SOME LEADERSHIP LESSONS

1. Let people talk in meetings: otherwise, why do you need these people. Meetings are a

great forum for observing who can make decisions and who can contribute. 2. If you want to break down business silos, tie a meaningful part of leadership

compensation to enterprise performance. Everything else works only partially.

3. If you promise to follow-up with someone, do it, and do so in a timely manner: lack of follow-up or taking more then 72 hours, signals how unimportant someone is to you

4. Organization culture is a direct reflection of leadership behaviour. Sure, you can

implement all sorts of programs; however, I’ve yet to see a culture which drives strategic behaviour where the leaders aren’t walking the talk.

5. If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know the answer: too many senior-

most executives feel the need to be the smartest person in the room. When you provide incorrect direction, you clearly lose credibility.

6. You cannot hurry time: urgency is valuable, particularly to create motivation and

drive change, but “patience can be a virtue” particularly when negotiating or taking time to align people to a strategy or vision; the other adage which comes to mind is that “you need to go slow to go fast”

7. Communication is not the most important thing. It’s the only thing. Leaders need to

get out of their offices, be visible, listen, remind people of the vision, strategy, and listen again. And, oh yes, do the same with your customers and clients.

8. Don’t delegate senior hire recruitment. Ask questions like, why do you want to work

at our company, tell me how you motivate people, provide examples of work relationships which have gone south, describe a difficult people issue and how you handled it, describe a major change initiative which you led, your approach and why it succeeded or didn’t, what is the biggest business challenge you’ve had and how did you handle it. Be honest about your own work environment and the job. Remember, more then 50% of executives flame out in the first two years….likely due to ineffective recruiting.

9. Innovate, Innovate, Innovate. Complacent companies die, some slowly, somequickly, but they die. The job of ALL senior leaders is to challenge the status quo,whether in products, services or processes. Find a cheaper, better faster way ofdelivering products or services, insist that your executive teams work acrossorganization boundaries to discover the next big thing, spend time with your clients andcustomers to find out what they need, assemble innovation teams, create a climate oftrust and risk-taking. In fact, expect all your top leaders to spend at least a third of theirtime with clients and conduct meetings to assemble what they have learned. Do thesame thing.

10. All leaders need to act as if they truly believe that their people are theorganization’s most important resource, and not just to mitigate turnover.Engaging people is no big mystery and you don’t need exorbitant and complexprocesses to evaluate or enhance. People look at their leaders for vision, guidance,meaning in their work, honesty, respect, accessibility and, above all else, candor. Thereis far too little candor in the workplace.