Truism
One of the key tenets of Getting Things Done is getting your head clear so you focus on getting things done.
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion.
Chinese Proverbs
Fads
Management theory and trends have swept the corporate boardrooms. The self professed Gurus have successfully marketed and sold many on
the new fads, i.e. BPR and Knowledge Management. I associate management with people who are administrators. You know the "paper pushers".
Leadership is about motivating, enlightening and capturing the hearts and minds of people towards a common goal. Each person has their own
leadership style. People are dynamic individuals. Content with who I am. I choose a more holistic and natural approach to leadership, befitting my personality and values.
Leaders and those aspiring leaders must be willing to learn from themselves and others. Adopt philosophies and practices that will enhance
your skill to handle new situations.
Evaluate your current and pass experiences that could have been better handled. An example, is doing a post morteem after each phase of a
project. What did WE do well? What could WE have done better? What will WE do to make it better? Leadership is not necessarily about "I" but "WE". Having said
that, you should also seek constructive feedback from team members. Now it is time to replace the "WE" with "I". Remember to write the stuff down.
In organisations, the leader's role is to help all members to find their place and direct them together into progress and fulfilment. Even though some people may be insufficient or unrefined, Lao Tzu asks 'Why waste them?' An enlightened leader makes certain to provide for the education of everyone in the organisation. In this way, all members become integrated with the organisation and the leader's position is established.
Lao Tzu
Day after day, consciously attain your center in these basic truisms.
Bushido Code
The Bushido, held leaders to a higher moral code. This must be the mantra after the deployable and horrific corporate
rape by the executives at Enron, Tyco and the list goes on. It's not too late to
learn.
- a sense of justice and honesty
- courage and contempt for death
- self-control
- sympathy towards all people
- politeness and respect for etiquette
- sincerity and respect for one's word of honour
- absolute loyalty to one's superior. I can not totally support this one. Loyality is not only about respect but admiration of the person. With that said, we have to learn to serve rather than being self-indulgent and self-centered.
- a duty to defend the honour of one's name and guild
Morality
The one who does good deeds and expects to be appreciated, does something better then committing a bad deed. However, he does so for his own benefit and not for others. A truly righteous man does good deeds without letting his beneficiary know of his deeds. He does good deeds freely and does not expect that in the future someone will recognize his deeds. A monk must have resolve far greater then this. In treating all sentient beings, he must not discriminate between those who are close to him and those who are scarcely known to him.
Dôgen (1200-1253)
Step Up, Step off or Get Stepped On
You have either heard or know the saying, "step up or step off". My version is, "step up, step off or get stepped on". The reason is that this is how the real world operates.
Leading is not always about holding hands and singing Khum ba ya. There will be times when you must invoke the
Art of War or even worst the
Book of 5 Rings.
Matching the names of CIOs who appeared on a verified lists at the start of 1994 and again at the start of 1995 confirms that their average job-holding expectancy was about 30 months, and probably less than that.
Paul A. Strassmann, Computerworld - June 10, 1996
Narcissistic Leaders
Strengths of the Narcissistic Leader
- Great Vision
- Scores of Followers
Weaknesses of the Narcissistic Leader
- Sensitive to Criticism
- Poor Listeners
- Lack of Empathy
- Distaste for Mentoring
- An Intense Desire to Compete
Avoiding the Traps
- Find a trusted sidekick
- Indoctrinate the organization
- Get into analysis
Two years ago, Nacchio left AT&T to become CEO of Qwest, a company that is creating a long-distance fiber-optic cable network. Nacchio had the credibility-and charisma-to sell Qwest's initial public offering to financial markets and gain a high valuation. Within a short space of time, he turned Qwest into an attractive target for the RBOCs, which were looking to move into long distance telephony and Internet services.
Such a sale would have given Qwest's owners a handsome profit on their investment. But Nacchio wanted more. He wanted to expand-to compete with AT&T - and for that he needed local service.
Rather than sell Qwest, he chose to make a bid himself for local telephone operator U.S. West, using Qwest's highly valued stock to finance the deal. The market voted on this display of expansiveness with its feet-Qwest's stock price fell 40% from last June when he made the deal to the end of the third quarter. (The S&P index dropped 5.7% during the same period.)
The Harvard Business Review, Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons - January-February, 2000
Less is More
Conventional wisdom says to beat your competitors you need to one-up them. If they have 4 features, you need 5. Or 15. Or 25. If they're spending X, you need to spend XX. If they have 20, you need 30.
While this strategy may still work for some, it's expensive, resource intensive, difficult, defensive, and not very satisfying. And I don't think it's good for customers either. It's a very Cold War mentality – always trying to one-up. When everyone tries to one-up, we all end up with too much. There's already too much "more" – what we need are simple solutions to simple, common problems, not huger solutions to huger problems.
What I'd like to suggest is a different approach. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing. Do less than your competitors to beat them.
- Less Money
- Less People
- Less Time
- Less Abstractions
- Less Software
- More Constraints
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