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Session 29 in our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. Let’s keep the ideas flowing about being excellent – not just in our leadership but for our team, group, or organization. Let’s talk about it context of connection, collaboration, and communication. These three C’s are crucial for high-performance and your leadership. 

By now you’ve figured out how to improve the psychological safety in your organization. Without it, there’ll be no good connection. And collaboration and communication will both suffer. These are important factors in measuring performance and whether or not people see it as a “gotcha” tactic versus a scorecard where success can be celebrated. 

Connect with your people individually if possible (as I said in an earlier session, think about your direct reports and expand it out beyond that if you can). Sit down and learn about their career goals, their life goals, and what they most want. Find points of congruency between the organization’s needs and their goals. Help them reach their goals and lead them (influence them and do for them what they can’t do for themselves). This is a perfect opportunity to collaborate with them on how they can better know if they’re on track toward what they most want to achieve. Communicate what you’re going to help them do to better measure their own success, so like me at the gym – they’ll know if they’re getting stronger. 

Connect with your people collectively for the same purpose. Ask them for their input. Challenge them to come up with measurements that will help each group, or team and the whole organization know the progress you’re all making together. Make it exciting, fun and challenging. 

We’re living in a society full of gamification. High-performing cultures gamify the quantifiable measurements to drive the competitive urges we all have to achieve more. My son has three kids ages 10, 8, and 6. When they were younger getting them to eat better was a challenge. Like most siblings, they were competitive with each other. So he made it a nightly contest with the winner getting some prize. The winner would be all smiles. The losers were in tears knowing they’d have to wait until tomorrow night for redemption from their losing performance. 😉 It works. 

Ideally, you want people involved in the measuring. Now some data will be easily captured by whatever computer systems are in place. Other measurements might require a more manual process. It’s important that people see the true value of the measurements to help them achieve more – and to have more fun (be more engaged in the outcomes). Remember, everybody in your organization wants to know where and how they fit in the world at work…and how they make a difference. This is how they’ll know!

One easy suggestion is to start with the speedbumps and roadblocks they encounter every day (or at least every week). A great point of connection and collaboration is to communicate your commitment to help them remedy these frustrations. Work together to measure the negative impact of these constraints. How much time is lost? What’s the financial cost? Figure out whatever you can quantify that will help determine the true impact of the impediment so you can then figure out what needs to be done to reduce or eliminate those measurements. Then keep measuring as you implement the changes!

Part of this will involve systems and processes. Simplify, simplify, simplify. 

I arrived as a new leader and quickly found an organization steeped in manual forms. I asked staff to give me a copy of every form being used. Thinking this would be a straightforward task I quickly learned they weren’t quite sure exactly how many forms they were using. Nobody had ever gathered them all together to inventory them. By the time the 27th form – again, these were paper forms filled out with a pen – I cried, “Uncle!” I’d seen enough. No, I didn’t bother calculating the inefficiency. I jumped straight to ditching the forms by distilling the information into just a couple of forms. All the same information. 95% fewer forms. Much less time spent completing them. 

What systems or processes do you rely on that may be broken? Question everything. Why not? Maybe it’s great. Maybe it’s not. Time to find out. 

Again, connection, collaboration, and communication. Work with your team or organization in figuring this out because you need to push problem-solving and decision-making down throughout the organization. The closer to the frontline workers you can drive these, the better. Who better to figure out solutions to the frustrating, nagging speedbumps than the people doing that work every day. They’re the ones encountering the constraints and they’re likely the ones with great suggestions on how to fix it. 

Don’t be afraid of process and system improvement. Remember the high value of humility. Quit caring who gets credit for what. When you grow to the point where you’re less interested in blame and credit, then you can improve your interest (and work) in becoming excellent!

Be brave. Challenge yourself and your team. Find paths forward to higher efficiency, lower cost, higher output, and quantum leaps in performance. I’m a big fan of striving to do something others don’t think is possible. Or things they don’t even consider doing. Why not? Let’s push the limits of what we think is possible. There’s no point in imposing limits just because we think it’ll be hard, maybe impossible. Why not find out?

It’s fun. It’s engaging. It’s how you can elevate your leadership, too.

a) influence
b) do for others what they’re unable to do for themselves

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 28 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. Let’s continue our conversation about keeping score, measurements.

About 15 years ago I decided to get more intentional about my physical health and fitness so I signed up at a gym. From the get-go I went five days a week for about 45 minutes to an hour. At first, I didn’t really track anything. I mostly just wanted to develop the new habit of going regularly and I focused on cardio. I’d see guys hitting the weight machines and free weights, many of them keeping notes. They were writing down how many repetitions and how much weight they did on any given date. I got acquainted with a few of them and would watch them increase the weights. Sometimes they’d increase the weight and the number of repetitions. I started to do the same thing except I’d keep the numbers in my head. Admittedly, I wasn’t using as many machines or as many free weights so tracking my numbers wasn’t a big challenge. But I was well on my well to better understand my strength levels once I began to track the numbers. 

The same thing applies to your enterprise. You can think you’re excellent – as I could have easily thought of myself as being fit and strong – but the numbers don’t lie. And they display our progress or lack of. 

High-performance organizations accurately measure their important numbers. These numbers become the scorecard for everybody in the organization. People enjoy tracking it and grow increasingly competitive to pursue improving the numbers. Nobody sees such tracking as punitive. Instead, it’s rewarding – like seeing the pins you knock down when you’re bowling. In 2012 research published in Personnel Psychology reported that high-performing employees are 400% more productive than the average. Plenty of other research bears out that enterprises who undertake some systematic process of high-performance (think Lean, Six Sigma, or a variety of the many other options) realize an improvement between 25-40%. Merely picking a horse to ride, and committing to it results in significant growth and improvement. 

Far too many organizations approach their daily work in a willy-nilly fashion. Going through the motions, putting one foot in front of the other without strategic purpose or intent isn’t the way high-performing enterprises operate. Avoid joining or remaining among the ranks of the average or below-average organizations. It’s time to soar, but first, you must know where you are so you can better determine where you’d like to go. 

When I started 30 minutes on a treadmill at brisk speed (setting the machine on 2.8-3) would wind me. Within a month I was able to increase it to 3.8-4 and maintain that for an hour. I was committed to walking at a fast pace, not running. I was (and still am) too old to develop knee problems resulting from running. By measuring the time and the speed, I was able to set my sites on improving. My goals were constantly moving forward because I wanted evidence that my fitness was improving. I didn’t want to just feel like I was getting better. I wanted to know. For sure.

So it goes at work. Everybody feels like they’re doing pretty well. Some, perhaps most, will claim, “We’re doing our best.” The reality is few have a clear idea of what their best might even be. Watch any video or documentary about military training, like the SEALS, and you’ll quickly realize these candidates mostly didn’t think they could push themselves to the point required to qualify for achieving entry to such a prestigious group. Those who don’t make it likely have the physical skills required, but they lack the mental toughness to go beyond whatever limits exist in their own mind. They quit believing they’ve done their best and it’s just not good enough. 

Can you identify the top key measurements that might be vital in the success of your organization? How many can you list? 

Is there any current documentation of these measurements? If so, how are the numbers shared in your organization and how do people respond to them?

Before we end today’s session let me challenge you to avoid falling into your industry trap of just looking at whatever measurements everybody else in your space looks at. I’m not urging you to not measure those same things, but I would challenge you to consider measuring things others aren’t looking at – things that might have a meaningful impact, but are largely being ignored by others in your space. 

For example, many years ago I began to look at a number that seemed obvious to me, but I didn’t hear anybody in our industry talk that much about it. At the time, I was increasing my fanatism with inventory management. Vendor returns – aka “defectives – were problematic because we’d buy merchandise, pay for it, then be stuck with some portion of our purchases that were unsellable. We’d have to then negotiate with the vendor to have the merchandise returned. More lost time with unsellable and paid-for inventory. I decided to more carefully track this and use it in meetings and negotiations with vendors. I was also able to negotiate better terms and conditions so the vendor would more quickly help us return the defective merchandise (another part of the tracking was how many days it took the vendor to take the merchandise back and issue us credit). Such things had a big impact on my internal vendor scores and I wanted vendors to pursue a higher score by making it easier for us to return defective merchandise AND to get the offsetting credit to our account. 

Do you have anything like that? Something that will make a difference, but you’ve not yet thought to measure it?

Tomorrow we’ll continue down this same path because great leadership is evidence-based. You want to have proof of how well you’re doing. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 27. Four more sessions including today and then we’re have completed our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course, a series of about 5 hours of real-world leadership coaching. You’re doing the work. I’m only here to help spur you on to do the work by showing you a few things you may not have considered, by sharing some insights that might be helpful, and by giving you some concepts that might help you move forward in your own leadership journey. Thank you for being part of this 30-day journey. 

High-performance leadership focuses on creating a high-performance environment where people can do their best work, where they can grow, where they can be challenged, and where they can see how their contributions make a difference. Your leadership relies on knowing what is real and true. It’s been said that fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. You don’t want to be ruled by fear, but by reality. 

That means you have to have great, accurate information. Data. Intel. Analysis. Measurements. Great leaders embrace knowing the numbers, the facts, and other data that can help make better decisions. After all, the daily work of a leader is communicating and making a series of decisions. Usually, the decisions aren’t “bet the farm” magnitude, but the higher up you go, the more critical the decisions become. The CEO can make a decision that can have an enormous negative or positive impact. The staff supervisor can make a decision that will move the needle, but the repercussions will be much smaller than those made by the CEO. 

I must reiterate the progression of leadership because these ingredients matter. Greatly. Especially that foundational ingredient, humility. It’s not just an honorable character trait. It’s practical. Without it, you’ll be robbed of seeing things more clearly and accurately. 

Business intelligence is steeped in curiosity, seeking answers – and questioning existing answers. Effective leaders want to make sure they’re seeing things accurately. Understanding is an accurate comprehension of something. Delusion isn’t helpful. False assumptions aren’t either. 

Survey organizations and ask them if they’re high-performing. Most, maybe all, will say they are. Probe more deeply and you’ll quickly find they stake their claim on how they feel about themselves. They think they’re high-performing, but they really don’t know. 

Let’s Go Bowling In The Dark. Wanna Go?

Who wants to go bowling when you can’t see the pins? You have no idea how many pins you knocked down. You hear the ball rolling down the lane. You hear pins fall. But you can’t see anything. No way to properly measure your success or failure. Nobody would sign up for such a game. The fun of bowling isn’t merely the act of tossing the ball down the lane. It’s in the work of trying to knock down as many pins in a single throw as possible. 

Why then do you think your team or organization should perform at a high level when nobody can keep score? Lots of people are disengaged because they can’t see how or if they’re making any difference. 

Measurements – keeping score – is important so you can objectively know if you’re making progress. Feeling good about yourself isn’t an accurate measurement. Those annual performance reviews tend to not be performance-based at all, but rather how somebody feels. Those feelings may be based on something, but often the basis isn’t something very quantifiable. 

What is quantifiable in your organization? Likely anything and everything. Does it mean everything is important? Not necessarily. You must be careful to connect the dots. Perhaps you have to be even more careful not to connect other dots that don’t belong together. 

The other day I heard somebody talking about how many Native American tribes were prospering because of casinos. One particular tribe comprised of about 400 members was prospering so much that tribe members were each paid over $80,000 monthly. Unemployment was over 99% because nobody needed to work. The slim percentage of people who did work, I’d assume did so because they wanted to – not because they needed to. Not knowing all the facts, some economist or expert could look at this particular tribe with 99% unemployment and conclude, “We need to help this tribe. Hardly any of them have jobs.” But by knowing and understanding the context, you realize unemployment in this community is not a problem, so far as earning money is concerned. 

Leaders can make erroneous conclusions, too. We can all get it wrong if we lack the humility to see real answers, accurate data, and even more accurate conclusions. 

From the number of incoming phone calls to inventory turnover ratios to customer acquisition costs – we can measure just about anything and everything today, thanks to computing power. Don’t be afraid to measure. People daily ignore going to the doctor even they “know” something isn’t right. Incorrectly thinking “what I don’t know won’t hurt me” can prove fatal if we have something seriously wrong.

Ignorance is not bliss. Know your numbers. 

Great leaders don’t fall into the trap of tracking only the key numbers indicative of their industry. They look to track things few others are willing to track. Seeking the competitive edge others may be unaware of, high-performance leaders push to figure out ways to gain the slightest edge for their organization and the people doing the work. And the workforce responds to the scoreboard. If you don’t think so I urge you to read The Great Game Of Business by Jack Stack of Springfield Remanufacturing. 

Employees can understand business. They can understand the numbers and how they matter. Great leaders show them. Teach them. Inspire them. And help them see how performance can be improved. 

What are you measuring?

What are you failing to measure?

In order to know where you’re going and how to get there, you must first know where you are. That’s why the measurements matter. They’re the starting point of your GPS, without which you can’t possibly compute a route to the future.

Share that information with the organization. Information isn’t to be hoarded. Don’t ask your employees to bowl in the dark. “And enjoy it.” 

Help the organization know the score, then you can get busy helping the organization learn how to improve the score. It’s a major path forward toward that coveted prize of “highly engaged employees.”

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Session 26. These are the last five sessions. But don’t zone out because these are going to be important lessons for your leadership journey.

Back on day 15, we talked about writing your story. Let’s circle back around to that today with a context you may not have considered. 

To keep things simple, let’s consider ourselves as the main character in our story. After all, this is our life. There’s nothing necessarily selfish about it. We’re looking through our eyes, seeing things the way we see them, and experiencing what we’re experiencing. Perfectly natural. 

And we’ve got two primary options in living the life of this main character that is OUR life. We’re busy writing a hero story or a victim story. 

Think of yourself in those terms. Hero or victim. Examine your life and you’re writing one story or the other. But your story is comprised of many smaller stories. There’s your overall story and then there are the specific chapters of your story. All those little stories that sum up your main story. 

From King Arthur to Sherlock Holmes to Superman – heroes are always heroes. Sometimes they suffer defeat. Sometimes they make foolish decisions. Even superheroes aren’t perfect. You aren’t either. And that’s okay. 

But their overall story – the way everybody would characterize their lives – is the life of a hero. 

When we think of victims we may think of people who were murdered. No matter what kind of person they were we may feel sadness, sympathy, and even sorrow that somebody’s lost their life to such violence. In some cases, people are killed because they’re involved in dangerous things. Or they’re in dangerous situations. Or they’re choosing to be around dangerous people. But sometimes murder is random. Sometimes it’s not through any fault or decision on the part of the victim. 

But there’s a much wider population of victims. In 2019 there were just under 20,000 murder victims in the U.S. That’s entirely too many murders, but a single murder is too many. Sadly, the people who are writing a victim story of their own life number in the millions and millions. People who are choosing to see themselves as pawns of others, or of circumstances beyond their control. 

As a leader, you must write a hero story for yourself and for others you hope to influence. All the people you serve can be influenced by you to write their own hero story. But only if you show them how. 

Heroes Emerge From Burning Buildings, Not Instagram Photos

There’s something we don’t often consider about heroes and that’s, “How are they made?”

Well, they’re not made by living an Instagram life filled with great vacations, exotic cars, and beautiful people. Heroes were made at 911 by greasy, sweaty, exhausted firefighters trying to lead people out of those towers. Heroes were made by a group of randomly thrown together strangers on an airliner when they decided to storm the terrorists and bring a plane destined to kill others. Heroes emerge from disasters, calamities, crises, danger, obstacles, and bad situations. 

Sometimes leaders emerge in such situations. Sometimes leaders find themselves in those circumstances. 

Everybody can be a leader because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to influence others and do for them what they can’t do for themselves. 

Everybody can be a hero because we all have the capacity to write a story where we’re able to rise to the occasion and refuse to be victimized by others or by a situation, no matter who or what caused it. 

Victims fixate on blame. “If only I had gotten the promotion he got, then I’d be successful.” Victims love the phrase, “If only…” This is why I concentrate so much in my work on the power of the corner – the place we all must enter if we’re ever going to rid ourselves of our excuses. People who have never experienced the corner are victims. They refuse or don’t yet know how to accept responsibility for themselves. As they see it, their lives would be much better if only…

Heroes don’t see themselves or the world that way. Wherever the hero finds herself she realizes this is the reality that must be dealt with. Heroes answer the question asked by others, “Now what are we gonna do?” 

The hero may not get it right. Not always. But the hero has a willingness – courage and strength – to face the realities and declare, “We’re going to move forward.” The hero – the leader – gives people hope. Following the leader is always seen as the best option. Otherwise, leaders have no followers. And that’s not leadership. Heroes and leaders have people in their life willing to let them serve. Which is a whole ‘nother truth about leadership – it can’t be imposed or forced. You can foist a boss on people, but people choose whom to follow. 

The hero isn’t out for himself. He’s out to help us, too. So is a leader.

You can view challenges as opportunities to write a hero story — or a victim story. You get to decide which you are, and which one you’ll become. And in either story you choose to write, you’ll take others along with you. You will influence others. 

Heroes work to emerge from the burning building. Hopefully, they emerge, but they don’t always. Live as a hero. Die as a hero. 

Or a victim. 

Victims tend to die as victims unless or until they decide to no longer be a victim. That’s the power of the corner – the place of NO MORE EXCUSES.

Both have a group around them. Both bring out something in others. 

Write the victim story and most people won’t care. They’re too focused on their own problems to care that much about your griping, complaining and finger-pointing. But some people will chime in because they share the same feelings about their own life. Misery does love company. To a degree. You can write such a story. It’s highly popular and there are more victims than heroes because more people make that choice. 

Heroes just make a different – a better – choice! They figure it’s far better to accept responsibility to move forward than to cower in fear. They want to escape the burning building and they really want us to escape, too. They have the courage to step up and step forward. We love them for it and we put our faith in them because we know they’re seeking our best. 

Victims are the most self-centered, arrogant people around. It’s all about them. And their problems. And their lack. They don’t serve us with anything that makes us better. They don’t provide any help to us. Zero. Rather, they’re detrimental to us. They make our lives worse. It’s their story and they want others to join them. Resist.

So what’s your story? How determined are you to write your very best story? If today’s chapter isn’t so good, then look at it as an opportunity – your burning building moment. Be a hero. Be a leader. Make a difference.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 25. The countdown begins as we’re winding our way down in this 30-Day Micro Leadership Course, but we’re going to finish strong with some pivotal lessons. 

The vertical pressures every leader must manage are “boots in the dirt” versus “eye in the sky.” Now we’re going to consider the horizontal pressures, “YOU” versus “a focus on others.”

Back on day 13, we talked about the power of the corner. Helping clients paint themselves into a corner where they’re able to face themselves in the mirror and stop making excuses is a major component of the value I provide. It’s work that’s entirely focused on them, which could sound selfish until you understand the context. Self-awareness and self-improvement are necessary if we’re going to increase our value to others. It’s not selfish because the work is about getting better, growing, and making ourselves better able to serve others. The ROI (return on investment) is higher than anything you can do – for yourself and anybody in your life. 

Imagine if we all were able to paint ourselves into that corner where we could at long last eliminate all the excuses in our lives. Where we could finally start doing the work of a hero, not a victim. Think of all the positive impacts we could have individually and collectively were to do that. Well, that’s the point of putting a focus on YOU.

Like the vertical pressures, these horizontal pressures swing back and forth as needed. At any given point you’ll be in one vertical spot and one horizontal spot. Circumstances will warrant which. Depending on your role and responsibilities you’ll likely be spending more time in some than others. For example, yesterday we talked about how the higher up you go in your leadership the more likely you’ll spend more time in the sky than in the dirt. It’s also likely that the higher you go – the more experienced you are – the more you’ll focus on others and less on yourself. Many excellent senior leaders find themselves with more long-term strategic thinking (eye in the sky) and thinking of how to best serve their employees (focus on others), but almost all admit they’re constantly and consistently trying to figure out how to improve themselves (YOU). There are no hard, fast rules. The key is knowing when to go where and knowing how long to stay there. 

These horizontal pressures are very different than the vertical ones because these two aren’t quite as distinctly different. Humility is key to it all. 

The most accomplished and effective leaders confess they’re always focused on these two horizontal pressures simultaneously. That’s very different than boots in the dirt and eye in the sky work. But it’s not only possible, but it’s also preferable. 

The ER physician invested money and years to learn the skills necessary to treat patients effectively. She didn’t just check the box on her learning and then stop. She’s constantly learning and improving, focusing on herself. But her focus is purpose-driven. She’s doing all this work for herself because it’s her choice – her life – but she’s also doing it because she wants to help others. 

The same is true for leadership.

Get focused on yourself so you can positively influence others and so you can do for others what they can’t do for themselves. 

Besides, how hypocritical is it for leaders to expect and urge others to grow and improve if they’re unwilling to do that themselves? Don’t be a hypocrite.

A focus on others. That’s where the rubber meets the road. 

Your impact on the group, team, or organization is your ability (your willingness) to serve others in ways few others (perhaps nobody) can. Willingness is such a strong part of leadership success because not everybody is willing to surrender to the high value they can supply to others. Most of us are intently focused on ourselves in selfish ways. 

These 2 pressure points must be simultaneously pursued at all times. Turns out the highest performing leaders operate in 3 of the 4 areas simultaneously at all times, and know when to enter that 4th area as needed – boots in the dirt. For good reason…

Influence on others and doing for others what they can’t do for themselves is the focal point of all the work. THAT’S why great leaders operate 100% of the time in 3 of the 4 areas and choose to selectively operate in the 4th only as needed. That’s where the highest service is rendered. 

By focusing on others, leadership knows not to rob people of opportunities to learn, grow, develop, improve and contribute. The details that are vital to any enterprise are mostly performed by the people who do those jobs daily. And mostly, they’re able to handle it well. On some occasions – like the vendor contract with costly cloud storage – the leader needs to dive down into the dirt to make sure the team has the most success. The leader isn’t doing this to embarrass or show up the team. No, she did it to protect the people and the organization. And in doing that, she taught a lesson nobody will ever forget. Everybody learned from it. And success was insured. She did for the department what they weren’t yet able to do for themselves. But that was then, this is now. NOW, they better understand to pay closer attention to the finer points of negotiation. 

Leaders (a’hem bosses) to stay in the details of everybody’s business are robbing people of opportunities to grow and accept responsibility for their own work. Thinking, “I can do this better than them,” isn’t the point. Can you grow them so they can outperform you? That’s one point. Can you help people grow individually and collectively so the entire group performs at levels never before achieved? That’s a point. Can you make a positive difference that otherwise might not be made if you weren’t involved? That’s the point. 

Do you make others betters because of the high value you bring to their lives? 

Great leaders do. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 24. There are four distinct pressures I always cover in my leadership coaching. These are in contrast to the trite subject of “balance.” Somebody may have figured out balance, that perfect mixture of business and personal. Work-life and personal life. It’s an impossible feat as far as I know. Instead, there are priorities…which are subject to change and shift situationally. 

Let’s start with the pressure points I hear most often. “He’s in the weeds,” says the boss. “I need him to be more strategic.” 

Translation: He’s in the details and I need him to not get bogged down in the details.

Or…

Translation: He’s doing the work still like he did before we promoted him to Director. We need him to better manage the work instead of spearheading all the work.

By strategic, most bosses mean “operate at a higher altitude where you can see the bigger picture.” Implied, if not directly stated, is the added desire for leaders or supervisors to be proactive and think ahead because every #1 (CEO, city manager or any other top-level leader who is in the top spot) is fearful about what might blindside the organization. Every wise leader is somewhat concerned about what they don’t know, or what they may not see coming. Hence, the admonition for everybody to be strategic with forward-thinking.

I use two metaphors for these two vertical pressures: boots on the ground versus eye in the sky.

Boots On The Ground

There are times when it’s vital for the leader to put on the boots and get them dirty because the devil truly is in the details. Consider an MIS (management information systems) department reviewing a pending vendor agreement, a 3-year contract that includes cloud storage. The CTO looks over the terms, diving more deeply into the weeds of the deal. She notices a pricing clause that includes the first year of free cloud storage. However, in years 2 and 3 the cost is approaching $300,000 annually. A seemingly minor detail that buries a cost of almost $600,000 over the term of the contract. The vendor representative never mentioned anything other than the first year’s “free” storage. She now begins to negotiate years 2 and 3 telling the vendor the deal hinges on those fees dropping significantly. 

Do you think the CEO wishes the CTO had not dropped into the weeds on that deal? Or do you suppose the CEO is pleased she got her boots on and jumped into the dirt to ferret out the pitfalls of what could have been a bad deal? Yes, this CEO was very happy his CTO decided to get her boots on when she could have refused claiming her job was be the eye in the sky. Problem…the eye in the sky wouldn’t have spotted the costly detail. 

The higher up the food chain you go in leadership or authority, the more time you must spend as “eye in the sky.” 

There’s a reason for this. As well as a practicality. The higher up you go the more direct reports you tend to have. Direct reports who can more easily be your boots on the ground, doing the work you once did, but now can’t because you’re busy working from a higher altitude. As you climb the ladder you have to figure out when and how long to stay at each vantage point. You can’t just stay in one or the other without regard to the other perspective. It’s a life of constantly moving down into the details, when necessary, then soaring back up to higher climbs so you can see the bigger picture. It’s knowing when to go to each place and how long to stay so you can be most helpful to your enterprise, team, or group. Don’t forget leadership is influence and doing for others what they can’t do for themselves. 

Eye In The Sky

This is the bigger picture, strategic viewpoint required to see the entire playing field. Being at this height enables you to see how things are working, or not working. Additionally, it helps you see what may be approaching – the ability to be transformational. That just means you’re able to see the greater or bigger vision. To future proof as best you can. To serve teammates in being able to see more clearly, too. 

Admittedly, there’s not a ton of hourly or daily work performed at this level. It’s more vision and clarity work. It’s seeing things in order to prevent your people from being blind-sided. Unless you’re the #1 it’s also about helping your boss avoid being blind-sided. But it’s not just about being preventative, which is plenty valuable enough. It’s also about having the ability to be proactive and act in advance, hopefully, faster than your competition. 

Jack Welch, while at the helm of General Electric, had a simple strategic plan. He’d ask his leadership, “What can our competition do in the next 18 months to nail us to the wall?” Then he’d ask, “What can we do in the next 18 months to nail them to the wall?”

That’s pretty simple, powerful yet straightforward strategic thinking. It demonstrates how important such thinking is to a global multi-billion dollar enterprise. But it’s also important to the small business owner or municipality. 

Successful leaders and managers aren’t only interested in protecting themselves, but they also want to go on the offensive to ensure their futures as much as possible. Growth and improvement are vital. Our survival depends on them. 

Tomorrow we’ll discuss some of the issues you’ll have to face as you navigate these two pressure points. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!