Speed and urgency are great values for measuring success goals, but they’re not stand-alone traits. Combining both magnitude and direction to generate velocity within an organization is a process that can track forward momentum and make sure every step is intentional towards your goal.
There are many different directions that are open for you to take, but not all of them are ones that will benefit you or help you achieve your goal. You need to have a clear vision for which path to take and use that momentum to propel you closer to your super-sized vision. Saying no is a very critical part of that process – having lots of options is exciting, until you need to whittle it down to one option. Practice saying no and keep yourself moving in the right direction.
Leadership involves many moving parts and tremendous flow of information. Successful leaders understand how to access, absorb and organize information quickly to make informed decisions. This ability to rapidly process information represents one of three key ingredients essential to leadership success, along with a leader’s broad experience and deep skill set across all disciplines.
Challenge yourself to develop your own approach to access, absorb, and organize information very quickly. You will find that a disciplined mental approach to information processing clarifies your business vision and accelerates your achievement of desired outcomes.
…but I say “Be Very, Very Visible”. Spend most of your time out of your office. Be visible, available and active in all parts of your company. Engage in informal conversations in the hallways and at people’s workstations.
Informal conversations offer the most effective way to learn the true state of your business. Build your feedback network and business knowledge by regularly working with employees at all levels.
Do you want to win? Ask, listen and gather information directly from the sources.
Employees need challenges, high expectations, and ownership of specific deliverables. And each team member needs quantifiable goals every month and every quarter for their deliverables. When leaders combine these disciplines with consistent accountability across the enterprise, team members rise above their past performance and achieve well beyond their own expectations.
Extraordinary results require a super-sized vision, high expectations, defined ownership of key success deliverables, and consistent application of goals and accountability.
All employees want to be part of something greater than themselves. Workers want to make an impact and know that their individual and collective contributions combine to achieve a greater purpose. A leader’s super-sized vision for a company’s future offers workers a reason to draw on deep intelligence, skills, creativity and energy to accomplish more than they ever thought possible and deliver an impact on the world in which we live.
It’s impossible to think too big. Imagine and communicate a grand vision for your company that changes the world for the better. Your team will amaze you with their ability to achieve the incomprehensible.
Leadership is a thankless job. Every decision impacts lives. Every choice alters outcomes. No one fully understands your predicament, and there are always critics. Everyone wants something from you and wants nothing to do with you.
CEOs require enormous reserves of courage and persistence. Inevitably, one or more group of employees, shareholders or customers is unhappy with you at any given moment. And people will abandon you when you least expect it.
So why take on leadership responsibilities? Why become a CEO or C-level executive? Because great leaders change the world for the better. By offering employees challenging and fulfilling work. By supporting employees and families with attractive compensation to grow their wealth and economic well being. By inspiring employees to grow and achieve more than ever thought possible. By improving diversity, increasing racial acceptance, building communities and bringing people closer together. By accelerating social change, reducing climate change, and driving responsible citizenship. Because great leaders do great things.
The proposed Biden Administration rule that may reclassify more independent contractors as employees threatens the existence of Uber, Lyft and countless other enterprises. This issue is simply about union power and dues. Nothing more.
Has anyone asked workers if they want to be employees? No. Workers are independent contractors when they perform a job as they desire (behavioral control), receive lump-sum payments and have the opportunity for profit or loss (financial control), and must perform the job to completion (relationship control) (see Common Law Control Test). Uber, Lyft, janitorial, home care, and construction workers often choose these professions for the earnings, schedule and process flexibility that they offer. Those workers that wish to seek employment have 10 million open jobs in the U.S. from which to choose.
On the flip side, employee status is required to receive benefits, and only employees can form unions. Unions are the primary beneficiaries of this proposed rule change. I am not against unions in any way. I am against forcing workers to become employees because of the perception that workers are exploited as independent contractors. Candidly, Uber, Lyft and countless other enterprises will go out of business if workers are classified as employees because a) their workers don’t wish to be employees, and b) their business models simply cannot absorb the full cost of employee benefits. Uber, Lyft and these types of businesses have provided an invaluable alternative to older, more costly regulated services.
This proposed rule change is a solution looking for a problem. We need Uber, Lyft and all of the small businesses that rely upon contract workers.
Perhaps the Biden Administration and Congress should focus on the issues that truly matter. Start with fiscal discipline and making the necessary difficult decisions to generate a budget surplus, reduce government debt and inflation, and ensure the integrity of our financial system. Then, dramatically accelerate private enterprise investment in the United States through clear, long-term policies for energy independence (all energy sources are required), physical airport/highway/seaport infrastructure, semiconductor and technology manufacturing, aerospace and defense technologies, education, child and elder care, and immigration/border security.
We cannot afford to have our leaders waste more time on bullshit and non-issues.
A Culture of Belief enables transformation, unleashes unlimited human potential, perseveres through inevitable challenges, and delivers sustained rapid growth.
“Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” – Gail Devers
Labor shortages and post-Covid remote work present two significant challenges for business leaders. Yet, both challenges are related. Companies that allow employees to work where and when they want will attract under-utilized talent pools and a more diverse workforce.
Many CEOs are missing the seismic workplace change underpinning remote work. It isn’t important whether a CEO believes in remote work or not. The fact is that professional work has changed forever. The Covid pandemic forced the professional world to accelerate change toward remote work, and now that change is here to stay. Remote work is productive, popular and proven.
If companies want the best talent, they must adapt to accommodate remote work wherever possible. Younger generations of workers demand remote work – older generations’ nostalgia for office work prior to Covid are irrelevant. And companies’ desire to reinstitute office attendance in order to monitor productivity of workers will fail. Great companies will adapt with better performance metrics that measure remote and office employee OUTCOMES rather than employee ACTIVITY.
Remote and flexible work also attracts better, more diverse talent. Companies that implement very flexible work schedules enjoy access to the tremendous talent and experience of women, single parents, older workers, and less mobile employees. These amazing talent pools are often excluded from the workplace due to rigid work hours and in-office work requirements. Companies with flexible work schedules and locations attract these underemployed talent pools and close the labor shortage gap.
This broader talent pool, in turn, yields a more diverse workforce. Businesses that purposely offer flexibility and opportunities that attract women, people of color, and individuals from varying socioeconomic backgrounds build better products and services that appeal to a much larger addressable market.
More talent, more diversity, more profits. Regardless of business leaders’ individual views toward remote work or nostalgia for years gone by, the practical reality is that businesses that allow more schedule and location flexibility, attract a diverse workforce, and implement better metrics to measure outcomes rather than activity will generate superior financial results over time.
CEOs have to forget about the past and look to the future.
I make my living from transforming underperforming highly engineered global product businesses into high growth industry leaders. Every underperforming business that I have encountered suffers from one universal entrenched challenge: a business culture that reflects actions and policies lagging well behind society as a whole. When a business does not reflect a high level of human decency, inclusive policies, diversity, equality, and trust consistent with the full spectrum of society, business performance suffers. Customers, employees and shareholders recognize this decay from society’s evolving norms and take their support elsewhere. Conversely, businesses that lead social change attract more loyal customers, achieve happier and more productive employees, and generate outsize shareholder returns.
Customers, employees and shareholders gravitate to forward-thinking businesses. Not only forward-looking products and services, but also businesses and leaders that value and trust the intelligence, perspectives and uniqueness of every customer, employee and shareholder. When business cultures celebrate women and men, welcome diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and embody trust for their customers and workforce, shareholders reap outsized rewards. Staying in sync or ahead of evolving social change demands constant vigilance and adaptation from business leaders to incorporate new norms. It’s also the pathway to success.
Culture of Belief 