Change involves risk, and there will never be enough information to guarantee that you have made the right decision. At some point, leaders must trust their accumulated experience and their gut instinct and seize the moment.
An effective decisions made at the right moment
Making decisions is the defining aspect of leadership. There has never been a [...]
Change is implemented more quickly and successfully when alternative options have been discussed in advance, and when the team as a whole has reached a consensus decision on the right way forward. Consensus also helps ensure that the people who are closest to the likely results of a decision get to make their voices heard.
The [...]
Successful leaders offer substantial autonomy to members of the team and to parts of the business. Individuals are empowered, and respond to this; decision-making is de-centralised, bringing more opinion and directly relevant experience into the process and, ideally, bringing decision-making closer to the customer. Whole units can be allowed to take control of their own [...]
If the tap in the staff kitchen is broken and nobody mends it, colleagues quite quickly begin to draw a number of very negative conclusions—in particular, that management isn’t particularly bothered about the welfare or comfort of the staff and that, since management don’t fix things that are broken in the staff’s day-to-day environment, it [...]
People still talk about ‘the masks of leadership’—about a leader’s need to present different ‘faces’ to different audiences. Forget it. People see straight through people who are not being honest with them; they know when they are being manipulated. And people can only be genuinely inspired by the real thing—by leaders who reveals at least [...]
Everyone wants to please the boss. Few of us are immune to the joys of hearing what we want to hear. Bad news, on the other hand, is never welcome. Leaders need to separate the message from the messenger: not knowing about bad news is the most dangerous thing of all. Some corporate structures also [...]
Jack Welch, ex-CEO of America’s giant General Electric Company, is famous for his insistence on ‘candor’ in business: the burning need to get to the heart of the problem without social niceties. But this approach has its potential downside.
The Idea
Jack Welch, the world-famous ex-CEO of General Electric, is surely right about ‘candor’. I [...]
Leaders need to tread the fine line between having the necessary confidence in their own abilities, and the lack of sensitivity and humility that will prevent them from successfully leading a team of other very able people.
The idea
Rudolph Giuliani, mayor of New York City from 1994-2001, makes the case for a leader’s need for [...]
All of a leader’s great plans come to nothing if they are not successfully executed.
[This edited version of 'Make it Happen' from 100 Great Leadership Ideas appeared in the Sunday Times ©The Sunday Times]
The idea
Michael Eisner, former chief executive of Walt Disney, said, “The problem is not the ideas. The problem is getting them executed. [...]
All leaders like to believe that they are doing this—but without fundamental systems and cultural structures in place, they are probably deluding themselves.
The problem with ‘harnessing the intelligence of the organisation’ is that it is so obviously a good idea that many mangers and leaders are convinced that they are doing it already. After all, [...]
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