Death of a Manager

Stop Driving Your People and

Your Peers Away and Become a Leader
Worth Following

Joel Davis
Boundary Press
Temple Terrace, Florida
www.boundarypress.com

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 Death of a Manager

Death of a Manager. Copyright © 2009 by Joel Davis. Manufactured in the United

States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and
retrieval systems, without permission, in writing by the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages in a review. This material may not be used in whole or in
part for presentations, training classes or seminars. Although the author and publisher
have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained
in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions or
inconsistency herein. Any slights of people, places or organizations are unintentional. All
names have been changed to ensure confidentiality. Published by Boundary Press,
located at 5004 E Fowler Ave., Unit C-115, Tampa, FL 33617.

Visit our Web site www.deathofaleader.com for additional and up-to-date contact
information.

Davis, Joel

Death of a Manager: Stop Driving Your People and Your Peers Away and Become a
Leader Worth Following

ISBN: 978-0-9791397-2-7
Edited by Marjorie Bulone.
Cover Design and Book Layout by Toné Mojica.
Production coordinated by Toné Mojica.

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 Death of a Manager

Creating Your Personal Leadership System

If you’re a leader, you need to have your own personal leadership system
written down, well defined and memorized. You need to look at it, refine
it, update it and never, ever stop adhering to it. Since you’re human, you
will make mistakes. You’ll follow your system imperfectly from time to
time. You’ll have roles where you were a great leader, roles where you
were a good leader and, perhaps, some roles were you were a bad leader.
Sometimes you can be a bad, good and great leader all in the same role—
especially if you’re in that role for a long time.

True leaders learn from their mistakes through reflection and a “Walking
360” (see Death of an Employee for more on both of this topics). Leaders
strive every day to live out their leadership system. In this section, I’m
sharing with you the leadership system I strive to achieve. I know I’ve had
roles where I was a bad leader, roles where I’ve been a good leader and
roles where I’ve been a great leader. So I’m not preaching to you here but,
rather, sharing with you what I believe—and this list will continue to be
refined as I learn every day.

Do You Have Your Own Life Plan in Writing and Up to Date?

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Leaders have to lead by example. They have to walk the walk, not just talk
the talk. Leaders, therefore, should have their own life plan in writing, and
they should keep it up to date. If you have no idea where you’re going in
life, how can you lead others? If you don’t know what success looks like,
because you haven’t defined it, how can you lead others to it? If you have
no roadmap, how will you lead your people, and how in the world could
they ever follow you? Without belaboring this point further, if you are in a
leadership position, get your life plan in writing and get it up to date. That
plan will keep you centered and balanced. For example, how can you
knowingly screw people at work or play the game of politics or manage by
personalities if your life plan has a mission statement, a value system and
a set of principles that are the exact opposite? Your life plan and meetings
with your life coach will keep you on a principle- and performance-based
path.

Leaders Connect with Heart, Not the Mind.

People connect with other people through the heart. People follow leaders
if they have a heart connection. People don’t care how experienced you
are, how smart you are, what degrees you have, who you know, what you
made or how wealthy you are. None of that matters. What matters to
people is that they know how much (or how little) you care about them as
a person. Do you care about their lives? Do you speak from the heart or do
you only speak corporate speak.

You don’t have to be emotional. In fact, I would argue that wearing your
emotions on your sleeve is the wrong way to lead. People will be walking
on eggshells trying to guess what mood you’re in. What I’m talking about
is simple to say but hard to do. You have to truly care about your
employees. You have to ask questions about their lives, families, careers,
passions, interests, hobbies, strengths and weaknesses. You have to go into
active listening. You have to watch and observe. You have to talk less.
You have to act on the information you’ve gathered to show them you
look at the whole person, i.e., their identity and not just their role (see
more on this shortly). If all you every do is talk about work, work, work,
you’re out of balance and you’re not connecting at the heart. Perhaps a
good way to determine if you’re actually connecting at the heart with

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people is to ask your spouse, close friend and work colleague. Ask them
their perception. Another way to determine this is to write down what
personal information you know about each employee who works for you.
If you can’t fill out more than their employee number, cubicle location and
e-mail address, then you’re in big trouble.

I’ll leave this section with two suggestions. The next time you have lunch
with people from work; forbid any type of work conversation. That’s
right; no one can talk about work, which by nature will help everyone
begin to make heart connections. You can also do this at the start of
customer meetings, perhaps over dinner. It really helps break the ice. A
final idea is to go around the table and ask everyone to share one item
from their lives that no one else knows about. This could be personal or
professional. It could be a big achievement or a big embarrassment. These
sessions are a lot of fun and really help people connect in ways they never
even thought was possible.

Do You Believe?

This question is one of the most powerful yet simple questions in the
world. It definitely applies to you personally as a leader in addition to
applying to the people who work for you and with you.

When you ask yourself or someone who works for you, “Do you
believe?”, you’ll get one of three answers. If they won’t commit to giving
you a “yes” or “no” answer and instead say they don’t know, then the real
answer is that they don’t believe. If they say they don’t believe, then at
least they’re being honest and you know where you stand. In either case, if
someone doesn’t believe in something, someone, a goal, a strategy, a
program, then their actions will reflect it. You’ll need to find out why they
don’t believe and help them understand and, ultimately, help them believe.
If they can’t or won’t believe, then you need to acknowledge that and help
them find a new job inside or outside of the company. It’s not fair to you
or to them to stay in their current role. They’ll be miserable and you won’t
get the performance out of them you need.

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If the person says they do believe, or you’re able to help someone

understand and, therefore, become a believer, then their actions, attitudes,
performance and morale will all line up to support that belief. Further,
belief in something is a powerful internal motivator. People who believe
usually don’t have to be pushed or prodded. They typically just need to be
supported because they know what to do, how to do it and they want to do
it to the best of their ability.

So, asking “Do you believe?”, is one of my favorite personal leadership

principles. If your entire team believes in what you’re doing, you’re a very
lucky (or good) leader indeed. Leaders, therefore, go to great lengths to
help their teams know the “why” behind the goals, strategies, programs
and other decisions. Leaders are transparent with their people. Leaders
believe in themselves and it radiates throughout their entire being. Their
people will see this belief, and after they understand the “why,” they’ll, in
turn, believe as well. When teams of people truly, deeply believe, nothing
is impossible. History is full of examples. Your job as a leader is to make
sure you believe and that your people truly, deeply believe.

What Are Your Beliefs About People—Are You Focused on Their

‘Identity’ or ‘Role’?

Every leader should have their beliefs written down. Even if you don’t
have them written down, your actions, thoughts and attitudes will be
shaped by your beliefs about people. If you’re sexist, it will come out. If
you’re racist, it will be revealed. If you’re hierarchical, where you only
deal directly with people at or above your title/position, it will be as bright
as sunshine for all to see. You can’t hide arrogance, low self-esteem,
biases and stereotypes. Here are my beliefs about people… perhaps they
might align with your own or show you a different perspective.

1. You can learn from anyone. That’s right—anyone and everyone.

Regardless of how much you know, where you went to school, how
many degrees you have, who you know, what kind of car you drive,
how big your house is and where you went on vacation, you need to
live your life like “humble pie is right around the corner.” You can
learn from anyone, but it takes humility to listen and learn.

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2. Everyone you meet is important, regardless of their current title,

position or company. Today’s independent consultant, working
alone, could be your boss or the key decision maker at your largest
customer tomorrow. Today’s young, hot-shot engineer could be the
CEO of a start-up while you’re in between jobs as a vice president of
marketing! Many people don’t realize that based on the role they
have in the corporation, the network may come to them. If you don’t
handle this properly, when you leave that role, you may not have a
network at all—because of the next point!
3. Never confuse someone’s “I” (identity) with someone’s “R” (role).
Every person you meet has a unique and precious “I”—as father,
wife, son, brother, husband or mom. This intrinsic identity should
always be kept in mind, regardless of whether they’re the senior vice
president of finance or the mail clerk. Many people in a corporation
start to believe their own press clippings. They get caught up in their
title and organizational responsibilities and, at the end of the day;
they love the power they have. The bad news is they think this is
because of them (their “I”). In reality, it’s because of their role
(“R”). When they leave that “R” or, worse yet, when they leave the
company, they’ll get a true scorecard of how they treated others—
and, hence, how large or small their network truly is.
4. Serve your network before asking the people in it to serve you. If
you’re the type of person who only reaches out to your network
when you need something (like a job), you’ll find out very quickly
that your network will consist of you and your dog, if you’re lucky
enough to have one.
5. At the end of your life, it will all be about your relationships and
experiences, not possessions and power. Relationships with people
and experiences with people who you love and enjoy being with are
what make people truly, deeply happy and fulfilled. Put people first
and search out ways to have great experiences together, and you’ll
be a very rich person indeed! And this leads to my next point.

Leaders Differentiate Themselves from Managers by Focusing on

Their People’s Careers, Not Just their Current Role.

Do you know the career objective of every person in your department? If

the answer is no, shame on you, because you’re only a manager! If you do,

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you’ve taken a huge first step in becoming a leader, but you must do one
more thing. You must make sure that your people have a Life and Career
Plan and, most importantly, you must have consistent, predictable
checkpoints with them about their progress on that plan. Yes, that’s right.
You need to have regular discussions with your people about their careers,
their hopes, their dreams and their challenges. You need to hold them
accountable to the plan that they created and that they said they want. You
need to show them how much you care about their long-term personal and
career goals.

In most companies, leaders don’t do this. In fact, in all but three

companies I’ve worked at, the only person who cared about my career was
me. So you have to own your own career management. No one will work
as hard at your career as you, unless you’re lucky enough to have a leader
like the one I’m describing in this section.

To help people with their life and career planning properly, please refer to
the previous section, “Leading Your Life and Career.” I put that section
before this one, because you have to personally walk the walk before you
can talk the talk. You must have a plan for your life and career before you
can help others develop theirs. You have to be held accountable to your
career and life plan, and understand how difficult it can be to make
progress on it with all the challenges that crop up in life. Only then can
you lead your people with compassion and empathy for their trials and
tribulations—which leads me to my next point, albeit a counter-intuitive
one.

I tell my people that they need to interview outside of the company at least
once a year to help them in their career. Why in the world would I say
that? Well, first, it’s a prudent thing to do. When you interview outside the
company, it forces you to do the following:

1. Update your résumé, biography and achievements. This is good for

potential employers as well as your current one. It prepares you for
your performance review.
2. Keep your network current, vibrant and alive. You connect with
other people. You help others. You serve others.
3. Improve your interview skills. This is good for interviewing for jobs
at your current company as well.

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When you do interview outside of the company, you’ll learn one of two
things:

1. You have a good (or great) job, with good pay, at a good company
with a decent culture. Stop your whining and complaining and be
thankful for what you have. Improve your attitude and your work
ethic. You’re in a good place and didn’t know it. Or…
2. You’re getting screwed. You’re underpaid, under appreciated and
you work for a jerk in a company with a toxic culture. It’s time to get
out. Develop a “Plan B.” This Plan B will give you hope. Improve
your attitude and your work ethic. Now you know you’re in a bad
place and you have a plan to get out. So do it!

By focusing on the career and life plans of your people, you’re also
sending a very important signal to them, which leads me to the next part of
my personal leadership system.

‘I’m Not Just On Your Side; I’m By Your Side!’

Think about this saying for a moment. It’s easy to say to someone, “Hey,
I’m on your side,” but then do nothing to help them. You can say this, but
then clearly communicate to them that your role is above theirs; they need
to remember that; they need to remember their place; and there are things
that you just won’t do because they are beneath your exalted position in
the firm. We all have worked for these types of managers.

However, look at what happens when you add the second part of this
saying, “I’m By Your Side.” Now you’re communicating to them that
you’re just the same as them. You’re saying that you aren’t better or
higher up or more valued than they are. You might have a different role,
but since you want to help them achieve their life and career objectives, as
well as the team’s goals, you’ll do anything required to help them win.
You’ll clean the bathrooms, make copies, dig the trenches and take the late
night watch. You’re in the foxhole with them, side by side, a team of two,
operating as one. You’ll get your hands dirty, make the late night phone
calls, come in early, stay late and help the team win.

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You’re also reinforcing, by actions, how much you care about them.
You’re showing them, not telling them they’re important. You care about
them. They can trust you to have their backs. You’ll take the heat for them
when things go wrong, and you’ll give them the credit and recognition
they deserve at all times. If I know that someone has my back, someone
who believes in me, someone who cares about me and wants me to
achieve my life and career objectives, I’ll walk through fire for that leader
because she is a treasure. I’ve only had that type of amazing experience
(from my boss) three times (VMware, Ingram Micro and Unisys) in 23+
years in business.

So, when was the last time you heard your boss say, “I’m Not Just On
Your Side; I’m By Your Side”? This is one of the most important parts of
my personal leadership system because it builds a team of equals working
toward a common goal. Which leads me to my next point!

One Team. One Goal.

I came up with this phrase back when I had my own consulting company
in 2000. I worked with several clients who adopted this powerful phrase to
get their teams working better together. Yet this concept is so difficult to
implement because many people are selfish, focused only on their needs,
their goals and their pay. True leaders view every situation, every
personnel decision, every cross-functional conflict situation, from the One
Team, One Goal perspective. Leaders realize that it’s easy to get caught up
in our own personal goals, agendas, biases, prejudices, compensation
plans and current roles. Departments can be at war with each other.
Executives can have conflicting compensation plans. Everywhere you
look, you can find forces at work that pull people apart. Leaders figure out
how to change that.

In Death of a Leader, I wrote about the “One Team, One Goal Business
Management System.” That section was one of the most important
sections in the book because it not only creates the foundation for your
company’s culture; it also continues to signal, on a daily basis, what the
company’s culture truly is. Go back and re-read that section of Death of a
Leader. If you don’t align goals and strategy cross-functionally, you can

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literally destroy a sound corporate strategy, tear the company apart from
within and demoralize hundreds (or thousands) of employees. If you get it
right, you can optimize even a mediocre corporate strategy (let alone
accelerate a sound one); build tight, fun working relationships internally;
and energize and add value to the lives of your employees. They, in turn,
will provide a glowing reference to others and will share their pride in the
company and its leaders with all who will listen! So how do you do this?

Develop goals using the One Team, One Goal process. Start at each layer
in each department of the company, from the BOTTOM UP, and have
them explain what they believe their goals should be and why. It’s okay to
establish some broad-brush ideas about what you want to accomplish in
the coming year/half/quarter, but don’t be too specific. It’s okay to provide
some context like “the market is growing X percent,” or “we have
historically grown Y percent,” etc. But don’t lay down the law. You want
to use this process to flush out hidden issues, internal execution problems
and unknown inhibitors. Listen to what people believe they can do under
the current structure, systems and processes.

Key Point: Itemize all of the structural impediments to making the goal.
Make sure you clearly understand the root cause of each issue that’s
preventing the employee/manager/department from obtaining the goals
you believe they can achieve. This will become the driver for your goal-
setting and business-improvement process.

A key part of any goal-setting process is to list the details of the

assumptions underlying each goal. What math is being used? What are the
main revenue drivers? What drives gross profit? Expenses? Capital
required? What systems and process issues are there? Also, provide details
of scenarios, i.e., what could you most likely achieve, given the current set
of circumstances? What could you achieve in a best-case scenario with the
majority of the structural problems resolved? What’s the worst-case
scenario if certain assumptions don’t work or structural issues aren’t
resolved?

Here’s the magic part of the process that’s guaranteed to set goals more
accurately but that practically no one follows: Debate each assumption,
not the goal itself! By debating each assumption and drilling down to the

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drivers underlying each assumption, the discussion focuses on the core

business problems rather than a personality fight or what typically is going
on—a hidden compensation plan discussion.

So, review each assumption in detail and question facts and data sources.
Compare these to industry benchmarks. In short, gain agreement on the
assumptions and the goals will work themselves out. Again, I can’t
hammer this home enough: Drill down on every assumption underlying
every proposed goal. Debate, discuss and gain consensus on the
assumptions and the model that’s being used to set the goal. Once that’s
understood and agreed upon, the math will literally work itself out to a
reasonable set of goals that everyone understands and can get behind.

Most companies establish departments that carry out certain functional

processes, e.g. Purchasing, Sales, Marketing, HR, IT, Finance. The leaders
of these departments usually have many years, if not decades, of
experience leading these functional areas. They know how to run their
departments from top to bottom, probably because they started at the
bottom early in their careers, and worked their way to the top of the
department over time. Or perhaps they worked for a big consulting firm,
say an accounting firm, and learned how Finance should work, and then
over time, decided to jump from the consulting firm to one of their clients
in a senior-level role to run the department. To the casual observer, this all
makes sense. Seasoned, experienced leaders establish the right goals,
processes and systems for their functional areas because they were taught
by seasoned, experienced leaders before them and so on.

And there in lies the problem!

When you look at each department’s role in the company on a stand-alone

basis, everything looks fine. When you look at each department’s core
functions in the company on a stand-alone basis, everything looks fine.
When you look at each department’s goals (and hence compensation
plans) on a stand-alone basis, everything looks fine.

However, when you place each department’s roles, functions and goals
side by side with other departments, you’ll see that you have more goal
conflict than you do goal alignment. Since companies pay their managers
based on goal achievement, guess what you have just set up in your own
firm? It’s called “The War of Politics and Personalities versus Principles

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and Performance.” To stop this war, and to get all of your departments
following the One Team, One Goal system, refer to the “One Team, One
Goal, Strategy Alignment Process” found in Death of a Leader.

Leaders know that to overcome these often chaotic and conflicting

systems they have to get people to work as a team. That’s the first part of
this leadership component. People have to be willing to put the team first,
before their own needs. Now this can clearly be a difficult task, but go
back to the “Do you believe?” section discussed previously and that’s how
you do it.

Pump Constant Positive Energy Into Your Team

This world can be a grind for anyone. One of your responsibilities as a

leader is to make work as positive, fun and creative as possible. The single
best way to do this is to make sure all of your employees have a life plan
in writing. This single document can provide clarity to their day-to-day
work while giving them hope for a better future. If you can help people
make the connection between the work they’re doing today and how that
work will lead them to a better future, you can reposition today’s work
into something more purposeful long term.

You can pump energy into your team in a million little ways. How you
greet people. How you talk to them. The words you use. How you walk
into the office. Your body language in meetings. How often you smile.
Here’s another little technique (it’s only one idea, there are many more)
that doesn’t cost the company or you any money, but practically
guarantees positive energy being pumped into your team, motivating them
and keeping them focused on the goal.

Praise Package: When you see your people overcome conflict, solve a
business problem, turn around someone with a bad attitude, achieve a new
level of productivity and collaboration with a specific department, or take
a step in the right direction, deliver what I call a “Praise Package.” It’s
simple. If you’re in the office, you can do it a couple of different ways.
The best and highest impact way to deliver it, is to call a department
huddle or quick meeting in a break room or simply to do it right in the
middle of the department. Invite your boss and, if possible, his boss. Ask

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the person or team who did the good thing to step into the middle of the
gathering. Then proceed to explain in great detail what their
accomplishment or big win was. Leave nothing out. Blow them away with
details that let everyone know you were aware of all that they truly did.
Praise everyone for their work. More importantly, praise everyone on a
personal basis as well. Ask everyone to give them a round of applause.
Then let everyone go and, if you can, let them go home early. If you do
this at the end of the day, take them out for happy hour or dinner after
work. Line up a lunch with your boss or his boss for them (but don’t go
yourself; give them the spotlight). You also can call them into your office
and do all of this privately. I prefer the first option, but it may not always
be possible.

If you’re out of the office, leave a detailed voice mail or send a group e-
mail copying senior management. I guarantee they will keep that e-mail
for a long time. When you get back to the office, take them out to lunch
and praise them in person.

Another way to do this—especially to reward an employee in another

department—is to send a note to their boss and their boss’ boss for a job
well done, an exceptional effort or a big problem that was prevented.

There are many other ideas for pumping constant positive energy into your
team. Everyone has their own style. You don’t have to do it the way I’ve
outlined. Just make sure you bring an energizing force into your business
and not an energy draining one!

A Leaders’ Value Add is Their People’s Value Add—Establish a

‘Thought Leadership Culture.’

I once read that the definition of a manager is someone who achieves

business results through managing the work of others. Therefore, the
thinking went, if your team performed their tasks efficiently, effectively
and consistently, you would be evaluated as a good manager. Sounds
boring to me. It’s also a roadmap for having your department outsourced
and your position eliminated.

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In today’s world, you have to tap into the talent, education, experience and
creativity that exist inside each employee. You have to motivate your
people to add value to everything they do. They can think through things
better. They can question why things are being done a certain way or
being done at all, and they can create a different or better way to get the
job done. They can re-engineer processes to make them more efficient.
They can suggest improvements to the IT systems to provide more
complete and timely information. They can infuse more fun and energy
into your department. You get the picture. In today’s world, a good leader
gets evaluated based on the value add to the business that’s created by her
people. In short, you want to create a culture in your department and a
brand outside your department that you have a thought leadership culture.

This type of culture enables every one of your people to engage, think
about the business and develop creative solutions to their problems—or
any other problem in the company that they see. You want your people to
innovate, try new things, solve big problems and do entirely new things.
As your people begin to develop these solutions, you’ll have a chance to
promote their ideas and give them cross-functional and senior executive
visibility—both of which they might have never had before. Over time,
you might find some of your employees have a passion for and a unique
gift for solving certain kinds of problems. This will usually mean there are
other departments in the company that can offer them more money AND a
better career path than you can. Outstanding! That’s what I’m talking
about! As a leader, the more people you help promote, vertically or cross-
functionally, the better it is for them, your firm and, ultimately, for you!

Thought leadership doesn’t have to be all work. Remember, you want to

create a thought leadership culture. One of my goals as a leader was to
have the best run, most fun department in the company. This meant we
were operating as one team, believing that we could achieve a specific
goal, executing on the DMS, adding value and making recommendations
to improve things wherever we went and whatever we were involved in.

As noted previously, people came to view our department as the thought

leaders department. Further, as more and more of my people got promoted
into other departments, my department came to be known as the place to
be for career advancement. In fact, I was approached monthly by high

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potential people inside the company who wanted to transfer to my

department. When you groom multiple directors and vice presidents, both
in the company or outside the company, you’re truly doing a magnificent
job of tapping into your employee’s value add capacity and helping them
reach their potential. And, by the way, your department and your firm
receive substantial positive impact too!

It also was important to have fun. We would play practical jokes on each
other. We would do things socially. We were always going out to lunch or
Happy Hour or doing something fun together. Now, it wasn’t always the
entire department, but everyone was certainly involved in some fun event
at some time during the month. We had lunch brought in for meetings and
sometimes just as a treat for the team. We remembered birthdays,
anniversaries and other personal items (like the never-ending trash talk on
sports rivalries). I would tell a given team in my department to take a late
lunch, say, around 1:00 p.m., and then I would tell them that I didn’t want
to see them back the rest of the day. Or, if I knew someone was stressed
about something on the home front, I would suggest they work from home
the next day. For people who burned the midnight oil to complete a
successful project, I would tell them to pick a Friday and take it off,
making it a three-day weekend. Or, I’d suggest they take their spouse out
to a nice dinner and expense it.

So, to me, the true measure of a leader is the intellectual value add
(thought leadership) that she brings to the business and that her people
bring to the business. They think about how they do things in the business.
They think about how they think about the business. They always try to
foster creative thinking and innovation from the strategic to the mundane.
Good leaders create a thought leadership culture where the people are free
to think, create, innovate, question, add value and have fun doing it, as
well as to have fun with each other. However, with empowerment comes
accountability, which is the next component of my leadership system.

Create a ‘No Excuses’ Environment—Then Hold People Accountable

Through Question-Based Management.

Leaders who do the Business 360 and create the DMS have a good idea of
what the obstacles are to success. You have a solid list of the issues

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holding your team back. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to remove as

many of those issues/obstacles as you can. Your goal is to create a no
excuses environment. Here’s an example.

Let’s say you’re trying to achieve “XYZ” goal but your team says they
can’t achieve that goal for three reasons. Let’s say you agree with the three
reasons. The next step is to say to your team, “So, if I/we can get these
three issues removed, then you can achieve “XYZ” goal. Is that correct?”
If they say no, then you must find out why, because perhaps there are
more issues preventing them from being successful. If they say yes, then
you can say to them, “Great, I’ll get these three issues solved by March
31. If I do that, then you can achieve XYZ goal by August 1, right?” When
they agree, you have just created a no excuses environment for this
specific project/goal. As soon as you’ve held up your end of the
agreement, namely getting those three issues resolved, then they need to
hold up their end of the agreement and achieve XYZ goal by August 1.

Please understand this is a simplistic example. Some issues may never go

away and you have to find a way to achieve the goal anyway. Some issues
can only be solved by someone else and they may not want to do it.
Nevertheless, make sure you clearly understand what issues are holding
your team back and gain agreement that, as those issues are removed, they
will execute and achieve the goal.

Remember, your people have to be Ready, Willing and Able to get the job
done and achieve the goal. One or two out of three won’t get it done. They
could be Ready and Willing but not Able. In this situation, setting up a no
excuses environment won’t be successful.

If the people are Ready and Able but not Willing then, again, setting up a
no excuses environment won’t work. They could be Able and Willing, but
not Ready. So, for a no excuses environment to work, your people need to
be Ready, Willing and Able.

If the people are Ready, Willing and Able, then the way you’ll hold them
accountable is through a Question-Based Management (QBM) process.
Notice the difference in this approach. You’re not yelling at them. You’re
not badgering them. You’re not talking at them, lecturing all the time.
Instead, you’re asking them direct questions they have to answer. You ask

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them the penetrating questions that will force introspection and

accountability. You ask them questions about each element of the goal or
program. You ask questions about each metric and what’s driving that
metric to the positive or negative. By asking the right questions, you’ll
find out very quickly whether or not they’re on top of their business and if
they’re really Ready, Willing and Able to achieve the objective.

Leaders Excel at Finding a ‘Way Out’ or Creating Leverage and

Momentum Were Nothing Existed.

This last component of the leadership system is a challenging one. There

are going to be two types of situations that can really make or break a
leader. These two situations are so intense that the entire burden of
responsibility often falls on the leader alone. And the leader can react very
poorly and become the destructive personality, or they can rise to the
occasion and do something that may have never been done before.

The first situation is a truly grave one. Things might be looking so bad that
the company might go out of business, or a big project or program is going
to fail. In these situations, you, as the leader, have to find a way out of this
mess. I don’t mean quitting; in fact, just the opposite is true. The leader
has to get more creative, more innovative and truly think outside of the
box to a higher level than they ever have before. I’m not suggesting the
leader become a lone wolf. The leader can and should leverage all
resources available to her. However, finding a way out will most likely
consume her every waking thought. So, the leader has to figure out a way
to win. If salvaging a win isn’t possible, then the leader must come up
with a very creative exit strategy.

The second situation isn’t as grave but it can be equally as challenging.

You might have been given responsibility to start something or turn
something around. When you get into the business, you find that it has no
momentum. The competition is way ahead and creating more distance
between the two of you every day. Or, perhaps, you find that your prior
momentum has stalled and now you’re adrift. Your prior competitive
advantages are gone. You no longer have leverage (think value
proposition). In both of these situations, your job as a leader is to start or
re-start momentum or to gain or regain the leverage you used to have. To
do this, you’ll have to reinvent the business from the inside out. You’ll
have to figure out what your competitors are doing that you aren’t. You’ll

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have to figure out a new value proposition. You’ll have to review every
line item in your business to see if it can provide any leverage or any
momentum whatsoever. This is much like a Business 360, but even more
intense because the time frame is usually very short to figure this all out
and then make a very big bet on what to do next.

Business literature covers hundreds of examples of all of these situations.

Read these books. See what people did in different situations. See how
they reacted and how they dealt with the stress. Add all of this to your
body of knowledge and experience so you can draw on it in the future.
Your own situation will be unique and you’ll have to develop your own
solution, but learning how other people approached the problem or viewed
the business can open up amazing insights.

This summarizes my own current personal leadership system. It includes

the following tenets:

1. I have a Life and Career Plan in writing and I help others create
theirs.
2. Leaders connect with the heart, not the mind.
3. Do you believe?
4. Leaders differentiate themselves from managers by focusing on their
people’s careers, not just their current roles. At the end of your life,
it will all be about your relationships and experiences, not
possessions and power.
5. I am not just on your side; I am by your side.
6. One team. One goal.
7. Pump constant positive energy into your team
8. A leaders’ value add is their people’s value add—establish a
“Thought Leadership Culture.”
9. Create a ‘no excuses’ environment. Then hold people accountable
through question-based management.
10. Leaders excel at finding a way out or creating leverage and
momentum where nothing existed.

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