weLEAD Online Magazine
leadingtoday.org
General Colin Powell
Chairman (Ret), Joint Chiefs of Staff
A Leadership Primer
LESSON 1
"Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off."
Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the
group, which
means that some people will get
angry at your actions and decisions.
It's
inevitable, if you're
honorable. Trying to get everyone to
like you is a sign
of mediocrity: you'll avoid the
tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the
people who need to be confronted,
and you'll avoid offering differential
rewards based on differential
performance because some people might
get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the
difficult choices, by trying
not to get anyone mad, and by
treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless
of their contributions, you'll
simply ensure that the only people you'll wind
up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization.
LESSON 2
"The day soldiers stop bringing
you their problems is the
day you have stopped
leading them. They have either lost
confidence that you can
help them or concluded that you
do not care. Either case is a failure of
leadership."
If this were a litmus test, the majority of CEOs would
fail. One, they build so
many barriers to upward
communication that the very idea of someone lower
in the hierarchy looking up to
the leader for help is ludicrous. Two,
the
corporate culture they foster
often defines asking for help as weakness or
failure, so people cover up their
gaps, and the organization suffers accordingly.
Real leaders make themselves
accessible and available. They show
concern
for the efforts and challenges
faced by underlings, even as they demand high
standards. Accordingly, they are more likely to create
an environment where
problem analysis replaces blame.
LESSON 3
"Don't be buffaloed by experts
and elites. Experts often
possess more data than
judgment. Elites can become so
inbred that they produce
hemophiliacs who bleed to death
as soon as they are
nicked by the real world."
Small companies and start-ups don't have the time for
analytically detached
experts. They don't have the money to subsidize lofty
elites, either. The
president answers the phone and
drives the truck when necessary; everyone
on the payroll visibly produces
and contributes to bottom-line results or they're
history. But as companies get bigger, they often
forget who "brought them to
the dance": things like
all-hands involvement, egalitarianism, informality,
market intimacy, daring, risk,
speed, agility. Policies that emanate
from
ivory towers often have an
adverse impact on the people out in the field
who are fighting the wars or
bringing in the revenues. Real leaders
are
vigilant, and combative, in the face
of these trends.
LESSON
4
"Don't be afraid to challenge the
pros,
even in their own
backyard."
Learn from the pros, observe them, seek them out as mentors and
partners.
But remember that even the pros
may have leveled out in terms of their
learning and skills. Sometimes even the pros can become
complacent and
lazy. Leadership does not emerge from blind obedience to anyone. Xerox's
Barry Rand was right on target
when he warned his people that if you have
a yes-man working for you, one
of you is redundant. Good leadership
encourages everyone's evolution.
LESSON 5
"Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled
or distracted the leader
must be doubly vigilant."
Strategy equals execution.
All the great ideas and visions in the world are
worthless if they can't be
implemented rapidly and efficiently.
Good leaders
delegate and empower others
liberally, but they pay attention to details, every
day. (Think about supreme athletic coaches like Jimmy Johnson, Pat
Riley
and Tony La Russa). Bad ones, even those who fancy themselves as
progressive
"visionaries," think they're somehow "above" operational
details.
Paradoxically, good leaders
understand something else: an obsessive routine
in carrying out the details
begets conformity and complacency, which in turn
dulls everyone's mind. That is why even as they pay attention to
details, they
continually encourage people to
challenge the process. They implicitly
understand the sentiment of CEO
leaders like Quad Graphic's Harry
Quadracchi, Oticon's Lars Kolind
and the late Bill McGowan of MCI, who all
independently asserted that the
Job of a leader is not to be the chief organizer,
but the chief dis-organizer.
LESSON 6
"You don't know what you can get away with until you try."
You know the expression, "it's easier to get forgiveness
than permission." Well,
it's true. Good leaders don't wait for official
blessing to try things out. They're
prudent, not reckless. But they also realize a fact of life in most
organizations:
if you ask enough people for
permission, you'll inevitably come up against
someone who believes his job is
to say "no." So the moral is,
don't ask. Less
effective middle managers
endorsed the sentiment, "If I haven't explicitly been
told 'yes,' I can't do it,"
whereas the good ones believed, "If I haven't explicitly
been told 'no,' I
can." There's a world of
difference between these two points
of view.
LESSON 7
"Keep looking below surface
appearances.
Don't shrink from doing
so (just) because you
might not like what you
find."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the slogan of the
complacent, the arrogant or the
scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to
non-arms. It's a mind-set that
assumes (or hopes) that today's
realities will continue tomorrow in a tidy, linear
and predictable fashion. Pure fantasy. In this sort of culture, you won't find
people who pro-actively take
steps to solve problems as they emerge.
Here's
a little tip: don't invest in
these companies.
LESSON
8
"Organization doesn't really
accomplish anything. Plans
don't accomplish
anything, either. Theories of
management
don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of
the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will
you accomplish great
deeds."
In a brain-based economy, your best assets are people. We've heard this
expression so often that it's
become trite. But how many leaders
really "walk
the talk" with this
stuff? Too often, people are assumed to
be empty chess
pieces to be moved around by
grand viziers, which may explain why so many
top managers immerse their
calendar time in deal making, restructuring and
the latest management fad. How many immerse themselves in the goal of
creating an environment where
the best, the brightest, the most creative are
attracted, retained and, most
importantly, unleashed?
LESSON 9
"Organization charts and fancy
titles count for next to nothing."
Organization charts are frozen, anachronistic photos in a work
place that ought
to be as dynamic as the external
environment around you. If people
really
followed organization charts,
companies would collapse. In well-run
organizations, titles are also
pretty meaningless. At best, they
advertise
some authority, an official status
conferring the ability to give orders and
induce obedience. But titles mean little in terms of real
power, which is the
capacity to influence and
inspire. Have you ever noticed that
people will
personally commit to certain
individuals who on paper (or on the organization
chart) possess little authority,
but instead possess pizzazz, drive, expertise,
and genuine caring for teammates
and products? On the flip side,
non-leaders
in management may be formally
anointed with all the perks and frills
associated with high positions,
but they have little influence on others, apart
from their ability to extract
minimal compliance to minimal standards.
LESSON 10
"Never let your ego get so close
to your position that
when your position goes,
your ego goes with it."
Too often, change is stifled by people who cling to familiar
turfs and job
descriptions. One reason that even large organizations
wither is that
managers won't challenge old,
comfortable ways of doing things. But
real leaders understand that,
nowadays, every one of our jobs is becoming
obsolete. The proper response is to obsolete our
activities before someone
else does. Effective leaders create a climate where
people’s worth is
determined by their willingness
to learn new skills and grab new
responsibilities, thus
perpetually reinventing their jobs. The
most
important question in
performance evaluation becomes not, "How well
did you perform your job since
the last time we met?" but, "How much
did you change it?"
LESSON 11
"Fit no stereotypes. Don't chase the latest management
fads. The situation dictates which approach best
accomplishes the team's
mission."
Flitting from fad to fad creates team confusion, reduces the
leader's credibility,
and drains organizational
coffers. Blindly following a particular
fad generates
rigidity in thought and
action. Sometimes speed to market is
more important
than total quality. Sometimes an unapologetic directive is more
appropriate
than participatory
discussion. Some situations require the
leader to hover
closely; others require long,
loose leashes. Leaders honor their core
values,
but they are flexible in how
they execute them. They understand that
management techniques are not
magic mantras but simply tools to be
reached for at the right times.
LESSON 12
"Perpetual optimism is a force
multiplier."
The ripple effect of a leader's enthusiasm and optimism is
awesome. So is the
impact of cynicism and
pessimism. Leaders who whine and blame
engender
those same behaviors among their
colleagues. I am not talking about
stoically
accepting organizational
stupidity and performance incompetence with a "what,
me worry?" smile. I am talking about a gung-ho attitude that
says "we can
change things here, we can
achieve awesome goals, we can be the best."
Spare me the grim litany of the
"realist," give me the unrealistic aspirations
of the optimist any day.
LESSON 13
"Powell's Rules for Picking
People:”
Look for intelligence and
judgment, and most critically,
a capacity to anticipate,
to see around corners. Also
look for loyalty,
integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced
ego, and the drive to get
things done.
How often do our recruitment and hiring processes tap into these
attributes?
More often than not, we ignore them
in favor of length of resume, degrees and
prior titles. A string of job descriptions a recruit held
yesterday seem to be
more important than who one is
today, what they can contribute tomorrow, or
how well their values mesh with
those of the organization. You can
train a
bright, willing novice in the
fundamentals of your business fairly readily, but
it's a lot harder to train
someone to have integrity, judgment, energy, balance,
and the drive to get things
done. Good leaders stack the deck in
their favor
right in the recruitment phase.
LESSON
14
"Great leaders are almost always
great simplifiers,
who can cut through
argument, debate and doubt,
to offer a solution
everybody can understand."
Effective leaders understand the KISS principle, Keep It Simple,
Stupid. They
articulate vivid, over-arching
goals and values, which they use to drive daily
behaviors and choices among
competing alternatives. Their visions
and
priorities are lean and
compelling, not cluttered and buzzword-laden.
Their
decisions are crisp and clear,
not tentative and ambiguous. They
convey an
unwavering firmness and
consistency in their actions, aligned with the picture
of the future they paint. The result: clarity of purpose, credibility
of leadership,
and integrity in organization.
LESSON 15
Part I: "Use the formula P=40 to
70, in which P stands
for the probability of
success and the numbers indicate
the percentage of
information acquired.”
Part II: "Once the
information is in the 40 to 70 range,
go with your gut."
Don't take action if you have only enough information to give
you less than a
40 percent chance of being
right, but don't wait until you have enough facts to
be 100 percent sure, because by
then it is almost always too late.
Today,
excessive delays in the name of
information-gathering breeds "analysis
paralysis." Procrastination in the name of reducing
risk actually increases risk.
LESSON 16
"The commander in the field is
always right and the
rear echelon is wrong,
unless proved otherwise."
Too often, the reverse defines corporate culture. This is one of the main
reasons why leaders like Ken
Iverson of Nucor Steel, Percy Barnevik of Asea
Brown Boveri, and Richard
Branson of Virgin have kept their corporate staffs
to a bare-bones minimum - how
about fewer than 100 central corporate
staffers for global $30
billion-plus ABB? Or around 25 and 3
for multi-billion
Nucor and Virgin,
respectively? Shift the power and the
financial accountability
to the folks who are bringing in
the beans, not the ones who are counting
or analyzing them.
LESSON 17
"Have fun in your command. Don't always run at
a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it:
Spend time with your
families.
Corollary: surround
yourself with people who take their
work seriously, but not
themselves, those who work
hard and play hard."
Herb Kelleher of Southwest Air and Anita Roddick of The Body
Shop would
agree: seek people who have some
balance in their lives, who are fun to hang
out with, who like to laugh (at
themselves, too) and who have some non-job
priorities which they approach
with the same passion that they do their work.
Spare me the grim workaholic or
the pompous pretentious "professional;”
I'll help them find jobs with my
competitor.
LESSON 18
"Command is lonely."
Harry Truman was right.
Whether you're a CEO or the temporary head of a
project team, the buck stops
here. You can encourage participative
management and bottom-up employee
involvement, but ultimately the
essence of leadership is the
willingness to make the tough, unambiguous
choices that will have an impact
on the fate of the organization. I've
seen
too many non-leaders flinch from
this responsibility. Even as you create
an informal, open, collaborative
corporate culture, prepare to be lonely.
“Leadership is the art of accomplishing
more than the science of management
says is possible.”