A Blog about Leadership

Many failures are merely mistakes and everyone makes mistakes. Those who achieve success are those who persevere after mistakes.

A Peter Drucker quote:
“The one person to distrust is the one who never makes a mistake. Either he is a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.”

I want to share a paragraph out of John C. Maxwell’s book, Failing Forward:

“Every successful person is someone who failed, yet never regarded himself as a failure. For example, Wolfgang Mozart, one of the geniuses of musical composition, was told by Emperor Ferdinand that his opera The Marriage of Figaro was ‘far too noisy’ and contained ‘far too many notes.’ Artist Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings now set records for the sums they bring at auction, sold only one painting in his lifetime. Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in history, was considered unteachable as a youngster. And Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of our time, was told by a Munich schoolmaster that he would “never amount to much.

“I think it’s safe to say that all great achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. In the face of adversity, rejection, and failings, they continue believing in themselves and refuse to consider themselves failures.”

Many failures are merely mistakes and everyone makes mistakes. Those who achieve success are those who persevere after mistakes. As a leader, it is particularly important to understand this. You don’t cover up mistakes, you acknowledge, learn from, and move past mistakes.

The same is true for your team. Your team members may make mistakes. Don’t make them an example, but lead them to acknowledge what the mistake was, what can be learned from the mistake, and how to move past it.

As the quote from Peter Drucker reminds us, the person you should be weary of is not the one who makes mistakes, but the person who does not make mistakes. Are they trying their best, are they growing as a professional, are they expanding their knowledge and skills, or are they merely stagnant with the tried and true.

Especially, in our demanding economic times, change is constant. You cannot stop change, but you can get out in front and make the most of it. In the process of working with change, you and your team may make mistakes – that’s an indication that you are trying. Now you merely have to respond positively to mistakes – persevere – and don’t allow failures to consume and paralyze you and your team.

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Great Book

I’ve added another book to my collection that I am quite excited about. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have great love for books. I picked up The Daily Drucker which is a compilation of the best of Peter F. Drucker that was put together with Joseph A. Maciariello.

The Daily Drucker is “366 DAYS of INSIGHT and MOTIVATION for GETTING the RIGHT THINGS DONE” (leap year included). I intend to go through this book as the writer intended – one day for one passage of the legendary Drucker. What prompted me to buy it was a paragraph in the preface written by Drucker, “But the most important part of this book is the blank spaces at the bottom of its pages. They are what the readers will contribute, their actions, decisions, and the results of these decisions. For this is an action book.

Action

Action is the key. All thoughts, plans, concepts, and ideas are empty without action. You can spend all your time reading and discussing the finer details of leadership, but it will be all for nothing without action. Leadership requires you to go and do. You can only be and become a leader through doing leadership.

There is a famous quote that is a bit controversial because it may be misappropriated to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (read about it here). Nonetheless I like this quote, so I am going to share it with you.

Quote about action from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
 “What you can do or think you can do, begin it—boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

Failure

Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back. Even if things don’t work out quite as you expect, you can still gain a great deal from experience and always remember the 3 Steps for How to Respond to Failure.

Be bold, be a leader, and take action.

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Persistence

Persistence – the act of enduring despite… regardless of… in the face of… even with… even though… A leader is persistent. If there are setbacks, if there are obstacles, if the going gets tough, a leader is persistent. It’s the act of determination that stems from the depths of confidence and the strength that is derived form experience.

Leadership quote from Peter Drucker:
“It is easy to look good in a boom.”

Right now, in the US, we are faced with the prospect of a recession – technically defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth. So, right now, we need a greater emphasis on leadership in organizations. We need those business man and women, who through experience and knowledge, are able to drive our businesses through this economic period where only select businesses will “look good” while others are merely positioned to endure through this an economic downturn and still others will crumble under the weight of tough times.

It takes leadership to look good in a decline.

Creativity and Innovation

When economic times get tough, then it is time for leaders to rise to the challenge and find creative solutions to the problem. This is not as straight forward as cutting costs or cutting jobs. These, short-term solutions may cause more long-term problems. Sometimes the solution is a realignment, restructuring, or, some other, repositioning of the business.

No “One” solution

There is never a one-size-fits-all solution. Some corporations have a problem of too much money on hand, like Berkshire Hatheway, while others may have cut costs a bit too far and are now losing value, the Dell and Wal-Mart problems.

Leadership

It’s the job of leadership to determine the best path. It’s not as black-and-white as to say the correct path, for there may be more than one correct way to go. Rather, it’s an indeterminate measurement of “best.” It’s a matter of core competence in conjunction with the market’s evolution and countering competition. Sometimes the best answer is to R & D an entirely new product, modify the existing product, or add a service to complement the buyer’s experience. Whatever the “best” answer, the job is leadership.

Rise to the challenge and persist.

Leadership quote from Thomas Edison:
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

The leader does not give up.

For assistance, see Creative Problem Solving for Leadership.

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Building Trust 

Building trust is a make-or-break point for some leaders, but there are merely two steps to successfully build trust.

The first step is the obvious.

1) Have a trustworthy character.

This is so obvious that you are probably wondering why I am writing this. Well, frankly, it is important to continually reiterate that honesty and responsibility still matter – especially in business. There seems to be a misnomer in most college business curriculums with a course like “business ethics.” This is not an oxymoron, but an inappropriate use of an adjective. There are not a set of ethics for business that are different than the ethics for church, family, friends, politics, or any-and-every other facet of life. There are just ethics. Either you are ethical or you are making poor, short-sided, non-leader decisions.

Of course, nobody is perfect. We make mistakes and sometimes it requires another to notice and call us on our mistakes. When this happens, the leader’s response is to admit the wrong, correct it, and move on.

The second step gets a little more into the message of this post.

2) Build value.

Peter Drucker quote:
“It’s much easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to give it away. Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free.”

Build value through:

• Actively participating – listening and communicating are elementary skills for leaders. Leaders need to listen to those around them and communicate ideas, objections, suggestions, and decisions.

• Demonstrating knowledge – you have to demonstrate your knowledge as it applies in an organization. If you don’t have the knowledge necessary to lead, then you will never garner the trust to lead.

• Portraying confidence – if there is one attribute that is contagious, it is confidence. Every effect leader portrays confidence in themselves as leaders, in the organization, and in the environment that is where the organization is operating and to where leadership is driving.

See the correlation of ethics and leadership for more.

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Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker was world renowned for definitive knowledge and wisdom about business, management, leadership, and the changes and progression of business. He had a unique ability to define changes in business before many were even aware of them. His prolific writings on the topics are tributes to his influence on a great many businesses.

Leadership quote from Peter F. Drucker:
“Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’, that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”

Leaders help others realize new potential.

There are too many people who settle for a simple par or, even worse, are content with sub-par. A leader impacts those around him or her to realize the full extent of what they can accomplish, to see beyond the limits of experience to the horizon of potential and lead them on the journey toward that destination.

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Change Happens

Work for the same organization for a five, ten, or twenty years and you are guaranteed to experience a significant amount of change.  Change can be good and change can also be detrimental.  Change requires leadership.

Leadership quote from Peter Drucker:
“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.”

Why Change

The world is constantly changing.  Technology has had a tremendous impact in the past and continues to have a tremendous impact in how we interact with friends, how we connect with associates, how we conduct business, and even the substance of our businesses.

When to Change

Always and never change.  Technology changes, but several theories and concepts never change.  I cannot count the number of business classes that I took which touched on ancient philosophies from Aristotle or ancient strategies from Sun Tzu.  Many of the terminologies employed from knowledge management, enterprise 2.0, and so many others are re-hashes of the same underlying concepts with better descriptions and lessons learned.

For more, see: 5 Points for Leaders on Change

Weekly series: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential

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Peter F. Drucker 

Peter Drucker is often referred to as the father of modern management; I prefer to think of him as the author of modern management as he wrote nearly fifty books on business and management.  He is created with predicting several of the current problems and obstacles that manager’s face today as well as notable terms like the “knowledge worker.”  Point blank, when Peter Drucker had something to say about management; great managers and leaders listen.

Leadership quote from Peter F. Drucker:
“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.”

3 Facets of Commitment

Commitment is the key word for ________.  You can fill in the blank with nearly anything from marriage and relationships to finding success.  Commitment is also a key word for leadership.

1. Involvement

You cannot be committed to something if you are not involved in it.  This a key point that is lost on so many leaders.  You have to be involved in what you are committed to.

2. Demonstration

You have to demonstrate what you commit to – the practice of what you preach or the walk of your talk.  If there is no demonstration of commitment, there is nothing for another to perceive or take note of.

3. Consistency

If you waver in your commitment, you are perceived as not committed and what people perceive is what people believe.  This “consistency” is in consistently demonstrating and consistently being involved; note: this is not continuous (not micromanaging), but consistent – unfailing, reliable, steady, and regular.

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You don’t have to be the smartest or, even necessarily, the best to rise to positions of leadership.

 Leadership quote from Peter Drucker:
“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”

1. Learn better management techniques:

There is a difference between leadership and management, but leaders need the skill set of a manager in order to complete the active job of leadership.

2. Organize and plan every project and task:

Even when you don’t have the time to plan, the critical element of continuous success is planning - put some cognitive power behind your tasks.

3. Delegate through empowering your people:

The members of your team will respond to the tasks that you delegate if they are constructive to their desires to participate in the team - use that desire.

4. Always seek improvement:

Continuous improve leads to continuously getting better; what ever measure you assign, whether effectiveness or efficiency, be a change agent and seek improvement.

5. Move past mistakes:

Sorry, your not perfect, but good news - no one is!  Just follow step number 6.

6. Never make the same mistake twice:

I don’t want to advocate beating yourself up over a mistake, but make certain the lesson is learned and the problem is mitigated.

7. Pay attention to the little things:

At the end of it all, the details are the weakest links that cause most of the problems - pay attention.

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We all have weaknesses.  How we deal with our weaknesses can be a strength or another weakness .  Peter Drucker presented an interesting perspective on strengths and weaknesses.

Leadership Quote from Peter Drucker:
“The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make weaknesses irrelevant.”

Make weaknesses irrelevant - Some leaders seem to be perfect; sometimes they are idealized as such.  They are not perfect.  No one is.  But some leaders possess so many strengths or their strengths dominate our perception of them that their weaknesses are irrelevant.  A good leader is able to portray the strengths of his leadership to those who follow…(more later)  He may be an effective communicator, he may be a brilliant thinker, he may be an awesome strategist, or he may possess another strength that dominates people’s opinion of him.  Read through this list of names:

• Warren Buffett
• Bill Gates
• Bill Clinton
• George W. Bush
• Albert Einstein
• Abraham Lincoln
• Thomas Paine

Each of these individuals is or was a leader.  The thoughts that enter your mind about them are part of the impression - the portrayal of their strengths that make their weaknesses irrelevant or their weaknesses masking their strengths.  Additionally, whether you note their strengths or weaknesses is a reflection of your bias, i.e. Liberals may see the strengths of Bill Clinton and the weakness of George W. Bush, and Conservatives vice versa.  An effective leader portrays his strengths and makes his weaknesses irrelevant - “an alignment of strengths.”

Strengthen your weaknesses - You may have weaknesses that seem to dominate people’s perception of you and may effect your leadership potential.  You can do something about it.  You can strengthen your weaknesses in order to enhance your strengths.  In order to strengthen your weaknesses, you must learn how to change.

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