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Archives for February 2010

The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders

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From Dave Kraft’s Leaders Who Last (Re: Lit Books), here’s his list:

  1. They spend too much time managing and not enough time leading.
  2. They spend too much time counseling the hurting people and not enough time developing the people with potential.
  3. They spend too much time putting out fires and not enough time lighting fires.
  4. They spend too much time doing and not enough time planning.
  5. They spend too much time teaching the crowd and not enough time training the core.
  6. They spend too much time doing it themselves and not enough time doing it through others.
  7. They make too many decisions based on organizational politics and too few decisions based on biblical principles.

He then adds:

Notice in particular numbers 2, 5, and 6, which have to do with the kinds of people you spend time with. I say it again: the people you spend the majority of your time with can and will determine whether you are an effective or ineffective leader.

The fact is that many people in leadership roles gravitate toward hurting, draining, time-=consuming people because they have a need to be needed. They want to help people, to be there for people. If a leader has strong mercy gifts, leading becomes more difficult. Simply put, if you need people, you can’t lead people. There is an inability or lack of desire to make the tough calls, speak the truth, or do the hard things. Motivated by a fear of disappointing people, this inability will seriously hamper and work against your ability to lead.

Don't Fill Up Your Calendar

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Some good advice from The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success:

When you think about it, absolutely everything anyone does starts with a thought. Becasue the quality of the thought has a large influence on the quality of the outcome, it makes sense to do what you can to think clearly. In a world in which technology provides the capacity to reach out and be reached anytime, anywhere, finding space to think clearly is more and more of a challenge. A lack of white space on one’s calendar correlates with a lack of white space in one’s brain.

The author then recounts a story from his former boss to illustrate this:

I can remember one time talking to another executive who said he was in meetings from morning until night and I asked, “How can you do your job?” and this guy just looked at me. I said, “I see part of my job as leaving enough space to think about what the next issue or problem is that lands on my desk.” He just looked at me like I was nuts. It is very counterintuitive, but I think if you leave some white space on your calendar you tend to get more done.

A full calendar may give the appearance of getting things done, but being able to see that next competitive thing coming down the line or being able to see that we’ve got two groups that are fighting here and we really need to invest in getting them to work together — those are the critical things that executives need to do.

It is about having the capacity to see further out or to deal with that big threat to your bottom line. The easier issues will get managed below, if you are doing your job right. The higher you are in the organization, the tougher the issues are that come to you. You have to have the space and perspective to deal with those tougher issues.

I think a lot of people measure their worth in a corporation by how many meetings they attend. It depends on the culture of the organization you are in, but often it is a huge mistake to fill up your schedule with meetings.

The Four Categories of Information You Need to Pay Attention To

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There are four categories of information you need to pay attention to when embarking on any significant endeavor:

  1. Things you know and know that you know.
  2. Things you know but don’t know that you know.
  3. Things you don’t know and know that you don’t know.
  4. Things you don’t know and don’t know that you don’t know.

Category four is what can be the real curve ball. The early space program is often given as an example of this: before we went into space, there were certain things we knew and could plan for (radiation, re-entry, etc.). But what were the things that we didn’t know that we wouldn’t even know were factors until encountering them? That was the challenge.

Which is why experimentation and trying things, sometimes in small steps, is so crucial. Since you can’t discover the things you don’t know that you don’t know any other way than by experience, taking action and embarking on paths of experimentation are essential to learning, for individuals and organizations.

This means that, to a certain extent, we need to be willing to tolerate risk and we need to be willing to tolerate failure.

Remember: Ask Questions

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“Questions attract thoughts and new ideas. Asking questions creates a learning mindset.”

Plus, it’s the right thing to do. Being interested in others — reflected in asking questions — is part of treating people well.

The 3 Constraints on Every Project

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Every project — every endeavor in organizations, society, and life — operates within three constraints:

  1. Quality
  2. Schedule
  3. Resources

Quality means how well it is done. Schedule means time — how long it takes. And resources means people and financial cost.

Here’s the meaning of this: these constraints are interdependent. And so you can hit it out of the park on any two of these areas, but not all three.

For example, if you want the end result to be very high in quality and done very quickly, it’s going to cost you a lot. Or if you want to use as little resources as possible, it’s either going to take you a very long time or you are going to have to sacrifice on quality.

You have to choose your priorities.

Reasons Projects Fail

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Here are some main reasons projects fail, from To Do Doing Done:

  1. Unclear goals or objectives
  2. Changing scope
  3. Insufficient resources
  4. Conflicting priorities
  5. Lack of knowledge
  6. Poor communications
  7. Lack of leadership
  8. Lack of management support
  9. Lack of teamwork
  10. Poor planning
  11. Political issues

The Scarcity of Good Management

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From an article in Fortune back in February of 2006; I don’t think things have changed much since, because the driving force of this problem is lack of training and skill:

“Talent of every sort is in short supply, but the greatest shortage of all is skilled, effective managers. Even [in China], where you can hire factory workers by the million, companies can’t find enough managers….Labor is abundant, but managers are scarce.”