DeM Banter: great article, please read…I could not agree more, honestly…I did not contribute to the article in any way. DeM comments in italics…
Never assume that the conventional wisdom is right. Old ways of operation can be sticky. After all, they have their own built-in constituencies. HUGE: institutional inertia is so hard to overcome, but we have to start somewhere…if we can get enough leaders questioning conventional wisdom…we have a WIN!
Be willing to explore things that could turn into a dead end. “If you think you have it all figured out before you start your analysis,” says Martin, “you’re not going to solve any mysteries.” One thing I try to point out…if our project, concept, or issue does not work…it is not a failure it is simply a data point…we now know what didn’t work….but we don’t want to turn that data point into a trend line.
Project confidence. “My case team was a little weirded out,” he recalls, “because I told them I’m not sure what we’d find. I never had doubts that it was essential for us to understand our distribution chain better. But I had to supply all the confidence.” I would hope a leader can project confidence….if you don’t believe in your own ideas…who will?
Don’t fall into the “execution trap”. “Strategy is about making choices: We’re going to do this, and not that. How many strategies can you think of that allow people below the top level of the company to turn off their brain and simply ‘execute’ a strategy by rote? It doesn’t happen that way.” This one has always been a big deal for me…there is no way that the top leaders ever have all the answers…EVER! As leaders we need to share our ideas and concepts and let others lash onto them, enrich them, and expand them…I can’t think of a time when an idea got worse because we asked for inputs.
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