Accountability
If leadership is not 100% accountable, it’s not leadership. It can be anything else but. It takes you to own the flaws, mistakes, failures and successes. Not only to yourself though, but with the people you work with (employees, partners, customers, etc.). “Leadership is about how to create more leaders; not attract more followers.” —David Marquet.
Leading is language
Not only whether you say please or not. It’s about how you frame (and reframe) the situations, the context, problems and even solutions. [Framing and reframing —NOT gaslighting.] It’s about the lens you have to see things. About the words you use not to drive a decision in X or Y direction. Here’s a little thing I learned: Instead of asking “Are you sure?” to know whether the others are feeling confident or not on what they think/consider, ask “How sure are you?” This question will bring a…
Leading is not empowering
You don’t empower people: employees, customers, trainees, interns… To empower them implies you can dis-empower them. That you can take any power, agency or determination they have from them. And that’s not in your control —at all. What you can do is help them feel empowered. You can foster their sense of agency, responsibility, decision-making, and more. Empowerment comes from within. Like an elephant that doesn’t move from the ridiculous small chain because they were taught they didn’t…
A choice to make. Following. Or leading.
Friend-of-the list and data science expert, Genevieve Hayes, got back to yesterday’s message with this old Dilbert comic: Leadership is a choice —and a hard one to take because it comes with responsibility for others, taking the time and effort to transfer those skills and learnings to others. You want to be surrounded by A-players. The best way is to help them get A, and even better. But that won’t happen if you treat them as followers.
Being a follower
“You’re a follower.” Doesn’t sound quite “empowering”, right? So, why would you want to have followers?
What’s wrong with your business?
Maybe nothing. I mean it. Maybe nothing at all. Ponder this question, though: What is the center for my business and how does it show? What’s it all about?
What’s wrong with business?
So, the way music is framed is about art, enjoy, amusement, etc. And the way business is framed: profit product growth brand etc. The thing is, none of those are about the customer. Your customers don’t buy because of what your product, your biz or you do (or even why you do it, depending of the need). They buy from you because you solve something for them. And they don’t care how. If they could achieve that very same thing with a AAA battery, a 5-minute writing process, or a complex…
Helping by saying No.
Author, data architect and fellow daily emailer, Andrew Jones, wrote back to “The thing about scope creep” with an awesome insight (bolding mine): “I’d add another one: saying no.I often say that saying no is the most important skill I’ve learned in my career.I always wanted to say ‘yes’, because I wanted to help people, and it was just easier!But I’d end up over promising and under delivering, or be prevented for saying yes to things that mattered more because I’d already promised too much.”…
The thing about scope creep
The problem is not scope creep, it’s not knowing how to: 1) limit scope. 2) get fine with good enough. 3) identify the right scope and timeline properly. When you lose sight of it, you get stuck in the trenches. A way to avoid this: be ruthless in what is important and what’s not.
Slow in the weeds
Collaboration is about getting into the weeds, about messiness. While speed and efficiencies do help, getting faster to the wrong goal or executing flawlessly the wrong thing won’t move the needle. Discussions, sometimes, feel like they get you stuck in the weeds. That it brings friction. And we try to avoid friction. Here’s the thing, though. Without discussions, there are no compromises and it becomes an easy way out when things are meh. It becomes easier to point fingers at. It becomes a…