“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.” – Robert Jarvik

Leaders pioneer and initiate change. Leaders are not sheepwalkers and they do not follow the traditional cow paths of life. Leaders bring the future into the present. This is because leaders see what others do not, they think differently. It’s because of this that visionaries find resistance from many fronts. Consider the following…

“The flight be machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible” – Simon Newcomb, an astronomer of some note, 1902

“It is an idle dream to imagine that . . . automobiles will take the place of railways in the long distance movement . . of passengers.” – American Road Congress, 1913

“The odds are now that the United States will not be able to honor the 1970 manned-lunar-landing date set by Mr. Kennedy.” – New Scientist, April 30, 1964

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” – Ken Olsen, president Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Leaders create change and are often faced with resistance and challenge. In spite of this many succeed…

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Photo by Sebastian Fritzon

Thinking is critical to leadership. A post on the Anecdote blog highlights the importance of improving how we think as leaders….

“The best thing we could do for ourselves is reflect on the way we think…. Our thoughts affect the way we feel about something (emotions) and the way we react to situations (our behavior) and that chain reaction determines the outcome (results).”

Leadership and thinking go hand-in-hand, because how we think, results in our attitudes, emotions, behaviours and ultimately our actions.

“Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities….. ‘The world we have created is a product of our way of thinking,’ said Einstein. Nothing will change in the future without fundamentally new ways of thinking. This is the real work of leadership….. because of how we think, we’re strangling the life out of ourselves. When we start to see the world more as it is, we stop strangling ourselves” – Peter Senge from the Introduction to “Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership”

One key leadership practice is the continual focus on shaping people’s thinking. The shaping of thinking begins with the leader’s vision and ends with the leader’s behaviours which are the embodiment of the vision. As leaders we need to devote sufficient time to thinking and the shaping of our thoughts. We cannot allow media to do the thinking for us.

With the importance of thinking to leadership it’s necessary for leaders to protect their minds and thoughts. As leaders we need to take responsibility for what we allow into out mind, what we think about and the attitudes we embrace. This mean we need to be careful with what books we read, which people we associate with and that attitudes we allow.

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One of the topics that I have written about on numerous occasions is the importance of setting aside time to reflect and think. How are you doing with this leadership practice? Do you have a place to think and shape your thoughts? Consider the following event in the life of Edward Bear from Winnie the Pooh…

“Here is Edward Bear now coming downstairs on his head bump bump bump behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming down though he feels there really ought to be a better way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it.” – A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh (original version from 1926)

Bump bump bump! Does this characterise your days, weeks and months? Are you acting purposefully? Are you taking the necessary time to think? When last did you set aside some time to think about how and why you’re doing what you’re doing?

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1. Are You Taking Enough Time Out to Think?
2. Leader, Are You Taking Enough Time Out To Think?

Photo by www.hansvink.nl

Leaders do not get enough time to think, this is the result of a recent survey. . .

“… of nearly 1,200 managers and directors by the UK-based Chartered Management Institute has found more than eight out of 10 struggle to prioritise their work, with conflicting demands pulling them in all directions…. Two-thirds complain they have ‘little time to think’ and more than half struggle to find time to plan strategically…. the majority of managers claim they struggle to finish tasks, with seven out of 10 admitting they are not looking for new market opportunities or product gaps in the marketplace.”

Taking time out to think is critical for effective leadership. Tom Peters has also discussed the importance of leaders taking time to think, he quotes from the book “Leadership the Hard Way” in which the author “insists that the leader-manager must free up no less than 50% of his-her time from routine tasks.”:

“Most managers spend a great deal of time thinking about what they plan to do, but relatively little time thinking about what they plan not to do … As a result, they become so caught up … in fighting the fires of the moment that they cannot really attend to the longterm threats and risks facing the organization. So the first soft skill of leadership the hard way is to cultivate the perspective of Marcus Aurelius: avoid busyness, free up your time, stay focused on what really matters. Let me put it bluntly: every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ‘slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.”

Are you setting aside time to think? Is it enough?

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1. Are You Taking Enough Time Out to Think?
2. Where Are You Spending Your Time and Energy?
3. Time is Limited…… Are you Spending it on Purpose?

MIT Sloan Management Review has a great article “In Search of Growth Leaders” by Sean D. Carr, Jeanne M. Liedtka, Robert Rosen and Robert E. Wiltbank discussing the importance of growth leaders. Growth leaders are these managers who can generate organic growth to “find new streams of revenue without always resorting to acquisitions”. After three years of research the authors have identified the following characteristics and strategies that distinguish growth leaders:

• Rich in Experience “All of the growth leaders in our study had unusually varied experience early in their careers. Along the way, they acquired skills that eventually helped them explicitly in their launching of growth initiatives…. Along with diversity of experience, we found in our subjects a deep-seated belief in their own abilities and in their power to change the world around them. For them, life is a journey of learning. They thrived on accepting challenges, taking action and getting immediate results. These positive traits tended to reinforce one another in a virtuous circle…This type of growth mindset prepared them to see and to chase opportunity.”

• Changing the Rules… “Most managers are programmed to think the way the head office does, to seek certainty and to rely on data with which to predict and plan. That approach can work well for an established business that knows its field and where surprises are few. But it is deadly in the world of growth, where what a company doesn’t know is far more important than what it does know. Growth is all about uncertainty and how to work with it. Prediction and analysis have their place, but they can’t be the only tools a business has.”
• …But Managing Risk “Although growth leaders embraced new ventures, they weren’t risk seekers. In fact, they minimized risk wherever possible.… while most managers are taught to approach new projects by calculating expected return on investment, growth leaders are more likely to estimate an acceptable degree of loss to start. This lets them pursue interesting opportunities without investing more than they can afford to lose… The managers in our study tended to place small bets fast, then study how their bets had influenced the market. This, in turn, encouraged them either to double-down or to place new bets elsewhere. It’s an approach that allowed them to be fast, flexible and capable of capitalizing on early success.”
• Preferring People to Data “Success was based more often on thoughtful exploration of customers’ needs than on dry market data. The managers in our study personally sought detailed knowledge about individual customers, instead of just seeing them as data in market-research reports… Direct knowledge about customers also helped the managers see what was most important to the customers in terms of products and services.”
• Pragmatic Idealists “In assembling teams, growth leaders learned to combine two seemingly opposing forces: holding people ruthlessly accountable for results, and engaging their passion to build something great together… Their overall approach was to be tough but fair. But they were adamant about acquiring staff with only the needed skill sets. Team effectiveness often depended on moving people quickly into positions that optimized their strengths, and removing people who did not fit or who lacked the necessary capabilities…. Groups pursuing new ventures were seen as no place for rookies. As one leader commented, growth initiatives should be about testing markets, not people. Yet despite this hard-nosed attitude, employees who worked for such managers invariably described them in terms such as ‘caring,’ ‘motivating’ and ‘inspiring.’”

Grow leader seem to be able to hold people accountable, to inspire passion for the vision and purpose and have a gut feel for making business decisions, informed by their rich experiences, their courage to challenge rules and to make calculated risks.

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1. How to Develop Your Personal Growth Plan
2. Where Growth Happens
3. Growth is Optional!