As suggested by the illustration in Figure 1, a leader:
Sets direction represented in the first panel by the target with a bull’s-eye in the middle.
Aligns resources; that is, the leader collects followers who all look to hit the same target.
Motivates action, as suggested by the radio bars in the lower corners of the third figure, which causes the resources to progress towards the target.
Figure 1: A leader sets direction, aligns resources, and motivates action.
Another way to say it, as summarized in Figure 2, is that a leader develops, holds, nurtures, communicates, and drives to achieve a vision. Like Harry Potter’s Marauder’s map, the leader holds a map that is always changing, making sense of it, and navigating the course accordingly with the team looking over his/her shoulder. Continue reading How to decide what kind of leader to be.→
High-end leadership development curriculum content now available on Amazon.
Whether one wants to change personal habits, implement a new information system, improve a business process, get team members to work together, increase a community’s appreciation for diversity, or even to topple a monarchy, taking seven actions driven by seven disarmingly simple truths will individually and collectively help achieve the goal.
Manage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World is a workbook that top educators, consultants, and executives use to help their students, clients, and staffs become effective leaders of strategic change. Manage to Lead serves as the core content for a class in Organization Leadership, Analysis, Strategy, and Development at one of the top Organization Development masters programs in the United States.
The workbook was introduced in the spring as interactive, digital content and is now also available in softcover from Amazon or as an iBook from iTunes. It introduces a straightforward framework to describe and assess any organization and provides a structured approach to plan and implement next steps for an organization as it strives for long-term growth and performance.
Being part of a successful start up is invigorating. Even for those with no equity stake, the energy and excitement is contagious and makes it easy to work hard for the good of the whole.
In the face of growth and strong performance, some may begin to wonder if the good times will soon end as founders, owners, and investors look to pocket the value that has been created through a sale of the organization to larger firm. Leaders sometimes struggle to keep up employee morale in such circumstances.
It can help for leaders to remind everyone that the best thing, in all scenarios, is to build the best possible business because doing so leads to:
Making the most positive impact in the market served.
Creating the most value for owners.
Creating the most opportunity for employees to assume new responsibilities, earn increased compensation, learn new skills, and be in position to take on attractive roles upon an acquisition. Continue reading Are we for sale?→
Leaders often struggle to reach a good, a better, or even a best solution to countless such questions. More important than the right answer, though, is all team members having the sameanswer.
Many intelliven.com blog posts are based on the slides and lecture notes from a masters class in Organization Development called Organization Analysis and Strategy offered at American University and taught by Peter DiGiammarino. These posts and other material from class, including:
Work problems,
Templates,
Graphics,
Slide shows, and
Assessments
are available from Amazon as a softcover workbook or from iTunes as an iBook titledManage to Lead: Seven Truths to Help You Change the World.
Selected intelliven.com blog content is now available as a workbook from Amazon or as an iBook from iTunes.
Whether one wants to change personal habits, implement a new information system, improve a business process, get team members to work together, increase a community’s appreciation for diversity, or even to topple a monarchy, taking seven actions driven by seven disarmingly simple truths will individually and collectively help achieve the goal.
Manage to Lead presents a framework to describe and assess any organization. It also provides a structured approach to plan and implement next steps for an organization as it strives for long-term growth and performance.
Readers are invited to select a familiar organization on which to apply the tools and templates introduced throughout the workbook. Exercises in each chapter produce essential elements for the organization’s annual strategic plan and lay the groundwork for implementing that plan.
Readers can package the key elements from Organization Exercises to form a strategic plan that communicates how the organization sees itself and where it is headed. At the end of the year leaders can compare actual results with what was described in the strategic plan to study what happened, why what happened was different than plan, what is to be learned from that, and what to do differently going forward as a result.
Repeat the process over several years and compare actual to planned results year-to-year to see the organization mature, perform, and grow to its full potential.
