Elevating others
Yesterday’s email took these points on Womack’s conception of leadership: Leadership equals heroic leadership. Leadership equals authority. Leadership is about convincing others. Here’s why this view can’t be sustainable. Leadership equals heroic leadership. It’s there to save the day / put the fires out. Heroes don’t scale. So at the moment there’s no more “heroic leader”, things go down south. Quickly. Leadership equals authority. They’re both independent from each other.You can have…
Too much leadership
Reading one of Ethan Garofolo’s daily emails, I bumped on this video by James Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute. On it he argues that there’s too much leadership and not enough management. However, the way Womack describes leadership and management gets mixed up and take an outdated view of what leadership is. 3 points to highlight Leadership equals heroic leadership. Leadership equals authority. Leadership is about convincing others. It has nothing to do with leadership. Here’s the…
Crushing solutions
“Don’t come to me with problems. I only want to hear solutions.” That’s part of friend-of-the-list Genevieve Hayes’ email about solving problems in isolation —and a generalized thinking framework in the business world, as the focus of this “don’t bring me problems” doesn’t let you see the forest for the trees. Here are a few thoughts on it: This kind of thinking from management has ramifications: “You bring fresh eyes, get me solutions”. If i see the problem —that you don’t consider a…
Unethically-led
Using the wording of [THING]-led takes off the responsibility of whatever sleazy/unethical actions they might do. The decision-makers feel they’re off the hook. If it’s led by sales, sales is what matters most. The decisions will be whatever makes sales grow. It’s only about the end. So if you get scammed/conned, it’s your fault, not the company’s or who runs it. “We’re sales/growth/innovation/whatever-led. We gave you a crap product, but it’s not our fault. “The thing” made the decision”….
Focused, instead of led
Are you afraid of using sales/growth/product/growth-focused and so on, instead of [THING]-led? My perception is that whoever came up with this [THING]-led concept was afraid of using [THING]-focused. Because when you change that tiny word, you can see how odd that would sound. As if focusing on the thing will have a tell on what you actually do. What if we change the wordging? Product-led? Product-focused. → So we focus on the product. Growth-led? Growth-focused → We focus on the biz growth…
Seeing the future… only by humans.
Leadership is about vision and only people can have a vision of the future, not things or concepts. It makes the notion of [THING]-led business an oxymoron. Because, how could a thing decide? A couple days ago there was a question about if business could be led by —Sales, Growth, Innovation, etc. If it could be led by things. Here’s what friend of the list and Data Scientist & AI and Analytics Specialist, Genevieve Hayes (do go check her emails out) said and I couldn’t put it better [shared…
Future and present (addendum)
Friend of the list and founder of Truly Human Hospitality replied to the Future and Present daily with this reel where she talks about managing and leading. Loving her POV, so here it is for you. 🙂
A question for you
Here’s a question for you: If leading is a choice, can things and businesses be… Product-led? Sales-led? Marketing-led? Growth-led? Innovation-led? Experience-led? I’m curious about what you think. 🙂
Future and present
“Leaders are in charge of the future, and managers are in charge of the present.” Blair Enns Friend of the list, James Turner came up with this email about Managers vs. Leaders, taking on points about how you can focus on the present and the future of your business. Under this view of future v present, you can also find out that one goes in the direction of innovation (being wasteful per definition), looking for the new; and the other, towards efficiency-seeking (the best use of resources) to…
On a ledger
Do you give your clients what they ask for or what they, really, deeply want? That was Christopher Nolan with Heath Ledger. He didn’t focus on what the fans were asking for —an “evil” actor. He focused on what they deeply wanted: a serious actor who’d tear the role and make them feel. Who’d blow their minds. Nolan stuck to his guns. The studio backed him up. They trusted the process (and the project), even when they “didn’t get it”. And that’s how we ended up with the best Joker. Now, when…