Onward to 2010!

Friends,

Happy New Year! A new year gives us all a chance to reflect on the opportunities that lie in front of us. The future is ripe with possibility – if we are bold enough to go for it! I don’t know about you, but I am ready to think big, to be aggressive, and to seize the day! I have goals for my personal and professional life and am ready to get after them. “Targets Up!”

Can I take a minute and update you on Leader Business? While not exactly burning up the internet, we did just have our 15,000th visitor to this site. (I need to weave in some juicy stories about Brittney or Tiger and I will probably get that kind of volume every day! I am in Los Angeles, after all!) I hope that the messages that we talk about on these pages are resonating with some of you and that you are sharing them with your friends. Please continue to do so and encourage your friends to subscribe (as a couple hundred of you already have) so they don’t miss any of our discussion topics. And thanks to those of you who comment! You all know the power of the blog as a 2-way conversation!

You may have noticed (okay…you probably didn’t) that I haven’t been posting as often as I once was. I have started working on Leader Business – the book! It will be a compilation of the sorts of topics we talk about here on this site and will be sort of poor man’s leadership development course. The leadership lessons I have accumulated over my career at places like West Point, Army Ranger School, and the Army’s National Training Center will be the foundation for this project. Stay tuned.

I hope to have this project completed before…I deploy to Afghanistan in July. I will be leaving Los Angeles and taking command of an Army Corps of Engineers unit in Kabul. I am looking forward to the challenges that leadership in a combat zone, focused on construction and water resource issues, might present. I am confident that my future teammates will bring me up to speed and I hope to be able to contribute to the success of our mission there.

In the interim, I have a lot to do. My New Year’s commitments include some of the same things you likely have on your respective resolution lists:

-- Listen more and talk less.
-- Have shorter meetings. My teammates will be thrilled with this one.
-- Be less of a cynic and more of an encourager. Be positive.
-- Reward people more. A praise or two per day over the next six months will help people understand how truly proud and grateful I am to serve with them.
-- Follow up / follow through on the many tasks that I am working with my team. An action passed is NOT an action completed!
-- Accomplish the mission and put a good transition plan in place. I need to set up my replacement for success.
-- Stop wasting time! I have too much to do. Read more, write more, and spend more time with family and friends.

So, enough about me…what about you? (See resolution #1 above!) How can I help hold you accountable on your commitments? What can I do to further our friendship or enable your success? Please let me know!

Happy New Year everyone. Let’s get to work! That’s Leader Business. Hooah!

P.S. Thanks to Dan McCarthy for including my posts on leadership lessons at the Army Ranger School in his “Best of 2009” Leadership Development Carnival! Please check it out!

You Gotta....Know When to Fold 'Em

I still remember the meeting. We had debated an issue with energy and passion. There were a host of opinions about the topic. Everything was laid out. We evaluated various alternatives. I heard from all sides. We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed courses of action. Then it was time. I made my decision. Everyone was ready to go. Everyone…but one guy. He thought it important to “state for the record” that he opposed the decision. Oh man…did this ever bother me. We had transitioned from decision-making…to decision. And this guy was still fighting. And then I watched as he tried to reverse my decision, and then undercut it during execution. Wrong answer, dude!

There is a time and place for debate. During the decision-making process -- yes. While alternatives are being discussed -- yes. But once the decision is made -- nope. At that point, there are only two ways to proceed:

1. Embrace the decision as if it was your own. Execute with vigor and do all you can to see the decision work out for all. Execute…and accomplish the mission. Git ‘er done! Or…..

2. Leave the team.

Quite frankly, the third way, to undermine the decision, to work covertly (or even overtly) to tube the mission…is unacceptable. You cannot be a part of the team and work to help the team fail. No whispering, spreading rumors, cynicism, or back-channel deals that prevent mission success. Be a part of the solution, not a schemer to make the problem even worse. There can be only one leader. And if you are not it…then deal with it! If you can’t live with the decision, vote with your feet and leave the team. Otherwise, you’ve done your duty in expressing your opinion. Now do your duty and help the team be successful. As the old country song goes – “You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em….”

So here’s the skinny. Fight for your beliefs and opinions before the decision is made. Leaders – encourage debate and solicit alternatives from all sides before locking in on the way ahead. Give everyone a chance to speak and listen to all alternatives. But once the decision is made…everyone has got to be – ALL THE WAY IN (see the last post!). No team can be successful if team members are allowed to undermine, undercut, or otherwise move in directions counter to the mission. The team must be all the way in!

It is encouraging to see US policy making working this way. Rigorous debate on things like health care, war, and energy policies reflect this approach. The town hall meetings are a beautiful thing to observe…and we should have them as a matter of routine! But once the decisions are made…we have to be all the way in. We have to execute in a way that accomplishes the mission, not as mindless robots but as members of a team -- committed to see the team succeed. Adjustments can be made along the way (and of course debate will continue on those adjustments) but…we cannot have the dysfunction that comes from a house (or a nation) divided. We have to find a way to be all in, to work together to reach our objectives! (Note…I say this not as one suggesting one way or the other is right, but one who knows that we have not been united in our commitment to success for many years and hopes there is another way!)

This is a message to all of us. We are all part of teams, we all report to someone. Let’s lead by example in this approach. Let’s build teams that respect all opinions, that encourage debate, and that understand this concept of being all the way in. Once the decision is made, let's know...when to fold 'em. It is the only way a team can be successful. That makes it…Leader Business.

So what do you think? Am I right? We’ve all been in positions like this, whether as team leader or team member. Let me know where you stand on this.

Image courtesy of www.sidesalad.net.

All the Way In

Not long ago, I was asked to implement a major organizational adjustment. The Army was changing and the team I led at the Army’s National Training Center needed to change along with it. It was time for a course correction and I was asked to make it happen.

Only problem was…I didn’t want to change. I was perfectly comfortable with the way things were. I was happy and my team was happy. The reasons may sound familiar:

-- This would be bad for morale for my team.
-- The skills which we had labored long and hard to develop would rapidly erode in the new organization.
-- We would not have the opportunities for growth and development in this mixed matrix sort of organization that we had in our current little stove-pipe.

So, I did what many of us do. I dragged my feet. I fought the change. I held on to the old way of doing business and did all I could to resist implementing the badly needed change to my team’s organizational structure. I held my ground.

But did you see anything missing from my reasoning above? How about the words…"customer" and…"mission?" That’s right…I had allowed myself to become focused inward and forgotten what we were all about. It wasn’t supposed to be what was good for me and my team but about our customer (in this case those we trained). Even worse, I had infected my team with a belief that we were more important than those we served, that the mission somehow revolved around us.

It was then that I learned that when it comes to major change, you must be “all the way in.” You cannot just dip your little pinky toe into the “change pool” and think that you are doing anyone any favors. This sort of go-slow approach only weakens the team and misses the mark regarding the bigger picture. Worse still, you can’t hide your attitude when resisting change. Your team will follow you – for better or for worse. You must be all the way in:

-- New hardware, software, or business processes? All the Way In!
-- Reshaping your organization? All the Way In!
-- Going after new customers or modifying your business model? All the Way In!
-- Some other change (and I hope you will share with me what that might be)? All the Way In!

(Now, lest you think that I am saying that leaders must be robots and never raise objections, stay tuned. We’ll cover that next!)

This may be hard for some of us to swallow. It certainly was for me. And I can assure you my team looked at me like I was crazy when I came into the office one morning singing a completely revolutionary new tune. But as their leader, it was the right thing to do. And from that moment, we were an improved team. More importantly, our customers, our mission, were instantly better for the shift as well.

And just like that…I was…all the way in. And that was good leadership. That made it…Leader Business.