The Leadership Coach™

Spring Clean Your Leadership

Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Paul Andrew in Leadership, The Leadership Coach™

We moved homes this week and became acutely aware of the amount of stuff we have accumulated as a family over the years. We’re not hoarders. In fact we’re not even especially sentimental. Yet quietly, in boxes and cupboards, in drawers and dark corners of the garage, “stuff” had been slowly multiplying. Not quite rubbish but not quite valuable either. Just “stuff”. So last weekend we had the mother of all garage sales. It was hard work yet strangely liberating and surprisingly profitable. It might be autumn in Sydney but it was time for a spring clean anyway.

When did you last spring clean your organisation? I’m not necessarily talking about an office clean up… what I really mean is when did you last stop everything and assess what is really of value and what is merely “stuff”?

I believe that every leader should take stock on a regular basis. Without it what we experience is mental clutter, diffused focus, ambiguous priorities, and a subtle drag that is created by all the excess baggage we’re carrying on the journey.

Three ways you could spring clean your leadership:
1. Strategies
You can’t afford for any strategy to become a sacred cow. Just because it worked once (or even saved your business) doesn’t mean that it’s the right strategy for the landscape you face today. Just ask the Allied armies that used “tried and tested” trench warfare strategies against an entirely new offense known as “blitzkreig” in World War II. Even the best strategies have a shelf life. And in modern business often your “best practice” breakthrough today is “common practice” for your competition tomorrow.

2. Policies
Most policies in organisations are created with purpose in mind at the beginning but most of them outlive the reason they were created. I wonder what policies and procedures, rules and regulations, are lurking throughout your team that no longer serve their best interests? Over time they layer on top of each other creating a thick web of bureaucracy that creates a sort of subtle inertia – resistance to change and innovation. And the more irrelevant and complex they become over time the more poisonous they are to your team.

3. Products & Services
One of the great challenges of leadership is working out when “less is more”. It’s the tension between doing more and getting better at what we already do. If the Pareto Principle is right, you probably get 80% of your results from just 20% of your products or services. If you ruthlessly culled from that 80% that produces only 20% of your results, what improvements could you bring to the best things you do? What if you had the chance to be world class in a few things, but at the cost of dabbling in many things? As I heard a speaker say once “The gap between where you are and where you want to be is largely determined by the price you’re unwilling to pay”.

Often in leadership we are so busy moving forward that we put off any activity that requires us to stop. But every gardener knows that pruning is short term pain for long term gain. Sure, pruning takes some time and actually cuts away foliage that is fruitful, but pruning triggers new growth and actually results in much more fruit longer term. Are you avoiding pruning away some things that have been fruitful for a season? What if that is costing you true long-term fruitfulness?

It’s time for a spring clean.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback
Plus click “ShareThis” below to post this article to your blog, Facebook, Twitter and more…

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Related posts:

1. What’s Your Leadership Footprint?
2. Simplify
3. Mandela’s Leadership Genius

Tags: Focus, Leadership Development, Pareto Principle, Strategy, Team Building