Leadership; lead and/or follow but always leading

Every year I lead a volunteer team that acts as mission control at a competition for the Olympic sport of equestrian three-day eventing (think of triathlon with three different disciplines (dressage, cross county and show jumping) over three days).  The cross country phase, as the name implies, involves the horse/rider combination traveling at a speed of about 500 meters per minute and jumping over obstacles such as (large) fallen trees.  When accidents happen, and they do, the injuries can be significant and require fast, immediate and coordinated response from over 100 volunteers.

These volunteers are a mixed bag: young and old, horsey or not horsey, groupies or just friends of the organization, and, in life, some are leaders and some are followers.  All of them share one thing in common, and that is the desire to to willingly place themselves in a situation well outside their normal frame of reference of authority and decision-making - where their immediate actions can have long-term implications from a horse or rider injury perspective.

My job, sitting in tent listening to/directing on five different radio channels, is to give these volunteers the confidence in the system and belief in themselves to make the right decision when something dramatic, potentially life threatening, happens in the middle of the woods.

So why do these people willing place their trust in the leadership that is effectively a random voice on the end of the radio?  I think it is four things:

• They are empowered (I have made it clear that I will support their decision without question as they are the ones on the ground dealing with the facts)
• They know that they are not alone (I have taken the time to ensure that they have been given a broad understanding of the entire safety plan (commander's intent if you like))
• They are made to feel valuable (recognized, often in small ways (by the riders, on the PA, in the programme, beer and pizza at the end of day, by the international officials, etc.), for their contribution)
• The know that if they need assets their request will be met with response that has a sense of control, urgency and decisiveness (when I do have to deploy doctors, vets and heavy equipment everyone knows what they have to do and how they going to do it)

Not rocket science I suppose.  But good leaders must know when to lead and when to support.  To do neither, or over do just one, means that your people will neither have the confidence to step up when you need them nor the belief that you will support their actions when they do.

Service firms: risk management of time and money

For most service-driven firms (such as ad agencies or PR firms) there are two things the leaders of client teams need to be constantly risk managing: the time and money allocated to a project. Successful management of these two elements has a direct bearing on the profitability (ROI) of a project.

Furthermore you must be proactive about risk managing these vital commodities.  By that we mean your account leaders need to know (on at least a weekly basis) where they stand in terms of burn rate.  To risk manage accurately means they must have the mechanism in place to understand how much of the budget (resources) has been expended against getting the task done (time).  This mechanism will need to be an institutionalized system otherwise you will have garbage in......

Not risk managing means that you are likely to be having the Oliver conversation ("Please Sir, may I have some more...)" with your client.  And this is never a pleasant conversation - especially if your people have squandered the time and money.

Decision-making is a key component of the risk management process.  But more on that later.

Your Plumber: the right way to use a Hired Gun

Think about your plumber.  You would not think of having him or her 'on staff' in your house so that they are available to deal with the occasional challenge that crops up.  Much better to use them as a hired gun.  Bringing them in for a specific task that is beyond your core competency/experience, where there is a clearly defined objective (clarity of purpose), where specialized thinking or tools might be required, and where the mission creep can be monitored.

The same rules could well apply when you need to resolve operational leadership challenges.  By operational leadership challenges we mean all aspects of running your organization (tasks, teams, talent and growth) as opposed to delivering your product or service.

Often operational leadership challenges manifest themselves in such things as an inability to grow the bottom line through winning new or organic business, all levels of leadership struggling to succeed, or internal projects that impact the entire organization being poorly planned and executed.

The issues mentioned above may not, in the first instance, require extra hires or re-organization (moving house) you may just need to call in the plumber.  This hired gun will have the competency, breath of experience, capacity, objective (clarity of purpose), specialized thinking and tools, and task definition to focus on understanding the problem, developing the solution and then leaving you to focus on what you do best.

There is nothing wrong with companies using hired guns (a different way of thinking about consultants) - as long as they use them the right way. 

Clarity of purpose (Pt 1): Commander's Intent

Understanding the 'Commander's Intent' basically means that all activities (whether they be marketing, operational, manufacturing, advertising, etc,) are done within the context of a broader objective.  If your objective is not inextricably linked to supporting the achievement of an uber objective then there is a good chance you have not understood your task.  This will mean that those executing (using your objective as their 'commander's intent) are being set up to fail.

"Make it so." Stardate 2012

These three words truly define the difference between a manager and a leader.  With them Captain Picard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxHAZChcYU) confirms the task, empowers the team and demonstrates his confidence in the individual talent that makes up the crew.