Leadership is Overrated – Part II

Before I begin the next phase of my leadership rant, I will recommend a great book. This book is called ‘First, break all the rules‘ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. ‘First, break all the rules’ analyzes what great leaders do. This is backed up by close to 25 years of research by the popular analytics firm, Gallup and is a gem.
Moving onto the issue itself – my hypothesis is that every organization doesn’t need tons of great leaders.
Can you imagine Apple with 2 Steve Jobs like personalities? Can you even imagine the kind of fireworks that would cause? (And historically, it did. Jobs did leave Apple and come back..)
What has worked for Apple is to have Steve Jobs lead the charge and have many great managers all the way down who stay true to Jobs’ philosophy.
Similarly, every great organization has a few leaders on top and the rest below are simply great managers. If we go back to the ‘shirtless dancing guy’ episode, that group did not need 10 shirtless dancing guys, they just needed one. In fact, 10 such guys would have only divided the group and caused chaos..
The point I am trying to make is simple – Leadership is a talent. Just like football. There’s only so much you can do to ‘instill’ leadership qualities. Schools can give students opportunities to lead but all this does is bring out the ones who have the talent.
Great management, on the other hand, can be learnt. And, as a result, taught. Great managers can codify what they do and pass it on. That’s precisely what ‘First, break all the rules’ does.
That’s not to say great management is easy. In truth, it is bloody difficult. Imagine you are a star in a football team to whom natural talents come easy. Now imagine you make the transition to managing a team – having to bring together a group of likely less talented lads, having to control a couple of arrogant stars and having to just be the ‘catalyst’ and make your group succeed. Suddenly, it is not about you. There is no place for insecurity.. there is only place for coaching, mentoring and letting people do their thing.
The good thing however is that it is difficult, not impossible. I would argue what we need is not a world full of leaders. We just need more potential great managers – people bred with self confidence rather than insecurity, bred with the understanding that competition doesn’t decide self worth but is only worthwhile to help maintain perspective and bred with the understanding that leadership is not everything.
It would help us remember that people do not leave companies, they leave managers. And great companies/organizations as a result simply have many great managers. And we need more great organizations in this world.
And by great, I mean purely in terms of quality.. (I hope you did not naturally picture a mammoth organization when you heard ‘great’ – if you did, then it’s not necessarily uncommon and that’s a discussion for another post.. :))
To be continued (1 more post to go..)

The Noise from the Bad Stuff

There’s a distinct Eckhart Tolle influence on my posts these days thanks to listening to Stillness Speaks for 15 min as I waft off to sleep every night. The wonderful thing about the book is that I have read it many many times (it is my default book when I have difficulty falling off to sleep) but still, I am continuously amazed by it’s depth.
And for the past few days, the one idea that I have been observing most is –
‘In this world, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much ‘noise”

I am reminded of this every morning after I finish reading the newspaper.
How did you feel after reading those newspaper? Were you reminded of all the evil, corruption and bad character in this world?
(That’s why you have got to love the Sports section…)

Leadership is Overrated – Part I

Firstly, here is a popular video I posted ages ago. I think what’s most remarkable is it’s simplicity.
(Only the first 3 minutes and 10 seconds)
Let’s remember the lessons again –
1. Firstly, if you are the type standing alone – nurture your first few followers as equals so it is more about he movement and not just about you
2. Biggest lesson – Leadership is over glorified
3. We are told that we all have to be leaders. To start a movement, have the courage to follow a lone nut.
Contemporary wisdom is all about nurturing leaders. I think we will always have great leaders as leadership, like football or basketball, is a talent.
I believe what we are lacking is not great leadership, but effective management.
To be continued..

The World Has Never Been So Personal

There is a lot of talk about how the internet and social media have contributed to the loss of things being ‘Personal’. For those of us who have been around long enough, it gives us a nice excuse to reminisce about the ‘good old days’ when we actually wrote letters, and the like.
I disagree. Vehemently.
Let’s consider the following 5 examples –
– A customer today doesn’t look at a ‘corporation’ as a large black-box in a world disconnected from his/her. These corporations have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts where his/her opinions will be listened to, and acted upon. Least of all, they would be heard and replied to.
A corporation that doesn’t is in for a lot of bad press.
– When I looked at my inbox today, I saw a flurry of personal emails. Thanks to communication being made so easy and fast, I can share my life with more close friends and family than was ever possible. Moreover, we can share our lives with each other more often than was ever possible, irrespective of distance.
– 2 days ago, I met with a school friend with whom I hadn’t met for around 6 years thanks to Facebook. We caught up over a game of football in a ‘far away land’ – all thanks to a status update I noticed from him that said he was in London.
– People are connected with their movie idols, sports stars over twitter more than ever before
– Skype and video calling has enabled more long distance relationships than ever before
Yes, that doesn’t take away the fact that we all have more friends on Facebook than we can count or that we have random twitter followers who aren’t even interested in what we say.
But, since when have things been perfect?
The world has never been as personal as it is today. Thanks to Email, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and the like, we can stay in closer touch than was ever possible, with more people that was ever imagined.
It’s a choice, of course. You have to choose to take time to write those personal emails, to write those Facebook messages and to stay in touch.
As I write this, I am reminded of the Eckhart Tolle quote..
‘In this world, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much ‘noise”

Things are getting better. Of course, while complaining about how technology has made the world less personal is one choice, leveraging it to build stronger, deeper relationships is the other.
The media wants you to believe the former is true.
I just hope you consciously pick one over the other.

On the Feynman approach

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘Surely you’re joking Mr.Feynman’ by Richard.P.Feynman

Richard Feynman had gained quite a reputation as a young Physicist. As a result, Feynman was soon part of many discussions with the top scientific names of the day like Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli and the Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, whose contributions to understanding atomic structure made him legendary.

Right after one such discussion with a group of eminent scientists including Niels Bohr, Bohr called his son (who was also part of the session) aside and said –

‘You know that young guy at the back – Feynman. Let’s have a separate discussion with him before our next session and then share our results with the rest of the group.’

‘Why father?’

‘Well, because, every time I say something, the others just say ‘You must be right, Dr Bohr’. He is the only one who has the courage to tell me I am wrong. ‘

Nobel Laureate Feynman later admitted that, once he got into a discussion on Physics, he completely lost sight of who he was speaking to. All he worried about was whether the Physics was right.

Richard Feynman’s story is a fascinating one. He was an incredibly curious man, an accomplished painter and drummer, while also being proficient in multiple languages. What stood out, however, was his uncomplicated approach to problem solving. A physics problem was, at the end of the day, a physics problem. He didn’t let factors like the person or the environment complicate it. As a result, he would have the same answer to a Niels Bohr as he would to you and me.

In that simplicity lay his greatness.

Here’s to remembering Feynman’s approach when we encounter a tough problem this week!