LEADERSHIP: DON'T WAIT FOR THE MUSIC TO STOP

Published: 2009-09-14   please add a comment below

How's this?  Eighty percent of CEOs expect big changes in their companies' strategies and operations this year!  In a calamitous downturn (trashing markets and businesses), people expect organisational change.  Well, I'd be concerned if they didn't!  The same report also worries about succession.  Two thirds of candidates won't be ready for 12 or more months.  But, one third being ready seems OK to me.  Surely, the real issue is raising performance of all leaders - NOW and in their current jobs.  Not playing musical chairs!  So, what's your plan - other than waiting for the music to stop?  Here are some thoughts.

1. Business plan priorities: shortlist four or five mission-critical strategic initiatives (such as entering that new high-growth market) and similar or fewer super-urgent projects (like completing the IT risk-management upgrade).
2. Cultural and organisational priorities: ask your people about the key friction points (such as turf wars) and stumbling blocks (such as resourcing gaps) that are holding back organisational traction on the business plan.
3. Personal priorities: identify, again with colleague input, your personal opportunities for distinctive value-add to each of the priority business and people issues.  (Perhaps sitting with the marketing team to share your deep knowledge of market-entry dos and don'ts; or, talking with key players you can uniquely influence.)
4. Leadership Action Plan: think through and list the specific commitments and timelines for each of your actions.
5. Communication: share this plan with your colleagues to ensure they agree your commitments truly represent the best use of your time, capacities and leverage.  And then, paste the final plan into the front of the Business Plan.  It's the key to implementation.

Your business plan addresses impersonal market and technical concerns around "what's to be done?"  And, your Leadership Action Plan addresses the equally critical inter-personal question "will people care?"  But, if you miss the "people" part, your "business" ambitions will remain unfulfilled.  And, you'll fail as a leader.  We're defined by our followers: your success depends on their commitment.  Without their alignment, energy and determination, you're nothing but a high paid figurehead.

In most large organisations, a lot of HR and line effort goes into training leaders and their successors.  But most training is theoretical and unaccountable: based on leadership fads, academic theories and historical feedback.  And,  succession is more of the same plus job rotation.  There's little or no investment in leaders making leadership plans - what they're going to do as the team leader - rather than as the lead technician, marketer or financier.

As with all business commitments, leadership ones have to be planned - and monitored.  If you want to succeed, planning your actions is smarter than waiting for the music to stop - and hoping to land a new chair.  That's a nursery game, not something for a serious player.

Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership^®