clear priorities

Leaders who execute focus on a very few clear priorities that everyone can grasp. Why just a few? First, anybody who thinks through the logic of a business will see that focusing on three or four priorities will produce the best results from the resources at hand. Second, people in contemporary organizations need a small number of clear priorities to execute well. In an old-fashioned hierarchical company, this wasn't so much of a problem - people generally knew what to do, because the orders can down through the chain of command. But when decision making is decentralized or highly fragmented, as in a matrix organization, people at many levels have to make endless trade-offs. There's competition for resources, and ambiguity over decision rights and working relationships. Without carefully thought-out and clear priorities, people can get bogged down in warfare over who gets what and why. 

A leader who says "I've got ten priorities" doesn't know what he's talking about - he doesn't know himself what the most important things are. You've got to have these few, clearly realistic goals and priorities, which will influence the overall performance of the company. 

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 69

centralised/decentralised command

Soldiers regularly have to deal with the four forces dubbed VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). In particular, Mr Gareth Tennant [formerly of the Royal Marines] cites the concept of mission command which developed during the Napoleonic wars. Armies found that, by the time messages had arrived at the front, the military situation had changed. The lesson was to establish what the army was trying to achieve before the battle and allow junior commanders to use their initiative and take decisions as the situation demanded.

The ideal command structure is not a rigid hierarchy, he argues, but a sphere, where the core sets the culture and the parts of the organisation at the edge are free to react to events outside them. In effect, the contrast is between centralised command and decentralised execution.

"What the armed forces can teach business." The Economist. Oct. 24, 2020

multiple minds working together to solve problems

When I was a junior designer, my creative director asked me to design a mascot with the rather uninspiring instruction to reorder the shapes of the famous 2012 Olympics logo. Having little choice but to accept my task, I threw myself into it with all the boundless, panicked energy that comes from needing to impress the powers above, trusting my superior to steer me in the right direction.

Three weeks later I was distraught, the entire weight of our complete and utter failure to win the pitch resting on my shoulders.

It would be easy to put that loss down to inexperience—after all, I totally missed the brief, and every other pitch was better. But when I think about it a little more thoroughly, I can see that the real problem was one of access. I longed to understand the full project details, but was instead privy to mere bits and pieces of projects, attempting to cobble together an unknown whole. It was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle whilst looking at it through a keyhole.

Many organizations—faced with the challenge of bringing together multiple projects, departments, and skillsets—fall back on the traditional combination of hierarchy, method, and structure. This can breed a culture of complacency, leading to outcomes that are narrow in their vision, team members who feel restricted and undervalued, and a workforce that operates under ceaseless pressure to either get it right, or get out.

When I look back on my ill-fated Olympic experience, I can see that I didn’t have the full picture. I was unable to bring my own ideas to the table, powerless to create change. I was subordinate; my relationship with my superiors was distant, and the most integral aspects of the design process—research, exploration, and discussion—were entirely absent. It wasn’t collaboration of any kind. No wonder that I lost both the pitch and the plot!

It doesn’t have to be that way. When I co-founded the creative studio Gravita, I learned what collaboration really looks like: multiple minds working together to solve problems. By doing this, our complementary skillsets are free to blend together in surprising ways—unconstrained, we’re better equipped to deliver inventive solutions.

This kind of collaborative culture is possible, whether you’re freelancing, in an agency environment, or in-house. You only need to do three things:

1. Remove assumptions
2. Emphasize project roles over job titles
3. Create a supportive environment for new ideas

Rosie Manning

"Structuring a New Collaborative Culture" A List Apart. 7/1/2014

thoughts for managing a creative culture

John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, VES Awards. 2/28/2010

Here are some of the principles we’ve developed over the years to enable and protect a healthy creative culture. I know that when you distill a complex idea into a T-shirt slogan, you risk giving the illusion of understanding – and, in the process, of sapping the idea of its power. An adage worth repeating is also halfway to being irrelevant. You end up with something that is easy to say but not connected to behavior. But while I have been dismissive of reductive truths throughout this book, I do have a point of view, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of the principles that I hold most dear here with you. The trick is to think of each statement as a starting point, as a prompt toward deeper inquiry, and not as a conclusion.

• Give good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. If you get the right team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right.
• When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight

turning the hierarchy upside down

The traditional hierarchy is good for the visionary aspect of leadership. People look to the leader for vision and direction, and although a leader should involve experienced people in shaping direction, the ultimate responsibility remains with the leader and cannot be delegated to others.

However, the implantation role – living according to the vision – is where most leaders and organizations get into trouble. The traditional hierarchy too often is kept alive and well, leaving the customers neglected at the bottom. All the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchy as workers try to please and be responsive to their bosses. The authoritarian structure too often forces the front-line people, the customer contact people, to say frustrating things like, “It’s our policy,” “I just work here,” or “Do you want to talk to the supervisor?” In this environment, self-serving leaders assume “the sheep are there for the benefit of the shepherd.” All the energy in the organization flows up the hierarchy.

Effective implementation requires turning the hierarchy upside down so the customer contact people are at the top of the organization and are able to respond to customers, while leaders serve the needs of employees, helping them to accomplish the vision and direction of the organization.

Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges

The Servant Leader: Transforming You Heart, Head, Hands & Habits. 2003. J.Countryman.

prepare organizations for change

[Leaders] don’t make plans; they don’t solve problems’ they don’t even organize people. What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it.

John P. Kotter

What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review. December 2001.

a strict hierarchy

Most companies are built with a strict hierarchy in place. This allows for managers to thrive and companies to excel at what they know and do best. But for organizations that need to change and quickly pursue new strategies, leaders must thrive, and they can only do so in a more dynamic environment, where traditional reporting structures take a back seat to good ideas, and where all individuals, regardless of rank, have the opportunity to help move the company where it wants—and needs—to go.

John P. Kotter

"Is Hierarchy an Obstacle to Innovation?" Forbes. 10/1/2012

managing vs. leading

Companies manage complexity first by planning and budgeting-setting targets or goals for the future (typically for the next month or year),establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision ofthe future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.

Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organizing and staffing-creating an organizational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements, staffing the jobs with qualified individuals, communicating the plan to those people, delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, and devising systems to monitor implementation. The equivalent leadership activity, however, is aligning people. This means communicating the new direction to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement.

Finally, management ensures plan accomplishment by controlling and problem solving – monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings, and other tools; identifying deviations; and then planning and organizing to solve the problems. But for leadership, achieving a vision requires motivating and inspiring – keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

John P. Kotter
“What Leaders Really Do.” Harvard Business Review. 1990.

reasons why change efforts typically fail

1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it.

2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed.

3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.

4. There is no compelling reason to change. The business case is not communicated.

5. A compelling vision that excites people about the future has not been developed and communicated.

6. The change leadership team does not include early adopters, resisters, or informal leaders.

7. The change is not piloted, so the organization does not learn what is needed to support the change.

8. Organizational systems and other initiatives are not aligned with the change.

9. Leaders lose focus or fail to prioritize, causing “death by 1,000 initiatives.”

10. People are not enabled or encouraged to build new skills.

11. Those leading the change are not credible. They undercommunicate, give mixed messages, and do not model the behaviors the change requires.

12. Progress is not measured, and/or no one recognizes the changes that people have worked hard to make.

13. People are not held accountable for implementing the change.

14. People leading the change fail to respect the power of the culture to kill the change.

15. Possibilities and options are not explored before a specific change is chose.

When most people see this list, their reaction depends on whether they have usually been the target of change or the change agent. Targets of change frequently feel as though we have been studying their organization for years, because they have seen these reasons why change fails in action, up close and personal. The reality is that while every organization is unique in some ways, they often struggle with change for the same reasons.

When change agents look at this list, they get discouraged, because they realize how complicated implementing change can be and how many different things can go wrong. Where should they start? Which of the fifteen reasons why change fails should they concentrate on?

Over the years it has been our experience that if leaders can understand and overcome the first three reasons why change typically fails, they are on the road to being effective leaders of change.

Ken Blanchard

Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations. FT Press. 2010.