Leaders, don't underestimate your impact!

With over 30 years of business experiences in companies large and small, at times working as a senior commercial executive in the food and beverage industry and more recently in running my own consulting firm that has served 35+ clients across a wide range of industries, I continue to come upon examples where key leaders have dramatically affected businesses and organizations by the impact of their actions and/or their inactions.  While I have certainly had the chance to work closely with talented, impactful and inspiring leaders, the contrary examples abound and are the center of the following essay.

In the spirit of confidentiality, I don't plan to "name names" about specific individuals in the following paragraphs, but rather to focus on the lessons that I have learned in some key areas where I have personally witnessed senior leaders really blow it!  In each of the focus areas I will review actions taken that lead an organization awry and other situations where the lack of action was the culprit to failing results.

Talent:  I start with a bias that I have always felt that 'talent" in an organization is precious, and many organizations have historically treated it as fungible/replaceable/generic as they build their strategic plans.  In my consulting work today, I have worked with numerous clients over the past three years and in every assignment, we have dealt with the lack of talent, or the loss of key talent, or the inability to hire great talent into key roles, etc. as major barriers to growth and future performance for those clients' companies.  I have watched this dynamic paralyze senior leader to NOT  replace key senior direct reports who are not performing well in their roles, or who are not living up to the values of the company/organization simply because they were not sure if and how they would replace those under-performers.  Senior leaders who are under-performers are a "cancer" in an organization and while it is harder now than ever to find and retain great talent, holding onto mediocre performers in a "hope" that things will get better is NEVER the right move.  Have high expectations for your entire team, especially your senior team, and treat them as the precious resource they are to your company/organization, and NEVER tolerate poor performance/behavior for long.  Take action and remove those poor performers before they ruin the organization!

Young leaders:  Nurturing your leaders is so important and so often neglected.  Think about how often highly performing individual contributors find themselves promoted into the role of leading a team for the first time and are so often put into those roles with no additional training/coaching/mentoring, etc.  put yourself in their shoes, ... its a freakout!  As you can see from my essays on this blog about leadership, I DEEPLY believe that leading teams is very different from managing projects and it takes work, practice, and support to learn to be a effective leader.  You can read more about this approach at https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/03/three-impact-points-of-leadership.html.  Too often I have watched senior leaders just assume that there is a pipeline of young leaders coming up through an organization, and that there will always be enough talent to fill the organizations leadership needs.... an assumption that is often wrong and always dangerous!  Senior leaders need to nurture young leaders and help by teaching/coaching and mentoring them as they move into their first leadership roles and help them find their way through the inevitable leadership challenges that they will face.  See more on this topic at https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/05/teachable-point-of-view.html

Succession:  This is an area where I have watched senior leaders and boards really do damage to great organizations!  In large companies and small, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike, no one wants to take the time and think about the inevitable challenges ahead when key executives depart an organization.  I have unfortunately witnessed organizations really struggle when CEO's pass away abruptly, or founders that become ill, or key executives who become disabled with NO succession plans in place.  While succession plans certainly don't guarantee success, the lack there of typically precedes failure!  While there is no underestimating the power of denial among boards and senior teams, an annual review of a succession plan is needed and the unfortunate reality is that too many organizations DON'T even have succession plans in place for the top/key executive roles.

Innovation:  As a lifeblood of so many organizations, innovation is too often thought about as incremental, episodic, and the domain of one organization ( too often R&D or Marketing.)  Regarding  the concept of "incremental," innovation efforts are regularly driven to be additive to the base set of an organization's brands/products/offerings.  While not incorrect, I believe it is insufficient for long term success.  Innovation needs to drive incremental growth versus an organization's current base of business AND drive to develop new concepts/products/offerings that would make your current offerings outmoded and obsolete.  In this fast paced competitive landscape, if we are not pushing innovation hard enough, we should be certain that competitors known or unknown will!  One added idea on the idea of "episodic," it is my experience that too often we think about innovation fitting into the annual business plan and hitting certain commercial windows.  While true,  we need to think about the concept of "Flow" which is defined as a "steady,continuous stream of something."  The work of innovation needs to be ongoing, and "flowing" in an organization, gaining input and ideas from across an organization and the marketplace, and "flowing" towards the market and shoppers & consumers.  Too often leaders drive innovation to make the next quarter, or annual budget, rather then working for it to be a driving and "flowing" source of growth opportunities across fiscal periods.

Personal Impact:  The reality that senior leaders are watched closely, listened to deeply and talked about pervasively is more true today than ever.  All you need to do is read "Glassdoor" and you can see how key leaders are discussed and reviewed.  It continually surprises me to see/hear senior leaders complain that they are "under a microscope" and that the level of review and critique is "out of bounds" or "unfair." While I am partially empathetic, I am not naive!  Senior execs ARE in the limelight, ARE being reviewed in  micro detail, ARE being discussed and reviewed on-line and live and that's not about to stop!  My recommendation is to not operate in denial but embrace the truth of that dynamic and turn it to your advantage.  Use your personal impact moments "with intent," (read more at https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/08/act-with-intent-redux.html ) and impact the organization in the direction that YOU choose.   Early on in my career I had the chance to work for a number of outstanding leaders, well before the advent of the internet and social media.  Even in those "prehistoric" days, those leaders realized they were highly visible and their public actions were often designed to have the organization "learn lessons" or "build skills" in ways that were "taught" in the everyday flow of their leadership actions.

Hopefully a few of these ideas have struck home and can prove helpful.  Most importantly, I want to encourage all leaders reading this essay to NOT underestimate their impact, but to look for ways to have the impact that they intend.  Leading an organization or a team is truly an honor and a privilege, and my strong encouragement to all readers is to not take it lightly!