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LEADERSHIP: WHEN IN DOUBT, DISAGGREGATE
Seth Godin is part blogger, part public intellectual. Some days, he really nails a topic. Here’s an abbreviated introduction to a recent posting*.
“The typical American buys precisely one book a year … (but) when it comes to books, there is no typical American. There are a lot of Americans who buy zero books … and then there are people like me who buy 400. The average is irrelevant.”
It’s the old warning of the non-swimmer, who drowned in a river of one-metre average depth. So, what’s the equivalent for your leadership? Are you just taking “average” one-size-fits-all actions? Here’s a three-step alternative.
List your current leadership challenges and then:
- Sort them into technical and people issues. Are they more about commercial problems, technical delivery and market/competition issues? Or, engaging team members, showing self-awareness, defining roles or perhaps creating fun and celebration? Let’s say they’re more about people.
- So, break down those people issues further. Imagine you’re in their shoes: how are they feeling? How does life look from where they stand? Do they enjoy personal engagement with you? Or, are they lonely and stressed to breaking point? What would they recommend? For you to listen more, clarify roles or what?
- Also, disaggregate the technical issues. Are customers complaining about quality or service? Are there inefficiencies in your production or delivery? Do benchmarks vary across the business and need codifying so there are best-practice standards?
Success in leadership (as in life) is about making the right moves and executing them both sympathetically and efficiently. It’s not about doing everything at once. Disaggregating and customising are key. Relying on old “average” actions will mean you drown in the variable profile of your day-to-day challenges.
To succeed (and be promoted), find your priority issues and focus first on them. Once they’re done, move to the next ones – whether about people, products or both. Create a personal Leadership Action Plan. This is often the missing link in business planning. You start a new venture with a new plan. So, why not lead your team (of particular people with particular challenges) similarly. A personal action list created by disaggregating the issues and finding those that should define your forward leadership actions. Not just repeating tired approaches learnt long ago – often in different circumstances entirely.
* http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/when-in-doubt-disaggregate.html
Categories for this Potshot:
Fix key commercial problems, Excel as a technician, Understand your marketplace, Build competitive advantage, Build teamwork, Be EQ-effective, Design structures and roles, Create fun and celebration, Engage people, Recognise internal limits, Attend to customers, Demonstrate efficiency, Lift benchmarks and IP,
Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership®
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Timothy Pascoe - date: 2010/05/31 05:53 pm
Dear All,
I had a message today from someone checking what I meant by a non-swimmer drowning in a river of one-metre average depth.
Lets assume that you want to cross a river with an average depth of one metre but you find that youve walked almost all the way across and the water has never been above your ankles. Fairly obviously, somewhere in the remaining 5% of your crossing there must be some very deep water - in which a non-swimmer would drown.
This used to be a well-known play on the danger of making decision based on averages.
My apologies if, like me, its a bit over the hill!