Phase 2-Enlightened Pathfinding – Working with Success Strategies-06.21.16

by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“You don’t have a hope in hell of leading and bringing out the best in people, if you don’t have a success strategy.”

    

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  It’s absolutely amazing how many times this writer has quizzed executives regarding their view of one of the most important items within their leadership role? They usually share multiple viewpoints, but rarely do they hit upon the necessity for producing a success strategy. Without one, an executive is not even close to being positioned to lead anyone. It is one of those vital ingredients of leader-pathfinding.

 

As you can see from the inset diagram, the concept is three-dimensional and simple. Like many simple concepts, it can be extremely powerful. Done right, as per its name, it can bring great success. As indicated, it brings three dimensions: Compelling Vision, Intentions and Resources; Direct or Indirect People Power; and Your Enlightened Leadership. Let’s consider them in turn.

 

»Compelling Vision, Intentions and Resources  – Let’s suppose you wish to bring a new product to market. You can either do that by yourself or with the involvement of others. If you do it by yourself, that’s self-leadership. If you do it with others, then that requires true people-leadership.

      In the case of people-leadership, it will require the involving others or dedicated team members at the outset. Immerse them  in formulating a vision around your market and product opportunity, and the best way to make any market introduction. The reality being: if your team members or others are not as vested as you are in that product launch, then you will probably end up doing it alone – something many executives end up doing out of their impatience, frustration and inadequate understanding of people-leadership.

Once you and your people decide the market strategies you intend pursuing – hopefully valuable and exciting ones – then you can resolve who’s going to do what. The more your people are engaged in formulating those strategies, the more committed they will become to being part of the project.

Beyond that, you will have to agree upon the resources required to do the job effectively: be that marketing materials, graphics, sales presentations, financial budgets, sales or marketing specialists, agents, media sources, and so on. However, you and your team will also need to decide which resources are essential and which are nice to have, and then determine what’s available. (NOTE: Some of the most successful campaigns have been executed with rather tight resource limits: probably because that encourages people to become that much more creative.)

 

»Direct or Indirect People Power – Many executives become somewhat sheepish these days when asked about their people resources.  In these times of slim budgets, a considerable number have few  or next to no direct team members. However, if they have an important role, they still have many indirect people they impact and can collaborate with. These additional people resources are virtual team members. Indirects include all manner of workplace people: like independent sales agents, marketing agencies, operations people, accounting staff, and so on.

     In fact, one could argue that these indirect team members call upon you to bring a much higher order of leadership skill, since they will only co-operate or make themselves available to you if you approach them in the right way. No ordering, no pushing, no structuring, no command and control. Only enlightened leadership will bring their greatest degree of commitment. (NOTE: Leadership Solutions can offer a number of prior papers on enlightened leadership.)

 

»Your Enlightened Leadership – It embraces a philosophy of fully engaging people, so they will bring their greatest energy, talents and expertise to bear on the task at hand. It fully incorporates the PEACAM mode: where P= compelling Purpose (your earlier vision and intentions); E= treating them with respect and a feeling of Equality; A= enabling them to feel a sense of Achievement; C= sensing Camaraderie at all levels; A= a sense of Autonomy, trust and empowerment; and M= confident they have Mastery of the topics, products and services at hand. Such a combination will infuse them with enormous intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is way more powerful than our traditional motivation methods – competition, incentives, goals, fear, accountability and measurement; or CIGFAM.

     Enlightened leadership will encourage positive team behavior, involvement, enjoyment, personal growth, creativity, enthusiasm, commitment and attentiveness. All those attributes desired by effective leaders.

So your success strategy will incorporate all three above dimensions and need to be in place whenever you take on a leadership assignment. Regrettably this has neither occurred to or is taken for granted  by so many executives. It is no wonder that so many teams do not achieve their full potential.

 

Leading with a success strategy is implicitly expected by any group of people you are fortunate enough to lead; whether they are direct or indirect team members. That is why so many workplace people feel let down; when they discover that a success strategy doesn’t exist. It’s the first tool executives should turn to in their leadership toolkit.

 

Once an organization reaches a certain size, where more long-term strategies are essential to “steer the ship,” your success strategy will morph into a strategic framework. The latter is the subject of another enlightened leadership paper. Suffice it is to say: such a Framework is defined by four components: Vision and positioning; Know-how; Resources; and Objectives (both operational and people).

 

Based upon this paper, your first leadership task this month is to ensure you already have a success strategy in place. That you and your people – either direct or indirect – have:

» A compelling vision + intentions + resources

» The right group of people to collaborate with – rather than work alone – be they direct or indirect, or both.

» A commitment to enlightened leadership and its PEACAM approach.

In the event that you bring the above factors to bear, you will have a bright future as a people-leader and will likely consistently accomplish any desired optimum performance.

 

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