The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

Getting From Here to There - Five Points Leaders Should Consider

Getting from here to there requires getting into a different paradigm. First, some definitions. The "here" refers to the present you and to the present circumstances of your organization. The "there" refers to the point at which you are irrevocably on the path of determining achievement. The "paradigm" refers to your standard way of looking at and thinking about yourself and your organization - and the world in which both function.

Why a different paradigm? Well, if you use the same paradigm every time, you will be doing the same thing over and over again. Or, at the best, you will be on the path of the ordinary, of carrying out whatever is inevitable in your present paradigm. Your destiny is either given or chosen. To choose requires moving into a way of thinking and doing that is different from the one that presently holds you hostage.

Here are five points leaders should consider if they truly desire to go from "here to there".

1. Leaders are roused to commitment and action through dissatisfaction.
2. Dissatisfaction with the status quo, with being merely adequate, with being victimized by whatever happens, with the deadly suffocation of mediocrity, with the mundane same-old, same-old, has to be the leader's driver.
3. Leaders lust to live in the rarefied atmosphere of being exceptional.
4. The faith required, the effort required, the perseverance required - all fade to irrelevance in the face of the raging dissatisfaction of being no more than a pawn in the clutches of yesterday, forever recycled.
5. To attempt to write your own story, you have to be powerfully dissatisfied with the one you're in. That's part of what it takes to lead the struggle from from "here" to "there."

A reminder: You can't live in the conventional world, wallowing in a conventional lifestyle, with its conventional orientations and attitudes, and still expect to be a real achiever. A would-be leader who does not have the courage to follow that proverbial "path less taken" will not make much of a difference in his or her own life, or the lives of others.

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.