Be Different or be dead

December 2, 2019

2 easy tasks that will make you an astonishing leader

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2 easy tasks that will make you an astonishing leader.

I know it’s almost impossible to reduce all of the qualities of an amazing leader down to two, but in my 40-year leadership experience there are two actions standout leaders take to distance themselves from the herd of leaders out there.

Task #1: Stop doing stuff

Kinda goes against traditional thought but most leaders think winning is about performing the incremental miracle; introducing something new that will take people’s breath away.
And the academics and pundits add to this belief by talking about innovation as being exclusively reserved for creating something new.

“Product innovation is the creation and subsequent introduction of a good or service that is either new, or an improved version of previous goods or services.” — Wikipedia

So the common perception is that to be innovative you must deliver something new or at least a significantly improved version of something that existed before.

Value creation is missing

The problem I have is that innovation by the common definition is silent on value creation; there’s no expressed connection.
An entrepreneur could introduce a new product that flops in the market but the act would still be tagged as an innovative move.

Innovation without value creation is useless because the purpose of innovation IS to add value. Introduce a new product that sucks value from the organization — because it’s unprofitable — is not innovative by anyone’s definition.

In my experience, there is one innovative task that rarely gets mentioned. It’s a task in most organizations that isn’t treated as a high priority yet it produces amazing value.

Decrement to create space

And it’s the antithesis of doing new incremental things — it’s doing new decremental things; removing old things in an organization that no longer add value and creating space in an organization to do new things that do add value.

No organization has unlimited resources to continue adding new activities with added costs; decrementing frees up resources and cost to do something new.

Great leaders treat removing stuff as a high priority and they treat it as a core competency of their organizations that contributes vitally to their competitive advantage — most others don’t focus on it and hence are more challenged to maintain healthy cash flow margins in the face of having to innovate to offer new stuff.

And decrementing is much more difficult to achieve than motivating people to do new exciting things; it’s simply not viewed as a “sexy” thing to do and people aren’t salivating to get on with removing the grunge that everyone knows is there.

CUT the crap

Not only is it difficult to get people to sign on with cutting the crap in an organization, it’s even more tough to actually remove the activities, programs, products and systems that have outlived their usefulness.

Why? No one likes to give up anything regardless how unproductive it is. They don’t like their familiarity with anything being disrupted even though it makes perfect sense to do so.

So employees who work on products with a small unprofitable market don’t want to lose their product work and analysts who maintain an obsolescent system would like to keep doing it.

When the cut the crap champion shows up there’s not a whole lot of willingness for owners of crap to give it up easily; they fight to hold on to it.

Task #2: Stop reading books on leadership

The Unmatchables get to their lofty position by NOT following the prescriptions of others — they don’t read their sh** — they find their own way in the morass and complications of dealing with humans of all types.

It’s not that text books and pundit readings are wrong necessarily, it’s just that they’re not good enough to make a leadership difference.

There’s no formula for being an incredible leader. There are tons of things you can do to be an average one but the secret sauce to greatness has to come from the individual not parchments with ascribed opinions from “experts”.

My experience has taught me that there are many actions The Great One’s take that are rarely found in a text book.

Head west

They believe that “heading slightly west” is a valid strategy despite the fact that the experts try to get you to believe that if you follow a precise process you will create the “perfect” plan.

Rather, what is needed is an imprecise view of the direction that should be taken with modifications made based on what is learned through execution.
How many plans have you had that turned out the way you originally intended? Yup. Same.

Try a lot

They believe that the more tries you make the greater the likelihood you’ll succeed. Their mindset is that if they get lucky and hit a home run on the first try, GREAT! but don’t count on it.

The odds of getting it right the first time are too low given the uncertainty and unpredictability of the markets we serve. If you’re not ready to try something else other than your first choice in times of chaotic change you’ll be unprepared when chaos strikes and you will fail.

The Distinguishables know that the text book might be helpful in choosing a direction, but eventual success comes to those who have made more attempts than the rest of the crowd.

Do the opposite

The Look-Up To’s have the natural instinct to go in a 180 degree direction against the flow of whatever is the current trend and give it a go. They understand that momentum and trends aren’t their friends when they are trying to garner a competitive advantage.

▪️If the market trend is toward lower calorie food products they do a 180.

▪️If the trend is to exceed customer service expectations in the hostel business they do the opposite.

They don’t bet the farm on such moves but they are willing to make an investment that captures the attention of onlookers.

In my experience, these two gems were instrumental in vaulting average leaders into really successful ones. I’m thinking that if you want to be a standout leader you might want to give them a try.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.2.19 at 04:26 am by Roy Osing
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November 30, 2019

9 fantastic quotes from some amazing lady bosses

9 fantastic quotes from some amazing lady bosses.

We must keep celebrating the strong leaders in our life.

FTD created an infographic with some of the most iconic and inspiring women in leadership –– from Michelle Obama to Indra Nooyi.

These women take no prisoners and have some words of wisdom to share with the world. Use their lessons to boost your own self-confidence or share them with a leader you value to say “thanks” for their guidance.

— Marielle Lea is a passionate writer who loves putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) whenever she can. In her spare time, Marielle loves to be with her family, enjoying the outdoors and finding the next great taco truck!

• Posted 11.30.19 at 03:48 pm by Roy Osing
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November 25, 2019

The 5 deadly sins of being like the next person

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The 5 deadly sins of being like the next person.

If you’re like the next ‘guy’, you have some serious thinking to do. There may be pressure to fit in and conform with others, but the consequences can be deadly; it’s simply not the place to be if you are looking for a successful and rewarding career.

When you are ok with blending in with the person next to you are committing the following deadly sins.

Sin #1 — you become wallpaper

Wallpaper is background; it provides a convenient backdrop for the action going on in the foreground. Do you ever notice wallpaper? You might if you are looking for wallpaper but it’s a temporal thing: after you’ve seen it, it soon fades and gives way to what is going on in front of it.

Think about when you decide to change the wallpaper on your device. You notice the various choices when you are looking, but once you’ve selected one that you like, it soon becomes subordinated to the apps and webpage shortcuts that populate the space in front of it.

Being like the next guy is being like wallpaper; people may notice you for a fleeting moment but then you disappear.
What you need to succeed in the long term is sustainability in terms of being noticed by people who can influence your career.

Sin #2 — you become immune to risk

It’s comfortable being like the next guy; there’s little personal risk and you’re rarely in trouble. Blending in allows you to float around unexposed to all onlookers.

The problem is that being comfy makes you risk averse and you tend to avoid circumstances where you have to step outside your comfort zone.
Being like the other guy robs you of the desire to take a chance because you don’t have to; it’s not necessary when the crowd governs the outcome for you.

A career suffers when an industry is not prepared to take reasons risks; innovation in any organization is impossible without a certain amount of chance.

Sin #3 — you can’t deal with conflict

When you’re like the next guy, you rarely have disagreements with others; you avoid conflict by having similar personas to those around you and no reason to fight for your own ideas.

It provides an artificial (and unhealthy) environment for the lookalike who grows up being extremely uncomfortable with differences in opinions and incapable of dealing with situations like this when they arise.

Being able to handle conflict is necessary in today’s world where the issues are so numerous that a myriad of opinions will always exist and to survive, people have to know how to put up their opinion and fight for it in a respectful way.

Those that can’t navigate through the opinion maze will stay in their herd — comfortable but unsuccessful.

Sin #4 — you think life is about ‘best practices’

When you’re like the next guy, you’ve already decided that the next guy represents your aspiration; the person or set of competencies you believe will make you successful. And you live your life believing that emulation is the way to successfully meander your way through the challenges and roadblocks thrown in your way.

Looking at what others do and copying what you believe to be the “best” becomes your modus operandi and you judge your worth if the image you see in a mirror is someone else.

Being like the next guy forces you build yourself in someone else’s image, to copy what another person has created and follow best of breed. This is not a recipe for success; it’s a path lacking originality and uniqueness and one that leads not to rewards.

Sin #5 — you are constantly in the stall mode

When you’re like the next guy, your life is punctuated by fits and starts; you have no forward momentum because you have no plan that is special in terms of how you intend to meet your personal goals. You are in the hands of others with no control over what you want to achieve or how you intend to achieve it.

As a result you tend to be in a perpetual stall mode waiting for the wind to either olift you up or force you down.

Being in the stalled mode wastes you of the most precious commodity there is — time. While you wait for the next guy’s energy to propel you somewhere, the people around you who choose to standout and be different from the next guy pass you by.

There is absolutely no redeeming value being like the next guy; it’s sinful and will rob you of your future.

Be different. Be unique. Be special. Be you.

It’s the only way you have an exciting life and a chance to win.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.25.19 at 04:29 am by Roy Osing
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November 18, 2019

5 simple things I did everyday as a leader

5 simple things I did everyday as a leader.

If you looked at how most executive leaders spend their time, you would find activities such as: attending executive leadership and board meetings, reviewing financial performance of their organization, developing strategic plans, meeting with their direct report team and the like.

My leadership style was different. Sure, I performed the traditional duties expected of me, but I realized as well that there were other things that had to be done to ensure a consistently high performing organization — plus have more fun!

These 5 activities consumed an inordinate amount of my time regularly while other leaders chose to stay with a more traditional routine.

1. Bear pit sessions

Seeking employee input on what’s working and what’s not working for them is a critical activity for the effective leader. Many leaders choose to delegate this responsibility to their management team; I did not.

I made this task a priority of how I spent my time, and coined the term bear pit session to describe the employee meetings I called to discuss issues in the workplace.

The purpose of the sessions was to engage people in a active conversation on such matters as:
— what’s preventing them from executing the strategic game plan of the organization;
— what needs to be changed in the way customers are served;
— what rules and policies are getting in the way of delivering amazing service experiences;
— what unmet customer needs should be addressed;
— what barriers need to be removed in order to make their jobs easier.

It was my agenda and I sought their input that I would normally never receive. I led each session on my own; my direct reports were never present because I wanted honesty from people.
And I had to take criticism on the chin; these were tell-it-like-it-is conversations which held very little back once I earned the trust of the attendees.

2. Dumb rules contests

One of my essential objectives was to “cleanse the organization’s environment” of stuff that made little sense to people; the rules, policies, processes and procedures — the systems — that got in their way of doing their job or that prevented the delivery of good customer service.

Most leaders opted to do studies using systems and process reengineering experts to identify the culprits that needed change because they were inefficient and could be reengineered to lower cost.

I took a different approach. I chose to sponsor dumb rule contests and involve the people who actually used the systems and enforced the rules & policies in the performance of their jobs. They were the best source to identify the candidates that needed change because they made their jobs difficult and/or annoyed customers.

The suggestions offered by employees — particularly from the frontline — were awesome! And we had a team of managers who were held accountable to schedule and implement the ideas with the greatest impact.

3. Skip level employee engagement

This is another twist to getting close to people doing the job without the filters of layers of management getting in the way.
This was my route to the truth. I have my managers the heads-up that I was going to be speaking to their employees directly on occasion.

I told them my purpose was not to undermine them but rather to get a better appreciation of how people doing the job felt; the individual problems they had and their views on how things could be achieved.

I also told them that if they were uncomfortable with my style then perhaps they need to find a more parochial leader.

This process worked miracles for me and my performance. I was able to get ahead of issues before they became performance effecting and I was able to help people perform their roles the way they wanted to: the right tools & training and fewer roadblocks.

And as a side benefit, it gave a perspective on how well my managers served their people and equipped me with the information I needed to help them do their jobs better.

4. VP-for-a-day assignments

“Walk in my shoes” for a day was an offer I regularly gave to a variety of employees in my organization; people who championed valuable projects that proved to enhance the performance of the organization and other high potential individuals who were the leaders of tomorrow.

This was a recognition for those who stood out and provided an invaluable contribution to fulfilling our strategic intent.

I did this once a month, and I structured the day to provide as realistic perspective of the type of issues I was typically engaged in. There is always a risk in being “too cheesy” so I tried to leave plenty of time for extemporaneous activity if I could.

The role was to engage my guest in whatever the moment was offering. They weren’t there to simply look and listen, they were there to offer their point of view on whatever subject was being discussed.

They loved the opportunity; they told their friends and colleagues of their experience and they became influencers of opinion in the workplace. And many of them achieved rewarding and successful careers.

5. Customers before anything

I always planned weekly customer meetings; I scheduled them early to avoid any conflict with internal meetings.
But of course things change and inevitably my boss would call a meeting that conflicted with a scheduled customer meet.

It was risky but I never put the customer off in favour of complying with my boss’s request that I meet with him or attend an executive meeting. I ALWAYS kept my promises to customers even if it was an uncomfortable and unheard of choice.

My boss at least understood (even though he may not have agreed with) my choice and agreed to support me.

My peers, on the other hand, thought my choice was reckless and not in my own personal career interests.

Turns out that with a great boss you can both stand your ground on principles and have a rewarding career (because customers always show their appreciation with their loyalty).

I’m not saying other leaders should follow me, but I encourage you to step out and find your own unique signature to practice your craft at an even higher level than is possible through traditional leadership doctrine.

Find your own way.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.18.19 at 04:19 am by Roy Osing
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