Monday, October 15, 2007

Knowing where to go

To me, the essence of leadership boils down to two things.

1. Knowing what needs to be done.

The ability to identify and articulate what needs to be done is enormously useful.

In most business situations, it means understanding the customer. It means focus on a few relatively important things. It means explaining this to other people in a persuasive way.

There are, of course, a whole bunch of skills related to understanding the customer. Understanding the customer is so very difficult, perhaps partially because it is an act of selection and editing (not everything that a customer might want, but those few essential things). Knowing what needs to be done can, for example, be claimed to be partially a financial understanding (ROI and NPV), but I think not mainly in most cases.

A listing of skills is not essential. Decomposing "what a leader does" into parts misleads as much as it helps. It is how the cake is put together and how it bakes as much as any list of ingredients. And finally it is in the eating only that its true meaning is fulfilled.

Once one has a vision, it is necessary to communicate this to others. So that they are inspired and encouraged. So that they act. Knowing is not enough; acting in such a way that the Team gets started is part of setting the initial direction. Imagine Moses setting off.

2. Getting us there

This is discussed in the next blg post.

This line of thoughts was opened up upon seeing this site:
http://lwok.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe in nowadays business with demands coming from everywhere knowing what does not need to be done can be more important, than what needs to be done.

Of course, both things are in fact the different sides of the same issue. It is just so that knowing what does not need to be done feels usually more important to me

Joe Little said...

Hi Artem,

You are of course right. One must say No many times if a Yes is to mean anything.

But as Joyce said: "...yes I said yes I will yes."

Regards, Joe

Anonymous said...

Great post. Leadership can be many things but regardless of organization or effort it is about knowing what to do and getting it done.

Joe Little said...

Hi Rob,

Glad it hit the spot. One struggles to add the necessary word, neither too abstract nor too specific.

Regards, Joe