Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Lead, Learn, or Get Out of the Way

Patricia Leonard, Executive Vice President of the American Management Association, is a woman with a mission: to build the AMA’s U.S. market presence in a way that truly “breaks from the pack”. When I had lunch with her recently, I was impressed with her passion and foresight. But what doubly impressed me was her expectations of the people who work at AMA. I think it was Tex Schramm, the Dallas Cowboy general manager from 1960-1989 who described his management philosophy as “Lead, follow, or get out of the way!” Schramm was obsessive about raising the team’s performance, and as far as he was concerned, people on the payroll had to make a clear choice: to step up to a leadership position and make things happen; or, to heed the leaders’ directives and implement them like crazy; or, to simply “get out of the way”—which means either leave, or minimally, don’t create any friction or hurdles to the progress under way. It worked. Under his helm, the Cowboys franchised transformed themselves into the incredibly successful “America’s Team” brand. Pat Leonard says that’s not good enough any more. Her motto is: “Lead, learn, or get out of the way!” In today’s knowledge economy, where the application of cutting edge talent is the best predictor of corporate competitive success, employees can no longer simply choose to “follow”. Corporate innovation and performance is an all-hands phenomenon. So from Leonard’s perspective, each employee (including manager) must choose to lead something (a product launch, the execution of a project, a cost-reduction effort—something!). If you can’t do that, she believes, then take it upon yourself to learn what you can do. Learn new skills, technologies and techniques. Learn about new markets. Learn about the deficiencies of the organization and what can be done to address them. Don’t wait for the company to provide you with learning. Seek opportunities until you figure out what you can do to improve things and spur the organization to further heights. At the end of the day, my take on all this is: Whether you’re a leader or a learner, or both, at your performance review you don’t brag about how well you’ve done your job over the past year. Good performance is a given. Instead, you brag about how much you’ve changed your job to create new value for the organization.Knowing Pat, she has even less patience with those who would choose to simply “get out of the way”. Companies can’t afford to keep that sort of organizational lard of employees who retired a few years ago but never told anyone

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