FAML 430 Week 9

Week 9:

*Embrace the opportunity to be a change-maker every day in one capacity or another.
*To become a great company, get the right people on the bus
*The ability to execute is rare
*Continual learning is an important aspect of capability
*A leader takes people to higher ground

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

1. Be Proactive

*It's hard to lead from behind

2. Begin With the End in Mind

3. First Things First

4. Think "Win-Win"

*Win but not at the expense of others

5. First Seek to Understand, Then Seek to be Understood

*Once we've listened with real intent, then we can formulate our own plan for winning

6. Create Synergy

*It can only happen when all parties possess the habit of "Win-Win" and empathetic listening

7. Sharpen the Saw

*Regroup, regenerate

Guy Kawasaki: ...The sequence of events is that you trust people and they will trust you.

...There are two kinds of people in the world...There are bakers and eaters. When an eater sees a pie, an eater is thinking, “Zero sum gain. I need to get as much of the pie as possible. My gain of the pie is your loss of the pie. I need to get as much of the pie as possible.” A baker by contrast sees the world as an opportunity to make more pies and bigger pies. Trustworthy people are bakers, not eaters.

...The third quality of trustworthiness is you need to default to “yes.” Defaulting to yes means that when you meet people, you are always thinking, “How can I help that person?” instead of "How can that person help me?"

A Message to Garcia

3. Immediately sketch out a plan. 

Quickly draft a provisional plan with goals, milestones and deadlines.

4 You have a choice… you can choose to start developing the attitudes, habits and instincts so your name will be called when success hangs in the balance. know enough to craft such a plan, decide how to gather the information you need. But in all cases, begin to move forward immediately. If the objective seems overwhelming or you are unsure of where to start, break it down using the Vision, Strategies, Projects, Tactics (VSPT) framework: 

Vision: This is your objective – delivering the letter to Garcia. 

Strategies: What are the ways you could achieve this objective? Sometimes there will be many strategies to choose from, other times only one. For Rowan, there was only one strategy: hand-deliver it. Today, other options might be to deliver the message by phone or by e-mail. 

Projects: What big things need to get done to accomplish the objective? Create a series of major milestones. For example: Sail to Cuba, trek through the forest, find Garcia, plot a course back home. Tactics: What do I need to do today to make progress on a project? Make a checklist: Hire a boat crew, find a guide for the trek, arrange for provisions, buy mosquito netting. Quickly start on these tasks, and before you know it, you will be executing. 

4. If you need resources, don’t be afraid to ask. 

A critical job for any leader is to allocate resources—money, people, his own time even—among competing projects. If you ask clearly for what you need and explain concisely why it is necessary to achieve the objective, a leader will give you the additional resources you need. 

5. Enlist help when needed. 

Don’t hesitate to ask for help from peers, but remember that the responsibility for accomplishing the task is yours alone. (And remember that the best way to get others to help you is to have helped them first.) 

6. Report back and show your work. 

Frequently report your progress with objective measures. Whenever possible, provide samples of your work. Instead of asking how to accomplish a task, show what you have done so far. If you are off course, you’ll get immediate feedback to put you back on the right path. 

7. Underpromise and overdeliver. 

Make it a point to set reasonable goals and always exceed them. If you want leaders to trust you with critical tasks, develop a reputation for getting the job done better, sooner and at a lower cost than you promised. 

8. Expect to make (small) mistakes. 

Accept mistakes as the price you pay to learn. Include an honest assessment of missteps in your progress reports. Embrace them as minor setbacks and correct them quickly. Jot down the lessons for reflection later, after the task has been accomplished. 

9. Put results before schmoozing. 

You want to spend time with those higher up in the organization so they’ll get to know you and appreciate your work. First focus on contributing something of value, and you’ll be surprised by how much attention you receive. 

10. Replace the voices in your head with positive action. 

1. Begin to see your life as a “calling” toward a Hero’s Journey. 

Your life is too valuable to waste. Embrace the idea of a “calling”—a reason that you were put on this earth. Envision your life as a quest, a series of daily struggles and larger challenges worth overcoming for a worthy mission.

2. Develop your gifts and talents into a discipline. 

Become world-class at something. Everyone has special God-given gifts. Discover yours and accept challenges that allow you to practice and perfect these skills. Develop a reputation for mastering a discipline and extraordinary opportunities will seek you out. 

3. Find a “deep burning need” you care about. 

Your lifelong mission will be more fulfilling if it serves the needs of others. Look for opportunities or injustices that speak to your heart. Find where your gifts, tasks you enjoy and a “deep burning need” intersect and you will have found your calling. 

4. Surround yourself with good people and worthy role models

Moving From Individual Action to Building a World-Class Organization

1. Make the mission clear and meaningful. 

You want people to sign on for the right reasons. Make it clear how your company intends to change the world for the better. 

2. Set unreasonably high standards. 

You want to attract the right people. Even more importantly, you want the wrong people to self-select out. Set high standards and clear ethical guardrails and stick to them. People like Rowan attract more people like Rowan. 

3. Align incentives with the few key tasks—the Key Success Factors—for the mission. 

Set clear, measurable objectives for success. Pay people to accomplish them. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the quality of applicants will improve. 

4. Make all employment conditional. 

Hire everyone for a probationary period. Assign difficult tasks and see who performs. Be ruthless in your initial evaluations to save later heartaches. Underachievers may change over time, but only if they make the decision to change themselves. Your assignment is to get the job done, not run a counseling service for underachievers. 

5. Hire leaders who know how to get the job done too. 

Leading is different from executing. It requires the ability to delegate and inspire. But insist that all leaders first know how to execute, and have little patience for those who don’t. 

6. Put the monkey on their back. 

Never allow a subordinate to bring you problems, even though this may play to your desire for action. Leaders execute in their assignments because the people led by them are inspired to execute on theirs. If you have attracted a team that is dependent on you for detailed directions, then you are the problem. 

7. Take time to coach those who have proved they can execute. 

Developing talent is a leader’s number one priority. Once someone has proved that he or she can execute, take a personal interest so you can inspire him or her to even greater accomplishments.

Good to Great

• Good is the enemy of great because it easy to be good
• Possess these three characteristics:

1. Great Product
2. Believe You're the Best
3. Passion for Your Product

*We were not sent to this earth to be a mediocre player

Disciplined People – Concept #1 – Level 5 Leadership

The leaders of great companies are not high profile or celebrities. Instead, the CEOs of great companies are most likely to have come from somewhere inside the company and will have personalities that are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. And most often, they will attribute their success to good luck rather than personal greatness. 

Disciplined People – Concept #2 – First “Who”, Then “What”

The key to making a good-to-great transition isn’t setting the right objective. Instead, concentrate on getting the right people on board, and then they will figure out what the most important objective should be. And the more people with initiative and skills that join the team, the better. 

Disciplined Thought – Concept #3 – Confront the True Facts

All good-to-great companies openly face the competitive realities of the markets in which they operate without losing faith that in the end, the company can and must prevail. Honesty and candor allows these companies to make the right decisions as they move forward instead of distorting the facts. Disciplined Thought – Concept #4 – Hedgehog Concept

Hedgehogs are relatively simple animals who know just one big thing and stick to it. Good-to-great companies do something similar – they consistently stick to doing what they do best and avoid getting distracted into new fields of business that are away from their core competencies. Good-to-great companies move ahead of their competitors by pursuing only those projects that have three traits: 1. What they can be “best in the world” at. 2. What drives profitability for their business model. 3. What their people are deeply passionate about. 

Disciplined Action – Concept #5 – Culture of Discipline

Having disciplined people eliminates the need for a hierarchy. Similarly, disciplined thought eliminates the need for a bureaucracy while disciplined action means there is no call for excessive controls. Good-to-great companies combine a culture of discipline with an entrepreneurial ethic to generate truly great marketplace performance. 

Disciplined Action – Concept #6 – Technology Accelerator

Good-to-great companies don’t get caught up in new technology fads. Instead, they link technology with the hedgehog concept – that is, they will adopt a new technology only if it accelerates their performance in an area which they are passionate about, perform to world-class standards and makes money.

Level 5 Executives Build greatness by applying a blend of personal humility and professional will. Level 4 Effective Business Leaders Generate an intense commitment and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision. 

Level 3 Competent Managers Organize people and resources efficiently to pursue some pre-determined objectives. 

Level 2 Contributing Team Members Inject personal capabilities effectively into teams working on group objectives and targets. 

Level 1 Highly Capable Individuals Make meaningful contributions based on talents, know-how, skills and good work habits.

SUMMARY

This week I learned that I have a longer path on my road of disciple leadership than I expected. I already read two of these talks in Pathways so I wasn't expecting to learn so much this week.

What stood out to me was that it's hard to lead from behind and I often get behind so I really need to work on that. Additionally I learned that I need to continually save my notes, otherwise they get deleted and I have to start from scratch.