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Dedication
To Rebecca, my partner in all things
Introduction – Leadership, Growth, and You
This is a book about growth and where to find it.
That means that ultimately it’s about the cultivation of a set of behaviors universally recognized as Leadership. It’s my job to prove to you that Growth and Leadership are clearly, inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other.
I set out to write this book for my own selfish reasons: I wanted to make sense of my own experiences as a leader and a follower and, truth be told, I wanted to be a published author, something that’s been on my bucket list since before I knew I had a bucket list. This started out as a book about me.
But along the way, something happened. Through my own experiences as a leader and, more recently, as a coach of leaders, I came to realize that when it comes to leadership, we’re thinking about it all wrong.
I learned that most organizations aren’t as successful as their senior management thinks they should be, and that the very same senior management typically isn’t sure why. Coming into organizations as a new leader or an outside advisor, I discovered that once I work through the initial cloud of emotion and defensiveness, the underlying problems are almost always the same.
Time and again, organizations can’t deal with their larger problems and seize the opportunities before them because they lack clarity around mission, expectations, and accountability. They aren’t sure where they’re going or why, and for some reason, no one ever seems to want to talk about it.
As a result, unsuccessful organizations are crippled by uncertainty about their future, their leaders’ priorities and the role played by individual employees in working toward that future. The one thing that is crystal clear is what is considered undiscussable, the “don’t go there” topics that aren’t to be brought up with the boss or in a public forum. In some cases undiscussables are trivial emotional issues: “Is the boss on the warpath today?” In other cases, they are matters of vital strategic importance: “What happens when a new, Internet-enabled competitor shows up and starts eating our lunch?”
Undiscussables are frequently intertwined with the personality of the founder. These self-imposed limitations are routinely justified through an unwritten organizational history. The culture passes around the remembered version of some long ago event, often a confrontation or emotional outburst, that has hardened into policy. This folk wisdom is typically communicated as an exaggerated reason not to take action: “Everyone knows it’s a problem, but I’m not going to risk my job by being the one to bring it up!” Too often, planning for growth and the future takes a back seat to personal risk avoidance.
Rather than focusing on leadership as we attempt to plan for growth in this environment, we look to more tangible, less personal levers that can be reduced to a spreadsheet analysis. As a result, when managers of businesses, nonprofits and associations look at growth plans, the discussion inevitably turns to investment. Growth initiatives are invariably characterized as labor-intensive, such as hiring more “resources” to staff a sales force or handle support calls, or capital-intensive, such as building a data center or buying a fleet of trucks.
We fund investment in growth initiatives, but are still unable to meld our labor and capital into a cohesive force for good. We struggle to weave together the wisdom of our Baby Boomers, the focus of our Gen Xers, and the energy of our Millennials into a seamless, winning team. We grapple with the technology at the core of our business, while an elite competitor appears to wield it as a strategic scalpel. Again and again, our organizations aren’t as successful as the leadership thinks they should be, and no one is quite sure why. It’s genuinely mystifying.
What’s routinely missed is that while labor and capital are essential ingredients in the recipe for growth, they aren’t differentiators. The central challenge for any organization attempting to stand out from the competition is that, in a world awash in cash, skilled labor and online resources, the playing field has been leveled. When everyone has access to the same markets, tools, employees, capital, and customers, how do you differentiate?
New research shows that the answer to that question is a simple one: The sole remaining differentiator is leadership. It turns out that growth isn’t just capital-intensive or labor-intensive. It’s leader-intensive. And it’s not just any kind of leadership. Growth requires leaders who accept responsibility for Vision, Engagement and Execution at both a personal and organizational level. These are the Big Three that enable leaders and organizations to navigate change and unlock the growth that is often hiding in plain sight.
I know from personal experience that this is true. I have seen businesses with thousands of employees and billions in capital fail, when measured in boardroom terms such as market penetration, revenue growth, employee retention and growth in shareholder value. I also have seen businesses transform themselves from miserable, grinding failures to credible, respected competitors by swapping out a single leader at the helm. The same budget, the same team, but with a dramatically different outcome. The social scientist in me says that this phenomenon – the ability to find hidden growth where none previously existed – is worth exploring.
That exploration has led to the inescapable conclusion that the competencies that predict highly effective leadership are both quantifiable and worth doing well. Let’s put this in personal terms: The quality of your leadership may be the only differentiator available to you. Unfortunately, like the majority of leaders, you may be essentially blind to the effect you have on your team, and that's a big problem. Leaders who are looking for growth must deliberately explore this blind spot. Are you an anchor holding your team back or a sail that catches the wind and pulls your crew forward? This bit of introspection and the knowledge it brings are key to enabling each leader to be aware of and take ownership for their impact.
Let’s get to the book. As mentioned, this book started out to be about me, and then something changed. As I worked through the research that made this book possible, I came to realize that my experiences, both as a leader and a follower, were far from unique. To my great surprise, I discovered that these experiences were both universal and measurable. I reached the conclusion that this realization could be of potential benefit to many people, in a broad range of organizations and roles.
Today, I see The Return on Leadership as a tool for the current or prospective leader who needs to drive transformational change in their organization, whether it’s a business, nonprofit, association or military unit. In my experience, it’s particularly helpful for those who lead multi-generational teams, from Baby Boomers to Millennials, because the underlying psychology and resulting action plans are universally applicable.
This book is an opportunity to learn from the experiences of others, to be exposed to cutting edge research, to consider diverse case studies, and to craft your personal leadership growth plan to navigate change and search for growth in people, teams, and markets – immediately.
Now that you know what you’re getting into, let’s get ROLling!
Chapter 1 – Turmoil or Turnaround?
Turmoil
On many days, it seems as though the combined forces of technology and globalization are eating the known world from the bottom up. Industry by industry, the technology and “direct to everything” capabilities that make the Internet what it is roll on, flattening barriers to entry, transforming services and tearing the guts out of established industries,
