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January 22, 2007

Steven Ambrose’s Eisenhower Parts I and II

I do not plan to summarize the whole 1200 pages of the two volume biography. Rather I plan to list things I want to remember about Eisenhower’s leadership.

 

 

“Long Faces Don’t Win Wars”

Be humble and give credit. Eisenhower was humble. He always gave credit to his soldiers and was willing to take the blame.

See for yourself. During WWII, The General visited the front lines more than any other General. He liked to see the troops and encourage them. His visits helped the front-line soldiers. For example: when he found out officers were living in luxury compared to the troops he gave orders to even out the living quarters. 

Do not fail. Eisenhower knew that some officiers would underperform. He told Patton that one of the most important yet hardest things to do is to remove the incapable officers as soon as possible.  

Make the most of who you are. He became Supreme Commander because the French would not follow an English leader. Many of the Generals believe that they should be Supreme Commander, and Eisenhower appeased them by letting them get all the press (this made him even more popular in the press).

Be decisive. On D-Day there were several worries about the weather, Eisenhower was decisive, ordering a go.

Be responsible for the outcome. Eisenhower had written a statment that he intended to read to the press if D-Day was a failure, where he took credit for the failure.  

Stay in the middle of extermes. As President, many times he took the "middle way" and compromised between Democrats and Republicans.

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September 29, 2006

What Leaders Really Do – article by John Kotter - blog by Karl Janowski

“No one has figured out how to manage people effectively into battle; they must be led”

 

Leaders – coping with change

  • Set a direction and create visions – broad based thinkers willing to take risks
  • Aligning people – empowering them, getting them to believe the vision
  • Motivate and Inspire – the more change the more inspiration needed 

Management – coping with complexity

  • Plans and budgets – planning is designed to produce orderly results, not change
  • Organizing and staffing – create human system like architecture
  • Controlling and problem solving – fast and efficient solutions to problems

This was a Harvard Business Review article that I read published in Leadership Insights a collection of 15 HBR articles. Although it talked about what leaders "do" it does not talk about one of the main Peter Senge leadsership topics: a leader leads through commitment to the vision, a manager manages though compliance. I think this is a key distinction that is maybe implied but not stated in this article.

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September 14, 2006

The Manager’s Job – article by Henry Mintzberg - blog by Karl Janowski

HBR Article

Do managers just plan, organize, coordinate, and control? 

The author of this article doesn’t believe so. After conducting studies of managers in the work place the author has come to some other conclusions, classifying the managers role into three main categories:


1.)    Interpersonal Roles – a key to authority

·        Figurehead – ceremonial duties of someone with authority

·        Leader – motivate and encourage employees

·        Liason – making contacts outside the vertical chain of command

2.)    Informational Roles – comes from interpersonal relationships

·        Monitor – scanning the environment

·        Disseminator – letting subordinates in on information

·        Spokesperson – communication outside of the unit 

3.)    Decisional Roles – comes from information

·        Entrepreneur –improve the unit or group

·        Disturbance Handler –fix problems and handle pressures

·        Resource Allocator – deciding who will get what

·        Negotiator – making tradeoffs between two things 

The managers’ effectiveness is related to their insight into their own work which is an integrated job of the roles given in the list above.

“Influence is seen in the leader role, formal authority vests them with great power; leadership determines how much of it they will realize”


My Thoughts: It is interesting to see a article almost solely on management in a leadership compellation. I wish this article talked more on the differences between leadership and management. It sort of falls into the trap of thinking that all managers are leaders of their subordinates. Anyway I would summarize this as: managers’ personal contacts lead to information which leads to decision-making. Managers must do all three. I am not sold on the “leader” part without a further discussion of the difference between a manger and a leader.

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April 30, 2006

Winning – book by Jack Welch – blog by Karl Janowski

This book covers a wide variety of general management topics.
 
Your mission statement should balance the possible and impossible.
 
What are the values you work by? List them and live them.
 
Reward both performance and behavior.
 
Candor – candor works because candor unclutters, but is against human nature
 
Jack uses differentiation in ranking employees 20% top, 70% middle, 10% falling. Protecting underperformers always backfires.  Rev up the 70% middle, don’t let them get lost or down
 
 
What Leaders Do
 
Constantly upgrade the team- evaluate, coach, build self confidence
Make people live and breath the vision
Give off energy and optimism
Trust with transparency and candor
Have courage to make unpopular calls
Probe and push with curiosity
Set the example
Celebrate
 
Hiring- How do you spot a winner?
 
3 Tests- integrity, intelligence, and maturity
 
Look for: positive energy, ability to energize others, ability to make tough decisions, to execute, and have passion for your job
 
 
For hiring high level managers: authenticity, anticipate future needs, surround themselves with good people, and resilience
 
People Management
Elevate HR to a position of power.
Use a rigorous non bureaucratic evaluation
Face straight into tough relationships
Have an effective mechanism (process and money) to motivate and train,
Treat the middle 70% as heart and soul of organization
Have a flatter organization with a clearly defined structure
 
3 Types of Firings
Integrity Violations – these are no brainers
Layoffs due to economics – every employee should know how the company is doing
Non-performance – Do it this way: no surprises, minimize humiliation,
 
3 Big Mistakes of Firing
Moving too fast
Not using enough candor
Taking too long
 
Change
Attach every change to a clear purpose
Hire and promote only true believers
Get rid of resisters
Seize every opportunity, even those from someone else’s misfortune
 
Crisis Management
Assume the problem is worse than it appears
There are no secrets in the world – be honest
You and your organizations handling will be portrayed in the worst light
There will be changes in process and people at the conclusion
You will get stronger from the crisis
 
 
Strategy
Come up with the big aha for your business – a sustainable competitive advantage
Put the right people in the right jobs
Seek out best practices to achieve your aha
 
Look at: current playing field, what you competition has been up to, what you’ve been up to
 
Budgeting
Do not use “Negotiated settlement or phony smile methods”
Need an operating plan first,
Bonuses should be about beating last years performance and competition
 
Start Up
Spend plenty upfront and put the most passionate people in the lead
Make a grand promotion of the importance of the startup
Err on the side of freedom, get of the venture’s back
 
Acquiring a Company Pitfalls
Thinking it will be a merger of equals
Not worrying about culture fit
A “reverse hostage situation” where you gave up too much power in negotiations
Integrating too timidly
The conqueror syndrome
Paying too much
Resistance in their employees
 
A part of making your customers sticky is meeting or exceeding their expectations, which is what Six Sigma helps you do.
 
Getting Promoted: Do deliver great performance far beyond expectations, don’t make your boss use political capital to champion you.
 
Your Boss
Top priority is competitiveness
Most are willing to accommodate work-life changes if you earned it
Bosses know that work-life issues are negotiated one on one over policy
Don’t turn for help too much, your life is your problem to solve

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April 29, 2006

The Fifth Discipline - book by Peter Senge - blog by Karl Janowski

Disciplines
System Thinking – common system patterns and how to use them
Personal Mastery – personal continuous learning
Mental Models – our views of how things work, internal representation of external reality
Shared Vision – team has same vision of the result
Team Learning – group learning, increasing team IQ

This is a great book. There is a lot of material for both self and team development. Peter Senge uses examples that make you think, like the MIT beer game where simple delays in communcation cause a game that models beer distrobution to be tougher than it seems.  Can you see the forest through the trees? Peter Senge has taught me the opposite of analytical thinking, instead of zoomming in and break things up into smaller chucks, zoom out to see the whole picture and understand.

Systems - elements interacting, and through their interaction achieve something they cannot achieve without interacting 

Here is a link for the system archetypes: http://www.systems-thinking.org/theWay/theWay.htm

Building Blocks
Balancing Loop – two opposing forces that reach an equilibrium
Reinforcing loop – results in growth or decline
 
Archetypes
Limits to Growth – one reinforcing loop and one balancing, the balancing limits the growth of the reinforcing, you keep putting bigger engines in cars to gain speed at the race track but weight of those engines limits the speed
 
Shifting the Burden- two balancing loops and a reinforcing loop, this happens when you solve the symptom and not the real problem and solving the symptom actually makes the fundamental problem worse
 
Fixes that Fail – a balancing loop foiled by a reinforcing,  you fix a problem but unintended consequences happen and defeat the fix
 
Drifting Goals – two balancing loops, one undermines the balance and intention of the other as the desired state keep moving because, hence the name “drifting goal”, for example you being training for a sport, you set your goal, as you get closer to the goal you start to settle for less and you never reach your goal.
 
Indecision – two balancing loops with delays, the delay causes and endless ping pong effect (in economics many time we assume perfect information, but does supply and demand really influence price? How do you know current supply and demand if it changes instantaneously?)
 
Escalation – two balancing loops oppose each other creating a reinforcing loop, the arms race between US and USSR is an example
 
Attractiveness Principle – limits to growth with multiple limits
 
Growth and Underinvestment – limits to growth with an additional reinforcing loop that has a external standard and some delay, marketing increases demand that leads to the need for more capacity after some delay
 
Accidental Adversaries – four reinforcing loops and two balancing, best explained that there are two things trying to work together for a common cause but each is also working on self development, this self development hinder the other person, example two politicians both running for a party’s presidential nomination (they are both from the same party) while working together to win the presidency for the party, they are also working for their individual nomination, and they both hurt each other through their campaign by exposing each other’s weaknesses thus hindering their party’s chances at the overall nomination. 
 
These two are similar; there are differences in their structure though. Success to the successful archetype allows one to grow. Tragedy of the commons limits both.
 
Tragedy of the Commons – two growing structures share a limited resource
 
Success to the Successful – growth of one limits the other

Other Peter Senge Sites
http://www.solonline.org/
 
http://www.thinking.net/Systems_Thinking/systems_thinking.html
 
http://www.systems-thinking.de/


As a final throught I have seem simularities between game theory and system thinking. The Prisoners Dilemma models the game theory of an arms race. Escalation models it in system thinking. Does balancing loop equlibrium relate to Nash equlibrium?

 

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Monday Morning Leadership – book by David Cottrell - blog by Karl Janowski

Here are some of the main ideas I picked up from the book:

People quit people before they quit companies.
 
Accept full responsibility for the team
Leadership requires different decisions than management
 
Keep the main thing, the main thing…. What is the main purpose of the team?
A leader's main purpose is to eliminate confusion.
 
Never depend on someone’s perception to match your expectation.
 
Employees
Employees fall into 3 categories: superstar, middle star, and falling star.
 
The minimal level of acceptable performance should be at the bottom of the falling stars because you still have to accept their work. Reward superstars, coach middle, and work with falling stars.
 
Don’t lump them all together.
 
Do right rule – Do right even when no one is watching.
“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice” Confucius
 
Greatest asset to a team – having the right people
Greatest liability – having the wrong people
 
Hire easy and manage tough, or hire tough and manage easy
 
Time Management
Pareto Principle – 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities
 
Touch a paper only once.  Do something with it.
 
Plan time to plan.
 
Leadership
The scorecard of leadership is the results of the team, not what you do.
 
You need your team more than your team needs you. 
 
Everyone has a bucket of motivation and dipper to remove motivation from other buckets.  As a leader you need to keep the buckets full. The more you fill the more your bucket is filled.
 
Your comfort zone is a forceful enemy. Defeat it. 
3 Ways to learn: read, listen, teach

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