Five Leadership mistakes

 

 It’s true that mistakes provide great learning opportunities, but not those leadership mistakes that happen in a series which can kill execution abilities and eventually destroy your companies will to win.

Have you ever wondered why so many well-led, talented organizations with clear visions and target goals fail? Leadership expert John Hamm, the author of ‘Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership’ says it’s because they’ve been infected with a disease he calls ‘failing elegantly’. “Failing elegantly is a very sophisticated and veiled set of coping behaviors by individuals, the purpose of which is to avoid the oncoming train of embarrassment when the cover comes off the lousy results that we’d prefer no one ever see,” he explains.
He says this disease takes effect when people stop believing they can be successful and start devoting their energy to how best to lose. Hamm points out a few leadership mistakes that put your team in danger of failing elegantly.

1. Setting Impossible Goals
It’s a very tricky job to lead the goal-setting process where you have to arrive at business objectives that are perfectly sized. Managers need to be very careful when setting such goals with proper calculation of risks involved, expected challenges, and the ever deflating expectations. It’s very important for the leadership to understand that their level of professional commitment would not be shared by everyone on the team. Hamm put this point very clearly in his own words, “Goals that are clearly beyond any reasonable confidence of achievement are worse than easy goals – they actually disengage your team’s energy. The predictable and natural response is ‘Why bother?’ Your employees can’t be productive if they have this sense of feeling that they are chasing a goal which is beyond their reach of realization. Managers need to set achievable goals that are explained clearly to the employees with intelligent prioritization of workload.
 
2. Allowing Pseudo-Wins
It’s a common phenomenon that talented employees tend to lose their focus on the critical but tough path problems which must be solved to transform an idea into reality. Man
agers often commit the mistake of allowing the best ones to taste the feeling of satisfaction on some simpler tasks or by providing some assignments or projects that are simply more fun. Hamm advises leaders to develop an eye and ear for this weakness and they must try to listen for it in every conversation and look for it in every ops review. “They must relentlessly redirect energy to the hard problems, realizing that it is human nature to drift from the tough stuff in favor of more emotionally fulfilling and easier project modules,” he says. 
 
3. Unlimited Tolerance
Yes, the virtue of tolerance is absolutely necessary to be a leader; however, when it’s unlimited, it’s a dangerous notion. When you don’t have a clear definition to your em
ployees on what is acceptable and unacceptable, the chance of failure is much higher than that of success. You cannot accept the lame excuses instead of results. Your act of tolerance should not be taken for granted and you should not count the amount of false efforts put in to give the justifications and rationalizations for certain courses of action. “What you want, and what the winner’s mindset demands, are insightful explanations for the gap between expected and actual performance,” says Hamm. “These are informed guesses – as informed and objective as they can be, untainted by the effort expended in dodging responsibility. There is tolerance of the simple fact that we don’t have control over every variable in the game, so at times – through either forces outside our influence or simply not having run our best play – the results are not as we wish.”
 
4. Allowing Sloppiness and Imprecision
Leaders should not allow sloppiness and imprecision in their employees as this kind of an approach encourages them to be lazy and uncommitted. You must not let
your employees to get away with their extra-polite manners or good-natured humor when they present a shoddy work or incomplete report. You should encourage them to take enough pride in the finished work. “Leaders want to be good people, and they want to show others that they have the wisdom to accept human frailty,” notes Hamm. “So they allow themselves to tolerate a little sloppiness here and a little imprecision there in their subordinates’ work. But high reliability organizations never allow sloppiness, because they know it equals death. Unusually excellent leaders have a zero tolerance policy for sloppiness.”
 
5. Failing to See the Real Feedback
It’s a grave mistake for a leader to ignore the real feedback or in other words, to encourage his employees to bring a feedback that would satisfy his likes. The
optimist and enthusiast leaders show a dangerous tendency to signal, often unconsciously, their dislike of bad news, their inner revulsion toward failure. Its here when the subordinates would shape and color the original data to satisfy the leader’s hopeful expectations and emotional needs rather than the intellectual needs. As the feedback data becomes corrupted, the overall strategy of the company begins to undermine to a point where the hopes of success would die down. “Unusually excellent leaders demand that performance feedback data be delivered promptly and be uncolored, objective, plentiful, and robust. This data is used to figure out what is working and what isn’t, so that corrections to course and speed can be made,” Hamm notes.

The Fresh Brew: Chronicles of business and freedom

‘The Fresh Brew: Chronicles of business and freedom’ is a new book by Amit Haralalka and Amitabh Thakur. This book tells twenty five stories of IIML alumni, who pursued their dream and started their own enterprise. In generic, This book is for wannabe entrepreneurs, who can get inspiration from this book.

( This book is available for online purchase and will be available in all Landmark book stores shortly. )

Opening story of book is about Bimal Patwari. Other stories include IIML MBAs like Anjali Mullatti who expressed importance of lifestyle entrepreneurship.

More information:
1. freshbrewbooks.com.
2. IIML Information of book

Strategy By Michael Porter

I reviewed on article published in Economic Times.

Michael Porter is well known for his competitive Strategy that is used by many global companies to sharpen competitive advantage. It is a framework that generates the agile practical approach to leverage the business. If I would generalize the principle, it tells to use the skill in which you are perfect. Michael says, ‘None of this is creating unique products and needs. You need to understand what it is that makes you unique. The better you understand what this is and how you do it, the better you will be at responding to trends and meeting customer needs.’

Many companies struggled to do everything including production, marketing, and sales on their own, but didn’t succeed much. Some outsourced specific division to the specialized small companied and continued the successful business.

Michael Porter further says that aftermath of US recession, people resented the companies that only worked for profit irrespective of thinking about customers. This conviction maligned the reputation of companies. To deal with this many companies started spending on the society in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR). He said, ‘CSR or handing out some of your profits towards a cause is not strategy and it will not restore trust in business The future will see a social dimension being added to business strategy and companies who do this will be at an advantage.’ In later years, Companies like GE, Canon considered publicly environmental concerns developing due to company business.

Automation, mechanical companies used cleaner resources. Machines worked out to cause reduced emission. Nestle, Unilever addressed core issues like environment, water use, health and nutrition.  This strategy has helped to increased customer relationship and created impact on society.

About Michael Porter:
MBA and PhD from Harvard Business School & Harvard University.
Research and publications over competitive advantage, Strategy, Management.
Founder of Monitor Group, Strategic Management Consultancy.

Political Strategy of Henry Kissinger

I was reading about the politics and diplomacy played by Henry Kissinger in Vietnam War. He was well known for his political strategies during cold war.  It looks contradictory with the Nobel peace prize awarded to him, still it is known that Vietnam war running long decade .  During cold war era, he played a grand game to get the find balance between opposing super powers China, Russia and US.

More information on wiki: here

Controversies: Christopher Hitchens wrote a book to uncover the war crimes by Henry Kissinger. Book started with two articles in Harper Magazine. Later book “The trial of Henry Kissinger” and documentary with the same name was released. He asked Henry to answer the questions about genocide he played in Vietnam War. Henry denied joining the debate with him.  Book ‘The Price of Power’ by Saymour Hersh sayed,  ‘This man can operate at a horrible levels. He sacrificed many human lives to achieve his strategic goals’.

To Become a Leader

Leadership mantra defines the ways you could take your team where you wanted.  When the people will follow your principles? Its only when you have charismatic and dynamic personality as much to make people feel you are cheer leader.

Leadership can be taught as well as learnt through principles. Just few principles by observation and my study as below:

What leader defines? Be- Know-Do are basic responsibilities of Leader. He has a specific direction. He has a deep conviction to tough the goal through collective efforts of team. So, Belief and values of leader cost much while leading the team.

’Believe you can and you’re halfway there’ -Theodare Roosevelt.

It is required to how get the things done from team. He should easily understand the people and their needs. Motivation should be supplied frequently to maintain the spirit within the team. He should be able to resolve conflicts within the team. ‘Do’ means he is the only prime driver of success.

To become a leader, person should have clear sense of direction, what exactly he wants to do with the team. If he gets direction, he should have strong vision and belief of strong future.

Charismatic leadership is comes with effective communication that builds trust and confidence in the team. This communication can be learnt with following steps 1. Try to make people understand the overall strategy and goal of the team/organization. 2. Let them know the ways to achieve the targets. Understand if team has any problems or hurdles achieving the goals. Share the information to build the trust. Appreciate the team members for their good work to express the significance of each individual.

Few traits of successful leader:

Know yourself and seek the improvements in you always. This requires analysis of you. Be familiar with the work done by your people. This will help you to understand the concerns expressed as well as unexpressed.  Take responsibility of all tasks done by team, because you are the only person who has shown the direction. Make timely decisions. Know your people and their problems. You are required to understand the human nature to have clear insight of a person.  Develop a clear accountably of work performed by people and let them own their tasks and handle it on their own.

At the last, Improve your language for motivation.

Cheerful words of leaders:

“You did a good job..!”
“Yes. You will do it..!”
“What is your opinion about this..?”
“Thank you..!”

Prognosis of POSCO India

Posco Steel project has got clearance from environmental and forest department of India. many months the rural population in Orissa was protesting against the energy project.

Initiative of POSCO steel project is to utilize the iron ore mines for the economic growth of nation.  Many districts even being rich in minerals remain underdeveloped. Steel can be exported out of India to increase our profit.  Now, government has reviewed all pros and cons of this project and environmental department understood the national benefit through this project.

As much larger population is coming under the covered land, all these people will become landless and their shelters will be erased. They will lose their bread and butter. Foreign investor has promised to offer alternative employment for this affected population.  Proper appreciation of their land will be offered. I expect credible and generous appreciation of land has to be done. People are forced to leave the land, on which many generations lived. Looking towards the commercial value of area, good amount of money should be given to the land owners.

From couple of years, many SEZs have been installed across India. People lost their land and living in covered area. Industrialists has bribed local politicians and leaders to make people leave the land for development projects. Naïve, illiterate population suffered everywhere.

This may happen here also. This can be prevented by company should directly communicated with the people migrating the land, rather than keeping local politicians as a mediator.