Sorry. But leadership is not a popularity contest.

My partner and I were chatting with the President of a large advertising agency earlier this week.  This individual was bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t ‘get to the big stuff’ because his was too busy with the day-to-day.  That sort of comment started me on the ‘Why of the Why’ sequence of questions.

Quick digression, I stole the ‘Why of the Why” information and insight gathering technique (keep asking “why’ and you will find that you get to a point that is a clear and logical jumping off point) from one of my favourite creative directors Joe.  Joe is not scared to ask the difficult questions that will lead to work that makes a difference.  He displays some great leadership traits: passionate, holds people to account and, perhaps most importantly, he is decisive.

Back to our conversation with the President.  It soon became clear that the real issue was that he could not deal with the fact that he would have to make some difficult decisions.  Decisions that would be unpopular and would have a human impact.  The ironic thing is that by trying to maintain his short-term popularity he was undermining his long-term credibility as a leader.

At the end of the day, when you accept the mantle of leadership (at work, as a volunteer, at school, or on a team, etc.) you must also accept the fact that you will have to make some decisions that will be unpopular.   As they say ‘it is lonely at the top’.

Creating a culture of decisiveness, from the President down, is essential to team, task and individual fulfillment.  And, for the leaders, the periods of unpopularity will be shorter in duration for all concerned.

Joe is also not always the most popular creative director, but he has done some great work.  And, the thing that I love most, is that the best people want to work on projects that he leads.  No surprises there.

Bad apples cost twice as much

Last week, in preparation for the upcoming Canada Day celebrations on 1st July, I bought a bag of apples to make one of my celebrated ("legend in my own mind") apple pies.  As I was putting them away I noticed there was a bruised one.  Shrugging, I reckoned that the pie would be long baked before the apple went rotten, so I did nothing about it.

In many organizations, from for profit to not-for-profit to volunteer, there is often an individual who is a bad apple.  The trouble with a bad apple in your organization is that they have the potential to negatively impact the organization in two key areas: the people as a whole and implementing strategic plans.  

For your talent (like the rest of the apples in my bag) the bad apple is festering away slowing spreading discontent and negativity.  In terms of strategic plans (my apple pie) the bad apple is undermining them by possibly forcing compromise or subverting the passion and skills of those engaged in the endeavour.  

Dealing with bad apples is never easy; often our default choice is not to deal with them at all.  Which is an odd leadership decision as we know intuitively that not dealing with them, through remediation (preferable) or letting them go (worst case), tends to end up costing us more emotionally and/or financially.

But back to my bag of apples.  By the time I got around to making my pie I discovered that now half of the apples were bad.  Cursing my laziness for not having dealt with that bad apple when I first noticed it (maybe saving the good bits and snacking on them or, if it had been past salvation, composting the whole thing).  At least then I would have only had to deal with the short-term pain of getting a single replacement apple.

But, with the shops closed for the holiday and no time left, I now had two problems.  One, not enough good apples to make a pie.  And two, I had no dessert for the family feast.

On telling my partner, her first question was: "Why didn't you deal with the bad apple in the first place?"

Team leadership: losing builds character

Last weekend was spent on the touchline assisting Coach Mario with my daughter's rep soccer team.
On Saturday we won two games.  Our final game was against a team that had won one and lost one.  Barring a disaster we were guaranteed a spot in the finals.

Well the disaster very nearly occurred.  We were taken to the cleaners 5 - 0 by a team that was not as skillful but were more motivated than us.  We barely kept our spot in the final.  The warm down was muted, from the keeper to the strikers the team knew that individually and collectively they had checked out before the game and so had paid the price.

They had let themselves, their teammates, their coaches, their club and their supporters down on many levels.  Coach Mario knew ranting was neither going to solve anything nor teach anything.  So he left them to their own thoughts.

The team we would be playing in the final?  The one that just beat us 5 nil.

The warm up before the final on Sunday was a subdued affair to say the least.  Before the start of the game Coach Mario got the team together and simple said, "Winning builds confidence.  Loosing builds character.  Put yesterday's game behind you and play our game today."


And, just like any team that is motivated, trained, disciplined and led in a firm but fair way, they did. 


I would like to write that we went on to win; but we didn't. We lost 1 nil. However, it was a loss that I am proud to have been a part of because of what the girls won in terms of individual pride, esprit d'corps, confidence and self-worth.

Coach Mario had the wisdom and experience to know that a rant on Saturday (or Sunday pre-game) was not the way to lead the team.  He demonstrated his belief in them by simply focusing them on their strengths.

For me the lesson is that as a leader you never stop learning now to be a better leader and that sometimes the best way for your team to learn is to let them find their own way out of a mess.

Of course not winning the cup still bites!  Next time.

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.

Leadership: surviving the Death Zone

It is climbing season in the Himalayas and already we have seen tragedy and triumph -  most of it taking place in the Death Zone.

On Everest the Death Zone is the zone above 8,000 meters where there is not enough oxygen to sustain life (an extended stay in the zone without supplementary oxygen will result in deterioration of bodily functions, loss of consciousness and, ultimately, death).  

What has this got to do with business leadership?  We use the expression Death Zone in the context of business leadership to describe the transition that managers must make when they are promoted into a leadership position.

Giving new leaders the intellectual and emotional tools, and coaching to survive this transition is an investment that has high ROI for both your people and your business.

Unfortunately it is more common than not, especially in marketing and advertising firms, to promote a 'craft' expert (manager) into a leadership role without giving them what they need to thrive as a leader.  When you promote someone it is essential that, right from the start, you give them the fundamental tools of leadership.  By this we mean the intellectual framework on how to direct a team, the practical framework to understand and manage a task, and the emotional framework to direct and nurture the talent and, ultimately, the coaching to sustain them through this transition from manager to leader. 

All to often we see people with great potential fail to transition the Death Zone and default back to their comfort zone of managing.  This inevitably means one, or all, of three things: 1) they end up suppressing the talent they are there to lead because they do their job (craft) for them; 2) the task is inefficiently executed (i.e. costly to the firm) due to poor decision-making burning hours and time (the two vital commodities in any firm); and 3) the team becomes dysfunctional due to a lack of clarity of purpose and roles and responsibilities.  Or, worse still, you will see an individual's passion and talent crushed due to the negative experience.

On Everest once you are in the Death Zone every decision you make, no matter how simple, has the potential to change your life forever.  To successfully transition the Death Zone requires skill, motivation, bravery, teamwork, leadership and personal drive in just the right mix. 

For those of us in business with the responsibility for selecting and nurturing leaders there are valuable lessons for us above 8,000 meters.

"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.