For
reasons that aren’t exactly clear to me, there’s a powerful tendency to
overcomplicate the whole notion of leadership: what it is, why it
matters, and how it manifests itself.
I’m not saying it’s a simple
concept to master; quite the contrary. We see the evidence of this all
around us in our daily lives: whether in business, politics, sports or
other endeavors large and small, it’s not easy to find effective leaders
who’ve built an enduring record of success.
In my own career, and
with the great executives on my team now, I try to keep the leadership
formula pretty simple. And yes, I know that scores of business books
have been written about leadership, and it’s been the subject of
countless courses and seminars in MBA programs. That’s great, and I’m
sure each of those offers some value.
But I’ve found that the best
way to be a leader, and to help shape high-potential young people into
the leaders of tomorrow, is to ensure that these five abilities are
always the focal points:
1) Getting the strategy right.
2) Executing that strategy.
3) Putting the right people in the right places.
4) Managing dual priorities that others see as conflicting.
5) Keeping everyone focused on what matters.
Let
me explain a little bit about each of these and why I think they’re so
important—and why I think that efforts to add more and more layers onto
the definition of leadership can be distracting at best and harmful at
worst.
1. Getting the Strategy Right.
While this has always been a top priority for CEOs, it’s taken on an
even greater significance in the past few years because of the highly
accelerated pace of change in today’s world. Consumer tastes and needs
are shifting faster and more dramatically than ever before—do you have a
sustainable strategy for product development and customer engagement
and employee engagement that lets you keep pace with this relentless
upheaval? Or do you find you’re always playing catch-up with
competitors, always struggling to find new sources of revenue, and all
too frequently seeing market share taken by competitors that are far
more in tune with customers, opportunities, and structural trends?
I
am a huge believer in brilliant, razor-sharp operations and
execution—but unless those outstanding qualities are being applied to a
world-class strategy, that company’s ability to compete and win and grow
will diminish.
2. World-Class Operations and Execution.
Some consultants and B-school professors are fond of saying that
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That conclusion totally misses
the point: if the strategy’s right but the company can’t execute, then
the problem isn’t an overly hungry culture – it’s weak or incomplete
leadership. That’s why I describe my leadership formula as simple—not
easy, but simple: the CEO’s got to be able to not only set the right
strategy but also drive operational excellence that brings the strategy
alive with dynamic new products, sales teams that are highly intelligent
and engaging and brilliant new talent that sees the company as a
terrific destination.
Operations aren’t
just supply chains and automated systems; they are the optimization of
people and process across every part of the organization—front office,
back office, product development, finance, engineering, customer
service, sales, etc.—that allow them to work with the shared purpose of
delighting customers, winning new business, creating fantastic new
products, and identifying and exploiting opportunities well ahead of
competitors.
3. Put the Right People in Place.
I know, that sounds pretty simplistic. But again, the margin for error
in today’s always-on business world is shrinking rapidly—and in spite of
the fantastic applications and systems that are available to companies
today, brilliant technology in the service of sub-par managers will
yield nothing but sub-par results.
That’s why the business
leaders of today have to be able to master this third indispensable
discipline: after formulating and communicating the right strategy, and
optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top
leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly
understand the big picture, that understand how their teams must engage
inside and outside the company to deliver maximum value, and stay
laser-focused on making that strategy come fully alive for customers and
prospects.
4. Recognize Business Isn’t an “Either/Or” World.
In addition to those three absolutely indispensable qualities outlined
above, I want to mention two other attributes that are essential for
leaders. We all occasionally get questions like this: “Are we more
concerned with long-term vision or short-term execution?” Managers will
seek to pick one or the other, but leaders will instinctively know that
the answer is “Both!”
When asked if employees should focus on cost and
efficiency, or growth and innovation, leaders will instinctively answer
“Yes!” Another variation is, “Is our primary focus new products or new
revenue?” And again, leaders will know that the answer must be both. For
most people, those answers can sometimes be counter intuitive—but
leaders in today’s turbulent business environment have to be able to not
just answer the question but also build teams in such a way that both
outcomes stand a high likelihood of success.
5. Stay Focused on those 3 Big Things.
I’ll never forget something FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith once said:
“In business, the big thing is making sure the big thing
stays
the big thing.” And to me, the Big Thing is made up of those top 3
qualities: the ability to set the strategy, the ability to harness
operational excellence to bring that strategy alive, and the ability to
pick the right people to drive relentless execution.
For
CEOs and aspiring leaders, distractions abound: the temptation to get
caught up in important but non-essential discussions and projects; the
tendency to fall back on what you’re comfortable with rather than what
needs to be done; and the understandable but dangerous attraction of
shiny new toys and trends in today’s remarkably fast-paced world. So I’d
add that a second key supporting attribute is one of focus:
“The big thing is to make sure the big thing stays the big thing.”
Let
me offer one final thought on this issue of focus, and on why I feel
CEOs and other leaders would be well served to avoid over complicating
how they define and deliver leadership. Some people say leadership has
to encompass qualities like passion, integrity, vision, energy,
commitment, and so forth. Don’t get me wrong—I think those are all
wonderful attributes, and there’s nothing wrong with a CEO embracing
them.
But the deeper question is this: what does “passion”
mean in terms of setting a strategy, or driving world-class execution?
If a leader is fiery and high-energy passionate but can’t define a
breakthrough strategy, how valuable is that passion? If a candidate for a
top position is a rock-solid individual with great integrity but has
demonstrated an inability to select great people and put them in the
right positions, how does that personal integrity make her or him a
better leader?
In some ways, that’s the real challenge of
leadership: the ability to push aside anything that’s not directly tied
to setting a great strategy, executing upon it brilliantly, and putting
terrific people in the right positions.
In my experience,
those top three leadership qualities are more than challenging enough,
and I’d advise you to let the B-school professors worry about all the
other issues.
