“To Get Where You Want to Go, We Always Begin by Recognizing Where You Currently Are“
One marketing division of an international pharmaceutical company that I worked with, “off-shored” the development and maintenance of their marketing relationship database to India. The requirements were shared, but they were not tied to specific test plans.
When the multimillion dollar system was delivered, independent verification from the company’s distributors, who would be the users in the field, indicated that the system “worked as designed” but that the design was not practical or useable in their day-to-day operations. The project was mothballed without final implementation.
Have you seen a project that turned into a learning opportunity like this before?
Poor leadership is the most common reason for major business mistakes like this. There is always a specific individual who is responsible for the Leadership of the team, so even little communication breakdowns point back to poor leadership skills.
Leadership comes down to standards, values, negotiation rituals, goals, and human beings.
YOUR PURPOSE AS A LEADER
Your purpose as a leader is to coordinate the interactions and efforts of a group of people to achieve valuable results that the individual persons who make up that team could not achieve by themselves.
Each individual offers their unique skills. But to create a synergistic effect that generates valuable results in an efficient manner requires your serious coordination.
You put the goals and standards you negotiate or dictate to your team in place to constrain team behaviors so that results are measurable and therefore manageable.
The rituals you establish with your team will determine your effectiveness as a unit in the larger organization.
The way you treat your people will determine whether your team will find their work meaningful, useful, and fulfilling, so that they will become delightfully engaged and give you more of their best. Or whether they will obligingly provide only the minimum necessary to get by and reserve their best ideas and effort for after work.
PRAGMATIC SHORT EXERCISE FOR LEARNING
Consider taking five minutes right now to write down what you consider to be your team’s:
- members
- values
- goals
- standards of practice
- key processes
- key measurements
When you put these down on paper (or the computer), you will find that more details will come to you than if you only did this exercise mentally. These emergent details are the “little devils” that you will want exorcise or negotiate with to resolve the issues you’re facing.
That is why a leader needs to take a step back and clarify his or her thinking on a regular basis. It is the leader’s job to understand the overall team scope, boundaries, and interfaces within the larger system that is your parent organization. But your range of influence is primarily within the details of your teams specific processes and procedures. As Marshal McLuhan said, Leaders must learn to
“think globally, and act locally.”
Let me know what you are thinking in the comments discussion (see the green tag), or to engage me directly, give me a call.
Keith W Fail
512-507-5464
