Leaders understanding the details

There is a ongoing debate about whether it is better for managers and leaders to be promoted from within or brought in from outside an organization.  Both approaches have merit.  Regardless of how senior managers acheived their post, they should always stay in touch with the day to day details of the organization.

In Leadership Jazz, Max De Pree proposed that leaders ask themselves the following question.

How long ago was it that I actually saw the products may business sells being made?  A college president might ask, how long ago has it been since I visited a classroom?  Or taught a class?

Princeton University requires all professors to teach classes, including undergraduate classes.  The former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, William Bratton, with previous police careers in Boston and New York, had to re-qualify as peace officer in California.  The television show "Undercover Boss" uses this concept.

Developing Leaders--Maxwell and Personalizing

Here are a few points on personalizing the development for a potential leader.  From John Maxwell's Developing the Leaders Around You (Thomas Nelson, 1995)

• Select people whose philosophy of life is similar to yours
• Choose people with potential you genuinely believe in
• Determine what they need
• Evaluate their progress constantly
• Be committed, serious, and available to the people you mentor

Philosophy of Little Details--Pamuk and Motorcycle Maintenance

Writer Orhan Pamuk had a good interview in the New York Times recently.  This excerpt on his book recommendation applies to leadership and management at all levels.

If you could recommend one book to the American president, what would it be?

Many years before he was elected president, I knew Obama as the author of “Dreams From My Father,” a very good book. To him or to any American president, I would like to recommend a book that I sometimes give as a gift to friends, hoping they read it and ask me, “Why this book, Orhan?” “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values” is a great American book based on the vastness of America and the individual search for values and meaning in life. This highly romantic book is not a novel, but does something every serious novel should do, and does it better than many great novels: making philosophy out of the little details of daily life. 


The full interview can be found here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/books/review/orhan-pamuk-by-the-book.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

 

"Gifts" by Ursula K. Le Guin--excerpts

 Two excerpts from Gifts, a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt, 2004)

My father was gone from daybreak to evening every day at the work of the domain. I had begun to be of use to him, but was useless now. Alloc took my place at his side. Alloc was a clear-hearted man, without ambitions or pretensions; he thought of himself as stupid, and some people agreed with him, but though slow to think, he often grasped an idea without thinking about it, and his judgement was usually sound. He and [my father] worked together, and he was what I could not be. I was both jealous and envious of him. I had the self-respect not to show it; for it would have hurt Alloc, angered my father, and done me no good. 

. . . . . . . . 

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it.  We seek company in mourning, but after the early burst of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief.  It is a burden borne alone. How you bear it is up to you.  

Stepping Outside of the Box and Failure

Change and exploration is often about failure.   Embracing failure is common in fields such as science, business, and sports.  Successful people are the persistent ones who are not discouraged by short term failure.

There is an episode of This American Life where they look at a mathematician who took "three years of Sundays" to disprove a previously accepted assumption.  The host Ira Glass and science writer Paul Hoffman discuss this mathematician, Frank Nelson Cole.

Paul Hoffman That's what science is about. It's real people banging their heads against walls and years of false starts. That's the other thing. We don't talk about the researcher who spent two years trying to find what this gene did and then gave up, or spent three years trying to find a planet outside the solar system and gave up, and someone else eventually did. It's more a combination of insight and hard work, because-- 

Ira Glass Failure. 

Paul Hoffman And failure. Because people who think outside the box and achieve things outside the box often entertain a lot of wacky ideas that don't turn out to be true in the science world.

Science and math are fields where progress is incremental, with many failures along the way.   An important approach is to never, never give up.

The Best Minute: Invest in People--Blanchard and Johnson

"The Best Minute I Spend Is The One I Invest in People"

This is one of the key points in The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.  This point is so simple, yet so many leaders in their busy, over-scheduled days, forget this.  They go on to write the following:

"Most companies spend 50% to 70% of their money on people's salaries.  And yet they spend less than 1% of their budget to train their people.  Most companies, in fact, spend more time and money on maintaining their buildings and equipment than they do on maintaining and developing people."

Leaders should reflect when they are working on budgets and to do lists and priorities to make sure they are putting people first.

Leadership: Angus King, Independent Senator

There are numerous great leaders involved in the political arena as independents and "third party candidates."      In the recent election, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party both ran solid national campaigns, showed leadership abilities, and stood for their principles.

In Maine, former governor Angus King won the senatorial election.  After the election, he had an interview on National Public Radio that highlighted several leadership philosophies.  Here are a couple excerpts.

My whole reason for going down there is to try to build bridges and get people talking to one another, and caucusing may be part of the process in order to participate fully in, you know, in committees and things like that, but I really think we got to get beyond this partisan stuff and we've got solve some problems.

. . . . . . . . . 

I don't want to sound corny about this, but I'm concerned about the country, and this fierce partisanship that we've seen is not serving public. And I worked in the Senate as a young staffer in the '70s and saw it actually work. I saw senators of both parties sit around the table, argue, disagree, agree, but finally reached consensus and passed important legislation. So it can happen.

Poem: Verlaine for Birthday

For my wife's birthday card, I included the following poem excerpt from "In Muted Tone" by Paul Verlaine.

Gently, let us steep our love

In the silence deep, as thus,

Branches arching high above

Twine their shadows over us.

Let us blend our souls as one,

Hearts’ and senses’ ecstasies,

Evergreen, in unison

With the pines’ vague lethargies.

The full poem can be found at the Poetry Foundation website.

Leadership: George on Mindfulness--Harvard Business

Recently Bill George had an article at the Harvard Business Review (hbr.org) entitled "Mindfulness Helps You Become a Better Leader".  He talks about some of the work they are doing at Harvard Business School as well his courses in Authentic Leadership.

"We are challenging students to think hard about their definition of success and what's important in their lives. Instead of viewing success as reaching a certain position or achieving a certain net worth, we encourage these future leaders to see success as making a positive difference in the lives of their colleagues, their organizations, their families, and society as a whole"

George emphasizes that leaders should routinely clarify their values and priorities.  Important to this process is a daily practice such as meditation, journaling, prayer, or reflecting while walking, hiking or jogging.  This connects to Stephen Covey's concept of "Sharpening the Saw."

There are many small things that you can do every day to help put your values in practice and impact colleagues, family members, and friends.  Go out of your way to say a sincere "thank you" or "good job".  Spend a little extra time with someone close to you.  Ask one more open-ended question and then just listen. 


URL for article:  http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/10/mindfulness-helps-you-become-a.html

Epigraphs in Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven

In The Lathe of Heaven (1971) Ursula K. Le Guin starts each chapter with an epigraph.  Here are some of the one which particularly caught my attention.

Chapter 3
Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven.  They do not learn this by learning.  They do not work it by working.  They do not reason it by using reason.  To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment.  Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.
--Chuang Tse:  XXIII

Chapter 4
Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is that mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being.
--H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia

Chapter 8
Heaven and Earth are not humane.
--Lao Tse:  V

Chapter 9
Those who dream of dream of feasting wake to lamentation.
--Chuang Tse:  II

The epigraph for Chapter 3 is particularly interesting on the overall topic of nature versus nurture.  It can apply to a broad range of talents and abilities.