LEADERSHIP: DITHERING IS DANGEROUS

Barack Obama is doing it tough.  Few US presidents have faced so many parallel challenges.  At home, the GFC has continuing work-out issues and healthcare remains unresolved.  Offshore, there's Afghanistan, Copenhagen, Iran, China, Russia and Israel - and they're just the big ones.  Sadly, there's rising concern about his capacity to decide and act with courage on a number of these.  This is not just from rabid Republicans but also fair-minded commentators at home and abroad.  While you and I face tiny leadership challenges by comparison, how would people say you're doing?  Here are some thoughts to guide your thinking - and actions!

1. Start with an open mind in reviewing assumptions, analysing trends, gathering data and exploring options.  Make sure you range widely and seek diverse views.  Give yourself time to interact and think.
2. Establish your criteria so you're clear how you're going to choose between options - recognising that some criteria are must-haves and others only nice-to-haves.  Work at this and don't assume old criteria still apply.
3. Sort and prioritise your options using the criteria but don't expect this will always lead to a single answer.  Reality is messy and analysis is just that.  Deciding is not just a mechanical process.  You also need judgement and courage.
4. Craft your messages to encapsulate the decision and enough context to make it compelling - but not your in-depth thinking.  The latter may confuse people - and possibly you as well.  Judgement is hard to explain - and courage more so.
5. Communicate (and keep repeating) each message, recognising you'll likely become bored by what you're saying way before everyone has either heard it or signed on.  Repetition, delivered with commitment, builds belief and then support.
6. Provide examples of what needs doing so your people know what they have to do.  Get below the strategies to on-the-ground actions.  Selling "hope" is a useful political narcotic but doesn't win the war.
7. Be flexible on means but not objectives so people have room to adjust implementation in the light of what unfolds, while holding to the central reasoning and rock-solid commitment to needed outcomes.

Categories for this Potshot:

Communicate key messages, Take tough decisions, Great-leader Potshots,

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