Results – Page 16 – Elisa K. Spain

Leadership Quote: Vision Without Execution…

August 25, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Vision without execution is hallucination.

— Thomas A. Edison

When leaders focus solely on vision and strategy and not on execution, put simply, nothing gets done. Successful leaders know that a vision is a destination that their team can rally around. They also know that while the vision is their job, it is a team effort to develop a strategy for getting there.

At the same time, once the vision and strategy are defined, results only happen with implementation. And only succeed with the monitoring and evaluation that follows.

In my experience, leaders who see their only job as generating the big ideas and abdicate their leadership role when it comes to execution are suffering from the hallucinations Thomas Edison describes. By avoiding learning about the people they lead, the technologies their companies use, the customers they serve, and numerous other crucial little things, they miss the key elements of execution.

This is why Vistage members share their vision, strategy and execution plans, are accountable to each other for all three and outperform their industry peers.

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership Development: Not Just For Women

August 4, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership Development: Not Just for Women

As part of our leadership development, my Vistage groups frequently select a book to read as a group. Recently, my Vistage Inside group chose the book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandburg.

On the day we discussed this book in my group, the first person to speak was a man. His comment was “This is not a gender issue. This book resonated for me and the challenges I have in my career”.

This book has garnered both praise and criticism and certainly puts to rest the question of whether a book can spark a debate.

The debate centers around two issues. First, given Sheryl’s wealth and position, is she truly able to advise young women? And, is she placing too much of the onus on women who are already struggling to fulfill impossible demands, and too little on government and employers to provide better child care, more flexible jobs and other concrete gains.

Having begun my career in the 1970’s, for me the book initially was a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. While certainly gender neutrality has occurred in many jobs, the executive suite is one where the numbers say otherwise.

That said, I wonder, is the question really about gender neutrality or is it about the challenges that women and men face as they navigate the path to career advancement?

I wonder if the real questions that Sheryl is suggesting we, women and men, ask are:

What is the path to a “seat at the table”?
What risks must I take?
What personal choices must I make to achieve career success (i.e. choice of mate, where I live, who my friends are)?

And, finally the most key question,

What must I give up, to get what I want?

For more on this topic, see previous post, Laws of Success: Perfection of The Life or Perfection of The Work

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership Quote: Leadership Is Not Magnetic Personality…

June 30, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Once again, I am taking a brief pause from the Leadership View series for the monthly quote. The series will return next week with Leadership View #12.

This month’s leadership quote:

Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations — Peter F. Drucker

What a relief, this means EVERY leader has the potential to succeed…That is, if he or she wants to. For me, this quote means that to accomplish successful leadership, we must step outside of ourselves and focus on the people we are leading. We must identify what drives each individual on our team, identify their unique genius and coach them toward success. It is our job as leaders to inspire the people we lead to take the next step, to take the risk to achieve growth and as Drucker says, achieve beyond their limitations.

Perhaps the place to start is with identifying these same factors within ourselves…

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership View #11: Hardest Task

June 23, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #11:

Hardest task – changing your leadership and management styles as your company grows or you go up the ladder.

I often hear entrepreneurs say, “I don’t want to lose the culture as I grow this company” or “We are like a family, I want to keep this feeling as we grow”. And yet as the company grows the culture inevitably changes and the owner no longer knows the name and the family of every employee.

And, what the company needs as it moves from “go-go” to “prime” (to quote Vistage speaker Gerry Faust) is for the leader to change.

In the go-go period, everyone is equal and it is all about getting the job done, getting the orders out, meeting the customer needs. Typically the owner is the chief sales officer and innovator. And, then as a company adds more people and moves to prime, management becomes necessary and terms like “building a leadership team” come into play.

Suddenly the owner is thrust into a role of CEO and has people reporting to him or her who are focused on their own career path. These key executives want the opportunity to innovate and have an impact themselves. And, the CEO while still expected to define the vision, must also become a coach and mentor, allowing others to grow and develop as leaders.

At the same time, the folks who came to the company as experts and doers are often expected to become managers. And those that came to “manage” are expected to become leaders. The best operations manager who succeeded because he or she can implement processes must learn to think like an owner and take a broad view. These new roles and new ways of thinking require new behaviors as well.

Those that are able to change are those rare few that build and lead the less than 1% of companies >$100mm in revenue.

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership View #8: Merging Two Organizations…

June 2, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #8:

Merging two organizations gives a leader an opportunity to form a new culture / leadership team / operating style. A common mistake is to adopt one or the other, thereby creating winners and losers.

This leadership view is actually a continuation of Leadership View #7 where I talked about getting buy-in during a merger. Once we have that buy-in from the early majority, the next question to answer is: what will be the culture, leadership and operating style of the combined group?

Remembering that a “merger” can mean combining two companies, two groups, or simply adding a significant number of new team members.

In my experience the culture bends. Last year, I added several new members to my Vistage CEO group and most of these new members came from other CEO groups where they had been members for some time. The groups they came from had their own culture, operating style and formal and informal leadership.

Here is what I learned from that experience.

First, the integration must be intentional. The people that were there first, feel a sense of ownership of the group. The new people want to add value. The challenge is creating situations that allow for both. The following steps worked for us:

-We form workgroups including members with various tenure and personality styles – sometimes the official leader was from the new group, sometimes from the old.

-New members were given the opportunity to showcase their expertise in a way that helped the group.

-We recognized that groups follow Bruce Tuckman’s model of forming, storming, norming, performing and they do it continuously. The merged group naturally moved through this process at it’s own pace.

The result: The group today is an integrated group with many of the same values as before, yet with updated norms and a new culture, well on its way to high performing.

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership View #7: When Merging Or Combining Two Organizations..

May 19, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #7:

When merging or combining two organizations, it has been estimated that 60% of the people will be relatively indifferent, 20% will be strongly supportive, and 20% will be strongly non-supportive. Focus on the 20% that are strongly supportive and converting the 60% who are neutral.

It is so easy to be drawn to want to “convert” those who are negative. Whether it’s the one customer we can’t seem to please; or the one person sleeping when we are giving a presentation; or the one person on our team of 25 who always has a negative comment.

And the same applies when combining organizations. There is an old adage that mergers succeed or fail based on cultural fit. My experience when combining organizations or adding a significant number of people to an existing group, is the culture bends. The core of the culture remains and it bends to accommodate and subsequently grow from the additions or the merger.

Those who are supportive and positive can inspire us as leaders to carry on and inspire those who are neutral to come on-board. Why waste our time on negative energy, when we can create more positive energy?

Questions for you to consider:

When was the last time you were leading an integration and felt drawn down by negative reactions?
Upon reflection, what percentage of those involved in the merger was actually negative?
What might you do next time to notice what percentage is positive to neutral and focus on them?

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership View #6: Some Problems Can’t Be “Solved”

May 12, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Leadership View #6:

Some problems can’t be “solved” (and, hopefully, made to go away) – they must be managed and may require the leader’s repetitive attention and time.

As leaders and managers, we have been taught to find the root cause and fix the problem. This Leadership View seems to fly in the face of that.

What do you mean “some problems can’t be solved”?

For me the key word here is repetition. For anything to be sustainable, it must be repeated. We humans get distracted, forget what we learned and have to be reminded. This is what Vistage is all about. Our members hear from a speaker 8 times a year. Do you really think each speaker brings something new to the table? Rather, they often are reinforcing a similar message. And, we hear the message differently depending on where we are in our lives and our businesses at the time. An entrepreneur leading a start-up will hear a leadership message differently 10 years later when he or she is challenged with building a leadership team that will lead to a sustainable enterprise.

I asked one of our long term Vistage members recently if he had ever considered leaving Vistage. His answer was “never, I learn something at every meeting, every one-to-one.” He leads a highly successful, high growth business. My belief is he learns something new each time, because he comes with different ears each time.

The same is true for the people that work for us. Some problems can’t be solved, because things happen. Life isn’t static and our businesses and our processes aren’t static. Last year in a post entitled “Is Your Leadership Team Your Co-Advisor“, I talked about the DIME Method: Design, Implement, Monitor, Evaluate. For me the repetition speaks to the Monitor and Evaluate part of the continuum. As problems get solved and things change, we must monitor, evaluate and then design again.

As you mull over this idea that problems can’t be solved, I encourage you to ask yourself the following questions:

When was the last time we monitored or evaluated the systems we have in place?
Are we doing things, “because that’s the way we have always done it”?
What is the root cause of the problems that exist in my company today? Which of these require my repetitive time and attention?

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership View #5: When Leading Change..

May 5, 2013 by Elisa Spain4 Comments

Leadership View #5:

When leading change – get some early wins –this makes change irresistible to those that resist. Getting these “early wins” may involve changing priorities or sequencing of events.

How often do we begin an initiative by setting a goal with a date when everything will be complete?

When starting a project we are excited to get “it” done. What if instead we focused on getting small wins and buy-in, how might we approach the project differently?

One of my favorite visible stories of a leader who understood the importance of early wins is The Chicago Wacker Drive Project. Mayor Richard M. Daley began this enormous project, raised the funds for it and hired the team to lead it. It was a massive undertaking. The job required rebuilding both Upper and Lower Wacker, a primary downtown Chicago artery.

What I remember most about this project is it began in early 2001 and was declared “finished” 20 months later in late 2002. It was declared a success coming in on-time and on-budget. The reality was, only a portion of the Wacker Drive rebuild was completed during this period. Work on Wacker Drive continued for many years and continues today.

Mayor Daley knew he had to get an “early win” and sequence the events so that he could pause and celebrate success. The work that continued for ten years hence followed this same model. Small incremental projects are funded, begun and then completed and celebrated.

Here are my questions for you to consider when you next begin an initiative in your company:

What is the ideal sequencing to get the job done right and on-time?
If my goal is buy-in, what changes might I need to make to get that buy-in?
Am I willing to go slower at the front-end to get to adoption?
Who are the people I can count on to be early adopters and influencers? How do I engage them, so they are willing proselytize our success?
How will I celebrate success?

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

Leadership Quote: Our Job As Marketers And Leaders

April 28, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Once again, I am taking a brief pause from the 45 Years of Leadership series for the monthly quote. The series will return next week with Marsh’s Leadership View #5.

This month’s leadership quote:

Our job as marketers and leaders is to create vibrant pockets, not to hunt for mass. – Seth Godin

This quote comes from Seth’s Super Bowl blog, entitled, Why do we care about football? In this post, Seth claims, that while mass TV built many elements of our culture, mass TV (except for the Super Bowl) is basically over. The new media giants of our age (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) don’t point everyone to one bit of content, don’t trade in mass. Instead, they splinter, connecting many to many, not many to one.

Facebook, Twitter and Google connect businesses to business, businesses to consumers and consumers to consumers. The question is no longer simply are you B2B or B2C but rather who are your customers, who do you want to have as customers and how do you continue to be relevant to them.

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com

45 Year Leadership View #4: A Leader Must Balance…

April 21, 2013 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Marsh Carter’s Leadership View #4:

A leader must balance between near-term and long-term leadership and management tasks.

Hmm.. last week’s leadership view involved balance and here we are with the same subject line again. It does seem that balance is a key challenge for every leader.

Most leaders have a sense of urgency, entrepreneurs especially. Often it is this sense of urgency that got us where we are. And, much like balancing the needs of the organization with the needs of our followers, we must also recognize which of our goals belong in the long term column and which belong as short-term.

And it is certainly a balancing act, because for high urgency leaders, we sometimes move tasks into the now, when they belong in the future. If you are challenged with sorting between short term and long term initiatives, here is a suggested approach to get started.

Begin by capturing all the ideas, tasks and goals. Next ask yourself the following three questions for each item:

How much time will it take to get this done?
What will be the impact/outcome for the organization when this is done? (people, resources, capital, impact on other initiatives impact on customers, etc.)
What will be the impact/outcome for the organization while we are getting this done? (people, resources, capital, impact on other initiatives impact on customers, etc.)

Elisa K. Spain

Elisa Spain

elisaspain.com