Excellence

L E A D E R S H I P
THE MAGAZINE OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS, AND ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY

NOVEMBER 2009

Leading Change Urgent Enterprise

William C. Byham Leadership Consultant

Leadership Excellence is an exceptional way to learn and then apply the best and latest ideas in the field of leadership.
WARREN BENNIS, AUTHOR AND USC PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT

Frozen Career Pipelines Management 2.0

w w w . L e a d e r E x c e l . c o m

V O L . 2 6 N O . 11

Excellence
L E A D E R S H I P
LINDA ACKERMAN ANDERSON AND DEAN ANDERSON SIMON SINEK

THE MAGAZINE OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS, AND ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY

NOVEMBER 2009

Inspire People

Leading Change
JIM KOUZES

Avoid 10 mistakes. . . . . . 3

Inspiration always beats manipulation. . . . . . . . . .13

STEVE BALLMER

Urgent Enterprise
GARY HAMEL

Thriving Today

Instill a sense of urgency. . .4

Im enthusiastic about the future . . . . . . .14

Management 2.0

Reinvent your systems. . . 5

CHIP R. BELL AND JOHN R. PATTERSON

Growing Champions

KEVIN CASHMAN

720-Degree Development
Develop the whole person.6

Do four things consistently . . . . . . . . . . .15

BILL GEORGE

LOUIS CARTER AND PATRICK CARMICHAEL

Defining Moment
JIM MCNERNEY

Best Practices

Lead in a crisis . . . . . . . . .6

Go beyond benchmarking. . . . . . . . .16

Leading in a Downturn
Start flying high again. . .7

WILLIAM ADAMS AND CYNTHIA ADAMS

Transform or Reform?

JEFF IMMELT

An American Renewal
WILLIAM C. BYHAM

We need many more transformational leaders. .17

It starts with quality. . . . .8

High Hopes
Endangered Rothschild giraffe make their way across Africas Great Rift Valley as pelicans pass overhead. Only about 500 of these giraffe exist, their habitat severely depleted. But about 60 are breeding at the Soysambu Conservancy, a non-profit whose goal is to preserve the ecosystem to benefit future generations.

TERRY R. BACON

Character Power

Frozen Career Pipelines

WARREN BENNIS

Build trust and sustainability. . . . . . . . . .18

Keep hi-pos moving. . . . 10

NORM SMALLWOOD AND JON YOUNGER

What Matters Most

Cultivate adaptive capacity.11

Decoding Leadership

GIFFORD AND ELIZABETH PINCHOT

Accelerate the development of future leaders . .19

JEFFREY A. KRAMES

Free Intraprise

Create systems based on free choices . . . . . . . .12

Costly Mistakes

Avoid seven common leadership snafus . . . . . .20

Reprinted with permission of Leadership Excellence: 1-877-250-1983

PEOPLE

INSPIRATION

Inspire People
S i m p l y s t a r t w i t h w h y.
by Simon Sinek

to influence behavior: you can manipulate it, or inspire it. Manipulations are simple and effective short term, but they are expensive to maintain and unstable long-term. Inspiration takes more discipline, but the long-term impact is astounding. The ability to inspire distinguishes good leaders from great ones. Examples of manipulations include dropping your price or having a promotion to overcome perceived risk or objections to close the sale. In marketing, fear is a wonderful manipulator, as is peer pressure. When a company tells us that they serve 70 percent of the market as a reason to do business, they are using peer pressure to close the deal. Aspirational messages, though positive, are also manipulations. You can convince someone to go once to the gym with an aspirational message, for example, but to get them to go three days a week requires inspiration. Manipulations workthat is why theyre so pervasive. But theyre costly to maintain, their gains are short-term, and they dont breed loyalty. Where manipulations work by offering external motivation, real loyalty comes from inspirationan internal motivation born out of values and beliefs. Loyal customers, and employees, are more valuable because they not only buy over and over, but theyll turn down a better product and a better price to keep doing business with you. The only way to build loyalty is to inspire it. So, how do you inspire loyalty? Great and inspiring leaders think, act and communicate the same wayand their simple pattern of behavior, the Golden Circle, that explains why some leaders are so good at inspiring action. Every person and organization knows What they dothey know what products or services they sell. Some know How they do it, whether you call it your differentiating value proposition or your proprietary process or USP. But few leaders or organizations can clearly state Why they do
L e a d e r s h i p

HERE ARE TWO WAYS

what they do. This has nothing to do with money or profitthose are results. By Why, I mean whats your purpose, cause or belief? Why does your company exist? Why did you get out of bed today? And why should anyone care? As a result, we think, act, and communicate from the outside-in of the Golden Circle: We tell people What we do, How we think were different or better, and then we expect a behaviora purchase. But all the great leaders think, act, and communicate from the inside-outthey all start with Why. Apple, for example, follows the principles of the Golden Circle, and that earns them the ability to inspire innovation and loyalty. If Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message from them would start with What, then try to differentiate with How. But heres how Apple actually communicates: In all we do, we believe in thinking differentlywe challenge the status quo by making our products beautifully designed and simple to use. We just happen to make great computers. Its a very different feelingno manipulationsby starting with Why. People dont buy What you do, they buy Why you do it. What you doyour products and servicesand how you communicate serve as the proof of what you believe. When you communicate from the outside-in, starting with What, people can understand the facts, figures, features, and benefits but it doesnt drive their behavior. When you communicate from the inside-out, starting with Why, you influence behavior, and the tangible things you say and do enable people to rationalize their decisions. Great leaders never try to rationalize why you should or shouldnt do something. They dont start by telling you What to do. Great leaders all start with Why. They tell you what they believe, their purpose or their cause and then ask you to join their cause. We follow leaders and buy from companies that inspire us, not because we have to or because we are manipulated to do so, but because we choose to. We follow those who inspire us not for them, but for ourselves. And what the great leaders do to inspire us is tell us why they do what they do they always start with Why. LE
Simon Sinek is the author of Start With Why (Penguin). Call 212-995-9199 or email info@startwithwhy.com.

ACTION: Start with why.

E x c e l l e n c e

Reprinted with permission of Leadership Excellence: 1-877-250-1983