by Dr. Cecil Clements (17th July 2012)
Increasingly these days I hear talk of good values, I hear companies that talk about core values that are based on integrity and honor and find that there’s attention towards ethical decision making. I am always encouraged and thrilled when I hear that ethics and corporate culture can be one, that they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Every time I read the book ‘HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything …. In Business (and in Life)’ by Dov Seidman, I am encouraged by what he says. I’m just going to talk about the ‘5 How’s of leadership’. Dov Seidman is Chairman and CEO of LRN, a company since 1994 and has helped over 15 million people in over 700 companies worldwide. They have offices in New York, Mumbai, Los Angeles and London, but Fortune Magazine calls Dov ‘the hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit’, and I think the key word here is virtue. The Economic Times also named him as one of the ‘Top 60 Global Thinkers of the last decade’.
Dov Seidman says that the first Five How’s of leadership are:
Increasingly these days I hear talk of good values, I hear companies that talk about core values that are based on integrity and honor and find that there’s attention towards ethical decision making. I am always encouraged and thrilled when I hear that ethics and corporate culture can be one, that they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Every time I read the book ‘HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything …. In Business (and in Life)’ by Dov Seidman, I am encouraged by what he says. I’m just going to talk about the ‘5 How’s of leadership’. Dov Seidman is Chairman and CEO of LRN, a company since 1994 and has helped over 15 million people in over 700 companies worldwide. They have offices in New York, Mumbai, Los Angeles and London, but Fortune Magazine calls Dov ‘the hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit’, and I think the key word here is virtue. The Economic Times also named him as one of the ‘Top 60 Global Thinkers of the last decade’.
Dov Seidman says that the first Five How’s of leadership are:
- Vision: having a leadership disposition means mentally envisioning a better future for yourself, the tasks at hand and those with whom you labor. Leadership starts with vision and leaders envision every moment. Vision is so important for leaders, to be able to know where you are going, to be able to know where you’re asking people to come along with, to be able to sell something to them, to have them see what you see and to be able to take people there. That’s the task of a leader and to begin as a leader, one needs to have vision. Maybe today is a good time to stop and say, “Do I have vision for what I’m doing?” in whichever slot you are in your company, do you have a vision for yourself, for the people who work around you? Because it’s core essential to what you do and how you will do it.
- To be able to communicate and enlist people. It’s one thing to have a vision or a goal; it’s another thing to enlist people around you and help them to see what you see. To truly enlist, you must be open and forthcoming about your motives, be transparent in your communication and reach out to others in a way that they feel you’ve truly shared. Once leaders reach out to others with a quality of communication, it allows people to share, to be enlisted and to make your visions theirs. That is one of the keys. It’s one thing to have a vision yourself; it’s another thing to get people to buy into that vision because you need other people around you to be able to accomplish anything. Unless one’s a real maverick (then there are people who are mavericks who are able to do that sometimes, but not all the time) you need a team of people with different talents, with different resources, with different abilities and skill sets, to be able to come around and help you to actualize that vision.
- To seize authority and take responsibility. One must always be ready to put one’s hand up at a meeting and say – “I have an idea that I’d like to run by this task force. I’d like to complete that assignment.” Leaders stand up for what they envision and are not afraid to occasionally take center-stage. They offer themselves up. They seize the authority and take the responsibility that comes with leadership. Carpe Diem - seize the day is the watchword. If you never step up, you always consign yourself to a career of following. You may think that you are not the type to just put your hand up and say that you will lead. Dov Seidman says that that may be true. But what you’ll find is that there are particular points in a particular strategy, where you know that that role is yours. That’s when you step up and say, “That’s something I can do. I can disseminate project metrics. I can provide essential data to make a better decision.” When that time comes, you need to put your hand up and say, “I can do it”. Opportunities to lead come once in a way but when they do, you need to step up and seize the moment and the moment will seize you.
- Plan and implement: Not only plan but implement as well. The corridors of the corporate world are full of plans that never made the light of day because they were never implemented. Walt Disney says, “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” Leadership is ideas put into action. So have a plan in place and be ready to implement it.
- Build succession and continuity: don’t make it so that you are the only one who can complete the job. Make sure that whether you are there or not, that the job is completed. A vision must always be bigger than who you are. It must have more people than you and it must outlive you. That’s the hallmark of a great vision. James C. Collins and Jerry Porras in their book ‘Built To Last’ put it brilliantly – “Leaders build clocks that keep telling the time whether they are there or not.” They don’t build anything that depends on a single person to show up and tell perfect time.
Dov Seidman goes on to say, “In 1964, Disney began to buy unproductive orange groves near Orlando, Florida, for what was called the ‘Florida Project’. It was one of Walt’s grandest notions. But as the project developed, he got lung cancer and soon died. His brother Roy and a team of Disney’s hand-selected and trained designers picked up the ball and saw it through to completion. Walt Disneyworld opened in 1971, the largest theme park ever imagined. He had enlisted them in his vision and they had made it their own. Roy Disney died 3 months later, but succession plans were in place and Donn Tantum became the first non-Disney family member to be Chairman and CEO of Walt Disney Company. The dream lived on. A succession plan was in place.
“To build business doesn’t seem to need you as much to accomplish that goal. We could use you better in this new position.” That’s what you need to hear from your superiors. They need to look at you and say, “You don’t need to be in this place for what you have started to be finished. We can use you in another place. Increment to progress, to getting ahead, is to leave a foundation behind.
A good thought for us as we start a Tuesday is to wonder, “Are we captured by the things that are breathtaking, things that are beyond us but dreams that have been placed upon our hearts? Or are we allowing those things to lie subdued within us?”
John Maxwell in ‘The Success Journey’ talks about Florence Littauer’s mother and Florence Littauer herself says in her book ‘Silver Boxes’. By the way, Florence Littauer wrote ‘Personality Plus’, a great book on personality. In the book, she tells a story revealing the power that our dreams can hold over us. She talks about her mother-in-law Marita Littauer, “after knowing her for many years and being a little intimidated by her, I once asked my mother-in-law who was ageing by this time, what she would have done if she could have done anything she wanted? Without a moment’s hesitation, her mother-in-law replied – an opera singer. She said that she had wanted to study music but her mother thought it was a waste of time and that she would make more money in the millinery business. But she was in one show in college where she had the lead.
The memory of that dread never left Marita Littauer even though her mother had shot it down. In her last days, her mind faded and she could no longer speak. But some evenings, she would stand proudly by her chair and sing opera to her nurse. Even in the twilight of her years, that deep desire never left her. Florence said, “Mother had talent that was never developed, a music box that was never allowed to play, a career that never began. Mother died with the music still in her.”
I pray that this will not be true for any of us on this call, that we will not die with the dreams still within us, with the vision unfulfilled, the music unplayed. I pray that today, carpe diem would be our watchword. Seize the day, my friends.
Let us pray. Almighty God, come upon us in fresh new ways. Dust off those things that need to be dusted so that we can see once again those visions that you have planted in us, within our corporate walls, what we need to do, what are things far beyond our capabilities, that you can come and help revive. I pray that those dreams and visions will find fulfillment in this group on this call today, that we will be stirred anew, to seek after those dreams, to see them implemented and fulfilled, to build succession that is way beyond us. Inspire us today, I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
“To build business doesn’t seem to need you as much to accomplish that goal. We could use you better in this new position.” That’s what you need to hear from your superiors. They need to look at you and say, “You don’t need to be in this place for what you have started to be finished. We can use you in another place. Increment to progress, to getting ahead, is to leave a foundation behind.
A good thought for us as we start a Tuesday is to wonder, “Are we captured by the things that are breathtaking, things that are beyond us but dreams that have been placed upon our hearts? Or are we allowing those things to lie subdued within us?”
John Maxwell in ‘The Success Journey’ talks about Florence Littauer’s mother and Florence Littauer herself says in her book ‘Silver Boxes’. By the way, Florence Littauer wrote ‘Personality Plus’, a great book on personality. In the book, she tells a story revealing the power that our dreams can hold over us. She talks about her mother-in-law Marita Littauer, “after knowing her for many years and being a little intimidated by her, I once asked my mother-in-law who was ageing by this time, what she would have done if she could have done anything she wanted? Without a moment’s hesitation, her mother-in-law replied – an opera singer. She said that she had wanted to study music but her mother thought it was a waste of time and that she would make more money in the millinery business. But she was in one show in college where she had the lead.
The memory of that dread never left Marita Littauer even though her mother had shot it down. In her last days, her mind faded and she could no longer speak. But some evenings, she would stand proudly by her chair and sing opera to her nurse. Even in the twilight of her years, that deep desire never left her. Florence said, “Mother had talent that was never developed, a music box that was never allowed to play, a career that never began. Mother died with the music still in her.”
I pray that this will not be true for any of us on this call, that we will not die with the dreams still within us, with the vision unfulfilled, the music unplayed. I pray that today, carpe diem would be our watchword. Seize the day, my friends.
Let us pray. Almighty God, come upon us in fresh new ways. Dust off those things that need to be dusted so that we can see once again those visions that you have planted in us, within our corporate walls, what we need to do, what are things far beyond our capabilities, that you can come and help revive. I pray that those dreams and visions will find fulfillment in this group on this call today, that we will be stirred anew, to seek after those dreams, to see them implemented and fulfilled, to build succession that is way beyond us. Inspire us today, I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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