The One Thing Part IIII: Great Leading

Great Leading: 3 keys
-- Discover what is universal and capitalize on it
-- Clarity of mission is essential to great leading
-- a great leader rallies people toward a better future

Brown described 5 fears we all share in common:

5 Fears of Human Nature
1. Fear of Death (our own and family's)- The Need for Security
2. Fear of the Outsider - The Need for Community
3. Fear of the Future - The Need for Clarity
4. Fear of Chaos - The Need for Authority
5. Fear of Insignificance - The Need for Respect

Which one demands the most of the Great Leader's attention? Not the last one. The Need for Respect is usually handled by an intermediary in our society, the clergy. The priest can tell you that you might be low on the earthly totem, but by adhering to precepts you would have the chance for prestige and respect. Today in the world of work this intermediary is handled by an intermediary, the Manager. Not everyone can become the CEO, but each can achieve nobility in their role. Managers provide avenues to earn respect by enlarging our roles and building on our strengths.
The need for authority doesn't help describe what you are leading toward, so that doesn't help you much.
The three that remain are all up for grabs - the need for Clarity, Community or Security can be trumpeted as a leaders vision. The need for Security and Community are static, they may achieve some leadership, but great leadership comes by neutralizing our fear of the future. This is huge. If you can make the future positive, then you really will have done something for all of us. Engage our fear of the unknown and turn it into spiritedness. How? Not by being passionate. Passion is temporary. People tend not to trust them. Not by being consistent. Consistency is good, but we all know situations change and we want you to change too. By far the most effective way to turn fear into confidence is to be clear; to define the future in such vivid terms through your actions, words, images, pictures, heroes and scores that we can all see where you, and thus we, are headed. Tweak your vision of the future to accommodate unforeseen circumstances, these tweaks and adjustments must always be accompanied with great vividness. Clarity is the antidote to anxiety, and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader.


The Points of Clarity

#1.) Who do we serve?
Wal-mart states "we serve people who live paycheck to paycheck." Take great care to tell them who their audience is and they will adapt to all audiences better! Wal-marts ripple effect allowed them to hit their audience and many others. Best Buy decided to respect their audience and serve "the smart shopper confused by the products we sell" and so bundled things more easy for them to understand. Sales fluorished.

SREC audience: Patients and doctors with timely, helpful, and organzied customer service. We are there smartest best friend in eyecare, willing to do what it takes to get the result they want.

#2.) What is our core strength?
Is it efficiency? partnering? Technology? Better service? Best marketing? Our economic engine can be improved if we know what it is. But also -- engage our fear of the future and tell us why we will win? Why are we the best? Why will we overcome our obstacles? The answer does not have to reflect present reality, it doesn't have to be right, it just has to be clear. The act of clarity is a constructive act - if you are clear, we your followers will make you right. Best Buy told their employees by strengthening the front line, they would win. They told each department to prepare the smartest, friendliest employees possible and they would win. They clarified the goal for everyone and things cut through to a more efficient and productive outcomes for everyone.

SREC core strength: tell us exactly why we will prevail, pick your favorite Clarity Voice
-- we are always improving, learning (dave), and caring :)
-- quality of care and caring (rob)
-- we provide an excellent place to work (Bev)
-- providing the best quality enhancement to every patient possible
-- safety and quality
-- customer service and quality

#3). What is our Core Score?
Example: Great prisons prisons was number of escapees. But then it changed to number or returnees or repeat offenders, and fluorished as a better system. Some truisms: "What gets measured gets managed". "You get what you inspect." "You cannot improve what you cannot measure." If you want us to follow you you should tell us the core score where we are going, the forest is dark and deep and we want to know where you are leading us. The balanced scorecard with many metrics satisfies the neurotic leader who wants imposed order, but it doesn't help the masses to mount followership in a cohesive and effective direction. It saps our strength and undermines our confidence. It's okay to use a balanced scorecard, but only broadcast the one metric. Quantify the one strength we possess and help us improve it, and we will follow you.

Best Buy uses several questions to evaluate their core strength, "employee engagement". They use - "does someone at work care about you?", and "at work do you have time to work on what you do best?". The 12 question survey found in "First Break all the Rules" outlines 12 questions that show if an employee is being superbly managed, and hence fully engaged.
Mayor Guiliani picked crime reduction as his core metric, and by reducing crime, brought clarity and perspective to all other areas. Including improving tourism, etc. What matters is that its clear.

SREC: number of internal referrals for cataract or LASIK surgery, or glasses.
-- consider a quantity survey of customers regarding core metric: glasses, cataract, LASIK
-- consider a quality survey of employee engagement, quality of their being managed.
-- be clear, pick one thing.

#4) What action must I take?
Like a player shooting a basketball, leaders take action. Action is unambiguous and is clear to those that are watching you. Symbolic actions define your intentions and focus vision but are unintrusive (improving the cabdrivers, the graffitti, or the squeegee men in NYC). Systematic actions refocus daily activities, are more intrusive, and have more direct effect good or bad. When Giuliani forced twice weekly CompStat Crime meetings from the manager of every bureau, he forced transparency, idea sharing, and focused on bureau data now from every manager. While these were management outcomes, the leadership effect was one of clarity and powerful.

SREC leadership actions
-- Frame drive is new, innovative, affordable, grassroots and local
-- Survey would constantly hone in on our core audience evaluation and report our strength
-- a managers meeting on the survey would also clarity our goal - better customer satisfaction.


Virtually every excellent leader excels and symbolic and systematic action. In todays barrage of goals, you must take the time to distil down the clutter to the key to your organizations success and who you serve. Your talent for distillation and piercing complexity will determine your success as a leader here. Here are 3 practices or disciplines a leader can use to improve his/her clarity:

1. Take Time to Reflect: upon your critical function toward group success. Ruminate on the requirements for excellence, success, what the future holds
2. Select your Heroes with Great Care: Pick your hero (Dr. Sonntag) and clarify why they are your hero (because they possess your core strength: great caring and great customer service, great learning and improving, etc.) The heroes you pick reveal the future you are trying to create.
3. Practice. Great leaders try out and refine their speeches, MLK fell back on his stump speech instead of his written speech in "I have a dream" because he knew it worked. Practice and try out your core audience, core strength, core metric and refine them.

Effective leaders don't have to be passionate, or charming, or brilliant, or have the common touch, or be great speakers. But the have to be clear. They never forget our need for security, for community, for clarity, for authority, for respect -- and our need for clarity, when met, is the most likely to engender in us confidence, resilience, and creativity.
Show us clearly whom we should seek to serve, where our core strength lies, which score we should focus on, and which actions we should take today, and we will reward you by working our hearts out to make our better future come true.