Archive for June, 2009

Your Leadership Legacy in One Sentence June 29 2009

By now, pretty much everyone has heard of the elevator speech.  You know the drill, describe what you’re working on, why it matters and what the other person can do to help in 60 seconds or less.  I’ve read lately that the Tweet is the new elevator speech.  Can you describe what you’re working on and why it’s important in 140 characters or less?  It’s all about the idea behind the famous line from T.S. Eliot, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”  It takes time and effort to boil down the essence of what you’re trying to do to a short and memorable idea.

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan built on this point by telling the story of what 20th century renaissance woman Clare Booth Luce once said to John F. Kennedy, “a great man is one sentence.”  As Noonan explains, “His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about.”  The first two pictures in this post are captioned with Noonan’s examples to give you additional insight into her point.

For the fun of it and to add some gender diversity to the examples, I've added a third picture of another leader with my own one sentence caption.  (What one sentence descriptions can you come up with for other well known leaders?)

Someone once said that strategy is as much about what you’re not going to do as what you’re going to do.  Great leaders know how to focus and to keep the group’s attention focused on the most important things. 

If you were to focus on crafting a short sentence that you hope would sum up the essence of your current work as a leader what would it be?  While you’re thinking about it, take a look at the following 30 second clip from the well known cowboy philosopher Curly for some inspiration:

Michael Jackson, Mark Sanford and the Human Condition June 26 2009

I’ve been thinking a lot about the light side and the dark side of the human condition this week.  A lot of this has been driven by the news and some of it has been driven by some reading I’m doing.  For so many leaders, the passion and energy that drives them to the top of their fields has a dark side in the form of an ego that is looking for additional validation in all of the wrong places.

Lessons from Tiger’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Weekend June 24 2009

Regular readers of this blog and anyone who’s heard me deliver a presentation lately  know that I am a huge fan of Tiger Woods.  His level of focus and commitment to continuous improvement are great examples for leaders.  So, I was mildly bummed when Tiger wasn’t able to overcome an 11 shot deficit and ended up finishing four shots behind the winner of the U.S. Open this past weekend.

You’re not tuning into this blog for a sports report, however, so it’s fair to ask, “What’s the point on leadership?”  Well, sometimes we can learn as much from less than perfect examples as we can from the perfect ones.  Tiger provided us with a couple of those at Bethpage Black last weekend.

Platform Agnostic Leadership June 22 2009

The protests over the elections in Iran present one of those rare instances when you know in the moment you’re watching history being made. The courage and dreams of the Iranians in the streets demanding democracy are inspiring.

As many have commented, one of the fascinating aspects of the protests is the use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as organizing tools for the leaders of the movement.  What’s equally interesting to me is the debate that’s emerging over the use of the tools and what it means for the future. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post called, “Reading Twitter in Tehran,” the authors write:

This strikes me as a pretty good example of missing the point. No one has said that Twitter is a substitute for reasoned argument. In the case of Iran, it’s a tool (one of the few available) for disseminating raw news and for leaders who want to organize their followers. The people using the tools don’t care about the pros and cons of the platform, they just care that it works. They’re platform agnostic leaders.

This morning, I read on social media guru Chris Brogan’s blog about a new service in alpha testing called Babel With Me. This site connects with Twitter, Facebook or e-mail to allow users around the world to have real time conversation with simultaneous translation in 45 languages. That sound you just heard was one more example of how quickly the world is shrinking. 

The implications for leaders are astounding. The tools or platforms that leaders use to organize their followers are changing faster than most of us can process. The opportunity is to engage followers in a way that encourages their participation and their own capacity to lead themselves. The challenge for leaders will be to maintain strategic perspective and direction in a world where the masses can organize themselves so quickly and effectively.

Those are just two observations about the nature of leadership in a platform agnostic age. What are yours?

Questions for Conscious Leaders June 19 2009

My goal this Friday morning is to leave you with some food for thought over the next few days.  This has been a week when I’ve had the opportunity to coach leaders in a number of different situations and settings.  I’ve been impressed and humbled in each instance by the conscious nature of leadership that I’ve seen.  My main contribution has been to frame up some questions and create some space for the leaders to observe themselves and determine what their next moves should be.  I thought I’d share some of those questions with you today.

How To Be A Leader Who Climbs The Walls June 17 2009

A couple of days ago, I put out a question to my LinkedIn network on the best conferences for plugging in to fresh thinking on innovation and leadership.  The answers are still coming in, but so far the overwhelming favorite is the series of conferences known as TED. If you’re not familiar with TED, the good news is that the organizers have a very robust web site with dozens of videos of their best speakers online.

I’ve been spending some time browsing the site and one of my favorites is a four and a half minute clip of advertising exec and expert rock climber Matthew Childs talking about nine lessons he’s learned from rock climbing.  I’m not a rock climber myself (although I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve scaled the 40 foot high rock climbing wall at a local sporting goods store.  Kind of like staying at a Holiday Inn Express last night.), but I appreciated the applicability of Childs’ lessons to leadership in general.

Here are five of my favorites from Childs’ TED talk:

1. Don’t let go – This sounds sort of obvious but Childs makes a really interesting point.  In rock climbing, you typically think about letting go long before you actually do.  The best climbers use that time to think through the rest of their options.
2. Have a plan – Again, it sounds obvious on first blush. The less obvious point is that climbers often focus their planning and maximum effort on the hardest part of the climb and then find themselves without a plan or any gas left for finishing the climb. Plan it through to the end.
3. Know how to rest -  I actually learned this at the sporting goods store. Climbing (and leadership) is a full body experience.  Your muscles (literally and figuratively) get tired.  It’s important to build in some rest breaks on the climb up. Otherwise, you lose your grip.
4. Fear sucks – Childs makes the great point that all fear does is focus your energy and attention on the consequences of failing rather than figuring out how you’re going to advance up the rock.
5. Know how to let go – Sometimes you can’t go any further without getting hurt. Childs advice is “don’t hang on until the bitter end.”  (If you have thoughts about how to distinguish between when to choose rule one or rule five, I’d love to hear them.)

The entire talk is worth a look.  You can check it out here.

Unsolicited Leadership Advice for DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee June 15 2009

Sunday’s Washington Post ran a front page feature article reviewing the first two years of Michelle Rhee’s tenure as the chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s public school system.  Thanks in part to extensive national coverage like the Time magazine cover to the right, Rhee has become the face of education reform in the United States.  As the article notes, what’s playing well nationally isn’t playing so well at home.  In fact, it begins by recounting the story of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray asking Rhee when the Time cover came out, "Michelle, why would you agree to be photographed with a broom on the cover of Time magazine?" He had a couple of follow up questions for her including "What does it get you to constantly bash those you're trying to get to help you?" and "Why did you let the picture be taken in the first place?”

Those are some pretty good questions the Chairman asked. Rhee herself acknowledges that she has made some missteps in her first two years in the job and that the grade for the DC public school system thus far is an incomplete at best. Reporter Bill Turque does a nice job of summarizing Rhee’s lessons learned thus far as:

Lesson 1: Fame Can Backfire – Rhee’s national celebrity has alienated some of her key constituencies like DC teachers and parents.

Lesson 2: Money Doesn't Always Talk – A potential 61% increase in base pay for teachers won’t get you very far if they don’t trust you.

Lesson 3: Politics Matters – As Willy Loman’s wife, Linda, said in Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”  If you’re working in a political environment as Rhee is, you have to pay attention to the politicians.

Lesson 4: Beware Unintended Consequences – It’s called a school system for a reason.  As is the case with any system, when you change one variable (e.g. closing schools, reducing central staff, adjusting pay plans), the entire system changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Being a smart and talented person,  Rhee has adjusted her approach in some ways, perhaps most notably in paying more attention to the City Council and teachers’ unions. Still, in reading between the lines of Turque’s article, I think I see some indicators of potential future trouble for Rhee.  These add up to caveats for any leader charged with securing radically different results. Not that she’s asked, but here’s my advice for Rhee and leaders in comparable situations:

Lessons in Presence from LeBron, Kobe and the Zen Master June 12 2009

As the NBA Finals continue between the Lakers and the Magic, both committed and casual hoops fans are longing over what might have been – a finals matchup between the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James. You can tell Nike was counting on it because they’ve gone ahead and run the Kobe and LeBron puppets campaign that they had shot in anticipation of the Finals they were hoping for.

Still, the playoffs have yielded some pretty exciting moments and some great performances.  One of my clients and his leadership team were lucky enough to see LeBron and the Cavs beat the Atlanta Hawks in game 3 of their series in Cleveland. And, being the brilliant guy that he is, my client used the game as an opportunity for a coachable moment about leadership.

Inside-Outside Leadership Perspectives June 10 2009

Years ago, when I was a corporate executive myself, I read and re-read Kevin Cashman’s Leadership from the Inside Out.  (A second edition has recently been released which I encourage you to buy.)  With its emphasis on the leader as a whole person, Kevin’s book really helped me get up on the balcony and look at the bigger picture of what I was trying to do, what really mattered and how I need to show up to make all of that more likely.  The time I spent with Leadership from the Inside Out had a lot to do with why I became an executive coach eight and a half years ago.  As Kevin would say, coaching is my “sweet spot.”

So, being such a fan of Kevin’s work, you can imagine how happy I was to hear him deliver the keynote presentation last week at the annual meeting of the Washington, DC chapter of the International Coach Federation.  He did not disappoint.  In his talk, Kevin shared 11 things he’s learned in 30 years of coaching leaders.  It was all good, but here are a few of his points that hit home with me that I want to share with you:

Wit and/or Wisdom from the Leadership Carnival June 8 2009

My friend, Dan McCarthy of the Great Leadership Blog (Dan just gives, gives, gives and never takes.), is hosting his monthly Leadership Carnival with the wit and/or wisdom of more than 30 leadership bloggers including yours truly.

There are a lot of great posts there. A couple in particular that I wish I was clever enough to write include this provocative poem on corporate reorganizations by David Zinger and Loraine Antrim’s pass along of Jamie Quatro’s take on how things might have come across if God had texted the Ten Commandments.   Just goes to show you that custom fit communications does matter! It’s right up there with one of my all time faves – if Abraham Lincoln had used Power Point to deliver the Gettysburg Address.

Enjoy.