For leaders to avoid. . .

16 Things Successful Leaders Never Do

1. Never let the bottom line be the bottom line.
2. Never pretend things are ok when they aren’t.
3. Never let what you’ve never done be the reason not to try.
4. Never get ahead by resenting those who get ahead.
5. Never let those who aren’t doing something prevent you for doing something.
6. Never do on the road what you wouldn’t do at home.
7. Never trust anyone who never admits mistakes.
8. Never achieve greatness through negativity.
9. Never pretend you can do what you can’t.
10. Never let others fail before doing everything appropriate to help them succeed.
11. “An executive has never suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.” Peter Drucker
12. Never find wisdom in excuses, defensiveness, or blame.
13. Never think loyalty is a gift.
14. Never waffle when it comes to taking responsibility.
15. Never waver when it comes to giving credit.
16. Never make excuses. “Never make excuses. Your friends don’t need them and your foes won’t believe them.” JohnWooden

Bonus: Never create the future by recreating the past.

The power of action and nerve. . .

Often, simply seeing, noticing and then organizing for action changes the world, or at least your own part of it!

Colin Powell on Leadership

Leadership lesson #18  "Command is lonely."

Harry Truman was right.  Whether you're a CEO or the temporary head of a project team, the buck stops here.  You can encourage participative management and bottom-up employee involvement, but ultimately the essence of leadership is the willingness to make the tough, unambiguous choices that will have an impact on the fate of the organization.  I've seen too many non-leaders flinch from this responsibility.  Even as you create an informal, open, collaborative corporate culture, prepare to be lonely. 

Colin Powell on Leadership

Leadership Lesson #17

"Have fun in your command.  Don't always run at a breakneck pace.  Take leave when you've earned it:  Spend time with your families.  Corollary: surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard."

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Air and Anita Roddick of The Body Shop would agree:  seek people who have some balance in their lives, who are fun to hang out with, who like to laugh (at themselves, too) and who have some non-job priorities which they approach with the same passion that they do their work.  Spare me the grim workaholic or the pompous pretentious "professional;" Ill them find jobs with my competitor. 

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson # 15:  Part I:  Use the P=40 to 70 in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired.    Part II:  Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

Don't take action if you have only enough information to give you less than a 40 percent chance of being right, but don't wait until you have enough facts to be 100 percent sure, because by then it is almost always too late.  Today, excessive delays in the name of information-gathering breeds "analysis paralysis."  Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #14:  Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

Effective leaders understand the KISS principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid. They articulate vivid, over-arching goals and values, which they use to drive daily behaviors and choices among competing alternatives.  Their visions and priorities are lean and compelling, not cluttered and buzzword-laden.  Their decisions are crisp and clear, not tentative and ambiguous. They convey an unwavering firmness and consistency in their actions, aligned with the picture of the future they paint.  The result:  clarity of purpose, credibility of leadership and integrity in organization.

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #11 Fit no stereotypes.  Don't chase the latest management fads.  The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team's mission.

Flitting from fad to fad creates team confusion, reduces the leader's credibility, and drains organizational coffers.  Blindly following a particular fad generates rigidity in thought and action.  Sometimes speed to market is more important than total quality.  Sometimes an unapologetic directive is more appropriate than participatory discussion.  Some situations require the leader to hover closely; others require long, loose leashes.  Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.  They understand that management techniques are not magic mantras but simply tools to be reached for at the right times.

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #10  Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

Organization charts are frozen, anachronistic photos in a work place that ought to be as dynamic as the external environment around you.  If people really followed organization charts, companies would collapse.  In well-run organizations, titles are also pretty meaningless.  At best, they advertise some authority, an official status conferring the ability to give orders and induce obedience.  But titles mean little in terms of real power, which is the capacity to influence and inspire.  Have you ever noticed that people will personally commit to certain individuals who on paper (or on the organization chart) possess little authority, but instead possess pizazz, drive, expertise, and genuine caring for teammates and products?  On the flip side, non-leaders in management may be formally anointed with all the perks and frills associated with high positions, but they have little influence on others, apart from their ability to extract minimal compliance to minimal standards.

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #9  Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Too often, change is stifled by people who cling to familiar turfs and job descriptions.  One reason that even large organizations wither is that managers won't challenge old, comfortable ways of doing things.  But real leaders understand that, nowadays, every one of our jobs is becoming obsolete. The proper response is to obsolete our activities before someone else does.  Effective leaders create a climate where people's worth is determined by their willingness to learn new skills and grab new responsibilities, thus perpetually reinventing their jobs.  The most important question in performance evaluation becomes not, "How well did you perform you job since the last time we met?" but, "How much did you change it?"

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #7:  Keep looking below surface appearances.  Don't shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared.  It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.  It's a mind-set that assumes (or hopes) that today's realities will continue tomorrow in a tidy, linear and predictable fashion.  Pure fantasy.  In this sort of culture, you won't find people who pro-actively take steps to solve problems as they emerge.  Here's a little tip:  don't invest in these companies.

Colin Powell on Leadership

Lesson #6:  "You don't know what you can get away with until you try."

You know the expression, "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."  Well, it's true.  Good leaders don't wait for official blessing to try things out.  They're prudent, not reckless.  But they also realize a fact of life in most organizations:  if you ask enough people for permission, you'll inevitably come up against someone who believes his job is to say "no."  So the moral is, don't ask.  Less effective middle managers endorsed the sentiment, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'yes,' I can't do it," whereas the good ones believed, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'no,' I can."  There's a world of difference between these two points of view.

An old entry in my journal: tough resignation and acceptance

Last week as I sorted through my books, my old files and other office junk deciding what to keep, what to toss and what to pass on to others, I came upon an old journal.  Actually, it was a cheap composition notebook, the black and white, marbled covered variety. 

The notebook contained only one entry.  Not sure how it ended up on the shelf, put away as if nothing else could be written on its pages. 

Here's what I wrote on November 30, 1995:

Day before yesterday, I transported 5 "Christmas Store" employees to Randy Mayeux's offices to help him move to a new building.  The four women who crammed themselves into the back seat warmed up about 1/2 way over and began to talk about life and the weather (it was amazing!) and most importantly, their kids and grandkids. 

One of the women was 29.  She had 7 children, the oldest 11, the youngest 2.  She commented to us in a very routine manner that she always kept her children in  the house after school.  "They know to come in, get a snack, get their baths and watch TV." 

Her reason for the tight regime:  too much violence in the Dixon Circle area. 

"Last night a gal was murdered on our parking lot," she commented without much emotion, expecting no real response. 

The others in the car responded with similar stories, but as if such was an accepted, expected part of life in their part of the city.  I've witnessed this attitude before in Oak Cliff at Gladewater Rd.  It is a survivor's mentality & I expect about the only way to make it through. 

But in each person there was a strength & a resilience to keep going and to provide good things for the children.  I was amazed again at the nobility and power of the heart of these folk.  I'm not sure what the "solution" is. 

Later that day, I met with [one of our big supporters].  When I told him of the situation with the family, he said, "Is there  any way we can get her out of there?"  Again, his heart was so right, but his thinking was not fully aware.  The solution is not to remove people from the places of danger, but to transform the place[s].  To remove that mother would be to significantly diminish the quality of the neighborhood.  We have much to do here.

Anna Hill--community builder

Ms. Anna Hill is our partner.

She is the most important leader in the Dolphin Heights neighborhood just east of Fair Park. The new-found health and hope now being experienced in her community is due largely to her personal efforts over the past several years.

We've had the honor to work with her on an exciting mutual project over the past several weeks. She is something else!

Thank God for Anna Hill and for grassroots leaders like her all across our community. Anna Hill and others like her are key players in the work of community renewal.

Read more about this important leader and cherished partner here.

.