research as an executive coach. First up- anger.

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Strategic Myopia

February 7th, 2013

Dig into the development plan of many senior leaders and you are likely to see one need area rise above the rest- strategy. The common lament is that the executive “is not a strategic thinker” or “does not grasp strategy” or ” does not have a clear strategic vision.” I assert that this is less an issue of capability and more one of focal length. Said another way, they are simply not looking far enough into the distance.

To prove this point, I submit to you the Government of the United States. There is clearly no larger or more strategically important entity in the world. With a near $16 trillion economy and a larger defense spend than the next 14 largest defense spending countries combined, you would hope that there is a long term strategic vision and plan for our place in the world. But alas, it is not so. Why? Simple. Because of myopia.

In the case of the United States, this myopia is caused by our election cycle. Every two years we face mid-term elections in the U.S. House of Representatives, putting the control of that chamber of Congress up for grabs. Add to that a perpetual Presidential campaign calendar that has newly elected presidents worrying about reelection the moment after swearing-in and the stage is set for a strategic horizon of about one year or so. Strategies are not established over one year horizons, hence the impotence of our lawmakers to implement strategic change on a consistent basis.

In the same way, executives minimize their strategic impact when they take the short view. With the challenges of a global marketplace, increased competition and a slow growth economy, it is all too easy for executives to keep their head down and attend to the knitting of day-to-day exigencies. Coupled with poorly designed incentive schemes that disproportionately reward near-term performance, it is little wonder that strategy suffers. But there is hope.

An executive can build their strategic capability by using the same discipline that drives execution, i.e. process focus. By implementing a process that forces a consistent longer term view of the business, macro/micro-economic factors, markets and competitors and trends, an executive can consistently build their strategic muscle. Like most fitness regimens, this muscle gets stronger with consistent, disciplined exercise.

So if you are one of those executives with a perceived shortfall with strategy, I encourage you to lift up your head, focus on the more distant horizon and implement a process that requires you to consistently evaluate the lay of that land.

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Strategic Change

January 7th, 2013

The most difficult challenges facing most firms involve strategy and change. In my experience as a senior executive and coach, these two areas, along with innovation, are among the most frequently cited developmental gaps for leaders. CEOs often decry the lack of strategic thinking and the ability to manage change as the biggest restrainers of success in their organizations. A closer examination provides a ready explanation.

Strategy and change are inextricably interwoven. To be adept in either requires expertise in both. But most leaders do not appreciate this nuance and therein lies the heart of the matter. There can be no effective strategy without change, and change without strategic underpinning is nothing but a costly distraction. Allow me to digress so as to elaborate.

Numerous tomes have been dedicated to strategy, and many high-end consulting firms have made strategy their stock-in-trade. The lack of confidence that BODs and CEOs feel about the strategic capability of their leaders has put many an S-class Mercedes in the driveway of high-end consultants. After all, the thinking goes, my people do not all possess an MBA from an elite B-school and we don’t employ a cadre of newly minted associates dumpster diving in the trash bins of competitors, so we cannot be very good at strategy. Ah, but if we pay a couple of hundred grand to a high end consulting shop, all of our strategic questions will be answered. Not only is this thinking often off the mark, it is also potentially dangerous.

I think back to the Fortune 500 organization in a declining product category that turned to the elite strategy consultants to help re-vector their revenue swoon. The expert answer was to consolidate, by half, the distribution network to create scale and efficiency in the survivors. The internal P & L managers were terrified by this recommendation, but executive leadership pushed ahead nonetheless. The resulting 50% decline in revenue put S-class Mercedes in the driveways of their consultants AND competitors. Ouch.

So at the risk of over-simplification, allow me to provide this definition of strategy- To apply your offering in a way that out positions your competitors to exploit market opportunities. It is certainly not complicated. Plus it reinforces the importance of your own people who understand your offering, competitors and markets better than anyone else. But there is a challenge, which brings me back to the linkage of strategy and change.

To exploit market opportunities requires that your firm and its leaders be agile, deft and change-able. Markets do not stand still. They constantly evolve to adapt to a changing world. You need look no further than the current shift from PCs to mobile devices to see this phenomenon at work. But if your leaders and organization are slow to change, then no amount of strategic planning and meeting will make a difference. I believe that this is the factor which causes so many leaders in firms to see strategic planning as a waste of time. In these circumstances, it is.

Likewise, change without strategic direction, is even more destructive. Such change is costly and takes significant energy out of the organization. Even more insidiously, it provides the illusion of moving forward, when it is simply change for change’s sake.

The moral of the story is clear. Strategy without change, or change without strategy, are at best a waste of time and at worst a catastrophic mistake. Except maybe for your competitors with a hankering for an S-class.

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Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

January 5th, 2013

As we begin a new year, it is natural to wax sentimental about the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead. We are taught from a young age that the world is our oyster, if we only work hard enough or imagine big things. If you can conceive it, you can achieve it, or so the hackneyed expression goes. Anything is possible.

Except of course, when it comes to our political leaders. It appears as though they are locked in a perpetual ideological struggle of juvenile one-upmanship, the kind we specialized in as kids. You remember it. My dad can beat up your dad, my mom is prettier, my bike is cooler, my dog is tougher. We were constantly trying to stretch our thumbs to reach the bottom of the handle on the baseball bat so that we could get first “ups.” You get the idea.

But alas, we all must grow up and leave our childish ways behind us as we (mostly) become responsible and productive members of society. Unless we are elected to Congress or as President of the United States. In that case, we get permission to behave like spoiled little babies, whining and crying to get exactly what we want, completely unwilling to consider other points of view. My way or the highway. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Moreover, the energy that should be spent on legitimate dialogue is instead focused on political diatribe, funneled through the ridiculously polarized lens of Fox News, Mother Jones or one of dozens of propagandized “news” services that ensure that an increasingly polarized electorate hear only sanitized information that fit their political paradigm.

This same-old, same-old brand of politics instills both fury and resignation. We are told to exercise our political responsibility and vote for leaders who will bring an adult perspective and a willingness to compromise and do the business of the people. Yet we face ridiculously gerrymandered congressional districts that ensure more of the same, for years to come.

But I have discovered a silver lining. The ubiquitous queasiness created by our sickening pols might just dampen our appetites enough to help us achieve our weight loss resolutions for 2013.

Happy old year.

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Look Down To Move Up

November 25th, 2012

The business world is full of paradox, making it more difficult than ever to navigate successfully. Lessons that we learn early in our career through successful trial and error, can suddenly become destructive in a different context. The key is knowing when to pivot to a new strategy.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of advancement. Early in our career we are rewarded for individual excellence and we differentiated ourselves based on our individual efforts. It is often advantageous to have “sharp elbows” during this stage of our career. But the very success that this approach helps to earn, also sows the seeds for its undoing.

Nothing is more de rigueur to a senior leadership role than the ability to lead a team of people to achieve pre-planned outcomes in the marketplace. To do this consistently and successfully requires a focus on others in your organization, those below you on the organization chart, to be precise. But if you are stuck in old behavior patterns of looking and managing up to demonstrate your own individual talents and skills, then you are surely missing an important inflection point in your career, the opportunity to demonstrate that you are a mature leader.

By focusing on the performance and capability of the individuals on their team, a leader with gravitas earns opportunity to move up, based on the collective excellence of those below.

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