Category Archives: Leadership

Are You Willing to Make the Choice?

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Most of us want to be part of a “great” organization – if we are the owner, we want it to be a great organization.  Often times when we do encounter a great organization we think that they were just at the right place at the right time of in other words, lucky. The reason our organization is not great is because we weren’t so lucky.

According to Jim Collins in Great by Choice - that argument is not valid based on their research of over six thousand years of corporate history.  He contends the following:

“. . .greatness is not primarily a matter of circumstance; greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline. The factors that determine whether or not a company becomes truly great, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, lie largely within the hands of its people. It is not mainly a matter of what happens to them but a matter of what they create, what they do, and how well they do it.”

It is a choice to be great and the discipline required to be so.  It is a choice to set high standards – to not compromise and the willingness to act in a disciplined manner.  This is hard work and requires making difficult choices.  The bottom line is that a great organization is achievable – if you choose it and are willing to work to make it so.

What is your choice?
BG

Encouraging the Heart

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Good morning to you.  

As a leader you are, or should be, a dealer in hope.  Actually that should be fairly easy as we serve the One who is our Hope.  However, I am afraid that at times I lose sight of that fact in the midst of busyness.  We of all people should be brimming over with hope.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner in their excellent book Encouraging the Heart make the following statement:

“Encouraging the Heart is ultimately about keeping hope alive. Leaders keep hope alive when they set high standards and genuinely express optimism about an individual’s capacity to achieve them. They keep hope alive when they give feedback and publicly recognize a job well done. They keep hope alive when they give their constituents the internal support that all human beings need to feel that they and their work are important and have meaning. They keep hope alive when they train and coach people to exceed their current capacities. Most important, leaders keep hope alive when they set an example. There really is nothing more encouraging than to see our leaders practice what they preach.”

So are you keeping hope alive in those that you lead?  Including your family?

Have a great day!.
BG

Are You Prepared?

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What are you doing to prepare the next generation of leaders for your organization?  If you are a next generation leader, what are you doing to prepare yourself?

Last week, I had the privilege of traveling to my home state to speak to the Mississippi Community College Leadership Academy (MCCLA) on the subject of strategic planning.

The MCCLA was developed in 2009 by Dr. Howell Garner of the MS Community College Foundation in order to start developing the next generation of leaders for the community colleges of Mississippi. They take from 30 – 40 of the young leaders, both administrators and academicians, and have three to four two-day sessions a year across the state with a range of speakers on various topics. Additionally, they are assigned various readings and projects. This is a great idea.

The MCCLA is an effort to “deepen the bench” of future leaders of the MS Community Colleges and a wise move in my opinion.

My question, is what are you doing to prepare your organization for the future? What are you doing to prepare yourself for the future?

Hope it is a great week for you!
BG

Buzz Word Bingo

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A few days ago, I posted about the “Blah Blahometer” where we were talking about speaking with clarity.  In ministry, we have our own “lingo” replete with buzz words that have little or no meaning, but still impress.

Following is a video from IBM on “Buzz Word Bingo“.  It is short – watch and see if you see yourself or your organization in the video.

 Blessings on your day!

BG

The Kernel of Good Strategy

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Good morning!

Yesterday we talked some about the four signs of bad strategy.  Today, let’s talk about the three things that make up the “kernel” of good strategy according to Richard Rumelt in his book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy.

1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical. You are essentially asking “What’s going on here?”. It is a judgement about the meaning of a set of facts.

2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. Good guiding policies are not goals or visions or images of desirable end states. Rather, they define a method of grappling with the situation and ruling out a vast array of possible actions.

3. A set of coherent actionsthat are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy. The actions within the kernel of strategy should be coherent. That is, the resource deployments, policies, and maneuvers that are undertaken should be consistent and coordinated.

The “kernel” is not the totality of the strategic plan, but it is the core.  Without the kernel the plan is in trouble.

Have a blessed day today!  Headed out with my boss today to meet with another organization to talk about CEO coaching – ought to be interesting!

BG

Rumelt, Richard (2011-07-19). Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (p. 77). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

4 Signs of Bad Strategy

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Good morning!

When you hear the term “strategic planning” does it conjure up images of long meetings, thick binders, and plenty of fancy trendy words?  Does it evoke feelings of frustration and boredom?  And at the end, do you wonder if you really have a good strategy?

Well, I am reading Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt and he lists four things that are indicators of a bad strategy:

1. Fluff. Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.

2. Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.

3. Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.

4. Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.

Do you see any of these four indicators in your strategy?

This is a good book for those that are serious about strategy development.

BG

Rumelt, Richard (2011-07-19). Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (p. 32). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Being Quiet Amidst All the Talking

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In the US, we love the large personality - we see the gregarious person as the ideal.  We see them as smarter and more successful while seeing the quiet person as less smart, less successful.  We equate the ability to talk fast and to talk well with success.  The quiet people we often ignore.

The problem is that by not valuing those quiet people, we lose so much.  We miss great ideas by out talking the quiet ones or think they don’t have any ideas simply because they are not talking excitedly.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins points out that ALL of the CEO’s of the great companies were quiet men who led from behind the scenes and were humble, but with intense will. In her book Quiet, Susan Cain illustrates how much we lose when we fail to tap into the quiet people in our organizations.

Pay attention to the quiet people in your organization, they have something to say – if you give them the chance to say it.  If you don’t, both you and your organization will lose.

BG

Show Horse or Plow Horse?

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Which one are you? Are you a “show horse” or a “plow horse”?

Our society clearly prefers the show horse, the person that has the outsized personality, the person that has loads of charisma and talks easily.

However, Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, points out that in the great companies, the CEO’s all had a charisma “bypass”. They were all “plow horses” content for others to get the recognition, while they stayed in the background plowing away. They were quick to take the blame when things went wrong and give away praise when things went well. They also were diligent – hard workers that stayed focused. Through their intense humility and tremendous will they built great organizations.

Popular culture elevates the show horse, but it is the plow horse that gets it done. So if you, like me, have had a “charisma bypass” don’t fret. Just keep on plowing and you will make a difference!

Blessings on your day,
BG

Something is Out of Whack

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Why don’t we really take care of our people?

Yesterday, I posted a Ken Blanchard video about the leadership approach at Southwest Airlines.  They are tremendously successful in an industry that is notorious for poor performance  – one key aspect is their deep care for their employees.  Jim Collins in his his book Good to Great talks about the importance of your people and how the great companies truly care for their staff.  Monday night, I talked with my class about a book by a CEO of a $2.5 billion company with 55,000 employees worldwide whose motto is “employees first, customers second” and has seen remarkable growth with that approach.  Story after story of the truly great organizations center around the care of the people that make up that organization.

Yet, it is sad to say, that in many of our churches and ministries, there is significantly less care and love for the staff than there is in these “secular” for-profit companies.  Why is it sometimes safer to be an employee of a large corporation where they do a better job of caring for their people than it is to serve at your local church or ministry? It seems a college football coach has greater job security than the senior pastor of a local church.

Sometimes it appears that the forward thinking organizations have adopted Biblical models of leadership and thriving while so many churches and ministries are mired in the some of the old discredited “business thinking” models of past decades.  Does that seem a little out of whack to you?

Somehow, we need to recapture the biblical model of leadership and care for our staffs within churches and ministries and once again begin setting the standard for how the rest of the world needs to lead and care for their employees.

Just a thought.

BG