Leadership

A few years ago (pre-blogging) I really enjoyed reading the book “John Adams” by David McCullough, so it’s been no surprise that I’ve been enthralled by the HBO miniseries of the same name that is in the middle of its seven episode run.

The courage, intelligence, eloquence, and tenacity of Adams and our founding fathers was never so vividly illustrated than in the re-enactments that have been portrayed on the screen.

I have to admit I was nearly in tears watching the final deliberations over whether or not the colonies would declare independence, stirred by the passion for freedom and liberty but balanced by the fear of what was to come from their decision.

I was particularly impressed by Adams, who again and again would remind his fellow congress attendees that the facts were speaking for themselves - the British had already essentially declared war on the colonies by their words and actions against them. There was really no choice but to stand up to the tyranny and declare independence.

It wasn’t the first time Adams publicly convinced other people that facts should rule - in 1770 he conducted the defense of the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre, an almost impossible task given the Bostonians’ hatred of British rule.

In his summation to the jury, he said this:

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

He won that case, by the power and persuasiveness of his words, and (of course), the facts.

What a valuable lesson to take from him - it can be applied to our world of business by this maxim - “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it“. That’s what I thought of after the impact of Adams’ words sunk in.

No matter how well we THINK things are going, or we HEAR things are going, if the facts say otherwise - the facts MUST rule. So we must generate the appropriate facts in our businesses that guide our decision making, and temper any feelings or emotions that may obfuscate those facts and put us down the wrong path.

Easier said than done, but if we can stick to our principles like John Adams did so well, we have nothing to worry about.

Take my advice and read the book and watch the miniseries - you will be enriched and inspired too!

I had intended to post about something entirely different today, but as I came out of a staff meeting I caught a headline on the lobby TV:

“Brett Favre to Retire”

I didn’t expect my return to sports news after a very long sabbatical would be something like this, but there it was .

I sat back at my desk and went to the Internet and yes, Brett has let the Green Bay Packers that he is retiring from professional football after 16 seasons in the league.

While I felt a tinge of regret at this news, more than anything I felt thankful - thankful for the entertainment he provided me (and millions of others) on so many Sundays as a player who so clearly enjoyed what he did, and led by example by his dedication to his craft and unwillingness to point blame on anyone but himself.

More than anything, he was just a regular guy doing extraordinary things, but could always put it in perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I heard him say - “hey, everybody, this is just a game!” .

He spent countless hours volunteering for the Make-a-Wish foundation, and I remember a press conference where he said that leveraging his fame to really make a difference for children in need was more personally meaningful than playing a sport.

Brett has been a rarity for me - a public figure that I’ve spent a long time observing and actually learning from. His context is much different than mine, to be sure, but his consistent displays of joy, leadership, dedication and perspective are quite “portable” to my life, and how I go about every day practicing my craft.

Thank You Brett Favre, and see you in Canton five years from now. I look forward to that speech.

Last week while I was on the road I finally got a chance to read the book “The 4-Hour Workweek“, by Timothy Ferriss (check it out here on my Amazon page).

I’ll be posting a full review of the book on March 10 on Joyful Jubilant Learning (bookmark it or subscribe now so you don’t miss it), but I wanted to raise a particular leadership point featured in the book today, because I believe in it so fervently.

I’ll put the point in my own words: “Empowerment Equals Leadership Freedom”

Or perhaps a more pointed subtitle, “Be an Enabler, Not a Disabler”

Ferriss talks about this in a quite different context than I would (he uses it as a means to a different end - stay tuned for the book review), but he makes a powerful case nonetheless for “pushing down” as much responsibility as possible. His key observation:

“It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them”

Ah yes, trust. I’ve personally seen someone grow two inches taller upon my utterance of these magic words - “I trust you”.

It is a marvelously enabling string of words - and not without risk. It takes a good degree of courage to let something go, since as humans I think we have a tendency to be control freaks. I can personally attest it’s a pretty strong thing to resist.

But resist we must, because from a leadership perspective enabling reveals something else - our effectiveness in selecting and hiring teammates.

Because if we can’t entrust someone with proper responsibilities commensurate with the job description, we simply shouldn’t hire them. Having too many “disabled” teammates chains a leader to too much minutiae, and gives him or her much less freedom to do what leaders really should be doing - LEADING.

And that’s the kind of freedom that leads us to our own promised land of job fulfillment.

Ferriss included a great quote from Henry David Thoreau in his book that sums it all up very nicely:

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone”

So set them free, and find the richness in your leadership life.

I’m a big list maker at work - I have a yellow legal pad with me at all times, and I’m always jotting down my “to dos“.

I cleaned out one of my credenzas a few weeks ago, and discovered I had about 30 of these pads from past weeks, months, and years stored away for posterity - a literal record of contemplated, ranked, and sorted priorities.

In reviewing these old lists with the benefit of hindsight, I could ascertain whether the priorities I set were correct - and, more importantly, whether I went after the right ones first .

It was a great exercise for me, because as a leader how we prioritize our goals and objectives is paramount to our success. Consequently I passed this lesson forward to my management team today, along with this quote by Robert J. McKain:

“Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.”

How often do we come up with a list but avoid the first thing we write down, because it’s probably the most difficult one? I think it’s human nature to want to do the “easier” things first, but good leaders need to resist that temptation and have the courage to dive in to the big and hairy stuff.

A classic example is diving into a spreadsheet or another “depersonalized” project instead of dealing with a critical teammate who is not performing and need to hold accountable. That really is the hard stuff, and typically are the “first things” we need to do to keep our goals on track.

I know that’s happened to me now and then - the evidence came right up in front of me when I looked back at my yellow pads - so I’ve redoubled my resolve going forward to keep my courage up when those tough tests of leadership happen.

So don’t do second things first - trust your instincts, go to the top of the list, and get ‘er done!

I spent a good deal time over last weekend thinking (when I wasn’t stressing through the Packers loss on Sunday - uck) about how to simplify the keys to good leadership - what are the tell-tale signs that show us we’re doing and saying the right things?

As I typically do, I scoured some famous quotations for inspiration, and it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.  It was a quote by Colin Powell:

“The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”

There are always going to be problems out there - nobody, and no business, is perfect.  If you are not hearing about them from your teammates, not only are you failing as a leader, you are being lulled into a false sense of security about what’s really happening - a real double whammy.

We must inspire trust and confidence as leaders, and the best evidence of this is a stream of bad news coming your way.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s really not.

The upshot of getting bad news on a timely basis is that we oftentimes can take speedy action to fix it,  thus minimizing any damage to the business.  Sometimes, the action can even have a net positive impact - really making “lemonade out of the lemons“.

It’s an often cited cliché , to be  sure,  but problems can and should be opportunities.   We just need to be sure we lead well enough to hear about them.

From a leadership perspective, bad news is indeed good news. It’s an easy “gut check” we can periodically make sure we’re on the right track.

I challenged my team to do such a check this week, and I encourage you to do the same - are you getting enough bad news?