By Dave Anderson
www.LearnToLead.com
The enemy of great is good. The primary reason
so few leaders or organizations ever become great is because they
get good and they stop. They stop growing, learning, risking and
changing. They use their track record of prior successes as evidence
they've arrived. Believing their own headlines, the leaders in these
successful organizations are ready to write it down, build the manual
and document the formula. This mentality shifts their business from
a growth to maintenance mindset; and trades in innovation for optimization.
These six stumbling blocks prevent you from making
the leap from good to great. They are the six most common and devastating
temptations of successful organizations. The key to overcoming them
is awareness. The more you are aware of these six traps, the more
likely you to recognize them and to take action to overcome them.
- Temptation One:
The leaders of successful organizations stop working on themselves.
Why? The leaders of successful organizations often think they've
got it all figured out. So they continue to work hard on their
job but stop working on themselves. They use their experience
and track record as a license to never read another book or attend
a course in their field. They point to their acclaim and accomplishments
and decide to take the skills they learned once upon a time and
run the rest of their career with them.
Remedy:
Continue to work on yourself as hard as you do on your job. Commit
to a personal growth program where you deliberately upgrade your
skills. This must become a discipline. As you grow, you have the
credibility and competence to grow others. But when you stop growing,
you will plateau and become a lid on the people you lead.
- Temptation Two:
The leaders of successful organizations stop thinking
big. Why? When a team gets on a roll, some leaders get spooked
and start to play it safe. They stop playing to win and instead
play not to lose. Where they once thought big and new, they now
think incrementally. They lose their hunger and spend more time
maintaining than stretching.
Remedy:
Never break your own momentum by resting, reflecting or celebrating
too long because momentum is much easier to steer than to start.
To stay hungry and continue thinking big do the following:
- A. When you're doing well, go shopping. One of the best
ways to stretch your thinking and disturb the comfort of routine
is to visit companies who are doing better than you are.
- B. Stir up an inspirational dissatisfaction. An inspirational
dissatisfaction does not mean you are never pleased or satisfied.
It's not a license to beat yourself up or your people. Instead,
it's a creative awareness that you can do better; that you
can do more to work harder on yourself and invest exhaustively
in your team.
- C. Develop a daily dose of paranoia. The best leaders act
as though someone is out to get them, like they're on the
verge of losing every customer and every day. This keeps them
in an attack mode and prevents them from sinking into a rut.
- D. Continue to set goals that stretch your team A goal is
only effective when it forces change, big decisions and bold
action: A.K.A. discomfort. If you can hit your goals with
a business as usual approach, your goals are too small.
- Temptation Three:
The leaders of successful organizations stop leading from the
front. Why? When a business is getting results and steamrolling
along, it can feel like everything's tidy and under control. Thus,
the leaders hit the remote control button and leave the trenches
for their office where they preside and administer but no longer
lead.
Remedy:
Stay engaged in the trenches of your business by doing the following:
- 1.) Attend meetings where your presence makes a positive
difference.
- 2.) Stay involved with the recruiting and hiring process.
- 3.) Conduct one-on-one coaching sessions with your high
potentials.
- 4.) Take the time to connect with and build relationships
with your people.
- 5.) Make yourself available for questions, ideas and problems.
- 6.) Give fast positive reinforcement and confront poor performances
just as quickly.
- 7.) Communicate vision and values consistently.
- Temptation Four:
The leaders of successful organizations stop developing others.
Why? Successful leaders look at their results, stare in the mirror,
pound their chest and convince themselves it's all because of
them. They don't want to rock the boat by delegating, sharing
power, pushing decision making down or developing an inner circle.
They adopt the lone ranger mindset toward leading, whereupon they
assume more and more responsibility, rather than developing a
team to share the load
Remedy:
Commit to building a team by consistent training and coaching
of all employees and mentoring your highest potentials. Push power
and decision-making down so you make your people less dependent
on you. By developing leaders at all levels you broaden your capacity
and build a bench competence that multiplies your own leadership
and effectiveness.
- Temptation Five:
The leaders of successful organizations stop holding others accountable.
Why? Since results are satisfactory and there's no immediate crisis,
why should they rock the boat by getting in people's face and
applying pressure to perform.
Remedy:
- 1. Raise or redefine clear performance expectations so people
feel become more focused and feel a positive pressure to perform.
This clarity of expectations creates a benchmark for accountability.
- 2. Give fast, consistent and brutally honest feedback on
performance to keep people out of a gray area.
- 3. Reward above-average performance loudly, tangibly and
publicly at the same time you establish consequences for those
failing to get results.
- 4. Proactively recruit to build a pipeline of talent that
reduces your chances of being held hostage by under-performers.
- Temptation Six:
Everyone in successful organizations begin to abandon the basics.
Why? Since the natural tendency when you're doing well is to let
up, people start getting away from the disciplines and decisions
that made them successful in the first place.
Remedy:
- 1. Sweat the small stuff. Contrary to prevailing pundit
wisdom, I highly suggest you sweat the "small stuff"
in your business. As a leader, you should sweat the basics,
the other five temptations and the tendency to let up and
abandon vital disciplines just because there is no visible
crisis.
- 2. Weave the mantra, "become brilliant in the basics"
into your culture. As a leader you should embrace the mantra
to become brilliant in the basics and there are four key words
to becoming brilliant in the basics: day in, day out. You
have to press the issue on good and bad days alike and weave
this awareness into your culture.
Without an awareness of these temptations starting
at the top of a business, your organization will never make the
leap from good to great. In addition, the organization becomes more
vulnerable to ruts and plateaus. The effort you expend in overcoming
the six temptations of successful organizations is worth the price.
Because once you break your own momentum by violating one or more
of these principles, regaining it takes several times the effort.
As General Patton said, "Never yield ground. It is always cheaper
to hold on to what you have than to retake it once it is lost."
Credit:
This article is taken from Dave Anderson's new book: Up Your Business:
7 Steps to Fix, Build or Stretch Your Organization (Wiley). Mr.
Anderson is a professional speaker and trainer with expertise in
leadership and management. He earned his business reputation by
leading top national automotive dealerships to record breaking sales.
For more information e-mail Dave@LearnToLead.com or go to: www.LearnToLead.com.
Related
Information:
NBA
Benefit Provider - Business
Buffet
NBA
Resource Article - Effective
Leadership through Communications
NBA
Resource Article - Defining
The Traits Of A Successful Leader
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endorsement by the National Business Association; the article is
for informational purposes for our members and viewers of our Web
site.
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