JoAnn Corley — January 15, 2020 Does your leadership – your leadership brand – really matter to you? Are you the kind of leader that really cares about the needed results you were hired to achieve?
If you answered yes, that means you have the desire and intent to be effective. Effective simply means successful in producing a desired or intended result – and since we’re talking business, I’m adding needed results.
For many leaders, being effective can feel like a moving target. It doesn’t have to be nor should it be.
In fact it is your job (our job…including myself here) to make sure it is not.
It also be confused with busy. Busy activity does not necessarily translate into being effective. Busy can create the illusion of meaningful action. And because many of us work in fast past businesses, this is pretty common and therefore imperative to make sure you are intentionally executing the elements of effectiveness.
A while back I picked up the book The Effective Executive. Several of my clients have adopted it into their learning and management portfolio. It is a simple, clear guide written by an early pioneer of corporate management – Peter Drucker. In it, he lays out he sees is required to be effective.
You know what? The elements are not hard. But, creating the disciplines – what he calls simple practices – may be. Why do I say that?
Because in my experience, creating any discipline – a fixed, solid reliable new habit – in any context can be a challenge…let alone when you are in the persistent midst of competing, clanging activity scraping for your attention. There are days…when that’s what running or leading a business, team, department or business unit feels like.
So, this is a huge challenge – particularly for new leaders in fast pace environments. How do you create needed disciplines to be effective in the midst of all that?
As I continue to work with leaders in a variety of enterprises from small to large, it’s not surprising (for a variety of reasons) that some have difficulty leading and managing in a meaningful way. They are swallowed up in learning how to run the business (operations), deal with people management issues or adapt to new responsibilities rather than being able to get out in front of it with consistent effective, execution.
For many, they feel as if the business is running them rather than them running the business.
So, as we move into the new year and roll out our new brand – Manage Global – we’ve decided that in addition to creating a single focus for management training and development, we’re going to enhance that focus by including help in this area.
We want to help leaders, particularly those of small businesses and emerging executives of mid-size companies, to become effective in satisfying and meaningful ways. And this actually answers the earlier question…how do you develop disciplines in the midst of competing activity?…with help
We will help you develop the needed disciplines not only as Mr. Drucker suggested, but also those distinct for your business.
Want to test your effectiveness? – try a trial run with our 60 day cycle initiative The 3 Disciplines. This is a very cost effective launching pad to get your sea legs if you feel you’re struggling. Test yourself! – take the challenge.
Of note, this initiative is the introduction and prelude to our Smart Management Blueprint containing all the elements – practices – Peter references in his books. We formulated those elements along with a few others we’ve experienced to be essential to business and people management and management development, into a step by step roadmap, embedded with behavioral science and financial measurements.
One Final Comment
In the many years I’ve been in the professional training and development industry, I’ve seen a persistent gap in senior leadership development. It goes from basic management to a gap to executive certificate programs at universities or 1/1 executive coaching… and there is quite a variety of executive “coaches” and programs.
Unless, a company has the resources and capacity to develop their own, there is little if any intentional, strategic development for pre-promotion or succession planning or on-boarding of a new or emerging executive – particularly addressing executive management effectiveness. Where appropriate, this is a gap we want to fill as well.
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