The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

There Is Only One Way to Achieve Greatness

There is no quick fix. We all know that's true. Yet why do so many executives, so many "wannabe" leaders, continue to lust after the latest and greatest of the "quick fixes" being hyped by the business press - or by one another? Not only is there no quick fix, there certainly isn't a one-size-fits-all prescription for greatness, for unparalleled success.

Why? because no two leaders are ever that much alike. And the circumstances in which it all has to be worked out are never the same. Add the fact that very few leaders have ever been able to replicate their success at another time and in different circumstances. So the imagined prescription which made them successful won't even work for them in changed circumstances. And they are themselves different from who they were previously.

There are no shortcuts, no fairy dust, no "secrets" to be revealed if you just buy this or that magazine or book or attend this seminar.

Consider these:

• You have to be up to something great in order to have any possibility of making progress in that direction.
• If you are not interpreting the world in terms of your own designs on it, then it will interpret you in its terms.
• If you don't know (or care) where you are going, you're likely to end up somplace else.
• To compete on any criterion other than becoming "the best" leaves you vulnerable to even the poorest competitors.

No, there is only one way to achieve something intended that is really worthwhile. And that is the hard way. To achieve great things, you have to pay the price. That's just the way it is. The price is in the long-term investment that requires great effort and leadership dedication. Extraordinary achievements require discipline, smarts, diligence, and an unwavering passion to achieve.

Lessons Learned from the Conventional Thinker

Conventional thinking always and inevitably leads to conventional ways of doing things. And conventional ways of doing things always produce conventional results.

It's always easier to think like everyone else thinks. That way you never have to justify your ways of thinking or of doing. And you'll end up in the middle of the pack, like most everyone else. And it's always easier to think like you have always thought. The more you think today the same way you thought yesterday, the more ingrained your thoughts become and the harder they are to change. We get deeply into our mental grooves and resist any happening or any person who challenges them. We twist present reality so that it fits past experiences. In short, we think like we've always thought.

Sometimes people just do the same thing over and over again, but "hope" for a better outcome. Hope is not a method. Thinking and doing in the same ways over and over again, while trying harder and hoping even more for a better outcome is, as ancient wisdom has it, a form of insanity.

Conventional thinking is a byproduct or a sympton of the inability to think afresh about a common problem. And thinking afresh requires:

• being totally acomplishment minded, not being shackled by routines,
• having great mental resources honed on great thinkers, and
• having the sort of disciplined mind that enables you to be creative, to invent or improvise ideas and statagems that enable you to leapfrog current thought and beliefs.

What are the lessons to be learned?

1. An accomplishment is always in the future. Leaders often have to create the outcomes they seek. If those could be had from experience, or by prescription, we'd all have been successful long ago.
2. Leaders have to calculate what needs to be done in always-unique and ever-changing circumstances, given their own aims. If you'r looking at circumstances in terms of your own aims, it will quickly become obvious that prepackaged ways of thinking won't work.
3. Leaders are the makers of the world and its consequences for their purposes. They are not the victims of it.

The future you need to create hasn't occurred yet. Change the world? Change your thinking.

Who Should Own the Problem - The Staffer or the Leader?

In a previous post with a subtitle of "lighting a fire under them," Jim Stroup may be assuming away what may be the underlying problem. His posts are always very astute and always worth reading. So this is more of a question than a criticism.

One of the key elements in my work with CEOs in helping them make high-performance organizations is the core strategem: Who should OWN what problems? If you get this wrong, you have perennial problems you can't solve.

Problem ownership. Who should own the problem of be "motivated" - the staffer or the leader? Who should own the problem of being "competent" - the worker or the leader? Who should own the problem of the employee's "happiness" at work - the employee or the boss? And so on through the whole litany.

We may live in a culture where we have come to believe that learning in a classrom is the teacher's problem. That makes the real problem insolvable. Where the problem is not owned by the person who should own it, the system is dysfunctional and cannot be fixed except by fixing the underlying dysfunction. Where what's at stake is the performance of the organization, the cultural bias that makes everything the leader's problem is simply wrong.

If we don't get problems owned by the person who could actually fix them, we will have them forever. The whole notion that you have to motivate people to perform the roles they volunteered to fulfill is ludicrous on the face of it. It's just folklore on a cultural level.

In his review of Abrashoff's book, It's Your Ship, I thought Jim was decrying the practice of attributing all of the success to the leader. But here he seems to be nurturing that view without realizing it. As most folks do these days.

So...whose problem should seeing the problem be? My anwer: the person who created it or who is in the best position to resolve it. That's the Toyota Way. But our automotive engineers don't get it. Their cultural lenses are out of focus. Maybe here too.

If You Want to Know What Kind of Organization You Deserve, Look at the One You've Got!

Maybe you have never heard chief executives whine about the performance of their organizations - or the people in them. I have. Many times. They seem to be suggesting that they somehow "deserve" better. But do they? Remember this: Them who can, do. Them who can't, whine about the reality they have surrounded themselves with, using words like "should" and "ought."

As a leader, do you deserve better? Here are some points worth contemplating.

• The people in your organization are there because you directly selected them. Or, because you selected the people who selected them. How people perform throughout the organization is your mandate - directly or indirectly. If you can't get that part of it right, you're going to have trouble getting any of the rest of it right.
• The person who performs in a way that pushes your frustration or anger button is likely not fully competent to perform his or her role as may be necessary. Who is ultimately responsible for that?
• The attitude and the performance of every person in your organization is directly or indirectly influenced by who you are, because who you are determines how you do what you do.
• If you overlook performance shortfalls or the failure to grow in your role until you finally "blow up," that makes those shortfalls and failures as much your fault as the other person's fault. From day one, if there are no consequences forthcoming for sub-par performance, then you are responsible for your own frustrations or anger.
• Are your expectations clear and mutually understood? As Sun Tzu said, if people do not perform as expected because the expectations were not clear (to them), then the fault lies with the boss - with the leader - with you.

With rare exceptions, the organization you deserve is the one you have.

Ten Leadership "Points to Ponder"

No scheme for making you successful - even your own - comes with an iron-clad guarantee. The reason is simple. The only person who can make you successful in a venture such as becoming extraordinary is you. Your personal mental and emotional resources may be superior, or not. Your timing may be fortuitous, or not. Your people may be better equipped, or not. If your business or personal strategies are wrong - forget it.

Good fortune favors the best prepared. That's accomplishable for those who are incorrigibly determined - and willing to pay the price. And a large part of that price is how you think about the things that make a difference.

Are you a true leader? If so, here are ten points you might like to ponder.

1. Habits take you where they are headed, not where you "want to" go.
2. Habits of thinking determine habits of seeing and doing.
3. If you can't tell your story compellingly, you don't have one.
4. Knowing about is not the same as knowing how.
5. Leaders don't depend on what is known. They depend on what can be done with what is known.
6. Outcomes are never linear.
7. Either be the source of change, or the victim of it.
8. Change has to be made possible, and then necessary.
9. Where their cause is a stake, leaders have to be capable of being ruthless.
10. We all need someone to make us do what we ought to do. Who?

I invite your comments.

Think About Your Role as a Leader

Think about your role as a leader. It does hinge profoundly on how the would-be leader thinks about things, doesn't it? The leader understands this: As we think, so we will be.

The leader knows that leadership is not a characteristic of a person. It is a role that needs playing in a story that needs writing. If it isn't the leader's story that gets written, the leader knows that it will be someone else's story, and that he or she will be no more than a bit player in those other stories.

It is only when this kind of outcome is intolerable that the irresistible desire to lead gets born. The leader knows that leadership, being a role that needs to be played, is, metaphorically, a performing art. How the would-be leader plays that role will determine whether or not there are followers, and thus whether that leader's aims make a difference...or not.

It may be that "All the world's a stage," but the only one that matters is the one on which you appear. And upon how well prepared you are for that role.

• Being prepared in a way of thinking that makes a difference.
• Being unconventional
• Thinking in a way that powers your performance.

The leader understands people better than most. The leader understands, for example, that if you want to know how a person really wants to live, you look at the way that person lives. And if you want to know what people mean by what they say, observe what they do.

What Leaders Know About "Change."

Change has become a perennial issue. It has become so popular, it functions like a "mantra" - people frequently mouth or pen the term - but it has ceased to mean much more than suggesting that the speaker or writer is "with it." Here's what true leaders know about change. Leaders know:

• Things are changing all the time.
• Most of the changes that swirl around us are not within our control.
• Who people are - because that is a function of a whole bundle of habits exercised every moment of every day - is a primary source of resistance to change. We will most likely be tomorrow what we are today. And for that to happen, the world tomorrow has to be reasonably like is today.
• That to attempt to change the world - which would require people to change - is the most dangerous and uncertain undertaking there is.
• That it is the appeal of the alternative leaders describe, that makes any significant change possible.
• Change won't occur unless it is necessary.
• That systems in which people are embedded are fiercely resistant to change because they are tacit, accessible only by habits of belief.

Leaders understand that they are wholly interdependent with the forces that resist change, and with the forces that enable change. All this because leaders don't make change. They midwife it.

Leadership - Creating the Habits That Make a Difference

Behind, under, and before every perception, every feeling, every decision and every action, there are habits. Habits of mind, habits of perception, habits of feeling, and habits of action and reaction. In short, the first and last leadership lesson is this:

We are led by our habits - of feeling, of thinking, of perceiving, and of understanding.

Get those right, and everything beyond becomes possible. Get those wrong, and the outcomes will always be something you didn't choose.

A leader knows that people do not choose their trajectories through life. How we live and maneuver through life is not something we can have simply by choosing it. It is our habits that drive the way we think, feel, do and say. We cannot choose our ways of being and doing. But...what we can choose are the habits that inform our perceptions, our thinking and our feelings. What makes the leader different is that he or she depends upon the habits chosen and developed to drive the direction and the outcomes of life. You can't get what you "want." You can only get what your habits can deliver.

What characterizes the leader is his or her mental models, the heuristics used to assess the world and the strategies for undertaking his or her cause in that world. It is the unique, unconventional habits of thought, feeling, and action that underwrites the leader's success in his or her endeavor.

The Elusive Laws of Communication - Excerpts From Chapter 13

A great many executives assume that when they are talking or writing to someone, they are "communicating." And when they're not engaged in those activities, they are not involved in communication. They would be wrong.

The rule of thumb here requires a bit of thought. It is this: You cannot, not communicate. What this means is that people are watching you and talking about you all the time. If they are expecting you to say something to them, and you don't, you are "communicating" loudly. This is because it is the receiver who interprets the message. And the receiver can make that message out of nothing - out of silence even.

People have to guess what things mean. Even if you say "And what I mean by that is this.," they still have to guess what you really meant by what you said - or what you didn't say. All meaning comes from the mind of the beholder. And beholders are all predisposed to interpret one way or the other - by their beliefs, their fears, by the very ambiguity of what's going on - or what isn't.

What people make of you and of what they interpret to be going on is the reality you need to be tuned into. Facts don't move people. Their interpretations do. You do not and cannot control their interpretations. But you can tune into them. It's the only way you will know what's really going on.

People are "reading" you and checking their interpretations with other like-minded people all the time. What you "intended" is largely beside the point. What they "got" (by making it up if necessary) is the point. Effective leaders stay on point.

The Elusive Laws of Communication - Excerpts from Chapter 11

...Your mind mediates everything, inbound and outbound. It does not - can not - process facts or data. It is only capable of processing meanings/interpretations.

"Mind" is really a verb. You mind the world according to your interpretations of it, most of which you got from those you have most frequently communicated with. The minor improvisations are yours. Others mind you, or what you say or write, according to their interpretations...

What's involved? Anything and everything that's going on with you or with others at the time. Most notably your communicative competencies and your competencies as a thinker/strategist. It inevitably includes you own self-deceptions. People will excuse theirs, but not yours...People will play to your susceptibilities...

What you tell yourself about the world, or what others tell you about that world, is no more than an interpretation. That interpretation tells you more about the person who is making it than it does about the world...

The consequences of any communication encounter will be determined by the best player in the game. If that is not you, it will be someone else.