100-Day Plan: Communication

Leaders communicate. I get that... I think. The book actually makes a very sharp point: A leader communicates continuously without interruption. This means that everything one chooses to do and not do is an act of communication, implying ideas and motives behind a leader's m.o. As my previous boss Tom often told me, true skill lies in knowing what not to do.

The book also makes a point about the order in which proactive communication occurs. The authors state that people contacted first will feel more valued and that people contacted later will feel less valued. Since this is probably true, I need to take extra steps to ensure that everyone I talk to feels as equally valuable as possible. The truth is: Each person should be equally valuable in my eyes until his or her actions lead me to believe otherwise. For example: I originally scheduled the order of meetings with my direct reports based solely on alphabetical order. If this creates a sense of inequality or bias, that consequence is completely unintentional.

But more importantly, the book reminds me to know myself and fully adopt my own mantras so that all that I do and not do automatically reflect and project the values that I hope everyone will adopt. Those values are still a work in progress, but I can start with these three guidelines.

First, see the vision. This really means that we each should understand where the organizational leader is going and know, at a minimum, where our individual places are in that vision. It then becomes the duty of the intermediate leaders (a.k.a. mid-level managers) to propagate the vision accurately to their direct reports.

Second, seek responsibility over accountability. This idea is actually the product of a few key points. One point is that we should avoid blaming others and instead take ownership of resolving issues and problems as they arise, collaborating with others when appropriate. Another point is that we must be painfully honest in order to understand where responsibility needs to be assumed or conceded, especially when it comes to assessing each team member's strengths, weaknesses and goals.

Finally, live for laughs and smiles. I don't know whether this statement is exactly what I want to say, but what I hope to get across with this is that we should maintain our sense of humor as we work to bring smiles to our customers, internally as well as externally. Also, we should strive to generally have fun working together and remember to consume a healthy serving of humor as part of our regular diets. "Great cheese comes from happy cows," as the California Milk Advisory Board promoted.

Now the challenge is working those ideas into the basic fabric of my person so that I truly walk the talk.

Leadership Is Service

I had a thought today about leadership that I believe helps me imagine my work in my new leadership role:  Leadership is serving others, given that you see a viable path to the shared vision.  At the workplace, this service is provided to your boss, to your peers and to your direct reports.

To your boss, the service is simple:  Help your boss build a path toward the shared vision by injecting insights from your particular area of expertise.  When your boss achieves his goal, then you have achieved yours.

To your peers:  Help them perform their functions more efficiently or more effortlessly by using your insights to streamline their processes or suggesting new ways of doing things that will enable them to do more with less.

To your staff:  Help them see, understand and appreciate the vision and then help them fulfill their roles in advancing toward the vision, by giving them the resources and the environment they need to succeed.

So, in summary, by helping others one helps him- or herself.  Why is this leadership?  Because it's all about moving everyone toward a common goal, recognizing that no one person can get there alone.

100-Day Plan: Acronyms to Remember

In the interest of retaining what I'm reading, I'd like to try to remember some of the acronyms used in the New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan.

ADEPT is used as an adjective to describe the kind of people one needs to hire and retain, but the actual components of the adjective are verbs: acquire, develop, encourage (or empower, in my vocabulary), plan and transition. Those are all of the actions that a leader must take in order to surround him- or herself with truly adept or competent people.

BRAVE is also used as an adjective to describe the members of a high-performing team. Without having read the actual chapter where this is discussed, I'm guessing that brave employees are ones who are equipped to make and follow through on major decisions (relative to their roles) without needing myriad levels of approvals or reviews. The acronym itself is composed of nouns (behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values, environment) that must be aligned in order to enable staff to be brave, although not to the extent of being foolishly brave.

The final one I remember is called ACES, an acronym I really like: assimilate, converge and evolve, or shock. I used to play poker and love the word "aces", and it aptly summarizes the two strategies (I think) of a new leader for creating change in an organization. One is smoother, and one is more abrupt. I can't wait to dive into the chapter where this is discussed in more detail!

100-Day Plan: Introduction

So, I picked up the New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan (3rd ed.) to guide me through the transition into a new leadership position at the end of June. Having never been in a position of formal leadership, I figured it would be smart to try starting off on the right foot.

My first day with the book was spent reading the Introduction, which was great. The Intro was concisely written and summarized the content in the book, and most importantly it clued me to the chapters that I should skip to maximize my benefit from the book. As it exists, the book actually contains 4 chapters through the first two parts that deal with getting a new job, which was not apparent in the book's synopsis. But, I guess that means less for me to read over the coming weeks, which doesn't hurt.

The gist of the Intro from what I recall is that a new leader must hit the ground running by knowing in general terms what needs to be done in the first 100 days. The preparatory work begins now, before the new job starts, so I'm glad I found the book thanks to LDRLB's book review.

The other key message I got was that a leader's main responsibilities are to communicate the vision and empower his staff to achieve the larger goals of the organization through their individual efforts. And to do this, the new leader must set milestones and execute in order to meet those milestones.

Thankfully, there's nothing too unexpected in the book so far. But the proof will be in the execution, not in how well I conceptually understand the book's message.